{"id":71987,"date":"2016-04-18T12:00:07","date_gmt":"2016-04-18T11:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=71987"},"modified":"2016-04-16T14:40:44","modified_gmt":"2016-04-16T13:40:44","slug":"krugman-attacks-the-establishment-snarls-a-warning-to-sanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2016\/04\/krugman-attacks-the-establishment-snarls-a-warning-to-sanders\/","title":{"rendered":"Krugman Attacks: The Establishment Snarls a Warning to Sanders"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"bernie<\/a>

Crush Rush | Shutterstock.com<\/p><\/div>\n

12 Apr 2016 – <\/em>When Republicans are in the White House, Paul Krugman and the NY Times sometimes sound pretty good. But when someone starts seriously and effectively challenging core assumptions and values of our political economic system, the progressive veneer quickly vanishes. This is demonstrated in Paul Krugman\u2019s verbal attack on the Bernie Sanders campaign in his \u201cSanders Over the Edge\u201d editorial<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Krugman does not hold back. Bernie supporters and Bernie himself are described by Krugman as intolerant, cultish, shallow, vague, without substance, lacking character and values, dishonest, short on ethics, really bad, petulant and self-righteous. Wow.<\/p>\n

Krugman\u2019s diatribe deserves scrutiny and lampooning. The purpose seems to be to ridicule, threaten and warn Sanders to get back in line. Hopefully progressives will intensify support for Bernie and tell Krugman to get his facts straight.<\/p>\n

Here are some key falsehoods in the Krugman attack.<\/p>\n

Krugman dismisses Sanders\u2019 call to \u2018break up the big banks\u2019 and suggests the financial giants did not cause the economic crash; the problem was \u201cpredatory lending\u201d by smaller outfits such as Countrywood Financial. This is nonsense which contradicts what Krugman himself has said in the past. The predatory lenders were minor players in the process. The loans would never have been issued if they were not being bought up and bundled together into collateral debt obligations (CDOs) and other \u201cproducdts\u201d by major financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs. They were the ones driving the operation not the individual lenders.<\/p>\n

Krugman goes on to claim Sanders does not have any specific proposals and that \u201cgoing on about big banks is pretty much all Mr. Sanders has done\u201d and \u201cabsence of substance beyond slogans seems to be true of his positions across the board\u201d. This is untrue, easily confirmed by looking at the Sanders website.<\/a> Sanders has called for a tax on Wall Street speculation\/trading, dramatic changes in the tax code, increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour, canceling detrimental trade accords and imposing individual penalties for corporate crime. These are clear and specific with similar details in virtually every policy area.<\/p>\n

Krugman claims Sanders and supporters were \u2018just plain dishonest\u2019 when they accused Clinton of receiving substantial funding from the fossil fuel industry. Krugman relies on the establishment \u201cfact check\u201d by NYT, WaPo and NPR. However that \u201cfact check\u201d has been refuted<\/a> by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting which confirms that Clinton did in fact receive substantial funding as claimed by Sanders. The FAIR title gives the essence: \u201cNPR Fact Checker can\u2019t be bothered to check\u201d.<\/p>\n

Krugman gets really worked up because Sanders issued a \u201crant\u201d suggesting Mrs. Clinton may not be \u201cqualified\u201d to be President after taking so much funding from Wall Street and supporting recent and past US foreign aggression and intervention which has backfired badly. Krugman says this is \u201creally bad on two levels\u201d: it is \u201cimposing a standard of purity \u201c and raising the specter that Bernie supporters may not happily support Clinton as the \u201cstrong favorite for the Democratic nomination\u201d. This is the core message from Krugman: a warning to Sanders to get back on the establishment bus.<\/p>\n

Krugman thinks it is hopelessly purist to expect a President that will not take the country into new wars and sustain illegal coups such as Honduras. Many Bernie supporters know about Clinton\u2019s role in Honduras, Libya and beyond, probably better than Krugman. That\u2019s why some will not transfer their votes to her.<\/p>\n

Is Krugman not aware of the reason for Bernie\u2019s success? Bernie is calling for radical transformation in the economy, criminal justice, health-care, education and foreign policy. He is publicly saying this needs to be done with a populist \u2018political revolution\u2019. He is winning huge support with that message and because many see him as sincere and authentic, not a normal politician. That is clearly troubling to Krugman and the NY Times.<\/p>\n

The NYTimes has endorsed Hillary Clinton and their candidate is in jeopardy. This may explain escalating attacks on Bernie and whitewashes <\/a>of Hillary. See the Young Turks<\/a> for a great video take-down of Paul Krugman and his attack on Bernie.<\/p>\n

___________________________________<\/a><\/p>\n

Rick Sterling<\/em> is a co-founder of Syria Solidarity Movement. He can be contacted at rsterling1@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 counterpunch.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Krugman does not hold back. Bernie supporters and Bernie himself are described by Krugman as intolerant, cultish, shallow, vague, without substance, lacking character and values, dishonest, short on ethics, really bad, petulant and self-righteous. Wow. Krugman\u2019s diatribe deserves scrutiny and lampooning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}