The Washington Post Editorial Board is entitled to its opinion but not its facts. They can agree or disagree with Supreme Court opinions but they should at least accurately describe what the Court did and did not rule. On May 18th they did not. Here is how the Washington Post editorial describes the holding in Graham v. Florida:

The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday in Graham v. Florida guarantees that those who have committed serious crimes as teenagers get an opportunity for release once they reach adulthood even while leaving intact the government’s ability to keep incarcerated those deemed too

… Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Dan Eggan reported on April 25th:

Many top Wall Street firms, including J.P. Morgan Chase and beleaguered Goldman Sachs, have also ramped up campaign contributions to Republican lawmakers who have united to oppose the bill.
…
Although Obama and other Democrats held the edge on Wall Street fundraising during the 2008 election cycle, the political action committees for major banks and financial services companies have dramatically shifted their giving toward Republicans in recent months, data show. Goldman’s PAC, for example, gave almost $300,000 to candidates and parties in March, nearly two-thirds of which went to the GOP.

This is a very … Continue Reading

The March 15th Washington Post Express  ran what otherwise could have been an ad for the energy efficiency rebates that were part of the larger stimulus package. Titled, “A Bailout for Your Electricity Bill” the article says,

About three dozen states will soon offer you a rebate of as much as $250 if you trade in your clunky old clothes washer, refrigerator or water heater for a more efficient model. Besides the money back, you’ll welcome the savings on your electric bill.

If that’s the case, consumers shouldn’t need a rebate for such a good investment. But the article … Continue Reading

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll claims that a large majority of Americans in both parties oppose the Supreme Court’s recent Citizens United ruling that loosened some of the rules in campaign finance law. The February 17th Dan Eggen WaPo story reports that “Eight in 10 poll respondents say they oppose the high court’s Jan. 21 decision to allow unfettered corporate political spending, with 65 percent ‘strongly’ opposed. Nearly as many backed congressional action to curb the ruling, with 72 percent in favor of reinstating limits.”

But a quick look at the actual poll questions shows that the Post

… Continue Reading

The February 13th Washington Post has an article by Walter Pincus titled: “Under Plan, Intelligence Agencies Would Be Consulted Before Reading of Rights.” But is not until the third paragraph that Pincus informs readers that the “plan now under review in the White House” involves “new procedures.” But this begs the question: what were the old procedures? Pincus never says.

Instead, Pincus goes on to report: “Republican lawmakers have criticized the administration for not consulting the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies before FBI agents read the 23-year-old Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights. ”

But did the Administration consult with the heads of … Continue Reading

The January 26th Washington Post carried a Rob Stein story on a new Guttmacher Institute study that found, between 2005 and 2006, the pregnancy rate among teenage girls rose for the first time in more than a decade. At two points in the story, Stein mentions some possible causes for the rise:

The cause of the increase is the subject of debate. Several experts blamed the increase in teen pregnancies on sex-education programs that focus on encouraging abstinence. Others said the reversal could be due to a variety of factors, including an increase in poverty, an influx of Hispanics and

… Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Alec MacGillis reported on January 13th:

The $787 billion economic stimulus package has created or saved between 1.7 million and 2 million jobs, but its impact on the economy ebbed slightly in the final quarter of 2009 compared with prior months, the White House said Tuesday night.
…
Congressional Republicans have questioned the administration’s claims about the stimulus’s impact, pointing to the 10 percent unemployment rate nationwide. Romer’s new figures are based on macroeconomic estimates, not reports filed by stimulus funding recipients, the next round of which is due later this month.

Separately, the White House has announced a change

… Continue Reading

In the January 2, 2010 Washington Post Ariana Eunjung Cha reports:

China’s state-owned banks have become a main engine of the global recovery, financing the construction of copper mines, purchase of airplanes, expansion of retail stores and other projects even as their U.S. and European counterparts scale back lending.
…
Over the first nine months of 2009, new lending by Chinese banks has injected $1.3 trillion into the world economy, according to statistics from the People’s Bank of China, which functions as China’s central bank.

But as Heritage Foundation Asian Studies Center Research Fellow Derek Scissors points out, it is a stretch … Continue Reading

The November 27th Washington Post had a front page headline under a Juliet Eilperin article reading: “China sets target for emission cuts. Premier to go to Copenhagen. Moves could signal progress in climate talks.”

The theme of the story is a looming, possible and very significant policy development, in which the United States would commit to binding, steep reductions in greenhouse gas emissions produced by combusting traditional energy sources (hydrocarbons or “fossil fuels”). This is a policy goal in favor of which the Post has aggressively editorialized. Other than massive expansion of nuclear power, there is no known way to … Continue Reading

On November 30th, the Washington Post’s Mary Beth Sheridan reported on voter turnout in Sunday’s Honduran presidential election:

Turnout was 47.6 percent, several points less than the total in the last presidential election in 2005, according to projections released by the country’s electoral tribunal.

On December 1st, the Washington Post’s Mary Beth Sheridan reported:

The exact turnout in Sunday’s vote was still not known, with the country’s electoral tribunal saying official figures may not be available for weeks. The tribunal said that, based on projections from about half the ballot boxes, 62 percent of eligible voters participated. However, an independent Honduran

… Continue Reading

Mary Beth Sheridan may have been working on a tight deadline, but considering the issues at stake, her editors should have killed her story before allowing it to print misleading numbers on voter turnout in the Honduran elections for November 30th Washington Post. Sheridan reports:

The crisis began on June 28, when President Manuel Zelaya, who had embraced the leftist agenda of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, was arrested on charges related to his campaign to rewrite the constitution. Many Hondurans believed Zelaya was trying to extend his rule. Soldiers bundled him onto a plane for Costa Rica, the first time

… Continue Reading

Perry Bacon Jr. reports in the November 3rd Washington Post:

The abortion dispute centers both on federal subsidies that would be provided for people who cannot afford health-care coverage themselves and the much-debated government insurance alternative, which is included in the House version of the bill but is still being debated in the Senate. Under a 1976 law, federal funds are generally barred from being used for abortions, except in cases of rape or incest or to ensure the life of the mother.

This is just plain false. Bacon is in no dount referring to the Hyde Amendment when he mentions the … Continue Reading

Juliet Eilperin’s October 28th Washington post story Economics of Climate Change in Forefront reports:

In June, the Center for American Progress and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute predicted that a $150 billion annual public and private investment in clean energy would produce a net increase every year of 1.7 million jobs.

It’s true, CAP did release such a “study” in June of this year. But they also released a very similar study in September of 2008 showing that $100 billion in annual spending on clean energy would produce 2 million jobs. That is a … Continue Reading

Shailagh Murray and Lori Montgomery report in the October 24th The Washington Post:

Democratic leaders in the Senate and House have concluded that a government-run insurance plan is the cheapest way to expand health coverage, and they sought Friday to rally support for the idea, prospects for which have gone in a few short weeks from bleak to bright.

Murray and Montgomery first note:

In an early estimate of the House bill, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that fewer than 12 million people would buy insurance through the government plan.

This is true, by itself, but then Murray and Montgomery later report:

Because a

… Continue Reading

An October 20th The Washington Post headline blares: Public Option Gains Support: Clear Majority Now Backs Plan. The first para of the Dan Balz and Jon Cohen article reports: “A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health-care plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and wins clear majority support from the public.”

So the public option has “rebounded” from “summertime lows” in the minds of the America public. How “low” did it go? How big is this rebound. It must be a huge swing to justify this headline.

But you have … Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Alec MacGillis has a Fact Checker item out October 14th purporting to vet studies paid for America’s Health Insurance Plans and Blue Cross Blue Shield, and performed by PricewaterhouseCoopers Oliver Wyman, showing that health insurance premiums for the typical American family would rise $3,000 to $4,000 per year if Obamacare were to become law.

Writing on the individual mandate portion of the bill, MacGillis writes:

There is a lively debate about whether the penalty would goad healthier people to get coverage. But the reports are probably too pessimistic. Massachusetts has gotten all but 3 percent of residents into

… Continue Reading

Michael Shear and Ceci Connolly published an article in the October 7th Washington Post titled “Reform Gets Conditional GOP Support” that reports:

Seeking to provide fresh evidence of bipartisan support for health-care reform, the White House is orchestrating a series of endorsements from GOP heavyweights around the country.
…
And in the past two days, former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist; George W. Bush health and human services secretary Tommy G. Thompson and Medicare chief Mark McClellan; California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger; and New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — a Republican turned independent — have all spoken favorably of overhauling the nation’s

… Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Keith Richburg published a health care article October 1st asking: “What Makes a Health Plan a ‘Cadillac’?” Richburg reports:

In the scramble to find money to overhaul the health-care system, Senate Democrats have been eyeing the most generous insurance packages — what some call the “Cadillac” plans — as a lucrative target to tax.
…
But as the competing proposals are debated on Capitol Hill, a fundamental challenge has emerged: Few people agree on exactly what constitutes a Cadillac plan.

But then, fifteen paragraphs later we learn:

Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) initially proposed an excise tax of 35 percent

… Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin published a story September 30th on Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and John Kerry (D-MA) “climate bill” which Eilperin reports:

aims to make deep cuts in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions in the near and long term while setting a limit on the cost of carbon allowances, according to several sources and a close-to-final version of the bill obtained by The Washington Post.

The bill, which is still being revised, would make it easier for businesses to compensate for their carbon pollution by expanding the available pool of domestic offsets by 40 percent compared with the House-passed climate bill

… Continue Reading

In the context of Congress preparing topass controversial “cap-and-trade” legislation in the name of man-made global warming, the Washington Post ran a Juliet Eilperin September 4th article claiming “human-generated greenhouse gas emissions have helped reverse a 2,000-year trend of cooling in the Arctic, prompting warmer average temperatures in the past decade that now rank higher than at any time since 1 B.C.”

Other news outlets ran similar, uncritical treatments of a paper appearing in the September 3, 2009 online version of the journal Science. The lead author was Northern Arizona University professor Darrell S. Kaufman.

Although the Post quotes activists … Continue Reading

Writing up the Commerce Department’s July Personal Income and Outlays report, the Washington Post’s Annys Shin writes:

The “Cash for Clunkers” trade-in program, which gave consumers a subsidy to turn in older vehicles for new, fuel-efficient models, boosted consumer spending in July, the Commerce Department reported Friday … Consumer spending drives much of the economy, and the new data suggested people are willing to spend if given the right incentives. … To further stimulate spending, the federal government is working out the details of a similar program to start later this year that would allow consumers to purchase more

… Continue Reading

Editorializing on what they see as “promising” and “increased activity” between China and the United States on climate change, the Washington Post wrote on August 2nd:

This is a far cry from what happened under President George W. Bush. After spending most of his eight years questioning the science buttressing predictions of catastrophic climate change.

Although an opinion piece, this assertion is  risibly misleading if not outright false. In reverse order, Bush always acknowledged a human contribution to climate change — though the annual, rapidly increasing climate science appropriations continue to affirm his point that we do not know what … Continue Reading

There is nothing really positive to say about Steven Pearlstein’s July29th Washington Post article titled Health Reform Threatened by Conservatives’ Anti-Tax Fantasy. Pearlstein opens:

Nothing has been more damaging to rational discourse about economic policy than the notion, peddled relentlessly by Republican conservatives and accepted by too many centrist Democrats, that raising taxes is always and everywhere bad for the economy.

But what Pearlstein fails to tell his readers is that Republicans in Congress have sponsored or co-sponsored no less than three bills that actually raise taxes to help pay for health care reform. It is actually Congressional Democrats, big labor, … 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

Where the Washington Post’s Joby Warrick and R. Jeffrey Smith are not flat out wrong in their May 19 article “U.S.-Russian Team Deems Missile Shield in Europe Ineffective”, they are flat out lazy. First the facts.

The EastWest Institute recently released a report titled “Iran’s Nuclear and Missile Potential: A Joint Assessment by U.S. and Russian Technical Experts.” The report concludes that a ballistic missile threat from Iran is not imminent, and that planned US missile defense would not be effective and threaten US-Russian cooperation.

Warrick and Smith wrote that “[m]oreover, if Iran were to build a nuclear-capable missile that … Continue Reading

Covering Vice President Biden’s “Middle Class Task Force” meeting in the Washington Post, reporter Michael Fletcher rightly points out the problem that ever-rising college costs are creating for middle class families:

Pointing out that the cost of a four-year college education has more than doubled in the same time that middle class incomes have crept up by just 10 percent, Biden said that an unprecedented effort is being mounted to address the growing gap…”This is something we are genuinely, genuinely committed to changing.”

The Post story then reviews the Obama administration’s plans to expand and reform federal subsidy programs for college … Continue Reading

Here’s a form of media malpractice that must stop: Describing judicial and legislative victories for same-sex marriage proponents as  “legalizing” same-sex marriage, voiding “bans,” or “allowing” marriage for all. An April 4, Washington Post headline read: Iowa Legalizes Same-Sex Marriage, and the reporter, Keith B. Richburg, opened his article with this: “Iowa became the third state in the country and the first from the rural heartland to legalize same-sex marriage when its Supreme Court yesterday unanimously struck down the state’s decade-long ban.” The April 3 New York Times had a similar headline: Iowa Court Voids Gay Marriage … Continue Reading

On April 4, the Washington Post published a story by Maria Glod covering the release of a new Department of Education evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, which currently helps 1,700 low-income children attend private schools in the nation’s capital.

As the Post’s story accurately reports, the academic evaluation found that, after three years, voucher students were outperforming their peers who remained in public school in reading; specifically, by about four months of learning. Like previous evaluations, the new report also found that parents of voucher students were more satisfied with their child’s school.

Glod’s report fails to … Continue Reading

The March 31, Washington Post does a fairly responsible job today when discussing the Social Security trust fund and its implications for the federal budget. In an article entitled, “Recession Puts a Major Strain on Social Security Trust Fund,” reporter Lori Montgomery explains:

With unemployment rising, the payroll tax revenue that finances Social Security benefits for nearly 51 million retirees and other recipients is falling, according to a report from the Congressional Budget Office. As a result, the trust fund’s annual surplus is forecast to all but vanish next year — nearly a decade ahead of schedule — and

… Continue Reading

When President Bush and Vice President Cheney claimed that reversing their tax cuts would hurt many small businesses, the fact-checkers of the press zinged them for exaggerating the impact. Most small businesses, they pointed out, would not be affected. Good for the media: Journalists ought to inform the public when their leaders are making false or misleading statements.

But they ought to do so whether the politicians in question are Republicans or Democrats, and whether the claims help liberal or conservative causes. Last night, President Obama said that his liberalized policy on funding for embryonic stem-cell research would aid the search … Continue Reading