Month: January 2009
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Greg Mankiw’s glass house problem
What is going on with Greg Mankiw? Since leaving the White House, the distinguished Harvard economist and former Bush administration CEA chair, whose statements about the revenue effects of tax cuts were repeatedly contradicted by White House officials without public comment by Mankiw, keeps suggesting that other politicians and economists are deviating from economic truths
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Intention and effect in the Israel debate
Supporters of Israel’s anti-Hamas offensive are attempting to shut down debate by calling opponents of the campaign “anti-Israel” — the same sort of tactic used here after 9/11 to try to shut down debate about the war on terror. It’s disturbingly familiar stuff. That said, however, there is an interesting reversal in assumptions between the
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Field experiments in restaurants!
A student at Yale named Elizabeth Campbell sent me a paper reporting the results of an innovative field experiment she conducted. Campbell’s study evaluated the effects of displaying one’s political preferences on the service in New Haven restaurants by randomly assigning customers to wear different campaign buttons. The resulting service was evaluated with respect to
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Phony NewsBusters bias claim
Even by the dismal standards of the ideological “watchdogs” who manufacture accusations of media bias, this may be a new low. In a blog post yesterday that is linked on Drudge, Warner Todd Huston of NewsBusters denounces journalists for allowing Barack Obama to pick his questioners and offers the reflexive media bias critic’s claim of
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Dept. of GOP redundancy
Mike Duncan, the head of the RNC, appealed to supporters yesterday (PDF) to express their “Grateful Gratitude to the President” by signing an e-card for him and donating to the RNC. Personally, I would suggest that they express their “thankful thanks” or “congratulatory congratulations,” but that’s just me…
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Examining Obama’s stimulus calculus
Like many observers, I’m baffled by Barack Obama’s efforts to obtain 80 votes for his economic stimulus proposal in the Senate. Despite concerns from economists such as Paul Krugman that more than $1 trillion in stimulus is needed, Obama has proposed a $775 billion package under the assumption that the cost of the legislation will
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Mark Leibovich on Bush/Clinton division
Mark Leibovich, who I’ve repeatedly criticized in the past, offers a skewed summary of presidential partisanship over the last 16 years in today’s New York Times Week in Review: George W. Bush began his administration with a promise to “change the tone” in Washington only to end it with a lament over his inability to
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Jon Chait on WSJ scare quotes
TNR's Jon Chait, the most distinguished Kreminologist of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, has written an amusing takedown of the WSJ editorial page's bizarre usage of scare quotes: Other uses of scare quotes so defy convention as to suggest a novel dialect of the English language. One editorial assailed legislation that would legalize "lower-cost
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Why Michael Moore deserves scrutiny
In a post that rightly excoriates apparent Surgeon General nominee Sanjay Gupta for his feckless fact-checking of Michael Moore’s Sicko, Ezra Klein acts as if journalists are being unreasonable in scrutinizing Moore’s work closely: Begin with this: Michael Moore makes journalists lose their mind. They have an almost compulsive need to prove him wrong. Similarly,
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CAP promotes Bush/Howard speculation
I’ve been telling people for years that you can’t trust the Center for American Progress. The latest evidence is a post on their Think Progress blog with the misleading headline “White House Asked Howard To Stay In Blair House To Give ‘Some Plausible Reason’ For Refusing Obama,” which has been widely covered in the blogosphere