Wages & Prices

Want to see a textbook example of how the left has tried to frame the debate against extending the Bush tax cuts? Take a look at Cenk Uygur, of "The Young Turks" fame, playing the class warfare/populism card.

On MSNBC's Aug. 17 broadcast of "The Dylan Ratigan Show," Uygur was up in arms over the argument that taxes shouldn't be raised by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. He alluded to Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, who made the case in 2007 that the wealthy should give more to society.

"Look at what Warren Buffett said," Uygur said. "He's talking to 400 wealthy donors and he says, ‘Look, the 400 of us pay a lower part of our income in taxes than the receptionists do, than our cleaning ladies do. For that matter, if you're in the luckiest 1 percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent.'"

And Buffett has been a long-time advocate of higher tax rates - something easy to be for when you're one of the richest men in the world. However, Uygur says it's not good enough for Buffett to be charitable. According to Uygur, this "giving" must come in the form of "mandatory" higher taxes.

In late July, NB Contributing Editor Tom Blumer busted the Associated Press for neglecting to mention the party affiliations of scandal-plagued officials in Bell, California. The AP piece was one of hundreds of reports on the scandal. Of those hundreds, one solitary report mentioned party labels for the five officials.

Can you guess which party they belong to? I'll bet you can.

The only news outlet that mentioned the officials were Democrats was the Orange County Register. And even that paper noted the absence of party labels only in response to reader complaints. "Our readers noticed one part of the story has been left out by virtually all media sources," the paper's editorial board wrote. "All five council members are members of the Democratic Party."

The most prominent of the officials in question, former Bell city manager Robert Rizzo, resigned after it came to light that he was making $1.5 million per year - in a town with a per capita income languishing at about half the national average.

Ed Schultz on Thursday blamed Republicans for all the unemployed people living in America today.

As he began the most recent installment of the "Ed Show" on MSNBC, the host said, "The Republican Party has been on a crusade against the middle class and the poor for the last 30 years. We're now seeing the wreckage of that race to the bottom line culture."

He disgracefully continued, "Today a government report showed weekly jobless claims at a five-month high. 484,000 new unemployment claims were filed in the week ending August 7th. And you know what folks, you can lay this right at the feet, right at the altar of the Republican Party."

Sadly, he wasn't close to done, claiming, "The people you see flooding the streets begging for help, begging for an opportunity are victims of the Republican agenda just to make sure that President Obama fails" (video follows with transcript and commentary): 

While ABC and NBC ignored a Monday USA Today report that found a significant gap in compensation between public and private sector employees, on Tuesday's CBS Evening News, correspondent Sharyl Attkisson provided a full story: "While many Americans have suffered pay cuts or job losses, one group is bucking the trend – federal workers."

Attkisson described how the "analysis finds that federal employees have gotten bigger pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years straight." She cited numbers from the report: "Federal salaries have grown 33% faster than inflation. Their pay and benefits average $123,000, up 37% since 2000. Private workers average $61,000, up just 8.8% over the same time."

In addition, Attkisson included a sound bite from Cato Institute budget analyst Tad Dehaven: "So you have Wall Street, you have big oil, and now you have federal civilians." She went to note: "And the bonuses are flowing. CBS News has learned your tax dollars funded $95.8 million in airport security TSA bonuses last year. A $35,000 bonus to the head of the agency."

As media predictably pound the table for Congress to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, an interesting analysis by Washington Post contributor Robert J. Samuelson should raise a caution flag.

Higher taxes inhibit couples from having children which in other developed nations has led to longterm economic paralysis.

In a western civilization that got drunk on entitlement programs in the previous century, population growth is essential as all of these schemes have a Ponzi component to them: they only work if you continually have new people entering the system to pay for those collecting benefits.

As Samuelson outlined in the Post Monday, our federal income tax structure is quite at odds with our best interests as a nation:

In liberal reporters' minds, the "more perfect union" referenced in the Preamble to the Constitution is a more perfect labor union.

In an August 6 ABCNews.com story about pay raises for the middle class, reporter Ray Sanchez found a few reasons for "median wage stagnation" including the decline of organized labor. He also cited a common liberal talking point -- the "erosion" of the minimum wage.

Bad economic news just keeps piling up. Today, the news about jobless claims from the AP:

Initial requests for jobless benefits rose last week to their highest level since April, a sign that hiring remains weak and some companies are still cutting workers.

The Labor Department said Thursday that new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 479,000. Analysts had expected a small drop. Claims have risen twice in the past three weeks.

Surprise!

And then, there's Gallup's small business indicator which would portend bad news in the next year:

Gold has been a highly valued commodity going at least as far back as the ancient Egyptian culture in 2600 BC. But now, with economic instability and uncertainty over the health of major global currencies, the demand for gold has risen as a store of value and a hedge against inflation.

Over the past 12 months, the price of gold has gone up dramatically - up 25 percent from July 2009 (from $929 per ounce to $1,163 per ounce, after reaching a high of $1,250 per ounce). That has outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) on a percentage basis.

This success has not stopped some detractors from questioning conservative commentators and investing commentators that argue gold should be a part of a person's financial portfolio. However, a recent report by liberal member of Congress Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., argues that one gold dealer, Goldline "grossly" overcharges for the gold coins and employs deceptive sales techniques to capitalize on fears about President Barack Obama's economic policies. Not so coincidentally, Goldline advertises on shows including Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham and Fred Thompson - all of them politically opposed to the agenda of Obama and Weiner himself.

On Thursday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, host Behar seemed to suggest that seeing poor whites might make Republicans more compassionate toward the poor as she hosted filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi to talk about her upcoming HBO documentary on the homeless who live in Orange County, California. Behar asked Pelosi – daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – if the reason she interviewed only whites for her film was to "make more of an impact" on Republicans:

JOY BEHAR: Did you deliberately only interview white families?

ALEXANDRA PELOSI: Well, they just happened to be at the school where I was interviewing, that`s who was there.

BEHAR: I`m only asking that because maybe you felt that that would make more of an impact on Republican congressmen and people who tend to, you know, veto any kind of help for people on the, you know, because the, oh, you know what I`m saying.

Pelosi later blamed the existence of the homeless problem in Orange County on Disneyland for not pushing the government to build more public housing:

Leave it to Dylan Ratigan, one of the star personalities at MSNBC who seems to be constantly looking for a reason to be angry.

On his July 12 show, Ratigan posed his view on how trade between China and the United States operates. According to Ratigan, importing products where labor costs are significantly lower is akin to slavery. He specifically named Foxconn, a company that manufactures iPhones and iPads for Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL). (h/t @KenShepherd)

"Do you want to get raw?" Ratigan said. "Let's say that the American people happily, logically apathetic are perfectly happy basically with a slave culture of illegals and outsourced slaves in China making iPhones at Foxconn and that for as much as we talk about the liberation of the slaves and we like to pat ourselves on the back for the Civil War - got a big statue of Abe Lincoln. All we've really done is alter the color of some our slaves and moved them to other countries. Is that too extreme on my part, Matt?"

If you were African-American living in the era of President Barack Obama, would you hate the Fourth of July because it reminded you of slavery and economic inequality?

You would if your name was Julianne Malveaux and you were the syndicated columnist that also serves as the president of Bennett College, the historically black women's school in Greensboro, North Carolina.

So disdainful of America's most-revered national holiday is Malveaux that she admitted in her July 2 USA Today op-ed, "I have never been big on the Fourth of July. Most years, I took great pleasure in reading the powerful Frederick Douglass speech, 'The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro.'"

Though written in 1852, this college president actually sees relevance to modern day America in these words:

Paul Krugman is known for throwing a bomb or two from his platform in the New York Times, but it's really tough to take him for a violent fellow.

In his July 2 blog post, "I'm Gonna Haul Out The Next Guy Who Calls Me ‘Crude' And Punch Him In the Kisser," Krugman lamented criticism of his support for more stimulus spending. A July 1 editorial in The Economist noted that the economy needs more private spending, not more government spending.

"Mr Krugman's crude Keynesianism underplays the link between firms' and households' behaviour and their expectations of future tax and spending policy," the editorial said. "For example, firms across the rich world are hoarding cash. Their reluctance to invest may have more to do with regulatory, financial and fiscal uncertainty than weak consumer demand (see article). If governments address those worries, businesspeople may start spending."

In an article published yesterday afternoon, CNBC news associate Joseph Pisani took note of something the rest of the media mostly hasn't, or at least hasn't highlighted: the terrible job market for teenagers. The headline and text indicate that this is the worst such market in 41 years. That's true, based on the stat Pisani presented. But barring a near miracle in the next three months, in terms of the stat that matters most, the unemployment rate, it's the worst ever.

Give the CNBC reporter props for doing something almost no other journalist has done, which is to use the not seasonally adjusted (NSA) employment numbers as his factual source. As I have discussed several times, including here, the reported NSA numbers represent the government's best estimate of what really happened in a given month, while the seasonally adjusted (SA) numbers published (and appropriately labeled) by the government and reported (but usually not labeled) by the press represent the result after smoothing out seasonal fluctuations.

Pisani's prose proceeds as follows:

A far-left Democratic congressman is accusing conservative commentators of improperly -- perhaps illegally -- conspiring with advertisers to shill for their products under the guise of political opinion. The accusers, however, conveniently ignore liberal commentators that do virtually the same thing, only on a far larger scale.

Rep. Anthony Weiner released a report yesterday alleging that Goldline "has formed an unholy alliance with conservative pundits to drive a false narrative and play off public fears in order to sell its products," according to a release. Under "conservative pundits," read the Fox News Channel, and specifically Glenn Beck.

Weiner has this far neglected to criticize Fox's cable news competitor MSNBC and its parent network, which consistently shill for policies that would dramatically enrich their parent company, General Electric. GE's communications arm consistently further's Weiner's own political agenda, so a double standard seems to be afoot in his failure to call NBC out on its colossal conflict on interest.

Could the New York Times not find an outspoken critic of the Senate's new Cap and Trade bill? Either one could not be found, or they opted not to include such a critic in the paper's report on the unveiling of the legislation.

The Times devoted 21 paragraphs to the new Kerry-Lieberman Cap and Trade bill -- proposed on Wednesday -- but did not even mention an actual critic of the legislation until the very last sentence of the story. Right after it noted that hardcore environmentalists think "the bill did not go far enough and offered too many concessions to win industry support," the Times quoted the Chamber of Commerce, which thinks the bill is a " 'work in progress' and may prove too costly to business."

Of course the Times needn't go further than President Obama himself to find a person who thinks a Cap and Trade plan will make electricity rates "necessarily skyrocket." The Times did note that energy companies could "pass along" higher costs to consumers, but gave no voice to critics or details of the criticism.

A $787-billion stimulus. Liabilities of $356 billion for the TARP bailout on the federal government's balance sheet. And that's in addition to other unfunded liabilities from federal entitlements like ObamaCare, Medicare, and Social Security.

But that doesn't mean the U.S. is heading down the path toward socialism because they were one-time expenditures, according to CNBC senior economics reporter Steve Liesman.

On CNBC's "Squawk Box" April 29, as jobless claims for the week was being released on the floor of the CME Group in Chicago, co-host Joe Kernen asked for Liesman's opinion.

PolitiFact called it the Lie of the Year, and journalists left and right (but mostly left) dismissed the claim as hyperbole at best, and fear-mongering propaganda at worst.

But Sarah Palin's "death panel" comment may not be as off the mark as so many have claimed. Don't take her word for it. White House budget director Peter Orszag apparently agrees.

Well, Orszag didn't specifically address Palin's claim, but his description of Medicare's new Independent Payment Advisory Board tried to cast health care rationing in nice rosy terms.

Speaking at the Economic Club of Washington, Orszag stated (video below the fold):

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."

Whenever you are bored or in need of a good laugh, help yourself to some mainstream media coverage of the economy under President Obama.

Each month we at NewsBusters wonder how the recession will be spun anew, and each month news outlets act with increasing hilarity.

First up for April was an earnest little piece by USA Today writer Matt Krantz published Thursday. Krantz insisted on reporting "optimism" and "confidence" in the economy thanks to a phantom supply of "new jobs."

Just one little problem, though: Thursday happened to be the same day the Department of Labor announced a surge in unemployment claims that hampered the stock market.

But no matter to Krantz. You see, Krantz wasn't talking about new jobs that actually existed - he was celebrating an announcement from two companies that they would be strong enough to hire a few people sometime in the future.

Krantz began with the headline "New Jobs Fan Rising Economic Optimism" and then waited five paragraphs to explain where those jobs were (emphasis mine, h/t NB reader Kara Kittle):

Watch the latest business video at <a href="http://video.foxbusiness.com/">video.foxbusiness.com</a>NPR and Fox News contributor Juan Williams does not see vitriolic blanket-statements condemning conservatives as "racist," "homophobic," heartless, anti-intellectual, and depraved (to name a few), as divisive or erroneous in the least.    

Aside from possibly race and identity-politics, there are few things more toxic and effective than the poisonous doctrine of class warfare - no matter how many times leaders may promise heaven on earth. In his April 7 speech at Harvard University, AFL-CIO leader (and corrupt money-laundering extraordinaire) Richard Trumka did his part to perpetuate fear and hate of conservatives - repeatedly inciting the "righteous anger" the "working class" should have against "servants of economic privilege" and "apostles of hate."

"There are forces in our country that are working hard to convert justifiable anger about an economy that only seems to work for a few of us into racist and homophobic hate and violence directed at our President and heroes like Congressman John Lewis," Trumka said. "Most of all, those forces of hate seek to divide working people -- to turn our anger against each other."  

Liberal commentator Nancy Skinner conceded there is one issue the right is right on - the value-added tax (VAT) is an absurd idea.

Skinner who is a regular guest on the Fox Business Network, stated April 7 that the VAT will do absolutely nothing to help the ailing economy, concurring with the "Bulls and Bears" panel.    

"Everybody, you're going to be surprised: I finally found a tax I don't like, and it's this VAT tax!" Skinner exclaimed. "Here's why - it doesn't produce any behavioral changes - it's hidden as Gerri Willis said. What you want in a tax is a tax that changes behavior."

As Reuters reported April 6, White House adviser Paul Volcker - of the Larry Summers school of economics - threw out a trial-balloon recently, saying the U.S. may need to consider a European-style value-added tax to raise revenue and bring the deficit under control.

In 2009, according to financial information at nasdaq.com, the New York Times Company's revenues fell by over 17%. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company's full-time employee count shrunk by 1,681, or over 18%. Rumor has it that more layoffs are planned for 2010.

Beginning almost a year ago, the company announced corporate salary cuts of 5%, negotiated similar cuts with newspaper guild members in New York, and steeper cuts of 9% in Boston.

The company eked out full-year pre-tax earnings of roughly $23.7 million (after adding back $3.8 million in taxes to the company's reported net income of $19.9 million).

In the midst of all of this, the Journal reports that Times Company chairman "Pinch" Sulzberger's total compensation more than doubled in 2009 to roughly $6 million, and that his CEO compadre hauled in a similar amount:

The past several decades, Americans have seen the disaster unionism has wrought on Detroit's Big Three. The auto-makers, saddled with powerful unions, fell victim to a combination of labor inefficiency and premium worker pay that proved unsustainable.

And while much of the rest of the private sector long ago realized the sots, government apparently has not. So, for the first time in history, public employees comprise the largest segment of unions today.

Save for New Jersey or New York, the pending public pension crisis is nowhere more evident than in California. Currently the state is on the hook for $100-300 billion in unfunded pension and health care liabilities with no end in sight - on top of a projected $25 billion budget deficit.

What good is the liberal media's "truth squadding" or "fact-checking" when it doesn't reveal any facts and is completely divorced from the truth?

MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell gave a stark answer to that question this morning, when she appeared on "Morning Joe" to discuss yesterday's health care summit. O'Donnell heaped praise on the President for being "in command of some of the facts", like the "fact" that premiums would decline 10-13 percent under his plan. If she had actually looked at the CBO report she was citing, however, she would know that the plan is expected to raise, not lower, premiums for individuals by 10-13 percent.

So for all her "truth-squadding" and "fact-checking", O'Donnell is still confused about the difference between up and down. Either that, or she didn't truth-squad or fact-check anything, but simply said what she wanted to believe. Maybe she should spend less time devising her awkward hyphenated verbs , and more actually examining the facts.

CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanja Gupta pressed HHS Secretary Kathleen for price controls in all parts of the health care industry on Thursday's Newsroom. Gupta stated that insurance companies were "just the tip of the iceberg" of health care costs: "There are a lot of different organizations, groups, people who contribute to health care costs. Are you going to be going after all these folks?" [audio clip available here]

It looked a bit odd for CNN to choose the correspondent, whom Obama chose to be surgeon general before adviser Tom Daschle was forced to resign, to interview other people who signed up to sell ObamaCare. Gupta's question came during an interview 26 minutes into the 9 am Eastern hour, in which both he and CNN anchor Kyra Phillips asked the Obama administration official about the health care summit later in the day at Blair House. Gupta also hinted at the possibility of going after the profits of health care suppliers in his last question to Sebelius (who was sympathetic to Gupta's proposal in her answer):

Earlier this afternoon, NB's Tim Graham noted how NPR's Robert Siegel and Pew Research pollster Andrew Kohut spoke approvingly of "Millennials" as being "less 'militaristic' and less religious" than their elders.

At end of his post, Graham noted that Siegel and Kohut "somehow" forgot to discuss the key political finding in the poll, namely that the demographic's 32-point favoritism towards Democrats (62% to 30%) has declined by more than half (to 54% to 40%) in just one year of living in Obamaland. Shoot, if that trend continues for another nine months, it will be almost all even by Election Day in November.

Why is the meltdown occurring? Get a load of the answers the Associated Press's Hope Yen identified in an early Wednesday dispatch (HT to Mark Levin, who mentioned this on his Wednesday evening show):

As the old cliché goes, you don't use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, but according to Rick Santelli, that's exactly what it appears the Obama administration is doing terms of financial regulation and fiscal discipline.

On CNBC's Feb. 2 broadcast of "Fast Money," host Melissa Lee proposed that taxing the wealthy is not the path to "economic prosperity and fiscal stability." Santelli, the network's CME Group floor reporter, agreed.

"Well, you're right," Santelli said. "But I also think you're going to see when the Bush tax cuts expire, a lot of middle class write-offs and exemptions and various tax benefits will also fall by the wayside. Not the least of which to mention, I have so many friends that work for the financial industry. And they've learned from the government, even if you only make $25,000 to $125,000 a year, one firm says if you leave to go into another job or whatever, anything outside retirement, they're going to keep 10-to-20 percent of the stock they took from you following the government's directives."

Update - 2/4, 11:46 AM | Lachlan Markay: CBS News President Sean McManus has denied that the network will cut Couric's pay. Details below.

Katie Couric may be getting a taste of her own populist medicine. When the Dow hit 10,000 last October, she (and other network news personalities) used the opportunity to bemoan massive payments to Wall Street bankers. But now the populist sentiment has turned on her. She faces dramatic pay cuts as CBS News downsizes.

Couric, shown in a, er, file photo at right, "makes enough to pay 200 news reporters $75,000 a year! It's complete insanity," one CBS News insider told the Drudge Report. "We report with great enthusiasm how much bankers are making, how it is out of step with reality during a recession. Well look at Katie!"

The employee was referring to Couric's roughly $14 million annual salary, the highest in network news. That salary may be cut dramatically in the face of massive layoffs at CBS News branches in Washington, San Francisco, Miami, London, Los Angeles and Moscow.

Is the luster finally wearing off the love affair between the White House press corps and President Barack Obama? It is, if CBS White House correspondent Chip Reid's analysis of President Barack Obama's latest Wall Street proposals is anything to go by.

Reid appeared on the Fox Business Network's Jan. 25 "Imus in the Morning" program and offered an update on the president's financial and economic advisers, mainly Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Director of the National Economic Council Lawrence Summers. He said both Geithner and Summers should survive, despite a run-in with former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who chairs the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

"Well, you know, it's really the same as it's all been," Reid said. "That there's some unease about both of them, but the President has been satisfied with the jobs they've done. Behind the scenes, they both still have a lot of control. They lost this battle to Volcker, but now they're on board on this new plan for Wall Street, although it really sounds more like politics than a real plan because it's hard to believe it would get through."

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Americans were treated to a number of populist sermons on the "special interests" who would oppose "reform" at any cost to maintain the "status quo" from which they "profit financially or politically." The drug companies, the energy companies, the Wall Street bankers, and the health insurers were the corporate enemies of a just and harmonious America, or so one might have gathered.

Obama was at the vanguard of this populist charge. But since his election, he has proposed health care legislation that would subsidize Pfizer and PhRMA, a cap and trade plan that would drive profits to General Electric, and Wall Street bailouts that lined the pockets of the same Goldman Sachs bankers he so reviled during the campaign. What happened?

Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney exposes and investigates this monumental disconnect in his new book "Obamanomics: How Barack Obama is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses." Carney explores the "political strategy of partnering with the biggest businesses in order to create new regulations, taxes, and subsidies." Those measures, he argues, actually benefit the biggest businesses by crowding out competition, consolidating market share, or giving billions in subsidies directly to those companies.