Backdoor Socialism
December 8, 2005
It’s laughable how Dodo birds are always trying to give flying lessons. Can you imagine a primer on journalistic success coming from the New York Times...much less a sermon on national healthcare policy?
The Times, whose economic management is described as “...bordering on the abysmal” by Morgan Stanley's senior publishing analyst Douglas Arthur, loves telling taxpayers how to empty their wallets. The soufflé dish of red ink (a.k.a. the Times), whose net income is down 35% since 2001, never misses a chance to urge taxpayers into the same economic bedlam.
In a December 4 article, Health Coverage of Young Widens With States' Aid, the Times’ pro-tax advocate (posing as John Broder) begins by informing that, “The number of American children without health care coverage has been slowly but steadily declining over the past several years even as health care costs continue to rise and fewer employers provide insurance, creating a breach that states have stepped in to fill with new programs and fresh money.” Where would we be without another government pogrom...I meant program?
Broder credits the 1997 federal program “State Children's Health Insurance Program, or Schip” for providing the funds to make this drop in uninsured children possible. He gives minor credits to “...tobacco taxes and general state revenues”. Why didn’t he save the ink and just say “taxes, taxes and more taxes”?
Don’t worry because that is where the story is headed.
Broder notes that “Vermont leads the nation in the percentage of its children who are insured through state and federal programs.” In 1989, Vermont “created a state-financed program for pregnant women and for children up to age 6 “. In 1992, Gov. Howard Dean expanded the program “to cover children through age 17” (doesn’t that mean all CHILDREN?) and increased the income eligibility to families making almost $60,000 a year. Well, now we know what an unstable liberal doctor likes to spend your tax dollars on.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, “a Republican”, gets a bitch-slapping from Broder. It seems that, unlike Howard Dean’s Vermont, California has “more than a million...children who now go without (insurance)”. Apparently, Schwarzenegger, “a Republican”, vetoed a bill that would have provided this coverage. Schwarzenegger “agreed with its aims”, but worried “that the sponsors had not come up with a way to pay for it”. Maybe Broder should have had Pinch Sulzberger write the check....
While Broder sings the praises of Vermont and berates the Scrooge-like states of California and Texas, he never mentions some obvious differences. Let’s see...in 1998, Vermont had a total of 17,271 illegal aliens while, in the same year California and Texas respectively had 6,417,052 and 1,497,287. Is this an example of what Pinch refers to as the Times commitment to “quality journalism”?
In a January Business Week article, The Future of the New York Times, Pinch Sulzberger finds it “troubling” that the internet is “training a generation of readers to get quality information for free”. Yet, without a misstep, the Times has no problem training generation after generation to expect a quality lifestyle for free.
The Times supports this position with a reliance on “...Elizabethan poor laws that drew a conceptual distinction between the deserving and the undeserving poor...It's very hard to call kids undeserving, even if you don't like the parents' behavior.” But does that really justify the bankrupting of society to provide a “soup-to-nuts” lifestyle for an unlimited number of children spawned by an unlimited number of irresponsible propagators?
The word “child” has morphed into one of the unassailable givens in the liberal lexicon. It is a hot-button code word that, once invoked, justifies all that follows...”The Children need a breakfast program; the Children need a lunch program; the Children need a snack program; the Children need better schools; the Children need a night-lit soccer field; the Children need an Astroturf ballpark; the Children need protection of their Constructional right to an abortion without telling mommy and daddy...” When a liberal says “Children”, get ready for another government program to suck your wallet empty.
Times’ reporter David Halbfinger once wrote an article on Alabama’s anti-tax vote. In the article, Halbfinger itemized the consequences should Alabama’s taxpayers just say no to having their pockets picked by bloated government: “prisoners turned loose, nursing-home patients turned out and schoolchildren denied textbooks”.
It’s funny that Halbfinger never once considered state spending to be the problem. It’s funny that Halbfinger never mentioned things like Democratic State Sen. Hank Sanders using state money to benefit his family. The Selma Democrat is under investigation for steering (through the childrens’ education budget) millions of dollars to private, nonprofit groups tied to his family.
How about $2.3 million of tax dollars for the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement, a tutoring and leadership program created by Sanders' wife and run by his daughter. Of course Sanders, who is chairman of the Senate's education budget committee, “says his family members didn't benefit because the state money didn't pay their salaries.”
Just try to tell Ronnie Earle that a dollar isn’t a dollar, isn’t a dollar!
Another Broder story addressed the budget crisis in Oregon. Broder contended that the state of Oregon had to raise taxes to cover a “sharp drop” in revenue. But as reported by Times Watch, “there was no sharp drop in revenue in Oregon; in fact, quite the opposite occurred. The Oregon General Fund Budget grew from $5.5 billion to $11.3 billion between 1991 to 2001. In other words, the state’s budget doubled over 10 years”. That didn’t stop the Times from trying to sell increased taxes with their crisis reporting that Oregon “lacks enough money for health care, schools, prisons and criminal prosecution”. I wonder if Jayson Blair contributed to Broder’s story?
As Bill Clinton once conceded, “the Era of big government is over”. And, as Business Week reported, the Times “has been permanently diminished, along with the rest of what now is dismissively known in some circles as the MSM”. Quickly rebounding from any sense of reality, Business Week blames this on the usual suspects, “a ...strident segment of the population seems (not) to want...journalism untainted by the personal views of journalists but coverage that affirms their partisan beliefs -- in the way that many Fox News (FOX ) shows cater to a conservative constituency.” I always new that Conservative was a liberal code word for TRUTH.
Walking into the front entrance of the Times is no different than walking into the backdoor of socialism. Both are equally dishonest systems. The Times is the inherited wealth of a limousine-liberal family. And like many inheritances, it is being eroded over time. The eventual bankruptcy of the Times would be a boon to society. The bankrupting of the taxpayer by infinitely increasing the confiscatory taxes the Times seems to love so much would not.
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