Crossposted with the Center for American Progress. With Mickey Ehrlich
Last week the new jobs report showed that the unemployment rate had fallen by 0.2 percent in the month of November. The number remained in double-digits, but CNBC's Trish Regan was particularly excited. It prompted her question: "Do we really need more stimulus given that we seem to be very much on the road to recovery? Why spend any more money? We haven't spent all the stimulus money thus far, why not maybe hang on to that?"
It was a question on the minds of many conservatives. On Monday, an editorial in The Wall Street Journal argued against reallocation of TARP funds for further stimulus. The editors declared the stimulus a failure, advising, "The best stimulus now would be for Congress to stop scaring private-sector job creators away by promising to help them. Just do nothing at all."
Hosts at CNBC and the editorial pages of WSJ have been on the same page, metaphorically speaking, in their unwavering criticism of February's stimulus spending. This despite the fact that the reporting in that respected newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, has more than once demonstrated the contrary.
You can read the rest of Eric Alterman and Mickey Ehrlich's analysis in their recent article, "Think Again: Conservatives Turn to CNBC and the WSJ for Stimulating Propaganda"
Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College. He is also a Nation columnist and a professor of journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. His seventh book, Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Most Important Ideals, was recently published in paperback. He occasionally blogs at http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation and is a regular contributor to The Daily Beast.
Mickey Ehrlich is a freelance writer based in New York.