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The "flood the zone" strategy of the NY Times on the so-called "child tax credit" for those who don't pay taxes continues. The Times uses conventionally distorted language to well-hide the dirty little secret that the "child tax credit" for very low income workers has absolutely nothing to do with cutting taxes, and has everthing to do with increasing the size of an alternative form of the welfare check. The closest that the Times comes to spilling the beans is this short aside:

The majority leader's defiance of the White House reflected growing frustration among conservatives about pressure from the administration to provide a benefit to millions of minimum-wage families who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes.

Which can only leave the average reader bewildered, wondering what relation this discussion of a "benefit" has to do with the political battle between the forces of good and evil over the slam dunk issue of whether or not to give tax cuts for low income workers with children -- when rich folks with kids are already getting them. It's always a fixed game with loaded dice at the Times. Only now, in the post-Raines era, weirdly misplaced "fig-leaf" lines show up here and there in a desperate stab at "cover-my-***" objectivity-- so out of place that one has trouble making sense of their meaning in the context of the story the Times would prefer to be telling.

UPDATE: This is how Howard Kurtz intrerprets the meaning of the NY Times story:

"Now we find out who really runs the country � and his name may just be DeLay .. One gets the impression that low-income families are not part of his core constituency."

Which is exactly the impression the NY Times wished Mr. Kurtz to have. As I say, it works. And note well, Kurtz's quote from the story leaves the false impression -- like the Times -- that the fight is over a cut in taxes for the poor, not over a newly minted or much increased welfare check to lower income earners. This is where for all practical purposes you have a bold type lie passing for news -- something much beyond mere everyday partisan spin at the Times and the Post. Where are Sullivan, Reynolds and Kaus on this story?