The New Republic article is titled, "The Unelectable Whiteness of Scott Walker," with the sub-heading, "A Journey Through the Poisonous World That Produced a Republican Star."

This is completely insane. I have followed Walker's career for a long time, and there is nothing in his record that can plausibly be given a racial tinge. What does TNR have on him? He supports voter ID legislation. That's it. Of course, every Republican politician supports voter ID, as do a lot of Democratic pols. As for voters, I believe most polls show around 70% support. All of which is to say that the New Republic's smear is pathetic, made up out of whole cloth.

When Congress threw ethanol producers a gigantic bone by expanding the Renewable Fuel Standard through the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 by annually increasing the amount of ethanol that fuel refiners are required to blend into the nation's gasoline supply, they blithely made the crucial assumption that Americans' gasoline consumption would continue to increase indefinitely. Thanks to heightened fuel efficiency and slackened driving habits, however, Americans' demand for gasoline has actually decreased, meaning that refiners would have to blend gasoline with ethanol well above the E10 level that is considered safe for most of the older cars and trucks on the road today in order to comply properly.

The charges are devastating, and there is plenty to back them up. And again, let's be abundantly clear: The Financial Times is accusing Thomas Piketty of dishonesty, of making up his arguments, of actively trying to mislead readers and actively trying to mischaracterize inequality trends. This mischaracterization leads to policy prescriptions on Piketty's part that are both entirely unrealistic in their design and implementation, and, more importantly, are wholly unsupported by the actual data on inequality . The main thrust of Thomas Piketty's book is entirely undermined, and his arguments and conclusions are annihilated. It is hard to imagine a more comprehensive refutation.
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The second thing we ought to note is that neither Giles, nor Giugliano, nor the Financial Times would have discovered that Piketty's books is fundamentally flawed if they listened to Paul Krugman, who famously said on his blog that "if you think you've found an obvious hole, empirical or logical, in Piketty, you're very probably wrong. He's done his homework!" Yes, that was a real statement by Paul Krugman, and yes, it ought to haunt him for the rest of his lifeâ"and beyond. We now know that it is more accurate to say that Piketty fudged his homework. I doubt that Krugman knew that Piketty's conclusions were pretty much made up out of thin air-if he did, there is truly something rotten in the state of economics-but the point is that Krugman tried his damnedest to ensure that no one would take a critical eye to Piketty's data and conclusions.