Estonian president scolds Paul Krugman on Twitter

Yahoo News ^ | 6 Jun 2012 | Liz Goodwin

[mandaladon]

The President of Estonia slammed Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Twitter today over Krugman's short blog post pooh-poohing the Eastern European country's economic recovery.

Krugman wrote that defenders of Europe's austerity measures often point to Estonia's economic recovery to defend their policies. He included a chart that showed the country's rising GDP and added: "Better than no recovery at all, obviously—but this is what passes for economic triumph?"'

Estonia's president Toomas Hendrik Ilves struck back on Twitter. "Let's write about something we know nothing about & be smug, overbearing & patronizing: after all, they're just wogs," Ilves wrote, using the derogatory British slang term for dark-skinned people from Africa or the East.

"Guess a Nobel in trade means you can pontificate on fiscal matters & declare my country a 'wasteland'. Must be a Princeton vs Columbia thing," he added, referencing the two men's alma maters. (It's unclear when and if Krugman actually called Estonia a wasteland, even though Ilves puts the word in quotes.)

So far, Krugman hasn't joined in the Twitter fight.

[Ohioan]

The other Zygmond Dobbs study for the Veritas Foundation, The Great Deceit, goes into Frankfurter's role, behind the scenes, in organizing the ACLU. Had the man had any honor, he would have recused himself from the Supreme Court case that forbade prayer in school, rather than write the opinion.

Of course, the very essence of the Fabian approach is deception.

William Flax

[uncommonsense]

I have to commend you on your Conservative Debate Handbook and I hope other Freepers pay a visit to the site. I can see you put a lot of study, thought, and work into compiling it! I think it's particularly important for younger folks, or people new to this country, to grasp the profound significance of the true foundations of the USA versus what's served up in our "learned" schools and institutions.

If you plan any updates to your section "Chapter I--American Constitutional Overview", I humbly recommend that you add under your section "framers were very specific in their grants of power" a link to FEDERALIST No. 41 General View of the Powers Conferred by The Constitution by James Madison, and show Madison's clear articulation of the limits on "general welfare" and commerce regulation.

Madison in #41 was laying out the arguments for national defense and DIRECTLY connected the "commerce" and "general welfare" clauses to national defense, not what has been distorted today as "welfare"

"The power of levying and borrowing money, being the sinew of that which is to be exerted in the national defense, is properly thrown into the same class with it. This power, also, has been examined already with much attention, and has, I trust, been clearly shown to be necessary, both in the extent and form given to it by the Constitution.

[snip]

Some, who have not denied the necessity of the power of taxation, have grounded a very fierce attack against the Constitution, on the language in which it is defined. It has been urged and echoed, that the power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts, and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," amounts to an unlimited commission to exercise every power which may be alleged to be necessary for the common defense or general welfare. No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction.

Madison's words and thoughts could not be more clear-cut if a person objectively reads #41 and makes the syntactic, linguistic connections of part 1 with part 2.

[Ohioan]

Thank you for the kind remarks.

Actually, in Chapter I, I was trying to be brief. But any careful reading of the Constitution, in context, will lead to Madison's articulated limits. The delegated powers, each relate to specific functions; and those functions are all consistent with an established relationship, between the Governments, State & Federal, wherein the General Powers, other than those covered by the specific functions delegated, are left to the States & local communities (subdivisions of the States). There is all sorts of intrinsic evidence of a logical pattern that makes it very clear that the general powers to deal with the problems of individual citizens and groups, were never intended to be Federal.

This view is also supported by the historic fact, discussed in America Grounded On Experience & Reason, that the founders' approach, differed by 180 degrees from that of the modern Socialists, Communists & those some mistakenly call "Liberals," which is theory, not experience, driven.

Of course, one of the ultimate examples of the fallacy of the Left, are the Keynesians like Krugman, who are endlessly trying to fit reality into their artificial models.

Cheers.