Fwd: Front-Page Surprise: Is Obama Over-Reaching on Govt. Takeovers?

Documenting and Exposing the Liberal Political Agenda of the New York Times
Friday June 18, 2010 @ 04:52 PM EDT

Front-Page Surprise From David Sanger: Is Obama Over-Reaching on Govt. Takeovers?
In a front-page story, reporter David Sanger actually wonders if Obama may be overdoing the government takeover thing just a bit: "[H]e will have to avoid painting with such a broad brush that foreign and domestic investors come to view the United States as a too risky place to do business, a country where big mistakes can lead to vilification and, perhaps, bankruptcy."

Holden Thinks Leftist Screed '8' Is Just Great
Stephen Holden, the Times' most liberal movie critic. embraces the pro-gay screed "8: The Mormon Proposition," which blames the Church for the vote repealing court-imposed gay marriage in California. Movies about women persecuted under Islam, on the other hand, are "lurid torture-porn."

Times Watch Quotes of Note - Times Takes 'Far Right' Angle on G.O.P. Senate Candidate from Nevada
"Among her detractors and her supporters [Angle] is known as a far-right conservative and a thorn in the side of both parties, routinely voting no on almost everything that came before the Legislature." - Reporter Jennifer Steinhauer, June 10. Plus: The GOP is already doomed in November, and anti-Tea Party snobbery among the "conservative" intellectual elite.

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Front-Page Surprise From David Sanger: Is Obama Over-Reaching on Govt. Takeovers?

Has David Sanger, a veteran reporter whose opposition to Bush's supposedly reckless foreign policy seeped from his stories, been reborn as an Tea Party activist? Not quite, but Sanger's Friday A1 "news analysis" was surprising, especially from a reporter who usually concentrates on foreign affairs: "Strong Steps Or Oversteps? BP Is Latest Example Of Tactic by Obama."

Sanger took a wide view of Obama's first 18 months in office and the many and varied ways the administration has insinuated itself into the private economy.

First there was General Motors, whose chief executive was summarily dismissed by the White House shortly before the government became the company's majority shareholder. Chrysler was forced into a merger. At the banks that received government bailouts, executive pay was curbed; at insurance companies seeking to jack up premiums, scathing criticism led to rollbacks.

But President Obama's successful move to force BP to establish a $20 billion compensation fund that the company will have no voice in allocating -- just a down payment, the president insisted -- may have been the most vivid example of what he recently called his determination to step in and do "what individuals couldn't do and corporations wouldn't do."

With that display of raw arm-twisting, Mr. Obama reinvigorated a debate about the renewed reach of government power, or, alternatively, the power of government overreach. It is an argument that has come to define Mr. Obama's first 18 months in office, and one that Mr. Obama clearly hopes to make a central issue in November's midterm elections.

....

The Wall Street executives who needed the government to prop them up, but still thought their services were worth millions a year, were cast by Mr. Obama as a shameless privileged class. Toyota was described as seeking profits over safety; Wellpoint, the insurance giant, was castigated for seeking to insulate itself from the new health care legislation by taking actions that the law will soon prohibit.

Against that backdrop, forcing BP to take a $20 billion bath -- even before the inevitable lawsuits are filed -- seemed an easy decision. Mr. Obama had no legal basis for the demand, but concluded he did not need one. "He had a power other presidents have used -- you call it jawboning," Mr. Emanuel said.

The question is whether the cumulative effects of these actions create an impression that, over the long run, may make it harder to persuade both American and foreign corporations to cooperate with Mr. Obama's program to reinvest and reinvigorate the American economy.

Sanger compared Obama's strategy to that of FDR Franklin D. Roosevelt, who claimed that "forces of selfishness and of lust for power" had "met their master" under his administration.

It is in the "master" role, however, that Mr. Obama and his advisers know he is on dangerous ground. He has responded to his critics by making the case that every time American business predicted ruin from government intervention -- that "Social Security would lead to socialism, and that Medicare was a government takeover" -- American capitalism survived.

Sanger's concluding sentence has a skeptical tone -- has Obama overreached? -- that one hardly ever encounters in the Times.

Along the way, he will have to avoid painting with such a broad brush that foreign and domestic investors come to view the United States as a too risky place to do business, a country where big mistakes can lead to vilification and, perhaps, bankruptcy.

You can follow Times Watch on Twitter.

Holden Thinks Leftist Screed '8' Is Just Great

On Friday leftist movie critic Stephen Holden reviewed "8: The Mormon Proposition," a documentary detailing the role of the Mormon Church in passing Proposition 8 in California, the 2008 ballot initiative that defined marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman.

Holden apparently found nothing too partisan or out of balance in the pro-gay, anti-Mormon propaganda piece, merely hinting that it was "highly emotional" and that it "dives angrily into the fray."

Holden appreciates left-wing screed-filled documentaries like "8." Too bad he doesn't get as exercised when it comes to movies about the danger of Islamic fundamentalism, as opposed to the very mild form of Christian fundamentalism powering California's Prop. 8: Holden's review of "The Stoning of Soraya M" dismissed it as "lurid torture-porn."

Reed Cowan's polemical film "8: The Mormon Proposition" examines the successful campaign against gay marriage in California that was heavily financed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is implacably opposed to homosexuality. The highly emotional documentary is narrated by Dustin Lance Black, the screenwriter for "Milk," who, like Mr. Cowan, is gay and grew up in a Mormon household.

....

The film dives angrily into the fray. It uncovers the classified church documents and the largely concealed money trail of Mormon contributions that paid for a high-powered campaign to pass Proposition 8. The Mormon involvement, the film persuasively argues, tilted the vote toward passage, by 52 percent to 48 percent, in its final weeks.

That involvement was concealed under the facade of a coalition with Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians called the National Organization for Marriage. Mormons raised an estimated $22 million for the cause. In the final week of the campaign, the film says, $3 million came from Utah. The money financed a sophisticated media barrage that involved blogs, Twitter and YouTube videos, as well as scary (and, according to the movie, misleading) television ads, and an aggressive door-to-door campaign whose foot soldiers were instructed on how not to appear Mormon.

Holden's criticism concluded on this polemical note:

The reason Utah's suicide rate is the highest of any state, the movie suggests, is the Mormon church's absolute rejection of homosexuality, which one church elder calls "contrary to God's plan." Chris Buttars, a proudly homophobic Utah state senator, compared male coupling to bestiality. The movie shows the depth of religion-based loathing of homosexuality, like that of abortion, to be primal.

In the meantime the struggle to repeal Proposition 8 is under way.

In his rush to link the Mormon Church to the vote, Holden also skipped over the inconvenient-for-liberals fact that it may have been the black vote -- the same vote that helped put Obama in the White House -- that carried the measure to victory (a CNN exit poll indicates the black community favored Prop 8 by 70%-30%).

At Newsbusters, Sarah Knoploh documented how even other liberal media critics (save Holden) felt obliged to admit the one-sided nature of the movie.

You can follow Times Watch on Twitter.

Times Watch Quotes of Note - Times Takes 'Far Right' Angle on G.O.P. Senate Candidate from Nevada

The Times Takes "Far-Right" Angle on G.O.P. Senate Candidate From Nevada

"But on the other hand some of these women are, like in Nevada, against Harry Reid, Sharron Angle has, she's a Tea Party candidate who's given Democrats renewed hope of saving Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, from what was looking to be near certain defeat, because she is so extreme. So much so that some of the Republicans in the immediate aftermath have started distancing themselves from her....The Democrats generally at first blush on Wednesday morning when the results were in were happy that both Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, looks newly secure because the Nevada Republicans had nominated such an extreme, Tea Party-type member." -- Reporter Jackie Calmes in a June 10 "Political Points" podcast.

"Among her detractors and her supporters she is known as a far-right conservative and a thorn in the side of both parties, routinely voting no on almost everything that came before the Legislature." -- Reporter Jennifer Steinhauer, June 10.

G.O.P. Already Doomed

"Some critics are already asking Republican leaders how they managed to let a promising election season get so mightily out of control." -- June 10 front-page teaser to a story by Matt Bai on Republican election prospects for November.



You can read more of the most biased quotes from the Times of late at Times Watch Quotes of Note.

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