Economy

I was going to leave this alone because the original item involved goes back to last week. But Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press brought it up again in his report today on existing home sales, so it's fair game again. The final sentence of his dispatch refers to last week's Census Bureau data in the new home market, and claims that "In June, they (builders) applied for permits to…

On Monday’s Morning Joe, an all-liberal panel discussed, with co-host Joe Scarborough, the recent feud between the D.C. Council and Walmart, highlighting the standoff between the discount retail giant and city councilors over wages at three future Walmart locations in the nation’s capital. Co-host Mika Brzezinski bashed Walmart throughout the segment, responding with a long pause and a…

On his eponymous Sunday program, Ed Schultz blamed Republicans for Detroit’s recent bankruptcy filing, implying that the GOP is “happy to see Detroit go bankrupt” and that Governor Rick Snyder (R-Mich.) is “swindling public workers out of their hard-earned pensions.” Schultz accused Republicans of wanting to “quit” and “surrender” on Detroit, launching into a 13-minute diatribe against Snyder…

CBS's Bob Schieffer got a much-needed lesson in recent history Sunday. During a Face the Nation discussion with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Oh.), after the host wrongly claimed sequester was "the creation of Congress," Boehner interrupted him saying, "That's wrong. Who insisted on the sequester? The President of the United States" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry blamed Detroit's bankruptcy on "government (that) is small enough to drown in your bathtub," and claimed that it reflects “exactly the kind of thing that many Republicans would impose on us.” Nothing can top that, right? Wrong. MSNBC's Ed Schultz did, by more directly blaming Republicans. With an…

Melissa Harris-Perry, one of the panel guests on MSNBC's "Now" program on Friday,  managed to tie Detroit's bankruptcy to small government, i.e., "when government is small enough to drown in your bathtub," and to analogize it to "exactly the kind of thing that many Republicans would impose on us." Really. The relevant transcript from RealClearPolitics, followed by comments from Erika Johnsen…

On Friday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie promoted a video of Rahm Emanuel caught dancing at a Chicago music festival: "Rahm's rhythm. You know, a lot of people find it just hard to sit still when they hear Robin Thicke's hit summer anthem Blurred Lines. Well now you can add Rahm Emanuel, Chicago's mayor, to that group." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] While the…

What Egyptian citizens must recognize is that political liberty thrives best where there's a large measure of economic liberty. The Egyptian people are not the problem; it's the environment they're forced to live in. Why is it that Egyptians do well in the U.S. but not Egypt? We could make the same observation about Nigerians, Cambodians, Jamaicans and many other people who leave their homeland…

Today, as the wire service AFP reported in a story carried at Yahoo.com, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in the question and answer exchange after his prepared testimony, told the House Financial Services Committee that "If we were to tighten (monetary) policy, the economy would tank." That assessment of the economy's fragility qualifies as news, especially given the Obama…

Whatever they're paying Teresa Ghilarducci, who is "the Bernard L. and Irene Schwartz chair of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research," it's too much. The bolded sentences seen after the jump which Ms. Ghilarducci included in a Friday New York Times op-ed (HT "Mungowitz" at the "Kids Prefer Cheese" blog via Megan McArdle) makes my contention an open and shut case (…

On ABC's This Week yesterday, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer -- who resigned in 2008 when caught dead to rights illegally purchasing the services of prostitutes but was never prosecuted because, as announced two days after Election Day in 2008, the Department of Justice decided that "the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges" -- called the verdict in…

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman takes positive glee in attacking Republicans on almost a daily basis. In a piece published Monday entitled "Hunger Games, USA," Krugman disgracefully said the GOP "takes positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable":

This one is a lead candidate for top placement in this week's "Even a stopped clock is right twice day" file. MSNBC's Michael Smerconish, whose NewsBusters archive exposes him as a Barack Obama-supporting, right-wing conspiracy-mongering faux conservative, had a perhaps surprising reaction to the District of Columbia City Council's 8-5 vote to force Walmart and other big box retailers in the…

On Thursday, my colleague Jeffrey Meyer noted how the Washington Post's Mike DeBonis failed to explain to readers how unionized retail outlets would benefit from an exemption in the cynically-titled Large Retailer Accountability Act, the D.C. Council bill that would require large retail chains like Walmart to pay employees at least $12.50/hour. Today, to their credit, Post editors did publish…