February 15, 2009 3:17PM 

# The Blogosphere Has Corrected the Record 

By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) 

---

<a class="js-popover-trigger cursor-pointer popover-trigger" data-bs-placement="bottom" data-bs-trigger="click" id="popover-trigger"> 

SHARE 

</a> 

Will Paul Krugman?

At a [Heritage event](http://blog.heritage.org/2009/02/10/why-the-stimulus-wont-work-thugs-ransanking-my-house/), Arnold Kling said:

> Back in September when they were talking about taking $700 billion dollars to unclog the financial system I wanted to yank Henry Paulson out of the TV screen and say to him: “Keep your hands off my daughter’s future.” But he got away with it. For me it felt like sitting there watching my home being ransacked by a gang of thugs. And now we’ve got a new gang of thugs and they are doing the same thing.

[Careless blogging](http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWNiNWZiZGI5OWJiOWI0YjE2YWQwNWZlNmIxOTEyMmE=) and [hyper-ideology](http://www.vanityfair.com/online/wolcott/2009/02/a-few-days-ago-notice.html) twisted that into a knock on President Obama and imputed racism to Kling. Krugman incorporated it all [into a column](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/opinion/13krugman.html) decrying the “ugliness of the political debate” over Obama’s stimulus.

Well, Paulson’s TARP and Obama’s stimulus are ugly, and so evidently is the cacophony in the echo chamber where Krugman gets his information. But not Kling.

##### Related Tags 

[Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) 

[![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) 
This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).