I was really depressed when I saw John Cochrane’s OpEd in The Wall Street Journal Monday, An Autopsy for the Keynesians. It wasn’t because it was totally wrong. But it is that. Ask Paul Krugman, Commies Like Me. Or Dean Baker, John Cochrane Versus the Keynesians, #23,127. Or Brad DeLong, If You Had Told Me Twenty Years Ago That the People The Wall Street Journal Put on Its Op-Ed Page Would Only Get Less Hinged as Time Passed… Or Noah Smith, Commie Commie Commie Commie Commie K-Keynesian. Or Frances Coppola, The Gullible Economist. Or Barkley Rosser, More Piling On Cochrane. I’m used to Cochrane writing absolutely stupid things.

What depressed me was that his article was so entirely typical of what we get from conservative economists who have done good work in the past. Or at least I think they’ve done good work in the past. People who know about such things certainly seem to think so. I don’t much pay attention to Cochrane. I’m much more focused on Greg Mankiw — probably because I better understand his economic work. But none of it matters because when they start talking policy, all their knowledge goes out the window. Earlier this year, Mankiw was arguing that of course the rich deserve everything they can because Robert Downey Jr starred in Iron Man 3. More recently, Cochrane was making the argument that inequality doesn’t matter because… single motherhood or something. When these jokers make policy arguments, they aren’t doing economics. They are simply pushing extremely tired arguments in favor the aristocracy that have been made for hundreds of years.

What bothers me is that none of these people ever pays a professional price for being out pushing the interests of the power elite. People will still look back on work they did in their 20s or 30s and note how professional it was. Sure, the economics blogs will attack them if they are pushing their vile apologetics in a venue that has a high enough profile. But there won’t be any good dinner parties they will miss because of this behavior. In fact, it will likely be the opposite. And no one will snub them at a conference and no one will fire them and no one will refuse to publish their books.

Of even greater concern is that these people will be eagerly sought in the next Republican administration. We know that of Mankiw. And we also know that his policy beliefs are entirely dependent upon who is in the White House. So if President Cruz calls him for economic advice, I’m know that Mankiw will be a Keynesian. And I’m sure that Cochrane will do the same thing. Because regardless of what he may rant around in The Wall Street Journal, he will do what they all do when it comes to practical matters: he will turn to Keynes.

So we are left with a situation where writing total blather in major newspapers makes these guys much more likely to go into government. And once there, they will be forced to grapple with actual practical economics. They will, of course, push the usual supply side nonsense loved by conservatives everywhere. But they will also have to admit that, yes, Keynes was right — not that they will say so in public. Because when it comes to the conservative audience — most especially including the politicians — Keynes isn’t an economist to be argued about; he’s the boogeyman.

Just in time for Thanksgiving, Darrell Issa released his final report on Benghazi — after two years of claiming that there was a big White House conspiracy to kill brave Americans and then to cover it up for political gain. The report’s findings: nothing whatsoever. It didn’t come as a surprise. I’d been saying the same thing since almost the start of the supposed scandal. It was just Republicans — as usual — looking for anything to complain about because they have literally nothing to add to any policy discussion.

And now, just in time for Christmas, Darrell Issa released his final report on the IRS targeting of tax-exempt, supposed social welfare groups — after coming up on two years of claiming that there was a big White House conspiracy to abuse conservative groups. The report’s findings (pdf): nothing whatsoever. Was the White House sending commands to the IRS to attack Obama’s enemies? No. Was the IRS targeting conservative groups and not liberal groups? No. Of course, we knew this back at the beginning. Michael Hiltzik explains it, Issa’s Big Dud: No White House Connection to IRS “Scandal”:

This is how Darrell Issa works. He makes loads of allegations very loudly as he makes the rounds to all the conservative media outlets. Then, he releases a report that says, “There is no evidence to back up anything I’ve been saying.” And since no one important is paying attention when he releases his reports, he wins. He’s been able to poison the political environment and make the Democrats look bad. No one is able to say quite what happened regarding Benghazi or IRS, but they will know that something happened and that the Democrats must have been up to something.

So let’s be clear: the only Benghazi scandal was that Republicans used the deaths of four Americans to push their own agenda and blacken the reputation of the United States government. And the only IRS scandal was that Republicans used a minor bureaucratic problem to push their own agenda and blacken the reputation of the United States government. In the process, the Republicans managed to force the IRS to grant 501(c)4 tax status to a number of conservative groups that absolutely should not have qualified.

Darrell Issa is the James O’Keefe of Congress. The question is what stunt he will come up with next. Sadly, the question is not whether the media will continue to fall for his tricks. We know the answer to that: yes. It doesn’t matter how much Issa manipulates the media and is shown to be completely wrong, they will come running when he calls. And when you wonder what has become of our democracy, all you need do is look around at all the “objective” journalists and see how they act as nothing but propagandists to anyone who claims to be telling “one side” of a story.

Oil money doesn’t just create bad governance outside the country. It also creates it inside the country. You’ve probably heard of Rick Perry’s supposed Texas Miracle. For years, Governor Who’s Smart Now That He Wears Glasses has been claiming that companies all over the nation are relocating to Texas because of its low taxes and regulations. Personally, I never liked the implied slogan, “Bring your employees to Texas so they can die in a workplace explosion!” But there you are.

The truth was always that Texas looked good to outsiders from California and New York for one reason: housing prices were low. There was the downside that, you know, the houses were in Texas. But people will put up with almost anything to find cheap housing. There is no doubt, however, that rich people liked the idea of moving to Texas because of its lack of an income tax. And regulation is lax, which is yet another reason why we really can’t leave such matters to the states because they do a shockingly bad job.

But a big part of the “Texas Miracle” was always the $100+ per barrel oil prices. And now that they are gone, it doesn’t look so good. On Monday, Michael Hiltzik wrote, Is the Oil Crash About to Snuff Out the “Texas Miracle”? That is certainly what happened in the 1980s. The Texas economy isn’t quite as dependent on oil as it was then, but it is still a very big deal. But what’s remarkable is that with all of the oil boom money that was coming into the Texas economy, none of it was used to build and repair public infrastructure.

Check out this amazing graph from the article that shows just how regressive the tax situation is in Texas:

Texas taxes people in the lowest three quintiles more than California. But even in California, the lowest two quintiles pay the highest percentage of their incomes in taxes. It’s an outrage — but not one that is of any interest to Fox News. Of course, I don’t ever recall seeing such information discussed on CNN or “liberal” MSNBC. But the main thing is that Texas soaks the poor. And now that they are headed for bad times, what they are going to get back for all those taxes they paid is nothing. As Hiltzik noted, “They’ll be searching for miracles, and they won’t find them in the Texas economy.”

Of course, Hiltzik thinks the coming difficulties will hurt Rick Perry’s presidential aspirations. I doubt that. He’ll be out of office. Perry will pretend that the only reason things have gone to hell is that his successor, Greg Abbott, doesn’t have his magic touch. I mean, really: he doesn’t even wear glasses!

If you want a great example of the vicissitudes of politics, all you have to do is take a look at the new CNN/ORC poll about the economy and Obama. The president’s approval rating has gone up to 48% — it’s highest level in almost two years. And this is, of course, all about people thinking the economy is doing better. This is just seven weeks since the Democrats suffered a very bad defeat at the polls. It was going to be bad regardless, but if the election were today, the Democrats would doubtless do much better than they did.

And that’s the difference between electing a whole bunch of really bad politicians and electing a much more reasonable bunch: seven weeks and a couple of hopeful economic reports. It’s incredibly sad. The psychology seems to be that when the government really isn’t doing its job and the poor are being greatly harmed, conservatives get elected because the poor are just too depressed to even show up to vote. Or maybe it isn’t depression. Maybe they are just too busy running around between their three part-time jobs that they don’t have time to vote. The results are the same: a bunch of old people on Social Security and Medicare show up to vote for politicians who promise to cut welfare. You know: Social Security and Medicare aren’t welfare when you receive it.

This is what is so frustrating about following politics. There is clear cause and effect, but it makes no sense. It isn’t the case that politicians get rewarded for improving the lots of the voters, and they certainly don’t get punished for destroying the lots of the voters. The poster child for this is now Sam Brownback. He has effectively destroyed the Kansas economy with the help of long-time Republican snake-oil salesman Arthur Laffer. And his penalty for this act of ideological rigidity and policy incompetence is that he didn’t win re-election by as much as he normally would have. It’s outrageous that this man continues to be employed. In a just world, he’d be in prison.

Yesterday, Luke Brinker reported, Sam Brownback Is Sorry He Predicted His Tax Cuts Would Work. Well, he didn’t actually say that. He just said that he regretted saying that his tax cuts would be a “shot of adrenaline.” But that raises the question as to what Brownback thought he was doing. If the tax cuts were not meant to grow the economy, then what? Of course, we all know what. It’s the reason I say he should be in prison: it was just an excuse to take money away from the poorer classes and give it to the rich. And in that way, it was a huge success. So why all the complaining?

Since I’m a big proponent of democracy, I think we should consider trying it in the United States. But there are a lot of things that we need to do and a whole lot of power and money that is against trying such an exciting experiment. Clearly, we have to get money out of politics. And according to the Supreme Court, that will require a Constitutional Amendment. (Although even in that case, I can see the unholy trinity on the court claiming that the new Amendment was unconstitutional.) It’s going to take some kind of catastrophe for this to happen. We also need to have automatic registration. It is an outrage that we don’t have that. It isn’t hard. Finally, we need to make voting mandatory and legislate some kind of paid holiday for voting. I would like to see a week of voting and anyone can take a paid day off during that week to vote. All of this would lead to a far more liberal and humane country. And that’s why the power elite will do everything they can to stop it. They like elections where people like Sam Brownback prevail.