The Coffeespy

Paul Krugman is a professor of economics and international affairs at Princeton and writes regularly for the New York Times.  From an Early Birded column in the NY Times:

These are two different pieces of the same story: under the guise of promoting a conservative agenda, the Bush administration has created a supersized version of the 19th-century spoils system.

The blueprint for Bush-era governance was laid out in a January 2001 manifesto from the Heritage Foundation, titled “Taking Charge of Federal Personnel.” The manifesto’s message, in brief, was that the professional civil service should be regarded as the enemy of the new administration’s conservative agenda. And there’s no question that Heritage’s thinking reflected that of many people on the Bush team.

Krugman’s playing a magic trick pretending this is a startling new phenomenon.  He shows you a patronage system with his left hand and says “ooh, look at the corruption” and hides the historical pattern of it in his right.  This is done in every administration.  Every… single… one.  He’s attaching Bush’s name to it because… well, I can only assume Bush must have noogied him as a child because every economic ill he writes about seems to originate with this administration.  A professor should know better.

• The Economist’s View has some good comments.  Skip the obvious blind hatred stuff for the posts with links to historical memos and orders.  Since the Times has the column behind their log-in wall, you can read the whole column at the EV.

New York Times op-ed columnist and noted economist Mike Krugman delivered a column titled “Outsourcer in Chief” that smells as dubious as the Potomac did this morning.  The editorial takes a shot at the Bush administration saying “outsourcing is one reason the administration has failed on so many fronts.”  Mr. Krugman then demonstrates an utter lack of comprehension of the Department of Defense’s acquisition processes by giving his primary example of this phantom phenomenon:

For example, an article in Saturday’s New York Times describes how the Coast Guard has run a $17 billion modernization program: “Instead of managing the project itself, the Coast Guard hired Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, two of the nation’s largest military contractors, to plan, supervise and deliver the new vessels and helicopters.”

Point of fact: All DoD projects are overseen by a program manager.  This is going to be a high-level civilian government employee or a uniformed officer of considerable rank.  That’s federal law.  Unless Mr. Krugman is accusing the Coast Guard command of violating federal law, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

On top of that, what is he suggesting?  The Coast Guard recruit and train an engineering and production arm to build their own ships?  Anyone remember Mil Spec and the overpriced toilet seats?

More from Krugman:

On the home front, the Bush administration outsourced many responsibilities of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. For example, the job of evacuating people from disaster areas was given to a trucking logistics firm, Landstar Express America. When Hurricane Katrina struck, Landstar didn’t even know where to get buses. According to Carey Limousine, which was eventually hired, Landstar “found us on the Web site.”

Mr. Krugman likes to draw straight lines.  Unfortunately, I doubt the President was directly involved in hiring Landstar Express America.  This, again, would have fallen to a government civilian.  Here’s something I’ve noted about government civilians in my time with the DoD: They’re overwhelmingly liberal.  Check out the political breakdown of Washington DC, you’ll get a sense of where they fall.

The failure of privatization under the Bush administration offers a target-rich environment to newly empowered Congressional Democrats — and I say, let the subpoenas fly.

Ah, now I see where this is going.  Another voice added to the chorus of people hoping to be able to stand up and say “see, I was right” rather than allow the new congress to do what it was elected to do: Get stuff done.

Bear in mind that we’re not talking just about wasted money: contracting failures in Iraq helped us lose one war, similar failures in Afghanistan may help us lose another, and FEMA’s failures helped us lose a great American city.

In one sentence, Krugman declares Iraq a loss, prophecizes another loss in Afghanistan, and forgets that Katrina was a hurricane, not an accidental flooding of New Orleans by the Bush administration.  Oh yeah, contrary to popular belief, New Orleans is still there.  I bet there’s a few people living in NO that would take issue with Krugman’s assessment that they are no longer a “great American city.”

There’s more to Krugman’s editorial, but really, why subject you to that?

Here’s some interesting Krugman reading from The Truth Squad.  According to that site, “The Truth Squad is a group of economists who have long marveled at the writings of Paul Krugman. The Squad Reports are synopses of their discussions.”

The Economist has more on Krugman in their 2003 article “The One-Handed Economist“ stating, “A glance through his past columns reveals a growing tendency to attribute all the world’s ills to George Bush…Now that he is a journalist, it is perhaps not surprising that Mr Krugman seems to have embraced the concept of the free lunch—even though as an economist he should know better.”

Krugman is currently rated as the third most partisan columnist overall by Lying in Ponds.

Note: The NYT article is not linked because you have to pay to read it.  True information, on the other hand, appears to be free.