Flint Scientist: ‘Perverse Incentives’ Block Criticism of Government

Business
February 10th, 2016 11:35 AM
Academic bias in favor of government is a real problem according to the professor who sounded the alarm on Flint, Michigan’s lead contamination crisis. That Virginia Tech civil engineering professor, Marc Edwards, criticized academia for its reluctance to criticize government and decried what he called “perverse incentives” preventing academics from criticizing government agencies that fund…

Not News: January's Raw Job Losses Were the Third-Worst on Record

February 9th, 2016 8:56 AM
On Friday, in its January Employment Situation Summary, the government's Bureau of Labor Statistics served up a stack of lemons disguised as lemonade. President Barack Obama declared in a tweet that "We've recovered from the worst economic crisis since the 1930s," and the press dutifully fell in line. The BLS reported that the economy added seasonally adjusted 151,000 payroll jobs and that the…
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Albright: 'Special Place in Hell' For Women Who Don't Vote For Hillary

February 6th, 2016 7:25 PM
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin referred to Madeleine Albright's somewhat well-known saying, found on a Starbucks coffee cup, that "There's a special place in Hell for women who don't help other women." At the time, Albright, who served as Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, huffed: "Though I am flattered that Governor Palin has chosen…

AP Ignores Mark Zandi's Prediction of Near-Zero Fourth-Quarter Growth

February 4th, 2016 9:49 AM
On Wednesday, Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press was tasked with covering ADP's morning report on January private-sector payrolls. At 8:15 a.m., the payroll and benefits giant estimated that the economy added 205,000 seasonally adjusted private-sector jobs last month. Rugaber also attended the 8:30 a.m. conference call which followed the report's release. It's clear that he was on it…

No Ferguson Effect? St. Louis, Baltimore in World's Top 20 For Murders

January 31st, 2016 11:45 AM
Those in the press who have insisted that the "Ferguson effect" is an urban legend will have a hard time explaining why the two cities with the most potential to be affected by this supposedly mythical phenomenon now have murder rates among the top 20 in the entire world. St. Louis, Missouri, next door to Ferguson, where a leftist-"inspired" campaign of "protests," civil disorder and rioting…

Bloomberg Writer: 'Economic Growth Isn't Everything'

January 30th, 2016 11:56 PM
Observers can be excused for thinking that the politicial establishment is preparing the battlespace to convince us plebes that progress and economic growth are overrated. (That's sort of odd for people who call themselves "progressives," but making sense is not their strong suit.) How interesting, for example, that Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon's book, The Rise and Fall of…

Press Drags Out 'Warm Weather' to Excuse Poor Fourth-Quarter Growth

January 30th, 2016 10:25 AM
Friday morning, the government reported that the economy grew at a pathetic annual rate of 0.7 percent in last year's final quarter. As it did in covering the disappointing Christmas shopping season, the business press partially blamed yesterday's awful result on the weather, i.e., warm weather.

AP: 8 Smoking Guns Later, Hillary 'Will Not Be Charged,' Per 'Experts'

January 29th, 2016 11:59 PM
This afternoon, Catherine Herridge at Fox News reported that "the intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails 'too damaging' to national security to release under any circumstances." This eighth "smoking gun" — on top of the seven an Investor's Business Daily editorial identified last week — wasn't enough to move the Associated Press Bradley Klapper from the AP's default…

AP Uses the Same Expert For Positive Words on Economy in Two Reports

January 28th, 2016 11:55 PM
The Associated Press may be down to one person in the whole wide world who will tell its economics reporters what they want to hear when the federal government releases economic data. That's what you almost have to conclude after reading the wire service's reports on two of Thursday's major releases, namely last week's initial unemployment claims and December's durable goods orders and shipments…

AP: 'Americans Rushed to Buy New Homes in Dec.' — A Whole 38,000

January 28th, 2016 8:32 AM
The hype machine was in overdrive at the Associated Press on Wednesday as economics reporter Josh Boak covered the government's mid-morning release on new-home sales. Boak opened by writing that "Americans rushed to buy new homes in December at the strongest pace in 10 months." Good heavens, we're talking about only 38,000 individuals or families, or about 0.031 percent of the nation's roughly…

IBD Explains Consumer Bureau's Auto Loan 'Shakedown' Press Won't Cover

January 28th, 2016 12:00 AM
Critics who warned in 2010 that the odious Dodd-Frank law's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would become a rogue agency which would become a largely unaccountable behemoth on a mission to create problems where none exist could not have been more correct. Sadly, searches on terms relevant to one of the agency's latest controversies involving the distribution of funds in a two year-old auto-…

AP Vaguely Headlines, Selectively Reports Thwarted Milwaukee Massacre

January 27th, 2016 1:03 AM
Barely making the Associated Press's top 10 U.S. stories list shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern Time is a story about the arrest and indictment of Samy Mohamed Hamzeh in Milwaukee. With informants posting as co-conspirators, Hamzeh intended to carry out a massacre of "at least 30 people" at "a Masonic temple in Milwaukee," intending to kill "everyone they saw," and to then "walk away from the scene…

Center for Medical Progress Planned Parenthood Videographers Indicted

January 25th, 2016 7:09 PM

In an unexpected development which may ultimately qualify as a "be careful what you wish for" exercise, the District Attorney in Harris County, Texas, whose county seat is Houston, has indicted Center for Medical Progress videographers David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt. Yes you read that right, via coverage in the Houston Chronicle (bolds are mine):

AP: Fed May Pause Increases, Only Because of 'Darker Global Economy'

January 25th, 2016 5:28 PM
Over the past several months, economics reporters at the Associated Press have told us time and time and time again that the U.S. economy is "largely insulated" from adverse economic developments overseas. So why is the AP's Martin Crutsinger going along with the now-shifting conventional "wisdom" that Janet Yellen's Federal Reserve may have to defer implementing additional interest-rate…