The Very Gray Lady

The New York Times is again trying to sell the Boston Globe newspaper after disposing of many of its other communications properties.  This is a sign of the dowager phase of what was once a great paper.  Now it has sunk to being mostly a stenographer for the Democrat party.  A perfectly repugnant example of same is its Republican slam-piece in last Sunday’s magazine section, see: Can the Republicans be Saved from Obsolescence  A liberal friend (like many of them these days) sent me the following editorial from the New York Times which typifies this paper’s declining standards (see: Why Taxes Have to Go Up) ... in order to set me straight.  Surprise, surprise … it once again proselytizes for higher taxes on the wealthy … I suspect to help dig Obama out of the predicament he has gotten himself into by having previously signed the government spending sequestration bill due to kick in on March 1^st.. This (not-too-well-written) editorial’s  tag line is:

Raising taxes at the top is neither punitive nor gratuitous. It is a needed step, both to achieve near-term budget goals and to lay the foundation for a healthy budget in the future. As the economy strengthens and the population ages, more taxes will be needed from further down the income scale, both to meet foreseeable commitments, especially health care, as well as unforeseeable developments, from wars to technological challenges. But there will never be a consensus for more taxes from the middle class without imposing higher taxes on wealthy Americans, who have enjoyed low taxes for a long time.

Now the fiscal cliff deal which was just passed in January and signed into law by Obama, raises the tax rate on “millionaires and billionaires” (those single earners making over $400K per year) to almost 40%.  Tasting blood, Our Dear Leader wants to extract another hundredweight of flesh from these same taxpayers … and then (read the editorial again more carefully) move the taxing scythe into the middle class … all without cutting discretionary or entitlement spending.  According to Obama and the Times, all we have is a taxing problem, not a spending problem.  This is ideological Alzheimer's disease.

The rest of this editorial is mostly half-truths or outright mendacity … e.g.s, “On the spending side, Republicans are resisting cuts to defense.” (Are not the Republicans willing to permit the looming budget sequestration which includes draconian defense spending cuts … on top of the already-existing D.O.D. one-half a trillion dollar cuts over the next decade … see: Huffington Post Story?) And another, “[Republican spending reductions] implies brutalizing cuts in nondefense discretionary areas, like education and environment, which are already set to fall to their lowest level as a share of the economy since the 1950s.”  As anyone with a frontal lobe can see, this is pure fiction.  The environment and education were hardly on the federal government’s radar screen in the 1950s.  And you can find other truth bendings in this editorial without any eyestrain if you care to look.

So, what was once the news standard of this nation’s intellectual elitists is now a crone feeding sardines to all the neighborhood cats  and serving tea and scones to anyone who’ll grace her door and listen to her relate her past glories.