Economy

I suspect that a number of people are tired of the establishment press telling us how so many economic reports have "best in" or best since (specific month in) 2008 (or 2007)" figures, especially the ones that still don't reflect what anyone would consider acceptable in normal economic times. Just a few examples include housing starts, housing permits, new home sales, existing home sales,…

Well, it’s Washington Post official: the sequestration wasn’t all that bad after all.  In fact, you could classify it as a dud, according to none other than Ezra Klein, a favored pet pundit of many a liberal MSNBC panel. In a June 30 item at his Wonkblog, Klein concluded that the experts were “mostly wrong” concerning the impact of the cuts.  At the same time, conservatives saw from the…

Independence Day is the perfect day to remember that liberal Democrats want Americans to be dependent on government. Nancy Pelosi reminded Americans of that on June 27 with her remarks to the press about the national holiday, where she essentially argued that the Founding Fathers would have loved ObamaCare. “[W]hen we celebrate Independence Day we’ll also be observing health independence.…

The Barack Obama Administration has been on a five-plus-year-long Collect-As-Much-Information-On-Us-As-Possible spree. With Tens of Millions of Phone Records Grabbed – It’s the Government, Stupid ‘Thousands of NSA Analysts Can Listen to Domestic Phone Calls,’ Read Emails, Texts, IMs Latest Big Government Data Grab: Justice Sues to Get It Without a Warrant IRS Tea Party Scandal Shows…

Ozark, Missouri-based children's magician Marty Hahne uses a three-pound rabbit in his magic act. In a development which probably won't become a news story because it makes the government look bad, Hahne has informed blogger Bob McCarty that "I just received an 8 page letter from the USDA, telling me that by July 29 I need to have in place a written disaster plan, detailing all the steps I…

On Sunday, in a report which I contend would surely have been published on a weekday -- and more importantly, published with far greater clarity -- if a Republican or conservative were in the White House, the Associated Press's Paul Wiseman essentially explored the following question: "Why aren't people spending more if they're so much richer?" The answer he found, which should surprise no…

Before the government released its first estimate of first-quarter economic growth in late April, the establishment press, particularly Bloomberg News and the Associated Press, salivated at the chance to report the then-predicted "robust" annualized growth of 3 percent and to describe how the economy had "accelerated" from the previous quarter's pathetic 0.4 percent. When that first estimate…

On Tuesday June 25, Penny Pritzker became the 38th Secretary of Commerce after the Senate voted to confirm her 97-1.  Oddly enough, Pritzker has a Romney-esque business background.  The well-connected friend of Obama is worth millions, has previously understated her income, and is not well liked by Big Labor.  She also benefited from offshore tax havens. Despite all that, in the end, her…

First, they buried the lede, then they excised it completely. An initial report yesterday at the New York Times on President Obama's speech on "climate change" at Georgetown University by Mark Landler and John M. Broder -- a report which was still up at least as late as 6 p.m. Tuesday evening, according to this story pull posted at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (go to the bottom of the article…

Continuing the business press's slavish devotion to seasonally adjusted figures in government reports to the exclusion of looking at what actually happened, Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, began his Tuesday dispatch on May's new-home sales report from the Census Bureau as follows: "Sales of new homes rose in May to the fastest pace in five years, a…

MSNBC anchor Alex Witt turned into a skeptic of federal government spending on Saturday’s Weekends with Alex Witt, but before you get too excited, it was predictably in service of a larger liberal agenda. Witt questioned the wisdom of a $30 billion border security amendment that is now being debated in the Senate. This amendment to the larger Senate immigration bill calls for 20,000 additional…

How ironic it is that, as Kyle Drennen noted today at NewsBusters, that NBC's David Gregory was so vocal in advocating that "Government Playing a Bigger Role" in the economy, given that yesterday was the eighth anniversary of the Kelo vs. New London decision, a monument to colossal government failure if there ever was one. A 5-4 Supreme Court majority, believing that the Connecticut city of…

NBC’s chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd had some tough words for President Obama on Monday’s Morning Joe. Todd, anchor of MSNBC’s Daily Rundown and a frequent critic of Republicans on network’s programming, scolded the president for running a “leaderless Washington,” and for failing to “rally the world” to a “solution in Syria.” Todd’s critique was in reference to a Saturday op-ed…

In an interview with liberal economist Jeffrey Sachs for Meet the Press's Press Pass segment on Sunday, moderator David Gregory worried about skepticism of big government: "...a lot of it has to do with what role does a government play in creating more structural balance in the economy, creating more jobs...doing what nobody else can do for the economy....but that the country writ large does…