This writer takes both quotes and data and spins them to say the opposite of what the detail in the original sources says. First, he misapplies a Will Rogers q

This writer takes both quotes and data and spins them to say the opposite of what the detail in the original sources says. First, he misapplies a Will Rogers quote and deliberately fudges the reference (cutting and pasting one sentence out of a quote and omitting its context). The full quote is in Wikiquote: "This election was lost four and five and six years ago not this year. They didn't start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy." By appropriated, he makes clear that it's government spending that did not trickle down, with which few Reaganite economists would argue. That's fundamentally different from, and generally works against, free-market activity. Later, he writes, "The IMF report, authored by five economists, presents a scathing rejection of the trickle-down approach..." Well, the intro language implies that, but a look at the actual data (Table 1) is in favor of "trickle-down" for 4 of the 5 quintiles, with the negative effect on the bottom quintile being less than one-third of the average beneficial effect for the other 80%. And this is despite the data being cooked as noted in the footnotes.