Media watch: Unemployment benefits for a million workers being cut

Unemployment insurance ends today for several distressed unemployed workers (about 10% of the unemployed will loose benefits, as reported by the NYTimes; see graph below). This was part of the bi-partisan fiscal deal that avoided another government shutdown and the debt-ceiling crisis to continue. The cuts are deep and the consequences will be significant, as noted by the EPI.

These news in and of itself are terrible, but not surprising. However, reading the NYTimes piece one cannot but notice that the reference to the EPI is preceded by the qualification that it is "a left-of-center" think tank, while the subsequent quote from the chief economist at JP-Morgan/Chase is hyphen free. Yep, JP-Morgan that has just settled to pay $13 billion for their fraudulent selling of mortgage bonds. No, JP-Morgan, contrary to EPI, is an uninterested observer of markets, or at least that seems to be the implication suggested by the NYTimes.

The same could be said about the quote of what Rand Paul told Fox News [“If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers. When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy;” yeah, because the problem is that those bums don't want to work and love handouts], i.e. no warning that Fox and Paul are part of the Lunatic Fringe right wing conservative movement. You either hyphenate everybody or you don't. But the NYTimes obviously thinks that workers and left of center groups are more dangerous. Oh well.