For Once, AP Skeptical of Dems' Over-the-Top Claims About the Economy
Even Charles Babington at the Associated Press, for once not the completely beholden Administration's Press, seemed to be having a hard time buying what Democrats at a meeting in Philadelphia were selling. Unfortunately, he decided to let Joe Biden's direct contradiction of his party's congressional delegation's sunnyside-up stance on the economy go unreported.
In a video carried at the Weekly…
Bloomberg Praises Home Sales Spike, Despite Prior Downward Revisions
If someone fools you once, shame on them. If they fool you with the same trick a second time, shame on you. If they "fool" you a third time — well, you must be in on it.
That's my take on Bloomberg News's virtually euphoric reaction to yesterday's new-home sales release from the Census Bureau. The wire service's Shobhana Chandra celebrated how seasonally adjusted December sales were at "the…
At Politico Mag, Undisclosed Dem Donor Covers Obama and Middle Class
It would seem that the conversation at Politico went something like this: "Hey, we need to hit the Obama administration for the havoc its policies have wreaked on the middle class. But we can't go after them too hard, because that might burn some bridges, and we'll lose our stenographer — er, journalistic — access. So we need to use someone sympathetic to Democrats who will know how not to go…
AP Spins Today's Glum (For Organized Labor) Union Membership Report
Someone looking at the annual "Union Members" report released this morning by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics would logically conclude that 2014 was a year organized labor would rather forget.
While average nonagricultural wage and salary employment increased by over 2.32 million from 2013 to 2014, union membership only went up by 48,000, or about 2 percent of the nationwide…
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Steve Rattner: Silver's 100G+ Assembly Pay Wasn't 'Full-Time' Salary
On today's Morning Joe, commenting on the arrest of Dem NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on bribery charges, Rattner claimed that "they don't pay these guys full-time salaries. They pay them, I think, $112,000 a year."
Barely News: Dire Venezuelan Shortages Bring Military Into Stores
Three results returned in a search at the Associated Press's national site on "Venezuela" tell us almost nothing about that country's deepening economic crisis.
An unbylined January 10 item reports on the visit of Nicolas Maduro, the country's de facto dictator, to Iran in hopes of "stabilizing" (i.e., raising) oil prices. A second unbylined report on January 9 tells readers that there's really…
NYT Loves Big Govt: 'Public Sector...Once Again Adding to Prosperity'
The big-government supporters at the New York Times offered two classic big-government news stories on the front of its Business section two days in a row. On Friday: "Government Spending, Edging Up, Is a Stimulus." The text box underlined the pro-government spending sentiment: "The public sector is once again adding to prosperity." On Thursday: "Hourly Wage Is Going Up for Millions." The online…
Mario Cuomo in 1984: High on Passion, Low on Accuracy
Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who died on Thursday, is predictably being lionized today by USA Today's Aamer Madhani "as (a) giant in political rhetoric," and by others elsewhere in similarly glowing terms.
Madhani goes on to characterize the three-term Empire State chief executive's 1984 Democratic Convention speech in San Francisco as "what is widely considered one of the finest pieces…
Stop the Presses: Jackson Said Something Sensible — On Immigration
Call the Ripley's Believe It or Not people. Have smelling salts available. What follows will surely be one of the more unusual things you've seen or heard this year.
In the midst of his otherwise odious Silicon Valley race-hustling shakedown effort, Jesse Jackson said something that made sense — so much sense that the rest of the press, which usually hangs on every word of his nonsensical…
Top 10 Lefty and Media Attacks on Business in 2014
Although 2014 was an election year, venomous attacks weren’t just in the campaign commercials. Most recently, anti-business attacks came from protesters across the country in the form of #ShutItDown. And there were many other anti-business views presented by the liberal news media, TV programming and left-wing extremists this year.
Attacks on businesses, executives and certain products were…
NYT Foodie Mark Bittman Uncoils Leftist Inanities for Sunday Review
An epic example of fanciful, fatuous liberalism featured in the most recent New York Times Sunday Review, a screed from Times food writer Mark Bittman that tried to tie in every single current event into a neat package labeled Republican Evil: "The police killing unarmed civilians. Horrifying income inequality. Rotting infrastructure and an unsafe "safety net." An inability to respond to climate…
Many UFCW Members Earn Far Less Than the $15/Hr. It Demands of Walmart
Just before Thanksgiving, Our Walmart and the United Food and Commerical Workers went into high gear in their effort to draw attention to their advocacy of $15-per-hour minimum wage at the nation's largest retailer. Just after the holiday, I pointed to a column by the Manhattan Institute's Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who quickly discovered that many Kroger employees represented by the UFCW earn far…
OUR Walmart Demands Chain Pay $15/Hr.; UFCW-Unionized Kroger Pays Less
In a Tuesday column originally appearing at RealClearMarkets.com (found in more readable form at Economics21.org), the Manhattan Institute's Diana Furchtgott-Roth tore into the hypocrites at OUR Walmart, the union-backed effort to intimidate the nation's largest retailer into paying all employees at least $15 per hour.
In the process, Furchtgott-Roth noted a particularly important fact which I…
AP Is Stunned at Japan's Recession Despite 'Unprecedented Stimulus'
After reading Elaine Kurtenbach's coverage of how Japan's latest dive into yet another recession is affecting young people there, I can only say, "The Keynesian koolaid is strong in this one." The AP reporter's headline says that the recession was "unexpected," and her first sentence calls it "a surprise." Anyone watching economic events in the country, and I think that's supposed to include…
