Krugman the Political Operative

Paul Krugman is a True Believer in FEMA, or at least FEMA run by Democrats. Despite the many news stories of chaos and violence in New York and New Jersey following the ravages of Hurricane Sandy (which only was a Category 1 hurricane, whereas Katrina was a Category 3), Krugman insists that the True Believing Obama administration's version of FEMA has performed magnificently.

(One can hear Krugman telling Obama, "You've done a heckuva job.)

Not satisfied with assuming that the damage to the New York area was comparable to much of New Orleans being flooded after a canal levee collapsed (Sorry, Paul, not even close), he then tells an outright falsehood regarding the response to the tragedy in Hoboken:

I could do a point-by-point — and it’s definitely worth it, if you’re curious, to revisit the 2005 Katrina timeline to get a sense of just how bad the response really was. But for me the difference is summed up in two images. One is the nightmare at the New Orleans convention center, where thousands were stranded for days amid inconceivable squalor, an outrage that all of America watched live on TV, but to which top officials seemed oblivious. The other is the scene in flooded Hoboken, with the National Guard moving in the day after the storm struck to deliver food and water and rescue stranded residents.

In other words, the National Guard immediately took care of things. (By the way, the National Guard and even FEMA were on the ground quickly in New Orleans, but government agents there acted like government agents, telling Wal-Mart its deliveries of thousands of bottles of water was "not needed," and forcing rescue workers to undergo two days of "sexual harassment" prevention training. One would think Krugman would approve, given he hates Wal-Mart and loves government haranguing of private citizens.)

Notice that Krugman did not mention Staten Island, where apparently FEMA did not perform its Krugmanesque heroics and chaos reigns as people cannot find food or anything else. Nor does he mention the gas shortages created by price controls, but Krugman is not much for prices, anyway, unless they are part of an index.

His biggest howler comes with his lavish praise of Bill Clinton's FEMA. He writes:

...Bill Clinton came in, put FEMA under professional management, and saw the agency’s reputation restored.

James Bovard would beg to differ. In his outstanding book, Feeling Your Pain, in which he chronicles the abuses and exploits of Clinton's administration, Bovard devotes an entire chapter to FEMA, which, contra Krugman, had the largest percentage of political appointees of any federal agency and handed out post-disaster checks, whether people wanted them or not. An Amazon review says:

His chapter on disaster relief is especially good, showing how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is "determined to spend tax dollars to rescue citizens, regardless of how irresponsible or negligent they have been and regardless of whether they have requested help."

Krugman's column is not so much a piece about federal agencies but rather is just another partisan political screed. He also forgets something else, and that is the brunt of Katrina did not hit New Orleans but rather the Gulf Coast of Mississippi and Alabama. In those areas, the FEMA presence was not as noticeable and, not surprisingly, the Gulf Coast recovered more quickly than did New Orleans.

You see, huge numbers of private volunteers, church groups, and other citizens went to the Gulf Coast to help, something that Krugman ignores because, after all, these people were not in the employ of the government, which means they are irrelevant and useless. As for New Orleans, the government told volunteers to get lost.

Yeah, Paul, It Always is Bush's Fault

When the U.S. economy moved into recession about the time of President George W. Bush's inauguration, Paul Krugman was quick to blame the downturn on Bush and his proposed tax cuts. Indeed, it would be months before Congress approved the Bush-proposed legislation that cut the top rates from 39.6 percent to 33 percent, which is not a huge cut, but STILL Krugman tried to claim that even the very THOUGHT of such a tax cut was enough to send the economy spiraling downward.

Later, Krugman would blame the financial meltdown on a lack of regulation, as though everyone in the SEC was a financial genius who ALWAYS knew what would be the perfect and riskless investment, IF ONLY they would be permitted to "regulate properly." (That the Clinton administration presided over a huge bubble in the stock markets, calling it "the New Economy," did not earn the same denunciation, which is not surprising, given my previous post about Krugman's outright hyper-partisanship.)

The apparent fetish about SEC "regulators" spending their time surfing the porno sites on the Internet was irrelevant to Krugman, but suddenly he has discovered why the BP spill happened: the regulators at the Department of the Interior were addicted to sex and drugs, and it was all Bush's fault!

In fact, Krugman once again brings up Hurricane Katrina, giving us the same line that the FEMA of the Clinton years miraculously would have saved everyone in New Orleans and had the perfect response to the aftermath of the hurricane. The well-known libertarian writer (and ferocious critic of the Bush gang) James Bovard, in his book on the Clinton years, Feeling Your Pain, has a chapter on FEMA that is worth reading if the readers are tempted to think that FEMA was anything but a vote-buying joke.

As for the oil spill, I find it interesting that more than a year into the Obama administration, anything bad that happens still is Bush's fault. However, as I noted earlier, as soon as Bush took office, he was responsible for an economy diving into recession.

One can find plenty not to like about George W. Bush, and I never voted for the guy, never supported him, and was glad to see him gone. To be frank, economists should not like any modern president's policies, given that presidents are likely to burden the economy with rules and regulations and patronage that force people to spend trillions of dollars on things that make it much more difficult for entrepreneurs to find profitable opportunities.

However, once again, we find Krugman playing the partisan role, just as he has done before. I would expect more from a Nobel Prize winner, but, then again, it is Krugman of which I speak. Enough said.