This Sunday on ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos twice misrepresented a recent Congressional Budget Office report on the costs of the recently passed Waxman-Markey climate cap and trade legislation. First he interrupted President Barack Obama strategist David Axelrod asserting that the EPA pegged the cost of Waxman-Markey at “about $150 a year.” Later he through the same talking point at Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) asking:

And [Axelrod] did point to these Congressional Budget Office numbers which show it’s only about a $150 in 2020 for an average family.

First lets focus on the two facts Stephanopoulos got blatantly wrong: … Continue Reading

Reuters Donna Smith filed a June 28th story on health care, reporting:

Soaring healthcare costs undermine the competitiveness of U.S. businesses, strain state and federal budgets and drive many Americans into bankruptcy.
…
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which represents 3 million businesses, has started a grass-roots campaign opposing major elements of Obama’s plan with thousands of business owners writing lawmakers to say they are against it.

So if health care costs are undermining “the competitiveness of U.S. businesses” then why is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce waging a grassroots campaign against it? Smith never tells us. Perhaps that is because, contrary to … Continue Reading

Reuters missile defense reporter Jim Wolf has struck again. This time his June 16 article “General ’90-percent-plus’ sure on U.S. Missile Defense” selectively quotes some experts and fails to identify others as long time anti-missile defense crusaders.

Wolf’s article begins by noting that Vice Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff General James Cartwright recently told Congress he believed the odds of defeating a long-range North Korean missile attack were “ninety percent plus.” Wolf then immediately quotes Lisbeth Gronlund who he identifies as “an expert on missile defense at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.” Gronlund … Continue Reading

Covering the squeeze Big Labor is putting on Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) over the Orwellian Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)the San Diego Union Tribune’s John Marelius wrote on June 21:

Under the Employee Free Choice Act, a union bargaining unit would be certified by the National Labor Relations Board any time 50 percent of the workers signed cards.

…
Under the present system, over which employers have much more control, 30 percent of the employees in a workplace can sign cards requesting a secret-ballot union election. If a majority votes for the union, the NLRB certifies it.

First a nit pick: EFCA requires … Continue Reading

In her June 21st article entitled “Palin spars with critics over ethics complaints”, Associated Press writer Rachel D’Oro makes the unfounded statement that “the truth (about whether Sarah Palin has violated state ethics laws) is probably somewhere in between” Palin’s denials and her critics’ grievances.

However, while one report suggests that Palin may have “abused her power” (a finding which Palin’s camp says is absolutely not reasonable to conclude from the evidence), even that report said Palin broke no laws.

And the multiple other ethics charges filed against Palin have all been dismissed as without foundation, frivolous, or simply not showing … Continue Reading

Reporting on Defense Secretary Roberts Gates’ decision to deploy the SBX sea-based radar system to Hawaii in anticipation of a new North Korean missile test, the Los Angeles Times‘ Julian Barnes writes on June 18th:

According to reports in Japanese media, the North Koreans appear to be preparing to conduct their next long-range test around July 4. Experts believe that because the last long-range missile test failed, Pyongyang has more to prove and may see another test as necessary.

But the April 5th North Korea missile test was far from a failure. Award winning journalist Craig Covault reports:

New details

… Continue Reading

Covering President Barack Obama’s public health insurance plan pitch to the American Medical association, New York Times reporters Robert Pear and Jackie Calmes write in the June 16th paper under the header Cost Concerns as Obama Pushes Health Issue:

Mr. Obama spoke just days after the A.M.A. had signaled opposition to his proposal for a public health insurance plan to compete with private insurers as part of a menu of choices, much like the one for members of Congress.

This is either factually wrong or highly misleading. Members of Congress, and all federal employees for that matter, do receive a menu … Continue Reading

Big “news” this past Monday: President Obama has new plans to “save or create” 600,000 additional jobs this summer!

At least that’s what you’d think by scanning today’s headlines. Doug Palmer’s June 8th Reuters piece Obama speeds projects to create, save 600,000 jobs, takes the President’s bait hook, line and sinker: “President Barack Obama said on Monday that accelerated stimulus spending would create or save 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days,” Palmer wrote before parroting White House claims that the spending will quickly lead to new economic activity at national parks, veterans centers and Superfund sites from coast to … Continue Reading

The Washington Post devotes a lot of space today—part of the front page, plus nearly one and a half additional pages—to explaining what experts think is wrong with the health-care system and what should be done about it. The effort is laudable, but the execution is deeply flawed.

Let’s leave aside the fact that the Ceci Connolly bylined article, Decision Makers Differ on How To Mend Broken Health System, entirely ignores conservative and libertarian analyses of the way Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax penalty on individually purchased insurance has distorted health care. (At least Connolly quotes one libertarian analyst.) Perhaps … Continue Reading

The New York Times’s Cornelia Dean wrote an article published June 2nd, Women Are Seen Bridging Gap in Science Opportunities, that highlights the findings that women scientists and engineers are making gains in academia and that the gap between boys’ and girls’ performance in mathematics has been almost eliminated. It’s certainly appropriate to applaud signs of women’s progress, but this article mistakenly accepts the presumption that absent discrimination and other nefarious factors women and men would be equally represented in these fields and excludes any discussion of the problems facing men in universities.

For example, she writes:

Although

… Continue Reading

The American Journal of Medicine released a study yesterday purporting to show that “62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical.” This claim was then picked up by multiple reporters including the Los Angeles Times‘ Lisa Girion (”medical bills contributed to 62% of all bankruptcies”), Reuters‘ Maggie Fox (”medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S. personal bankruptcies”) and the Sacramento Bee’s Bobby Caina Calvan (”the cost of health care continues to burden Americans in alarming numbers, with 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies in 2007 blamed on unaffordable medical bills”).

All of these stories … Continue Reading

Fiona Harvey writes in the May 29th Financial Times:

Climate change is claiming 300,000 lives a year and costing the global economy $125bn annually … according to a report from the Global Humanitarian Forum. … The study was compiled using a widely accepted methodology for examining the effects of climate change developed by the World Health Organization.

But as University of Colorado professor Roger Pielke has noted, not even GHF head Kofi Annan was willing to call the study “scientific.” Why not? Pielke explains:

Why can’t the work produced by the GHF be “as rigorous as a scientific study”? Well, one answer

… Continue Reading

Reporting on a White House Council of Economic Advisers report linking health care cost reductions to improved economic performance, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Carolyn Lochhead notes: “The cost of expanding coverage to the nation’s 46 million uninsured is the biggest hurdle.” That 40 some odd million number of uninsured is often bandied about when health care is in the news. For example, when HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently promoted health care reform, the AP put the number of uninsured Americans at 48 million. Whether the number is 46 or 48, the statisitc is highly misleading. Here’s why:

Numbers in … Continue Reading