Economy

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Sunday gave Lawrence O'Donnell a much-needed education on the economic impact of the Bill Clinton tax hikes in the '90s. As O'Donnell precipitated the exchange, he perfectly demonstrated why MSNBC commentators are far too liberally biased to be invited on NBC's Meet the Press (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman took a lot of heat from conservatives on ABC's This Week Sunday. Shortly after Republican strategist Mary Matalin derogatorily asked him if he was an economist or a polemicist, George Will said, "I have yet to encounter someone who disagrees with you who you don't think is a knave or corrupt or a corrupt knave" (video follows with transcript and…

Republican strategist Mary Matalin on Sunday asked New York Times columnist Paul Krugman an absolutely marvelous question. As Krugman spewed typical Democrat talking points about the fiscal cliff negotiations on ABC's This Week, Matalin interjected, "Are you an economist or a polemicist? Just make up your mind" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The U.S. Department of Agriculture released its latest report on food stamp program participation through September today. I received the email alerting me to the release at 5:17 p.m., so it seems reasonable to believe that USDA and the Barack Obama administration wanted the new data to get as little attention as possible (as will be seen later, it's currently getting none). If so, they have…

The PBS NewsHour has yet to invite a strong conservative on the program to talk about the fiscal cliff.  Tuesday night they had New York Times columnist, left-wing economist, and Obama cheerleader Paul Krugman to detail his view.  Wednesday night they had moderately-conservative Sen. Bob Corker ( R-Tenn), but last night was the most interesting. PBS invited the Norquist of the left, Max…

Things have really come full circle for the perpetually troubled liberal magazine Newsweek, since it infamously smeared Newt Gingrich on its cover as "the Gingrich who stole Christmas." Eighteen years later, Newsweek is literally doing that to more than 50 employees it fired on Friday. The pink-slipped staff for the Newsweek/Daily Beast Company received a letter from Editor-in-Chief Tina…

President Obama is winning the messaging wars in the "fiscal cliff" debate largely because Republicans aren't even in the game. The GOP leadership in Washington keeps talking as if the issue is deficit reduction, while the president is talking about fairness. Consider the numbers. Sixty-one percent of voters want to see a deal reached to avoid the big Jan. 1 tax hikes and across-the-board…

In what ABC News deemed a "major blow to union rights," Michigan became the 24th right-to-work state on Thursday. Yet, NBC and CBS totally ignored this development. ABC allowed a scant 14 second news brief on Friday's Good Morning America. What did the networks cover instead? Over a three minute segment, CBS This Morning highlighted the deeply important news that Justin Bieber endured a snub…

Cokie Roberts and other outspoken liberal journalists are "unelected lobbyists" in the very same sense that they charge Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist is. "From her perch at ABC News," as an ostensible journalist, Roberts is agitating for tax hikes, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell observed on the December 6 edition of Fox News Channel's Hannity. Rather than reporting the…

CNN's Wolf Blitzer said Thursday that the Democratic fiscal cliff plan of raising tax rates on the top two percent of income earners is the "beginning" of a solution. "But it's a beginning. A billion here, a billion there, it winds up being real money," Blitzer told Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on Thursday's The Situation Room. Blitzer had already pushed House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-…

It's a metaphysical certitude the media will be gushing and fawning over the Labor Department report Friday that the unemployment rate dropped to 7.7 percent in November. What they'll likely ignore is that the number of working age Americans participating in the labor forced dropped to 63.6 percent.

ABC News, which previously mocked the loss of 18,000 jobs at Hostess, now has concern for the unemployed, worrying about those who will lose benefits if a deal on the fiscal cliff cannot be found. Reporter Jon Karl on Wednesday's World News fretted, "Without a deal, unemployment compensation will end for more than two million people who've been out of work more than 26 weeks." Karl…

Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell offered Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) a golden opportunity to prove just how popular President Obama's plan to avert the fiscal cliff is with his member of his own party. But, true to form, Sen. Reid refused to schedule the vote. "Not a single Senate Democrat has stepped forward to support it, and if you look at it you can see why.... It…

"Militantly non-partisan" Major Garrett sounded more like an Obama administration flack on Thursday's CBS This Morning as he spotlighted the President's latest P.R. stunt. Garrett noted Obama's plan to visit a northern Virginia middle-class family and claimed that the Democrat was underlining the "self-evident point that if the there is a deal and their taxes aren't raised by about $2,000, they…