I'm pretty sure that an intended part of the William Proxmire joke was that Proxmire had essentially no campaign fund at all.

From his 2005 Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel obit: "he was re-elected in landslides in 1976 and 1982 despite refusing contributions. He spent less than $180 a race, mostly on postage to return donations."

-http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=377745

(In 1978, no doubt, *everyone* still remembered this.)

My mistake, from spending too much time in parts of the blogosphere, where the term "shrill" has been used ironically for some time now to refer to people like Krugman, who have turned out to be completely right in their analysis, but were originally labeled as "shrill" by the right wing.

Brad DeLong is the leader of this ironic reversal brigade. I should have provided a link.

I apologize for jumping on my disagreement with one adjective Mr. Leonard chose. I totally agree with his main point, satire of economics is far too rare and is a subject rich in possibility. Thank you for bringing the Theory of Interstellar Trade to my attention.

And is there any reason to suspect that Krugman is being hacked? That the piece was actually written by someone else?

gimme an F'in break! This just goes to prove the point that Greenwald made a few days ago in his "The Religion of Centrism and Balance"== that anyone who tells the truth about our economic and political situation is labeled "divisive" and "angry" and "unserious" by the yammering class. I don't think Leonard is a yammerer, but in this case, he's acting like it.

...that doesn't mean he's not right, though.

Really? What adjectives do you have left over for people who really are shrill? Dowd would be, what, bat-shit-insane? What does that leave Coulter?

I think you may want to rethink your use of hyperbole.

I'm not sure what that makes Maureen Dowd--the Messiah of the Shrill? And Frank Rich is kind of off his rocker too.

Look, at least Krugman tries to make his point based on analysis of policies and, as far as I recall, doesn't focus on Naomi Wolf, earth tones, making up slanders like the Gore-Love Story slander, and the numerous other crimes against our discourse that the "liberal" columnists at the NYT engage in.

Oh, I almost forgot Gail "Candidates talking about issues are boring" Collins.

Please, give the man a break--he works with lunatics.

A copy and paste error led to the wrong link for interstellar trade.

http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf

And I had forgotten (or never knew) about Proxmire's opposition to NASA! Which of course makes the joke even better.

Andrew,

I think that you miss an important aspect of the William Proxmire reference. Proxmire (who I otherwise admired) was generally believed to be against NASA in general. Larry Niven has a fun story that plays on that idea - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Return_of_William_Proxmire .

I think that the links gots muddled. The "Theory of Interstellar Trade" paper itslef seems to be at http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf .