Ezra Klein, Troglodyte

To say that Ezra Klein leans left is an understatement. His uber-leftist tilt is so severe as to explain his dizzy thinking. I believe the same analysis can be applied to economist Paul Krugman of the NY Times.

Mr. Klein writes a self-described "opinionated blog" for the Washington Post. I can't fault him for that pursuit. I can admire people for adhering to strongly held beliefs to the exclusion of outside influence. In short, "opinionated" is simply a euphemism for "bigoted" - a much maligned quality, IMHO. But that doesn't mean I have to agree with him. In fact, it makes it imperative to counter-argue this "community-based reality" embraced by the Left.

This morning, Mr. Klein published an Op/Ed touting the popularity of unions VS the eeebil Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker(R) based upon a newly released PPP poll.

John Steele Gordon at Commentary Magazine disassembles Klein's muddled argument:

"Finally, he (Klein) argues that a “world without organized labor is a world where workers have less voice and corporations are even more dominant and unchecked across both the economy and the political system.”

What Klein very carefully fails to point out, of course, is that the fight in Wisconsin is not over unions and collective bargaining with corporations (an argument that was settled in the 1930s); it is over unions and collective bargaining with governments. The evidence that that is a recipe for fiscal disaster is now overwhelming.

Of course, most of that evidence postdates the 1950s, when public-employee unions were very rare and collective bargaining with governments even rarer. George Meany, who headed up the AFL-CIO after their merger in 1955, thought collective bargaining with governments was “impossible.”

Like so many of the confusions uber-Leftists espouse - "govt. spending are investments," "social programs are charity," "smaller spending increases are a budget cuts,"  etc - the term "unions" is an insincere generalization, one that elicits a visceral response of power and pride in skilled workmanship by individual members of said unions. This generalization is one that Klein and the PPP exploited, and one that John Steele Gordon disassembled.

So, what about that PPP poll? Let's simply say the PPP suffers from similar dizzy thinking as Klein and Krugman. W.J. at L.I. explains their tilted methodology.