Today in "so much winning"!

[DCHawk1]

ziNg!

[DCHawk1]

Least intellectual.

lulz.

[Shirley]

Least intellectual.

lulz.

^^^

Why one editor won’t run any more op-eds by the Heritage Foundation’s top economist

“I won’t be running anything else from Stephen Moore.”

So says Miriam Pepper, editorial page editor of the Kansas City Star—and not just because she’s retiring this week. Pepper’s no-Moore stance comes after her paper discovered substantial factual errors in a recent guest op-ed by Moore, the chief economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The episode serves as a cautionary tale for editors navigating the disputes of rival policy advocates—and a case study in the delicate art of running a correction.

It all began a month ago, when the Star ran a piece by the Nobel Prize-winning economist-turned- liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, as it does regularly. The column named Moore as one of the “charlatans and cranks” who have influenced policymakers at all levels to enact low-tax, supply-side economic policies—with ruinous effects, according to Krugman. The sweeping 2013 tax cut in Kansas is only the latest example, he wrote, citing unfavorable economic and fiscal news in the Sunflower State.

After the column ran, Pepper told me, “I was contacted by Moore’s people saying they wanted to run a response.” In the interest of fairness, she agreed.

Moore, formerly of The Wall Street Journal, submitted a version of a column that originally ran in Investor’s Business Daily. Contra Krugman, the column argued that Kansas’s tax-cut experiment needed more time to work, and cited statistics to show that states “following Krugman’s (and President Barack Obama’s) economic strategy are getting clobbered by tax-cutting states.”

The Star ran Moore’s column on July 7. It wasn’t until weeks later that Pepper realized there were problems with it. The bad news came from one of her own columnists, Yael Abouhalkah, who had taken another look at Moore’s op-ed while researching an editorial he was writing, and realized that one key paragraph—the one containing the most specific data in support of Moore’s claim—didn’t check out.

Moore had written:

No-income-tax Texas gained 1 million jobs over the last five years; California, with its 13 percent tax rate, managed to lose jobs. Oops. Florida gained hundreds of thousands of jobs while New York lost jobs. Oops.
The recurring “oops,” intended as a dig at Krugman, took on an unintended irony after Abouhalkah discovered that Moore’s numbers did not match those of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In fact, Moore later acknowledged, he was using BLS numbers not from “the last five years” but from an earlier five-year period: December 2007 to December 2012. Focusing on that period is arguably dubious, because the span captures the depths of the Great Recession and the housing crash, which hit some states harder than others—and whose impact likely would have swamped any tax-rate effect. There are other issues with the quality of Moore’s argument, too, like its glancing-at-best treatment of how factors like housing costs shape population and job growth.

In any case, Abouhalkah found, Moore’s numbers were wrong even for 2007-12, in ways that complicated the “low taxes = more jobs” message. As Abouhalkah wrote in a column this week:

Texas did not gain 1 million jobs in the 2007-2012 period Moore measured. The correct figure was a gain of 497,400 jobs.

Florida did not add hundreds of thousands of jobs in that span. It actually lost 461,500 jobs.

New York, with [its] very high income tax rates, did not lose jobs during that time. It gained 75,900 jobs.
Oops, indeed.

In an email exchange, Pepper says, she presented Abouhalkah’s findings to Moore, and he agreed to a detailed correction, which ran on page 2 of the paper in an edition last week. The Star’s corrected version of the online column, published July 24, can be seen here.

The corrections

Moore’s piece, and the mistakes it included, did not appear only in the Star. When Abouhalkah discovered the errors, Pepper informed editors at the Wichita Eagle, the Star’s sister McClatchy paper, which had also run the piece. The Eagle ran its own correction, somewhat different from the Star’s. The original version published in Investor’s Business Daily remains uncorrected as of this writing. (IBD, which identifies Moore as part of its “brain trust,” did not respond to a request for comment.)

[...]

[Geezer]

Perfect choice by Trump.

[defixione]

Him and Barr, who helped keep Mr. Alzheimer out of the stinky place.

[DCHawk1]

Perfect choice by Trump.

^^^^^^

[Geezer]

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/28/trumps- ... -says.html

[DCHawk1]

I know, right?

https://nypost.com/2019/03/23/ocasio-co ... s-venture/

[Leawood]

$1,877.56 > $75,000

[Shirley]

Least intellectual.

lulz.

Greg Mankiw, who chaired the White House Council of Economic Advisors for President George W. Bush, wrote in a blog:...“Steve is a perfectly amiable guy, but he does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job. If you doubt it, read his latest book, ‘Trumponomics,’ or my review of it.”

Stephen Moore, Trump’s Wildly Unqualified Federal Reserve Board Pick, Faces a ‘Steep Learning Curve’

Trump, who believes the Fed held off interest-rate hikes in 2012 to help re-elect Obama, is determined to get his own thumb on the scale ahead of his 2020 contest.

President Trump’s nominee for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board is not an economist, but he has continually gotten key economic policy ideas wrong for 30 years and admits he knows nothing about monetary policy, which is what the Fed oversees and regulates.

Meet Stephen Moore, 59, the non-economist who plays one on television, and who, because of his loyalty to Trump, is about to dramatically fail upward.

“I’m kind of new to this game, frankly, so I’m going to be on a steep learning curve myself about how the Fed operates, how the Federal Reserve makes its decisions,” Moore told Bloomberg Television. “It’s hard for me to say even what my role will be there, assuming I get confirmed.”

...A catalogue of Moore’s greatest hits includes his insistence that Trump’s corporate tax cut is paying for itself despite the administration reporting that tax revenue is substantially down. Before that, he insisted the Clinton-era tax increase would tank the economy. Instead, it balanced the budget and left a sizeable surplus.

Moore was the architect of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s “red-state experiment.” Deep cuts in income taxes and business taxes were supposed to spur the state economy. Instead, they resulted in a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars, forcing unpopular deep cuts as school districts resorted to a four-day week, and roads and bridges were left in disrepair.

“Nothing the Matter with Kansas,” Moore declared in 2014, when the fallout was becoming painfully obvious. Brownback was narrowly reelected in 2017, but left the following year to become U.S. ambassador-a-large for religious freedom, his legacy as a pro-growth tax-cutter in shreds.

...Moore worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, where he developed the candidate’s tax plan. It built on two simple premises that Moore never deviates from, no matter the evidence: that tax cuts pay for themselves by spurring growth, and, conversely, that tax hikes cost more than they generate because they suppress growth.

...Moore’s right about one thing: the “steep learning curve” he’ll be up against in trying to convert the bankers and economists of the Federal Reserve Board to Trump’s sketchy economic agenda.

One thing Moore has in his favor: he’s never been accused of losing faith in his side of the argument as evidence against it mounts up.

[DCHawk1]

Mankiw is pissy that Steve doesn't have a PhD, which is fine.

O'course neither did Paul Volcker. Mankiw -- who is a pretty decent guy -- woulda shit himself at Volcker too.

Cuz...credentialing!

[defixione]

I understand academic posturing. Bottom line: is Moore qualified for this job?

[DCHawk1]

Chief economist @ Cato; senior economist @ U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee; senior economics editor and editorial board member @ WSJ; chief economist @ Heritage.

For a non-academic, it's pretty qualified.

[dolomite]

Chief economist @ Cato; senior economist @ U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee; senior economics editor and editorial board member @ WSJ; chief economist @ Heritage.

For a non-academic, it's pretty qualified.

Goodnuff for me.

[defixione]

Chief economist @ Cato; senior economist @ U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee; senior economics editor and editorial board member @ WSJ; chief economist @ Heritage.

For a non-academic, it's pretty qualified.

With all those credentials, how did his economic plan fail in Kansas?

[Geezer]

Do any of those positions involve money or is he just another right wing bloviator?

[DCHawk1]

Do any of those positions involve money or is he just another right wing bloviator?

Either way, how would it distinguish him from an academic?

Thanks for playing.

[Shirley]

Self-ownage much, junior?

[DCHawk1]

Wow.

I bet he never recovers from that sick burn.

[Shirley]

I was walking through the house yesterday when I heard "conservative" "economist" Larry Kudlow call on the Fed for a 50 basis point cut in interest rates, and reflexively said "WTF!?".

Proving once again: "We all know what we are, the only question, is price."