Shill Project profile on Megan McArdle

[Cain]

You know, I've been waiting for this profile for a long time.  Long before McArdle made the stupidest move of a very stupid career by picking a fight with Mark Ames and Yasha Levine over the origins of the Tea Party.  I'd been aware of McArdle's earlier days as "Jane Galt" on the internet, wishing to get rid of corporate taxes entirely and wanting to beat antiwar protestors with pieces of 2x4, before she remade herself as a "serious" and "sober" business and economic correspondent for The Atlantic.

That anyone could take her seriously with that kind of background seemed utterly preposterous.  But here we are, several years on, and "Jane Galt" is still regurgitating her libertarian word-vomit over the wider internet, and somehow getting paid for it.  Though at least she is gone from The Atlantic (too late, the damage is done, James Fallows and Ta-Nehisi Coates are the only people worth reading in that rag), the Daily Beast are gainfully employing her, meaning she'll still be shitting up internet political writing for years to come.

Anyway, enough about that, here is the link

http://exiledonline.com/the-daily-beasts-megan-mcardle-a-covert-republican-party-activist-trained-by-the-billionaire-koch-brothers/

Includes such delicious quotes as:

"Borrowers were not brought down by predatory lending. . . . Borrowers were brought down by a willingness to gamble on rising home prices–exactly the same thing that knocked out Lehman Brothers. At least Lehman Brothers had the excuse that ten years of rising prices had completely screwed up their default models."

Yeah, homeowners caused the economic crisis, and took those poor, defenceless bankers for a ride.

"I also disagree with the notion that the concentration of wealth is a large political problem. ... while the wealthy certainly have the ear of politicians, and also give a lot of money to those politicians, it's not clear to me how tightly these things are linked on matters of broad national policy."

Yeah, whenever in the history of humanity has large concentrations of wealth in the hands of a few ever led to political power?  Certainly not in recent history.

Am I suggesting that the Iraqis should pay for occupation expenses? Nope. We can afford it, and there's something repellent about making impoverished Iraqis pay for a war foisted on them by an evil dictator. But most of that $2t, if it is any sort of a real number, will be stuff for Iraqis: roads, schools, hospitals, government buildings, power plants and sewers and all the good stuff that lets us live like citizens of the 21st century. That stuff should come out of Iraqi oil revenues.

"HAHAHA, look at the antiwar retards.  Don't you know the Iraq War will pay for itself? Once those grateful Iraqis are done throwing flowers at us, they'll use their massive oil wealth to rebuild the country themselves."

"For some reason, marriage always and everywhere, in every culture we know about, is between a man and a woman; this seems to be an important feature of the institution. We should not go mucking around and changing this extremely important institution, because if we make a bad change, the institution will fall apart."

Ladies and gentlemen, Megan McArdle, "libertarian".

Also documented is McArdle's long history of having virtually everything ever paid for by the Koch brothers, who at this point should be considered polluters of public discourse, the fly-tippers of internet blogging.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Whoa.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

[Verbal Mike]

Thanks for bringing the SHAME project to my attention.
Jeezus, they have profiles on Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Levitt. I really liked those guys!

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Thanks for bringing the SHAME project to my attention.
Jeezus, they have profiles on Malcolm Gladwell and Steven Levitt. I really liked those guys!

If I remember correctly, Cain fucking wrecked Malcolm Gladwell for me, and I'm glad he did.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

This is fucking AWESOME.   

Thanks, Cain, keep 'em coming!

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

It's AMMO.

McArdle: 100% DISCREDITED 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

NICE!

[Cain]

So, that article touched a nerve.

It was reposted on Naked Capitalism and Barry Ritholtz's blog, and the comments were instantly full of trolls.  Truly amazing.

Yves Smith said:

Now it may sound a paranoid to suggest that some of the critics might have been paid-for operatives and I honestly don't know and can't prove it. A few (from what I can tell, three) of the unhappy commentors were established NC readers who are libertarians. Three additional ones were first time commmentors but looked to be motivated by either loyalty to McArdle (readers recognized one) or the libertarian cause, and kept coming back when the regulars had a go with them. But these at least argue like normal people, with egos; they defend their positions when challenged. (I also had a venomous personal attack that got caught on the moderation tripwire accusing me of being in the employ of Soros, which is amusing, since I'd be living much better if I had a rich sponsor, and inaccurate).

I also have to note, that despite all the food fighting in comments on the McArdle post, no one laid a glove on its substance.

The ones that look sus, and they came early in the thread, were people (and there were a good half dozen) who've never commented here before, make PR-type points, and didn't respond to rebuttals. The reason this is suspicious is I see this sort of thing happening only on certain types of posts, for instance, ones that go after libertarians (particularly the Kochs, although the ones that annoy libertarians on a broader basis tend to have a higher ratio of True Believers to the people running PR tropes) or ones that defend unions. Mind you, that does not mean these comments were paid for; they could be from people who are loyal to certain causes and know PR tricks doing this on their own initiative. But the results are pretty much the same.

I'm not the only one to experience this. Barry wrote me to tell me that the comments on the post he put up pointing to the McArdle post were "insane" and he had had to ban 5 people.