Media Mythbusters Blog

Cross-posted from Wizbang!

By: Lorie Byrd

In my column at Townhall this week (read it all here) I look at some of the reasons behind President Obama’s strategy for talking the economy down prior to passage of the “stimulus” bill and then back up last week.

“Spendulus,” “Porkulus,” and “the Generational Theft Act of 2009″ are all nicknames some have given to the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009″ signed into law by President Obama last month. In light of Obama’s most recent statements about the economy an even more accurate moniker might be “Scamulus” considering how obvious it now is that everything leading up to passage of the bill was a master con perpetrated on American taxpayers. The con is not over either. We have simply entered the next phase.

“Scamulus” had to be passed in a big hurry. The rush was such that not only did Democrats and Obama break their pledge to allow for a 48 hour review period prior to the vote, but not even 24 hours were provided to read the 1400-plus page bill. The urgency of the bill, according to President Obama, was because America was facing an “economic crisis as deep and as dire as the Great Depression” and we could not afford to wait even 48 hours because it might turn into a “crisis that at some point we may be unable to reverse.”
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Obama has also talked the economy down to the point that just about any future improvement will look like significant recovery by comparison and be hailed as the product of the miraculous Obamessiah’s policies. The media that downplayed, and sometimes just completely ignored, good economic news during the Bush years, will highlight each and every example of it over the next few years. It has already begun.

Over the weekend I heard the following statement from Lawrence Summers reported as an indication that the President’s policies are working and that his new found optimism is valid: “It is surely too early to gauge the broader economic impact of the President’s program. But it is modestly encouraging that since it began to take shape, consumer spending in the US, which was collapsing during the holiday season, appears, according to a number of indicators, to have stabilized.” As I cited earlier, at least one economic indicator, retail sales, was up in January for the first time in seven months indicating the collapse of consumer spending during the holiday season was already recovering in January, not only before passage of the major component of “the President’s program” in mid February, but for the most part before Obama was even sworn into office. The news report on the Summers statement I heard made no mention of the January retail sales numbers. Expect each and every positive bit of economic news to be attributed to the President’s plan, regardless of whether or not it is even possible for it to be related.

Today in the news there is another reason the scam stimulus bill had to be rushed — I can’t find a link yet, but it was just reported on Fox News that today the Commerce Department reports an unexpected jump in new housing projects for the month of February. Construction of new homes and apartments jumped more than 22 percent since January. Consider how much more difficult it might have been to sell his 800 billion dollar bill if he had waited until this news was out. It would have been a little bit harder to sell the doom and gloom scare pitch with good news out there to report. It might have occurred to people that the economy would recover even without a big government takeover of more of the nation’s economy.

Update: Here is a link to the new home numbers (courtesy of Hugh).