Krugman, New York Times, Obama, Supercommittee, POTUS.

Paul Krugman, the one in the grey shirt, has been accused of being overly partisan in his editorial writing. His recent editorial in the New York Times titled "Failure is Good" did not fail to diminish these accusations. Krugman asserted that the Supercommittee's imminent failure is good. You may recall that the SC was charged with developing a series of deficit reduction recommendations by Thanksgiving. Krugman does not offer a single reason why such failure is good, but he does point out it is the republicans fault.

In the editorial, Krugman claims that republicans have broken every deal, squandered our surplus on tax cuts and unfunded wars, and then he suggests that the voters should decide on deficit reduction matters. Historically, economists are released from the rigor of supporting claims with evidence and Krugman uses this free pass to his advantage. The absolute absurdity that voters could understand 70,000 pages of tax code and then vote on changes is a striking example of Krugman's lack of understanding. Harry Truman's futile search for the one handed economist continues.

Krugman's  view on anything would not matter to me, except that the printed word is sacrosanct and the New York Times, for many people, is a reputed source of educational material. In my view, the NYT should have header that they must print in 60 point type on the front page of every edition. It should say,"The information in this paper is partisan. It supports a liberal point of view and the opinions expressed herein have not been checked for accuracy, reasonableness or logic."

I can forgive Krugman for being short.  That is not his fault. I can not forgive him for being short on intelligence and woefully short on logic, signified by his editorial. However, he is smart enough to know that he does not have to support any of his opinions, as long as the NYT will print what ever he writes. Krugman's resume is impressive. He is a worldwide academic in the field of economics. His book on the Conscience of a Liberal is a left hook to Barry Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative. As I understand it, Krugman's interest in economics began with his reading of Issac Asimov's science fiction novels. In these novels, social scientists use psychohistory to save the world. Since that field did not exist, Krugman became an economist.

In my view, the length of Krugman's resume and the icons of his successes, do not auto-release him from a duty to write with logic and an obligation to provide constructive thought. His editorial, which accuses all republicans of evil and celebrates the failure of our congressional leaders, is not excusable.

Krugman's credentials are impressive. He is a Nobel prize winner. Obama won one of those prizes before he was president. Nobel prize winners have a mixed history. Norman Shockley, a Nobel prize winner that I am familiar with, spent the last few decades of his life trying to get congress to limit the number of children that minorities could sire because he believed that it lowered the intelligence of the nation.

Newspapers have blamed their demise on the rise of the digital world. Not true. Newspapers have lost their readership, particularly with recent college graduates, because discerning readers can not trust newspaper content for constructive reporting or thoughtful editorials.  Krugman's NYT article is a perfect example of a thoughtless, non-constructive editorial.