Economy

A recent Gallup poll found that 31 percent of Americans self-identify as social liberals, and that an equal percentage call themselves social conservatives -- the first time since Gallup began conducting such surveys in 1999 that conservatives haven’t outnumbered liberals. On Tuesday, pundit Michael Tomasky seized on this development as an indication that Republicans no longer will be able to use…

This shouldn't be a trick question, but to the nation's establishment press business reporters it apparently is: What is the current length of the U.S. economy's expansion? The answer, after yesterday's reported 0.7 percent annualized contraction in U.S. Gross Domestic Product, is obviously zero. But that's not what Bloomberg News and reporter Sho Chandra, who has used her full first name of…

Friday's Morning Edition on NPR did its best to try to promote the liberal cause of expanding Medicaid in Texas. Wade Goodwyn lined up six soundbites from pro-expansion talking heads, versus only two from former Texas Governor Rick Perry, an opponent. Goodwyn played up that "in hating the Affordable Care Act, the state is leaving on the table as much as a hundred billion dollars of federal money…

This has to be the month's top entry in the "Just when you think you've seen it all" category — and it will be more than a little interesting to see how the nation's press handles it. As the Associated Press reported a week ago, the City Council in Los Angeles, by a vote of 14-1, ordered the drafting of a law mandating a citywide minimum wage of $15 per hour by 2020, noting that "the support of…

Seldom does one see such an obvious betrayal of reporters' biased mindsets as the one found in the opening paragraph of an Associated Press report earlier today on CEO pay at major U.S. publicly-held companies. According to the AP's Steve Rothwell and Ryan Nakashima, that entertainers, whose incomes are derived from leveraging special physical and artistic talents, deserve all the money they can…

In the early 1990s, politicians floated the term “peace dividend” regarding a hoped-for post-Cold War reduction in the U.S. defense budget, and Pentagon spending indeed fell somewhat in the mid- and late ‘90s. Sean McElwee, a research associate at the lefty think tank Demos, argues that America now needs a post-9/11, post-Afghanistan, post-Iraq peace dividend which would allow greatly increased…

Given how much wailing and gnashing of teeth there was in the press when the old Hostess liquidated in 2012, a mid-April story at Forbes on the company's has gotten surprisingly little attention. Well, maybe it's not that much of a surprise, for reasons which will be indentified here. Readers may recall that the final straw in that drama occurred late that year when the the AFL-CIO-affiliated…

On Wednesday’s NBC Today, co-host Tamron Hall stumbled upon conservative economic philosophy as she defended a hot dog vendor’s right to charge customers whatever he wanted, even if it was overpriced: “But why can’t he set his own prices? I mean, if a restaurant sells their hot dog, steak, or whatever for the price they want, why is his price regulated?”

The former Democratic governors of Michigan and Ohio are on tap to be in the same place at the same time on June 27 in the Buckeye State capital of Columbus. This is a made-for-the-media event for the record books. I certainly can't recall a time when two former governors who oversaw a combined total of over 1 million peak-to-trough job losses during their terms in office have been at the same…

It's bad enough, as Bryan Ballas at NewsBusters noted on May 16, that the Washington Post's Philip Bump dishonestly used last week's Amtrak tragedy to rip Republican members of Congress for somehow being responsible for the (theoretically) for-profit entity's "constant struggle" for funding. As Sean Davis at the Federalist explained, Amtrak has really had no funding struggles. Bump had to make…

On May 5, PolitiFact's Louis Jacobson kept with the alleged "fact-checking" web site's actual role as pack of leftist hacks by issuing a fundamentally dishonest "Half True" ruling on a statement made by CarlyFiorina.org's cybersquatter. I raise the matter now because the web site's critics, while raising most of the relevant points, haven't gone far enough in tearing apart Jacobson's work. As…

On May 1, the Associated Press's Paul Wiseman was pleased to tell the wire service's readers and subscribing outlets that "The University of Michigan's sentiment index rose to 95.9 from 93 in March," reaching "its second-highest level since 2007." Among other things, the survey's chief economist said that the result reflected "improving prospects for jobs and incomes." What a difference two…

Is Jesus a Bernie Sanders fan?  Could be, if you believe Howard Dean.  On today's Morning Joe, Dean claimed that "if you look at the red-letter version of the Bible, Jesus was probably to the left of the Democratic party." Dean's declaration came in the context of a discussion of yesterday's forum on poverty in which President Obama and AEI President Arthur Brooks participated.  Question: is…

Despite now knowing that the Amtrak train that derailed outside of Philadelphia on Tuesday night was going more than double the speed limit, the “big three” networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC continued pushing the need for more infrastructure funding and an increase in Amtrak’s budget on their Wednesday evening newscasts. In addition, CBS and NBC failed to mention the fact that train engine in…