Okie Pundit

Not too long ago the Journal Record hired M. Scott Carter to report for them.  Carter is well known in Norman as a former writer for the Norman Transcript and as someone who heroically refused to allow any hint of objectivity to seep into his “news” stories.  Carter was so clearly proud of his liberal bias in reporting, it makes us wonder what the Journal Record was thinking when it hired him.  After all, the Journal Record is supposed to be an objective source for Oklahoma’s business and legal news, isn’t it?  Perhaps not.

Anyway, last week we were perusing the Journal Record when we came across Carter’s latest report on the state of Oklahoma’s supposedly no-longer-recession-proof economy.  Entitled “Oklahoma’s Recession-Proof Reputation Fizzles,” we expected to read an article about job losses and how businesses were shuttering or leaving the state and that the gross domestic product of the state had contracted at least two consecutive quarters, thereby technically leaving us in a recession.

“Remember that story in the national magazine about the Oklahoma economy being recession-proof?  Don’t believe it,” Carter writes. Carter then cites the looming $1.3 billion budget deficit as proof we’re now in a recession.

Read the entire thing.  There are several astonishing problems with Carter’s reporting and logic, not least of which is his singular reliance on former Democrat State Senator Cal Hobson as an economic expert.  First of all, no, I don’t remember that story from a national magazine about Oklahoma recession-proof because that story was never written.  And I’m sure Carter doesn’t remember it either. He’s just being inexcusably lazy.  The article he’s attempting to reference was in Forbes, entitled “America’s Recession-Proof Cities,” and it didn’t say Oklahoma was recession-proof; it said Oklahoma City was recession-proof.  Hence, the name of the article wasn’t “America’s Recession-Proof States.”

Second and most importantly, Carter’s logic is an excellent example of how Democrats and liberals conflate the health of government finances with the health of the economy.  For many of them, it’s the same because they desire to have government as the primary driver of economic production–an impossible goal learned poorly throughout history.  If the government doesn’t have enough money, it can’t prop up the economy with more government workers, entitlement programs, social programs, and tax giveaways.  Thus, because we’re facing a budget deficit of over $1 billion, a worrying sign to be sure, Carter believes the economy “has officially crashed and burned.”

By Carter’s and the Journal Record’s logic, the United States has been in an almost persistent state of economic crashing and burning due to our relatively constant budget deficit.  The reality is our budget deficit is more a function of our spending obligations than it is our economic health. Of course if our economy is doing well we’ll bring in more tax revenue, but it is also true that our economy could be growing at 10% annually and we could face a massive budget deficit because legislators have agreed to expand government spending obligations by 50%.  Alternatively, our economy could be growing at 10%, but if our tax revenue base is comprised solely on the revenues of a single industry, we may face the same budget problems.   In neither case is our economy “crashing and burning,” though if such deficit spending is constant it will ultimately lead to economic decline as government must suck more equity out of the productive private sector to pay for the unproductive public sector.

The Journal Record would have been better served if Carter had put a little more effort into his reporting and cited falling economic indicators or job losses (which haven’t been too bad in Oklahoma thus far) to show our economy is in trouble like most other states. But with the facts we have right now from the Commerce Department and the Labor Department, it is objectively impossible to make the case that Oklahoma’s economy is “crashing and burning.”  Carter is either economically illiterate or willfully lazy to conflate the government budget deficit with the state of the economy and he is being irresponsible as a reporter by using such sensational (false) language.  Alternatively, as an unabashed liberal, he could truly believe that one equals the other, which would just be sad.  Either excuse isn’t flattering for the Journal Record and its credibility as a source of news.

Tags: Journal Record, Liberal Economics, M Scott Carter