Healthcare

Krugman Takes On Greenwald and FDL

CORRECTION: This is from January of 2010. I didn't look at the date and and discovered it because Greenwald was debating @OTOOLEFAN about it on Twitter earlier today. Nevertheless, it's worth repeating anyway.

Paul Krugman rattled the firebagger hornet's nest and took on their "crusade" against White House healthcare economist Jonathan Gruber. Greenwald and the others have been accusing Gruber of being a paid propagandist, cut from the same cloth as Armstrong Williams and other Bush era shills. In the process, Greenwald attacked Krugman for defending Gruber. Krugman responds:

And here’s the thing: by claiming that there’s a huge scandal when nothing worse happened than insufficient care about disclosure, Greenwald and the people at FDL are actually reducing our ability to call foul on real corruption. After all, if everything is a scandal, nothing is a scandal. One of these days, perhaps soon, we’ll have a genuinely corrupt administration again — but when whistleblowers try to call attention to the misdeeds, you can be sure that there will be claims that “even liberals said that Obama did things just as bad or worse.”

I've never really been clear about the endgame for this gang. What do they intend to achieve? If it's accountability at all costs, do they recognize the repercussions -- if successful -- in taking down the most liberal president in generations? I think they do because, despite being kneejerk opportunists, they're smart. And if they're willing to destroy progress, whatever the speed, with their "everything is a scandal" approach, can they really call themselves "progressives?"

Furthermore, they clearly see scandals where there aren't any -- as Krugman detailed above. In this regard, I don't believe they can be trusted as honest writers/journalists. From there, we can only deduce that they're being instigators for the sake of personal gain, and their bodies of work, no matter how accurate, should be reevaluated.