The Annals of Context
James Pethokoukis writes for US News about “hysterical” liberal reactions to the Obama stimulus plan:
Some of their greatest hysterical hits: 1) “The economic plan he’s offering isn’t as strong as his language about the economic threat,” wrote NY Times columnist Paul Krugman. “In fact, it falls well short of what’s needed”; 2) the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank founded by Obama transition co-chair John Podesta, said the Obama plan was chock-full of “special interest favorites” and “long-discredited conservative proposals”; 3) Sen. Tom Harkin said Obamanomics “still looks a little more to me like trickle-down,” invoking a Reagan-era economic invective that liberals love to hurl; and 4) Nancy Pelosi, who seems to actually believe the Obama campaign spin that the Bush tax cuts somehow caused the recession, blurted out this gem: “Put me down as clearly as you possibly can as one who wants to have those tax cuts for the wealthiest in America repealed.” Duly noted, Madam Speaker.
Here’s what CAP’s Will Straw actually wrote:
To ensure that public money is not irresponsibly wasted, the legislation must break away from special-interest politics and conservative filibustering. Public money should be spent wisely and in the most effective way to address our economic woes. A rapid and aggressive economic plan must not be obstructed by demands for pet projects from either side of the congressional aisle or long-discredited conservative proposals such as permanent tax cuts for the rich.
In short, Straw said it would be undesirable for congress to modify Obama’s plan by letting special interests add long-discredited proposals such as permanent tax cuts for the rich. He didn’t say that Obama’s plan includes discredited permanent tax cuts for the rich because, you know, it doesn’t include any.
23 Responses to “The Annals of Context”
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January 12th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Wow. It looks like he’s not only quoting out of context, by replacing “special interest politics” with “special interest favorites,” he’s just straight up misquoting. How special. That’s why I canceled a subscription I had to U.S. News even though it was free. Their magazine is mostly crap — without even going into the damage they do in the realm of higher education.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:55 am
You’d think a US News and World reporter would have basic literacy.
I guess that’s expecting a bit much.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:59 am
Yeah, but James Pethokoukis can’t deal with reality. So he needs to make up his own and put words in other people’s mouths.
This is deeply dishonest and is also immoral. I wonder if James Pethokoukis is one of those con’s trying to get the Ten Commandments put up all over the place and if he ever read the one that said “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.”
January 12th, 2009 at 11:02 am
If that’s truly the document the quotations are based on, there are decent grounds for a libel suit here.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:21 am
I know that this will immediately disqualify me as an objective observer (based on ‘village rules’), but I learned to distrust American news media during the 1980s when I, as part of a class project on the history of Latin America, went to a university library and learned about what was really happening in El Salvador. What is distressing, is that since the end of the Reagan administration the news media has shifted from being simply pro-America and pro-business to being pro-Republican and pro-conservative. It did not used to be the case — maybe my rose colored glasses are showing, but I remember media being much more even-handed during the back-and-forth tussles between Reagan and the Democratic-controlled Congress.
@5: No one has ever filed a libel suit over something that was essentially a slander of a policy statement. Perhaps CAP will push US News to issue a correction… but unless the libel is personal and derogatory then yawn…
January 12th, 2009 at 11:21 am
If that’s as hysterical as liberals get, we must be a very calm group. Conservatives would have found a way to work mushroom clouds into it.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:21 am
Did Mr. Pethokoukis spend some of his career writing ad copy for movies? Because I’m seeing some parallels in his use of quotes.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:22 am
God forbid anyone but center-rightists and right wingers and market fundamentalists make noise about the policies they believe in.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:31 am
This financial crisis has really got me scratching my head. I read about three or four blogs about the subject including Krugman and they are all over the map, some predicting a meltdown worse then the G.D. Here is my question, there is a lot of concern that we spend the stimulus money wisely on one hand but on the other Ben Bernanke is on record for saying it would help the economy to simply drop money from helicopters. I don’t understand macroeconomics at all but if Bernanke is right, how much do we need to worry about the efficiency of stimulus spending? It seems to me if it is less wasteful then simply dropping it from the sky it makes the cut.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:39 am
useless news and world distort.
as always.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Bernanke’s helicopter comment was not about fiscal policy, but monetary policy. The idea is that if you are in a deflationary trap and traditional monetary policy does not work (because trading newly created dollars for government securities doesn’t do much if people just sit on their dollars) then you can in principle just create money and throw it out of helicopters to assure that it gets into circulation. Fiscally it wouldn’t neccesarily do much, but the impact of flagrantly inflating the currency in such a way would cause people to feel more inclined to spend their dollars. The stimulus package involves borrowing money already in circulation, so it doesn’t work that way.
January 12th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Insert straw man joke here.
January 12th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Thanks UserGoogol, I was hoping I had discovered something everyone else have overlooked and that my comment was going to make me famous. Now I don’t have to worry that a call from the Nobel Prize Committee is going to wake me up too early in the am.
January 12th, 2009 at 1:24 pm
“The economic plan he’s offering isn’t as strong as his language about the economic threat,” wrote NY Times columnist Paul Krugman. “In fact, it falls well short of what’s needed”
Man, the hysteria really bleeds from that quote, doesn’t it? Somebody get this man a straitjacket, stat!
January 12th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
I’m just glad Matt spelled “annals” correctly.
January 12th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I second spot-check billy.
I love the quotes in movie ads, especially the ones that feature a word that looks like it’s a compliment, but isn’t really.
Explosive AND Highly Stylized? Wow, that must be some awesome movie.
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