Thanks for pointing this article out. Krugman is indeed a good read - usually thoughtful and often plausibly provocative. He's a democrat (small d) in a den full of "free market" apologists.

I am especially confident that Obama will keep a real bond with Americans as Krugman suggests. The e-mail list he has accumulated alone gives him great opportunity to go right over the heads of Congress and the media to talk to the people directly. I am anxious to see how the Obama Administration makes use of this list, confident that they are too tech savvy to ignore its utility.

And he will definitely need to have a "direct line" to the public. Never mind all the talk about the "librul media." Where it counts, the mainstream press - the one that employs the multi-million dollar news personalities - has consistently weighed in on the side of Wall Street over Main Street. The most recent example I can cite is from Sunday's Meet the Press. In his interview with Axelrod, Gregory kept insisting that the repeal of the Bush tax cuts - the ones that were gifted to the wealthiest among us - would in fact represent a tax increase on these unfortunate souls. Even allowing them to expire as originally planned in statute would be a tax increase, Gregory insisted. You could almost hear the wheels turning as poor Mr. Gregory was computing just how much this "increase" was going to cost him personally while Axelrod rightly explained that this would move us closer to a more equitable burden to be shared by all if in fact Obama chose to let it go away as originally planned.

As to my nomination for the number one "good" award for the year, I would name Thomas Tamm at the top of the list. This op-ed (from the Salt Lake Tribune, no less!) makes the case very well.

This patriot is well deserving of a place in our pantheon of heroes. One of the most shocking moments for me in a whole Administration of shocking moments was the presser when Bush denounced the unknown (at the time) whistleblower who "compromised our security" by going to the press with news about the extent of the Bush/Cheney illegal wiretapping. It was that moment that I began to comprehend just how far off the reservation these criminals had actually wandered. It still leaves me shaking my head that we allowed it to happen, all in the name of defending freedom and liberty, fer chrissakes!

Anyway, good post! Definitely rec'd!

Good post Feral. I am also pleased the Krugman is writing so many essays. Surely the publishers wish to take advantage. But he will pose an issue and state that he does not have an immediate answer.

There is nothing wrong with pointing out an issue and not pretending that you are all knowing and all seeing.

I have a lot of respect for Paul Krugman; his NYT columns tend to be more ideological than intellectual, and more normative than positive.

That said, occasionally we get a break from the exhortations to corporatism and he talks economics for their own sake. When he does, he's as incisive and brilliant as anyone discussing those issues today.

That said, his continual praise for FDR is getting a bit old. FDR, after all, took office only two years into a ten year economic downturn, involved the United States in a foreign war which cost more in lives and dollars than any before or since, and took credit for a government-financed recovery in 1939-40 only a year or so after destroying the recovery the economy had managed to eke out despite his command-and-control programs like the NRA.

He was not a great President, nor a great man; I would place his historical relevance and credit in the same area as Ronald Reagan.

And wouldn't Krugman just love that?

Krugman has it all wrong re "symbolism matters".

Obama taking a pleasant vacation is a POSITIVE symbol, one which says, "Don't freak out, don't over-react, don't hoard. Enjoy life."

It's much more subtle than when Bush told us all to spend spend spend after 9/11. Is Krugman really that dense??

.

Thanks for this thread...

I rec'd it . . .

And ... Who would I put on this year's "good" list?

Donna Jean

Why my loving wife of 40 years.

1.) She puts up with me.

2.) She tirelessly serves her special needs children the very same everyday at school as she has done for the past 30+ years.

3.) She brings light to everyone she touches.

There are hundreds of thousands of Donna Jeans throughout our country.

~OGD~

I agree.

Obama should take a vacation now. He's going to be busy soon. Right now, he has no authority to do any darn thing.

But not because it's a symbol. He does it because he bloody well wants to, and he bloody well CAN.

He's hanging out with the wife and kids, because we don't have a call on him til January.