New York Times economist-turned-liberal-hack-columnist Paul Krugman has a habit of accusing his political opponents not of being misguided, flat wrong, or even dumb, but actively wicked (he also has the gift of tastelessness).
Cruel rule is what Krugman thinks is going on in the red states of Texas and Kansas, as their limited-government approaches make them “States of Cruelty.” The text box: “Some ugly politics is local.”
Krugman also spouted that it’s cruel to women to be pro-life, no matter how many baby girls might be saved, because he has made an unsubstantiated link between deaths of pregnant women in Texas and defunding Planned Parenthood abortion clinics.
Something terrible has happened to pregnant women in Texas: their mortality rate has doubled in recent years, and is now comparable to rates in places like Russia or Ukraine. Although researchers into this disaster are careful to say that it can’t be attributed to any one cause, the death surge does coincide with the state’s defunding of Planned Parenthood, which led to the closing of many clinics. And all of this should be seen against the general background of Texas policy, which is extremely hostile toward anything that helps low-income residents.
There’s an important civics lesson here. While many people are focused on national politics, with reason -- one sociopath in the White House can ruin your whole day -- many crucial decisions are taken at the state and local levels. If the people we elect to these offices are irresponsible, cruel, or both, they can do a lot of damage.
Next, a defense of flailing Obama-care.
....States with consistently conservative governments generally offered benefits to as few people as the law allowed, sometimes only to adults with children in truly dire poverty. States with more liberal governments extended benefits much more widely. These policy differences were one main reason for a huge divergence in the percentage of the population without insurance, with Texas consistently coming in first in that dismal ranking.
Meanwhile, liberal California earned high marks:
Needless to say, nothing like this has happened in red states. And while the number of uninsured has declined even in these states, thanks to the federal exchanges, the gap between red and blue states has widened.
But why are states like Texas so dead-set against helping the unfortunate, even if the feds are willing to pick up the tab?
He provided a total of one sentence to the inconvenient fact that “Texas has long led the nation in employment growth.” Then he sniffed, “But there are other reasons for that growth, especially energy and cheap housing.”
Krugman sees no principled ideological opposition to his high-spending, high-debt philosophy. Every case for limited government or being pro-life is rooted in race and misogyny. Failure to expand a failing government program like Obamacare? Must be cruel racism.
So the economic case for being cruel to the unfortunate has lost whatever slight credibility it may once have had. Yet the cruelty goes on. Why?
A large part of the answer, surely, is the usual one: It’s about race. Medicaid expansion disproportionately benefits nonwhite Americans; so does spending on public health more generally. And opposition to these programs is concentrated in states where voters in local elections don’t like the idea of helping neighbors who don’t look like them.
In the specific case of Planned Parenthood, this usual answer is overlaid with other, equally nasty issues, including -- or so I’d say -- a substantial infusion of misogyny.
Pro-lifers make the case that Planned Parenthood has a racist legacy, given its founding in the racial eugenics movement.
Krugman equated American “generosity” (which is true) with spending other people’s tax money: “...Most Americans are, I believe, far more generous than the politicians leading many of our states. The problem is that too many of us don’t vote in state and local elections, or realize how much cruelty is being carried out in our name.”
