Twitter roundup

	Brendan Nyhan Oct 29, 2010 at 9:37pm From my Twitter feed (10/20-10/25)
	BrendanNyhan Oct 25, 2010 at 4:19pm Princeton's Sam Wang flags NV, WV, CO, and IL Senate races as the best values for donors considering polls and state size http://j.mp/92UEFN
	2010 Congressional races – where to donate
	BrendanNyhan Oct 25, 2010 at 2:20pm Midterm is not simply a backlash against Obama's liberalism - incredibly simplistic claim by Krauthammer http://j.mp/cLA6zN
	Wehner Fallacy, Left And Right Versions | The New Republic The New Republic covers politics, culture, and the arts with a focus on the White House, foreign policy, Congress, Capitol Hill, the 2010 midterm elections, literature, and more.
	BrendanNyhan Oct 25, 2010 at 1:47pm .@joshtpm and @mattyglesias latest to note that Clinton's messaging skills didn't translate to victory in 1994 http://j.mp/cypzCa
	Yglesias » That Old Clinton Magic
	BrendanNyhan Oct 25, 2010 at 1:44pm Political scientists Barry Burden and Kenneth Mayer argue that early voting reduces turnout in a NYT op-ed http://j.mp/9YL2HJ
	The New York Times > Log In
	BrendanNyhan Oct 25, 2010 at 1:42pm Unlike GOP Senate candidates (http://j.mp/9HlxI1), Weekly Standard's Caldwell says tax cuts don't increase revenue http://j.mp/bh3RGE
	Economist's View: One More Time with Gusto: Tax Cuts Do Not Pay for Themselves Republicans are selling snake oil once again: Some Republican Senate candidates have suggested that extending the Bush tax cuts — which are scheduled to expire at the end of the year — will actu...
	The New York Times > Log In
	BrendanNyhan Oct 25, 2010 at 10:53am RT @smotus The gender gap is entirely a product of men becoming more Republican. http://tinyurl.com/23xw992
	The Monkey Cage: The Gender Gap
	BrendanNyhan Oct 25, 2010 at 12:19am Why so little strategic voting in FL SEN -- Crist's switch + Meek loyalty among black Dems? Meek voters should be bailing http://j.mp/bN8PGz
	Poll: GOP's Marco Rubio has solid lead in Florida Senate race - Politics AP - MiamiHerald.com Republican Marco Rubio is on the verge of delivering one of the biggest political knockouts in Florida history, as a new St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald/Bay News 9 poll shows him barreling int...
	PollsAndVotes Oct 24, 2010 at 12:48am At Dartmouth yesterday for panel on election forecasts. 51-52 Dems in senate and 50-60 seat GOP pickup in House was consensus.
	BrendanNyhan Oct 22, 2010 at 5:43pm Cool new update to HuffPo Pollster algorithm RT @mysterypollster Using Kalman Filter as the engine for our trend lines http://huff.to/9iiyr1
	Upgrading Pollster's Trend Lines: The Kalman Filter Regular readers have probably noticed a few subtle changes in our trend lines over the last 24 hours (and perhaps a few temporary glitches). The good news is that we have been rolling out the fi...
	BrendanNyhan Oct 22, 2010 at 5:42pm Dear CNN: A "Poll of Polls" should have >3 polls http://j.mp/bs5cVc Please talk to @mysterypollster about licensing some @pollster data.
	CNN Poll of Polls: Americans divided on Obama – CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs Washington (CNN) -- Forty-seven percent of Americans approve of how Barack Obama is handling his job as president, while 48 percent disapprove of his job performance, according to a CNN Poll of ...
	BrendanNyhan Oct 22, 2010 at 3:39pm Intrade's GOP majority odds: House 89%, Senate 16% || RT @JDelaneyIntrade 2010 US Midterm Elections: Market Update http://bit.ly/c6I0dZ
	Intrade Exchange News
	BrendanNyhan Oct 22, 2010 at 3:14pm RT @alexlundry Great data resource for historical election year polling numbers, by @RoperCenter http://bit.ly/9NAGNW
	Congressional Elections Past and Present
	BrendanNyhan Oct 22, 2010 at 2:32pm RT @stevekornacki If anyone should know the futility of "messaging" in a midterm environment like this, it's Clinton http://j.mp/dtE5Qc
	Former president Clinton on mission to rescue Democratic Party in fall elections Bill Clinton is baffled. The former president's friends say he is in disbelief that in the closing weeks of the midterm campaigns Democrats have failed to articulate a coherent message on the ec...
	BrendanNyhan Oct 22, 2010 at 1:14pm RT @JonHenke Who produced this ad for Roy Barnes? They need to be publicly shamed http://bit.ly/dbttL9
	When Campaign Ads Go Too Far | Philosophical Fragments Campaign ads are a sordid lot.  We all know this.  But how do we know when campaign ads have crossed the line from spin to outright dishonesty, from
	BrendanNyhan Oct 22, 2010 at 11:16am From @daveweigel, "a model example of high-level birtherism": http://j.mp/bYmfdJ
	Weigel : "Up to And Including Impeachment" I missed this over the weekend, but Susan Demas has footage of Tim Walberg, a one-term Republican congressman running for his old seat in Michigan spending a minute and a half musing over the pr...
	BrendanNyhan Oct 22, 2010 at 12:59am Correcting the NY Times: "Southern Democrats are in Trouble…But It’s Not a Realignment" http://j.mp/9a8yCz
	BrendanNyhan Oct 21, 2010 at 9:09pm .@daveweigel asks why Blumenthal suffering less military record fallout than Kirk. The short answer: McCain IL vote: 37%; Obama CT vote: 61%
	BrendanNyhan Oct 21, 2010 at 2:37pm Love this concept RT @mattyglesias Is anyone actually going to miss Juan Williams' replacement-level political commentary?

Comments

[David in Cal]

Economist Mark Thoma fights ignorant assertion with ignorant assertion. It's true that those who assert that Bush tax cuts paid for themselves cannot prove it. But, Thoma similarly doesn't try to prove that those tax cuts didn't pay for themselves.

The fact is that the Federal Government collected on average a substantially larger annual amount of income taxes during FYs 2005 - 2008 than in 2001 - 2003. (I posted those figures here some time ago.) That's because the economy grew quite a bit -- enough to more than offset the lower rates. I admit that I have no way to show how much of the economic growth, if any, was due to lower tax rates.

Prof. Thoma also makes no effort to calculate how much of the economic growth in 2005 - 2008 was due to lower tax rates. He tells us how much the tax cuts cost us, implicitly assuming that the lower tax rates produced no economic growth. (I believe that must be the case, because those are the only figures available.) This is what logicians call the fallacy of Begging the Question, Circular Argument, Circulus in Probando, or Petitio Principii.

Evidently this economics professor either doesn't understand Supply Side Economics, doesn't understand logic or is lying through his teeth, perhaps for political reasons.

Regarding the last possibility,which assertion is less likely?

1. Bush tax cuts increased tax revenue during a period when tax revenue did indeed increase substantially.

2. Obama's policies increased the number of jobs during a period when the number of jobs decreased substantially.

IMHO #2 is more implausible than #1. But, liberal economists don't want to touch #2.

[David in Cal]

Unlike Brendan, I do not admire that comment from Yglesias. The Juan Williams firing is a matter of principle; his replaceability isn't the point.

Try this analogy. Suppose NPR had fired Williams out of explicit racism. The station publicly anounced they don't want a black person in such a senior position.

Now imagine that someone defended that firing by writing, "Is anyone actually going to miss Juan Williams' replacement-level political commentary?" Would Brendan love that comment? Of course not. It's the principle involved, not whether some other commentator might be just as good.

[Jinchi]

I've never seen any evidence that Intrade has the ability to predict an election any better than the CW.

Am I wrong on this point?

[David in Cal]

I might add that some believe that race did play a part in the Williams firing. Not explicit racism of course. However, some perceive an implicit double standard: Caucasians are allowed to hold divergent views, but African Americans must not deviate from the liberal line at all.

This double standard may be seen in the fact that liberals demonize Clarence Thomas more than Antonin Scalia, even though both have similar legal and political views.

[bnyhan]

Depends on the standard you use to judge their accuracy -- see http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/PredictionMarkets(Palgrave).pdf and http://bpp.wharton.upenn.edu/jwolfers/Papers/Predictionmarkets.pdf for reviews of the literature.

[David in Cal]

Thomas Sowell provides another example when tax rate cuts were followed by increases in income tax dollars collected:

Between 1921 and 1929, tax rates in the top brackets were cut from 73 percent to 24 percent....

What happened to federal revenues from income taxes over this same span of time? Income tax revenues rose by more than 30 percent. What happened to the economy? Jobs increased, output rose, the unemployment rate fell and incomes rose. Because economic activity increased, the government received more income tax revenues.

http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2010/10/26/brass_oldies/page/full/

[Jinchi]

Seriously Dave, 1929. That's the year you want us to look to as evidence of the wisdom of any economic policy.

1929 was a bad year. Much much worse than anything since. Maybe it would be smarter to look at whatever they were doing immediately before 1929 and not do that again.

[David in Cal]

Good point, Jinchi. Also, Dr. Sowell makes a related point -- something I was unaware of -- in Part II of the column linked above. Sowell points out that unemployment didn't become really bad for a year after the stock market crash -- not until Hoover and then FDR, as well as Congress, began tinkering. He blames their tinkering for deepening and lengthing the Depression.

Some people point to the history of the Great Depression of the 1930s, when unemployment peaked at 25 percent, as proof that the government cannot simply stand by and do nothing when so many millions of people are out of work.

...First of all, unemployment never hit 25 percent until after -- repeat, AFTER -- the federal government intervened in the economy.

What was unemployment like when the federal government first intervened in the economy after the stock market crash of 1929? It was 6.3 percent when that first intervention took place in June 1930 -- down from a peak of 9 percent in December 1929, two months after the stock market crash.

Unemployment never hit double digits in any of the 12 months following the stock market crash of 1929. But it hit double digits within 6 months after government intervention-- and unemployment stayed in double digits for the entire remainder of the decade, as the government went in for one intervention after another.