Reporting on the Obama administration’s failure to convince voters the stimulus worked, The Washington Post’s Michael Shear reported on July 14th:

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 … Continue Reading

Krissah Thompson reported on the controversy surrounding the Obama Justice Department’s handling of the New Black Panther Party case for the July 15th Washington Post. Thompson writes:

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

… Continue Reading

Surprised by the fact that unions, not corporations, have spent the most money since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United free speech decision, The Washington Post’s T.W. Farnam reported on July 7th:

“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 … Continue Reading

In his July 9th column praising the recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), David Ignatius reports:

The CMS post has been unfilled since 2006 and Obama finally decided enough, already. The White House said Republicans “were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points.”

The White House can say whatever it wants but even columnists should check and see if they are telling the truth. And as ABC’s Jake Tapper reported, the GOP had no interest in stalling Dr. Berwick’s hearing:

Sen. John Kerry,

… Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Michael Fletcher had a report July 1st on state budgets that reads more like an opinion editorial than a staff report. Fletcher wrote,

Nothing less than the nation’s nascent economic recovery hangs in the balance. States say that if they do not find financial rescue they will have to cut services and workers. That would deliver a potentially crippling blow to the economy, which needs higher employment levels to fatten wallets, promote spending, bolster tax revenue and reduce dependence on expensive social services.

States face a combined deficit of $89 billion in the fiscal year that

… Continue Reading

The Washington Post reported on July 5th that FedEx and UPS are “engaged in one of the fiercest lobbying battles in recent memory, with millions of dollars spent on advertising, Web sites, grass-roots organizing and other tactics.” And what are they fighting over? Dan Eggan explains:

An obscure, 230-word provision that would require FedEx Express to comply with the same labor laws as UPS, making it easier for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and other unions to organize.

Fair enough. But why would FedEx care if federal law changed to make it easier for big labor to unionize their workforce? Eggan … Continue Reading

David Hilzenrath and N.C. Aizenman reported in the June 15th Washington Post:

If you like your health plan, you can keep it. That’s what President Obama promised during the long months of debate over health-care reform.
…
On Monday, the administration issued new rules to fulfill that promise. But your plan might not be quite the same — it could offer more benefits, and it could cost more.

Or if you have a health savings account or flexible savings account then you can’t keep your current health plan at all. The Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn Nix explains:

Obamacare law limits these consumer-controlled accounts in

… Continue Reading

Reporting on BP’s agreement to establishing a $20 billion trust fund for oil spill related claims, Scott Wilson and Joel Achenbach reported on page A1 of the June 17th Washington Post:

Both sides got what they wanted out of the encounter. The administration, under fire for how it has responded to the environmental calamity, can boast of creating a huge pot of money for easing the pain of Gulf Coast residents. BP, though poorer on paper in the short run, got some much-needed clarity on its long-term liability.

But then just two paragraphs later Achenbach and Wilson reported:

The figure is not

… Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin and Glenn Kessler report that it took over a month from the time the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded before the Obama administration began accepting offers of assistance from foreign nations. On May 19th State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters:

We are keeping an eye on what supplies we do need. And as we see that our supplies are running low, it may be at that point in time to accept offers from particular governments.

But some time in late May the Obama administration changed course and began accepting help from Mexico and the … Continue Reading

In an otherwise fine piece of reporting on the continued flight of wordlwide investment into the safety of U.S. Treasury bonds, The Washington Post’s Neil Irwin reports:

Perceptions inside the Beltway rest on this idea: Although the current large budget deficit is caused mainly by the weak economy and a short-term economic stimulus that will soon expire, in the longer run the government faces a vast unfunded burden, particularly tied to Medicare and Medicaid.

It is true that Medicare’s $37.9 trillion unfunded liability is a driver of long term U.S. deficit concerns, but one cannot ignore Social Security’s problems either.

In … Continue Reading

Glenn Kessler’s “analysis” of the implications of the Israeli conflict with the flotilla headed for the Gaza strip (entitled “Condemnation of Israeli Assault Complicates Relations with U.S.”) leaves out so many critical facts and background that readers are left with a skewed and inaccurate sense of the event. Kessler writes:

The worldwide condemnation of the deadly Israeli assault on the Gaza aid flotilla will complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to improve its tense relations with Jerusalem and will probably distract from the push to sanction Iran over its nuclear program.

Kessler highlights numerous criticisms of Israel from world leaders, … Continue Reading

Steven Pearlstein writes an opinion column for The Washington Post. And while Pearlstein is entitled to his own opinion, as Sen Danial Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) once said, he is not entitled to his own facts.

In Pearlstein’s May 26th column he writes:

What it misses is just how dramatically the regulatory agencies have been shrunken in size, stripped of talent and resources, demoralized by lousy leadership, captured by the industries they were meant to oversee and undermined by political interference and relentless attacks on their competence and purpose.

There is no data collected for “demoralized by lousy leadership” or “captured by the … Continue Reading

Covering the impending Democratic spend-a-thon in Congress in the May 24th Washington Post, Lori Montgomery and Shailagh Murray write:

With the national debt at its highest level in nearly 60 years, the question of whether to cut spending — and if so, how — is pitting liberals against conservatives, and Congress against the president. The White House has proposed a three-year freeze in programs unrelated to national security and warned House leaders Friday that it might go further, targeting the Defense Department for cuts.

The problem with this reporting is that President Obama’s “spending freeze” exempts far more than just “national security” … Continue Reading

Reporting on the White House’s final push to pass their health care reform bill, Lori Montgomery and Shailagh Murray write in the March 3rd Washington Post:

Reconciliation is a procedure created in 1974 to help lawmakers advance politically difficult budget legislation, particularly measures that reduce the deficit. It has been used 22 times by both parties since 1980 to promote a variety of policies, including overhauling the welfare system, creating COBRA health benefits for people who lose their jobs, and cutting taxes in two huge packages championed by President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003.

This is all true but … Continue Reading

When Washington Post reporter Alec MacGillis tries to explain complex issues in a neutral voice, somehow the results always favor the Left.

In an August 16th guide to the health-care debate, MacGillis wrote, “Fixing [the system] could be very simple: a single-payer system. To the dismay of many liberals, President Obama and congressional Democrats think it’s more realistic to build on what’s already there, which is why legislation overhauling it comes in the form of 1,000-page tomes.” No substantive criticisms of single payer were offered anywhere in the piece.

On Sunday February 21st Post MacGillis purported to expose “five … Continue Reading