I'll post Krugman's most rescent column here with two risks. First, you may require a subscription to the New York Times online to access the article, I'm not sure. Secondly, I know there will be some outrage exhibited in replies. But the reason I've decided to post it here is because Krugman states pretty much the way I feel. I'm not happy about reaching the conclusions I have; I wish it were different. But what Krugman says, in case you can't actually read the article, can be paraphrased in just a few sentences...

• There are too many in Washington who ignore the economic facts of life and still criticize any and all government programs by mounting arguments no more detailed or thoughtful than it must be bad, it's run by the government.
• That sort of argument was what was cited by President Reagan.
• Krugman describes the Reagan economic philosophy as a "zombie doctrine". It's been repeatedly proven that it hasn't worked, yet it keeps on coming, even though dead.
• Krugman presents the following evidence of the failure of the Reagan doctrine...While the income of the wealthiest Americans rose seven-fold since the Reagan years, the median income of middle-class families has risen only one-third of that amount. And since the two George Bush terms, the middle and lower class families have experienced no income growth at all.
• He explains the financial disaster of the last two years as the result of politicians committed to the Reagan ideology dismantling all the financial regulations that protected the banking system since the 1930's, maintaining that the free markets could take care of themselves.
• Explaining the current financial crisis Krugman quotes FDR as saying in 1937, ”We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals...we know now that it is also bad economics.”
• He is critical of those now criticizing the "public option" as not presenting any provable, coherent arguments other than "government can't run anything right".
• He asks, rhetorically, "why won't these arguments die when they've been proven so wrong?" He goes on to quote the author Upton Sinclair, "“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary”...or, Krugman adds, his campaign contributions...“depend upon his not understanding it.”
• He finishes the article with a statement of hope that a crucial opportunity is not missed because of the inability of our elected officials to do the right thing.

Hopefully, you'll be able to read the article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/op...=1&ref=opinion

Of course, you all know that Paul Krugman is not a fly-by-night columnist. He is the winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics. He is an admitted liberal in his economics as well as his writing.

Please consider this post as an effort on my part to get people to consider different points-of-view before reaching political conclusions. By posting this, I'm not trying to convince anyone to agree with the conclusions I've reached. Everyone has a right to form their own opinions. I'm just hopeful that people will consider a lot of the information that's available before either locking in on or maintaining a particular political opinion. Times and circumstances change and we should be prepared to do the same.