John Dendahl's column in the Albuqujerque Journal this morning reprises his usual themes, the loudest of which is that any economic policy other than what he espouses is socialism.
No surprise there.
Dendah's argument, however, that a higher minium wage would produce outsourcing of American jobs is not just funny but dishonest.
Outsourcing, after all, is strong and growing even as business enjoys a low federal minimum wage that has fallen far behind inflation. Even proponents of outsorucing agree it is prompted by the kind of global economics now popular.
No surprise, either, that Dendahl should obfuscate. A former chair of the New Mexico Republican Party, he is a partisan.
This raises the question, can you be partisan and intellectually honest?
It's a question newspaper editors ought to ponder, as they try tos erve the public interest on their editorial and Op Ed pages.
In a recent item on Healther Wilson's votes, I speculated that - with an eye on Patricia Madrid's challenge - Wilson was putting some distance between herself and the GOP leadership
Michael Coleman of the Albuquerque Journal's Washington Bureau also noticed Wilson's vote alongside Tom Udall to derail a GOP deficit measure aimed at saving dollars by cutting Medicaid (for the poor) and Medicare (the middle-class elderly). He cites it in a political roundup column today.
Coleman doesn't speculate on her motivation, just notes she sided with Udall and that Steve Pearce, the downstate Republican, stayed with the party.
That's something. Good for Coleman.
Front page of the Albuiquerque Tribune yesterday: "President outlines failed '02 L.A. attack." The story reports President Bush said "The terroistsd are living under constant pressure and this adds to our security." A bit further down, he says, "The terrorists are weakened and fractured, and yet they are lethal."
Got that? OK.
Back page of the Albuquerque Tribune's first section yesterday: "Stats: Insurgents gain steam." The GAO statistics say, in summary, that insurgent attacks have grown over the last three years. "It;s not going down. there are peaks and valleys but if you look at every peak, it's higher than the peak before." That's from Joseph christoff of GAO, testifying before Senate Foreign Relations.
No, the GAO report does not directly contradict the President's statemnts. But it sure casts some doubt on them. Which prompts this question - are newspapers doing enough to extract meaning from their hard news reports?
Imagine, for example, if the front-page and back-page stories were layed out side-by-side?
Something to think about....
Last week Rep. Heather Wilson (R., NM) voted against a House budget that endorsed tax cuts for the wealthy and cut social services.
That’s right, she and Tom Udall were on the same side!
Today’s Albuquerque Journal reports that Wilson wants the Administration to brief Congressional intelligence committees more extensively where President Bush’s domestic eavesdropping is concerned.
Now neither of these votes makes Wilson a liberal, of course, but it’s easy to see that she is putting space between herself and the Republican Congressional leadership (budget) and the White House (eavesdropping).
Can anyone here say "Patricia Madrid"?
Yes, Rep. Wilson is trying to establish a defense against what Madrid will charge in the race for her House seat.
So why haven’t we read this, or some other analysis of her votes, in our local newspapers?
Because our local newspapers get around to this sort of thing when the spirit moves them and not a moment earlier.
Come election time, newspapers regularly examine campaign ads to sift what is true from what isn’t.
They ought to do that earlier in the campaign - daily, if possible, weekly if that’s more convenient