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Paul Krugman

Krugman Will Not Acknowledge Obstructionism – Blames Obama

Nov 23rd, 2009
by Tom.
1 comment

Re: Op-Ed Columnist – The Phantom Menace – NYTimes.com , By PAUL KRUGMAN, Published: November 22, 2009

Paul Krugman

In December 2008 Lawrence Summers, soon to become the administration’s highest-ranking economist, called for decisive action. “Many experts,” he warned, “believe that unemployment could reach 10 percent by the end of next year.” In the face of that prospect, he continued, “doing too little poses a greater threat than doing too much.”

Ten months later unemployment reached 10.2 percent, suggesting that despite his warning the administration hadn’t done enough to create jobs. You might have expected, then, a determination to do more…

…Most economists I talk to believe that the big risk to recovery comes from the inadequacy of government efforts: the stimulus was too small, and it will fade out next year, while high unemployment is undermining both consumer and business confidence.

Krugman kills me. He will stop at nothing to ignore history and stretch as hard as he can to point a finger at Obama, and his reasoning behind this weeks slam on Obama is a long stretch. With good lefties like Krugman, who needs the Republicans.

The truth here is that there was tremendous opposition to even a small stimulus. Republican governors in southern states like Texas and South Carolina even fanned the flames of succession over the stimulus bill. Republican leaders in Congress bashed Obama relentlessly, filibustered, and used the right-wing echo machine to do anything they could do to stop the stimulus from passing. The Republicans did everything they could do to undermine a stimulus package that was as big as Obama could politically make it with over a third of the total package in tax cuts to appease them.

He says that the impediment to recovery is a lack of government effort. I say he is full of s**t. I say that the main impediment to recovery is what it has always been – right-wing obstructionism. The party of “no”. How can there be more government effort when the right uses procedural gimmicks, the media, and Republican governors to stop any good government action?

And besides that, Krugman never mentions how all this got started in the first place with the right-wing deregulation, never looking beyond his nose to point a finger where it should go – straight at George W. Bush. He doesn’t even mention what the Republican stimulus plan revolved around. No spending, just more tax cuts for the rich!

Now Krugman says that Obama didn’t do enough. Here’s what I say to Krugman, F.U.!

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A Second Look | Krugman Sucks! Attacking From The Left Again!

Aug 21st, 2009
by Tom.
1 comment

via Op-Ed Columnist – Obama’s Trust Problem – NYTimes.com.

Paul Krugman, Obama Political Enemy

NY Times op-ed columnist and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman is at it again. At a time when the President is at his most difficult moment since inauguration with the health care debate, Krugman goes on the attack.

He is attacking the President from the left again, not satisfied that we at least have a Democrat in the White House that has achieved much since arriving there a mere eight months ago. Examples? The right-wing Supreme Court ruled in Ledbetter v. Goodyear that it was okay that women get paid less than men and not be able to sue for it, and then Obama fixed that by signing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009. Where was the kudos for Obama from Krugman? Crickets.

There have been many accomplishments in Obama’s eight months in office.

Obama inherited a nation whose economy was in free-fall and he has been able to get the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed with no Republican support in the House and very little in the Senate. He has also passed a budget plan that puts emphasis on eliminating fraud and abuse and overall fiscal responsibility after inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit from Bush.

Here are just a few more examples of President Obama’s accomplishments from the Huffington Post:

  • $19 billion in the stimulus package to help implement an electronic medical record system
  • innovative online messaging by streaming every press conference and hosting question-and-answer sessions with the president, and publishing the first White House blog
  • Obama Department of Transportation has approved 2,500 highway projects and they have move $9.3 billion out the door since February in stimulus money
  • $2,500 tax credit to help offset the cost of tuition (among other expenses) for those seeking a college education. Nearly five million families are expected to save $9 billion
  • $2 billion in stimulus cash for advanced batteries systems for electric and hybrid cars
  • CARS, the Car Allowance Rebate System – cash for clunkers
  • the DOJ secured $2 billion for Byrne Grants, which funds anti-gang and anti-gun task forces and is expected to have huge impacts in urban gang control

You’d think we’d be hearing from Krugman about some, at least one, of these accomplishments. But hell no. Krugman is once again baselessly attacking a President that has bent over backwards to create a bipartisan atmosphere in Washington. He has reached out to the Republicans time and again only to have that door slammed in his face. Leftist economists like Krugman accuse him of appeasement and then attack him personally as a weakling.

It’s hard to avoid the sense that Mr. Obama has wasted months trying to appease people who can’t be appeased, and who take every concession as a sign that he can be rolled.

Krugman is critical of not only the President’s policies, but insultingly talks of his moral failings and his lack of clarity. Notice how he starts this next paragraph with the issue of “health care itself”, then immediately slides into a personal barrage, forgetting health care itself, but using the health care issue to wedge in his personal attack on Obama insinuating that the President has somehow become “uninspiring” and now he is nothing more than a “dry technocrat”:

On the issue of health care itself, the inspiring figure progressives thought they had elected comes across, far too often, as a dry technocrat who talks of “bending the curve” but has only recently begun to make the moral case for reform. Mr. Obama’s explanations of his plan have gotten clearer, but he still seems unable to settle on a simple, pithy formula; his speeches and op-eds still read as if they were written by a committee.

If Krugman is so worked up about Obama’s presidency at this point after only eight months, then a year from now Krugman will be a total wreck. He is the epitome of the enemy that should be kept closer. Yes, Krugman is the enemy, it matters not if he is from the far left. He still supplies the right with ammunition against his fellow Democratic president. With supporters like Krugman, who needs the right, right?

Krugman, the high and mighty Nobel Prize winner, sucks.

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A Second Look | Executive and Legislative Ambulance Chasing

Jul 18th, 2009
by Tom.
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Does slowing down the legislative process equate to “killing” health care? If so, how?

via Citing CBO-Director’s Statements, Senate Centrists Urge Slower Pace For Health Care Reform | TPMDC.

Six key Senate Centrists–Ben Nelson (D-NE), Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Ron Wyden (D-OR)–are asking Democratic and Republican leaders to slow down the pace of health care reform efforts.

“[I]n the view of [CBO Director Doug Elmendorf's] statement, there is much heavy lifting ahead,” reads a letter the group signed today. “We look forward to working with you to develop legislation that is vital to the well-being of the American people and urge you to resist timelines which prevent us from achieving the best results.”

According to Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim, who first obtained the letter, “The organized effort to slow down the process is a blow to the reform effort.” And, indeed, there [sic] letter exemplifies a growing sense among centrists and health reform skeptics that the pace of reform should be slowed down. But it’s also a restatement of very publicly held views. Earlier today, Nelson himself appeared on CNN and suggested congressional health care leaders should not to move too quickly.

The President wants the Senate bill yesterday, and conventional wisdom says that if this process drags on past the August recess then there will be the possibility that it won’t pass this year. So? I would much rather see the right bill get passed at a later date than have the wrong bill passed immediately. The “Gang of Six” have asked for a little more time, not a hatchet.

President Obama gave his weekly address this morning on this subject. I read the transcript and there is no solid reason or justification that would back up the idea that this legislation has to be out of committee before the August recess. The video:

Here is the only part of the President’s address that speaks to the urgency of the bill:

(snip) This is the status quo. This is the system we have today. This is what the debate in Congress is all about: Whether we’ll keep talking and tinkering and letting this problem fester as more families and businesses go under, and more Americans lose their coverage. Or whether we’ll seize this opportunity – one we might not have again for generations – and finally pass health insurance reform this year, in 2009.

I agree. Health care reform must pass this year – and it must contain a public plan. But, in all honesty, will giving it a couple more weeks do irreparable harm?

In yet another attack on the liberal agenda, the ultra left-wing economist Paul Krugman penned an op-ed today harshly criticizing any notion of delay in the process of passing the health care reform bill. The op-ed is entitled, The Six Deadly Hypocrites.

Will the destructive center kill health care reform? It looks all too possible.

What’s especially galling is the hypocrisy of their claimed reason for delaying progress — concern about the fiscal burden. After all, in the past most of them have shown no concern at all for the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook.

Case in point: the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which denied Medicare the right to bargain for lower drug prices, locked in overpayments to private insurance companies, and did nothing, nothing at all, to pay for its proposed outlays. How many of these six self-proclaimed defenders of solvency voted no on the crucial procedural vote? One. (Joe Lieberman, to my surprise.)

Well, Paul, the Bush administration never paid for any legislation at all, especially the most expensive – the  Bush tax cuts of 2003 that cost over a trillion dollars. And you are right, there was no concern for fiscal responsibility at that time from these six Senators. But times have changed. Obama has taken full responsibility for today’s economy. He has opened his arms and has embraced this mess as if it were his own. President Obama is the one who has demanded fiscal responsibility, and yet he wants to hurry the process of health care reform without giving these conservative Democrats a chance to catch their breaths and consider the impact of the costs. It’s okay nowadays to talk about saving money in the long run.

And what is “especially galling” to me sometimes is how Krugman, Ryan Grim, and others can begin pouting and stomping their feet whenever some  new event happens that upsets the progressive left’s apple cart. If we can make it through eight years of the most spendy administration ever, we can surely do  the next few months without a major mishap. We’ll get the apple vendor safely to the hospital, so stop fretting.

UPDATE ,07/19/09:
via Orszag: Republicans Trying To Kill Health Care Reform Through Delay

President Obama’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, accused Senate Republicans on Sunday of trying to kill health care reform by dragging out the legislative process.

Appearing on CNN’s State of the Union, Orszag labeled the attempts to push back the health care reform timeline as a “typical Washington bureaucratic game of if you don’t have a better alternative just delay in hopes that that kills something.”

“We want to get this done by August and we think we can,” he added. “There are those that are advocating delay just as a desperation move to try and kill this.”

Orszag stressed that not everyone calling for delay had sinister motives. The moderate Democrats in the Senate and Blue Dog Democrats in the House, he said, were “actively participating in the debate and that is great.” This past week, Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) Mary Landrieu (La.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.), along with Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and Maine Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins signed a letter asking to slow down the health care reform debate.

See? Not everyone calling for delay has sinister motives. Besides, Orszag accuses Republicans of trying to kill health care reform by slowing it down without ever offering any conclusive evidence that they are, in fact, doing that.

And, he doesn’t tell us how slowing down the process will kill the bill. His explanation sounds a bit hokey. He speaks of Republican attempts to ask for more time as a, “typical Washington bureaucratic game of if you don’t have a better alternative just delay in hopes that that kills something.”

Weak.

Listen. If we are steadfast and continue to call, sign petitions, and generally push from our end then health care reform, with a public option, will pass Congress. If it is not done by the August recess, then it will be soon after. Obama told us during the campaign that change is up to us, not him, so keep up the pressure.

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