Debunking the Myths of The New York Occasions’ ‘American Inertia’ Sequence

In at the moment’s publication: a response to the New York Occasions “American Inertia” sequence, a publicly pro-Israel MIT professor researching nuclear fusion is shot and killed in Brookline, Mass., and corrections to 2 of our latest dispatches.

Above the fold on at the moment’s New York Occasions entrance pages and leaping to a few full broadsheet pages within the entrance part is the newest installment of a Occasions sequence, “American Inertia.” It focuses on a span of freeway on the sting of my previous neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights. “Metropolis officers declared in 2016 that this decrepit cantilever wanted to be utterly overhauled. It hasn’t occurred,” the Occasions stories, blaming “neighborhood opposition.”

But the massive image story of Brooklyn Heights and of Interstate 278, the freeway additionally recognized on this stretch because the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, or BQE, shouldn’t be of inertia, however of dynamism.

Right here’s what the three-full-pages plus a front-page chunk Occasions article completely omits:

• In 2019, simply seven miles previous the part of I-278 that runs beneath the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, a new Kosciuszko Bridge opened to site visitors as a part of a $873 million rebuilding venture.

• In 2018, lower than 50 miles north the brand new, nearly $4 billion, Mario M. Cuomo Bridge opened to site visitors, changing the Tappan Zee Bridge.

• Over the previous quarter century, the Dumbo neighborhood neighborhood neighboring the crumbling freeway has undergone a constructing growth producing billions of worth (ask the Walentas household or my former New York Solar colleague David Lombino who works for them). The close by waterfront of deserted warehouses and deteriorating piers has been constructed into an 85-acre park that New York journal described in July 2024 as a “miraculous” “civic masterpiece.”

It’s actually a traditional show of negativity bias for the Occasions to explain as “American inertia” highways which have seen $5 billion in two main bridge rebuildings lately, together with a shocking new park venture and unimaginable residential real-estate worth creation. Even a sentence or two noting this stuff would have given nationwide and worldwide readers not conversant in the native developments a extra correct and nuanced sense of the fact. The story of the delay-afflicted BQE rebuild could also be technically true, however it’s such an incomplete a part of the larger story that it winds up being extra basically unfaithful. By telling solely the story of the delay and the inertia and never the story of the accomplishments and dynamism, the Occasions winds up deceptive readers. It oversimplifies the story.

A Occasions spokesman, Charlie Stadtlander, despatched The Editors an announcement in response: “The Occasions’s ongoing sequence on the persistent problem of modernizing and rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure consists of a number of items, together with a latest one on indicators of optimism. The reporting you’re referring to on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway particulars a decaying part of roadway greater than twenty years past the period it was designed for, working by way of the center of New York Metropolis and carrying 130,000 autos every day. The reporting relies on firsthand observations and discussions with engineering specialists, authorities officers and members of the neighborhood. Any honest studying of the article ought to acknowledge the general public service it offers.”

Neither is this the primary instance of such inaccuracy-by-crude-oversimplification on this Occasions sequence. Again on December 3 (“New York Occasions Pushes Chinese language Communist Social gathering Line”), I famous an earlier installment of the identical Occasions sequence that praised Chinese language building of high-speed rail and prepare stations with out acknowledging that these China rail investments have been so expensive and inefficient that even the Chinese language Communists are actually regretting them and transferring in a special route.

In one other a part of the Occasions sequence, by Michael Kimmelman, that I haven’t but seen in print, there’s extra unskeptical and inaccurate shopping for into Chinese language triumphalism.

Kimmelman writes:

the price of a mile of interstate skyrocketed, 1 / 4 of that rise due to litigation. Environmental critiques grew to become necessary and have been quickly weaponized by NIMBYs and politicians. President Obama’s Restoration Act of 2009 triggered greater than 190,000 environmental critiques.

That is on the similar time that China started to surpass America in productiveness. Its autocratic authorities required residents to fulfill targets and make sacrifices for materials good points.

The declare that “China started to surpass America in productiveness” is fake. It echoes a false declare by the manager editor of the Occasions, Joe Kahn, that “at the moment, it’s apparent China has taken the lead” over different East Asian international locations and the West. The Worldwide Labor Group compiles information on labor productiveness, measured in GDP per hour labored. The U.S. is at $81.80, whereas China is down within the basement at $20.60. That’s utilizing China’s exaggerated and overstated official statistics. The Convention Board says an individual employed in China produces about 29 p.c of what an individual employed within the U.S. does. Here’s a bar graph from the Convention Board displaying GDP per hour labored within the U.S. versus different international locations, together with China:

The Occasions ought to run a correction of the wrong declare about China surpassing America in productiveness. The inaccuracy of describing as “inertia” the dynamism of the New York bridges and the environment of Brooklyn Heights is much less simply corrected, however one thing—perhaps an editor’s word—might be nonetheless warranted.

Professional-Israel MIT professor researching nuclear fusion is shot and killed in his Brookline dwelling: Native and worldwide information accounts have reported on the truth that an MIT professor, Nuno Loureiro, who was researching nuclear fusion, was shot and killed in his residence constructing final night time in Brookline’s Coolidge Nook neighborhood. The Editors understands that Loureiro was Jewish. The Editors has obtained and is sharing right here a social media publish of an account that seems to be the professor defending Israel.