Nonsense. First of all, I don’t know what the word “murky” means in this context. His business career is crystal clear, rather than murky, in that we know exactly what positions he held, at what point in time, to what degree he succeeded or failed, and how much money he made.
If “murky” is meant to be a synonym for “dishonest” or “shady,” then there’s no such evidence – merely charges by political opponents. It would be equally wrong to say it was “murky” as to whether Bill and Hillary Clinton arranged the murder of Vince Foster, because some of their opponents made that charge.
Nobody was lying. Both sides were spinning. Rubin proposed deferring the enacted future tax cuts. This is an increase over tax levels that will apply, but it is NOT an increase over current levels. So, it’s correct in one sense to call it an increase, but in another sense, not.
This same ambiguity came up a few years ago in a debate over proposed changes in medicare by Newt Gingrich, only the two sides compared their “decreases” in the reverse way. Democrats charged that Gingrich wanted to cut Medicare below what was planned. Republicans said he wanted to increase Medicare above then current spending.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Krugman’s column in other papers, so I guess he’s syndicated.
His crude attacks on Bush and Republicans are normal for the Times Op-ed page. There’s no reason to think these particular editors would want to take out the word, “lie.” In fact, they may have added it!
Bullshit. What he said was Rubin wanted to raise taxes in the face of a recession, It’s spinning to call cancelling a tax cut a tax increase, but it’s an outright lie to say he proposed to do so during a recession. (unless you believe that the recession is going to on for the next 10 years).
Tejota, to make your charge stick, you ought to have some actual facts, not just the mention of bovine excrement. E.g.
When does the next round of income tax rate reductions begin?
When do they first hit our withholding?
What sort of planning horizon do businesses use, when they are making decisions about expansion or contraction?
Organizations I’ve worked for plan a few years in advance. So, future tax rate decreases would affect whether they begin taking steps toward expansion now.
Anyway I just read this on talkingpointsmemo. Turns out that the assertion from the OMD director in a Times letter that their error had been corrected “weeks” ago was itself false; the change had merely been made five days before. Amazing. Do these guys ever tell the truth? http://talkingpointsmemo.com/
