Budget

On Tuesday's New Day, CNN's Alisyn Camerota made no mention of the outrage over Planned Parenthood varying its abortion techniques in order to preserve unborn babies' organs for medical research, as was revealed in two undercover videos. Instead, Camerota zeroed in on "these representatives from Planned Parenthood negotiating" over prices for these organs. She even touted how the "exchange of…

Of all the media memes ever attempted, the one blaming Republicans for the fact that now-resigned Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Aruchleta was confirmed is high on the list of the most ridiculous ever. A reasonably close runnerup is the idea that Congress failed "to adequately fund OPM." Matt Balan at NewsBusters covered CNN's ridiculous tweeted claim that "Republicans…

The current headline at a June 29 New York Times story by Peter Eavis, also appearing on the front page of today's print edition, is "Loads of Debt: A Global Ailment With Few Cures." But the last portion of the story's web address is "... trillions-spent-but-crises-like-greeces-persist.html." That's because the original headline, the one used at the Times's Twitter account — was "Trillions Spent…

In addition to his usual tired historical revisionism, the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger, in his report on May's budget deficit of $82 billion, failed to mention that the nation is once again operating at the legal limit of its authorized debt. Additionally, he mailed in his final five paragraphs, virtually copying what he wrote on May 12 in covering April's surplus. The nation's debt…

Will Deener, who has been a business reporter since at least before the turn of the century, considers his most unforgettable experience on the job to be "Covering the crash of the Internet stocks and Enron in 2000-2002." Sunday evening, the Dallas Morning News columnist moaned about how big U.S. companies engaged in real businesses are avoiding paying billions in taxes because "the nation’s…

Facts are such inconvenient things. Especially financial facts and figures. On Tuesday, Rebecca Shabad at the Hill composed a 34-paragraph report entitled "Washington is ready to spend." Really? When have Congress or the White House not been ready to spend? Oh, I get it. She really means that they're getting ready to spend more. How much more? Readers will search in vain for anything beyond a…

In the early 1990s, politicians floated the term “peace dividend” regarding a hoped-for post-Cold War reduction in the U.S. defense budget, and Pentagon spending indeed fell somewhat in the mid- and late ‘90s. Sean McElwee, a research associate at the lefty think tank Demos, argues that America now needs a post-9/11, post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq peace dividend which would allow greatly increased…

It's bad enough, as Bryan Ballas at NewsBusters noted on May 16, that the Washington Post's Philip Bump dishonestly used last week's Amtrak tragedy to rip Republican members of Congress for somehow being responsible for the (theoretically) for-profit entity's "constant struggle" for funding. As Sean Davis at the Federalist explained, Amtrak has really had no funding struggles. Bump had to make…

On Tuesday, Associated Press reporter Martin Crutsinger celebrated the federal government's large April budget surplus, caused by "a flood of tax payments (which) pushed government receipts to an all-time high." He didn't mention that the tax payments were higher largely because of tax increases passed in 2013. It certainly didn't occur because of an improving economy — because it's not…

Without any evidence of what caused the crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia Tuesday night, all three network morning shows on Wednesday had no hesitation in suggesting a lack of government infrastructure spending was to blame. NBC's Guthrie:  "And another issue people have raised is that because this is such a heavily traveled section of track that there are also infrastructure issues....Is…

It was enough to make a blogger in mom's basement spit out his Cheetos in surprise.  On today's Morning Joe income redistributionist and global climate kvetcher Prof. Jeffrey Sachs praised the UK Conservatives for creating jobs via an austerity budget. In a second surprise, Sachs criticized fellow lefty traveler Paul Krugman. Said Sachs of the Conservatives: "they governed well . . . they got…

Japan just reported yet another awful retail sales result. Though it far exceeeded predictions of a 7.3 percent fall, the 9.7 percent March 2015 plunge compared to March 2014 doesn't reveal much, as March 2014 saw a splurge at the stores ahead of a steep sales tax increase which took effect on April 1. The really telling figure is the 1.9 percent seasonally adjusted dive compared to February.…

So when is a recession not a genuine recession? Apparently when it's "technical." Unfortunately, the term "technical recession" appears to be well on the way to devolving into what has long been considered the real definition of a recession for the purpose of discounting its validity.

It was the best of coverage - it was the worst of coverage.