Economy

“Fiscal conservatism, in other words, comes with its own costs.” That sums up the lead story in Thursday’s National section by Michael Powell and Midwest bureau chief Monica Davey from Indianapolis, “The Indiana Exception? Yes, but...A State Averts the Worst of the Recession, But Its Success Comes at a Steep Social Cost.” It’s a major story, packed with statistics and charts and interviews,…

It took well over a year, but New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has gotten his way. Covering the story for the New York Times, Richard Perez-Pena seemed to alternate between shock and "Awww." His biggest journalistic distortion was understating the degree to which Christie needed -- and got -- Democratic Party help to pass legislation which, in Pena's words, "will sharply increase what state…

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? -- Matthew 7:4 On a somewhat slow Thursday night, let's have a good chuckle.  On his MSNBC show this evening, Cenk Uygur jumped on a poll showing Paul Ryan with a 26% unfavorability rating to declare that America "can't stand" the Wisconsin congressman and that the 26%…

We all know how the story ended for the first "Sheriff of Wall Street," Eliot Spitzer. CNN hailed attorney Preet Bharara as the "New Sheriff of Wall Street" in a puff-piece Thursday afternoon, and one can only wonder if his career path will eventually take him to a prime-time slot at CNN as a Democrat mouthpiece. Bharara was nominated by President Obama in 2009 to be U.S. Attorney for the…

Talking to former Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer touted low approval ratings for some newly elected Republican governors and theorized: "They went into office with messages of austerity. And now a year later, you look at their approval ratings and they're falling. Is this buyer's remorse?" A graphic appeared on screen showing Wisconsin Governor…

When the Associated Press's Paul Wiseman and Martin Crutsinger team up for a report on the economy, there's no limit to the comic potential. Today, in covering what the folks at Zero Hedge described as "Ben Bernanke's 'I Have No Idea Why The Economy Will Get Better But It Will' Speech" (transcript is at link), the AP pair may have set a new world record for most unused words one would expect…

Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday accused Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) of being a socialist. "The Last Word" host, who has admitted on national television to himself being a socialist, did so by cherry-picking from an article published at the perilously liberal website "The Huffington Post" (video follows with commentary and full transcript at end of post):

The sub-prime mortgage bust has been the topic of much discussion in the media since late 2008. Unfortunately, given the left-leaning composition of most of America's elite newsrooms, very little of that discussion has focused on the federal government-backed mortgage bundlers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The MacIver Institute, a Wisconsin-based free-market think tank, has released a new video exploring the essential philosophy that underlies many liberal economic policies of late:the belief that the government, not the individual has the foremost right to the nation's wealth. Check out their new video with commentary by Rep. Paul Ryan after the break, and let us know your thoughts in the…

In the run-up to the passage of Obamacare in March 2010, Nancy Pelosi infamously told a friendly audience: "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." Fifteen months later, we still haven't learned everything about a bill which no honest congressperson or senator can claim to have read and fully understood. Today's "discovery" is that some couples in their early 60s…

New York Times economics reporter Catherine Rampell’s front-page story Saturday on Arizona imposing limits on federal unemployment benefits it provides, “For  Want of a Word, Arizona’s Jobless Lose Checks,” is the latest Times story to fiercely defend unimpeded spending on unemployment benefits. Previously this year, Times reporters had questioned  “deepest and most far-reaching” cuts in…

New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny followed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to Tampa and filed “Democrats Scowl at Romney Joke” for Friday's edition, treating as a weighty matter a harmless joke by the candidate to a group of unemployed people as one of a series of “occasionally awkward...off-the-cuff remarks.” Yet the Times has remained silent as President Obama has reeled off a…

CNN's Fareed Zakaria regurgitated his conservative-bashing Time magazine piece on his Sunday show Fareed Zakaria GPS. He opened up his program with the same barrage against conservatives that he launched in Time on Thursday, namely that today's conservatism is woefully divorced from reality like the Marxists of the 19th century. Zakaria writes that "conservatives now resemble the old…

I am so sick and tired of people defending Barack Obama and the disastrous policies of the two years the Democrats had control of both houses of Congress. If anybody ever had a reverse Midas touch, it is this president. Everything he touches turns to debt. I sincerely want anybody who wants to defend Obama to respond to this column, but I don't want to have even one response that mentions…