The Art of Not Answering

I'm sure I'm biased, but it seems that Democrats are better at this than Republicans. I'm confident that it's the most important asset of a Press Secretary, though.

Here's Jay Carney deftly dodging. 

Really read his response, though. Major Garret points out that the US has acted (however weakly), yet Russia continues moving forward on Ukraine.

Carney has two responses: "The US can't force action simply by saying stop, and we will continue along the same path we are on." The first is a typical Obama tactic--the straw man argument. The second is devoid of information.

A Perfect Storm

I'm really tired of the over-use of the phrase A Perfect Storm, but this is just ridiculous! The Snowden revelation was not a perfect storm at all. He understood and took advantage of flaws within the system. A perfect storm is when rare events all happen at once. Clapper is just trying to hide the CIA's errors in the matter.

A Coup at the CBO?

The CBO has recently released three conservative-leaning conclusions. This from the same organization that predicts jobs saved from stimulus based on economic models based on Keynesian principles.

Obamacare reduces incentives to work for subsidized beneficiaries
Minimum Wage costs jobs
Premium Support could offer same benefits for lower costs to taxpayers (and potentially consumers)

I wonder what's going on over there.

Has the Left Learned Nothing from Economics?

One of the favorite stories among economists (especially libertarian economists) is the Simon-Ehrlich wager. Ehrlich was an alarmist who constantly predicted the end of the world as we knew it, while Simon was a cool-headed economist that forced Ehrlich to put his money where his mouth was. Simon argued that if Ehrlich really believed that the world was doomed then the price of commodities should only go up. He let Ehrlich choose five commodities and if the price didn't go up, then Ehrlich lost.

Now we have this story worrying about running out of obscure metals. Perhaps there are no substitutes for these metals, but I would bet my own money, that our progress isn't in as much danger as these alarmists claim.

Anti-Free Trade?

In the past, I have been sympathetic to the Tea Party. Their priorities aligned with mine. Lately I realized that the Tea Party seems to be identified with conservative social issues, though, and it made me wonder when this became a big part of the Tea Party.  As I recall, the whole thing got started as a reaction to high debt levels and increased government control over our lives. While I generally agree with conservatives on social issues, these issues are not my primary concern right now, and I think they scare away a lot of people who would otherwise side with libertarians so I was unhappy with the new themes.

Now, I read that the Tea Party may be against free trade. If that's the case, then I'll have to abandon them altogether. Of course, this article doesn't really give many details, so it may not be true at all. They basically just posit that the Tea Party is skeptical of free trade, but don't name any people or a party platform or issue statement or anything. They then guess at some reasons why this may be the case. Hopefully it's untrue.

Prove It, Krugman

Paul Krugman wrote an op-ed about how terrible inequality is, but he forgot to make the case that inequality actually causes anything negative. Most of his argument is that inequality coexists with a bad economy.

Well, no. First of all, even if you look only at the direct impact of rising inequality on middle-class Americans, it is indeed a very big deal. Beyond that, inequality probably played an important role in creating our economic mess, and has played a crucial role in our failure to clean it up.

What a damning indictment of inequality. It's a very big deal. (unadulterated opinion). Inequality probably played an important role...  Well, if it probably did, we better get rid of it right away.

Inequality is rising so fast over the past six years it has been as big a drag on ordinary American incomes as poor economic performance.

How can inequality be a drag on incomes? Inequality doesn't cause lower incomes. Lower incomes cause inequality. What is he talking about?

The single argument he makes that inequality is bad, is that rich people make bad laws. So inequality creates more bad laws.

I encourage you to carefully read this column. You might think that when a Nobel prize-winning economist makes a statement about how inequality is harmful, he might have some economic arguments to back him up.

It's Official. Obama Lied.

Obama and his administration could have tried to make the case that his statement "If you like your plan, you can keep it." wasn't a lie.

Unfortunately, the self-proclaimed neutral watchdog Politifact (in reality, they're probably a little left-leaning) named it the lie of the year.

It's not just that his statement was false, but he deliberately used a false statement to make sure this reform passed. If he hadn't it would have been even more difficult than it was.