Craig Gurian

Faced with evidence of the ineffectiveness of its foreclosure prevention efforts, the Administration shrugs its shoulders and says it has "limited levers." The limitations are not a necessary fact of life, but a function of the view that forcing financial institutions to modify mortgages would be an affront to the dignity and sovereignty of banks.

A majority of Senators supports a bill to end tax breaks for oil and gas companies and opposes a bill that would expand the areas open to oil and gas exploration. Is the presence or absence of majority support really irrelevant to the reporting of the stories? A continuation of our ongoing feature on limitations of the paper's reporting (the feature also includes examples of reporter opinions and assumptions getting tucked in to national political stories as though they were facts).

Even as reporter opinions and assumptions get neatly tucked in to national political stories as though they were facts, those stories are still being billed as hard news. For those not gripped by centrism-mania, it is clear how powerfully those reportorial assumptions warp and limit coverage. This edition presents the first entries in what, sadly, promises to be a continuing feature.

With rent regulation set to expire next month if not renewed by the state legislature, and with New York's governor having failed to specify how, if at all, he would like the system strengthened, Remapping Debate looks back at the crucial moment when believers in market theology were able to weaken the regulation system profoundly.

Oxford rolls out small business renewal plans, increasing patient cost for out-of-network care by more than 50 percent.

The "curse" of state reliance on high earners to pay a big share of taxes leaves states "starved for revenue in a bust.” The "root" of California’s woes is "its reliance on taxing the wealthy.” Claims like these mean that a recent Wall Street Journal article will undoubtedly be brandished in tax fights. But the story doesn't add up. And, interestingly, one needn’t go beyond the four corners of the Journal’s “Saturday Essay” feature to figure that out.

Multiple agencies unable or unwilling to describe minimum level of airborne contamination that would generate concern about medium- and long-term health effects.

One might imagine that U.S. government agencies are well-versed in the physics of how, when, over what period of time, and with what consequences, radioactive particles may rise to the altitude of the jet stream, there to be transported from Japanese air space across the Pacific Ocean until some subset of those particles were circulating in the jet stream over the United States.

One might also imagine that a basic level of national security vigilance would mean that these agencies had definitive plans in place to coordinate with one another, apply established standards of radiological safety to the context of air travel in and through that jet stream, and update the public accordingly.

At least in respect to the second set of imaginings, it appears that one would be wrong.

For years, New York Times reporters (or their editors) had been too "diplomatic" to use the "D" word.

A shift in demographics to relatively smaller cohorts of young people is almost never viewed as presenting an opportunity, just as the challenge of how to successfully support a greater percentage of older people without lower living standards either for them or their younger compatriots is virtually never viewed as one worth facing and winning.