The Times Responds, and So Do I.
This is great. You tell me who’s right.
Diane McNulty diane.mcnulty@nytimes.com>
Dear Mr. Skwire,
Thanks for writing — and for reading The New York Times. Regarding Maureen Dowd’s column, behind almost all “pork” projects, one can usually find something of worth, including jobs. What makes them “pork” is that they are inserted into bills by Senators often as a favor for constituents and to repay donors, without any real debate or any give-and-take about what makes them valuable for society — in particular what makes them of more general value than other items that wind up getting deleted from the budget to make room for these items. “Pork” has never had the meaning of utter pointlessness. It has always meant an item that is of interest to a particular constituency that is inserted into budget legislation through a non-transparent process.
Maureen’s point is that Mr. Obama said he wanted to do away with a lot of things, including this process, and his failure to do so leaves him open to this sort of attack by John McCain.
Sincerely,
Diane M.Diane McNulty
Executive Director of Community Affairs and Media Relations
THE NEW YORK TIMES
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10018
T: 212.556.5244
E: diane.mcnulty@nytimes.com
My response:
Frankly Ms. McNulty, this isn’t good enough. My point was that Ms. Dowd did not do her homework: she relied 100% on the words of John McCain, who lost the election to the person responsible for the budget. Did it ever cross Dowd’s mind that maybe, just maybe, John McCain has a highly partisan opinion? Or that he might be happy to take shallow political potshots at the man who defeated him?
Dowd did not do any fact checking whatsoever: that was confirmed to me by several of the people I talked to. If you’d like, I can call each of them back and ask them specifically if Dowd or anyone from the Times contacted them. My bet is the answer will be “no”. Would you care to take me up on this wager? I will be happy to spend tomorrow as I have spent today: writing 13 times the columns that Muareen Dowd writes, all of it checked for accuracy, while successfully fulfilling the responsibilities of my day job. I made my deadline for a grant for ESL classes in a low-income neighborhood of Philly while doing Dowd’s job for her! Or is that pork?
I stand by my postiion: Maureen Dowd is lazy; she relies on dubious sources (perhaps for her next column she can rely on the chairman of Exxon for an article on why global warning isn’t real); she doesn’t check her facts; and by doing so she leaves the New York Times open to ridicule.
I suggest you fire her, and hire me. My rates are better, I work from home, and I do my homework.
Sincerely, Brendan Skwire
You tell me who’s correct here. McNulty, who thinks that by funding these projects Obama is breaking a promise, or me, the guy pointing out that Dowd never did the legwork to find out if these projects were worthwhile? And for your reference, wiki’s deifnition of “pork”:
Typically, “pork” involves funding for government programs whose economic or service benefits are concentrated in a particular area but whose costs are spread among all taxpayers. Public works projects, certain national defense spending projects, and agricultural subsidies are the most commonly cited examples.
Citizens Against Government Waste outlines seven criteria by which spending can be classified as “pork”:
Requested by only one chamber of Congress;
Not specifically authorized;
Not competitively awarded;
Not requested by the President;
Greatly exceeds the President’s budget request or the previous year’s funding;
Not the subject of congressional hearings; or
Serves only a local or special interest.
March 5th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
very nice!