Nobel Prize Winner Paul Krugman is Caught in an Embarassing Mistake!!
Here’s what Paul Krugman had to say recently:
“I’ve been getting some mail over yesterday’s column, with angry correspondents posting charts like this, showing government spending as a percentage of GDP, to claim that government spending has too surged:
But if you look at the raw numbers on government spending, here’s what you see:
Bureau of Economic Analysis
Feel the surge!
What’s going on? Yes, that’s right: it’s what happens when you divide by GDP in a time of terrible economic performance. Spending hasn’t surged; in fact, it grew more slowly in the two years after Lehman collapsed than in the two previous years, despite a sharp rise in spending on safety-net programs. Instead, GDP growth has plunged.”
But Krugman is very wrong, as James Taranto explains:
“The first chart, which shows a dramatic increase in spending as a percentage of GDP, uses a Y-axis that runs from 30% to 37%–just enough to contain each year’s figure, but no more. The second chart, showing the dollar amounts, starts at zero and ends at $6 trillion–meaning that the initial amount is much higher up on the chart.
Krugman doesn’t provide the actual numbers used in the chart, so we’re eyeballing these estimates:
The first chart shows an increase from roughly 30.8% in 2006 to 32% in 2008 to 36.1% today. The second chart shows an increase from about $4.2 trillion in 2006 to $4.5 trillion in 2008 to $5.3 trillion today.
To put these rises in percentage terms: Government spending as a share of GDP has risen 17.2% since 2006 and 12.8% since 2008. Government spending in dollars has increased 26.2% since 2006 and 17.8% since 2008. Spending has actually increased more sharply in nominal terms than as a percentage of GDP–not surprisingly, since GDP has been growing since the middle of last year, when the Obama jobless recovery began.
The gentler slope in the second chart is entirely a function of Krugman’s trickery with the Y-axis. Whether this is the product of dishonesty or mere incompetence, all we can say is that if this is the quality of Krugman’s advice, it’s no wonder Enron collapsed.”
Krugman, like Obama, has a Nobel prize.
Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-OH) Beats His Wife???
We can do oppo research too, you know:
“Charles admits that early in the marriage he kicked and struck plaintiff and accused her of adultery (Defendant’s Deposition) … Clara shall confirm the beatings, slappings, and kicking at the early stage of her marriage to the point where she was afraid to anger the Defendant and instead yielded to his demands. She also lied to third parties as to the causes of her injuries. Mrs. Wilson was the typical battered wife.”
And there’s graphic detail.
In Nevada, Ashjian’s Effort to Play Spoiler Gets Torpedoed!!
Given that Harry Reid and Sharron Angle are only separated by a percentage point or two, Reid’s hopes for re-election lay with Scott Ashjian, a fake “Tea Partier” who managed to get on the ballot.
The hope was the Ashjian would pull one or two percent from Angle, thus helping Reid win. But now there’s some news that Reid won’t like at all:
The Ashjian factor has lately become even more of a concern for Republicans because Ashjian’s name identification is up — in part because his recent meeting with Angle made national headlines — and also because his name will be right under Angle’s on the alphabetical ballot with the words “tea party” right there next to his name.
But apparently tens of thousands of ballots along with the hundreds of voting machine screens will show the abbreviation “TPN” rather than the words “Tea Party of Nevada” next to Ashjian’s name.
That fact could make a huge difference in how many votes he pulls, and Ashjian is not a happy camper. He told the Las Vegas Review Journal earlier this week that upon receiving his ballot in the mail, he noted [his objection to] the abbreviation.
In a strongly worded letter to the secretary of state’s office, Ashjian called it “wholly unfair” and alleged that “several county clerks have unlawfully abbreviated the name of my political party in an obvious attempt to mitigate the impact of the tea party.”
Secretary of State Ross Miller told Battle ‘10 there is no conspiracy among the county clerks to thwart Ashjian. Miller said both Clark and Washoe, the two most populous counties in the state, typically choose to abbreviate the names of political parties on their ballots, while the other 15 counties usually spell them out.
“How the ballots are stylized is within the discretion of the county clerks,” said Miller. “In any case, it is too late to change them now. Over one hundred thousand ballots have been printed and sent out, and many of them have already been returned.”
Here is the Clark County ballot to which Ashjian objects:
Fundraising is the Effect of the GOP Advantage, not the Cause
The Hotline’s Josh Kraushaar explains:
“All expectations were that Democrats would hold a significant financial fundraising edge over Republicans, and that the money advantage would be their one saving grace in surviving an otherwise punishing election year. This was the near-unanimous conventional wisdom well after the Supreme Court loosened campaign finance restrictions in its Citizens United v. FEC decision, and even months after third-party groups like American Crossroads formed with the express intent to help Republican candidates.
Instead, the third-party money has evened the playing field, allowing underfunded Republican challengers to be financially competitive with well-heeled Democratic incumbents. Without groups like American Crossroads, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid would have been able to dominate the airwaves against Republican Sharron Angle, who ended the primary campaign nearly broke while Reid was sitting on more than $8 million.
The story has been the same in Senate and House races throughout the country, where most Democratic members preparing for competitive contests used the advantages of incumbency to stockpile campaign cash — with significant amounts coming from political action committees, hardly the “cleanest” form of campaign money. Challengers don’t have that luxury.
Democrats have portrayed the influx of GOP outside money into the political process as sinister, raising the unsubstantiated specter of foreign influence into the political process. But money chases momentum — not the other way around. There’s a simple reason for all of the cash flooding against Democrats this year — voters are sending a clear message to Washington with their pocketbooks.
Money doesn’t get raised in a vacuum. If the political environment weren’t as poor as it is for Democrats, and if the House and Senate weren’t in play, there wouldn’t be as much interest in donating to outside groups like American Crossroads. In 2008, outside organizations with high-profile GOP connections such as Freedom’s Watch were unable to raise enough money to have an impact.
That’s all changed, thanks to the Obama administration’s aggressive first-term agenda, which has expanded the scope of government and alienated a large swath of the electorate, according to national polling. Wall Street, which closely split its donations between Republicans and Democrats in 2008, has now doled out most of its cash to Republican groups and candidates, out of concern about the administration’s regulatory policies. The Chamber of Commerce initially backed Obama on the stimulus. But now, outraged over White House policies on health care and climate change — and what it views as the administration’s anti-business rhetoric — the Chamber is focusing its efforts primarily on electing Republicans.
And while Republicans and their allies are winning support from the well-heeled, the untold story is the GOP’s small-donor base — not all that different from the one that allowed Obama to set fundraising records in his 2008 presidential campaign.”
He gives plenty of numbers to back that up.
Will Democrats Lose Seats That Aren’t on Anyone’s Radar?
Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) has won re-election by landslide margins for the last decade. Holt won 63 percent in 2008, 66 percent in 2006, 59 percent in 2004, and 61 percent in 2002.
And now an independent poll shows him in a 51-46 race with his Republican challenger! That’s a swing of 20 points from 2008!
Does Holt show up on Charlie Cook’s list of competitive seats? Barely. He’s in the Likely Democratic column.
I wonder how many such races there are, where complacent Democrat Congressman will find themselves out of a job come election day…
Rove Raises $13 Million After Obama’s Attacks!
The GOP-aligned American Crossroads said Wednesday it has raised over $13 million since coming under attack from President Obama.
The group and its campaign affiliate, Crossroads GPS, said it had easily surpassed its initial fundraising goal of $50 million to spend on behalf of Republicans, and has increased its target to $65 million, according to spokesman Jonathan Collegio.
The boffo numbers come after a week in which Obama led Democrats in attacks on the group, which is affiliated with GOP strategists Ed Gillespie and Karl Rove. Both are veterans of President George W. Bush’s White House.
Obama accused American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce of possibly receiving money from foreign donors and corporations to fund their electoral activities, a charge the groups deny.
The administration has shown no sign of relenting in their attacks toward the groups, which could have a major impact in the final weeks before Nov. 2, when voters head to the polls in crucial midterm elections.
Collegio said the attacks had only driven interest in the group’s activities, and that the increased fundraising would allow Crossroads to spend an additional $10 million in House races, and $5 million more in Senate races.
Poll: Raese Up by 3
Says Rasmussen. No wonder Manchin’s literally shooting at Cap-and-Tax.
Despicable Democrat Ad: My Opponent Will Kill Your Dog
Video: Chicago Reporters Gang Up to Shield Rahm Emanuel from Tough Questions
(via Breitbart.tv)
Gulp: Polls May Be Overstating Dino Rossi’s Support
Nate Silver explains:
The inconvenient thing about Washington, however, is that the polling there has been all over the map.
Indeed, this has been a problem for some time. In April, one survey showed Mr. Rossi ahead by 10 points, while another had Ms. Murray ahead by 17.
Things seemed to have improved last month, when several polls were in the field at the same time, and essentially all showed Ms. Murray with a small but meaningful lead.
Since then, however, the problem has gotten worse again. Rasmussen Reports has deployed four of its ubiquitous surveys in the state in the past three weeks, each showing the race essentially tied. And a Republican pollster, working for the conservative-leaning American Action Forum, showed Mr. Rossi ahead by 6 points. But yesterday, a poll by a local, nonpartisan polling firm, Elway Research, gave Ms. Murray a 15-point advantage.
Ignoring the American Action Forum poll for the time being — we don’t use explicitly partisan polls in our Senate or gubernatorial models and they often diverge significantly from nonpartisan ones — we still have a pretty big difference to split between the Rasmussen and Elway numbers.
The usual thing that people do in these situations is to engage in a “deep dive” on the demographics — “Rasmussen has only 36 percent Democrats in its sample when, like, everyone knows it should be 38 percent, dude!” Although I’ve engaged in such expeditions on occasion, most of these differences are caused by random statistical variations and are not meaningful. And the others usually result from legitimate differences of opinion about how to model the electorate.
So, let’s go “macro” here instead: why might Washington be a difficult state to poll?
One reason could be that it is one of two states, along with Oregon, where voting takes place almost entirely by mail. This can wreck havoc withtraditional likely voter models, which oftentimes ask questions like “Have you voted in the election precinct before?” and “Do you know where people in neighborhood go to vote?” — questions that are nonsensical in the context of an election that takes place by post. Also — probably because of mail balloting — turnout in Washington and another vote-by-mail state, Oregon, hasgenerally been very high, so targets that might work well in other states could fail there. Finally, since many voters in Washington return their ballots in well in advance of Election Day, a pollster surveying the race close to Election Day will encounter another type of voter — those who claim to have voted already — which traditional likely voter models are not well-designed to handle.
If this were to cause problems for pollsters, you might think the effects were felt predominantly among national polling firms, which might not adopt their assumptions to cater to the peculiarities of the state. And indeed, Rasmussen Reports has had some problems in Washington in the past, overestimating the performance of the Republican candidate by an average of 4 or 5 points since 2000:
SurveyUSA, another automated polling firm which has shown better results for Mr. Rossi this cycle than most other pollsters, also demonstrates such a pattern. Their final poll of the general election has overestimated the performance of the Republican candidate in each of the nine surveys in our database, and by 4 to 5 points on average:
So the two polling firms that have shown the best results for Mr. Rossi — Rasmussen and SurveyUSA — have a longstanding history of overstating Republicans’ numbers in Washington. Can Democrats rejoice?
Not entirely, because the local polling firm we mentioned — Elway Research — has tended to show a bias running the other way, with their surveysoverestimating the performance of Democratic candidates by an average of 3 points:
In the absence of any other information, the thing you usually do when polls diverge is simply to average them and hope for the best. There is especial reason to do in this case, since the polling firms that show the outlying results have some history of being biased in the same directions that they are now: Rasmussen and SurveyUSA, too favorable to Republicans; Elway, a bit optimistic for Democrats.
That would point toward Ms. Murray indeed holding a small lead, one that could be somewhat more meaningful than usual given that many ballots in Washington are sent in before Election Day proper and it is hard to make up ground late — although Mr. Rossi obviously retains decent chances.
Poll: Angle Leads by 1
Says Rasmussen. Only 1 percent of voters are undecided; so this race is probably going to stay tight all the way through November 2nd.
Tony Blankley: An Unhealthy Bunker Mentality at the White House
The Obama White House is behaving like the last two years of the Bush White House:
Based on the recent appointments of the two most powerful staff positions in the White House, it appears that the White House is descending deeper into the bunker in anticipation of the expected shift in congressional majorities next year. The selection of Pete Rouse for chief of staff and Tom Donilon for national security adviser are both in-house promotions. Moving deputies up to principal rank is more typically seen in the seventh and eighth years of a White House administration – when an administration often has lost its instinct for innovation and creative responses to changing events. Moreover, in each case, a senior figure is being replaced with a staffer. Rahm Emanuel was a congressman who was in the senior leadership of the Democratic House when he became chief of staff. Gen. James L. Jones had been supreme allied commander in Europe and four-star commandant of the Marine Corps before he became national security adviser last year.
Mr. Donilon and Mr. Rouse – both with good careers as staffers – have never held a principal position. They may well rise to the occasion – even as Gen. Jones seemed to descend at his White House occasion – but they start in the hole as major political forces in their own rights. Worse, they both are known as political Mr. Fixits rather than serious policy players, being more suited for executing presidential orders than helping the president see and move toward different strategic visions of his presidency.
Obama to Appeal Gay Marriage Ruling
Just in time for the elections, this should rile up gay people against Obama:
The Obama administration decided on Tuesday to appeal a judge’s rulings that prevented the U.S. government from banning same-sex marriages, a move that could undermine support among President Barack Obama’s traditional liberal base ahead of a key election.
The Obama administration filed a notice of appeal with the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in support of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, that barred gay marriages, even though Obama had previously opposed the law.
Although Obama opposes the law, a Justice Department spokeswoman said that the administration was defending the statute because it was obligated to defend federal laws when challenged in court.
Video: Alvin Greene Answers Every Question With the Same Answer
Charlie Cook: More Bad News for Democrats
Keeping in mind that Democrats now hold 59 percent of all House seats, the Republicans’ lead among likely voters in the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll is 52-45 percent; CBS News has it at 45-37 percent, while the ABC News/Washington Post poll has it at 49-43 percent.
The CNN poll of 504 likely voters was conducted October 5-7 and has a 5-point error margin. The CBS poll of 1,129 adults was conducted October 1-5 has a 3-point error margin, with a higher error margin for likely voters. The ABC/Post poll of 669 likely voters was conducted September 30-October 3 and has a 4-point error margin.
If those margins hold in the eventual popular vote total, it would translate into considerably more than the 218 seats Republicans need for the barest majority. Keep in mind that historically, national polls tend to underestimate the Republican vote on the generic congressional ballot test by about 4 points.
Starting last week, the Gallup Organization began releasing weekly its updated likely voter models. Based on two separate polls, each week is released with two sets of numbers, one based on a relatively higher turnout midterm election, the other on a somewhat lower turnout midterm. The higher-turnout version has the GOP up 53-41 percent, while under a lower-turnout scenario, the Republican edge is a whopping 56-39 percent. Democratic pollsters and their sympathizers have taken plenty of pot shots at the Gallup likely voter models since the first version was released a week ago, but it should be remembered that Gallup has been doing likely voter modeling in national elections since 1950 — longer than anyone else — and its seven-question screen is time-tested. Even if you take the narrower of the two sets of Gallup likely voter models and cut it in half, you would still have a GOP takeover of the House. Rather than shoot the messenger, folks should take the Gallup likely voter models fairly seriously.
