Shouldn’t Krugmarx like him if he is a Moocher?
Pray America wakes up
You forgot the Barf alert.
Only a private property stealing Bolshevik like Krugman thinks it’s normal for the federal government to own the lion’s share of Western lands. Appeals to his collectivist derangement.
Of course that’s what the POS totalitarian hiding behind his theoretician’s academic beard would say.
Wake up and smell the socialism.
YOU didn’t build that planet, control freak.
Why does the Federal government “own” that land?
Krugman has been inhaling the vapors again...
Is this the same Paul Krugman who took a $250,000 salary to address income inequality? That Paul Hypocrite Krugman?
Re: the turn conservatism has taken . . .
I am interested in the chain of events that turned conservatives, more or less a law-and-order group historically, into a group that distrusts the “jack-booted thugs” in law enforcement. One element of that is certainly the swat/militarization of federal, state, and local law enforcement, but I wonder if there is more than that.
Is a loss of perceived/actual legitimacy in government at work here?
Did the Democrats with their claims of George W. Bush’s illegitimacy for “stealing” Florida raise the stakes in the political battles? Did the Democrats respond to that perceived offense by more aggressively working to steal the Obama election(s) and others such as Franken’s Senate race? Did the left respond to the GOP’s failure to follow what the 2000 Florida election law “should have said” by more aggressively twisting/bending/ignoring laws they never liked?
Have conservatives gone from being supporters of the rule-of-law and thus of government law enforcement to being supporters of the rule of law and thus opponents of government law enforcement as currently practiced? Have we actually changed, has our perception of FedGov especially changed while FedGov remains more or less the same, or has FedGov genuinely changed?
Any thoughts?
Okay, I’ll bite, Dr. Krugman:
1. You never address the issue of whether the Federal government SHOULD own all that land in the west. Somehow, your home state of New Jersey does just fine without the Federal government owning most of it.
2. You say the government charges too little, but your accompanying report just says the government takes in less than it costs them to administer the land. Are you aware that government costs tends to be many times more than private sector costs for the same activity? Furthermore, if lots of different landowners existed, grazing fees would have to be low because of competition.
3. You say that because cattle ranchers get a supposed subsidy from the government, they’re not rugged individualists. That’s a really silly argument. I mean, you could argue everyone in history who lived in some country was not an individualist because they benefited from government in some way. I’m sure Daniel Boone took the state roads as far as they would go before walking in the wilderness. Big deal.
4. You toss in accusations of racism with no evidence whatsoever.
5. You say that conservatives believe private property rights are absolute. That’s a strawman argument. No serious conservative believes that. Thomas Sowell has written about limitations on property rights, to name one example. No conservative thinks someone should be able to store unprotected nuclear waste on a suburban street.
6. You then throw in a reference to Duck Dynasty for no reason other than it gets giggles from your leftist base.
The crux of the issue is whether massive government ownership of land leads to corruption. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that this whole mess started because of a solar panels deal involving Harry Reid’s family. How about a column about that, Dr. Krugman? But it’s a lot easier to just make snide comments about ranchers and Duck Dynasty to appeal to the amoral leftist elites that read you.
As opposed to White Plains Morons.
I bet this guy Krugman can’t shoot for sh#t.
I have to agree with him. Cliven Bundy got to use public land without paying even a fraction of what it is worth. He is a tenant - no more and no less. We all know what happens when we stop paying our rent to our landlord. The sheriff ultimately comes to evict us from the property. The only difference here is the landlord in question is the federal government.
Our law of contracts doesn’t change because of the nature of the lawful owner. The federal law doesn’t grant Bundy any more standing than a private tenant would have. We have laws and we have to live by them. If the Feds trespassed on private land, that would be one thing. But neither Bundy nor any one else has the right to use public land as they see fit.
Of course, if the American people want to change the arrangement, they can do so - through their elected representatives passing a new law. Until that happens we must obey the law regardless of our personal feelings about them and none of us get to decide what laws we would like to obey in this country.
Krugman could have written for Pravda.
Hey Paul, F@*k you and the horse you rode in on!
The Bundy family used that land 80 years before the BLM was even founded.
And what about the government wanting Mr. Bundy to reduce the size of his herd by 90%? That would put him out of business right there (which is what the Agenda 21 types want).
Still carrying Dingy Harry’s water, I see.
Paul Krugman my favorite slime ball.
Thugman’s DemocRat plantation ain’t too pretty.