In July, LA School Officials Defended RFK Taj Mahal K-12 Complex as 'M
Well, it didn't take to much digging to find people who think that the $578 million cost of the new Taj Mahal complex known as the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Los Angeles (pictured at right; noted last night at NewsBusters and BizzyBlog) isn't that big of a deal. What I found makes me wonder why it took so long for waste of this magnitude to become a national story. On July 9, at LA'…
O, M, G -- Price Tag for One New LA K-12 Complex: $578 Mil
Call it "No Contractor Left Behind." The Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Los Angeles, apparently opening soon, will serve roughly 4,200 students in grades K-12. Its cost is coming in at $578 million, or almost $140,000 per student ($2.75 million per 20-student classroom). This is the LA Unified District's most flagrant example of its Taj Mahal obsession, and it is far from the only one.…
Meet the Press: Dick Armey Slams Alan Greenspan's View of Bush Tax Cut
David Gregory on Sunday finally got an answer to his question about extending the Bush tax cuts, but it certainly wasn't what he was expecting.For those that have been watching "Meet the Press" this month, the host has been grilling his conservative guests about this issue ever since former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan told him on August 1 that tax cuts don't pay for themselves.Having…
George Will Schools Robert Reich On Deficit Spending, FDR and Herbert
George Will on Sunday gave Robert Reich a much-needed history lesson about deficit spending and liberal myths concerning Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover.As the Roundtable segment on ABC's "This Week" moved to the current state of the economy, Reich predictably called for another stimulus package. "You can't even talk about stimulus because people say, 'Oh, that would create a deficit…
WaPo's Eugene Robinson: Obama Is On A 'Winning Streak
What kind of shameless shill do you have to be to claim the President is on a winning streak as his poll numbers plummet, the economy teeters on a double-dip recession, and his Party is facing historic losses in both chambers of Congress?A Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and former managing editor of the Washington Post, that's who.Consider that just days after numerous polls were released…
Really Raw Data: July 2010 Is Worst July on Record for Housing Starts
Here's how the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger and Daniel Wagner reported the housing portion of their Tuesday report on the day's economic news ("Factories aid bumpy recovery, housing still weak"): Single-family home construction, which represented nearly 80 percent of the market, fell 4.2 percent. And requests for building permits, considered a good sign of future activity, slid 3.1…
Cenk Uygur's Pitchfork Populism: Raising Taxes Will Solve Income Dispa
Want to see a textbook example of how the left has tried to frame the debate against extending the Bush tax cuts? Take a look at Cenk Uygur, of "The Young Turks" fame, playing the class warfare/populism card. On MSNBC's Aug. 17 broadcast of "The Dylan Ratigan Show," Uygur was up in arms over the argument that taxes shouldn't be raised by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. He alluded to…
ZBB BS: WSJ Editorial Scoops Beat Journalists on Financial Condition o
Here's yet another example illustrating why one must treat the editorials at the Wall Street Journal as a primary source of hard news during Democratic presidential administrations. On Monday, President Obama visited ZBB Energy Corp, a maker of high-tech batteries in Menominee, Wisconsin. Helene Cooper at the New York Times, where a larger version of the picture at the right appeared, reported…
WaPo's Frank Ahrens Suggests Krugman, Kudlow as Potential Romer Replac
Paul Krugman and Larry Kudlow - not exactly two guys you would associate with one another. However, they are two media figures Washington Post columnist Frank Ahrens thinks should be candidates for the same job. In his Aug. 15 column, Ahrens wrote about some of the people that should replace outgoing chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer. He named several…
AP Writers Package Months-Old Polling Data As Currently Relevant News
Memo to Alan Fram and Trevor Tompson of the Associated Press and two other writers who contributed to this report ("AP-GfK polls show Obama losing independents"): You should have taken the weekend off.When I saw a shorter, earlier version of the referenced AP report this morning, it didn't mention when AP's polling arm AP-GfK Roper had done their work. When I went to the polling home page and…
NYT's Herbert Rips Obama: He Should Have Exclusively Focused On Jobs
Are even the most liberal media members starting to realize the administration's "Recovery Summer" campaign was a complete joke?Such appears to be the case for New York Times columnist Bob Herbert who on Saturday published a piece absolutely excoriating President Obama for not exclusively focusing on jobs after his inauguration last year:The Obama administration seems to be feeling sorry for…
Obama Demagogues Social Security in Radio/Net Address; AP and Erica We
Don't they usually wait until after Labor Day to do this? Ten days ago, I asserted that that the administration's cynical use of Andy Griffith for a patently political promo on behalf of Medicare ("This year, as always, we’ll have our guaranteed benefits, and with the new healthcare law, more good things are coming: free check-ups, lower prescription costs") was "the foundation for the biennial…
After Bashing Bush on Unemployment, NYT Now Touting 'Benefits' of High
In late 2009, when high rates of unemployment began looking like a sad fact of life for the foreseeable future, the media started looking for ways to put a positive spin on the situation.
Sure, many had predicted the next great depression when unemployment stood at around 6 percent in 2008, but with Democrats in control of the White House and Congress, a number of reporters suddenly found the…
