Economy

The U.S. economy “sputtered” again in the second quarter, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, that “disappointing” economic news, coming on the heels of the Democratic National Convention, wasn’t reported by the broadcast evening news shows. The Commerce Department announced July 29, that the economy grew at an annual rate of 1.2 percent annual in the second quarter. But ABC, CBS and…

Venezuela’s economy continues to deteriorate under the rule of its socialist president Nicolas Maduro. The collapsing economy, combined with government regulations and price controls created a food shortage so severe some have taken drastic measures. One group of desperate Venezuelans broke into a zoo and butchered a horse for meat on July 24, according to Fusion’s Manuel Rueda.

Yesterday's news about the economy was the latest in a 7-1/2 year series of mostly regular disappointments. The government reported that nation's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an annual rate of just 1.2 percent in the second quarter, half or less of what most alleged "experts" expected. Additionally, the first's quarter's originally reported 1.1 percent growth was revised down to 0.8…

Is media bias just smart marketing? Yes, suggests Taibbi, who claims it’s “irrelevant” that “most individual reporters” are liberals given that their profit-driven, audience-conscious corporate overlords keep them on a short leash. “Whatever their personal leanings, influential reporters mostly work in nihilistic corporations, to whom the news is a non-ideological commodity, to be sold the same…

Now we know why Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's de facto dictator, recently handed over responsibility for food production to the military: He's going to need soldiers on farms and elsewhere in the food distribution chain to keep conscripted workers in line. That's because on July 22, now over a week ago, Maduro's government decreed "... that any employee in Venezuela can be effectively made to work…

They call it a comeback. It is true, the U.S. economy is no longer in the depths of what has been called “The Great Recession.” But, in many ways the economy remains “weak.” Overall economic growth remains “subpar” and labor force participation rates remain shocking, not far from 38-year lows. Then of course there’s poverty, food stamp use, weak wage growth and household income struggles. The…

The Washington Post “Fact Checker” column is running its critiques of the Republican convention this week, and in the process is trying again to rebuff a figure of $15,000 per household that I employ as a placeholder for the annual cost of federal regulations.  

The 2016 Republican National Convention brought the radical, left-wing fringe out in Cleveland, and some of the groups’ ideas were downright ridiculous.

It’s almost as if “Net Neutrality” is a Leftist safe word - to be uttered when the free market growing freely causes them too much discomfort. Few things demonstrate the insular Media-Government Bubble better than this:

The latest installment in leftist excuse-making when socialism fails goes into the "It would work if leaders just had the right people handling things" file. It comes in the form of a Friday morning "analysis" at the Associated Press. Writers Jorge Rueda and Joshua Goodman want readers to believe that the economy in the Bolivarian socialist and once fairly prosperous nation of Venezuela would be…

Much like Phil Mickelson took a big early lead in the British Open, Esquire’s Charles Pierce has taken a big rhetorical-excess lead in early blogging about Donald Trump’s VP pick, Indiana governor Mike Pence, calling him a “very strange and completely unreconstructed wingnut” whose paper trail contains “a rich deposit of sweet crude crazy.” Kevin Drum of Mother Jones described Pence as "not…

The media exuded panic surrounding the vote for the U.K. to leave the European Union, commonly called Brexit. Reports after the vote panicked over how much markets had fallen, worried about a potential recession for the UK and otherwise attacked the outcome. 

It would be far too kind to give three cheers to CNN for exposing the disastrous conditions in a children's hospital in Caracas, Venezuela caused by over 15 years of Bolivarian socialism in a July 13 broadcast report. The network gets one hearty cheer for the detailed report's existence. It lost a chance for a second cheer when it failed to mention the country's socialist form of government…

It's a safe prediction that there will be renewed interest in the federal government's perilous financial situation if the country elects someone not named Hillary Clinton as its next president in November. One reason why this prediction is so safe is how little interest there has been in even covering today's news about Uncle Sam's troubling June surplus of only $6.3 billion. The Associated…