Biden lays out an ambitious agenda for a more activist government, strays from the facts with some assertions

Attendance in the House chamber was limited due to the pandemic. (Photo by Doug Mills, The New York Times)

"President Biden laid out an ambitious agenda on Wednesday night to rewrite the American social compact by vastly expanding family leave, child care, health care, preschool and college education for millions of people to be financed with increased taxes on the wealthiest earners," Peter Baker reports for The New York Times. "The succession of costly proposals amounts to a risky gamble that a country deeply polarized along ideological and cultural lines is ready for a more activist government."

Biden's speech to a limited-attendance joint session of Congress had a couple of lines aimed at rural voters, saying his infrastructure plan "creates jobs, connecting every American with high-speed internet including the 35 percent of rural America that still doesn't have it," and would pay farmers for helping thwart climate change.

The speech also included some misleading claims, according to fact-checkers. One came early: "The economy created more than 1,300,000 new jobs in 100 days. More new jobs in the first 100 days than any president on record." That's misleading, the Times' Jeanna Smialek wrote:

"That is extremely fast by historical norms, but it’s also a function of the state of the economy. About 8.4 million jobs are still missing compared to the employment level before the pandemic started to weigh on the economy in March 2020. Most people who lost jobs in the downturn are expected to come back fairly quickly as reopening gets underway, because they presumably want to work, but have been thrown out of jobs by state and local lockdowns. It doesn’t make sense for Mr. Biden to seemingly take credit for the rapid rebound in his bragging point, because it is partly or mostly the result of economic reopening."

Biden also claimed that “a broad consensus of economists, left, right, center . . . agree that what I’m proposing will help create millions of jobs and generate historic economic growth.” Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, giving the Republican response, contradicted him, saying unspecified "experts" say the plan would lower the average wage and shrink the economy. Scott appeared to be referring to projections by The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

A more optimistic projection came from Moody's Investors Service, which Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post cited: "The infrastructure plan would especially spur job growth in 2024 and 2025, after a slight decline in jobs because of the impact of Biden’s proposed tax increases to fund the plan," according to Moody's. The Associated Press said Biden was "glossing over the naysayers."

Biden made many ad libs to his prepared text, some of which strayed from the facts. Mentioning the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants, he said "the vast majority [are] overstaying visas."  There is no official count, but Daniel Dale of CNN said that was true of the newly undocumented until 2017, and AP cited an expert who figures the overstay share in 2018 was 46 percent, "not a majority, let alone a 'vast majority'."

Finally, two style points, perhaps also attributable to ad libs: Biden asked Congress to send him a bill "which I will gladly, anxiously sign," and said the U.S. is "the most unique idea in history." First, if he was glad, he wouldn't be anxious; what he surely meant was "eager." It's a common mistake.

Also common, but more irritating to those of us who put a premium on clarity of language, was his misuse of "unique," which should take no modifiers of degree. Otherwise, we lose a unique word, the only one that means "one of a kind." We need that word. Let's treat it with respect and accuracy.

An Oxford comma and an oxymoron walk into a bar . . .

Many of us who deal with words for a living will get smiles from this clever list of grammar-and-style quips modeled on an old joke format. Jim Cook, former editor of The Parsons Sun in Kansas, posted it on Facebook. Retired Associated Press photographer Cliff Schiappa sent it to Connecting, a daily email newsleter for AP retirees and friends, saying of Cook, "I have no idea if he created it, or just forwarded it, but it sure is fun!" Yes, and it would be a good handout for journalism classes.

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television getting drunk and smoking cigars.
• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.
• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.
• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.
• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”
• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.
• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.
• A question mark walks into a bar?
• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.
• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."
• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.
• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.
• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.
• A synonym strolls into a tavern.
• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.
• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.
• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.
• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.
• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.
• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.
• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.
• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.
• A dyslexic walks into a bra.
• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.
• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.
• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.
• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

From rural schools to U.S. bureaucrats, interviews are chilled by 'minders' from official PR offices

The Kentucky New Era in Hopkinsville had a great community story Aug. 30 by Zirconia Alleyne about a fifth-grade teacher who held a mock funeral to bury bad writing habits, allowing students to rip up index cards with improper sentence structures and words like "ain't" and "gonna" and put the papers in graves, hoping to forever say goodbye to bad grammar. (Alleyne photo: Students burying bad grammar)

But just getting stories like this one from the county school system have been an uphill battle for the 10,000-circulation daily newspaper. In an editorial, opinion writer Jennifer Brown wrote: "It has become almost impossible to tell these kinds of stories from the Christian County Public Schools. Over the past couple of years, the central office has insisted that the district’s community relations director be present for all interviews between a New Era reporter and a school employee. Over and over, we’ve been told it is the district’s 'procedure.'

"We want to get along, but district administrators fail to understand that using a media handler puts a chill on the natural conversation that should happen between a news reporter and a story subject. Although it might not be intentional, there is stiffness to an interview that is observed by a public relations employee."

Brown points to the recent Society of Professional Journalists convention, where "Sonny Albarado, projects editor for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and the outgoing SPJ president, spoke about 'roadblocks' journalists encounter when they are trying to gather information for the public," Brown writes. Albarado said, “There’s … the pernicious practice at all levels of government of cutting off journalists’ access to public officials and agency experts by forcing all queries to go through a public affairs officer or public information officer. And, of course, the PAO has to monitor the interview, if by chance you are granted an audience. This further chills the prospects for candid conversation and an informed citizenry.”

Incoming SPJ president David Cuillier, journalism-school director at the University of Arizona, "said he’ll be advocating this year for the First Amendment, press rights and freedom of information," Brown reports. Cuillier said in a speech: “I’m also going to push back against excessive controls by government to manage the message, manage reporters." (Read more)