Yesterday, when rolling out its expanded op-ed pages, The New York Times reaffirmed its news policy of “struggling every day to provide the fairest and most impartial report possible.” Yeah, right. The actual policy guiding the Times’s Week in Review section seems to be, “Bolster the Democrats’ Social Security talking points.” The president has rightly stressed the demographic crunch facing the social security system. And fair-minded economists who are far from boosters for either Republicans or Democrats confirm it. So now the Times has decided to take on one of the most prominent of those economists, Lawrence J. Kotlikoff. Following up on their Nicholas Confessore fiasco, the Times floats another superficially “balanced”article that is in fact an attempt to discredit Kotlikoff, and the larger demographic argument behind the president’s case. Titled “Maybe We’re Not Robbing the Cradle,” (There’s an idea for a fair headline: “Maybe the Times Isn’t Impartial.”), the story is essentially a puff piece for the statistical sleight of hand of Gary Burtless, of the Brookings Institution. Burtless disguises the coming demographic crunch by comparing it to the baby boom. After all, says Burtless, society paid for huge numbers of dependents during the baby boom years, and the economy still survived. But of course there’s all the difference in the world between directing your wages toward your own family and children and having them garnished for taxes to support elders you don’t even know. Burtless tries to turn our declining fertility rates into a plus by noting how many resources this frees to care for the old. But that leaves out the fact that we’ll pay a long-term price for that fertility decline in exponentially falling population rates. Over time, that will make paying for the elderly even tougher. Then the Times quotes an economist who downplays the demographic crunch, yet admits in passing that we’ll “probably require people to work a little longer in life and perhaps get a bit less in Social Security benefits.” Really? Well, have you seen any Democratic proposals for benefit cuts? If this is the best the Democrats…er, I mean The New York Times can do to turn aside the idea of a demographic crunch, I’m decidedly unimpressed.