A NUGGET OF STUPIDITY SO EGREGIOUS

Iowahawk writes, "Please pardon this brief departure from my normal folderol, but every so often a member of the chattering class issues a nugget of stupidity so egregious that no amount of mockery will suffice. Particularly when the issuer of said stupidity holds a Nobel Prize."; and then goes on to effectively and scientifically trash the intellectual moron and Nobel Prize winner, Paul Krugman, for his use of make-believe data to make a rather deceitful point:

Case in point: Paul Krugman. The Times' staff economics blowhard recently typed, re the state of education in Texas:

And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.

Similarly, The Economist passes on what appears to be the cut-'n'-paste lefty factoid du jour:

Only 5 states do not have collective bargaining for educators and have deemed it illegal. Those states and their ranking on ACT/SAT scores are as follows:

South Carolina – 50th
North Carolina – 49th
Georgia – 48th
Texas – 47th
Virginia – 44th

If you are wondering, Wisconsin, with its collective bargaining for teachers, is ranked 2nd in the country.

The point being, I suppose, is that unionized teachers stand as a thin chalk-stained line keeping Wisconsin from descending into the dystopian non-union educational hellscape of Texas. Interesting, if it wasn't complete bullshit.

Read the entire take-down, which is a priceless public service. In fact, as it turns out looking at real data, he summarizes thusly:

White and Hispanic Texas students indeed seem to dropout at a higher rate than their counterparts in Wisconsin, although in both cases (a) the difference is not statistically significant; and (b) in both cases, both states are significantly below the national average. Among black high school students, Texans have significantly lower dropout rates than their national cohort and Wisconsinites. Black high school students in Wisconsin have significantly higher dropout rates than national.

Your first question is probably, "why do the union teachers in Wisconsin hate black students?" Sorry, can't help you there, I'm stumped too.

Well, complete and utter bullshit is the hallmark of most of Professor Krugman's writings (and I have noted this before multiple times on my blog); but here is an astonishing take on the Krugman post that will leave you absolutely breathless with regard to the depth of idiocy, hatred and unbelievable psychological delusion that are evident to the most casual reader:

And what now when the Texas Miracle turned out to be a mirage and the state is suffering from serious budget problems? Education spending will be cut back.

I don't really need to tell anyone smart enough to read my blog that this is like the farmers eating the seed corn. There will be little to plant next year, which in terms of education means that the next generations will have few skills, will not be able to handle complex work tasks and will, in general, suffer from lower earnings and standards of living.

The conservatives sometimes buy the argument that we should spend some public funds to educate the children so that corporations in the future will have a better labor force. But we shouldn't stop at that pecuniary level. An educated society is a much nicer society for all of us to live in. An educated society means that an old conservative will be taken care of by skilled nurses and doctors, for example. An educated society has fewer desperate people, less poverty and less crime, all nice things for an elderly conservative wanting to rock on that front porch watching the sun set.

But mostly conservatives see children as the punishment their parents deserve for having dared to have sex. Nobody else should pay for them, they should be educated at home by their mothers and somehow a miracle is required that all this would provide the kind of educated society the conservatives would ultimately want. Without them having to pay anything. A Texas Miracle of sorts.

"Smart enough to read my blog"??? What kind of smarts do you need, honey? A kindergarden education, perhaps? Or, maybe all that's required is one of those trendy "adolescent" worldviews I wrote about recently?

I felt the urge to vigorously wash my eyes out with bactericidal soap after reading just those few imbecilic and hateful paragraphs. If this vitriolic rant is typical of the "superior intellect" leftists enjoy patting themselves on the back about, then it's no surprise their wondrous economic policies somehow just never work out in the real world.

Just imagine the amount of denial, projection and outright psychotic delusion that it takes to write something like that.

On the whole, Krugman is refreshingly and uncomplicatedly stupid by comparison.