A front-page article in today's New York Times reports, "Last month, Mullah Omar had reportedly agreed to surrender Kandahar to Mullah Naqib. But he reversed his decision a couple of days later, apparently after a prophetic dream instructed him to keep fighting." The Times doesn't provide any more details about Mullah Omar's "prophetic dream." It's hard to know how the newspaper knows it "apparently" occurred. Is the Times using its legendary mind-reading ability to monitor Mullah Omar's dreams? Even if the mullah did have a dream that instructed him to keep fighting, and even if the Times somehow knows about this dream, how can the Times be so sure the dream was "prophetic"?

Thoughtless: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports on Attorney General John Ashcroft's testimony before a Senate committee. "The Democratic critics on the committee were careful in their questioning and most laced their remarks with some support for the administration, even for the proposal thought to be the most controversial, the establishment of military tribunals to try terrorists," the Times reports. "Thought" to be the most controversial by whom? By the Times news department? Or by the Democratic critics? The passive construction gives Times readers no idea and is thought to be a way of avoiding responsibility for injecting opinions into news articles.

Toe Truck: A news article in today's New York Times about a congressional vote on trade says, "With the time allotted for voting expired and Democrats shouting across the aisle to bring down the gavel, Mr. Hastert and other Republican leaders repeatedly circled Adam Putnam of Florida, urging the 27-year-old freshman to tow the party line." Here's the relevant entry in the New York Times's own stylebook: "toe the line, toe the mark (not 'tow'). The allusion is to the starting position in a footrace."

Oldest Orthodox Congregation: An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports, "A fire yesterday ravaged a synagogue on the Lower East Side that houses the city's oldest Orthodox congregation." That is inaccurate. The congregation the Times article refers to, Beth Hamedrash Hagodol, is not "the city's oldest Orthodox congregation." That distinction belongs to Congregation Shearith Israel, whose Web site identifies it as a "member and founder of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America." Shearith Israel was founded in 1654. Beth Hamedrash Hagodol has been in its building since 1885, the Times article reports, while Shearith Israel has been in its current building since 1897. But the Times article identifies the congregation as the oldest, not the building. Presumably, too, the reference is to the age of the organization, not the ages of the individual members.

Encouraging? An editorial in today's New York Times begins, "Give Yasir Arafat credit for some encouraging first steps against Hamas, the group that claimed responsibility for last weekend's deadly terrorist bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa. Placing Hamas's spiritual leader, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, under house arrest sent a clear message to Hamas supporters, who have responded with angry protests." The Times editorialists ought to check out their own newspaper's news article today, which reports that the "house arrest" consisted of Palestinian "police" posted two blocks away from the sheik's home. The "police" had told the sheik "that they were trying to protect him," the Times news article reports. The Times news article also reports that Sheik Yassin was receiving a "steady parade of visitors," in apparent violation of the terms of his "house arrest." This is a "clear message"?

Reckonings: Paul Krugman's op-ed page column, which Smartertimes.com can no longer refer to as the Reckonings column because the New York Times has shorn the column of its label, today asserts, "Since the administration's phony budget math ('fuzzy' just doesn't cut it at this point) gets phonier the further you go into the future, this means that we have effectively returned to a state of permanent deficit. . . . Administration officials insist that the economic slowdown and the war on terror, not the tax cut, are responsible for the red ink. But this is flatly untrue: antiterror spending is a minor factor, and the persistence of projected deficits into the indefinite future tells us that it's not caused by the recession either. Anyway, they're missing the point. Opponents of the administration's plan always warned that it was foolish to lock in a giant tax cut on the basis of hypothetical surplus projections. They urged, to no avail, that we wait to see the actual budget results." The double standard here is glaring. Mr. Krugman criticizes the Bush administration for backing a tax cut "on the basis of hypothetical surplus projections." But Mr. Krugman himself complains about "the persistence of projected deficits into the indefinite future." How is it that the surpluses are merely hypothetical and not to be relied upon instead of the "actual budget results," but the deficits -- which are just as hypothetical as the surpluses -- are worth getting in a lather over? Mr. Krugman should either rely on the budget projections or not rely upon them. Or if there is a reason to criticize the basis of the projections, he should do so. But to rely on the projections when they show a deficit and ignore them when they show a surplus is a bit of fast footwork that suggests that what Mr. Krugman is really up to has little to do with the budget projections and a lot to do with opposing tax cuts.

Note: Smartertimes.com is operating today off the New York Times online edition.

News Article: Original, non-Times-related news article: Solzhenitsyn Son in Spotlight on Greenpoint Power Plant, Puzzling Brooklyn Poles.

By BENJAMIN SMITH
Smartertimes.com Staff
GREENPOINT, Brooklyn -- If not for consultant Stephan Solzhenitsyn, it would be a traditional neighborhood fight. Mr. Solzhenitsyn's client, TransGas Energy Systems, wants to build a 1,100 Megawatt power station here on the edge of New York's biggest Polish-American community, and local residents oppose it.

Now, the locals -- many of whom revere Stephen Solzhenitsyn's father, Nobel-prize winning Soviet dissident Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, for his anti-Communism -- are divided on what to make of his son's unexpected appearance at forums like the one held last Thursday at the Polish National Home, where he joined TransGas executives in pushing the virtues of the electric power plant to a hostile crowd. Some in the community appear to take the Solzhenitsyn name as a reason to temper their opposition to the project. Others say he has somehow betrayed his father's principles.

"Didn't his father teach him anything about doing the right thing for the people?" the Polish-born co-chairman of Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning, Richard Mazur, asked.

Some resentment of Mr. Solzhenitsyn's role, residents say, was sparked by a profile that ran October 10 in the Polish-language daily newspaper Nowy Dziennik. "Engineer Solzhenitsyn Reassures: The Greenpoint power station is not that awful," the headline read.

The 28-year old Mr. Solzhenitsyn has sometimes been involved in his father's work. He has translated essays, and he served as interpreter when his father, now 82, returned to Russia for the first time in 1994.

But the consultant himself appears to have made no effort to trade on his family name. Born in Russia, he came to the United States after his father was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974 for describing the horrors of Soviet prison camps in "Gulag Archipelago." The younger Mr. Solzhenitsyn grew up in Cavendish, Vermont, attended Harvard and MIT, and now works for the consulting firm TRC.

"I wouldn't want them to think that this proposal is okay because of who my father is," Mr. Solzhenitsyn told Smartertimes.com of the Greenpoint project. "I want them to think this proposal is okay on the merits."

According to documents filed with the New York State Department of Public Service, which must approve power plants, the Trangas project would stand on the edge of Polish Greenpoint, occupying the site of the Bayside Fuel Oil Depot on the waterfront on North 12th Street. The natural-gas-burning plant would meet more than 10% of New York City's demand for electricity during peak periods, according to the documents.

The Greenpoint-Williamsburg Association for Parks and Planning, a coalition including Polish groups and other neighborhood organizations, says its neighborhood is the wrong place for a power plant. Manufacturing along the river has been declining for half a century, and the neighborhood's real estate values are rising as gentrification spreads north from Williamsburg into an area whose main languages include Spanish and Yiddish, as well as Polish.

Now, the opponents say that a power plant would just make bad air quality worse and that its three towering smokestacks would ruin a picturesque waterfront. A Transgas spokesman, Michael Woloz, responded that the plant could even improve the current site, which is contaminated by a century of fuel storage, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He also said the plant would lower energy costs for New Yorkers, and that the company would donate money to other projects that will improve the neighborhood.

One man particularly intrigued by the connection to Alexandr Solzhenitsyn is Antoni Chroscielewski, 76, president of the Polish National Home. In 1939, the Soviet Union occupied Mr. Chroscielewski 's East Polish town and the next year he was deported to what is now Kazakhstan. Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was sent to a gulag, also in what is now Kazakhstan, after his arrest in 1945.

"I mentioned [to the younger Mr. Solzhenitsyn] that I was two years in Siberia," Mr. Chroscielewski said. "It did not make a big impression on him."

Sitting in the Warsaw, the downstairs bar at the Polish National Home, a recent evening, Mr. Chroscielewski explained the mixed feelings that he, like many Poles, has about the elder Mr. Solzhenitsyn: he admired the writer for his opposition to the Soviet regime but ran into disappointment in mid-1990s, when Mr. Solzhenitsyn publicly opposed Poland's joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO.

The decision over the Transgas plant is now in state hands, ultimately the hands of Governor George Pataki. And Mr. Chroscielewski sees another connection there: Mr. Pataki is of Hungarian extraction, and "Hungary and Poland are very close, like brothers," he said.

A front-page article in today's New York Times begins, "The Justice Department has refused to let the F.B.I. check its records to determine whether any of the 1,200 people detained after the Sept. 11 attacks had bought guns, F.B.I. and Justice Department officials say. The department made the decision in October after the F.B.I. asked to examine the records it maintains on background checks to see if any detainees had purchased guns in the United States."

It's not clear from either sentence who "it" is. Do the records belong to the Justice Department or to the FBI? You have to read about 15 paragraphs down into the article to find out that they are FBI records. (The FBI, is, of course, part of the Justice Department, but the two lead sentences create a distinction that seems important for the purpose of the story.)

The Times headline is "Justice Dept. Bars Use of Gun Checks in Terror Inquiry." But the headline might as well be "Congress Bars Use of Gun Checks in Terror Inquiry"; the Justice Department position, the Times article eventually makes clear, is that the department is merely obeying the strictures of the law.

The Times article quotes a gun-control advocate, a California police chief and Senator Schumer, but it never quotes a representative of the American Civil Liberties Union. In fact, the tone of today's article on the use of the gun-check records is jarringly at odds with the rest of the Times coverage on the detainees, military tribunals and the terrorism investigation. When it comes to questioning or detaining immigrants or monitoring mosques, the Times routinely expresses outrage that the FBI would dare impinge on civil liberties, and outraged civil libertarians are duly quoted. Yet when the Bush Justice Department for once errs on the side of civil liberties, the Times summons up an outraged police chief and can't find anyone to praise the administration for respecting civil liberties.

It's not that the use of the gun-check records isn't a newsworthy topic; it is. It's just that the Times treatment of the Bush administration is so unremittingly negative. If the administration takes an aggressive approach at the expense of civil liberties, the Times quotes the yelping civil libertarians. If the administration takes a restrained approach aimed at preserving civil liberties, the Times quotes the yelping people who want a tougher stance against terrorism.

The Times portrays this as an example of the hypocrisy of the Justice Department. The newspaper reports, "Even as the department is instituting tough new measures to detain individuals suspected of links to terrorism, they say, it is being unusually solicitous of foreigners' gun rights." Yet the Times is just as vulnerable to a similar charge of hypocrisy. Even as the newspaper is harshly criticizing the tough new measures to detain individuals suspected of links to terrorism, it is being unusually solicitous of those who would trample on foreigners' gun rights.

One of the critics that the Times quotes, apparently in all seriousness, derides the administration's decision as "absurd and unconscionable" and "based on a right-to-bear-arms mentality."

Presumably the "right-to-bear-arms mentality" also afflicted the framers of the Bill of Rights that is enshrined in the Constitution. Can one honestly imagine the Times running a quote from someone who is complaining about the FBI's refusal to monitor all mosques, calling that decision "absurd and unconscionable" and "based on a right-to-free-exercise-of-religion mentality"?

Missing Juror: The front-page New York Times account of the conviction of A. Alfred Taubman in connection with price-fixing at Sotheby's today leaves out the comment of one of the jurors in the case. "In my heart, in my mind, deep down, I don't believe he is guilty," that juror, Lydell Durant, told Steve Dunleavy of the New York Post after the jury announced it had found Taubman guilty. "I think it was the wrong verdict."

A news article in the metro section of today's New York Times begins, "Bringing down the curtain on the first act of a bitter backstage battle, a State Supreme Court justice in Manhattan issued a preliminary injunction against Scott Rudin, the millionaire Hollywood and Broadway producer, that stops him, at least for now, from preventing the production of a long-suffering, long-gestating new Stephen Sondheim musical called 'Gold!'"

What's the relevance of the fact that Mr. Rudin is a "millionaire"? The story never explains. It manages to refer to the show's director, Harold Prince; to Justice Ira Gammerman; to Stephen Sondheim; and to several other theatrical figures without saying whether they are millionaires or without making any reference to their net worth.

It may seem snooty to say so, but given the rise in real estate values, in executive pay and in the value of U.S. stocks in the past two decades, it's not particularly exceptional in many quarters these days to have personal wealth of a million dollars. The Times often refers to other figures in the news who are millionaires -- like, say, Senator Clinton, or the newspaper's own publisher -- without commenting on their personal wealth. If Mr. Rudin were worth more than, say, $100 million dollars, it might be newsworthy and worth mentioning. Or if his wealth were somehow an issue in the court case, and if that were described in the news article.

As it is, the description of Mr. Rudin as a "millionaire" lends the Times news article a breathless, almost tabloid-like quality.

Fuel of the Conflict: The op-ed page of today's New York Times carries an op-ed from the vice president of the Arab American Action Network. A pull-quote says "The occupation, not Yasser Arafat, is the problem," and the article asserts, "it is the occupation that is the fuel of the conflict." It urges America to deal "directly with the root causes of the conflict." What "occupation" is the author talking about? Readers can get a clue with the reference to "all the ugly symptoms of 53 years of repression of millions of people in Palestine." In other words, the problem, according to this op-ed that the Times chooses to run in the wake of suicide bombings that killed 25 Israelis over the weekend, is not "occupation," but the very establishment of Israel in 1948.

News Article: Schumer, Hillary Back Tax Breaks For Investment Banks; 'Payola' Says AEI's Hassett

By BENJAMIN SMITH
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- Tax breaks worth $86 million for Merrill Lynch; worth $58 million for Lehman Brothers; worth up to $48 million for Deutsche Bank. The Republican economic stimulus package that Democrats have been criticizing as corporate welfare? Nope -- it's the federal aid plan for Lower Manhattan pushed by New York's Democratic senators, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton.

The Schumer-Clinton plan, which has been approved by the Senate Finance Committee, includes tax credits of up to $4,800 per employee per year, at a total cost to the federal budget estimated at $2 billion over five years. Some of the biggest beneficiaries would be companies whose employees and executives were big campaign contributors to the senators. While some of the companies have been out of their offices for months, others suffered only relatively minor business disruptions because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The legislation's backers say it will offer an instant anchor for businesses that are considering leaving the area. But many companies have already decided to stay in the region -- for them, the tax breaks would come too late to have any effect on their decision-making. In fact, a competing proposal introduced last week in the House leaves out the per-employee credit, focusing more heavily on incentives for investment. And some critics say that Lower Manhattan should recover and rebuild based not on temporary tax credits but on which businesses can be successful there.

"This is just payola," an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, Kevin Hassett, said. "It's not going to have any impact" on what businesses do, he said "but it's going to be a lot of money in their pockets."

The big winners of the $4,800 per-employee credit in the Schumer-Clinton plan would be the financial services firms that dominate the area covered by the legislation, the triangle south of a line formed by Canal Street, Grand Street, and East Broadway. The securities and investment industries are the biggest donors to Senator Schumer. They gave the senator's campaign war chest $2.7 million from 1997 to 2002, the Center for Responsive Politics reports.

Merrill Lynch employees, their families, and its political action committee, for example, gave Mr. Schumer's campaign $152,700; with the company's 9,000 employees in Lower Manhattan, the firm stands to gain more than 500 times that amount in tax breaks. Employees of Goldman Sachs, which owns several downtown offices but said it could not estimate the number of employees in the area, gave Mr. Schumer's campaign $96,000.

"We have a commitment to New York City regardless of what special benefits there might be," said a spokesman for Lehman Brothers, Bill Ahearn. Lehman could claim tax credits for 6,000 employees under the Schumer-Clinton plan.

The largest and most immediate element of the legislation, which was passed by the Senate Finance Committee last month but has not reached a floor vote, would temporarily expand the Work Opportunity Tax Credit to include two categories of employers. Every business located in the designated "New York Recovery Zone" -- that triangle south of a line formed by Canal Street, Grand Street, and East Broadway -- would qualify. So would businesses that the September 11 attack forced to move elsewhere within New York City. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit is a federal program that is ordinarily aimed at encouraging the employment of welfare recipients, disabled veterans, and impoverished ex-felons.

Any business could relocate to Lower Manhattan to participate in the program, and the businesses already there could benefit from the credit for an unlimited number of new hires, in addition to claiming the credit for their existing employees. Businesses that were forced to relocate can claim benefits only for as many employees as they had downtown on September 11. The credits could be claimed from the period from Sept. 11, 2001 through December 31, 2002.

The tricky question is who, exactly, is an "employee." Under the WOTC, a qualified employee is anyone who works at least 400 hours for a business; in the case of Lower Manhattan, workers would have to perform "substantially all the services" for their employer in Lower Manhattan. Qualified employers would be permitted to claim a credit on their tax bill for an amount equal to 40% of the first $12,000 of each employee's salary. Some businesses could end up paying no taxes at all. Employers can carry the tax credits backward against last year's taxes or forward for up to 20 years. But a company that never showed any profit and never owed any tax could not get a check from the government under the credit program.

Another section of the bill backed by Clinton and Schumer would reduce the cost of financing for building downtown by authorizing the issuance of tax-exempt bonds. A third, smaller section would provide incentives for downtown business to invest their insurance proceeds in Lower Manhattan.

Along with the question of whether the targeted tax breaks will end up persuading companies to stay or relocate downtown is the question of whether, even if it did have the desired effect, the policy makes sense.

"If business doesn't want to be there for some reason, then the market is saying something," the director of fiscal policy for the Cato Institute in Washington, Chris Edwards, said. "The market is saying that Lower Manhattan is a very expensive place to do business."

And so, for some businesses, Lower Manhattan may no longer make sense. Higher insurance premiums are unlikely to go away. Transit links with New Jersey and other areas could be fixed -- but until they are, tax credits have to be weighed against thousands of hours of commuting time.

A separate set of problems confront small business that provide services that are no longer needed. Some sandwich shops have lost their delivery businesses to new security precautions. Some shoe-shine stands have lost their customers in the rubble of the World Trade Center or to the flight to New Jersey and other parts of Manhattan. Neither business could be saved by a tax credit; it only makes sense for these services to exist when, and if, their customers return.

"What a small business needs is not federal grants," a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, E.J. McMahon, said. "They need business."

Backers say the per-employee tax credit is a stop-gap measure, designed to hold businesses while the area rebuilds. "Keeping businesses here during the transition is key," New York City Partnership Senior Vice-President Tom McMahon (no relation to the Manhattan Institute's Mr. McMahon) said.

But even the Partnership would like to see the bill altered. In particular, the business group would like to see a set of incentives on long-term investment added to the short-term employee tax credit. A House bill sponsored by New York representatives offers tax breaks for building and improving property below Canal Street.

"We're not satisfied that what is currently on the table is all we'll end up with," the Partnership's Mr. McMahon said of the Senate bill.

Aides to Senators Schumer and Clinton did not return calls for comment. In a speech on the Senate floor on November 27, Mrs. Clinton said, "we need some help to put New York back into business so that it will continue as the capital of the global markets, as the capital of the global entertainment and media world." She pointed out that New York runs "a balance of payment deficit between New York and Washington that is $15 to $18 billion a year." So a tax break that is specific to New York would return to the city some of the tax funds that it already pays in.

That's a new tack on taxes from a senator who (along with Mr. Schumer) voted against President Bush's tax cut plan this May. The president's plan, she told Channel 4's Gabe Pressman in March, would be "bad for the country and very bad for New York." Why? Because it's "too skewed toward a small minority of the very wealthy."

A dispatch from Washington in the international section of today's New York Times begins, "A prototype antimissile weapon demolished a mock warhead tonight high above the Pacific Ocean in the second consecutive success for the Pentagon's costly missile defense program, military officials said."

The news article would be better if some editor had deleted the word "costly." The article eventually mentions that missile defense spending is now about $5.3 billion a year and that the Bush administration wants to increase that to $8.3 billion. Why not let the readers decide for themselves whether that is costly? It's a matter of opinion, after all. While $5.3 billion is costly by the standard of an individual American household budget, it isn't really all that much for a federal program. And some would argue that it is cheap compared to the price of having an American city struck by a missile armed with a nuclear or chemical warhead. The Times manages, elsewhere in today's newspaper, to write about "the Medicare program" and "Democrats demanding increased aid to the unemployed and low-income workers." The Times doesn't refer in those cases to "the costly Medicare program" or to Democrats demanding "costly increased aid to the unemployed and low-income workers." Only the missile defense spending is tagged with the label "costly." That's a signal from the New York Times news department that missile defense is a bad idea and that spending on it should be opposed. There are plenty of readers who, no matter what their views on the merits of antimissile spending, would prefer that the Times news columns retained at least a pretense of neutrality on the issue.

Ignore: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports that Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg "spent his own money on the campaign, choosing to ignore the city's campaign finance law, which seeks to restrict the influence of money on politics by requiring candidates to limit the amount of money they raise and spend in order to qualify for public matching funds." This makes Mr. Bloomberg sound like a scofflaw. In fact Mr. Bloomberg did not "ignore" the law; he acted in compliance with its provisions, which allow candidates to opt out of the spending limits and, in doing so, to turn down the chance to receive public matching funds.

With public attention focused on Israel following the suicide bombings there over the weekend, it's worth taking a careful look at the New York Times's coverage of the Middle East. This morning's news coverage is typically opinionated, contradictory, and riddled with falsehoods and distortions.

The most glaringly error-ridden piece is an obituary in today's Times of Mohammed Kamel. The Times writes that Kamel "resigned as Egypt's foreign minister in 1978 in protest against the Camp David peace accords with Israel, predicting accurately that they would isolate Egypt in the Arab world without resolving the Palestinian question." The Times obituary backs up the claim that Kamel's prediction was accurate by noting that after the Camp David accord, "most Arab nations severed diplomatic relations with Cairo." But the Times never notes that the severance was temporary, and that virtually all Arab nations have now resumed diplomatic relations with Egypt, notwithstanding the Camp David accord. That makes Mr. Kamel's prediction look less "accurate" and more shortsighted.

The Times obituary notes as context that "Efforts to secure greater autonomy for the Palestinians were hampered by the spread of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, by Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem in 1980 and its subsequent invasion of Lebanon. Twenty years later, the Palestinians still have no state, and relations with Israel remain bitter." This summary of the events of 20 years, delivered in the voice of the Times news department without attribution to any diplomat or scholar, is amazingly one-sided. The condition of the Palestinian Arabs, in this account, is entirely determined by Israeli behavior. Left out as factors that may have "hampered" efforts to secure greater autonomy for the Palestinian Arabs are the decisions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization leadership to side with the Soviet Union in the Cold War and with Iraq in the Gulf War. Also omitted are the PLO's refusal to accept Israel's right to exist, and the PLO's decision to use attacks on Israeli and American civilians as tactics in its struggle. Nor does the Times summary reflect the fact that the Palestinian Arabs indeed have secured greater autonomy in the past 20 years. That, too, makes Mr. Kamel's prediction look less "accurate" and more shortsighted.

The opinionated, anti-Israel voice of the Times news department makes another appearance in a front-page dispatch from Washington today. The Times writes, "But Mr. Bush knows that he does not have the luxury of dealing with militant groups in the Palestinian territories, Syria and Lebanon the way he is dealing with them in Afghanistan." It's unclear how the Times can say with such authority what President Bush does or does not "know." Maybe the newspaper has hired a mind-reader as its Washington correspondent. Moreover, what Mr. Bush is said to "know" is in fact highly questionable from a policy perspective. Smartertimes.com could just as easily assert, "Mr. Bush knows that he does not have the luxury of ignoring the terrorist groups in the Palestinian territories, Syria and Lebanon the way he and President Clinton did the ones in Afghanistan before September 11." Senator Schumer, to his credit, is quoted later on in the article saying, "The P.L.O. is the same as the Taliban, which aids, abets and provides safe haven for terrorists. And Israel is like America, simply trying to protect its home front. To ask Israel to negotiate with Arafat is like asking America to negotiate with Mullah Muhammad Omar, the chief of the Taliban." The Times doesn't say Mr. Schumer "knows" this, it just says he "said" it.

Finally, in a front-page "news analysis," the Times bureau chief in Jerusalem asserts, "For 10 months, the Bush administration avoided what it saw as the thankless task of peacemaking here. In retrospect, that looks like a policy of malign neglect, because in the interim, the conflict ground away trust and good will between not only Israeli and Palestinian leaders but also between their people." Well, there wasn't much trust and good will to begin with. And maligning the Bush administration for it is a bit of a reach. A New York Times editorial today refers to Yasser Arafat's "disastrous decision 14 months ago to countenance a new armed campaign against Israel." That decision can't in fairness be blamed on the Bush administration, which had not yet even been elected.

Capital Gains: An article in the international section of today's New York Times reports that Swiss voters rejected a measure to impose a capital gains tax. "The vote leaves Switzerland and Greece the only two European countries that do not impose such a levy," the Times reports. That's inaccurate, so far as Smartertimes.com can tell. Germany in most cases has no tax on long-term capital gains by individuals. And while Poland plans to adopt a capital gains tax on individuals in 2003, it does not impose one now. An Arthur Andersen study conducted in 1998 for the American Council for Capital Formation found that Belgium and the Netherlands had no capital gains taxes on individuals, but it is possible that the tax laws in those countries have changed since 1998 as the European Union has pressed for standardization.

Most Generous: An item in the arts section of today's New York Times reports, "The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington announced on Saturday that it had received a $10 million grant from the Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation for a 10-year performance series, the most generous gift to the arts since Sept. 11, said James A. Johnson, Kennedy Center chairman." It's unclear how the Times can let this "most generous" claim slide unchallenged, given that the New York Times itself reported on Sunday that the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater last Wednesday announced a $15 million gift from Sanford I. Weill and his wife Joan. A larger gift is not necessarily a more generous one, but in the absence of any additional details, it is hard to see how the Times can defend airing the Kennedy Center claim without making reference to the Weill gift.

Sub-Sonic: An article in the business section of today's New York Times reports on a new "transportation device." The postal service plans to test the device in "Concorde, N.H.," the Times reports. Hmm. Wonder if the New Yorke Times also thinks the early battles of the American Revolution were at Lexington and "Concorde, Mass."

An article in the city section of today's New York Times reports on an effort to prevent a two-acre family farm in Queens from being sold to a developer who wants to build 22 two-family houses on the property. The Times is constantly whining about the housing "crisis" and the housing "emergency" in New York City. But today's article contains not a single comment from an affordable-housing advocate. The developer who wants to build on the land is not identified or quoted. There are three persons quoted in the article, and they all oppose the house-building. It's an incredibly one-sided dispatch.

Patronizing: The lead article in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times says of Al Qaeda that "Unlike guerilla groups from Colombia to Chechnya, it holds no territory -- especially now that its patrons in the Taliban movement have been routed in most of Afghanistan." In fact, reports in the Washington Post and even some in the New York Times suggest that it was Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden that were the patrons of the Taliban, not the reverse.

Unofficial: An article in today's New York Times refers to Richard Perle as "chairman of the Defense Policy Board, an unofficial Pentagon policy review panel." It's not "unofficial." In fact, the board is funded by the government, appointed by the government, and created by the government. Its charter begins with the words: "Official Designation: This committee will be officially designated the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee (referred to as the Defense Policy Board, abbreviated DPBAC)."

Stuck in Cement: Today's New York Times magazine carries an article about the island of Babuyan Claro. The article makes several references to "cement," as in a "cement house" "a cement church" and "a cement bridge," with what an island resident describes as "long metal rods inside the cement." The Times magazine editors would have done well to consult the newspaper's own stylebook. The Times stylebook entry on "cement" says, "Use 'concrete' instead to mean the material that forms blocks, walls and roads. One ingredient is 'cement,' the binding agent that is mixed with water, sand and gravel."

In- 'L'-egant: An article in the Arts & Leisure section of today's New York Times reports on synagogue architecture. It says one plan "was based, for unknown reasons, on arcane formal manipulations of the Hebrew letter L." There is no letter "L" in Hebrew, which has a different alphabet from English. There is a rough Hebrew equivalent to the letter "L," the letter "lamed."

Loss of Liberties: The op-ed page of today's New York Times strips the newspaper's regular columnists of their column labels. The "Liberties" and "Foreign Affairs" columns used to run with those labels. Now the columns are identified only by the names of the columnists. The Times gives no explanation for the change.

The New York Times on November 21 and 24 devoted two full-length news articles to the question of how Israel uses torture. On Friday, Human Rights Watch issued a 50-page report which found that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority engages in the "routine use of torture." The Associated Press moved a full news article on the report; so did the Jerusalem Post. The New York Times routinely covers Human Rights Watch reports. And it covers torture, when Israel does it. But the Human Rights Watch report on the Palestinian Authority seems not fit to print.

Bollinger: The New York Times reports today, under the headline, "University of Michigan Won't Cooperate in Federal Canvass," that "The University of Michigan's police force has refused to help the federal government in its effort to interview thousands of foreign students and others in the United States on temporary visas." The Times article quotes a spokeswoman for the university but never mentions the name of the university president, Lee Bollinger, who is scheduled to take over next year as the president of Columbia University. That would seem to be an interesting angle for a newspaper based in Columbia's hometown of New York to pursue: what role, if any, did Mr. Bollinger play in the decision to refuse to assist the federal effort? And how do the Columbia trustees who hired him feel about that?

Israel and Iraq: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports, "In the interview, Mr. Armitage said the administration was sensitive to concerns among the European and Arab allies that forcing a military confrontation with Iraq could sunder the antiterror coalition and possibly harm efforts to negotiate a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians." The Times news article -- and for that matter, Mr. Armitage -- treat this argument about Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian negotiations as if it is credible. The newspaper even made the argument itself in a Monday, November 26 editorial on Iraq, writing, " War in Iraq would also undermine whatever possibility now exists for damping violence between Israelis and Palestinians and restarting efforts toward a lasting peace. . . . Moving militarily against Iraq now would hobble America's power as a Mideast peacemaker." Well, since Mr. Armitage and the Times news department are now echoing and displaying their sensitivity to the editorial's faulty reasoning, Smartertimes.com will repeat what it said on Monday:

"This stands in utter contradiction to the historical reality. In fact America's last war in Iraq, from 1990 to 1991, is what made it possible to convene the October 30, 1991, Madrid peace conference, which was the starting point for America's current peacemaking efforts in the Middle East. Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization had sided with Iraq, and the defeat of Iraq left Mr. Arafat in a weakened position with respect to his usual Arab patrons. He was thus forced to the bargaining table.

"Rather than hobbling America's power as a peacemaker, a successful American war against Iraq might well strengthen it. It would do so not merely by strengthening America's prestige at the bargaining table, but by directly eliminating at its source a cause of the violence between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. As reported by the Washington Post, Saddam Hussein's regime has been awarding $10,000 'martyr payments' as an incentive to the parents of Palestinian Arabs who die attacking Israel. As reported yesterday by the Associated Press in Amman, Jordanian authorities arrested an Iraqi truck driver, Jaafar Mansoor Ali, 45, who authorities said was trying to smuggle 40 hand grenades from Iraq to the Palestinian territories. As reported yesterday in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Israeli authorities recently arrested 15 Palestinians who were trained and financed by Iraq and who planned 'spectacular' terror attacks at Ben-Gurion International Airport, in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem. It's rare for this sort of information to make it into the news section of the New York Times -- one has to subscribe to Iraq News or read other newspapers to find out about it."

Thomas Friedman's column in Friday's New York Times asserts, "The Bush team is about to make a big mistake. Mr. Putin has made the decision to 'go west.' But he's way out ahead of his generals and his public. He needs the continued cover of the ABM treaty to keep them moving west, too. But he's willing to concede limiting testing under ABM." Mr. Friedman opines, "Give him what he wants. Let's have more Putin and less testing."

Vladimir Putin, the former KGB official who now runs Russia, has "made the decision to 'go west,'" huh?

Maybe Mr. Friedman should check out the article in the international section of Friday's New York Times that runs under the headline, "Ruling to Dissolve Independent Russian TV Network Draws Protests." That reports that Russia is headed toward "virtual government control over national television." It reports that the independent television network blames "a manipulative Kremlin" for putting it out of business.

It's almost enough to make a cynic think that what is driving Mr. Friedman's policy decisions is not a judgment about Mr. Putin's "decision to 'go west'" but Mr. Friedman's opposition to missile defense.

Experts: A report in the international section of today's New York Times seeks to explain a suicide bombing attack on an Israeli bus. "Some experts saw a mix of reasons for the recent violence," the Times reports. "'Some of the Palestinian violence is in retaliation,' said Yossi Alpher, a security expert and the former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies. Part of the violence, he said, was 'mindlessly done,' and still other attacks were 'deliberate sabotage of Arafat's standing.'" Hmm. The "expert" selected by the Times doesn't seem to consider that another reason for the violence is that the perpetrators are anti-Semites who want to kill Jews and destroy Israel.

An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports matter-of-factly on a debate over pricing for rides in city taxicabs. "The fare increase is to be debated at a hearing of the Taxi and Limousine Commission on Dec. 27, four days before the mayor and most of the City Council, who choose the commissioners, leave office," the Times reports. "But the mayor made it clear that he supported some kind of increase, even saying at one point that the two-tier pricing system 'is something that I approved a couple of days ago.'"

The Times article never questions the underlying assumption that the city government ought to be setting the prices in transactions between taxi customers and taxi drivers. Yet in a world in which price controls and centrally planned economies are generally considered things of the past, the taxi fare-setting procedures are a vestige of a command economy. The Times doesn't have to agree with this point of view. But it would be refreshing if, in a news article like this, the newspaper once in a while sought comment from a dollar-van driver or free-market economist who might say something like, "We've pretty much decided in our economy that the government won't set the prices for restaurant meals, hotel rooms or neckties. So why should taxi fares be an exception to that general rule?"

Defenders of the current system will no doubt raise concern about traffic jams and the specter of unregulated drivers who don't know the city's streets or its language. But isn't that a debate worth having rather than skipping?

Command Economy, II: An editorial in today's New York Times discusses the financial difficulties of Enron. The editorial blames "fawning investors, Wall Street analysts, journalists and accountants unwilling to allow a company's lack of transparency about its business to get in the way of a dizzying ride, until they realize the destination is the top of a steep cliff."

The editorial goes on to say that, "Now Enron is the best argument for stronger supervision of public companies' financial data." And in case it's not clear what kind of "supervision" the Times has in mind, the newspaper specifies, "There is a certain irony that Enron, a champion of deregulation, now becomes a poster child for strong regulation on Wall Street."

The editorialists' approach to investments seems to be the same as the news department's approach to taxi fares -- that a strong government role is necessary to protect consumers. Yet, as the editorial itself concedes, the failure here was not the government's but that of "investors, Wall Street analysts, journalists and accountants." One might as well argue that Enron is a poster child for "strong regulation" of journalists by the government. Such regulation would be unconstitutional, of course, but what's more, there's no reason to suggest it would be effective. In the long run, in a free market, journalists who keep touting companies that collapse will lose their readership to more reliable journalists. Analysts who keep touting companies that collapse will find it hard to find employers willing to pay their million-dollar-a-year salaries. And investors will learn the hard way about the tradeoff between risk and reward. There's little, if any evidence that government regulators are in the long run any better guarantors of this than the free market is.

Nadler and the Welsh: An article in the national section of today's New York Times quotes Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat from New York. "The bill before the House welshes on that solemn pledge," the Times quotes Mr. Nadler as saying. When Bill Clinton used the word "welsh" this way, Rees Lloyd, general counsel for the Welsh-American Legal Defense, Education and Development Fund called the remark "awful" and "insensitive," according to CNN. The New York Times stylebook describes this use of the word "welsh" as "an ethnic slur." So why isn't the Times headline, "New York Congressman Uses Ethnic Slur; Welsh Express Outrage"? Given the Times' tip-toeing around the sensitivities of other angry minority groups, it is interesting to see that Mr. Nadler get a free ride on what by the Times's own definition is an "ethnic slur."

Their Own Worst Enemy: An op-ed piece in today's New York Times asserts that "American Jews -- and even Israelis -- are probably far more open to some reasonable pressures on Israel in the cause of a Middle East peace than most politicians believe." It goes on to cite polls that purport to show this. The assertion is highly questionable. If you call people up and ask them if they would support skin boils in the cause of a Mideast peace they will say yes. This doesn't measure support for skin boils; it measures support for Mideast peace. What's going on here is an op-ed that asserts, "People support skin boils."

The op-ed piece relies on two surveys that are tainted by their association with advocacy groups. One is being described as having been conducted by "the Forward, an independent national news weekly of Jewish affairs." But in fact, since Lipsky-Steinhardt LLC sold its half-ownership of the paper (that's when the editor of Smartertimes.com, who used to work there, left), the Forward has hardly been "independent." The newspaper now effectively functions as an organ of a left-wing American Jewish advocacy group called the Labor Zionist Alliance, whose officers and directors interlock with those of the Forward. One of the social scientists hired to conduct the study for the Forward is a left-wing Israeli political activist. And even that survey's most interesting result was that, asked "Were Jewish groups right to protest administration pressure on Israel?" 61% agreed, and 38% disagreed. The Times op-ed doesn't mention that result -- a classic case of data-mining.

Just in case you're lost in the statistics, let Smartertimes.com just underscore again exactly how galling this is. The editor of a newspaper conducts a poll asking about Bush administration "pressure" on Israel. The newspaper's poll shows that, even with a very popular president in office after September 11, 61% of its respondents support protests against that pressure, while 38% oppose them. And what does the newspaper editor do? He writes an op-ed for the New York Times that doesn't even mention at all the 61% finding, but asserts, in the absence of any evidence, that American Jews support pressure on Israel. He hangs that on a basically split response to another question, one that asked about whether the Bush administration was right to call for "restraint." That question measured support for the Bush administration and support for "restraint," but it tells nothing about support for pressure. The question that asked about pressure, the op-ed writer left out of his op-ed, because the result undermined his assertion.

Another study the Times op-ed piece cites was openly sponsored by the Israel Policy Forum, another left-wing advocacy group. When studies on these issues are conducted by independent pollsters or by more moderate groups such as the American Jewish Committee or the Middle East Quarterly, the results show that American Jews overwhelmingly oppose pressuring Israel to divide or surrender its capital in the face of Arab terrorism. The Times op-ed ignores those polls.

News Article: Another non-Times related original news article from Smartertimes.com:

Brownsville Councilman Pushes Ebonics,
Eyes Mayoral Race in 2013
By Benjamin Smith
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- He argues that Ebonics should be the language of instruction in city schools. He labels "political cowardice" the refusal of many of the city's black Democratic leaders to attend the funeral this February of Khalid Abdul Muhammad, a Nation of Islam renegade who called Jews "bloodsuckers" and whites "crackers." In the 2000 presidential election, he cast a write-in vote for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the imprisoned Philadelphia activist convicted of killing a police officer. And now, Charles Barron is ready to take his seat in City Hall when the New York City Council convenes in January.

Yet with a worn casual sweater (the council member-elect eschews suits on revolutionary principle) and close-cut salt-and-pepper hair over a cherubic face, the 51-year old, newly elected Mr. Barron looks more like a block association president than a proud former Black Panther. Indeed, he is president of the Bradford Street Block Association, and scourge of his neighborhood's drug dealers. He's pressed rap musicians to clean up their lyrics, and he's worked with neighborhood groups to replace schools' coal furnaces.

Mr. Barron says his entry into the "white power structure" that he's been battling for decades will give a new voice to the city's African-American and Latino residents, and he promises to shake things up from the inside. Others call him divisive. And critics say some of the policies he champions would end up hurting the people he is trying to help. Ebonics, a kind of black English, some say would trap African-American children outside the workforce, and the program was labeled a "cruel joke" by the president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Kweisi Mfume. In any case, Mr. Barron's political career is worth keeping an eye on; he told Smartertimes.com he is already mulling a run for Gracie Mansion.

"I don't have to change who I am, I don't have to placate or capitulate to any white liberal group" to succeed in citywide politics, he said. "With the changing demographics, if people of color and progressive whites came together in a coalition, you only need ten percent of the white vote to win" the 2013 mayor's race.

"He's radical, but he's effective," the president of a school board in his district of East New York and Brownsville in Brooklyn, Reginald Bowman, said.

How radical is he? Well, he says he'll lobby for the release of Black Panther "prisoners of war" still in jail for shooting cops in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ("Who is going to raise [the issue] if not me?") He says that New York's most prominent African-American leaders are too close to the Democratic Party. He describes independent corporate investment in inner city economies as "domestic neocolonialism." As for Khalid Abdul Muhammad, he says the late anti-Semite "said some crazy stuff, some of it just wrong É but I know one thing: he loved black people."

But with pre-session City Council maneuvering already underway, Mr. Barron has also positioned himself as a leader of the Fresh Democracy Council, a mainstream group of new members calling for rule changes that will reduce the council speaker's power.

"A lot of people with a position and agenda as unconventional as his are not effective legislators," said another of the group's members, David Yassky, who, like Mr. Barron, is a newly-elected city councilman from Brooklyn. "He's the rare person who has both got an ideological vision but also understands that to get things done in government you need to compromise."

Mr. Barron grew up in a housing project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He says his political stance has changed little since he joined the Black Panther Party in 1969. To him, the panthers represented "education, children, clothing, survival programs" and "the boldness to pick up arms and stand up against a far more powerful white power structure." In other words, "the same values that the council is supposed to want for its people."

The Panthers collapsed amid arrests and infighting in the early 1970s -- leaving police officers dead in shootouts. Mr. Barron says he never carried a gun. Mr. Barron went back to school, earning a degree in sociology from Hunter College. He then returned to black separatist politics, eventually serving as chief of staff to Reverend Herbert Daughtry, the leader of the National Black United Front.

In 1985, Mr. Barron founded Dynamics of Leadership, Inc., now a two-person consulting business that earns its roughly $100,000 of annual revenues from his speaking tours and from "leadership training" sessions performed for schools, non-profit organizations, and others.

In 1997, Mr. Barron lost a tight race against incumbent Patricia Wooten, a fixture first elected in 1981. This year, with Ms. Wooten forced to retire because of term limits, he ran against former New York Knick Gregory Jackson, who had the backing of the Brooklyn Democratic organization. Mr. Barron garnered the support of some city unions, of the Rev. Al Sharpton, and of former mayor David Dinkins. He won by 269 votes in a six-way race.

"I will fight for radically rearranging American society," he said, vowing to "more equitably distribute the wealth to the masses of American people, particularly people of color."

Now the question is: how high can a self-described "black revolutionary Christian socialist" go in New York politics? Mr. Barron has a clear answer: he wants to be mayor when he's 63.

He seems an unlikely choice. Conventional wisdom has long held that winning African-American and Latino candidates are moderates who can appeal to white voters, who are the city's largest minority.

But Mr. Barron sees shifting city demographics as opening the door for a mayor from the far left.

His plan is undoubtedly a long shot. The radical coalition of African-American, Caribbean-American, and Latinos that he imagines will depend increasingly on the growing population of Latino immigrants -- who may not be all that radical.

"Latinos are one of the most conservative groups in the New York City ethnic spectrum," City University urban studies professor John Mollenkopf said.

But Mr. Barron pledges to press forward. In his neat office last week, he demonstrated his characteristic blend of radicalism and pragmatism: his first priority, he said, will be working the Fresh Democracy Council to lobby for rule changes. That, and do something about the art.

"I'm going to say, 'Mr. Speaker, Madam advocate, I want to pass a motion that we commission some artists and diversify the interior of these chambers here,'" he said. "'In other words, too many white men on the wall. Where's the black people? Where's the Latinos?"

Monday's Smartertimes dealt with the lead editorial in Monday's New York Times, which was headlined, "The Wrong Time to Fight Iraq." Today the New York Times's aversion to toppling Saddam Hussein spills over into the news columns, and it isn't pretty.

A news article in the international section of today's New York Times concludes, "Since Sept. 11, hard-line members of the administration have argued for aggressive action against Iraq. But Secretary of State Colin Powell has said there is no evidence linking Mr. Hussein to the terror attacks. He has also warned that an attack on Iraq would not have much support from many of the allies who support the United States' current campaign in Afghanistan."

That summary fails just about any test of fairness and balance. The supporters of aggressive action are not named, while the chief opponent is named. The supporters of aggressive action are labeled "hard-liners," while the opponents are not labeled at all. The Times does not include a single reason given by the supporters of aggressive action, while it gives two arguments that oppose aggressive action.

Another article in the international section of today's Times, a dispatch from Washington profiling retired General Anthony Zinni, reports, "During his final posting as head of Central Command, General Zinni criticized the Clinton administration's efforts to equip and train Iraqi exile groups in their effort to topple President Saddam Hussein, an aim supported by Republicans in Congress."

The use of the phrase "Republicans in Congress" is just a classic example of Times bias. The editors at the Times must think overthrowing Saddam is such a bad idea ("Wrong Time") that it could only be supported by "hard-liners" or "Republicans in Congress." In fact the Iraq Liberation Act that authorized such efforts passed the House of Representatives on October 5, 1998, by a vote of 360 to 38, and it passed the Senate on October 7, 1998, unanimously. Among its key backers in the Senate were Bob Kerrey and Joseph Lieberman, both Democrats.

Needed Support: A dispatch from the United Nations in the international section of today's New York Times reports on the American approach to sanctions on Iraq. "The approach also reflected a reluctance by the United States to provoke countries like Jordan, Syria and Turkey, which all have lively illegal trade with Iraq, but whose support the United States needs in the war on terrorism," the Times reports. It's strictly an opinion that America needs the support of Syria in the war against terrorism. Lots of people think that Syria is an enemy in the war against terrorism, and that America should be seeking not the support of its regime but that regime's destruction. The State Department lists Syria as a terrorist state. It's nonsensical to speak of needing the support of terrorists in the war against terrorism. If the Times wants to air this sort of nonsensical opinion on its op-ed pages or by quoting "experts" or government officials who hold that opinion, fine, but stating it as fact in a news article is another matter.

Bongo Drums: An article on the education page of today's New York Times reports on a protest at Colgate University over what some students say are "racially insensitive events, including an e-mail from a political science professor." The Times reports that the message said the professor was concerned "that too many students of color are seduced into taking exotic courses that make few demands on them rather than those courses that force them to grow emotionally and intellectually. It seems to me that if students of color graduate with inferior written and analytic skills to those of their white colleagues, Colgate faculty are certainly not serving the needs of all their students."

Compare that supposedly "racially insensitive" comment to the lament of the eminent black civil rights leader Bayard Rustin, as reported in Midge Decter's new book "An Old Wife's Tale": "We fought and fought, people suffered, to get black kids into universities so they could have new opportunities. And now these university administrations are allowing them to go all through school studying their oppression and playing bongo drums."

Rather than examine the truth of Rustin's claim or that of the Colgate professor, the Times reports on the controversy about whether the remark was "racially insensitive." Do the Times and the Colgate protesters think Bayard Rustin was "racially insensitive"?

Blowing Smoke: A headline on an item in the National Briefing section of today's New York Times says, "Maryland: Antismoking Ban Loses Support." What's losing support, the news item makes clear, is a smoking ban, not an antismoking ban. The double negative is unnecessary and confusing. Maybe the Times should impose an anti-bad-headlines ban.

News Article: Smartertimes.com begins this month supplying some original, non-Times-related news coverage. Today's installment focuses on the New York City budget.

By Benjamin Smith
Smartertimes.com Staff
NEW YORK -- Mayor-elect Michael Bloomberg will have to swing the axe. The only question is which city spending he will chop.

The next mayor could cut the benefits of city workers, clash with the popular Police Department, and even reopen Staten Island's massive, malodorous dump in response to what may well be a multi-billion dollar budget gap. Mr. Bloomberg will get a clearer view of the scope of the problem later this week or early next, when the mayor's office releases its first detailed forecasts for next year's crunch.

The cuts, which could add up to about 10% of New York City's more than $40 billion budget, will go far beyond the city's balance sheet. Services from sanitation to schools could be contracted out or sold off to private operators, while elected officials may have to do with leaner staffs. The new mayor can chip away at the shortfall with special borrowing privileges and hiring freezes, but he has pledged to avoid any tax hikes. Unexpectedly strong growth could make up some of the deficit by increasing tax revenue. But some spending cuts are probably unavoidable. Smartertimes.com asked a dozen New York City policy and budget experts for their opinions on where to cut and how. Most said that the real savings will have to come in cuts in labor spending, which now accounts for about half of the city budget.

"You can't do it by cutting expenditures for electricity, you can't do it by cutting expenditures for copying machines, you can't do it by cutting contracts," Columbia Business School professor Raymond Horton said. "Basically you can only get at a problem this large by making major reductions in the amount of money you're paying out to your municipal workforce."

Some of those savings could be won by the kinds of productivity gains suggested by the Citizens Budget Commission last December -- merit pay, reformed work rules, and salaries based on the market. (http://www.cbcny.org/CollectiveBargaining.pdf). Even then, the new mayor will probably have to look at the budget for additional cuts. Here are some suggestions from the budget watchers who spoke to Smartertimes.com.

1. Make city employees contribute to health care costs. "Like everyone else, city employees have to provide for some minimal payment toward their health care," Cooper Union professor Fred Siegel said. Employee contributions toward health insurance premiums and copayments for medical costs could trim $500 million annually from the city budget, the Citizens Budget Commission estimates.

2. Merge and slash bureaucracies. The Mayor's Office of Midtown Enforcement, for example, is a "vestige" of Times Square's seedier days, said Harvey Robins, who served as an aide to mayors Koch and Dinkins. And the Department of Records and Information could be folded into the Department of Citywide Administrative Services. "When you eliminate a commissioner by consolidating a function, you retain the function, but you don't need to have . . . the assistants, and all the bells and whistles," Mr. Robins said.

3. Replace desk-bound cops with civilians. The city could save by putting the administrative functions of Police Headquarters at One Police Plaza in the hands of administrators, not trained and more highly paid police officers, Douglas Offerman of the Citizens Budget Commission said. City Comptroller Alan Hevesi estimated in 1999 that the measure would save $36 million a year if officers were replaced through attrition, and more with a more aggressive approach.

4. Reform police overtime. Overtime costs have tripled since 1995 to more than $300 million, and excessive overtime -- as opposed to using employees during their regular shifts -- reflects "mismanagement," said Glenn Pasanen, associate director of City Project, a budget watchdog group. "The problem is political," Mr. Pasanen says of any cuts at the NYPD, citing the public focus on security and the department's hero status.

5. Sell off buses, garbage trucks, schools. "The most significant thing that could and should be done [to reduce costs] is to continue and accelerate the process of privatization," Baruch College Professor E. S. Savas said. Municipal employees unions would fight tooth and nail, and introducing school privatization has proven particularly difficult. But he estimates that 35% savings in public transit could dramatically reduce the city's annual more than $300 million subsidy to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

6. Cut non-core social services, like parenting classes, day care at high schools, and sensitivity training. Education "should focus on the absolute essentials, which is creating a literate workforce and citizenry," Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Heather MacDonald said. But the question is how much the new mayor is willing to antagonize many of the liberal Democrats who voted for him.

7. Reopen the Fresh Kills Landfill. Staten Island would holler, but "we do spend a lot more money exporting our waste than we used to," said the executive director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York, John Mollenkopf. New York now spends about $200 million a year exporting garbage, the Independent Budget Office reported.

8. Slash elected officials' staff. Many city officials, like borough presidents, don't actually have much responsibility -- but their staffs have continued to grow, said a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute's Center for Civic Innovation, E.J. McMahon.

No cuts will be easy. A slipping economy means higher demand for social services. The city's labor agreements limit layoffs. And some of the city's federal and state funding mandates fixed city spending. Then there's an apparent conflict, at times, between good government and good politics.

"Across-the-board cuts are mindless and devoid of management skills," former New York State Lieutenant Governor Betsy McCaughey Ross said. "They penalize agencies that are using resources effectively."

Singling out specific programs and agencies, however, will mean going head to head with powerful interest groups.

"There's nothing that government spends money on that doesn't have a substantial constituency, and it's going to be very hard to make those cuts," CUNY's Mr. Mollenkopf said.

An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports that Carl McCall will emphasize education in a speech he gives campaigning for governor. The speech, the Times reports, "goes on to make some bold pledges. 'I guarantee that within four years of taking office, 75 percent of students in this state will pass the standardized tests in English and math,' the speech says."

What is "bold" about a pledge that basically sets as a goal the idea that five years from now, a quarter of the students in the state still won't be able to read or do math? Talk about your soft bigotry of low expectations. It might be "bold" to guarantee that 100% of students will pass the tests, or to call for 90% of the students to not simply pass but excel.

Besides calling Mr. McCall's pledge "bold" -- a tradeoff for getting a copy of the speech a day before it was to be delivered? -- the Times has this to say: "The pledge to have 75 percent of students pass standardized tests is also likely to raise eyebrows. On the assessment tests that all New York fourth graders take, 60 percent passed the English portion this year, and 69 percent passed in math."

There is no explanation in the Times article of why that pledge is "likely to raise eyebrows." Is it because it is too ambitious? Or is it because it is not ambitious enough? By its use of the word "bold," the Times seems to be suggesting that it is too ambitious to suggest that the math performance of the city's fourth graders be raised six percentage points over five years. If so, the defeatism -- and this in a news article -- is remarkable.

Neediest Cases: The New York Times launched a charitable appeal after the September 11 attacks for a special New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund. In an news article on September 13, the New York Times reported, "The New York Times Company announced yesterday that it had begun a special campaign to raise money for the victims of the attack on the World Trade Center." The September 13 article reported, "This special campaign is intended to help families of the victims, said Jack Rosenthal, president of The New York Times Company Foundation, which created the fund and each year runs an appeal for The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund, a charity that provides money to seven social service agencies in the city." It seemed clear enough at the time. The 9/11 Neediest Cases Fund effort has raised $46.8 million so far, the Times says.

Today's New York Times reports that the fund has given grants of $300,000 each to the Legal Aid Society and to Legal Services New York "to provide help to poor families." The Times Web site specifies further that the grants are for "Legal assistance to low-income people affected by the 9/11 attacks." According to the Legal Aid Society's own Web site: "The Society's Immigration Unit, consisting of six attorneys and three paralegals, provides comprehensive legal assistance to immigrants, including routinely interviewing New Yorkers accused of immigration violations. Sometimes the Unit represents wrongfully accused immigrant detainees; in other cases Society staff arrange for private counsel to be appointed. Neither the Immigration Unit, nor the Society's Civil Division of which the Unit is a part, ever represents persons whose detention is predicated on issues other than alleged immigration violations. After September 11, the Immigration Court asked the Society's Immigration Unit to interview a number of detainees of Arab or Middle Eastern descent because they had no legal counsel. The Society complied with the Immigration Court's request, conducted some interviews, and referred most cases to the private bar. Society Immigration Unit staff accepted three cases for representation and facilitated a settlement for one of these cases. We have recently learned that the other two cases involve issues beyond immigration violations, and our Immigration staff therefore cannot provide further immigration assistance. Accordingly, these two remaining cases have been reassigned to private counsel. The Legal Aid Society's civil staff has not represented and would not represent anyone on matters related to perpetrating the World Trade Center attacks."

Money is fungible; the money donated by Times readers to the newspaper's fund for "victims of the attack on the World Trade Center" is thus being used, at least indirectly, by an organization which also spends money representing people of Arab or Middle Eastern descent detained for immigration violations in the wake of the attack. The New York Times may wish to argue that these detained people are "victims of the attack on the World Trade Center," or that they are "low-income people affected by the 9/11 attacks." Or the Times may argue that its money is being used to help the families of those killed win benefits, fight eviction and obtain death certificates, and that what the Legal Aid Society does with its other, non-New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund money, is irrelevant. But Smartertimes.com would wager that when most Times readers sent in their checks to the 9/11 Neediest Fund intending to help "families of the victims," they did not think their money would be used, even indirectly, to offset the costs of defending Arabs charged with immigration law violations in the wake of the attacks.

Some Conservatives and Saddam: A front-page article in today's New York Times reports, "Mr. Bush has been criticized by conservative Republicans for not moving forcibly against Mr. Hussein." The article goes on later to say, "Mr. Bush has been criticized by some conservatives for what they consider his hesitation in dealing with Mr. Hussein." The Times article never says who these conservatives are and it never quotes them, which is a bit odd, given that it is a fairly long article and the other sides of the dispute pretty much get their say in their own words.

The lead editorial in today's New York Times runs under the headline, "The Wrong Time to Fight Iraq."

The editorial argues that "War in Iraq would also undermine whatever possibility now exists for damping violence between Israelis and Palestinians and restarting efforts toward a lasting peace. . . . Moving militarily against Iraq now would hobble America's power as a Mideast peacemaker."

This stands in utter contradiction to the historical reality. In fact America's last war in Iraq, from 1990 to 1991, is what made it possible to convene the October 30, 1991, Madrid peace conference, which was the starting point for America's current peacemaking efforts in the Middle East. Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization had sided with Iraq, and the defeat of Iraq left Mr. Arafat in a weakened position with respect to his usual Arab patrons. He was thus forced to the bargaining table.

Rather than hobbling America's power as a peacemaker, a successful American war against Iraq might well strengthen it. It would do so not merely by strengthening America's prestige at the bargaining table, but by directly eliminating at its source a cause of the violence between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. As reported by the Washington Post, Saddam Hussein's regime has been awarding $10,000 "martyr payments" as an incentive to the parents of Palestinian Arabs who die attacking Israel. As reported yesterday by the Associated Press in Amman, Jordanian authorities arrested an Iraqi truck driver, Jaafar Mansoor Ali, 45, who authorities said was trying to smuggle 40 hand grenades from Iraq to the Palestinian territories. As reported yesterday in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Israeli authorities recently arrested 15 Palestinians who were trained and financed by Iraq and who planned "spectacular" terror attacks at Ben-Gurion International Airport, in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem. It's rare for this sort of information to make it into the news section of the New York Times -- one has to subscribe to Iraq News or read other newspapers to find out about it.

The Times editorial goes on to assert that "the military challenges of war in Iraq are far more formidable than anything yet seen in Afghanistan." This is pretty rich, given that only a few weeks ago, the Times editorialists were busy assuring us that the military challenges of war in Afghanistan would be far more formidable than anything Americans saw in the Gulf War in Iraq. The exact language used in a Times editorial on September 21, 2001, was "As Mr. Bush noted, this war will not resemble the quick and easy triumph of the gulf war." It's almost enough to make a cynical reader believe that what the editorialists are writing has nothing to do with the actual military challenges but has a lot to do with the Times' reluctance to face the enemy.

The Times editorial goes on to assert that "The Iraqi National Congress, the umbrella opposition group supported by Washington, is a feud-ridden collection of exiled politicians who command no combat forces." That's just false. The Kurdish factions in Northern Iraq are part of the Iraqi National Congress. A September 24, 2001, column by William Safire in the New York Times reported that "Some 75,000 Kurdish warriors, protected from air attack by our fighter patrols, are headed by longtime rivals Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani." The Barzani Kurds and the Talabani Kurds are both represented in the Iraqi National Congress, as are the Shiite Iraqis who have been combating Saddam Hussein in the South of Iraq. In any event, there's a gaping factual chasm between Mr. Safire's description of "75,000 Kurdish warriors" and the Times editorial's assertion of "no combat forces."

The Times editorial goes on to claim that "Mr. Hussein can count on the loyalty of a large army." But a few paragraphs later the editorial acknowledges "there are hundreds of thousands of discontented Iraqis." If there are so many discontented Iraqis, how can the Times be so sure that Saddam's army is so loyal?

Finally, the Times editorial asserts that "unlike the situation prior to the Persian Gulf war, Washington could not count on the use of staging bases on Saudi Arabia." Well, that is assuming that Washington adopts the same supplicant relationship to Saudi Arabia that has been America's habit. If the Saudis were shown that America were serious about advancing its interests, perhaps they'd be a bit more cooperative. And if not, then they are protecting the terrorists, with all the implications.

The lead article in the Week in Review section of today's New York Times reports on the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. The article refers to a "framework" for what Yasser Arafat -- indelicately, given the historical resonances -- calls a "permanent solution."

The Times reports that under this framework, "A sovereign Palestinian state would be proclaimed, but would agree to remain demilitarized."

"Remain" demilitarized? As the Times itself reports elsewhere in today's newspaper, "Palestinians regularly lob mortar shells into Netzarim," an Israeli community in the Gaza Strip. A front-page article in the October 6, 2001, New York Times reported, "This afternoon, in the shade cast by a building, six Palestinian soldiers drank cups of sweet Arabic coffee, a half hour after trading shots with Israeli tanks."

A situation such as the present one, in which the Palestinian Arabs have "soldiers" and regularly lob mortar shells at Israeli Jews, can not be considered "demilitarized" by any accurate use of the term. The Palestinian Arabs are supposed to be demilitarized under the agreements that Israel signed with the Palestine Liberation Organization, but the PLO has violated those agreements. It's nonsensical to speak of the Palestinian Arabs agreeing to "remain demilitarized."

The same Week in Review article speaks of a "framework" for Jerusalem. "The rest of the Old City would be divided up, as it already is, and the outlying portions of the city divided roughly along the lines of who lives where now," the Times says. It's inaccurate to say that the Old City is "already" divided up. There are various quarters where members of one religion or background are dominant, but the entire city is under Israeli sovereignty.

The New York Times betrays its odd perceptions of the situation in Israel elsewhere in today's paper as well. In the book review section, a Times reporter writes about the Dome of the Rock, "The current Palestinian uprising, the Aksa intifada, is named after it." A more likely explanation is that the uprising is named after Al Aksa mosque, which is near the Dome of the Rock but is a different building.

And in the international section, today's Times reports, "While Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, has accepted the idea of a two-state solution to the conflict here, Hamas rejects a negotiated settlement." The notion that Mr. Arafat has accepted a "two-state solution" is in fact highly debatable. In fact, the Israel government press office has repeatedly accused Mr. Arafat of pursuing a "phased plan" aimed at using a Palestinian Arab state as a platform to achieve the ultimate goal of Israel's destruction. According to an Israeli government press release, "Chairman Arafat habitually invokes the June 8, 1974 resolution of the Palestinian National Council [PNC], known as the 'Phased Plan' for Israel's destruction. The decision contains two key elements: first, to create a Palestinian state on any territory vacated by Israel (paragraph 2); and second, to use that state as a base for mobilizing a general Arab assault on Israel (paragraph 8 of the resolution)." Mr. Arafat has made these references publicly -- in an interview on Egyptian Orbit TV, April 18, 1998, and in an interview with the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, on the occasion of Fatah day, January 1, 1998. Mr. Arafat's aides and officials of the Palestinian Authority have made similar comments casting doubt on their willingness to accept a two-state solution. And never mind what Mr. Arafat and his aides say -- if you look at what they do, in terms of the textbooks in Palestinian Arab schools, the propaganda in Arafat-controlled Palestinian television, radio and newspapers, and in terms of the PLO's willingness to embrace other terrorist groups that aim even more openly at the immediate destruction of Israel, it becomes difficult to credit the assertion by the Times that Mr. Arafat "has accepted the idea of a two-state solution."

Snow Job: An Associated Press dispatch picked up in the New York Times sports section today reports, "The quality of man-made snow is so superior to Mother Nature's version that the International Ski Federation requires a base of manufactured snow for its races." This may be a matter of opinion rather than of an empirical judgment about superior snow "quality." There may be a difference between the "base" and the actual surface one skis on. And there's no accounting for the International Ski Federation. But let's just say that if Smartertimes.com had the choice of schussing down some fresh-from-the-sky snow or some that was pumped out of some snowmaking guns, Smartertimes.com would go with the natural stuff. Not even a close call.

Blowing Smoke: The international section of today's New York Times carries a dispatch from Geneva about "proposals for a global ban on advertising and promotion of cigarettes." Not a word in the story about the First Amendment, which any American backing of such a ban would surely run up against pretty quickly.

The "religion journal" column in the national section of today's New York Times reports on American Muslim publishing. The article quotes the editor of "The Minaret, a Muslim magazine with an investigative bent."

An "investigative bent" doesn't probably come to mind as the most noteworthy characteristic of the Minaret, unless the Times has in mind the sort of "investigators" who claim the Holocaust is a myth.

As the Zionist Organization of America has noted, after a French court convicted Roger Garaudy of denying the Holocaust, a Minaret editorial (Vol.20, No.3; 1998) claimed that "the French judiciary succumbed to the pressure of Zionists." The editorial criticized American Muslims for being "silent on the sentence imposed on Garaudy," and said, "Muslim organizations should have taken the case to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights."

Another Minaret editorial, (Vol.20, No. 5; 1998), said, "Our country should not have been forced to support and finance Zionist brutalities and barbaric policies. Our pluralistic society has become prisoner to a country that follows racism and apartheid in its policies. . . The supporters of Israel have created a quiet reign of terror in the U.S. People cannot speak loudly against the apartheid policies of Israel."

One Minaret cartoon, the ZOA reports, showed Uncle Sam crying sympathetically as an obese Jew with a violin played in his ear a tune with the lyrics "Israel. . . Holocaust . . . Israel . . . Holocaust."

Another Minaret cartoon depicted Jews in the form of a hook-nosed tumble-weed with a large Jewish star, occupying "Palestine" and declaring "I'm Isaac, the Zionist tumbleweed, from halfway across the world."

It sure would have been nice if the New York Times had exhibited a bit more of an investigative bent in its survey of the Muslim publishing scene.

Watch the Label: An article in the business section of today's New York Times refers to "John Makin, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute." It also refers to "conservatives like William A. Niskanen, chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute."

As for liberal Robert Greenstein of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Times article describes him as "Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities." The conservatives and libertarians get labeled, while the liberal goes unlabeled.

Lost at Brooks Brothers: An article in the business section of today's New York Times reports on the sale of Brooks Brothers. Not a sale on merchandise at Brooks Brothers, but a sale of the chain of clothing stores. The Wall Street Journal had this news yesterday, so the Times is late again. The New York Times article claims that the attacks on September 11 "affected the flagship Brooks Brothers store in Lower Manhattan." The flagship Brooks Brothers store is not in "Lower Manhattan" but in midtown, at 44th Street and Madison Avenue. Business at that flagship store may be off because of the attack. There was a Brooks Brothers store in Lower Manhattan near the World Trade Center that has been closed by the attack. The Times article seems to conflate and confuse the two stores.

A separate article on the front page of today's New York Times reports, "Brooks Brothers, near Rockefeller Center, had an offer: buy one shirt and get a second one 40 percent off." The reference is to the store at 666 Fifth Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd Streets. But the way the sentence is written, readers are left wondering whether the offer is available at all stores or just at the one "near Rockefeller Center."

Not in the Times: There may be a mention somewhere in today's New York Times of the fact that an anthrax-tainted letter was sent to Dr. Antonio Banfi, a pediatrician at a children's hospital in Santiago, Chile. But Smartertimes.com sure couldn't find any such mention and only heard about it from an Associated Press dispatch distributed by Iraq News.

An article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on the effect of the September 11 attack on a party-planning business. The Times reports, "During the next week, they had Gourmet magazine's 16th-anniversary party at the Whitney Museum."

As Gourmet's readers know, the anniversary the magazine is celebrating this year is its 60th, not its 16th. You don't even have to be a Gourmet reader to realize this. It would be unusually extravagant to rent out the Whitney Museum for a 16th anniversary party for a magazine -- strange enough to make an editor with even a below-average store of skepticism ask a reporter, "are you sure that's right?"