Blogs

Today's report from the government on retail sales was awful — "unexpectedly" so, according to both Bloomberg and Reuters. Following on the heels of a 0.4 percent seasonally adjusted decline in January and a flat February, March sales fell by 0.3 percent. Two of the three main U.S. business wire services blamed the American people, not the worst post-recession economy since World War II during…

Despite the decay of the left-dominated blue-city model during the past several decades, liberals and the press are not fans of many urban neighborhood improvement efforts. One recent example found at a national media outlet is at Newsweek, where on April 2, Alexander Nazaryan, in an item headlined "WHITE CITY: THE NEW URBAN BLIGHT IS RICH PEOPLE," wrote that "gentrification ... turns cities…

On Tuesday, shortly after Governor Jerry Brown signed California's $15-an-hour minimum wage legislation, the Associated Press's Michael R. Blood and Don Thompson called the move "a victory for those struggling on the margins of the economy and the politically powerful unions that pushed it." As seen in a NewsBusters post on March 31, it's definitely a win for union members whose wages are set…

Two weeks ago, yours truly posted on a very inadequate March 26 U.S.-distributed Associated Press story out of Glasgow the previous day (since expired) about the murder of Asad Shah. Despite the fact that far more information was known at the time, the wire service would only acknowledge that "the killing of a Muslim shopkeeper who wished Christians a happy Easter is being investigated as '…

In a properly functioning news environment, where genuine journalists recognize important news and report it without first screening its relevance through a PC filter, the deaths of volunteer firefighter Peter Hacking and his two young daughters in a car crash near Wylie, Texas last week would have become a widely covered national story by now. Sadly, virtually the only reason it's known at all…

Perhaps this is why the press has been reluctant to cite economists who are predicting that sharp increases in state minimum wages like the $15-per-hour minimums just passed in California and New York will reduce employment: They're with many of their lefty brethren who don't care whether jobs are lost. So they must believe that no one else should care either. At the Washington Post's WonkBlog…

On Sunday, I noted how USA Today, the Associated Press, and the establishment press in general have swallowed the Obama administration's line that the 61 convicted and incarcerated criminals whose sentences the President commuted last Thursday were "low-level inmates" guilty of "low-level drug offenses." A spreadsheet working only from the information the White House provided demonstrates that…

At Politico tonight, the headline is: "Sanders crushes Clinton in Wisconsin." Given Mrs. Clinton's frontrunner status and the fact that, as the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel noted on Saturday (HT Ann Althouse), "Wisconsin has a nearly unbroken modern-day record of voting for party front-runners in its presidential primary," that's an accurate characterization of Sanders' 12-point lead over Mrs.…

The Associated Press, the nation's de facto business news gatekeeper for those who don't follow the economy or the markets closely, is telling America that the U.S. job market is fine, and ignoring the dismal results seen in weekly pay during the past several months. Christopher Rugaber's Friday evening coverage of the government's jobs report earlier in the day described the reported 215,000 in…

Earlier this evening, Curtis Houck at NewsBusters noted how Hillary Clinton committed an obvious gaffe for someone who is supposedly radically pro-abortion. On NBC's Meet the Press, Chuck Todd asked, "When, or if, does an unborn child have constitutional rights?" Mrs. Clinton responded that "the unborn person doesn't have constitutional rights." The best way to tell when a leftist's gaffe is…

The antennae went up when I saw the following tease on the front page of Thursday's USA Today print edition: "Obama commutes sentences for 61 low-level inmates." The brief description which immediately followed told readers that "He has cut sentences for 248 so far, more than (the) previous 6 presidents combined, official says." Hmm. What's a "low-level inmate"? The underlying Page 3A article by…

In covering Thursday morning's report from the Department of Labor on initial unemployment claims, one of a relatively few economic reports showing strength these days, Associated Press reporter Scott Boak spread his enthusiasm over the result to the entire economy. It wasn't justified. It's as if the poor guy has missed most of the pertinent other economic news during the past week, most of…

Wednesday morning, Tim Graham at NewsBusters observed how pseudo-conservative David Brooks, who is no fan of Donald Trump, gave the current GOP frontrunner credit for having "destroyed a dying husk" of "obsolete Reagan ideology" in the Republican Party. That's fascinating stuff, given the catch of the day by Instapundit's Ed Driscoll. You see, 12 years ago, Brooks gave Reagan credit for having…

Mark Zandi, Moody's chief economist, comments monthly on the ADP private-sector employment report his firm compiles. He is "often quoted in national and global publications and interviewed by major news media outlets, and is a frequent guest on CNBC, NPR, Meet the Press, CNN, and various other national networks and news programs." Zandi has also been the economy's head cheerleader during much of…