A front-page article in today's New York Times reports, "Officials said the Postal Service, whose 800,000 workers make it the nation's second-largest private employer after Wal-Mart, was in the process of ordering new machinery that can irradiate mail to remove contaminants, in the same way food is treated."
Only the New York Times, in its wisdom, could consider the Postal Service a "private employer." The Postal Service is owned by the federal government. It doesn't pay taxes. It has a federally granted monopoly in exchange for a federal universal-service obligation. Its postal rate changes must be approved by a federal commission. It is controlled by a board of governors appointed by the president. Its employees have a legal status similar to federal employees and are covered by many of the same laws and regulations. It has its own police force of postal inspectors who have the authority of federal law enforcement officials. If the Postal Service is already a private employer, what was its postmaster general from 1998 to 2001 doing writing in the September 2, 2001, Washington Post, under the headline, "I Ran the Postal Service; It Should be Privatized": "I can't believe that 25 years from now the Postal Service will still be owned by the federal government"?
After the Taliban: An editorial in today's New York Times comes out against allowing "the discredited warlords" of the Northern Alliance to rule Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. The Times writes that such a government "would have little chance" of "acceptance by important neighbors like Pakistan." That's a weak argument for rejecting the Northern Alliance. Why should America care what Pakistan wants? Pakistan liked the Taliban government and America's reward for that choice was thousands dead at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11. When Israel was created in 1948, it had little chance of acceptance by its important neighbors, but that was not a good reason to oppose its creation. Taiwan has little chance of acceptance by some of its important neighbors, like Red China, but that is no reason for America to abandon it. Pakistan is a military dictatorship that is supporting terrorism against India, a democracy. There's no reason for America to defer to its whims. Pakistan's nuclear capability is not a reason -- America should have eliminated it long ago.
The Times editorial further complains that the Northern Alliance has "ethnically unrepresentative leaders." Well, the list of editors and executives on the Times masthead is also "ethnically unrepresentative." The U.S. Congress is "ethnically unrepresentative." So what? Afghanistan is in the midst of a civil war. The Times editorialists seem to think the new government there should be created not by the winners of the war but by the beneficiaries of some sort of racial quota system. It would be nice if the new government were ethnically representative but more important is that it is free and democratic and adheres to the rule of law.
Second Time: An article in the Circuits section of today's New York Times reports on the use of global positioning system units at the World Trade Center site. "Officials are examining the idea of hoisting an antenna on 3 World Financial Center, across the highway from the trade center site, that would boost the hand-held computers' signals and give them a clearer shot to satellites." The Times made the same error in describing how GPS units work on September 29. Smartertimes pointed that error out at the time, and the New York Times ran a correction on October 3. The devices don't send signals; they receive signals from satellites. So to refer to boosting the hand-held-computers' signals is nonsensical. What is being boosted is the satellite's signal; the antenna would give the satellites a clearer shot to the computers.
Stalin: The Bloomberg-Green-Stalin coverage in the metro section of today's New York Times is even worse than yesterday's, and yesterday's was the topic of a Smartertimes item. Today a Times columnist accuses Mr. Bloomberg of adopting "the tactics of Joseph McCarthy" and a "political memo" that begins on the metro front accuses Mr. Bloomberg of engaging in "hyperbole." The Times "political memo" describes the Stalin question as an "unwelcome" subject. The Times doesn't even consider the possibility that, with New York and America now engaged in a war, the fact that Mark Green woefully misunderstood the intentions of America's foe in the Cold War is even the slightest bit relevant. Mr. Green is going around town campaigning for mayor in part by bragging about the number of books he has written. It's not McCarthyism to go look at what the books say and hold Mr. Green accountable for siding with the Soviet propaganda line against Ronald Reagan. If Mr. Green were to now acknowledge he was wrong about Stalin's intentions, that would be one thing. But given that Mr. Green has so far been unwilling to make that acknowledgement, it seems to Smartertimes that it is entirely justified for the Bloomberg campaign to press Mr. Green on the Stalin issue.