An Associated Press article, under the header “Workers bear larger share of health premium costs,” reports that “workers are paying a larger portion of health insurance costs as businesses, trying to ride out the economic downturn, shift more of the burden to their employees.”

The September 2nd Tom Murphy article adds: “The average employee contribution toward premiums for family coverage climbed 14 percent this year to nearly $4,000, according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust released Thursday. Contributions for single coverage grew 15 percent.”

But this study repeats the myth that there … Continue Reading

Simon Romero of The New York Times romanticizes the benefits of Venezuela’s new government-owned cafes without discussing the larger effects government control has over the economy. Romero describes two new state-owned cafes that opened this year in Venezuela and how they serve coffee and snacks grown and produced within the country. The prices for these goods, and others, are kept artificially lower than its competitors. Romero writes:

The planners behind the cafes have multiple objectives: to provide food and conviviality at democratic prices, to serve as commercial linchpins to renew some of the city’s

… Continue Reading

Elizabath Rosenthal’s September 16th New York Times article “As Europe Kicks Coal, Hungarian Town Suffers” does contain some useful reminders about how wedded Europe still is to coal power. Specifically, she reports:

Determined to reduce Europe’s reliance on coal, the European Commission is fighting a complicated battle against the subsidies that have long sustained coal, an influential but polluting industry in Europe and in the United States. In May, the Brussels-based governing body for the European Union announced that economic bailouts and favors for coal mines and power plants were forbidden after this year, precipitating Vertesi’s demise.

But just how “determined” … Continue Reading

Celebrating the six-month anniversary of President Barack Obama’s health care law, The New York Times Kevin Sack writes:

Starting now, insurance companies will no longer be permitted to exclude children because of pre-existing health conditions, which the White House said could enable 72,000 uninsured to gain coverage. Insurers also will be prohibited from imposing lifetime limits on benefits.

The law will now forbid insurers to drop sick and costly customers after discovering technical mistakes on applications. It requires that they offer coverage to children under 26 on their parents’ policies.

It establishes a menu of preventive procedures, like colonoscopies, mammograms and immunizations,

… Continue Reading

Staff writer Lori Montgomery wrote an article in the September 20th Washington Post that says because of Congress’s recent spending streak and our skyrocketing national debt, letting the Bush tax cuts expire will bring in more tax revenue to the government and consequently lower the deficit. She writes:

Today, the economy is sluggish and the national debt is soaring to worrisome levels. As lawmakers bicker over whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts, not just for the middle class but also for the wealthy, many economists and budget analysts say there’s a simple way to curb borrowing: Let the

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A USA Today item posted September 21st and titled “How the tax cut debate affects you” reports on the imminent tax hikes threatening American families. Author Richard Wolf does report that: “During his presidential campaign, Obama vowed not to raise income taxes on families with annual income below $250,000. His pledge was coupled with his plan to raise taxes on wealthier Americans who benefited the most from the Bush tax cuts. That plan is at the center of today’s debate.” But then Wolf never tells us if his proposals honor that promise.

They don’t.

First of as The Heritage Foundation’s … Continue Reading

A September 14th Washington Post article by N.C. Aizenman covering the oral arguments in the states suit against Obamacare, reports that “the public remains profoundly ambivalent about the president’s signature legislative achievement.” But is the American public really “ambivalent” about Obamacare? According to Merriam-Webster, ambivalence means holding “simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings,” “continual fluctuation,” or “uncertainty as to which approach to follow.”

Now compare that definition with the Pollster.com aggregated data on Obamacare’s poll numbers. It reveals that a plurality or majority of the public has consistently opposed the law since before the angry town-hall meetings of … Continue Reading

An August 25th USA Today read, Cutbacks force police to curtail calls for some crimes, and author Kevin Johnson reported:

Budget cuts are forcing police around the country to stop responding to fraud, burglary and theft calls as officers focus limited resources on violent crime.
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Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union, said cutbacks are preventing many police agencies from responding to property crimes.

But, as many including National Review’s Daniel Foster have reported, law enforcement spending cuts do not have to lead to layoffs. In Oakland, California, for example, Foster reported … Continue Reading

Covering the similarities between Obamacare and Romneycare The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote on July 26th:

[E]ven a cursory read of the evidence would show that whatever the drawbacks of central planning, it covers people at an extremely low cost. Romney Care’s cost problem is a result of pasting a coverage-oriented quick fix atop our insane health-care system. Compare its costs to the British system, the French system, the German system, or any other system, and whatever your conclusions, you won’t walk away unimpressed by the ability of cen

First, this reasoning violates Cannon’s First Rule of Economic Literacy: when … Continue Reading

Clifford Krauss’ and John Broder’s report in the August 25th New York Times claims that industry and government projections of job losses due to the Obama administration’s deepwater drilling moratorium are unlikely. They write:

Yet the worst of those forecasts has failed to materialize, as companies wait to see how long the moratorium will last before making critical decisions on spending cuts and layoffs. Unemployment claims related to the oil industry along the Gulf Coast have been in the hundreds, not the thousands, and while oil production from the gulf is down because of the drilling halt, supplies from the

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China makes inroads on emissions the headline over Juliet Eilperin’s September 13th Washington Post article reads. Eilperin goes on to report:

In the United States, many politicians are reluctant to impose mandatory curbs on heat-trapping gases, fearing a political backlash. But the Chinese government has begun to make some inroads into its greenhouse gas emissions by holding accountable local and provincial officials - as well as the nation’s top 1,000 emitters.

The rest of Eilperin’s article makes it seem like China has fully embraced the climate alarmist agenda. She reports: “[China] has set a more ambitious target for the next decade, … Continue Reading

John Collins Rudolf of The New York Times notes several differences between the fire that occurred last week on Mariner’s production platform and the drilling rig explosion that occurred at the Macondo well on April 20th. The fire at the Mariner production platform (Vermilion 380-A) did not kill or injure anyone and the workers shut all the wells before fleeing the platform to ensure no oil leaked into the ocean. But Rudolf creates a false assumption that what happened at the Mariner platform could have been just like the BP oil spill and twice refers to the … Continue Reading

In the August 26th issue of Time, Michael Grunwald has a lengthy article titled How the Stimulus Is Changing America which is filled with half-truths about President Barack Obama’s failed economic stimulus. First, Grunwald gets the cost of the stimulus wrong reporting: “The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 — President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus — has been marketed as a jobs bill, and that’s how it’s been judged.” As the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has recently confirmed, since the stimulus failed to create jobs the cost of the unemployment measures has risen and the estimated ten … Continue Reading

In The Washington Post August 29th, David A. Fahrenthold had a good report on the environmental movement and its inability to pass comprehensive climate change legislation - even with a left-leaning Congress, a Democratic President and a record oil spill. The article nicely demonstrates how the public does not have an appetite for cap and trade or any other bill that will increase the cost of energy. Fahrenthold misleads readers when he says it was industry and the oil groups that stopped cap and trade in its tracks. Writing about the environmentalists, he says, “A … Continue Reading

Carol E. Lee, covering President Barack Obama’s trip to New Orleans to commemorate Hurricane Katrina, reported for the August 29th Politico:

Diners literally embraced the president, who apologized to a handful of people for cutting in line to order a shrimp po’ boy and gumbo.
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The Katrina anniversary presented Obama with an opportunity to accentuate his positive accomplishments and involvement in the region, particularly compared with his predecessor, George W. Bush. And the president didn’t hesitate.

Obama waded heavily into the details of his administration’s efforts in post-Katrina New Orleans. Long passages of his read inexplicitly like a juxtaposition of his actions

… Continue Reading