The lead editorial in today's New York Times says, "The Bush budget is a road map toward a different kind of American society, in which the government no longer taxes the rich to aid the poor, and in fact does very little but protect the nation from foreign enemies." Meanwhile, in the national section of today's Times is a graphic labeled "where it is spent." The graphic shows that of the $2.13 trillion in spending proposed by President Bush, 17% is on the military, 19% is nonmilitary discretionary spending, 54% is "Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements" and 9% is interest on the debt. It's as if the Times editorialists feel totally unconstrained by the facts reported in their own newspaper. Only a Times editorialist could consider 73% of $2.13 trillion to be "very little."

Probably: A "political memo" in the national section of today's New York Times reports on an aspect of the congressional budget process. "Its main benefit -- or drawback, depending on the point of view -- has been that under Congressional rules, it made one budget bill a year immune from filibuster in the Senate. Without such a system, President Bush's large tax cut last year probably could not have been enacted," the Times reports. Note the artful use of the word "probably." In fact, it takes 60 votes in the Senate to stop a filibuster. Bush's tax cut passed the Senate as an outline in April on a 65-35 vote and in detail in May on a 62-38 vote. So Mr. Bush's tax cut "probably" could have been enacted even in the absence of any immunity from filibusters.

An editorial in today's New York Times labels as "true reform" a bill that would, the Times acknowledges, ban "'issue ads' broadcast within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary." The editorial manages to avoid totally the obvious question of why Americans should have less of a right to free speech in the period immediately before an election than they do at any other time. The First Amendment doesn't say, "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances so long as the speech, assembly and petitioning takes place at least 60 days before a general election or 30 days before a primary." It just says "Congress shall make no law. . ." One would think that speech rights should be at their most robust in the period immediately before an election, not at their most limited. That is the period, after all, when the voting public is paying the closest attention and is most able to reap the benefit of speech that throws the issues into the sharpest relief.

'Tanzin': William Safire's column on the op-ed page of today's New York Times twice quotes Ariel Sharon referring to the "Tanzin," a militia associated with the Fatah faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In fact, as the Israel Defense Forces Web site ( http://www.idf.il/english/news/tanzim.stm ) makes clear, the name of the group is the Tanzim, with an "m" at the end. It will be interesting to see if the Times corrects this error; the Times still has not corrected the January 24, 2002, Safire column in which the columnist referred to a Sherlock Holmes story involving "a dog named Silver Blaze." As Smartertimes.com noted at the time, the dog is not named in the story, and Silver Blaze was actually the missing horse the great detective was pursuing.

The op-ed page of today's New York Times carries an article under the headline "The Palestinian Vision of Peace." The article, by Yasser Arafat, manages to go on at some length about the Palestinian Arab "vision of peace" without making any reference to or mention of the ship owned by the Palestinian Authority and staffed by its naval officers that was recently seized while smuggling tons of Iranian arms into the supposedly demilitarized Palestinian Authority. The article also claims that "The 1993 Oslo Accord, signed on the White House lawn, promised the Palestinians freedom by May 1999." The 1993 Oslo Accord "promised" the Palestinian Arabs nothing of the sort. The word "freedom" appears nowhere in its text.

Siding With Cuba: An article in the international section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Bush Hires Hard-Liners to Handle Cuba Policy." The article reports that one Bush aide had been placed into office "after Senate Democrats blocked his confirmation on the grounds that he had behaved unethically in the Reagan White House and that he was too partisan." It's funny how the Times is so sure that those were the grounds on which the Democrats were blocking the appointment. There's a tremendous lack of skepticism when it comes to the Senate Democrats, a lack of skepticism that would stop Times editors in their tracks if it were applied to the Senate Republicans. Imagine, for instance, if the Times article said, "after Senate Democrats blocked his confirmation on the grounds that he was too ardent an anti-Communist and they were so partisan that they wanted to deny the president a key foreign policy aide as a way to make his life more difficult."

An article in the metro section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "City College, the Faded Jewel of CUNY, Is Recovering Its Luster and Its Achievers." The most significant piece of evidence the Times musters to support this claim is that the average SAT score for all of the "regularly admitted freshman applicants from American high schools" at City College was 1089. What's interesting is that the Times seems to think the only relevant benchmark for comparison of the City College SAT scores is the scores at other City University of New York campuses. It's the soft bigotry of low expectations, all over again. The average score for all college-bound students who took the test was 1020, so a 1089 on a scale that tops out at 1600 isn't exactly lustrous. If the Times is going to compare City College to other colleges, why not measure it up against other high-grade public universities like the University of California at Berkeley or the University of Michigan? And aren't the SAT scores of the students who actually enrolled more relevant than the SAT scores of those merely admitted? For all the Times readers know, a few students with high SAT scores applied to City College as a backup "safety school," were admitted, and then decided to go to college somewhere else. Never mind the irony that the Times, which is constantly harping on the imperfections of the SAT, is now all of a sudden using it as a way to measure the quality of the students that a college is attracting.

News Article: Ramirez Romances McCall
By BENJAMIN SMITH
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- An architect of the black-Hispanic coalition that carried Fernando Ferrer's mayoral run could soon be on the payroll of State Comptroller Carl McCall's gubernatorial campaign.

Roberto Ramirez, who stepped down yesterday as chairman of the Bronx County Democratic Committee, told Smartertimes.com that he is in talks with the McCall campaign about taking a position as a paid political consultant.

The McCall campaign would not comment on the potential hiring, but some city political consultants speculated that the former Bronx boss will be brought on staff to boost Mr. McCall's support among New York's Hispanics, who proved themselves a crucial group of swing voters in last year's mayoral contest. Mr. Ramirez's role in the campaign could signal a departure from Mr. McCall's traditionally muted approach to the politics of race; and some observers warned that explicit appeals on racial lines would cut into the comptroller's support among non-Hispanic whites, who made up 62% of the state's population at the time of the 2000 census. Mr. McCall demonstrated his broad appeal when he was reelected comptroller in 1998 with more votes than the winner of any other New York State contest that year. Mr. Ramirez, in contrast, crafted Bronx Borough President Ferrer's campaign for mayor, which focused on the "other New York" of black and Hispanic voters.

Adopting Mr. Ferrer's tactics in a statewide race "would be a mistake," said a New York political consultant, Joseph Mercurio. "McCall has been a big vote-getter in the past because he's run color-blind campaigns," he said.

Mr. Ramirez said Thursday that he has had "a number of conversations" with representatives of the McCall campaign about taking a paid position. The former county leader has already announced plans to set up a private consulting firm. "I certainly hope" to go to work for Mr. McCall, he told Smartertimes.com.

An adviser to Mr. McCall, Hank Sheinkopf, would not comment on the possibility that Mr. Ramirez would join the campaign. Also declining to comment was Peter Ragone, a spokesman for McCall's rival for the Democratic nomination for governor, Andrew Cuomo, who was secretary of housing and urban development in the Clinton administration and who is a son of former New York governor Mario Cuomo.

Mr. Ramirez had already endorsed Mr. McCall, but Mr. Ramirez's move to the private sector will free him of any restrictions that the Bronx County Committee could impose on his campaigning and fundraising activities, a spokeswoman for the New York State Democratic Party, Serena Torrey, said.

"McCall is a guy who has managed to straddle a number of worlds," said a professor of history at Cooper Union, Fred Siegel. A shift toward campaign tactics with an explicit focus on race "will make it harder for him to appear as a moderate upstate," he said.

A news article in today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Iraqis Seek to Oust Hussein With U.S. Military Training." The Times reports, "The Clinton administration was skeptical of the claims made by the Iraqi National Congress and opposed military training." It's a distortion to say that the Clinton administration "opposed military training" for the Iraqi opposition without mentioning that, during the Clinton administration, members of the Iraqi National Congress actually received military training from the United States. An undersecretary of state for political affairs in the Clinton administration, Thomas Pickering, said in a public speech on November 1, 1999, "The first free Iraqis, nominated by the new Iraqi National Congress, are already en route to participate in the training provided under the Iraq Liberation Act. They, and we hope many others after them, will benefit from exactly the same training which the Department of Defense offers to civilian and military officers of friendly countries throughout the Middle East." Reuters reported from Washington on October 28, 1999 -- during the Clinton administration -- "The United States will begin its first direct, although modest, military training of opponents of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein at a Florida Air Force base next week, the U.S. Defense Department said on Thursday. Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said four Iraqis, including two former military officers who defected from Saddam's forces, would attend a regular Air Force civil-military training course for officers from Arab and Central Asian countries at Hurlburt Field near Pensacola. But Bacon stressed at a briefing for reporters that the 10-day course beginning on Monday at the Air Force's special operations headquarters was 'non-lethal,' although he refused to rule out future combat training for the Iraqi opposition."

A photo on the front of the metro section of today's New York Times is labeled "Larry Silverstein." The image appears instead to be a photograph of a New York public-relations man named Howard Rubenstein. Ya stein one, ya stein 'em all.

Early Retirement: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports that the leader of the FBI's New York office "will leave the agency two months before he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 57, officials said." Since mandatory retirement ages are now often being thrown out in reaction to age-discrimination lawsuits, and since 57 is younger than more common mandatory retirement ages like 65, a phrase of explanation might have been useful to readers here. Something to the effect of: "(A federal law allows mandatory retirement ages for law-enforcement personnel; in the case of FBI agents, the director of the bureau has the authority to grant an exemption that allows the agent to serve until 60.)"

Starter Home: An article in the national section of today's New York Times runs under the headline "When $450,000 Will Buy Just a Starter Home." It reports on Santa Cruz, Calif., which is by one measure "the least affordable place to buy a house in the nation." The Times examines several possible explanations for this, including "dot-comers" and "the lure of the beach and the waves and the city's young, laid-back street chic," but it does not examine the way the liberals who run the city and county discourage new housing construction. Santa Cruz has rent control for mobile home lots, and it is along the coast, which means that in addition to having to satisfy city and county officials, those trying to build often have to satisfy the California Coastal Commission, a famously ornery regulatory body. By the time you've finished hiring the lawyers, paying the permit fees and doing the environmental impact studies necessary to build a fire-resistant, earthquake-resistant and energy-efficient home in Santa Cruz, it's no wonder your starter home costs $450,000.

***

Lindsay and Bloomberg: NEW YORK -- America was at war. New York's finances were in trouble. And in 1965, the city's voters chose as their mayor a liberal Republican from the Upper East Side, a man from New York's social elite with no experience in city government. That mayor was John Vliet Lindsay, a handsome 43-year old congressman who came in with all the hopes of 1960s urban liberalism, but whose two terms were marked by labor strife, racial tension and financial irresponsibility.

Michael Bloomberg took office this month with some of the same handicaps that crippled Lindsay, and he faces some similar challenges. Smartertimes.com spoke about the two mayors with Lindsay biographer Vincent J. Cannato, whose book, "The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York," appeared last July. Mr. Cannato argued that Lindsay was a symbol of the hopes and the failures of American urban liberalism.

"The continued crisis in American cities undermined the claim of liberals like Lindsay to govern the nation," Mr. Cannato, a fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, wrote of the urban turmoil in the late 1960s. "John Lindsay failed because he could not make the city work; liberalism sputtered because of the tragic failure of men like Lindsay."

Mr. Cannato spoke to Smartertimes.com's Benjamin Smith at the Strand Diner on West 96th Street in Manhattan. What follows are excerpts from an edited transcript of the conversation.

Smartertimes.com: What about Mayor Bloomberg reminds you of John Lindsay?

Vincent Cannato: Bloomberg, like Lindsay, comes in with a limited knowledge of city government. Like Lindsay, Bloomberg's knowledge of the city is the corporate boardrooms, the Upper East Side, the social set.

Lindsay had the advantage that he did grow up in the city, but he didn't understand Brooklyn or Queens, and he didn't understand middle-class people. As for city government, he knew it only on the grand level. He had grand ideas, and big plans, but he didn't know the nuts and bolts of city government when he took office.

What made it worse for Lindsay is that people knew he didn't know about the city. It hurt him particularly with unions. The unions realized that he didn't know anything about how unions worked and didn't understand the mentality of union people. He thought they were selfish. He had a point, but he didn't understand where they stood in the apparatus of the city.

Convincing people that he understands the way the city government works -- and fast -- is going to be one of Bloomberg's biggest challenges. He has got to convince people that he's a quick learner, and that he knows where the neighborhoods are.

Smartertimes.com: On January 1, 1966, Lindsay took the oath of office. The Transit Workers Union struck the same day, shutting down the city's subways and buses. Can Bloomberg learn anything from that crisis?

Vincent Cannato: Lindsay was a perfect target for "Red" Mike Quill, the president of the Transit Workers Union. The mayor was a patrician, and he was anti-union -- and they were going to teach him a lesson.

Those same labor issues are going to be one of Bloomberg's biggest problems. Remember, how has Bloomberg solved problems in his political career? He's given people money. When it comes to unions, that's exactly what you don't want to do. You don't want to pay unions off to keep them quiet.

When he turns to the unions, Bloomberg is going to find a lot of angry people. But what might help him is that these days the public doesn't seem to have a great deal of sympathy for teachers, police, firemen, or transit workers who go on strike. And that's really a result of what happened in the sixties.

That Bloomberg has going for him. And maybe he'll make a name for himself, not as a union-buster but as someone who can say, "Look I made these people an honest offer. These are tough fiscal times, and I'm not going to stand for a strike because this city can't stand for a strike."

If he stands up, is firm and strong, then he'll make himself into a good mayor. I wouldn't want to be in his shoes, though.

Smartertimes.com: How do Mayor Bloomberg's first days in office look to a Lindsay scholar?

Vincent Cannato: So far, so good. He has put together a solid, experienced team. In contrast to Lindsay's grand plans, Bloomberg's whole inauguration speech centered on this idea of lower expectations. We're going to cut 20 percent, we're not going to build these programs. Bloomberg as mayor is Bloomberg as manager. This is the MBA mayoralty.

But he has to follow through. When Lindsay entered office, he came offering spending cuts as well. He was going to trim the fat, because New York under his predecessor, Robert Wagner, had in those last few years been borrowing money. But there was a great tension between that fiscal conservatism and Lindsay's grand social plans. Ultimately, in the spirit of the 1960s, those grand social programs swamped the fiscal conservatism and there weren't any cuts.

Bloomberg, on the other hand, is not promising much. That makes his promise of reducing the budget more plausible.

Smartertimes.com: Is there anything positive the new mayor should take from Lindsay's legacy?

Vincent Cannato: The thing to take from Lindsay is this idea of walking the city. Lindsay's walks through Harlem are one of the things people remember most about him. In 1968, after Martin Luther King was killed, he went into a really dangerous situation. People were milling around on 125th street, angry and sad. Speakers were blaring. There was a low rumble of discontent. And he goes up there without a big security detail. He takes out a bullhorn and talks to the people. It took a lot of bravery to do that, and it calmed the situation.

Lindsay embodied the idea of a mayor who is not going to be stuck in City Hall and Gracie Mansion. That's important. Bloomberg is now the symbolic leader of the city, not just a manager. He needs to get out among the people and communicate his vision of the city directly to New Yorkers.

Bloomberg also has to be very careful about the image of the city -- how the city looks and how the city feels. If he gets out a little more, he'll be able to hear that and feel that.

The business section of today's New York Times carries a news article about the announcement of the retirement of Louis V. Gerstner Jr. as chief executive of IBM. The article contains a pretty thorough rundown of Mr. Gerstner's career. And the article observes that after his retirement, Mr. Gerstner "would seem ideally suited to become a senior adviser to major corporations."

But the Times article somehow omits the fact that Mr. Gerstner served from 1986 to 1997 on the board of the New York Times Company. In that role, according to the 1999 book "The Trust," he clashed with the company's then-chairman, Arthur O. "Punch" Sulzberger. The book reports that Mr. Gerstner's "forceful and frequently biting comments at board meetings had offended Punch and made him uneasy . . .Punch had feared the director's real goal was to commandeer the process, maybe even head the search committee, and use it to effectively strip Punch of his power to name the top nonfamily executive of the company." Is that a sign that Mr. Gerstner is "ideally suited" as a senior adviser to major corporations?

Similarly, an article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on a debate over a proposed expansion of the Pierpont Morgan Library. Among the architects of the addition is Renzo Piano, who appeared yesterday at a hearing about the plan before the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the Times reports. The Times article today somehow omits the fact that Mr. Piano is the architect of the Times Company's planned new headquarters tower. It will be interesting to see the Times architecture critic -- who helped to select Mr. Piano as the architect for the new Times tower -- comment on the Morgan Library controversy.

By RACHEL P. KOVNER
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- A city advertising campaign seeks new teachers by mocking middle-management jobs with slogans like, "No one ever goes back ten years later to thank a middle manager."

The bureaucracy-bashing author?

New York City's Board of Education, which last year employed more than 3,100 in its central administration, as well as 6,977 in community school district administration, 4,031 in high school administration, 1,617 in special education administration and 1,747 at the Board of Education's Brooklyn Headquarters. (The board does not publish a breakdown of which of those non-teaching posts were "middle management.")

Vicky Bernstein, who oversees the New York City Teaching Fellows program touted in the campaign, said the ads weren't meant as career-choice criticism. While it's too early to measure results, Ms. Bernstein said the teaching fellows program has seen a surge in interest since the ads began running in the New York Times and other publications on Dec. 30 and in subways this month.

"There are some people who are looking for a job that may have larger implications in life than what they may be doing now. That's for each individual to decide," said Ms. Bernstein. "We're not preaching that people have to change their lives."

But Manhattan Chamber of Commerce President Nancy Ploeger called the ads "unfair."

"There are many rewarding jobs, and one can be inspired by a middle manager as well. In defense of the business community, many middle managers have challenged their associates to think, to act, and to grow in their careers," she said. "And teachers inspire students to become middle managers!"

Ms. Ploeger's alternative slogan might need a little tweaking before it takes off -- she suggests, "Middle managers in the private sector go back after 10 years to thank their teachers."

The $375,000 advertising campaign, intended to recruit career-changers without teaching certification, was designed by the advertising firm TBWA Chiat/Day, creators of the Taco Bell Chihuahua and Apple's "Think Different" campaign.

***

Darkness: An editorial in today's New York Times begins, "Sunshine, the Watergate-era rallying cry proclaimed, is the best disinfectant. It is a credo that, 30 years later, is more relevant than ever." In fact the phrase is widely attributed not to the Watergate era but to Justice Louis D. Brandeis, who said it in 1933. A Web search finds some variations on the phrase: "A little sunlight is the best disinfectant"; "Sunlight is said to be the best disinfectant: electric light the most efficient policeman"; "Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman." But they are nearly uniformly attributed to Brandeis, who died in 1941, decades before Watergate. If the Times had referred to it as a "Depression-era rallying cry," it might have taken some of the wind out of the paper's Enron editorial.

Missing Question: Today's New York Times carries on its front page, above the fold, an interview with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. The Times apparently didn't see fit to ask Abdullah to expand on his comment that "The people of the kingdom have not been affected by what certain newspapers publish and you know who is behind this media." The Times might have asked, "What newspapers are you talking about and who are you saying is behind them? And why won't you say so directly instead of referring to 'you know who'"? The Abdullah quote indicating a belief in a bizarre anti-Semitic conspiracy theory was buried in an inside news feature article in Monday's paper; today's interview in which Abdullah makes nice to America gets more prominent placement.

Losing Clients: A headline in the business section of today's New York Times blares: "Andersen Says It Is Losing Clients." The article names not a single client that has dropped Arthur Andersen.

By BENJAMIN SMITH
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- Remember impeachment? New York's junior senator sure does -- Senator Hillary Clinton suggested Sunday that the impeachment of President Clinton was unconstitutional.

She spoke at a memorial service at Columbia University for Charles Black, who was an impeachment expert and constitutional scholar. Black died last May at the age of 85.

Mrs. Clinton has largely avoided discussing her husband and his travails as she builds an independent political career. But Mr. Clinton's impeachment and subsequent acquittal on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice turned out to be a hard subject to avoid at Columbia's St. Paul's Chapel. Before an audience of more than 200, most of them legal scholars, Mrs. Clinton recalled a 1973 phone call she made to Black, who had been her professor at Yale Law School. She was calling to ask advice on drafting a memo for the House Judiciary Committee on the impeachment of President Richard Nixon.

The Nixon impeachment process was "the constitutional impeachment of the second half of the 20th century," Mrs. Clinton said yesterday, implying that her husband's impeachment had been unconstitutional.

Nixon resigned before the House of Representatives could vote on impeaching him.

Mrs. Clinton did not specify what she thought was unconstitutional about Mr. Clinton's impeachment. One question raised at the time was whether Mr. Clinton's offenses measured up to the Constitutional standard of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

That was an issue on which Black was a particular expert. His thoughts on the subject were used by those on both sides of the Clinton impeachment fight. His 1974 work, "Impeachment: A Handbook," reprinted in 1999, includes a pair of hypothetical cases that call Mr. Clinton's various travails to mind: that of a president who transports a woman across state lines for "immoral purposes," in violation of the 1915 Mann Act; and of a president who covers up for an aide who has been caught with marijuana.

In either case, Black wrote, it would be "absurd" to impeach, and a White House response to the Starr report quoted his work approvingly.

But Black's work also found favor with the House Republicans prosecuting the impeachment trial. Representative Charles Canady of Florida quoted Mr. Black's statement that "a large-scale tax cheat is not a viable chief magistrate" to argue that Mr. Clinton's actions made it impossible for him to enforce the law.

Still, Mrs. Clinton appeared to feel that her old law professor was on her side. "Unfortunately, in more recent times," she said, referring to the 1998-1999 impeachment process, "Professor Black's treatise wasn't given much attention."

***

Better for the City: An editorial in today's New York Times praises Mayor Bloomberg for doing "very well" in standing "comfortably beside the Rev. Al Sharpton." The Times editorial says, "what Mr. Bloomberg seems to understand is that giving Mr. Sharpton a chance to bask in the limelight is far better for the city than freezing him out."

As is typical in a Times editorial, this view isn't argued so much as it is simply asserted or pronounced from on high. So Times readers are left wondering why it is better -- and not just better, but "far" better -- for the city if Rev. Sharpton has a chance to bask in the limelight. Perhaps the Times thinks that Rev. Sharpton has such a self-destructive and careless streak that if exposed to the limelight he will inevitable be recognized as an empty suit and then be frozen out for good. This argument doesn't hold much weight, because Rev. Sharpton has already had plenty of chances to bask in the limelight -- Crown Heights, Freddy's Fashion Mart, Tawana Brawley -- and as a consequence of his errors in those cases had been justifiably frozen out by Mayor Giuliani. Why start the cycle all over again? Perhaps the Times actually thinks that Rev. Sharpton's message of exaggerated racial victimhood and grievance-nursing at the expense of the police and businesses deserves to be spread more widely, and that increased exposure of this message is "better for the city." Or perhaps the Times thinks that Rev. Sharpton will change his message if he is treated more warmly by the mayor, just like the Times incorrectly thought Yasser Arafat would change his message if he were treated more warmly by Israel. Speculating in this vein makes it easy to understand why these editorial positions aren't argued, just asserted; it's hard to come up with good arguments to back them up. It's also an instance of how the Times is wildly out of step with the views of most New Yorkers. It would be interesting to see what the results would be if you polled New Yorkers on whether they agreed or disagreed with the proposition that "giving Mr. Sharpton a chance to bask in the limelight is far better for the city than freezing him out." Rev. Sharpton's dismal showings in his attempts to get elected to public office are an indicator that New York voters, at least, are happy to freeze him out.

An article in the travel section of today's New York Times reports on the prospect that U.S.-based cruise ships will be able to dock in Cuba. The article exhibits the typical Times one-sidedness, quoting several persons who favor increased American tourism in Cuba and not a single person who opposes it. Never mind that, though: the real whopper is the following Times sentence: "But the maximum sentence -- life without parole -- handed down to the leader of a Cuban spy ring last month in federal court in Miami after he and four others were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage appears to be a sign that the Bush administration is not prepared to ease its policies against Cuba."

Well, in the American system, the sentences are set by judges, and the judicial branch of government is distinct and well insulated from the policies of the Bush administration. A Bush administration prosecutor might ask for a stiff sentence, but the sentence itself is up to the judge. In the case the Times refers to, the judge was Joan A. Lenard of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. She was appointed to the bench in December of 1995 by President Clinton. So it's just bizarre to interpret a sentence that she handed down as "a sign that the Bush administration" is prepared to do or not to do anything.

In his column on yesterday's New York Times op-ed page, Paul Krugman refers to "a broader effort by conservatives to sling Enron muck toward their left, hoping that some of it would stick." Mr. Krugman writes, "One doubts that the people putting out this stuff really expect to convince anyone. But they do hope to muddy the waters. If they can get a little bit of Enron dirt on everyone -- the Clinton administration, environmentalists, liberal columnists -- the stain on people and ideas they support will be less noticeable."

Well, here is Mr. Krugman's fellow New York Times op-ed page columnist -- and a former New York Times managing editor -- Bill Keller, writing on today's Times op-ed page: "If you're asking whether the Bush administration do favors for Enron, sure it did -- and so, by the way, did the Clinton administration, and both parties in Congress."

It's rather impolite of Mr. Krugman to accuse his fellow columnist, Mr. Keller, of not expecting to convince anyone, and of hoping to muddy the waters, and of slinging muck. And it's unseemly for the Times to have its columnist Mr. Krugman so openly denigrating the work of its columnist Mr. Keller.

Guerillas and Terrorists: An article in today's New York Times about Al Qaeda cells in Singapore runs with Times references to "a terror inquiry" and "terror's outposts." Yet an article about a suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv pedestrian mall never mentions the word terrorism or terror, only Palestinian "militants." Another article refers to Hezbollah as "a guerilla group that is fighting a low-level war with Israel from Lebanon" without mentioning that Hezbollah is on the U.S. State Department lists of terrorist organizations, in part because of its role in attacks on American government personnel and targets. Maybe you're only a terrorist if you attack civilians in New York City?

Not in the New York Times: New Yorkers looking to find out that 50,000 tons of mangled metal from the twin towers have already been sold off and shipped to Communist China as scrap had to read about it in today's Los Angeles Times. No mention in today's New York Times that Shanghai Baosteel is denying Chinese press reports that it plans to manufacture souvenirs out of the material.

In his column on the op-ed page of today's New York Times, Paul Krugman writes, "After all that effort to convince people that the private sector can police itself, the most admired company in America turns out to have been a giant Ponzi scheme -- and the most respected accounting firm turns out to have been an accomplice." It's inaccurate to call Enron "the most admired company in America." Fortune magazine conducts an annual survey of the most admired companies in America. The Fortune survey rated Enron as the most admired company in the pipeline industry. But that is a far different thing from being "the most admired company in America." In the overall survey, Enron didn't even rank in the top 10 most admired companies in America, a list that was headed by firms like General Electric, Cisco Systems, Wal-Mart Stores, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft and Home Depot. Mr. Krugman also doesn't give any evidence for his assertion that Arthur Andersen is "the most respected accounting firm." And it seems a bit premature -- before anyone has been indicted or convicted -- for Mr. Krugman to be naming an entire accounting firm as an "accomplice," a term that implies some kind of criminal wrongdoing.

Relinquish: An op-ed piece in today's New York Times describes Yasser Arafat as "the first Palestinian leader" to "relinquish the objective of regaining all of historic Palestine." There's no evidence that Mr. Arafat has relinquished the goal of eliminating Israel, a goal the Times article euphemistically and falsely refers to as "regaining all of historic Palestine." In fact Mr. Arafat and his advisers have repeatedly spoken in Arabic about a phased plan in which the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state in the West Bank and Gaza would be a prelude to the next phase, the elimination of Israel. Mr. Arafat's refusal publicly to abandon his demand for the "return" of millions of Arab "refugees" to Israel in connection with his acceptance of a state in the West Bank and Gaza is another sign that he has not relinquished the goal of eliminating Israel.

Public Interest: An article in the business section of today's New York Times refers to TomPaine.com as "a public interest group and web site." Only if one thinks that higher taxes, bigger government and more restrictions on political speech are in the "public interest." The Times practice is to label conservative groups as "conservative groups" and liberal groups as "public interest" groups.

By RACHEL P. KOVNER
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- The world's richest university is worried its immense endowment might be hurting its fundraising.

Harvard -- endowment, $18.3 billion -- is now conducting a Web-based survey of alumni, asking graduates whether they agree or disagree with statements like "Harvard cares more about amassing large sums of money than about how the money is used; the endowment is too large" and "Harvard should spend more of the money it has today to meet its needs."

Two groups that monitor college endowments and fundraising said to their knowledge Harvard's survey was unique in exploring whether billion dollar endowments can lead to fundraising backlash. A spokesman in Harvard's development office, Andy Tiedemann, said this isn't the first time Harvard has surveyed alumni about their attitudes toward the school's wealth. But the latest effort comes at a time when endowments at Harvard and other universities have broken records and drawn criticism from some. When the school announced in 2000 that its endowment had reached a peak of $19.2 billion, the student-run Harvard Crimson newspaper called on the university to spend more of its endowment on projects like a student center and increased financial aid. Student members of Harvard's Living Wage Campaign, who conducted a 21 day sit-in last spring over the wages of the universities lowest paid employees, cited the school's vast wealth as a reason the school could afford to pay more and have called on alumni to withhold contributions.

"I think we're just part of a larger phenomenon of attention the endowment's gotten," said a Harvard senior who helped organize the sit-in, Ben McKean. "Certainly I find the idea of giving money to an institution that already has so much money a little strange."

Officials at New York colleges said they'd love to have such problems.

The associate director and chief operating officer at Columbia University's Alumni Relations Office, Tony Roman, said he'd heard grumbles about the impact of large endowments on fundraising among non-profit leaders. "We worry about the other problem -- we don't have enough money," he laughed.

The deputy director of alumni relations at NYU, Kathy Wyatt, said if a prospective donor raised a concern about the university's wealth, it would be handled one-on-one by the university's development office. "Discerning alumni who read about things like this may well question it," she said of Harvard's endowment. "Of course, our endowment is relatively small compared to other universities. We have never had any queries of that sort."

The senior vice president and treasurer of the National Association of College and University Business Officers, Larry Goldstein, said that as the school with the biggest endowment, Harvard would probably be the first school to see some alumni reluctant to add to the school's coffers.

But Mr. Goldstein said there are 41 institutions with endowments of $1billion or more, "which no matter who's measuring is a big number," he said. "On some level, if you've got billion or five billion or seven billion," he said, "how different is it?"

Like Harvard, New York colleges have seen their endowments balloon in recent years, with Columbia now ranked ninth in the nation for its $4.3 billion endowment and New York University ranked 13th for its $1.18 billion. At NYU, the leaders of a campaign to organize a labor union for the school's graduate students cited the school's endowment as one reason the school could afford to pay teaching assistants more. A similar unionization effort is underway at Columbia.

At Harvard, Mr. Tiedemann said results aren't yet available to the alumni survey. He said he wasn't sure if the endowment questions on the latest survey had been asked previously, and he declined to provide results from previous versions of those questions. He said the number of college alumni who agreed that Harvard needed their contributions rose from 37 percent in a 1994 survey at the start of the school's $2.6 billion capital campaign to 62 percent in a survey last year.

Mr. Tiedemann said the results of the most recent survey would help school officials assess whether they were doing enough to convince alumni that even the world's wealthiest school needs their help. Much of the school's money, officials said, is earmarked for specific programs and is not available for general use.

Harvard e-mailed a link to the Web-based survey questionnaire to about 10,000 randomly selected graduates of Harvard College. About 2,200 have responded so far, Mr. Tiedemann said. In addition to asking about attitudes toward the endowment, the poll probes general attitudes about Harvard and philanthropy. One question asks respondents to agree or disagree with the statements, "I trust governments," "I trust higher education," "I trust my friends," "I trust my neighbors" and "I trust business leaders."

***

Elementary: William Safire's column on the op-ed page of today's New York Times makes reference to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective story in which, Mr. Safire writes, "the 'curious incident' was the failure of a dog named Silver Blaze to bark." In fact, the dog is not named in the story. Silver Blaze was actually the missing horse the great detective was pursuing.

Late Again: The New York Times waddles in this morning with the news that Senator Clinton is making friends with some Republicans. The lead quote in the Times article comes from Senator John Ensign, a Republican from Nevada. The Times reports that Mr. Ensign "said it may not be a popular thing to say where he comes from, but he has become fond of Mrs. Clinton." Sound familiar? Check out this, from a USA Today article published on July 10, 2001: "'With some of my folks back home, I have to be careful how I say this,' Ensign says, 'but I like her.'" Got to love that New York Times, running a full six months behind USA Today in its coverage of New York's junior senator.

A front-page dispatch from Jerusalem in today's New York Times reports that an Arab terrorist attack on a Jerusalem shopping district "came on a day already stained by bloodshed." How had the day already been "stained"? "Before dawn on Tuesday, Israeli forces killed four Palestinian militants, members of the Islamic group Hamas, with a raid on what the army called a bomb-making laboratory in the West Bank city of Nablus," the Times reports. Only the pacifists at the Times could consider a successful Israeli raid against a bomb-making laboratory of Hamas, a group that even the U.S. State Department considers a terrorist organization, to have "stained" a day.

Imagine if the Times had written a couple of months ago, "The anthrax deaths in the U.S. came on a day already stained by bloodshed; before dawn American bombing killed four members of the militant group Al Qaeda." It's unthinkable to describe successful American counterterrorist operations as "staining" a day. But there is a double standard applied to Israeli counterterrorist operations.

Business Story: The lead article in the sports section of today's New York Times is about a fight at a press conference that involved the boxer Mike Tyson. The article mentions a deal with HBO and Showtime that would have guaranteed Tyson $17.5 million for an April 6 fight. But there's a business angle to this story that the Times leaves largely unexplored. The Times is constantly running out endless profiles wondering how tobacco executives can live with themselves. Isn't it worth asking the executives of the parent companies of HBO and Showtime -- AOL Time Warner and Viacom -- what in the world they are doing by striking business deals with Tyson? These guys sit on the boards of fancy New York charities, yet their companies feel the need to deal with a boxer whose license was revoked "for 18 months in 1997" the Times says, "for biting Evander Holyfield's ears," and who the Times says, "served two jail sentences -- one for a rape conviction in Indiana and the other for attacking two men in Maryland after a car accident." It sure would be interesting to hear Steve Case and Ted Turner explain this one.

News Article: An original, non-Times-related news article follows: Street-Naming Stumbles Into Mideast Politics
By BENJAMIN SMITH
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- As policy disputes go, those at the New York City Council over the honorary naming of streets tend to be pretty low-grade. But an effort by one council member to honor a slain Israeli politician is getting caught up in the politics of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Queens Democrat David Weprin wants to turn a so-far-undesignated Queens street into "a symbol against terrorism and in support of the state of Israel" by naming it after slain Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze'evi, Mr. Weprin told Smartertimes.com. But Ze'evi's views --which included advocacy of encouraging Arabs to leave Israel, the West Bank and Gaza -- are prompting some objections to the plan.

New York City's leaders have long expressed firm backing for Israel, and Mr. Weprin's proposal comes just three months after then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani returned a $10 million check to a Saudi prince who urged America to respond to the September 11 attack by getting tougher on Israel. The proposal to rename a street is already drawing the ire of some Arab-American groups, who compare Mr. Ze'evi to Serbian leaders, and from a former city council member. But it has the support of some New York Jewish politicians, and Mr. Weprin's clout as chairman of the council's finance committee makes a bill honoring Ze'evi likely to pass if he proposes it.

The council member's plan is "provocative and unwise," former council member Ronnie Eldridge said. "The City Council shouldn't be practicing foreign policy, and this will arouse passions on both sides," she said.

The most recent Israeli politician to be honored with a New York street sign is Yitzhak Rabin. Second Avenue between 42nd and 43rd Streets was named for Rabin after his assassination in 1995. Chairman of the Moledet Party, Ze'evi stood across the political spectrum from Rabin, but like the slain premier, was a member of the old guard that fought to win Israeli independence. Ze'evi argued that the Oslo accords threatened Israeli security, and he advocated the voluntary transfer of Arabs out of the land under Israeli control. He drew attention last July when he said of Palestinian Arabs who are in Israel illegally: "We should get rid of the ones who are not Israeli citizens the same way you get rid of lice. We have to stop this cancer from spreading within us."

Ze'evi was assassinated in Jerusalem last October; the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine claimed responsibility for the killing, the Associated Press reported.

"I don't support his views, I just support the message against terrorism," Mr. Weprin said. He said he would probably choose a street in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills to name after Ze'evi.

Mr. Weprin's plan is "outrageous and absolutely revolting," Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee communications director Hussein Ibish said on Tuesday. "To honor him with a street in New York would be the moral equivalent of naming a street after Slobodan Milosevic," Mr. Ibish said.

Asked about the Milosevic comparison, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ze'evi's successor as minister and party chief Benny Elon said Ze'evi was not a racist. The slain minister favored "transferring people where they wish to go," the spokeswoman, Hagit Sachs, said.

New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind called Mr. Weprin "courageous" for diving into Middle East politics. "A lot of people disagreed with some of the positions that Ze'evi took, but he was a leader in Israel and a man with incredible integrity," Mr. Hikind said.

Several current council members were unwilling to comment, and council staffers suggested that members would be unlikely to antagonize Mr. Weprin, who will hold considerable sway over budget decisions. One councilman, Brooklyn's Simcha Felder, has already decided to support the bill, a spokeswoman for Mr. Felder said.

Renaming streets after deceased politicians, athletes, musicians, statesman, and constituents is a cherished City Council power. Last year's honorees ranged from the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York from 1984 to 2000, John Cardinal O'Connor, to the owner of Deno's Wonder Wheel Amusement and Kiddie Park on Coney Island, Denos Vourderis.

An editorial in today's New York Times runs under the headline "Restoring Yosemite." The editorial complains about the "tawdriness" and "disgraceful overcrowding" of Yosemite National Park. The editorial calls for implementing a Park Service master plan by which "The number of parking spaces and campsites would be reduced" and "Commercial structures and tacky cabins would be razed." The Times comes out in favor of this plan on the grounds that it would have the effect of "restoring animal habitat," and, presumably, of reducing tawdriness and tackiness.

Well, while the Times editorialists are in favor of reducing the number of campsites in Yosemite Valley to 500 from 850, and for razing those "tacky cabins," there's no mention of reducing the number of rooms available in the park's flagship Ahwahnee hotel, where a room costs $366 a night. The Ahwahnee features "bell service, valet parking, a full-time concierge, twice daily maid service with evening turndowns, room service, afternoon tea service and informative evening lectures and slide shows," according to its Web site, http://www.YosemitePark.com/html/accom_ahwahnee.html. It's amazing how the Times editorialists, who yelp about how tax cuts unduly help the rich and how welfare reforms unduly hurt the poor, are so quick to endorse a Park Service policy that would have the effect of further limiting access to Yosemite Valley for those who can't afford those $366-a-night rooms at the Ahwahnee. In general, Smartertimes.com believes that price is a pretty effective way to come to the most efficient distribution of a scarce resource, like rush-hour highway space or tickets to the Super Bowl. But in the case of a government-owned national treasure like Yosemite Valley, restricting overnight access to those who can afford a four-star hotel room seems a bit un-American. You'd think a Times editorial on the topic would at least deal with the issue. The failure to do so illuminates a classic flaw of limousine liberalism of the Times variety -- the tendency to mouth support for the poor and middle classes so long as they don't do anything so "tacky" as to park their families in a camp site or cabin that a Times editorial-writer might stumble across while walking from Yosemite Falls to afternoon tea back at the Ahwahnee.

Unregulated: The New York Times today is in full froth in favor of the cause of limiting the political speech rights of those not fortunate enough to have inherited newspapers. The Times refers to this as campaign finance "reform." The Times news columns repeatedly refer to this campaign in inaccurate promotional language. An item on the front of the Times business section, for instance, refers to "Representative Christopher Shays, the Connecticut Republican who is a leading sponsor of the bill to ban the unregulated and unlimited contributions to political parties known as soft money." A news article in the national section identifies Mr. Shays as " a leading sponsor of the bill to ban the unregulated and unlimited contributions to political parties known as soft money." And the lead editorial in today's New York Times claims hysterically that "American democracy is also being attacked from within by a poisonous system of unregulated campaign donations." The unregulated Times editorial goes on to point out that "In the last election cycle, Enron was one of the nation's biggest donors. The company and its executives doled out $2.4 million, more than two-thirds of it in unregulated soft money."

Well, let's see. If the Enron "soft money" contributions are indeed "unregulated," how is it that the Times knows exactly how much the company gave? In fact, donations to political parties for party-building and issue advertisements are regulated. The regulations require disclosure. As the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics reports, " In 1991, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) amended its regulations to require national parties to disclose their soft money donors." Similarly, a Congressional Research Service report says, " FEC regulations in 1991 (11 C.F.R. Sections 102, 104, and 106) required political committees with both federal and non-federal accounts and that engage in mixed activities to allocate their expenditures according to specified formulae. These regulations required disclosure of all national, state, and local party finances from federal accounts and of transfers from non-federal accounts for a share of mixed activities." The exact language of the relevant part of the regulation is as follows: "National party committees shall disclose in a memo Schedule A information about each individual, committee, corporation, labor organization, or other entity that donates an aggregate amount in excess of $200 in a calendar year to the committee's non-federal account(s). This information shall include the donating individual's or entity's name, mailing address, occupation or type of business, and the date of receipt and amount of any such donation. If a donor's name is known to have changed since an earlier donation reported during the calendar year, the exact name or address previously used shall be noted with the first reported donation from that donor subsequent to the name change. " It's just inaccurate for the Times to claim that these contributions are unregulated when in fact there's a federal regulation on the books that regulates them by requiring disclosure.

Correction: The New Jersey Americans is the name under which the New Jersey Nets began; The team moved to Long Island and took the name New York Nets in 1968. And the Dayton Dragons are the Class "A" minor league baseball team that drew the most fans to its home ballpark in 2001. More fans attended Brooklyn Cyclones home games than those of any other Class "A" team playing a short season of 76 total games. An article in the Saturday, January 19, 2002, Smartertimes.com had those facts incorrect.