Budget

As Americans across the fruited plain worry about their jobs and how they're going to make ends meet during the current recession, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman showed Sunday morning just how separated from reality and the common man he actually is.Appearing on ABC's "This Week," the New York Times columnist said that he wasn't worried about how expensive president-elect Barack Obama's economic…

Joe Conason's column should be as chilling to conservatives as it is meant to be comforting to liberals.  His message: don't be distracted by the centrist-seeming appointments Pres.-elect Obama has made to his economic team.  He remains as committed as ever to his radical agenda.Conason's commentary appears this morning at Rasmussen Reports.  Key lines [emphasis added]:[W]hen liberals point to…

Doesn't it amaze you when some liberal media member actually claims that raising taxes is good for the economy, and uses the Clinton Era to prove his or her specious point? Such transpired Tuesday afternoon when CNBC's Trish Regan invited liberal columnist David Sirota on to discuss president-elect Barack Obama's plans to get the economy rolling again. True to the liberal motif, Sirota spoke…

Can I have permission to utter the S-word ("socialism")? Ken Thomas's Associated Press report today (link is dynamic, subject to change, and will probably be gone in a week) on auto industry bailout ideas emanating from Washington includes these items, all of which expand soc- ... soc- ... socialism: Legislation proposed by Barney Frank involves the government taking ownership stakes in the…

It's not like Barack Obama is a socialist or anything. It's just that Thomas Friedman wants him to put a "government master" in charge of the country's biggest manufacturing sector. Friedman made his modest proposal in his New York Times column of today, and expanded on it during a Morning Joe appearance. [H/t reader Tom.]Video also available here.I've got three easy reasons why Friedman's idea…

During a segment on Tuesday’s Newsroom program, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez asked South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford if the Republican needed to abandon its social conservative principles in order to be successful again: "Do you have to be anti-abortion, because that's a very important, big topic in the South..?" Sanchez later asked the Republican governor, as well as talk show host Neal Boortz, "…

Showing once again that its opinion pieces serve a dual purpose as a news source, a Monday Wall Street Journal editorial noted that Democrats have quietly dropped a central plank of their successful 2006 effort to gain a congressional majority (HT Hot Air):Late last week the leader of the House Blue Dog Coalition, Tennessee Democrat Jim Cooper, announced that with Barack Obama about to enter the…

Talk about "change." The latest version of president-elect Barack Obama's ever-evolving ideas for "community service" promises to pass out quite a bit of it to America's college students. The "America Serves" (link is to Google cache) and "Service" sections of Team Obama's Change.gov site have, uh, changed quite a bit over the past day or so after many, including Kerry Picket of Newsbusters,…

The first term of President Barack Obama will bring nationalized health care, attacks on the coal industry, higher government spending and higher taxes, according to Business & Media Institute Vice President Dan Gainor.On “Fox & Friends” Nov. 6, Gainor highlighted BMI’s most recent Special Report, America 2012, a look at what some of Obama’s major policies proposals will do to the…

Who's going to be the leader of the financial world in the role of Treasury Secretary under President Obama? It may be Democratic New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, who has pushed for an additional economic stimulus package to the tune of $300 billion to support infrastructure projects. CNBC's Carl Quintanilla asked Corzine outright on "Squawk Box" if he would accept a job in the Obama…

I'm guessing that Paul Krugman and David Brooks don't hang out that much together.  So when both turn up on the New York Times op-ed page this morning with columns calling for massive government spending, I'm assuming they came to their conclusions independently.  My working hypothesis: if Krugman and Brooks agree on something this important, they must be wrong.Here's Krugman's prescription,…

Jeff Cohen, founder of FAIR—a self-described progressive media watch group—now a professor of independent media at Ithaca College, invited me to address his class of student bloggers this afternoon.  Asked to name some of the fairer MSM journalists, I included David Gregory on my short list.  That could understandably come as a surprise to those who remember Gregory from his days as NBC's chief…

Story after story on the full-year results for the federal budget refers to the size of the full-year deficit for the fiscal year that just ended on September 30 ($455 billion), and how it compares to last year's deficit ($162 billion). Almost none of them talk about why the deficit ballooned. I wonder why? Could it be because the Democrat-controlled Congress of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid…