Dayhoff Soundtrack: TimesWatch Tracker: Times Again Promotes Common Cause's Anti-Thomas Crusade, Skips Racism at CC Protest

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

TimesWatch Tracker: Times Again Promotes Common Cause's Anti-Thomas Crusade, Skips Racism at CC Protest

Sunday Front Page: Clarence Thomas Caught in Quiet-Gate Controversy!
News you can use: "The anniversary will probably be observed in silence. A week from Tuesday, when the Supreme Court returns from its midwinter break and hears arguments in two criminal cases, it will have been five years since Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken during a court argument."

Times Again Promotes Common Cause's Anti-Thomas Crusade, Skips Racism at CC Protest
The "advocacy group" battling "conservatives" and Justice Clarence Thomas: "...Justice Thomas reported that the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group, had reimbursed him an undisclosed amount for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” over the weekend of the retreat. The event is organized by Charles and David Koch, brothers who have used millions of dollars from the energy conglomerate they run in Wichita, Kan., to finance conservative causes."

Calmes Again Compliments Obama's Budget; Times Bashed Bush's Budgets
Jackie Calmes again suggests Obama's budget for fiscal year 2012 threaded the needle just right between spending cuts and increases, downplaying his lack of leadership on deficit-cutting: "With this year's deficit projected to hit a record, $1.6 trillion, he laid out a path for bringing down annual deficits to more sustainable levels over the rest of the decade."

Jackie Calmes: Behold Obama's Budgetary Brilliance
Reporter Jackie Calmes defends Obama's lack of budgetary leadership as clever strategy: "...President Obama has not opted for the bold, comprehensive approach to reining in the fast-growing federal debt....[reflecting] a White House calculation: that 'now' is too soon for the nation's political system....Plenty of people here in both parties, even deficit hawks among nonpartisan budget analysts, agree with that White House logic."

'Huff and Puff and Blow Your House Down' - Will Your Home Survive Global Warming?
Reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal rushes in where scientific consensus fears to tread: "Global warming is most likely responsible, at least in part, for the rising frequency and severity of extreme weather events - like floods, storms and droughts - since warmer surface temperatures tend to produce more violent weather patterns, scientists say."

Deborah Solomon Gives Up 'Q&A' Slot; Showed Blatant Hostility Toward Conservatives
Peter Baker's respectful interview with Donald Rumsfeld in the Times Sunday Magazine makes quite a contrast with Deborah Solomon's aggressive and hostile approach toward conservatives like William F. Buckley and Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Sunday Front Page: Clarence Thomas Caught in Quiet-Gate Controversy!

Besides the drumbeat of criticism of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas over his speaking engagements in front of conservative groups, the Times updated another traditional line of Thomas criticism on Sunday’s front page: He doesn’t speak during Supreme Court arguments (as if that would make the Times any less dismissive of his conservative philosophy). The latest iteration of the criticism is headlined “ No Argument: Thomas Keeps 5-Year Silence,” from Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak. And this time, the Times has figures to back up its fascinating premise.

Legal reporter Neil Lewis wrote a story about it for the December 17, 2000 Week in Review. Former Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse devoted her March 11, 2010 column to Thomas’s long silence. Some excerpts from Liptak's front-page contribution to this vital topic:

The anniversary will probably be observed in silence.

A week from Tuesday, when the Supreme Court returns from its midwinter break and hears arguments in two criminal cases, it will have been five years since Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken during a court argument.

If he is true to form, Justice Thomas will spend the arguments as he always does: leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, rubbing his eyes, whispering to Justice Stephen G. Breyer, consulting papers and looking a little irritated and a little bored. He will ask no questions.

In the past 40 years, no other justice has gone an entire term, much less five, without speaking at least once during arguments, according to Timothy R. Johnson, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota. Justice Thomas’s epic silence on the bench is just one part of his enigmatic and contradictory persona. He is guarded in public but gregarious in private. He avoids elite universities but speaks frequently to students at regional and religious schools. In those settings, he rarely dwells on legal topics but is happy to discuss a favorite movie, like “Saving Private Ryan.”

Here’s Liptak uncovering Quiet-Gate.

Justice Thomas has given various and shifting reasons for declining to participate in oral arguments, the court’s most public ceremony.

He has said, for instance, that he is self-conscious about the way he speaks. In his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” he wrote that he had been teased about the dialect he grew up speaking in rural Georgia. He never asked questions in college or law school, he wrote, and he was intimidated by some fellow students.

Elsewhere, he has said that he is silent out of simple courtesy.

Times Again Promotes Common Cause's Anti-Thomas Crusade, Skips Racism at CC Protest

The Times went after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas again in Tuesday’s report by Eric Lichtblau, “ Court Is Asked to Clarify Thomas’s Ties to a Retreat.”

Discrepancies in reports about an appearance by Justice Clarence Thomas at a political retreat for wealthy conservatives three years ago have prompted new questions to the Supreme Court from a group that advocates changing campaign finance laws.

When questions were first raised about the retreat last month, a court spokeswoman said Justice Thomas had made a “brief drop-by” at the event in Palm Springs, Calif., in January 2008 and had given a talk.

In his financial disclosure report for that year, however, Justice Thomas reported that the Federalist Society, a prominent conservative legal group, had reimbursed him an undisclosed amount for four days of “transportation, meals and accommodations” over the weekend of the retreat. The event is organized byCharles and David Koch, brothers who have used millions of dollars from the energy conglomerate they run in Wichita, Kan., to finance conservative causes.

Despite all the free publicity the Times has given to Common Cause’s recent conflict-of-interest complaints against Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, the paper has yet to report on the vulgar and racist remarks about Thomas (“String him up”) made by Common Cause-affiliated protesters and caught on video January 30 outside a resort in which the Koch brothers had organized a conservative meeting. Lichtblau himself even covered the protest, in flattering fashion.

Also note Lichtblau’s labeling disparity: While the Federalist Society is “conservative,” and the Koch brothers “finance conservative causes,” their leftist opponents at Common Cause are twice considered merely an “advocacy group.”

Arn Pearson, a vice president at the advocacy group Common Cause, said the two statements appeared at odds. His group sent a letter to the Supreme Court on Monday asking for “further clarification” as to whether the justice spent four days at the retreat for the entire event or was there only briefly.

....

Common Cause maintains that Justice Thomas should have disqualified himself from last year’s landmark campaign finance ruling in the Citizens United case, partly because of his ties to the Koch brothers.

In a petition filed with the Justice Department last month, the advocacy group said past appearances at the Koch brothers’ retreat by Justice Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, along with the conservative political work of Justice Thomas’s wife, had created a possible perception of bias in hearing the case.

The Citizens United decision, with Justice Thomas’s support, freed corporations to engage in direct political spending with little public disclosure. The Koch brothers have been among the main beneficiaries, political analysts say.

And which “political analysts” would those be?

Calmes Again Compliments Obama's Budget; Times Bashed Bush's Budgets

Jackie Calmes again made approving noises over Obama’s budget proposal for the fiscal year 2012 on Tuesday's front page: “Obama’s Budget Focuses On Path To Rein In Deficit.” As she did yesterday, Calmes treated the Obama budget as just right in its balance of spending cuts and increases (as opposed to the “Republican plan for immediate deep spending cuts”) and gave him a pass for putting off the tough choices.

With President Obama’s release on Monday of a budget for next year and House action this week on a Republican plan for immediate deep spending cuts, the nation is getting its clearest view since the president took office of the parties’ competing visions of the role of government, the urgency of addressing the deficit and the best path to long-term economic success.

Mr. Obama used his budget for the fiscal year 2012 and beyond to make the case for selectively cutting spending while increasing resources in areas like education and clean energy initiatives that hold the potential for long-term payoffs in economic growth. With this year’s deficit projected to hit a record, $1.6 trillion, he laid out a path for bringing down annual deficits to more sustainable levels over the rest of the decade.

Republicans said it was not nearly enough to address chronic fiscal imbalances and reduce the role of the federal government in the economy and society.

Neither party has put forward specific proposals to begin grappling with the most pressing long-term budget problem: the huge costs in the Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security programs as the population ages and medical costs rise, a bill that could overwhelm the government and crimp the economy if not addressed.

“We’re doing things that are the most painful and of least long-term economic value because we’re not willing to do the things that everybody, at least privately, agrees are necessary,” said Vin Weber, a Republican Party strategist and former congressman.

Nonetheless, with his budget, Mr. Obama was pivoting from the emphasis in his first two years on costly efforts to revive the economy. He said his plan would reduce the total projected deficits over the next decade by $1.1 trillion, or about 10 percent.

His budget, for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, would cut spending for an array of domestic programs, including community services and environmental protection, and reduce the Pentagon’s previously proposed budget by $78 billion over five years. At the same time, it would make room for spending increases for education, infrastructure, clean energy, innovation, as well as research.

By contrast, President Bush’s budget proposals for the fiscal years 2005 and 2006, with their own mix of spending priorities, were criticized in the Times both for being “austere” and, conversely, for failing to reign in the “record-high deficit.” Reporters Edmund Andrews and David Rosenbaum insisted of Bush’s $2.57 trillion budget proposal for 2006:

By any measure, the new budget is austere. It calls for deep cuts next year in almost every category of domestic spending outside the mandatory entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are based on laws adopted in previous years.

And in her February 3, 2004 report on Bush’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2005, Elisabeth Bumiller declared it dead on arrival and wondered if Bush could survive the "cuts to popular programs" (left unnamed) in his $2.4 trillion budget:

Mr. Bush's calculation is that voters will care far more about protecting the nation from another terrorist attack than about cuts to popular programs, or, for that matter, the record-high deficit....Like his State of the Union address, Mr. Bush's budget calls for no big new domestic programs and in fact forces him to cut so deeply that even his Republican allies in Congress called it politically impractical and said restorations were inevitable.

Bumiller got that from a budget proposal that actually increased discretionary spending outside of the military and domestic security by 0.5 percent.

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Jackie Calmes: Behold Obama's Budgetary Brilliance

Washington reporter Jackie Calmes evidently approves of Obama’s budget in her Monday morning story before the document’s official release: “ A Cautious Approach Seeking Bipartisan Appeal.”

Calmes has been a big booster of Obama’s stimulus package, insisting that no reputable economist can deny its success.

Calmes gave Obama credit on Monday morning for his “characteristic caution” (a phrase that provides the big-spending president a false patina of moderation), while the print edition text box implied Obama got the mix just right, like Goldilocks: “Analysts agree President Obama’s budget should be bolder, but not yet.”

With the budget he is to unveil Monday, President Obama has not opted for the bold, comprehensive approach to reining in the fast-growing federal debt that his own fiscal commission has said is needed, now.

That decision partly reflects Mr. Obama’s characteristic caution, but also a White House calculation: that “now” is too soon for the nation’s political system. And that boldness could backfire -- wounding not just a president facing re-election next year but also the prospects for bipartisan agreement on the very tax and spending-cut proposals that all sides realize are needed to truly stem the projected red ink in a nation confronting high health care costs and an aging population.

Plenty of people here in both parties, even deficit hawks among nonpartisan budget analysts, agree with that White House logic.

Those fierce “deficit hawks” include liberal Democratic Sen. Kent Conrad.

Calmes played defense for Obama’s lack of budgetary leadership:

With Republicans newly in control of the House and holding a bigger minority in the Senate, these people argue, the party needs time to at least try to push its own ambitious agenda for reducing government with the deepest spending cuts in memory. To compromise too soon would enrage the Republicans’ political base, in particular Tea Party activists who fueled the party’s election gains in November.

And, the reasoning goes, were Mr. Obama to propose a drastic debt-reduction plan as an invitation to Republicans to join him at the bargaining table -- a plan with the kind of far-reaching tax changes and spending cuts for the military, Medicare and Social Security that a bipartisan majority of his fiscal commission recommended in December -- he would most likely get an immediate “no, thanks” from Republican leaders, perhaps poisoning prospects for bipartisan talks for the foreseeable future. In fact, all three House Republican leaders on that commission opposed its majority report.

The headline in The Hill newspaper online was not as forgiving: “Obama budget falls far short of debt commission savings plan.”

'Huff and Puff and Blow Your House Down' - Will Your Home Survive Global Warming?

For the Sunday Week in Review, reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal filed yet another credulous report on the dangers of global warming, finding a unique apocalyptic angle: “ Huff and Puff and Blow Your House Down – Most buildings – ice rinks, stadiums and homes – were built with specific weather conditions in mind. Will they survive climate change?”

Rosenthal showed an even more cataclysmic outlook in a December 14, 2009 piece on glaciers in the Andes mountain range in South America:

A World Bank report concluded last year that climate change would eliminate many glaciers in the Andes within 20 years, threatening the existence of nearly 100 million people.

From Rosenthal’s Sunday morning jeremiad:

Under the weight of record snows, roofs across the Northeast have been buckling this winter, raining debris on children skating in ice rinks, crushing cows and tractors in farmers’ barns and even flattening a garage full of antique cars. In December, nearly 18 inches of new heavy snow brought down the roof of the Metrodome in Minneapolis, forcing the Vikings to temporarily relocate to Detroit.

Why? Rosenthal knows. She found certainty in an issue that is actually subject to heated scientific debate:

....The litany of extreme weather events has often left local officials scrambling to respond to each new crisis, looking -- by turns pathetic and heroic -- like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, trying to fend off nature’s monumental forces.

Global warming is most likely responsible, at least in part, for the rising frequency and severity of extreme weather events -- like floods, storms and droughts -- since warmer surface temperatures tend to produce more violent weather patterns, scientists say. And the damage these events have caused is a sign that the safety factors that engineers, architects and planners have previously built into structures are becoming inadequate for the changing climate.

After several paragraphs of environmental fearmongering, Rosenthal eventually admitted that no one really knows the future impact of “climate change.”

Widely varying predictions about climate change make it especially hard for engineers to build for the future -- or for insurers to guard against weather-related losses. Indeed, scientists do not entirely understand the complex ways in which warmer temperatures influence weather.

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said 2010 had tied for the warmest year on record in terms of land and sea surface temperatures. At the simplest level, a warmer ocean surface means more evaporation into the atmosphere -- and all that extra water has to come down somewhere, probably accounting for more frequent and severe storms. But it is not easy to predict which places will suffer snow or rain and which will experience drought.

Deborah Solomon Gives Up 'Q&A' Slot; Showed Blatant Hostility Toward Conservatives

Upon first skimming the New York Times Sunday Magazine “Q&A” with Donald Rumsfeld, I steeled myself for reporter Deborah Solomon’s usual hostility. Finding instead neutral questions designed to invite substantive responses from the subject, I rubbed my eyes and checked the byline.

Sure enough, Solomon’s announced retirement as section contributor had come to pass, with reporter Peter Baker taking over interviewing duties (at least this week).

Some of Solomon’s low-light interviews include a hostile one she conducted with conservative icon William F. Buckley, especially compared to the fawning one she gave racially inflammatory Al Sharpton the very next week.

A couple of the questions Solomon asked Buckley for the July 11, 2004 edition of the magazine:

You have made so many offensive comments over the years. Do you regret any of them?

It's not fair to blame the press. Some of your most inflammatory comments have been made in your essays and columns. In the 50's, you famously claimed that whites were culturally superior to African-Americans.

By contrast, while interviewing Sharpton, Solomon not only ignored Sharpton’s inflammatory history, but invited him to accuse another black personality -- Bill Cosby -- of racism!

I wonder how you feel about Bill Cosby's recent comment that too many African-Americans speak ungrammatical English and fail to rear their children properly. Does that strike you as racist?" It takes chutzpah to ask Sharpton (he of "white interloper" fame) if someone else is using racist language.

And in an interview with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal for the August 31, 2008 magazine, she callously asked:

If the Republican Party bills itself as the party of family values, what should we make of the fact that you rejected the name your parents gave you, their political affiliation and their religion?

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TimesWatch Tracker: Times Again Promotes Common Cause's Anti-Thomas Crusade, Skips Racism at CC Protest

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