The most important aspect of Randianism as currently practiced is the
lies its adherents tell themselves. "When you're successful, it's
because other people are inferior to you." "When you fail, it's because
inferior people persecute you (call it going Roark)." "One of these days
you're going to run away and everyone who's been mean to you will be
sorry."
The most important aspect of Straussianism as currently practiced is the
lies its adherents tell others. Having started from the assumption that
traditional democracy can't work because most people aren't smart
enough to handle the role of voter, the Straussians conclude that
superior minds must, for the good of society, lie to and manipulate the
masses.
Joseph and I have an ongoing argument about which school is worse, a
question greatly complicated by the compatibility of the two systems and
the overlap of believers and their tactics and objectives. Joseph
generally argues that Rand is worse (without, of course, defending
Strauss) while I generally take the opposite position.
This week brought news that I think bolsters my case (though I suspect
Joseph could easily turn it around to support his): one of the logical
consequences of assuming typical voters can't evaluate information on
their own is that data sources that are recognized as reliable are a
threat to society. They can't be spun and they encourage people to make
their own decisions.
To coin a phrase, if the masses can't handle the truth and need instead
to be fed a version crafted by the elite to keep the people happy and
doing what's best for them, the public's access to accurate, objective
information has to be tightly controlled. With that in mind, consider
the following from Jared Bernstein:
[D]ue to pressure from Republicans, the Congressional Research Service
is withdrawing a report that showed the lack of correlation between high
end tax cuts and economic growth.
The study, by economist Tom Hungerford, is of high quality, and is one
I’ve cited here at OTE. Its findings are fairly common in the economics
literature and the concerns raised by that noted econometrician Mitch
McConnell are trumped up and bogus. He and his colleagues don’t like
the findings because they strike at the supply-side arguments that they
hold so dear.
And with Sandy still on everyone's mind, here's something from
Menzie Chinn:
NOAA's programs are in function 300, Natural Resources and Environment,
along with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and a range of conservation
and natural resources programs. In the near term, function 300 would be
14.6 percent lower in 2014 in the Ryan budget according to the
Washington Post. It quotes David Kendall of The Third Way as warning
about the potential impact on weather forecasting: "'Our weather
forecasts would be only half as accurate for four to eight years until
another polar satellite is launched,' estimates Kendall. 'For many
people planning a weekend outdoors, they may have to wait until Thursday
for a forecast as accurate as one they now get on Monday. … Perhaps
most affected would be hurricane response. Governors and mayors would
have to order evacuations for areas twice as large or wait twice as long
for an accurate forecast.'"
There are also attempts from
prominent conservatives to delegitimize objective data:
Apparently, Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, is
accusing the Bureau of Labor Statistics of manipulating the jobs report
to help President Obama. Others seem to be adding their voices to this
slanderous lie. It is simply outrageous to make such a claim and echoes
the worrying general distrust of facts that seems to have swept segments
of our nation. The BLS employment report draws on two surveys, one (the
establishment survey) of 141,000 businesses and government agencies and
the other (the household survey) of 60,000 households. The household
survey is done by the Census Bureau on behalf of BLS. It’s important to
note that large single-month divergences between the employment numbers
in these two surveys (like the divergence in September) are just not
that rare. EPI’s Elise Gould has a great paper on the differences
between these two surveys.
BLS is a highly professional agency with dozens of people involved in
the tabulation and analysis of these data. The idea that the data are
manipulated is just completely implausible. Moreover, the data trends
reported are clearly in line with previous monthly reports and other
economic indicators (such as GDP). The key result was the 114,000
increase in payroll employment from the establishment survey, which was
right in line with what forecasters were expecting. This was a positive
growth in jobs but roughly the amount to absorb a growing labor force
and maintain a stable, not falling, unemployment rate. If someone wanted
to help the president, they should have doubled the job growth the
report showed. The household survey was much more positive, showing
unemployment falling from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent. These numbers are
more volatile month to month and it wouldn’t be surprising to see
unemployment rise a bit next month. Nevertheless, there’s nothing
implausible about the reported data. The household survey has shown
greater job growth in the recovery than the establishment survey
throughout the recovery. The labor force participation rate (the share
of adults who are working or unemployed) increased to 63.6 percent,
which is an improvement from the prior month but still below the 63.7
percent reported for July. All in all, there was nothing particularly
strange about this month’s jobs reports—and certainly nothing to spur
accusations of outright fraud.
We can also put many of the attacks against Nate Silver in this category.
Going back a few months, we had this from
Businessweek:
The House Committee on Appropriations recently proposed cutting the
Census budget to $878 million, $10 million below its current budget and
$91 million less than the bureau’s request for the next fiscal year.
Included in the committee number is a $20 million cut in funding for
this year’s Economic Census, considered the foundation of U.S. economic
statistics.
And
Bruce Bartlett had a whole set of examples involving Newt Gingrich:
On Nov. 21, Newt Gingrich, who is leading the race for the Republican
presidential nomination in some polls, attacked the Congressional Budget
Office. In a speech in New Hampshire, Mr. Gingrich said the C.B.O. "is a
reactionary socialist institution which does not believe in economic
growth, does not believe in innovation and does not believe in data that
it has not internally generated."
Mr. Gingrich's charge is complete nonsense. The former C.B.O. director
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, now a Republican policy adviser, labeled the
description "ludicrous." Most policy analysts from both sides of the
aisle would say the C.B.O. is one of the very few analytical
institutions left in government that one can trust implicitly.
It's precisely its deep reservoir of respect that makes Mr. Gingrich
hate the C.B.O., because it has long stood in the way of allowing
Republicans to make up numbers to justify whatever they feel like doing.
...
Mr. Gingrich has long had special ire for the C.B.O. because it has
consistently thrown cold water on his pet health schemes, from which he
enriched himself after being forced out as speaker of the House in 1998.
In 2005, he wrote an op-ed article in The Washington Times berating the
C.B.O., then under the direction of Mr. Holtz-Eakin, saying it had
improperly scored some Gingrich-backed proposals. At a debate on Nov. 5,
Mr. Gingrich said, "If you are serious about real health reform, you
must abolish the Congressional Budget Office because it lies."
...
Because Mr. Gingrich does know more than most politicians, the main
obstacles to his grandiose schemes have always been Congress's
professional staff members, many among the leading authorities anywhere
in their areas of expertise.
To remove this obstacle, Mr. Gingrich did everything in his power to
dismantle Congressional institutions that employed people with the
knowledge, training and experience to know a harebrained idea when they
saw it. When he became speaker in 1995, Mr. Gingrich moved quickly to
slash the budgets and staff of the House committees, which employed
thousands of professionals with long and deep institutional memories.
Of course, when party control in Congress changes, many of those
employed by the previous majority party expect to lose their jobs. But
the Democratic committee staff members that Mr. Gingrich fired in 1995
weren't replaced by Republicans. In essence, the positions were simply
abolished, permanently crippling the committee system and depriving
members of Congress of competent and informed advice on issues that they
are responsible for overseeing.
Mr. Gingrich sold his committee-neutering as a money-saving measure. How
could Congress cut the budgets of federal agencies if it wasn't willing
to cut its own budget, he asked. In the heady days of the first
Republican House since 1954, Mr. Gingrich pretty much got whatever he
asked for.
In addition to decimating committee budgets, he also abolished two
really useful Congressional agencies, the Office of Technology
Assessment and the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.
The former brought high-level scientific expertise to bear on
legislative issues and the latter gave state and local governments an
important voice in Congressional deliberations.
The amount of money involved was trivial even in terms of Congress's
budget. Mr. Gingrich's real purpose was to centralize power in the
speaker's office, which was staffed with young right-wing zealots who
followed his orders without question. Lacking the staff resources to
challenge Mr. Gingrich, the committees could offer no resistance and his
agenda was simply rubber-stamped.
Unfortunately, Gingrichism lives on. Republican Congressional leaders
continually criticize every Congressional agency that stands in their
way. In addition to the C.B.O., one often hears attacks on the
Congressional Research Service, the Joint Committee on Taxation and the
Government Accountability Office.
Lately, the G.A.O. has been the prime target. Appropriators are cutting
its budget by $42 million, forcing furloughs and cutbacks in
investigations that identify billions of dollars in savings yearly. So
misguided is this effort that Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma
and one of the most conservative members of Congress, came to the
agency's defense.
In a report issued by his office on Nov. 16, Senator Coburn pointed out
that the G.A.O.'s budget has been cut by 13 percent in real terms since
1992 and its work force reduced by 40 percent -- more than 2,000 people.
By contrast, Congress's budget has risen at twice the rate of inflation
and nearly doubled to $2.3 billion from $1.2 billion over the last
decade.
Mr. Coburn's report is replete with examples of budget savings
recommended by G.A.O. He estimated that cutting its budget would add
$3.3 billion a year to government waste, fraud, abuse and inefficiency
that will go unidentified.
For good measure, Mr. Coburn included a chapter in his report on how
Congressional committees have fallen down in their responsibility to
exercise oversight. The number of hearings has fallen sharply in both
the House and Senate. Since the beginning of the Gingrich era, they have
fallen almost in half, with the biggest decline coming in the 104th
Congress (1995-96), his first as speaker.
In short, Mr. Gingrich's unprovoked attack on the C.B.O. is part of a
pattern. He disdains the expertise of anyone other than himself and is
willing to undercut any institution that stands in his way.
Unfortunately, we are still living with the consequences of his foolish
actions as speaker.
We could really use the Office of Technology Assessment at a time when
Congress desperately needs scientific expertise on a variety of issues
in involving health, energy, climate change, homeland security and many
others. And given the enormous stress suffered by state and local
governments as they are forced by Washington to do more with less, an
organization like the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations
would be invaluable.
