Sure there’s bad news out there if you want it. Yes, tax day was last week, trillions of new taxes are on the way, some of the Obamanites are pushing for a VAT in addition to the income tax, enormous deficits are predicted for at least a decade and our national debt is sky high.

But my advice to you is not to start drinking heavliy. You don’t even need to hide all the sharp objects in your house. I have good news! Americans’ faith in government is reaching an all time low. More people want less government. We are winning. Just ask the Pew Research Center:

By almost every conceivable measure Americans are less positive and more critical of government these days…

Rather than an activist government to deal with the nation’s top problems, the public now wants government reformed and growing numbers want its power curtailed. With the exception of greater regulation of major financial institutions, there is less of an appetite for government solutions to the nation’s problems — including more government control over the economy — than there was when Barack Obama first took office…

Just 22% say they can trust the government in Washington almost always or most of the time, among the lowest measures in half a century…

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Admittedly, Media Matters doesn’t have a deep well of credibility, but even I was shocked by the sloppiness of this hack-attack yesterday. Their headline:

Nate Silver takes the Hot Air out of Cato’s stimulus attack

And opening line:

Right-wing blogger Allahpundit put some Hot Air behind a piece of Cato Institute research that sought to attack stimulus spending as unfairly tilted in favor of Democratic congressional districts.

Except, you know, it wasn’t a Cato study. It was a Mercatus Center study. If Media Matters had even bothered to look at the actual study, pausing just a few moments from launching their attack, they would have seen that. Here is the study, technically a ‘working paper,’ but the title page is very clear, Mercatus Center: George Mason University.

Media Matters also identifies the study’s author, Big Government Contributor Veronique de Rugy, as a “Cato Scholar.” But, their own link for de Rugy makes it clear that she is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center and used to work at Cato. AKA, in the past. Does Media Matters even follow their own links?

Sure, these may seem like minor points, but getting obvious facts so completely wrong is indicative of the drive-by, hit-and-run style of analysis employed by Media Matters.

There is, actually, a much more substantial error on their part.

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