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Yanking the Chains of People who Wag the Dog

Posted: August 24, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: just because | Tags: |19 Comments

More of the latest headlines from Red State and the National Review

The Right Wing blogosphere and propaganda media are all in a tizzy about about something Paul Krugman didn’t say. You expect this kind of behavior from the likes of Hot Air or Red State. Now that Bill Buckley’s dead, the National Review appears to have gone the way of Fox News.  Just check out this search on Fact Check.  They’ve gotten it wrong so many times recently it’s not even funny. No wonder right wing Republicans can’t even get their American History straight. So, this is the crux of the story.   Yesterday, a Google+ account from “Paul Krugman” posted this about the earthquake.

People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage.

Problem is, the account didn’t belong to Dr. Paul Krugman.  It belongs to some right winger who was trying to make a point. No one in the right wing village actually checked to see if the real Paul Krugman even had a Google+account.  Why would he?  He gets a lot of mileage from his blog at the NYT and other places.

Approximately a month ago, having been laid off and having too much time on my hands, I finally decided to create my own personal account on Google+. I found it to be extremely boring, mostly because no one I knew had an account and my needs for instant news had long been satisfied by twitter. To kill some time and fully delve into what Google+ had to offer, I decided to create a gimmick account of Paul Krugman and see what happened.

Last night, I made this post which caused quite a stir on twitter and blogosphere.

People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage.

I do not regret writing it and I hope it will enlighten many on the perverse economic views held by a Nobel winning economist writing for the New York Times who also lectures at Princeton University. While Paul Krugman did not write the above statement, he has made similar statements within the year and I would not be surprised if Paul Krugman did not in fact hold this view.

On March 15, 2011 Paul Krugman wrote this on his blog.

And yes, this does mean that the nuclear catastrophe could end up being expansionary, if not for Japan then at least for the world as a whole. If this sounds crazy, well, liquidity-trap economics is like that — remember, World War II ended the Great Depression.

Three days after the 9/11 tragedy Paul Krugman had this to say.

Nonetheless, we must ask about the economic aftershocks from Tuesday’s horror.These aftershocks need not be major. Ghastly as it may seem to say this, the terror attack — like the original day of infamy, which brought an end to the Great Depression — could even do some economic good.

If you showed any disgust at my fake comment written on Google+, I expect you would show equal antipathy for the two quotes above. For too long now, Krugman along with other Keynesian economists such as Nouriel Roubini have supported Keynesian policies which advocate for more taxation of the job creating private sector to contribute to the job destroying public sector. While he public sector has “created” jobs, one must remember and take into account the opportunity cost of taxing the private sector.

Beyond identity theft, this guy has made the cardinal mistake you’re warned against in your first class on your first day in economics 101.  That is assuming a positive statement has any moral judgement or advocacy attached to it.  As an example, I could say legalizing marijuana and taxing it would provide enough revenues to pay off a substantial part of the public debt and still be against legalizing marijuana.  The first statement is a positive statement and could be proved with data and analysis rather easily.   Normative statements are based on personal norms. There is nothing in that first statement that actually advocates for doing that policy like adding, well, that’s the best policy at this point to pay off the debt.  That’s a normative statement and it advocates the policy.  When you’re trained as an economist, you’re taught to separate the two types of thinking because as a number cruncher and researcher, you are supposed to dispassionately crunch through possibilities and come out with results based on logic and data not wishful thinking.  That is something right wingers never seem capable of doing.  They always go with wishful thinking despite facts.

The perfect example of that was making the rounds last week.  That example would be Rick Perry and his continual insistence that “abstinence works” despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. His mind simply won’t wrap itself around something he doesn’t want to see. He just insists he’s right despite the evidence.  Other examples include people that literally believe the world is less than 8000 years old, there’s a god that exactly looks like the god in the Sistine chapel ceiling, and the Garden of Eden was a literal place on earth about 8000 years ago in time.  It’s how these same people claim–despite it not being true now–that there are ‘holes’ in the theory of evolution and that climate change is some kind of numbers hoax.  Their lives are ruled by off the wall moral judgements rather than dispassionate assessment of data and facts via the scientific method where conclusions come from careful, rational thought instead of myth and moral judgement.  It doesn’t occur to them that thought exercises are part of getting out of the box because they want to stay in the box.

Here’s what the real Paul Krugman had to say in a blog post called “Identity Theft” on the NYT.

Well, this is interesting. I hear that the not-so-good people at National Review are attacking me over something I said on my Google+ page. Except, I don’t have a Google+ page.

This is the third incident I’m aware of — there may well be more — in which people are claiming to be me. There was also my nonexistent connection with academia.edu, and at least one web opinion piece by someone claiming to be me (and sounding not at all like me).

This is really cute, not. Apparently some people can’t find enough things to attack in what I actually say, so they’re busy creating fake quotes. And I have enough on my plate without trying to chase all this stuff down.

So if you see me quoted as saying something really stupid or outrageous, and it didn’t come from the Times or some other verifiable site, you should probably assume it was a fake.

So here’s two off the wall idiot winger sources that perpetually refuse to fact check, because facts are so damned inconvenient: The American Thinker and  The National Review. I put the link up top to Hot Air that at least updated and corrected the story.   Of course, the right wing story is some take on what I printed from the person committing the identity theft is, well,  it sounded like something he’d say!

It’s one thing to spoof the Bronx Zoo Python or the Satan Shit Sandwich. It’s completely another to steal a real person’s identity.  I frankly hope the police go after him.  The lesson it teaches me is that you can never trust true believers.  They fall for anything.  Villagers, take note!  Yes, any natural disaster or man made disaster will create a situation where you have to rebuild or build-up which creates jobs and customers. Saying that it will happen is not the same as saying you’re all for creating disasters.  Idiots!

19 Comments on “Yanking the Chains of People who Wag the Dog”

  1. Minkoff Minx says:
    August 24, 2011 at 3:20 pm

    Oh Dak, great post! I have a few links in the evening reads that go perfectly with this…

    I saw the Twitter thing, but did not read anything about it. To find out now that it was just another right wingnut phoney twitter account, just makes me think about what we are in for as the 2012 election comes around.

    • dakinikat says:
      August 24, 2011 at 3:22 pm

      Yeah … CREEP lives!!! Just saw a poll that Perry is now ahead of Romney. We can look for a really dirty campaign season if it’s Perry v. Obama.

      • Minkoff Minx says:
        August 24, 2011 at 3:28 pm

        Thank you for putting that image of a Perry vs. Obama scenario in my head…it made me lose my appetite. Now if only we could bottle that gut reaction in pill form, and sell it as a diet drug for former Clinton supporters…who would like to loose a few pounds this election season.

      • ralphb says:
        August 24, 2011 at 3:59 pm

        Oh, I just threw up in my mouth a little thinking of Perry v Obama.

      • B KIlpatrick says:
        August 24, 2011 at 5:53 pm

        Perry’s not nearly as durable a candidate as people think. Perry has a lot of things that will come out because the Bushies hate him.

  2. Minkoff Minx says:
    August 24, 2011 at 3:56 pm

    Dak, h/t Alegre Obama Campaign Seeking Social Media Staffers | techPresident

    First data, now tweets: President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is seeking “social media copywriters.” From an ad on the job board for the professional left, Jobs That Are Left, first spotted by New York politics beatwriter Azi Paybarah:

    We’re looking for writers who can tell stories in 140 characters or
    less, put complex policy into Facebook-friendly terms, and help plan
    and create original content that people will be compelled to share
    with their friends.

    A great candidate will be able to formulate a social media plan for
    specific goals and audiences, write content for it with a clear,
    consistent voice, and analyze outcomes to make the next campaign even
    better. You should have a head for politics, a sense of humor, and
    buckets of common sense.

    The post from the campaign, Obama for America, says the team is hiring staffers at all levels.

  3. ralphb says:
    August 24, 2011 at 4:01 pm

    Yesterday reports were the Obama Admin was pressuring the NY AG to go along with settlement which would absolve the banks of any further liability. Today, it appears the administration got some help.

    N.Y. bumped from 50-state foreclosure committee

    Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is leading foreclosure settlement negotiations with the nation’s largest banks on behalf of all 50 states, abruptly removed New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman from the coalition’s executive committee Tuesday, saying he had “actively worked to undermine” the group’s efforts in recent months.

    Miller did not speak with Schneiderman before he sent word about the decision. Rather, Iowa assistant Attorney General Patrick Madigan e-mailed counterparts around the country just before 1 p.m. announcing that New York had been booted from the key group of states overseeing the negotiations, “effective immediately.”
    …
    A central issue is how broad a release from future legal claims banks should receive in exchange for agreeing to overhaul their mortgage servicing practices and paying tens of billions of dollars in penalties.

    Schneiderman, who has undertaken investigations into the way banks bundled and sold pools of mortgages, known as securitization, has said any settlement should not release banks from liability for all their mortgage-related sins committed before the financial crisis. Attorneys general from several other states, including Delaware, Nevada and Massachusetts, have expressed similar concerns.

    Sorry this is OT but can you say “miseerable crooks”, boys and girls?

  4. dakinikat says:
    August 24, 2011 at 4:21 pm

    From Matt Yglesias:

    The fact that breaking windows would make a society poorer (fewer windows) is precisely why nobody ever proposes stimulating the economy by deliberately smashing windows. But the way the dialogue works is that first a Keynesian observes that fiscal stimulus can increase growth in a depressed economy. Second, as an attempted reductio, a conservative says “if that was true, then you could increase growth by breaking a bunch of windows.” Third, the Keynesian accurately points out that you could, in fact, increase growth by breaking windows. Fourth, the conservative accuses Keynesians of wanting to break windows or believing that window-breaking increases wealth. But nobody ever said that! The point is that we have very good reasons to think smashing windows would be a bad idea—there’s more to life than full employment—and that’s why Keynesians generally want to boost employment by having people do something useful like renovate schools or repair bridges

    • ralphb says:
      August 24, 2011 at 4:48 pm

      That seems to be the way it works and I am getting more than a little tired of it.

      People seem to be conflating the federal debt (deficit) with the huge debt overhang of individuals and families. Individuals who are in debt up to their eyeballs can’t/won’t spend to get the economy going. But that has nada to do with government spending to stimulate the economy. It’s maddening that the difference is not apparent to more people.

      • B KIlpatrick says:
        August 24, 2011 at 6:01 pm

        I think it’s very apparent to people, it’s just that they think the difference isn’t that big and have a (normative) preference for not mortgaging the future in order to slap a bandaid on structural problems which have merely been made apparent by the crash.

        • dakinikat says:
          August 24, 2011 at 6:40 pm

          Using leverage to enhance productive assets is not mortgaging the future. Using leverage to suppress competition for other companies or to go drop bombs on some other person’s country is mortgaging the future without a payoff.

    • B KIlpatrick says:
      August 24, 2011 at 5:58 pm

      Problem is that breaking windows doesn’t increase growth. WW2 is actually a wonderful example of this. Katrina too. Broken windows can’t increase growth because, to take the metaphor a bit too far, a replacement window is just a window that won’t be installed somewhere else.

      • dakinikat says:
        August 24, 2011 at 6:38 pm

        There’s a difference between wealth (value of existing assets) and consumption (using current wealth to buy something). The Katrina rebuilding is one of the reasons that LA stayed some what immune to the Great Recession for some time because of the increased construction and clean up spending. However, because infrastructure was completely ruined, it decreased wealth and assets for businesses and home owners. So there’s an offset when there’ some kind of wealth destruction. The deal is the multiplying impact them comes from hiring workers that wouldn’t be there otherwise. They don’t just fix widows. They pay rent, buy groceries and gas, drink at bars, and need clothes. Ordinary window replacement doesn’t do as much of that.

  5. ralphb says:
    August 24, 2011 at 4:49 pm

    Jon Huntsman should run 3rd party for president.

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