Politifact has revealed the “Lie of the Year” for 2011.

First let’s review the last couple of winners, followed by some on the left who applauded Politifact for those choices.

In 2009, Politifact’s Lie of the Year was “Death Panels.” The left applauded the choice.

In 2010, Politifact’s Lie of the Year was “government takeover of health care.” Another liberal round of applause.

This year, Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” is…

What?

A “credibility-killing choice” says one unhappy former customer. “Politifact, RIP” writes MRC’s Quote of the Year winner Paul Krugman. The latter thinks Politifact is terrified of appearing partisan and made this choice to appease the right. Apparently the only way Politifact could avoid appearing partisan would be to give a claim from the right the “Lie of the Year” distinction every single year.

Krugman, et al, are claiming that the Republicans did vote to end Medicare and that Politifact got this one colossally wrong. On that, here’s Avik Roy writing at Forbes.com:

Their [lefty critics of Politifact's 2011 "lie of the year" choice] defense of the “ending Medicare” claim, such as it is, is that using private insurers to deliver health care to seniors, instead of a government agency, fundamentally “ends” the program. This is, plainly, ridiculous. When the British government privatized British Rail in 1993, the railway system did not cease to exist. When Germany privatized Lufthansa in 1994, the German airline wasn’t “ended.”

Similarly, if the government comes up with alternate modes of delivering the same health care to seniors, the program hasn’t been ended. As PolitiFact notes, a more accurate label would be to say that the Ryan plan “privatizes” Medicare. The problem for would-be liberal demagogues is that privatization isn’t the scare word for most Americans that it once was.

But just in case “privatization” is still the scare word it once was, let’s show the “Paul Ryan’s going to kill your grandma” ad one more time:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Because, see, taking $55,000 from Enron to sit on a do-nothing board while penning paeans to those corporate fraudsters in nooooooo way compromised his journalistic ethics.

But leaving the hallowed confines of his NYTimes office to commune in person with his fellow anti-plutocrats at Kamp Alinsky would just…cross the line.

LOLOLOLOLOLOL:

Some readers have been asking me to go make a speech at one of the OWS demonstrations. If you think about it, however, you’ll see why I can’t.

I’ve been granted the enormous privilege of expounding my own views twice a week in the world’s greatest newspaper. I try to make the best use of that privilege, doing all I can to get the truth across and also advocating for what I believe to be the right policies. There are, however, some restrictions that come with the privilege; one of them is not crossing the line between advocate and activist. And there are good reasons for drawing that line.

Such scrupulous self-sacrifice! Order him up another Nobel Prize.

***

A Twitter follower reacts: “Smug, self-righteous, unintentionally ironic and cowardly. Classic Krugman.”

***

Yesterday: Snortalicious: Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman joins progs’ war on “plutocrats”

According to the NY Daily News: “A ‘Millionaires March’ will visit the homes – or, more realistically, the gleaming marble lobbies – of five of the city’s wealthiest residents, including News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and conservative billionaire David Koch.”

Some millionaires and billionaires and their homes get protected, of course. Billionaire NYC Mayor Bloomberg, who refuses to crack down on protesters who have no permit to conduct the march, has a pass. Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman’s compound is off-limits. So is NY-based billionaire hedge fund mogul, Obama donor, and Dodd-Frank waiver beneficiary George Soros.

Photo credit: Business Insider

Scandal-plagued LightSquared billionaire investor and Obama donor Philip Falcone owns a $49 million Upper East Side palace that won’t be on the protest route.

GE billionaire fat cat Jeffrey Immelt won’t be targeted, either.

Outside NYC, Billionaire Obama donor and Solyndra peddler George Kaiser isn’t even on their radar.

Also on the immunity list: Al Gore’s multiple mansions, including his $9 million Montecito oceanfront villa:

Oh, and you won’t see any Occupy Wall Street zombies banging their bongo drums in front of the sweetheart homes of privileged Democrats who’ve cashed in on cozy Wall Street/BigGov-BigBiz deals like the ones below.

Remember?

Flashback September 2010…

How privileged Democrats pay for their houses
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

…Former senior senator from Delaware and current Vice President Joe Biden has a custom-built house in Delaware’s ritziest Chateau Country neighborhood. It is now worth at least $2.5 million and is the Bidens’ most valuable asset. Biden tapped campaign funds to pay for his compound’s lawn needs. He secured the new estate with the help of a corporate executive who worked for Biden’s top campaign donor, credit card giant MBNA.

In 1996, Biden sold his previous mansion to MBNA Vice Chairman John Cochran. The asking price was $1.2 million. Cochran forked over the full sum. Biden then paid $350,000 in cash to real estate developer Keith Stoltz for a 4.2-acre lakefront lot. Stoltz had paid that same amount five years earlier for the undeveloped property.

Stoltz told the Wilmington News Journal that “the residential real estate market was soft” at the time he sold the land to Biden. But “soft” for whom? Stoltz was a well-off businessman who didn’t appear to be in such dire financial straits that he needed to unload the property quickly in a weak market.

Reporter Byron York looked at comparable properties in Biden’s neighborhood and found three cases where homes in the area went “for a good deal less than their appraised value. In comparison, it appears Cochran simply paid Biden’s full asking price.”

Biden’s office denied any sweetheart deals took place, but York noted that it appeared MBNA indirectly helped Cochran buy the Biden house through six-figure executive compensation funds listed as moving expenses and losses suffered on the sale of his previous home.

To be clear, no laws were broken. These arrangements were simply a continuation of Biden’s decades-long, Beltway business-as-usual relationships with a deep-pocketed corporate benefactor — which, by the way, later hired his son. Nice nepotism, if you can get it.

North Dakota Democrat Sen. Kent Conrad and Connecticut Democrat Sen. Chris Dodd made cozy arrangements with subprime sleaze lender Countrywide. Portfolio.com reported that Conrad “borrowed $1.07 million in 2004 to refinance his vacation home with a balcony and wraparound porch in Bethany Beach, Del., a block from the ocean.”

Senate Banking Chair Dodd received two discounted loans in 2003 through Countrywide’s VIP program. He borrowed $506,000 to refinance his elite townhouse in Washington, D.C., and $275,042 to refinance a home in East Haddam, Conn. Countrywide helpfully waived fractions of points on the loans. The lower interest rates could have saved Dodd a combined $75,000 during the life of the 30-year loans.

Dodd had known about the preferential treatment on his loans since 2003, yet continued to deny that he was treated like a VIP, refused to acknowledge wrongdoing and encouraged government-sponsored mortgage enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to invest in Countrywide’s risky loans.

Not content with two shady home deals, Dodd got in on a real estate scheme for an Irish cottage and nearly 10 acres of land with William Kessinger, a businessman tied to his close friend, insider trader Edward R. Downe Jr.

Downe had pleaded guilty to tax and securities law violations and was banned for life from the business. In 2001, Dodd helped Downe obtain one of the treasured presidential pardons on Bill Clinton’s last day in office. A year after that, as Irish real estate prices went through the roof, Dodd purchased Kessinger’s share of the estate at a discount. He failed to include the obvious quid-pro-quo gift on Senate disclosure forms: Help a crooked friend, reap a cut-rate real estate deal.

Prominent members of Team Obama benefited from similar special home deals. Politico.com noted that the Clintons secured a $1.35 million loan from Democrat pal and fundraiser Terry McAuliffe for their New York estate; Obama special envoy Richard Holbrooke snagged a sweetheart loan to refinance his Telluride, Colo., ski vacation home from the Countrywide VIP program; and Obama’s close confidante and erstwhile vice presidential search committee panelist Jim Johnson accepted more than $7 million in below-market-rate loans from Countrywide.

Then there’s President Barack Obama’s own $1.7 million Chicago manse — which was financed with a discounted mortgage from Northern Trust and infamously included a shady land swap with convicted felon donor/developer Tony Rezko. A report released by the Federal Election Commission in February 2009 underscored that the Obamas received reduced loan rates (saving $300 a month, or $108,000 over the life of a 30-year loan) because of their high-profile positions.

Northern Trust offered the super jumbo loan to the Obamas in anticipation of entering “long-term financial relationships” with the successful couple. The FEC refused to call the Obamas’ mortgage deal an illegal corporate contribution, but it was an obvious act of favor-trading. Northern Trust employees had contributed $71,000 to Obama since 1990…Perhaps fat-cat Democrats in crony-funded houses should put down their stones.

***

It’s getting ugly out there. Won’t be long ’til the agitators are back to breaking into private homes like their ACORN predecessors in 2009. Everything old is new again.

Related: Matthew Vadum reports at BG…Operation #OccupyWallStreeters–SEIU’s Stephen Lerner Leaks Plan to Terrorize Corporate Executives

***

Update: 2:05pm Eastern…Live video of the march here.

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman is the perfect cheerleader for the high-tech-toting Kamp Alinsky crusaders against capitalism.

Just perfect.

The lead paragraph of his glowing Occupy Wall Street paean today:

Panic of the Plutocrats
By PAUL KRUGMAN

It remains to be seen whether the Occupy Wall Street protests will change America’s direction. Yet the protests have already elicited a remarkably hysterical reaction from Wall Street, the super-rich in general, and politicians and pundits who reliably serve the interests of the wealthiest hundredth of a percent.

The man who grabbed every opportunity to mock the Right and the Tea Party as an “insane,” fringe mob inciting violence now whitewashes the nutballs of Occupy Wall Street and explains the reaction of sane, working people to the entitled grievance-mongers stinking up the streets this way:

The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points out just how rigged the system is.

That’s rich. Paul Krugman, man of the people. Snort.

Flashback:

In 1999 Paul Krugman was paid $50,000 by Enron as a consultant on its “advisory board,” and that same year he wrote a glowing article about Enron for Fortune magazine. But he would change his tune. After Enron collapsed in 2001, Krugman wrote several columns excoriating the company. (One featured what may be the most absurd howler in the history of op-ed journalism: “I predict that in the years ahead Enron, not Sept. 11, will come to be seen as the greater turning point in U.S. society.”) In most of these columns Krugman worked hard to link Enron to the Bush administration, and in one he actually blamed Enron’s consultants for the company’s collapse — while neglecting to mention that he, too, had been an Enron consultant.

Daniel Okrent, while ombudsman for the New York Times, wrote that “Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers.” Indeed. But Krugman’s distortions were so rampant, and his unwillingness to correct them so intransigent, that Okrent — no doubt pressured into service by my Krugman Truth Squad column for NRO — did something about it. Okrent forced the Times op-ed page to adopt for the first time a corrections policy for op-ed columnists. That was in 2004. Later, when Krugman flouted that policy, the Krugman Truth Squad went to work on Okrent’s successor, Byron Calame, who pressed for the adoption of a new, more stringent policy in 2005.

Flashback:

Paul Krugman, an editorial columnist for The New York Times, said he was also paid $50,000 to serve on an Enron advisory board in 1999. He disclosed his connection in a Jan. 24, 2001, column about Enron.

“This was an advisory panel that had no function that I was aware of,” Mr. Krugman said today. “My later interpretation is that it was all part of the way they built an image. All in all, I was just another brick in the wall.”

A willing tool for the plutocrats. Until it was no longer politically expedient, that is.

Just like the fair-weather protest mobs shaking one fist at “corporations” — with the other fist wrapped around an evil corporate product or two…

Perfect. Just perfect.

***

Related Occupy Wall Street mob links:

“Time to kill the wealthy”

Occupy Boston hosts rally for terror suspect

Occupy DC/CODE Pink protests Wounded Warrior Annual Army run

Occupy Wall Street Protester Defecates On Police Car

$2 Million Spent on Police Overtime for Occupy Wall Street

I didn’t want to waste any more energy and space than I needed to yesterday on NYT wackadoodle Paul Krugman’s two-minutes-hate blog post about post-9/11 America. But on the morning after, it is worth calling out the smug coward who flung his op-ed crap against the wall and then deliberately turned off his comments section to avoid any heat in the Times’ kitchen.

After ten years, the sum total of Krugman’s 9/11 reflections can be summed up in three words:

BUSH! NEOCONS! SHAME!

He writes:

“Te (sic) atrocity should have been a unifying event, but instead it became a wedge issue.”

Koward Krugman gripes about partisan hijackers, while dashing off his own petty, partisan snipes.

His 181-word turd demonstrates perfectly the leftist approach to combating Islamic jihad:

Cut and run.

My advice to Koward Krugman is that he shouldn’t be complaining about anyone else’s wedges when he’s using a pair taller than Lady Gaga’s to drive Americans apart.

I would also advise him that there are plenty of constructive ways to illuminate bipartisan government failures since 9/11. I’m reprinting my day-after-9/11-anniversary column from eight years ago below to show you how I did it.

Koward Krugman’s problem is that he’s a lazy intellectual slob who hurriedly hits the “publish” button before the sand in his little kitchen egg timer empties. He hurls Molotov cocktails at his political enemies, while hiding behind his hallowed desk at the Fishwrap of Record.

Shame on him. Shame on the New York Times.

***

Spitting on their graves
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
9/10/03

Across the nation, public officials will strike somber poses and shed television-friendly tears and bow their blow-dried heads in memory of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

They’ll hold hands, light candles, and pass around a plateful of platitudes: “Never forget,” they’ll intone. “Let’s roll,” they’ll thunder. “God bless America,” they’ll warble in perfect harmony.

They’ll assure us that they are committed to fighting terror and securing our borders and doing whatever it takes to protect the homeland from another horrific mass murder at the hands of freedom-hating fanatics. And then?

And then, from Washington state to Washington, D.C., they’ll go back to work, roll up their sleeves, and spit on the graves of the 9/11 dead.

Your pious city councilwoman will return to the office to draft a resolution condemning the common-sense detention and deportation of Middle Eastern illegal aliens suspected of terrorism.

Your politically correct police chief will refuse to cooperate with federal authorities in criminal investigations of illegal visa overstayers and border-crossers and ship-jumpers.

Your pandering mayor will stealthily renew his policy of preventing city employees from reporting illegal aliens.

Your indignant local librarian will promote fear-mongering and misinformation about the Patriot Act.

Your regional Chamber of Commerce president will join forces with Canadian and Mexican government representatives to put business interests ahead of border enforcement.

Your tuition-thirsty university president will lobby behind closed doors against federal efforts to track foreign students and ensure that they go home when required. Your vote-hungry governor will encourage document fraud through his support of insecure foreign-issued identification cards and driver’s licenses for “undocumented workers.”

Your race card-fearing congressman will court Arab and Muslim special interest groups and donors who have coddled Islamists on college campuses, in prisons, and in the U.S. military in the name of “diversity.”

Your grandstanding senator will block funding for long-delayed homeland defense measures — such as a national entry-exit system to monitor temporary foreign visitors — even as he whines about the need for more money to ensure our safety.

Your incompetent Transportation Security Administration will stonewall pilots who want training to be armed, squander tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on lucrative contracts for weapons-detection equipment that doesn’t work or get used, and continue to ban racial profiling.

Your indifferent Interior Department will look the other way as underequipped and understaffed park rangers along the southwestern border remain vulnerable to drug smugglers and terrorists.

Your bloated Homeland Security Department will keep Clinton-era holdovers in pivotal positions, reduce routine inspections at seaports in the name of efficiency, and continue to shortchange interior enforcement against deportation fugitives and asylum con artists in favor of duct tape tipsheets and cosmetic color-coded alerts.

Your corrupted State Department will appease Saudi terror-backers, reward butt-covering managers, assuage European travel industry tycoons, and continue to defend lax visa screening policies.

Your Democratic presidential candidates will unanimously endorse the very kind of amnesty policies that allowed several al Qaeda operatives to infiltrate this country and hatch terrorist plots.

And your Republican Party elites will continue to spurn immigration enforcement reformers within their own ranks for fear of alienating ethnic constituencies that will never vote for them anyway.

To those who lost their lives on Sept. 11 because their government failed to enforce its borders, laws, and sovereignty, the politicians and bureaucrats and civic leaders will ostentatiously offer one measly day a year of dedication in rhetoric — and 364 days of desecration in deed.

***

Update: Oh, dear. Krugman mustered up a few more seconds to dash out an obligatory follow-up to his weekend word turd.

Shorter Krugman: Yeah, yeah, heroes, blah blah. Bush still sucks!

Comments closed yet again on the post.

Yesterday, after the earthquake in the east, a quote attributed to New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman making the rounds stated that we’d see a bigger increase in government spending and hence economic growth if only the earthquake had done more damage.

The quote didn’t seem incredibly outrageous by Krugman standards, but it did turn out to be a fake.

In order to help prevent these mix-ups from happening in the future, Mr. Krugman wants to remind everybody that there’s an easy way to spot phony quotes attributed to him: If you read something stupid purportedly authored by Paul Krugman, don’t believe it’s authentic… unless it’s in the New York Times:

So if you see me quoted as saying something really stupid or outrageous, and it didn’t come from the Times or some other verifiable site, you should probably assume it was a fake.

Got it.

(h/t Newsbusters)

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Yesterday, Paul Krugman, Nobel laureate and columnist for the New York Times, appeared on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS” and had an out of this world idea to turn the economy around:

PAUL KRUGMAN, NEW YORK TIMES: Think about World War II, right? That was actually negative social product spending, and yet it brought us out.

I mean, probably because you want to put these things together, if we say, “Look, we could use some inflation.” Ken and I are both saying that, which is, of course, anathema to a lot of people in Washington but is, in fact, what the basic logic says.

It’s very hard to get inflation in a depressed economy. But if you had a program of government spending plus an expansionary policy by the Fed, you could get that. So, if you think about using all of these things together, you could accomplish, you know, a great deal.

If we discovered that, you know, space aliens were planning to attack and we needed a massive buildup to counter the space alien threat and really inflation and budget deficits took secondary place to that, this slump would be over in 18 months. And then if we discovered, oops, we made a mistake, there aren’t any aliens, we’d be better–

Oddly enough, after this interview was over, space aliens did show up, but it was only to cancel their subscription to the New York Times. Unfortunately though, the aliens were exposed to our Krugmanized economic atmosphere for too long, which resulted in three of them getting laid off before they could make it back to the spaceship.

Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters ran some of the numbers on the off chance anybody outside select pockets of liberal academia took Krugman seriously:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Not that you needed any more evidence that New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is a flip-flopping charlatan, but here’s the latest.

Today, he assails GOP proposals to raise the Medicare age and, by extension, the Social Security retirement age. (My column on the subject from earlier this month is here.)

Krugman bludgeons entitlement reform advocates with the class-warfare card, lamenting that “the fervor with which Washington types call for raising eligibility ages is a ‘tell’: it shows how disconnected they are from the way the other half lives (and dies). For in our increasingly polarized society, life expectancy is more and more a class-related issue.” Only elites in society, Krugman writes, like judges and politicians, “think it’s a great idea to raise the Medicare age.”

Funny. In 1996, Krugman had an entirely different view of long-term structural changes to federal entitlements, including raising the age of eligibility. In a lengthy New York Times book review of “How the Coming Social Security Crisis Threatens You, Your Family, and Your Country” by Peter G. Peterson and “America’s Most Powerful Lobby and the Clash of Generations” by Charles R. Morris, Krugman targeted the very kind of short-term politicization of the entitlement/demographic crisis that he now indulges in. Close your eyes, read Krugman’s words circa 1996, and you might think you were listening to Paul Ryan circa 2011:

Generous benefits for the elderly are feasible as long as there are relatively few retirees compared with the number of taxpaying workers — which is the current situation, because the baby boomers swell the workforce. In 2010, however, the boomers will begin to retire. Every year thereafter, for the next quarter-century, several million 65-year-olds will leave the rolls of taxpayers and begin claiming their benefits.

The budgetary effects of this demographic tidal wave are straightforward to compute, but so huge as almost to defy comprehension. Mr. Peterson, the chairman of the Blackstone Group, a private investment bank, informs us that ”the combined Federal cost of Social Security and Medicare, expressed as a share of workers’ taxable payroll, is officially projected to rise from the already burdensome 17 percent in 1995 to between 35 and 55 percent in 2040. And this figure does not include the many other costs — from nursing homes to civil service and military pensions — that are destined to grow along with the age wave.”

But aren’t Social Security and Medicare basically pension funds, in which workers’ contributions are invested to provide for their retirement? Hardly. A private pension fund that planned to pay the benefits these programs promise would be accumulating huge reserves. In fact, the so-called ”trust funds” are making barely any provisions for the future. In another spectacular statistic, Mr. Peterson notes that if Medicare and Social Security had to obey the same rules that apply to private pensions, the reported Federal deficit this year would be not its official $150 billion, but roughly $1.5 trillion.

In short, the Federal Government, however solid its finances may currently appear, is in fact living utterly beyond its means. While the present generation of retirees is doing very nicely, the promises that are being made to those now working cannot be honored.

What did the old Paul Krugman think of Peterson’s proposals to rein in costs and raise the age of eligibility for federal entitlements? He called them “sensible:”

Both Mr. Morris and Mr. Peterson offer plans to avert the crisis ahead. The details differ, and Mr. Peterson’s proposal is more completely fleshed out, but the general thrust is clear: slow the growth in benefit levels, gradually raise the retirement age, impose limits on expensive terminal medical care that prolongs life for only weeks or days and — last but not least — raise taxes moderately now, rather than massively later. We need not dwell on their sensible proposals, however, because there is not the slightest prospect that they will be put into effect — or indeed that we will do anything serious about the looming crisis until it is almost upon us.

Thanks to finger-in-the-wind demagogues like 2011-era Krugman, the obstacles to lasting entitlement and budget reform have grown even more insurmountable than they were 15 years ago when 1996-era Krugman took them seriously.

***

Related:

Paul Krugman Prays That No One Will Figure Out How Frequently He Flip-Flops

Paul Krugman’s ‘Breathtaking’ Hypocrisy

An “Alarming” Flip-Flop: Krugman says Social Security is in crisis. Wait — no — he says it’s fine.

The AJC’s Cynthia Tucker blogged today about a testy exchange we had last summer on ABC’s “This Week” regarding government unemployment benefits and the effect that endless extensions have on reducing the incentive to seek a job. Once again, she mistakes standard economic arguments for moral judgments: “Does the right really believe the unemployed are lazy?”

What offended Tucker’s sensibilities was the blunt manner in which I summed up taxpayer-subsidized inducements: “If you put enough government cheese in front of people, they are just going to keep eating it.”

As I said in August and reiterated last week during the Bunning Senate floor showdown, the question is where do we draw the line? There is no such thing as a “temporary” entitlement in Washington and there are precious few politicians willing to challenge the permanent, ever-expanding Nanny State (quoting from the WaPo article: “under multiple extensions enacted by the federal government in response to the downturn, workers can collect the payments for as long as 99 weeks in states with the highest unemployment rates — the longest period since the program’s inception.”)

None other than Paul Krugman of the Fishwrap of Record acknowledges that generous unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to seek jobs.

As he put it exactly:

“Everyone agrees that really generous unemployment benefits, by reducing the incentive to seek jobs, can raise the NAIRU” [the minimum rate of unemployment consistent with a stable inflation rate].

“Everyone agrees.” “Everyone?”

Tell it to Ms. Tucker. Or the nutroots and Democrat demagogues who went bananas when Sen. Jon Kyl basically said the same thing last week.

Or, um, perhaps Paul Krugman should tell it to himself. Last August, he sniffed that “Ms. Malkin’s theory of unemployment is no crazier than what’s coming out of some of our leading universities.”

Or out of crazy textbooks like…this one authored by none other than Paul Krugman and noted by the WSJ’s James Taranto:

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman takes note in his New York Times column of what he calls “the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties”:

Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.

“What Democrats believe,” he says “is what textbook economics says”:

But that’s not how Republicans see it. Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”

Krugman scoffs: “To me, that’s a bizarre point of view–but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.”

What does textbook economics have to say about this question? Here is a passage from a textbook called “Macroeconomics”:

Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of “Eurosclerosis,” the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries. (emphasis added)

So it turns out that what Krugman calls Sen. Kyl’s “bizarre point of view” is, in fact, textbook economics. The authors of that textbook are Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. Miss Wells is also known as Mrs. Paul Krugman.

It seems Krugman himself lives in two different universes–the universe of the academic economist and the universe of the bitter partisan columnist. Or maybe this is like that episode of “Star Trek” in which crewmen from the Enterprise switched places with their counterparts from a universe in which everyone was the same, only evil.

Like Spock, the evil Krugman is the one with the beard.

Krugman argues that right now the situation is different because unemployment is high. His position seems to be that the need for short-term stimulus trumps longer-term worries about raising the NAIRU.

The problem, as more learned economists than I will point out, is that once you’ve established that unemployment benefits will be extended during recessions, then that policy gets incorporated into workers’ expectations. And you can’t easily undo those expectations once the economy improves.

But never mind all that. Evil conservatives hate unemployed people! Bad, bad conservatives!

It started out as a gag here on the editorial page of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and soon became a superstition:

Every time the stock market took a little dip, we’d reprint one of Paul Krugman’s dour columns from the New York Jaundiced Times about the imminent doom of the American economy.

Almost immediately the market would bounce back and then some. It worked every time.

But we may have overdone it of late. By now the Dow Jones has started to cross into 12,000 territory. A few more Krugman columns explaining how the economy has cooled off and the thing could overheat.

We reprinted one of his columns last Thursday morning and, sure enough, by the end of the day, the Dow ended the day over 12,000 for the first time. AN HISTORIC HIGH! and all that jazz.

Well, sure. The Krugman touch never fails.

The more Professor Eeyore says the economy is going to hell, the more heavenly it gets. Can it be just a coincidence? The Dow seems to surge whenever it sees “Paul Krugman” in a by-line. It must be a kind of Pavlovian reaction by now.

Can Krugman work his magic on the midterms? Greenberg wryly concludes:

If there’s any hope at all for the once Grand Old Party in these midterm elections, and there may not be, it’s that Paul Krugman can do for it what he’s consistently done for the stock market.

Cross your fingers.

***

For what it’s worth, Dick Morris at Vote.com says the election is back to a “toss-up:”

he latest polls show something very strange and quite encouraging is happening: The Republican base seems to be coming back home. This trend, only vaguely and dimly emerging from a variety of polls, suggests that a trend may be afoot that would deny the Democrats control of the House and the Senate.

With two weeks to go, anything can happen, but it is beginning to look poss- ible that the Democratic surge in the midterm elections may fall short of control in either House.

Here’s the evidence:

* Pollsters Scott Rasmussen and John Zogby both show Republican Bob Corker gaining on Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee, a must-win Senate seat for the Democrats. Zogby has Corker ahead by seven, while Rasmussen still shows a Ford edge of two points.

* Zogby reports a “turnaround” in New Jersey’s Senate race with the GOP candidate Tom Kean taking the lead, a conclusion shared by some other public polls.

* Even though Sen. Jim Talent in Missouri is still under the magic 50 percent threshold for an incumbent, Rasmussen has him one point ahead and Zogby puts him three up. But unless he crests 50 percent, he’ll probably still lose.

* Even though he is a lost cause, both Rasmussen and Zogby show Montana’s Republican Sen. Conrad Burns cutting the gap and moving up.

* In Virginia, Republican embattled incumbent Sen. George Allen has now moved over the 50 percent threshold in his internal polls. (He’d been at 48 percent.)

Nationally, Zogby reports that the generic Democratic edge is down to four points, having been as high as nine two weeks ago.

***

One last bit of news: Consumer confidence holds at ’06 high…

Consumer confidence holds steady at its highest level of the year, staying well above its 2006 low reached less than two months ago.

The latest ABC News/Washington Post Consumer Comfort Index stands at -7 on its scale of +100 to -100, unchanged from last week to match its best of the year. The index is up eight points since mid-September, and 12 points since matching its worst level of the year on Aug. 27. Gas prices have dropped 64 cents in that time.

Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman offer stiff competition on a weekly basis, but Crowley’s embarrassing little squib (283 words) has to be one of most insipid, shallow, and uninformed wastes of space to grace the NYTimes’ pages.

Based on a single “expert” source–”liberal activist Matt Stoller”–Crowley makes
sweeping assertions about the content, nature, effectiveness, and media penetration of partisan blogs. Liberal blogs criticize Democrats more, while conservatives march in lockstep with the GOP leadership to “to provide maximum benefit for their issues and candidates,” the piece asserts.

What? Clue-by-four for you, Mr. Crowley: A name that rhymes with Marriet Hyers.

Another dose of reality for the clueless Crowley: Technorati search – Bush + open borders + amnesty.

And another: The fissures in the conservative blogosphere over Terri Schiavo.

And another: Porkbusters.

Anyone who swallows the idea that conservative bloggers are an organized arm of the Republican machine who are easily mobilized at the command of Karl Rove does not read conservative blogs–and should not be paid by the NYTimes or anyone else to write about them.

But hey, since when did the NYTimes let ignorance get in the way of its “journalism.” Crowley goes on to conclude:

…what really makes conservatives effective is their pre-existing media infrastructure, composed of local and national talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News Channel and sensationalist say-anything outlets like the Drudge Report – all of which are quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere. “One blogger on the Republican side can have a real impact on a race because he can just plug right into the right-wing infrastructure that the Republicans have built,” Stoller says.

Yup, it’s that darned Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, again.

Three syllables for you, Mr. Crowley: BWAH-HAH-HAH.

Hate to bother Mr. Crowley and his editors with some facts, but here’s Matt Drudge on blogs from a Sunday London Times interview in April 2005:

Back in the 1990s Drudge was a believer in the empowering potential of the internet. In a speech he said, “We have entered an era vibrating with the din of small voices. Every citizen can be a reporter, can take on the powers that be.”

Now he sounds disillusioned and says that the “din” is growing into a cacophony: “There’s a danger of the internet just becoming loud, ugly and boring with a thousand voices screaming for attention.” He is no fan of the blogging phenomenon (weblogs linking sites): “I don’t read them. I like to create waves and not surf them. And who are these influential bloggers? You can’t name one because they don’t exist.”

Blog links on the Drudge Report are extremely rare. Glenn Reynolds’ observation is right: “Drudge is, in fact, pretty aloof where the blogosphere is concerned.”

Citations of conservative bloggers’ work on Rush Limbaugh are increasing, but also very rare. And appearances by non-MSM bloggers on Fox News Channel are few and far between. (CNN has assigned reporters who cover blogs. MSNBC featured bloggers regularly on the recently canceled Connected: Coast to Coast. Fox has a few in-house blogs. But when I’m booked to appear, the majority of producers have no idea I have a blog–and I have good reason to believe that the same goes for most if not all of the network’s senior management. So much for VWRC collusion.)

Some of the most high-impact blogging by conservatives this year got little, if any, buzz in the conservative “media infrastructure.” Case in point: Ed Morrissey’s ground-breaking work on the Canadian Adscam scandal. And when conservative bloggers did organize for a single cause this year, it wasn’t to advance GOP interests. It was to raise money–more than 1,800 blogs raised more than $1.3 million–for Hurricane Katrina victims.

If sensationalist say-anything Crowley was trying to convey the impression of familiarity with the blogosphere and pay a back-handed compliment to conservative blogs, he failed miserably. There is a good piece to be written about the fascinating cacophony of conservative and liberal voices in the political blogosphere and their real/imagined impact on current affairs.

Crowley’s lousy piece of toilet paper sheet-sized opinionating was not it.

***

P.S. Did the NYTimes pay for Crowley’s brain dropping? How much? And what yahoo thought it was worth hyping in E&P?

The correction comes in the form of a “Letter From the Editor” by editorial page editor Gail Collins, who acknowledges that Krugman mischaracterized the results of two recount studies, one led by the Miami Herald and the other led by the New York Times:

In describing the results of the ballot study by the group led by The Miami Herald in his column of Aug. 26, Paul Krugman relied on the Herald report, which listed only three hypothetical statewide recounts, two of which went to Al Gore. There was, however, a fourth recount, which would have gone to George W. Bush. In this case, the two stricter-standard recounts went to Mr. Bush. A later study, by a group that included The New York Times, used two methods to count ballots: relying on the judgment of a majority of those examining each ballot, or requiring unanimity. Mr. Gore lost one hypothetical recount on the unanimity basis.

This is the first time these errors have been acknowledged in the print version of the Times.

Although Collins’ letter mentions Krugman’s August 19 column, her correction does not. That column falsely stated:

Two different news media consortiums reviewed Florida’s ballots; both found that a full manual recount would have given the election to Mr. Gore.

The correction to that column incorrectly states that “the results of the 2000 Florida election study by a media consortium led by The Miami Herald… showed Al Gore winning [two out of three] statewide manual recounts.”

Collins’ correction also neglects to mention Krugman’s August 22 column, entitled “Don’t Prettify Our History,” which contains this whopper:

About the evidence regarding a manual recount: in April 2001 a media consortium led by The Miami Herald assessed how various recounts of ”undervotes,” which did not register at all, would have affected the outcome. Two out of three hypothetical statewide counts would have given the election to Mr. Gore.

Given Collins’ professed concern about ensuring the accuracy of archived columns–her letter to readers is entitled “It All Goes on the Permanent Record”–it will be interesting to see if her correction is appended to Krugman’s August 19 and August 22 columns.

***

More blogger reax (hat tip: EU Rota, who has his own feedback):

Tim Worstall

Donald Luskin

And more:

Mediacrity

Decision ’08

Tim Blair

***

Previous:
Krugman’s Correction
The Krugman Correction

New York Times public editor Byron Calame has further thoughts.

Update: Luskin writes:

In your post about the Krugman Korrection, you link to Calame saying he has “further thoughts.” These are, in fact, prior thoughts, written on the same day as Krugman’s web-only correction. He completely ducks the issue of why the correction has not percolated throughout the archive system, and never saw print.

More here.

The second correction addresses Krugman’s characterization of the findings of a media consortium led by The Miami Herald:

[T]he public editor says, rightly, that I should acknowledge initially misstating the results of the 2000 Florida election study by a media consortium led by The Miami Herald. Unlike a more definitive study by a larger consortium that included The New York Times, an analysis that showed Al Gore winning all statewide manual recounts, the earlier study showed him winning two out of three.

Well, OK. But take a look at what Krugman wrote in his earlier column:

About the evidence regarding a manual recount: in April 2001 a media consortium led by The Miami Herald assessed how various recounts of “undervotes,” which did not register at all, would have affected the outcome. Two out of three hypothetical statewide counts would have given the election to Mr. Gore.

Confused? You’re not the only one. Here’s Patterico:

Krugman initially said “Gore won two out of three” — and corrected that statement today to “Gore won two out of three.” Call me crazy, but this appears to be the same exact claim.

I’m really starting to wonder whether Paul Krugman is looking at a different 2001 study of undervotes by a consortium including the Miami Herald than I am. Every time I look at my link to the USA Today article on the study, it says Bush won 3 out of 4 times. Let me quote it again, just to make sure I’m not hallucinating:

“The newspapers then applied the accounting firm’s findings to four standards [yup, four, not three — hear that, Paul?] used in Florida and elsewhere to determine when an undervote ballot becomes a legal vote. By three of the standards, Bush holds the lead. The fourth standard gives Gore a razor-thin win.”

Let me translate that for you, Paul. When it says that four standards were applied, and Bush held the lead in three, I think that means Bush won three of four. I mean, I’m not the New York Times columnist; you are. But that’s pretty much how it reads to this humble blogger….

Someone help me. I’m just utterly flummoxed. Is a New York Times columnist just repeatedly lying to his readers about an easily checkable fact, even after getting called on it by his public editor? Or is this guy living in a parallel universe where what he is saying is true? Please, someone help me. What is going on here?

It’s possible Krugman was referring to this USA Today article, which apparently came out about a month after the article that Patterico cites. As Donald Luskin notes, however, the second article also cites four recount standards, not three. And the winner was “Bush, under the 2 most widely used standards; Gore, under the 2 least used.”

***

Ironically, Krugman’s underlying point–that Gore would have won Florida if a statewide recount had proceeded–seems to be correct. As Mickey Kaus has pointed out many times, the hypothetical recount analyses carried out by various media consortia focused on undervotes (i.e., ballots on which no presidential candidate was selected). Kaus says that the overvotes were a far greater source of uncounted Gore votes:

The mother lode of hidden Gore votes, it turned out, was in the overvotes, especially ballots of voters who “tried to be extra-clear in their choice and ended up nullifying the vote. They filled in the oval next to a candidate and then filled in the oval for ‘write-in’ and wrote the same candidate’s name again.”

The discomfiting truth is that, if you also recounted overvotes, the NORC media recount, under several “certainty” standards, showed Gore the winner… What’s more, there’s strong, near-smoking evidence that if the recount had been allowed to proceed overvotes would have been counted (despite the Gore camp’s revealingly obtuse, self-defeating focus on the “undervotes”).

So why didn’t Krugman just say that? Note that Kaus places blame on the Gore campaign–that doesn’t square with Krugman’s Bush-is-the-source-of-all-evil worldview.

Of course, Kaus’ conclusion doesn’t get Krugman off the hook for either his botched correction or his initial mischaracterization of the findings of the USA TODAY/Miami Herald/Knight Ridder consortium. So will Krugman issue a correction to his correction? Stay tuned.

***

More blogger reax…

Donald Luskin: “I can only imagine the bitter negotiations that must have been going on between Krugman, ‘public editor’ Byron Calame, and editorial page editor Gail Collins. But this ain’t over yet. There’s a recount coming.”

Bulldogpundit at Ankle Biting Pundits: “[W]e’d have loved to have seen Krugman typing ‘Correction’ in the column. This is after all, a man whom former ‘Public Editor’ (Ombudsman) Daniel Okrent said ‘I can’t come up with an adverb sufficient to encompass his general attitude toward substantive criticism.’ ”

Richard Baehr at The American Thinker:

The New York Times has seen its reputation and credibility erode seriously under the leadership of “Pinch” Sulzberger, its hereditary publisher. The continuous rise of the internet has enabled critics to hyperlink source material proving Krugman’s lack of integrity. Krugman simply could not get away with his lies if he were required to post hyperlinks. So Krugman and his backers at the Times hierarchy are in essence flaunting the inadequacies of their publishing format in a manner which will provide ample grist for the critics to demonstrate their obsolescence.

Why is the New York Times still employing a serial liar in its op ed pages? There are only a few answers, and none of them bodes well for the shareholders of the New York Times Company, the newspaper industry (which is virtually ignoring the scandal), or Krugman’s reputation.

Politicalities fisks Frank Rich.

Generation Why on how the Left is adopting a victim mentality as a political ideology.

Mr. Right on George W. Bush and the Holy Grail

My post on why soldiers fight.

Jim Lindgren on whether or not lawyerly concerns hindered the capture of Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s.