Moment of Truthiness Krugman

[elleng]

We all know how democracy is supposed to work. Politicians are supposed to campaign on the issues, and an informed public is supposed to cast its votes based on those issues, with some allowance for the politicians’ perceived character and competence.

We also all know that the reality falls far short of the ideal. Voters are often misinformed, and politicians aren’t reliably truthful. Still, we like to imagine that voters generally get it right in the end, and that politicians are eventually held accountable for what they do.

But is even this modified, more realistic vision of democracy in action still relevant? Or has our political system been so degraded by misinformation and disinformation that it can no longer function?

Well, consider the case of the budget deficit — an issue that dominated Washington discussion for almost three years, although it has recently receded.

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that voters are poorly informed about the deficit. But you may be surprised by just how misinformed.

In a well-known paper with the discouraging title, “It Feels Like We’re Thinking,” the political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels reported on a 1996 survey that asked voters whether the budget deficit had increased or decreased under President Clinton. In fact, the deficit was down sharply, but a plurality of voters — and a majority of Republicans — believed that it had gone up.

I wondered on my blog what a similar survey would show today, with the deficit falling even faster than it did in the 1990s. Ask and ye shall receive.


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/16/opinion/krugman-moment-of-truthiness.html?hp

[Newest Reality]

1. Just like

austerity coming in the name of "sequester" which seems to be a great example of Newspeak and how you can hide something in plain sight and let people figure it out after the fact.

We get a long, slow pattern of, (unpopular) austerity measures while the upper-percentile on Wall Street, in the defense industries, et al, prosper in obscene and unprecedented ways.

We need more coco-rations and Victory Gin, at the very least.

[JayhawkSD]

2. What he fails to discuss.

From that same column: "Still, aren’t there umpires for this sort of thing — trusted, nonpartisan authorities who can and will call out purveyors of falsehood? Once upon a time, he says, I think, there were."

The "umpires" he, fails to say, were the media, who no longer call bullshit on lies by either side of the partisan divide. How does Krugman, who is part of the media himself, fail to point this out? Perhaps because he himself is a member of and is employed by the media?

The historic role of the media had been to keep the politicians honest, and to inform the public when they were being lied to. They no longer do that, but merely serve as stenographers; publishing the lies issued by one side, "balanced" by the countering lies issued by the other side.

Krugman himself, when he does cry foul never names names, except for competing econimists or the occasional headline politician, but usually settles for saying that "some say" or "the other side claims," and citing generic rather than specific dishonisty.

[Bill USA]

3. It continues to astound me how GOPers blatantly hurl the Big Lies without batting an eye. They have

to be clinical sociopaths to do it with such composure....

from the article:

Am I saying that voters are stupid? Not at all. People have lives, jobs, children to raise. They’re not going to sit down with Congressional Budget Office reports. Instead, they rely on what they hear from authority figures. The problem is that much of what they hear is misleading if not outright false.

The outright falsehoods, you won’t be surprised to learn, tend to be politically motivated. In those 1996 data, Republicans were much more likely than Democrats to hold false views about the deficit, and the same must surely be true today. After all, Republicans made a lot of political hay over a supposedly runaway deficit early in the Obama administration, and they have maintained the same rhetoric even as the deficit has plunged. Thus Eric Cantor, the second-ranking Republican in the House, declared on Fox News that we have a “growing deficit,” while Senator Rand Paul told Bloomberg Businessweek that we’re running “a trillion-dollar deficit every year.”

Do people like Mr. Cantor or Mr. Paul know that what they’re saying isn’t true? Do they care? Probably not. In Stephen Colbert’s famous formulation, claims about runaway deficits may not be true, but they have truthiness, and that’s all that matters.

Still, aren’t there umpires for this sort of thing — trusted, nonpartisan authorities who can and will call out purveyors of falsehood? Once upon a time, I think, there were. But these days the partisan divide runs very deep, and even those who try to play umpire seem afraid to call out falsehood. Incredibly, the fact-checking site PolitiFact rated Mr. Cantor’s flatly false statement as “half true.”

I rate Politifact's "half-true" judgement of Cantor's clear intention to deceive as fully - dubious. Here's what Politifact said in conclusion:

"Cantor said that the federal deficit is "growing." Annual federal deficits are not growing right now, and they are not projected to grow through 2015, a point at which the deficit will have shrunk by three-quarters since 2009. By this standard, Cantor is wrong. However, unless policies are changed, deficits are projected to grow again in 2016 and beyond, according to the CBO. On balance, we rate his claim Half True."

I think they are really bending way over backwards in this case. How difficult would it have been for Cantor to say, "the deficit is coming down right now, but according to the CBO, it will begin to increase again after 2016"?? That isn't a whole lot of detail to have to include. His intension was to exaggerate, deceive and confuse the listeners.

In the end, as always, it's easier to keep track of when GOPers speak the truth than to keep up with their lies. When do the speak the truth.... let's see, when Hell freezes over? They are so practiced at lieing that it just may be that they don't even know when they are lieing anymore! How convenient for them.