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National Review debunks supply-side myths
The NYT’s Ross Douthat flags a very important article by Kevin Williamson in National Review debunking the myth that tax cuts increase revenue, an article of faith among George W. Bush and other prominent Republicans that even Bush’s own economists didn’t believe. Williamson describes this point of view as “magical thinking”: What does Representative Gohmert
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Radio interview on misperceptions
For those who are interested, I did an in-depth interview about political misperceptions with Robert Pollie of The 7th Avenue Project (KUSP Santa Cruz) that aired on Sunday. It’s now available online as a podcast or via this Flash player: [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
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Bad CBS/NYT poll question on AZ profiling debate
A New York Times article on the latest CBS/NYT poll (PDF) suggests that a majority of Americans believe the new immigration law in Arizona “would result in racial profiling”: [D]espite protests against Arizona’s stringent new immigration enforcement law, a majority of Americans support it, even though they say it may lead to racial profiling… [T]the
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Joe Klein’s sedition rhetoric
It’s time to add Time’s Joe Klein to the emerging anti-dissent caucus on the left. Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit busts Klein for his repeated use of “sedition” rhetoric against conservative critics of the Obama administration, as in this clip from the Chris Matthews Show a couple of weeks ago: MATTHEWS: Well, making your point,
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -Great questions for journalists covering 2010 Congressional races from John Sides and Jonathan Bernstein -Even by the sad standards of Sunday talk, Bill Maher and Al Sharpton together on ABC’s This Week might be a new low -Rush Limbaugh is promoting the conspiracy theory that the leaking oil rig was sunk
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Obama tax increase misperception grows
Earlier this year, I noted a CBSNews.com post showing that 24% of Americans thought President Obama had raised taxes for most Americans and 53% believed taxes had been kept the same. The numbers, which were drawn from a CBS/New York Times poll conducted February 5-10, were even worse among Tea Party supporters — 44% thought
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Twitter roundup
From my Twitter feed: -CJR’s Greg Marx nails the New York Times for lazy “he said, she said” coverage of the financial reform debate –David Gregory and Perry Bacon should form a blame-the-voters club for journalists who don’t fact-check –The unbearable hypocrisy of former Washington Times editor Wes Pruden accusing President Obama of “play[ing] the
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New article on health care misinformation
I have a new article on health care misinformation in The Forum that may be of interest (link requires free registration; ungated copy here): Why the “Death Panel” Myth Wouldn’t Die: Misinformation in the Health Care Reform Debate Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama struggled to overcome widespread and persistent myths about their proposals to
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Measuring “epistemic closure”
While I obviously support more polling on misinformation, I don’t agree with Ezra Klein’s suggestion that it’s the best way to determine whether there is “epistemic closure” among ideological or partisan groups: The question is how do you measure epistemic closure? The easy answer is you test for its product: Misinformation. What you’d want to
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Charles Krauthammer: Hack psychiatrist
It infuriates me when pundits pretend to diagnose mental illness in their political opponents, but at least it’s obvious in most cases that the speaker has no psychiatric expertise. That’s not true, however, with the Washington Post’s Charles Krauthammer, an actual psychiatrist. Via P. O’Neill, the latest example comes from a Krauthammer column earlier this