“Some of us.” Don’t you love that locution? Smug, cliquish, self-satisfied: it’s a perfect rhetorical gambit for “progressive” souls — you know, people who are just wee-bit smarter and emotionally attuned to the Zeitgeist than you or I. Take The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, for example. Writing in the former Paper of Record today, The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman gazes over the economic landscape and announces that, even before Inauguration Day (of blessed memory), “some of us worried” that the stimulus plan Barack Obama (peace be unto him) proposed “would prove inadequate.” Almost a trillion dollars, but would it be enough? The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman and his circle of enlightened friends had their doubts. And, deep thinkers that they are, they worried that “it might be hard, as a political matter, to come back for another round.”
You got that one right, Kemo Sabe! That sucking sound you hear all around you is the gas escaping from the Obama (peace, etc.,etc.) balloon as a public drunk on Hope and Change wake to find that the promised tax cuts, 3 million new jobs, and prosperity everywhere were nothing but starry-eyed campaign projections — or, to use the vernacular, lies.
The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman asks how “concerned citizens” (i.e., resposible folk like him)
“should be reacting to the disappointing economic news. Should we be patient and give the Obama plan time to work? Should we call for bigger, bolder actions? Or should we declare the plan a failure and demand that the administration call the whole thing off?”
Whaddya’ think, Frank? Let’s see if you can guess what The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman says. Everyone who thinks he says “declare the plan a failure and demand that the administration call the whole thing off” raise your hands. What, no takers?
You are clever, Dear Reader! You got it exactly right. The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, like the great Obama (peace &c.) know that there is still some money out there, and he wants to spend it all.
The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman also knows, since he is not a lunatic, that resistance to mortgaging even more of the country’s future is rising, that it is going to be a very hard sell. But Obama (p., &c.) must gird up his loins and talk to the American people “like adults.” (Don’t you love that? Agree with The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman and you’re an adult, otherwise . . .) We’ve already spent trillions. Quick! Before the bills come due, let’s spend a few trillion more and really get the socialist state going. Think it will be easy? Not if stories like this begin making the rounds: “Ninety Percent of Stimulus Funds Spent on Bailouts for State Governments.”
The study found that 90 percent of the stimulus funds spent so far have gone toward bailouts for fiscally irresponsible state governments. These states made commitments on health care and education spending commensurate to what they could afford during the boom years. When the economy crashed and tax revenues dried up, they had no way to pay for these commitments short of raising taxes, which none of them wanted to do. (Most states’ constitutions restrict their ability to run deficits.)
This is what the stimulus was really all about — not creating or “saving” jobs, but preventing states from suffering the consequences of their profligacy.
“The consequences of their profligacy.” Now there’s an interesting idea! What would the The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman have to say about that?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member