Encouraging journalism development of the day

The AP now working lefty narrative into their lede on the results of an ObamaCare poll.

As lawmakers shaken by the shooting of a colleague return to the health care debate, an Associated Press-GfK poll finds raw feelings over President Barack Obama's overhaul have subsided.

Ahead of a vote on repeal in the GOP-led House this week, strong opposition to the law stands at 30 percent, close to the lowest level registered in AP-GfK surveys dating to September 2009.

"shooting", "raw feelings" and "President Barack Obama's overhaul", all worked into the first paragraph. About as subtle as a two by four upside the head, no?

In the horribly slanted article, the authors Jennifer Agiesta and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, wait until the 10th paragraph to re-address the issue of the supposed link between the Tucson shooter and the current political climate.

There's no evidence the gunman who targeted Giffords was motivated by politics, but the aftermath left many people concerned about the venom in public life. A conservative Democrat, Giffords had been harshly criticized for voting in favor of the health overhaul, and won re-election by a narrow margin.

There's always that "but"
that leaves the door open for conjecture on the motives and intent of those opposed to the current statist legislative agenda.

It would appear that the Associated Press learned nothing last week with respect to unfounded accusations and shameless speculation. Such is the current state of journalism, we suppose.

They get it... they really get it.

The Associated Press and Reuters are probably two of the guiltiest parties in seemingly being shocked, shocked by continual bad economic news by their continual use of "unexpectedly" when reporting out on higher unemployment, lower GDP figures and rising home foreclosure rates.

It begs one to ask: "Have not these guys been paying attention?" and "Just what is it about porkaholic Keynesian gimmickry that would lead them to believe it is going to turn the economy around?"

So we must give credit where credit is due to the multi-colored fishwrap USA TODAY for their headline:

As expected, August auto sales crater

Comparison with last year skewed by cash for clunkers

We were so overcome with emotion upon seeing that headline and sub-headline we almost broke down in tears. Tears of joy, friends, tears of joy.

Car and truck sales dropped sharply in August from a year ago, the result of a massive hangover from last August's cash-for-clunkers federal rebate fiesta that made it the best car sales month of 2009.

Industrywide sales were down 21% from last August, to 997,468, the worst August total since 1983, according to Ward's AutoInfoBank. The month's seasonally adjusted annualized sales rate of 11.47 million, however, put it about on par with the sales rate through most of this year.

Toyota was one of the biggest losers, with sales cratering 34%. It had been one of the biggest beneficiaries of last year's stimulus program, with many consumers opting to use their $4,500 rebate on Toyota and Lexus vehicles. Sales of Corolla, one of its top cash-for-clunkers cars, fell by more than half.

Federal rebate fiesta? Somebody at USA TODAY is having too good of a time.

Sales will continue to putter along at an anemic pace for the foreseeable future, several auto executives said on conference calls to discuss August sales. There is little on the horizon to persuade customers to come back to showrooms, they say.

Emily Kolinski Morris, Ford senior U.S. economist, noted there's little to support optimism in economic data on consumer confidence, jobless claims and other indicators: The data show "lower momentum for auto sales the next three to six months."

Recession-battered consumers are saving more, she said, which will hurt sales in the near future.

Don Esmond, Toyota's senior vice president for sales, said the company is continuing its relatively generous incentives program through September to keep customers in showrooms. But Toyota senses customers are more interested these days in saving than buying a new car, he said.

"It's understandable why consumers keep putting off major purchases," he said.

But he doesn't think the government should bring back another major car-buying stimulus program. "I think the best thing for the industry is consistent growth brought from real demand, not stimulus brought into the marketplace," he said.

Unlike the broader main stream media, it would appear that auto execs and the writers at USA TODAY expected Cash for Clunkers to distort the market just as it has.

And perhaps when the rest of the media takes off its "O"-colored glasses, they'll realize that there is nothing unexpected happening to the economy whatsoever.

Europe, Canada, etc., ain't got nothin' on us

The Associated Press's not-too-subtle approach to framing the healthcare debate:

The United States is the only major developed nation that does not have a comprehensive national health care plan for its citizens. About 50 million Americans are without health insurance. With unemployment rising, many Americans are losing health insurance when they lose jobs because employers provide health care plans.

The AP fails to note in their story a few other healthcare-related items to which is exclusive to the United States. W.C. Varones has more here.

Now, it can be told

With Obamacare nearing inevitability, Big Media can finally let down it’s guard and start to report on what’s really in the bill – items and features of Obamacare which the blogosphere has been doing for months.

This from the AP yesterday:

Americans will feel the pain before the gain from the health care overhaul Democrats are close to pushing through Congress.

Proposed taxes and fees on upper-income earners, insurers, even tanning parlors, take effect quickly. So would Medicare cuts.

Benefits, such as subsidies for lower middle-income households, consumer protections for all, eliminating the prescription coverage gap for seniors, come gradually.

"There's going to be an expectations gap, no question about that," said Drew Altman, president of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. "People are going to see their premiums and out-of-pocket costs go up before the tangible benefits kick in."

Thanks for sharing that, guys. And doesn't "expectation gap" kind of sum up this entire administration?

To be precise, we will start paying for this colossal mistake in 2010 but won’t see any appreciable decline in our health, err…. won’t see any of the benefits until 2014 and at a trickle at that. The chart below from the CBO documents the crappy healthcare ramp-up. Please feel free to click and enlarge to be sufficiently appalled.

The obligatory porkulus update

We took a hard copy of the local fishwrap out to Joshua Tree with us over the weekend and read of the Associated Press’s review that concluded the Obama administration overestimated by thousands the number of jobs it has created or saved with porkulus. That’s right – even that whopping 30,000 jobs created or saved that the administration is claiming is a fudge.

Quick aside: Porkulus money went to repaving the taxi-ways of a local commuter airport out in Santee a couple months back. It employed approx. 20 people for 3 weeks. Does that brief amount of employment get tallied under “jobs created or saved”? Considering the adminstration’s accounting methods, we’re saying “absolutely!”.

The article gave numerous examples of double-dipping and faulty accounting but this section towards the bottom of the article grabbed us:

Barbara Moore, executive director of the Child Care Association of Brevard County in Cocoa, Fla., reported that the $98,669 she received in stimulus money saved 129 jobs at her center, though the cash was used to give her 129 employees a 3.9 percent cost-of-living raise.

She said she needed to boost their salaries because some workers had left for better paying jobs.

"They were leaving because we had not been able to give them a raise in four years," Moore said.

You read that correctly. The money wasn’t going to save any jobs. There were not going to be any layoffs at Bab’s business. All that happened was your tax dollars were going to prevent people from taking jobs that were better paying. And since Ms. Moore was not being competitive in the open market, she was rewarded and those other businesses that were offering better compensation were punished.

This example represents what we are talking about when we say “picking winners and losers” and “misallocation of resources” with respect to porkulus. Those businesses that were offering better pay than Moore’s are now out a fresh infusion of labor talent and the normal flow and activity of workers changing jobs in an open and competitive market is stymied by external forces.

Exit question: All these businesses and government agencies that are getting porkulus money to hold on to employees and which just represent payroll bandaids… what happens next year and the year after that?

In-credible

We were going to post on the following on Tuesday but talked ourselves down off the ledge. Here was the gist of the situation: On Sunday, two armed men broke into a house in San Bernardino, tied up the family, stole money and other property and then 20 minutes later, left, taking the youngest member of the family, Briant Rodriguez, age 3, with them.

The article that ran in Tuesday’s San Diego U-T was picked up from the Associated Press. The detailed account of the home invasion, robbery and abduction was absent one glaring item: a physical description of the two bad guys.

We got our hackles up but before we posted our righteous indignation, we made a few phone calls on Tuesday afternoon/evening. First to the San Berdoo police, then the Sheriffs’ and finally to Amber-Alert. The operator at Amber-Alert said the descriptions of the two men and composite sketches had been released to the media and were also on Amber-Alert’s website.

Because finding Briant was and is the top priority, we did not go too much into investigative journalism mode but the gentleman from Amber-Alert suggested that they corroborate all the data and information they have before releasing the details on the suspects’ physical descriptions. Fair enough. Begin backing slowly away from the ledge.

Well, in yesterday’s U-T, there is an article, again, from the AP which is an update on the leads investigators are pursuing with respect to Briant Rodriquez. And guess what salient point of information that just might be advantageous towards the search for young Briant and his two kidnappers was missing? Outside of the winnowing-with-a-dull-butter knife information that the two abductors are “Spanish-speaking kidnappers” from Mexico, there is zero information on what these two guys look like.

We’re left to question just how serious the AP and by extension the U-T (they ran the story, they own the story) really is about wanting to disseminate information that would aid in this search effort.

Yes, we’ve seen the physical description of the two kidnappers on T.V. but how in god’s name do you run a story about a missing child without providing that detail? How?

Pray for Briant’s safety and his ultimate reunion with his family because out of either willful journalistic negligence or misguided political correctness, some people really don’t seem to care.

When the U-T and the rest of print media finally packs it all in, you’ll be left with at least one reason as to why it may have happened.

P.S. The physical description of the two men can be found, here, at Amber-Alert’s website.

P.P.S. Letter to the Editor requesting an explanation for this omission has been sent.

If you’re feeling a little groggy this morning, it is due perhaps to being under-reported last night

AP article here reports out on falling light sweet crude prices. It talks about how the fall in the price of crude did help bolster the Dow before falling off to an eventual loss for the day. It talks about the volatility of the crude prices and how this drop in prices may not last, but it never talks about or gives any explanation for the drop. None. We find this amazing, of course, because its possible, just possible and not entirely in the realm of fantasy that perhaps one of the reasons could have been that Bush announced earlier in the week that he was lifting the Presidential ban on off-shore drilling. Crazy, we know.

This is all pretty simple: when the CEO of the world’s largest economy that is currently wracked by a falling dollar, plunging housing prices and ever-rising energy costs says that after nearly 30 years, drilling off-shore in specific areas is back on the table, its going to move the needle. Fact. To not even acknowledge that is to court journalistic malfeasance.