John Quiggin corrects this morning's Paul Krugman column about the rhetoric surrounding Social Security privatization. Of course, doing so makes Krugman's basic point twice as strong...
Posted by DeLong at September 06, 2002 12:59 PM | TrackbackJohn Quiggin: ...Paul Krugman is usually right up to the minute. But the main point of his latest piece, namely, that the US Republicans have backed away from using the term "privatization" to describe their plans for Social Security individual accounts, was in Salon's Spinsanity back in June. And the kicker for his column is this para: "And what's the name of the Cato project to promote personal accounts? Why, the Project on Social Security Privatization, of course." In fact, as was reported in this blog, back in July, the Cato Institute has followed the Republican party line, and changed the name to Project on Social Security Choice. Of course, it will be a bit embarrassing for them to write in with a correction, since it simply underlines the main point...
The striking thing to me was the RNC document quoted by Krugman; it shows that these folks sound like Ann Coulter even when writing a document apparently never intended for public consumption.
Posted by: Ken Doran on September 6, 2002 05:14 PMBullying has worked.
PBS Nightly News plays to "balanced" reporting to an extent that increasingly makes it impossible to understand where policy arguments might be.
Posted by: on September 7, 2002 11:32 AM