http://www.pointofinquiry.org/robert_price_chris_mooney_must_atheists_also_be_liberals/

Does it make sense to create a podcast discussing whether atheists must be liberals without even attempting to define “liberal” (and, by extension, “conservative”?)

To my mind, Chris Mooney is just too partisan to “c0-replace” D J Grothe as host of Point of Inquiry.  Mooney repeatedly asserts that “corporations are anti-science.”  A more tendentious claim can hardly be imagined.  All sorts of businesses use the results of scientific inquiry every day.  To describe them as “anti-science” is preposterous.

What Mooney observes is that different people will use whatever at least semi-plausible arguments available to influence the government (mainly) in all sorts of ways.  Many of these people will be speaking on behalf of businesses (and many will not), and many of these arguments will be scientifically dubious but politically influential.

This is the way politics works.  It is not some unique characteristic of  “corporations.”

Just as Lou Dobbs talks himself into believing that two people voluntarily trading with one another yields a net loss if they are both US citizens, various lefty types tie themselves into knots trying to convince themselves that destruction is good.

But, to be fair, we Bastiat fans tend to ignore what people are really referring to when talking about “helping the economy,” which is unemployment.  Economists rightly use wealth and GDP to measure the health of the economy.  The rest of the world uses unemployment.