-By Warner Todd Huston
By all accounts the Interstate 5 bridge collapse in Washington State was a result of an over sized truck load as opposed to “failing infrastructure.” But a plea for greater federal spending figured prominently in many reports on the accident nonetheless.
Naturally, many on the left stampeded immediately to decrying “austerity,” or accused the Republicans of “endangering lives” by opposing big government, while still others blamed the sequester as news of the collapse spread.
In the progressive media, infrastructure also featured prominently in coverage.
CNN, for instance, injected Obama’s call for higher spending in its piece. USA Today also claimed that the bridge collapse would “raise questions about the nation’s infrastructure.” Reuters focused on a call for “public officials to invest in infrastructure and upgrade bridges.” The Associated Press joined Reuters in that focus. And, not to be outdone, Bloomberg said, “The bridge’s collapse put a new focus on the nation’s failing infrastructure, an issue that President Barack Obama has highlighted in his second-term agenda.”
Sadly, the Voice of America also used the collapse as a means to talk about Obama’s spending wants.
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Washington Bridge Collapse Being Used to Push Big Government”
There has been much speculation in the media on why Obama’s current scandal of the IRS targeting conservative groups for attack didn’t come out last year when the initial flurry of reportage on the incident was seen. Well, The New York Times thinks it has the answer: it was Rush Limbaugh’s fault.
The Conservative Hispanic Society has joined the growing list of conservative groups that feel that they, too, were targeted by the Internal Revenue Service in its recent campaign of harassment. In a statement, CHS is “expressing outrage” over what it feels is Obama’s “infiltration of every aspect of our government.”
On Saturday the FBI arrested two-term Arkansas State Treasurer Martha Shoffner (D, Newport) on charges of “extortion under color of official right,” a violation of the Hobbs Act.
Yahoo, Inc. has announced that it has cleared the way to purchase the social website Tumblr for a cool $1.1 billion.
MSNBC’s Morning Joe host, Joe Scarborough, is nearly apoplectic over the recent IRS admission that it used the power of its office to intimidate conservative groups throughout Obama’s presidency. Not necessarily because the IRS was acting so poorly, but because the scandal hurts his anti-gun argument.
Square payment services is one of those new payment applications that merchants can put on a smart phone and, along with the plug-in hardware, is used like a credit card swipe machine to accept payments made by their customers. This month, however, Square has changed its user policy and is now prohibiting merchants from using the service to sell anything firearm related.
The story of the coming demise of Chinatown bus lines in New York City is a tale of multiple failures in both government and the media and shows that both have a bias against entrepreneurs that kills new, start up ideas with unfair regulations, faux public advocacy, and dismal reporting.
Upon coming to office, President Obama began using the obscure National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to give big payoffs to unions at the expense of business and to the detriment of our economic recovery but at last his incredible abuse of this agency is under scrutiny.
During the 2012 presidential campaign, many conservatives complained that the IRS was targeting them for harassment, some even claimed that Obama had an “enemies list.” During that time the progressive media complex ridiculed these claims but now the IRS itself has come forward to “
On May 10, a spokeswoman for the Internal Revenue Service admitted that over the last year–during the presidential election, at that–the agency had conducted “overzealous audits” of the tax-exempt status of dozens of conservative activists and Tea Party groups. Last year The New York Times dismissed claims that the IRS was abusing its powers but even with these new admissions by the IRS the Times is underplaying the facts.
Apparently, the haters at the AFL-CIO decided that military veterans shouldn’t be allowed to take jobs offered by Walmart.
Supermarket owner Rafael Cuellar from Passaic, NJ, reports that he had to spend $350,000 to install 69 surveillance cameras, recording devices, and video storage banks in order to stop fake “slip and fall” insurance claims against his store. It’s a cost that just adds to the cost of living for everyone and is a perfect example of the abuse of the legal system that we see every day with this avalanche of frivolous lawsuits.
MSNBC talker Toure thinks he has discovered a key security flaw in our nation’s policies and has suggested a solution. Poverty in the Muslim world, he says, is a key threat to U.S. security and to nullify that threat we should open the borders wide and let all Muslims come here to get jobs so that their poverty can be alleviated.
PepsiCo, Inc, owners of Mountain Dew soda, has pulled an online video ad after viewers complained of its use of racial stereotypes. The ad also seemed to be making light of violence toward women.
On the heels of reports that “half” the staffers at the L.A. Times would resign if the paper was sold to conservative billionaires the Koch brothers, the Newspaper Guild–Communications Workers of America, a journalist labor union, have issued a statement declaring the pair unfit to own a newspaper.
Citizen journalists in China have succeeded in getting a wasteful government official fired by reporting on a lavish party he threw paid for by government funds.
Lee Fang has cobbled together a new book ostensibly meant as a guide to things that conservative activists are doing for their cause and in his chapter on the Koch brothers he regurgitates dozens of un-sourced lies that have little basis in fact even as he presents them as fact.
Coming years late to the story, The New York Times finally took a look at the Pigford scandal that Andrew Breitbart, Lee Stranahan and the Breitbart team exposed starting in 2010. At last the story is making an appearance across the media.
National Public Radio recently aired a radio program focused on federal food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). NPR presented the assistance program as seemingly costless–in fact, said it was an economic boon to states–and also acted as both an advocate and salesman for SNAP. 