Paul Krugman: Solar Panels for Thee, But Not . . .
. . . not for Paul Krugman, as the latest episode of the Contra Krugman podcast notes. Krugman begins his column by labeling the GOP “Enemies of the Sun:”
When it comes to energy policy, the G.O.P. has become fossilized. That is, it’s fossil fuels, and only fossil fuels, all the way. . . . While politicians on the right may talk about encouraging innovation and promoting an energy revolution, they’re actually defenders of the energy status quo, part of a movement trying to block anything that might disrupt the reign of fossil fuels.
Tom Woods and Robert Murphy, the folks at the new Contra Krugman podcast that refutes Krugman every single week, found a picture of Krugman’s house. How many solar panels does it have? You guessed it!
The podcast episode on this can be found here, or at iTunes or Stitcher. It is excellent. Woods and Murphy expose Krugman hypocrisy. They reveal ways that Krugman deceives with statistics. They refute illogical arguments. And they do it all with humor and clarity.
Here’s one more example of hypocrisy to whet your appetite. In this column Krugman suggests that the GOP opposes renewable energy because they’re in Big Coal’s pocket:
[Y]ou need to follow the money. We used to say that the G.O.P. was the party of Big Energy, but these days it would be more accurate to say that it’s the party of Old Energy. In the 2014 election cycle the oil and gas industry gave 87 percent of its political contributions to Republicans; for coal mining the figure was 96, that’s right, 96 percent. Meanwhile, alternative energy went 56 percent for Democrats.
It is certainly a fair argument that one’s views may be affected by the sources of the money one receives. In other words: we need to look at who is giving you money when we evaluate your arguments. But that wasn’t the position Krugman took when Jonathan Gruber was attacked in 2010 for making pro-ObamaCare arguments without disclosing that he had received money from the Obama Administration to work on ObamaCare:
Given that Gruber was providing this kind of technical consulting, should he have recused himself entirely from the public debate? Should he have stopped writing op-eds and, more important, technical papers read by the likes of Ezra Klein and myself? If he had, the public debate would have been much poorer; again, there aren’t many people in a position to do the kind of quantitative assessments Gruber does.
And one more thing: what Gruber has had to say about health reform in the current debate is entirely consistent with his previous academic work. There’s not a hint that he has changed views, or altered his model, to accommodate the Obama administration.
In other words, look at his arguments, not at who is giving him money.
Krugman will always adopt whatever position helps the leftist view, regardless of consistency or logic.
He is, after all, a Liberal with a Conscience — and a Friend, not an Enemy, of the Sun.
Go listen to the whole thing and subscribe. You won’t be sorry!