by Steve Timmer

Jun 5, 2012, 10:00 AM

The professor has no clothes!

Here’s what the upcoming campaign is all about, says the newly endorsed Kurt Bills:

Within minutes after thanking his supporters, his family and his competitors, [after receiving the endorsement] Bills was telling reporters of his plan for the days ahead. “I’m going to show up Monday morning for my advanced economics class,” he said. “After that we are going to riding this bus that will be touring around the state.” His theme, he said, is to bring “econ 101” to Washington.

The theme “econ 101” was echoed by Keith Downey, Bills’ campaign chair, in his nomination speech.

Bills did show up in class the next week, according to media reports, to continue gazing into the eyes of adolescents to determine the fate of the nation.

But who is this economics wizard, anyway? Well, you’re in luck, kids, because Professor Bills — kidding — has begun to spread his wisdom about economics far and wide. An example:

Basic Economic Systems:  Traditional, Command, and Market.  The three basic economic questions are answered through these systems.  Many people think the United States is a market economy when actually we are a mixed system, which has focused on free enterprise.

Here’s another:

Basic Economic Questions:  What to produce?  How to produce?   For whom to produce?  These are the three basic economic questions that must be answered by individuals, firms and nations.  How we answer these basic questions can be found in three basic economic systems, which will be our topic in the next ECON101.  Between now and then think about what you produce, how you produce it and for whom you produce it  Whether it’s a product, a service, good manners or bad.

Now, to some people — libertarians, or high school students, maybe — this may seem like brilliant flashes of insight. But they’re really more like paragraphs snipped from a high school economics text book.

If you were looking things like why we should return to a Bretton Woods international monetary system, the effect of reserve rates on the money supply, why Keynes was wrong (or right) about fiscal stimulus, why individual states should be able to print their own money, or how the economy wouldn’t really be crushed for lack of credit if we returned to a gold standard, and why it would be good to export all our wealth to South Africa (where most of the mine-able gold is), why, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

But back to the question: who is this economics wizard? He has an undergraduate degree in history and is a licensed high school social studies teacher. Several inquiries were made to the campaign for information about Bills’ academic study of economics, but none has been returned.

We can only assume the worst.

The real voter fraud in Minnesota that people should be worried about is that somebody is passing Kurt Bills off as an economics expert.