Economy

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Real Earnings News Release yesterday:

Average weekly earnings rose by 4.4 percent, seasonally adjusted, from March 2006 to March 2007. After deflation by the CPI-W, average weekly earnings increased by 1.6 percent.

And here's one for Paul "the rich are getting it all" Krugman of the New York Times -- Note who is being surveyed when these numbers are determined:

Earnings series from the monthly establishment series are estimated arithmetic averages (means) of the hourly and weekly earnings of all production or nonsupervisory jobs in the private nonfarm sector of the economy.

It's Joe and Josephine Sixpack whose earnings have "really" increased in the past year.

Even more confirmation came from BLS today:

Scratch a radical environmentalist, find a radical, full stop. Case in point: Boston Globe columnist James Carroll. In his New thinking to save the earth [is that all?], Carroll calls for nothing less than the end of the United States as we know it, and a yours-is-mine socialism.

Carroll claims that "if the earth is to survive as a human habitat," the meaning of four subjects "must be transformed." Among the things Carroll wants to redefine are "nation" and "property." Ominous enough, but getting down into the details is even more chilling.

"Minding Your Business" reporter Ali Velshi flubbed his tax data near the end of an April 13 report on the alternative minimum tax.

Velshi was busy sympathizing with House Democrats who are unlikely to seek a full repeal of the AMT when he ran into trouble:

“Why? Because repealing the AMT would cost the government $50 billion a year. And no matter who you are – if you were the government – you probably wouldn’t give up the $50 million a year,” said Velshi.

Velshi meant billion, although Americans for Tax reform puts the figure higher -$872 billion over the next 10 years, which averages out to $87.2 billion per year.

Leave it to a liberal to claim that Americans are "cheapskates" because our government does not spend enough money on foreign aid. In the L.A.Times for April 13th, that is just what we are treated to with Rosa Brooks' screed titled, "To the rest of the world, we're cheapskates" and subtitled, "The U.S. international affairs budget -- which helps fight AIDS, poverty and more -- is just 1% of total spending." But, by attacking our country over its record on charity and foreign aid spending, Brooks proves that she neither understands the nature of American generosity, nor the American character.

Starbucks. Many Americans may think the Seattle-based coffee chain is generally well-liked by its employees and generally well-liked by liberals, but to some left-wing organizers, it's the new Wal-Mart. Sooner or later the Washington Post was going to notice.

And so today's paper splashed its Style section cover page with a David Segal story about Daniel Gross, a "scruffy college grad" that became the "Norma Rea of the Caramel Macchiato."

But the thing is that organizer Gross doesn't work for a liberal-but-mainstream labor union like any number of unions that report to the AFL-CIO. No, Gross is a member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a self-described radical organization that thinks the AFL-CIO is too soft on corporate America.

From the group's Web site, here's how IWW describes itself, (portions in bold are my emphasis):

Agence France Presse has published a whopper about Global Warming, titled "Climate refugees -- the growing army without a name", in which we get the claims of a UN Climate Committee that "50 million" will be homeless because of Global Warming "by 2010". But the report is so filled with could be's, might be's and the ever popular "some experts say" that it is hard to take the claims seriously. It is, in fact, downright impossible to believe a word in the report unless you suspend all faculties of disbelief and merely accept as a matter of faith that they "could be" right. Of course, that is the nub of the Globaloney debate in the first place; the willing suspension of disbelief.

The first paragraph of this report sets a dichotomy that the rest of the report tries hard to refute with their "expert" testimony.

The great William F. Buckley, Jr. once famously said that he "would rather be governed by the first 200 names in the Boston phone book, than by the Harvard faculty." The National Review founder might well feel the same about the elected officials of Harvard's home of Cambridge, Massachusetts. For as described in a Boston Globe editorial of this morning, How green was my city?, Cambridge's city earth mothers and fathers have unveiled a nonsensical exercise in feel-good environmentalism. A nonsensical exercise which, of course, the Boston Globe heartily applauds.

Beware government programs with slogans, particularly ones of the breathtaking hubris inherent in "saving money and the planet" that Cambridge has slapped on this project. Yes, forget about our brave warriors confronting terrorism worldwide. The true heroes are those professors of feminist studies and purveyors of Marxism who screw in fluorescent light bulbs.

UPDATE (14:18 EDT): See bottom of post.

The front-page teaser headline for today's front page Washington Post article on the Supreme Court's CO2 ruling (emphases below are mine):

Court: EPA Violated Clean Air Act

Supreme Court rebukes Bush administration for refusing to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The link takes readers to today's front page article by Robert Barnes and Juliet Eilperin, "High Court Faults EPA Inaction on Emissions."

But both headlines not only skew the issue that was before the Court -- turning a legal matter into a political drama, and making the Supreme Court into a veritable high court of climate science -- they mislead readers about the actual finding of the Court's majority.

I'm no fan of the majority's reasoning or their ruling, but as Barnes and Eilperin themselves report deep in their article, Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, noted that "We need not and do not reach the question" of whether the EPA "must make an endangerment finding." In other words, the ruling is not some stern Al Gore-like command for the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide emissions.

Indeed, while the scientific geniuses in the Court majority in Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. EPA did hold that carbon dioxide may be defined as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act and hence may result in future EPA regulation, the ruling is not a rebuke to the Bush, and Clinton, administrations* for years of non-regulation.

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Time's Joe Klein raves that the Supreme Court ruling that EPA can regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant is "fabulous":

This is fabulous news from the Supreme Court. Let's hope it lifts some of the remaining diffidence in DC regarding actual solutions--as in, carbon taxes or cap-and-trade programs, or a bit of both.

Two days ago, I blogged about how the Washington Post's Jeff Birnbaum believes that "without question," Reagan's tax cuts went "too far."

In today's Post, Slate's Timothy Noah went a few steps further in his negative review of John Patrick Diggins's Reagan biography "Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History."

Noah tried his hand at being a shrink, attributing psychosexual motives to Reagan's economic policy. Emphasis mine.:

...Reagan, like just about every other actor who ever passed through Hollywood, had a very hard time viewing sex as something to repress. This genial hedonism would later express itself in Reagan's embrace of supply-side economics. Tax cuts would pay for themselves, he told himself, and when they didn't, he left to his two White House successors the drudge work of reducing the huge budget deficit.

Failed radio mouth and Senatorial candidate from Minnesota , Al Franken, told David Letterman on the set of the "Late Show" that the USA should reconsider approving the Kyoto Protocols because the treaty is good for the economy -- Despite that the ruinous treaty was voted down by a unanimous Senate vote in 1997 for the very reason that it would harm the economy.

To a fawning audience and a rapt host, Franken attacked Bush over the treaty that was voted down before he ever got to office, saying "One of the dumbest things that this president has said -- and that is a high bar -- is that if we abided by the Kyoto agreement, it would be ruinous to our economy. The opposite is true."

"We should have went to the mob for a loan," said Bronx homeowner Ana Rosado on CNN's March 27 "American Morning."

Her statement, extreme as it was, rivaled network reporting in March about subprime loans and foreclosures.

Reporters called the situation a “meltdown,” an “epidemic” and a “crisis” that could potentially lead to recession, and blamed lenders while almost entirely ignoring personal responsibility for borrowers. Instead, media accounts portrayed borrowers as victims, many of whom seemed shocked when their adjustable-rate mortgages adjusted upward.

While lenders were painted as the bad guys, they were rarely allowed to give any perspective. The networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, have done at least 26 stories on subprime loans just in the month of March, but only six of those included a lender’s voice. That meant an overwhelming 77 percent of stories didn’t even try to explain the lenders’ position.

Yesterday's indictment of former Reagan budget director David Stockman was cause enough for the Washington Post's Jeffrey Birnbaum to use Stockman's personal ethical and possibly criminal lapses in the private sector as a way to lodge liberal attacks on the Reagan tax cuts. But that was just the beginning for Birnbaum, who, in a Washington Post chat later that day, said that "without question, the Reagan tax cuts went too far."

Four paragraphs into his March 27 Business section story, Birnbaum found a Stockman critic to assail the Reagan fiscal policy that Stockman defended in the late president's first term.

"I have vivid memories of his misusing and misstating data and using obviously phony economic forecasts," said veteran budget analyst Stanley E. Collender. "You wonder if those were habits that stuck with him when he became a Wall Street deal-maker."

Collender may be a crack budget analyst, but he's also politically active. A search of OpenSecrets.org found Collender gave $1,000 to Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) in her first Senate race in 2000.

Birnbaum continued:

The Vermont syrup industry is in jeopardy because of changing climate, according to ABC "World News with Charles Gibson" from March 24.

Reporter Bob Jamieson called it "A truly New England business that may one day disappear."

Jamieson interviewed Tom Branon and his wife, who run a sugaring business in Vermont. Branon told ABC "springs are coming earlier" and "winters are less harsh." Then the ABC reporter mentioned researchers who say the state is caught in a "long-term warming trend" that might eventually cause the decline of the industry.

But NBC "Nightly News" proved that the syrup story didn't have to be doom and gloom. Instead, NBC focused on a sugar farmer's decision to adapt. "Some years, like last year, we lost out. We lost the first run, but I'm not worried this year. We're going to-we're almost fully tapped," said Burr Morse to "Nightly News."

During his online "Critiquing the Media" chat on Monday, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz agreed with criticism that today's story on immigrant "victims" of mortgage lenders didn't seem to assume that borrowers are in any way responsible for failing to make their mortgage payments. He even agreed with the online questioner's suggestion there was "subtle racism" in the tone of the story:

Northern Virginia: Howard, question regarding the headline and terminology used in today's Post story on foreclosures. In both the current washingtonpost.com headline and the lede the term "victim" is used. The word implies predation and an I see an implication that these people aren't smart enough to understand what they're signing when they apply for mortgages. Am I reading too much into this or is there a subtle racism to writing about immigrant "victims"?

Howard Kurtz: I couldn't agree more.

The top right-hand corner of Monday's Washington Post sounds like the return of Hurricane Katrina. "Foreclosure Wave Bears Down on Immigrants" is the headline. Reporter Kirstin Downey begins: "Immigrants are emerging as among the first victims of a growing wave of home foreclosures in the Washington area as mortgage lending problems multiply locally and across the country."

But the "victims of a wave" line fails to ask the question: at what point are people who make bad financial decisions responsible for their own fate? The heart-breaking individual stories Downey tells could have been avoided if the struggling homeowners had stared harder at the numbers.

From a CNN e-mail I received shortly after the close of Friday's stock markets (this was the entire message):

Wall Street fights off mortgage-risk-induced woes to end the week higher, with small gains Friday.

Anyone reading this e-mail would have thought that this was a net ho-hum week on The Street. After all, the e-mail merely said that the week ended "higher."

"Higher"? More like "way, way higher" -- in fact, the best single-week point gain in four years:

Something rather extraordinary occurred last December which had extremely ominous implications for stock investors around the world, but got totally ignored by the media.

In fact, if not for a recent video posting at YouTube, and a March 20 article in the New York Post, these spectacular revelations would still be well under the radar.

On December 22, CNBC’s James Cramer did a web interview for TheStreet.com TV. In it, he told TSC’s executive editor Aaron Task about how he used to manipulate stocks and the market when he was a hedge fund manager, and explained how such people today can’t “do anything remotely truthful” if they want to make money (video available here).

As TSC reported in a recap at its website the same day (emphasis added throughout):

Time's Joe Klein is pleased that Al Gore isn't squishing out on global warming in order to make a 2008 campaign run more palatable for the American people.

As if that wasn't a liberal-enough talking point, Klein's March 22 "Swampland" blog post describes Gore's willingness to resort to the usual tax and spend policies as "putting his [Gore's] money where his mouth is." Portion in bold is my emphasis.:

Yesterday, I wrote--based on incomplete reporting of ongoing testimony (no criticism of live-blogger Brian Beutler; the hearing was in midstream when I posted)--that Al Gore seemed to be backing away from his carbon-payroll tax swap. I haven't seen the complete testimony, and the press reports are not sufficiently wonky to give all the relevant details, but it appears that Gore is still up for the tax swap (an idea I supported in this column last year). In fact--no surprise--he's for a very tough global warming regime, including a ban on new coal-fired power plants and an intense cap-and-trade regime.

I speculated yesterday that if he stepped away from the tax swap, it might mean that Gore has political plans--but that speculation obviously was idle and kind of dumb. In 2000, Gore proposed spending $150 billion on global warming over the next 10 years (essentially, he wanted to spend the entire budget surplus on global warming...you remember the budget surplus). So he isn't averse to putting his money where his mouth is on this issue, even when running for office. Is he running? Dunno. But, as Jake Barnes once said to Lady Brett Ashley (or vice versa), it would be nice to think so.

Since Katie Couric is so fond of reporting on France’s utopian workforce, will she report French enthusiasm for…the mostly-capitalist England? Couric once salivated over the French socialist version of what the US business could be if only America let go of that ridiculous capitalist "anti-worker" propaganda that brainwashes people into thinking there is nothing wrong with a little hard work and the silly, old-fashioned idea that the customer is always right, not the employee. According to Katie and the other socialist cheerleaders, the French love their worker’s paradise, right? Well, according to this Reuters article on Yahoo, not all of them do:

Before I started as NewsBusters managing editor, I finished up a study of the media's bias when it comes to reporting on prescription drugs. The study was released on March 14.

After the page break are some findings from the executive summary. Here's a link to the PDF version of the study.

Even when one new drug was hailed as a “major advance in combating breast cancer” and a “major medical breakthrough,” its manufacturer was given only a passing mention on one network. BMI looked at 132 stories on prescription or over-the-counter drugs from the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening newscasts between January 1 and Sept. 30, 2006.

Among the findings:

Last night, ABC "World News with Charles Gibson," and CBS "Evening News" both blamed increased foreclosures on lending companies and mentioned tightened regulation instead of discussing the issue of personal choice. NBC "Nightly News" was the only network to bring individual choice into the story on March 13.

"Mortgage companies were lending to people with questionable credit," said ABC's David Muir.

But it is not as if lending companies run around just handing out money to bad credit risks, people actually have to apply for home loans because they want to buy a home. Both ABC and CBS missed that.

Instead Muir's "World News" report pitied one couple "fighting to hold on."

Another left winger appeared on "The View." This time it was Roseanne Barr who felt she knew everything because she’s "old," claimed to stump for the middle and working class while admitting she’s rich, bashed the late Ronald Reagan, praised Rosie O’Donnell, and hinted at the left wing election "fixing" conspiracy theory.

Roseanne started with her explanation on why she thinks she knows everything, then demonstrated her love for her favorite "View" co-hosts, Rosie O’Donnell and Joy Behar. She even added that Rosie made this a "very intellectual hour." The multimillionaire comedienne proceeded to bring in her class warfare pitch by bashing the late President Ronald Reagan and then discussed with four rich women the horror that "most people like to hang out with rich people. They don’t give a damn about anyone else." The four rich co-hosts agreed.

Rosie, Roseanne, and Joy agreed on some commonly held left wing conspiracy theories. Roseanne called on "people who fix elections" to "let a Democrat in the next time." Then of course, much of the media feeds us is "the art of distraction." The transcript from key points of the discussion is below.

Here are the facts: The federal deficit is "down sharply"...

WASHINGTON - The deficit for the first five months of the budget year is down sharply from a year ago as the growth in government tax collections continues to outpace growth in spending.

...and "down sharply" means more than 25 percent over last year.

The Treasury Department reported that the deficit from October through February totaled $162.2 billion, down 25.5 percent from the same period last year.

The federal deficit was up 0.6 percent to $120 billion in February...

That improvement came even though the deficit in February hit $120 billion, up 0.6 percent from last February's deficit of $119.2 billion.

...but that's normal for this time of year as the numbers get skewed up because the government is sending out more money in the form of tax refunds to earlier tax filers.

One factor that contributes to higher deficits in February are the refund payments the Internal Revenue Service is mailing out during the month to people who have filed early tax returns. The February 2006 imbalance was the largest monthly deficit for that year.

...add this little tidbit to the story:

Now, as a lifelong resident of the Free State, I can attest that Maryland is a fairly liberal state and it spends at the state and county levels in a fairly liberal manner. Today's Washington Post characterized Democratic Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett's first budget proposal as detrimental to the county's public schools.

"Leggett to Offer Cautious Budget: 6% Increase Would Shrink School Request," read the headline to Miranda S. Spivack's Metro section front pager.

What makes the Leggett budget so cautious compared to the last one sought by his predecessor, former Democratic gubernatorial candidate Doug Duncan?

Perhaps because Duncan's last budget, Spivack noted, increased county spending by 9 percent. Of course both 6 and 9 percent growth rates for county spending well outpace the growth in the U.S. gross domestic product.

Here are Three Things to Remember about The Government's Monthly Employment Reports:

First, the initial report for the current month by the Bureaus of Labor Statistics (BLS) has usually contained significant upward revisions to previous months, as shown here:

For the past seven months, the number reported for jobs added in the current month has been, on average, less than 2/3 of the total reported increase in jobs, because of significant revisions to prior months.

Second, as you would expect because of the first point, the current month's initially reported total has usually been revised upward quite a bit in subsequent months:

Perhaps Janus, the two-faced god of Roman mythology, should be the CNN mascot because the network was certainly double-minded today on employment.

"American Morning's" Ali Velshi called the report "good news" while CNN.com called the same data "weakest in 2 years" on March 9.

"Four-point-five percent as a national unemployment rate is good news for workers because it means more demand for workers and they can demand higher wages," Velshi said.

In contrast, CNN.com reported:

"The gain of 97,000 was the smallest since January 2005, weaker than even the final readings in the two months after Hurricane Katrina that fall."