The agenda-setting New York Times has been absent without reporting on the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act after agitating on its editorial pages (and in the news columns, really) for the CPSIA’s passage in 2008. If you’re going to sell a law, shouldn’t you report on its harmful effects?

Walter Olson at Overlawyered.com has been following the Times’ journalistic dereliction and today he reports the latest editorial bizarreness — a feature on the new-found chicness of used children’s products that doesn’t mention the CPSIA:

The New York Times, which to the amazement of many has printed scarcely a word about the catastrophic effects of the law it still defends, now runs a Fashion & Style story applauding what it identifies as a trend among affluent urban parents toward buying used products for their kids rather than always insisting on new (Sarah Wildman, “For Firstborns, Secondhand Fits the Bill“). But it never mentions the reason why those parents will find the selection of kids’ goods around the nation’s thrift shops to be much, much sparser than it was a year ago.

We need to figure out a PR strategy to tear off the editorial blinkers of the Times’ editors. Here’s an idea: Take the letter from the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s professional staff responding to questions from Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) about the CPSIA’s implementation. Stamp “Top Secret” over it, slip it into an envelope with stamps from Albania and Jordan (rendition!) and then have somebody from the CIA slip it to a Times reporter surreptiously.

It will be Page One, guaranteed.

From The New York Times’ editorial today, “Guarding the Family Fortune,” another pure distillation of class warfare:

Last week, as the unemployment rate hit a 25-year high and nearly one in 10 Americans was receiving food stamps, 10 Democrats in the Senate joined all 41 Republican senators to cut estate taxes for the wealthiest families. The provision would funnel an additional $91 billion over 10 years to the heirs of megafortunes, money that would otherwise have been paid in federal taxes or donated to charity.

Philip Klein of The American Spectator takes strenuous issue:

While killing the death tax wouldn’t be at the top of my list of polices to pursue at this point in time, it’s sickening that the Times would use the term “funnel” — a word normally associated with shady dealings and extortion rackets — in this context. The money we’re talking about here is money that individuals earn honestly, pay taxes on while they’re still alive, and hand down to their surviving family. The way the Times portrays it, government starts off with a natural right to all money earned in the United States. Any legislation that pushes taxes south of the prevailing rate at the time is a “cost” to government because they’re being deprived of revenue that is rightfully theirs, and now, if wealthy Americans are involved, it’s described like a money-laundering operation.

How’s the Times doing these days, anyway?

The New York Times publishes the most tedious major editorial page in the country, so predictable that actually reading it is an unnecessary exercise. Making an exception today to review its endorsement of Senator Obama (a shocker, yeah), we see this comment on tax policies:

That means the well-off Americans who have benefited disproportionately from Mr. Bush’s tax cuts will have to pay some more. Working Americans, who have seen their standard of living fall and their children’s options narrow, will benefit.

So, in the Times’ world view we have either well-off Americans or working Americans. Well-off Americans don’t work, and working Americans aren’t well-off.

S&P cut the New York Times’ corporate credit rating to junk bond status this week, but its editorial thinking had reached that point long ago.

New York Times editorial, “The Right to Organize ,” March 6, 2007:

Labor unions have a role to play in helping to fix today’s economic ills — most notably, worsening income inequality, a problem that’s caused in part by unions’ decline and the workers’ resulting lack of bargaining power.

New York Times article, “Times Will Shut Down Its Distribution Subsidiary,” September 8, 2008:

The New York Times Company will shut down in January a subsidiary that distributes newspapers and magazines in the metropolitan area, the company announced Monday.

The move will eliminate the equivalent of 550 full-time jobs and affect the distribution of some 200 publications…[snip]

In its place, The New York Times newspaper will increase its reliance on independent distributors, which are generally nonunion and pay drivers less than City and Suburban drivers.

Alternative headlines:

“Times to Dump 500+ Union Jobs”

“Times to Worsen Income Inequality”

“Times: We Never Meant Us”