Many years ago, I was talking to a liberal friend of mine. I noted that the last two years of Bush’s presidency weren’t that bad. He seemed to have taken control from Cheney. He didn’t have control of Congress. He wasn’t good, but he was about as good as you could expect from a Republican president. And most of all: he was far better than he was the first six years. My friend did not like this at all. She started ranting about how evil Bush was and how he would run for a third term if he thought he could get away with it. And on and on.

This is a problem with all of us. I certainly fall into it myself. I assume the worst possible motives to conservatives. But I try not to. I try to remember that they really do think if we just cut taxes and regulations, then there will be jobs aplenty and it will be 1963 with June there to welcome the Beaver home from school and have dinner on the table when Hugh got home from work. Although I have to admit, the evidence against the kind of economic policy that Republicans favor is hard to justify. But I figure it is mostly tribal, not not that they just want to screw everyone but the rich.

But this attitude — that a politician you don’t like has evil intent — is nowhere as big as it is for the Clintons — Hillary especially at the moment. And this isn’t just on the right. There are lots of liberals who have a hatred that can only be described as pathological. And it’s strange. I understand that Rush Limbaugh thinks that the Clintons dress up in black robs and ritually torture infants to death in their secret underground lair; and then Hillary bathes in the blood to stay young. But he’s a demagogue.

The complaint from the liberal and “moderate” side seems to be that the Clintons are fake. But I actually think this is totally wrong. When Bill Clinton was first elected president, I was a libertarian. But I was amazed that people had such a problem with him. It seemed to me that the complaints about him being “slick” were just the complaints of losers that the winner was really good at what he does. If sprinters were as petty as these people, they would complain that Usain Bolt was “slick.”

Let’s face it: all politicians are fake to one degree or another. That’s what you get when you make politics into a “beauty” pageant. But in the case of the Clintons, there seems to be some very twisted logic. Bill Clinton was attacked explicitly because he seemed authentic, “I feel your pain.” But to the professional pundit, the more authentic someone seems, the less authentic they must be. That’s certainly what seems to be going on with Ron Fournier — the man who always finds the truth exactly halfway between the two parties and almost always finds them equally to blame for everything. Except when it comes to anyone named Clinton. He claims that, “The email scandal is a distraction from the important work of the Democratic Party.” As though it isn’t exactly him and like minded individuals who continue to push this fake scandal.

Kevin Drum wrote an excellent retort, If You Accuse Hillary Clinton of Lying, You Should Be Careful With the Truth Yourself. It turns out that everything that Fournier is complaining about is either wrong or misleading. The details don’t actually matter (but click over if you are interested). As Drum said, “It’s been months now, and there’s simply no evidence of anything other than unwise email practices and an unfortunate but instinctive defensiveness from Clinton over trivial matters.”

But Fournier and others know there must be something there. There must be, because it is Hillary Clinton. My take away from the Starr Report in 1998 was that the Clintons had to be the most honest politicians in the history of the world. And here’s the thing: that’s what a reasonably rational and objective person concludes. But people like Ron Fournier are basically conspiracy theorists: they’ve decided that there is “something” there and they will never believe anything else because there is no way to prove a negative. Fournier could be obsessed with finding that teapot that might be orbiting the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars. But instead, he’s obsessed with the malfeasance that he “knows” Hillary Clinton must be involved in.

See also: Centrist Solutions Lead to Right Wing Extremism.

Well, Donald Trump has a new tax plan out that he claims “is going to cost me a fortune.” And apparently, a lot of news outlets are buying that, because hey, it’s easier to just listen to him than it is look at the tax plan. But even looking at the bullet points shows what a sham it is. He’s lowering everyone’s tax rate. Well, that won’t work. And then he says individuals making less than $25,000 per year will pay no taxes — but most of them already don’t. But the crowning achievement in the plan is that it eliminates the estate tax.

Think about that for a moment. No one even argues that the estate estate tax limits investment. So why is it even part of this plan? And under current law, there is no estate tax when money is transferred between spouses. And there is no estate tax on amounts given to individuals up to $5 million. So this change is not meant to help the rich; it is meant to help the super rich; it is meant to help people like him. His line that it “is going to cost me a fortune” is so much nonsense, and it is outrageous that we have such an incompetent press that it reports this stuff seriously.

Luckily, there are people who actually look at the policy. CNN did a pretty good job of summing up what some of those people had to say, Donald Trump Unveils Plan to Slash Taxes for the Poor — and the Wealthy. For example, according to the Tax Policy Center, this year, 45% of Americans will own no Federal income taxes. All Trump’s plan does is push that number up to about 50%. Alan Cole of the Tax Foundation said, “Some of what Mr Trump has done in his press conference is just sell us on one of the better features of what our income tax already does.”

But the biggest news is that the top tax rate would go down from just shy of 40% to 25%. As Donald Trump might say: that’s huge. What’s more, he wants to get rid of the alternative minimum tax. And he wants to cut the capital gains tax rate. That’s always presented as a way to spur investment, but it’s done to decrease the taxes on the very richest people. There are better ways to encourage actual investment, but people like Trump aren’t interested in that.

Dylan Matthews put together, Donald Trump’s Massive Tax Cut for the Top 1 Percent, in One Chart. You may remember recently I wrote, The Narrative of Jeb Bush’s Tax Cut Plan. It was one of a couple of articles I wrote about how Bush’s tax plan is a huge tax cut for the rich. Well, as you will see, Trump’s “populist” tax cut, is far worse:

Yes, Trump’s tax cut does provide more to benefit to those at the lowest levels of the economy — but not much more. And it totally explodes at the top — exactly where tax cuts are unnecessary. The people are the top have been doing great since 2008. It’s not the upper class — much the less the top 1% — that needs help. Here’s how the numbers break down. Those in the lower class (lowest quintile), would get less than 2% of their yearly income in tax breaks. The middle class would get 5%. And the top 1% would get a bit more than 10%. Progressive tax cuts!

One of the better moments at the last debate was when Trump told Carson that we have always had progressive income taxes and that it isn’t socialism. But when it comes down to it, Trump’s tax plan is regressive — making the tax system less progressive. Almost 70% of the tax cuts go to the upper class (top quintile). Republicans just can’t help it. They can’t seem to think any other way about these kinds of things. But that doesn’t mean we have to believe their rhetoric.

Over at Vox last week, Dylan Matthews wrote a great article, The Case Against Equality of Opportunity. It’s somewhat long, but I recommend reading it. He showed that “equality of opportunity” is just not possible. This should be understood by everyone at this point. We simply don’t have the kind of society that would say to rich people, “You can’t spend your money on your kids!” And that is what it would take. In fact, we don’t even have the kind of society that provides equal funding for all children in public school. Even that kind of “equality of opportunity” is a bridge too far.

But the meat of Matthews’ article is that we shouldn’t want equality of opportunity. His quote of Thomas Nagel sums up the point, “When racial and sexual injustice have been reduced, we shall still be left with the great injustice of the smart and the dumb, who are so differently rewarded for comparable effort.” Take it to extremes: do we provide the same “opportunity” to get ahead to a child born without arms and legs as we do to other children? It’s a ridiculous notion when put in such stark terms, but that’s what we are saying. It just isn’t as obvious because someone who is intellectually slow would probably struggle through life. But that’s hardly fair.

The problem is both genetic and environmental. People who have a natural gift for trading stocks are more likely to have children with a similar gift. And, as Matthews pointed out, “We know, for example, that lead paint is more prevalent in poor neighborhoods. We also know that lead poisoning hurts children’s IQs, their ability to pay attention, and their school achievement, and that its effects on cognition last through adulthood.” Offering such children “equality of opportunity” is obviously just a sick joke.

But a sick joke is exactly what many conservatives would like to offer. A couple of years ago, reformish Republican Avik Roy wrote an article where he laid out what Republicans mean by “equality of opportunity.” And it was truly vile. According to him, equality of opportunity means only the lack of explicit laws. So as long as there were no laws stopping African Americans from having certain jobs, there was equality of opportunity. Note what’s happened here. First, Republicans said they believed in equality. Then it was equality of opportunity. Then even that “reformer” Avik Roy defines out of existence.

When we liberals talk about equality, we aren’t requesting that everyone have the same thing — all that Harrison Bergeron nonsense. The funny thing is that not even the communist countries pretended to have that. All we are really talking about is the safety net. The truth is that we are far too wealthy a country not to provide a basic level of care to our citizens. I would go far beyond that. Since I’m no fan of the idea of “free will,” I believe in great limits to how far one can rise economically. But we are at a point where we still have to argue about whether poor children should be given school lunches.

Matthews’ main point is directed at liberals. He pointed out that we want people’s lives to be better, “The desire isn’t egalitarian, but humanitarian.” And that means we care about outcomes. To me, the politics of this are pretty simple. And it goes back to what I’ve long been saying about how the New Democrats destroyed America. The Republicans and the Democrats talk about “equality of opportunity.” But it is meaningless. It is just a way of avoiding doing those things that would improve the lives of the ever increasing share of Americans who are struggling. The fact that the numbers are increasing should be all that we care about.

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution wrote something interesting, Generic Drug Regulation and Pharmaceutical Price-Jacking. It’s about the recent price rise of Daraprim from $13.60 to $750. He noted that the drug is not under patent, so this, at least, is not an issue of our broken intellectual property system. It is just that the the company that makes it is the only company that makes it, and Martin Shkreli is using that fact to price gouge. It is an example of our broken pharmaceutical system generally.

Tabarrok is a libertarian, and he has a bit of an ax to grind — although not like his partner, Tyler Cowen. Regardless, he did note two things that are important. One is that FDA approval for getting a license to produce a generic drug is costly. The other is that we aren’t able to just import drugs from other countries. In an incredible comparison, this drug is available in India for 5¢ per pill. This is the drug that Shkreli has gone around telling people the company was losing money charging $13.60 — and which he now sells for $750.

The main point is that we should allow reciprocity in drug purchases, “All that we would be doing is allowing import of any generic approved as such in Europe to be sold in the United States.” I agree with that. In fact, I would go further, Tabarrok is a bit of a protectionist when it comes to this issue — claiming that allowing patented medicines to be imported might have a “effect on innovation.” I’m getting kind of tired of the “innovation” line when it comes to the pharmaceutical companies. They mostly seem to be providing us with more and more diverse drugs for erectile dysfunction.

I would like to see far more government involvement in the markets for healthcare needs. As it is, the US government already spends a huge amount of money on drug research, but then allows private companies to get all the rents on them. It’s madness. What’s more, I don’t see why the government doesn’t just go into the business of making generic drugs. Clearly, our market system is not working in the case of Daraprim. But personally, I don’t think we need various sources of generic Vicodin.

One thing is certain: this is not a situation where all we need is for the government to get out of the way. It’s true that Shkreli is abusing the existing system. But any system we have will be abused by the likes of him. And I find it interesting that we arrest people for price gouging during a hurricane — charging ten dollars for can of peaches. But when Shkreli does it on a massively larger and more damaging scale, all we get from people is a shrug: that’s just the way our economy works. Well that’s the problem! We need to stop thinking that the way things have been is the way they must be or or that they are the “natural” way.

Work by the Center for Economic and Policy Research has found that our drug patent system costs us many hundreds of billion of dollars per year. Given this, I think we have to ask if the current system is the best that we can do. As it is, pretty much all economists believe that patents are a really bad for the economy. They cause enormous distortions in the market. The only point to having them is if they provide great benefits. Clearly they do provide some benefits. But I think we could do much better for our money through collective action.

It seems that the editors at The Washington Post are very concerned, The End of Globalization? The last three years the global economy has grown more than international trade. The last time this happened was in 1985. Oh. My. God! What are we going to do? I just looked outside and there are no flames as of yet, but clearly it is just a matter of time because the world is on fire. I’m sure that Thomas Friedman is hiding under his bed. How can we possibly survive without ever increasing international trade?! If people are buying more things locally, it must be a sign of Armageddon.

Dean Baker responded, The Trans-Pacific Partnership, International Trade, and Arithmetic Problems at The Washington Post. Because this is all about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). All our worries will supposedly be over if only we get the TPP — at least until the next trade agreement comes up. But as Baker noted, “The TPP actually will not do much to reduce trade barriers, since the barriers to trade among the countries in the pact are already low in almost all cases.” Like most trade deals these days, it doesn’t have that much to do with trade in a general sense and it has nothing to do with “free trade.”

This reminds me of an article that Noah Smith wrote a few months back, Free-Market Ideology and the Burden of Proof. It was about tax cuts and regulation reductions and their effects on the economy. He said basically, “Let’s assume that Reagan’s changes really helped the economy in the 1980s; isn’t it likely that making taxes even lower and getting rid of even more regulation will have — at best — a far smaller effect on the economy?” I feel the same way about trade agreements: getting rid of trade barriers in the past was doubtless a good idea. But are we really likely to gain much now? Reducing tariffs from 50% to 5% was a much bigger deal than reducing them from 5% to 0%.

And that’s why when we look at the new trade deals they don’t seem to have much to do with their stated intent. Baker has done everything but run through the streets banging pots to bring attention to this. We aren’t talking “free trade” when “one of the main thrusts of the deal is to increase patent and copyright protections.” That’s not about bringing prices down for consumers — quite the opposite, actually. That’s about providing certain industries with economic protection — industries that have a lot of political power.

There is a cargo cult aspect to this too. Thomas Friedman famously said, “I wrote a column supporting the CAFTA, the Caribbean Free Trade initiative. I didn’t even know what was in it. I just knew two words: free trade.” That’s true of most of the trade deal boosters who don’t have a direct stake in the matter: trade deals helped the economy in the past so they must always be good under all conditions. And in the case of Friedman: the deal didn’t even have to be about free trade — it just had to claim to be about it.

William Jennings Bryan once spoke about how the financial types wanted to “crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.” Well, now it is a cross of free trade. And the people advocating it today are no more well informed than the gold standard types were then.

It is well known (among liberals at least), that the economy has done much better under Democratic administrations than under Republicans — going back to World War II. And the difference is big: it’s almost double in terms of GDP growth. But I’ve always been skeptical about the claim. While it is certainly true, it isn’t based upon a lot of data — just 12 presidencies. And besides, I tended to think that the president doesn’t have that big an effect on the economy. But then I read Mark Thoma in The Fiscal Times, The Political Party of the President Matters for the Economy.

Thoma is a liberal, but he’s no bomb thrower. He’s a very careful economist. If it had been just anyone writing such an article, I probably would have passed it by. But instead, I read it, and he makes a very compelling case. He goes through the many ways that presidents do, in fact, effect the economy. It wasn’t all new to me, but it I wasn’t thinking too clearly even about the stuff that I knew. One thing that did surprise me is that because people don’t stay on the Federal Reserve board for very long, both George W Bush and Obama were able to fill it with all their own people. That matters. As Thomas put it, if we had had a Republican in the White House “does anyone doubt that policy would have been much different? Would interest rates still be at the lower bound? Would the Fed’s balance sheet be as large?”

The more obvious way the president matters is in fiscal policy. Democrats approach recessions in ways that actually help: tax cuts for the poor and middle classes; extended unemployment insurance; infrastructure spending. Republicans approach recessions the way they do everything: tax cuts for the rich. Even though “there’s little evidence that cutting taxes on the wealthy spurs economic growth, particularly in a severe recession when the tax reductions mostly end up as idle savings.” Basically, a recession is just an excuse for Republicans to do what they want to do anyway.

What’s more, individuals and businesses are more confident about the economic outlook when the Democrats are in charge. So they spend and invest more. That, I must say, is a bit of a shock to me. If the people know that the economy will do better under the Democrats, why do they ever vote for the Republicans? I understand that turnout is an issue. But if even businesses know it, why hasn’t there been a huge amount of pressure on the Republican Party to change its economic policies?

When put this way, it all seems so clear. The Republicans really are all about the shock doctrine: they don’t care about doing what is best for the economy; they have a set of things they want to do — which they always want to do — and that is what they do. It would be like going to a dentist who only knows how to pull teeth. Before long, you would have no teeth.

If you want to do a little low key activism, you might discuss this issue with people who aren’t much into politics. You don’t have to mention policies. You just have to talk about how they feel about the economy under Democrats and Republicans. Because the last time the economy did reasonably well under a Republican was under Reagan — 30 years ago. And all the Republican Party has offered since are the same policies, only more so. And it hasn’t worked. And it isn’t intended to. It is intended to just take more money away from you and me and give it to the rich.

Martin Longman wrote a very good article last week, Ted Cruz to Push It Real Good. It’s all about the upcoming government shutdown. To my surprise, there are actually some Republicans in the House, called the Main Street Partnership, who are pushing back publicly on the idea. They point out that it is really bad for the economy — which happens to be right. But the Ted Cruz wing of the party thinks they have to shut down the government, because the Republican base is restless. To support this idea, check out this amazing stat: “Survey data released by the Pew Research Center over the summer showed that positive views of the GOP among Republicans declined by an astonishing 18 percentage points since January.”

Longman’s claim is that the Republican Party is in a catch-22. Appealing to the base will necessarily offend everyone else. His advice, “But, as a rule, when you’re in a hole…” That’s certainly true. The problem at this point is that the GOP has made far too many promises. They are now in control of Congress. They told the whole nation that things were going to change. But of course, they haven’t. The base was hoping for a big showdown with the president. Instead, it has managed to get only two bills passed that Obama vetoed: one about the Keystone XL Pipeline and another minor bill trying to micromanage the NLRB. Not exactly exciting stuff.

But I wonder if the Republican Party could stop now even if it wanted to. As it is, I doubt that Donald Trump would be leading in the Republican presidential primary if the party had had its way. But instead, it is all the conservative media sources that have allowed him to become a big deal. This is a classic case of “live by the sword and die by the sword.” People tend to say that the Republican Party has created a monster in its base. But it isn’t the base. If the base weren’t told every day on Fox News that the country was going to hell, it would get in line with the Republican Party.

That’s the true catch-22 here. Because if the GOP doesn’t have Fox News, what does it have? My experience in talking to conservatives is that they don’t know what to think beyond, “America good!” Fox News manages to get them riled up about the most ridiculous stuff in the world. But it also keeps them focused on the thing that Republican elites care most about: tax cuts. Most conservatives I know want to see taxes raised on the rich. If it weren’t for the conservative commentators talking about this stuff, keeping taxes low on the rich would be as politically relevant as whether we should continue to fund the military.

I really don’t know where the Republican Party goes from here. My best guess is that they don’t go anywhere. Most people don’t pay enough attention to politics for it to matter. If China’s economy tanks and it takes down the rest of the world, the Republicans will probably do great in the 2016 election. It’s certainly the case that while the 2013 government shutdown was bad for the economy, it wasn’t bad for the Republicans in the election just a year later. And let’s face it: the power elite in this country know they have nothing to fear from the Democrats. Maybe their taxes will go up a tiny amount — that’s about it. At worst, having Democrats in power just means treading water until the Republicans get control and give the power elite everything it wants.

So maybe it’s not a catch-22 after all. Maybe we are all too focused on the short game. It doesn’t matter what happens to this week, or this year, or even this decade. And don’t forget: the power elite have done great under Obama. Under a Republican, they get a bigger slice of the pie, but a smaller pie. It may be that they support the Republicans just to keep the Democrats from doing anything that would hurt them.

Is it just me or do Republicans really not care at all about being anything close to correct about what they rant about? On Tuesday, Jeb Bush had an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, How I’ll Slash the Regulation Tax. He wrote, “To understand what is wrong with the regulatory culture of the US under President Obama, consider this alarming statistic: today, according to the World Bank — not exactly a right-wing think tank — the US ranks 46th in the world in terms of ease of starting a business.”

As a long time micro-businessman, let me respond: what a crock! The regulatory problems with running a business are all about state and local laws. I’m particularly annoyed by inventory taxes here in California. They really should be set up so that, for example, computer refurbishers can keep a small amount of hardware around without having to keep track of it for tax purposes. For people like me, this isn’t about the money — which is negligible — but about the hassle of it. There are other things too, like the fact that you can hardly move a block without the sales tax rate changing. There is much else, but none of it has to do with the federal government — much less President Obama.

I’m not surprised that Bush doesn’t know about this kind of thing. The way business works at the bottom rungs of the economy really is hidden from the likes of Bush and Trump. There are millions of little businesses around the US and they don’t have much to do with the way that business is taught in school or practiced in the Fortune 500 companies. It’s a hell of a lot more like Bob’s Burgers. Maybe Bush should spend some time watching that show — he might learn a thing or two.

But it turns out that Jeb Bush was just being deceptive. If you look at the actual World Bank rankings, you will find the following table. You will have to click on it to read it. But what it shows is the top ten countries where it is easiest to do business. There are ten factors listed that go into this. The overall ranking of the US is 7th. All Bush did was find the subcategories where the US did the worst and talk about that. It’s just despicable behavior.

Kevin Drum did a bit of a deep dive into the subject and he noted a few things. For really large economies, the World Bank just looked at two cities. In the case of the US: New York City and Los Angeles. They aren’t exactly representative, but okay — that’s good to know. But then Drum compared the US versus New Zealand, which ranks first on “stating a business.” It turns out that in New Zealand you can start a business in a half of a day, but it takes four days in the US. This isn’t actually starting a business, of course, “It’s solely about registering a new business.” In other words, the most trivial part of starting a new business.

But I thought that Drum’s conclusion was particularly important, “As for the outrageous regulations he promises to repeal on Day One, this would mostly just benefit big campaign donors, not the yeoman entrepreneurs he claims to be sticking up for.” Of course! Because Jeb Bush isn’t interested in people starting new businesses; he’s interested in allowing profitable existing businesses to make even more money. There’s a name for what Bush promises: crony capitalism.