An interesting bit from Krugman's NPR interview:

Gross asked if he stands by that column where he claimed the Enron scandal would be a bigger turning point in America's perception of itself than 9/11:

"No, but not for the reason you'd think. The story about September 11th that people were telling at that time was that it was going to be the moment when an angered America took up arms and we really showed the world. I don't think that's the way we will remember it. What I did not understand at that point was the extent to which - I'm going to say something fairly stiff here - the depth of the cynicism in our leadership. I didn't understand the extent to which they'd exploit September 11th for political goals. The extent to which they would use it for partisan advantage, in the elections, and the extent to which they would use it to rationalize projects that had nothing to do with terrorism.

Now, having done all that, I think we will look back at September 11th as a turning point, but as a turning point that we'll be ashamed of in future generations. We'll look at the way in which patriotism and fear were abused, and we'll say 'my god, this is the point where America really took a very serious wrong turn.'"
- posted by Jason @ 6:29 PM

 
I just realized what bothers me so much about discussing Social Security after reading some comments over on Brad Delong's website.

Namely: can you recall privitization proponents *ever* talking about raising taxes, which absolutely must be done to fund a privitization program? I'm not talking about in obscure journals where they discuss it in technical terms, I'm talking about in public. It simply doesn't happen - can you recall a public conservative ever, ever admitting we'll need to raise taxes to privitize Social Security? By contrast, raising taxes to fix Social Security is pretty much all liberals talk about when the subject comes up.

If conservatives want to argue "we're going to have to raise taxes anyway by about as much, so we might as well privitize; there's benefits," fine, go for it. It's an honest debate. That's not what happens, though; what happens is Bush trots out and insists that $1 put into private accounts today *won't* have to be made up by equivalent tax increases elsewhere. Hey look, kids, free money! Conservatives know we'll have to pay just about as much to transition to a privatized system, but that's a cost you can reveal after tricking the voters into approving it by lying about the costs.

This goes back to something revealed back in the 2000 election; the right has a real distrust for the messy concept of democracy. The conservative position on deficits is pretty much "they won't vote to cut spending like they should, so we'll just cut taxes, run deficits, and then use that to trick them into cutting spending", for example. The vein cuts across a bunch of issues; the 2000 election, Bush's tax cuts, Social Security, Iraq - it's disturbing.
- posted by Jason @ 1:10 AM

 
Conservatives claim Scrooge McDuck as their own. I know liberals sure don't want him.

The only relevent match from google for "Scrooge McDuck Allende" says he has his history on the Allende/McDuck connection wrong, too.
- posted by Jason @ 11:12 AM