krebscycle

[from 2016] The NYTimes will, most likely, endorse the Democratic nominee for President but their News Desk is and has always been working full time to elect the Republican mostly by reinforcing the Republican brand. Most people do not vote based on issues papers, but on their impressions of the candidates and parties. The Republicans/Conservatives have a dishonest marketing campaign, selling themselves as: patriotic, tough minded, in favor of small government and balanced budgets, and strong/masculine. The Republicans market Democrats as: big spenders, dreamers, either bitchy or effeminate depending on gender, and ineffective.  Republican marketing depends a great deal on the Press. Here’s the liberal New York Times – finally – running some front page coverage of Bernie Sanders:

His major objective as chairman[of the Veterans Committee in the Senate] was to expand the menu of veterans benefits. It was an ambitious goal, and as with his proposals today for free public college and universal health care, many viewed it as unrealistic. The cost was so high that even Republicans who normally favor more aid for veterans blanched at the dollars involved — while fearing that more offerings would cause even longer waits at the overburdened V.A.

In the real world, Republicans consistently refuse to fund basic services for veterans and, when they control the Presidency, mismanage and skim from Veterans services,  but to the New York Times “even Republicans who normally favor more aid for veterans blanched at the dollars involved”.  Republicans routinely neglect and short-change veterans – using them for some show-the-flag propaganda, but starving their programs of resources but the Times, and this is supposedly a “news” article, is sticking to the narrative that Republicans are “patriotic” and support Veterans, but are tough minded, unlike these ineffective Democrats.

You might notice that the Times reporter does not offer any information about whether the program addressed actual needs – he accepts the Republican judgment as the defining reality. Republicans, the same Republicans who greenlighted spending a trillion dollars off books on GW Bush’s fiasco in Iraq, “blanched” at the enormous cost of treating veterans of that war. How much was it?

Mr. Sanders packaged the proposals into one 367-page “omnibus” bill, with an estimated cost of $21 billion over 10 years — a cost that would lead to its demise.

So $2Billion a year to upgrade veterans health care – asked from a Congress that won’t cut multi-billion dollar yearly tax breaks for Private Equity managers and that recently  added tens of billions in yearly cost to subsidies for wealthy farmers and insurance companies. That context is missing because: Republicans are patriotic and tough minded. That’s the liberal New York Times News Desk.

“It was everything that we in the veterans community had been working for — everything was in there,” said Diane Zumatto, the national legislative director with Amvets, who said it was ultimately “too much” and impractical. “It would never get passed because it was such a huge price tag,” she said.

So $2billion/year for “everything the veterans community had been working on” was too much – nothing is too much for our wounded warriors except spending some money. 

The bill drew a puzzled reaction from Republican colleagues who found it overly expensive and who bemoaned what they viewed as a lack of
compromise and a failure to adequately address the existing waits.

The simple fact is that long waiting times at VA system are mostly due to underfunding. The VA has a bad cycle: it doesn’t pay enough to attract good health care workers or managers, then the bad ones it hires make the working environment hostile to highly qualified people who would take lower salaries in order to support Vets. But “the bill drew a puzzled reaction from Republican colleagues” whose patriotic support for Vets and good faith are implicitly endorsed in this news article.

What most people who read or hear of this article will carry away is the standard Republican branding. The ideas that Republicans callously underfund Veterans and that their attacks on malfunction of government agencies are in bad faith is taboo in the New York Times which just two days earlier told us that Marco Rubio “display[ed]  the firmest possible command of facts and figures, of ideology and geopolitics.“ and that

But the newly personal and unguarded approach to campaigning is a
recognition that the assets he has worked hardest to develop — mastery
of foreign policy, and a bruising critique of the Obama era — are not
enough by themselves to capture the hearts of voters. And that the ones
he was born with — a compelling family history and an innate charm —
will only grow more important as he appeals to broader sections of the
electorate.

I won’t describe Democratic marketing, because with the exception of Barack Obama, most Democrats have no clue about marketing.

See also New York Time Love for Jeb!