A front-page article in today's New York Times about President Bush's budget reports, "Democrats said Mr. Bush's request for large Pentagon spending increases belied his claim to fiscal restraint, and suggested that the military budget was the first place they would look for savings to make sure that the budget did not use Social Security money."
Aha, so now the "Democrats" are attacking President Bush for his "large Pentagon spending increases." A July 11, 2001, Washington Post article on a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee reported "committee members from both parties also complained that Bush's spending plan still would underfund the military." The Post quoted Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat from Connecticut, as saying to the military brass at a Senate hearing, "We're not giving you enough." The Post also quoted Senator Max Cleland, a Democrat from Georgia, as saying that the Bush administration budget proposal "grossly underfunds" the military.
If the Times were a little bit sharper and quicker and more willing to ask tough questions of Democrats, it might name these unnamed "Democrats" who are complaining about Mr. Bush's "request for large Pentagon spending increases," and ask them, "Gee, how can you complain about Bush spending too much on the military when Senators Lieberman and Cleland, from your own party, were just last month complaining that Bush was spending too little on the military?" But instead the paper lets the contradiction pass without comment.
Sham Unions: A headline in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "Workers' Rights Are Suffering in China as Manufacturing Goes Capitalist." The article reports, in all apparent seriousness, that "With the collapse of the state industries that once dominated China, tens of millions of the workers who were long portrayed as official masters of the Communist nation have been virtually cast aside. Their official Communist-run trade union federation has often been little more than a bystander as the old companies are dissolved or sold. As private and foreign companies race ahead in newer industrial centers like this one in the southeastern province of Guangdong, a new kind of working class is emerging, one dominated by rural migrants who have no tradition of unions or the security once enjoyed in state enterprises."
The Times says, "A large majority of the new companies have ignored the requirement to unionize or have created puppet bodies, according to Chinese and foreign labor experts."
Worker's rights aren't suffering in China because of China going "Capitalist"; they are suffering because of China remaining communist. The "tradition of unions" the Times refers to is nonexistent -- in communist China there are no free labor unions. There weren't any in the Soviet Union, either. The AFL-CIO long recognized this fact by refusing to have anything to do with these sham state-run unions, recognizing them as organs of the state rather than of the workers. This was the source of the rift between the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which represented the genuine labor unions, and the World Federation of Trade Unions, which represented the sham communist state-controlled unions. The "requirement to unionize" that the Times refers to is worthless in a communist country where the state controls both the union and the factory. Under communism, the workers had -- and still have -- no right to organize free labor unions, which is the essential workers' right. So a headline claiming "Workers' Rights Are Suffering in China as Manufacturing Goes Capitalist" is just nonsensical. So is complaining of "puppet bodies" emerging under capitalism, when the communist, state-dominated "labor union" was itself a puppet.
Ultraconservative: An article in the national section of today's New York Times reports on Senator Jesse Helms' plans to retire. "Mr. Helms often offended many liberals and moderates with his ultraconservative views on race and homosexuality, making him an enduring bogeyman to the American left," the Times reports. The ultraliberal Times doesn't say what the senator's "views on race" are, or just what defines them as "ultraconservative."