I’ve written before about the fiasco that’s been going on in Kansas, Art Laffer’s Toxic Prescription. Since the 1970s, Laffer has been selling the same old supply side snake oil. The idea is that cutting taxes will so stimulate the economy that it will actually bring more money into the government in the form of taxes. It isn’t true that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but this supply side myth is not one of those free lunches. Given our low level of taxation, it literally never works. But over three decades of failure has not stopped Laffer from continuing to push this idea.

Kansas is ground zero for this right now. Sam Brownback used Laffer’s ideas as an excuse to do what Republicans always want to do: cut taxes. This is not about economics. This is religious faith, which is why intellectual mediocrities like Art Laffer are held up as heroes on the right. But things have not worked out. The tax cuts have not spurred growth — unemployment is higher than it is in surrounding states. And the government has had huge deficits. The response from Brownback is that these things take time. Just keep waiting and eventually all will be well. Of course, the cuts to education are here today. And if the tax cuts were going to work, they would have worked by now.

But I learned something new about the Kansas story from an article by Mark Binelli in Rolling Stone, The Great Kansas Tea Party Disaster. He noted, “Back in 2011, Arthur Laffer, the Reagan-era godfather of supply-side economics, brought to Wichita by Brownback as a paid consultant…” Interesting. I knew that Laffer had consulted on how to destroy the Kansas economy, but I didn’t know it worked that way.

Here’s the thing. Since supply side economics is a religious faith, you don’t go hire an expert who will look at your options and decide on the best one. You decide what you are going to do and then you hire Art Laffer as a way to justify it. Laffer isn’t an economist; he’s a public relations device. So bringing him in to “consult” is picking your solution, because you know that Art Laffer has only ever had one idea (and it isn’t even his). So if you hire him, that’s the idea that you will get.

Many years ago, I was the head of software development at a high tech start-up. We did amazing work — arguably the best work I’ve ever been part of. But there was a shake-up among the owners and the brilliant founder of the company was pushed out. Suddenly, the company was controlled by a bunch of money guys who didn’t understand anything about technology. They hired a friend with a technological bent, but who was totally unqualified for the job. And he proceeded to destroy pretty much everything that was developed under the company’s founder. That was mostly on the hardware side. But at one point, they decided to hire a software consultant. This guy did work on web-based applications. So he studied what we were doing and — What a surprise! — he decided that we should convert the software to be a web-based application.

This is my experience with consultants. In general, they aren’t the generalists you would think. Instead, there is one thing they know and when hired, they always find that the best solution is that one thing they know. In the case of my clueless employers, I don’t think they understood what they were doing. They probably met the guy at a bar and that was good enough for them. But clearly Brownback knew what he was getting. Laffer was not going to surprise him.

The whole thing is remarkably disingenuous. We actually know pretty well what works in terms of economic policy. But there are always conservative economists around to tell conservatives whatever it is that they want to hear. Alberto Alesina is there to tell them that budget cuts in a recession will create a boom. Greg Mankiw will tell them that stimulus spending is good when a Republican is in the White House, and that it is bad when a Democrat is in the White House. Funny that. And Art Laffer, the one trick pony, will tell them tax cuts will pay for themselves. We would be dealing with more open-minded people if we were dealing with the Spanish Inquisition.

H/T: Ed Kilgore

As you probably know, I’ve been paying pretty close attention to the race for control of the Senate. You can see the six main models listed on the sidebar on the right. And recently, things have not been going so well, as I discussed in, Democrats Are Sad Not Delusional. So I continue to focus on Nate Silver’s model — currently giving Democrats a 36% chance of holding the Senate — and using Sam Wang’s model to remain hopeful.

Right now, Wang’s model gives the Democrats a 45±15% chance of holding the Senate. But it has been as low as 25±15% just a couple of days ago. It isn’t this number that gives me hope. Wang provides a more interesting statistic: the meta-margin. This is how far off the polls would have to be for the election to be a toss-up (50% chance that Democrats would keep control of the Senate). Currently, the value is R+0.4%. That is: Republicans are up by 0.4 percentage points and if the polls are off by 0.4 percentage points in the Republicans favor it would be a toss-up.

The reason this gives me hope is that polls usually are off by quite a lot more than that. Looking just at midterm elections (presidential election polling is better), the average magnitude of errors on elections since 1990 is 2.9%. Of course, that doesn’t mean that errors would be in the Republicans’ favor. In 1990, 1994, and 2002, the polls were off in the Democrats’ favor — meaning the Republicans did better than expected. But the last two midterms were off in the Republicans’ favor. And the last four elections total greatly favored the Republicans: +3.4%, +0.9%, -0.2%, +2.7%.

This doesn’t necessarily mean anything. The 1998 polls favored the Republicans by 4.9%. Then the 2000 polls favored the Republicans by 2.1%. But then it flipped and favored the Democrats by 4.0% in 2002. So maybe the polls are all making the Democrats look better than they will turn out to be. That would actually make sense, because the Democrats have been polling far better than anyone expected, given the fundamentals of this election. And if that’s the case, this could be a far worse election than I am expecting.

In the end, when I make my predictions going into the election, I’ll stick with the polls. But I hang onto the hope that the meta-margin provides. Of course, it is just a measure of the error that the models predict. Most of them claim that Democrats have about a one-in-three shot of keeping the Senate. And that means there is roughly a one-in-three chance that the Republicans will have a blow-out. So that’s not a lot to hold onto. But it’s something. As always, it will help if you vote.

You would know I was being ironic if I wrote, “Those subhuman blacks are such racists!” But if I were a conservative, well, you would have to assume that I was serious. I know this sounds like an extreme example, but conservative lawyer Larry Klayman was over at that bastion of sanity WorldNetDaily Friday, Time to Act on Obama’s Ebola-Gate. Basically, it is about yet another of his useless and costly lawsuits. But apparently, Klayman just can’t help himself because, you know, he’s a bigot.

There is, perhaps, nothing that a modern American conservative believe quite as much as “reverse racism.” They think that there is no racism in America because there are no laws that stop people from doing particular things because of their race. But they also believe — contrary to their first claim — that there is racism, and it is against whites for people even claiming that the other kind of racism exists.

Here is the money quote — the one you would know was ironic if I wrote it:

I’m not going to break the whole thing down — much less the rest of the article with such priceless quotes as, “But I am not a racist, and neither are you!” I just want to focus on three little words: “his fellow Africans.” Really?! Obama is an African? That’s amazing. It is now the sixth year of Obama’s presidency, and people on the right can still not accept that he is an America. He is still that inscrutable “African” who managed to trick a lot of the “real” (white) Americans to vote for him. It is a shockingly racist statement. Since Obama is black (whatever that is supposed to mean), he sides with his “fellow Africans” and against “whites and others.”

Brian Tashman at Right Wing Watch noted:

I also like how Africa is a single place in the minds of conservatives. It isn’t 20% of the land area of the world with 47 countries. I guess this goes along with the school district that wouldn’t allow two Rwandan children to enter school because of Ebola concerns. You know: it’s the “dark continent”; how could anyone tell one region from another — much less one nation from another! I mean, Rwanda is only 2,600 miles from the closest country with Ebola. But that’s just “I’m an ignorant American” syndrome. It isn’t racism.

I’ve only said it once, so let me repeat it: Larry Klayman is a bigot. But he has lots of support. If you have a strong stomach, you can read through some of the comments. One person claimed that his lawsuit wouldn’t work, “Crooked judges would rather see themselves and their families die of Obola, than allow discovery on Obola’s forged documents.” Another has it all figured out, “Obama WANTS half of America to die. WHY? CONTROL.” And another gave the obligatory shoutout to the conservatives’ newest authroitarian BFF, “I notice that Russia is clamping down, and Putin is right to do it.” (I can’t actually find any indication that this is true.)

What bugs me is that I’m sure Klayman is no kind of social pariah. That is something that the upper reaches of our society have lost sight of. Norms are enforced by people paying a social price for breaking those norms. But going around publishing racist comments about the president don’t disqualify him from being at all the good parties. I don’t know, but given that it wasn’t for Andrew Breitbart, why would it be for Klayman? The one good thing about this is that you don’t have to read the future Fall of the American Empire because you get to watch it in real time.

H/T: Digby

Ramesh Ponnuru now works at Bloomberg View, which goes along with my theory that any smart conservative will eventually end up with a good job at a mainstream news outlet because there are so few conservative writers who aren’t totally insane. But while I like him and think he often has really insightful things to say about American politics, he is usually just a conservative who can’t see beyond his limited worldview. Take, for example, his article today, Sorry, Obamacare Is Still Unfixable.

Earlier this year, I wrote, Ramesh Ponnuru Obamacare Warning to Conservatives. That was in reference to his article warning that Obamacare was not about to “implode.” But I criticized him for implying that conservative complaints about Obamacare were substantial. They aren’t. And to be honest, I don’t see that Ponnuru’s complaints are either.

In today’s article, he attacked the plan of Senators Mark Warner and Mark Begich to add “copper” plans to Obamacare. These would be plans with low premiums and high deductibles. Ponnuru says that such plans might hurt Obamacare, “That migration could, however, make the exchanges less stable by reducing the amount of money that healthy people are putting into them through their premiums.” It’s possible, but given the conservative tendency to always assume the worst about Obamacare and always be wrong, it is hard to take the “could” complaint very seriously.

But Ponnuru’s complaint especially annoys me because what Warner and Begich are doing is trying to appease conservatives. It is conservatives, after all, who are always yelling about how “catastrophic insurance” is the solution to all our problems. But once such things are on the table, they complain about high deductibles. Indeed, Ponnuru complains about the ridiculously high deductibles in the current “bronze” plans. And I agree: it’s terrible. And I don’t like the idea of “copper” plans. I wanted and continue to want a more liberal plan. The current plan is extremely conservative. Democrats are working to make it even more conservative. And the reaction by conservatives is that moves in their direction are no good. Because, let’s face it, Obamacare will never be any good. There is no “replace” of Obamacare; conservatives just want to kill it.

This brings up an issue: is healthcare in the United States better under Obamacare than it was before? I think the answer to that is clearly and resoundingly, “Yes!” That should be the question for conservatives like Ponnuru, just the same as it is for liberals like me. It shouldn’t be, “Is Obamacare better than whatever solution you have in your head?” I’m not saying that Ponnuru is being disingenuous, but it is just too easy for people (Like me!) to get lost in theoretical-land and not deal with the world as it is.

Ponnuru ended the article in a way that makes me even less keen. He wrote, “An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll earlier this month found that only 36 percent of the public favors Obamacare.” That’s true, but hardly relevant. People don’t even know what Obamacare is. It is just that the word “Obamacare” has been vilified like the word “liberal” — and by the same people. No change to Obamacare will make “Obamacare” popular. Even if it was reformed to consist only of tort “reform” and huge tax cuts for the wealthy, conservatives wouldn’t like it because it has “Obama” in the word.

I am sure that Ponnuru knows this. So the end of his article is nothing but conservative propaganda. And more generally, but to a lesser extent, that’s true of the whole article. Ponnuru is better than this. Sadly, the conservative movement is not.

This image comes from Digby, Exceptionally Hysterical. What it shows is the coverage of yesterday’s shooting at the Canadian Parliament. On the left is CNN with, “Terrified Capital.” I’m sorry: “TERRIFIED CAPITAL.” On the right is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) with, “Soldier Dies After Parliament Hill Attack, Gunman Also Shot Dead.” Stark difference.

What’s sad is that if I had only told you the headlines, you would have known: the first was from some American outlet. Even right now, The New York Times headline is, After Shooting, Fear and Anxiety Take Over Ottawa. And you would have known that the second headline was from some other country where they still report the news. Right now, the CBC headline is, Ottawa Shooting: A Day of Chaos Leaves Soldier, Gunman Dead.

I have a message for my fellow Americans: stop being such pussies. Constantly flying into fits of terror does not make us look tough. It makes us look like frightened children. As Russell Saunders noted yesterday, “As of this writing, the number of patients diagnosed with Ebola in the United States can be counted on one hand, and the number who have died on one finger.” Is there no threat too small that we won’t freak out?! If Malia gets a paper cut, will the headlines read, “BLOOD FLOWS IN THE WHITE HOUSE”?

The situation in Canada is pretty clear. There was a violent person who the Canadian government already knew about. He killed a man, which is sad in a general sense and a tragedy for those close to him. And now the violent man is dead. It doesn’t mean planes are heading for our skyscrapers. No black helicopters coming. No Ebola epidemic.

But you know what? There are 10,000 germs on every square inch of your skin! What’s more, every year, over two million children under the age of 5 die of diarrheal diseases. If I were you, I’d get to the bathroom fast. Not only can you vigorously wash your hands over and over again, it will also hide you away so that the rest of the world won’t have to see what cowards Americans are! This is why we spend on our military just under what the rest of the world combined spends: because we are terrified of a fair fight. Because we are the few, the arrogant, the pussies.

Ed Kilgore wrote a good article over at Talking Points Memo that really can’t be repeated enough, Looking For a Mandate In November? Good Luck. Of course, it won’t matter. Regardless of what happens, pundits will claim that there was a mandate. It’s what they always do. What is most likely to happen is that the Republicans will get a small majority in the Senate. And this will be portrayed as a backlash against Obama’s “liberal” policies.

It’s curious. Pundits are supposed to exist to provide insight into the news. So you would think that the natural thing for a pundit to do would be to note that this election is six years after the huge Democratic wave election of 2008. There are 21 Democrats in the Senate up for re-election — 8 in Romney states. There are only 15 Republicans up for re-election — only one of which is in a state that Obama took in 2012. So what we should expect is that the Republicans would gain 7 seats. And that is exactly what we are looking at, although right now, Nate Silver is giving almost as much chance that they will gain 8 seats.

But I don’t expect to see much of this nuanced view during the evening of the first Tuesday in November. Instead, there will be lots of conjecture about what “the people” think. And it will say a lot more about what the pundit thinks. But the main thing is that we can depend upon the pundits to do whatever is simplest. We can’t have news analysis that’s any more detailed and honest than campaign ads!

Here’s Kilgore’s take on it:

To take it a step further, it seems that the only thing that matters in politics these days is turnout. So regardless what happens to the polls, we can’t much say what “the people” think or want. We can say that people are disaffected from politics. And we can say that we make voting far harder than it needs to be, even apart from Republican attempts to stop people from voting.

But part of the problem is just us liberals. The Pew Research report I discussed earlier showed that less than 70% of consistent liberals voted in primaries as consistent conservatives. I continue to grasp onto the hope that some day all my fellow liberals will realize that we have such a bad government that is so disinterested in the concerns of the people because we don’t vote. And not voting in primaries, makes it easier for Democrats to nominate economic conservatives like Clinton and Obama so that even when the Democrats win, liberals lose.

But this election? It means nothing. It looks very much like it is going to turn out exactly as the fundamentals predict. The geography itself is against the Democrats. And the politics are against them this year. If we end up with 48 or even 47 seats, it will be a neutral year. But don’t expect to hear that from the pundits.

It seems that Ben Bradlee has died. He is, of course, the legendary Washington Post executive editor who made the paper into something really great once upon a time. To me, he will always be Jason Robards in All the President’s Men. But otherwise, as usual, I don’t especially care. Celebrity deaths are just like the deaths of other people. Those who knew him grieve, but his death is hardly important. For the last couple of decades, he was better known for his wife Sally Quinn’s very inside-the-beltway cocktail parties.

I don’t mean to suggest that Bradlee doesn’t deserve respect. Not at all! A couple of years ago, I wrote an article, Ben Bradlee and Integrity. It featured a quote from Eric Alterman about Bradlee in his glory days, when he had just started his job as executive editor:

That’s pretty awesome. I understand the economics of newspapers were different then, but I don’t think most editors would have acted as he did. In fact, I don’t think many people have a single example of such integrity and strength in their whole lives. So that’s a fitting obituary for the man.

Martin Longman has a different take on this from the “Bradlee was God!” obituaries that are streaming out. He called it, A Contrary View of Bradlee’s Death. It is contrary, but I think a better word would be “nuanced.” His concern is not Bradlee as a man so much as Bradlee as a symbol:

I do wonder how long we are all going to look at the Washington Post and think of the great work they did on Watergate 40 years ago. Yesterday, I was marveling at the Pew Research report, Political Polarization & Media Habits. It contained the ideological makeup of the readers of 36 different news sources (including anti-news sources like Fox News and The Rush Limbaugh Show). It contained a tool that allows you to see the results for each source. And I was shocked to see that the Washington Post had an overwhelmingly liberal readership.

Why then is it that the Washington Post editorial page is so conservative? Well, I think it is that the paper doesn’t froth at the mouth the way the Wall Street Journal editorial page does. It is the very definition of Very Serious Thinking. So very much like Andrew Cuomo, the Post can claim that it is telling hard truths, just as it did during Bradlee’s early days. But then it was more interested in telling truth to power. Now, the Washington Post is all about telling the powerful’s truths.

This morning over at Washington Monthly, Jim Sleeper wrote, On Election Day, Let Texas Voters Tip Their Hats to Hong Kong. That headline is a reference to the fact that the Hong Kong protesters — and those at Tienanmen Square before them — made symbolic gestures to American democracy. It is interesting that destroying democracy should be the primary goal of one of the two major American political parties.

Most of the article is about the obsession with guns on the right. Guns are not a sign of liberty. They are a sign that if you have enough power, you can do what you want. And that has always been true. If you listen to people on the right, you will hear a constant refrain about taking the country back — as if the United States is somehow not valid if it isn’t doing exactly what they want. This dates back at least to the 1950s and the John Birch Society, as well documented in Wrapped in the Flag. And the whole point of the ostentatious love of guns is the not-so-subtle message, “If you don’t do what we want, we will make you do what we want.”

You can forget about everything else. The one defining feature of modern American conservatism is that it doesn’t believe in democracy. Yesterday, Bruce Braley quoted a conservative complaining about the politics in her state, “If Iowa gave power based on land ownership, the state would swing 180 degrees.” Indeed it would! And if only we just anointed Ted Cruz King of America, things would swing pretty far in her direction too.

All of American conservative politics eventually leads to Sharron Angle. She said what the majority of conservatives are thinking. Forget the “Second Amendment remedies” quote. In one interview after talking about how sporting goods stores couldn’t keep ammunition in stock because people were arming to fight the government for their “liberty,” she said, “That’s why I look at this as almost an imperative. If we don’t win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?” Someone who believes in democracy would think the next step would be organizing, educating, and generally sucking it up. But that’s not the fantasy of the conservative mind.

Notice how authoritarian this is. There are despots all over the world who are all for democracy as long as it keeps them in power. If they lose the election, well, that just means there was vote tampering and they have to declare marshal law until the situation is stabilized. This is no different than the conservative claim that they will try to “Take our country back!” at the ballot box, but if that doesn’t work, “Armed rebellion!” I don’t think they will actually do this, of course. They are mostly a bunch of chickenhawks who dream of their great guerrilla war. (I’ve got an idea: fantasy guerrilla warfare leagues!)

But these same people who complain that they are losing at the ballot box are the ones that are working so hard to suppress the votes of other people. So even their tepid support for democracy is anti-democratic! But it is based on the same thing that is behind, “Take our country back!” Just as the current America — Now and sixty years ago! — is not valid, many Americans are not valid. High on their list would be people like me and the kind of people who read this site. But it is pretty hard to stop us from voting without going full “King Ted Cruz.” So they go after easier targets — people even weaker than we are.

We have had this democratic republic for 226 years. It is sad that we now have to argue over the very idea of democracy.