“Be very, very afraid”: Paul Krugman on the GOP’s scary economic “experts”

Title from the Salon referring to Krugman's NYT Column

Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, is said to be a rising contender for the Republican presidential nomination. So, on Wednesday, he did what, these days, any ambitious Republican must, and pledged allegiance to charlatans and cranks.

For those unfamiliar with the phrase, “charlatans and cranks” is associated with N. Gregory Mankiw, a professor at Harvard who served for a time as George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser. In the first edition of his best-selling economics textbook, Mr. Mankiw used those words to ridicule “supply-siders” who promised that tax cuts would have such magic effects on the economy that deficits would go down, not up.

But, on Wednesday, Mr. Walker, in what was clearly a rite of passage into serious candidacy, spoke at a dinner at Manhattan’s “21” Club hosted by the three most prominent supply-siders: Art Laffer (he of the curve); Larry Kudlow of CNBC; and Stephen Moore, chief economist of the Heritage Foundation. Politico pointed out that Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas, attended a similar event last month. Clearly, to be a Republican contender you have to court the powerful charlatan caucus.

So a doctrine that even Republican economists consider dangerous nonsense has become party orthodoxy. And what makes this political triumph especially remarkable is that it comes just as the doctrine’s high priests have been setting new standards for utter, epic predictive failure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/20/opinion/paul-krugman-cranking-up-for-2016.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=1

The modern Republican Party is beholden to “economic charlatans and cranks” who reject the very notion of an “objective reality,” Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman charges in his New York Times column today.

The latest evidence came Wednesday, when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — one of the GOP’s leading 2016 contenders — attended a New York dinner hosted by supply-side grandees Art Laffer, creator of the notorious Laffer Curve; CNBC host Larry Kudlow; and Heritage Foundation chief economist Stephen Moore. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who’s gearing up for a second White House bid, kissed the supply-siders’ rings last month.

That these men have become political powerbrokers attests to the sorry intellectual state of the GOP, Krugman contends. They don’t just cling to the fantastical — and empirically disproven — idea that tax cuts will bring deficits down. They’ve also made embarrassingly inaccurate forecasts about the Obama-era economy, predictions that have done nothing to damage their standing within the Republican Party.

“‘Get ready for inflation and higher interest rates’ was the title of a June 2009 op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal by Mr. Laffer,” Krugman notes, while ”what followed were the lowest inflation in two generations and the lowest interest rates in history. Mr. Kudlow and Mr. Moore both predicted 1970s-style stagflation.” Kudlow and Laffer, Krugman points out, have at least admitted that their predictions were wrong.

http://www.salon.com/2015/02/20/be_very_very_afraid_paul_krugman_on_the_gops_scary_economic_experts/

Field of Schemes has a recent report indicating Scott Walker's proposed bond issue on the Bucks new arena will likely cost taxpayers about $160 million more than the stated claims.

This issue is key when highlighting the hypocrisy of the Republican's "tax hike" assertions

Obama budget proposal would eliminate tax-exempt bonds for stadiums

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s budget released Monday would eliminate the sort of tax break used to fund $325 million in tax-exempt debt for the Dallas Cowboys’ $1.3 billion stadium.

The budget blueprint won’t go far in the GOP-controlled Congress. And even if it did, it would only apply to bonds issued after Dec. 31, 2015. So financing for Cowboys Stadium wouldn’t be affected. But it could have a big impact for teams around the country.

Eliminating the tax break would raise $542 million over 10 years, according to budget estimates.

Under current law, local governments can use funding from tax-exempt bonds to pay for private activities, including stadium projects, unless more than 10 percent of the bond proceeds are used for private business use and more than 10 percent of the debt service comes from private business use.

An exemption can only be denied if both of those apply.

trailblazersblog.dallasnews.com/2015/02/obama-budget-proposal-would-eliminate-tax-exempt-bonds-for-stadiums.html/