I just came across this from a few months ago and I COULD NOT believe this. For all you Left Wingers out there, this is NOT from FOX News, (since you're alway saying they're biased against this administration), this is from none other than the Clinton News Network, er... I mean CNN.
If Paul Revere were alive today, instead of saying "The British Are Coming", he would say "The Thought Police are coming, the Thought Police are coming!!"
WJLA-TV, a Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate, suspended reporter Doug McKelway following his alleged “partisan” comments at a liberal rally on Capitol Hill marking the three-month anniversary of the Gulf oil spill. Video of the broadcast tells a different story:
Apparently facts are now “partisan.”
McKelway stuck to the truth about BP’s political contributions and pending cap-and-trade legislation, newsworthy subjects given that the event’s organizers were lobbying to “pass legislation to end America’s addiction to oil and urged lawmakers to donate campaign money raised from the oil industry to the clean-up efforts in the Gulf.”
According to the Washington Post, it was McKelway’s supposedly controversial comments on July 20 that led to his suspension. Anonymous sources at the station are now accusing him of “insubordination” in an apparent attempt to fire him.
McKelway’s live report began with a factually correct statement about BP’s donations to President Obama. McKelway accurately noted that Obama received $77,051 from the BP employees, information verified by the Center for Responsive Politics.
When McKelway asked one of the event’s participants to comment on it, Ted Glick of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network acknowledged it was a problem for Obama. The rally was organized by left-wing groups Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Public Citizen.
Nevertheless, the Washington Post, quoting anonymous sources, indicated McKelway’s report crossed the line. The newspaper reported:
According to several of McKelway’s colleagues, the newsman’s reporting may have lapsed into partisan territory when he commented live on the air about the oil industry’s influence in Washington, particularly its contributions to Democratic politicians and legislators.
This is absolutely absurd. The Post’s decision to use anonymous sources to smear McKelway was bad enough, but reporter Paul Farhi also wrote a subjective description of the broadcast instead of simply stating the facts. The newspaper’s own reporters engage in flagrant partisan behavior on a daily basis.
WJLA’s station manager and news director declined to comment on the personnel matter. McKelway isn’t talking either.
Based on what we know — and discounting the questionable and anonymous sources in Farhi’s story — it appears this is a classic case of the mainstream media silencing those who report inconvenient truths about this administration. McKelway is a veteran newsman who has consistently strived for balance in reporting. Unfortunately, in a news environment like Washington, D.C, liberals don’t always like the facts. In this case, McKelway appears to have suffered the consequences.
The White House can repeat these “jobs saved or created” numbers as often as it wants; it won’t make them true. Consider this Business Weekreport on a study released today by the Council Of Economic Advisers:
The report says the stimulus has “saved or created” about 3 million jobs, and is moving toward a goal of 3.5 million jobs by the end of the year, according to an administration official speaking on condition of anonymity before the report’s release today.
As it turns out, when you unpack the numbers, you find that Romer and her team didn’t actually count how many people got a job thanks to the stimulus. Instead, the number is a projection that relies on the myth that a dollar of government spending creates up to 2.5 dollars of economic growth.
That’s strange. Robert Barro of Harvard University has estimated that, even in the best-case senario, $1 of government spending will generate between $0.40 and $0.70 ofeconomic growth, i.e., much less than the amount of growth that we would get if that dollar was invested privately. What’s more, if that dollar has previously been taxed out the economy, then the overall effect of $1 of government spending is a destruction of $1.10 of economic growth. Not exactly the rosy projections that Romer is touting today. (And Barro is not alone. Even the most optimistic projections of the economic effect of government spending never display such numbers. Never.)
Recovery.gov, which actually counts the number of jobs created (if in a very favorable light), only displays roughly 680,000 jobs, not 3 million. Why would the White House not up that number if in fact 3 million jobs had been created? Because they don’t have names and addresses to back up their gargantuan projections.
The business community itself doesn’t seem to know where these miraculous jobs are. A few weeks ago, the chairman of the Business Roundtable — the association of top corporate executives that has been President Obama’s closest ally in the business community — accused the president and Democratic lawmakers of creating an “increasingly hostile environment for investment and job creation.” The stimulus, they say, is hurting them, not helping:
“In our judgment, we have reached a point where the negative effects of these policies are simply too significant to ignore,” Seidenberg said in a lunchtime speech to the Economic Club of Washington. “By reaching into virtually every sector of economic life, government is injecting uncertainty into the marketplace and making it harder to raise capital and create new businesses.”
Romer, on the other hand, lives in a fantasy world where the administration’s policies will encourage investment:
The economic stimulus legislation pushed by U.S. President Barack Obama last year will help encourage $280 billion of investment by private industry and local governments, according to an administration report being released today. The analysis, by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, estimates that about $100 billion in government grants, loan guarantees, interest subsidies and tax breaks will be matched almost three-to-one by other spending on clean energy projects, economic development and building construction.
Well, not exactly: The Federal Reserve has calculated that almost $2 trillion of capital is sitting on the sidelines right now, waiting for the government to stop its policy of destruction. The business community is not investing $1.8 trillion because of the uncertainty injected by the government’s policies, including the stimulus.
I am about to release the third Stimulus Facts report based on Recovery.gov data, which show thatfour out of five jobs created were created in the public sector. Remember the promise made by Romer herself when the stimulus was passed, that the bill would create 3.5 million jobs in two years, mostly in the private sector? Almost two years later,682,370 jobs were reported created, not 3 million, and over 510,000 of these were in the public sector. (My preliminary data is online here; my paper on whether government spending stimulates economic growth is here.)
Basically, the White House can claim all the job creation that it wants. The data show a completely different story. I am testifying before Congress and Rep. Paul Ryan at 1 p.m.to make these points.