When you’re the noted Reaganomics guru, Arthur Laffer, it must be humiliating when a reporter from a mid-sized Missouri newspaper busts you in the Sunday paper for using incorrect data to promote benefactor Rex Sinquefield’s viewpoint.  That’s just what www.columbiatribune.com statehouse bulldog Rudi Keller did this weekend.  Laffer and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) annually produce a jointly-branded report on “Economic Opportunity Outlook” of the states.  This year’s ALEC-Laffer report had Missouri ranked 9th right behind Tennessee – the state Sinquefield & Co. are touting as the model for Missouri as they campaign to dump the state tax code in favor of a huge sales tax increase opponents are tagging, “Almost Everything Tax.”  But Keller did some digging and found Laffer overstated Missouri’s marginal personal income tax rate as 7 percent instead of the correct figure, 6 percent.  The result was to make Missouri rank worse than Tennessee. Let’s see if Laffer the scholar publicly acknowledges his mistake and does new calculations – which should leapfrog Missouri’s economic outlook past Tennessee’s.  Sinquefield and his pet campaign committee, Let Voters Decide, recently promoted Laffer at a Chesterfield party to tout the supposedly superior Tennessee economic model.  Wonder if Rex is putting a hold on his check to Laffer?

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