Here we go again – the FEC has launched another attack on free speech.
Regulation
By Tom Blumer | July 29, 2015 | 3:46 PM EDT
Yet another important economic statistic confidently predicted to rise has fallen — hard.
This time it was June's pending sales of existing homes. Just in time for summer, they were predicted to increase by a seasonally adjusted 1.0 percent to 1.5 percent. Instead they fell by 1.8 percent, the steepest drop since December 2013. Additionally, May's original 0.9 percent increase was revised down to 0.6 percent. This brought out yet another appearance of the dreaded "U-Word" ("unexpectedly") — accompanied, as usual, by excuses delivered by Victoria Stilwell at Bloomberg News (bolds are mine):
By Tom Blumer | July 24, 2015 | 6:48 PM EDT
Thanks to year-over-year declines in manufacturing orders, manufacturing shipments, and wholesale sales, along with bloated inventories, apologists for the current condition of the U.S. economy are down to three defenses supposedly demonstrating that all is still really well after yet another rough first quarter (once again excused away as due to supposedly historically awful winter weather).
One of the three is that the housing market, particularly for new homes, is in a genuine recovery. Effective today, we can scratch at least the new-home element of that claim. The Census Bureau told us today that seasonally adjusted new-home sales fell by 7 percent in June, after May's originally strong figure was also revised down by 5 percent. The raw data showed that the number of new homes sold in June — supposedly peak season for new home purchases — was the same as the number sold in February.
By Clay Waters | July 23, 2015 | 11:08 PM EDT
Thursday's lead New York Times story on New York State raising the minimum wage for fast-food workers to a whopping $15 an hour was dominated almost completely by cheerleading for the wage. That's despite the fact that even liberal economists are queasy about such a drastic hike in the minimum wage, and that the hike risks hurting the very low-income workers it supposedly helps, by raising the cost of their labor beyond a business's willingness or ability to pay.
By Matthew Balan | July 15, 2015 | 12:42 PM EDT
Wednesday's Fox and Friends spotlighted how two members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors treated a Fox News Channel journalist with contempt, after he tried asking them about their sanctuary city policy. Host Steve Doocy later zeroed in on how anchor Chris Cuomo at competitor network CNN asserted that the term "sanctuary city" was a "misnomer" on Monday's New Day. Doocy mocked CNN as "the Cuomo news network," and added: "So that's what you get on the real news channel over there."
By Matthew Balan | July 10, 2015 | 9:42 PM EDT
On Friday, ABC, CBS, and NBC's evening newscasts all ignored how the Obama administration issued the latest version of its abortifacient/contraception mandate under ObamaCare, which ignores multiple court rulings against it – including the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling in 2014 – and again tries to force religious non-profits to fund drugs that they consider to be immoral. Instead, the Big Three programs all devoted over a minute and a half each to the ticker tape parade in New York City for the World Cup-winning U.S. national women's soccer team.
By Mark Finkelstein | July 9, 2015 | 8:45 AM EDT
What does MSNBC's Alex Wagner have against stately Indian warriors? On today's Morning Joe, Wagner said it was "amazing" that anyone could look at the Washington Redskins logo and name and not find them controversial.
This NewsBuster can understand the debate over the "Redskins" name. But the logo? Has Alex actually had a look at it? Could Wagner be confusing it with the Cleveland Indians' Chief Yahoo? Seriously, what could be more stately, grave and dignified than the Redskins logo?
By Curtis Houck | July 8, 2015 | 9:43 PM EDT
On Wednesday night, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC refused to cover the Obama administration’s official unveiling of new regulations that aim to force neighborhoods to diversification or risk losing annual federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). As they often do when the networks fail to cover a story, the Fox News Channel (FNC) program Special Report was there to pick up the pieces and provided a full report from White House correspondent Kevin Corke on the plans that HUD says will “reduc[e] disparities in housing choice and access.”
July 6, 2015 | 3:47 PM EDT
Small business owners often complain about being “choked” by ever-increasing mandated benefits, but rarely do you see their complaints presented in a clear and compelling way. An exception took place during coverage of the very latest mandated benefit in California: sick leave for part-time employees, which just took effect this month.
By Curtis Houck | June 29, 2015 | 9:21 PM EDT
On Monday night, the networks showed scant interest in covering the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling against the Obama administration and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the regulation of power plant emissions as NBC ignored the story completely with ABC and CBS combining to spend only 29 seconds on the decision. While ABC and CBS came together to spend just under 30 seconds on this story, the Fox News Channel’s Special Report led off its Monday night broadcast with a segment by correspondent Shannon Bream on the final rulings of the Court’s term.
By Brad Wilmouth | June 28, 2015 | 8:25 PM EDT
It was obvious on Friday that CNN reporters and analysts were giddily celebrating the Supreme Court's liberal ruling bolstering same-sex marriage, but CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin was perhaps the only one who inadvertently admitted that "we celebrate" the trend toward gay rights victories before immediately catching his faux pas with laughter and walking it back to "many people celebrate" as he predicted the next target of the gay rights movement.
Dear NY Times: Who Has Been in Charge All This Time? After 8 Years of 'Financial Downturn,' Far More Americans Delay Major Life Events
By Tom Blumer | June 26, 2015 | 8:40 PM EDT There may no better illustration of how much harm the economy has inflicted on the American people during the Obama era than a March 2015 Harris survey commissioned by American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. The AICPA's Thursday press release reported that "a majority of American adults (51 percent) have delayed at least one important life decision in the last year due to financial reasons ... an increase of 20 percentage points from a similar survey conducted in 2007."
Covering the survey's results, Ann Carrns at the New York Times, in an item carried at CNBC (also found at the Times's web site), waited seven paragraphs to note a particularly damning statistic about a situation Obamacare advocates like to claim has already been solved.