New York Times
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By Russ Baker on October 5, 2009
The New York Times lead story describes how a series of private equity firms managed to repeatedly flip the venerable Simmons mattress company, earning themselves huge profits while the company became increasingly mired in debt and ultimately forced into bankruptcy and massive layoffs, with ordinary investors, employees, and company retirees taking a huge hit.
I thought it would be worthwhile to… [Read the rest]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged bankruptcy, Barack Obama, charities, Democratic Party, Forbes, Harvard University, leveraged buyouts, New York Times, NYU Medical Center, private equity, Simmons, Thomas H. Lee, William J. Clinton Foundation
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By Russ Baker on October 1, 2009
Yesterday’s New York Times represented a kind of quiet sea change. A front-page article addressed the quality of intelligence analyses of Iran’s nuclear intentions, against the background of the West’s mounting confrontation with Tehran. Unlike the largely credulous articles written by Judith Miller and others that provided crucial fodder for justifying the invasion of Iraq (over Weapons of Mass Destruction… [Read the rest]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged CIA, Gary Sick, Glenn Greenwald, Iran, Journalism, Judith Miller, New York Times, nuclear power, nuclear weapons, Qum facility, Salon, WMDs
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By Russ Baker on September 23, 2009
Two large debit-card issuers have suddenly decided to clean up their acts in the face of pending legislative action against them. The bigger question is: what’s to prevent them from pulling a bait and switch, first voluntarily revising their rapacious practices and then, when the threat of legislation dies down, ramping those practices right back up again?
As summarized by the… [Read the rest]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged Bank of America, banking, banking reform, banks, debit cards, finance, financial reform, JPMorgan Chase, New York Times, Ron Lieber
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By Russ Baker on September 18, 2009
Conservative activists and talk show hosts, continuing a crusade begun during the presidential campaign, have been calling for their compatriots to dig up dirt on appointees and beneficiaries of Obama administration funding. The result has been an effort by the Democrats to quickly blunt any controversy by terminating links with anyone deemed controversial.
Recently, a low-level White House environmental official named… [Read the rest]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged 9/11, ACORN, Barack Obama, Census Bureau, Claude Allen, conservative politics, Daniel Ellsberg, Democratic Party, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Fox News, George W. Bush, Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, New York Times, Van Jones
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By Russ Baker on September 1, 2009
On August 20, while scanning the New York Times the old-fashioned way, i.e. on paper, I stopped to look at a small article, no bigger than a long paragraph, tucked away in a column full of short items called “National Briefing.” The headline read: “Mercury Found in Every Fish Tested, Scientists Say”.
I stopped to read, and found that “When government… [Read the rest]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged Barack Obama, coal, coal industry, coal-fired power plants, Congress, contamination, emissions, energy, Environmental Protection Agency, fish, mercury, New York Times, Reuters, U.S. Geological Survey
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By Russ Baker on August 19, 2009
The New York Times has a surprisingly direct, no-hedging, exposé of oil industry shenanigans designed to block climate change legislation. For once, it is crystal clear to readers what is going on—the oil industry is rallying workers whose (understandable) immediate concerns do not extend beyond continuing to earn a living, to . . . preserving life on earth.
Hard on the… [Read the rest]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged astroturfing, big oil, carbon credits, climate change, emissions, global warming, Houston, New York Times, oil industry, Texas, town halls
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By Russ Baker on August 17, 2009
The other day, the New York Times got around to a bit of investigation into the origins of false information about health insurance reform. But just a bit—not nearly enough.
The stubborn yet false rumor that President Obama’s health care proposals would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere in recent… [Read the rest]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, death panels, health care, health care reform, health insurance, New York Times, special interests, town hall meetings, Washington Times
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By Russ Baker on August 12, 2009
The New York Times reports on new documents showing that Bush White House political honcho Karl Rove was much more deeply involved in the early moves that led to the firings of numerous United States Attorneys, seemingly for partisan reasons. But the article fails to focus on what matters most: Why?
Internal e-mail messages in the spring of 2005 at the… [Read the rest]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged David Iglesias, George W. Bush, Karl Rove, New Mexico, New York Times, Scott Jennings, U.S. attorney firings, voter fraud
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By David V. Johnson on July 31, 2009
WhoWhatWhy commenter David pointed us to the following video of former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura discussing his brush with the Central Intelligence Agency as a newly elected state leader . . .
In the video, Ventura discusses material from his recent memoir Don’t Start the Revolution Without Me!. He repeats the following claims:
(1) Shortly after taking office in January 1999, Gov.… [Read the rest]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged Associated Press, CIA, Jesse Ventura, Minnesota, New York Times, Washington Post
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By Russ Baker on July 25, 2009
The New York Times reports on the formidable resistance in Congress to Obama’s efforts to, among other things, create a new consumer protection agency to cover credit cards, mortgages, and other poorly-regulated financial products. It cites
. . . significant criticism from the financial services industry and its allies in Congress. Earlier this week, senior Democrats in the House conceded that… [Read the rest]
Posted in The Digest
| Tagged American Bankers Association, Barack Obama, Christopher Dodd, consumer protection, Countrywide, credit cards, Ed Yingling, Federal Reserve, finance, mortgages, New York Times, regulation, Rob Simmons, Senate Banking Committee
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