Life is difficult when you’re a cranky libertarian.
President Obama’s latest stimulus scam was just rejected by the Senate, so I went online to read about this rare bit of good news.
But my cheerful mood was undermined by a reprehensible bit of bias by the folks at Reuters. Read the first paragraph of the story.
The Senate defeated President Barack Obama’s job-creation package on Tuesday in a sign that Washington is likely too paralyzed to take major steps to spur hiring before the 2012 elections.
Two things jumped out at me. First, Reuters called Obama’s plan a “job-creation package.” An honest and fair news organization would have written something such as “…the President’s proposal, which the White House asserts will create jobs.”
I may have forgiven that first bit of bias. After all, reporters do face pressure to be concise and “job-creation package” certainly satisfies that criteria. Moreover, it’s not as if I was expecting them to choose “stimulus scam” as an option, even though it is equally concise.
But then the story says “Washington is likely too paralyzed to take major steps to spur hiring,” which clearly implies that approving Obama’s proposal would create jobs.
But if that was the case, then the 2009 so-called stimulus should have created jobs. Yet as these four charts illustrate, it was a total flop. Heck, it was worse than that. It led to job losses by increasing the burden of government.
Shame on Reuters.
