Reporting for The Hill, Walter Alarkon, in his July 13th article “Democrats and AARP want to make IRA enrollment automatic,” implies that the automatic investment retirement accounts (IRAs) is a Democratically controlled plan with support only from the White House and the Association for the Advancement of Retired Persons (AARP). But The Heritage Foundation’s Senior Research Fellow in Retirement Security and Financial Markets David John refutes Alarkon’s assertion that the Automatic IRA is a partisan idea:

The Automatic IRA has enjoyed wide bipartisan and cross-ideological support since it was first unveiled at The Heritage Foundation in

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CNN reporter Lateef Mungin leads off a July 22 piece entitled “Arizona Immigration Law Faces Federal Challenge Thursday,” by writing:

The Obama administration’s challenge to the controversial Arizona immigration law goes before a federal judge Thursday.

That seems straight enough. But is it really fair that the media constantly characterizes the immigration law as “controversial”?

A poll conducted by Quinnipac last week found that 50 percent of Americans back Arizona’s law compared to 30 percent who opposed it. Other polls have found even higher levels of support for Arizona’s efforts. The Quinnipac poll also found that, by … Continue Reading

In his July 21st article, Carbon-control bill faces steep hill in Senate, Associated Press reporter Charles Babington makes it sound like nothing but good will come from a bill that prices carbon dioxide. Discussing last year’s Waxman-Markey bill Babington writes, “The House voted 219-212 last year for a “cap and trade” energy plan. It would create economic incentives to limit heat-trapping gases from power plants, vehicles and other sources.”

These economic incentives are nothing more than crony capitalist handouts given to large corporations. The incentives are subsidies, loan guarantees, tax credits, and regulations. In the free … Continue Reading

Reporting on the Obama administration’s failure to convince voters the stimulus worked, The Washington Post’s Michael Shear reported on July 14th:

On that Friday, Gibbs was upbeat, expressing confidence in Obama’s ability to make his case for what eventually became an $850 billion stimulus plan.

Shear’s $850 billion number is an improvement over the $787 billion number the Post used to use but it is still not correct.

President Obama’s stimulus may have only totaled $787 billion when Congressional critics first voted against it, but its costs have increased since then. According to revised … Continue Reading

On July 12th Coral Davenport reported for Politico:
Congress may or may not pass a serious climate bill this year, but one thing is certain: It won’t be business as usual.

Congress may or may not pass a serious climate bill this year, but one thing is certain: It won’t be business as usual.

While Republicans and polluting industries will celebrate, most know their victory will be fleeting…
Over the past year, the Environmental Protection Agency rolled out four rules that, in the absence of climate change legislation, eventually would give the executive branch command-and-control power to limit carbon pollution from power plants, factories

… Continue Reading

Krissah Thompson reported on the controversy surrounding the Obama Justice Department’s handling of the New Black Panther Party case for the July 15th Washington Post. Thompson writes:

The suit was focused on the party and two of its members, who stood out front of a polling place in Philadelphia on Election Day 2008 wearing military gear. They were captured on video and were accused of trying to discourage some people from voting. One carried a nightstick.

Conservatives complained last year when Justice officials narrowed the case, dropping the party and one of the men and focusing only the bearer of the

… Continue Reading

Surprised by the fact that unions, not corporations, have spent the most money since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United free speech decision, The Washington Post’s T.W. Farnam reported on July 7th:

“We would be very pleasantly surprised if there’s not a gusher of special interest money,” Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said in an interview. “Very few people play in the primaries — most of this money is almost always spent in the general election.”

Van Hollen is pushing a bill the House recently passed that would require funding sources for advertising to be disclosed.

This is just plain false. Van Hollen’s … Continue Reading

Reporting on the New Black Panther Party controversy, Politico’s Ben Smith recounted the facts of the case for a July 16th article:

The facts of the case are relatively simple. Two men were captured on a video standing outside a polling place in a black Philadelphia neighborhood on Election Day in 2008. One of the men had a nightstick, if an unclear agenda — though a member of the black nationalist New Black Panther Party, he had earlier professed loathing for the Democratic “puppet” candidate, Barack Obama, who went on to overwhelmingly carry that precinct.

Three Republican poll monitors filed complaints

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In the course of a July 13th Washington Post column attacking Republicans, Katrina vanden Heuvel writes that “Missouri’s Roy Blunt, among others, stood with the insurance and drug companies against health-care reform.” Come again? The pharmaceutical industry favored the Democrats’ health-care legislation, and is even now coming to the aid of Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) to thank him for his role in passing it. The insurers spent more than a year urging passage of an individual mandate coupled with insurance regulations. That wasn’t the Republican position in the debate.

So … Continue Reading

In his July 9th column praising the recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), David Ignatius reports:

The CMS post has been unfilled since 2006 and Obama finally decided enough, already. The White House said Republicans “were going to stall the nomination as long as they could, solely to score political points.”

The White House can say whatever it wants but even columnists should check and see if they are telling the truth. And as ABC’s Jake Tapper reported, the GOP had no interest in stalling Dr. Berwick’s hearing:

Sen. John Kerry,

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In a “report” on Ireland’s economy, Liz Alderman of the New York Times assumes a Keynesian approach would make Ireland better off than its current economic state. Alderman reported June 29th, “Rather than being rewarded for its actions, though, Ireland is being penalized. Its downturn has certainly been sharper than if the government had spent more to keep people working. Lacking stimulus money, the Irish economy shrank 7.1 percent last year and remains in recession. “

Aside from signs that Ireland’s economy appears to be turning the corner, what makes Alderman think that a stimulus would have triggered … Continue Reading

Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn transcribed a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office on the Democrats latest cap and trade energy tax bill for Politico July 7th:

The CBO analysis of the American Power Act, championed by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) found that government revenues would grow by about $751 billion from 2011 to 2020 if the bill became law. By contrast, the legislation would create direct spending of $732 billion over the same 10-year period.

This is all true, but Samuelsohn ignores some elementary criticism of how the CBO is forced to score legislation by Congress. The … Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Michael Fletcher had a report July 1st on state budgets that reads more like an opinion editorial than a staff report. Fletcher wrote,

Nothing less than the nation’s nascent economic recovery hangs in the balance. States say that if they do not find financial rescue they will have to cut services and workers. That would deliver a potentially crippling blow to the economy, which needs higher employment levels to fatten wallets, promote spending, bolster tax revenue and reduce dependence on expensive social services.

States face a combined deficit of $89 billion in the fiscal year that

… Continue Reading

The Washington Post reported on July 5th that FedEx and UPS are “engaged in one of the fiercest lobbying battles in recent memory, with millions of dollars spent on advertising, Web sites, grass-roots organizing and other tactics.” And what are they fighting over? Dan Eggan explains:

An obscure, 230-word provision that would require FedEx Express to comply with the same labor laws as UPS, making it easier for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and other unions to organize.

Fair enough. But why would FedEx care if federal law changed to make it easier for big labor to unionize their workforce? Eggan … Continue Reading

Matthew Lee and Eileen Sullivan of the Associated Press wrote a story with the headline, “Cleanup Aid from Overseas Comes with a Price Tag,” lamenting about the cost that comes with foreign assistance to clean up the Gulf oil spill. They say, “The State Department confirmed that nearly every offer of equipment or expertise from a foreign government since the April 20 oil rig explosion would require the U.S. to reimburse that country.”

Of course they do. Under the 1990 Oil Pollution Act, the party responsible for the spill is also responsible for all the direct … Continue Reading

Covering the June 29th Elena Kagan confirmation hearing, Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports:

Republicans are pouncing on the less-than-crystal-clear answer Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan gave late in Tuesday’s confirmation hearing to a question from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) about whether the government has the right to micromanage Americans’ diets.
…
While it’s true that Kagan never definitively answered Coburn’s question, the pair spent nearly 10 minutes discussing the issue. In comments she made after the brief [video] clip the GOP posted, Kagan indicated that laws that regulated noneconomic activity, which presumably would include eating, were beyond Congress’s commerce clause power.

How exactly is … Continue Reading

Jeannine Aversa of The Associated Press wrote a June 29th article detailing some of the economic damage from the Deepwater Horizon spill including:

Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner estimates that up to 250,000 Gulf jobs in fishing, tourism and energy will be lost in the second half of the year.

But what Aversa fails to report is that almost half of this jobless is the direct result of President Barack Obama’s oil drilling moratorium. The American Petroleum Institute forecasts that if the drilling ban continues, more than 120,000 jobs could be lost in the Gulf Coast and key … Continue Reading

The Associated Press’s Matthew Daly reported June 15th on the Environmental Protection Agency’s new analysis of the Senate cap and trade bill introduced by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT). The analysis says cap and trade would cost American households cost households an average of $79 to $146 per year. But the AP fails to report on the faulty assumptions that come with the EPA analysis.

To get there, the EPA includes generous assumptions, specifically on the use of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), the use of offsets and the increase in nuclear power. With CCS, … Continue Reading

David Hilzenrath and N.C. Aizenman reported in the June 15th Washington Post:

If you like your health plan, you can keep it. That’s what President Obama promised during the long months of debate over health-care reform.
…
On Monday, the administration issued new rules to fulfill that promise. But your plan might not be quite the same — it could offer more benefits, and it could cost more.

Or if you have a health savings account or flexible savings account then you can’t keep your current health plan at all. The Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn Nix explains:

Obamacare law limits these consumer-controlled accounts in

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Associated Press reporter David Espo wrote about the DISCLOSE Act on June 15th:

The measure requires the listing of the names of the top five donors to an organization running political ads, including unions, businesses and non-profit organizations. … In a concession negotiated over the weekend, House Democrats agreed to an exemption from the disclosure requirements for organizations that have been in existence for a decade, have at least 1 million dues-paying members and do not use any corporate or labor union money to finance their campaign-related expenditures.

This language makes it seem that the DISCLOSE Act treats union and corporation … Continue Reading

Reporting on BP’s agreement to establishing a $20 billion trust fund for oil spill related claims, Scott Wilson and Joel Achenbach reported on page A1 of the June 17th Washington Post:

Both sides got what they wanted out of the encounter. The administration, under fire for how it has responded to the environmental calamity, can boast of creating a huge pot of money for easing the pain of Gulf Coast residents. BP, though poorer on paper in the short run, got some much-needed clarity on its long-term liability.

But then just two paragraphs later Achenbach and Wilson reported:

The figure is not

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On June 16, Michelle Price writes for the Associated Press in “Ariz. lawmaker takes aim at automatic citizenship” about a proposal by local law makers to prohibit issuing birth certificates unless at least one parent can prove US citizenship. Arizona state senator Russell Pearce, the article states, is considering legislation because he, “contends that the practice of granting citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. encourages illegal immigrants to come to this country to give birth and secure full rights for their children.”

Price goes on to write that “Legal scholars laugh out loud at Republican state … Continue Reading

The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin and Glenn Kessler report that it took over a month from the time the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded before the Obama administration began accepting offers of assistance from foreign nations. On May 19th State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters:

We are keeping an eye on what supplies we do need. And as we see that our supplies are running low, it may be at that point in time to accept offers from particular governments.

But some time in late May the Obama administration changed course and began accepting help from Mexico and the … Continue Reading

Reporting on President Barack Obama’s desire for billions more of deficit stimulus spending, The New York Times‘ David Sanger and Sewell Chan report:

Lawrence H. Summers, the director of the National Economic Council and the economic adviser at Mr. Obama’s elbow, argued that the effects of last year’s $787 billion spending program had not fully kicked in.

President Obama’s stimulus may have only totaled $787 billion when Congressional critics first voted against it, but its costs have increased since then. According to revised accounting by the Congressional Budget Office released this January, because the … Continue Reading

Politico’s Ben Smith and Maggie Haberman published an informative, if late, article on the growing political liability government unions are becoming for their political patrons June 6th. But their otherwise find narrative could have benefited from some facts. Smith and Haberman reported:

[A]nother consultant to major unions pointed to a different, more structural shift: Public sector unions are increasingly the face of American labor, and they have prospered as private sector unions disappeared and workers’ wages stagnated.

“The face of labor today is now public employee unions whose wages and benefits largely outstrip those of average Americans,” said the

… Continue Reading

In an otherwise fine piece of reporting on the continued flight of wordlwide investment into the safety of U.S. Treasury bonds, The Washington Post’s Neil Irwin reports:

Perceptions inside the Beltway rest on this idea: Although the current large budget deficit is caused mainly by the weak economy and a short-term economic stimulus that will soon expire, in the longer run the government faces a vast unfunded burden, particularly tied to Medicare and Medicaid.

It is true that Medicare’s $37.9 trillion unfunded liability is a driver of long term U.S. deficit concerns, but one cannot ignore Social Security’s problems either.

In … Continue Reading

A June 3rd Associated Press report, “Impact: US-Mexico border isn’t so dangerous,” by Martha Mendoza carries a misleading title and omits key facts about the state of border security. The article claims “government data obtained by The Associated Press show it actually isn’t so dangerous after all.” The article notes that crime rates in four major border cities San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin is down. In addition, it cites an internal Department of Homeland Security report that concludes the levels of violence against US Border Patrol agents is declining as well.

What the report omits, however, is … Continue Reading

One can understand why facts might be hard to come by while reporting on Vice President Joe Biden’s economic stimulus claims, but The Hill’s Michael O’Brien makes two easy errors in his June 2nd article. First he calls it the “$787 billion” stimulus bill. That was once true … nut not anyomore. According to revised accounting by the Congressional Budget Office released this January, because the stimulus failed to keep unemployment below 8% as promised, it will end up costing $862 billion thanks to increased food stamp and unemployment payments.

O’Brien’s second factual error comes three paragraphs later when … Continue Reading

Senate Democrats want both a $200 billion deficit spending jobs bill, but they also want to appear as though they care about the growing national debt. Covering this dilemma for The New York Times, David Leonhardt wrote on June 1st:

Of course, even if the bill is not very expensive, it is worth passing only if it will make a difference. And economists say it will.

Last year’s big stimulus program certainly did. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 1.4 million to 3.4 million people now working would be unemployed were it not for the stimulus.

But the CBO estimates are not … Continue Reading

Glenn Kessler’s “analysis” of the implications of the Israeli conflict with the flotilla headed for the Gaza strip (entitled “Condemnation of Israeli Assault Complicates Relations with U.S.”) leaves out so many critical facts and background that readers are left with a skewed and inaccurate sense of the event. Kessler writes:

The worldwide condemnation of the deadly Israeli assault on the Gaza aid flotilla will complicate the Obama administration’s efforts to improve its tense relations with Jerusalem and will probably distract from the push to sanction Iran over its nuclear program.

Kessler highlights numerous criticisms of Israel from world leaders, … Continue Reading