A October 29th Bloomberg headline reads Poll: Americans Don’t Know Economy Expanded With Tax Cuts and authors Heidi Przybyla and John McCormick report:

The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks and has overseen an economy that has grown for the past five quarters.

Most voters don’t believe it.

A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Oct. 24-26 finds that by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the Nov. 2 midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to

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The October 28th NPR story by Julie Rovner, “Health Law Hardly At Fault For Rising Premiums,” was much fairer than its headline (and the sub-heads, if that’s what we call them). Obamacare is “hardly at fault for rising premiums?” Really? The story quotes an insurance-industry flack who well establishes what the Obama administration’s own regulations confirm: Obamacare will be a major driver of premium increases for some health plans.

A sub-head calls such claims “misinformation.” Really? The article does more to bolster … Continue Reading

Sewell Chan of the New York Times wrote an article on October 22 on the White House’s proposal to restrain trade imbalances and work with G-20 nations to “agree to curb persistent surpluses and deficits that could contribute to the next financial crisis.” The White House released a letter from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner he wrote to G-20 nations to reduce external imbalances (positive or negative) below four percent of gross domestic product within the next four years.

Chen writes that “Four countries have current-account surpluses exceeding 4 percent: Saudi Arabia (6.7 percent), Germany (6.1 percent), China (4.7 … Continue Reading

Andrew Freedman wrote in the Washington Post on October 18th that Americans are confused about global warming. He cites one poll that shows fewer Americans believe that humans are the primary cause of global warming, and nearly half the respondents to another poll say they have thought about global warming “a little” or “not at all.” Where Freedman is wrong is where he says humans being the primary cause of global warming is a “view held by the vast majority of climate scientists.” Freedman goes on to say, “In fact, there is very little disagreement … Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Jia Lynn Yang and Ariana Eunjung Cha wrote a story October 7th on President Obama vetoing a bill that addresses the flaws in foreclosure proceedings. The authors write:

The vetoed bill, which is two pages, would have required local courts to accept notarizations, including those made electronically, from across state lines. Its sponsors said it was intended to promote interstate commerce. Lawmakers saw no problems when the House approved it in April by a voice vote, which leaves no record of votes. The Senate passed the bill unanimously last week.

But as the lack of a

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Kudos to The Washington Post for even asking a question about whether federal workers are over compensated. On October 18th, Lisa Rein and Ed O’Keefe reported on a recent study by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation and Harvard University on Americans’ views of the role of government. The poll found that 52% of American found that “most employees of the federal government are overpaid.”

The only problem with the article is that Rein and O’Keefe don’t seem to have made any effort to see if Americans beliefs about this issue are correct. In fact, they are. … Continue Reading

N.C. Aizenman covered Judge Roger Vinson’s rejection of the Obama administration’s motion to dismiss the 20 state legal challenge to Obamacare’s individual mandate for the October 15th Washington Post. Providing some background in the decision, Aizenman writes:

Last week, in a suit brought by private parties, a federal judge in Michigan unequivocally upheld Congress’s authority on that point. However, Vinson described the question as far from settled, because the relevant clauses of the Constitution “have never been applied in such a manner before.”

But the Michigan judges’s decision was not as unequivocally different from Judge Vinson’s opinion as Aizenman lets on, … Continue Reading

Covering the White House’s factually unsubstantiated claims that the Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money to pay for television advertisements, CBS News Stephanie Condon reported October 8th:

The president was referring to the outside interest groups that have flooded the 2010 election cycle with cash, in many cases without publicly disclosing their donors. Much of the activity can be tied to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that significantly freed up corporate spending.

This is just plain false. There is nothing about spending by third parties this year that is in anyway tied to the Citizens United decision. Perhaps … Continue Reading

Chelsea Conaboy of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote an article on October 4th discussing the success of the northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). RGGI is a regional cap and trade system that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector 10 percent by 2018 and includes 10 northeastern states. While Conaboy accurately points out that one purpose of a cap and trade system is a revenue raiser (RGGI brought in $729 million in new revenue for the states), the program is not the driver for reduced emissions. The slumping economy is. Carbon … Continue Reading

Writing in Reuters on October 7th, Luca Nencetti, Kasia Duda, and Yuan Fang argue that the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is the least-desired climate change policy because of its command-and-control approach. This part is true. Regulating CO2 emissions under the Clean Air Act will burden the economy with higher energy costs, higher administrative compliance costs for businesses, higher bureaucratic costs for enforcing the regulations, and higher legal costs from the inevitable litigation. But authors make two glaring mistakes when they glorify the benefits of a cap and trade system … Continue Reading

In an article titled, Movement of the Moment Looks to Long-Ago Texts, New York Times reporter Kate Zernike provides an accurate description of the philosophical works behind the Tea Party movement that advocate for limited government involvement in the economy. She mentions Frederic Bastiat’s The Law, F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, and The 5000 Year Leap, among others. But Zernike is wrong when she suggests the Tea Party movement “has reached back to dusty bookshelves for long-dormant ideas.”

These ideas are anything but long-dormant. Although their popularity may be … Continue Reading

On October 1st, Juliet Eilperin reported on new Interior Department regulations for offshore drilling operators writing:

Energy industry officials said that they would review the regulations but that federal officials can now lift the ban on deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico without fearing the consequences.

This sentence is not in quotes so it is hard to tell if the error is Eilperin’s or “energy industry officials,” but wither way it is just false to characterize President Barack Obama’s current oil drilling ban as a “deep-eater” ban. It is true that the first ban issued by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar … Continue Reading

In a September 27th Hill article, Russell Berman reports that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) will promote a bill that aims to increase the manufacturing base in the United States. Berman writes, “In the speech to be delivered at the National Press Club, Hoyer will lament the decline in homemade goods during the last three decades and highlight Democratic efforts to promote ‘Make It in America’ policies as the November midterm elections draw closer. ‘Manufacturing, and the middle-class economy it creates, is a part of the American character that we must not give up,’  Hoyer plans … Continue Reading