It is a mystery why the New York Times news editors keep producing "news" stories that ignore what innumerable articles and the Times’ own coverage revealed months ago. The latest example is Sheryl Gay Stolberg’s reporting on the White House efforts to reassure Americans that the stimulus bill, passed only three months ago, will gradually save or create a substantial number of jobs.
With unemployment now at 9.4 percent and still rising, it’s understandable that both the White House and voters would be concerned about how effective and rapid the stimulus will be. People are hurting and they need help, especially jobs, now.
But the Times article proceeds to quote disingenuous Republican criticism of the stimulus’ progress without mentioning their party’s destructive role, reported in numerous news articles, in making sure the stimulus would be smaller, slower and less effective than it should have been. Instead we read this dishonest framing from Republican flacks:
“The Obama administration is continuing to fabricate job creation numbers related to the stimulus,” Tony Fratto, a deputy press secretary in the Bush administration, said in an e-mail message to reporters. He added, “Their so-called models would not stand the light of day.”
And this misdirection from Eric Cantor:
“The administration looks dramatically out of touch as they highlight the creation of temporary summer employment in the face of job losses unseen in decades, record unemployment and massive deficits,” said Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House Republican whip.
And this whining misrepresentation from John Boehner:
“When they passed this spending plan, Democrats said it would immediately create jobs,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House Republican leader, “yet nearly four months later, unemployment has continued to climb and none of their rosy predictions have come true.”
The Times neglects to mention that all but three Republicans (Snowe and Collins, with Specter having since renamed himself a Democrat) voted against the stimulus. It doesn’t mention these same Republicans did everything they could to discredit the idea of a stimulus bill, to restrict and water down job-creating spending, and to divert limited stimulus dollars to ineffective tax breaks for people who not only didn’t need them but who, as the Times’ own economic Nobel Laureate predicted, used the tax breaks to pay down their debts and rebuild their savings.
Nor does the Times mention that Republicans essentially vetoed more funds to help states avoid immediate and massive layoffs and/or tax cuts that would produce a collective anti-stimulus. The opportunity to have an immediate impact on jobs was that feature, but Republicans demanded it be whittled down. California, anyone?
The quoted Republicans lament the fact that Americans are losing their jobs. But the Times doesn’t mention that these same Republicans adamantly opposed providing temporary unemployment benefits to people whose hours were being cut back and vetoed the Administration’s proposal to provide temporary Medicare benefits to those who lost their jobs and health care.
Nor does the Times inform its readers that the substantial increase in personal savings we’ve seen explains why the Republican’s newly recovered alarm over deficit spending is misplaced.
And apparently, there’s no connection between this story and the fact that the most clueless conservative Republican governors — Ms. Palin comes to mind — continue to argue against stimulus spending, complain about deficits (when that’s what stimulus spending is) and continue to complain that the stimulus bill is forcing them to help their own citizens who have lost their jobs, health care and homes during the recession.
"Why, oh why, can’t we have a better press corps" — Brad Delong, et al.
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Short memories, those NYT writers.
The Republicans are crazy. The MSM remains sloppy, lazy, and partisan. But this still doesn’t make either Obama or the Democrats right. Most of the effects of the stimulus were always going to be felt in 2010. The continuing rapid deterioration of the American economy, despite the ongoing suckers rally on Wall Street, has forced Obama to try to push more of the stimulus into this year. But it is far short of what is needed. Obama continues to use the deceptive talk about jobs created “or saved”. He promises 600,000 such jobs this summer ignoring that we have lost 2.2 million since the beginning of the year, and what jobs he actually does manage to create will be less than a fourth or fifth of what we have lost so far this year, not counting the job losses from last year, or further job losses this year. Our political elites across the board remain in denial about the condition of the economy and how to fix it.
It’s easy to program 600,000 jobs in the summer; that’s prime road construction season. Accelerate the projects and you create more jobs. And then there’s the maintenance in national parks. And summer youth job programs in cities.
Where the heavy lifting will come is when school starts again.
There are no jobs… only government sponsored work…
Alan Ableson at Barron’s has mocked Elaine Chao’s (Bush’s Labor Sec) Birth death model and the employment numbers it produced.
You do not get more probusiness than Barron’s the WallStreet Journal’s Saturday paper.
Lets see the Bushies answer Alan’s questions! Lets see the Times do some basic research on an issue.
Government-sponsored work is just as valuable as “private-sponsored” work. There are plenty of public jobs that add value to the economy. Teachers, health workers, firemen, police, judicial positions, program administrators and on and on. Then there supposedly “private” jobs that exist only because of government guarantees — building nuclear plants, wind mills, solar facilities, banks, etc.
Even temp govt jobs are real jobs. Building/maintaining roads, parks, trails, bikeways are all worthwhile things to do and make the country richer.
The suggestion that “public” jobs and not real jobs is wrong.
I know. I was just throwing their own rhetoric back at them. They are the ones who claimed that the stimulus didn’t create jobs, just work.
This is exactly what Obama gets for being Bipartisan. Their will be another bank bailout or corporation, hedgefund that is to big to fail and will need government cash.
Does the ProBusiness party really want to piss us off when we know they will need a favor?
I’m thinking a Stimulus plan the same size as China is doing.
The exploitation of the American people’s short term memory by the Republicans obvious. They have called this Obama’s recession and since he is the President? I would have thought that they would give him at LEAST 9 month to blame the previous president after all they gave Bush nine months till 9/11 and that was blamed on Clinton.
The thing that people don’t remember about today’s Journalmalism is that it is not the press’ job anymore to provide the challenge to the Republican’s ridiculous comments. It is the Democrat’s job. And when they don’t say something about the Republican’s ridiculous claim well, too damn bad. “I gave them a chance to comment.”
This is another method to frame the debate. This is also a way to keep the Democrats in defensive mode. It is much harder to control the story and reframe the story when you are playing defense.
Ah — you’re right; that was/is the argument. The interesting thing I keep recalling is all of the wonderful legacy projects built in the 1930s. Lodges and trails in parks; libraries, schools, fire-stations, bridges — terrific structures that are still there, and still adding value to our lives. What will we leave as our legacy?
You almost can’t do enough of this. The jobs are real, the income/wages are real; the economic activity/multiplier is real — and it leaves the country better than it was.
16.4% are actually without jobs, if you include discouraged workers who were disingenuously subtracted from the totals during the Clinton Admin.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data
Sad thing is that many of those wonderful projects are is a state of decay that would shame the men & women who built them. We have spent so much of the past 30+ years shortchanging our public facilities, and even now in the face of another depression the Rs are only doing hand wringing and accusing the Ds of not fixing the problem that they themselves created.
They demanded that the money only be for shovel-ready projects. They demanded that the spending be restricted to only certain “Republican Approved”TM sectors and functions. We need to cut the BS, and spend like theirs an economic war on our horizons (it is, whether the pols in DC recognize it as such or not), and put people to work.
It doesn’t matter if it is only temporary. The fact is that our best guess right now as to the number of unemployed/underemployed people is 16.5% and climbing. We are facing economic catastrophe, and the Rs are whinging about deficit spending. I simply can’t feel sorry for them and can’t understand how anyone can credit their position, but sadly many folks do.
The New York Times is a terrible newspaper and always has been. Full of misinformation, disinformation, outright lies and casual stupidity it has acquired the tagline of “The newspaper of record” entirely through snob appeal to the middle-classes and relentless brown-nosing of the upper ones.
In short it’s journalism’s biggest “Phoebe.”
Funny really that the Republicans consider themselves a party of business, but they don’t understand that businesses have to borrow money to grow. So the government borrows some money so that it can grow… hang on…
It just seems screamingly obvious that in a bad time when businesses cannot provide enough jobs, the government can and should pick up the slack, and that the temporary nature of the jobs should not be held against it, because in good times businesses will provide enough jobs. That’s so basic to understanding the modern economy that I actually feel insulted that grown men and women pretend they don’t understand it.
Are Republicans grown men and women? Are we counting chronological or emotional age here?
egregious had VA voting update, upstairs!
Deeds Leading in VA Governor Primary: Heavy Rain Suppresses Turnout
Not wanting to sound conspiratorial, but do you suppose there is any connection between the fact that the NYT is located just down the street from Wall St., which has it’s armored cars parked behind the Capitol building in Washington? Maybe they know which side their bread is buttered on? Or what’s in THEIR wallet?
Wait, let’s see if I got this straight. You’re mad at senators who say the stimulus bill didn’t work because back when the stimulus bill was in Congress they voted against it because they said then that it wouldn’t work. And I understanding this right?
No. He’s saying they crippled the bill by insisting things like more money for the states be taken out.
Me, I’m not so sure it was that big a difference. The bill, as passed, was quite close to what Obama originally wanted. The HOUSE bill, not Obama’s bill, was substantially better, but Obama said he loved the compromise Senate bill so very very much, so I don’t think he can complain about it now.
I said the day that they announced the ratio of tax cuts to spending, it wasn’t going to work well enough. And that was Obama’s choice. He got his tax cuts.
Ultimately those who voted for a bill are responsible for its success or failure. If they allowed people to cripple the bill, people who still wouldn’t vote for it after they crippled it, then the success or failure of the bill still belongs to those who voted for it (to say nothing of whether or not we should let people who allow others to do this be in charge of a lemonade stand, much less represent us in Congress). Conversely could you imagine scarecrow giving any credit to the Republicans who voted against the bill for their contributions to said bill if the results were different?