Krugman thrown under "progressive" bus

[mkultra]

Paul Krugman’s Health Care Sell-Out: The Health 'Reform' Bill in Congress Is Worse Than Nothing

Paul Krugman, one of the few liberal columnists writing for the New York Times, claims that at some point in the hoary past when he "began writing a lot about health care," he was in favor of a Canadian-style single-payer health care system. He adds that even today if he thought there was "any chance of creating Medicare for All any time in the next decade," he would be "pushing for single-payer now."

But on Christmas, Krugman threw in the towel, calling on progressives to support the Senate's version of health care legislation. Suggesting that the so-called Senate Health Reform Bill, if it had been the law back in Dickens' time in England, would have saved Tiny Tim without any need for the belated charitable intervention of Ebenezer Scrooge, Krugman says progressives should recognize that the Senate bill is the best they can hope for, and that they need to accept that politics is "the art of the possible."

Krugman goes on to say that despite some "flaws and limitations," which he leaves unexplained, the Senate bill is "a big win" for progressives--and for America."

But is it?

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/29-6


who's next i wonder?

[pnwmom]

1. Krugman, the liberal, Nobel winning economist is wrong. So sayeth some journalist. n/t

[Tempest]

5. Not just some journalist

There are many people who believe Krugman is wrong.

The proposed bill is bad and does nothing to reform the health care system. It should be thrown out and started over from scratch.

[mkultra]

12. awsome

:popcorn:

[Capn Sunshine]

44. That's excactly what the HealthCare Industry wants

Nice to see how you've come around to corporate America's viewpoint

[damonm]

64. "thrown out and started over from scratch"

I'll agree with that when you show me ANY time in American History where a bill has made it this far, been killed by its proponents, and reemerged as a stronger version of itself within the same Congress.
IMO, this bill, as deeply flawed as it is, dies, any chance of HCR for a generation dies with it.

[Hello_Kitty]

40. Milton Friedman was an economist and won a Nobel prize too.

Just sayin'.

[Zynx]

52. Milton Friedman was still a credible source to cite on issues.

He was still respectable, though his conclusions were crazy.

[Hello_Kitty]

55. Krugman isn't crazy like Friedman, but he's not always right either.

And where was he during the repeal of Glass Steagal and the housing bubble? Would that he'd have been as assiduous about examining and critiquing those things as he is about pushing for mandating that people buy craptastic insurance from private corporations.

[Zynx]

56. He believed that there was a housing bubble and he said that low rates were fueling it.

He was concerned that Greenspan was just trading a stock market bubble for a housing bubble.

Also, I'm fairly certain he opposed the repeal of Glass Steagall. Krugman has been advocating heavier regulation for a long time.

[VMI Dem]

2. Centrists rejoice! You've beaten another liberal into submission.

woo hoo.

[mkultra]

13. yes, we have been working on him for weeks

now he is OURS!!!! MWHUAHAHAHA

[VMI Dem]

15. Maybe you can swing that Iran war by Spring.

Hells yeah.

[mkultra]

25. Youll have to ask Hillary about that.

[Cali_Democrat]

36. Do you think the obliteration of Iran is on the table?

[mkultra]

58. of course not.

[cali]

30. do you realize how embarassingly stupid that sounds? Obviously not.

[Phx_Dem]

37. Rejoicing.

[dionysus]

41. it's a pretty dumb thing to do to insinuate everyone that you disagree with is right leaning.

just sayin.

[phleshdef]

3. Pretty soon, progressives will have to start individually throwing ourselves under the bus...

...otherwise, we are running out of options.

[brooklynite]

4. Unrec'd...

Krugman wrote the piece two weeks ago. If the point is to respond to his comments, pull out something from this article that challenges him, or offer something yourself.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[LoZoccolo]

6. This is part and parcel of netroots politics.

When all you do is post messages on the Internet, throwing people under the bus is one of the only powers you have to affect change.

[Tempest]

8. Krugman wasn't thrown under any bus

He stepped out in front of the bus and laid down in the path.

[NJmaverick]

9. Sad but true.

[cliffordu]

10. Welcome to the under side of the bus, Krugman.

Watch where you sit, it's crowded.

[mkultra]

14. you have it mixed up, Krugman is under your bus

so technically, If your under a buss too, then its a double decker bus.

[cliffordu]

51. Why would it be MY bus???

[brentspeak]

11. I wonder what Noam Chomsky would think to see a corporate centrist use his pic as an avatar

[Kermitt Gribble]

16. Lol! +1 n/t

[dionysus]

19. except you have no credentials to tell anyone who is left or not.

[jonnyblitz]

23. yeah, we can't tell by reading their posts day in and day out.

:sarcasm: :crazy:

[dionysus]

26. in your mind, basically everyone that supports the president is a corporatist.

:shrug:

[Cali_Democrat]

38. LOL. Good point.

It's like the GWB menatality.....you're either with us or against us! If you like Obama, then you're a DLC corporate centrist asshole!!!

[QC]

21. Protective coloration. n/t

[jonnyblitz]

22. I've seen a few centrist dipshits on here with Che avatars

as well. :crazy:

[jgraz]

45. It's a common tactic here.

Almost like they've been trained to do it... :shrug:

[pecwae]

54. It only takes a couple

of perusals of their posts to know the truth. The obvious misdirection fails miserably.

[ima_sinnic]

65. +1

I've wondered about that myself.

[johan helge]

17. Stupid or dishonest

Krugman's just saying that single-payer is best, and that the health reform is better than no reform (partly because health reform means "more than 30 million Americans gaining coverage", http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/18/opinion/18krugman.html).

Calling that a "sell-out" is either stupid or dishonest.

[dflprincess]

24. Coverage I got

access to care is what I need.

All this bill does is increase the number of underinsured. The high out of pockets allowed in both the House and Senate bills guarantee that there will still be plenty of people unable to afford to see a doctor or declaring bankruptcy because of medical bills.

Besides the insurance companies, the only other winners in this scam may be the credit card companies as Americans continue to pay for health care with plastic.

[johan helge]

31. You disagree with Krugman,

and that's ok. But to call Krugman's view a "sell-out", like this guy does, is not ok, that's just a way to try to discredit Krugman's view, without having a proper reason.

(I agree with Krugman - it would be strange if this bill did not lead to more people getting treatment?)

[mkultra]

27. yup, just like our "progressive" friends

stupid or dishonest.

[johan helge]

32. Who? (nt)

[flpoljunkie]

18. Pelosi working to raise AV to 70% and increase subsidies for those at lower poverty levels.

She's also working to increase the minimum threshold for 'cadillac' coverage to $28,000. We cannot let this opportunity pass to move us toward universal health care for all Americans. If Wendell Potter says it's worth passing, then it's worth passing.

[QC]

20. Krugman's been under the Hopemobile for a couple of years now,

so this will be a change of scenery, at least.

[mkultra]

28. true that.

[Name removed]

62. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Vinnie From Indy]

29. While this Krugman piece has already been posted a gazillion times

on DU already, it still bears repeating that the whole "under the bus" meme is nonsense. The ones that keep posting this mildly amusing bit of piffle are merely trying to engage in argument without arguing anything. It is lazy and I hope that all DU'ers reflect a moment on that point.

In regard to Mr. Krugman, everyone makes mistakes. Krugman's mistake, in my view, has nothing to do with his knowledge of economics so much as his fundamental faith and trust that insurance companies will actually honor an HCR that restrains their profits. He simply assumes that the so called "good" things in the bill will be implemented in good faith. They won't in my opinion and that is why I believe that he is making a mistake to support this horrible bill. I can disagree with progressives and still not throw them under the bus. That term is divisive, lazy and does absolutely nothing to further debate or understanding.

[mkultra]

34. i throw your post under the bus

[Vinnie From Indy]

35. LOL!

$20. and I'll lube the chassis while I am down there!

:)

[Vattel]

50. well-said

apparently one can't disagree with Krugman about anything without throwing him under the bus. The OP is a stupid attempt to make some sort of useless point.

[Mass]

33. And you are going to throw all progressives under the bus because you dislike the way Lindorff

writes?

[mkultra]

59. I couldnt care less about Lindorf

I just thought it was funny to see Krugman, someone so deeply rooted in the dissent of the "far left" go against the grain and get hammered for disagreement.

[zulchzulu]

39. Dave Lindorff is a clueless Utopian Purist Asshat Extraordinaire

Apparently he was sniffing glue when he was skipping out on his Civics 101 class in junior high.

Krugman is correct on two fronts. One, single payer or Medicare For All is the way to go. Two, that's not going to happen as long as we have Republicans who don't want change and Blue Dogs and Anti-Choicers in the Democratic Party that don't allow for a veto-proof majority.

Dave Lindorff forgets that Obama is not a King. Fuckin' idiot...

[Cha]

57. Why should he remember?

His readership doesn't.

[treestar]

42. There was a time he said the stimulus bill would not work

and he was "right" and heroic and a truth teller, now he goes under the bus with all the other corporatists. :rofl:

[Forkboy]

43. You realize the flip side of that, don't you?

When he was being called "right" and "heroic" what was the other side of the debate calling him? When he said things about Obama that some here didn't agree with they shit all over Krugman. Now some of these very same people are supporting him and mocking others for flip flopping on their views of the man...while they do the exact same thing.

There's no grounds for one side or the other to be trying to act superior as they've both been acting in total kneejerk fashion in regards to Krugman all along.

[mkultra]

60. Actually, Its not the same

The dissenters BROUGHT Krugman into the debate as a hammer which was somewhat meaningless to those who do not follow him. He didn't go thrown under the bus. But when his opinion goes south of the revolutionaries, then he goes rightt under their bus.

The term under the bus means that you go from favored to shunned for some action or opinion.

[Forkboy]

63. "The term under the bus means that you go from favored to shunned for some action or opinion."

Then the people who initially shunned him must never have liked him to start with. Now that he says what they like to hear he's favored by the same people who initially shunned him. May not be under the bus, but it's still damned hypocritical.

[mkultra]

66. I dont think he made that kind of move

Those who didn't really follow him do not now worship him. Those that did, however, are pretty upset at him.

For one group he went from meh--> meh
For the other he went from God--> peon.

[alcibiades_mystery]

46. Progressives don't have a "bus"

Or so they say.

You must have missed the classic post in which somebody argued that the phgrase 'under the bus" cannot be turned back on progressives, so be it!

It was a beautiful piece of hypocritical stupidity.

[mkultra]

61. Well, they do have one and its a short one

At least the ones on this board. I like to put the word "progressives" in quotes when i speak of these people as i don't consider them to be progressives in the least. progressives favor progress, not ultimatums.

[jgraz]

47. Oh good. He's been stuck under the HOPEMOBILE since he disagreed with the stimulus

This will be a nice change of scenery for him.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

49. N'HAAH! (in Chris Matthews' voice) nt

[Zynx]

53. Saying he disagreed with the stimulus doesn't phrase it properly.

He supported something like ARRA. He just wanted it bigger. That was never going to happen though.

[TheKentuckian]

48. I threw him under the HopeMobile too.Poor Paul, he'll get back to thinking and off shilling sometime

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

67. You know what I love about DU?

That people who couldn't perform a regression analysis to save their lives feel qualified to tell a Nobel Prize winning economist and author of five economics textbooks that they think he's just plain wrong.

When in doubt, listen to the smart guy...

[Hello_Kitty]

68. Milton Friedman had a Nobel Prize and could do regression analysis too.

And I'm sorry but you are engaging in the worst sort of Appeal to Authority. Paul Krugman is a highly intelligent man with a wealth of knowledge in a few specific areas. That does not translate into expertise in every subject. Much of Krugman's writing and commentary in the MSM has been about politics, an area he clearly doesn't know nearly as much about as other subjects yet he is given automatic credibility because he's "the smart guy".

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

69. We had this discussion once before...

The "Appeal to Authority" is not a logical fallacy. It's a fallacy only when the authority you're appealing to is not qualified or competent on the subject. Krugman clearly is competent to comment on economic issues (the subject at hand here), and you clearly aren't.

P.S. The continual invoking of Milton Friedman's name as a perforative is a logical fallacy.

[Hello_Kitty]

70. And I guess we'll agree to disagree

I'm going to continue to be a critical consumer of Krugman's commentary and you will continue to blindly believe everything he says about any topic or subject because he's Paul Krugman.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

71. Krugman = Nobel Prize

You = Fact Free Posturing.

As long as Krugman can back up what he says, I'll trust him over your potificating.

[Hello_Kitty]

72. Have you ever disagreed with anything Krugman has asserted?

Ever?

No one is always right. No one.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

74. I have, in fact....

Earlier this year, Krugman was arguing that the stimulus package was too small. His fear is a repeat of 1937, where Congress decided that balancing the budget was more important than maintaining the stimulus (the economy went back into a recession the next year).

I think that since the stimulus needs to be doled out over the course of several years, it is as large as it needs to be for this year. Our disagreement was more political than economic, but there you have it.

[Hello_Kitty]

75. And I disagree with him on several aspects on health care

For reasons I'd characterize as more political than economic. I'm not engaging in fact free posturing as you claim. I'm a long-time political activist and I've talked to many voters and worked on many campaigns, all of which I doubt Paul Krugman has done. This HCR bill in its current form is hugely unpopular where I live, and not just with teabaggers, and no amount of "well you just don't understand" pedantic wonkery is going to improve that situation. This bill has to be sold to the American people and every good thing that would have sold it to the middle class (and those are the people who vote in mid-terms) has been stripped out.

[TheKentuckian]

73. I've seen many an expert in many fields be devastatingly wrong and I was right

and my problem with Krugman is not his analysis but rather his twisting it to sell a position by explaining a broad concept and then inferring the logic onto a more specific situation.

He explained the use of mandates very well but then told a big ass whopper that once it is accepted you have a mandate then the natural result is the Senate bill, which is an utterly false misrepresentation and it doesn't take a Nobel prize to see right through it. It was a sales tactic not an economic study and I have no question that I know way more in a practical sense about sales tactics then Mr Krugman, just by how clumsily he used it. Spin is spin is spin.