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Media Infiltrations: Republicans and the Populist Temptation  Wall Street Journal February 9, 2010 Why Taxing Stock Trades Is a Really Bad Idea Wall Street Journal January 6, 2010
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The Conspiracy Letters
Join the fray! Email us at letters@poorandstupid.com. We reserve the right to publish all letters with authors' names, unless specified as not for publication or for publication anonymously. Letters may be edited for clarity and brevity.
Thursday, January 01, 2004
THE DARKER SIDE OF WAL-MART There is one more important factor about Wal-Mart's holiday sales [re: "Letters on Krugman's 'So-Called' Boom" 12/30/2003] Due to the Neal Boortz syndicated radio talk show (300 stations), news has gotten out about a case in Alabama where a whole neighborhood of low income people had their property seized under the color of imminent domain law, for the purpose of building a Wal-Mart Supercenter. The arrogance of the Alabaster, Alabama city council is bad enough, but for Wal-Mart to be aware of it and accept it is terrible.This abuse of imminent domain is downright evil. I know that I chose to avoid Wal-Mart for the past two months since I found out about this abuse. And I can't stand listening to Paul Harvey be a pitchman for that company, talking about "you couldn't have a better neighbor." With "neighbors" like Wal-Mart, who needs pillagers and looters?
Will Coffman
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 4:58 PM |
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Tuesday, December 30, 2003
HAIL BLOGS I read the USA Today article on blogging and want to tell you I get most of my news from the internet. It is wonderful, as you can read both sides of an issue, learn the history of a person, and make your own decision on whoseveiwpoint is closer to how you think. I would not know or understand half of what is happening in America
if I only watched television and read my newspaper.
It is an astounding venue with many ideas. Some nuts, of course -- but if a person continues to search, there are people with the courage to speak up about the bias of the liberal media, and let you know about their fictions.
Carole Graham
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 6:54 PM |
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Monday, December 29, 2003
GORE AND THE INTERNET Does anyone besides yourself pay attention to the junk Krugman spews when it concerns facts? His "New Year's Resolution" column [12/26/2003] states:"If a reporter must use anecdotes, they'd better be true. After the Dean endorsement, innumerable reporters cracked jokes about Al Gore's inventing the Internet. Guys, he never said that: it's a malicious distortion of a true statement, and no self-respecting journalist would repeat it."I found the transcript of what Krugman states that Al Gore "never said." It was on CNN's "Late Edition" with Wolf Blitzer on March 9, 1999:
"BLITZER: I want to get to some of the substance of domestic and international issues in a minute, but let's just wrap up a little bit of the politics right now. Why should Democrats, looking at the Democratic nomination process, support you instead of Bill Bradley, a friend of yours, a former colleague in the Senate? What do you have to bring to this that he doesn't necessarily bring to this process?While Gore may have been embellishing a little, there is some factual background to his "claim." But Krugman goes way overboard. Simply by saying "Guys, he never said that..." he makes it sound like there is a conservative conspiracy to lie to the public by making up quotes. What is interesting is that it would have taken less space for Krugman to have quoted Gore's statement -- so people could see the facts for themselves - than it did for Krugman to "explain" it. I think Krugman realized that if most people read the quote for themselves and made up their own mind, they would laugh at Gore also. When most people read that someone "took the initiative in creating...", they think of things like the Wright brothers taking the initiative in creating airplanes, not the Wright brothers voting for legislation to help others create airplanes. Krugman prevents people from arrive at this conclusion themselves by saying that it didn't happen and how to respond if they hear about it again."GORE: Well, I will be offering -- I'll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I've traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."
Krugman's denial of Gore's statements has about as much integrity as someone proclaiming at the U.N., "Guys, Saddam never gassed 100,000 Suunis or Shiites, it is a Bush lie"...but intentionally leaving out that he gassed 100,000 Kurds.
Rich Whitlock
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:55 AM |
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Sunday, December 28, 2003
A CHRISTMAS GOTCHA You must be too busy opening presents or something - you missed a classic Krugman twist of the truth in his article in the January 5, 2004 edition of The Nation, "The Death of Horatio Alger."Here is the offending text:
"A classic 1978 survey found that among adult men whose fathers were in the bottom 25 percent of the population as ranked by social and economic status, 23 percent had made it into the top 25 percent. In other words, during the first thirty years or so after World War II, the American dream of upward mobility was a real experience for many people.
"Now for the shocker: The Business Week piece cites a new survey of today's adult men, which finds that this number has dropped to only 10 percent. That is, over the past generation upward mobility has fallen drastically. Very few children of the lower class are making their way to even moderate affluence."
It's in the second paragraph that he makes his leap over the truth. Krugman reports that, according to a new survey, only 10 percent of adult men are making it into the top 25 percent of Americans. Then, in the very next sentence, he says: "Very few children of the lower class are making their way to even moderate affluence."
But -- and please correct me if I'm wrong -- he hasn't shown that at all. All he's shown is that only 1 in 10 are making it into the top 25 percent. Could Krugman mean that only the top 25 percent of Americans enjoy "even moderate affluence"? In other words, that 75 percent of Americans are poor? Nowhere in the article does he even attempt to clarify his standards for "even moderate affluence," or to show how many Americans from the (also undefined) lower class are making it there.
One might consider this just sloppy writing. But I see it as a lie: he acts as if he justified his absurd conclusion, when he actually did nothing of the sort, and counts on a fast reader not noticing.
No need to thank me. Finding more of the untruths generated by this detestable creature is reward enough.
Michael Ladenson
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 3:56 PM |
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