| Wallsten worth a close look Karl
Scott's a friend and proving one of the best economists in D.C. The paper you reported from was 2007 and he would now find it weak. He comes from the "market" set and that paper retweeted a lot of uninteresting stuff. He always phrased things in D.C. lingo and as you made clear are mistaken when interpreted as ordinary English. His main theme as presented - we do not have severe broadband problems - is untrue and badly presented. His meaning in DCspeak, I believe, was that the U.S. ranking in penetration didn't prove we were far behind the large Europeans, which is actually true. We've fallen from far ahead of almost everyone to seriously behind the best and among the middle of the pack of large Western countries. I think that demonstrates pretty bad policy; Scott's take then was it wasn't enough of an emergency for the government to step in. Both of us know that for some - extreme rural areas, most of the poor - things are unacceptable.
Since then, I've been at several events with him and exchanged ideas. He spent more effort looking for the facts on this than any other pundit in D.C. By 2009 at the Columbia event, his analysis - specifically including Connect Kentucky, was very different.
Few of us learn and so repeat our mistakes. Scott has gone far beyond his thoughts then. Dave Burstein |
