The Chronicle of Death

Here it is from the Guardian - 994 mass shootings in 1004 days.

This includes all incidents in which 4 or more people were shot, irrespective of whether there were any fatalities.

The link.

In Which Trump Proves My Fallibility

A few months back I predicted that by September Donald Trump would be the Herman Cain of the current Rethug presidential field - a quirky, mildly offensive, moderately amusing performance artist whose star quickly rises, then goes poof in the middle of the night. Well, we’re only 1/3 of the way through August and I have to admit I got this wrong. And not by a near miss, either. My prediction was the the very antithesis, the exact polar opposite of correct.

Draft dodger Trump broke St Ronnie’s 11th commandment by speaking ill of a fellow Rethug, and in the process dissed the military service and PoW status of one who in conservatard circles is considered to be a war hero. And his poll numbers went up.

Trump has made a series of blatantly stupid and gratuitously hateful statements that are either racist or misogynist. And each time his pole numbers went up.

Now, he has taken on Fox news - that bastion of right wing punditry and thought control - and Fox backed down.

Let me make this crystal clear: Trump feuded with the official propaganda arm of the Rethug party, and won!

Presumably it was H. L. Menken who said, ”"No one in this world, so far as I know - and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me - has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

Well it wasn’t my money on the line, but I certainly failed to underestimate the intelligence - or perhaps gullibility, or maybe the amorphous bitterness and self-defeating, wrong-headed bigotry and hatred of America’s plain citizens, those simple people of the earth, the common clay of the right wing - you know: morons.

___________________

h/t to SEK, who said:

"Now that Donald Trump and Roger Ailes have reconciled after a brutal 96-hour-long estrangement in which both sides said many things they lack the moral capacity to regret, the GOP presidential hopeful was free to appear on 'Fox & Friends' this morning to complain about, among other things, ISIS’s superior Internet connections."

Notes:

Menken

Draft dodger

Morons

Religion in the Modern World

This morning I had a tiny epiphany regarding the IOKIYAR [It’s OK if you're a Republican] cliche.  Of course, this is just tribalism - that much has always been obvious.  What struck me today is the connection of Tea Party Rethuglianism to Christian religious fundamentalism.

The basic concept of Christian fundamentalism is that once you accept Jesus as your personal savior, you’re in - you’re saved, you’re going to heaven: end of story.  They way in which you live your life - your sins vis-vis your good works - becomes irrelevant.

Implicit in this concept is the notion that Jesus will inform your life in such a way that you will then live it according to the ideals that Jesus preached constantly and exemplified continuously in his own life: love one another, take care of those in need, forgive, and don’t judge.

But we all know how that works out.  

Of course, the antitheses of all of these is greed and hatred. What I see among self-righteous, self-professing Christians in the pubic sphere is boundless greed, hatred on steroids, utter contempt for those in need, and harsh - indeed merciless - judgement for those who do not meet their approval, for whatever reason.

Then what I see among the Christian community at large [with the notable exception of the current Pope and his minions - but the fundamentalists don’t believe Catholics are real Christians anyway, so that doesn’t count for much] and most notably the Christian right, is agreement with and approval for every bit of this. But since they’re saved, it’s all good.  

So here’s the connection: when you’re in the tribe, whether it be the Christian or the Rethug Tea Party variety, anything you do is OK, because - well, just because.  And, to a large extent, these two tribes are really just one.

So now you see Donald Trump making stupidly outrageous comments on a wide variety of topics, and surging in the polls.  Because he is not only a Rethug, but playing to the ignorance and prejudice of a base which is largely the religious right.

The hypocrisy - it burns.

Republicans: All Wrong, All the Time, Pt. 12 - Taxes and Revenues

While mucking around in the archives, I somehow made this old post from 2/25/10 inaccessible.

So, I'm reposting it now, because it has important information.

________________________________________


 The liars at the Heritage Foundation will tell you that lowering taxes increases federal Revenues.

A New York Times article, Deficit Spending Can Help Republicans, by Daniel Altman, shows that old, wrong assumptions die hard. The article reports that:

"From the beginning of 2001 through the third quarter of 2002, the federal government leapt from a surplus (including Social Security) amounting to 2.3 percent of gross domestic product to a deficit of the same size. By itself, the current deficit is not terribly threatening. Indeed, running a modest deficit during an economic downturn can be useful, as long as the policies behind the deficit — lower taxes and higher spending — benefit consumers and businesses."

The article then claims that the 1980s Reagan tax cuts failed to increase tax revenues;

"The White House says lower tax rates will lead consumers to work more and businesses to expand, resulting in higher tax revenues and eventually closing the budget gap. That notion, chided as "voodoo economics" by critics, turned out to be false when it was last in vogue, during the 1980's."

However, the numbers, crunched by Heritage's Brian Riedl, show otherwise (see chart below). In 1980, the last year before the tax cuts, tax revenues were $956 billion (in constant 1996 dollars).
Revenues exceeded that 1980 level in eight of the next 10 years. Annual revenues over the next decade averaged $102 billion above their 1980 level (in constant 1996 dollars).

They even offer this chart as proof!  (Click the link, expressed in constant 1996 dollars.)  But the real Voodoo is in achieving an actual reduction in revenues, as they did according to the Heritage Foundation figures in 1982 and (quire dramatically) 1983, in the context of an economy that has achieved 3.7% annual growth for 200 years!

And that is key.  Every year the population grows.  Almost every year the economy grows.  There is inflation in the background, most of the time.  In fact, the compounded annual growth rate of federal tax revenues from 1970 through 2008 was just slightly over 7%.   (Current dollars, not inflation adjusted.)

Here is reality, presented in non-inflation adjusted dollars   Data from the Congressional Budget Office.

Actual revenues are shown on the broken red and blue line, with segments color-coded to indicate the party of the White House occupant.  The purple curved line is the 7% growth line, starting in 1970.   The pink line is the best-fitting straight line.  Each President's term has also been overlayed with a best fitting straight line. In retrospect, these straight lines don't tell us much of anything. 

One interesting facet of this display is that most of it lies well above the 7% growth curve.  This is entirely due to increases during the Carter and Clinton administrations, as a visual inspection reveals, and we will also prove mathematically.

Here is the compounded  annual growth rate of tax revenues, by President, over the 1970 to 2008 period.

Well, Nixon and Ford managed to top the long period average by a slight margin, but they were not under the thrall of Voodoo Economists.  Neither was Clinton.  Bush I wasn't either, but he inherited Reagan's vultures.  Look at Reagan's revenue growth rate: 5.35%.  Consider that average inflation over Reagan's years was 4.56%, and GDP growth averaged 3.4%.  Under those circumstances, revenue growth should have been at least 7.96%, not a paltry 5.35%.  The average compounded growth in constant 1996 dollars, using the Heritage Foundation table is 2.38%.  This is more than a full percentage point below real GDP growth. 

Bush II's revenue growth rate was 3.01%.  But inflation averaged 2.84% and GDP growth averaged an anemic 2.16.  Together they total 5.0%.  So, Republican tax revenue growth cannot even match the inflation adjusted level of growth in the economy.


Many years ago, my dad told me that figures don't lie, but liars sure know how to figure.  The bullshit you get from the Heritage Foundation is exactly what he was talking about.  It's another example of the conservative ploy of willfully denying reality.

Which is just one more reason why WE ARE SO SCREWED.
.

The Traffic Trap

Commenter OwenKL writes a bit of poetry most days to compliment the theme of the L.A. Times Crossword Puzzle.

Today's was a typically clever example. 

But I thought of a different Christie, and came up with this.

The Traffic Trap

Chris Christie writes cover-up scenes
Of denial re: that bridge west of Queens.
Why would it be
He put the screws to Fort Lee?
Just to vent his too partisan spleens!

Random Thought

I've decided I never want Chris Christie to be my bridge partner.

Republican State of Disunion: Taxes Edition

The Republican response to the President's State of the Union message was delivered by Washington State Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers.  It was personal, platitude-ridden, overtly religious, twee, and devoid of policy content or anything else of relevant substance - other than a naked assertion that BHO's policies are making life harder in myriad unspecified ways. In other words, it was the most you could expect from an intellectually bankrupt party whose only agenda item is to make the President fail.

To be fair, she did offer one concrete recommendation: to lower taxes.  The concept that lowering taxes would be beneficial at this point is one of those zombie ideas that not only won't die, but continues to eat peoples' brains.  For example, in a recent AB comment stream, this idea was put forth: "Substantial tax cuts worked under Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush. Given the much higher level of household debt, a bold tax cut was needed more than ever."

As I've demonstrated before, and shortly will again with actual facts and data, there is no reason to believe that lowering taxes improves the economy.    But first, let's remember two important details.  First, over 45% of Americans don't pay any federal income tax.  The Wall Street Journal calls them "Lucky Duckies."  Imagine the great good fortune of making so little money that you don't qualify to be taxed on your earnings.  Second, as Bruce Bartlett pointed out 4 years ago, "tax filers with adjusted gross incomes between $40,000 and $50,000 have an average federal income tax burden of just 1.7%. Those with adjusted gross incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 have an average burden of 4.2%."

So the opportunity to have tax cuts do much to promote real economic growth is somewhere between slim and nonexistent.

Let's look at the actual information we have on tax rates and Real GDP growth.*  Graph 1 shows the top marginal rate in blue and the capital gains rate in green from 1950 through 2011.  Also included in brown [right scale] is the YoY percent change in RGDP [annual data] and a linear RGDP growth trend line.  The major trend in each of these phenomena slants down over time.

Graph 1 - Tax Rates and GDP Growth since 1950

Graph 2 is a scatterplot of RGDP growth vs top marginal tax rate, same annual data as in graph 1.

 Graph 2 - Scatterplot of RGDP Growth vs. Top Marginal Tax Rate

The points are color-coded Red for Republican administrations, and blue for Democratic administrations.  Again, a trend line is included, showing a positive slope.  I find it interesting that the space below the trend line is dominated by red dots.  You might not.  The data arranges itself  in columns because the tax rates tend to remain constant for several years at a time.  There is a great deal of scatter since many things besides the tax rate influence the economy.  The simultaneous general abandonment of a Keynesian approach over the period is notable in this regard.

It might be a bit simplistic to think that a current tax rate influences GDP growth in the immediate year, so I took some long averages and redid the scatterplot.   Graph 3 is a plot of the 8-year averages of both top marginal tax rate and RGDP growth.  This has the additional advantage knocking down the data columns.

Graph 3 - Scatterplot of RGDP Growth vs. Top Rate, 8-Yr Avgs.

The 8th year of each administration that lasted that long is indicated with a red dot for Republican and a bright blue dot for Democrat.  Make of it what you will.  The general trend over time is from the top right to the lower left of the graph, and the highlighted dots appear in strict right to left chronological order, from Ike at the right though Kennedy-Johnson, Nixon-Ford, Reagan and Clinton to G. W. Bush at the left. A similar graph of 13-year averages tells the same story, but with all of the the dots landing closer to the trend line.

It does appear from graph 3 that lowering the top rate from 91% to 70% might have been associated with higher RGDP growth.  But, note from graph 2 that the spread of RGDP values at 91% is far greater, and that the highest individual RGDP values are at the higher tax rates.  The 50's, when most of the 91% values occurred, were characterized by a series of economic shocks and recessions as the U.S. returned to peace time conditions and absorbed several million WW II veterans into the work force.

Graph 4 is a close-up view of the 8-Yr average graph starting with the Reagan administration.

Graph 4 -  RGDP Growth vs. Top Rate, 8-Yr Avgs.from Reagan on

The eight years of the Reagan administration are indicated with red dots, GHW Bush in orange, Clinton in bright blue, and GW Bush in purple.  The later is most notable for making the 8 year average of RGDP growth dive off a cliff.  And before you get too excited about the transient RGDP increase in the late Reagan years, remember he also ran deficits that dwarfed anything seen up to that time.

The record of the Clinton years not withstanding, I'm not going to get into a post-hoc discussion of higher taxes causing higher growth - though the data up to at least the 70% level is consistent with that assertion.  Correlation is not causation.  On the other hand, the absence of correlation absolutely refutes causation. What one may say with absolute certainty is that in the post WW II United States, tax cuts have never led to a sustainable increase in RGDP growth.  The lone possible exception is the cut in the 60's from 91% to 70%.  It's plausible that cutting from an extremely high tax rate might be beneficial, but, due to the extreme volatility of the early post WW II period, the effect in that case is not at all clear.

So if anyone tries to tell you that cutting taxes in the current set of conditions will stimulate growth, feel free to show them this post.

_________________________________________

* Top marginal tax rates from Citizens for Tax Justice.
Capital Gains Tax rates from the Tax Policy Center.
RGDP data from FRED

Shallow Stupid - The Bully is a Dupe

He makes excuses, says he didn't know
About that bridge thing when no one could go.
"I worked the cones." See - it's all just for show.
That's why the Bully is a Dupe.

It wasn't Christie, no - it was his staff
Now they've resigned both the riff and the raff
They jammed up Fort Lee, and just for a laugh.
That's why the Bully is a Dupe.

He loves to spew a lot of hot air
He doesn''t care
Traffic is broke
He says it's OK

He hates Fort Lee; and he don't give a whoop.
That's why the Bully is a Dupe.

To the tune of -




Source

Same As it Ever Was

Source

Going Nuclear

This post at LGM reminded me of my "Party of No" post from almost 4 years ago.

I've updated the graph, and maybe made it a little easier to read.

From Congresses 65 [1917-18] through 91 [1969-70] there were never more than 7 cloture votes in any two-year session.  The line rising up from the bottom left of the graph shows what has happened to votes per session since.  It's color coded by the party with the minority in the senate, Red for Rep, Blue for Dem.  The yellow dot shows the 44 cloture votes to date for the current 113th congress. 

 Filibusters use is down from the 112 cloture votes of the 110th congress.  But the 73 votes of the 112th congress is still above the pre-Obama high of 61 in the 107th congress.  With more than a year left in the current 113th session, it was on a pace to exceed the total of the 112th.  However, that will probably now not come to fruition.

Dems have used the filibuster, but typically about as often as the current norm.  Reps have been responsible for the vast majority of the increased filibuster use over time.  The squiggly red and blue lines [same color code, right scale] indicate the number of senators per party at a given time, counting independents who caucused with the party as being of that party.

It's pretty clear that abusing the filibuster has not been a problem over the entire span of the last century.  It clearly has become one now.  Filibuster use more than doubled as soon as BHO became president.  Using it to block appointments has been particularly egregious, prompting the current change in senate rules.

For additional context, he alternating blue-red line at the top of the graph shows the sitting president's party affiliation.

I see Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has covered this subject as well.

Money quote:

The last straw came when Republicans announced their intention to filibuster all of Obama's nominees to the DC circuit court simply because they didn't want a Democratic president to be able to fill any more vacancies.

Cloture vote counts and make up of the Senate from Senate.gov.

The Republicans of 2013

I

The split in the Republican Party is between, on the one hand, ignorant, mean-spirited ideologues with a contempt for governance who refuse to accept the legitimacy of twice elected President Obama's presidency and are willing to ruin the economy and the country as a whole to make invalid political points; and, on the other hand, totally bat-guano-insane psychopaths.

II

In case there was any doubt, if Obama or his minions do anything -- seriously, ANYTHING -- it is a priori* wrong.

* my Latin isn't too good - I think this refers to revealed knowledge.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the day, in reference to what is happening in Texas, N. Carolina and sadly many other places where Rethugs are in control of the legislatures:

"We're going back to the dark ages at light speed."
---- My Lovely Wife

More on the Lying Liars at the Heritage Foundation

I've called them out a few times, here, here and here (with some help) and here.

Now, Steve Benen reports, one of their economists been caught lying to the Senate Budget Committee.  

As the occasionally reliable Matt Yglesias recently pointed out regarding a different passel of Heritage lies:

But it illustrates an underappreciated point in Washington, namely that even ideological think tanks do their movements a disservice when they do bad work. As Republican members of Congress ponder what to do about immigration, having accurate information about its fiscal impact would be very useful to them. You actually want to have a team of people "on your side" who you can trust to do good work. Heritage is not that team.

True, but MY misses a rather vital feature.  If you are trying to make points that do not comport with truth or reality, you have to lie, pretty much by default.  And you can't do good work if you are lying.

Benin replies:

That's true. If there are any Republican policymakers left who care about quality scholarship and reliable data, they'd no doubt like to rely on an institution like the Heritage Foundation as a go-to source for credible research. But as Heritage transitions from its traditional role as think tank to its new role as an activist group, and the intellectual infrastructure on the right deteriorates, GOP lawmakers no long have such a resource.

But that's not quite right, either.  Heritage has been lying to promote an agenda for as long as I've been aware of them.  If Rethug lawmakers ever had such a resource, it's been gone for a long, long time.

H/T to PK

The Wrong Man for the Wrong Job

I might have a marginally less jaundiced view of Michigan governor Rick Snyder's emergency manager solution to Detroit's economic problems if 1) the approach didn't have a known track record of dismal failure; B) The people of Michigan hadn't rejected the E.M. approach in our most recent and, in retrospect, meaningless election; and iii) if Snyder hadn't chosen as E. M. a man who is incapable of managing his own personal finances.

I do not see this coming to a good end.

But on the plus side, Kevyn Orr was able to pull out his wallet and fork over about $16,000 in unpaid taxes.

Twice in two years.

Update:  According to Snyder spokesweaselperson Sandra Wurfel, "There was apparently an oversight related to a childcare provider unemployment insurance payment."    This is blamed on a 3rd party accountant.  Aside from the craven blame shifting, one must wonder how this innocent mistake could happen four consecutive years.

More Right Wing Lies - Redux

Foreword

Unlike right-wingers, frex. Amity Shlaes, I like to get things right.  In fact, when one is refuting a liar's lies, I believe its important to be meticulously correct.  Hence this rework of my previous post.

As I was thinking about Graph 3, it occurred to me that the numbers there were far too small, around 100 million at the maximum, when they should be in the billions.  I'm not sure what that graph represents, but it is certainly not the total of income tax revenues.  That sent me on a quest to find better numbers, which I did.  You will find them in Graph 3 and 4 of this rewrite.  Much to my chagrin, I also found I put the wrong data in Graph 2, now corrected here.  Since I want to cross-post this at Angry Bear, I've also made a few editorial changes to make it more Bear-worthy.

~ : ~ : ~

Amity Shlaes, the disinformation bunny, is still going.  In the latest issue of Imprimus, a publication of Hillsdale College, is a transcript adapted from a recent talk she gave there during a conference on the Income Tax, sponsored by Hillsdale's own Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.  Right away, you know this is going to be good.  The Title of her contribution is Calvin Coolidge and the Moral Case for Economy.  Of course, by economy, she means austerity.

There is so much wrong here it's both impressive and depressing.  Rather than give her the full FJM treatment, which would take more time and energy than she deserves, I'll just hit on a couple of the lowlights.  Here is her opening paragraph.

With the Federal debt spiraling out of control, many Americans sense an urgent need to find a political leader who is able to say "no" to spending.

Here we go. Her first sentence is an exercise in made-up right-wing talking point mythology.  I've already exploded the 'Obama is a profligate spender" myth, here, here, and here. Further, we have just lived through three years when federal spending was close to flat line, as Graph 1 shows.  

 Graph 1 - Flat Federal Spending Under Obama 

There is only one comparable period in post WW II history, 1953-56, during Eisenhower's first term, as shown in Graph 2.   Still, over Ike's full term, spending grew by about 30%.

 Graph 2  Not So Flat Spending Growth Under Eisenhower ('53-'60)

To suggest that federal dept is now  "spiraling out of control" due to excessive spending is not merely disingenuous.  It is a sign that either Shlaes has no earthly idea what she's talking about, which in an alleged journalist, is unforgivable, or it's a bare-faced lie, which is unforgivable for anybody.  And if many Americans are feeling the urgent need to curtail government spending, it's because they have been lied to so repeatedly and often that they have no idea what the truth is.  As Krugman recently put it: "And I have to say, it’s extremely telling that conservative Republicans don’t seem able to make their case without resorting, right from the beginning, to obviously dumb fallacies."  The truth is that if we have a debt problem, it is due to a shortfall in revenues.

Yet they fear that finding such a leader is impossible.

Its not clear who made Shlaes the spokesperson for this sorry, disenfranchised segment of the population, nor that this is indeed what they fear.  Perhaps we should introduce Shlaes and the rest of these Real Americans to the real President B. Hoover Obama.

Conservatives long for another Ronald Reagan.

This is probably correct, though as Shlaes goes on to demonstrate, conservatives in this way - and, alas, right-wingers almost always - are rather badly disconnected from reality.

He was of course a tax cutter, reducing the top marginal rate from 70 to 28 percent.  But his tax cuts - which vindicated supply side economics by vastly increasing federal revenue - were bought partly through a bargain with Democrats who were eager to spend that revenue.

Wrong again.  The reality is that Revenue growth under Reagan was the worst of any 20th century President, post Eisenhower, except for the unfortunate Bush, Sr. under who's recession plagued regime Reagan's buzzards came home to roost. And was it really the Democrats who spent that anemic revenue stream, or did it go to Reagan's Star Wars fantasy?

Reagan was no budget cutter.  In fact, the federal budget grew over a third during his administration.

Here, she finally gets something right, if by "federal budget" she means Total Outlays, and by "over a third" she means over 80%  [as measured from 1980 to 1988.]

Things get really egregious further on in the section titled "The Purpose of Tax Cuts."  She informs us that President Coolidge and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon campaigned to lower top rates from the 50's to the 20's.

Mellon and Coolidge did not win all they sought.  The top rate of the final law was in the forties.  But even this reduction yielded results - more money flowing into the treasury - suggesting that "scientific taxation" worked.  By 1926, Coolidge was able to sign legislation that brought the top marginal rate down to 25%, and do so retroactively.

I was surprised to learn that Coolidge and Mellon had anticipated the Laffer curve by 6 decades.  Let's have a look at how more money flowed into the treasury. In 1922 and '23, with a top marginal rate of 56%, tax revenues were $2.23 and 1.69 billion respectively. [Per FRED, 1923 was a recession year]  In 1924, with a top rate of 46%, total revenues were $1.79 billion.  This is what Shleas calls "more money flowing into the treasury."  Here's a bigger picture look.  In 1920, when the top marginal rate was 73%, receipts were slightly over $4 billion.  In 1925, when the top marginal rate was 25%, receipts were $1.7 billion, less than half of the 1920 value, and by 1929 had only increased to 2.23 billion.  Graph 3 shows revenues per year [Coolidge's term highlighted in red,] and belies Shlaes' assertion.

 Graph 3 Income Tax Revenues, 1915-1930

Graph 4 shows a scatter plot of this same data, with revenues as a function of top marginal rate, Coolidge years are again highlighted in red.

Graph 4 Top Marginal Rate and Tax Revenues, 1915-1930

A best fit straight line is included.  There's lots of scatter, for a variety of reasons, but the upward trend - the exact opposite of Shleas' assertion, is obvious.

So here's the reality.  A decade of tax cutting and deregulation led us into the Great Depression, the worst economic collapse of the 20th century. [You might note that the following decades of high tax rates and robust regulation were free of these horrible events.]  And what happened most recently?  A decade of tax cuts and deregulation - the end game of three decades of this supply-side approach - led to the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.  Significantly, the major deregulations of big finance, including the repeal of Glass-Steagall came at the end of Clinton's term, less than a decade prior to the financial melt down.  Last Friday on his radio show, Thom Hartmann pointed out that prior to the regulations put in place in the 30's, the U.S. had never gone for more than 15 years without a major financial collapse.  So this result should have been expected.

The extraordinary thing isn't that right wingers lie.  The simple reality is that they can't make their case without lying, because it has no merit.  The extraordinary thing is that their lies are so easily rooted out and refuted, in the era of free and easily accessible information, but so few people will take the required few minutes to go ahead and do it. Sadly, whenever the truth comes up against a cascade of lies, the liars have a significant tactical advantage. 

Shlaes' presentation is just one more manifestation of the right wing ploy of denying reality.   Sadly, it works, because you really can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.

More Right Wing Lies

Amity Shlaes, the disinformation bunny, is still going.  In the latest issue of Imprimus, a publication of Hillsdale College, is a transcript adapted from a recent talk she gave there during a conference on the Income Tax, sponsored by Hillsdale's own Center for Constructive Alternatives and the Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series.  Right away, you know this is going to be good.  The Title of her contribution is Calvin Coolidge and the Moral Case for Economy.  Of course, by economy, she means austerity.

There is so much wrong here it's both impressive and depressing.  Rather than give her the full FJM treatment, which would take more time and energy than she deserves, I'll just hit on a couple of the lowlights.  Here is her opening paragraph.

With the Federal debt spiraling out of control, many Americans sense an urgent need to find a political leader who is able to say "no" to spending.

Here we go. Her first sentence is an exercise in right wing talking point mythology.  I've already exploded the 'Obama is a profligate spender" myth, here, here, and here. Further, we have just lived through three years when federal spending was close to flat line, as Graph 1 shows.  

 Graph 1 - Flat Federal Spending Under Obama 

There is no comparable period in post WW II history.  Graph 2 shows the next flattest era under Eisenhower, when spending grew by about 50% over the term.

 Graph 2  Not So Flat Spending Growth Under Eisenhower

To say federal dept is "spiraling out of control" is not merely disingenuous.  It is a sign that either Shlaes has no earthly idea what she's talking about, which in an alleged journalist, is unforgivable, or it's a bare-faced lie, which is unforgivable for anybody.  And if many Americans are feeling the urgent need to curtail spending, it's because they have been lied to so repeatedly and often that they have no idea what the truth is.   The truth is that if we have a debt problem, it is due to a shortfall in revenues.

Yet they fear that finding such a leader is impossible.

Its not clear who made Shlaes the spokesperson for this sorry, disenfranchised segment of the population, nor that this is indeed what they fear.  Perhaps we should introduce Shlaes and the rest of these Real Americans to the real President B. Hoover Obama.

Conservatives long for another Ronald Reagan.

This is probably correct, though as Shlaes goes on to demonstrate, conservatives in this way - and, alas, typically - are rather badly disconnected from reality.

He was of course a tax cutter, reducing the top marginal rate from 70 to 28 percent.  But his tax cuts - which vindicated supply side economics by vastly increasing federal revenue - were bought partly through a bargain with Democrats who were eager to spend that revenue.

 The reality is that Revenue growth under Reagan was the worst of any 20th century President, post Eisenhower, except for the unfortunate Bush, Sr. under who's regime Reagan's buzzards came home to roost. And was it really the Democrats who spent that anemic revenue stream, or did it go to Reagan's Star Wars fantasy?

Reagan was no budget cutter.  In fact, the federal budget grew over a third during his administration.

Here, she finally gets something right, if by "federal budget" she means Total Outlays, and by "over a third" she means over 80%  [as measured from 1980 to 1988.]

Things get really egregious further on in the section titled "The Purpose of Tax Cuts."  She informs us that President Coolidge and Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon campaigned to lower top rates from the 50's to the 20's.

Mellon and Coolidge did not win all they sought.  The top rate of the final law was in the forties.  But even this reduction yielded results - more money flowing into the treasury - suggesting that "scientific taxation" worked.  By 1926, Coolidge was able to sign legislation that brought the top marginal rate down to 25%, and do so retroactively.

Let's have a look at how more money flowed into the treasury.  In 1919-21, when the top marginal rate was over 70%, receipts were over $120 million.  By 1925, when the top marginal rate was 25%, receipts were in the $60 to 90 million range, and by 1929 had declined to about $50 million.  As Graph3 shows, Shlaes' lie is simply astounding.

Graph 3 Federal Revenues Collapse During the 1920s

So here's the reality.  A decade of tax cutting and deregulation led us into the Great Depression, the worst economic collapse of the 20th century. [You might note that the following decades of high tax rates and robust regulation were free of these horrible events.]  And what happened most recently?  A decade of tax cuts and deregulation - the end game of three decades of this supply-side approach - led to the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.  Significantly, the major deregulations of big finance came at the end of Clinton's term, less than a decade prior to the financial melt down.

The extraordinary thing isn't that right wingers lie.  The simple reality is that they can't make their case without lying, because it has no merit.  The extraordinary thing is that their lies are so easily rooted out and refuted, in the era of free and easily accessible information, but so few people will take the required few minutes to go ahead and do it. 

Shlaes' presentation is just one more manifestation of the right wing ploy of denying reality.   Sadly, it works, because you really can fool a lot of the people a lot of the time.

Quote of the Day

In comments to this must-read Johnathon Chait article * on the thoroughly despicable Jeff Sessions, reader HATCHAX  offers this gem.  No extra charge for the quote within the quote.

Reminds of when I worked for the DSCC when Howell Heflin was retiring & Sessions was running for his seat: his staff told me Sen. Heflin was proud to keep Sessions off the federal bench because "At the risk of offending every rock in the world, that boy's dumber than one." After Sessions' eleciton, I heard Heflin say something along the lines he wasn't too upset Jeff Sessions replaced him, for after all, being a judge was one thing but intelligence was not something the Senate had in any abundance.

That is some high quality snark.

Now go read the Chait article.

Really.

H/T to Scott Lemieux at LGM

* UPDATE: 6/25/17:  Sadly, this is now a dead link.  It looks like DeLong preserved the article content, but, as near as I can tell, the original comment stream is now lost.

You Can Fool Most of the People Most of the Time

At least on certain issues.

I'm not inherently a great pessimist, but with few exceptions each passing month for over a decade now has seen my optimism whither, at least a little.  So I can't help but see the manure-colored lining in this otherwise rosy, fluffy cloud.

Steve Benen reports that according to the new NBC/WSJ poll, Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans on domestic issues, sometimes by large margins.  Here is a graph.  (As always, click to embiggen.)

 

Graph 1   Who Do You Trust?

But the causes of my pessimism are four-fold.  First, as Benen goes on to note, the same polling reveals that in the popular mind "Republicans have an advantage on the (sic) reducing the deficit, 'controlling' government spending, and national defense."  Well, there's three reasons for pessimism right there.  A) Reducing the deficit is an issue of exactly zero urgency, and attacking it now will certainly cause economic hardship, especially for those at the bottom. Further, Republicans have been huge debt increasers for decades, while Dems have not.  B) We absolutely do not have a spending problem.  We absolutely do have a revenue problem, as graph 2 plainly indicates.  I think the Republicans have become convinced of their own lies.

Graph 2   Federal Gov Current Recpts by GDP

C) From FDR through LBJ to BHO, Dems have been every bit as war-mongerish as their Rep counterparts; BHO has continued his predecessors war initiatives almost seamlessly;  and 9/11 happened on W's watch.  This just makes me want to cry.

But I have a bigger list.  Second, a look a graph 1 reveals some disturbing details.  A)  Joe BeerCan must not connect "Looking out for the middle class," Medicare," "Health Care," "Medicare,' or "Social Security" with "Economy" or the results for those categories would line up better.  B) Considering Paul Ryan and the never-ending series of Republican contrived cliffs, scoring Dems only marginally better than Repubs on the economy is, all by itself, cause for despair.  C) As is the close call on taxes.

Third, and I've already alluded to this, there is almost no daylight between the two parties on foreign policy issues.  Still I have to give a slight nod to the Dems, based on practicality, because: John Bolton.

And last, though I firmly believe to the bottom of my heart that the Dems are superior on absolutely every issue, problem and question that might rise, they still aren't that damned good.  Case in point: the new head of the Michigan Democratic party is a venture capitalist.  As Bill Maher sagely put it, while the Democrats have moved to the right, the Republicans have moved to the insane asylum.  They demonstrate this anew, almost every single day. 

The lessons of history and even a casual observation of the current failures of European austerity show that progressive policies are the clear and present necessity.  But even if we had strong Dem majorities, we still have Reaganite B. Hoover Obama in the White House, and a genuine progressive movement in congress the exact size and shape of Bernie Sanders. 

As one of my college professors put it long ago:  Booze is the only answer.

Random Thoughts - Republican Violence Against Women

A small number of Republicans voted for the

Violence Against Women Act.

Then they actually read the thing and discovered

it was prevention, not encouragement.

Republicans, All Wrong, All the Time, Part 34 -- Thus Spake The Rube

For the hundredth time the foreign-born Muslim commie Nazi extends an olive branch across the aisle, and for the hundredth time it's dashed to the floor, stomped on and set ablaze - along with the latest spokes-liars trousers.   It became a conflagration that the infamous water-stop could not staunch.

Early in Marco Rubio's alleged rebuttal to B. Hoover Obama's latest exercise in political theater it became painfully obvious that his pants were on fire.  This was even before it became obvious that his diatribe was utterly incoherent.  Steve Benen explaines.

By any sensible measure, Rubio's entire pitch was incoherent gibberish. He thinks President Obama is hostile to free enterprise and wants to increase the deficit, neither of which makes any sense. Rubio thinks the housing crisis was caused by big government, which is simply idiotic. Rubio celebrates his family's history of dependence on government social programs like student loans and Medicare, while articulating a policy agenda that guts government social programs like student loans and Medicare.

Forget ideology, subjectivity, and areas of opinion -- the fact is Marco Rubio's speech was filled with a series of claims with no meaningful connection to reality. The senator even thinks combating the climate crisis means asking government to "control the weather," which is just genuinely dumb.

Part way through I started taking notes, and discovered an unappetizing platter of rewarmed left-overs [or more accurately: right-overs] of Romney's failed presidential campaign, where lying and incoherence were the norm.  It was deja vu all over again. Viz:

Obama's obsession with raising taxes
Solyndra [God help us - I am not making this up]
We should open Federal lands to energy exploration
Grow Energy industry [but not renewables]
Lower Corp tax rate
Incentivise school districts
Schools of choice
Solve the debt problem [As if BHO ignored it - or, more importantly - as if it were a real problem]
Obama created the debt with excessive spending  [my personal favorite]
Need a balanced budget amendment  [the ignorance - it burns, too]
Obama's in favor of leaving Medicare just the way it is [though he clearly stated otherwise]
He also wants to unconstitutionally undermine 2nd amendment rights
The President's devastating cuts to our military [Seriously -- WTH?!?]
Moral breakdown in society - need more faith
Economic liberty

That's what I was able to capture as Rubio's litany of [mostly] decades old Republican clap-trap spewed forth almost faster than I could record it.

One of the MSNBC commentators pointed out that this nonsense wasn't directed to the American public, who I hope are beginning to see through the smoke screen, but to the hard-core right-wing base.  As such, it's Rubio's first gambit in his run for the 2016 presidential nomination.

I don't know if I should laugh, cry, or drink myself into a stupor.