Economy

There isn't much about dysfunctional government that shocks me anymore, but this story did. According to a report by the Office of Personnel Management and reported in Ed O'Keefe's "The Federal Eye" column in the Washington Post, our government has been sending checks to dead people. "In the last five years," O'Keefe writes, "the Office of Personnel Management has made more than $601 million…

Are we witnessing a crack-up within the key demographic President Obama must count on to have any hope of re-election?  Al Sharpton has come out firing at Maxine Waters and other black Dems for their criticism of President Obama's perceived indifference to black unemployment. Last month, long-time congresswoman Waters told the audience at a Congressional Black Caucus event that she and other…

CNN's Jessica Yellin, reporting on President Obama's virtual townhall Monday afternoon, noted two wealthy persons who wish to pay higher taxes – but didn't mention the small businessman who during the townhall complained to the President about regulations and taxes. Yellin focused her brief report on a member of the audience who claimed to be a wealthy retiree and asked for higher taxes. CNN…

Both CBS's "Early Show" and CNN's "Newsroom" sought out Rep. Maxine Waters on Monday for her reaction to President Obama's "stop complaining" rejoinder to the Congressional Black Caucus on Saturday, but neither outlet mentioned the continuing ethics investigation into the ultra-liberal Democrat. CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux even went so far to flatter Rep. Waters as having her "marching shoes"…

"Greece has got a 45 percent income tax, a 23 percent value-added tax on top of that, so Greece should be in fine shape according to this economic theory," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News's Sean Hannity on Friday, reacting to a clip of CNN's Christine Romans insisting that "serious economists" all agree that taxes must be raised on America's highest income earners. "This is a…

Sometimes, I think that we wouldn't have a useful press at all if it weren't for the British press. The big news out of the International Monetary Fund this weekend was, as reported by the UK Telegraph, that it "may need billions in extra funding." Specifically, it "may have to tap its members – including Britain – for billions of pounds of extra funding to stem the European debt crisis."…

It's probably not much of a stretch to believe that Barack Obama and his speechwriters frequently peruse the New York Times in print or online. Their likely affinity for the Times may explain why the President referred to the "intercontinental railroad" in his speech yesterday in Cincinnati near the Brent Spence Bridge:

In one of the least needed reassurances in modern political history, President Obama's top political man David Plouffe, "told Democrats late last week that the White House would not suffer from overconfidence. 'What I don't want to suggest is that we're sitting around and thinking everything is great,' he said." With the White House's own economists predicting 9 percent or worse unemployment…

Morgan Freeman, in an interview to be aired on CNN Friday evening, says that President Obama has made racism worse in America. Chatting with Piers Morgan, the Oscar-winning actor also blames the Tea Party saying they're "going to do whatever [they] can to get this black man outta here” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The lengths Paul Krugman will go to further the lie that the rich don't pay their "fair share" of taxes knows no bounds. In his New York Times column Friday, the Nobel laureate in economics claimed, "[T]he federal tax burden has fallen for all income classes":

It is clear from the way President Barack Obama has been talking about the federal budget recently, and about taxation since he came to office, that all the money that Americans earn belongs to the federal government. The key words in this conversation are "tax expenditures." Obama has lost a lot in tax expenditures, and he wants more of those tax expenditures back. He can spend that money, he…

What a curiously incurious Morning Joe bunch!  Joe Scarborough says Solyndra "is just not a story I have focused on" and John Heilemann similarly admits to not having "drilled down" on the matter.  Meanwhile, Harold Ford, Jr. assures us that when it comes to any potential Solyndra scandal, "there's no there, there" and that no one "has done anything illicit here at all." A blasé Joe…

Sometimes, media bias is all about the headline . . . The New York Times has a decent piece this morning detailing the background that led to the approval by the Obama admin of more than a half-billion in loan guarantees to the soon-to-go-kaput Solyndra solar firm.   The article paints a picture of an Obama admin that was eager to get the money out the door and was heavily lobbied by Solyndra…

Earlier this evening (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I cited a few of very many examples where the press has not hesitated during the Obama years, and really since Barack Obama became the frontrunner for the Democratic Party's nomination in 2008, to engage in uncalled-for creativity to avoid calling a statement made a lie or an unlawful action illegal. One of the lastest: A Raleigh New &…