I'm watching him now on Sunday Morning with Barbara Walters. Krugman bemoans the fact that in our democracy, unlike in western Europe, the House cap-and-trade and health care bills already would be law. Krugman blames it all on that messy thing called the Senate, which effectively requires a 60-vote super-majority to pass significant legislation
Krugman then dismissed Scott Brown's victory as due to Martha Coakley failing to know her Red Sox, and people liking Brown.
Krugman epitomizes everything wrong with the self-appointed intelligentsia, mostly on the left but some also on the right.
The Senate filibuster rule is one of the great things about our democracy. The super-majority rule is one of the things which prevents the extreme on either wing of the political spectrum from running roughshod over the policital minority.
And Scott Brown's victory owing just to the Red Sox and likability? Krugman needs to get out into the country (not just the countryside).
The victory for Brown was a victory for the majority, which rejects the very policies Krugman wishes already were law. Krugman's real objection is not to Coakley's lack of baseball knowledge, but to the audacity of the democratic process to produce a result with which Krugman disagrees.
In these past couple of weeks, as the columnists at the NY Times have digested the Brown victory, I have come to have much more respect for Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins than for Krugman. At least Dowd and Collins, in their own unique ways, acknowledge and understand the what took place in Massachusetts.
Krugman still is on
Added:
In a later segment of the show, Krugman stated that the reason the health care legislation failed was that the American people didn't understand the bills due to misrepresentation by Fox News. (Roger Ailes, who was on the show, shot Krugman down on that.) Krugman lamented that people did not read the NY Times more thoroughly.
Krugman not only is clueless, he is so enamored with himself that he is incapable of understanding that the health care legislation failed precisely because the American people did understand the big points. People may not have understood all the nuances and details, but neither did the members of Congress who didn't read the bill and who learned important details only when exposed by bloggers and "right-wing" news organizations.
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Krugman is a typical progressive that worships in the church of John Maynard Keynes and thinks he is smarter than the rest of us.
ReplyDeleteWhile it is true that he is more educated than most of us, he lacks a true grasp of reality and has no idea how the real world works.
Krugman's argument for changing the filibuster rule is a serious and dangerous threat to our Constitutional Republic form of government. The filibuster helps prevent majorities impose radical change on the governed without their overwhelming consent. In essence, it helps prevent tyrannical rule over the minority when one party has a majority of all three Houses. The Founders never intended radical change to be accomplished easily. If the healthcare bill had been overwhelmingly supported by the governed, it would have passed without all the bribes and special deals.
ReplyDeleteAs I've said before, I had subscribed to the dead tree NYT for over a decade when I lived in NYC, and the two reasons why I cancelled my subscrption are Paul Krugman and Frank Rich. They don't just write opinions offering an opposing worldview, they often try to foment hate against those they oppose. Bad guys.
Regarding today's show, I personally enjoyed how Ailes destroyed Arianna Huffington when she tried to argue Fox is irresponsible for giving Glenn Beck a forum to express his views.
Also, at the very end, as Ailes was talking about how Fox is "the most trusted name in news" (as the Democrat connected polling outfit Public Policy Polling recently confirmed), it looked to me like Krugman, in disgust, started to rip his microphone off before the segment was completely finished. Did anybody else catch that?
You write:
ReplyDelete"Krugman epitomizes everything wrong with the self-appointed intelligentsia, mostly on the left but some also on the right," citing intellectual arrogance and lack of respect for the democratic process.
And then:
"Krugman still is on is (sic) personal jihad to prove that he is smarter than the rest of us."
I do agree with some the criticisms you level at Krugman, especially the reasons he cites for Americans' opposition to the disaster called "health care reform." However, I would add to list of "everything wrong with the self-appointed intelligentsia," here mostly on the RIGHT, but some on the left, the immature and unthinking use of the language of Islamic fundamentalism and Soviet-style communism to attack a figure with whom you disagree. (add to this list the left's use of the language of fascism to describe our former President)
Paul Krugman is not on a jihad. Obama is not a bolshevik. Bush was not Hitler. Using those terms not only cheapens their real meaning, but sends a clear signal to most thinking people (left or right) to disregard whatever the user is attempting to say, regardless of the merits of what was actually said.
Such rhetoric does nothing to advance the democratic process you so strongly defend.
@jsm99 - thanks for catching the typo, but I do not agree that saying someone is on a "personal jihad" to prove something is the same thing as calling them a Nazi or Bolshevik or even a radical Islamic jihadist. It simply is a term for someone who is on a personal mission, and I think that is the reasonable interpretation and proper usage.
ReplyDeleteThis is about the zillionth time in the last few weeks that I've run across someone from the right criticizing Krugman. I'm convinced that if Conservatives would stop paying attention to him, he would disappear into obscurity almost immediately.
ReplyDeletePlease. Just ignore the imbecile.
Alas, Krugman received a Nobel prize... therefore Krugman is considered by some.... to be an authority.
ReplyDeleteAs a somewhat mediocre economist (oh yeah, I am a Bachelor of Economics and Commerce)I disagree with Krugman. What he says most of the time just does not make sense. He is so taken with himself and his extreme left-wing ideas that he comes across as something of a looney tune.
At this present time I disagree with the Obama Administration policies, and I disagree with the economic policies of my own government. Krudd is quite useless, and Swan the Treasurer should learn how to do a swan dive. The policies in question are the exact opposite of what is needed to bring about economic recovery.
Krugman can go on and on about "health care reform" all he wants, but as an economist he should know that what is proposed will further damage what is presently a very fragile economy.
Krugman is not a Keynesian economist. He does not truly advocate what Keynes would have suggested for what was truly a manufactured crisis. The stimulus in both the USA and Australia has been a total joke. It has been nothing more than pork.
The last time that Australia had anything like this in the form of unnecessary budgetary expansion was during the Whitlam years. The impact upon the economy was a disaster - I am now of the opinion that Whitlam did in fact do the FDR which caused the stagflation to last longer than was necessary. Well I am seeing it happen again, with the impact of those policies being felt in future years.
If Krugman had his way the USA would be well on the way to the River of No Return.....
By chance, I happened to catch that ABC show. I was folding some laundry when it began and I continued to watch it largely because the group dynamic seemed so odd to me. It did not disappoint. First Arianna Huffington, then later Barbara Walters (and Arianna a second time) set themselves up for two impressive Roger Ailes takedowns.
ReplyDeleteOuch . . . that had to leave a mark!
Krugman, however, somehow seemed hopelessly out of place throughout, even given the fellow-traveling presence of Huffington.
My sense is that he cannot find his place, a comfort zone . . . even though Obama has been in office for a year. Krugman is by nature a contrarian, convinced -- within his own unique state of denial -- that only he knows what is right, and that everyone else is pretty much an idiot. So I think you're on to something when you say he is on a jihad.
Paul is someone you would never want to have in charge of anything you were invested in, certainly not anything important, or with any real value.
Regarding Krugman's understanding of why we don't want the health care bill: we called our Senator Kay Hagan's office today to ask why she went to South Beach to meet with lobbyists. We got on to the topic of why she doesn't listen to her constituents. Regarding health care, her aide said, "She's heard from a lot of constituents, but feels she's doing what is best." When reminded she's there to represent the people of NC, who oppose this, she said her constituents' opposition to the bill is "mostly based on rhetoric." Do they really believe this, or think if they keep saying it, we will believe it?
ReplyDelete