Government Agencies

The editorialists at Investor's Business Daily have reported on the results of an important study by several George Mason University Mercatus Center economists showing what regulations have cost the economy in economic growth since 1980. The establishment press, which has been singularly uninterested in reporting anything that has to potential to slow the regulatory leviathan down — y'know,…

In a Fox News Sunday interview so painful to watch readers are advised to consider taking headache medicine before viewing, Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz tried to make the case that the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's handling of emails containing sensitive and classified national security information and her use of an undisclosed private email server is a…

Things must be getting grim on the Obamacare front if the Obama administration feels it must send "Zeke the Bleak" Emanuel out to defend it. Though he was on relatively good behavior compared to previous interviews he has given, Emanuel, rather than visibly losing his cool, kept on using Stuart Varney's first name in his responses during a Fox Business interview this week to the point where it…

Americans For Prosperity won a huge court victory in California Thursday against that state's hard-left vindictive attorney general, Kamala Harris. Naturally, the national press is doing what it does when it doesn't want to cover a story: letting the Politico cover it and then pretending that this suffices. Harris demanded that AFP provides the section of its not-for-profit Federal Form 990…

As the Washington Free Beacon reported today (confirmed here in a chart published two weeks ago), the number of Americans enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), traditionally known as Food Stamps, dropped below 45 million for the first time in almost five years (actually, 57 months) in January. This is hardly cause for cheer, and does nothing to change the fact that in…

Three important things happened at Tuesday's hearing of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security. The first was the testimony of two mothers of children killed by illegal immigrants. The second was the outrageous and false contention by a Methodist bishop that the mere act of bringing attention to these heinous offenses is a form of "blind vengeance" over "…

For better or worse, the press, Wall Street and others routinely place a great deal of faith in the federal government's payroll employment estimates. But when Republican Governor Rick Scott's supporters cited data from Uncle Sam's Bureau of Labor Statistics to defend him against an insufferably rude leftist who started screaming and cursing at him in a Starbucks coffee shop, Associated Press…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Call it the golden mean or the vital center, Mother Jones blogger Drum is for it with regard to economic systems. Drum contended in a Tuesday post that “the mixed economy is the only way to run a modern country” since the other choices, a “pure free market” and “socialism,” have unacceptable consequences.

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…