Piling on Paul

In a Business Alabama article, Southern Appeal blogger Jim Dunn follows up on that illiterate-Alabama-auto-worker story from last week. You know - the one that NY Times columnist Paul Krugman picked up on - leading him to the absurd conclusion that Alabama's automobile industry is losing jobs to Canada because our state's taxes are too low. (See my previous blog post here.)

Anyway, here's a bit of good news from Dunn's Business Alabama piece:

Donald Luskin, contributing editor at National Review, contacted the New York Times about the Krugman column. Luskin told Business Alabama that Byron Calame, the public editor of the Times, was sufficiently concerned about Krugman’s column to discuss it with Gail Collins, editorial board chief at the paper. As of Aug. 9, the last word Luskin had received from Calame was that he was still looking into the matter.

Without a doubt, the real weasel here is Paul Krugman, who took one man's biased opinion and presented it as truth in order to make an unbalanced and utterly false attack on Alabama and its workers.

If Mr. Krugman had done his homework, he would have found that a plethora of information on Alabama's auto industry is readily available to anyone who is curious enough to investigate. Better yet, he could have spent a few bucks, hopped on a jet, and come to see things for himself. (Scratch that...let him set up a videoconference and keep his sorry a** in New York where he belongs.)

Certainly someone like Mr. Krugman, who calls himself an economist, should be interested in ascertaining the truth, especially when it concerns matters directly related to his area of expertise. It will be interesting to hear what his excuse is for this particular deception. If he lives up to his reputation, he will simply claim infallibility and deny that he misrepresented the facts to begin with. Nonetheless, the ball is in his court, and it's still possible that he will be man enough to admit his error.