New York Times Watch Quotes of Note: 'Deep Cuts in Social Services' by Conservatives Led to London Riots

“Deep Cuts in Social Services” By Conservatives Led to London Riots

“Frustration in this impoverished neighborhood, as in many others in Britain, has mounted as the government’s austerity budget has forced deep cuts in social services. At the same time, a widely held disdain for law enforcement here, where a large Afro-Caribbean population has felt singled out by the police for abuse, has only intensified through the drumbeat of scandal that has racked Scotland Yard in recent weeks and led to the resignation of the force’s two top commanders....Economic malaise and cuts in spending and services instituted by the Conservative-led government have been recurring flashpoints for months...As the budget cuts take hold, risk of unemployment increases and social measures like youth projects are sacrificed, Mr. Beech said, and ‘all logic says there will be an increase in antisocial behavior.’” – London-based reporter Ravi Somaiya on the riots there, August 8.

Norway Terrorist’s “Fellow Travelers,” Gingrich and Rep. Peter King

“Breivik has many ideological fellow travelers on both sides of the Atlantic. Theirs is the poison in which he refined his murderous resentment....Republicans like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Representative Peter King, who have found it politically opportune to target ‘creeping Shariah in the United States’ at a time when the middle name of the president is Hussein. – International columnist Roger Cohen, posted to nytimes.com July 25.

Again: Columnist Compares Tea Party to Terrorists

“You know what they say: Never negotiate with terrorists. It only encourages them. These last few months, much of the country has watched in horror as the Tea Party Republicans have waged jihad on the American people. Their intransigent demands for deep spending cuts, coupled with their almost gleeful willingness to destroy one of America’s most invaluable assets, its full faith and credit, were incredibly irresponsible. But they didn’t care. Their goal, they believed, was worth blowing up the country for, if that’s what it took....For now, the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests.” – Columnist Joe Nocera, August 2.


And Again: Columnist Compares Tea Party to Terrorists

“If China or Iran threatened our national credit rating and tried to drive up our interest rates, or if they sought to damage our education system, we would erupt in outrage. Well, wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists. We tend to think of national security narrowly as the risk of a military or terrorist attack. But national security is about protecting our people and our national strength -- and the blunt truth is that the biggest threat to America’s national security this summer doesn’t come from China, Iran or any other foreign power. It comes from budget machinations, and budget maniacs, at home....So let’s remember not only the national security risks posed by Iran and Al Qaeda. Let’s also focus on the risks, however unintentional, from domestic zealots.” – Columnist Nicholas Kristof, July 24.

Again? Another Columnist Likens Tea Party to Terrorists

“Alas, that is the Tea Party. It is so lacking in any aspiration for American greatness, so dominated by the narrowest visions for our country and so ignorant of the fact that it was not tax cuts that made America great but our unique public-private partnerships across the generations. If sane Republicans do not stand up to this Hezbollah faction in their midst, the Tea Party will take the G.O.P. on a suicide mission.” – Columnist Thomas Friedman, July 27.

Welcome to the Race, Governor Perry

“And if [Rick] Perry were to win the Republican nomination, he would face critics, among them Democrats, who have long complained that the state’s economic health has come at a steep a price: a long-term hollowing out of the state’s prospects because of deep cuts to education spending, low rates of investment in research and development, and a disparity in the job market that confines many blacks and Hispanics to minimum-wage jobs without health insurance.” – Clifford Krauss, August 16 report from Houston.

The “Psychological Upside” of Soviet Repression

“There was an initial assumption in the West that the end of the cold war in 1991 brought universal jubilation. But time has proved and the show suggests otherwise. Free-market capitalism brought its suppressions and exclusions, as artists discovered. Among other things, some felt, it undermined the purpose and value of art....For some artists repression had a psychological upside. It gave their work a clear-cut sense of importance. It established art’s primary value as moral, not monetary; instrumental, not formal. If what you were doing was censorable, you could trust you were doing something right; heroic, even. And this attitude fostered solidarity and the growth of a counterculture in which experimentation, individuality and iconoclasm were protected and nurtured.” – From a July 22 art review by Holland Cotter, “When Repression Was a Muse.”

Reporter Sighs Along With Obama’s “Frustration” Over G.O.P. “Intransigence”

“And I think the frustration the president has, is ‘Look, I’ve come three-quarters the way to your position, and you’re not willing to give me that last 25 percent that I can use to say to Democrats there is something in this for you.’ So I think the intransigence of the Republicans is really beginning to wear on him and just strikes him as more and more unreasonable." – Reporter Mark Landler in a “Caucus” podcast, posted on nytimes.com July 15.

Read the full issue of biased New York Times quotes at Times Watch Quotes of Note.