Either Nicholas Riccardi at the Associated Press is woefully ignorant, or he set out to deliberately mislead readers about the impact of Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush's tax plan. I'll report the details; readers here can decide for themselves.

Riccardi's "analysis," contained in his Sunday morning writeup covering the tax proposals of Bush, Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, contained the following paragraph summarizing the Bush plan's impact (HT to longtime emailer Alfred Lemire):

Democrats' current and potential candidates for their party's 2016 presidential nomination continue to complain about various aspects of the economy. They continue to make no connection between their complaints and the fact that Democrat Barack Obama has been in the White House for over six years. Obama has for the most part operated either under the conditions created by the 2009-2010 Congress or, when resisted, by unilaterally ruling through executive orders and arbitrary regulatory actions.

Establishment press outlets, likely recognizing the candidates' hypocrisy, mostly fail to carry their complaints — and when they do, they make no attempt to note that the candidates are citing areas the Obama administration has either failed to address, or has attempted to address counterproductively. This pattern of behavior became so obvious yesterday as a result of Vice President Joe Biden's appearance in Pittsburgh that National Review and IJ Review contributor Stephen Miller tweeted the following:

Silly me. I really thought that every state's lottery operation was walled off from the rest of its finances. They collect bets, pay out winnings and administrative costs, and turn over the profits to general fund. End of discussion. No muss, no fuss. Right?

In Illinois, based on recent developments, we know that's obviously not the case — leading me to wonder how many other states potentially have the same problem the Land of Lincoln currently has. You see, the state is about to move into the third month of a budget standoff between Republican Governor Bruce Rauner and its Democrat-controlled state legislature. As a result, because the lottery's operations are at least in a legal sense commingled with the rest of the state's finances, its comptroller has been forced to cancel payouts of lottery winnings greater than $25,000. It appears that very few media outlets outside of Illinois are interested in covering this obviously important story. Why?

In his MSNBC show The Last Word Tuesday evening, Lawrence O’Donnell dedicated a segment to describing his opinion of what “good and bad socialism” looks like. Naturally his example of “good” socialism included the man and policies Bernie Sanders. It also included a 6 year old cover from Newsweek magazine that proclaimed “We Are All Socialists now,” which detailed how it's becoming normal (and good) for America to fund massive socialist policies like Social Security and Medicaid. Bad socialism is, of course, allowing the government to “socialize” the sports industry by subsidizing the construction of new stadiums for rich and greedy team owners and the millionaire athletes they employ.

In a Wednesday column, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman extended his odd obsession with raising the gas tax into the 2016 Republican presidential debate. But Friedman will have a hard time convincing Republicans to listen if he keeps throwing around insults, like describing the party's donors and supporters as embracing the "angry anti-science, anti-tax, anti-government, anti-minorities, anti-gay rights and anti-immigration views of the Tea Party and its media enforcer, Fox News."