A dispatch by Norimitsu Onishi from Richmond, Calif., reports that "left-wing anticorporate activists seized control of the City Council and mayor's office" and that similar candidates "candidates grabbed seats on the City Council."

This is a useful reminder that biased language in the news section of the Times isn't restricted for use only about right-wing groups. It comes into play whenever anyone is outside the Times' definition of the mainstream.

The mayor and the Council Council members, after all, did not "seize" or "grab" their offices. They won them in elections whose free and fair nature does not appear to have been questioned.

Two articles in today's New York Times understate the size of the payroll tax, inaccurately leaving readers with the impression that the tax is about half of its actual size.

One article, by Binyamin Appelbaum and Catherine Rampell, reports:

lawmakers' decision not to reverse a scheduled increase in the payroll tax that finances Social Security, while widely expected, still means that about 77 percent of households will pay a larger share of income to the federal government this year, according to the center's analysis.

The tax this year will increase by two percentage points, to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent, on all earned income up to $113,700.

A second article, by Nathaniel Popper, reports, "as expected, Congress decided to allow the payroll tax to rise 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent." (The sentence should say "rise to 6.2 percent from 4.2 percent," but that's a separate issue.)

In fact the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, a center-left group that the Times often relies on for this sort of thing, has a table with the payroll tax rate. In 2012 it was 10.4%, with an additional 2.9% Medicare tax, for a total payroll tax of 13.3%. A two percentage point increase will bring the Social Security portion of the tax back to 12.4%, which, with the 2.9% Medicare tax, brings the total payroll tax — a tax on employment, which is something that policymakers profess to want to encourage — to a monstrous 15.3%.

The Times' confusion on the point arises probably because the payroll tax is split between and "employee portion" and an "employer's portion." But Americans who are self-employed, as many are, pay both halves of the tax. And economists almost universally agree that the even though the employer's portion of the tax is remitted to the government by the employer, it in effect comes out out of the employee's pocket. It may seem like a subtle, technical point, but as a matter of framing the issue, it's important. How can one expect voters or members of Congress to support tax reductions when their newspapers won't even accurately report to them how much tax they are paying?

What passes for a center-right columnist at the New York Times, David Brooks, objects to the tax bill passed by the Senate early this morning — not on the grounds that it raises taxes too much, but on the grounds that it does not raise taxes enough. He writes that the bill "locks in low tax rates on families making less than around $450,000; it is simply impossible to avert catastrophe unless tax increases go below that line."

He goes on, "The average Medicare couple pays $109,000 into the program and gets $343,000 in benefits out, according to the Urban Institute. This is $234,000 in free money." That's a bit misleading. The Urban Institute's calculation includes a 2% real rate of return. If you think you can do better than that over the long term, use a higher number for what you pay in. A lot of the number has to do with the inflation calculator and the compounding effect, not the tax rate. And if you earn higher than the "average" wage, again, use a higher number for what you pay in.

Even the value of the benefits is not as neatly priced as Mr. Brooks suggests. That's what the government pays out, or what you'd have to put into an account to generate the money that the government pays out using the same assumption on a 2% real rate of return. It doesn't account for the possibility that the government is overpaying for the benefits compared to what they'd cost in a true market system. (Usually when I write this I get a comment from a physician or two complaining about how low the Medicare reimbursement rates are. Maybe so, but in some cases private insurance companies can negotiate the rates even lower than Medicare, which would mean the value of the benefits — not the sticker price representing what doctors and hospitals and drug companies would like to be paid, but the post-discount price representing what purchasers with group bargaining power are willing actually to pay—would be lower.) In any event, the value of the benefits to the patient is not the same as the amount of money the government pays to the health care provider who treats the patient. It could be more, or it could be less. It's hard to tell, because it's not a free market with consumers spending their own money that they control.

This may seem an obscure point, but it's an important one to get clear, particularly for people like Mr. Brooks who purport to support reforms to Medicare. When you frame it the way he does — $343,000 in benefits for $109,000 in taxes — Medicare sounds like an incredibly great deal, and it's no wonder that people don't want to change it. But if you frame it a different way — the government takes a lot of money from you and uses it to pay high prices to drug companies and hospitals for procedures instead of giving you the choice of spending the money on what you want, whether it's end-of-life health care or something else — you might get a different political dynamic.

Imagine, for example, if you let Medicare seniors go into the ObamaCare exchanges and buy health insurance through them, and let them keep any savings they generate relative to the traditional, old-fashioned Medicare system. Democrats would attack this as "vouchers" and "destroying Medicare," and Republicans wouldn't like it because it acknowledges the ObamaCare exchanges are going to be here to stay. But that approach would acknowledge the reality that we're not in a world in which people reach age 65 and "retire" onto Medicare, but we're in a world in which plenty of 60-year-olds aren't working full time and plenty of 70-year-olds are working full time.

There's some of this sort of thing going on already through Medicare Advantage-type plans offered by private insurance companies, and plenty of seniors have chosen to participate, in part because they view their health care not entirely in terms of the lifetime value of their benefits in terms of maximizing what the government will pay for them.

Smartertimes.com is, surprisingly, emerging as something of a hard-liner on the question of children's privacy (please see, for instance, the January 3, 2002 edition on "Psychedelic Parenthood," and the March 2, 2002 edition on "Parading Justin," both available at the Smartertimes.com archive page.)

Today's New York Times Book Review carries a review of "Around the House and in the Garden: A Memoir of Heartbreak, Healing and Home Improvement." The book is by a divorced mother of two, and the Times reviewer reports that "the liveliest sections of the book deal with the kids, about whom Browning has an unerring gift for capturing revelatory events."

For instance, the Times review summarizes, "And then came their father's wedding, not in itself troubling to the boys. But one of them, by now a teenager, withdrew into a depression once the honeymooners were out of town. Finally, he confessed to his mother: 'It isn't even the wedding . . . I just know they'll have a new baby. I'll be going from your house part time, to his house part time. The baby will be living with him all the time. I'll be nobody's full-time baby.'"

Smartertimes.com is of the perhaps antiquated view that this teenager's "depression" and his confessions to his mother deserve to be kept private. If his mother feels the need to air them in public for the purpose of helping the Scribner publishing house make money and the purpose of supplementing her own income as the editor of House & Garden, that's sad enough. But why should the New York Times cooperate in this? Did the Times contact this teenager independently to find out whether he wanted the details of his "depression" and other "revelatory events" aired in the newspaper's pages? Did the newspaper contact him to verify the facts of the events? Or did the newspaper just take his mother's word for it?

This is made all the more tacky by the fact that the "honeymooners" in question were a columnist for the Times book review and a former regular contributor to the Times magazine. (A matter that the Times review leaves undisclosed.) If the Times treats its own people and their children this shabbily, imagine how little deference the privacy of the rest of us, and our children, can expect.

Note: If you'd like to know a little more about The New York Sun, its staff and its owners, please feel free to check out the newspaper's Web site at http://www.nysun.com The number to call for home deliveryof the New York Sun in the New York area is 1-866-NYC-SUN1. The way to advertise is to email Christopher Garrity at [email protected]. Please tell them you were sent by Smartertimes.com.

An article on the front page of the Arts & Leisure section of Sunday's New York Times refers to Boston, Massachusetts, as "America's most culturally hidebound city."

The meaning of hidebound that the Times seems to be using is the one that Webster's Second gives as "obstinate; bigoted; narrow-minded; prejudiced."

It sure looks to Smartertimes.com like the one being narrow-minded and prejudiced here is the New York Times. Surely there are cities in America that are more culturally hidebound than Boston. Perhaps those cities are outside the usual travel paths of the Times's cultural critics.

For Boston residents who patronize that city's many cultural institutions -- for example, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Berklee College of Music, the Massachusetts College of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art -- it is going to come as news that they live in "America's most culturally hidebound city." And residents of such cutting-edge cultural beacons as Bakersfield, Calif., and Yonkers, N.Y., can now breath a sigh of relief: "Whew, thanks to the New York Times, we know that at least we are not as culturally hidebound as Boston."

If indeed Boston is "America's most culturally hidebound city," it may be cause for examining some assumptions. The citizens there, after all, vote overwhelmingly for Democrats. The city's dominant newspaper, the Boston Globe, is owned by the New York Times Company, which has embarked on a campaign to dumb it down so as to drive the Globe's higher-end readers to the New York Times. Thus the cutback in the Globe's book coverage and its elimination of David Warsh's column, which is now available online at http://www.economicprincipals.com .

Too bad the Taylor family and the owners of the Red Sox did not realize that they were selling the city's jewels to a company that considers Boston "America's most culturally hidebound city." The columnists at the Herald sure should have some fun with this one.

Note: If you'd like to know a little more about The New York Sun, its staff and its owners, please feel free to check out the newspaper's Web site at http://www.nysun.com The number to call for home deliveryof the New York Sun in the New York area is 1-866-NYC-SUN1. The way to advertise is to email Christopher Garrity at [email protected]. Please tell them you were sent by Smartertimes.com.

Dear Smartertimes.com Reader:

As you may recall, Smartertimes.com was founded in June 2000, "dedicated to assembling a community of readers to support a new newspaper that would offer an alternative to the dominant daily."

Well, the dream of that new newspaper is now less than a month from reality. On Tuesday, April 16, The New York Sun -- the first general-interest broadsheet newspaper to be launched in New York in two generations -- will make its debut.

The Sun is backed by a group of distinguished businessmen who care about New York and by Hollinger International, the publisher of the Daily Telegraph in London, the Jerusalem Post in Israel, and the Sun-Times in Chicago.

The New York Sun will be edited by my journalistic colleague and business partner Seth Lipsky, a veteran of the Wall Street Journal, and by yours truly, the editor of Smartertimes.com. The Boston Globe once called Seth "a legendary figure in contemporary journalism," and over the years I've come to see why.

The New York Sun will strive to adhere to the standards of accuracy and clear writing -- and to some of the principles of freedom, democracy and constitutional government -- that have guided Smartertimes.com. In contrast to Smartertimes.com, however, it will not be primarily a critique of another newspaper. The Sun will be a new and lively original voice, a high-quality newspaper focused on news of New York -- its policy debates, its politics, its cultural, commercial, philanthropic, spiritual and sporting life, and its effort to rebuild.

Seth and I have recruited a talented group of newspapermen and women to help put out the paper. The news staff includes veterans of the Wall Street Journal, the Forward and even, believe it or not, the New York Times. The paper will include a carefully edited national and international news report, a crossword puzzle, restaurant, art, book and movie reviews, opinion columns by former speechwriters for President Reagan and Mayor Giuliani, a chess column co-written by a former chess champion of both America and the Soviet Union, and a bridge column co-written by the chairman and chief executive of Bear Stearns, James E. Cayne, a 13-time U.S. national bridge champion, and the Cold War hero Michael Ledeen. And much more.

The new newspaper is already starting to generate an encouraging amount of excitement. "I think it is great that there will be another voice with smart guys behind it," the dean of the Columbia School of Journalism told the Chicago Tribune. The publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Peter Kann, told the Tribune, "In the end, the most important thing is if the editorial product is really good, and I think it will be." Even a top editor at the New Yorker magazine, Hendrik Hertzberg, said of my colleague Seth Lipsky, and of the New York Sun: "He can make it lively, he can make it intelligent, and he can go way, way up-market with it, with a raffish edge. He's going to have more fun than anybody in the world. I envy him, and I wish he were a liberal."

Many of you have already contributed to the success of Smartertimes.com by spreading the word, by contributing letters to the editor, or by just wiring a private note of encouragement. For that you have my warm thanks. Smartertimes.com has been free -- with not even a digital tip jar or a banner ad -- since its inception.

Now I am writing to offer Smartertimes.com readers a special opportunity to get in right at the start of the new newspaper -- and to ask you for your custom.

If you live or work in New York City, Westchester or Long Island, you can sign up now for convenient home or office delivery of the New York Sun, Monday through Friday, for only $2.50 a week. If you act now, you'll send an important signal of support -- and you'll make sure that you don't miss out on The New York Sun's special April 16 inaugural edition, which is sure to be snapped up quickly on newsstands. You can do this by calling toll free 1-866-NYC-SUN1, 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week.

Another way to show your support for The New York Sun is to purchase a congratulatory ad in that inaugural edition. Or to purchase a schedule of advertising for your business or nonprofit organization. The Sun will offer advertisers competitive rates and a high-quality, high-value editorial environment. You can do this by e-mailing the vice president of advertising of The New York Sun, Christopher Garrity, at [email protected].

With your help, the Sun will shine for all.

Cordially,

Ira Stoll

Editor
Smartertimes.com

P.S. If you'd like to know a little more about The New York Sun, its staff and its owners, please feel free to check out the newspaper's Web site at http://www.nysun.com

PPS. The number to call for home delivery in the New York area is 1-866-NYC-SUN1. The way to advertise is to email Christopher Garrity at [email protected]. Please tell them you were sent by Smartertimes.com.

The lead, front-page news article in today's New York Times reports, "Mr. Cheney's remarks about the importance of Mr. Arafat's role in Beirut came as the administration was struggling to rebuild the peace process."

The reference to "the peace process," as if it were some kind of corporeal entity that had something to do with peace, is classic Times-State Department-speak. The Times editors had cracked down for a while on the use of this phrase, recognizing it for what it was -- ideologically charged language that was out of touch with reality. "Peace" is something that it makes sense to talk about in a news article. "Negotiations" are another thing. But to call a process of Israeli concessions and Palestinian Arab terrorism that has led inexorably to more Palestinian Arab terrorism and demands for more Israeli concessions a "peace process" is a triumph of imagination over experience. As others have written, "war process" would be a more accurate term. The Bush administration is struggling to wrest more concessions out of Israel in the misguided belief that this will stop the terrorism. If the Bush administration took the same approach with Osama Bin Laden that it is suggesting Israel take with the Palestinian Arabs, it would involve offering the terrorist kingpin all of Washington and offering to withdraw American troops from bases around the world. It's unlikely that such a surrender would be described as a "peace process." When the Times describes what the administration is now doing as "struggling to rebuild the peace process," it is letting itself be spun by the State Department's spinners.

A front-page news article in today's New York Times reports from Vatican City: "Cardinal Castrillon, who leads the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy and is considered a leading candidate to succeed John Paul, seemed inclined to minimize the problem. For example, he said one point that he wanted to emphasize was that there had not yet been any good studies on what percentage of priests are pedophiles, compared to people in other lines of work."

Compare that report with one in the column "The Big City," which runs on the front page of the metro section of today's New York Times. That column reports that Philip Jenkins, a professor who has written a book on the topic and who "is not an apologist for the Catholic church," "says there is no evidence that the rate of pedophilia among Catholic priests is higher than among other clergy or other professions." The Times column also reports, "Jenkins pointed to a study in Chicago a decade ago that concluded that about 40 of 2,200 priests, a little less than 2 percent, had committed sexual misconduct with a minor. But only one priest of the 2,200 was classified as a pedophile."

In a 1996 article in the journal First Things, Professor Jenkins wrote, "The most solid assessment of clerical sexual problems is found in the Chicago study, commissioned by Cardinal Bernardin, that examined the personnel files of all 2,252 priests who had served in the archdiocese between 1951 and 1991. Between 1963 and 1991, fifty-seven priests had been accused of sexual abuse, in addition to two visiting clerics. The commission reviewed all charges, not by the standard of criminal cases (which insists on proof beyond a reasonable doubt), but on the less stringent civil criterion of the preponderance of evidence, including legally inadmissible hearsay. Eighteen cases were judged not to involve sexual misconduct, leaving charges against forty-one priests, or about 1.8 percent of clergy. Only one instance probably involved true 'pedophilia,' the sexual molestation of small children."

There are some distinctions and contradictions worth noting here. The news article quotes unchallenged the assertion that "there had not yet been any good studies," and characterizes that assertion as an attempt "to minimize the problem." The metro-section column refers to the Chicago study without mentioning that it was Church-commissioned and says "there is no evidence that the rate of pedophilia among Catholic priests is higher than among other clergy or other professions." Well, these are two distinct claims. One claim says there are no good studies; the other claim could easily be interpreted as a meaning that there has been a good study and that it showed no evidence of a particular priestly pedophilia problem.

It's nice to see that the Times is open to a variety of opinions on this topic. But for a reader trying to figure out what the facts of the matter are, today's coverage is confusing. A news article comprehensively examining and summarizing the state of research on the topic would be a help. As it is, Times readers are left wondering whether in fact there have been any good studies on the matter.

Can't Spell: A dispatch from Washington in the national section of today's New York Times reports that "Bert Neuborne, former legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union," will be among those on the legal team defending the political-speech limitation legislation recently passed by Congress under the guise of campaign finance "reform." The correct spelling of Professor Neuborne's first name is Burt, with a "u," not an "e."

A news article at the top of the front page of today's New York Times reports on the possibility that America will take military action in Pakistan against Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. The subheadline on the article is "Spring Offensive Feared."

The word "fear" or "feared" appears nowhere in the text of the article, so readers are left wondering exactly who is fearing this offensive.

Is it the evil-doers who are hiding in Pakistan? If that is indeed the reference, it is hard to see how the Times could determine their level of fear or lack of fear without using mind-reading ability.

Is it the American soldiers who may launch the attack who are in fear? The Americans interviewed in the article certainly don't say so. Maybe the "offensive" the Americans fear is not their own but one from the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces hiding in Pakistan. There's no way to tell from the headline whose offensive is being feared, though it would seem to be the potential American one.

If the fear reference is to the American people, the polls indicating overwhelming support for military action against the September 11 culprits suggest a more accurate headline would be "Spring Offensive Hoped For."

The "fear" in question might be that of the Times headline writers, who seem to fear the use of the American military no matter what the circumstance.

Unknown Incident: An article in the international section of today's New York Times runs under the headline "On the Eve of His Trip to Latin America, Bush Ties U.S. Aid To Reforms." The article mysteriously concludes: "Last night, the White House issued a brief statement offering condolences to the victims and their families as the anniversary of incident drew near." It's unclear what incident or anniversary the Times is referring to -- it almost seems as if this is a stray paragraph from some other article.

Illegal Immigrants: An article in the international section of today's New York Times runs under the headline, "Beijing Increases Detentions of Illegal North Korean Immigrants." The story turns out to be that there is a debate over whether the Koreans are illegal immigrants or legitimate refugees. The Communist position, as the Times reports that the Communist Chinese ambassador to South Korea put it, is that "No refugee problem exists between China and North Korea. China views such people as illegal immigrants." Well, it looks like the New York Times headline writers view such people as illegal immigrants, too.

The top of the front page of today's New York Times carries four photographs of an Antarctic ice shelf that appears to have broken up. "The speed of the breakup stunned scientists," the Times reports on its front page. Inside, the Times has a news article that reports, "researchers said this was the first time in thousands of years that this part of Antarctica -- the east coast of its arm-shaped peninsula -- had seen so much ice erode and temperatures rise so much."

The Times reports that "many experts said it was getting harder to find any other explanation" of the ice-shelf breakup other than the buildup of greenhouse gas emissions "that scientists believe are warming the planet."

Well, just to put the matter in context, have a look at John Muir's 1879 essay "The Discovery of Glacier Bay."

Muir writes: "Glacier Bay is undoubtedly young as yet. Vancouver's chart, made only a century ago, shows no trace of it, though found admirably faithful in general. It seems probable, therefore, that even then the entire bay was occupied by a glacier of which all those described above, great through they are, were only tributaries. Nearly as great a change has taken place in Sum Dum Bay since Vancouver's visit, the main trunk glacier there having receded from eighteen to 25 miles from the line marked on his chart. Charley, who was here when a boy, said that the place had so changed that he hardly recognized it, so many new islands had been born in the meantime and so much ice had vanished. As we have seen, this Icy Bay is being still farther extended by the recession of the glaciers. That this whole system of fiords and channels was added to the domain of the sea by glacial action is to my mind certain."

Maybe it was greenhouse gas emissions back in 1879 that caused the creation of Glacier Bay in Alaska. After all, the antipollution rules were a lot less strict then than they are now. And maybe the developments in Antarctica are indeed unprecedented and worthy of top-of-the-front-page treatment by the New York Times. It certainly has been a warm winter here in New York. But a bit more skepticism and historical perspective is probably in order here.

By SETH MNOOKIN
SUN STAFF
NEW YORK -- A long-defunct "ethnic coalition" is joining forces to protest the proposed elimination of a $2.4 million city-funded program that directs money to nine social service organizations affiliated with the Greek, Irish, Italian, Jewish, and Polish-Slavic communities -- but not to any black or Hispanic groups.

Yesterday, the representatives from the coalition's nine members met at the Manhattan offices of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty to discuss possible strategies for getting the funding restored. Today, Met Council executive director William Rapfogel is scheduled to speak with Senator Schumer as part of an effort to ask lawmakers to put pressure on the mayor.

In these early days of Michael Bloomberg's tenure as mayor, the coalition, like many groups that depend on city support, is looking for signs of how he will approach the delicate topic of how city social-service spending is allocated. Coalition members say their worst fear is that the scrapping of the relatively small Extended Services program, funded by the city's Department for the Aging, is indicative of an administration approach that will neglect them when it comes to social service funding.

"I'm scared to think that's what he really believes," said the executive director of the American Italian Coalition of Organizations, Jerry Chiappetta. "But right now we don't know what is going on. We're baffled. Even in seemingly affluent communities there are always pockets were people are living in a marginal existence, and they need help," he said. In 2001, the Italian group received $199,181 in city funding under the Extended Services program.

"We certainly hope nobody is pitting one group against another," said the executive director of Hellenic American Neighborhood Action Committee, John Kaiteris. "The majority of the clients we serve are elderly, and they're elderly whether or not they're a minority or any other group. My sense is unfortunately the commissioner here didn't really think through what his cuts were going to be."

The commissioner of the city's Department for the Aging, Edwin Mendez-Santiago, said neither his department nor the Bloomberg administration viewed social service dollars as needing to go primarily to black and Hispanic communities. "We'd never look at it that way," he said. "We look at the actual services that are provided, and tried to see where best to cut."

The Extended Services program began in 1973 and for three decades has been channeling city money to nonprofit social-service groups. For instance, the Hellenic American Neighborhood Action Committee has Greek-speaking staff that advise people on whether they qualify for welfare benefits, free meals or other programs funded through the city, state, and federal government or private charities. The groups also help with job placement and training, home health care, and a range of other services.

In 1991, the program was transferred from the city's Human Resources Administration to its Department for the Aging. However, the program does not cater exclusively to senior citizens. "Less than 100 percent of the services provided [by the program] go directly to seniors, and we were hoping we could set up other options that the seniors could reach out to," Mr. Mendez-Santiago said.

Mr. Mendez-Santiago says he needed to cut the amount of city money he used by 16 percent, or about $26 million, to help close the city's $4 billion budget gap. Mr. Mendez-Santiago said that instead of cutting all of the departmentÕs programs, he looked for programs he could cut while "minimizing the impact of services. We didn't want to touch any program that serves the frail, those that are homebound. We didn't want to cut any home-delivered meals."

But this betrays a lack of understanding about how the program works, according to the coalition.

"We haven't had a problem since the last year of the Dinkins administration," said the executive director of the United Irish Foundation, Ahmed Kamal. While coalition members say they were expecting some cuts, they say they had not imagined the program would be scrapped entirely.

"We hope this isn't just a game of chicken," Mr. Rapfogel said. "We hope the mayor isn't daring the city council not to restore this money with their own money," or discretionary budget.

"If it's a game, it's a game that is very scary to seniors," Mr. Rapfogel said. "We're going to ratchet up the pressure. If we wanted to, we could flood City Hall with letters. But we want to see if we can work this out without it coming to that."

Mr. Rapfogel said he's already lobbied for support from a number of elected politicians, such as Representatives Anthony Wiener and Jerrold Nadler. "We're going to be talking to city, state, and federal legislators. Look, I hope to have Mike Bloomberg on board. The last thing we want to do is to get into a battle. We think this is a slightly misguided decision, that they donÕt realize the full extent of these services, and we want to educate them."

***

Antiriot Force: A front-page article in today's New York Times about labor unrest in China refers to "the People's Armed Police, the main antiriot force." Given the Times's reluctance to use the word "riot" to describe genuine riots like the one that happened in Crown Heights, it's amazing to see the Times describe an antiworker, pro-Communist force as an antiriot force. It makes no more sense than describing the guards in the Soviet gulag as antiriot forces, or the British in revolutionary America as antiriot forces. They are not antiriot forces, they are antifreedom forces.

A "news analysis" in the international section of today's New York Times says, "It is widely accepted that nuclear weapons are virtually useless in a war on terrorism or on rogue states, and in the case of America's nuclear arsenal that is particularly true. As the Nuclear Posture Review notes, the American arsenal is overwhelmingly based on cold-war thinking, when deterrence meant convincing rivals that the United States possessed the ability to wipe out their cities and missile silos. Mr. Bush has said that approach is outdated and has embraced deep cuts in America's traditional nuclear arsenal. But terrorists do not have cities, and Iran and Iraq do not have silos."

The Times claims that "terrorists do not have cities." That's absurd. The American State Department lists seven countries as state sponsors of terrorism: Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, North Korea and Cuba. There are cities in each of those countries.

The Times also claims confidently that "Iran and Iraq do not have silos." Well, at the rate things are going, Iran will have them before long. According to a report in the Washington Times, Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking in Washington in September of 1998, said of Iran, "'They are building an enormous infrastructure [including] hardened missile silos,' which can house the missiles and protect them against any U.S. or Israeli pre-emptive strikes." And as for Iraq, there's no way of knowing for sure whether it has silos or not, because Saddam Hussein has refused to allow U.N. weapons inspectors there.

Exclaiming: A dispatch in the national section of today's New York Times reports about whale watching. The third paragraph of the article is as follows:

"Oh my God, there's another calf!" exclaimed Alisa Schulman-Janiger of the American Cetacean Society, which has counted gray whales as they commute up and down the California coast for almost 20 years. "It's so exciting to see a rebound! We're sure due for one."

"Oh my God, what a badly written paragraph!" exclaimed the editor of Smartertimes.com. "It's bad enough to include two exclamation marks. But if you are going to use exclamation marks, it's redundant to use the verb 'exclaimed'!" Not only that, the sentence doesn't make clear whether the phrase "for almost 20 years" refers to the whales or to the American Cetacean Society.

The Week in Review section of today's New York Times carries an article about the editor of an English-language Saudi Arabian newspaper called Arab News. The article is promoted on the front page of the Times Week in Review section with the phrase "One Saudi's war against hate -- American hate." The headline inside says "Temper, Temper," and continues, "From bin Laden's Native Land, a Voice to Calm the Angry American."

The Times article begins "Khaled Al-Maeena, the editor in chief of the English-language Saudi newspaper Arab News, is an unabashed America-lover. He studied in the United States, sent four of his five children to American colleges and, with a tiny budget, built a newspaper staff of young Saudi men and women who are required to speak flawless English. So when dozens of Americans who read his newspaper on the Internet began to send him e-mail after Sept. 11, he fought back -- with deliberately moderate words."

So, according to the New York Times, Mr. Al-Maeena is the "moderate" lover of America, and his American correspondents are the angry ones full of hate.

Well, to gauge the accuracy of that assessment, check out the following article, which ran in Mr. Al-Maeena's newspaper under the headline "US media dancing to Zionist tune," and which is still available on the newspaper's Web site at http://www.arabnews.com/Article.asp?ID=10309 :

"Since the US began to cobble together an international alliance to combat terrorism following the Sept. 11 attacks, the US media are unleashing a campaign against Muslims and Arabs without any distinction. . . . Interestingly, the US media attacks on Saudi Arabia and Egypt run counter to the daily statements of the US president or his secretary of state. Both have been praising the credible support and sincere efforts demonstrated by the Kingdom and Egypt. Then why this media onslaught? A study would reveal their motives. Thomas Friedman, a Jew, accuses Saudi Arabia and Egypt of not being with the US in its war on Afghanistan. The Washington Post even questions the legitimacy of the government in Egypt by saying that the elections were not fair, that freedom of expression is suppressed and that the political situation is in peril."

The Arab News article continues, "There is no doubt that after World War II, the world Jewry has been trying to be as close as possible to the decision-making processes in the West in general and the US in particular -- Congress, the Senate and the Pentagon. Zionism convinced the Western world that communism was their enemy No. 1 with Islam occupying the second position. As communism is no longer a threat, Islam is the No. 1 enemy and such a canard is unfortunately believed by many Westerners. Moreover, as Zionism is surviving on lies, it exploits every opportunity to target Islam and this is evident following the September attacks on the US. Therefore, the US media that are controlled or dominated by Zionists continue attacking Islam, Muslims and Arabs taking advantage of the fact that the prime suspects in the attacks are Arab or Muslim."

The Arab News article continues, "The enmity between the West and Islam is growing due to the lies spread by Zionism. Zionists claim that Arabs and Muslims are against Israel. They choose to ignore the fact that Israel is an alien outpost in the Arab world. It was Jews who occupied Palestine and displaced its original people. . . . So, it is not surprising that the Zionist media tried to equate the September attacks on the US with the legitimate struggle of the Palestinians against Israel and call the Palestinians terrorists. Zionists are trying to poison Arab-US relations to further their own interests."

This article -- citing "Thomas Friedman, a Jew" as an example of "the US media that are controlled or dominated by Zionists" -- is a prime example of what appears in the newspaper whose editor in chief today's New York Times describes as "an unabashed America-lover" who is fighting "a war against hate."

Mr. Friedman at least deserves an apology from his colleagues at the Times. But that is an internal matter. More importantly, the readers of the New York Times deserve better than news articles and headlines that bill a publisher of anti-Jewish propaganda as "an unabashed America-lover" who is fighting "a war against hate."

An editorial in today's New York Times reports that when Thomas Winship took over as editor of the Boston Globe, it "was a cautious, provincial newspaper, stiffly written, its front page corrupted by ads."

Corrupted by ads? If the New York Times thinks that advertisements "corrupt" the front pages of newspapers, the Times might do well to stop worrying about what was going on at the Globe 37 years ago. The Times editorialists might take a look instead at today's New York Times front page, which features a paid advertisement from the British Tourist Authority.

Smartertimes.com does not think that advertisements "corrupt" newspaper pages, or Web pages, for that matter. But the editorials traditionally represent the institutional voice of the newspaper and its publisher. So it is interesting to see that the Times views advertisers not as the warmly welcomed customers who pay the bills but rather as a source of corruption.

Reasonable Cost: The lead editorial in today's New York Times declares that "Americans should be outraged" at a Senate vote that rejected new, more strict fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. The Times cites a National Academy of Sciences report that purports to show, the Times says, "that stiffer fuel efficiency standards could be attained at a reasonable cost and without overly jeopardizing auto safety." Well, if these costs are so "reasonable," why doesn't the New York Times Company undertake to convert its own fleet of gas-guzzling delivery trucks and staff cars to super-low-emissions vehicles? The Times declares that the Senate vote "was more about ideology than economics." Well, if economics are not the issue, what is stopping the Times from deploying on a fleet-wide basis the low-emissions vehicle technology that is already on the market? And if the Times is so concerned about the "energy crisis" and so squarely against "Detroit's automakers" -- that is the phrase used in the Times editorial -- why doesn't the newspaper again put its money where its mouth is and start turning down the ads for sport utility vehicles? And when will Detroit get smart and stop spending millions of dollars supporting a newspaper whose editorials and news articles are so consistently opposed to the commercial interests of the auto industry? Too bad those ads don't have more of a corrupting influence on the Times.

Ideological Terms: A news article in the metro section of today's New York Times reports on a City Council hearing. "The sharpest disagreement came over the food stamp waiver, which had been opposed on ideological grounds by Mr. Turner's allies," the Times news article reports. "Ideological" is the word the Times uses to describe conservative ideas that it disagrees with. Those on the other side of the food-stamp debate are just as ideological, but the Times does not describe them as such. It would have been more accurate and less slanted to leave out the grounds, to say "on policy grounds" or to spell out the specific objection rather than simply dismissing it as ideological. The way the article is currently worded, it looks like the Times news department, on ideological grounds, opposes welfare reform.

A dispatch from the United Nations in today's New York Times reports, "Mr. Annan today downplayed his choice of the word 'illegal,' saying that the Security Council and the General Assembly had already used it to describe Israel's occupation and some of its actions against Palestinians." That is a falsehood, which the Times allows Mr. Annan to get away with unchallenged.

Set aside the question of the General Assembly -- that was the collection of tyrannies that, on November 10, 1975, declared by vote of 72 to 35, with 32 abstentions, that "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." Given how discredited the General Assembly's record has been on Israel, it is both telling and troubling that Mr. Annan would cite it in defense of his own remarks.

Look instead at the Security Council, which the Mr. Annan claims has used the word "illegal" to describe Israel's "occupation." Look through the most one-sided anti-Israel U.N. Security Council resolutions, dating from the darkest days of the Carter administration -- Security Council resolutions 446, 452 and 465. Two of these resolutions -- 446 and 465 -- state that the Israeli housing on the West Bank has "no legal validity." Two of them -- 452 and 465 -- state that Israel is violating the Fourth Geneva Convention. But that is different from using the word "illegal" to describe Israel's actions. The word "illegal" never appears. It is a subtle distinction but an important one. An action can have "no legal validity" without being "illegal." If the editor of Smartertimes.com claimed the U.N. headquarters building as his new home, the action would have no legal validity, but it would not be illegal. A U.N. resolution stating that "The editor of Smartertimes.com's claim on the U.N. headquarters building has no legal validity" is different from a resolution saying "the editor of Smartertimes.com's claim on the U.N. headquarters building is illegal." The first is a declaration that a claim has no lasting legal standing; the second is a claim that a law has been broken. In any case, the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs that have taken place since the Madrid Conference in 1991 have been on the basis of U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, not these other resolutions. Mr. Annan's invocation of the Security Council resolutions from the U.N.'s bad old days of "Zionism is a form of racism" will have the effect of undermining the Arab-Israeli negotiations that Mr. Annan claims to be so concerned with preserving.