By Arthur Alpert

Shhhhh.

We should talk abut Winthrop Quigley’s  “Money & Medicine”column in the Albuquerque Journal’s Business Outlook Monday, June 14, page 4. (Bonus: It’s a link you can read even if you don’t subscribe to the Journal).

But let’s be quiet, very quiet. We wouldn’t want to get him in trouble with management.
It’s subversive stuff, you see, in content and approach.

Quigley writes that the subject of  “public budget deficits” is complicated and rues the “simplistic, bombastic diatribes” that are “the order of the day.”

Immediately I flashed on simplistic Journal editorials, Op Ed columns and AP Washington “news” stories on the subject. But Quigley must have been aiming elsewhere.

Still, I wish he’d be more careful.

Sometimes, Quigley seems foolhardy. “Taxation,” he continues, “is the part of the solution no one wants to talk about.”

Which isn’t to say he’s perfect; though a glowing star in the Journal’s dark night of the intellect, Quigley doesn’t always examine assumptions or plumb depths.

Thus, he ends his deficit column by plugging an “America Speaks” national town hall meeting on fiscal matters at the Albuquerque Convention Center June 26. He lists the “America Speaks” sponsors and think tanks without mentioning they’re Establishment.

Nor does he note that singling out deficits is itself a political statement. That it’s the “haves” talking. That it’s superficial, too.

Quigley might not agree, but no matter – his business IQ, fairness and tolerance for complexity make him a valuable journalist, anyway. So here’s wishing that he remembers where he works.

And walks softly.

Shhhhh.