Topic: Media Research Center
One of the things the Media Research Center loves to do when talking down the economy for partisan gain is to call on economists to repeat those right-wing talking points without explaining that they are also partisan actors as evidenced by their employment with right-wing think tanks. Joseph Vazquez dutifully did just that in an Aug. 24 post:
The Washington Post’s third-rate “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler butchered the facts when he claimed that the sky-high inflation brought on by Bidenomics barely made a dent in Americans’ spending power. Economists interviewed by MRC Business were having none of it.
Kessler went after presidential candidate Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) for his nuanced assertion during the GOP presidential primary debate that the average American family has lost “$10,000 of spending power” in President Joe Biden’s economy. “This seems wildly overstated,” objected Kessler. He then attributed Scott’s argument to an analysis by Heritage Foundation Research Fellow EJ Antoni, estimating that American families have lost roughly $7,000 in spending power since Biden first took office. Without being specific, Kessler vaguely pointed to some string of “economists we contacted [who] were dubious about the math, which relied on a change in purchasing power and a change in borrowing power.” But Kessler’s true-to-form retort to protect Biden would be fallacy-riddled and devoid of context that would actually blow up his argument.
MRC Business reached out to Antoni, who, in his response, didn’t mince words about Kessler’s shoddy argument. Kessler’s assessment of the numbers is “just flat-out wrong,” rebuked Antoni. Kessler “should know better,” Antoni reproached. “I literally explained [my calculations] to him both on the phone and via email in a previous conversation. I explained how these figures are actually calculated.”
[...]
Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Brian Riedl was blunt in comments to MRC Business that Scott was correct in his assessment and Kessler was wrong:
I understood Sen. Scott to suggest that inflation has cost the typical household roughly $10,000 in higher prices over the past two years. Using the economist rule of thumb that each 1% of higher inflation costs the typical household $650 annually (which renews the next year as prices remain elevated) produces a figure of roughly $10,000 in higher prices (compared to under the typical 2% inflation) since Biden took office. Sen. Scott is correct,[emphasis added].
Vazquez faild to disclose ythat both the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute are both right-wing institutions whose paid economists would be expected to follow right-wing talking points.
Vazquez pulled the same stunt again -- using one of those very same economists -- in a Sept. 19 post:
Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist Will Bunch gaslit the American public in an outrageous full-throated defense of “Bidenomics.”
Bunch’s Sept. 14 column headline speaks for itself: “The problem with ‘Bidenomics’? It didn’t go far enough.” The columnist doubled down on his absurd logic in the sub-headline: “New census data shows how ‘Bidenomics’ was helping America's working class and poor — until a key anti-poverty program was killed.” Economists interviewed by MRC Business showed why the argument was nonsense.
[...]
“If [not expanding the Child Tax Credit] were the only reason [for the increased poverty rate], then poverty rates would’ve simply returned to the level they were at before Biden’s expanded child tax credit,”Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni told MRC. “Instead, poverty rates greatly increased. What changed was inflation.”
Antoni ripped Bunch for deceiving readers into believing that anything other than the inflation crisis was responsible for the spike in poverty:
[...]
Center for Freedom and Prosperity President Dan Mitchell pointed MRC Business to three analyses he conducted illustrating why Biden’s “per-child handouts” Bunch haphazardly celebrated were a textbook case of government stupidity, not benevolence. “The bottom line is that the United States already has a big problem with government dependency. Per-child handouts will make a bad situation even worse,” Mitchell wrote in a June 27, 2021 blog post. Mitchell also directed MRC Business to an X post by American Enterprise Institute Center on Opportunity and Social Mobility Director Scott Winship<, who directly addressed the propaganda Bunch was pushing: “You'd be wrong if you think the expiration of the expanded CTC was the most important factor in raising SPM child poverty or if you think child poverty would have fallen had it not expired.”
The Center for Freedom and Prosperity is also a right-wing group, which Vazquez failed to disclose. He also included a quot from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which of course is also right-wing -- and whose political slant went undisclosed.
Tom Olohan touted another right-wing economist repeating right-wing talking points in an Oct. 30 post:
Economist Stephen Moore pointed out Monday that despite government subsidies and companies pushing electric vehicles (EVs), Americans are rejecting them.
Moore told Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney on the Oct. 30 edition of Varney & Co. that extremely generous federal and state subsidies for electric cars have not been enough to push Americans towards them, simply because “car buyers do not want” electric vehicles. After mentioning that only 10% of cars being sold “off of lots” are electric vehicles, Moore said, “I’ve talked to dealers around the country, auto dealers, and they are telling me they have lots full of EVs, Stuart, and people come in and they say, ‘Wait a minute, I want to buy a gas car where are they?’ ‘Oh we don’t have many of those, but are you interested in this EV over here?’ And people say, ‘No, I don't want it.’”
As usual, Olohan didn't disclose Moore's partisan bias. Instead, he hyped how Moore used a separate column to "compare[] the present push to electric vehicles to the disastrous launch of the Ford Edsel Sedan." Olohan didn't bother fact-check Moore, otherwise he would have known Moore got basic facts wrong, starting with the name "Ford Edsel sedan." In fact, Edsel was a separate nameplate Ford tried to launch in the late 1950s; there was never anything called a "Ford Edsel," and the nameplate offered a full range of vehicles, not just sedans. In the column Olohan referenced, Moore falsely claimed only 10,000 Edsels were sold; in fact, about 116,000 were sold over the three years the nameplate existed. Moore also blamed Edsel's failure on company executives not "bother[ing] to ask car buyers what THEY thought of the new car"; more prominent factors include the fact that the cars were overhyped prior to launch, Edsel's place in Ford's brand hierarchy was not well defined, and the brand was introduced during a recession at a time the U.S. auto market was undergoing a brand shakeout.
Vazquez trotted out Antoni again in a Dec. 13 post for more recitation of talking points:
There seems to be no end in sight for the media gaslighting on President Joe Biden’s abysmal economy. One economist has had it.
Business Insider had the audacity to publish an asinine piece of economic propaganda Dec. 3 that reeked of a public relations stunt by Biden’s press team: “After 3 years of pain, America has finally achieved economic nirvana.” The author, Renaissance Macro Research Head of Economics Neil Dutta, celebrated how supposedly “[t]he signs of a well-balanced economy are everywhere.” He continued: “Current economic data is consistent with a soft landing for the economy — a situation in which inflation cools without causing a recession or sudden spike in unemployment.”
But Heritage Foundation Public Finance Economist EJ Antoni laid waste to Dutta’s argument in an exclusive interview with MRC Business: “Articles like that can only be written by those who are woefully ignorant of the data at every level.”
Antoni was right on target.
“The most obvious example” of Dutta’s illusory “nirvana” was “the slowdown in inflation,” cherry-picking how core consumer prices — which excludes food and energy — allegedly rose at “an annualized rate of 2.8 percent since June.” Of course, nowhere did Dutta mention that prices are still up 17.6 percent since Biden took office.
It's ironic that Vazquez called Dutta's piece "economic propaganda" -- even though he and Antoni are being paid to push their own economic propaganda that is deliberately designed to hurt President Biden's chances of re-election.
In none of these posts were the targets of the MRC and its favored economists given an opportunity to respond to their criticism.
