Newt Gingrich notes MSM bias.
Newt questions the timidity of MSM re the following quite obvious problem:
"Back in February, President Obama repeatedly argued that the need to pass the $787 billion stimulus bill was so dire that there was no time from members of Congress to read it first. Things would get worse before they got better, we were told. But without the stimulus bill, America would suffer economic Armageddon.
To make their case, the Obama Administration produced a chart showing that with the stimulus bill, unemployment would reach 8 percent by June of 2009. Without the $787 billion infusion of taxpayer funds, we were told, unemployment would hit 8.7 percent.
In fact, the May jobless data put the actual unemployment rate at 9.4 percent.
If an enterprising White House reporter bothered to do the math, he or she would reach this startling conclusion: Since the passage of the stimulus bill, the U.S. economy has lost one million more jobs than President Obama assured us we would lose if we had done nothing at all."
Of course, we all know he will get a pass from the MSM. How about you? Are you going to give him a pass?
"Back in February, President Obama repeatedly argued that the need to pass the $787 billion stimulus bill was so dire that there was no time from members of Congress to read it first. Things would get worse before they got better, we were told. But without the stimulus bill, America would suffer economic Armageddon.
To make their case, the Obama Administration produced a chart showing that with the stimulus bill, unemployment would reach 8 percent by June of 2009. Without the $787 billion infusion of taxpayer funds, we were told, unemployment would hit 8.7 percent.
In fact, the May jobless data put the actual unemployment rate at 9.4 percent.
If an enterprising White House reporter bothered to do the math, he or she would reach this startling conclusion: Since the passage of the stimulus bill, the U.S. economy has lost one million more jobs than President Obama assured us we would lose if we had done nothing at all."
Of course, we all know he will get a pass from the MSM. How about you? Are you going to give him a pass?
Labels: Politics
posted by Jim | 1:20 PM
2 Comments:
I suspect Paul Krugman is part of the MSM, and his column today essentially takes on this argument.
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/opinion/15krugman.html
The problem here, as is so often the case in economics, is that we can't know for sure what would have happened if we had done something else.
One could argue things several ways, it seems to me:
1) the downturn was more severe than expected, so without stimulus we'd be even worse off
2) the stimulus itself is the cause of further downturns, since people are worried about future deficits
3) the stimulus spending is going out pretty slowly so it hasn't had the expected 'stimulus effect' so far
The trick is to find a way to determine what's actually the case... Krugman is arguing using historical parallels, but obviously there are other economists who read the history differently.
I am not enough of an Economist to follow Krugman's argument, but it is not on point as I see it.
I do not hear calls to stop the stimulus. I do hear lots about corruption in the stimulus and an inability to spend the money effectively.
Art Laffer, who I read earlier in the week, does project inflation and no matter what Krugman says, I will bet there will be massive inflation if BHO's poicies are followed. Krugman avoids "time" as I always seem to point out the left loves to do. Remember BHO's deficits stretch out for at least a decade!).
Newt Gingrich's point is that nobody, including Krugman, questions the fact that the stimulus package was RUSHED through without full review based on PHONY numbers as much as guaranteed by BHO and his administration to lessen the questioning of the bill, a standart left trick. We knew it at the time but nobody would listen!
Shouldn't BHO be treated as W was treated when the government insisted Iraq had WMD, and be questioned on why they made that projection? WMD's at least appears to be an honest mistake - lots of Dems and Allies agreed with our analysis - where this underestimate of Stimulus effects was done purposely (if they didn't know they should have said they didn't know) to "take advantage of the crisis" to quote Emanuel!
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