As I mentioned previously, Ironman at Political Calculations and Menzie Chenn at Econbrowser are at odds over the Kansas economy. But it seems there is a larger issue that I have bumbled into. Here is Ironman at Political Calculations:
June 16 update:
The frenzy of activity was then unleashed on 14 June 2016, when beginning as early as 8:30 AM Central Daylight Time, the cat was compelled to spend the next 7-8 hours of their life feverishly trying to make the crackpot argument that every economic disappointment in the state of Kansas since January 2011 was the fault of tax cut policies implemented by its governor. Never mind the impact that the state's severe drought had on its large agriculture industry, the microrecession that impacted in the state's general aviation industry when President Obama's promised national economic recovery failed to materialize, or a massive cut in defense spending that occurred in the state that was later amplified by the defense spending cuts proposed by President Obama through the budget sequester, just to name a few.
That doesn't mean that Kansas' governor is off the hook. The combination of tax cuts and failure to restrain the growth of state government spending in the state more in the face of the deep non-policy related economic blows it was taking created a fiscal problem for the state's government, which wasn't helped by the federal government cutting $794 million worth of its annual spending in the state during the period spanning 2011 through 2014. By contrast, state and local government spending in Kansas was largely flat from 2010 through 2014. ...
August 12 update:
We're trying something new. Taking advantage of the comments at Env-Econ, which linked to that crap analysis we previously mentioned, we realized it would be catnip to the cat. So we dropped a couple of comments at the post (sorry John!), where we hope to achieve some much needed behavioral modification on the part of the cat.
And this was posted yesterday:
We have a special example of junk science to present today, because this particular example represents the first time we've had to address a repeat offender and to revisit a category from our checklist of how to detect junk science as part of this series. ...
As we revisit the category of Inconsistencies, we're fortunate to have access to all of the source data that the originator of today's example of junk science used in their analysis, which is what allows us to expose the methods by which they either ignored relevant data or suppressed it in order to sustain their pseudoscientific claims.
But better than that, today's example of junk science will take on some really comic proportions. Let's get started, shall we?
<-- Read the post at Political Calculations -->
That concludes today's example, which is far from the last produced by its originator. In fact, the techniques they used to cook their analysis in this analysis would appear to be their preferred M.O. to generate their desired and predetermined results, producing several additional examples that share a similar deficiency with today's example over just the last month and a half, although they have also managed to check off several other categories in the junk science checklist as well during that time.
On a more personal note, we've heard that the originator of today's example of junk science is upset that we keep returning to the subject of drought affecting Kansas economy andwonders why we do. From our perspective, that's a lot like O.J. Simpson complaining about people always asking him about the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, only in this case, the metaphorical dead bodies that are piling up are being used to arbitrarily dismiss real evidence that explains a large part of reality both more simply and more convincingly than their preferred narrative, which would appear can only be propped up using their pseudoscientific practices.
Speaking of which, to date, they have not retracted any of their findings that are based on their pseudoscientific practices, which we can confirm extends back over a number of years and would also appear to cover many aspects of their published analyses.
It's not like our repeat offender couldn't have taken an alternative course of action where they could have avoided such unpleasantness as this public exposure, but it is far too late for that now, as they apparently cannot restrain themselves from engaging in bad behavior. From our own example, when we make mistakes in the analyses we present, we address them and even thank those who point them out. It works pretty well for us, but then, there's a difference between unintentional mistakes and premeditated ones, which if you follow each of the links above, you'll find we've demonstrated applies to the repeat offender.
At the risk of more bumble, I tend to think that there is never one explanation for anything economic and that trying to figure out the most important explanation doesn't always make much sense.
