David Leonhardt

Kids Drinking Soda Pop: Like Smoking Camels or Riding Without Seat Belts?
By Clay Waters | May 22, 2010 | 5:42 PM EDT
Wednesday's Business Day column by the Times' liberal economic conscience David Leonhardt is another one for the food police files: “The Battle Over Taxing Soda.” Personal responsibility on such personal matters isn't a large concern in Leonhardt's worldview, as he readily compared lobbyists for the soda industry to lobbyists against tobacco companies and pollution laws.

Tobacco lobbyists spent years fighting regulation by claiming to be defending individual freedom, not the profits of tobacco companies. Detroit’s lobbyists did much the same to push back against seat belt and pollution laws. Wall Street has spent months opposing the financial regulation bill in the name of families and small businesses.

The latest example comes from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and the rest of the soda industry, which is trying to defeat a soda tax now before the District of Columbia Council. The industry has succeeded recently in beating back similar taxes in New York and Philadelphia, and in keeping one out of the federal health overhaul bill. But the Washington Council seems to be seriously considering a penny-per-ounce tax on nondiet sodas, energy drinks and artificial juices. Council members are set to vote on the issue next week.
NYT's Leonhardt Dismisses How Almost Half Pay No Income Tax, Calls For Higher Rates
By Clay Waters | April 14, 2010 | 4:46 PM EDT
In his Wednesday Business Day column, David Leonhardt, the New York Times's conscience on economic matters, defended the current skewed tax system, in which almost half of U.S. households paid no income taxes last year, and even argued that those now paying the highest rates should be paying even more: "Behind The 47% Talking Point."

Leonhardt never addressed the underlying point of conservative opposition: The free-rider problem, as half of households pay nothing for services that (theoretically) benefit them all, like public education and national defense. Citizens with no "skin in the game," safe in the assumption they will never have to pay federal taxes, have little practical incentive to oppose programs that will lead to higher taxes, like Obama-care.
Forty-seven percent.

That's the portion of American households that owe no income tax for 2009. The number is up from 38 percent in 2007, and it has become a popular talking point on cable television and talk radio. With Tax Day coming on Thursday, 47 percent has become shorthand for the notion that the wealthy face a much higher tax burden than they once did while growing numbers of Americans are effectively on the dole.

Neither one of those ideas is true. They rely on a cleverly selective reading of the facts. So does the 47 percent number.

NYT: ObamaCare's Success Based On Denying Medical Procedures
By Noel Sheppard | April 7, 2010 | 5:56 PM EDT
In today's "Now They Tell Us" segment, the New York Times on Wednesday reported that ObamaCare's ability to bring down costs will be a function of denying some people medical services and procedures.

"From an economic perspective, health reform will fail if we can't sometimes push back against the try-anything instinct," wrote David Leonhardt. 

"So figuring out how we can say no may be the single toughest and most important task facing the people who will be in charge of carrying out reform." 

As you continue to read Leonhardt's shocking words, consider that the paper he writes for has published over 100 articles about Sarah Palin's "death panels":

NYT's Main Eco. Writer Reverses Himself on Obama's Tax-Cut Pledge for Earners Under $250K
By Clay Waters | March 17, 2010 | 1:48 PM EDT

In David Leonhardt's latest "Economic Scene" column for the New York Times, "The Perils Of Pay Less, Get More," he reestablished his reputation as the paper's neo-liberal economic voice, admitting that at a certain point taxes hurt economic growth, but also urging Obama to break his pledge and raise taxes on everyone, not just people making over $250,000 a year, in order to cut the deficit.Leonhardt has certainly changed his mind about Obama's tax pledge. In a huge August 2008 story for the New York Times Magazine, Leonhardt actually promoted Obama's popular campaign promise to reduce taxes for those making under $250,000, in the name of addressing "inequality":

Obama's agenda starts not with raising taxes to reduce the deficit, as Clinton's ended up doing, but with changing the tax code so that families making more than $250,000 a year pay more taxes and nearly everyone else pays less. That would begin to address inequality.
Lefties (and the White House) Gush Over Stimulus Defense By NYT's David Leonhardt
By Clay Waters | February 18, 2010 | 4:02 PM EST
David Leonhardt, who serves as the New York Times's conscience on economics issues as a columnist and reporter, celebrated the one-year anniversary of the Obama "stimulus" on the front page of Wednesday's Business section, while attacking naysayers as "hard-core skeptics" and pushing for yet another "stimulus": "Success of Stimulus Bill Is Noteworthy as Another Is Weighed."

Leonhardt's column instantly became a gloatworthy morale-booster to sympathetic left-wing web sites like Talking Points Memo and Huffington Post. Even White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs put it on his Twitter feed. But is Leonhardt bashing straw men?

On Wednesday Leonhardt led his readers, Philosophy 101-style, through a thought experiment:
Imagine if, one year ago, Congress had passed a stimulus bill that really worked.

How Can 'Mainstream' Media Figures Land on the List of 'Top 25 Journalists on the Left'?
By Tim Graham | February 18, 2010 | 2:55 PM EST

Liberal Tina Brown’s website The Daily Beast as another Top 25 list of journalists today – The Left’s Top 25. (Noel Sheppard noted their top conservatives last week.) Tunku Varadajaran, formerly of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, listed Jon Stewart as the most impactful journalist on the left.

What stands out are the "mainstream" media figures on the list. There’s CNN host Christiane Amanpour, and a trio of Washington Post people, past and present. But the largest force in this Left list is five from The New York Times: columnist Paul Krugman (number 2), op-ed page editor David Shipley (4), economics writer David Leonhardt (8), Times magazine writer Deborah Solomon (22) and Times magazine contributor David Rieff (24).

What will shock readers is the MSNBC deficit: only Rachel Maddow (11), and no Matthews or Olbermann.

The largely positive blurbs that accompany this photo gallery hardly seem written by a conservative. Take the Paul Krugman encomium:

NYTimes: Obama's Economic Ideas Great... Just Like Hitler's Were?
By Warner Todd Huston | April 3, 2009 | 7:35 AM EDT

For The New York Times economic scene section for March 31, David Leonhardt came across with one of the most amazing admissions about Obama that I've ever seen in the Times. Namely that Barack Obama is just like Hitler. Now, many of you may be solemnly shaking your head in agreement, but in so doing you would be missing why the Times was comparing Obama to Hitler. You see, Leonhardt didn't mean it as an insult. He was saying that it was a good thing that Barack was being like Hitler at least in an economic sense.

Here Leonhardt is taking the trains-on-time track with his Hitler angle by saying that, despite that whole Holocaust and World War II business, Hitler's policies were good for Germany. So good, in fact, that he celebrates the ways he sees that Obama is emulating the mustachioed mad-man's economic prescriptions with the massive takeover of the economy and bloated government spending on "stimulus."

You know the left has lost it when they are invoking the "success" of Hitler to prop up The One!

Bozell Column: Breathtakingly Bold Barack
By Brent Bozell | March 3, 2009 | 10:51 PM EST

As Gov. Bobby Jindal began to offer a Republican response, it became apparent that he would be no match with Barack Obama in the soaring-oratory department. The Republicans really should have tried a gimmick instead.

NYT Ties Today's Illegal Immigration Foes to Violent Racists of a Century Ago
By Clay Waters | March 3, 2008 | 2:14 PM EST

The front of the New York Times Week in Review is dominated by business columnist-reporter David Leonhardt's "The Border And The Ballot Box," his slanted essay on anti-immigration crusades then and now.

NYT Columnist: Do You Have a Right to Your Own Money?
By Jeff Poor | October 31, 2007 | 3:30 PM EDT

This would be a no-brainer to most people, but for David Leonhardt, business columnist for The New York Times, it’s a question that deserves deep thoughtful deliberation. “There are big philosophical questions about taxes that facts alone can’t answer. How important is it to let people keep the money that they earn?” Leonhardt asked in the October 31 Times.

Follow-up: Nearly Six Months Later, NYT's 'Manufacturing Recession' Call Uncorrected
By Tom Blumer | August 22, 2007 | 8:15 AM EDT

Last night, it occurred to me, as I was preparing an e-mail to notify New York Times business columnist David Cay Johnston about updates to yesterday's original posts (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog) about his "smaller average incomes" report and a new source data update post, that I should bring a festering Times-related business reporting matter to his attention.

So I did (links to previous NewsBusters, BizzyBlog and other posts not in the e-mail have been added by me; Mr. Johnston was advised that this portion of the e-mail would be posted):

David,

..... Until earlier this year, I really didn't have too adverse of an opinion on the hard business reporting at the Times (outside of Paul Krugman, but he's a commentator). I've usually seen AP as consistently worse on hard biz-econ news.

Then, in February, Times reporter David Leonhardt told readers that manufacturing was in a recession. Not heading towards one. Not on the verge of one. Nope -- IN one.