Senator Joe Returns

It appears that Joe McCarthy is alive and well and living in Kansas. On February 3rd, Senator Sam Brownback sent out a critique of the stimulus analysis by White House Council of Economic Advisors chair Christina Romer and Vice Presidential economic advisor Jared Bernstein. The four page critique, “Stimulus and Green Jobs: Some Disconcerting Suggestions,” is written under the Joint Economic Committee banner, but is an unrepentant ad hominem attack on the authors of the study, or more particularly, on the authors of one of the studies they cite in their analysis.

Rather than deal with uninteresting methodological or data issues relating to economic stimulus or green jobs, Brownback goes immediately to the heart of the matter: the political affiliations of Robert Pollin and Jeanette Wicks-Lim. Both, it seems, are, or have been, members of the Union of Radical Political Economics. And Jared Bernstein himself, we are helpfully warned by Senator Brownback, actually participated in conferences sponsored by the Union for Radical Political Economics. Case closed.

And I supposed Senator Brownback has a list of 205 “known members or sympathizers” of the Union for Radical Political Economics in his suit pocket.