Economy

(Image found at BuriedPlanet.com)In a wildly meandering report on the status of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Alliance's attempt to enact statist health care this year, Associated Press writers David Espo and Erica Werner:Told us that the House wants to slap a surtax on "highly paid" Americans without disclosing the percentage of the proposed surtax or how much it might raise.Forgot to tell us that…

"Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" That's a saying once bungled by President George W. Bush, to the loud delight of the liberal media. But that same media should keep it in mind as Washington mulls a second round of stimulus spending. A July 7 Bloomberg story by Shamim Adam reported that Laura Tyson, an economic advisor to the Obama administration, had put forward the…

In this report we get a nice one-two punch. Not only are we seeing Democrats once again refusing even a tiny compromise with Republicans on Obama's takeover of nearly 20% of our economy with his healthcare plans, but we also get to see another example of why Huffington Post is not journalism. I like a nice one-two punch for a Wednesday. For one thing, the HuffPo article hilariously calls Democrat…

[Please see update below.]Two major wire services- AP and Reuters- cherry picked excerpts from Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical (a teaching document of the Catholic Church) on Tuesday to support left-wing economic and political positions, and all but ignored the pontiff’s traditional stances on the family, bioethics, and the environment. The AP also went so far to bring up “the state of the…

Despite devoting almost the entire Good Morning America program on Tuesday to Michael Jackson, ABC could only find three minutes for a hard-hitting Jake Tapper interview with Barack Obama. And even though co-host Diane Sawyer promised at the close of the piece, "And we'll have more of the President's interview with Jake Tapper later in the broadcast," the segment never returned. Tapper, who was…

Why is CNBC's Rick Santelli one of the few press members willing to point out when the emperor isn't wearing any clothes?As you ponder that important question, consider how Santelli on Tuesday morning recognized how absurd Vice President Joe Biden's Sunday comments were concerning the Obama administration misreading how bad the economy was.After all, as Santelli marvelously asked: "How many…

Question for CNBC Chief Washington Correspondent John Harwood: Where were you six-and-a-half months ago? Harwood on CNBC's July 6 "Squawk Box" noted that the stimulus was not working quite as well as the Obama Administration had hoped - this coming in the wake of comments from Vice President Joe Biden that the economy was "misread" by the administration. The difficulty with the stimulus, he…

In the later paragraphs of a story today about the latest hurdle bailed-out General Motors has managed to jump to get out of bankruptcy, the Associated Press's Bree Fowler almost totally ignored the impact of Ford's improvement largely at GM's expense during the first half of 2009, acting as if GM's decline has almost solely been the result of defections to foreign competitors.Fowler's only…

Oh. So. Predictable -- Both what is happening, and how it is being "covered."Chrysler is barely out of bankruptcy, and there is already concern as to whether the money Uncle Sam, (i.e., U.S. taxpayers) funneled into the company -- while in the process of ripping off and intimidating its secured creditors, capriciously terminating plants and dealers, and running roughshod over long-held notions of…

Part 1 ("The Big Picture") is here.Quick:Which company sold the most light trucks in the U.S. in June?Which company came in at Number 9 in car sales in June, down from Number 7 a year ago?Aren't smaller players in the auto industry obviously gaining ground on the big guys because of their small, fuel-efficient cars?If you don't know the answers to these questions, it's because the press has been…

Your humble correspondent always checks out NeverPayRetailAgain very carefully every morning. That site often provides information about sales bargains that sometimes defy belief. In fact, yesterday at Publix I was able to purchase 2 packages of Ball Park Franks plus a large seedless watermelon for a total cost of just $4.98. $3.99 BOGO (Buy One Get One free) on the hot dogs minus a $1.00 Ball…

We are now six months into the failed Auto Bailout Era. Looking at the industry's four biggest companies, it has become clear that Ford is on the rise, General Motors continues to slip badly, Chrysler is fading into minor-player status, and Toyota's ongoing struggles continue. In May, after April's sales results came out, two Associated Press writers noted Ford's ascendancy and uniquely hinted at…

Somehow New York Times columnist Paul Krugman seems a terrible subject for a song.Yet, Loudon Wainwright III, who admits to being a Times fan, performed "The Krugman Blues" in New York's Madison Square Park a few weeks ago:I read the New York Times, that's where I get the news. Paul Krugman's on the Op Ed page, that's where I get the blues.  In Wainwright's view, given the current state of the…

At the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web today, Jim Taranto noted that it took the Associated Press's Jeannine Aversa until the 15th paragraph of her expanded dispatch on today's Employment Situation Report to find something mildly positive to write.Aversa, who has been one of the wire service's chief silver lining make-up artists during the Obama presidency's disastrous economic stewardship…