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Paul Krugman is plain awful

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by hondo, Sep 11, 2011.

  1. hondo

    hondo Well-Known Member

    http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/the-years-of-shame/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

    Terrible, terrible thing to write on this day. And he's wrong. I feel no shame in my country or its citizens in the 10 years since 9-11. He can feel all the shame he wants, or think America has to. Doesn't make it so.

    And nice cop-out: "For obvious reasons, I will not be allowing posts."

    Who the hell are you to write this hit-and-run blog and then tell people they won't have a chance to respond?
     
  2. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    I would have liked to see an article on how much Kerik and Giuliani have made since then.
     
  3. SpeedTchr

    SpeedTchr Well-Known Member

    Shame? The only shame I feel is that that dick is still collecting a paycheck.

    Stitch -- I would like to have seen such as well.
     
  4. Point of Order

    Point of Order Active Member

    Good column.
     
  5. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member



    BLOGS!
     
  6. SF_Express

    SF_Express Active Member

    If you don't like that, you're probably not going to like a lot of the special report here:

    http://www.truthdig.com/
     
  7. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    A few things. Krugman is entitled to his opinion. He is a political (not an economics, despite who he is) columnist and he writes with a point of view. Not very surprising that would be his point of view. I agree with him to a degree.

    I wouldn't lump Rudolph Giuliani in with George Bush, though, personally, in that "fake heroes" category. Neither are heroes. Bernie Kerik is fairly irrelevant, but as a person he is morally bankrupt, and it would be easy enough to write that column, because he was caught.

    Giuliani and Bush were elected officials, not heroes. As a New Yorker, I felt that Rudolph Giuliani did a fantastic job of showing leadership right after 9/11, particularly that first month. I was constantly amazed at his poise, rhetoric, and how he seemed to be everywhere at once. He seemed to be putting in 28 hour days, going from one funeral to the next, to press conferences to meetings to public events, etc. and being the public face of the city. I think he barely slept for a few weeks, and you could see it on his face, yet he kept his poise and showed what I thought was great leadnership. He was a fantastic mayor during that period in my opinion.

    Did he cash in after he left office? Yup. In a big way. Does that make him bad? Maybe. I see it as typical of the elected official who walks through the revolving door and gets paid for his influence by industry. Is he any worse than Tom Daschle or Byron Dorgon or Bob Bennett or if you want to stick to the local level, Ed Koch? Nope. They ALL do it.

    The problem with throwing in the "raced to cash in part," is that it is an ad hominem attack, typical of Krugman, and it is not particularly true in the case of Giuliani. He stayed mayor through that period, and wanted to continue as mayor, except term limits stopped him. After he left office, he did go through the revolving door, though. "Race to cash in," though? All Krugman had to say was that an atrocity was turned into a wedge issue, which is true. He could have written something without trying to create very specific villians (his agenda with that blog post) according to his home team/visiting team agenda.

    Krugman himself has made a ton of money in speaking and consulting fees. We covered his Enron issues on the other thread. He consulted for them, took a paycheck, owned stock in the company, wrote a glowing article about them for Fortune. Is what he does when he collects a hefty speaking fee from some private organization any different than what Rudy Giuliani did after he left office? He traded in his name for consulting money. Krugman does it too, and given the ethics stones others have tried to throw at his glass house, you'd think he'd be careful about writing something like that -- at least out of empathy.

    If he has proof of corruption when it comes to Giuliani, that is the column he should write. Instead, lacking the facts to write that kind of column, he tried to impugn the guy with vague innuendo. It's kind of unfair.

    Bush? Go for it. It's easy enough to demonstrate how many bags of money were passed around (and disappeared) as politically-connected private enterprises were war profiteers.

    But that was typical Krugman. Start with an agenda. Pick the names you want to attack. Pick some relatively obvious bad ones so you can claim honesty. And then use vague innuendo and an ad hominem attack to lump everything together to fulfill your original agenda.
     
  8. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    I agree that Mayor Giuliani was a fantastic comfort to everyone in the city in the days and weeks following the attack. Even those who loathed him.

    His term ended on December 31, 2001.

    That's 111 days after September 11th.

    This appeared in Slate in September 2002.

    http://www.slate.com/id/2070544/

    His 2002 income from speaking engagements alone is expected to exceed $8 million. And that doesn't include the $2.7 million advance he received to write two books, the first of which, Leadership, will be published in October. Nor does it include the money Giuliani receives from Merrill Lynch (a reported $200 an hour) as an adviser to help with the firm's negotiations with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Nor the money Giuliani receives from his business consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, which the New York Post reported made $7.5 million in June alone.
     
  9. steveu

    steveu Well-Known Member

    Wow, Paul. Nice of you to throw a live grenade into a room and then duck away without taking any repercussions for it.
     
  10. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    Why is this thread in the journalism section, since it involves criticism of a political opinion by a guy paid to write them on political grounds? It should be in the news and sports thread, where it would be a perfectly valid topic.
     
  11. SF_Express

    SF_Express Active Member

    I guess it's all how you look at it, and the political ramifications obviously, but Michael, it never even occurred to me it didn't belong here until you mention it. But I see your point.
     
  12. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    His term was over. He walked out and through the revolving door. How many politicians do that? Ones like Giuliani, who are riding high, cash in quite a bit.

    Is that immoral? Only if he is using his rolodex to lobby for special interest legislation. He may or may not have done that. But he certainly didn't do it on the level of say a Tom Daschle or a John Ashcroft, who were whores while in and out of office.

    The guy was out of office. He used his name to earn money. Krugman himself has been accused of ethics violations in the past because of his relationship with industries and companies he wrote about, and his hiring himself out as a speaker at the same time he is practicing journalism. Is it really any more or less insidious than Giuliani selling his fame for money AFTER he left office?
     
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