Government Agencies
AP's Boak: With the Economy So Good, Why Won't Fed Raise Rates?
September 19th, 2015 10:51 PM
The business press just can't understand why the Federal Reserve decided not to raise interest rates on Thursday. After all, these alleged journalists have been telling us for months bordering on years that U.S. economy is really in good shape. So it should be able to handle a rate hike, especially after over seven years of rates at essentially zero. The problem is that they now believe their own…
AP Hides the Obama Era's Poverty Rise, Household Income Decline
September 16th, 2015 5:21 PM
From its "Don't read this story, it's boring" headline to its obfuscating content, today's coverage at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, of the Census Bureau's 2014 report on income and poverty in the United States was all about ensuring that readers know as little as possible about the declining incomes and disheartening increases in officially-defined poverty seen during the…
LAT, AP Ignore Dems' Economic Revolt Against California Enviro Zealots
September 14th, 2015 4:44 PM
You wouldn't know it from reading the national coverage by the Associated Press or stories at the Los Angeles Times, but California Governor Jerry Brown and his fellow far-left Democratic Party environmentalists suffered significant setbacks last week.
How bad? So bad that the Times editorial board accused "a new crop of moderate Democratic legislators" of succumbing to "oil industry propaganda…
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AP Portrays Baltimore Mayor Not Running For Reelection as a Victim
September 13th, 2015 11:01 PM
Paraphrasing the title of a song Linda Ronstadt made famous, the tune the Associated Press's Juliet Linderman sang Saturday morning in the wake of Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's decision to not to seek reelection was: "Poor, Poor, Pitiful She."
That's right. Rawlings-Blake is a victim who is being "dogged by critics who questioned whether she was fit to lead." Linderman made that…
AP Thinks Lowest Deficit in 8 Years Is News, But Not Record Spending
September 12th, 2015 7:42 PM
Friday's report on the federal government's budget deficit through August told us that with one month remaining in the fiscal year, Uncle Sam will certainly "achieve" an all-time single-year record in tax collections accompanied by all-time record spending.
The Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger apparently didn't consider either item newsworthy. Instead, he decided that the real news is this…
AP Treats Bloated Wholesale Inventories As a Positive
September 10th, 2015 11:14 PM
Today's Monthly Wholesale Trade report from the Census Bureau covering July was the latest in a wave of disappointing reports on business activity this year. Wholesale inventories remained very high, while sales turned in a seventh consecutive month of year-over-year declines.
Much of that sales decline is due to the fall in oil prices during the past year. But even after factoring that out,…
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Napolitano Rips 'Unprecedented' Freddie Gray Payout Before Cops' Trial
September 10th, 2015 4:02 PM
On Megyn Kelly's Fox News show on Wednesday, Andrew Napolitano sharply criticized the city of Baltimore's agreement to pay $6.4 million to the family of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old black man who died in police custody there in April.
The Associated Press and most of the rest of the establishment press are describing the city's payout, which was approved on Thursday, as a "settlement" — an odd…
AP Headline on Stiffed Ill. Lottery Winners Doesn't Note Their Lawsuit
September 9th, 2015 10:31 PM
It would be easy to conclude, based on its treatment of a story about Illinois lottery winners suing to force the state to disburse their payouts, that the Associated Press really doesn't want readers and its subscribing outlets to learn about it.
This "keep them in the dark" approach is consistent with a previous AP story on the state's failure to pay lottery winners. Let's start with that…
Press: Aug. Job Growth Lowballed; If Revised, It Will Still Be Weak
September 6th, 2015 11:51 PM
A popular meme in the wake of Friday's jobs report seen at many media outlets is that August's reported job growth of 173,000 seasonally adjusted jobs is a virtual lock to be revised up by 50,000, or 78,000, or perhaps even more, since such revisions during the past three years have been unusually large.
Well, since they opened that can of worms, let me make clear to everyone that even if those…
NY Times Tags Kim Davis As a Republican, Blames 'Editing Error'
September 6th, 2015 9:00 PM
At the New York Times, a Thursday report by Alan Blinder and Tamar Lewin, with assistance credited to two others, originally identified Rowan County clerk Kim Davis, the center of national attention who has been jailed over her refusal to issue marriage licenses containing her name to homosexual couples, as a Republican. (The press has been mighty quiet about acknowledging that Ms. Davis would be…
Ignatius Discloses Source's Lack of Objectivity — In a Separate Column
September 5th, 2015 10:43 AM
In the past week, several pundits and alleged "experts" have been on a mission to tell us rubes that Hillary Clinton's email and private-server controversy doesn't rise to the level of being a scandal. They have absurdly argued that even if she "technically" violated State Department protocols and even broke some pesky laws in handling her communications while she was Secretary of State, Mrs.…
AP Coverage of Manufacturing Continues to Ignore Its Steep Decline
September 3rd, 2015 11:54 PM
The press's failure to tell the public how seriously the U.S. economy is struggling is not the most egregious exercise in reality avoidance we've seen during the past several months. The willful denial of Iran's intent to destroy Israel and its Western enemies, the refusal to acknowledge the inherent institutional ugliness of Planned Parenthood, and the failure to accurately characterize Hillary…
Why Is the Press So Quiet About Ill. Lottery Winners Not Getting Paid?
August 31st, 2015 11:37 PM
Silly me. I really thought that every state's lottery operation was walled off from the rest of its finances. They collect bets, pay out winnings and administrative costs, and turn over the profits to general fund. End of discussion. No muss, no fuss. Right?
In Illinois, based on recent developments, we know that's obviously not the case — leading me to wonder how many other states potentially…
Begala Calls Cheney a 'Sociopath' — Then Apologizes to Sociopaths
August 31st, 2015 6:00 PM
This is obviously sarcasm: Right behind all the positive racial healing we've seen during Barack Obama's presidency is the vast improvement in the degree of civility heard and seen in leftist discourse.
Obviously, that's not so. Hillary Clinton calls GOP presidential candidates "terrorists" and invokes Nazi-era images of illegal immigrants being "loaded into boxcars." The press — which would…