On today's Morning Joe, commenting on the arrest of Dem NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on bribery charges, Rattner claimed that "they don't pay these guys full-time salaries. They pay them, I think, $112,000 a year."
Wages & Prices
By Tom Blumer | January 10, 2015 | 10:39 AM EST
Three results returned in a search at the Associated Press's national site on "Venezuela" tell us almost nothing about that country's deepening economic crisis.
An unbylined January 10 item reports on the visit of Nicolas Maduro, the country's de facto dictator, to Iran in hopes of "stabilizing" (i.e., raising) oil prices. A second unbylined report on January 9 tells readers that there's really nothing to worry (oh sure) about in China's growing Latin American influence. Only the faintest hint of the horrors everyday Venezuelans are now experiencing appeared on January 7. The following two paragraphs appeared at the very end of a report describing Maduro's visit to China:
NYT Loves Big Government: 'Public Sector Is Once Again Adding to Prosperity...Minimum Wage Rises, Helping Millions of Workers'
By Clay Waters | January 2, 2015 | 9:05 PM EST The big-government supporters at the New York Times offered two classic big-government news stories on the front of its Business section two days in a row. On Friday: "Government Spending, Edging Up, Is a Stimulus." The text box underlined the pro-government spending sentiment: "The public sector is once again adding to prosperity." On Thursday: "Hourly Wage Is Going Up for Millions." The online headline was biased: "States' Minimum Wages Rise, Helping Millions of Workers."
By Tom Blumer | January 2, 2015 | 7:29 AM EST
Former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, who died on Thursday, is predictably being lionized today by USA Today's Aamer Madhani "as (a) giant in political rhetoric," and by others elsewhere in similarly glowing terms.
Madhani goes on to characterize the three-term Empire State chief executive's 1984 Democratic Convention speech in San Francisco as "what is widely considered one of the finest pieces of political rhetoric in recent memory." That it probably was. But he also calls it "a full-throated rebuttal of President Ronald Reagan, who would go on to a landslide victory over the Democratic nominee Walter Mondale." On that, Madhani is absolutely wrong. It was an attempt at a rebuttal which has since been thoroughly refuted and discredited.
By Tom Blumer | December 31, 2014 | 5:10 PM EST
Call the Ripley's Believe It or Not people. Have smelling salts available. What follows will surely be one of the more unusual things you've seen or heard this year.
In the midst of his otherwise odious Silicon Valley race-hustling shakedown effort, Jesse Jackson said something that made sense — so much sense that the rest of the press, which usually hangs on every word of his nonsensical pronouncements, has virtually ignored it, and will probably continue to.
By Julia A. Seymour | December 17, 2014 | 10:04 AM EST
Although 2014 was an election year, venomous attacks weren’t just in the campaign commercials. Most recently, anti-business attacks came from protesters across the country in the form of #ShutItDown. And there were many other anti-business views presented by the liberal news media, TV programming and left-wing extremists this year.
Attacks on businesses, executives and certain products were abundant this year. They included a propagandist “McMocumentary” that portrayed McDonald’s as heartless, which depicted Ronald McDonald driving over his own sister after she demanded a raise. Industries including agriculture, coal and retail were also under fire.
MRC Business compiled a list of the 10 worst left-wing and media attacks on business from the past year:
New York Times Foodie Mark Bittman Uncoils String of Leftist Inanities Disguised as Sunday Review Piece
By Clay Waters | December 16, 2014 | 1:38 AM EST An epic example of fanciful, fatuous liberalism featured in the most recent New York Times Sunday Review, a screed from Times food writer Mark Bittman that tried to tie in every single current event into a neat package labeled Republican Evil: "The police killing unarmed civilians. Horrifying income inequality. Rotting infrastructure and an unsafe "safety net." An inability to respond to climate, public health and environmental threats. A food system that causes disease. An occasionally dysfunctional and even cruel government. A sizable segment of the population excluded from work and subject to near-random incarceration. You get it: This is the United States, which, with the incoming Congress, might actually get worse."
By Tom Blumer | December 7, 2014 | 9:52 PM EST
Just before Thanksgiving, Our Walmart and the United Food and Commerical Workers went into high gear in their effort to draw attention to their advocacy of $15-per-hour minimum wage at the nation's largest retailer. Just after the holiday, I pointed to a column by the Manhattan Institute's Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who quickly discovered that many Kroger employees represented by the UFCW earn far less.
It didn't take much additional research to demonstrate that any fair and balanced reporting on the union's Our Walmart activities should note that "thousands of UFCW members, and perhaps even a majority, earn less, and often far less, than $15 per hour."
By Tom Blumer | November 28, 2014 | 1:55 PM EST
In a Tuesday column originally appearing at RealClearMarkets.com (found in more readable form at Economics21.org), the Manhattan Institute's Diana Furchtgott-Roth tore into the hypocrites at OUR Walmart, the union-backed effort to intimidate the nation's largest retailer into paying all employees at least $15 per hour.
In the process, Furchtgott-Roth noted a particularly important fact which I have yet to see reported elsewhere in the organized labor-sympathetic establishment press about the United Food and Commerical Workers (UFCW), one of the primary backers of today's OUR Walmart Black Friday protests. While UFCW demands $15 per hour for Walmart employees, many of its own members at other grocery chains often earn nowhere near that, and, under current contracts, never will (bolds are mine):
By Tom Blumer | November 25, 2014 | 7:10 PM EST
After reading Elaine Kurtenbach's coverage of how Japan's latest dive into yet another recession is affecting young people there, I can only say, "The Keynesian koolaid is strong in this one."
The AP reporter's headline says that the recession was "unexpected," and her first sentence calls it "a surprise." Anyone watching economic events in the country, and I think that's supposed to include her, should have known it was imminent. Kurtenbach, and apparently every other Keynesian koolaid drinker is shocked — shocked, I tell you! — that the recession occurred despite "unprecedented stimulus," and believes that young Japanese really, really want yet another tax increase (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
By Tom Blumer | November 11, 2014 | 8:50 PM EST
Far be it from me to talk a leftist columnist out of an ignorant, self-satisfied position which might, if anything, cause his fellow travelers to hit the accelerator a little less aggressively in future political campaigns.
At the Atlantic on Monday afternoon, Richard Reeves, policy director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, claimed that the left shouldn't be so glum after Tuesday's election results, because "progressive policies are working." His very first graph makes a mockery of his claim:
By Julia A. Seymour | October 21, 2014 | 10:39 AM EDT
Obama has been a champion of equal pay for women, at least according to his administration and the network news media.
The broadcast networks boosted his image on the subject throughout his presidency, from the first bill he signed into law in 2009 to a September 2014 speech mentioning “equal pay.” ABC said Obama waged an “assault” on the pay gap with an executive order over salary disclosures, while CBS said he “boosts equal pay for women.”