Scott Spiegel

With the news that Frank Rich and Bob Herbert have left The New York Times, the selection of my 20 free Times articles a month couldn’t be less strongly affected if Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd decided to quit.

Recently John Gruber of Daring Fireball deconstructed the imbecilic, overly complicated pricing structure the non-business-adept Times has spent a year-and-a-half and tens of millions of dollars devising to undergird its new digital subscription plan.

The Times’ business model, in addition to being extraordinarily confusing, includes the following giant loophole: “Readers who come to Times articles through links from search engines, blogs and social media will be able to read those articles, even if they have reached their monthly reading limit.”

So if you find a story on the Times site that looks worthwhile (suspend your disbelief for a moment), but you’ve reached your monthly limit, you can just copy the title, paste it in a search engine, and click on it from a site that links to it.

Admittedly, this is too much work for most people to bother to find out, say, Dowd’s opinion on the rise of Mormons in popular culture, but some tenacious fans will undoubtedly make the effort.

Perhaps The Times hopes its free backdoor policy will lead more social media outlets to link to their articles.  Maybe they’re afraid they won’t easily be able to regulate access from third-party sources.  But either way, doesn’t this aspect of their plan defeat the purpose of limiting content in order to make people buy subscriptions?

All articles from the Top News section will continue to be available for free via New York Times smartphone and tablet apps.

Also, purchasing just the Sunday print version will give you the most comprehensive tier of unlimited access to digital content, including online, smartphone, and tablet.  This leads Reuters’ Felix Salmon to wonder, “[I]f you get a Sunday-only subscription and then suspend delivery of the physical newspaper while you ‘go on vacation’ for a month or two at a time, how long can you drag out your free access to the website before the NYT gets wise to what you’re doing?”

I guess we shouldn’t expect a sterling business model from a paper whose editorial board believes the way to create wealth is to blow up federal spending and increase federal regulation of the economy by an order of magnitude.

Isn’t The Wall Street Journal’s model much more sensible: everyone has free access to most online content, but key articles require a subscription?  Isn’t it easier to tie access to content, rather than try to tabulate the ephemeral surfing activities of millions of users out there in the ether?

The Times and Journal’s payment plans seem to reflect their ideological worldviews: The Journal, which leans right, offers general content funded via advertising and charges for premium content readers are willing to pay for, a typical capitalist arrangement.  In contrast, The Times, which leans left, will rely on a cadre of loyal followers willing to donate the equivalent of welfare to keep the sputtering paper going, regardless of how frequently the journal offers specific content worth paying for.

In the same way that liberal celebrities frequently announce how much they love paying taxes, soon I can imagine New York elites sanctimoniously defending the Times’ plan by declaring how much they adore shelling out for its superlative content.

Given the astronomical cost of the Times’ plan, only rich liberals will be able to afford it anyway.

At least the new digital subscription plan is an improvement over the short-lived TimesSelect debacle, in which the paper charged for online access to the site’s premium content—which included such must-read material as the repetitive, stale-as-a-cigarette-butt columns of Krugman, Herbert, Rich, and Dowd.

Borrowing language from President Obama’s State of the Union address, New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. announced in a letter to readers that the new subscription plan is an “investment in our future.”

In other words, Obama implied that taxpayers should subsidize inefficient, underused high-speed rail—so more people will be forced to use something they didn’t use when they didn’t have to pay for it, and other options hadn’t been driven from the market.  Similarly, Times readers will now have to pay for biased, slanted content so more people will be forced to read something they didn’t want to read when they didn’t have to pay for it, and other options hadn’t been driven from the market.

Except that The Times won’t continue to dominate the news market the way government-subsidized boondoggles like high-speed rail and ObamaCare will take over their markets.  Does The Times really think they’re the only game in town?  The Times is one of those papers everyone reads because everyone else reads it.  That won’t be true once people start getting charged hundreds of dollars a year to read it.

Unless the federal government steps in and gives The Times a giant bailout, consumers are going to wise up and start getting their content elsewhere.  Not only does the sclerotic, past-its-prime paper’s poorly conceived paywall fail to invest in its own future, it indirectly invests in its competitors’ futures.

Which is fine with me.

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Jonathan Martin of Politico notes that, even though racism against the president is supposedly widespread, “it’s still a sensitive enough issue that the [Democratic] party doesn’t broach it directly.”  By “sensitive,” of course, he means “far-fetched, ludicrous, and laughable.”

Representative Hank Johnson (D-GA) claims that in Senator Joe Wilson’s outburst toward the president last week, Wilson “kind of winked at that element” of the U.S. that disrespects Obama because he is black.  I’m not sure what criminal statutes are on the books for “kind of winking” at an “element,” but I do know that Democrats’ charges of racism until recently have been so timid and indirect, because they know that if they made them openly, they might have to produce actual evidence of racism.

Lately some of the attempts to label opposition to socialized medicine and trillion-dollar deficits as racism have gotten more blatant.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright was just caught on video snarling, “I think the racists in the right wing are upset because poor people are about to be helped.”  And it wasn’t even during one of his weekly sermons!

Jimmy Carter weighed in on the subject over the weekend: “[A]n overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man… [and] a belief among many white people… that African Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.”

MSNBC bloggers recently wrote, “Whether it’s fair or not, there is a perception growing that race is driving some elements of the opposition to Obama.”

Maureen Dowd wrote of Wilson in the New York Times, “[F]air or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!”  Oh, the New York Times doesn’t need to be fair!  Stop being so hard on yourself!

According to Dowd, who was praised by liberal bloggers everywhere for finally stating openly what they believed but didn’t feel comfortable expressing, “Wilson clearly did not like being lectured and even rebuked by the brainy black president presiding over the majestic chamber.”  Note to Dowd: None of the conservatives in Congress did, and it had nothing to do with Obama’s being brainy or black—it had everything to do with his being wrongheaded and pompous.

Dowd lamented “the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as… socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people.”

I don’t know—some would say that taking over banks, car companies, and the health care industry is a bit socialist; wanting to “spread the wealth around” is a bit Marxist; having a spiritual mentor who railed against white people in church for 20 years is a bit racist; nominating former communists as czars is a bit Commie; receiving material support from groups that beat up health care protestors at townhall meetings is a bit Nazi; and planning to set up government panels to ration end-of-life care implies a willingness to snuff old people.  Then again, some don’t write for the New York Times.

Dowd added, “Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president… convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.”  Yes, and the “shocking disrespect” for the office of Congressman at mostly white Senators and Representatives’ townhall meetings has convinced me: Some people just can’t believe white people can be in Congress and will never accept it.

Dowd charged that Obama is “at the center of a period of racial turbulence sparked by his ascension” and that “this president is the ultimate civil rights figure—a black man whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a loco fringe.”

For liberals, the equation is “challenged” plus “black” = “victim of racism.”

I suppose we need to inform Thomas Sowell, Larry Elder, Walter Williams, Sonja Schmidt, Mychal Massie, and other fantastic black conservative and libertarian commentators and harsh Obama critics that their opposition is based on mere black self-hatred.

It was also insinuated by major media outlets that the massive tea party held in Washington over the weekend was fueled by racist resentment of a black man in the White House.  As amply documented by photos of the event, however, signs protested the actions of not just Obama but: Bush, Congress, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Steny Hoyer, Saul Alinsky, government, and the mainstream media, among many other targets.

Tea party signs protested Medicaid and Medicare’s insolvency, passing on trillions of dollars of debt to future generations, providing health care to illegal immigrants, paying for abortions through health care legislation, excessive taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, government takeover of the automobile industry, and the appointment of czars.  (Take that, NAACP!)

Finally, signs supported tort reform, health savings accounts, a flat tax, gun rights, the war on terror, and a strange, unheard-of cult called “Liberty.”

Notably absent from protest signs were calls for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and the resegregation of water fountains.  As Obama correctly observed in one of his health care speeches this summer, “This is not about me.”

As for the occasional reference to race on protest signs, Martin writes, “Republicans see an important distinction between Obama critics who are genuinely worried about his… policies and those whose fears go beyond the president’s liberalism…  But for some Democrats, it’s difficult to make that distinction when conservative marchers take to Washington bearing images of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Obama that read, ‘He had a dream, we got a nightmare.’”  And for some Republicans, it’s difficult to make a distinction between signs comparing King and Obama that would be acceptable to liberals and those that would be branded “racist.”

As one prescient and widely photographed sign at the protest read, “It doesn’t matter what this sign says—you’ll call it racism anyway.”

In anticipation of the humiliating defeat of their socialized medicine scheme, Democrats are feverishly working to get their legislation passed by cheating.

Their plan, known as “budget reconciliation,” works as follows: (1) have Senate committees expand Medicaid, cut Medicare, force individuals to buy and businesses to offer insurance, give subsidies to low-income people and tax credits to small businesses, levy new taxes, and do everything else Democrats wanted to do in their health care bill but knew would never pass; (2) lump it all into a bill; and (3) pass it with 50 votes and no filibuster.

The bill would also contain language to support enactment of a health care overhaul, but because provisions unrelated to the budget cannot legally be included, the Senate parliamentarian will likely strike these from the bill.  According to the New York Times, which favors the reconciliation swindle, it is unclear whether two key elements will be allowed in the bill: the requirement that insurance companies accept all candidates and charge the same regardless of condition, and the creation of a government health insurance exchange.

The Times eggs Democrats on to declare that these two provisions, while irrelevant to the budget, “are so intertwined with other reforms that they are [necessary] for other provisions that do affect spending or revenues.”

If that ruse doesn’t work, the Times notes, then the process could “leave the reform package riddled with holes—perhaps providing subsidies to buy insurance on exchanges that do not exist, for example.”  In this eventuality, Democrats would pass a second bill, subject to filibuster, that fills in gaps where budget-irrelevant provisions were removed.

Ignore for the moment the fact that Democrats’ chess-playing skills obviously aren’t very good: to wit, why would Republican senators support a bill to prop up the reconciliation bill, if the two bills in combination would lead to an outcome they opposed in the first place?

Ignore, too, the stipulation that the reconciliation bill may not legally cause deficits to increase, which a health care overhaul clearly would do.

There’s just the inconvenient detail that reconciliation was never designed to be used for anything remotely like what Democrats propose to use it for.

According to the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Rules, the purpose of budget reconciliation is to “fine tune revenue and spending levels.”  Admittedly, in the Obama era, adding a trillion-dollar program here or there could be characterized as “fine tuning,” but I don’t think this is what the creators of reconciliation had in mind.

Democrats have offered the following compelling argument for using reconciliation to socialize health care: Republicans have used reconciliation!

Yes, Republicans have used reconciliation—for things it was supposed to be used for, such as adjusting tax rates and decreasing entitlement spending.  Claiming that reconciliation can be used for health care because Republicans have used it is like claiming that pesos can be used at Taco Bell because Mexicans have used them.

Even the New York Times admits, “The approach is risky.  Reconciliation bills are primarily intended to deal with budget items that affect the deficit, not with substantive legislation like health care reform.”  Note the sneaky, dishonest addition of “primarily.”

As Judd Gregg explained to Norah O’Donnell, who insisted Gregg was a hypocrite because he had favored reconciliation in the past, “Reconciliation is meant to adjust already existing programs.  You adjust tax rates, or you adjust already existing programs at the margin.  What’s being proposed here is, ab initio, a brand-new, major initiative which is the total rewrite of the health care system of the United States.”

President Clinton floated the idea of using reconciliation to pass health care legislation in 1993, but Senator Robert Byrd reminded him that reconciliation was meant to be used to square away budgets, not turn us into Canada.  In 2003, Congressional Republican leaders considered, then rejected, using reconciliation to pass their prescription benefits program.

In 2005, Senate Republicans introduced a provision allowing drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, an attempt that failed when the provision was removed during reconciliation.  Whether this attempt was appropriate or not, it should be pretty clear that if we’re not allowed to use reconciliation to drill in a barren wilderness that makes up less than 0.5% of Alaska in the middle of an energy crisis and a war in Iraq, then it’s not appropriate to use budget reconciliation to take over 17% of the economy.

There’s a reason budget reconciliation was introduced as a separate parliamentary process: it was to be used to make adjustments to existing programs, not introduce massive new ones.  The total amount of debate time allowed for reconciliation is only 20 hours—about twice as long as Congress had to read the 1,600-page stimulus bill before voting, but still not very long.

By the way, I don’t fault Obama for threatening to violate the spirit of bipartisanship with the reconciliation maneuver, inasmuch as (1) I don’t favor Republicans in charge having to compromise when Democrats propose screwy ideas and (2) in order to put a halt to bipartisanship, Obama would have had to actually start practicing it first.  But it’s ironic that Congressional Democrats believe they are putting aside their longstanding, magnanimous display of bipartisanship by resorting to sleazy use of a tactic called “reconciliation.”

The new test of liberal political ideology seems to be, not whether you favor Obama’s health care plan, but how long it takes you to realize what a disaster it is.

The American people were, as usual, first out of the gate to demonstrate their common-sense conservatism.  Although a slim majority voted for Obama in November, a growing preponderance has been telling pollsters they disapprove of the President and his handling of health care.   On Sunday, Rasmussen reported that Obama had reached a new low in their Presidential Approval Index, with health care one of his lowest-rated issues.

Like a teacher indulging a failing student’s pleas to find a way to give him extra points on his test, the Congressional Budget Office has spent all summer admonishing Obama for presenting legislation that will be more expensive than advertised, produce no savings, and yield expanding and unsustainable deficits for the next 10 years.  (“Now, Barry, I’ve already given you all the credit I can—next time you’ll just have to try harder.”)

The Mayo Clinic, which Obama cites as a model for cost-cutting measures, called the Medicare payment model proposed by Congress a “catastrophe.”

Seven state medical associations banded together with private medical societies and two previous AMA presidents in a letter to the President opposing the legislation.  The American Hospital Association is imploring hospital directors to counter Congress’s bill, as are specialty associations such as the American College of Physicians.

John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal cataloging the myriad flaws in Democrats’ proposal.

Sixty-thousand AARP members have cut up their cards since July over their leadership’s endorsement of Congress’s approach.  Though AARP supports the President’s general strategy, even they had to smack Obama down for claiming they had endorsed a bill when they had not yet done so.

After Obama insulted the Postal Service in his quest for a bill, the National Association of Postal Supervisors wrote Obama a letter expressing “our collective disappointment that you chose to use the Postal Service as a scapegoat …  [I]t was a kick to the chest to have you take a shot at a group of federal employees who are working hard every day to support this country.”

Pseudo-moderate network CNN recently chronicled “Five Freedoms You’d Lose in Health Care Reform,” including the freedom to negotiate details of your plan, cut costs by living healthier, choose a high-deductible plan, keep your current plan, and select your doctors.

The Associated Press fact-checked Obama’s claims and called him out for continuing to tell the same lies: e.g., if you like your health insurance, you can keep it—the implication being that you can keep it for as long as your employer and insurance company would otherwise have offered it without government health care, which is outlawed in Congress’s plan.

The Washington Post, no friend to conservatives, has been barraging readers with columns opposing ObamaCare.  Columnist David Hilzenrath affirmed that the administration would not be able to ensure that employees can keep the plans they have now.  Martin Feldstein explained that the 85% of Americans who now have insurance would pay higher taxes and receive fewer services.  Maya MacGuineas ridiculed the administration’s pledge that it can add an expensive new health care plan covering millions more Americans that will cost no extra and actually alleviate the budget deficit.

The Post’s editorial board also reminded the administration of the CBO’s harsh projections and warned him not to treat these lightly.  In a separate editorial, they scorned Democrats’ stubborn, mindless fixation on a public option.

Obama’s own Hyde Park doctor suggests that Congress’s legislation is worthless and adds of his patient, “I’m not sure he really understands what we face in primary care.”

In the workers’ paradise to our north, the current and incoming presidents of the Canadian Medical Association recently bemoaned the failures of Canada’s universal health care system, calling it “sick,” “precarious,” and “imploding,” and urged Canadian doctors to support free market reforms to the system.

The artist of the Obama “Joker” poster, Palestinian socialist and Dennis Kucinich supporter Firas Alkhateeb, admitted, “[Y]ou had all of these people who basically saw him as the second coming of Christ.  From my perspective, there wasn’t much substance to him.”

Air America host Christiane Brown decried Obama’s reversal of his promise not to bar negotiation for lower drug prices, then purred, “He’s such a charming liar, though.  He’s such a nice guy when he lies like that.”

On Sunday, Senator Joe Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats, said he’s changed his mind on proposed legislation and urges postponing it until the economy recovers.

Now The New York Times has gotten on the bandwagon; you might say they finally have some “skin in the game.”  Times reporter David Pear reported a few days ago that there is, after all, a legitimate basis for elderly Americans’ fear that legislation will lead to rationing of health care.

Paul Krugman criticized the President’s priorities, belittled his dwindling ability to inspire confidence, and lamented that “his speeches and op-eds still read as if they were written by a committee.”

Bob Herbert scolded Obama for not explaining why a gargantuan new government program is in our country’s interest in the middle of a recession: “Many sane and intelligent people who voted for Mr. Obama… have legitimate concerns about the timing of this health reform initiative…  [He] has not been at all clear about how the reform that is coming will rein in runaway costs…  [P]eople are starting to lose faith in the president.”

I’m glad the Times is finally starting to see the light on Obama’s executive inexperience and his disastrous agenda.  Maybe now millions of Middle Americans who hang on Krugman and Herbert’s every word will develop more confidence in expressing their opposition at all those town hall meetings I keep hearing about.