Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive Comments
Paul Krugman says there's no reason to shed any tears over Reagan's lost legacy:
Don’t Cry for Reagan, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: As the Bush administration sinks deeper into its multiple quagmires, the personality cult the G.O.P. once built around President Bush has given way to nostalgia for the good old days. The current cover of Time magazine shows a weeping Ronald Reagan, and declares that Republicans “need to reclaim the Reagan legacy.”
But Republicans shouldn’t cry for Ronald Reagan; the truth is, he never left them. There’s no need to reclaim the Reagan legacy: Mr. Bush is what Mr. Reagan would have been given the opportunity.
In 1993 Jonathan Cohn ... published an article in The American Prospect describing the dire state of the federal government. Changing just a few words ... makes it read as if it were written in 2007.
Thus, Mr. Cohn described how the Interior Department had been packed with opponents of environmental protection, who “presided over a massive sell-off of federal lands...” that “deprived the department of several billion dollars in annual revenue.” Oil leases, anyone?
Meanwhile, privatization had run amok, because “the ranks of public officials necessary to supervise contractors have been so thinned... Agencies have been left with the worst of both worlds — demoralized and disorganized public officials and unaccountable private contractors.” Holy Halliburton!
Not mentioned..., but equally reminiscent of current events, was the state of the Justice Department under Ed Meese, a man who gives Alberto Gonzales and John Mitchell serious competition for the title of worst attorney general ever. The politicization of Justice got so bad that in 1988 six senior officials, all Republicans, ... resigned in protest.
Why is there such a strong family resemblance...? Mr. Reagan’s administration, like Mr. Bush’s, was run by movement conservatives... And both cronyism and abuse of power are part of the movement conservative package.
In part this is because people whose ideology says that government is always the problem, never the solution, see no point in governing well. So they use political power to reward their friends, rather than find people who will actually do their jobs.
If expertise is irrelevant, who gets the jobs? No problem: the interlocking, lavishly financed institutions of movement conservatism, which range from K Street to Fox News, create a vast class of apparatchiks who can be counted on to be “loyal Bushies.” ...
Still, Mr. Reagan’s misgovernment never went as far as Mr. Bush’s. As a result, he managed to leave office with an approval rating about as high as ... Bill Clinton... But the key to Reagan’s relative success, I believe, is that he was lucky in his limitations.
Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Reagan never controlled both houses of Congress — and the pre-Gingrich Republican Party still contained moderates who imposed limits on his ability to govern badly. Also, there was no Reagan-era equivalent of the rush, after 9/11, to give the Bush administration whatever it wanted in the name of fighting terrorism.
Mr. Reagan may even have been helped, perversely, by the fact that in the 1980s there were still two superpowers. This helped prevent the hubris, the delusions of grandeur, that led the Bush administration to believe that a splendid little war in Iraq was just the thing to secure its position.
But what this tells us is that Mr. Bush, not Mr. Reagan, is the true representative of what modern conservatism is all about. And it’s the movement, not just one man, that has failed.
Posted by Mark Thoma on March 19, 2007
http://
economistsview.typepad.co...krugman_do.html
Thank, DJM; a fine column as usual, sad as usual too. I could not get through for a while.
Once again, PK hits the nail on the head.
http://select.nytimes.com/2007/0.../
19herbert.html
March 19, 2007
Death of a Marine
By BOB HERBERT
Jeffrey Lucey was 18 when he signed up for the Marine Reserves in December 1999. His parents, Kevin and Joyce Lucey of Belchertown, Mass., were not happy. They had hoped their son would go to college.
Jeffrey himself was ambivalent.
"The recruiter was a very smooth talker and very, very persistent," Ms. Lucey told me in a call from Orlando, Fla., where she was on vacation with her husband and their two grown daughters last week. The conversation was difficult. Ms. Lucey would talk for a while, and then her husband would get on the phone.
"We see him everywhere," Ms. Lucey said. "Every little dark-haired boy you see, it looks like Jeff. If we see a parent reprimanding a child, it's like you want to go up and say, 'Oh, don't do that, because you don't know how long you're going to have him.' "
The war in Iraq began four years ago today. Fans at sporting events around the U.S. greeted the war and its early "shock and awe" bombing campaign with chants of "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!"
Jeffrey Lucey, who turned 22 the day before the war began, had a different perspective. He had no illusions about the glory or glamour of warfare. His unit had been activated and he was part of the first wave of troops to head into the combat zone.
A diary entry noted the explosion of a Scud missile near his unit: "The noise was just short of blowing out your eardrums. Everyone's heart truly skipped a beat. ... Nerves are on edge."
By the time he came home, Jeffrey Lucey was a mess. He had gruesome stories to tell. They could not all be verified, but there was no doubt that this once-healthy young man had been shattered by his experiences.
He had nightmares. He drank furiously. He withdrew from his friends. He wrecked his parents' car. He began to hallucinate.
In a moment of deep despair on the Christmas Eve after his return from Iraq, Jeffrey hurled his dogtags at his sister Debra and cried out, "Don't you know your brother's a murderer?"
Jeffrey exhibited all the signs of deep depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Wars do that to people. They rip apart the mind and the soul in the same way that bullets and bombs mutilate the body. The war in Iraq is inflicting a much greater emotional toll on U.S. troops than most Americans realize....
Again, for those of you who like your PK free and unfiltered:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_200...6/
031907O.shtml
Re: "...it's the movement, not just one man, that has failed."
Ahh, if only it were so. In fact, the issue is far from settled.
While there was a decided swing away from the GOP in the last election, I am still of the opinion that it was the scandals -- particularly the Mark Foley scandal -- that carried the day. I am supported in this by the exit polls, in which more voters named corruption as their most important issue than any other, including the Iraq war.
The degree of election fraud in 2000 and 2004 has been well-documented, and in both cases actually gave the presidency of the United States to the losing candidate. As of 9/20/06, however, 22 states do not require a voter-verified paper audit trail, which is considered by most election certification organizations to be the minimum standard necessary for accurate vote tabulation.
This is not an accident, oversight, or work-in-progress. This is deliberate policy. You may remember that the recommendations of the government's own National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to mandate voter-verified paper audit trails was stonewalled by the U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC), which is headed by a small number of presidential appointees.
This is inexcusable and dangerous. Oversight requires access to information, and the inability to visually verify the handling of ballots by machines makes oversight impossible. The actions of the EAC makes it clear that this situation is intentional.
The conservative movement has failed? Not by a long shot.
Remember, if you have access to an "edu" e-mail address, all NYTimes Select articles are open to you.
Helix6 ;
"The conservative movement has failed? Not by a long shot."
I agree, in order to make it a truthful statement we need to change that to;
"The conservative movement has failed the average person."
Helix6:
About the role of the Foley Scandal in turning the last election into...not the last election, I agree. Too many numbers indicate a turn away from the Party due to the scandals, not the War which has been otherwise described as something which can be brought under control in the next six months, for the last several years.
The Republicans are relentless in their quest for power and they do use a number of tricks to get their way...election tampering high among them. There is no reason for us to expect that they will change this pattern but will, instead, seek to 'improve' the ways they do things. The payoff is too great to pass up on the opportunity.
I agree that George Walker Bush is just the figurehead for a very corrupt and immoral values system and I watched this system in action two and three decades ago. I have watched as so many of the same people and events occur within the system. The same names: Rumsfeld, Cheney, Abrams...the list is a long one. This is the way these people think and this is the way they act.
Let's face it: when you are dealing with snakes, it is likely one will get bit. And one other point about Krugman's column is this: loyalty trumps all for these people. They may cheat, they may steal, they may corrupt society...but they are loyal to a fault.
No, the conservative movement is not dead; anyone who feels that is the case had better enjoy themselves right now--while they can. Because the conservatives will do their best to make certain they succeed the next election.
Randy Stone
excerpts from http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/6192
Iraq, Bush's God-Emboldened Narcissism and Parasitic Militarism
by Walter C. Uhler | Mar 19 2007
Quoting from Hugh Urban, a professor of comparative religion, Mr. Hossein-Zadeh agrees: "The narrative that Bush and his biographers tell is clearly modeled on the prodigal son - the young man who fritters away his early life on alcohol [if not cocaine] and sin, only to find God and return to his rightful place in his father's former occupation." [p. 170]
.....although this narrative duped a minority among the electorate, especially evangelical Christians, there is little evidence -- except for giving up the alcohol -- to indicate that finding God actually improved Bush's character.
Behaving as if their country was a banana republic, they put into the office an unread, ill-traveled, inarticulate, crude, callous, mean-spirited, trouble-making, revenge-seeking, Vietnam-evading, incompetent, loud-mouthed, cheap-shot, but consistently-bailed-out narcissist -- largely because Bush and his propagandists proclaimed he had found God.
Arguably, finding God further warped his character. Instead of remaining an unread, ill-traveled, inarticulate, crude, callous, mean-spirited, trouble-making, revenge-seeking, Vietnam-evading, incompetent, loud-mouthed, cheap-shot, but consistenly-bailed-out narcissist, Bush became a narcissist emboldened by the belief that God had called upon him - him! -- to lead the United States.
Bush was narcissistic enough to claim: "I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me," [p. 171] simply imagine the extent to which his fatally flawed narcissism metastasized after he "won" the White House (and, subsequently, reelection). As Aesop once observed: "The smaller the mind the greater the conceit." [p. 172]
The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh, professor of economics at Drake University
http://www.amazon.com/Political-...h/dp/
1403972850
( has five star reviews)
"...I sense my country is going to need me..." Is it any wonder there are conspiracy theories about 9/11 ?
These radical-conservatives will fail, but no yet.
speaking of loyalty Randy, this is a point we shouldn't forget;
"While in many contexts loyalty is rightly regarded as an important moral virtue, Bush’s excessive valuing of loyalty is less a sign of his appreciating a moral virtue than of his inhabiting a world in which true morality is scarcely relevant.
That’s what underlies Bush’s pronounced penchant for appointing cronies rather than well-qualified people, and of his bestowing honors on people who have stood by him while failing the country."
from; When Loyalty Is Not a Virtue: A Glimpse into Bush's Amoral World
by Andrew Bard Schmookler
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/node/6197
"...people who have stood by him while failing the country."
that was me still..
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/2...tml?
ref=science
March 20, 2007
Material Shows Weakening of Climate Reports
By ANDREW C. REVKIN and MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — A House committee released documents Monday that showed hundreds of instances in which a White House official who was previously an oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming or play down evidence of such a role.
In a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the official, Philip A. Cooney, who left government in 2005, defended the changes he had made in government reports over several years. Mr. Cooney said the editing was part of the normal White House review process and reflected findings in a climate report written for President Bush by the National Academy of Sciences in 2001....
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/2...ness/
20tax.html
March 20, 2007
I.R.S. Agents Feel Pressed to End Cases
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
The head of the Internal Revenue Service faces questions in Congress today about auditors' complaints that they are being forced to close corporate cases prematurely, allowing billions in tax dollars to go unpaid.
In interviews, these revenue agents warned that unless they were free to pursue what their instincts tell them, their focus would end up being only on known abuses, and new ones created by the tax advice industry would go undetected....
Yes; we have a whole new sort of government....
There are all sorts of scary scenarios out there on the housing market, but investment markets are just not showing the problem if there is a general problem. The American stock market is down a drop and international markets are up, bonds are fine, commercial real estate is holding.
So, we watch and learn.
The Federal Reserve chief is likely thinking if employment holds, all will be well. I tend to agree.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/2...serland&
emc=rss
March 20, 2007
Decoding a Neighbor's Call
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
A couple of years ago, researchers at the University of Montana discovered that black-capped chickadees are pretty clever. The birds, they found, encode their warning calls to other chickadees with information about the degree of threat posed by a particular nearby predator.
The lead researcher in that study, Christopher N. Templeton, who has moved on to the doctoral program at the University of Washington, now reports that if chickadees are clever, red-breasted nuthatches are cleverer still. The nuthatches, which are about the same size and share many of the same habitats as chickadees, don't have to depend on warning calls of their own — they can eavesdrop on the chickadees to get the information they need....
Notice that for all the booms in housing internationally these last years, none has been followed by a recession even with the energy price increases. This is hopeful to me.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/2...serland&
emc=rss
March 20, 2007
Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior
By NICHOLAS WADE
Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.
Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are....
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/
0...ner=rssuserland
February 1, 2005
Minds of Their Own: Birds Gain Respect
By SANDRA BLAKESLEE
Birdbrain has long been a colloquial term of ridicule. The common notion is that birds' brains are simple, or so scientists thought and taught for many years. But that notion has increasingly been called into question as crows and parrots, among other birds, have shown what appears to be behavior as intelligent as that of chimpanzees.
The clash of simple brain and complex behavior has led some neuroscientists to create a new map of the avian brain....
A note on Bush loyalty...
It is important to note that loyalty flows upward in the administration, not downward. These people kiss up and kick down.
I assure you, Gonzales will likely receive the kick down once he's shown beyond an unreasonable doubt (only kind Bush has) that he's a liability. This is the honor among thieves.
The fault part of the loyal to a fault is the idea that loyalty flows both ways, whether convenient or not...
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ful...960958260&
fta=y
March 24, 1996
The Mark of the Beast
By DEREK BICKERTON
GOOD NATURED
The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals.
By Frans de Waal.
Following publication of "Origin of Species," even those sympathetic to evolution found themselves facing a seemingly insuperable problem. Physically, our development from apes was plausible, but what about our vaunted morality? One of Darwin's correspondents wrote of the impossibility of accepting "that man's reasoning-faculties & above all his moral sense cd. ever have been obtained from irrational progenitors." Darwin responded that natural selection operated on communities as well as individuals, so that groups of social animals tightly knit by altruistic bonds would fare better than those riven by selfishness. But modern population genetics rejected the idea of "group selection." ...
This is simply too confident a stock and bond market to get rattled quite yet. We will find what the Federal reserve comment on the economy is tomorrow, but short term interest rates will surely stay steady.
Hi All:
You simply have to hand it to this crew...their audacity is absolutely unlimited:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_200...6/
032007R.shtml
White House Offers Interview With Rove
By Pete Yost
The Associated Press
Tuesday 20 March 2007
White House offers to make Rove, Miers available for interview in attorneys probe.
"..."Such interviews would be private and conducted without the need for an oath, transcript, subsequent testimony, or the subsequent issuance of subpoenas," (White House counsel Fred) Fielding said in a letter to the chairman of the House and Senate judiciary committees..."
Just who are these folks kidding ? Too bad OJ couldn't have received similar treatment.
If the Democratic Congressional Committees settle for this malarkey, then the United States truly will be in a world of hurt.
Randy Stone
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/abo_pe_1.asp
An important new historical exhibit on the British slave trade.
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/abo_tr_1.asp
Begin the tour here....
Wow, the British slave-trade tour is saddening and surprising even though I should not be surprised. This is an important web site.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/2...on/
l21iraq.html
Bush's Call for Patience on the War
To the Editor:
"Don't 'Pack Up,' Bush Says After 4 Years of War":
After four years of a war brazenly launched by a large United States bombardment, President Bush and his administration seem audaciously indifferent to the morass and suffering in Iraq that American actions and presence worsen each day.
There is no good that can come of a continued United States troop presence in Iraq. Rather than stemming terrorism, American military might and bases are fueling a maelstrom of hatred and determination that merely give rise to terrorism.
What is unconscionable is that Mr. Bush claims sole authority in this matter. It is little wonder, then, that no mention was made of democracy in this war anniversary speech. It has been useful as a war slogan, yet discarded as a guiding principle to abide.
Democracy's erosion is a threat that whittles away at us by bits and pieces, until our voices are neither heard nor heeded, and a war we decry rages on with no end in sight.
Nancy Dickeman
Seattle, March 20, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/2...serland&
emc=rss
March 20, 2007
Material Shows Weakening of Climate Reports
By ANDREW C. REVKIN and MATTHEW L. WALD
WASHINGTON — A House committee released documents Monday that showed hundreds of instances in which a White House official who was previously an oil industry lobbyist edited government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming or play down evidence of such a role....
Well, we look to be back to the international bull stock market - broad and deep as any I can find record of. I am impressed.
My sense is that commercial and public construction has accounted for an employment shift that has been fairly smooth and impressive, and as long as there is no substantial employment effect from the slowing of housing the economy should grow reasonably.
What has impressed me for several years is that though housing markets have boomed and faltered in quite a number of developed markets, there have been no recessions even through this period of energy price increases. The resilience of the British or Australian or Dutch economies makes me fairly secure about our economy.
I am terribly saddened but hopeful for the Edwards family.
Mrs Edwards is one of the most genuine people in (or around) politics today....I certainly hope she is fine.
John Edwards has been an important leading voice for Democrats, as has been wonderful Elizabeth, and no matter what the day may bring the voices are still there. They will be heard.
Sadder than sad, and terribly brave for the family. The Edwards campaign will continue, but this must be so difficult.
The reason, the real reason to go on, is that we struggle on as best we can through times of sadness for resignation to the sadness while understandable will not avail. So, we go on. I can easily understand, and admire the decision completely and hope for the well-being of so brave and dedicated a family.
Why I Love Elizabeth Edwards
by Linda Milazzo | Mar 22 2007
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6278
Thank you, DJM. Heck, there was a time when there was Eleanor Roosevelt and we sure could use another.
A 16-day gap in e-mail records between the Justice Department and the White House concerning the firing of U.S. attorneys last year has attracted the attention of congressional investigators.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_200...6/
032207J.shtml
Gap in Justice, White House Emails Raises Questions
By Kevin Bohn
CNN News
Thursday 22 March 2007
Let us all hope this will not be the "incident" Bush has been waiting and hoping for...It seems like a disagreement of location more than anything at the moment.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_200...6/
032307A.shtml
Iran "Seizes" 15 British Marines
CNN News
Friday 23 March 2007
We all know that if the dots can be connected, there are grounds for the impeachment of George W. Bush. 97% of Republicans have no use for accountability or rule of law, but somehow 51% of the American public still seems ready to let it slide (i.e., there isn't the public support for impeachment). Bush might make it through January of 2009 without impeachment (and possible dismissal from office), but history will catch up with him, Cheney, Rove and the rest of their ilk. Within a decade at least, the historical assessment of Bush 43 will make Richard Nixon look like Dwight Eisenhower.
http://en.rian.ru/world/20070322...2/
62434533.html
Iranian Navy begins maneuvers in Persian Gulf
The current wargames are the fourth since the beginning of 2007 and are largely considered to be part of preparations for possible U.S. and Israeli strikes on its nuclear facilities.
So far the Iranian authorities have not indicated clearly their intentions, what if any political capital they plan to make out of the captured sailors.
The worry is that the situation will worsen considerably if Iran links the fate of the British to that of the five Iranians held by the Americans in Iraq.
The US says those five men are elite Revolutionary Guards up to no good in Iraq. Tehran says they are diplomats.
from; http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middl...ast/
6491513.stm
This article includes a small map of the Cornwall's area of operation;
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_ne...ews/
6491581.stm
Here is a great article. Enjoy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp...7032301613.html
http://
economistsview.typepad.co...krugman_em.html
March 26, 2007
Paul Krugman: Emerging Republican Minority
Edited by Mark Thoma
Paul Krugman on the declining support for the Republican Party:
NY Times: Remember how the 2004 election was supposed to have demonstrated, once and for all, that conservatism was the future of American politics? I do: early in 2005, some colleagues in the news media urged me, in effect, to give up. "The election settled some things," I was told.
But at this point 2004 looks like an aberration, an election won with fear-and-smear tactics that have passed their sell-by date. Republicans no longer have a perceived edge over Democrats on national security — and without that edge, they stand revealed as ideologues out of step with an increasingly liberal American public.
Right now the talk of the political chattering classes is a report from the Pew Research Center showing a precipitous decline in Republican support. In 2002 equal numbers of Americans identified themselves as Republicans and Democrats, but since then the Democrats have opened up a 15-point advantage.
Part of the Republican collapse surely reflects public disgust with the Bush administration. ... But polling data ... suggest that the G.O.P.'s problems lie as much with its ideology as with one man's disastrous reign.
For the conservatives who run today's Republican Party are devoted, above all, to the proposition that government is always the problem, never the solution. For a while the American people seemed to agree; but lately they've concluded that sometimes government is the solution, after all, and they'd like to see more of it.
Consider, for example ... in 1994, the year the Republicans began their 12-year control of Congress, those who favored smaller government had the edge, by 36 to 27. By 2004, however, those in favor of bigger government had a 43-to-20 lead.
And public opinion seems to have taken a particularly strong turn in favor of universal health care. Gallup reports that 69 percent of the public believes that "it is the responsibility of the federal government to make sure all Americans have health care coverage," up from 59 percent in 2000.
The main force driving this shift to the left is probably rising income inequality. ... Interestingly, the big increase in disgruntlement over rising inequality has come among the relatively well off — those making more than $75,000 a year.
Indeed, ... the big income gains have been going to a tiny, super-rich minority. It's not surprising, under those circumstances, that most people favor a stronger safety net — which they might need — even at the expense of higher taxes, much of which could be paid by the ever-richer elite. ...
So what does this say about the political outlook? It's difficult to make predictions... But at this point it looks as if we're seeing an emerging Republican minority.
After all, Democratic priorities — in particular, on health care, ... seem to be more or less in line with what the public wants.
Republicans, on the other hand, are still wallowing in nostalgia — nostalgia for the days when people thought they were heroic terrorism-fighters, nostalgia for the days when lots of Americans hated Big Government.
Many Republicans still imagine that what their party needs is a return to the conservative legacy of Ronald Reagan. It will probably take quite a while in the political wilderness before they take on board the message of Arnold Schwarzenegger's comeback in California — which is that what they really need is a return to the moderate legacy of Dwight Eisenhower.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe...ckoning?
mode=PF
March 26, 2007
Americans Face a Moral Reckoning
By James Carroll - Boston Globe
YOU HAVE been reading "The Sorrow of War" by Bao Ninh, the classic account of what in Vietnam is called the American war. The title of Bao Ninh's novel captures the feeling of grief and loss that always comes in the wake of violent conflict. Allowing room for fear, grief, and loss must define the dominant experience in Iraq today, where the suffering caused by this American war mounts inexorably.
But sorrow has also emerged as a note of life in the Unites States lately. Many comparisons are drawn between this nation's misadventures in Iraq and Vietnam, but what you are most aware of is the return of a clenched feeling in your chest, a knot of distressed sadness that is tied to your country's reiteration of the tragic error. After the chaotic end of the Vietnam War in 1975, you were like many Americans in thinking with relief that the nation would never know -- or cause -- such sorrow again....
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