May
23
2026

Robert Reich is a Fabulous … Oops, Sorry, That Should Be "Fabulist"

Alleged "Berkeley professor, former Secretary of Labor" Robert Reich's midweek tweet is drawing some attention:

Verified X user @amuse wrote a lengthy article in rebuttal: Coming Up Short: Robert Reich Doesn't Know What an Effective Tax Rate Is.

There is a particular sort of dishonesty available only to a man with credentials. The ordinary liar must hope his audience does not check. The credentialed liar trusts that his audience will not check, because surely a Cabinet secretary, a Berkeley professor, the subject of a Netflix documentary on inequality, would not say something obviously false. Robert Reich understands this. He has built a career on it.

[…]

Consider the post he published on 𝕏 in May 2026, which travelled, as such things do, to several million readers. "Effective tax rate paid by Jeff Bezos from 2014 to 2018: 0.98%. Effective 2025 federal tax rate paid by Amazon: 1.4%. Typical tax rate paid by the average American: 14.5%. Just thought I should point that out."

[…]

Three numbers, presented in parallel, presented as comparable, presented as damning. And every one of them is wrong in a different way. The 0.98% is definitionally false. The 1.4% is structurally misleading. The 14.5% is statistically inflated. The juxtaposition is not analysis. It is the rhetorical equivalent of a magician's patter, designed to keep the audience watching one hand while the other does the work.

More at the link, and it's recommended for anyone who might be interested in how dishonest a "Berkeley professor" can blithely be.

He's been doing this sort of thing for a long time. See a couple of 2006(!) posts by Harvard econ prof Greg Mankiw: Reich on Taxes and Reich on Taxes, Again.

And all the way back in 1997(!), Jonathan Rauch wrote at Slate about Reich's memoir of his days as Clinton's Secretary of Labor, and found many of his tales excessively, albeit conveniently, fabricated: Robert Reich, Quote Doctor. Example:

Or, perhaps most striking of all, consider a set piece in which Reich speaks to the National Association of Manufacturers. He describes himself as being ambushed by cigar-chomping capitalists who hiss at him so loudly that he has to yell to be heard. “They plan to carve me up into small pieces,” he writes. “There isn’t a lady in the room. All men, in dark suits. They’ve finished lunch. Some are smoking cigars. Others are quietly smirking, ready for the kill.” His speech over, Reich is lambasted by a “John,” and Reich’s answer elicits an eruption of “Wrong!” “Bullshit!” and “Go back to Harvard!” As Reich speaks, the audience hisses so loudly “that I’m not sure anyone can hear me.” The cigar smoke, he says, “is making my eyes water. I feel dizzy.” He says, “We’re in a boxing arena, John’s the champ, and the crowd is loving every minute.” Finally, the meeting over, he races “out the back exit before they can pummel me.”

As it happens, the meeting was a breakfast, not a lunch. The NAM says the attendance list shows that a third or more of the people present were women (including the NAM representative with whom I spoke). If anyone actually was inclined to light up a cigar after breakfast, he would have been breaking the NAM’s no-smoking rule, according to an association representative (who, like another witness I talked to, saw no cigars). Most important, a transcript of the meeting shows a respectful Q and A session, in which none of the comments attributed to “John”–nor any like them–were actually made.

Bottom line: if Reich claims water is wet, you would be wise to get a couple other opinions.

Also of note:

  • Want to hear the most annoying sound in the world?" Certainly, some GOP fans might find George Will's latest column to be vexing: Dumb and dumber, Republican-style. (WaPo gifted link)

    This week, the Republican Party has accomplished something difficult: It made itself stupider. It subtracted from its already shallow reservoir of intelligence by moving to purge two fine senators. And its embodiment authored a novel grift.

    If what is probably predictable does happen, the two senators will be replaced on this autumn’s ballots by persons who, if elected (the one in Louisiana almost certainly will be), can be counted on to be exactly what no senator should be: another of the president’s congressional sock puppets, promising, as a high principle, not to think independently.

    To make another movie reference: Republicans seem to want to play an agreeable Thelma as Trump (playing Louise) steps on the Thunderbird's gas …

  • … zipping down the Road to Serfdom. Tad DeHaven notes the latest signposts on that highway: Trump’s Presidential Portfolio Goes Quantum.

    The Commerce Department announced today that it has signed letters of intent to provide roughly $2 billion in federal incentives under the CHIPS and Science Act to nine quantum-computing companies. In return, the federal government will receive minority equity stakes in each company. 

    The largest recipient is IBM, which is slated to receive $1 billion to establish a new quantum foundry subsidiary. GlobalFoundries is to get $375 million. The rest would receive $100 million each, with Diraq receiving up to $38 million. 

    Ah, yes, IBM: that plucky little startup that I've heard so much about lately.

  • But at least the dogs are barking. Kevin D. Williamson says it's difficult to know who to root for in The Curious Case of Trump vs. Trump vs. Trump. (archive.today link)

    Bonus movie reference in our excerpt:

    To recap: Donald Trump has sued the Donald Trump administration over alleged wrongdoing by the Donald Trump administration, and an out-of-court settlement between Donald Trump and the Donald Trump administration will have Donald Trump’s DOJ ponying up the better part of $2 billion to be put into a fund controlled by Donald Trump and used for the benefit of—let’s check in here with dead-eyed White House trash panda J.D. Vance—“people who voted for Donald Trump and participated in the January 6th protests.”

    We are going to need a whole brigade of additional tally-men to tally the bananas in this bananas republic.

    One group of Trump sycophants negotiating with another group of Trump sycophants for the benefit of Trump sycophants and Trump himself: surely the toughest negotiation since Harry S. Stamper told the powers that be that none of his crew wanted to pay taxes again—“EVER”—in Armageddon. Trump did not demand immunity from taxes—only immunity from being investigated or prosecuted for not paying his taxes, for tax fraud, or for other tax-related shenanigans: immunity for himself, for his business associates, for Uday and Qusay and the rest of his ghastly cretinous spawn.

    Almost certainly we'll be talking about this for a while.

  • The University Near Here got a Reason mention. Whether it's good or bad is up to you: In New Hampshire, a Setback for Second Amendment Rights on Campus. Ari Shtein reports:

    On Thursday, an effort to eliminate gun-free zones on New Hampshire college campuses fizzled out in the state Legislature, when the Senate voted against a committee of conference to renegotiate the bill with House leaders. Despite the setback, proponents of the legislation say they're not done.

    "We'll be pursuing this with a legal challenge," says state Rep. Sam Farrington (R–Rochester), who sponsored the bill, which would have also allowed students to carry nonlethal weapons such as pepper spray and mace. Farrington, who graduated from the University of New Hampshire (UNH) last Saturday, says the challenge will be under New Hampshire's "pre-emption statute," which prohibits any "political subdivision" other than the state Legislature from regulating firearms. He thinks that policies that ban guns from campus, imposed by "unelected administrators at public universities," fall into that category.

    UNH says that its restrictions were "adopted under authority granted by the Legislature to the Board of Trustees and campus presidents to govern university property."

    The article (and Rep. Farrington) make the obvious point that gun-banning makes universities a very soft target for wannabe mass murderers.