David Kocieniewski

In Going After Apple's Tax Avoidance, NYT Never, Ever Criticizes Calif. and U.S. Government Spending and Bloat
By Tom Blumer | April 30, 2012 | 11:56 PM EDT

At the New York Times on Saturday (in Sunday's print edition), reporters Charles Duhigg and David Kocienewski, in a report riddled with conceptual flaws and misleading statistics, bemoaned "how technology giants have taken advantage of tax codes written for an industrial age and ill suited to today’s digital economy." They focused their attention almost entirely on Apple, seemingly in simultaneous awe and disgust at how "Apple’s accountants have found legal ways to allocate about 70 percent of its profits overseas, where tax rates are often much lower, according to corporate filings."

Well guys, a look at Apple's latest 10-K annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Page 73 reveals that Apple's net sales in "The Americas" geographic segment -- from the northernmost portion of Canada to the southernmost tip of Chile -- in the year ended September 24, 2011 were $38 billion out of a companywide total of $108 billion. Apple doesn't segregate U.S. sales, but it would seem that they probably aren't any more than $30 billion of that $38 billion. So the vast majority of Apple's sales are "overseas." An even larger majority is outside of the U.S. Even after allowing for aggressive tax-avoidance maneuvers, why should it surprise anyone that the large majority of profits are also earned overseas?

'Romney Riches Are Being Seen as New Hurdle,' at the NYTimes, Anyway
By Clay Waters | January 20, 2012 | 9:54 AM EST

The New York Times has been going to town on controversies over Mitt Romney’s money, from his personal tax rate to the work of Bain Capital, the private equity firm he co-founded. Thursday’s front page story goes into excruciating detail on what is known about Romney's wealth, under the self-fulfilling headline “Romney Riches Are Being Seen as New Hurdle,” by Nicholas Confessore, David Kocieniewski, and Michael Luo. The story was touted by Charlie Rose on CBS Thursday morning and captured by the MRC's Matthew Balan. But riches were not nearly such a "hurdle" when liberal John Edwards ran for president in 2008.

NYTimes Certain Romney's Tax-Cut Proposals Would 'Benefit the Wealthiest,' Widen the Deficit
By Clay Waters | January 20, 2012 | 8:50 AM EST

Tax-cut hostile New York Times reporters Michael Cooper and David Kocieniewski teamed up Thursday in a “news” article that assumed as fact (using a study from a left-of-center “nonpartisan” group) that plans by Republican presidential candidates for reducing tax rates would by design lead to widening deficits and "benefit the wealthiest the most": “Higher Deficits Seen In Romney’s Tax Plan, And His Rivals’, Too.” Yet the Times's own chart shows 80% of filers earning between $20,000 and $30,000 -- hardly "the rich" -- would get a tax cut as well.

(Kocieniewski’s hostility to tax cuts is well documented, while Cooper attacked Obama from the left on March 2, 2011 for signing into law an obscure tax break not even liberal economists have  a problem with.)

NYTimes Reporter Again Hails Warren Buffett, Liberals' Favorite Billionaire, on Tax Hikes
By Clay Waters | January 19, 2012 | 7:27 AM EST

New York Times tax reporter David Kocieniewski took advantage of Mitt Romney's admission (blared as Wednesday's lead story, under six bylines) that his personal tax rate is around 15% to fight decades-old tax-cut battles in Wednesday’s "Since 1980s, The Kindest Of Tax Cuts For the Rich." Naturally, he brought up liberals' favorite billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who made waves with an op-ed in the Times calling for higher taxes on "the rich."

It’s not Buffett's first appearance in one of Kocieniewski’s slanted "tax the rich" stories. Kocieniewski also took time to refute the head of the "conservative Tax Foundation" on eliminating the capital gains tax.

More NY Times Hypocrisy, Attacking Lauder for Using Tax Loopholes It Employs as Well
By Clay Waters | December 1, 2011 | 9:38 AM EST

Ira Stoll dissected the New York Times’ s latest outburst of “sheer hypocrisy masquerading as journalism,” a Sunday front-page attack on the tax-shelter practices of Ronald Lauder, in a Monday post at the New York Sun website -- “Owners of New York Times Used Tax Loopholes the Paper Scored Ambassador Lauder for Using.”

 

A decade ago Stoll established Smarter Times, an influential blog of New York Times criticism, before becoming editor of the right-of-center newspaper The New York Sun. The Sun is only an online product now, but Stoll is keeping his hand in Times criticism. In his latest post, Stoll summarized the philanthropic work of Lauder, wealthy heir to the Estee Lauder fortune, then noted how:

NYT Dubiously Claims Buffett Tax Hikes Would Raise Revenues, Falsely Claims Taxes at Historic Low
By Clay Waters | August 17, 2011 | 2:16 PM EDT

New York Times reporter David Kocieniewski reported on the front of Tuesday’s Business section reported on the op-ed by billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s in Monday’s Times which has gone viral in liberal circles. Buffett called for higher taxes on rich people like him in the name of fairness, claiming his 17% effective tax rate was lower than anyone else in his office.

Kocieniewski, who in January 2005 took advantage of a book by moderate Republican governor Christine Whitman of New Jersey to attack "conservative hubris" and the Republican party's "lurch to the right,” used the flawed static analysis employed by liberal economists to prove that higher tax rates would automatically lead to higher tax revenues, as if raising rates would have no effect on how people invest their money.

NY Times: OK to Defend American Taliban, But Defending Big Tobacco Verboten?
By Clay Waters | March 27, 2009 | 3:11 PM EDT

It's enlightening to see what topics New York Times editors find disturbing and newsworthy and which ones they shrug off or ignore.New York's new senator, Kirsten Gillibrand, is a Democrat who is nonetheless under strong suspicions at the liberal Times for her support of gun rights and her previous representation of a white conservative district. On Friday's front page, she came under fire via a stash of old ammo in a story by Raymond Hernandez and David Kocieniewski. "As New Lawyer, Senator Defended Big Tobacco." Gillibrand is in trouble for defending Big Tobacco as a lawyer representing Philip Morris back in 1996.

The Philip Morris Company did not like to talk about what went on inside its lab in Cologne, Germany, where researchers secretly conducted experiments exploring the effects of cigarette smoking.So when the Justice Department tried to get its hands on that research in 1996 to prove that tobacco industry executives had lied about the dangers of smoking, the company moved to fend off the effort with the help of a highly regarded young lawyer named Kirsten Rutnik.Ms. Rutnik, who now goes by her married name, Gillibrand, threw herself into the work. She traveled to Germany at least twice, interviewing the lab's top scientists, whose research showed a connection between smoking and cancer but was kept far from public view.