Someone forgot to tell the Wall Street Journal’s Kelly Evans and Justin Lahart, carried here at the Arizona Republic, that they’re supposed to portray the economy in a bad light whenever and wherever possible. I’ll get to the pair’s report later.

That “bad light” directive seems seared into the minds of the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger and his AP colleagues, as they continue to “cling to recession,” and attempt to convince consumers and businesses that if perchance we’re not already in one, it’s just around the bend.

The AP’s persistence has borne dreadful fruit. Relentlessly downbeat reporting during at least the past six years by the wire service’s business reporters — who largely determine what most Americans see, hear, and read about the economy — is a big reason, if not the most important reason, why most Americans, as seen in the latest consumer confidence report, have a negative economic outlook and are convinced that we are in a recession.

Friday, Crutsinger worked mightily to take the lemonade that was the good housing starts report and turn it into lemons:

Construction of new homes increased by the biggest percentage in more than two years in April, a rare spot of good news amid the worst downturn in housing in more than two decades.

Analysts, however, played down the increase, noting that all the strength came from the volatile apartment sector. They said the painful housing slump is far from over as a record flood of foreclosures continues to add to the sizable stockpile of unsold homes.

….. The correction has proven to be a serious drag on the overall economy, raising worries that the country could be in danger of falling into a recession.

A second report yesterday showed that consumer confidence as measured by the University of Michigan/Reuters survey fell to a 28-year low of 59.5 in early May, down from 62.6 in April. The drop was blamed in part on rising concerns about higher gas and food prices.

Well, at least the AP reporter seemed to be acknowledging that we’re not currently in a recession.

But earlier today, in a story about a speech by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Crutsinger found some curiously unnamed others to do it for him:

Treasury secretary says markets are calmer now

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday that financial markets are “considerably calmer” now than they were two months ago. He predicted the economy will be rebounding by the second half of this year.

The economy has been pushed to the brink of a recession by a prolonged housing slump, a credit crisis, soaring energy prices and more than a quarter-million job layoffs over the past four months.

In his remarks, Paulson never used the word recession, although many private economists believe the country is in one.

But he did forecast that the stimulus checks going to 130 million households would help spur growth in the second half of the year.

Part of the problem with Crutsinger, AP’s business writers, and others is that they really don’t seem to understand that no one can show that “a quarter-million job layoffs” have occurred (starting point for obtaining the data below is here):

What HAS occurred is that total employment in the economy on a seasonally adjusted basis has gone down by 260,000 so far this year. But on the ground in the past four months, larger than usual job reductions in January, many of which represent seasonal workers leaving the workforce, were followed by smaller than usual job increases in February, March, and April. The net change is a pretty big negative number (-1,209,000), and does not compare well to the same months in the three preceding years. No one around here is claiming that the employment situation is wonderful, because it isn’t.

But no one, not even AP business reporters, can tell whether how much of these changes represent layoffs, voluntary terminations, firings for cause, retirements, or merely returning home after working the Christmas season or the post-Christmas retail closing season. Crutsinger’s characterization of what has occurred as “a quarter-million layoffs” (or “pink slips,” a favorite term of AP’s Jeannine Aversa) makes it look as if one can identify each person in the reported number by name. These and similar renderings by other AP business reporters during the past few months are totally disconnected from reality.

Clearly, we aren’t getting enough of the balanced output exemplified in the report by the WSJ’s Evans and Lahart.

In fact, given what we’ve been fed for so long by AP, what the pair wrote will come as a shock to some (original was published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal; original title was “Recession? Not So Fast, Say Some”; link may require paid subscription; bolds are mine):

As recession fails to materialize, economists revise predictions

A funny thing happened to the economy on its way to recession: It has taken a detour.

That, at least, is the view of a growing number of economists, including some who not long ago were saying a recession was all but inevitable.

They note that stock and credit markets have steadily improved since the Federal Reserve intervened to keep Bear Stearns Cos. from bankruptcy in early March, while a series of economic reports have been stronger than expected.

….. “A couple months ago it seemed like we were on the abyss,” said Jay Bryson, global economist with Wachovia Corp., referring to the seizing up of credit markets and the collapse of Bear Stearns. “Things have changed. . . . The numbers we’ve seen recently haven’t been as bad as we were led to believe just a few months ago.”

….. Job losses, meanwhile, have been less severe than they usually are in recessions. Many economists think the government’s earliest estimate of first-quarter GDP growth – 0.6 percent – will be revised upward. After reviewing the retail-sales data, economists at Global Insight, a Waltham, Mass.-based forecasting firm, predicted the government would increase its assessment of GDP growth in the first quarter to 1 percent at an annual rate. They forecast continued growth in consumer spending, partly because of tax rebates and stimulus checks.

In February, Global Insight joined Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Merrill Lynch in declaring the U.S. to be in recession. Now, Global Insight’s Brian Bethune says that while the firm is still forecasting a recession, “it’s conceivable we could avoid it” …..

When are the luminaries just cited, who just a few months ago said that a recession had already begun, going to say, “We were wrong. We are sorry”? And how could the crack AP business reporting corps not have picked up on the change of sentiment reported by Evans and LaHart?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

You have to wonder how this CNN headline and story, which includes a shocking statistic, about the earthquake in China got out (bold is mine):

Parents’ losses compounded by China’s one-child policy

Li Yunxia wipes away tears as rescue crews dig through the ruins of a kindergarten class that has buried her only child — a 5-year-old boy.

Other parents wail as soldiers in blue masks trudge through the mud, hauling bodies from the rubble on stretchers.

“Children were screaming, but I couldn’t hear my son’s voice,” she says, sobbing.

This grim ritual repeated itself Thursday across southwestern China, as thousands of mothers and fathers await news about their sons and daughters.

….. The grief is compounded in many cases by a Chinese policy that limits most couples to one child, a measure meant to control explosive population growth.

As a result of the one-child policy, the quake — already responsible for at least 15,000 deaths — is producing another tragic aftershock:

Not only must thousands of parents suddenly cope with the loss of a child, but many must cope with the loss of their only child.

China’s population minister recently praised the one-child rule, which dates to 1979, saying it has prevented 400 million children from being born.

….. That reality has cast parents like Li into an agonizing limbo — waiting to discover whether their only child is alive or dead.

Joe Stalin, himself responsible for the deaths of countless millions (literally true; the total has been best-guesstimated at between 20 million and 30 million), once said that “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” What does that make 400 million? It would appear that at least 300 million of those “prevented” children were victims of abortion; this Abortion Facts link reports that over 10 million abortions took place in China in just one of the 29 years since the one-child policy took effect.

Though I suppose the point might be made, I’m not going to try to argue that losing “only” one child of several would make parents’ grief more manageable. I just find it very interesting, given the relative pass the US media has given Communist China during its government-imposed 29-year “one-child” horror, that this story took the angle that it did — and that it got past its editors.

It will be very interesting to see how long this Kyung Lah’s CNN dispatch remains available. Saving it to the hard drive might be advisable.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Note: This column was originally posted at Pajamas Media Thursday under the title “Federal Budget Woes: It’s the Spending, Stupid!”

___________________________________________

The April Monthly Treasury Statement issued by Uncle Sam on Monday should put to rest the idea that the government is not getting enough in “revenues” (i.e., taxes) to get by.

Contrary to the expectations of many, including myself, that report, along with the April 30 Daily Treasury Statement that preceded it, showed that there is still a bit of life left in George Bush’s supply-side tax cuts:

After April 2007’s record collections of $383.6 billion, which broke the previous one-month record set in April 2001 by over 15%, I expected the sluggish economy’s mediocre 0.6% growth in each of the past two quarters to cause April 2008’s receipts to come in lower. Surprise.

What is especially heartening in the table above is the large increase in not-withheld receipts. As I noted at my home blog on April 29 when it first became clear that a new receipts record was on the horizon (bold is mine):

The unexpected increase in this not-withheld category consists mostly of final payments that accompany individual 1040s for 2007, plus first-quarter 2008 estimated payments. The increase may not only reflect that entrepreneurs and the self-employed had pretty decent years in 2007, but that many of them are thinking, in the face of relentless media harping to the contrary, that 2008 will be at least as profitable. Estimated payments are supposed to be 25% of last year’s total tax bill, unless the taxpayer figures that the current year’s tax bill will be lower, in which case they can pay in less. I would think that anyone who could defensibly pay in less, would pay in less.

If these not-withheld receipts continue to soar in comparison to previous years, we may see further overall increases in collections that outpace inflation in the next few months. Imagine that.

The record-breaking news from the Treasury also leads to a pretty good question relating to the overall economy: If things are so bad, why were April’s tax receipts, which include first-quarter 2008 estimated payments, so high?

In fact, as I pointed out last week, things aren’t so bad. They’re actually improving, and the media’s seemingly fond wish for a recession may go ungranted. Last week, the Institute for Supply Management’s Spring 2008 Semiannual Economic Forecast predicted annualized 1% growth in manufacturing and 2.7% growth in services, which includes the troubled housing and financial services sectors, during the rest of the year. On a weighted-average basis (15% manufacturing, 85% services), that’s 2.4% — not great, but certainly not recessionary.

Looking back, the increases in collections during the past four years have been nothing short of remarkable:

As was the case in the 1920s with Coolidge, the 1960s with Kennedy, the 1980s with Reagan, and 1997 with the Clinton capital-gains tax cut, Bush’s lower tax rates and investment-related tax cuts have led to impressive increases in money coming into the government. Supply-side economics’ naysayers have once again been shown to be wrong.

Supply-side econ works in the opposite direction too. If taxes are allowed to return to their pre-2003 levels over the next few years, as will be the case if Congress does not act, Treasury collections will likely decline, or will at least trail inflation significantly. One could and should argue that in addition to extending the existing tax system — the one the markets have gotten used to for the past six years — the next president should push to enact another business-stimulating, collection-increasing tax cut. Hong Kong, Ireland, Iceland, and Australia, as well as Reagan during the 1980s, have all shown that multiple supply-side cuts continue to lead to increased collections.

Unfortunately, as has been the case during almost all of the current fiscal year and most of the past seven years, April’s great collections news was more than negated by out-of-control spending:

This is a reversal of what had been an unusually good fiscal 2007, where spending only grew 2.8% (last item at link), the lowest in many, many years. Last year’s result occurred because a vulnerable Republican Congress finally got spending religion when it put together the fiscal 2007 budget. Too bad for them that it was too little and too late to save them from losing control of both chambers in the November 2006 elections.

Fiscal 2008 thus far represents the first output of the Pelosi-Reid Congress, which deserves at least half the blame for its dismal result (President Bush gets the rest). Even before considering the “stimulus” checks that are being mailed this month, 7%-plus spending increases with revenues going up at a much slower rate is an unsustainable situation. Yet all three remaining presidential candidates are proposing huge spending initiatives. While Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s proposals are better known, John McCain’s plans for a massive conversion to a greener economy — in the name of global warming that hasn’t been happening for about ten years — will create a bureaucratic monster that will demand whatever money is necessary to carry out its goals. And it won’t be cheap.

Will anyone tell the candidates that we can’t afford their grandiose plans?

From Chesterfield, Missouri:

Saturday, May. 10 2008

Chesterfield — Church bells tolled in the distance as an unintentional but perhaps fitting signal just before Terry Marcrum climbed out of a wheelchair Friday and took slow, deliberate steps back toward his old life.

Some say his walking, his very survival, is a miracle.

Staff at St. John’s Mercy Rehabilitation Hospital in Chesterfield offered hugs, and fellow patients wiped away tears, as they said good-bye to Marcrum, a mail carrier who survived a gunshot to the head and became an inspiration for them.

Returning home for a long recovery, Marcrum, 44, said he carries no anger toward the stranger who shot him with no explanation April 14 on his postal route in St. Louis.

“I thank God I’m alive everyday,” Marcrum said. “It was like I was given a second chance at life.”

He already has been putting that second chance to good use.

In 2½ weeks at the rehab center, he encouraged other patients to push against obstacles, and impressed his doctors and physical therapists.

“He makes so many people feel good,” said David Poertner, 24, of Valley Park, who came to the rehabilitation center depressed that back problems might cost him the ability to walk. “I really felt like my life was over. The doctors told me I was paralyzed. Terry told me I wasn’t. He believed in me.”

Marcrum, 44, talked to reporters Friday with slow, broken speech. On instructions from prosecutors, he avoided discussing the shooting. He focused instead on his recovery, and gratitude.

“I just wanted to thank everybody for the support they have given me,” he said. “Their prayers and well wishes — it’s been overwhelming.”

Marcrum said that since moving from a hospital to rehab on April 22, he had to learn to speak again and to regain his balance. He said his goal is to encourage others through similar struggles.

He recalled joking one day with a fellow patient who was so self-conscious about a speech problem that she would avoid talking to anyone. “I asked her if I smelled or something,” Marcrum remembered. “Ever since, I couldn’t get her to shut up.”

THE BEST MAN

Another goal, achieved, was to be released in time to be best man at his brother Tony’s wedding today in St. Louis County.

“He’s always kind of been sunny-side up,” said another brother, Jerry Marcrum. “To see him here today is a miracle. I told him God is on his side.”

Go here for the rest of the story.