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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKrugman: Con Men Aren’t Stupid
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/con-men-arent-stupid/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0Brad DeLong finds Larry Kotlikoff fulminating about how mean I am so mean that he apparently couldt bring himself to read what I wrote. No, I didnt say that Paul Ryan is stupid. I did imply and have said explicitly on many other occasions that he is a con man. Why did I do that?
Not as a way to avoid having a substantive discussion. Ive documented Ryans many cons very extensively, showing in particular that his budgets were sold on false pretenses all the alleged fiscal responsibility lay not in the much-hyped changes to Medicare, but in magic asterisks claiming huge but unspecified savings from discretionary spending and huge but unspecified revenue gains from closing loopholes he refused to name.
Still, why not pretend that were having a nice, honest discussion? Because Im trying to inform readers about whats going on and the attempt to sell right-wing goals under false pretenses is an important part of the story. If you fell for the carefully crafted image of Ryan as an honest wonk, you were being taken
Uncle Joe
(58,378 posts)Thanks for the thread, eridani.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)griloco
(832 posts)truebluegreen
(9,033 posts)it was a marathon in under 3 hours! Or not--actual time was over 4.
Itty bitty mistake
griloco
(832 posts)Nobody can run a mile under 3 minutes. That's insane. I said i ran a 32.2822 second forty. Obama lied about that, too. Did i mention Benghazi?
hifiguy
(33,688 posts)If you are, say, a Bernie Madoff, you have to be pretty smart to snooker sophisticated rich people. If you're a Goldman Sachs you have to be very clever to steal countless billions of dollars and succeed in doing so. Conversely, the huge population of teatalitarians and their ilk can be slickered by someone with the intelligence of a tree fern (Princess Dumbass of the Northwoods comes to mind), because the target audience is even dumber. A thought that boggles the mind.
hfojvt
(37,573 posts)before they are officially a "con man"?
I'm still kinda peeved about Krugman's own con http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2225110