Nicholas Kristof, "Crony Capitalism Comes Home": His Worst Opinion Piece Ever

Nicholas Kristof has written many fatuous New York Times op-eds. In one 2010 opinion piece entitled "New Alarm Bells About Chemicals and Cancer" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/06/opinion/06kristof.html), Kristof began by stating:

"The President’s Cancer Panel is the Mount Everest of the medical mainstream, so it is astonishing to learn that it is poised to join ranks with the organic food movement and declare: chemicals threaten our bodies."

Apparently, Kristof was blithely unaware that our bodies consist of chemicals, but ignorance has never prevented him from foisting twaddle upon the The Times's readership.

Kristof today introduces the readership of The New York Times to a new bugaboo, crony capitalism, in his latest op-ed, "Crony Capitalism Comes Home" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/opinion/kristof-crony-capitalism-comes-homes.html?hp). However, Kristof begins with a defense of the Occupy Wall Street movement:

"Whenever I write about Occupy Wall Street, some readers ask me if the protesters really are half-naked Communists aiming to bring down the American economic system when they’re not doing drugs or having sex in public.

The answer is no. That alarmist view of the movement is a credit to the (prurient) imagination of its critics, and voyeurs of Occupy Wall Street will be disappointed."

Is it remotely possible that Kristof is unaware of the findings of pollster Douglas Schoen (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576637082965745362.html) concerning the views of OWS protesters? Schoen determined:

"Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda."

Nicholas can deride the critics of OWS with inapposite sexual innuendo, but these statistics are indeed frightening.

Before going further astray along the fuzzy directions of this op-ed, let's return to its purported subject, i.e. crony capitalism. Although Kristof tells us that Lawrence Summers once opined that crony capitalism was to blame for the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, and he would have us believe that crony capitalism is to blame for America's current economic ills, he never troubles to define this term.

Allow me to assist Kristof. Crony capitalism involves a system whereby governments extend permits, grants, loans, tax credits, and other favors to connected persons in the business community.

Hey, doesn't that remind you of what happened with respect to Solyndra? Needless to say, Kristof doesn't go down that path.

Instead, Kristof provides a laundry list of distinguished persons who call for "structural change," recommend "broad-based job creation," and warn against "too much inequality" in a capitalist economy. But none of these persons are saying that the US is a banana republic suffering from crony capitalism.

Anyone familiar with this blog knows that I have long derided past excesses of America's financial institutions. I favor reenactment of Glass-Steagall; I favor reinstatement of the Uptick Rule. However, unlike Kristof, I do not perceive the United States as a banana republic.

Kristof concludes:

"So, yes, we face a threat to our capitalist system. But it’s not coming from half-naked anarchists manning the barricades at Occupy Wall Street protests. Rather, it comes from pinstriped apologists for a financial system that glides along without enough of the discipline of failure and that produces soaring inequality, socialist bank bailouts and unaccountable executives.

It’s time to take the crony out of capitalism, right here at home."

I am no apologist for the financial system, and I don't wear pinstripes. (As I type this blog entry, I am wearing sweat-stained gym shorts and a t-shirt covered in dog hair.) I do believe in correcting excesses without crashing the system. And unpleasant as it may have been, had Citibank and AIG not been rescued by the federal government, we would probably be back in the days of barter, with cow manure, for use as fertilizer to grow your own food, one of the world's most precious commodities.

Winston Churchill once said:

“It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

I think the same is true of capitalism as it pertains to systems of economics.

Charles Blow, "Occupy-apalooza Strikes a Chord": A Pickled Lenin Winks from His Red Square Mausoleum

How low can Blow go? Certainly today he is testing new depths.

In a New York Times op-ed entitled "Occupy-apalooza Strikes a Chord" (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/opinion/blow-occupy-apalooza-strikes-a-chord.html?_r=1&hp), Charles Blow begins by describing a meeting with a young woman, who, after a morning "boot camp" workout at the Y.M.C.A. and evening drinks with friends, intends to participate in the Zucotti Park Occupy Wall Street protests. When asked by Blow why she is going, she responds:

"I don't know. It's just cool"

"Cool"? That is a reason to participate in a demonstration?

This young woman went on to tell Blow that she wanted to be a part of OWS "in the same way that people from previous generations were part of the civil rights, women’s liberation and antiwar movements." Well, back 40 years ago, I was protesting the Vietnam War on the streets of Chicago, but it wasn't because it was "cool" or because I needed to belong to something, but rather, because I was passionately opposed to the war.

Given this young woman's inability to articulate a rational reason for participating in the OWS protest, Blow provides one:

"Needless to say, that doesn’t cover everyone. The protests have a Lollapalooza-like eccentricity and diversity to the crowds. Some come to revel in the moment. Others come to rage against the machine. But they are all drawn together by the excitement of animating a muscle that many thought had atrophied: demonstration and disobedience in the name of equality."

Blow proceeds to cite three polls showing that many Americans are in agreement with the "disparate ideas" of the OWS protesters, and concludes:

"If nothing else, the movement has established itself as a cultural phenomenon with surprising staying power, and as someone who wasn’t sure that it would catch hold, I must echo the young woman in the restaurant: that’s just cool."

However, one of the "disparate ideas" of the OWS protesters is anti-Semitism in its basest forms, but of course no mention by Blow of this unpleasant phenomenon (see, for example: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/10/11/occupy-wall-street-has-an-anti-semitism-problem/). I am confident that if the N-word was being freely tossed around by these radicals, Blow would lose much of his enthusiasm for the movement, but these days, anti-Semitism has even weaved its way into The New York Times (see, for example: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.com/2010/08/charles-blows-obama-and-jews-part-2.html) and has become mainstay in leftist circles.

Blow also doesn't trouble themselves to observe that 34% of the Occupy Wall Street protesters polled by New York Magazine believe that the US is no better than al-Qaeda, 37% believe that capitalism is inherently immoral and cannot be saved, and 55% didn't vote in the 2010 midterm elections (see: http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/topic/occupy-wall-street-2011-10/).

Needless to say, Blow doesn't bother to relate to the findings of pollster Douglas Schoen, who, in an article in The Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204479504576637082965745362.html), wrote:

"[T]he Occupy Wall Street movement reflects values that are dangerously out of touch with the broad mass of the American people—and particularly with swing voters who are largely independent and have been trending away from the president since the debate over health-care reform.

The protesters have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies. On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polling firm, interviewed nearly 200 protesters in New York's Zuccotti Park. Our findings probably represent the first systematic random sample of Occupy Wall Street opinion.

Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn't represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda."

Sorry, Charles, but there is nothing "disparate" about the ideas of these protesters, and there is certainly nothing "cool" about them, notwithstanding your best efforts to provide them with a positive spin. Shame on you!