[Peace-discuss] Mean Streets (2) (David Sirota on Populism, too)

[E. Wayne Johnson]

I don't trust Krugman any more than I trust Obama and Bernanke.

Pareto, Amoroso, Gini, and Mussolini had more in common than just being 
Italian.

They knew what they meant when they said Proudly that they were 
Fascists.  They were good statisticians too, innovative in the math 
tools they created, rather than innovative in the Mark Twain judgment of 
statisticians.  Amoroso's biography of Pareto considers Pareto as a sort 
of Fascist God, and Gini wrote a book called something like "The 
Scientific Basis for  Fascism", but later became discouraged about 
Fascism because its authoritarian hand interfered with his work.

Orwell on the other hand offers a more ambiguous observation that does 
indeed illustrate the problems of connotation:
/
^ <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism#cite_note-orwell1944-51> The 
word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of 
course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it 
applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, 
fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, 
Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, 
Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else... 
almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for 
‘Fascist’. – George Orwell, What is Fascism?. 1944.[52]/

Orwellian confusion aside, there are useful definitions of fascism ---
   (1). A political regime, usually totalitarian, ideologically based on 
centralized government, government control of business, repression of 
criticism or opposition, a leader cult and exalting the state and/or
       religion above individual rights. Originally only applied 
(usually capitalized) to Benito Mussolini's Italy.
   (2). By vague analogy, any system of strong autocracy or oligarchy 
usually to the extent of bending and breaking the law, race-baiting and 
violence against largely unarmed populations

 From my point of view, the Clinton-Bush-Obama administration is rather 
strongly committed to definition (1), and one major theme for Mr. Obama 
is to accelerate the process.

Let's hang around and see what happens next.

C. G. Estabrook wrote:
> I think he's often quite good -- e.g., today's column: 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27krugman.html?_r=1&em
>
> Obama's 100 Daze has had produced two principal things: the 
> restoration of Wall Street wealth and dead people in AfPak.  Krugman 
> describes the former.
>
> --CGE
>
> E. Wayne Johnson wrote:
>> One might wonder how much Krugman's Nobel Prize cost and where the 
>> money to buy it came from but on the other hand part of it is sort of 
>> easy to guess and we might not want to know the gory and  sordid  
>> details of every event.  That could be too much information.
>>
>> Paul Krugman is certainly an easy guy to dislike, as everyone agrees.
>>> Ben Bernanke's maiden Congressional testimony as chairman of the 
>>> Federal Reserve was, everyone agrees, superb. He didn't put a foot 
>>> wrong on monetary or fiscal policy.
>
>

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