Regulation

The press is protecting Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton from the true extent of the blowback over her expressed desire to see coal miners lose their jobs and her bogus attempt to "apologize" for what she said. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, appearing on Fox & Friends Thursday morning, identified a larger truth about Mrs. Clinton's callous disregard for workers and their families…

Almost any time a government agency or program fails to perform, those involved complain that they don't have enough money to properly do their jobs. Unless the matter involves national defense, the press gullibly swallows their contentions. The Transportation Safety Administration is the latest case in point. Lines at airport security checkpoints are already getting noticeably longer, and we…

In March of 2013, the Republican National Committee issued what soon became known as the “autopsy report,” which discussed how the party might improve its chances of winning presidential elections. Last Thursday in The Atlantic, reform conservative (or former conservative) Frum provided the GOP with a sort of pre-autopsy document that it might consult after Donald Trump’s “almost certain failure…

As his final term wanes, the New York Times is making excuses for the economy’s performance under President Obama, with the president himself guiding the way. Economics reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin’s interview of Obama for the cover of the Times Sunday magazine dug in in defense of Obama. The subhead: “Eight years after the financial crisis, unemployment is at 5 percent, deficits are down and G.D.…

On Thursday, shortly after the government estimated that the economy only grew at an annual rate of 0.5 percent in this year's first quarter, Jeffry Bartash at Marketwatch.com commented on the especially weak performance in nonresidential business investment. That category subtracted 0.76 points from GDP, the worst result since the second quarter of 2009, during the recession. Bartash,…

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,…

Just in time for tomorrow's first-quarter economic growth announcement from the government, Bloomberg Businessweek's Economics Editor is telling readers: "Don't Sweat America's Upcoming Microscopic GDP Growth." Besides, Peter Coy writes, people need to get used to the supposedly inescapable fact that "Normal growth for the U.S. economy is just a lot lower than it used to be." Americans shouldn't…

George H. W. Bush pooh-poohed “the vision thing.” Bernie Sanders wouldn’t have a presidential campaign without it. True, the Vermont senator is not known for his grasp of policy minutiae, to which Daily Kos founder and publisher Markos Moulitsas says, in effect, so what? Kos implied that Sanders has caught a lot more flak for his vague answers than Republicans do when they routinely “promis[e] …

On April 1, the Associated Press, in an online video which I covered in an April 2 NewsBusters post, interviewed three California business owners about the impact the state's just-passed $15-per-hour minimum wage would have on their businesses. Though the video was headlined "Small Businesses React to Calif. Wage Increase," the owners interviewed weren't representative of the whole state in any…

Just three months after Arch, the nation's Number 2 coal mining company, filed for bankruptcy, Number 1, Peabody Energy, has followed suit. Five of the industry's largest firms have now gone bankrupt in the past 12 months. Two Associated Press stories on Peabody this week managed to avoid mentioning the name of President Barack Obama, whose hostility toward the industry has been obvious since…

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…

There’s a crucial difference between the Loch Ness Monster and any Republican health-care-reform plan worthy of the name: Nessie almost certainly does not exist, but the GOP plan cannot exist. That, essentially, was the message of a Monday blog post by New York magazine’s Chait. “It is impossible to design a health-care plan that is both consistent with conservative ideology and acceptable to…

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…

New York Times San Francisco bureau chief Thomas Fuller embraced a major shift toward European-style social policy in that city in Wednesday's “No Pay Cuts for New Parents in San Francisco – City Becomes the First in the Country to Approve Six Weeks of Fully Paid Leave.” As shown by that headline, the Times got really excited about the local liberal ordinance, with a full story on the front of…