Over the weekend, poor and biased media reporting, dysfunctional politics, blindly ambitious activism, and economic ignorance fed on each other to produce a phenomenally false narrative that went out to hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. The result not only doesn’t pass the smell test; it fails the stench test from a mile away.

The first origins of the activist narrative burst forth during Friday’s PBS News Hour, when the network’s Betty Ann Bowser opened her report on health care costs with two sentences that belong in the Sloppy Statement Hall of Shame (bold is mine):

Health care spending devoured 17 percent of the entire economy last year, about $2.5 trillion. That’s the biggest one-year growth since record-keeping began in 1960, according to projections from the Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, this week.

Huh?

If you don’t mind my asking — What exactly is the “that” to which Ms. Bowser referred?

Could she have meant the “biggest one-year growth” in current-dollar health care costs? If so, I found in my review of data downloaded from the relevant link (”NHE Historical and projections, 1965-2019″) at this CMS web page that this is a barely true assertion. The 2009 cost increase of $133.461 billion slightly edges out the $133.171 billion seen in 2002. But such a stat is meaningless without some kind of reference to inflation. I found that the dollar amount of cost increases after taking inflation into account were greater in five other years between 2001 and 2008 than they were in 2009.

Did the reporter, whose News Hour work on health care “just so happens” to be part of a “project” funded by the left-leaning Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, mean to refer to the rate at which costs increased during the past year? I hope not, because the 2009 rate of increase of 5.7% was lower than 38 of the other 43 previous years (1966 through 2008) listed in the downloaded file. Ah, but to be consistent, we should also look at the inflation-adjusted rate increases. Doing so is of no help to Ms. Bowser; 36 of the 43 previous years had higher real health care cost growth rates than the 3% the country experienced in 2009 (5.7% minus 2.7%).

Or did she really mean to tell us, as is indeed the case, that the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) “devoured” by health care (the raw percentage, not its change) was the highest on record? If so, she had a funny way of expressing it.

The final possibility that is factually correct — and the one I believe the poor woman meant to relay to her audience — is that the one-year percentage-point increase in GDP taken up by health care “costs” (I would prefer to refer to them as “services provided”) was the highest ever. That is a fact, thanks largely to what I have been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy since the summer of 2008. During the two years containing what also turned out to the POR recession as normal people define it, health care costs as a percentage of GDP indeed rose:

My review indicates that the 1.14-point increase in health care costs as a percentage of GDP in 2009 is indeed the largest on record. But it is not the biggest percentage increase in the percentage. Expressed in those terms, the 2009 increase of  just over 7% (1.14% change divided by 16.20%) is less than 1982, when health care’s share of GDP went from 9.39% to 10.17%, a percentage increase of about 8.3% (.88% change divided by 9.39%).

Some of us remember 1982. What it had in common with 2009 is that the economy stunk. The real impact of Ronald Reagan’s Democrat-delayed supply-side tax cuts didn’t kick in until the next year. In both 1982 and 2009, the health care sector kept GDP from sinking further. In 2009, it was one of the very few areas in the private sector where total employment actually increased. Yet Betty Ann Bowser breathlessly blasted this as a bad thing, when the real culprit is this administration’s misguided attempt to revive the rest of the economy through historically disproven spending “stimulus” instead of employing the historically effective steps taken by JFK, Reagan, and Bush 43, i.e., cutting marginal tax rates on labor and invested capital.

In any event, it seems likely that Betty Ann Bowser, who used her opening statement as a launch point for barely disguised statist health care advocacy, knew what she wanted to say. It may be more accurate to assert that the folks at Robert Wood Johnson knew what they wanted her to say. Regardless, the end result is that she said it horribly.

Then the Obamabots at Organizing For America (OFA) went further, serially abusing Bowser’s already tortured statement.

The poor souls at OFA are desperate to find some way, any way, to help Dear Leader take over health care while proving, despite clearly declining energy and enthusiasm, that they are still relevant. In less than 24 hours, seemingly without thinking or even blinking, Mitch Stewart of OFA produced an absolute howler of an e-mail that began as follows (bold is in original):

Tom –

An alarming new study shows that health care costs increased last year at the fastest rate in more than a half century.

Health care spending rose to an estimated $2.5 trillion in 2009, or $8,047 per person — and is now projected to nearly double by 2019. If we don’t act, this growing burden will mean more lost jobs, more families pushed into bankruptcy, and more crushing debt for our nation.

The conclusion is clear: This isn’t a problem we can kick down the road for another decade — or even another year. We need to pass health reform now.

Mitch’s rich pitch fell firmly into the ditch.

A new “study”? Mitch my man, the info comes from a routine annual government report. Or did you think it really came from your buds at Robert Wood Johnson?

Although I understand how easy it might be to misinterpret Betty Ann Bowser’s opening News Hour statement, the people at OFA must be collectively leading incredibly sheltered lives if they can’t recall the double-digit percentage increases in annual health care costs that routinely occurred from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s — increases that make the OFA e-mail’s first-sentence claim so obviously absurd. (Hmm …. isn’t the mid-1960s when Medicare started? Why yes, it is. What a non-conincidence.)

There’s no way an embarrassing sentence like Mitch Stewart’s opener should have gotten past an organization allegedly run by informed, educated adults. But it did. And they and their ilk want to be in charge of everyone’s health care? Pass the tea.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

India has had enough of globaloney — “India abandons IPCC, sets up own panel”:

The Indian government has moved to establish its own body to address and monitor science surrounding climate change, saying it “cannot rely” on the official United Nation panel.

…. “There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism,” Ramesh said. “I am for climate science.”

Maybe the Indian organization will actually produce some legitimate climate science. It has become very clear that what the IPCC has published surely doesn’t qualify.

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George Will (”How to get the country to solvency on entitlements”), on Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, and sensible conservative ideas for escaping the loony-left mess being currently created (internal link is in original):

(Under Daniels) Indiana property taxes have been cut 30 percent, and for the first time Standard & Poor’s has raised the state’s credit rating to AAA. But in January 2010, Ryan released an updated version of his “Roadmap for America’s Future” (PDF), a cure for the most completely predictable major problem that has ever afflicted America.

…. Republicans are frequently criticized as “the party of no.” But because most new ideas are injurious, rejection is an important function in politics. It is, however, insufficient. Fortunately, Ryan, assisted by Republican Reps. Devin Nunes of California and Jeb Hensarling of Texas, has become a think tank, refuting the idea that Republicans lack ideas.

Read the whole thing.

Ryan is the Ranking Member of the House’s Committee on the Budget. Will is right. Ryan’s “Roadmap” web site makes mincemeat of the “no ideas” canard.

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Via the Wall Street Journal, Democratic Climate Revolt:

The Obama Administration has been moving full-speed ahead on anticarbon regulation, never mind waiting for Congress to pass a bill. But now opposition is building among senior Democrats, with two powerful committee Chairmen introducing a bill last week to bar the Environmental Protection Agency from declaring that carbon is a dangerous pollutant.

As the WSJ notes, there is irony in what’s motivating the effort, but says “we’ll take what we can get.”

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In a separate Wall Street Journal editorial, “Andrew Cuomo has more to answer for than does Bank of America.”

He sure does. The Journal quotes this document at HUD’s own web site bragging about what happened there during Cuomo’s tenure there (under “Increasing Homeownership and Helping Homebuyers”):

In July 1999, Secretary Cuomo established new Affordable Housing Goals requiring Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – two government sponsored enterprises involved in housing finance – to buy $2.4 trillion in mortgages in the next 10 years.

In other words, Cuomo created the framework for the housing bubble and subprime mortgage mess — and HUD is bragging about it.

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FOF (Flat-Out Falsehood) of the Day:

The nation’s health care bill increased 5.7% last year, or 3.01% after 2009’s calendar-year inflation of 2.7%. Even for these guys, this is a spectacularly ridiculous fib, as noted in this post that I put together Monday afternoon.

…so the government just spent $2.5 million advertising the fricking census? Oh yeah, that makes me want to run to the mailbox and participate…NOT.

Q: “The names of those living at your residence?”
A: 1. “Uncle Smith” 2. “Uncle Wesson”

(direct link to vid)

From New Orleans:

February 05, 2010, 9:01PM

Matthew Bertucci, Micah Roshell and Jamie Burt won’t take in Super Bowl XXIV at the kind of traditional parties that will fill homes, restaurants, bars and streets across south Louisiana on Sunday evening.

The lifelong New Orleans Saints fans instead will host smaller gatherings in their hospital rooms, where Bertucci and Roshell are battling cancer, while Burt rehabilitates from a construction-site accident that left him without the use of his legs.

Lest anyone think the mood won’t be festive, the patients and their loved ones are quick to say just how eagerly they await their team’s debut on the grandest of football stages.

Among a fan base that trumpets the parallel between a football club’s championship run and a storm-torn city’s rebirth, this trio and others like them have perhaps the most personal claims of connection between the Saints and recovery.

“I sure sat up as much as I could when he hit that field goal,” said Burt, 27, a Lake Charles native now at Touro Infirmary, as he recalled Garrett Hartley’s winning kick two weeks ago in the NFC title game. As for what one more win would mean, the father of two young Who Dats, the eldest named Drew, pondered the question. “I know the Saints are older than I am,” he said after a long silence. “I just don’t know how I’d take it, to tell you the truth.”

Bertucci, a 19-year-old who writes his half of conversations while a ventilator helps him breathe, attended most Saints home games during the past decade alongside his grandfather, mother and other family members. The malignancy found on his spine and in his brain last year made that impossible for this season, sending him instead to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore and now back to Children’s Hospital in Uptown.

“It would make my year so much better,” he said of a Saints victory.

The walls around him were covered with newspaper clippings spanning the Saints’ season-opening win over the Detroit Lions to the overtime thriller over the Minnesota Vikings. He wore a “Who Dat” T-shirt that Sen. David Vitter had printed to mock the NFL’s efforts to block local merchants from profiting off the phrase. When Bertucci wasn’t writing, he held one of two footballs covered with the autographs of Saints players.

Quarterback Drew Brees recently paid him a surprise visit. “It was like a dream,” Bertucci said.

Down the hall, 12-year-old Micah’s room is decorated in the same theme, with the help of his mother Valetta and some timely visits from folks like Brees and his wife, Brittany, to running back Reggie Bush and his girlfriend Kim Kardashian.

Micah’s door features a printout of an online Twitter message in which Brees asks his contacts to “please pray for my friend Micah Roshell.” Brees posted the message on the morning of Roshell’s most recent bone marrow transplant.

“He’ll be watching Drew on Sunday, I can promise you,” Valetta Roshell said outside her son’s isolation room. Inside, Micah was resting after a biopsy that doctors ordered only weeks after having declared him cancer-free. With him is the game ball that Brees brought to him days after the Saints divisional playoff win over the Arizona Cardinals.

The boy, who came to New Orleans with his mother from Beauregard Parish after being diagnosed with leukemia three years ago, has parted with the football only for the few hours he spent in the operating room. “They came in to take him to surgery and he had it under the covers between his legs,” his mother said. He told the doctor “it is for good luck.”

Dr. Gregory Stewart, medical director at Tulane-Lakeside Hospital in Metairie, said it is clear to him that the morale boost the Saints have given to the New Orleans region is magnified in hospitals, nursing homes and rehabilitation centers.

Since October, the rehabilitation unit at Lakeside has thrown a game-watch party each Sunday for patients, most of them recovering from strokes or cardiovascular surgery. The routine this Sunday will be no different, with the floor’s physical therapy gym being transformed into something like a tailgate party.

Shannon Laiche, a nurse and rehab manager, said, “The patients talk about it all week.” ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

Ordinarily, one wouldn’t take much notice of a gallon jug losing only a drop or two of water a day. But if you came back a year later and saw it half-empty, that would get your attention.

Such is the case with the steep ratings declines at CNN and MSNBC. A year ago, they already trailed Fox News badly — so badly that Fox’s audience in a given hour of prime time was sometimes greater than CNN, MSNBC, and Headline News (HLN) combined.

Revise “sometimes” to “virtually always.” A comparison of Media Bistro’s scoreboard for Thursday, February 4, 2010 to the same report for Thursday, February 5, 2009 shows stunning leakage from CNN and MSNBC. The jug is less than half full:

CNN and MSNBC both declined over 50% in the 25-54 demographic, while both networks also suffered seriously in total audience.

Much more detail is in this graphic. Some highlights/lowlights from that graphic:

• MSNBC’s first two hours of prime time, with Chris Matthews and David Shuster, each had fewer than 100,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo last Thursday .
• Every single one of CNN’s prime time shows came in with fewer than 200,000 viewers in the 25-54 demo on Thursday. Last year, every one was above 200,000. Anderson Cooper’s 10 p.m. show cratered, dropping from 528,000 to 178,000.
• HLN significantly outdrew both CNN and MSNBC in the 25-54 demo during both prime time and the entire day; it was a distant third in each category a year ago.
• The results were not entirely peachy at Fox News. Sean Hannity’s and Greta Van Susteren’s audiences were both down by single digits from a year ago in the 25-54 demographic and total viewers.

While it’s heartening to see steep falloffs from the fever swamp, those of us who would like to see more Americans tune into the fair and balanced reporting of Fox should not be overly cheered. Less than a quarter of those in the 25-54 demographic who tuned out MSNBC and CNN switched to Fox; barely a sixth of total viewers did so.

Where did the rest of them go? Some may have decided to tune into the evening newscasts of ABC, NBC, and CBS, as their viewership is up about 10-15% since fall of last year. The rest appear to have tuned out — at least from television news. Unless one believes that the vast majority of the rest are actively visiting blogs and social media to get their news, which seems hardly likely, a lot of the potential electorate may simply be tuning out. This would not bode well if one believes that a highly engaged electorate is a prerequisite to turning the country around.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Meanwhile, the federal government keeps growing and growing.

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Note: This column went up at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Friday.

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There’s a reason why Americans who don’t happen to work for the government or directly benefit from its largesse are not sensing an economic recovery. For them, it’s mostly not happening. ADP’s January employment report showing 22,000 private-sector jobs lost, the latest available jobs-related information available when this column was written, only confirms that feeling.

A look at what has happened to the nation’s inflation-adjusted Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the value of all goods and services produced in the economy, during the last six quarters is sadly instructive. Comparing the fourth quarter of 2009 with the second quarter of 2008, we see that:

• Even after six months of “recovery,” the economy as a whole has shrunk by almost 2%.
• Uncle Sam’s level of annualized consumption and “investment” has grown by 8.5%.
• Despite the incessant pleadings of poverty by most state and local governments, their consumption and “investment” have hardly changed.
• What remains, i.e., the private sector, is 3% smaller.

The private-sector shrink is really about 1 percentage point higher than indicated, because the above data treats General Motors and Chrysler as if the government and a meddling Congress aren’t in control of them. This of course is nonsense.

Meanwhile, the past year and a half has been a great period to be a federal government employee. While the private sector has shed almost 6.4 million jobs on a seasonally adjusted basis during that time, federal non-postal employment has leaped by over 150,000, a stunning increase of over 7.5%. Two-thirds of the increase occurred during the first eleven full months of the Obama administration, even though the severity of the recession was drop-dead obvious well before he took office. Even higher federal employment is on the horizon.

The burgeoning ranks of federal employees are in an enviable situation compared to their private-sector counterparts — or perhaps I should say, “underlings.” In December, USA Today reported that:

• The average federal worker’s annual pay is over $71,200, compared to just over $40,300 in the private sector.
• Almost one in five federal workers makes $100,000 a year or more — “and that’s before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.” It’s also before considering a far better than average benefits package.
• In late 2007, “The Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.”
• Effective in January, despite a virtually zero-inflation environment and while pay and jobs were still being slashed in the private sector, a typical federal worker saw his or her pay increase by over 3%.

There is little doubt that whether or not the economy ever returns to something resembling normalcy again, the government’s influence on our daily lives, absent a historic pushback, will be demonstrably larger.

Chalk all of this up as yet another “accomplishment” of what I have identified and have been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy since (imagine that) mid-2008.

Others, including editorialists at the Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily, have more recently named what we are living through “the uncertainty economy.” But the key to understanding what has transpired is accepting the truth about when it really began. Its origins go back to June 2008, when Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid injected enough of the aforementioned uncertainty to cause deep concerns about the future among the people who matter most when it comes to creating and sustaining economic growth: entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and investors.

June 2008 is when the terrible triumvirate went visibly wacko on energy. In the name of “protecting” humanity from the horrible consequences of supposedly settled assertions that have since been exposed as utterly without credible support — namely that global warming is occurring, and that human activity is causing it — they promised to starve the nation of the conventional energy it needs to function, in the likely vain hope that acceptable, affordable alternatives will just, like, well, y’know … show up. The fact that they and their party intend to pursue their radical cap-and-tax plan in spite of the comprehensive scientific debunking that the colossal ClimateGate scandal represents merely proves that the business community’s fear-based mid-2008 reaction was more than justified. Their accurate advance perception was that the “climate change” discussion isn’t really about the environment; it’s about control.

At the same time, Pelosi, Obama, and Reid — but especially Obama — promised to punitively tax the 5% of the nation’s most productive so they could redistribute money to everyone else. These promises were routinely accompanied by heavy doses of business-bashing, pseudo-populist rhetoric. Again, those who saw big trouble on the horizon in mid-2008 from a potentially hostile government have been more than vindicated. Few of us ever thought that a president of the United States would be telling bankers who had money forced onto them at figurative gunpoint but who fully repaid their loans that he still “wants our money back” — and that he would then mobilize/mob-ilize his minions in an attempt to create the pressure to make it happen.

In mid-2008, perceptive entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and investors reacted defensively — as anyone who has decided that they are under attack would — by abandoning expansion plans, trimming employment, and cutting their spending to the bone. Thus, the second quarter of 2008 recovery from the previous quarter’s difficulties abruptly ended. In the third quarter, the recession as normal people define it began.

Matters only worsened in ensuing months. The decades-in-the-making Fannie Mae- and Freddie Mac-driven housing and mortgage lending debacles, the “stimulus” that has only stimulated bogus claims of jobs “created and saved,” and the Chicago-way conduct of the Chrysler and GM bankruptcies have only reinforced the business community’s justifiable siege mentality.

In this POR “Rebound? What Rebound?” economy, it should not surprise anyone that the government has become bigger, bolder, and more intrusive, while a worried private sector has contracted. Is there any good reason to believe that this has not been part of the plan all along?

The Truth In Blogging All-Stars have returned to the air for the first time in several months.

Go to Weapons of Mass Discussion to tune in and for a running live blog.

(HT: Emailer who forwarded similar sentiments from an attendee of the Sharonville Pancake Breakfast last week, at which most of the individuals mentioned here, spoke).

Clermont County’s Lincoln Day Dinner was last night. Roughly 150 people showed, in spite of the weather. The speakers were Dave Yost (procured before “the switch,” and Jon Husted (no comment). Jean Schmidt & Tom Niehaus also spoke. Funny…Jean didn’t mention her TARP vote or her assertion that “the courts have final say” in this country and Tom didn’t mention the 4.5% retroactive income tax increase for which he recently voted. Because hey, they are ALL “Tea-Party” Conservatives now…honest!

Shockingly enough, Rob Portman graced everyone with his presence by making a “last minute” appearance. Oh, I’m sure the availability was blamed on a cancellation of another event due to the weather, but I have no doubt that this was also done to “warm” the chilly reception feared by the speakers (namely Dave Yost, who had asked for, and received, Clermont County’s endorsement for AG right before he made “the switch”).

Of course heaven and earth was moved to give Rob the microphone because after all, he is the “end-all be-all”…you know, a real “Tea Party’s” partier…honest!

Sooooo…..when Dave Yost – successful, Prosecuting Attorney – was running for state Attorney General against Mike DeWine, Rob Portman wouldn’t give him the time of day. After all, Rob Portman, “the statesman” is all about staying out of primaries, right? Wrong….again.

Now that Kevin DeWine has lured Dave into the ORP’s sandbox, clearing the way for kissin’ cousin Mike DeWine, Rob Portman is all about Dave Yost…for Auditor, that is. And with Seth Morgan in attendance – the State Rep./CPA who announced his candidacy first – the one for whom the ORP intentionally CREATED a primary (the kind of act admonished by “statesmen”), Rob Portman – “the statesman,” took a big toke of the party joint and blew the ORP’s smoke all over the audience and proclaimed that Dave Yost was the man…for Auditor, that is.  Oh, and by the way, Rob Portman, “the statesman,” revealed that he is a conservative’s conservative now…honest!

Sidebar:  I give credit to Morgan for staying and working the room. That could not have been easy. In my opinion, the LEAST that Rob Portman, “the statesman” could have done, is acknowledge Seth or stay out of it. As it stands now, the ORP, who intentionally set up this primary will try to destroy Morgan (not realizing that in this new patriotic era, they very well may do so at their own peril). End Sidebar.

Everyone is saying “what a great year” 2010 will be for Republicans. But judging from the lukewarm reception received by everyone last night, there isn’t burning, diehard, across-the-board fervor for anyone. That’s because people are realizing that a “great year for Republicans” doesn’t always translate into what’s best for the electorate, and that for many years, Republicans – who are currently running – have enabled this country’s current crisis with their backroom deals and agenda-compromising policies. Even if there is one or two who genuinely try to “slow” the leaks in this country, I don’t have faith in any of them to stop the leaks, let alone turn the boat toward shore. That would require too much selflessness.

Oh, I just love it when an ORP plan comes together and they are able enslave all of us on their plantation.  It worked so well over the last few years.  But don’t worry, they’re all “real” conservatives now…honest!

From Miami, with love (previous related BizzyBlog posts are here and here):

February 5, 2010

If you think you have read all there is on the Focus on the Family commercial featuring Tim Tebow and his mother’s decision not to have an abortion — wait, there’s more. Officials at the pro-life group announced today that they are unveiling a second ad that will air before the Super Bowl begins.

The second commercial plans to go further than the first and will reveal more details about Pam Tebow’s decision not to have an abortion than CBS would allow in the first ad already planned for during the Super Bowl.

This Super Bowl surprise has Focus unveiling a second ad that will also feature him Tebow and his mother and it was filmed in Orlando at the same time last month as the ad that has garnered so much attention.

Focus on the Family won’t reveal the details of this surprise second ad, but CEO Jim Daly confirmed to USA Today that this ad goes further and it appears to be the original ad CBS rejected before it worked with the station on a revised commercial fitting its standards.

In this second ad, Pam Tebow reportedly says “Both of our lives were at risk” when talking about her difficult pregnancy with Tim after suffering from dysentery and entering into a coma.

“They felt that was too much,” Daly told USA Today. “So we dropped the line. We didn’t fight them.” The word “abortion” is never used.

Daly says this new ad is “an open discussion on the sanctity of human life — not just the issue of abortion — and he indicated it was made for less than $100,000 with “a bit of humor in it — in fitting with the Super Bowl theme.”

This second ad will reportedly air four times during the pre-game festivities and analysis before the Super Bowl begins. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

In stories currently carrying Friday afternoon and early Saturday time stamps, the Associated Press weighed in with supportive articles about Illinois Democrats who are desperately trying to convince Scott Lee Cohen (pictured at right; image is captured from his web site), who won the party’s nomination for Lieutenant Governor, to step aside.

In the Friday afternoon’s report (”Embattled Dem Ill. candidate won’t step down”), AP reporter Karen Hawkins swallowed the line that “details had emerged” about Cohen’s 2005 arrest on domestic battery charges, despite the fact that Cohen himself preemptively disclosed many of those details to Chicago Sun-Times reporter Mark Brown in March 2009 (link is to a cached copy of Brown’s article that was posted at Cohen’s campaign site). Brown apparently chose not to relay much of what Cohen revealed, but he clearly had a lot of it.

In an early Saturday item (”IL Gov. might want to run from his running mate”), the wire service’s Deanna Bellandi owned up to the existence of the Sun-Times story and relayed the demands of several Illinois Democrats that Cohen withdraw.

Each reporter seemed to go out of her way to avoid mentioning the remaining candidates for the Republican Party’s gubernatorial nomination, Bill Brady and Kirk Dillard, who are currently locked in a razor-thin, currently undecided race.

Here are selected paragraphs from Hawkins’s earlier report:

A political newcomer who won the Democratic nomination for Illinois lieutenant governor said he has no intention of leaving the race after details emerged about his arrest for allegedly holding a knife to his former girlfriend’s throat.

Scott Lee Cohen struck a defiant tone even after running mate Gov. Pat Quinn predicted he would have to leave the race. U.S. Senator Dick Durbin also said Friday that Cohen needs to step aside – though Durbin said he didn’t expect President Barack Obama’s White House would have to intervene.

Cohen said people should wait for all facts to become known.

… Cohen was arrested on domestic battery charges in 2005, accused of pushing his then-girlfriend’s head against a wall and of the knife incident. The police report noted abrasions on her neck and hand, but charges were dropped after she failed to appear in court.

Police records show the woman had been arrested for prostitution, the Chicago Tribune reported. Cohen said he did not know that at the time. He told WTTW-TV that he met her at a “massage therapy place” and believed she was a masseuse. Cohen denied hitting her and said their relationship was “tumultuous.”

Cohen said he has asked her and his ex-wife, Debbie Cohen York, to clear the air. York sought an order of protection against Cohen in 2005 as she filed for divorce. She said his violence was fueled by anabolic steroids.

… Cohen, a pawnbroker and owner of a cleaning supplies company, shocked the political establishment by beating four state lawmakers to nab the Democratic nomination with 26 percent of the vote. He gained strong name recognition with advertising that featured people who said they found jobs at employment fairs he organized.

Cohen stressed that he disclosed his arrest before he announced his candidacy.

Cohen’s 26.0% of the vote was 3.7% and 30,000 ballots ahead of his closest competitor. There should have been plenty of warning that the guy was serious, based on the money he spent, the length of his campaign, and based on the results of this Google News Archive search on Cohen’s full name in quotes for calendar 2009, the extent of his activity. That Cohen’s emphasis on jobs in a state with double-digit unemployment would resonate with Democratic voters shouldn’t have surprised anyone.

Barrandi’s early Saturday report went into overdrive with clear advocacy and inflammatory quotes. Note the failure to name the GOP gubernatorial contenders in the fifth paragraph:

Just when Illinois was starting to move on from the scandals of ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich, along comes Scott Lee Cohen.

After the political unknown managed to win the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor Tuesday, it became widely known that he was accused of abusing his ex-wife and holding a knife to the throat of an ex-girlfriend – a woman who was herself charged with prostitution. He also admits using steroids in the past.

Democratic leaders hadn’t considered Cohen a threat to win and didn’t highlight his past during the campaign. Now they’re alarmed that Cohen could drag down the ticket he shares with Gov. Pat Quinn.

He is refusing demands that he step out of the race; if he doesn’t, Quinn might have to change parties to sever Cohen’s political aspirations from his own.

Quinn already was facing a tough Republican challenge, and with a similarly tight U.S. Senate race expected, the stakes could extend beyond the state offices for Illinois Democrats.

“It really puts all of us in jeopardy,” said U.S. Rep. Danny Davis, D-Ill.

…. U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin said Cohen needs to step aside and the people he trusts politically need to make that clear to him.

“Mr. Cohen is not going to be the lieutenant governor,” said Durbin, who chastised the party and the media for not doing a better job vetting candidates.

…. If Cohen voluntarily resigns from the ticket, he would be replaced on the ballot by state party leaders. If he doesn’t, Durbin and others say Quinn can consider the possibility of running without him by leaving the Democratic Party.

It’s happened before. In 1986, Democrat Adlai Stevenson III created the Illinois Solidarity Party to avoid running with a lieutenant governor candidate who was a follower of frequent presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. Stevenson lost to Republican Gov. Jim Thompson.

“Somehow,” both AP reporters forgot to ask any of the 212,902 Illinois Democrats who supported Cohen their thoughts about having their votes nullified by party bigwigs.

It’s also more than a little odd that there no full-faced picture of Cohen at either story. Instead, one has a picture of incumbent governor Pat Quinn at a news conference, while the other (link is to enlarged version) has a picture of Cohen on the phone at his pawn shop. Well over a third of his face is covered. Though yours truly is not the best judge of such things, it appears that some voters might find Cohen physically attractive, something Illinois Dems would not consider particularly helpful in the circumstances.

Cynical observers might note that given that the Democratic Party’s White House occupant has admitted to past cocaine use, and that Illinois’s Democratic nominee for its open U.S. Senate is allegedly “married to the mob,” one might expect that Land of Lincoln Democrats, instead of shunning Scott Lee Cohen, would instead be welcoming him to the club with open arms.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

In a post late Thursday afternoon (at NewBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that the half of the teases (6 of 12) for the Associated Press’s short videos in business stories at its web site were about Toyota, specifically its recent product quality issues and falling sales.

In that post, I noted a conflict of interest in the relationship between the U.S. government and Toyota, and wondered when someone in the press would bring the matter up:

To the extent the government is leaning hard on the company, somebody in the press should be questioning whether the motivations are purely related to safety or whether they also involve generating as much negative publicity as possible about the principal foreign-based competitor of government-controlled General Motors and Chrysler.

I didn’t realize at the time that one wire service, AFP, actually had actually brought up the matter, complete with quite a provocative headline, Thursday morning.

Here are key paragraphs from Mira Oberman’s AFP story (bolds are mine):

Is US bullying Toyota on recall?
Thu Feb 4, 8:50 am ET

The US transportation chief’s public rebukes of Toyota’s handling of a massive safety recall have raised eyebrows, given the US government’s major stake in rivals General Motors and Chrysler.

“The optics are terrible because — and this is what happens when a government owns a company – the two companies that are going to gain the most out of this are General Motors and Chrysler,” said Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland’s business school.

“But their behavior is consistent with the general policy of the US government, whether it’s dealing with coffeemakers or cars.”

Safety officials understand that product design mistakes are inevitable and will work to help companies correct the problem and alert consumers. But they will not tolerate a slow or weak response, Morici told AFP.

…. David Champion, director of automobile testing for Consumer Reports magazine, said the reaction to the recall was overblown.

“When you look at the statistics we are putting an awful lot of effort on a very small risk,” he said.

“There has been something like 2,000 complaints of unintended acceleration in some 20 million Toyota vehicles — it’s almost like trying to find a needle in a haystack.”

Champion lamented as “unfortunate” that it took the death of an off-duty California state trooper and three members of his family to prompt Toyota to issue a mass recall in September to address the problem.

But he said a congressional investigation was an “overreaction” and noted that the “sticky” pedal problem that caused Toyota to halt production and sales of eight models last month was not linked to any accidents or injuries.

One can quibble with elements of AFP’s report, but the most important point here is that we have a wire service committing real journalism by raising what should be an obvious issue that some on the left have been trying to portray as conspiracy-mongering.

In certain cases, those who are doing so are really good at telling us that “appearances” are important. This is why they tend to oppose those who have management backgrounds in a given industry getting involved in regulating it, even though such people will often have vastly superior ideas for improving safety, efficiency and compliance than someone light on experience and heavy on hostility.

But there’s more than an “appearance” of a conflict of interest with the government and Toyota; there’s a very real one, as Morici’s statement that “the two companies that are going to gain the most out of this are General Motors and Chrysler” makes clear. Morici’s claim that “the optics are terrible” should really be phrased as, “The facts and circumstances are terrible.”

While it may appear that Uncle Sam’s conduct is judicious throughout this process, that appearance won’t disperse the cloud of suspicion that hangs over the “negotiations” — and it shouldn’t. If the government hadn’t decided to become the controlling owner of two auto companies, the worst suspicion would be that it’s picking on a foreign-based competitor of a large U.S. industry. Now the suspicion is that it’s trying to hurt the strongest foreign-based competitor of two companies it controls and from which it hopes (someday) to recover tens of billions of dollars it has thrown at them. No amount of outwardly professional behavior will negate the existence of that inherent multibillion-dollar conflict.

Think of the government’s safety enforcers as the equivalent of financial auditors. No one would accept the idea of a CPA firm’s supposedly independent auditors directly owing shares of companies they audit, which is why it’s a prohibited behavior. Auditors with such interests might protest that their objectivity isn’t affected, but appearances trump those representations, period. Judicious CPAs also try to avoid having material ownership interests in competitors of companies they audit.

Similarly, we shouldn’t blandly accept the idea that government’s safety people, whose bosses have controlling interests in two competitors who “owe” them tens of billions, aren’t going to let those situations affect their judgments as to how hard to push safety issues at a competitor. The fact that a consumer watchdog group that has tended to favor regulation in so many areas thinks that Uncle Sam has overreacted is not a trifling matter (though to be fair, Consumer Reports, having rated Toyotas so highly for so many years, has a bit of an appearance problem of its own).

Despite the drop-dead obvious conflict-of-interest problem, only AFP has prominently raised it. A search at the Associated Press on “Toyota” early Saturday morning returned 63 stories. No listed headline brings up the issue. The same search at the New York Times also came back with no directly relevant headlines.

In at least one instance I found, the AP veered into barely concealed boosterism. The third paragraph of an unbylined January 27 item entitled “GM offers incentives to lure fearful Toyota owners” read like a high-pitched dealer advertisement instead of a news report:

The Detroit automaker is offering offer zero percent financing for 60 months on most models. It also will offer $1,000 to Toyota owners toward a down payment on a GM vehicle and up to $1,000 to help to pay off current leases early. The offers run through the end of February.

The AP article did not even mention that the government controls GM, let alone note what is clearly an appearance of coordination, regardless of whether such coordination is actually occurring.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Will January 2010 be the month when private-sector employment finally picked up after years of contraction? (Update: Private-sector employment contracted for the 25th month in the past 26, but November was restated to show a seasonally adjusted 75K pickup in the private sector from a previously reported zero. December’s private-sector statistic now reads -123K.)

Will the comprehensive revision really be as bad or worse than the 824,000 jobs lost that the Bureau of Labor Statistics telegraphed last year? (Update: Worse.)

In the runup, ADP said on Wednesday that 22,000 seasonally adjusted private-sector jobs were lost in January. AP reports from yesterday carried predictions that today’s number for the entire economy will be +5,000. A really good New York Post column by John Crudele cites +13,000.

Those of us who follow the actuals are watching what comes in compared to prior years:

January (really mid-late December through mid-late January, when the employment surveys are done) is a big negative month on the ground largely because people hired as seasonal help during the holidays are let go.

The report will come out here at 8:30 a.m.

The news:

The unemployment rate fell from 10.0 to 9.7 percent in January, and nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged (-20,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment fell in construction and in transportation and warehousing, while temporary help services and retail trade added jobs.

What was supposed to be relieving news (jobs) turned out not so good (pending revisions, of course), and what was supposed to be bad news (the unemployment rate) ended up being “good.”

But the obvious reax is that this combination can only be occurring because more Americans on net have stopped looking for work.

++++++++++++++++++++++

Update: The less obvious but more correct reax is that based on contacts with households the Bureau found fewer unemployed people on a seasonally adjusted basis last month. But, it didn’t find them working at establishments they contacted. In other words, things are out of sync, which is unfortunately not unusual. The establishment survey is supposedly more precise (emphasis on “supposedly”).

That is, the guy in this AP report, despite the establishment survey’s contrarian take, is hopefully correct:

“It simply was, people found jobs,” he said. The report is “consistent with continued improvement in the labor market.”

++++++++++++++++++++++

Later in the report, we see that seasonally adjusted government employment grew yet again:

January, the federal government added 33,000 jobs, including 9,000 temporary positions for Census 2010. Employment in state and local governments, excluding education, continued to trend down.

The private-sector shrink (just looked it up in the longer version of the report) was 12,000. The “Honey They Shrunk the Private Sector” trend continues.

As to that comprehensive revision … … ouch:

The total nonfarm employment level for March 2009 was revised downward by 902,000 (930,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis), or 0.7 percent. The previously published level for December 2009 was revised downward 1,390,000 (1,363,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis).

Good news, bad news, wrong net direction: November got revised to +64,000, up from +4,000. December went to -150,000 from -85,000, which was a surprise, because ADP’s January revision to December showed fewer private-sector job losses.

As you’ll see at this NewsBusters post, my CNNMoney.com e-mail alert liked the unemployment rate drop so much that it “forgot” to mention both January’s job losses and the comprehensive revision.

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Sunday morning (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

Here is a graphic capture of the source (currently here at the Bureau of Economic Analysis, but subject to change) for my early-paragraph statements about the growth of government and the contracting private sector (click here or on the graphic to see its actual size in a separate window):

Thus, we see that during the six full quarters since the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy began (i.e., comparing 4Q09 to 2Q08), as noted in the column, the private sector is 3% smaller:

• 4Q09 Private Sector —  $13.155 trillion less $2.5844 trillion = $10.5706 trillion
• 2Q08 Private Sector — $13.415 trillion less $2.5069 trillion = $10.9081 trillion
• Difference = $327.5 billion
• Percentage Difference = $327.5 billion/$10,908.1 billion = 3%

As I wrote in the column, during the POR Economy, “…. the government has become bigger, bolder, and more intrusive, while a worried private sector has contracted. Is there any good reason to believe that this has not been part of the plan all along?”

From Lander, Wyoming:

Feb 4, 2010 / 07:27 pm

A U.S. Catholic professor was recently awarded an audience with Pope Benedict XVI and an almost $30,000 prize for his doctoral thesis, which he wrote to help “unfold the beauty of Catholic teaching.”

John Mortenson, an Associate Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Wyoming Catholic College, received the award on Jan. 27 for his work titled “Understanding St. Thomas on Analogy.” The award was given to him by the Coordination Council of Pontifical Academies, a committee that was established by the late John Paul II in 1996.

“The prize for theology and St. Thomas is given every four years by the Pontifical Academies of Theology and St. Thomas Aquinas,” Mortensen explained to CNA. “My thesis director asked if I would like to submit the thesis, and I consented, and sent my CV and copies of the thesis to Rome.”

Reflecting on his personal faith and what led him to pursue his career as a Catholic professor, Mortensen said, “I was drawn to theology and to teaching through love. I wanted to grow in my Catholic faith, and studying theology and philosophy provided a richness to my spiritual and intellectual life that I had not thought possible.”

“When I first began to study Thomas Aquinas, I was amazed at the clarity and succinctness with which he presented Catholic doctrine,” he added. “I wanted to unfold the beauty of Catholic teaching present in Aquinas and present it to others.”

Mortensen outlined the purpose of his thesis and said that “The question of analogy is foundational for theology and philosophy. The way we speak about things and the way things exist can only be understood if one understands analogy.”

“My thesis aimed at clarifying a much-debated point in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas about the way he uses the word ‘analogy,’” Mortensen explained. “This clarification is important as a starting point in the whole question of analogy, since without getting this issue right, many errors and misunderstandings are bound to follow.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Blue is for how Ohio was fiscally managed while ORPINO-favored politicians foisted on voters were in charge.

Blue is for the party currently controlling the Statehouse, which gained that control primarily because previous ORPINO-favored administrations “mostly acted (fiscally) blue since the mid-1990s.”

Blue is for Mike DeWine’s myriad liberal-leaning, conservative-betraying, election-losing positions.

And yellow is for being skeeeeered of several dozen peaceful, vocal patriots — people who, if ORPINO wasn’t an “in name only” organization, would be their ideological brethren. Instead, they’re apparently the enemy.

What follows is something I missed Monday night. I have already updated a related Tuesday post with this info, but thought it deserved a bit more emphasis, which is why it will appear at the top of BizzyBlog for most of today.

It’s a headline plus four words from Matt Hurley at Weapons of Mass Discussion (HT Maggie Thurber), who is in a position to know:

Did ORP Really Call Cops on Tea Partiers?

My sources say yes.

Update: That reminds me. So did this source, as obtained from a trusted e-mailer –

November could have been a series of wins representing an unmistakable mandate for the sweeping, top-to-bottom reform the Buckeye State desperately needs. Now, no matter how convincing the victory margins (assuming they even occur, which is now much more in doubt) and no matter how furious the Election Night spin, there will be no mandate. None. The only takeaway will be, “we got the bad guys out, and put our not so bad guys in.” Period.

Why are the Associated Press’s video people piling on Toyota?

Moments ago, in going to business-related stories at hosted.ap.org (example here), I found that the rotation of video teases the AP is presenting to readers has 12 items. Six of them, presented consecutively, relate to Toyota. Each is negative.

No doubt the situations in which the company is involved are newsworthy, but is one company’s misfortune half of everything that’s going on in the business world?

Here’s the lineup as of 4:45 p.m. ET on Monday:
- Toyota Tell Dealers Parts on Way to Fix Pedals
- AP Source: Govt. Clears Toyota Gas Pedal Fix
- Toyota Admits Design Problems with its Brakes
- Toyota Probe Deepens Amid Confusion Over Risk
- Trans. Secy: Don’t Drive Recalled Toyotas
- Toyota Sales Drop 16 Percent in January
- Small Businesses Aim for Loan Growth
- Econony Grew in Fourth Quarter; Jobs Still Sparse
- Bernanke Wins Confirmation to Second Term
- Ford returns to Profitability after 4 Years
- Obama: “We All Hated Bank Bailout”
- Charges Filed Against Bank of America, Frmr. CEO

It’s hard to understand why the “Don’t Drive Recalled Toyotas” story is still there, when Transportation Secretary LaHood has clarified those remarks (the link is to, ahem, an AP story), and why today’s news about unemployment claims hasn’t made the rotation.

To the extent the government is leaning hard on the company, somebody in the press should be questioning whether the motivations are purely related to safety or whether they also involve generating as much negative publicity as possible about the principal foreign-based competitor of government-controlled General Motors and Chrysler. AP’s saturation coverage in the rotation also begs the question of whether it would be as rough on those two wards of the state in similar circumstances, or whether it would be looking over its shoulder to avoid getting White House pressure as Reuters experienced when it pulled Terri Cullen’s tax column earlier this week. Cullen had the nerve to point out that there are some middle-class tax hits in President Obama’s budget.

I believe I’m also correct in asserting that AP’s journalists are mostly unionized, while I know that Toyota’s workers are mostly if entirely not.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE: Chris at My Random Blog notes a typical form of distortion at a site that doesn’t deserve a link.

You would think that someone going to the trouble of reporting on something would at least provide the most basic of relevant numbers so that readers could understand what they’re telling us.

That isn’t the case with the 11:51 a.m. version of Uncle Sam’s report on unemployment claims by the Associated Press’s Stephen Bernard and Tim Paradis. Their report failed to specifically state what analysts predicted, and waited until a much later paragraph to tell us what their predictions are for tomorrow’s jobs report.

The first three paragraphs of that version of the story are in the graphic capture that follows:

For the record:

• According to this CNNMoney.com report, “Economists were expecting claims to drop to 455,000, according to a consensus estimate from Briefing.com.” In other words, claims were expected to go down by roughly twice as much as they actually went up.
• A much, much later paragraph in the AP pair’s report told us that expectations for tomorrow’s jobs report are for 5,000 jobs to have been added in January and for an uptick in the unemployment rate to 10.1% from its current 10%. Did the AP pair withhold these numbers because the jobs expectation is unimpressive, while the rate increase is depressive?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

UPDATE: The AP’s 12:28 p.m. report is an improvement, as the jobs-related info has moved to a much higher paragraph, but the jobless claims expectations are still nowhere to be found:

I had forgotten that Al Gore shared his Ig-Nobel Prize with the IPCC’s disgraceful leader, which makes the following point raised at the American Interest (HT Instapundit) so spot-on:

Al Gore, who shared the Nobel Prize with Rajendra Pachauri and the increasingly discredited IPCC, has a special responsibility to environmentalists and others in the United States to clearly state that bad science and poor judgment have no place in the leadership of the movement to stop climate change.

I suspect Gore still believes that the “science” is “settled.” But if he no longer does, I doubt that he would ever have the guts to admit it.

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At Calculated Risk, a “Rebound? What Rebound?” observation: “The current level of (vehicle) sales …. (is) still below the lowest point for the ‘90/’91 recession (even with a larger population).”

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Phillip Klein at the American Spectator’s blog, in a post that should be called “Obama v. Bush for Dummies” — “Why Obama Is an Even Bigger Spender Than Bush.”

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Las Vegas’s mayor reacted to this Obama statement (”When times are tough, you … don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college”) by saying that the president is “a real slow learner” (HT Hot Air).

I’m not so sure. A “brilliant” (so we’re told) person legitimately interested in the economy’s recovery would not repeat the same commerce-suppressing mistakes … would he?

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Allan Sloan “discovers” what readers of this blog have known for months — “Next in Line for a Bailout: Social Security.”