Economy

Last night (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that the State of Minnesota, where the government is shut down but spokesman for the Department of Public Safety Doug Neville is somehow still working, is demanding that MillerCoors pull its products from Gopher State store shelves within days, and identified a number of questions non-inquisitive Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Eric Roper…

Two days after Anderson Cooper described President Barack Obama as the "adult" in a room of unruly Republicans, Obama reportedly stormed out of a heated discussion on debt negotiations yesterday due to his frustration with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Also yesterday came a stern reminder from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that the president has repeatedly listened to the concerns…

At the Associated Press, the task of reporting on the official results of Uncle Sam's June Monthly Treasury Statement fell to Christopher Rugaber instead Marty Crutsinger. Next time, Chris, tell us what happened in the month you're covering instead of going almost exclusively with the federal government's year-to-date results. If Rugaber had looked more closely at June, he would have had to…

Well, I guess it's getting serious now in the melodrama known as the Minnesota state government shutdown. If the Gopher State shutdown goes on much longer, hundreds of bars and restaurants will lose their ability to serve alcohol because they can't renew their liquor licenses. Worse, as reported by Eric Roper at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, MillerCoors, whose "brand license" somehow expired…

Chris Matthews on Wednesday gave a lesson on utterly shameless fear-mongering. In the final segment of MSNBC's "Hardball," the host said, "Failure to act on the debt ceiling will create a horror for our country, a horror we’ve never seen before" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

James Pethokoukis of Reuters published a chart Tuesday demonstrating exactly why all the hysteria about a debt default or missing Social Security check payments is a bunch of nonsense. If America's news outlets were actually interested in disseminating the truth rather than fear-mongering, this chart or something like it would be part of every report involving the debt ceiling:

The New York Times's chief economics writer David Leonhardt proposed his usual solution – tax hikes – to the ongoing budget and debt-ceiling battles between congressional Republicans and President Obama in his confidently titled Wednesday column “Why Taxes Will Rise In the End.” Leonhardt struggled to ponder why his fellow citizens stubbornly refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Polls show that…

As a result of Scott Pelley's interview with President Obama on the "CBS Evening News" Tuesday, the media are once again scaring seniors with the absurd notion Social Security checks won't go out in August if the debt ceiling isn't raised. An examination of the video and transcript of the relevant sections of this exchange bring into question whether or not that's actually what the President…

President Barack Obama told CBS News today that there may not be enough money in the U.S. Treasury to cover Social Security checks after Aug. 3 if Congress does not agree to lift the legal limit on the federal debt and allow his administration to borrow more money. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the…

Some people can spot a slight in every compliment, whereas others — the happy ones — find a compliment in every slight. So last week, as a free-market, low-taxes, constitutional conservative, I happily found an apparently unintended compliment from the liberal New Republic. It is not often that I agree with the central attack line of my sometimes media sparring partner, The New Republic's Ed…

Wannabe liberal reporters in J-school could use Alex Altman's July 11 Swampland blog post at Time.com as a template for biased coverage of the federal budget battle. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) is a "hard-line" conservative aligned with House Republican freshmen "who would rather risk economic catastrophe than give ideological ground" by agreeing to tax increases, Altman…

CNN's Anderson Cooper and Gloria Borger took turns casting President Barack Obama as the centrist 'adult' in a room teeming with unruly Republican children who would rather invite economic calamity than compromise on a debt-reduction plan. Discussing a topic that would have made a perfect "Keeping Them Honest" segment, Cooper insisted, incorrectly, on Monday's "AC 360" that the Democratic…

Monday’s New York Times front-page story by Motoko Rich, “Economy Faces a Jolt as Benefit Checks Run Out,” portrayed massive government spending on unemployment benefits and food stamps as an economic plus, not a potential drain, warning that cutting that funding would be a drag on the fragile recovery. An extraordinary amount of personal income is coming directly from the government.

Martin Bashir Monday falsely accused former Alaska governor Sarah Palin of calling President Obama a sugar daddy. Not only did the MSNBC host badly misinterpret Palin's words, he clearly doesn't understand what a sugar daddy is (video follows with transcript and commentary):