Shhh: Unionized Percentage of Workforce Is at an Over 100-Year Low

January 27th, 2015 10:02 PM
On Friday, Melissa Quinn at the Daily Signal, after the release of the government's "Union Members -- 2014" report, uniquely observed that the unionized percentage of the public- and private-sector nonagricultural wage and salary U.S. workforce had reached "its lowest rate in 100 years." From what I can tell in web and news searches, despite the fact that virtually any 100-year record is…

Only 1.1% of Americans Live in Unemployment Rate-Recovering Counties

January 26th, 2015 6:11 PM
This post follows up on Friday morning's entry (at BizzyBlog; at NewsBusters) showing that "Fewer Than 0.5% of Americans Live in Fully Recovered Counties." This is the kind of news which would be front and center with the nation's establishment press if such a report came out during a Republican or conservative presidential administration. With Team Obama in place, NACo's work has been virtually…

At Politico Mag, Undisclosed Dem Donor Covers Obama and Middle Class

January 26th, 2015 11:28 AM
It would seem that the conversation at Politico went something like this: "Hey, we need to hit the Obama administration for the havoc its policies have wreaked on the middle class. But we can't go after them too hard, because that might burn some bridges, and we'll lose our stenographer — er, journalistic — access. So we need to use someone sympathetic to Democrats who will know how not to go…

Surprise: AP Uses the Term 'Radical Left' in Covering Greek Elections

January 23rd, 2015 6:51 PM
In a report on the upcoming Greek elections, an unbylined Friday afternoon Associated Press report dusted off words seldom seen in their dispatches, using the term "radical left" twice and the word "radical" separately once for good measure. The almost never seen terms — virtually invisible in decades of descriptions of longtime radical leftists like Fidel Castro, the late Hugo Chavez or lefty…

AP Spins Today's Glum (For Organized Labor) Union Membership Report

January 23rd, 2015 4:46 PM
Someone looking at the annual "Union Members" report released this morning by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics would logically conclude that 2014 was a year organized labor would rather forget. While average nonagricultural wage and salary employment increased by over 2.32 million from 2013 to 2014, union membership only went up by 48,000, or about 2 percent of the nationwide…

Not News: Fewer Than 0.5% Live in Fully Recovered Counties

January 23rd, 2015 9:44 AM
In his State of the Union address — perhaps, based on the recommendations for government involvement and control he made therein, better described as his Statist of the Union address — President Obama referenced the "growing" U.S. economy at least three times, but "recovery" only once. Specifically, he claimed that "thanks to a growing economy, the recovery is touching more and more lives." The…

Press Ignores Venezuelan Bishops' Strong Denunciation of Marxism

January 13th, 2015 7:30 PM
The latest report out of Venezuela by the Associated Press's Hannah Dreier has a time stamp of 1:15 p.m. today. This means that the wire service has had plenty of time to report, and has chosen not to report, a powerful pastoral letter issued yesterday by that country's Catholic bishops (original in Spanish; full Google Translation) denouncing that country's descent into a system they described…

Barely News: Dire Venezuelan Shortages Bring Military Into Stores

January 10th, 2015 10:39 AM
Three results returned in a search at the Associated Press's national site on "Venezuela" tell us almost nothing about that country's deepening economic crisis. An unbylined January 10 item reports on the visit of Nicolas Maduro, the country's de facto dictator, to Iran in hopes of "stabilizing" (i.e., raising) oil prices. A second unbylined report on January 9 tells readers that there's really…
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Fox's Shep Smith Hopes Cuba Relations Thaw Doesn't 'Ruin the Place'

December 18th, 2014 2:03 PM
Those who rail at Fox News for allegedly being a haven of unbridled, uninterrupted conservatism usually and conveniently fail to remember that Shepard Smith is there. Smith's take yesterday on the potential pitfalls of a thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations, particularly on the commercial front, was nothing short of astonishing. His primary fear, expressed in an interview with Gerri Willis of the Fox…

Top 10 Lefty and Media Attacks on Business in 2014

December 17th, 2014 10:04 AM
Although 2014 was an election year, venomous attacks weren’t just in the campaign commercials. Most recently, anti-business attacks came from protesters across the country in the form of #ShutItDown. And there were many other anti-business views presented by the liberal news media, TV programming and left-wing extremists this year. Attacks on businesses, executives and certain products were…

AP Thinks We're Thrilled to Be 'Finally Getting Over' on Gas Stations

December 14th, 2014 10:31 AM
Here's a small window into a journalist's mindset. In a report on how lower gas prices are affecting the companies operating retail gas stations, Associated Press reporter John Fahey revealed his apparent believes that there are millions of us walking around, perhaps including him, obsessed with getting back at gas station owners for charging us so much at fill-up time for years:

Thin Gruel: AP Hypes How 'Job Market Hits a Turning Point'

December 8th, 2014 2:41 PM
Friday's Employment Situation Summary contained one strong element: In November, the economy added 321,000 seasonally adjusted payroll jobs. That's not insignificant, but that news, especially in the report's full context, certainly didn't justify the level of elation seen in much of the press. Predictably, the Associated Press found a specious reason to characterize the government's report as…

The Media Messes Up the Lede

December 1st, 2014 10:36 AM
As we’ve often discussed, the Tech World Media is just as hopelessly Leftist and lost as the broader Jurassic Press. They so often get it so very wrong - often because their absurd political perspective warps their alleged “reporting.”  Saturday gave us two additional exquisite examples - one each in Politico (henceforth Pathetico) and The Hill.

OUR Walmart Demands Chain Pay $15/Hr.; UFCW-Unionized Kroger Pays Less

November 28th, 2014 1:55 PM
In a Tuesday column originally appearing at RealClearMarkets.com (found in more readable form at Economics21.org), the Manhattan Institute's Diana Furchtgott-Roth tore into the hypocrites at OUR Walmart, the union-backed effort to intimidate the nation's largest retailer into paying all employees at least $15 per hour. In the process, Furchtgott-Roth noted a particularly important fact which I…