Attorney General Barr: There Are no Predicates for Spying

A review of the public record demonstrates that the Russia investigation rested on a house of cards assembled by high-level officials to prevent Donald Trump’s election or to ensure that his administration would fail. This conclusion rests on mainstream media accounts, primarily of The New York Times. The Russia probe imposed a considerable cost in terms of international status, domestic tranquility, political paralysis and a challenge to the outcome of a democratic election. It weakened the Trump presidency to the benefit of his political opponents, and boosted Vladimir Putin’s claim of the crookedness of American democracy.

go to Washington Times

What the Mueller report tells us about Putin, Russia and Trump's election

eal Kremlin insiders — not Steele’s anonymous “trusted officials” — reveal that Putin did not share the elation of his security officers and of the Russian people with respect to the unexpected election of Donald Trump. No conspiracy structure was in place. Putin had no idea how to create either a formal or a back channel to the Trump team, and he warned his oligarchs to get ready for more sanctions under Trump. He “suggested” that his oligarchs open up back channels, but his low expectation of success turned out to be correct.

Even The New York Times has admitted that the Steele dossier could be a Kremlin disinformation campaign to “hedge their bets and place a few land mines under Trump’s presidency as well.” Yet, the Times’ recognition of that does not answer why the Kremlin would sabotage the candidate it wanted so much to win.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/444673-what-the-mueller-report-tells-us-about-putin-russia-and-trumps-election

The 'Putin Directed The Leaks' Story Is Less Than It Appears

he NBC report intimates that our spies and intelligence officials know Putin’s innermost thoughts on matters of great importance, such as his preferences on the next US President. If so, NBC’s sources know more than Russian officials, pundits, oppositionists, and media about what Putin, isolated in in his Moscow suburban palace, is up to. Few officials seem to know how the Putin kleptocracy works. Is it a one-man show or is it run by a Kremlin Politburo?

As to linking Putin to a specific nefarious act, efforts by western intelligence and investigative press to link Putin to murders of renegade reporters, ex KGB turncoats, and notable political figures (Boris Nemtsov) have failed, but somehow NBC informants have been able to find almost “inconvertible evidence” of Putin’s personal involvement in the US election. His personal involvement may have been simply to sit back and enjoy the show.

As I have written on numerous occasions, the WikiLeaks disclosures have been a godsend for Putin to “show corruption in American politics,” as the NBC “bombshell” now claims. After surviving a much-criticized parliamentary election, the Kremlin media could regale the Russian public with US press accounts of a rigged election, conspiracies against the peoples’ candidate, Bernie Sanders, the riches of Soros, Goldman Sachs, and the Saudi princes determining the outcome, and the Clintons growing rich from their political connections. Putin could now ask: Who gives these Clintons the right to criticize me? What more was sweet revenge against Hillary Clinton could Putin ask for?

go to Forbes.com

A Hayseed Economist Responds To The Times' Bill Keller

Bill Keller, the former editor of the New York Times, has ventured into economic commentary after tutorials from “a few economists respected for the integrity of their science.” Presumably, they all have impeccable Ivy League or Wall Street credentials.

Keller concludes that the state of economics is “rotten” because the “democratization of media has diminished the authority once held — and sometimes abused — by a few big newspapers and broadcasters.”

 I, hayseed that I am,  had not realized that the New York Times and CBS – not the editors of the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy,  or the Quarterly Journal of Economics -- are (or were to Keller’s regret) the true arbiters of what is good or bad economics. 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2011/12/04/a-hayseed-economist-responds-to-the-times-bill-keller/ 

The NYT Says What Obama Cannot Say: Raise Everyone’s Taxes

The New York Times Sunday editorial reveals point blank the liberal agenda. According its the editorial writers, we cannot cut spending in any significant way without curtailing core liberal programs. Hence, “there is no economically sensible or politically honest way to address the deficit without also increasing revenues and reforming the tax code.”

Even more remarkable is their candor with respect to taxes. Contrary to Obama’s promise not to raise taxes on the middle class, the NYT calls for raising taxes on just about everyone. 

I supply their blueprint for taxation during the second Obama administration without comments:

1). Let the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2012 for those making $250,000 and above.  The other tax cuts could expire at the end of 2013. The middle class should keep their tax cuts for a year to prop up consumer demand. The expiration of all the tax cuts would “save” $3.8 trillion over the next decade.

2) Tax reform should not touch breaks for home ownership and retirement saving, but they should be targeted only to help low and middle-income tax payers. Capital gains should be taxed at 35 percent. Tax breaks that subsidize profitable industries like oil must be ended. If the ending of tax breaks permits, tax rates could be lowered generally.

3) We should use a value-added tax or carbon taxes to raise “needed revenue for deficit reduction, and for what government provides” so that all additional tax revenue need not be squeezed from income taxes.

The NYT ends with its reading of public sentiment: “The public is open to new taxes, and the economic facts are clear. Until tax increases are considered in equal measure to spending cuts, there will be no budget fix.”

I imagine this editorial is not being greeted with enthusiasm in the White House. It lays bare the fact that Obama’s core supporters do not want to cut spending. Instead, they propose massive tax increases on middle- and low-income families.

If Obama were to publicly embrace these proposals in his upcoming campaign, his chances of reelection would shrink virtually to zero. Republican candidates should keep this editorial ready for use.

Media Slant: Guess Which Newspaper Ran Which Story: Wall Street Journal or New York Times?

1. "Grand Bargain Talks Collapse"

WASHINGTON—A high-stakes effort by President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner to hatch a landmark deficit reduction deal collapsed in anger Friday, sending Washington into a weekend of negotiations over how the world's top financial power can make good on its debt obligations.

In a letter to his colleagues, Mr. Boehner said he called off talks with the president. He informed Mr. Obama Friday night he planned to start negotiations with the Senate to seek what would likely be a smaller deal.

"In the end we couldn't connect. Not because of different personalities, but because of different visions for our country,

2. "Debt Ceiling Talks Collapse as Boehner Walks Out"

WASHINGTON — Negotiations over a broad deficit reduction plan collapsed in acrimony on Friday after Speaker John A. Boehner suddenly broke off talks with President Obama, raising the risk of an economy-shaking default.

A visibly angry President Obama, in a hastily scheduled White House news conference, demanded that Congressional leaders come to the White House on Saturday morning. “I want them here at 11 a.m. tomorrow,” he said. “They are going to have to explain to me how it is that we are going to avoid default.”

Answer (if you need an answer: WSJ =1, NYT =2)

No Shock in Thomas Friedman’s Shock Therapy

Thomas Friedman’s friends appear to be disgusted with American politics. They have concluded that the two parties think only of reelection and their special-interest constituencies. They cannot imperil their chances of reelection by doing the four things -- spend, cut, tax and invest -- that must be done simultaneously “if we have any hope of maintaining American greatness.”

Friedman’s disgusted friends are looking for a serious Third Party candidate to “deliver shock therapy to the corrupt, encrusted, two-party duopoly now running the show in America.”

In my vocabulary “shock therapy” describes a rapid course of transition from planned socialism to capitalism. Therefore, I expected more than I got from Friedman’s shock therapy, which consists of the following four points:

1)                  More stimulus to keep the economy from slipping back into recession.

2)                  An accompanying credible long-term plan for spending and deficit reduction — e.g., the Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction plan.

3)                  New revenues (a gas tax and a carbon tax) to “reinvest” in education, infrastructure and government-funded research to push out the boundaries of knowledge.

4)                  Assorted other things like “shrinking” our presence in Afghanistan and raising mandated mileage standards on new cars.

Friedman opines that his hypothetical “spend, cut, tax and invest” platform is sure to attract his reasonable, sophisticated, and intelligent friends from both sides of the aisle.

I interpret it as a platform that elected liberals are too cowardly to pass for fear of voter backlash.

Why is this program the liberal Holy Grail?

Friedman’s “spend, cut, tax and invest” raises government spending now (bigger government), despite the failure of the massive fiscal and monetary stimulus of the past few years. (If once you do not succeed, try, try again). In return, Congress adopts Simpson-Bowles, which cuts spending and deficits over the long run (and perhaps never) by a combination of spending cuts and, yes, TAX increases.

But wait: Friedman is talking about cuts in “spending” not in “investment.” Government spending on research, infrastructure, green technology and other fads in liberal favor can boom because of new dedicated revenue from national gas and carbon taxes. No, the gusher of new tax revenue will not go into deficit reduction but into new windmills, bullet trains, and studies of the sex habits of mice, without which our economy cannot survive in the twenty-first century. I guess, in Friedman’s mind, we will have no innovation, no technological progress unless it is ordered and paid for by the state.

Friedman’s “spend, cut, tax and invest” is nothing more than a stealth program for ever larger and more intrusive government, in which the liberal state can pass out favors to its crony capitalists and labor allies.

A truly bold Friedmanian Third Party candidate could set the gas and carbon taxes high enough to raise total government spending to half the economy. With this accomplishment, we can at last join the genteel European brotherhood of enlightened welfare states, and  Thomas Friedman can return to foreign affairs, where he belongs.

David Brooks’ Country-Club Valedictory: It Is About You

“Conservative” David Brooks’ column “It’s Not About You” (NYT May 30) is incomprehensible fluff until you realize its audience.

Let me quote some key passages to illustrate:

“This year’s graduates are members of the most supervised generation in American history… they have been monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree. Most will spend a decade wandering from job to job and clique to clique, searching for a role. No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness.”

So we learn from Brooks that today’s graduates, the “most supervised in American history,” are being thrust into a “decade of extreme openness.” My own impression is that today’s latch-key, single parent, web-surfing, text-messaging graduates are among the least supervised in history. I must admit I do not understand Brooks’ “decade of extreme openness.” Graduates, it appears to me, are just entering the uncertain job market characteristic of a weak economy.

After some serious thought about who might read this column, it began to make more sense. By “graduates,” Brooks has in mind graduates of elite institutions, not college graduates in general. It is they who have been “monitored, tutored, coached and honed to an unprecedented degree.” Their mothers competed for slots in elite toddler academies in Manhattan or Cambridge. It is they who have been coached and tutored in preparatory academies and by SAT coaches. They have been “honed” for admission to Stanford or Harvard.

Graduates of state schools and, even worse, junior colleges do not fit into Brooks’ picture of the country-club elite. I guess they are not the ones who count.

Now these “supervised” graduates are being thrown into a cruel world of job insecurity and, gasp, “team work.” No longer does a secure spot in Daddy’s Lehman Brothers await them.

Brooks’ advice: Instead of focusing on “finding yourself,” find a cause – a problem to solve. “It’s the things they did to court unhappiness — the things they did that were arduous and miserable, which sometimes cost them friends and aroused hatred. It’s excellence, not happiness, that we admire most.” So the greats of the past succeeded because they were willing to be miserable and friendless. They did not become great through the joy of discovery, invention or entrepreneurship.

If I had taken out student loans to graduate from a good university with a meaningful degree and David Brooks delivered this as the commencement address, I would have asked for my money back.

The NYT’s Conservative Columnist: Future Congresses To Make Future Spending Cuts?

“Conservative” NYT columnist, David Brooks, has suddenly turned optimist. He opines that the upcoming vote on the debt ceiling will force Congress into a real compromise on spending cuts. He assures us: “Something good is about to happen.” The Republicans have leverage because “the debt-ceiling limit has to pass.” This is their chance to really stick it to the free spending Democrats.

Wait a minute. In reading further, I am less optimistic: “Congress won’t be able to produce specific program cuts and policy reform in the next few weeks, but it can come up with structural rules that will obligate future Congresses to make cuts and reforms for years ahead.”

It is all clear now. We won’t make significant cuts now but future Congresses will. As Brooks notes: “The important argument now is over what kind of restrictions to impose on future Congresses.”

Last I heard, future Congresses tax and spend as they see fit in the future. Our history is littered with the carcasses of “pay as you go” agreements and promises to spend less “next year.” Republicans, who have fallen for this line, deserve what they get. George H. W. Bush might have had a second term if he had not fallen for this, the oldest bait and switch.

Here is what Brooks wants: A bill that would cap federal spending at 20.6 percent of GDP, the recent historic average. If spending rose above that, automatic cuts would ensue. Well, let’s pass that one and see how long it is honored by future Congresses. The only thing that counts is what we do now, not what we say we will do later.

Brooks seems to have great faith in rules that bind future Congresses. He credits pay-as-you-go rules “for restraining spending and debt in the 1990s.” How long did they last? Was the remarkable spending restraint of the 1990s not the result of a strong Republican majority and a Democratic president who decided to make a strong move to the center?

Rules for future Congresses mean next to nothing. The only thing that counts is who wins the 2012 elections. If the Republicans gain a strong Congressional majority, the “rules” might be followed. If not, forget about the iron-clad rule from 2011.

My advice: If the Republicans have leverage now, they must use it to cut now.

As far as the Republicans are concerned, with David Brooks as a friend, who needs enemies?

The NYT Reveals the Real Reason For a Flat Tax: If Congress Can Mug Big Oil, It Can Mug Anyone

When Robert Hall and Alvin Rabushka proposed the flat tax more than a quarter century ago, they justified it on the grounds of economic efficiency and tax simplification. We now understand the real reason we need a flat tax.

Under our current federal tax system, everyone pays different tax rates depending on their lobbying clout, political donations, or interest group. Differences in realized tax rates are brought about by exemptions, loopholes, and preferences, most justified as promoting the common good. If you are in good with Congress or the administration (like GE or Hollywood), your breaks are secure and you get new ones. If you cross them or are a convenient target (like “Big Oil”), they take them away. Many have learned the bitter lesson: “What one hand giveth, the other taketh away.”

Our tax code has become a blunt instrument for political mugging, shakedowns, and intimidation. It insures a steady flow of political contributions. Anyone can find themselves a target. But everyone should remember that tomorrow the shoe can be on the other foot.

Our federal tax code is not a rule of law, but a rule of the political jungle.

The New York Times, Monday May 9, provides a case in point: “Senate Democrats say they will move forward this week with a plan that would eliminate tax breaks for big oil companies…..As currently written, the bill would apply only to what Democrats have identified as the five largest and most profitable oil companies.”

The long-forgotten Article 1, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution forbids Bill of Attainders – legislation that punishes specific persons or groups without judicial review. But the NYT declares that the proposed Democrat legislation is written specifically to deprive BP, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, and Conoco Phillips of tax advantages that other companies enjoy. These five oil companies are not named specifically, but the legislation is written to apply only to companies that meet their profile.

What would the framers of the Constitution think about this?

A concern expressed in the NYT article is that the recent drop in oil prices will reduce prices at the pump, and there will less support for this legislation. I guess this means that we should base tax regulations on good or bad fortune. If doctors are doing well, let’s take away their home mortgage deduction. Those who aren’t doing so well can keep it. If people are paying more for movie tickets, let’s take away subsidies for film producers. If unions succeed in obtaining higher fringe benefits, let’s tax them as regular income, but only for union members. This is where the logic leads us.

The flat tax has been adopted with the least difficulty in the new countries of Eastern Europe. They have been free to choose optimal institutions before powerful interest groups form. We have reached a point of no return. Too many politicians, companies, and individuals benefit from our crazy system. They have too much to lose if we move to a rational system.

It Would Be Hard for Assad to Lose

It is not easy to overthrow a dictator, especially one who is willing to do anything and everything to stay in power. Even in the internet age, the creation of a shadowy National Initiative for Change in Syria, will have little effect. If the regime is willing to shoot demonstrators, the price of demonstrations will eventually prove to be too high, and the demonstrations will stop.

Here are the ingredients for the overthrow of a totalitarian regime:

1. The regime is morally constrained and will not employ extreme force.
2. There is a well organized group of dedicated revolutionaries who are prepared to use all means necessary to gain power.
3. There is strong support from outside either in the form of overt or covert military and propaganda aid.

Two examples of success would be the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

In the Russian case, Nicolas II, was morally constrained to the extreme (He was devastated to learn that his people did not love him and abdicated). The Bolsheviks and their Social Revolutionary and Menshevik allies had been professional underground conspirators for a decade or more, and, among them, the Bolsheviks were prepared to use any means necessary, and the German military was prepared to lend a hand.

In the Iranian case, the Shah was constrained by his own conscience and by U.S. pressure. In the end, he was not willing to use the force necessary. His Islamic-fundamentalist opponents were well organized and had coalesced around a leader in exile. The world community considered the Shah a pariah. No country was willing to help him. After a show of resistance, the Shah resigned and left Iran for an uneasy exile.

None of these conditions for successful overthrow apply to Syria’s Assad regime. We have ample evidence that it is prepared to do anything and everything to stay in power and cares little about what the Western world thinks. After decades of dictatorial control, there is no organized opposition left, and the opposition that exists does not know how to use extreme force even if they could. There is little outside pressure. As a UN member in good standing among its peers, attempts by Western powers to gain a condemnation of Syria have failed and will continue to fail.

Even the New York Times (Embattled Arab Leaders Decide It’s Better to Fight Than Quit, April 28) has discovered that that those dictators who are prepared to use extreme force are the ones who survive. Those who followed the NYT’s advice to engage in meaningful reform are gone or will shortly be gone.

The NYT Lets the Cat Out of the Bag: Reduce the Deficit By Raising Taxes on the Middle-Class Without Doing Anything

Picture the five year-old who blurts out at a family gathering: “Grandpa has bad breath.” Grandpa may indeed have bad breath, but this is not something said in polite company.

A veteran NYT journalist has committed the indiscretion of the five year old. (See Ross Douthat, “The Middle Class Tax Trap”, April 18). He sweeps away the smoke and mirrors for a fleeting moment. We learn that Obama has an alternative to his strategy of “soak the rich and then just keep going deeper into the red.” The CBO’s “current law baseline” reveals that, if the Bush tax rates are not renewed in 2012, inflation and the alternative minimum tax will raise middle-class marginal tax rates from 29 to 38 percent (Welcome to the “tax rates for the rich”), and federal tax revenues will rise from 18 to 23 percent of GDP.

Just by doing nothing in 2012, the Obama administration can set the country on course to “afford” a European style welfare state. As more and more of our vast middle class are pushed into higher tax brackets, federal, state, and local revenues rise to some forty percent of GDP. Add a harmless two to three percent deficit on top of that, and we have reached the low to mid forty percents in terms of government spending. We can miraculously pay for our entitlements without breaking a sweat. And we have done this without a value added tax, no less.

The CBO warns that their “current law baseline” could “tend to discourage some economic activity” and could “harm the economy through the impact on peoples’ decisions on how much to work and save.” We do not really know how our middle class would react to European levels of taxation. Some of us hope we’ll never test this proposition.

President Obama warned that the Republican budget proposals would lead to “a fundamentally different America.” But in a burst of candor, the NYT writer admits that the “current law baseline” scenario would lead to a “more stagnant and balkanized society in which our promise to the elderly crowds out the fundamental promise of America itself.”

Remarkable words from our newspaper of record.

NYT Media Bias: A Blatantly Misleading Headline (“Budget Cuts Raise Doubt on the Course of Recovery”)

I was taught in junior high journalism that headlines are guides to the content of the article. If the reader skips the article, the headline constitutes the information that the reader takes away. The headline should strive to honestly capture what the article is about.

“Budget Cuts Raise Doubt On the Course of Recovery” (NYT, Business section, April 12) blatantly violate this basic rule. The headline warns that experts (not the writer) think that the $38 billion budget cut (and cuts to follow) will harm the recovery. “The budget deal is a bet by the Obama administration that the loss of $38 billion in federal spending will not be the straw that breaks the back of the fragile economic recovery.”

We then learn that the straw is lighter than the lightest of feathers. The $38 billion equals one quarter of one percent of GDP and “joins a growing list of minor problems impeding growth, economists said.” Whom is he quoting, I'd like to know.

To underscore the impeding danger, the author tells us that a chief economist of a Chicago investment firm has reduced her growth forecast from 4.2 percent to 3.3 percent. There is no corollary statement her move was prompted by the budget cut. If it were, I imagine she would be laughed out of the investment community.

The article changes tone. We learn that things are looking up. The Fed and private forecasters predict that growth will accelerate. Even more surprising (in light of the dire headline), there are experts who think budget cuts will stimulate economic activity, but one such expert is dismissed as belonging to “a libertarian think tank.” However, other economists (in addition to the libertarian) opine that budgets cuts will have immediate economic benefits “by soothing the nerves of foreign investors.”

The NYT writer saves his strongest ammunition for last: an IMF warning that “the cuts proposed by the Obama administration will be challenging to implement in an environment of weak growth and high unemployment.” As I read this, the IMF is concerned that the administration cannot carry through on the proposed budget because of political considerations, not because of the economic consequences. I cannot really tell from the information in the article.

An accurate headline from an unbiased writer would have been: “$38 billion budget cut no threat to recovery, experts say.”

NYT’s Expose: But GE Is Doing Exactly What is Expected of Them (Subtitle: Jeffrey Immelt is James Taggart in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged opening on April 15)

President Obama’s appointment of GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt as his job czar signaled his “move to the center.” The pro-business President declared a “government-business partnership” to create jobs, green technology, and other good things. Now a NYT investigation reports that GE paid no U.S. taxes, aggressively lobbied Congress for subsidies and sweetheart deals, and spends millions (billions?) to minimize its tax bill. The NYT was shocked, as was Claude Rains in Casablanca, to find such skullduggery, from GE, no less. The NYT concludes that one of the most striking advantages of GE is not its jet engines and washing machines but “its ability to lobby for, win and take advantage of tax breaks.”

Written to buttress the case against reductions in the corporate tax rate, the NYT investigation unwittingly strikes a deeper vein --- that GE is faithfully pursuing Obama’s vision of, what is called in other countries, crony capitalism. Under this philosophy, “crony corporations” should follow where government incentives lead them. If Obama wants green jobs, they will build windmills, with healthy subsidies of course. If the government wants more lending, crony corporations will lend with a bailout if the loans go bad. A “green car” should be no problem. The government will pick up most of the price tag for leery consumers. Insofar as crony corporations, like GE, can “negotiate” their tax bill with Congress, they are a ready source of campaign contributions or other perquisites.

Such crony capitalism changes the normal rules of economics. Those who play the “business-government partnership game” better than others win. Those who do not play well lose, even if they are superior entrepreneurs or innovators.

From an economic perspective, it is not even clear that GE is a real “winner.” In pursuing subsidies and tax advantages, GE engages in activities that yield lower returns than other alternatives. The government payoff compensates them for making otherwise unwise economic decisions. The GEs of the world also have to waste enormous resources on the lobbying game.

If we factor in all these economic costs and losses, GE may have been better off not playing the crony capitalism game after all. The public, surely, is made worse off by the misallocation of resources and other economic losses.

The NYT’s disclosures, coupled with Obama’s appointment of Immelt, are an embarrassment, but they offer a rare backroom glimpse of crony capitalism in action. Our crony capitalism takes place, respectably and legally, in board rooms, in congressional and executive offices, or “on bended knee” before Charles Rangel. In other less civilized countries, it takes the form of shakedowns, threats of violence, and arbitrary prosecutions, but the game is played with the same results. In Russia, it is called State-Mafia capitalism. In the U.S., it is corporate welfare.

How To Distort Polls: The NYT/CBS Poll on Public Sector Workers

The big surprises of yesterday’s NYT/CBS national poll on public sector unions were that 61 percent of adult Americans think that public employee salaries and benefits are “too low” or “about right,” 56 percent oppose cutting public employee salaries and benefits to reduce state deficits, and 40 percent prefer increasing taxes to decreasing spending on other things, among them public employee salaries and benefits. (The poll reports that even a slight majority of Republicans said public employee wages and benefits were “too low” or “just about right.”).

These results raise eyebrows. They seem to contradict the November election results. Perhaps the fickle electorate has changed its mind since November? Last night’s political talk shows were abuzz.

These poll results are so out of line with conventional thinking that they require careful scrutiny. My own (admittedly non-expert) examination raises three red flags:

FIRST: Why are there so many public-employee and union households in the sample?

The NYT/CBS pollsters conducted telephone interviews with 984 respondents using procedures that “in theory, in 19 cases out of 20”will “differ by no more than three percentage points” from an interview of all American adults. Their procedures include adjusting for under- or oversampling of various demographic characteristics. There are no adjustments for public employment, labor union membership, or political identification.

Twenty five percent of the NYT/CBS respondents are from households that had a public employee (versus 17 percent for the U.S.) and twenty percent had a union member in the household (versus 13 percent for the US). If we combine the two (while avoiding double counting as best we can), some 34 percent of the sample are either public employees or union members (versus 23 percent for the US population).

If we assume (rightly or wrongly) that all public employees and union members responded in the most pro-public-employee way to the survey questions, the pro-public-employee majorities wither away without them. The survey therefore shows that Americans who do not have a union member or public employee in the household think public-employee wages and benefits are too high, oppose raising taxes to cover deficits, and favor reduction of collective-bargaining rights.

(To adjust for the oversampling of public employees and union members alone, one should subtract some eleven percentage points from the more favorable public-employee response rates, as I see it).

SECOND: Are Republicans underrepresented?

The NYT/CBS poll asks questions about today’s most politically heated issue. It would therefore seem appropriate to weight the sample to make it 29 percent Republican, 31 percent Democrat, and 38 percent independent (according to recent Gallup reports) before reporting results that are supposed to capture the “national” mood. At a minimum, the NYT/CBS pollsters should provide the breakdowns of their respondents by political affiliations so that users can make their own adjustments if one group is underrepresented. The high public employee and labor union share already suggests an oversampling of Democrats. There is also the fact that Republican response rates to telephone surveys tend to be lower, requiring that their share be adjusted upwards for this reason alone.

Let the NYT/CBS pollsters release these results. I went to NYT.com/polls and failed to find any of these details.

THIRD: Why are results not broken down by political affiliation?

The NTYT/CBS pollsters clearly have results in their hands broken down by political affiliation. They proudly report that “61 percent of those polled — including just over half of Republicans — said they thought the salaries and benefits of most public employees were either “about right” or “too low” for the work they do.” Later they report “there was also strong opposition from independents: 62 percent of them said they opposed taking bargaining rights away from public employee unions.”

If we have the results and respondent shares broken down by political affiliation, we can calculate ourselves the “national” responses adjusted for political affiliation.

The NYT/CBS poll is an example of the not-so-subtle use of polling to support a political cause. This practice is not limited to the left. My suggestion is that next time, NYT/CBS put much more detail on their website (including the cross tabulations that I find sorely missing). Skeptics can therefore examine the results for themselves so that they can draw proper conclusions from the survey.