Craig Gurian

Today’s robbing of the NYC employees’ health insurance fund as a “realistic” means to pay to avoid layoffs will become tomorrow’s hysterically anti-union “health benefits costs are out of control” rallying cry. City officials — neither the “education” mayor, nor the backbone-free City Council — are just not prepared to pay for vital services.

However much money AARP spends, and however many town hall meetings it holds, its rationalizations for shifting position just won’t stand scrutiny. AARP isn't hopping aboard a ship that was already sailing, but rather choosing to provide critical momentum and cover to resuscitate the benefits-cutting effort.

Today’s robbing of the NYC employees’ health insurance fund as a “realistic” means to pay to avoid layoffs will become tomorrow’s hysterically anti-union “health benefits costs are out of control” rallying cry.

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.