With Friends Like These...

Ugh. In the course of a pretty good column on taxes and the economy, Boskin proceeds to destroy his credibility with a stupid claim. "The lower marginal tax rates in the 1980s led to the best quarter-century of economic performance in American history." I mean, is he trying to convince people that tax-cut enthusiasts are just charlatans? We can support lowering tax rates without resorting to this sort of thing, people.

(Implicitly) Making Stuff (Up)

This is a pet peeve of mine, but I think it's important (so maybe pet peeve isn't the right term). Paul Krugman wrote a column on the state of US manufacturing, and can't find two sentences to note that the idea of long term decline is a myth. Not only that, but he very carefully constructs his sentences to leave the impression on people that it's true, without actually lying that I can see. Check out the data, while US manufacturing does dip a little during recessions, it is clearly rising over time. It's one thing when some random pundit without much economics knowledge doesn't know this stuff, but Krugman either does, or absolutely should. Chances of DeLong noting this? Approximately 0.1%.

More dishonesty from BDL

The NY Times had a Room for Debate forum about Bernanke, the Fed, etc. In Megan McArdle's portion she wrote a fairly blah piece, talking about how some see it this way, some another. DeLong's response? To go after her because "she talks about how Ben Bernanke has been 'recklessly ignoring inflation'." Go read what she wrote. I support criticizing her for her Shape of the Earth type writing, and I agree with DeLong that Bernanke and The Fed are doing too little (I'd put it a slightly different way, but that's splitting hairs at this point), but why lie about what she wrote? Delong has shot whatever remained of his credibility.

Empirical Proof that America's Liberals Are Stupid

Sasha Volokh wrote a pretty out there post about asteroids, taxation and rights, specifically noting that his views here are not normal for Libertarians. Delong doesn't just rightly make fun of Sasha, no he says that this shows that "America's Libertarians are Completely Insane". Reading comprehension and/or fairness/honesty are not the man's strong suits. Using his logic, I conclude that America's Liberals are dishonest or idiots, or both. And no, I don't think he's kidding.

Amazing!

This reminds of a someone, can't quite place my finger on who, though.

Remiss

That's what I've been, not posting this stuff here. So much news has come out from Wikileaks, and all our media can do is report on the most banal and gossipy stuff. Well, read this, and this, and this, and this, and then try to claim that "there's nothing new here", or that it's unimportant fluff.

Up from X

I loved this post by TNC. Click for the Louis CK, stay for the great writing.
And this is an excellent piece on homophobia (via the Balko).

Oy

Greg Mankiw wrote a post Saturday on why he is agnostic on the question of how long people should be eligible for unemployment insurance. While he does a good job of raising the questions that we should ask to figure out what the optimal length of eligibility should be, the post is somewhat disingenuous, as he could pretty easily get good answers to all of his questions by walking down the hall to talk to his colleague Chetty who's studied this stuff, as pointed out by DeLong.

However, DeLong, in the course of pointing this out, is even more disingenuous, and more blatantly so. He points that out Chetty "conclude[s] that an unemployment benefit-market wage of about 50% is about right", and that he also concludes that more is called for at certain times (such as now). Well, that's all fine and good and interesting, but it really doesn't tell us how long people should be eligible for benefits, neither in normal times nor in times of high unemployment. I pointed this out to DeWrong in his comments section. His response? To delete my comment and ban me.

Why oh why can't we have a better economics professor section of the blogosphere?

Update: Well, BDL let me know why I'm banned. It's because I spread misinformation in the past. How did I do so? By questioning how someone used a model of global climate (NB: no claims about climate change made by me), and by trying to fill in the blank spots in the story of the Krugman-Okrent tiff. I don't know if I was right or wrong in either case, but I certainly never spread misinformation; both times I speculated a little (clearly labeled so marked as such, not as fact) and asked questions. Regardless, I think we can take this as an admission that I'm right in this case; why else go to the extra effort to bring up things that happened years ago instead of engaging on the points I made about his UI evidence this time? Also, he's clearly lying about why I'm banned, as I've left a few comments in between then and this most recent time; I embarrassed him with truth, and it pissed him off so that he had to find an excuse to get rid of me. In any case, I'd still like to know if there's good research on the ideal length of benefit eligibility.

The upside of it

The last two times that I was looking for apartments, I made extensive use of Craig's List. I was looking at 1, 2, and 3 bedroom apartments, with 2's the expectation. So I was generally looking to move in with someone that I didn't know. I looked at quite a few places in person, and tons of places online. Sometimes I'd go to see a place and the prospective roommate(s) was weird in some way that made me think that I didn't want to live there, even though the place itself was good. A frustrating waste of time. A lot of times when looking at listings, I could tell that the apartment was not for me. Every once in a while, the listing would look really good, and then I'd see that the lister had put something like only "white people", or "no Asians". Thank goodness that they were able to put that stuff in their ads; if they hadn't I might have wound up seeing the place, liking it and thinking that they were normal, and moved in. Selfishly, I want racist people like that to be free to express their racism in (non-violent) acts and expressions; I want to know who these assholes are, so I can avoid them.

Why to not vote for Coakley

Well, one of the reasons.

I <3 GG

Cass Sunstein scares the living bejeebus out of me. The fact that he has a significant (or any, really) role in the Obama administration is a disgrace. I particularly would like to point out his advocacy of what amounts to a conspiracy to deal with people advocating conspiracy theories. Think I'm exaggerating? "In 2008...Sunstein [proposed] that the U.S. Government...'cognitively infiltrate'...activist groups which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government."
Also, Greenwald makes some good points on the Jon Gruber situation in the same piece.

Is this passive aggressive?

Or aggressively passive? Either way, nice.

Some things are, and some things are not

I loved this piece in Esquire trying to show all that Obama has accomplished. About 90% of the things listed fit into at least one of these categories:
A) Haven't happened yet (a push for something isn't an accomplishment)
B) Are bad (increased drone attacks are good?)
C) Are overstated (banning torture by the US is good, but the vast majority of the problem comes from rendition based torture)
D) Aren't accomplishments (if appointing someone to a vacancy on the Supreme Court is an accomplishment for a President, then so is selecting a running mate, and so is me making breakfast)

I agree that some of the complaints against Obama are weak sauce. That some of the things he's trying to do take time, so complaining that they aren't done yet is silly. However, blind faith support of the man doesn't help us.

Cripple Fight

What's worse, having no evidence, or retarded evidence? Brooks claims that text messages have ruined romance. Based on...nothing that I can see. Yglesias attempts to refute him by referring to The Rules of Attraction, written in the 80s. A NOVEL written in the 80s. And by referring to Mad Men, about an office in the early 60s. A FICTIONAL office in the 60s, written and shot today. I guess I'll go with the retarded evidence as superior, or at least more honest. At least I can point out the problems with it. With Brooks, there's nothing there at all. Winner, Yglesias.

Shorter Mankiw

How do you tell when Krugman is lying? Either his lips are moving or he's typing.
BTW, did anyone else catch Geithner saying on Meet the Press that the number of jobs saved by the stimulus is a fact? Really Timmy? A fact? I accept that it's your best guess at the effect, that the estimate was made in good faith, etc. But it is by no means a fact. It's an estimate based on some models. No more, no less.

Bad Timing by Joe Wilson

Barack Obama continues to lie about Iran. Don't take it from me, read someone with expertise on the Middle East, expertise on nuclear weapons, expertise on the IAEA, and who was right on everything he said about Iraq before the invasion.

Lies about Honesty

More Krugman. He calls out Feldstein for mistakes in a piece. I agree that Feldstein should admit his errors. However, Krugman ends by saying "if I misstated the facts like this in the Times, I’d be required to publish a correction". Really? How about if he claimed in a column that Herbert Hoover cut government spending during the Great Depression?
(added link to my original post on the column)

TNC

Two from Ta-Nehisi.
First, he relays some great stuff on Ali-Frazier. Frazier really doesn't across well at all. Not that Ali does, but better than Frazier. Entertaining stuff.
Second, he writes about Sotomayor, Lindsey Graham, and PC. I really don't get what he's saying here. The possibilities I can think of are: 1) There is no double standard. 2) Double standards are good. 3) Some double standards are bad, but the one that says if a white man makes a statement concerning race and/or gender that a non-white male disagrees with, he's needs to kicked out of public life, but that the opposite is not true, is a good double standard. 4) It's not a good double standard, but there are bigger fish to fry.
That last one is the one that makes the most sense to me, but I don't think that's his meaning. I readily accept that, as a historically privileged group, what's acceptable for me to say is somewhat different than what's acceptable for someone else. Also, if Sotomayor had been speaking off the cuff, or made her wise latina statement when she was 25, or she was some minor nobody, I'd give it a big whatever. However, she was reading a prepared speech, less than 10 years ago, and she's going to be on the Supreme Court. So, yes it matters. I'm willing to listen to her defend it, explain exactly what she meant, and likely I'll be mollified. There are plausible benign explanations for what she said. However, we'll see.
TNC calls Graham "smug, self-satisfied, unreflective, whiny and narcissistic". And that "if you've never had to grapple with who you are in relation to other people, if you've never had to worry much about courting people who aren't like you, if you've never struggled with being politically correct, it's exactly the sort of thing you'd say." Graham may well be all of those things (they are practically his job requirements). However, I see no evidence for those things in his statement. While I agree with PC part of the diagnosis (a PC person wouldn't make that statement), I don't with the rest. I have "had to grapple with who [I] am in relation to other people". I have "had to worry much about courting people who aren't like" me. Surely not as much as TNC, but I have. And, I agree with the offending language Graham used. So try again, TNC.
I enjoy the man's writing, he often helps me think of issues in somewhat different ways, to expand my thinking, and is entertaining most of the time. However, this was a big whiff on his part.

Note to Self

Never work at Citigroup. That goes for you, too.

Completely Complicit

Gee, do you think this could anything to do with her refusal to let Kucinich's impeachment attempts go forward.