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Brookings Institute freaks out over ‘extremism’ and fiscal cliff
Generational Dynamics World View
First, by way of introduction, let me reprise the following:
- In 2006-2007, the Brookings Institute was dead wrong about the war in Iraq.
(See “Brookings
Institution does a full reversal on Iraq war” from 2009.) Not only was the
Brookings Institute wrong, but they were disastrously wrong, and if President
Bush had followed their advice, it might well have been a disaster for Iraq.
Basically, Brookings Institute made up “facts” known only to themselves. - As I’ve written many, many times, economists have no clue about what’s going
on. They didn’t predict, and can’t explain, the tech bubble of the 1990s, the
real estate bubble, the credit bubble, the credit crunch of 2007, the collapse
of 2008, they had no idea what was going to happen in 2012, and they have no
idea what will happen in 2013. Alan Greenspan has said that every macroeconomic
model has failed since 2007.
So with repeated failures by economists
and by the Brookings Institute itself, you’d think they’d develop a little
humility. Instead, here are some excerpts from an interview on CNN’s Reliable
Sources on Sunday, or Thomas Mann of Brookings Institute and Norman Ornstein of
American Enterprise Institute on the subject of the fiscal cliff:
Thomas Mann: “The Republican Party is very much together like a Tea
Party now. Their ideological commitments have moved far to the Right and they
really have deep skepticism of the whole notion of facts, of evidence, of
science. And they’re willing to engage in behavior that a generation ago we
would have said is just beyond the pale, that is take the country’s public
credit and risk a default to get their way.”Thomas Mann: “It’s just
stunning what Republicans have said and been willing to do that’s simply aren’t
true, not in a little fact-checking way, but in broad arguments about what
America’s about, where we’ve come from, why we have deficit problems now, what
government spending does to jobs, and the like.”Norm Ornstein: “And,
you know, part of our concern is — again, it’s not ideological. But if voters
don’t have a sense of who’s to blame, in a system — you know, it’s not a
parliamentary system. If you have a party acting as a parliamentary minority,
you’re going to have to find ways to hold them accountable and it’s up to the
press to report the truth, not the balance.”
It’s absolutely
incredible. Instead of recognizing their repeated record of failures, and saying
something like, “Maybe we’re wrong, but we believe that the Republicans are
making some errors,” they claim that they have the “facts,” they’re right about
everything, and anyone who disagrees is an extremist.
And then they say
“it’s not ideological!!”
How stupid do Mann and Ornstein have to be to
claim they know everything, despite repeated past failures by their colleagues?
Note that I’m not saying that they’re wrong and the Republicans are right. I’m
saying that Mann and Ornstein don’t have the vaguest clue what they’re talking
about, and that they’re simply making stuff up to support their ideology.
But this is the way people are these days. If you disagree with them,
then you’re an “extremist.” If you disagree with an Obama policy, then you’re a
“racist.” If you’re a member of the Tea Party, then you’re a “teabagger,”
according to CNN’s David Gergen and Anderson Cooper, who giggled as they uttered
the epithet. (See “Vile
‘teabagging’ jokes signal the deterioration of CNN and NBC news”)
At
least Mann and Ornstein didn’t threaten any Republicans with violence. That task
regularly falls to Teamsters president James Hoffa, who said
of the Tea Party in his introduction to the next speaker president Obama,
“We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America
back to an America where we belong.” And his union thugs have followed his
advice.
As far as who’s right and who’s wrong, I would remind readers
that in 2005 I issued a challenge to anyone to find a web site, an analyst, a
journalist or a politician anywhere in the world with a better predictive record
than my web site, GenerationalDynamics.com, and no one has produced one. I set
up my web ten years ago, and I’ve posted thousands of articles containing
hundreds of predictions that have all turned out to be right or are trending
right. None has turned out to be wrong. That’s not because I’m particularly
clever or prescient, but because in ten years the Generational Dynamics
methodology has been proven to be valid. Unlike the ideological rantings of
morons like Mann and Ornstein. CNN
2013-01-07 06:45:10
Source: http://www.americanfreedombybarbara.com/2013/01/brookings-institute-freaks-out-over.html
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