hard heads soft hearts |
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a scratch pad for half-formed thoughts by a liberal political junkie who's nobody special. ''Hard Heads, Soft Hearts'' is the title of a book by Princeton economist Alan Blinder, and tends to be a favorite motto of neoliberals, especially liberal economists. mobile
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Friday, June 14, 2002
concerning "Punditgate", I'm bemused by how things that aren't true, like the assertion that you wrote a "puff piece" for Enron in 1999, that you admitted getting 50,000 dollars for "doing nothing", and worst of all, that your primary response to ethics criticisms was to "blame everything on a vast right-wing conspiracy", can nevertheless be repeated again and again by allegedly professional journalists. Also, I got the sense that the media people had only read your first posting on your web site, and not your later additions. Perhaps when you post something significant on your web page, you shold give a one or two line mention in your column, so interested readers can check it out. It doesn't really matter for something as ultimately trivial as "Punditgate", but your Argentina postings should have had as wide a readership as possible. Also, I think you can be fairly rebuked for three recently sloppy arguments: first, you said Enron, not the WTC attacks, will be considered a bigger turning point, because an event can't change everything unless it changes how you see yourself, and being victimised cannot do that. By that logic, Hitler coming to power did not change everything for German Jews. Simply put, being victimised on a sufficient scale can change how you see yourself, and September 11th probably has. Second, It is a non-sequiter to say that more heavy-duty conventional weapons are not justified by the war on terrorism because they can't attack Al-Qaeda. Obviously, they're purported use is not to go after individual terrorists, but to go after terrorist-harboring, WMD developing countries. To argue against the Crusader artillery system, you'd have to argue it would be useless in potential war against Iraq, not a potential war against Al-Qaeda. Thirdly, if Bush allocates 11 billion this year and 9 billion *next* year, can't he be said to have fulfilled his promise? You didn't make clear if the 11 billion was for just this year or for future years as well. And you've never presented a reasoned analysis of how much money New York *should* get. The 20 billion figure was basically just something Schumer pulled out of his head. Surely how much money New York should or should not get is a more important question than whether or not Bush keeps his promise. After all, he's broken so many! I say this as a great admirer of your work. In this vein, I think that readers who like your column may really enjoy/benefit from reading your past books. Going through your old books, I think "Age of Diminished Expectations" is the only one where large parts (but by no means all) of it have dated. In particular, "Peddling Prosperity" holds up very well. I used to think, to quote you, that if enough influential people read Peddling Prosperity, "our politics would be transformed". I'm no longer so naive, but I still like the book. Alas, liberals tend to be quite miserly, which is why I think "Fuzzy Math" didn't do so well, being quite thin for a harback. Perhaps a "Krugman Omnibus" , packaging your better popular writing into a big paperback, from "Peddling Prosperity" to "Fuzzy Math", would give potential buyer's sufficient value for money? I think it would do very well. |