Rant 4/26/13
This comes in two parts – one deals with the opening of a Library in Texas – and the other deals with an economic paper that turns not to as accurate as stated and what if anything will be the result of that.
The George W Bush library opened yesterday with the surviving presidents in attendance and the courtier press attempting is figure out why this man is so gosh darn disliked by folks as he was always nice to them and had a great bar be que.
What the Professor noted is that the last few days were a good reminder of just how insane the Bush years were and how utterly awful they were.
The professor is a busy man and can’t list all the reasons why someone with a working forebrain would find W’s presidency a disaster and the man himself worth despising. Aside from the greatest intelligence failure in this country since Peal Harbor there was letting Osama Ben Laden out of Afghanistan (while incompetence does explain this there may have been a more evil motive behind it) the utterly disastrous invasion of Iraq which followed months of demonizing any opposition to the war (who proved out to be correct about this being a huge stupid mistake) and of course there was the torture, the kidnapping (it has another name but one of the worst trends in America is giving soothing sounding names to ugly things like shooting rockets a people in country we’re not a war with to blow up some we dislike and fuck the wedding party next to them.) and letting New Orleans drown.
And at this ceremony W gave a speech and begins to cry about all the folks who died. And the crown applauded. That W had had a major had in them fucking dying in the first place and that a lot of them would be alive and well (this is not counting the maimed by the by). He was given an ovation by the Texas audience – this has gotten a great deal of play in the press as in the “see he’s not such a shit.” But all the professor could think was these are the tears of a clown who is crying for himself along.
Not that I would wish harm on another human being – well that’s not exactly right but still it is not something to indulge in - my suggestion for W to prove his sincerity would be ritual seppuku with dick Cheney as a second.
The second part here involves what was known as the R&R study that ‘proved’ that once government debt went beyond 90 of the GDP it had a negative effect on growth. The publication of this paper back in 2010 was greeted with huzzahs of praise just about everywhere folks wanted to cut deficits here at last was positive proof that what they knew in their hearts that debt was bad was true. That the paper had not been peer reviewed yet, that the authors would not release their data and that a lot of economists questioned and questioned loudly the conclusion the paper mattered not a whit – it was quoted all over the media with a reverence not even seen for Ronald Reagan’s sayings
The trouble is that once someone got a look at the real numbers all sorts of things popped out – selective omissions of data – whole countries not included in the calculations because of a error in excel (which can, one must admit happen to the best of us) so when the numbers where run again it turns out the economy doesn’t fall when the debt is above 90%. It’s been an embarrassing few weeks for the authors who have been on a ‘it’s not really out fault that everybody quoted this and we really didn’t mean that really” tour of the media but the damage has been done. – Krugman wonders what difference this is going to make to the policies in place which have destroyed Greece and have wrecked the economies of Italy and Spain and Ireland and England (who at last report is heading into another recession) and threaten to do the same for the rest of Europe and of course here in the US where the sequester is supposed to get the sides together and decide what really needs to get cut out of the budget.
Alas Dr. Krugman – it won’t made a damn bit if difference.
It’s the policies that are inviolate we must cut the deficit – it’s a moral imperative and gut social security while we are at it, this too is a moral imperative. So that an intellectual prop got kicked out from under this edifice shall matter not a whit. Another will be found.
As was noted there were questions about the study the instant it came out but there were hushed aside. Had any of the powers that be had a smattering of humility it might have occurred to them that a study that exactly matched their pre-existing prejudices might well be too good to be true and should be viewed with a careful eye.
As a side note this should have been the rocket that went up when Charles Murray published the Bell Curve wherein he, a lifelong foe of government assistance to the poor – especially the black folks – said he had discovered that the blacks had lower i.q.’s overall which accounted for their continued poor showing economically and that any attempt to help them was a waste of money. Let just say that if the professor ever did a study that found that that his pre-existing prejudices about Yankee fans (that they front running whiners who are compensating for their own life failures by rooting for the most successful franchise in Baseball) he would have to reluctantly presume he’d managed to cook the books someone and toss the study away. In Murray’s case later research has shown that he was amazingly selective about what data he did and did not use so much so that his conclusions can be safely disregarded. This is of course not even addressing the matter of what if anything I.Q. Tests test other than one’s ability to do I.Q. Tests.
The professor expects that soon another study of something will show that Debts by Governments are always bad things and this will be seized up as if it was holy writ.
Depressing yes but there you are.
One last thing came to the professor attention here – the W library apparently asks the visitor what would you do? For example what would you do if you were told about the attack in the trade towers?
Well for one thing I would put the book down and try and find out what was going on rather than sitting there like an ass.
