This message merited an audible “Hmm…” in the BizzyBlog bunker when it arrived in the e-mail inbox (click on pic to see full text of e-mail):

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TURNAROUND OHIO?

Seems like I’ve heard that “somewhere” before….

Oops, that link didn’t work. That’s because it was changed to a generic Ted Strickland banner mere hours after this post at RAB and this one at BizzyBlog called out the governor for publicly dithering on education once safely in office (”School-funding fix need not be rushed, Strickland contends”). Only three months after his election and barely a month in office, Strickland indicated that education initiatives wouldn’t need to get into his first two-year budget, even though he had outlined over $350 million in “First Year Funding” (go to the bottom of this page that was saved from Strickland’s campaign web site before it went dark) during the gubernatorial campaign.

(Aside to Joe Hallett: Contrary to the snide assertion you made, and which you also attributed to Mrs. Sherrod Brown aka Connie “in lockstep” Schultz (”Little original reporting comes from political blogs.“), this was one of dozens of times Ohio’s center-right blogosphere has scooped the Columbus Dispatch and the rest of Ohio’s Old Media. So is this post. A longer list is available on request — that is, if you and others at your paper ever wish to stop being the mouthpiece for Ted’s ignorant economic posturing and his amateurish war-conduct second-guessing [here and here] and catch up with recent history and current events.)

Strickland’s Governor-elect site appears to have subsequently carried in the Turnaround Ohio and Learning for Life pages intact. Their conflict with what has been done since he took office remains.

Back to ProgressOhio and Turnaround Ohio — Are we to assume that they are acting with Ted’s consent by using that slogan in its campaign literature? If there is no objection by the Governor, should we then also assume that Ted really supports this economy-crippling power grab while publicly opposing it?

Those looking for a pervasive and severe nationwide decline in home prices are going to have to keep looking.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) just released its House Price Index (PDF) for the first quarter of 2007. This most comprehensive of home-price reports shows that nationwide prices increased 0.45% (rounded to 0.5% in the announcement) in the first quarter of this year, and went up 4.25% (rounded to 4.3% in the announcement) in the past four quarters.

Core inflation during those two time periods was 0.6% and 2.5%, respectively. OFHEO says that inflation excluding only shelter costs only rose 1.6% during the past year.

Context (from Pages 4 and 5 of the report):

• From 1990 through 1997, reported four-quarter appreciation was less than the 4.25% just reported 28 out of 32 times.
• During that same time period, individual-quarter appreciation was less than the 0.45% just reported 14 out of 32 times — including six nationwide quarterly declines.

I recall no discussions of pervasive real estate “bubbles” or fears of steep, widespread declines during the 1990s.

Here’s what will likely be a well-kept secret: Seven western states actually showed double-digit gains in the past 12 months (UT, ID, MT, WY, WA, NM, and OR), and 12 others had increases of over 6%.

Only seven states came in with four-quarter results below OFHEO’s 1.6% inflation minus shelter costs figure (from Page 19 — RI, CA, NH, OH, NV, MA, and MI). All are understandable without having to call out a price-collapse scenario. Cali and Nevada overheated more than most states in the three previous years, while the other states’ economies aren’t doing very well. Only MA (-0.56%) and MI (-0.86%) actually had year-over-year declines.

Looking at regions (Page 28), eight of nine came in above the 1.6% benchmark just noted; only New England (+1.11%) trailed.

As to metro areas, the search for widespread suffering was also futile. In contrast to the S&P report (Excel spreadsheet is at 5th item at bottom of linked page) that showed 13 and 17 of the 20 largest metro areas with annual and quarterly declines, respectively, OFHEO showed only three annual declines (overheated San Diego, plus declining Detroit and Boston) and 10 quarterly declines. San Diego (-1.12%) was the only top-20 metro area to show a quarterly decline of over 1%.

Apparent doomsday believer Rex Nutting of MarketWatch jumped on the S&P report (requires free registration), and appeared eager to tell us that, according to the relatively limited S&P report, “Prices have been falling for the past three quarters.”

Well, not exactly, Rex. Let’s see how he treats the OFHEO release, whose now-accurate prediction of 0.5% made by an economist was saved for the last paragraph of his report.

The Associated Press, in an unbylined report at 11:36AM, searched for a way to go negative on the OFHEO release, and settled on the idea that it “provided the latest indication of a modulated slowdown in the once-sizzling housing market.”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

This is shaping up to have been a weak quarter.

This sentence from BEA’s report sticks out:

The real change in private inventories subtracted 0.98 percentage point from the first-quarter change in real GDP, after subtracting 1.16 percentage points from the fourth-quarter change.

That’s a lot. If inventories had stayed the same, 4th quarter 2006 growth would have been about 3.7%, and 1st quarter 2007 would have been about 1.6%.

That means that businesses reduced inventories for the second quarter in a row. The two-quarter reduction is a combined $29 billion (about 2.14% of a $13.5 trillion GDP, the sum of 0.98% and 1.16%), which I’m guessing most observers didn’t think could happen. Its possible, but doesn’t seem likely, that businesses have suddenly figured out a way to run even leaner and meaner and stay that way permanently. But I would think that any kind of increase in consumer or business demand, which may have already occurred since the end of the first quarter, will cause a bounce-back effect, leading to an inventory build-up that might make GDP jump sharply in future quarters.

Tomorrow’s employment and ISM manufacturing reports, and next week’s ISM non-manufacturing report, will be very important indicators of whether that bounce-back might be occurring.

When a liberal-friendly network is screaming about earmarks and going after the current congressional and Senate majorities, as is the case in this video of a CNN report, perceptive members of those majorities should be taking it as a warning that voters won’t be happy with how they’ve done the people’s business when the next election arrives.

Odds are they won’t listen.

From Dayton, OH (a related story is here):

FAIRBORN — Nothing about their relationship was typical. They met at Dayton Children’s Medical Center, dated over the phone, and kissed through oxygen masks.

But for Douglas and Misty (Rose) Langstaff, both born with cystic fibrosis, nothing was going to keep them from enjoying their life together.

The Fairborn couple married on April 14. A month and a day later, Misty, 18, died at Dayton Children’s.

Douglas Langstaff, 20, said although the couple of two years only got to experience married life for a short time, it felt like they’d been together 50 years.

“We did everything together,” he said. “The wedding was Misty’s highlight.”

Douglas helped Misty achieve other milestones in her last few months. She attended driving school and got her license, went horseback riding on their honeymoon in Kentucky, and received her high school diploma from Graham Digital Academy May 1.

“She was a very strong person,” Douglas said of Misty. “She never complained about her disease or anything.”

At Townhall:

If you want to know why the immigration bill makes people so mad, just listen to the Bush administration defend it.

Michelle Malkin has pointed specifics directed at the president.

If accounting and reporting standards applied to the private sector were applied to Uncle Sam, that would be the amount of liabilities that would have to be recorded on the books of the federal government, according to USA Today.

Though it ignores the government’s assets, I find the liabilities number credible.

Most of the liabilities are in Social Security and Medicare, the two programs that Congresses controlled by both parties and every president until the current occupant of the White House have for the most part resisted applying any kind of meaningful reforms to.

Ronald Reagan occasionally referred to the idea of making Social Security voluntary, but in the name of pursuing what he felt were larger goals (winning the Cold War, and reforming the then-punitive federal income tax structure, and turning the economy around), he pledged to leave the fundamental structure of Social Security in place.

A mid-1980s Social Security commission headed by Alan Greenspan considered private accounts, but instead opted for tweaks to the retirement age and tax increases that kicked the can down the road instead of fundamentally reforming the system.

A 1995 congressional attempt to reform Medicare that could have fundamentally changed the program for the better led to the president shutting the government down until Congress backed off.

The Clinton Administration mostly talked about reforming Social Security during its second term, and as I recall never had a bill introduced supporting a reform framework it favored. It resisted private accounts, instead favoring direct government investment in the stock market — a move that inevitably would have led to the government, at best, making political statements (don’t invest in tobacco, etc.), or at worst, picking favored companies.

President Bush has made fitful attempts to get a relatively puny version of private accounts onto the national agenda, and the response from opponents has been “there is no crisis.”

Really?

As I’ve said before (here and here), supporters of leaving the two programs alone, no matter what, have a distinct advantage. Their position improves with each additional day of dithering, because the larger the unfunded liability gets, the more difficult fixing the problem becomes, until it gets so overwhelming that our problems resemble the virtually intractable ones facing France and Germany. It’s clear that believers in the status quo would consider that a good thing.

From New York City (HT Daily Good e-mail), about a nationwide effort that has provided the “medicine of music” to thousands of children and teens:

Seven-year-old Ronald Sterling of New York City loves baseball, hot dogs, doughnuts with sprinkles and Sesame Street.

This week, Ronald, who has a serious genetic disorder that affects his immune system, is getting a special treat.

Bob McGrath of Sesame Street just recorded a song that’s all about Ronald. On Thursday, 15,000 schoolchildren from the New York City area will sing the chorus to the soundtrack, along with McGrath, during a recording session at Shea Stadium.

The event marks the 12,000th song produced by the Songs of Love Foundation, a non-profit group that creates personalized compositions for children and teens who are chronically or terminally ill, are developmentally disabled or have serious psychological or psychiatric problems. Each song has its own melody and lyrics that describe the child’s interests, family, friends and pets.

Go here for the rest of the story.

What he drew.

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I hope he’s right:

Muslims are not silent in the face of radicalism, extremism, and other ideologies that support terrorism from within the ranks of the Islamic global community. But Western mainstream media - the MSM - have proven unwilling or incapable of reporting to Western audiences on the personalities embodying the Islamic “counter-jihad.” The problem is more that of “MSM silence” than of “Muslim silence.”

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Although I’ve been following the American Family Association’s boycott of Ford (now pushing 710,000 signers at boycottford.com), I’ve never been a big fan of the tactic. Given the dire straits Ford is in and the fact that a widespread boycott does exist, my concern has been that the company is going to commit corporate suicide in the name of so-called Corporate Social Responsibility and political correctness, and that Old Media will lend an assist by failing to acknowledge what the company is doing to itself.

As to the boycott tactic, I believe it is fair to ask the American Family Association why it concentrates all of its fire on Ford and not on other companies, given the results of its own monitoring of TV program advertisers. Yes, Ford is the worst according to its standards, but if you look at the detail (HT One News Now) you’ll see plenty of other potential targets for AFA’s wrath. So why only Ford?

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Let’s see now:

• HE was for it before HE was against it.
• SHE was for it before SHE voted against it.
• This means that what this guy said about the man who was president from 1993 to 2001 (”no core beliefs”) is apparently true of at least two of the his party’s three major 2008 presidential candidates.
• Surely, BHOO (Barack Hussein Obambi Obama) looks “good” (as in relatively consistent) by comparison — for now.
• BHOO also apparently looks better in the polls against potential GOP rivals. But this guy wasn’t mentioned.

EU carbon emissions were up 3.6% in 2006. The US’s were down 1.3%, as noted in a weekend post.

Though those facts were known on about May 17 and May 23, respectively, a May 26 New York Times story (may require free registration) on how “The United States has rejected Germany’s proposal for deep long-term cuts in greenhouse gas emissions” omitted those inconvenient truths.

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Having ripped the Home Depot and departed CEO Bob Nardelli often (previous posts relating to Nardelli’s departure are here, here, here, and here), it’s only fair to note that this year’s annual meeting appears to have been a big improvement, but not across the board:

At first, it seemed that everyone was on the same page. The new chief executive, Frank Blake, took the stage and apologized for last year’s infamous annual meeting, when Nardelli refused to take questions from investors, and members of the company’s board stayed home, at their leader’s urging.

“There is no better way to deal with a mistake than to acknowledge it, fix it and move forward,” Blake said. “We apologize for last year’s meeting. It was a mistake, and we won’t do it again.”

But in an interview minutes before the meeting, the company’s lead director, Kenneth G. Langone, strongly defended Nardelli’s leadership and pay, both of which came under withering criticism before the board asked him to step down in January.

“We needed the best. We got the best. Bob saved Home Depot,” Langone said.

He said Nardelli was worth “the full value” of his pay, roughly $270 million over six years. “I am never going back away from it.”

Given that Nardelli’s pay is the subject of at least one shareholder suit, what else could Langone say? As to saving Home Depot, Nardelli couldn’t have screwed up what was a good thing worse if he had tried. The share price performance of the company versus Lowe’s tells the tale, Mr. Langone.

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A post last week on the overreaction to April’s 11% drop in the median selling price of a new home — the drop was attributable almost entirely to a change in the sales mix to lower-cost regions — noted that the real decline after factoring out the mix problem was in the neighborhood of 1.2% in the last month, and 1.5% in the past year. This fact was totally ignored by Martin “Where’s the Bad Economic News?” Crutsinger of the Associated Press.

Sure enough, the April National Association of Realtors existing-home sales report, which is less vulnerable to regional fluctuations, came in showing a 0.8% decline in the past year. What’s more, the Excel spreadsheet supporting the NAR announcement (link is at the same page) shows that the nationwide median existing-home selling price went UP 1.2% from March 2007 to April 2007, and went up in every region of the country (Northeast, +1.9%; Midwest, +3.5%; South, +0.7%; West, +1.0%).

Sorry about those erroneous estimates (:–>) — but only about 10% as sorry as Martin Crutsinger should be for not explaining the obvious problem in a nationwide Commerce Department report.

From South London, England: (HT Good News Blog):

May 25 2007

A HEROIC team of passers-by lifted a 14-tonne bus off the ground to free a 13-year-old schoolboy trapped under-neath.

The youngster had tripped and fallen under the vehicle as it was pulling away from a stop in Katharine Street, central Croydon, at the junction with St George’s Walk.

Witnesses say the boy had missed the 250 bus and was trying to catch up with it in the hope it would stop when the accident happened shortly before 4pm on Wednesday.

As he fell he became trapped between the body of the bus and the pavement, breaking his leg.

With the boy in a dazed state, street wardens Nathan Thompson, 27 and Neville Sharpe,41, heard the commotion and organised an unlikely rescue operation.

Go here for the rest of the story.

Hugo Chavez is simultaneously acting as Bull Connor (fire hoses/water cannons) and Gustav Husak (deploying tanks against his own people), yet what little Old Media coverage there is seems to want to avoid those elements of the story.

At 11:00 a.m. Sunday, Gateway Pundit blogged (and did an update post at 7:43 p.m. last night) on Venezuela’s virtual dictator sending in tanks to intimidate opponents demonstrating against a government-planned closure of one of the country’s last independent TV outlets. An underlying post at Publius Pundit that GP linked to shows the tanks in place, and has a time stamp of 2:09 a.m.

The Jungle Hut reported (scroll down) at what appeared to be midnight on May 27 that:

12:oo UPDATE: It is done! the RCTV emblem is gone! Now we see the new television social emblem! TVes.

UPDATE: All media is warned not to refer to this as a closure of RCTV, but rather that their concession (liscense) has not been re-newed.

In Globovision pics eerily reminiscent of the fire hoses turned on Birmingham, Alabama demonstrators in 1963 (second paragraph at link), it appears that water cannons are being used against demonstrators (an AP report discussed below confirms this).

Voice of America mentioned the tanks in a story that carries a date of May 26 at Google News but is currently dated May 27 at VOA. The context clearly indicates that the article was originally written, and the tank deployment occurred, on Saturday:

Venezuelan army tanks and security forces deployed across the capital and other cities ahead of the protests, which are expected to continue Sunday.

Yet the South American bureau of the Houston Chronicle, in a report dated May 26 at 9:54 p.m., fails to mention the tanks. Co-authors John Otis and Jose Orozco also saw fit to tell us that “Although Chavez remains wildly popular, revoking RCTV’s license has been one of the most unpopular moves of his presidency.”

New York Times searches on “Venezuela tank” and “Venezuela tanks” (not in quotes in both cases) show no current results. A May 26 Times article on the impending station closure by Simon Romero, carried in May 27’s newspaper, makes no mention of military deployment, and can only be described as bending over backwards to make Chavez look reasonable.

Google News searches done at about 9:30 AM ET on “Venezuela tank” and “Venezuela tanks” (not in quotes in both cases) turn up no other items besides those just discussed.

In a report caught by Drudge, Reuters managed to report last night that “Venezuelan troops have seized an anti-government television channel’s broadcast equipment.” It did refer to “a show of military force meant to deter possible violence by opposition demonstrators,” but didn’t mention the tanks or the tactics used on demonstrators.

The progression of the three most recent Associated Press dispatches as of 10:00 a.m ET, the first two by Ian James and the third by Christopher Toothaker (here, here, and here; saved for posterity, and of course fair use and discussion purposes, here, here, and here), is interesting indeed. The first consists of only two paragraphs, and its second paragraph appears to be nearly celebratory:

Venezuela’s oldest private television station went off the air at midnight Sunday as thousands banged on pots and pans in protest against President Hugo Chavez’s decision not to renew the license of the opposition-aligned channel.

Fireworks exploded across Caracas as crowds of Chavez’s supporters celebrated the expiration of Radio Caracas Television’s license and the birth of a new public service station that was created to replace it.

The second and third reports mention that “police” used “a water cannon and tear gas” to break up “one opposition protest” (referred to oddly in what may be a Freudian slip as “one opposition protests” in the third report), and never use the word “military” or “tank.”

Someone please remind me of why we’re supposed to rely on Old Media outlets to stay informed.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE: This YouTube vid (HT BoingBoing via Instapundit) clearly validates the comparison to Birmingham 1963.

UPDATE 2: A more balanced BBC report (”Rallies as Venezuelan TV closes”) notes the water cannon and tear gas, and the oft-overlooked fact that Chavez has “the power to rule by decree.”

UPDATE 3: A revised AP report from about 11:15 a.m., mostly containing what was in the third AP report discussed above, is here. Still no mention of tanks.

UPDATE 4, 11 PM: Now Globovision is getting the shutdown threats.

UPDATE 5, May 29: Michael Moore (”The media is far freer in Venezuela than it is here in the US”) was unavailable for comment (HT Old Controller).

UPDATE 6, May 30: Troops have attacked students with rubber bullets. Video is at the link.

Note: This was to be today’s only post, but today’s later post on Venezuela was too important to defer.

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From About.com:

It was 1866 and the United States was recovering from the long and bloody Civil War between the North and the South. Surviving soldiers came home, some with missing limbs, and all with stories to tell. Henry Welles, a drugstore owner in Waterloo, New York, heard the stories and had an idea. He suggested that all the shops in town close for one day to honor the soldiers who were killed in the Civil War and were buried in the Waterloo cemetery. On the morning of May 5, the townspeople placed flowers, wreaths and crosses on the graves of the Northern soldiers in the cemetery. At about the same time, Retired Major General Jonathan A. Logan planned another ceremony, this time for the soldiers who survived the war. He led the veterans through town to the cemetery to decorate their comrades’ graves with flags. It was not a happy celebration, but a memorial. The townspeople called it Decoration Day.

In Retired Major General Logan’s proclamation of Memorial Day, he declared:

“The 30th of May, 1868, is designated for the purpose of strewing with flowers, or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country and during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village and hamlet churchyard in the land. In this observance no form of ceremony is prescribed, but posts and comrades will in their own way arrange such fitting services and testimonials of respect as circumstances may permit.”

The two ceremonies were joined in 1868, and northern states commemorated the day on May 30. The southern states commemorated their war dead on different days. Children read poems and sang civil war songs and veterans came to school wearing their medals and uniforms to tell students about the Civil War. Then the veterans marched through their home towns followed by the townspeople to the cemetery. They decorated graves and took photographs of soldiers next to American flags. Rifles were shot in the air as a salute to the northern soldiers who had given their lives to keep the United States together.

In 1882, the name was changed to Memorial Day and soldiers who had died in previous wars were honored as well. In the northern United States, it was designated a public holiday. In 1971, along with other holidays, President Richard Nixon declared Memorial Day a federal holiday on the last Monday in May.

Cities all around the United States hold their own ceremonies on the last Monday in May to pay respect to the men and women who have died in wars or in the service of their country.

May 28 Note: See the Update below, which notes different timing, but no change to the fundamental premise of this post.

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That there has been no love lost between the Associated Press and leading center-right blog Powerline for quite some time is not exactly a secret. The mutual distaste goes back at least as far as the 2004 presidential campaign, when Powerline caught AP reporter Scott Lindlaw telling others that his “mission” was to see that George Bush would not be reelected, and exposed the AP’s Jennifer Loven’s conflict of interest in reporting environmental stories while her husband was the Kerry campaign’s environmental consultant.

So what happened when John Hinderaker at Powerline exposed yet another in a long line of stories about politicians’ misdeeds that “somehow” didn’t mention the offender’s party is fascinating indeed.

The original story on the DWI arrest of State Senate President James Metzen made no mention of his party affiliation. Its fifth paragraph read as follows (link is to abbreviated story; the original referred to by Powerline and Drudge was later revised; this ABC story has the original fifth paragraph but a revised sixth that indicates party affiliation):

Metzen, 61, a seven-term senator from South St. Paul, told officers he had three or four drinks, (South St. Paul Police Chief Michael) Messerich said.

It is virtually impossible that Bakst did not know that party James Metzen is a member of Democratic Farm Labor, the Gopher’s State’s version of the Democrats, when he wrote his original story on May 22. After all, Metzen isn’t just another state politician, he’s the President of the Senate. I confirmed in a phone call to AP’s St. Paul office that was forwarded to its Minneapolis office that Bakst indeed works out of the St. Paul office. Additionally, Bakst appears to cover Minnesota state politics regularly — so regularly that Larry Schumacher, a reporter and blogger for the St. Cloud Times, refers to Bakst in a blog post as a “Fellow Capitol basement dweller” (at second paragraph of second post at link).

Powerline’s post noting Metzen’s lack of party identification (”How to Read the AP”) went up at 11:23 a.m. Central Time on May 23.

There is an updated report stamped 1:12 p.m. Eastern Time that same day (i.e., less than an hour later; the same time stamp is on the report at other sites). At that report, Bakst changed the fifth paragraph to read:

Metzen, 61, a seven-term Democratic senator from South St. Paul, told officers he had three or four drinks, Messerich said.

Even if this isn’t the first update where Metzen’s party ID was noted, what took Bakst so long to indicate what he obviously knew? And if the 1:12 p.m. update really is the first appearance of Metzen’s party ID, did Bakst and AP have to be goaded by their adversary into reporting what they should have told readers in the first place?

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UPDATE, May 28: I was informed of two additional developments that adjust the timing of the Powerline post and the related AP report, but still leave the question open as to what caused Bakst/AP to add Metzen’s party ID.

First, I was informed by Noel at NewsBusters that Bakst did update the Metzen story’s sixth paragraph at 7:46 a.m. on May 23 (”Metzen, a Democrat, didn’t immediately return a call.”)

Separately, and without knowledge of what I just noted, Scott Johnson at Powerline commented on the NewsBusters post yesterday evening, and added the following previously not-known information:

FOOTNOTE: I should add that our post misstates the author and the time it was posted. I originally posted the item before I left for work on May 23. I think it was the last item posted before our site crashed later that morning. Our tech genius Joe Malchow rebuilt our site with the result that the posting information is now off, although the text is accurate. I add this note only because Blumer’s post uses the inaccurate posting information and accordingly tends, I believe, to understate his point.

Actually, Scott’s information restores the point to its original place, depending on exactly when his original post went up on May 23. If it went up a little bit before 6:46 a.m. Central Time (7:46 a.m. Eastern), it remains an open question, as was the case with the timing as I originally understood it, as to whether Bakst’s/AP’s party-ID update was spontaneous, or whether it occurred in response to Powerline’s post.

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Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE, May 29: Ken Shepherd updated at the NewsBusters post in response to an e-mail from AP:

Update (Ken Shepherd | May 29 | 14:35 EDT):

AP’s Minnesota news editor sent the following note to NewsBusters two hours ago:

I’m writing to respond to accusations of bias in AP’s handling last week of the arrest of Minnesota Senate President James Metzen.

The suggestion that AP intentionally omitted Metzen’s party affiliation _ he is a Democrat _ is incorrect.

Metzen’s party ID _ as DFL _ was included in the original story that moved on Minnesota state wires May 22, and in four updates of the story.

The first version that moved on national wires May 22 also included Metzen’s party affiliation, listed as Democrat. A second version that moved at 2:26 a.m. on May 23 DID drop the affiliation. It appears that happened when an editor inserted comment from Metzen’s attorney for the paragraph that had included Metzen’s party ID.

When the missing party ID was brought to AP’s attention, a new version was promptly transmitted to restore it.

Doug Glass
Minnesota News Editor
Associated Press

Two points:

• How convenient.
• Even if we buy into the accident scenario, Glass doesn’t say how the “missing party ID was brought to AP’s attention” — i.e., it could have been AP reading Powerline, or it could have been a Powerline reader calling AP, or it could have been anyone other human being on the planet.

The two questions at the end of the original portion of this post still stand.

Readers rarely get the truth about the US economy’s performance from Old Media business reporters without having to sift through a litany of “yeah, buts” and “what ifs” designed to water down anything that might make the Bush economy appear successful. But if you look hard enough, you sometimes stumble across stories in other areas that indicate how things really are.

Stories on the environment are good candidates for finding economic truth, because the writer has to establish that continued economic growth without what the writer believes are appropriate environmental constraints is a bad thing. That means that the writer has to somehow acknowledge that economic growth exists.

Such is the case in a story buried on Page A14 of Thursday’s Washington Post about lower CO2 emissions in the US last year (you read that right). In it, writer Juliet Eilperin let the reality of how the economy is performing slip in (bold is mine):

U.S. Carbon Emissions Fell 1.3% in 2006

U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped slightly last year even as the economy grew, according to an initial estimate released yesterday by the Energy Information Administration.

The 1.3 percent drop in CO2 emissions marks the first time that U.S. pollution linked to global warming has declined in absolute terms since 2001 and the first time it has gone down since 1990 while the economy was thriving. Carbon dioxide emissions declined in both 2001 and 1991, in large part because of economic slowdowns during those years.

Whoa.

At what other time has the Post informed its readers that the economy is “thriving”? Answer: Other than the above, not once in the last 60 days; none of the links found at the Post in a search on “economy thriving” (without quotes) refer to the US economy’s performance.

Returning to form, Eilperin, after using the first four paragraphs to the hard news, gave the next two to an industry “more needs to be done” spokesman, and the final four to critical Democrats and environmentalists, including this sky-is-falling quote from Senator John Kerry:

“This is more proof that this President just doesn’t get it when it comes to combating climate change,” Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) said in a statement yesterday. “The house is on fire, and he’s trying to douse the flames with a watering can. The science tells us that we need to reduce our emissions by 60-80% by 2050 in order to avoid catastrophic damage.”

The news was carried in a brief blurb found on Page A20 in Thursday’s New York Times. The item (may require free registration) helpfully reminded readers that “The United States remains the leading source of the carbon dioxide, the main emission linked to global warming.” But according to this March 23 Reuters report, obviously written well before the just-announced reduction in US emissions during 2006, China “is on course to overtake the United States this year as the world’s biggest carbon emitter.” The latest news from the administration would appear to make China’s ascendancy to Number One in carbon emissions this year a certainty.

It should be noted that the need to reduce CO2 emission is anything but “settled science” — at least until someone refutes Fred Singer (described at the link as “an atmospheric physicist at George Mason University and founder of the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a think tank on climate and environmental issues”). Singer maintains that satellite temperature readings show that the earth is cooling not warming, and believes, with good reason, that “climate science is on its way to becoming pathological, to becoming abnormal in the sense that it is being guided by the money that’s being made available to people.”

Getting back to Old Media coverage — Try to imagine an administration of the other party announcing actual nationwide reductions in carbon emissions and seeing the news buried in the Post and the Times. No, neither can I.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Tequesta, Florida:

Tequesta diver named ‘Real Hero’ for saving buddy off Juno
May 20, 2007

A Tequesta man’s quick thinking during a dive in November not only saved his buddy’s life but earned him an American Red Cross Palm Beach Area Chapter “Real Heroes Marine Rescue Award” at a breakfast Wednesday in West Palm Beach.

Michael Syler, 19, was nominated for the award by the Tequesta Fire-Rescue Department because of his lifesaving efforts while scuba diving off a local dive charter boat.

Both Syler and Kyle Connelly, 21, were diving together in 95 feet of water on a reef east of Juno Beach when Connelly signaled to Syler that he was running low on air. Syler swam to Connelly’s side, and moments later Connelly indicated he had run out of air, so Syler offered his backup regulator to Syler.

Both divers made a rapid ascent to the surface, but when they reached 30 feet below the water, Syler’s pressure gauge registered zero and Connelly was now unconscious. Syler rushed his diving buddy to the surface, signaled the dive boat while he kept Connelly’s head above water and began rescue breathing. Connelly began to breath, but remained unconscious and didn’t come around until after the dive boat pulled them aboard, and he was given oxygen.

Go here for the rest of the story.

For those who prefer their news fair and balanced instead of imbalanced and biased, the demise of the Big 3 networks’ evening newscasts can’t come quickly enough. Though their imminent end seems unlikely (see the reasons at the end of this post), the latest May sweep results strongly indicate that their march towards irrelevance may be completed sooner than originally thought.

All the happy talk at evening news sweep winner ABC should not obscure the fact that over 6% fewer Americans watched the evening newscasts during the May 2007 sweep than did during the May 2006 sweep, and that the combined May 2007 sweep results are barely above those achieved during what was described last summer as the “Low-Water Mark for Broadcast TV Viewing”:

Sources:
- 2007 Sweeps — Media Bistro
- July 3, 2006 — Media Bistro; also commented on here last year
- 2006 Sweeps — Estimated based on ABC memo’s claims that ABC was up 7% from last year’s sweep, while NBC and CBS were down 11% and 15%, respectively.

A repeat of last summer’s 7%-plus slide would take total viewership to below 20 million.

I fail to see any reason why the overall decline won’t continue its over quarter-of-a-century trend. It’s hard to imagine that in 1980, about 52 million viewers tuned into the nets’ evening newscasts.

With their numbers down 60% during that time while the US population has increased over a third from 1980’s 226 million, you would think that the nets might start wondering about whether their definition and delivery of the news needs improvement. Failing that, you would think that the nets’ corporate masters might explore pulling the plug on these declining dinosaurs.

Don’t count on either thing happening. I see little, if any, evidence that what I wrote nearly two years ago about how the evening newscasts are going to be with us long after they have become irrelevant has changed (some text revised slightly from original):

• All three nightly broadcasts most likely lose money, when isolated from their morning counterparts (Today, Good Morning America, CBS Morning Show) and their documentary shows (Dateline, 60 Minutes, 20/20, etc.). At a minimum, none makes an acceptable level of profit.
• BUT, the news operations of each of the Big 3 networks are very small parts of very large organizations (CBS Inc., NBC-GE, and ABC-Disney), so small that apparently no one at any of the three parent companies cares enough to do anything about the continued hemorrhaging in their evening new shows, as long as the news operations themselves are profitable.
• So because those other parts of the news operations make money, the nightly news programs can chug right along, oblivious to normal profitability expectations.
• The journalists who put together the nightly news programs could care less if the broadcasts are profitable. It’s obvious that their agenda is more important.
• Because of all of the above, the ever-shrinking audience for these broadcasts will be spoon-fed biased reporting, Bush bashing, and conservative-bashing for the foreseeable future.

….. Perhaps until they’re only speaking to themselves.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

In an excellent investigative report last Sunday (may require free registration) that is part of a series on how “how businesses and investors seek to profit from the soaring number of older Americans, in ways helpful and harmful,” the New York Times’ Charles Duhigg exposed the despicable tactics of elder-scam artists and the “information services” companies that supply them the “sucker lists” they need.

He may not have known that he was simultaneously exposing information that could, and arguably should, damage the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton.

Duhigg led with the truly sad story of 92 year-old Richard Guthrie:

….. He ended up on scam artists’ lists because his name, like millions of others, was sold by large companies to telemarketing criminals, who then turned to major banks to steal his life’s savings.

Mr. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on scores of other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers, regulators say.

InfoUSA advertised lists of “Elderly Opportunity Seekers,” 3.3 million older people “looking for ways to make money,” and “Suffering Seniors,” 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. “Oldies but Goodies” contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: “These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change.”

As Mr. Guthrie sat home alone — surrounded by his Purple Heart medal, photos of eight children and mementos of a wife who was buried nine years earlier — the telephone rang day and night. After criminals tricked him into revealing his banking information, they went to Wachovia, the nation’s fourth-largest bank, and raided his account, according to banking records.

Telemarketing fraud, once limited to small-time thieves, has become a global criminal enterprise preying upon millions of elderly and other Americans every year, authorities say. Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers. And major banks have made it possible for criminals to dip into victims’ accounts without their authorization, according to court records.

“Most people have no idea how widespread and sophisticated telemarketing fraud has become,” said James Davis, a Federal Trade Commission lawyer. “It shocks even us.”

Many of the victims are people like Mr. Guthrie, whose name was among the millions that infoUSA sold to companies under investigation for fraud, according to regulators. Scam artists stole more than $100,000 from Mr. Guthrie, his family says.

Senior executives at infoUSA were contacted by telephone and e-mail messages at least 30 times. They did not respond.

In Thursday’s New York Post, Dick Morris and Eileen McGann pegged off of the Duhigg’s story:

EVERY year since he left the White House, former President Bill Clinton has been paid by InfoUSA - an Omaha, Neb., company now identified as a key provider of databases that enable criminals to defraud the unsuspecting elderly.

Senate rules don’t require Hillary Clinton to reveal exactly how much - or for what - the company has paid her husband over the past five years. But former presidents - especially Bill Clinton - don’t come cheap. And, just months after he left the presidency, InfoUSA paid Bill Clinton $200,000 to give a speech in Omaha. Since then, it has paid him an undisclosed amount each year - listed only as “more than $1,000″ for “non-employee compensation” on Sen. Clinton’s financial-disclosure forms. (Her latest Senate disclosure isn’t yet public, so we don’t yet know if the firm paid him anything last year.)

As best we can determine, this is one of only two companies with whom the ex-president has an ongoing, formal relationship.

….. The relationship between Bill Clinton and Vinod “Vin” Gupta, InfoUSA’s CEO and chairman, is longstanding and deep.

A frequent donor to Bill’s campaigns, Gupta stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom in the Clinton years. He admits donating $1 million to the Clinton Library and in 1999 gave $2 million for Hillary Clinton’s Millennium New Year’s Eve bash. He has raised over $200,000 for Hillary’s Senate campaigns and given thousands to other Democratic funds.

Morris and McGann then provided an exhaustive list of Clinton-InfoUSA-Gupta connections.

Apparently the heat from the Morris-McGann Post column was too much for the Times political reporters to ignore, even as it pretended not to know of its existence. Instead, today’s Times story by Mike McIntire (”Suit Sheds Light on Clintons’ Ties to a Benefactor”) wraps itself around a shareholder lawsuit filed against InfoUSA late last year. It’s also worth noting that someone at InfoUSA figured out how to respond to a political story in progress to defend the Clintons after ignoring so many attempts to contact them about one slamming the company in the Times’ business pages (links within excerpt added by me):

The Clintons’ role in the shareholder suit has been largely overlooked even as the presidential race has heated up. The Deal, a business publication, said in a February article (link is to a search result; viewing article requires paid subscription. — Ed.) about infoUSA that the lawsuit’s references to an unnamed “former high-ranking government official and his wife” appeared to describe Mr. and Mrs. Clinton.

Neither aides to the Clintons nor infoUSA disputed that the complaint referred to the Clintons.

….. The lawsuit says Mr. Clinton signed a consulting agreement in April 2002 to “provide confidential advice and counsel to the chairman and C.E.O. of the company for the purpose of strategic growth and business development.” InfoUSA made $2.1 million in quarterly payments to Mr. Clinton from July 2003 to April 2005, and in October 2005 entered into a new three-year agreement to pay him $1.2 million. It also gave him an option to buy 100,000 shares of infoUSA stock, with no expiration date (InfoUSA shares closed Friday at $10.50. — Ed.).

The complaint asserts that the contracts with Mr. Clinton are “extremely vague” to the point of being wasteful.

….. (infoUSA CFO and 2002 Nebraska gubernatorial candidate Stormy) Dean said Mr. Clinton had no role in infoUSA’s data collection and distribution business, which was criticized by the authorities in Iowa who uncovered the questionable sales of call lists during an investigation of unscrupulous telemarketers in 2005.

The Times, as is its habit with Democrats in potentially damaging stories, did not name Mr. Dean’s party affiliation.

It is odd indeed that Mr. Dean claimed no Bill Clinton connection to infoUSA’s so-called “data collection and distribution business,” and that the Times tried to limit its perceived size by focusing on activities in one state.

In fact, until late last year, all of infoUSA’s business was “data collection and distribution.” The company describes itself as follows:

(at page 1 of its most recent 10-K annual report) “info USA Inc. ….. is a leading provider of sales leads, mailing lists, direct marketing, database marketing, e-mail marketing and market research solutions to help our clients grow their sales and increase their profits.”

(from Page 72 of the 10-K) “The info USA Group licenses its sales leads, mailing lists, databases, and other database marketing services to small and medium size businesses, entrepreneurs, professionals, and sales executives. This segment also includes the sale of subscription based products primarily from the Internet.”

The Donnelley Group provides licensing of the info USA database, direct marketing services, database marketing services, e-mail marketing services, list brokerage and list management services, and online interactive marketing services to large businesses, i.e. businesses with 1,000 or more employees.

The Research Group was added in 2006 as a result of the acquisition of Opinion Research Corporation, on December 4, 2006. Opinion Research Corporation is a diversified market research company with two principal divisions. These divisions consist of Opinion Research and Macro International.”

If former president Clinton really had no role in infoUSA’s “data collection and distribution business,” then it would appear that, until late last year, he should have had no role in InfoUSA at all.

A separate question that warrants a thorough vetting is why InfoUSA, led by “Friend of Bill” Gupta, went out and bought Opinion Research Corporation (ORC), a leading polling firm with a large government and business consulting subsidiary.

On January 12, 2007, a little more than a month after infoUSA acquired ORC, it established a very interesting relationship (link is to a PDF):

Opinion Research Corporation will become CNN’s new polling partner as the network moves toward the 2008 elections. Beginning in 2007, polls released by the network will be identified as CNN/Opinion Research Corporation surveys.

It’s curious indeed that the Times could spend over 1,600 words covering the Clintons and InfoUSA without ever getting around to the possibility that Clinton-friendly CNN and its new partner appear to have the opportunity, and motivation, for manipulating its polling topics and results.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

______________________________________

UPDATE: A DFU vid on the Clinton-CNN relationship is here at YouTube.

UPDATE 2: My comeback to a commenter at NewsBusters who pointed to InfoUSA’s response –

The release has at least two examples of Clintonian parsing I found without even breaking a sweat:

– a Clintonian tense change — “infoUSA has never characterized individuals on lists as ‘gullible.’ Nor does infoUSA compile lists entitled ‘Elderly Opportunity Seekers,’ ‘Suffering Seniors,’ or ‘Oldies But Goodies.’” Remember that an army of lawyers reviewed this before it went out. So why the change to present tense? A careful reader takes this as an admission that they HAVE compiled lists with the aforementioned names in the past.

- Clintonian misdirection — “infoUSA’s database contains several entries for a Des Moines resident named Richard Guthrie (possibly the gentleman featured in the article) but none of those entries contain age information.” They don’t have to contain age info if there are indications that he’s a WWII vet and that he is single (i.e., more vulnerable).

Nice try. No sale.

UPDATE 3, May 30: Horizonr at MyDD definitely gets to the fundamental question –

What does Hillary Clinton’s silence in all this say about her respect for democracy and her worthiness for the White House?