Media love the "middle" in politics--where leaders of the two major parties come together to find common ground, renew the national spirit and/or live up to the ideals of the Founders. Time magazine (7/14/11) has a soppy piece about Barack Obama and Republican leader John Boehner's attempt to reach a budget deal.

Those efforts--some of which happened in secret--are, according to reporters Jay Newton-Small and Michael Scherer,

the story of two self-described dealmakers in a town where dealing is often a synonym for surrender, who ran up against the limits of their roles, their powers and their colleagues. Boehner and Obama have gotten credit for thinking big and working to overhaul outdated economic policies. But they waited too long to start, in part because they didn't take the time to get to know each other years ago. They also misjudged their armies: They rode out to rescue the country, only to watch many of their followers run for the hills.

They explain how the pair came up with the idea to use the debt ceiling as a lever for a budget deal in order to

freeze out their respective extremists and make the kind of historic deal that no one really thought possible anymore--bigger than when Reagan and Tip O'Neill overhauled the tax code in 1986 or when Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich passed welfare reform a decade later.

You got it-- each side has its crazies that prevent great things from happening. Obama tried to freeze the left-wing extremists, and Boehner has.... well...I guess the upshot, according to Time, is unfortunately all the extremists balked; the left wouldn't cut Social Security benefits, the right wouldn't make wealthy people pay any more in taxes:

The Republican refusal to consider any new revenues, including making easy fixes to the tax code to close loopholes for businesses and other groups that don't need public subsidies, is as recklessly absolutist as Democrats' insistence that bloated entitlement programs are untouchable.

Protecting Social Security benefits (average monthly check: $1,177) is just the same as protecting corporations from paying higher taxes. That makes sense only in The Sensible Center that the Beltway media have concocted.

In coverage of the budget negotiations in Washington, which have largely revolved around how much money will be cut from the federal budget, it's rarely acknowledged that the standard economic assumption is that reducing government spending at a time of diminished economic activity will destroy jobs. As a rule of thumb, every $1 billion in spending cuts eliminates roughly 10,000 jobs. (The Economic Policy Institute provides a slightly more sophisticated explanation here.)

Given the the public consistently tells pollsters that job creation should be the country's top priority--often picked over deficit reduction by wide margins--this information should be included in every article on the budget debate. Thus when the New York Times (4/8/11) says that the Obama administration has agreed to $34.5 billion in cuts, and House Speaker John Boehner is pushing for $39 billion, the paper should note that the administration's position would cost approximately 345,000 jobs, while Boehner's would reduce employment by about 390,000.

I suspect that the inclusion of this information would rapidly change the debate.

The subhead sums up the point of USA Today's lead story today (2/14/11) about Barack Obama's budget proposal:

Obama Proposes Cuts to Trim Deficit; GOP, Others Want More

The piece by Richard Wolf and Mimi Hall begins, "President Obama will send Congress a 2012 budget today that would trim the budget deficit by $1.1 trillion over the next decade, but Republicans and nonpartisan budget experts are already saying that's not enough." And that's how the story is framed: You've got the White House vs. the Republicans, and "nonpartisan budget experts" who agree with the Republicans.

"We're going to make tough choices," promises the White House budget director--who is countered by USA Today: "Those choices aren't as tough, however, as the ones made by Obama's bipartisan fiscal commission in December." Two sources--described a second time as "nonpartisan budget experts," in case we missed it the first time--concur: Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, accuses the White House of "a political unwillingness to tackle the tough issues," while Robert Bixby, director of the Concord Coalition, described as "a fiscal watchdog group," charges that "the entitlement and tax reform agenda will apparently be deferred yet again."

So everybody who's not a partisan or an amateur, apparently, believes that Obama's cuts don't go far enough? Of course that's not true; USA Today's "experts" actually occupy a narrow strip of ideological terrain, with both the groups they represent receiving funding from billionaire deficit hawk Pete Peterson. The Concord Coalition is a Peterson creation; the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, in addition to its backing from Peterson, is part of the New America Foundation, whose "Leadership Council"--people who give them at least $25,000 a year and as a result "participate in the intellectual life of the Foundation in numerous ways"--has included executives from such companies as Wal-Mart, Goldman Sachs and a variety of other financial industry firms.

It's very clear that such entities have a definition of the kind of "tough" that would be desirable that is very different from the "tough" that would be advocated by equally nonpartisan experts at a group like the Economic Policy Institute, which is critical of the president's budget for being too quick to cut spending during an economic crisis.

But the only other sources in the story, besides the White House and the Peterson-affiliated deficit hawks, are House Speaker John Boehner--who says Obama's budget "will continue to destroy jobs by spending too much, borrowing too much and taxing too much"--and "150 economists" rounded up by Boehner who insist in an open letter that "to support real economic growth and support the creation of private-sector jobs, immediate action is needed to rein in federal spending." That one could find far more than 150 economists who would give you the standard economic line that cutting federal spending at a time of depressed demand is not a way to create jobs, private-sector or otherwise, is not even hinted at by USA Today.

From his Meet the Press interview with House Speaker John Boehner (2/13/11):

 On entitlements, like Social Security, you said the retirement age should be raised, but you said you don't want to get into negotiating how that happens just now until the problem is better defined.  Again, when it comes to leadership, when it comes to the need to, you know, have no limit on cutting, don't you think Americans understand what the problem with Social Security is?  What will it take for you to join with the White House to make real reform to deal with this piece of the budget?

When interviewers like Gregory demand more "leadership" on a given issue, it's not hard to figure out what they mean.  A question like this implies that Social Security is a big, big problem in need of a big, big solution--and that raising the retirement age (which is, remember, a benefit cut) isn't enough to deal with the problem.

Just a few months ago (FAIR Blog, 11/15/10), Gregory's NBC program featured a discussion of the White House's right-leaning deficit commission involving right-wingers Alan Greenspan and Newt Gingrich, with right-wing Democrat Harold Ford in the mix too. Gregory's point then was much the same:

I don't see why, for instance, some of these suggestions, Harold, on Social Security are going to be demagogued to death. Why, in 50 years, people can't look at raising the retirement age and have that be a serious discussion point?

As we noted back in that November post, the retirement age is already rising, which amounts to a benefit cut for the poor, and raising the cap on taxable income--which would be a tax hike on the wealthy--would take care of all the supposed long-term problems with Social Security's finances. But something tells me that you're not likely to see David Gregory demanding that any political leaders declare their support for this simple fix.

Under the headline "Lawmakers Aiming to Increase Civility," the New York Times (1/17/11) reports from the front lines of the improved, post-Tucson political climate:

And the House speaker, John A. Boehner, used the phrase ''job-destroying'' instead of "job-killing'' in reference to the Democrats' healthcare overhaul in a speech to colleagues on Saturday--a subtle but pointed shift in tone, though not in substance.

Change is in the air!

On a serious note, this would suggest a shift from a mean-sounding, unsupported-by-the-facts attack on one's opponents to a slightly less mean-sounding, still fact-free attack on the Democrats and the Obama White House. As Dean Baker wrote at his Beat the Press blog today (1/18/11), many reports quote Republican politicians saying the new healthcare law is going to destroy jobs--without any suggestion that they should provide compelling evidence that this is in fact true.

Baker points to an AP "fact check" piece that does a good job of setting the evidence down--and showing that the Republicans have very little going for them. As he put it on Saturday:

In principle, reporters have the time to investigate allegations like the claim that the healthcare bill is costing jobs. Readers, on the other hand, do not. If the Republicans can make an untrue assertion and simply have it passed along as a credible statement because reporters do not do their jobs, then we should expect them to make even stronger statements. Perhaps we will soon be reading accusations from Republicans that President Obama and the Democrats are baby killers. After all, given the current practice of the national media, they would likely just pass the charge along as a reasonable statement about events in the world.

On CBS's Face the Nation (1/9/11), host Bob Schieffer declared:

Democracy's arguments have never been pretty, but technology has changed the American dialogue because we can now know of problems instantly. We expect answers immediately and when we don't get them, we let everyone know in no uncertain terms. We scream and shout, hurl charges without proof. Those on the other side of the argument become not opponents but enemies. Dangerous inflammatory words are used with no thought of consequence.

Schieffer singled out one exceptional political leader: "In an eloquent statement, the new Republican House Speaker John Boehner said yesterday's attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve."  To which Schieffer added, "We must change the atmosphere in which this happened and we can begin by remembering that words have consequence. Like all powerful things, they must be used carefully."

While Schieffer sings Boehner's praises, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone (1/5/11)  recalled a different type of Boehner moment:

Another Ohio Democrat, Steve Driehaus, clashed repeatedly with Boehner before losing his seat in the midterm elections. After Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, Driehaus "may be a dead man" and "can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati" because "the Catholics will run him out of town," Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house. Driehaus says he approached Boehner on the floor and confronted him.

"I didn't think it was funny at all," Driehaus says. "I've got three little kids and a wife. I said to him, 'John, this is bullshit, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.'"

Driehaus is quick to point out that he doesn't think Boehner meant to urge anyone to violence. "But it's not about what he intended — it's about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work."

Driehaus says Boehner was "taken aback" when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: "He said something along the lines of, 'You know that's not what I meant.' But he didn't apologize."

The Washington Post's account (1/6/11) of John Boehner's first day as Speaker of the House could have been a press release from Boehner's office. The headline was "A Modest Boehner Takes Congress's Most Powerful Office." Post readers learned that "Boehner tends to shun big moments such as these. He's more at home on the golf course with his rank-and-file buddies." He's just one of us! The Post adds:

About 500 of Boehner's constituents, including family friends from the Cincinnati area, came to see him sworn in. Many of them, as well as some D.C. lobbyists, came through his office late Wednesday morning for coffee and to pay their respects.

How did those lobbyists sneak in to say hello to this Man of the People!?

Boehner's perhaps best known in Washington for being extraordinarily tight with corporate lobbyists. Even the recent Time cover story admitted that Democrats' critique of him as cozy with lobbyists is true:

Many of Boehner's closest personal and political friends really are lobbyists for banks, insurers and other corporations. Ever since he first joined the House leadership 15 years ago, he has been a leading Republican ambassador to K Street.

Maybe those are his "rank-and-file" golf buddies? Time adds:

He drinks his share of Merlot and hangs out with a crowd of influence peddlers in what's known as Boehnerland. He's a frequent flyer on corporate jets and successfully fought a ban on privately funded congressional travel in the 2007 ethics-reform bill. This election cycle alone, special interests have paid for him to take 40 trips worth $158,000. Just hours before his victory speech, he held court at his favorite Washington restaurant, Trattoria Alberto, with his 40 closest friends and advisers, the bulk of whom are corporate lobbyists.

And:

To Democrats and many in the media, "tireless fundraiser" is just a nice way of saying "bagman for K Street." Boehner received $32,000 from clients of corrupt GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. He's raked in $2.6 million from the financial sector. When he chaired the Education Committee, Sallie Mae gave him $122,500--and his daughter a job. His lavish parties--an annual beach bash, golf tournaments in four states--are practically lobbyist conventions.

But, you know, he's also "modest."

There's a simple way of looking at the debate over the Bush tax cuts. The White House and most Democrats say they want to extend them for the vast majority of the population, but keep higher rates in place for families making over $250,000 a year. Republicans seem to know that "Keep Taxes Rates Low for the Rich!" isn't a winner, politically speaking. So they argue that these tax increases are really going to punish "small businesses."

There's ample evidence that this is mostly untrue--the number of "small businesses" that would affected is somewhere between 2 percent and 5 percent, depending on how you define the term. But some media outlets seem unwilling to render judgment on the GOP's talking point--see the New York Times today (9/13/10):

Many Senate Republicans have said that letting the Bush cuts expire for high earners amounts to raising taxes on small-business owners, some of whom fall into those rates because they report their business earnings as personal income.

Or last week (9/9/10):

Mr. Boehner got out ahead of Mr. Obama's speech. Appearing on ABC-TV's Good Morning America, he said that extending the top Bush tax rates would benefit small businesses; Democrats argue that few small businesses pay taxes at the top rates.

Journalism should tell us more than what politicians say about this or any other issue. How something will work in the real world is vastly more important than what John Boehner thinks, or what "Democrats argue" in response to what Boehner says. Oddly enough, you had to read a Times editorial on the same day (9/9/10) to get a meaningful sense of what was going on:

Mr. Boehner's much professed concern for small businesses is misdirection. The tax cuts that Mr. Obama would let expire would affect very few owners of small businesses--how many do you know who make more than $250,000 a year?--by any common-sense definition of that term.

How would the debate over tax cuts change if more reporters were willing to let reality intervene in this debate?

The New York Times' reporter on the climate beat, Andrew Revkin, had a front-page story this weekend (11/20/09) detailing the contents of climate scientists' private emails discussing global warming. Predictably, the emails are being taken out of context by climate change deniers--but more interesting to me is the fact that the focus is on the content of the emails, not on the fact that they were illegally obtained.

That's not the way corporate media handled the illegally taped cell phone call between Newt Gingrich, John Boehner and other Republican congressmembers in which Gingrich violated the terms of a ethics sanction by strategizing about how to minimize the charges against him. In that case, they focused on the illegality of the taping--and the unauthorized leaking of the tape by Rep. Jim McDermott (D.-Wash.).

That's also not how the press handled the case of  Cincinnati Enquirer reporter Michael Gallagher, who illegally listened to voicemails at the Chiquita corporation in pursuit of a series of stories that charged the company with involvement in bribery, fraud and the abuse of workers. Again, the wrongdoing that was considered newsworthy was the reporter's, not the target of his investigation.

It's hard to imagine what ethical code would tell journalists to ignore information about corporate skullduggery or congressional ethics violations if it was obtained through illicit means, but if it concerns the academic politics of climate scientists--dig in!

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman helpfully debunks (1/26/09) some of the more tendentious and misleading criticisms of the White House's economic stimulus package. Here's one such trope:

First, there’s the bogus talking point that the Obama plan will cost $275,000 per job created. Why is it bogus? Because it involves taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years, creating millions of jobs each year, and dividing it by the jobs created in just one of those years.

It’s as if an opponent of the school lunch program were to take an estimate of the cost of that program over the next five years, then divide it by the number of lunches provided in just one of those years, and assert that the program was hugely wasteful, because it cost $13 per lunch. (The actual cost of a free school lunch, by the way, is $2.57.)

The true cost per job of the Obama plan will probably be closer to $100,000 than $275,000--and the net cost will be as little as $60,000 once you take into account the fact that a stronger economy means higher tax receipts.

Well, that's refreshing; one only wishes that news articles in the same paper would challenge such spin instead of merely passing it along, as they did yesterday (courtesy of GOP Congressmember John Boehner):

Mr. Boehner cited numbers to counter Mr. Obama's, saying the House Democratic plan included $600 million for the federal government to buy new cars, $650 million for digital television coupons and $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. "All told," he said, "the plan would spend a whopping $275,000 in taxpayer dollars for every new job it aims to create."