Uncle Sam's Collections Crunch and Record Deficits Continue; Press Cov

December 7th, 2009 12:19 PM
Blogger Doug Ross got to the news of the Congressional Budget Office's Monthly Budget Report (PDF) over the weekend, quite accurately observing that the establishment news coverage of its content barely existed. The results of searches at the Associated Press's raw feed page on "Congressional Budget Office" (not in quotes) and "CBO" confirm Doug's observation, as no result returned relates to…

Name That Party: AP and Pennsylvania Press Fail to ID Party of Third G

December 6th, 2009 9:10 AM
Well, you can't say they aren't consistent.Two brief AP dispatches from December 2 and December 3 about Michael Toole, a Pennsylvania judge who has agreed to plead guilty to corruption-related charges, fail to mention that Toole has at least been a contributor to the Democratic Party, and appears very likely to have been a party member.This see-no-party treatment parallels local media coverage…

Lipstick on a Pig: AP Describes ADP's Job-Loss Decline as Better Than

December 3rd, 2009 3:26 PM
The coverage yesterday by the Associated Press's Stephen Bernard of payroll and human resources giant ADP's monthly jobs report for November focused on a relatively small reduction in the size of the decline in jobs lost and not on the fact that continuing to lose jobs is a bad thing.That rhetorical sleight of hand enabled the AP reporter to tell us that ADP's reported private sector job loss…

Rom Houben: Culture of Death Is Not Impressed

November 28th, 2009 12:53 AM
It's nice that the story of Rom Houben has recently made the news. I carried it as one of my own "Positivity" posts earlier this week. A Google News Search on "Rom Houben Laureys" (not typed in quotes; Laureys is the last name of Houben's principal doctor) at about 11:30 p.m. ET came back with 1,528 results relating to the word of his amazing recovery and ability to communicate after 23 years of…

Tax Increase Campaign Item 3: Wars Cost Money And Rich Must Pay, MI Se

November 21st, 2009 10:37 AM
At this point, there should be little doubt that there is a concerted attempt underway to use the war in Afghanistan as a justification for punitively taxing high earners. Last weekend (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the New York Times discovered that wars cost money. It cited Wisconsin Democratic Congressman David Obey's concern that funding the Afghanistan effort at the level requested…

AFP Writes Up Proposed Tax With 'Next to No Chance' of Passage to Set

November 20th, 2009 10:59 PM
You've got to hand it to the propagandists at the AFP. When heavy-hitting members of the party they favor announce an idea whose main purpose is, as the New York Times suddenly "discovered" last weekend, to remind people that wars cost money and distract from supposedly more important priorities, the wire service leaps into action. Even AFP acknowledges that the tax proposal by several top-tier…

Health Care Poll-Cooking: AP Headlines 'Tax the Rich' Finding, Ignores

November 17th, 2009 1:19 PM
That the Associated Press's basement-level poll-cooking and poll-reporting standards are quite low, and quite agenda-driven, might as well be an article of faith by this time. But the wire service-commissioned poll on health care, and Erica Warner's report on it (saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes; HT JammieWearingFool via Instapundit; the full poll report in PDF…

AP Parrots GM's Comparative Tease of Not Comparable 'Financials' Comin

November 15th, 2009 8:47 PM
In the alternative universe known as Government/General Motors Land, you can: Talk about how your financial results are going to be better than last year's and in the next breath caution that the numbers won't be comparable. Inform the public that the financial information to be released on Monday isn't going to be prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP),…

We Wish: AP Report Falsely Claims National Debt Is 'Accumulation of An

November 15th, 2009 1:47 PM
In a report that is so riddled with bias and factual errors it's hard to know even where to begin, Associated Press Writers Tom Raum and Andrew Taylor yesterday gave making President Obama look like a born-again deficit hawk their best shot. The pair's work is partially saved here for fair use, discussion and in this case entertainment purposes. The biggest error Raum and Taylor made was…

Big Brother and PC In Holland: A Mileage Tax That Varies on Car Type a

November 14th, 2009 8:21 AM
In what is presented to readers of an Associated Press report as a done deal, the Netherlands will impose a mileage tax on drivers beginning in 2012. It goes beyond most if not all other government-imposed taxes in that it will charge more during so-called peak times or if a vehicle is considered a heavier polluter. The abolition of two other taxes is apparently the mechanism for enticing the…

Though Alarming, AP's Report on October Deficit Still Misses the Big

November 13th, 2009 10:14 AM
It might seem odd, given its content, that I'm about to criticize yesterday's Associated Press report on the deficit. After all, AP business writers Martin Crutsinger and Daniel Wagner did give us the facts about Uncle Sam's October Monthly Treasury Statement, put them into historical context, and told us that we face $1 trillion-plus shortfalls in fiscal 2010 and 2011. But the pair missed a…

Pfizer Leaving New London, CT; Just Don't Mention 'Kelo' While Reporti

November 10th, 2009 12:09 PM
It's a development that I wouldn't wish on anybody, but one that the City of New London, Connecticut largely brought upon itself by pursuing and winning the Kelo v. New London case at the Supreme Court in June 2005. Some "win." In what Ed Morrissey at Hot Air calls "a fitting coda to a chapter of governmental abuse," pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer is leaving the global research and…

Reuters, PBS Noted Faith's Role in Fall of Berlin Wall

November 10th, 2009 10:56 AM
I believe in miracles. They happen everyday. Like Reuters, of all news outlets, acknowledging the role that religious faith played in the dissident movements in East Germany leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.Sarah Pulliam Bailey picked up on that in a November 9 post at Get Religion yesterday:With Bon Jovi, Angela Merkel and Mikhail Gorbachev likely to steal the spotlight at the…

AP, Covering ACORN La. Raid, Acts As If Only One Office Was Videotaped

November 6th, 2009 11:23 PM
Did you know that activist filmmaker James O'Keefe and partner Hannah Giles made only one undercover video showing ACORN employees willing to assist them in illegal and human rights-violating activities? Absent prior knowledge, that's the impression you would have upon reading the Associated Press's coverage of the latest development in the ACORN saga, namely the raid on the organization's New…