Last week, Newsmax promoted an article by Ken Timmerman citing “tax experts” claim that treasury secretary-designee Tim Geithner should withdraw because of an issue over non-payment of taxes (which he has since paid) while employed by the International Monetary Fund. The only problem: All those alleged “experts” are right-wingers.
Newsmax does the same thing in a Jan. 18 article (credited only to “Newsmax Staff”) asserting that, according to “financial experts,” Barack Obama’s proposed stimulus package “is little more than a checklist for funding the pricey social-services agenda that he promised during his campaign” and is a “Trojan horse of pork and welfare spending” that “will ultimately worsen the recession and drive the nation deeper into debt.”
But as before, all the “experts” Newsmax cites are right-wingers with a presumed agenda:
- Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., ranking Republican on the House Appropriations Committee.
- Arthur Laffer, “an economic advisor to President Reagan”and promoter of the Laffer Curve.
- Steve Horwitz, an economist at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y.
- J.D. Foster, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
At no point does Newsmax identify these “experts” as conservative, even though they all are. Lewis, Laffer and Foster’s affiliations are clear, Horwitz’s less so. In an “Open Letter to my Friends on the Left” written last September, Horwitz places himself among those “committed to free markets” (code for right-wing economist) and takes the conservative line that the financial crisis was “caused by the very kinds of government regulation that you [leftists] now propose.” Horwitz falsely links the subprime mortgage crisis to the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977; in fact, the vast majority of subprime loans were made by institutions not subject to CRA regulations.