What We Do Without Dean Baker?

The man is a steadfast news-reading and -debunking machine. You can read his reviews of articles from the mass media at Beat the Press by Dean Baker (CEPR). He is a national treasure and that he’s not as household a name as Anderson Cooper is a sign of the average American’s decline and inability to pay attention to that which could make his or her life so much better.

In response to the recent article, The Budget Debate, Revealed by Richard W. Stevenson (NY Times), Baker wrote The Battle Is About Giving More Money to Rich People, Not About the Size and Role of Government in response, which sums up the problem with the original article like this:

“It is understandable that proponents of redistributing income upward would try to conceal their motives by feigning an interest in small government. The prospect of a small government probably has more appeal to most citizens than the prospect of further upward redistribution of income. The NYT should not be assisting the proponents of upward redistribution in concealing their agenda.”