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Update: My hero (see, Krugman, you're wrong on that one, too!) Kara Glennon writes in to the comment section to let me know I had the wrong spelling of her name (it's fixed now), and also to reemphasize her point.
No, I'm not talking about Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been demagoguing the gas-tax issue for what seems an eternity now. I'm actually talking about a woman, identified by ABC as an Obama supporter named (phonetically) Kara GlennanGlennon, who took the mike at today's "town-hall meeting" in Indiana and told Sen. Clinton that
"I do feel pandered to when you talk about suspending the gas tax," the woman said, adding: "Call me crazy but I actually listen to economists because I think they know what they've studied."Kudos to this woman for not falling for Sen. Clinton's bash-the-experts-when-they-do-their-job hooey. The woman made her comment after this exchange between Sen. Clinton and former Clinton staffer, subsequent Clinton traitor, and current ABC staffer George Stephanopoulos:
There's a lot about the Clinton Administration that I found frustrating. For the most part, though, and certainly by comparison to the dishonesty of the Bush years, I thought one of the things the Clinton folks did right was largely let professional economists do their job. The kind of stuff that has severely damaged the credibility of both the U.S. government and of economists willing to work for it under Republican presidents was largely avoided during the Clinton years. Not that there wasn't some dishonesty, some that bothered me a lot, but for the most part President Clinton let his economic staff tell the truth.STEPHANOPOULOS: ....
Can you name one economist, a credible economist who supports the suspension?
CLINTON: Well, you know, George, I think we've been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion basically behind policies that haven't worked well for the middle class and hard-working Americans. From the moment I started this campaign, I've said that I am absolutely determined that we're going to reverse the trends that have been going on in our government and in our political system, because what I have seen is that the rich have gotten richer. A vast majority -- I think something like 90 percent -- of the wealth gains over the last seven years have gone to the top 10 percent of wage earners in America.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But can you name an economist who thinks this makes sense?
CLINTON: Well, I'll tell you what, I'm not going to put my lot in with economists
After all that, it's very disheartening to see Sen. Clinton now going with the don't-trust-experts BS that Republicans have used for so many years to fool people with their supposed anti-elitism.
Shame on Sen. Clinton, and good for that woman, Ms.
2 comments:
Clinton's response reminds me of a line from a Spanish film called "The Contestant" that I saw over the weekend. The story is about an economics professor who wins the lottery and then, after he sees his life fall apart, becomes disenchanted with capitalism. He goes to talk to a Marxist intellectual, who tells him "I don't talk to economists. It's a waste of time."
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