As IF Times

link Harry Reid: “I dont know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican.” | The Weekly Standard.

If you think about this sentiment, you will see the embedded racism within.  An organization that professes to be the party of the people transparently exposes itself to be essentially a union shop.  If you extrapolated Mr. Reid’s logic, you’d have to include numerous other groups in society that could not possibly be Republican.  If we make a list of the vocal groups that regularly protest any activity seen to be hostile to their way of life and which can be blamed on Republican policies, they would include: Entertainers, gays, women, union members, blacks, drug dealers, young people, the poor, immigrants legal and illegal, Muslims, Jews, Atheists, Asians, environmentalists, academics, animal rights activists, abortionists, non-gun owners and of course the aforementioned Hispanics. 

Crunching the numbers over the entire U.S. population, this leaves only Donald Trump and 5 other guys who could be Republican.  Truly amazing then that the GOP can ever get elected given this small fan base.  Of course there is a possibility that individual members of the listed demographic groups don’t subscribe to the policies of the Democratic party and instead choose to think for themselves and identify more with the principles of the GOP.  It’s possible that some may be insulted at being lumped into some amorphous group and then pandered to by Democratic “leaders” like Reid.  While there may be appeal to some groups to have their interests championed at first, the bigger consequence is the balkanization of the country which leads to the divisiveness that the Dems always accuse the GOP of promoting.  As we have discussed in previous comments, people are naturally tribal and will join a mob given the right circumstances. 

Politics in the U.S. has evolved into a game of identifying a unique demographic slice and then to claim discrimination  by the larger group of society. Weak minds fall for the political call to action and voila, a new oppressed subgroup is formed to be organized, plied for political donations and worked for influence.  Essentially a union local is created.

A guy like Reid would be far more useful leading the charge for a college football team where his rants can actually be useful and in fact encouraged.  The ‘Us’ and “Them” ideology works great in the sports arena;  there it’s healthy, in politics not so much.

link Examiner Editorial: Time to admit that Obamanomics has failed | San Francisco Examiner.

If a San Francisco newspaper questions the policies and directions of the Administration, you know there is unrest among the plain folk.  Christina Romer, the academic who was brought in to chair the White House council of economic advisers has decided to go back to teaching at Berkeley after almost 2 years of poor results in the nation’s economic numbers.  Hmm.

According to Wikipedia, Romer, jointly with her husband David, worked on the study of how tax policies affect economic growth during their academic careers.  No slouch, she received her doctorate in economics from M.I.T.   The net conclusion?

“…Romer and Romer also find “no support for the hypothesis that tax cuts restrain government spending; indeed … tax cuts may increase spending. The results also indicate that the main effect of tax cuts on the government budget is to induce subsequent legislated tax increases.”However, she notes that “Our baseline specification suggests that an exogenous tax increase of one percent of GDP lowers real GDP by roughly three percent…”

I know to most people this is as interesting as the Dewey decimal system, but put very simply, (1) tax cuts can result in higher government spending (eventually) and (2) tax increases reduce GDP by a factor of 3 times according to their work.

While the latter conclusion is rather intuitive and we’ve discussed this in previous comments, the first conclusion is suspect.  No doubt a gripping read, the Romers’ thesis that lower taxes leads to higher government spending implies a rather spurious link (in my opinion )  between the two events.  Government spending always has at its roots, wants, not needs.  Wants are a result of politics and lobbying and to a large degree, prevailing culture.  For example, if someone were to put a number on the amount of government money spent on global warming over the past 5 years, it would skew the spending statistic, but would have nothing to do with tax cuts. 

As fascinating as discussions of economic theory are to everyone, the point of this commentary is to underline the fact again that academics with very little life experience outside of the ivory tower are drawing road maps for public policy.  Some, like Paul Krugman, get Nobel prizes for their theories, while others like Romer, get to actually implement their views.  Over the past 2 years, it’s clear that what looked good on paper, fails miserably in real life.  So, it’s abandon ship and back to the world of academia for her. 

But that begs the question.  If it didn’t work in real life,  is she going back to teaching it?  Will her views on economic theories change now that she’s seen them enacted in real time?  If not, the world had better be leery of Berkeley economics grads years down the road.