Pejman Yousefzadeh

Crook has taken their measure:

Brad DeLong has commented on my beef with Paul Krugman. I’m reluctant to engage, to be honest, because his post exemplifies the intemperance I’m addressing. Once an admirer, I gave up on his commentary a long time ago. You get a sense of the problem from his post about me. He illustrates it with a picture of a clown. He also wants me fired. “Bloomberg has some house-cleaning to do,” he says — charming, and from a tenured academic, to boot.

DeLong’s fine under the supervision of a competent adult, as here (an excellent paper, which I praised at the time). But as an unattended blogger he regresses to intellectual adolescence, light on thinking and exhaustingly heavy on peevish belligerence. Not just uncivil, he actually disapproves of civility — today, as you see, I’m trying to meet him halfway.

The substance of DeLong’s complaint about my column and post appears to be that they lack supporting documentation. I asserted (thinking it self-evident) that many Republicans are thoughtful and public-spirited. DeLong is incredulous and finds it revealing that I failed to give examples. I also accused Krugman of letting partisan politics taint his analysis and said he cared as much about undoing the Bush tax cuts as about expanding and extending the fiscal stimulus. At this, DeLong is aghast. He demands to see my evidence.

Will this do? From Krugman’s column, Let’s Not Make a Deal, in December 2010.

Back in 2001, former President George W. Bush pulled a fast one. He wanted to enact an irresponsible tax cut, largely for the benefit of the wealthiest Americans. But there were Senate rules in place designed to prevent that kind of irresponsibility. So Mr. Bush evaded the rules by making the tax cut temporary, with the whole thing scheduled to expire on the last day of 2010.

The plan, of course, was to come back later and make the thing permanent, never mind the impact on the deficit. But that never happened. And so here we are, with 2010 almost over and nothing resolved.

Democrats have tried to push a compromise: let tax cuts for the wealthy expire, but extend tax cuts for the middle class. Republicans, however, are having none of it. They have been filibustering Democratic attempts to separate tax cuts that mainly benefit a tiny group of wealthy Americans from those that mainly help the middle class. It’s all or nothing, they say: all the Bush tax cuts must be extended. What should Democrats do?

The answer is that they should just say no. If GOP intransigence means that taxes rise at the end of this month, so be it.

Krugman proposed raising taxes on all Americans while the recovery was still very weak. He recognized this as a fiscal tightening that would put people out of work. He advocated it because the alternative of retaining the Bush tax cuts would have handed the Republicans a victory, and because — get this — he was worried about the long-term deficit implications. There you have it: Krugman the apolitical Keynesian.

I suppose that it would be churlish of me not to note that DeLong has (uncharacteristically) said some nice things about me recently. I wish that I could return the favor, but for the moment, anyway, I can’t.

Anyone who claims—as Paul Krugman does—that the Bush administration “lied us into war” in Iraq ought to read Jamie Kirchick’s demolition of this absurd claim:

In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it “did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments.” The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found “no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.”

Contrast those conclusions with the Senate Intelligence Committee report issued June 5, the production of which excluded Republican staffers and which only two GOP senators endorsed. In a news release announcing the report, committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV got in this familiar shot: “Sadly, the Bush administration led the nation into war under false pretenses.”

Yet Rockefeller’s highly partisan report does not substantiate its most explosive claims. Rockefeller, for instance, charges that “top administration officials made repeated statements that falsely linked Iraq and Al Qaeda as a single threat and insinuated that Iraq played a role in 9/11.” Yet what did his report actually find? That Iraq-Al Qaeda links were “substantiated by intelligence information.” The same goes for claims about Hussein’s possession of biological and chemical weapons, as well as his alleged operation of a nuclear weapons program.

Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don’t get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were “misled” into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.

In 2003, top Senate Democrats — not just Rockefeller but also Carl Levin, Clinton, Kerry and others — sounded just as alarmist. Conveniently, this month’s report, titled “Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information,” includes only statements by the executive branch. Had it scrutinized public statements of Democrats on the Intelligence, Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees — who have access to the same intelligence information as the president and his chief advisors — many senators would be unable to distinguish their own words from what they today characterize as warmongering.

The list of people who should read Kirchick include New York Times editors who are allowing their paper and their brand to be hijacked in the service of lies by people like Paul Krugman. And since there is no way to say the following nicely, I won’t try: Either the Times hierarchy will force Krugman to adopt some ethical journalistic standards, or they are complicit in his rank dishonesty and deserve to fade away from the world of journalism so that more honest news sources can take the place of the New York Times.

There is angst and ferment on the port side:

President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say.

In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the president’s demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some corporations.

Congressional Republicans have dug in against any new tax revenues after higher taxes for the affluent were approved at the start of the year. The administration’s hope is to create cracks in Republicans’ antitax resistance, especially in the Senate, as constituents complain about the across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs that took effect March 1.

Mr. Obama’s proposed deficit reduction would replace those cuts. And if Republicans continue to resist the president, the White House believes that most Americans will blame them for the fiscal paralysis.

I remember when the White House thought that Republicans would never agree to the sequester, and if they did, they would be instantly punished in the court of public opinion. How did that turn out?

For port-siders who hate the deal, see Brian Beutler, Sahil Kapur (who points to other port-siders who hate the deal), and Paul Krugman. The objections mainly revolve around the administration’s acceptance of chained CPI when it comes to Social Security. I would take the time to drink their tears and pronounce them to be delicious, but I have to agree with the notion that the president is making compromises that he doesn’t need to make. His popularity has fallen, but he is still more popular than congressional Republicans, and running against cuts in Social Security—demagogic though this stance may be—isn’t out of style just yet. Additionally, the GOP as a whole is still battered and bruised as a consequence of the election and its general public image. I don’t see why the administration doesn’t just hold fast to a liberal line, demand more tax increases on the rich and insist that it will protect Social Security from the supposed ravages of chained CPI, thus preventing old people from having to get by on cat food. Again, I stress that such a negotiating stance would constitute pure demagoguery, but I would have thought that the demagoguery would work, and the administration would be happy to pursue it—especially in the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections. The negotiating stance they have chosen instead seems sub-optimal when one considers the political aims of the administration and its congressional Democratic allies.

Paul Krugman and I may not agree on much when it comes to politics or economics. But the man has good taste in music.

I prefer this video, by the way:

“Because the Economist made a snide crack about sewers back in 1848—no, not a typo, we are talking about an Economist article from one hundred sixty five years ago—I can diss present day conservatives.”

If anyone ever wanted to know what a desperate and laughable argument looks like, well, here you go.

I agree with just about all of it. I will add that Keynesian stimulus would work better if it were targeted by technocrats to all of the right places. But that’s not the way our system of government works. When Congress considers a stimulus bill, representatives and senators from districts and states that don’t need stimulus do not give way to those from districts and states that do need stimulus. Rather, they ask “where’s mine?” And until they get an answer that pleases them, they withhold their votes.

I am tremendously disappointed. The White House has announced that the federal government will not build a Death Star.

I certainly want to give props to Paul Shawcross for the informative, humorous and fun-loving way in which he wrote his response, but from a Keynesian standpoint, the arguments he makes are surely inadequate. Shawcross cites the massive price tag associated with building a Death Star, but according to Keynesian principles, we ought to worry much less about the deficit these days, and more about throwing piles of money into job-creating enterprises. Building a Death Star, as I explained in my post discussing the petition, should build oodles of jobs according to Keynesian theory, and Keynesians ought to be outraged that this administration is failing to take the principles spelled out in the General Theory of Employment to the next level. Indeed, I daresay that Keynesians ought to find the administration’s lack of faith in their principles disturbing.

Shawcross appears to be repelled by the idea of building a massive space station that is capable of blowing up planets, but of course, there is no reason why the Death Star should be tasked to blow up planets. Recall Paul Krugman’s comment that we ought to organize our public works plans as though we are supposed to respond to a fake alien invasion. Emphasis on the word “fake.” There can be no bigger, better or more comprehensive response to a fake alien invasion than to build a Death Star and since (one hopes) there are no actual aliens on their way to attack us, there is no need whatsoever to equip the Death Star with the ability to destroy planets.

Shawcross also states that the Obama administration does not want to build a Death Star “with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship.” I applaud this sentiment, but of course, we don’t have to do any such thing. From a design perspective, the Death Star can be improved upon, and blithely assuming otherwise just will not do. Besides, in addition to all of the jobs that can be created by building a Death Star in the first place, we can create even more by employing more scientists and engineers to come up with a design that removes the flaw Shawcross refers to, and which I referred to in my original post regarding this issue.

(I suppose it would be nitpicky for me to reply to Shawcross’s observation that “the United States doesn’t have anything that can do the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs” by noting—as many, many, many others have—that a parsec is a unit of distance, not a unit of time. I know that George Lucas got this wrong too, but we expect better from the Obama administration. After all, we pay their salaries with our tax money.)

In any event, now that the administration has come out against the construction of a Death Star, I propose that we get private enterprise involved to construct it. I look forward to the day when we can point with pride to the creation of the Death Star, and then tell the Obama administration that they didn’t build that; someone else made that happen.

Incidentally, I am partial to this Death Star above all others. But then, I am no Keynesian.

The consensus used to be that President Obama held all of the high cards when it came to the fiscal cliff negotiations, and that Republicans would be forced to swallow a bad deal. But as a final deal to avert the cliff is taking shape, the consensus appears to be changing. Now, it is Republicans who appear to be getting the better of the deal, or at the very least, a far better deal than they thought they would get.

Joshua Green explains why the deal is good for Republicans:

With the caveat that no reporter is privy to the details of the offers being swapped, here is the deal that seemed to be emerging: Democrats would get an extension of unemployment benefits for 2.1 million people; they’d patch the alternative minimum tax for a year to protect the middle class from sharp tax hikes; and they’d implement a “doc fix” to ensure that Medicare reimbursement rates to doctors don’t fall precipitously and limit patients’ access to medical care. Republicans would get to preserve Bush-era income tax rates for households making up to $400,000 (rather than the $250,000 limit Democrats prefer). They’d also get a lower tax rate and a much higher threshold for inheritance taxes (set to revert to 55 percent on estates of more than $1 million on Tuesday). And significantly, Republicans would hold onto their greatest point of leverage in upcoming negotiations over entitlement cuts, because the deal wouldn’t raise the debt limit.

Here’s what’s important about everything Democrats would get: It’s temporary; everything expires (presumably) within a year. Here’s what’s important about what Republicans would get: it’s permanent. The tax rates won’t expire.

That means Democrats are offering a huge gift to Republicans and getting almost nothing in return because on Jan. 1, if no deal is struck, Democrats will get even more revenue than they’re asking for without conceding a thing. And if, as polls suggest, voters would blame Republicans for going over the cliff, Democrats are also offering to save Republicans from their worst impulses—which, at least for the time being, since they haven’t yet agreed, is to reject this deal.

I might argue with a few details here and there, but by and large, Green appears to have hit the major points in his analysis. The emerging deal has turned out far better than Republicans have feared, and far worse than Democrats have hoped.

It appears to have dawned on some liberal pundits and politicians that they ought to not like the deal. Timothy Noah calls upon congressional Democrats to kill the deal, and Tom Harkin threatens to rally fellow Senate Democrats against the deal. Matt Yglesias joins in the hand-wringing and Brian Beutler also appears to be upset. Paul Krugman calls Barack Obama “The World’s Worst Poker Player,” and then, having gotten more information on the deal, he calls the president “Conceder In Chief.” Jamelle Bouie states that “if President Obama remains committed to getting a deal done before the new year, then in all likelihood, it won’t be favorable to his short-term or long-term interests.” This comment, of course, reflects the fact that Obamaphiles were and are willing to go over the cliff and risk damage to the economy in order to do better in negotiations (again, who are the real “hostage-takers” in these negotiations?). The only Obamaphile who seems to think that the White House has the better of the negotiations is Andrew Sullivan, who continues to meep meep away. One presumes, however, that if the deal does turn out to be as unfavorable to liberals as is feared on the port side, Sullivan will swiftly downshift into utterly and completely losing it, as he is often wont to do.

I guess that the only thing I have to add is that if the president does indeed end up getting outwitted and outmaneuvered in these negotiations, it will cause people like me to ask anew how it is possible that Republicans could have lost the 2012 presidential election to him. But maybe that’s a different matter for another day.

The White House has stated that it will respond to any and all online petitions that garner at least 25,000 signatures.

One such petition has not only met, but exceeded the threshold: A petition to have the United States build a Death Star.

I know that you think that this is crazy, but none other than Paul Krugman has advocated the following more than once in order to give a boost to the economy:

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: This is hard to get people to do, much better, obviously, to build bridges and roads and healthcare clinics and schools. But my proposed, I actually have a serious proposal which is that we have to get a bunch of scientists to tell us that we’re facing a threatened alien invasion, and in order to be prepared for that alien invasion we have to do things like build high-speed rail. And the, once we’ve recovered, we can say, “Look, there were no aliens.”

But look, I mean, whatever it takes because right now we need somebody to spend, and that somebody has to be the U.S. government.

Now, here’s the thing: If we were to actually face an alien invasion, I highly doubt that the biggest agenda item on our to-do list would be to build high-speed rail. In fact, I daresay that a bigger and more pressing agenda item would be to build a Death Star. Not only could we equip ourselves to annihilate enemy spaceships once they have come close to Earth, we could get the Death Star to travel at light speed to enemy planets and obliterate them, no matter how peaceful those planets may turn out to be, and no matter how few weapons they might have.

So I do hope that the Obama administration will—like a bunch of good Keynesians—follow Krugman’s lead and announce that in anticipation of an alien threat, they will build a Death Star, if only to create jobs and stimulate the economy. I just hope that the Obamaesque Death Star won’t come with a thermal exhaust port that is at least two meters wide. I hear that if you practice gunning down womp rats in your T-16 back in Beggar’s Canyon, firing a couple of torpedoes that will destroy the exhaust port and the Death Star with it will be no problem whatsoever.

I mean, I would hate for the Obamaesque Death Star to become some kind of latter-day Solyndra. Wouldn’t you?