The national section of today's New York Times carries an article under the headline, "Bush to Insist on Ethanol Use in California; Critics Say Cheaper Technology Can Avert Jump in Gasoline Prices." The article reports, "The decision opens up the biggest market in the country to corn producers and, in particular, could benefit the Archer Daniels Midland agribusiness, a major Republican contributor, because it is one of the few ethanol producers able to transport ethanol to the West and East coasts." The innuendo is that President Bush made this decision to reward a "major Republican contributor."
Well, it's true that Archer Daniels Midland, its political action committee and its executives are major Republican contributors. Yet somehow the fact that the company, its political action committee and its executives are also major Democratic contributors seems to the New York Times to be not worth mentioning. Since the Federal Election Commission's Web-searchable records begin in 1997, ADM donated $100,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, $200,000 to the Democratic National Committee, and $199,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It addition, its political action committee donated $15,000 to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and $10,000 to the Democratic Party of Illinois. The PAC also gave $3,000 to Evan Bayh, $2,000 to Barbara Boxer, $3,000 to Carol Moseley Braun, $3,000 to John Breaux, $10,000 to Mel Carnahan, $7,000 to Tom Daschle, $6,000 to Richard Durbin, $4,000 to Dianne Feinstein, $13,000 to Richard Gephardt, $10,000 to Ted Kennedy, $4,500 to Charles Rangel, $10,000 to Charles Stenholm, and $10,000 to Robert Torricelli -- all Democrats.
For the Times to describe ADM as "a major Republican contributor" tells only half the story.
Cuban Propaganda: The metro section of today's New York Times carries a propaganda dispatch from Havana that is worthy of Herbert Matthews, the Times correspondent who was a dupe of Castro 40 years ago. Today's dispatch reports on eight poor medical students from the U.S. who are studying in Cuba on scholarships provided by the Communist regime there. "Conservative critics, however, says the students are being used as mere propaganda tools," the Times reports in a pathetic attempt to demonstrate some objectivity. But the article doesn't quote a single such conservative critic. And in any case, the critics of Cuba aren't just conservatives but have included over the years liberal anti-Communists like John F. Kennedy and Lane Kirkland. The Miami Herald, which reported on this program months ago, had a much more balanced article that included quotes from actual critics of the program and of the Castro regime. The Times account, on the other hand, reports unquestioningly that "Cuba's own medical system -- though beleaguered by shortages -- has been praised by some experts as a model for community and preventative medicine, especially in the third world." The article further quotes the students referring to "the successes Cuba has had in public health, which have eluded its Caribbean and Latin American neighbors." The Cuban public health "successes" are like the Soviet Union's agricultural "successes" -- the imaginary creations of Communist bureaucrats whose career advancement depends on creating statistics to demonstrate "successes" even when the reality is that of miserable failure.