Why Newsweek is only worth one dollar

Last week, the Washington Post agreed to sell Newsweek magazine for one dollar. It seemed an ignominious death for a venerable news magazine. Today, if there were any doubt why Newsweek had no value, an article appeared in the magazine that made this clear. The article is a polemic by lefty Ezra Klein and it begins like this:


"I’ve got some good news for deficit hawks: earlier this year, Congress passed legislation reducing the deficit by about $125 billion over the next 10 years. But, as they say on the infomercials, that’s not all! The bill cuts the deficit by $1.3 trillion in the second decade. That more than pays for every dollar we’ve spent on stimulus since 2008. The bill also sets up a new—and actually credible—system to keep Medicare’s costs under control. So hear that, fiscal conservatives? Hear that, bond markets? This is progress, baby. We’ll lick our deficit problem, yet.

The bill in question is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as health-care reform. The numbers come from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. But as always, there’s a catch: the savings arrive only if the policies behind the savings are allowed to do their jobs. And in the GOP’s zeal to repeal a bill it considers a deficit-busting nightmare, Republicans are focusing their fire on the parts they should like: the cost controls."

Klein actually has the nerve to claim that Obamacare will cut the deficit and Medicare costs as well. He then cites to numbers from the CBO which were rigged to make it look like this is the case. Let me be clear: when Obamacare was passed, the Obamacrats carefully removed the so-called "doctors' fix" from the bill. this is the provision which prevents the compensation to doctors from falling below the point where those same doctors would refuse to see medicare patients. Without the doctors' fix, it is believed that Medicare would simply fall apart. The problem with the doctors' fix, however, is that it will cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the next ten years and even more in the decade that follows. That means that the numbers tha Klein quotes omit about 20% of the costs on this item alone. It also means that once one adds the actual costs back in from just this one item, Obamacare will add well over $100 billion to the deficit over the next decade. And that will happen only if Congress actually keeps costs under control as projected by the CBO in its numbers. We all know that Congress has never once done such a thing and there is no reason to believe that it will do so now.

So, what does this all mean? It is simple: Newsweek has published a dishonest and slanted story that claims one thing when the opposite is true, and everyone at Newsweek who decided to either write or print that story knew that it was untrue. Is it any wonder that no one reads that rag anymore? At $1, Mr. Harman seems to have overpaid.