Michael Cooper

Tax-cut hostile New York Times reporters Michael Cooper and David Kocieniewski teamed up Thursday in a “news” article that assumed as fact (using a study from a left-of-center “nonpartisan” group) that plans by Republican presidential candidates for reducing tax rates would by design lead to widening deficits and "benefit the wealthiest the most": “Higher Deficits Seen In Romney’s Tax Plan, And His Rivals’, Too.” Yet the Times's own chart shows 80% of filers earning between $20,000 and $30,000 -- hardly "the rich" -- would get a tax cut as well.

(Kocieniewski’s hostility to tax cuts is well documented, while Cooper attacked Obama from the left on March 2, 2011 for signing into law an obscure tax break not even liberal economists have  a problem with.)

Tuesday's New York Times's “Check Point” was the latest liberally slanted fact check of a G.O.P. presidential debate, this time by two liberal reporters, Michael Cooper and Nicholas Confessore, “Perry’s Criticism of Social Security as ‘Ponzi Scheme' Dogs Him in Debate.”

Confessore, who once worked for the liberal journals Washington Monthly and American Prospect, once again staunchly defended Social Security. In a December 2004 post for the Prospect, he praised the Times, the paper he was about to join, for its harsh coverage of President Bush’s attempt at free-market-based Social Security reform.

The New York Times on Friday downplayed results in its own poll that found 44 percent of respondents think the cuts in the debt deal didn't go far enough, versus only 15 percent who said "too far." In an article starting on the front page, writers Michael Cooper and Megan Thee-Brenan didn't mention this fact until the ninth paragraph of page A-14.

The New York Times may flinch at the thought of cutting Medicare or unemployment benefits to cut deficits, but reporters have quickly warmed to the idea of a speedy withdrawal from Afghanistan in the name of cost-cutting.

Reporter Michael Cooper spied an anti-war revival on Tuesday in “Mayors Call for a Quicker End to Wars So Money Can Be Used for Needs at Home,” picking up on a release from the liberal U.S. Conference of Mayors (once notorious for issuing factually malnourished hunger statistics around the holidays suggesting North Korea-like levels of hunger in America):

Are deadly tornadoes really the best "stimulus" to be hoped for from the Obama White House, or is the New York Times just desperately looking for economics green shoots as the 2012 presidential elections approach?

In any case, just 10 days after the deadly tornado hit Joplin, Missouri, Wednesday’s off-lead by Michael Cooper, "Reconstruction  Lifts Economy After Disasters – New Jobs Are Created to Erase the Rubble," pushed tornadoes as economic stimulus.

More New York Times' s crusading against state spending cuts in Tuesday's edition. Reporter Michael Cooper’s “Michigan, With Persistent Unemployment, Cuts Jobless Benefit by Six Weeks” raised quite a grand commotion out of a small cut in Michigan’s unemployment benefit plan: The state will now pay only 20 weeks of benefits to the jobless, instead of the standard 26 weeks (and even those come before federal unemployment benefits kick in, which now run for up to 99 weeks).

The story’s text box implied bad faith on the part of new Republican Gov. Rick Snyder. “A surprise inside a bill whose purpose was to extend federal benefits.”

Michigan, whose unemployment rate has topped 10 percent longer than that of any other state, is about to set another record: its new Republican governor, Rick Snyder, signed a law Monday that will lead the state to pay fewer weeks of unemployment benefits next year than any other state.

Democrats and advocates for the unemployed expressed outrage that such a hard-hit state will become the most miserly when it comes to how long it pays benefits to those who have lost their jobs. All states currently pay 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, before extended benefits paid by the federal government kick in. Michigan’s new law means that starting next year, when the federal benefits are now set to end, the state will stop paying benefits to the jobless after just 20 weeks. The shape of future extensions is unclear.

The lead National section story in Wednesday's New York Times by Michael Cooper was an odd choice, hitting President Obama from the left on a rather obscure newly established tax break not even liberal economists have found much fault with: “A Tax Cut May Carve Into Budgets Of 19 States.” Cooper melodramatically fretted that it "could blow a hole in state budgets."

The story is based on report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal group and popular source for the Times that the paper consistently fails to properly label ideologically.

Included in the tax-cut package Obama signed in December extending the Bush tax cuts, was legislation allowing businesses to deduct the full value of new equipment from their taxes immediately. Cooper found fault:

Michael Cooper’s lead story in the National section of the New York Times on Saturday, "Debunking the Myths of the Midterm," offered up four alleged myths downplaying the import of the Republican takeover of the House and big gains in the Senate. The first four of Cooper's five "myths" centered around the idea that the Republican victory and Democratic defeat of 2010 had been overstated (the fifth was a paragraph of throwaway humor headlined “The Pundits Have a Clue” while arguing the opposite).

Every election develops its own mythology, usually before the official results are even certified, and this week’s was no different. And like all mythology, the narrative that is being woven around the midterm elections by Bulfinches from both parties is a blend of history, facts and, yes, myths.

But the four partisan myths Cooper tried to knock down were all ones that made Republicans look strong.

“Return to the Republican Fold” (Cooper denied it.)
“The Sweeping Mandate” (No way.)
“The Lost Youth Vote” (Not so fast.)
“A Disaster for the President” (Not necessarily.)

On March 26, Cooper wrote on how “vandalism threatened to be a public relations disaster for the fledgling Tea Party movement,” suggesting his political analysis isn’t foolproof.

In Saturday's "Attacking Obama's Associations," New York Times reporter Michael Cooper reviewed a John McCain campaign ad emphasizing Barack Obama's ties to controversial Chicago political figures like the radical Bill Ayers and the felonious fundraiser Tony Rezko. He wasn't impressed, which is no surprise from the McCain-mocking Cooper. But did Cooper really compare domestic terrorist Bill Ayers to shady financier Charles Keating? Why yes, yes he did.

But first, Cooper confidently claimed that

--the effort to tie Mr. Obama to Mr. Ayers is overstated. Mr. Ayers, who is now an education professor in Chicago, did host a coffee for Mr. Obama's first run for office, and serve with him on a charitable board, but the two men do not appear to have been close, and Mr. Obama does not appear to have expressed sympathy for Mr. Ayers's past radical actions.

Thursday's New York Times lead story by Elisabeth Bumiller and Michael Cooper covered Palin's rapturously received speech at the Republican Convention Wednesday night, "On Center Stage, Palin Electrifies Convention." After describing how she introduced herself to the "roaring crowd" in St. Paul, the Times threw in this dubious assertion:

But the nomination was a sideshow to the evening's main event, the speech by the little-known Ms. Palin, who was seeking to wrest back the narrative of her life and redefine herself to the American public after a rocky start that has put Mr. McCain's closest aides on edge. Ms. Palin's appearance electrified a convention that has been consumed by questions of whether she was up to the job, as she launched slashing attacks on Mr. Obama's claims of experience.

Actually, only the liberal media was consumed by that question -- Palin was a wildly popular pick even before her impressive convention speech.

The back and forth of racial accusations between the Obama and McCain camps made the front of Friday's New York Times in "McCain Camp Says Obama Plays 'Race Card,'" by Michael Cooper and Michael Powell. The reporters bizarrely suggested that it was the GOP, not Obama, that has injected race into the campaign, and relayed some dubious anecdotes to suggest Obama has been a victim of racist Republican attacks.

To continue the fun, a McCain spokesman on Friday compared the Times's editors to your "average Daily Kos diarist sitting at home in his mother's basement" playing Dungeons & Dragons. 

"McCain Goes Negative, Worrying Some in G.O.P.," the New York Times fretted Wednesday in a headline over a story by reporter Michael Cooper. Times readers learned that while it's perfectly acceptable for the Times to call conservative Sen. Tom Coburn "Dr. No" in a front-page headline, it's bad for John McCain to call Barack Obama the same thing.

Cooper opened his story:

In recent days Senator John McCain has charged that Senator Barack Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign," tarred him as "Dr. No" on energy policy and run advertisements calling him responsible for high gas prices.

(The headline to Monday's front-page story about Sen. Tom Coburn: "Democrats Try to Break Grip Of the Senate's Flinty Dr. No.")

In Wednesday's off-lead story by Michael Cooper and Larry Rohter, the New York Times found both McCain and Obama retreating to home base when it comes to economic solutions. But the Times' unconscious embrace of liberal conventional wisdom was evident in how it treated much-argued political terms like "windfall profits", "the death tax," and even "victory" in Iraq.

Bush's mild tax cuts were seen as only benefiting "the wealthy" (by whose definition?), an assertion the Times underlined by repeating it three times.

And look how the Times used quotation marks as warning flares or to suggest a conservative position was dubious. While "victory" and "death tax" were seen as partisan Republican terms and secured in protective quotes, Democrat-loaded terms like "windfall profits of oil companies" weren't put in quotes but stood unencumbered and presented as fact, even though the phrase "windfall" is calculated to make it appear oil company profits are somehow unjust or unearned.

John McCain not only surprised and pleased many with his hands-off stand against government intervention in the home mortgage "crisis," he broke through the liberal media's fascination with Obama-Clinton, but at a cost -- the New York Times's front-page story from March 26 was notably unsympathetic, relaying only criticism from his Democratic opponents. Hillary's plan, by contrast, had been warmly received by the Times the day before.

Late last week McCain pivoted toward calling for more federal help for struggling homeowners, and the Times took another bite, in "McCain Shifts on Aid to Some Mortgage Holders," Friday's piece by reporter Michael Cooper:

The New York Times's Michael Cooper and Michael Luo covered the Republican debate Thursday night in Myrtle Beach, S.C., hitting the theme of a "faltering" Fred Thompson, lashing out in a desperate bid to salvage his campaign.

"Fred D. Thompson tried to salvage his faltering presidential campaign at a debate Thursday night with a barrage of sharp attacks on the 'liberal' policies of Mike Huckabee, the fellow Southerner whom he clearly sees as a rival in the South Carolina primary.

"The performance by Mr. Thompson, which including several pointed one-liners, capped a debate that showed the altered terrain of the Republican field as it moved beyond contests in Iowa and New Hampshire."

The Times portrayed Thompson as an aggressor and Mike Huckabee turning the other cheek.