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.

I find it curious that over the last few months as police officers have (bizarrely) felt attacked, one point they’ve fallen back on is the tired, “Well the next time you’re in trouble, maybe the police won’t come!” During my colorful life, I have found myself in far more dangerous situations than the vast majority of my fellow countrymen. At no point did I think a situation would have been made better by the presence of a police officers. About the only thing I’ve ever wished for is that I had a gun. But the last thing I wanted was someone armed who was jittery and convinced that his job was so dangerous that he needed to start shooting. (Check out the statistics from 2013: officers are much more likely to die in car accidents than in shootings.)

But all this discussion of the matter is telling. It shows that the police really do think they are critically necessary. I think the history of the world shows that this isn’t true. We’ve seen huge rises in policing because crime is so low — not the other way around. People in the lowest crime areas are the least tolerant of any crime and the most punitive towards those people who do commit crime. What’s more, there is always a reason to increase the police force. Is crime up temporarily? We need more policing to stop it! Is crime down? We need more policing because it’s working! It is all madness.

So a crazy man goes on a shooting spree and kills two police officers. And this means… What exactly? Crazy people kill others all the time. When right-wing nutjob Eric Frein killed a police officer, it didn’t have any significance. All the right wing politicians with their “don’t retreat, reload” rhetoric weren’t responsible for that. And no one claimed that they were. But an even crazier man kills a couple of officers and suddenly it is Bill de Blasio’s fault. It’s an amazing but common double standard: right wing politicians are never responsible for anything; left wing ones always are.

Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote a good article yesterday, Blue Lives Matter. It is about how we don’t have a “policing problem”; we have a society problem. The police are, after all, just doing what the people want. I do, however, disagree in one way: we don’t actually live in a democracy. In the modern world, it is all too easy for the power elite to manipulate the electorate. If they manage to do it with economic policy that directly harms those who vote for it, it is trivial to do it on policy designed to keep the underclass as the underclass.

And that starts with the media. The best example of this occurred over the weekend. I learned of it by Miserable Shitehawk at Gawker, Slimy Baltimore FOX Affiliate Caught Faking “Kill a Cop” Protest Chant. A group of protesters was chanting, “We can’t stop! We won’t stop! Til killer cops are in cell blocks!” I understand that it can be hard to understand chants. So the Fox45 newscaster could be forgiven for hearing, “We can’t stop! We won’t stop! So kill a cop blah blah blah!” But that doesn’t explain why she cut off the recording of the chant after “cop.” Amazing.

The station has since issued an apology. But it is ridiculous. They claimed, “Although last night’s report reflected an honest misunderstanding of what the protesters were saying, we apologize for the error.” That’s just not credible given that they did not use the whole chant. But even if it were an honest mistake, what does that say about the media that they think people are out in the streets calling for the murder of police officers? That would be illegal, for one thing.

We have twice as many police officers as we ought to have. We have ten times as many prison cells as we need. We have far too many prosecutors and they have far too much power in the criminal “justice” system. After freeing up these resources, we could use them to help society become better. I’m afraid this “instant death penalty for disrespecting a cop” thing has about played itself out. The only question is whether the people really will continue to think that we must keep our police state going to keep the underclass down. But if we do that, Ta-Nehisi Coates has a warning we should take very seriously, “[O]ne does not have to work hard to imagine a future when the agents of our will, the agents whom we created, are in fact our masters. On that day one can expect that the tactics intended for the ghettos will enjoy wider usage.”

It has begun. One of my biggest concerns about Republican control of Congress was that they would turn the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) into a partisan outfit. And now the process has begun. The idea of the CBO has always been that Congress ought to have access to real economic analysis. If they don’t have it, they will just do what they do in every other area: depend upon lobbyists. That’s not to say that the CBO has been perfect since its creation in 1974, but it has done a better job than I would have expected. And that is all about to change.

Yesterday, Dave Weigel reported, Republicans Block Reappointment of CBO Chief Doug Elmendorf. While it’s true that Elmendorf was appointed by Democrats, he’s never shown any preference toward them. In fact, he has acted the way anyone heading the office is supposed to: as a boring bean counter who drives pretty much everyone crazy. But it isn’t that the Republicans really care about him. It is just that they want to replace him with a partisan hack who will do “dynamic scoring.” This is the idea that tax cuts will so stimulate the economy that they will at least be partially paid for.

The CBO has never done dynamic scoring for a really good reason: by and large the economy doesn’t really work that way. One of the reasons that the 2009 stimulus worker poorer than it needed to was because it a good chunk of money was spent on tax cuts (much of which wasn’t spent) instead of direct spending. Once the Republicans get a partisan hack installed at the CBO, then they can propose Paul Ryan’s tax cutting rich-guy giveaway “budget.” And the CBO will say that it will reduce the budget because it will cause 6% growth from now until the second coming of Reagan.

Jonathan Bernstein is not a man to make outlandish claims, but even he wrote today, Republicans’ Latest War on Facts. He made three points. First, the Republican obsession with the budget deficit is “phony.” See how careful he is? This one could have been called in the early 1980s under Reagan. So: of course these mendacious jerks don’t care about the deficit. They only care about it in as much as it allows them to hurt the poor. Money given to the rich is sacred, and no sacrifice is too great to do that holy work.

Bernstein’s second point is that the Republicans have no interest in facts. He’s particularly focused on the supply side garbage thinking and the idea that tax cuts pay for themselves:

What do facts matter when they get in the way of things you simply want to believe? Want to cut food stamps? Scream about the budget deficit! Want to fund a war? Scream about how Reagan proved budget deficits don’t matter! Want Tinker Bell to come back to life? Appoint a Director of the Congressional Budget Office who really, really believes in fairies!

And his third point is perhaps the most damning, “Republicans in Congress don’t care about Congress.” Like most political scientists, Bernstein really cares about political institutions. And the Republicans don’t. They are just trying to push their ideological agenda by any means necessary. It reminds me of the Nazis when they took power in the legislature: they abolished it. If there were a way to do that in the United States, I have little doubt that the Republicans would have done it in January of 2003.

The Commerce Department has revised the third quarter GDP growth rate up to 5%. People are happy. Ed Kilgore is happy. Paul Krugman is happy. Matt Yglesias is happy. But I’m not. Who really cares about increases in GDP when it has become uncoupled from wages?

It’s remarkable to think about this. Roughly four decades ago, the wages of American workers broke off from its strong correlation with GDP and flat-lined. But in that time no one has seemed to care. It goes along with the announcement of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is announced every night on the news. Does a smoking hot stock market mean that more people are employed? No. Does it mean wages go up? No. So why do we care?

The truth is that “we” — as in, actual people who work for a living — don’t care. But newscasters do. The power elite care. And that is all that matters in the land of the “free” and the home of the “brave.” It’s an outrage that people remember the 1970s because of the high inflation as opposed to the beginning of deregulation. It is an outrage that people remember the 1980s as “morning in America” and not the decimation of unions and the end of even small gains to worker standards of living. It is an outrage that people remember the 1990s as a good economic time instead of yet another bubble economy and the end of welfare as we know it.

Democracy is not just a matter of voting. In fact, it isn’t even primarily about voting. No one really thinks that democracy is where an autocrat is the only person people can vote for. But in America, where we get to vote from two (!) people with exactly the same economic policies, we do call it democracy. It isn’t. It is oligarchy. We let the prols decide how long they can abort fetuses — but not whether they can join a union at work. Have a good same-sex wedding — if you can afford it, which you can’t.

So a 5% increase in GDP is a good thing in theory. But it could be 50% or 500%. What does that matter to you?! Are you going to get a job or a better job because of it? Are you going to get a raise? No you’re not. Our GDP could be cut in half and most people would be far better off if the economy were more equally divided among the people. So who cares? Caring about this is just more indication that we see everything through the lens of the power elite. We need to stop doing that.

It seems that Timothy Geithner is going around patting himself on the back because TARP ended up bring in more money than it put out. Thankfully, Dean Baker is out beating down this ridiculous notion, The Profit on the TARP and Bernie Madoff. He provided a great example of how the federal government could have done the same thing for Bernie Madoff that would have saved his business and “made” the government money. He considers the issue, “The question is whether an important public purpose was served by rescuing the Wall Street banks from their own greed.” He doesn’t see one.

There is an even more basic consideration. Geithner is just looking at how much money it cost the government to borrow the money and comparing it to the amount of interest that the banks paid. That’s a ridiculous way to look at it. To begin with, the government could borrow for so little money because interest rates were really low. And interest rates were really low because the economy was terrible. And the economy was terrible because the banks destroyed it. Something is very wrong with that kind of logic.

The other issue is that the government doesn’t work for free. Timothy Geithner and a bunch of other people and institutions had to be paid. There is government overhead for all of this stuff. Why isn’t all of this taken into account of the costs to the government? Because the government would have to pay it anyway? That’s not how a private business would look at it in its accounting. So why should the banks get off in this way. Clearly, this is just a way for Geithner to argue (as if it were necessary) that it is always a great idea to shovel cash to the rich because it is always a good investment.

But there is a far easier, if less quantitative way of thinking about this. The government can only do so many things: it has limited resources. So there is an opportunity cost of doing any given thing. The question is never whether bailing out the banks paid for itself in the long run. The question is whether that was a better use for the money than other things. Personally, I have no doubt that spending that money on improving schools and infrastructure would have been better. But for obvious reasons, people never bring this up. Because helping out the rich is always the most important thing to do because the one thing we really believe here in America is that the rich can never, ever be allowed to fail.

Baker did mention in passing the “Second Great Depression scare story.” That’s the one where we are all supposed to deliver gold, frankincense, and myrrh to the feet of Timothy Geithner for saving us from the calamity that would have befallen us if the big banks hadn’t been save. In other places, Baker has mentioned a number of things that could have been done. But in this article, he just mentioned the most obvious: the government could have spent money. That is, after all, what the government did do. But if it had been regular spending, it could have been used on good things instead of the bonuses of top management at banks.