The New York Times is one of the most effective tools for limiting discussion in the U.S. political system. Falsely perceived as a left-leaning outlet, it has the power to make the most reasonable proposals seem ultra-radical by placing them beyond the pale.

Take yesterday's review by Times book critic Michiko Kakutani (1/19/10) of progressive economist Joseph Stiglitz's Freefall: America, Free Markets and the Sinking of the World Economy. Kakutani says Stiglitz's accurate prediction of the financial crisis " lends credibility to his trenchant analysis of the causes of the fiscal meltdown," though at the same time she accuses him of "an I-told-you-so sanctimoniousness about both the recession and Washington’s response."

It's when it comes to policy proposals, however, that Kakutani really has problems with the book: "Some of the suggestions that Mr. Stiglitz makes in these pages for reconfiguring the American economy (and American society) stray far from the realm of practical policy recommendations that actually have a chance of winning broad public support or being enacted by Congress."  What are these way-out ideas?  Well, for one thing, he suggests that "a 'redistribution of income' and more progressive taxation might help stabilize the economy." He also calls for "a new global reserve system" and criticizes America's "unrelenting pursuit of profits." Concludes Kakutani:

Such remarks not only give ammunition to conservative critics who want to dismiss Mr. Stiglitz as a European-style liberal, but they also have the unfortunate effect of diverting the reader's attention from the many shrewd assessments that he makes in Freefall about the causes and consequences of the great financial meltdown of 2008.

In other words, proposals like progressive taxation should be avoided because people might call you a liberal.  This from the daily news outlet that was named by journalists most often when asked to name one that was "especially liberal."

For the record, taxing the rich is not an idea that has "a chance of winning broad public support"--it already has broad public support.

The corporate media has more or less been on the same page in applauding Obama's cabinet picks so far--"He's been pragmatic in choosing pragmatists," as the Washington Post editorial page cheered on November 28. There's been occasional criticism of Obama's choices as being too progressive, as when the L.A. Times (12/5/08) attacked the idea of Rep. Xavier Bercerra as U.S. trade representative, declaring that Obama "should break his promises and appoint a free-trader as trade representative."

So it was refreshing to see Michael Hirsh's piece in Newsweek wondering why left-leaning Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz hasn't been in the mix:

But lost amid the cascades of ticker tape is the fact that, astonishingly, you didn't hire the one expert who's been right about the financial crisis all along--and whose Nobel Prize-winning ideas will probably be most central to fixing the global economy.

In Hirsh's mind, Stiglitz has a solid record that would recommend him in the current crisis--namely, that he saw much of it coming, unlike some of Obama's other advisers (specifically media favorite Larry Summers):

Stiglitz, more than anyone on the Washington scene, was the biggest fly in the ointment of "free-market fundamentalism" pressed on the world in the '90s by Summers, Geithner and their mentor, former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin—advice that has now contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

That perspective was seconded by New York Times columnist Frank Rich on Sunday (12/7/08), who wondered if we are seeing a replay of Kennedy's "best and brightest" team of advisers:

No, it’s the economic team that evokes trace memories of our dark best-and-brightest past. Lawrence Summers, the new top economic adviser, was the youngest tenured professor in Harvard’s history and is famous for never letting anyone forget his brilliance. It was his highhanded disregard for his own colleagues, not his impolitic remarks about gender and science, that forced him out of Harvard’s presidency in four years. Timothy Geithner, the nominee for treasury secretary, is the boy wonder president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He comes with none of Summers's personal baggage, but his sparkling résumé is missing one crucial asset: experience outside academe and government, in the real world of business and finance. Postgraduate finishing school at Kissinger & Associates doesn’t count.

Summers and Geithner are both protégés of another master of the universe, Robert Rubin. His appearance in the photo op for Obama-transition economic advisers three days after the election was, to put it mildly, disconcerting. Ever since his acclaimed service as treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, Rubin has labored as a senior adviser and director at Citigroup, now being bailed out by taxpayers to the potential tune of some $300 billion. Somehow the all-seeing Rubin didn’t notice the toxic mortgage-derivatives on Citi’s books until it was too late. The Citi may never sleep, but he snored.

Geithner was no less tardy in discovering the reckless, wholesale gambling that went on in Wall Street’s big casinos, all of which cratered while at least nominally under his regulatory watch. That a Hydra-headed banking monster like Citigroup came to be in the first place was a direct byproduct of deregulation championed by Rubin and Summers in Clinton’s Treasury Department (where Geithner also served). The New Deal reform they helped repeal, the Glass-Steagall Act, had been enacted in 1933 in part because Citigroup's ancestor, National City Bank, had imploded after repackaging bad loans as toxic securities in the go-go 1920s.

Two weekends ago the New York Times' Week In Review section launched an op-ed series called "Transitions," in which it promised to provide "a series of Op-Ed articles by experts on the most formidable issues facing the new president." The first installment (11/23/08), on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, featured seven op-eds. FAIR's Peter Hart broke it down:

Three were enthusiastic Iraq hawks (in the cases of Rumsfeld and Chalabi, that's an understatement). One other--Cordesman-- was an important voice in elite foreign policy debate who supported the invasion. Another contributor worked for Petraeus. Those perspectives are "balanced," so to speak, by a pro-invasion author and a journalist who seems to advocate a rather middle-of-the-road perspective.

This weekend, the Times was back with more "Transitions," this time on "“The Challenges of the Economic Crisis" (11/30/08)--and it did little better.

The lineup this time: a former Bush I official who was later Giuliani’s chief economic policy adviser and is also a fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution; a managing director of Goldman Sachs, co-writing with a historian who penned a scathing review of Paul Krugman’s latest book in which he declared that Krugman was "maybe not really an economist" because he didn’t believe in laissez-faire; George W. Bush's former director of the National Economic Council and a fellow at the conservative AEI; an FDR scholar; and Joseph Stiglitz.

Stiglitz pushes some more progressive economic medicine, but it's hardly a balanced crew--not to mention that every single one of them is a white male. What, no women, no people of color have opinions on the economy valid enough for the Times to seek out and highlight?