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Gene Sperling

Obama Admin On Miserable Jobs Report: Blame Bush, Claim 11 Million Jobs Saved

By Mark Finkelstein | September 02, 2011 | 11:10

Give Gene Sperling credit--he managed to keep a straight face. Sent out onto the White House lawn to explain away the horrendous jobs report showing that the economy created no new jobs in August, the director of the White House National Economic Council actually resorted to blaming the economy inherited from George W. Bush, then making the mind-boggling boast that the failed Obama stimulus program somehow made an 11-million job difference.

Sperling was speaking with Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post, guest hosting for Chuck Todd on MSNBC's Daily Rundown.  View video after the jump.

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MSNBC's Chuck Todd Continues to Distort Tax Deal's 'Astronomical' Cost

By Alex Fitzsimmons | December 07, 2010 | 13:48

MSNBC's Chuck Todd on the December 7 "Daily Rundown" was uncharacteristically heated in his opposition to the compromise between President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans on extending the Bush tax rates.

Interviewing a Treasury Department official, Todd used flawed statistics to malign the proposed two-year extension of tax breaks for all families as unacceptably expensive.

"The cost of this is astronomical though," proclaimed the NBC Political Director. "The payroll tax cut means essentially borrowing from the Social Security trust fund to do this temporary payroll tax. I mean, it's 120 billion, that's a lot of money!"

[Video embedded after the page break.]

BusinessWeek Hypes Downside of Free Trade, Ignores Positives

By Jeff Poor | February 01, 2008 | 16:26

♪♫ ♪ Say, say, one, nine, three, zero, party over, oops, out of time! So tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1929! ♪♫ ♪

It's the kind of rhetoric legislators in Congress were probably hearing following the economic downturn that occurred in 1929, which instigated the infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 that sent U.S. tariff rates sky high. That is, the February 11 issue of BusinessWeek, showing all the disadvantages of free trade for the United States and ignoring the advantages.

An article, "Economists Rethink Free Trade," by BusinessWeek Washington Bureau Chief Jane Sasseen ignored the benefits of free trade and the consequences of enacting anti-free trade policies.