In his January 10th, Factbox: U.S. guns laws among the most permissive in world, Reuters Greg McCune reports:

For a decade until 2004, the U.S. banned civilians from owning certain types of assault weapons. This ban was allowed to expire during the administration of President George W. Bush. Police said the young man arrested in the Arizona shooting, Jared Lee Loughner, purchased a semi-automatic Glock pistol from a Tucson gun dealer in November. This has prompted some in Congress to call for the ban on assault weapons to be reinstated.

What happened in Tucson is a tragedy, but it should not … Continue Reading

In a fine Reuters “Special Report: California or Bust” posted January 3rd, Nichola Groom reports:

But many in the state say taxes, rather than spending, are at the heart of California’s troubles. For some, the Golden State hamstrung its finances when a 1978 ballot initiative, Proposition 13, capped property taxes at 1 percent. California became more dependent on personal income, sales and corporate taxes, which can fluctuate wildly from good times to bad.
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Prop 13 also limited the ability of California’s towns and cities to raise their own revenues by requiring a two-thirds vote to do so. The idea was to

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Writing in Reuters on November 2nd, Elizabeth McGowan covers a new study entitled “Americans’ Knowledge of Climate Change” conducted by Yale researchers and funded by the National Science Foundation. The title of the piece “Only 47% of Republicans Think Global Warming Is Happening” gives the impression that Republicans are alone in their global warming views. But the reality is that most independents polled in the survey fall closer in line with Republican views than they do with the Democrat opinions. The report indicates that “81 percent of Democrats think global warming is happening, compared to … 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

A report from Reuters “Calderon urges U.S. to reinstate assault weapons ban,” edited by Cynthia Osterman and posted on May 20 contains both factual errors and careless omissions that misrepresent the challenges of border security and immigration enforcement.

The article quoted Mexican President Felipe Calderon as stating his country had “seized around 75,000 guns and assault weapons in the last three years, Calderon said. He said more than 80 percent of them came from the United States and noted there were more than 7,000 gun shops along the … Continue Reading

As tragic as the oil spill is, reports are conflating energy sources that are used much differently. Reuters is one of many papers that fails to distinguish petroleum production for the transportation sector and renewable generation for the electricity sector. Reuters’ Richard Cowen reported on May 4th that Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) “told reporters the oil spill should expedite alternative energy legislation, which would encourage the use of cleaner power sources, such as wind and solar.”

What Reuters and others fail to point out is how little petroleum fuels our electricity sector. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, … Continue Reading

Journalist Jim Wolfe’s April 15th Reuters item titled “US plans full European missile shield in 8 years” fails to tell the whole story of recent testimony by Obama officials before Congress.

The article reported:

Bradley Roberts, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, said in reply to a question at a hearing of a House of Representatives Armed Services subcommittee Thursday….the Obama administration was putting ‘proven’ sea-based and land-based missile shields into Europe as quickly as possible as part of a revised shield announced last September to any Iranian ballistic-missile strike.

That statement is patently false. The European … Continue Reading

Reporting on a new “study” on U.S.-China trade, Reuters reporter Doug Palmer writes:

Unfair Chinese trade and currency practices caused the loss of as many as 2.4 million U.S. jobs between 2001 and 2008, according to a study released on Tuesday.
The report by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute said China’s “currency manipulation” was a major cause of the United States’ trade deficit with China, though it said other Chinese practices contributed to the deficit.

While Palmer mentions that EPI is “left-leaning,” he fails to mention that the organization receives 30% of its funding from trade-averse labor unions, and that its … Continue Reading

Reporting on new criticisms from China of US “protectionism,” Reuters reporter Chris Buckley states:

China has accused the United States of straining their vast economic relationship through a slew of anti-dumping measures, adding to growing tensions between the two global powers….

The warning reflected the increasingly testy trade relations between China and the United States.

Buckley demonstrates a basic misunderstanding of how trade remedies (i.e., anti-dumping, countervailing duty or safeguards) cases are initiated and decided in the United States.  Under US law, an anti-dumping investigation results from a petition filed by a private firm (or firms) and/or its union pursuant to commercial … Continue Reading

Reporting on President Barack Obama’s decision to impose tariffs on tires made in China, Reuters‘ Matt Spetalnick and Jeremy Pelofsky reported on September 12th:

“This is simply about enforcing the rules of the road and creating a trade system that is based on those rules and is fair for everybody,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Air Force One as President Barack Obama traveled to talk about his health care initiative.
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“For trade to work for everybody, it has to be based on fairness and rules,” Gibbs said. “We’re simply enforcing those rules and we expect the Chinese to

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You here or read the number all the time. Phil Stewart and Todd Eastham breathlessly reported for Reuters on August 19th that there are 46 million uninsured Americans and President Barack Obama routinely asserts the same number. But as Heritage fellow Dennis Smith points out, that number is just not true:

• According to AHRQ’s The Uninsured in American, 1996-2008: Estimates for the U.S. Civilian Nonstitutionalized Population under Age 65 (Statistical Brief #259) the number of non-elderly individuals for the full year in 2007 was 39.9 million.
• That 39.9 million includes 5.9 million children(see Statistical Brief #259) who are

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Reuters’ David Alexander July 12th  article on Democrats’ problems in agreeing on how to pay for President Obama’s health care reform. In “Lawmakers reject tax to pay for health reform,” he details reactions to the latest proposal to fund the program through a huge tax increase on wealthy Americans. The depiction of the discord about how to raise the money is probably pretty accurate, but the piece includes a bit of background on the current state of American health care that is just plan misleading.

Take this statement: “Some 46 million are uninsured and have little access … 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.
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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

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 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