Uncategorized
-
Now hiring: Government Accountability Office
President Bush may have a lackluster economic record, but he’s creating jobs at the Government Accountability Office! (PDF) The US Govt. Accountability Office, an agency of Congress, expects to hire a large number of entry-level analysts over the coming year. These positions are designed for recently minted MAs and PhDs with solid analytical and methodological
-
Rudy and McCain get supply-side religion
Sadly, Rudy Giuliani is following John McCain down the supply side rabbit hole. Last week, as Matthew Yglesias notes, Giuliani told supply-side guru Larry Kudlow that tax cuts increase revenue: KUDLOW: “I want to ask you, do you regard yourself as a free market capitalist? Do you regard yourself as a supply-sider?” GIULIANI: “I regard
-
Bush stops saying “Democrat”?
In his report on President Bush’s press conference today, New York Times reporter Jim Rutenberg writes that President Bush “seemed to consciously back away from describing his opponents as ‘the Democrat Party’”: But even as he engaged in openly partisan battle, Mr. Bush at one point seemed to consciously back away from describing his opponents
-
Larry Kudlow’s counterfactual reasoning
Via Matthew Yglesias, here’s Larry Kudlow’s latest hand-waving defense of supply-side economics: Tax revenues have been surging from personal incomes, capital gains, and dividends. Now, the Congressional Budget Office would try to argue that these revenues are lower than would have been the case if taxes had not been cut. But who’s to say? Economic
-
More “largest tax increase” rhetoric
The phony talking point that Democrats have proposed the “largest tax increase in American history” (see here and here) continues to spread. Vice President Cheney repeated it yesterday at a reception for Senator Jeff Sessions: The Democrats in the Senate recently passed their budget, which calls for more spending and higher taxes. In fact, they
-
Dartmouth blog panel on April 19
If you’re near Dartmouth College, I hope you’ll come out for a panel on blogs that I’ll be part of on April 19: “Mass Communication for the Masses: The Power of Weblogs” THURSDAY, APRIL 19, 2007 4:30 PM – 3 Rockefeller Hall Panelists will share their thoughts on the power of blogs in creating communities,
-
Matthew Dowd: Belated dissident
I don’t have much to say about former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd’s public break with the President except to wonder what took him so long. Take a look at the New York Times summary of Dowd’s objections: He criticized the president as failing to call the nation to a shared sense of sacrifice at a
-
FYI: Guiliani opposed impeachment
Has anyone asked Rudy Giuliani about this recently? A friend of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, Giuliani defended Starr’s report on President Clinton but said he would oppose impeachment. He called it a “mistake” for congressional Republicans to aggressively pursue the Clinton sex scandal (Washington Post, 12/6/98). Not sure how that’s going to play in
-
McConnell says Dems helping the “enemy”
It’s all too predictable. The current GOP talking point on the debate over the Iraq funding bills is that the legislation “sends a memo to the enemy” telling them when the US will withdraw. Mitch McConnell made that point this morning on “Fox News Sunday” and then went further, directly implying that Democrats want to
-
Return of bogus “average” tax cut stats
The emerging debate over the possible expiration of President Bush’s tax cuts means that the White House is trotting out its misleading arsenal of “average” tax cut statistics. The goal: To mislead the public about the benefits of the tax cuts by using unrepresentative averages that are skewed upward by the disproportionate benefits received by