Posted 10:25 PM by Robert

Out Of Town

Weekend blogging will be light, at best.

The Man Without Qualities will be in Chicago over the weekend, leaving tomorrow morning to attend a wedding of one of those guys you can't quite bring yourself to believe is finally getting married.

Then, after the ceremony, I suppose everybody will just hold their collective breath for the first year or so. Waiting to exhale, as it were.

We'll see.

But, of course, none of that sentiment will be voiced this weekend.

Posted 10:13 PM by Robert

Iraqi Loans: The Prime of Ms. Maria Cantwell

The Senate has voted to convert one half of the Administration's $20.3 billion Iraqi rebuilding plan into a loan. The Administration correctly argued that loans would worsen Iraq's foreign debt, slow its recovery and hand a propaganda victory to America's enemies. Such loans are much worse and much less legitimate national obligations than bank loans made to other third world countries because the United States fully controls the borrower. This will be, in effect, an infliction of credit on Iraq.

Eight Republicans voted for the loan plan. But some Democrats opposed the loan proposal, including Joseph Biden of Delaware, Maria Cantwell of Washington, Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, and Zell Miller of Georgia.

Maria Cantwell?!!?

Senator Cantwell's expression of good sense on this vote in the face of party and media pressure is almost enough to make one not dearly desire her removal from the Senate.

Posted 10:01 PM by Robert

Suffering Much More Than Enough

It's pretty well known that large doses of certain drugs such as aspirin can damage the inner ear and result in tinnitus (ringing ears).

But the connection between some pain killing drugs and hearing loss seems to go much further:

Doctors over the past several years have reported dozens of cases of Vicodin addicts who became deaf and, in some cases, only regained their hearing with the help of cochlear implants such as the ones received by [Rush] Limbaugh. ...

When he initially lost his hearing, experts suspected Limbaugh suffered from autoimmune disorder... But last week, another potential cause revealed itself when Limbaugh announced he was addicted to painkillers -- reportedly including Vicodin (also known as hydrocodone).

Posted 9:37 PM by Robert

Some Options Sense From A Former SEC Commissioner

There are signs that the post-Enron madness in securities regulation and corporate governance continues tentatively to abate. The new marginal evidence of creeping sanity:

Former acting chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission Laura Unger took issue with the FASB's move toward mandatory expensing of stock options.

"Companies like Intel, Cisco and even Microsoft wouldn't be what they are today without stock options. Eliminating broad-based plans for employees - which would be the net result of mandatory expensing - would curtail job growth and will make it harder for U.S. companies to compete in the global marketplace," said Unger.

The comments were made in an interview with Jim Glassman, a transcript of which can be viewed at www.Techcentralstation.com. Ms. Unger raises various interesting points contraindicating the wisdom of expensing options.

Now, if only some current members of the SEC could have the guts to oppose this FASB expensing foolishness.

Posted 3:55 PM by Robert

Contra Online Plagiarism

There has been a spectacular growth of "cheatsites" online and other forms of Internet-based plagiarism.

And, as the night follows the day, there is now a demand for Internet services to stop or inhibit internet-based plagiarism.

Two related sites, Plagiarism.org and Turnitin.com, offer facts about Internet plagiarism and reports on it as a "growing problem."

Posted 2:17 PM by Robert

Political Smog

Smog levels dropped during the 1980s. But the latest edition of the EPA's annual report on air quality shows that smog levels didn't get better from 1993 through 2002. Independent scientists have drawn similar conclusions.

So, let's see. Smog levels dropped during the Reagan-Bush 1980's.

Smog levels did not drop during the Clinton-Gore 1990's.

Posted 2:08 PM by Robert

Median And Average

General economic trends are often described in terms of "medians' or "averages" - with the difference often being downplayed. But sometimes there is a very big difference with very real economic consequences. For example:

The average price for an apartment in Manhattan was $919,959 in the third quarter of this year...

In part because so many of the sales in Manhattan are in the seven-figure range, the average is skewed upward.

The median price of an apartment in Manhattan for the third quarter of 2003, the exact middle of all the sales, was $575,000

Posted 1:42 PM by Robert

Graham Agonistes

The Miami Herald reports that U.S. Sen. Bob Graham (D, Fla.), who abandoned his presidential campaign last week after he failed to raise enough money to compete, has told the Democratic Senate candidates that he intends to make a decision on whether to run for reelection to the Senate by next week.

Advisors say the state's senior senator is conflicted: He feels the pressure from national Democratic leaders who want him to seek reelection and protect a seat in a competitive election year but also wants to ensure a future for himself as a national player -- perhaps as a Cabinet member in a Democratic administration.

Given his generally soporific effect, the days of this "will-he, won't he" hiatus unquestionably constitute the Senator's most exciting moments yet. Only a few shopping days left!

The nation and Florida can hardly wait to see how it turns out!

Posted 11:53 AM by Robert

One Voter, One Vote

For many years the Supreme Court has imposed a so-called "one person, one vote" requirement on most United States election apportionments. While "one person, one vote" has a nice sound to it, the results of this slogan are often perverse because not every person can vote. Legal and illegal aliens, many convicted felons (in many states) and children are the most obvious examples. One consequence of the "one person, one vote" rule is that voters in districts that also include a disproportionate number of people not eligible to vote enjoy disproportionate voting power. Indeed, the "one person, one vote" rule in principle allows for creation of standard sized election districts containing a tiny number of eligible voters.

A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies states that there are nearly 7 million illegal aliens and 12 million other non-citizens counted in the 2000 Census and that as a result of the interplay of the "one person, one vote" rule and recent immigration four states lost a congressional seat in 2000 because of illegal aliens and an additional five states lost a seat because of the presence of lawful non-citizens.

The "one person, one vote" rule has been paraphrased as expressing the fundamental principle that nobody's vote should count less than anybody else's just because of where the voter happens to live. But the "one person, one vote" rule itself is creating exactly that problem - in general and now in with respect to House apportionment. The simple fact is that a vote from a district in which few ineligible people reside will count less than a vote from a district that includes a lot of people ineligible to vote - just because of where the voters happen to live.

The Supreme Court should refine its "one person, one vote" rule to allow apportioning agencies (usually state legislatures) to create districts which include equal numbers of persons eligible to vote. That is, the correct rule should be "one voter, one vote" - not the increasingly perverse and internally inconsistent "one person, one vote" aberration.

Posted 9:35 AM by Robert

Congressional Hall Of Mirrors?

Means testing of Medicare is here!

Sen. John Breaux, D-La., said there was a "developing consensus on means testing Part B'' of Medicare, the portion that provides non-hospital coverage, including doctor care.

Or is it? What is at stake is Medicare's "universality." If the bloc of Medicare beneficiaries is broken up in principle, the thinking goes, it will become much easier to treat the program as just another entitlement subject to cost controls and reductions - and less a "third rail." After all, if wealthy older people receive less from Medicare, they have less reason to support the program.

As Mickey Kaus points out, a willingness to accept means testing has existed for a long time in neo-liberals, a distinct minority of Democrats. The consequences of such Democrats expressing their opinions have often not been pretty:

At a breakfast in the spring of 1985, Paul Kirk, then chairman of the Democratic National Committee, suggested "means testing" big government benefit programs--in essence, shaving the benefits of the affluent--as a way to save money. Kirk was forced to eat his words by lunch. ("I should not have mentioned the subject of a means test.")

But liberal Democrats have not been willing to go along - and have sometimes expressed themselves with outrage. In June of this year an amendment by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Don Nickles, R-Okla., to apply means testing to Part B Medicare premiums - essentially the same provision now under discussion - had to be left out of the Senate's Medicare drug bill to garner liberal Democratic support in passage.

Has anything changed? Speaking to the new "developing consensus on means testing Part B,'' Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass. said: "I want to wait to see the entire bill.'' But this summer Kennedy threatened to filibuster essentially the same legislation.

All of the Congressional names in the article to which Kausfiles links are Republicans. But a "consensus" among Senate and House Republicans plus a few moderate Democrats isn't a "developing consensus on means testing Part B'' in any useful sense of that term.

Posted 12:45 PM by Robert

No Hillary

Hllary Clinton will not run for President in 2004. But it has nothing to do with October 4 being the anniversary of Bill Clinton's formal decision to seek that office.

Hillary Clinton will not seek the presidency because the economy is improving - and the greatest part of a presidential election, especially one involving an incumbent, is whether the economy is performing in the run up to the election.

And the economy is and will be performing well enough.

And while it is highly unusual for foreign affairs to drive a presidential election, even the situation in Iraq offers less and less hope to a Bush challenger.

Senator Clinton knows all that, and she's not stupid. It's that simple.

Posted 10:29 AM by Robert

Old News: Cranking Up The Rhetoric?

CBS News (60 Minutes II) is preparing to air an interview with Greg Thielmann, who directed the office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research until September 2002, in which Mr. Thielmann accuses Colin Powell of "misinforming" Americans during his speech at the U.N. last winter. He also is reported to repeat the canard that what Secretary Powell said at the UN was wrong because Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat. But it is very old news and clear that neither the Secretary nor the Administration argued any such thing. In fact, the Administration's opponents argued that what the critics terms the Bush Administration doctrine of "pre-emptive invasion" did not conform to the "imminent threat" requirement of international law - and the Administration rebutted that argument in, for example, the State of the Union address: Some have said we must not act until the threat is imminent. ... If this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all words, and all recriminations would come too late.

That's all also old news.

Mr. Thielmann is entitled to sound off. And he has sounded off - a lot. Way back in June he said what seems to be substantively the same things to CBS News that he's saying to CBS News now. There were his soundbites tossed to Mother Jones. And a Frontline interview. The Now With Bill Moyers interview. And lots more.

So why is CBS News now digging up Mr. Thielmann again for yet another interview - on 60 Minutes II, no less?

It appears that what is "new" about Mr. Thielmann now is his willingness to use more highly charged rhetoric than he did in the past. For example, he seems to now want to suggest that Secretary Powell deliberately misinformed the UN.

But if Mr. Thielmann departs from the tone and suggestiveness of his old comments, the real story is that he is undermining his own credibility across the board.

MORE: From Hoystory.

Posted 12:52 AM by Robert

Misunderstanding The Court

Linda Greenhouse continues as the greatest single souce of misinformation about the United States Supreme Court with this:

The Supreme Court, in a silent rebuff on Tuesday to federal policy on medical marijuana, let stand an appeals court ruling that doctors may not be investigated, threatened or punished by federal regulators for recommending marijuana as a medical treatment for their patients.

What the Supreme Court actually did was to decline to review the lower court (Ninth Circuit) decision. One of the most basic rules of Court watching is that such refusals to review do not indicate an implicit approval of what the the lower court has done. In fact, the Court generally waits for a "split in the circuits" - that is, a contrary decision by another circuit - before accepting review of a case like this one. There's a good reason for that: varied circuit court opinions usually provide lots more good reasoning and analysis for the issue at stake. That the federal government asked the Court to review the case increased the chance that the Court would do that - but it's not a sure thing by any means.

Also contrary to another of Ms. Greenhouse's assertions, the Ninth Circuit opinion was anything but "strong." That's why (as she puts it): Advocates of medical marijuana greeted the court's action as a significant and surprising victory.

For the moment, "weak Ninth Circuit opinion" equals "surprising Supreme Court decision not to reverse." But the Supreme Court will almost certainly reverse this decision once other federal circuit courts have ruled on the matter.

Posted 2:13 PM by Robert

Hair Doktorprofessor: Ape And Essence

Kevin Drum has been criticized recently - especially by Steve Verdon - for aping Paul Krugman. But in today's column, Paul Krugman apes Kevin Drum - without essential improvement. One is reminded of a striking image from the Huxley novel.

The tale begins back in early September of this year, when Lehman Brothers issued a press release regarding what was described as "Damocles," a proprietary early warning system to identify the likelihood of countries entering into financial crises. The press release included a curious acknowledgement that Damocles deliberately omits what it authors consider to be the "biggest risk" in the very subject Damocles is supposed to model:

"Looking beyond the current ambit of Damocles, perhaps the biggest risk to the emerging market economies at present stems from the developed countries, many of which are exhibiting large economic imbalances. .... that would set Damocles' alarm bells ringing." Most conspicuous of these threats is the United States, where any financial crisis could cause considerable spillover effects to the rest of the world.

Damocles' lead author cautioned: "Damocles should be used but not abused ... it must be embedded in a broader analysis..." Media coverage has indeed been widespread but nonabusive. The Nation magazine ran an article based on the release. Other media broadly reported on Damocles. Calpundit quoted this passage from the article on Damocles that finally appeared on October 2 in Economist:

When Lehman ran America's economic numbers through Damocles, the outcome was striking. With its rapidly climbing current-account deficit and foreign debt, among other worries, America's Damocles index is just shy of 75. There are, points out Russell Jones, the bank's international economist, problems applying Damocles to America, which enjoys the luxury of having the world's reserve currency. Granted. Poorer countries tend to owe dollars, and therefore suffer when their currencies fall. Lucky America, of course, owes its own currency.

Today Damocles fell belatedly into under the pen of Herr Doktorprofessor Paul von Krugman, and the abuse feared by Damocles' makers has begun.

As a preliminary matter, Steve Antler has already pointed out that Herr Doktorprofessor misrepresents Damocles as an "economic model," where it is an index (Lehman Brothers terms it "a proprietary early warning system," not a model) - and has other interesting things to say about Herr Doktorprofessor's use of the Lehman work.

But Herr Doktorprofessor's abuse of Damocles is deeper and more serious. He begins by frankly misquoting the authors to exaggerate the exceptional position of US. The press release refers to the developed world where many countries are exhibiting imbalances "that would set Damocles' alarm bells ringing." Most conspicuous of these threats is the United States, where any financial crisis could cause considerable spillover effects to the rest of the world.

This passage is not saying that the United States is most conspicuous because it is most at risk - the passage is saying that the United States is most conspicuous because a US financial crisis could cause greater "spillover effects" than a crisis in one of those other "many" developed countries with imbalances.

But in Herr Doktorprofessor's column this passage becomes :

[A]pplying the same model to some advanced countries "would set Damocles' alarm bells ringing." Lehman's press release adds, "Most conspicuous of these threats is the United States."

So "many countries" becomes "some advanced countries," and the reference to the "conspicuous" United States eliminates the part of the sentence that makes clear that the "conspicuousness" relates to the extent of the consequences of a crises, not the likelihood of a crisis.

But, as all too usual with Herr Doktorprofessor, it gets worse.

Lehman regards the "problems" applying Damocles to the United States and other developed countries as very real and important qualifiers, but Herr Doktorprofessor invites his readers to minimize their significance:

O.K., let's run through some reassuring counterarguments.

First, economists are very good at devising models that would have predicted past crises, but each new crisis tends to happen where and when they didn't expect it. So even though our budget deficit is bigger relative to the economy than Argentina's in 2000, and our trade deficit is bigger relative to the economy than Indonesia's in 1996, our experience needn't be the same.

Second, ... America's burgeoning foreign debt is in our own currency.

Finally, financial markets are generally willing to give advanced countries the benefit of the doubt. ...

Third world countries typically suffer from institutional weaknesses. They have poor corporate governance: you can't trust business accounting, and insiders often enrich themselves at stockholders' expense. Meanwhile, cronyism is rampant, with close personal and financial links between powerful politicians and the very companies that benefit from public largesse. Luckily, in America we don't have any of these weaknesses. Oh, wait. . . . (Isn't that all history? No. According to The Wall Street Journal, we are again hearing warnings that "optimism is based on massaged earnings.")

Aside from distorting the Damocles authors' warning by minimizing the degree of difference they indicate for the United States condition, Herr Doktorprofessor fails to present - never mind answer - the basic question: From an empirical standpoint, why do the Damocles authors think there are problems in applying Damocles to the United States?

The press release states that Damocles is based on a sample of past crises. That is a normal way of testing economic theories. That there are "problems" in applying Damocles to the United States suggests that Damocles overpredicts "financial crises" when applied to the United States - and other developed countries - on the basis of past historical information. Herr Doktorprofessor doesn't ask, but doesn't it matter if Damocles' alarm rings when it is fed US data from, say, the 1980's or 1990's?

It is just absurd to suggest - as Herr Doktorprofessor does - that American problems with corporate governance, business accounting, insider self-enrighment through fiduciary breach, cronyism, regulatory capture and government/industry collusion are remotely as serious as those of, say, Indonesia, China or other developing countries. Moreover, financial crises are strongly correlated to insufficietly free markets - which is not generally considered to be a serious feature of the United States.

But the most peculiar aspect of Herr Doktorprofessor's column is its reliance on a cartoon:

But at a certain point we'll have a Wile E. Coyote moment. For those not familiar with the Road Runner cartoons, Mr. Coyote had a habit of running off cliffs and taking several steps on thin air before noticing that there was nothing underneath his feet. Only then would he plunge.

What will that plunge look like? It will certainly involve a sharp fall in the dollar and a sharp rise in interest rates. In the worst-case scenario, the government's access to borrowing will be cut off, creating a cash crisis that throws the nation into chaos.

Really? Even granting the significance of every one of Herr Doktorprofessor's assumptions, why isn't it more much likely that world financial markets will respond to mounting American imbalances with mounting resistance to the Dollar and US investments? Yes, a "plunge" might happen, but it's unusual. The Euro sank against the Dollar, and then the Dollar against the Euro. Earlier, the Pound gradually lost it's role as a true "reserve currency" and Britain ceased to be a true economic superpower. There was no "plunge" in either case. That's normal. Herr Doktorprofessor thinks the United States has cronic problems. But if that's true, the world financial markets should respond with corresponding cronic, increasing resistance to American problems.

So why must we at some time see a sharp fall in the dollar and a sharp rise in interest rates?

Herr Doktorprofessor says its because that's the way it happens to the Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons.

MORE: Don Luskin has lots more very good analysis.

STILL MORE: From Hoystory.

AND STILL MORE: Excellent material from Antler.

Posted 10:24 PM by Robert

Snap And Fair Elections

Matt Welch scribes a California recall post mortem that recounts some very typical local liberal-Democrat rant, in this case from a music producer and Davis supporter, Steven Machat.

"What they did, is they just instrumented?—inaugurated?—the continued erosion of our fundamental rights," insisted Machat ... "We voted Gray Davis in; he should be charged and impeached. We should not be having a popularity contest because people don't like what he's doing... ... And now, it'll make it too easy [to recall future governors]. Assume the new governor gets in November first; May 1st we recall him."

It may come as a surprise to people like Mr. Machat, but Americans are in the distinct minority among world democracies in almost always voting for their public representatives in elections that occur on a regular schedule: four years, two years ... even annually. Most functioning Democracies don't tie their elections down that way. For example, the British government is constrained to hold Parliamentary elections every five years - but often does not wait for the entire period to expire. Instead, the populace is conditioned to expect "snap elections" which the government calls at its discretionon and which involves a campaign lasting only a matter of a few weeks. The California recall campaign - lamented by so many on the left as requiring an impossibly short campaign schedule - was substantially more generous than the campaign season allowed in most "snap elections."

Governments are not shy about calling snap elections for their own interest - meaning that the government senses that there is a popularity contest waiting that the government can win. The opposition often complains about that. For example, consider this grousing about a New Zealand snap election, chosen more or less at random:

With Parliament now having closed and the country gearing up for a snap election, most people remain totally confused as to why the election has been forced on us. It is especially perplexing given that both of the Alliance Party leaders as well as the Greens had categorically promised to support Labour right through until November.

Unlike the snap elections in 1951 when waterfront strikes had crippled the country or 1984 when there was a financial emergency, there is no crisis. Labour has called a snap election for the simple reason that when a party is at 50 per cent in the polls there is only one place to go and that is down. With the surging dollar, the economic outlook for the rest of the year is looking increasingly gloomy. Labour wants to get re-elected before voters realise that they are being governed by a party that would have trouble running a booze-up in a brewery.

As this complaint above indicates, the government's decision to call a snap election to its own advantage just to get itself re-elected is definitely a valid point to raise in the campaign. But nobody seriously suggests that snap elections pose a serious threat to democracy, or constitute a serious flaw in democracy. The power of a government to call a snap election is a feature - not a defect - and it comes with advantages and disadvantages that can be debated forever.

So if it is no big deal, and hugely commonplace, for governments all over the world to have the power to call snap elections (and to use that power) when they are popular just to get themselves re-elected, why is it some kind of abrogation of democratic principles for a substantial minority of the voters to have the same power to call a snap election when the government is unpopular? Maybe one likes snap elections and maybe one doesn't. But a Constitutional recall feature that has nothing whatsoever to do with "impeachment" concepts is surely less of a threat to, or an imperfection in, a democracy than allowing a government to call snap elections.

Are recall elections going to happen a lot in the future in California? No. It's expensive for the proponents of a recall to obtain one, and the recall of Mr. Davis is the first time one has worked in about 100 years - which means something. If a governor is not already deeply unpopular as Mr. Davis was, the recall petition will not usually attract support because sane people prefer spending their time and energy on projects that have a good chance of succeeding - and paying for and dedicating one's time to the recall of a reasonably popular governor is not such a project. Worse for the critics, in rare circumstances discussed below a quick re-recall should be available.

Critics constantly point out that California recall procedure allows for at least the possibility of a candidate being elected by a small minority while the sitting governor draws a large minority. This result is said to be "unfair."

The correct answer to this is: So what? Kenneth Arrow won a Nobel Prize in part for demonstrating that no voting system is "fair" in exactly the way many critics of the California system complain about. Given a few reasonable criteria of "election fairness," Arrow showed that all voting systems violate some such criteria some of the time. A voting system that meets all of the criteria all of the time simply does not exist. Were the results of the California primary system, which allowed Mr. Davis to intervene in the Republican primary to defeat Mr. Riordan, "fair?" So why isn't Lawrence Lessig complaining that the California primary system is "stupidly drafted?"

What is even stranger about the criticisms of the California recall procedure - such as those offered by the hapless but generic Mr. Machat - is that they are hostile to the built-in corrective to the very results considered offensive.

Suppose the recall results had been different. Suppose Mr. Davis had drawn, say 49% of the vote, but had been replaced by somebody drawing, say, 20%. Isn't the possibility of a follow-on recall election a good thing in such a case? Why should we not want the people to have a lot of freedom to recall a candidate who drew only 20% of the vote? Mr. Davis could then run as a replacement for his replacement.

That's not a bad thing. It's not a perfect thing. But there are no perfect election structures, as Mr. Arrow reminds us.

And suppose Mr. Machat's posited petition to recall Mr. Schwarzenegger garners enough signatures. Fine. As noted above, it is unlikely that there will be another recall - because even liberal and Democratic multi-millionaires aren't prone to spending millions of dollars stupidly and without likely effect. That's not how they got rich. But suppose one happens anyway, because Mr. Saban or sme other wealthy Democratic activist has too much wine one night and writes the $10 million check to make it happen, for example. Mr. Schwarzenegger just won with almost 50% of the vote - and if Mr. McClintock had not been in the race, he would have drawn a good deal more of the vote. So, unless things change pretty fast, Mr.Schwarzenegger would probably survive the new recall very well, thank you.

That's one reason Mr. Saban won't be writing such a check any time soon. He'll probably prefer funding another Children's Hospital institute - since that would make sense.

UPDATE: As Mark Steyn notes: Anyway, the good news is that residents of the Golden Reich still have the right to recall their new fuhrer from his bunker in Sacramento...

Posted 12:44 PM by Robert

Three Good Ones

From Steve Verdon ... on Social Security. Here and here and here.

Enjoy!

Posted 12:11 PM by Robert

The Ecs Come For Herr Doktorprofessor!

Arnold Kling posted a thoughtful article explaining how and why Herr Doktorprofessor Paul Krugman has gone so badly off course. Kling argues in part that Herr Doktorprofessor routinely fails to establish economic facts or likelihoods, but instead imputes the motives of any person who disagrees with him - often asserting that the person is lying.

Don Luskin points out - I think quite correctly - that Herr Doktorprofessor's problems go further and deeper than those described by Kling:

With the imprimatur of his Princeton professorship and the New York Times, Krugman dares to hold his own opinions so sacred that to differ with them is to lie. Krugman is lying about lying.

Luskin's point is very well taken. Indeed, my reference to Paul Krugman as Herr Doktorprofessor in this blog is an allusion to his tendency (now an obsession) to treat his own attenuated economics arguments as TRUTH, as some of the more bombastic professors in 19th century german universities were infamous for doing. Herr Doktorprofessor's columns scream: YOU MUST AGREE WITH ME, I AM A FULL PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AT PRINCETON, I HAVE WON THE CLARK MEDAL AND I WRITE TOO OFTEN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES. AGREE WITH ME OR YOU ARE A BASE LIAR, AN ENEMY OF SCIENCE AND OF REASON ITSELF ... AND A DUMMER KOPF! And he does this despite the fact that his economics arguments are increasing pale and specious, and - as with his most recent embarrassing and confused extrusion - entirely gone, with the column having the intellectual content of a stuck-out-tongue. Charming.

OpinionJournal today provides a spectacular example of Don Luskin's point in the form of an article by three distinguished economics professors, Gary S. Becker, Edward P. Lazear and Kevin M. Murphy. Professor Becker is, of course, a winner of a Nobel Prize in economics, and Professor Murphy is a winner of the John Bates Clark Medal of the American Economic Association, which is also Paul Krugman's greatest credential. The OpinionJournal article begins and ends as follows:

Every Democratic candidate for president has called for rolling back all or part of George W. Bush's tax cuts. All politics aside, and with the economy showing signs of recovery, perhaps now is the right time to revisit the rationale behind tax reductions and what seems to be an excessive fear of budget deficits. ....

The evidence is clear: Cutting taxes will have beneficial effects. Tax cuts will keep government spending in check and will provide the incentives necessary to produce a highly skilled, productive work force that enables high economic growth and rising standards of living.

I do not want to argue here that these three worthies are right (I agree with them, that is irrelevant). But I do want to point out that Herr Doktorprofessor has repeatedly treated his conclusion that the Bush tax cuts and the deficits he associates with them are dreadful for the nation as indisputable, economic, scientific facts - and he has correspondingly bottomed many of his hysterical (in both of the common meanings of that term) assertions that the President is a base liar on that "economic fact" and his observation that the President just doesn't see things the way Herr Doktorprofessor does on this point. Herr Doktorprofessor routinely and repeatedly argues that it is a fact that the tax cuts are ineluctably dragging the nation down the path of economic decline already traveled by Argentina. If there is one person on the globe whose writings express an excessive fear of budget deficits, it is Paul Krugman. In short, this OpinionJournal article is not directed at Herr Doktorprofessor Krugman (these three authors couldn't be bothered with such an insignificant target, I am sure) - but the article does, incidentally, demonstrate the fault line in his thinking.

So long ago, as the forces of Herr Doktorprofessor Kraugaman pillaged the fair valleys of economics and public policy, the Man Without Qualities pined:

Yes, it is true that with each Kraugaman foray a fellowship of the ring of Kraugaman watchers sallies forth to flood the zone with Kraugaman-corrective critiques. But where is the powerful if slow moving leader to arouse the Ecs - the ancient shepherds of economic intellectual growth! Do they think this is not their battle?

What will it take to stir them to flood the zone at Ostelfenbeinturm as Treebeard led the Ents to flood the zone at Isengard!

Or will the Ecs hold off indefinitely? As one Ec remarked about an advocate of dangerous market and price regulation fulsomely praised by Kraugaman: "I think we have better things to do than beat up a straw man."

MORE and MORE.

And now, tho the ecs write in an elliptical manner uniquely their own, it has come to pass. The Ecs seem to have completed some inconceivably long council and concluded that the kind of argument that Herr Doktorprofessor and others, such as the Democratic presidential wannabees, have been offering for so long is just bad economics and contrary to the clear evidence that cutting taxes - including these Bush tax cuts - will have beneficial effects.

Now, is Herr Doktorprofessor going to accuse Professors Becker, Lazear and Murphy of lying? Or is he going to admit that his accusations against the President and Congressional Republicans amount to nothing more than criticisms of their failure to accept Herr Doktorprofessor's side of an academic dispute on which the better economists substantially agree with the President?

And, if Herr Doktorprofessor doesn't make such an admission, who's doing the lying then?