The New York Times reports. You decide.
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")
Little better encapsulates the problems we face in the media than a brief perusal of this morning's New York Times online. All the old favorites are there: the "both sides do it" waffle, the "Democrats in disarray" switcheroo, the center-right view disguised as the reasonable one, in "contrast" with the featured hyper-conservative view. If it weren't real, one might even consider it a work of performance art to confirm every blogger's media critique:
After weeks of Republicans holding the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to the demands of the Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises cults, the Times' blaring A1 headline declares Challenge To A Budget Deal: Selling It To Democrats. Yes, Democrats:
Congressional and administration officials said that the two men, who had abandoned earlier talks toward a deal when leaks provoked Republicans’ protests, were closing in on a package calling for as much as $3 trillion in savings from substantial spending cuts and future revenue produced by a tax code overhaul. If it could be sold to Congress, the plan could clear the way for a vote to increase the federal debt ceiling before an Aug. 2 deadline.
But the initial reaction to the still-unfinished proposal hardly suggested a quick resolution. This time, the flak came mostly from senior Congressional Democrats, who are angry at some of Mr. Obama’s concessions and at being excluded from the talks.
The president worked to ease concerns from members of his party, inviting Democratic leaders to a White House meeting on Thursday evening that lasted nearly two hours. The participants would not comment afterward.
No one could possibly imagine why Democrats in Congress wouldn't go along with a "deal" offering $3 trillion in devastating cuts that will only exacerbate a protracted recession and jobless recovery, paired with "overhauls" of the tax code that would likely be regressive overall in nature, and that will be implemented in an election year approximately when pigs fly and Greenland's ice sheet shows up in Dante's Inferno. Clearly, the ideological rigidity of House Democrats is preventing the President and the Speaker from coming to a reasonable compromise on delivering Fancy Feast to America's seniors.
And if it isn't Democrats in particular who are to blame, it's nasty "both sides do it" partisan bickering:
President Obama and the Republican House speaker, John A. Boehner, once again struggled against resistance from their respective parties on Thursday as they tried to shape a sweeping deficit-reduction agreement that could avert a government default in less than two weeks.
Of course, as the New York Times points out immediately below the previous article, the deal is important because the states will be in even more trouble than before without assistance from the federal government. No mention is made of why states governed by Democrats and Republicans alike are experiencing fiscal crises (think: historic recession created by financial sector recklessless, that will surely worsen with the cuts proposed in the "deal"), or the fact that most conservative "red" states rely more on federal aid and give back less to the federal government than do more liberal "blue" states. Bringing in that sort of context would be an indication of bias, and a violation of professional journalistic standards.
On the opinion side, we have a featured article by Grover Norquist, who sees an unprecedented opportunity to use a made-up crisis as shock doctrine material and drown the safety net in a bathtub. His Shrillness Paul Krugman has an esoteric piece about how we're still in a recession that will only get worse with austerity measures. And in the supposed middle, lying sensibly in between the Nobel Prize-winning Keynesian and the rabid ideologue nutcase, is the execrable David Brooks, who can barely contain his orgiastic delight over the Gang of Six and the "Grand Bargain". Brooks envisions himself as a grand conciliator, bringing two ideologically recalcitrant toddlers together for the good of the country and lower taxes for billionaires:
Imagine you’re a member of Congress. You have your own preferred way to reduce debt. If you’re a Democrat, it probably involves protecting Medicare and raising taxes. If you’re a Republican, it probably involves cutting spending, reforming Medicare and keeping taxes low....
At the last minute, two bipartisan approaches heave into view. In the Senate, the “Gang of Six” produces one Grand Bargain. Meanwhile, President Obama and John Boehner, the House speaker, have been quietly working on another. They suddenly seem close to a deal...
[B]oth bargains would boost growth. The tax code really is a travesty and a drag on the country’s economic dynamism. Any serious effort to simplify the code, strip out tax expenditures and reduce rates would have significant positive effects — even if it raised some tax revenues along the way...
Mostly you do it because you want to live in a country than can govern itself. Over the past few weeks, Washington has seemed dysfunctional. Public disgust has risen to epic levels. Yet through all this, serious people — Barack Obama, John Boehner, the members of the Gang of Six — have soldiered on. They’ve been responsible and brave. If you’re a Democrat, you hate to see domestic cuts. If you’re a Republican, you loathe revenue increases, even little ones.
Get that? If you're a Democrat, you hate domestic cuts. If you're a Republican, you hate taxes. Even little bitty taxes. Which is why in Brooksland, the reasonable center between Krugman and Norquist, it's a perfectly fair compromise for Democrats to swallow $3 trillion in cuts, including to vital and very popular entitlement programs, in exchange for a promissory note for nebulous tax "reform" later. In Brooksland, the public's clear preference for a debt ceiling increase, for new and much higher taxes on the wealthy, and for no cuts to Medicare and Social Security, are irrelevant annoyances compared to the supposed good intentions of Obama and Boehner, who are just trying to do the right thing, don't you know.
And arbiters of conventional wisdom wonder why the public has lost faith in government, media and institutions in general.
The "liberal" New York Times. They report. You decide.