ABC News reports,

...a Barbie doll calls a Ken doll to complain she has contracted lead poisoning from a late-night, alcohol-induced, post-breakup (and off-camera) rendezvous with her dashing plastic boy-toy.

"It's hard to talk about, Ken," Barbie says into a cell phone glued to her head. "But I've contracted something."

"Oh, no!" Ken replies into his phone. "Barbie, I'm so sorry. What is it?"

"It's -- it's lead poisoning!" Barbie says.

"Barbie accessories containing toxic levels of lead were some of the 25 million products recalled this year," the group explains in a press release announcing its campaign.

The Washington, D.C.-based nonpartisan watchdog is using the video to call for the resignation of Nancy Nord, acting director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, for declining to push for better funding of her agency despite recent problems with unsafe products being imported to the United States.

"Campaign for America's Future" is a union-funded, far left-wing (wing-tip?) group. In their version of our future, America becomes quite different, something like a Euro-Socialist, trial lawyer-dominated, totally unionized, income-equality PC-police state. Yummy! Time to face east and worship Hillary.

CAF makes a clever ad, urging a hapless Bush appointee to resign over the lead painted toy scandal. Blame all around, of course. Two things to note: look how ABC spins it, as if the ad alleges that Barbie's lead poisoning was the result of a drunken tryst with Ken. (Hmm, is this latent anti-male bias? Assuming this version of Ken is male.) Second, the truth -- as almost always in Washington -- is boring and not-suitable-for-TV dramas: The Bush Adminisration opposes new legislation pending in the Senate because it radically tilts the litigation field towards the trial bar, creating liabilities into the hundreds of millions, for ambiguous "failures to report." The Bush Administration has its own program to increase toy safety and appears to be leaning towards a more moderate, bipartisan House bill.

"Inside the Beltway, doomsaying about Social Security -- declaring that the program as we know it can't survive the onslaught of retiring baby boomers -- is regarded as a sort of badge of seriousness, a way of showing how statesmanlike and tough-minded you are," Krugman wrote last week. "In fact, the whole Beltway obsession with the fiscal burden of an aging population is misguided."

Somebody should introduce Paul Krugman to . . . Paul Krugman.

"[A] decade from now the population served by those programs [Social Security and Medicare] will explode. . . . Because of those facts, merely balancing the federal budget would be a deeply irresponsible policy -- because that would leave us unprepared for the demographic deluge, with no alternative once it arrives except to raise taxes and slash benefits." (July 11, 2001)

"Broadly speaking, the next administration . . . will face two big economic tests. One . . . is whether it can stick to a fiscal policy, including a policy toward Social Security, that prepares this country for the demographic deluge." (Nov. 12, 2000)

"The reason Social Security is in trouble is that the system has a large 'hole' -- basically a hidden debt -- because previous generations of retirees were paid benefits out of the contributions of younger workers . . . a multitrillion-dollar debt that somebody has to pay." (Oct. 1, 2000)

"[B]ecause the baby boomers' contributions were used to provide generous benefits to earlier generations, there isn't enough money in the system to pay the benefits promised to the boomers themselves." (June 21, 2000)

In addition to this fiscal amnesia, Krugman misrepresents responsible voices in the debate.

First, he quoted a new paper by Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag and CBO analyst Philip Ellis. Notwithstanding "all the attention paid to demographic challenges," they conclude, "our country's financial health will in fact be determined primarily by the growth rate of per capita health care costs."

True, but Krugman omits any mention of Orszag's latest book, inconveniently titled "Saving Social Security." Orszag and co-author Peter Diamond wrote that "Social Security's projected financial difficulties are real and that addressing those difficulties sooner rather than later would make sensible reforms easier and more likely."

Krugman then takes on The Post for an October editorial that, in his skewed retelling, castigated Hillary Clinton"for, um, not being panicky about Social Security."

I write for the Post editorial page, including sometimes on Social Security, and, um, the editorial said nothing about panicking. It quoted one Bill Clinton, circa 1998, saying: "Every single year we avoid resolving this, it will get harder and harder and harder."

Update... That thin-skinned narcissistic whiner is already responding on his blog. Krugman starts, astonishingly, by saying "Early in my tenure at the NYT, I was advised that it’s a bad idea to devote a column to attacking another columnist — not just at the Times, but anywhere. Why? Because it makes you look small..." Well, yes. And from there, he proceeds to make himself look very small indeed.

He makes two basic points. First, he claims that in his earlier stance that there was a Social Security crisis, it was only an issue insofar as it should argue against income tax cuts. But Marcus's column clearly shows that's a lie. He wrote repeatedly that the program has its own problems, arising from its own legacy debt. And the income tax cuts Krugman opposed were in fact passed -- so now, according to his present rationale, there should be an even greater crisis than there was before. Yet now there's no problem? Looking small, Paul!

Second, claims that the 1996 projections were more pessimistic than the current ones. Indeed they were. But the current projections still show a huge shortfall.

Krugman is playing fast and loose with the facts on this subject. For example, In his 11/17 blog post, he attempts to document that there is no problem:

According to the “intermediate” projection of the Social Security trustees, this trust fund will be exhausted in 2041 — but they also present a more optimistic scenario, based on economic assumptions that don’t seem at all outlandish, in which the trust fund goes on forever.

This scenario is so unlikely that it doesn't even appear within the 95% confidence band of the Trustees' projections. The scenario in which the problem goes away entirely, even over 75 years, wouldn't even be a 1 in 100 shot. But Krugman doesn't warn you about that. Small! Small! Small!

Oh, and those economic assumptions he says are "not at all outlandish" include that real wage growth over the next 75 years will be more than 175% of the level it's been over the last 40 years. And inflation can never top 2% in any year over the next 75. Small! Tiny! Pygmy!

Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:57 AM | link