The "Economic View" column in the business section of today's New York Times begins: "Go back through all the writings on capitalism, back to Adam Smith, and a bedrock principle asserts itself repeatedly. It is that government provides services the private sector cannot provide as well or will not provide at all. Building airports and putting satellites into space are obvious examples."
Oh, so the Times columnist considers it "obvious" that government can do better than the private sector at building airports and putting satellites into space. That isn't so obvious to everyone else. It's not even obvious to many people who work in government. When the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey recently began a $9.3 billion renovation of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, it hired a private company, Bechtel, to manage much of the project. When the city-run Denver International Airport finally opened in 1995, it was 16 months behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget, and its automated baggage-mangling system was the subject of jokes on late-night television. When it comes to satellite launches, too, the U.S. government has always relied heavily on private contractors like Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, and it is doing so even more now. A June 1998 report from the General Accounting Office, an investigative arm of Congress, that analyzed the space-launch needs of the Department of Defense said, "commercial interests are expected to dominate the worldwide space launch service market."
The same Times column goes on to complain that the nation "is being locked into a $1.35 trillion tax cut over the next decade without ever hearing a discussion in Congress of how the government might have spent that money if there were no tax cut." No one is being "locked" into anything. If the Democrats take control of the Congress in 2002 or win the White House in 2004 and want to raise taxes, there is nothing stopping them from trying.
The same Times column goes on to refer to "the conservative Cato Institute." Cato would be more accurately described as libertarian.
The Reign in Spain: The article in the business section of today's New York Times about Amazon.com reports "In other cases, the computer recommended keeping tighter reign on inventory, pressing the vendor for more discounts, or raising prices." The word the Times was looking for there is rein, not reign. You keep a tight rein on a horse; a king reigns.
Late Again: The New York Times waddles in this morning with a front-page news article on the Hindus upset about beef flavoring in McDonald's French fries. The Seattle Times reported this story on May 2. Overlawyered.com had it on May 4, linking to May 3 stories on Reuters and in the Times of India. The Wall Street Journal had an editorial about the case that ran in American editions on May 14. The fact that it took the New York Times until May 20 to come in on it is telling. The fact that it is on the front page is even more telling; it's as if the Times really does assume that its readers live in a vacuum and that the Times is the only news source that exists.
Late Again: The Sunday Styles section of the New York Times waddles in today with a brief article on how bamboo is "the floral pick of the month." That's old news to readers of the Wall Street Journal, which had a better article on the trend in Friday's paper under the headline "'Lucky' Bamboo Has Florists Seeing Green."