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Saturday, January 8, 2011

Krugman On Texas

Jan 8th, 2011

Writing in the NY Times a couple of days ago, Paul Krugman critiqued what he calls "The Texas Omen:"





"Wasn’t Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn’t its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that “we have billions in surplus”? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.

And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting — the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending — has been implemented most completely. If the theory can’t make it there, it can’t make it anywhere."

The primary problem with the current Republican leadership is that they continue to argue against defusing any bombs until they go off. Then, after they go off, they scramble to blame liberals for not defusing them

2 comments:

  1. Grey, they scramble to blame and...by God they succeed. This success is reflective of the poor job we do educating our children. We will always be dealing with this until our students are taught to "think" about an issue rather than "feel" a certain way. Discerning people generally don't feast on pablum three times a day.

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  2. I would agree with Cletis. Yes, I do get the odd "gut" response - but you think with your brain not your gut...

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