As it’s been pointed out several times on Media Malpractice, the true cost of the stimulus bill is now $862 billion according to the latest Congressional Budget Office estimates. This $75 billion mistake (nearly a 10% increase from the original cost estimate) should not go unnoticed.

Recent Bloomberg, ABC News and even Schreiner’s colleague at the Associated Press all used the correct $862 billion figure. The revised number is now over seven months old. It’s time for Schreiner and other reporters stuck on $787 billion to revise their work.

The Automatic IRA has enjoyed wide bipartisan and cross-ideological support since it was first unveiled at The Heritage Foundation in February 2006. This is not, as the story implied, some partisan initiative. It was co-developed by Mark Iwry, then at Brookings, and me as part of the Retirement Security Project. It was endorsed by both the McCain and Obama campaigns during the 2008 campaign. This broad support continues.

Alarkon also says the “The auto-enrollment provision will get pushback from small-business groups,” but John writes that “Studies show that small business employees want the Automatic IRA, and as they learn more about the proposal, employers do also. In past Congresses, the proposal had bipartisan co-sponsorship, and that level of support is possible this year also. In addition to the AARP’s support, the Automatic IRA has also been endorsed by a number of small business groups, including the U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce, the National Alliance of African-American Chambers of Commerce, Women Impacting Public Policy, and the Business and Professional Women’s Foundation.”

The Obama administration’s challenge to the controversial Arizona immigration law goes before a federal judge Thursday.

That seems straight enough. But is it really fair that the media constantly characterizes the immigration law as “controversial”?

A poll conducted by Quinnipac last week found that 50 percent of Americans back Arizona’s law compared to 30 percent who opposed it. Other polls have found even higher levels of support for Arizona’s efforts. The Quinnipac poll also found that, by a more than two-to-one ratio, Americans opposed the federal law suit rather than supported it.

Given these figures wouldn’t it be more accurate to write “The Obama administration’s controversial challenge to a new Arizona immigration law goes before a federal judge Thursday.”?

These economic incentives are nothing more than crony capitalist handouts given to large corporations. The incentives are subsidies, loan guarantees, tax credits, and regulations. In the free market, these are not the incentives you want to see. The incentive in a cap and trade system is for people to use less energy by raising the price of it. Knowing that this is a large energy tax that will generate large amounts of revenue, businesses sent thousands of lobbyists to flood the halls of Congress asking for a piece of the “climate revenue” pie. With the majority of the energy tax revenue handed out to large corporations, less will be made available to the public, leaving the American consumer to pick up the costly tab.

The AP also carries no alternative comment to Senator Joe Lieberman’s (I-CT) comment that a cap and trade or any emissions reduction bill will be a “jobs-creation bill.” The Congressional Budget Office recently affirmed that an emissions-reduction bill would kill more jobs than it would create: “Job losses in the industries that shrink would lower employment more than job gains in other industries would increase employment, thereby raising the overall unemployment rate.”

On that Friday, Gibbs was upbeat, expressing confidence in Obama’s ability to make his case for what eventually became an $850 billion stimulus plan.

Shear’s $850 billion number is an improvement over the $787 billion number the Post used to use but it is still not correct.

President Obama’s stimulus may have only totaled $787 billion when Congressional critics first voted against it, but its costs have increased since then. According to revised accounting by the Congressional Budget Office released this January, because the stimulus has failed to keep unemployment below 8% as promised, it will end up costing $862 billion thanks to increased food stamp and unemployment payments.

Congress may or may not pass a serious climate bill this year, but one thing is certain: It won’t be business as usual.

While Republicans and polluting industries will celebrate, most know their victory will be fleeting…
Over the past year, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out four rules that, in the absence of climate change legislation, eventually would give the executive branch command-and-control power to limit carbon pollution from power plants, factories and tailpipes. Those rules will start to take effect next year, and they will be met with a tsunami of legal pushback from states and polluting industries.

This reporting might be true depending on how Davenport wants to define “polluting industries.” Because many energy companies that emit carbon (including BP, Duke Energy, and ConocoPhillips) were all members of the pro-climate bill U.S. Climate Action Partnership. These corporations are not celebrating their lost opportunity to lock out new competitors and win new federal subsidies as part of a “serious climate bill.”

Meanwhile the National Federation of Independent Businesses will be one of “industries” joining states fighting back against the EPA’s “command-and-control” regulations. Small businesses do use energy, so in that sense they are a “polluting industry” but then by that definition all companies, including Politico, would qualify as a polluting industry.

Will Politico be joining suit against the EPA?

The suit was focused on the party and two of its members, who stood out front of a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008 wearing military gear. They were captured on video and were accused of trying to discourage some people from voting. One carried a nightstick.

Conservatives complained last year when Justice officials narrowed the case, dropping the party and one of the men and focusing only the bearer of the stick. Department officials have said since then that they did not have sufficient evidence to pursue the case against the other defendants. Justice officials who served in the Bush administration have countered that the department had enough evidence to pursue the case more fully and called the decision to narrow it political.

There are two problems with this report. First, the video of the event is online. Any honest person can watch for themselves and see if Thompson’s use of the phrases “carried a nightstick” and “bearer of the stick” are accurate description’s of what transpired.

More importantly though, Thompson completely leaves out the fact the DOJ trial team in charge of the case had filed a notice of default judgment with the court after the defendants in the case failed to respond to the DOJs civil case.

Only after Obama political appointees intervened was the trial team forced to dismiss the case. This despite the fact that career lawyers in the appellate division reviewed the facts and determined their was plenty of evidence necessary to sustain the default judgment.

Journalists who want to get the facts right can read a full timeline of the case here.

“We would be very pleasantly surprised if there’s not a gusher of special interest money,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in an interview. “Very few people play in the primaries — most of this money is almost always spent in the general election.”

Van Hollen is pushing a bill the House recently passed that would require funding sources for advertising to be disclosed.

This is just plain false. Van Hollen’s bill does require new and purposefully onerous reporting requirements. But not all sources would have to disclose. Union election spending would be exempt from the act, and after some back room deal cutting, the National Rifle Association would be exempt as well.

The facts of the case are relatively simple. Two men were captured on a video standing outside a polling place in a black Philadelphia neighborhood on Election Day in 2008. One of the men had a nightstick, if an unclear agenda — though a member of the black nationalist New Black Panther Party, he had earlier professed loathing for the Democratic “puppet” candidate, Barack Obama, who went on to overwhelmingly carry that precinct.

Three Republican poll monitors filed complaints of intimidation — itself a federal crime — but no voters attested to being turned away. The Justice Department, while Bush was still president, investigated the incident and later, after Obama took office, decided that “the facts and the law did not support pursuing” the claims against the party and against a second, unarmed man, Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said.

What Smith fails to mention is that the DOJ trial team in charge of the case had filed a notice of default judgment with the court after the defendants in the case failed to respond to the DOJs civil case.

Only after Obama political appointees intervened was the trial team forced to dismiss the case. This despite the fact that career lawyers in the appellate division reviewed the facts and determined their was plenty of evidence necessary to sustain the default judgment.

Journalists who want to get the facts right can read a full timeline of the case here.

So let’s edit the sentence: “Missouri’s Roy Blunt, among others, stood with the public against health-care legislation that the pharmaceutical interests wanted and that contained many of the insurance industry’s favorite policies.” Much better.