Washington Post

Memo From Austerity Land To Teachers: Caring No Longer Counts

Jeff Bryant — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:30:11 -0500

Although it's a bit early to know for sure, let's hope that 2012 is the year that the economic policies known as "austerity" finally crashed and burned. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is certainly ready to bid adieu to austerity, writing in The New York Times this week that deep spending cuts leveled by state and local governments have proven to be "a major drag on the overall economy" and most probably have erected an "unnecessary" detour in "the road to self-sustaining growth."

Nowhere have the ravages of austerity policies been more apparent and more ruinous than in public education, where deep budget cuts to schools have taken spending back to 2008 levels or earlier. What we've witnessed over the past two years is the biggest cut to education since the Great Depression, and it has had catastrophic and long-lasting effects on a generation of kids -- beginning with the very youngest.

Austerity Is Eviscerating Early Childhood Education

A recent article in the Huffington Post recounted that, due to state budget cuts and roll-backs to early childhood programs, "roughly a quarter of the nation's 4-year-olds and more than half of 3-year-olds attend no preschool, either public or private."

Unbelievably, only three states currently offer prekindergarten to all 4-year-olds, even though "kids from low-income families who start kindergarten without first attending a quality education program enter school an estimated 18 months behind their peers. Many never catch up, and research shows they are more likely to need special education services and to drop out."

Simultaneous to this article's warning bell, the medical journal Pediatrics reported the results of a new study showing that "lack of adult support" in a child's early years results in a build up of "toxic stress" that has life-long negative ramifications, including harmful effects to "learning capacities, adaptive behaviors, lifelong physical and mental health, and adult productivity.”

Writing at the Core Knowledge blog, Robert Pondisco commented that "the report should have a profound impact on educators and education policymakers because we now know that interventions in children's lives -- especially those who grow up in the difficult circumstances associated with poverty, homelessness, crime, malnutrition, and abusive households -- "must start from Day One. Not Day One of school, Day One of life. Kindergarten is too late."

The federal government's attempt to alleviate some of the harm being done to the youngest Americans falls way short of what's needed. The Obama administration's recent debut of a $500 million Race to the Top grant competition for early childhood education has been widely dismissed as being "too little, too late" and being too reliant on reviving assessments of four-year-olds that were tried and abandoned by the Bush administration.

So there's little doubt that the dreadful results of economic austerity have been equal to if not worse to education than they've been to the economy. But as the failure of economic austerity becomes a more widespread realization (hopefully) in the media, far less attention is being paid to another form of austerity that is at least as pernicious and potentially far more poisoning.

Austerity of the Soul

This other austerity -- call it "austerity of the soul" -- is most obvious when you look at how the people on the frontlines of public education -- classroom teachers -- are being treated. By now, for instance, anyone who is paying attention has heard about classroom teachers in the Chester-Upland, Pennsylvania school district who agreed to work without pay while their school budgets were being savaged by state officials and their resources and students were bled away to competitive charter schools.

One of the teachers, writing at Valerie Strauss's blog at the Washington Post explains what should trouble everyone who cares about the welfare of children:

My heart bleeds for these kids. Many of these students have seen so much tragedy, loss, and rejection in 16 years than most will see in a lifetime. Now, when faced with the possibility of their schools closing they are hit yet again. In discussions between students regarding the possibility of being sent to other districts, a common response from students is, "They won’t do that; nobody wants us." Heartbreaking.

These teachers refused to abandon the kids because they cared, unlike the hapless Italian cruise ship captain who recently abandoned ship before his passengers had fled to safety. So what do they get in return for their sacrifice?

The governor's office has drafted a legislative proposal that calls for a state takeover of the distressed district. And if this state takeover follows the course of others in Pennsylvania, this will put a "school reform commission-type" oversight board in place which would likely cancel the teachers' contracts and turn all the district's schools into charters.

In other words, these teachers, despite their sacrifice, are more apt to get fired.

It's important, by the way, to remember that the spending cuts that slammed Chester-Upland and other school districts like it were deliberately aimed at those schools. State lawmakers purposefully designed the budget cuts to draw the most money away from the poorest districts. And regardless of the rationale used justify such an act, this has been nothing but a despicable attack on people who are least capable of fighting back.

"People like you destroy morale"

Pennsylvania isn't the only place where teachers are being treated badly. In Dallas, Texas classroom teachers are being forced to work longer days, with no extra pay, simply because local school officials, regardless of any objective evidence, decided that the district wasn't getting its money's worth from teachers.

Texas is, of course, a "right to work" state that prohibits unions from organizing on a mass scale to negotiate fair wages. But when one of the school officials made the comment that he didn't feel the district was getting its "eight hours" worth from teachers, it prompted one teacher to speak out in an email: (emphasis added)

It is sad that individuals like you make this noble profession of teaching America’s future leaders more and more miserable each day. We already give more of our daily selves to the students and community than an average worker, including lawyers. I have been on the same salary step for 4 years, due to the fact that the district shifts it each time I am due for that coveted next step. I have received no substantial raise in 4 years. I am the father of 6 children and am the only income for my family. I am struggling to pay bills and just make it through life. We get dumped on by administration each day, cursed out by students, yelled at by parents, receive very little respect from the community, work long hours, and receive meager pay. But that’s okay. I see, on the other hand, that according to the Dallas CAD you have several nice properties in your name at [address deleted] (value $155,770), [address deleted] (value $187,310), and [address deleted] (value $225,330). I, on the other hand, am struggling to pay bills and just make it through life. I used to think I was doing something good for society. People like you destroy morale, beat us down into the ground, and make us wish we had been greedy enough to go into the business world as yourself.

For speaking his mind, the teacher, Joseph Drake, was summarily placed on leave. And although he has since been reinstated, the message is clear that how teachers feel about the way they're being treated matters little to local politicians.

The Great Big Disconnect

Politicians at all levels love to talk in glittering generalities about how "valuable" good teachers are and how much they "matter." In his recent Sate of the Union address, President Obama, with one of the Chester-Upland teachers sitting practically within arm's length of his wife, called for an end to teacher "bashing" and exhorted them to "teach with creativity and passion" and "stop teaching to the test."

All this sounds well and good -- except it is completely disconnected to what is happening on the ground.

As Diane Ravitch recently wrote in her regular blog at Education Week, the President's policies actually promote "teaching to the test" and do more to advance "teacher bashing" than quell it.

The truth is that if we want teaching with "creativity and passion," we want to reinforce in teachers that act of caring. But teachers everywhere are being told that caring -- whether it's caring about the welfare of students or caring about work conditions -- is no longer something that counts.

This discrepancy of what our political leaders profess and the deliberate actions they take produces an austerity of the soul that is at least as crippling to education as economic austerity has been. The reality is that in addition to closing its pocketbooks, America its hardening its heart to children and the people who care for and educate them.

As a Texas school superintendent, John Kuhn, recently wrote at the site of edu-blogger Anthony Cody,

"Accountability is only for the teachers in our modern republic. There is no visible or sustained pressure to address school funding, no pressure to address the inequity of resources or the unequal opportunity to learn that, while many are content to pretend it doesn't exist, nonetheless devastates kids . . . . We [teachers] are supposed to accept poverty as "part of the deal." There will be no hue and cry in opposition to inequality. And to that I can only say, "Why?"

Why indeed!

As John Dickerson recently observed at Slate.com, we're likely heading into a Presidential election between two candidates -- Barak Obama and Mitt Romney -- who portray all the characteristics of "aloof men trading charges about who is more out of touch." This stands in stark contrast to what's needed for the times.

Writing at, coincidentally, In These Times, Thomas Franks notes that in the destructive wake of economic austerity what's needed is an "idealism in the grand sense" that can rise above "our fallen economic world" and point the way to a better future.

If Obama can heed the times and break through with an idealistic message extolling the value of caring and the need to extinguish our current austerity of the soul, it could make all the difference.

Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/jeffbcdm

Don't Blink. The DC Machine Is Killing Medicare Right Before Our Eyes

Richard Eskow — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 18:05:42 -0500

This last week we've seen how Washington's elites are able to suppress popular opinion, work against the public interest, and wrap it all up with a bow so that it looks like 'democracy in action.' It's not. What we're seeing isn't democracy, and it isn't a free press either. It's merely another cynical ploy to rob Americans of government programs they both need and want.

The latest assault is on Medicare. The "Ryan/Wyden plan" is a perfect case study in the cynical workings of an antidemocratic machine - a machine whose cogs are lazy journalists, whose gears are selfish politicians, and whose levers are pulled by the wealthy and powerful.

I held my fire on this for a few days, to see if more details would emerge on the proposal from Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Paul Ryan, who were initially (and deliberately vague) on its specifics. That turned it into Rorschach test for observers, and where the Washington Post sees a butterfly I usually see a vampire bat.

But Malcolm Gladwell would be pleased: It turns out that the first 'blink' impression of Ryan/Wyden is the right one. It's a Medicare-killing publicity stunt that undermines the financial security of the 99%. And if you happen to be reading this in the Nation's Capital, please note: The 'lefty' position on Medicare is supported by most Republicans.

Let's not kid ourselves. Unless we act quickly and aggressively, the Machine will succeed in killing Medicare.

The Program

We've seen this software before. It's been run against Social Security, jobs, and other government services that are both popular and effective. Here's how it works:

Concept: An intellectually thin but highly-funded network of corporate-funded and billionaire-backed "think" tanks draft a proposal that would eviscerate a popular government program.
Rollout: Congressional Republicans act in lockstep to implement the think tank's policy by gutting something that's typically supported in overwhelming numbers by Democrats and independents - and which is often backed most registered Republican voters, too.
Blowback: The backlash from aggrieved citizens comes from all across the political spectrum, but is spun by compliant media figures as a reflexive hostility to "new ideas" from "ideologues" and "extremists" on the left.
Sellout: A cynical, self-serving Democrat sees an opportunity to curry favor with billionaires, corporations, and media outlets by endorsing the radical moves the Republicans have proposed.
Spin: The media uses that Democrat's endorsement as proof that the corporate position is actually that of "responsible" and "moderate" politicians in both parties.

The software has a political side effect, too: The distinction between Republicans and Democrats is blurred a little more, depriving Democrats of a winnable election issue.

Think of these five steps as a computer program you can run in almost any situation. The only variables are the program that is to be killed, the Democrat that'll do the dirty work, and which media outlet will deliver the machine's message this time. Plug in those three items and the program pretty much runs itself - or, as they used to say in the tech world, it "executes."

The Execution

This time around the government program is Medicare, the Democratic hack who's willing to undermine it for selfish reasons is Ron Wyden, and the media outlet is (who else?) the Washington Post. Here's how the five steps played out this time around:

Concept: Rightists in think tanks like the Heritage Foundation designed a system that dismantles Medicare, replacing it with vouchers that would provide less and less medical coverage with each passing year. The dovetails nicely with the rightwing Peterson Foundation's twenty-year jihad against so-called "entitlements," Social Security and Medicare, which have very little fiscal relationship to one another.
Rollout: Congressional Republicans dutifully encoded this radical scheme into a proposal called the "Ryan Plan," after Rep. Paul Ryan, who was chosen to present this idea as if it were his own. Their voted nearly unanimously for Ryan's plan, placing their party in an extremely vulnerable position with voters (while ingratiating it to many high-dollar corporate and individual campaign donors).
Blowback: The Machine media tried to claim it was not a plan to end Medicare, a radical reality inversion which had an hallucinatory effect on your correspondent. But no Orwellian inversion could conceal this plan's true nature or protect Republicans in Congress from a public backlash. That's why so many Republican representatives ran into a hailstorm during the next recess.
Sellout: Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon dutifully stepped up to play the 'Democratic hack' role that's been played by so many of his colleagues, co-authoring a modified 'Ryan/Wyden plan' that was nothing more than a diluted version of Ryan's radicalism.
Spin: And now - with a predictability that should be astonishing, but isn't - the Washington Post is celebrating Ryan as a shining example of true bipartisanship in action.

Make no mistake about it: This program would have a devastating effect on Medicare. (See here,, here, and for a more general overview of "premium support" programs, here.)

How would we recognize real bipartisanship? It's what you'd see if a few Republicans heeded the wishes of their own voters by crossing the aisle to oppose the Ryan plan, sincepolls show that 56% of registered Republicans are against a voucher system. But that ain't gonna happen. And if a single Republican on the Hill strays from corporatist/Republican orthodoxy, you can be they won't be the subject of a laudatory editorial in the Washington Post.

What's more, if voters are told that plans like Ryan/Wyden won't cover all the costs currently covered by Medicare, overall opposition to the idea rises to 84%. But who's going to tell them that - the Post?

Don't hold your breath.

Party Line

Call it the "Uni-Party," the alignment of corporate-funded politicians from both parties who serve a narrow elite. Corporate Washington's company paper is the Post, and its editors can usually be counted upon to toe its party line. Like the five-part plan, the Uni-Party's editorials follow a strictly preprogrammed algorithm.

It starts with Orwellian wordplay, which the Post happily provides in the title of its editorial: "Healing Medicare." (Ryan/Wyden would heal Medicare, I suppose - the same way cutting my head off would cure this headache.)

"In the maelstrom of dysfunction and partisanship better known as the 112th Congress," it begins - and let me stop right there for a second. Since when is partisanship a bad thing. One party advocates a policy, another opposes it, and voters choose. The Uni-Party hates that, so it stigmatizes it by calling it names. I call it "democracy."

"it is always surprising and gratifying when lawmakers from opposing parties manage to work together. That is particularly true when their collaboration involves an issue as politically charged and substantively complex as Medicare ..."

It's very important that cynicism be rewarded with praise and good press, as well as lavish campaign donations. Politicians can't serve the Machine if they can't get reelected, after all. The editors continue:

"Some will read the last sentence and chuckle knowingly about its seeming naivete."

Not at all. The editors aren't naive at all. They just think we are.

The rest of the proposal comes straight out of the software: "Jump-starting the conversation" is a favorite phrase, because it's code for "introducing radical conservatism into the debate." I doubt they'd praise anyone for suggesting, oh, I don't know, the confiscation of homes and property of rich bankers. Ryan/Wyden is at least that radical, but the Post probably wouldn't praise a revolutionary socialist for "jump-starting a conversation" about the economy, would it? Would they call it a "serious proposal"?

The editorial ends by slamming the White House for "stomping" on Ryan/Wyden, an act that resembles the killing of an insect, and which most Republican voters are likely to applaud. We can only add that if stomping doesn't work, the Administration can always try hitting it with a rolled-up newspaper. The Post will do nicely.

Last Rites

Some people are giving this radical scheme cover by saying we'll still have access to public-sector Medicare, as well as private plans. But that's how Medicare works today. The big difference is that, under Ryan/Widen, total expenditures would be sharply capped without any way of controlling runaway medical costs. So those costs would be shifted to seniors more and more with each passing year.

Others are pointing out that the public/private competition would resemble the "public option" under Medicare. But why is an "option" only acceptable when it undermines a public system? As a former health insurance exec myself, I know how easy it would be to game and undermine this kind of program under a fixed budget and without clearly defined benefits.

What happens next is critically important. As Nate Silver noted, the public's opinion on this topic is highly malleable. Misinformation from media outlets like the Post can affect the fate of Medicare, and the failure of Democrats to forcefully repudiate Wyden will further weaken its chances

Things aren't looking good. By presenting a united front, which they rarely do anymore, Democrats have been able to get their message across about Medicare and the Ryan Plan. But the Machine is always looking for new recruits, and it always seems to find willing Democrats. Conrad on health care, Durbin on Social Security, Wyden on Medicare ... it doesn't take more than one or two to cloud the issue and undermine a vital and popular program.

No wonder most Americans are disgusted with this Congress and don't believe it will act effectively to protect their interests. The dissatisfaction is widespread among Republicans and Democrats and is most pronounced among independents, 57% of whom voted for Democrats last time around.

In the long run Medicare will need saving - from the devastating impact of for-profit medicine on our health economy (and on our health). That will take aggressive cost control measures. Those measures could include new provider reimbursement plans, along with a highly robust public option that restricts private-sector gamesmanship. But first Medicare has to be protected from crazy schemes and stealth attacks like the Ryan/Widen plan.

If politicians and the public don't strike back hard against scams like "Wyden/Ryan," make no mistake about it: Medicare will die, and the Machine will begin locking onto its next target.

Fact Sheet: Inaccuracies in Washington Post's Halloween Social Security Article

Richard Eskow — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 17:37:56 -0400

A Huffington Post commenter responding to my recent piece on the Washington Post's recent Social Security article by saying that I "claimed 'inaccuracies, falsehoods, and downright lies' but delivered problems of tone, and emphasis."

Then, and without irony, the commenter links to a 'fact sheet' on Social Security from - the Washington Post!

Here's a fact sheet on those "inaccuracies, falsehoods, and downright lies"- or at least, as many as I could squeeze in here:
___________________________________________________

"Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury."

False. The Treasury owes the Social Security $2.6 trillion.

"This year, it will add a projected $46 billion to the nation's budget problems ..."

False. It is drawing on its own funds.

"Replacing cash lost to a one-year payroll tax holiday will require another $105 billion."

False. See Dean Baker for more.

"Social Security is hardly the biggest drain on the budget."

False. It does not drain the budget at all.

"... Modest change to Social Security ... "

False. It's a significant change.

And those are only from the lines I directly quoted. Here are some other falsehoods from the piece:

"The $2.6 trillion Social Security trust fund will provide little relief."

Are you kidding? It provides $2.6 trillion in relief!

"The government has borrowed every cent and now must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors to keep benefit checks flowing."

False, false, and false. The government has borrowed from Social Security's contributors - you and me - to fund its tax cuts for the wealthy and two wars. Since when is repaying a creditor - us - considered spending?

And that comment about benefit checks is a particularly egregious lie. With no changes to the program whatsoever, it will still be able to pay its benefits in full until sometime in the 2030's, after which it will still be able to pay 75% of its benefits - without taking a single penny from other sources.

"Many Democrats have largely chosen to ignore the shortfall, insisting the program is flush ..."

False. All the Democrats and independents defending Social Security acknowledge the long-term shortfall. Many, like Bernie Sanders, advocating making up the difference by lifting the payroll tax cap in some fashion and applying it to higher earners. (That's the approach recommended by Reagan's former actuary.)

"Such statements (like Harry Reid's, that Social Security doesn't contribute to the deficit) have not been true since at least 2009, when the cost of monthly checks regularly began to exceed payroll tax collections."

False. Social Security is drawing on its own funds and is not contributing to the deficit.

"The Bowles-Simpson plan would have righted the system's finances with a combination of payroll tax increases and reductions in scheduled benefits, mainly years down the road. It would have hit upper-income workers ..."

False. Their overall plan, heavily skewed toward the right, included tax cuts for the wealthy. And it raised payroll taxes so slowly that it would have taken fifty years to have those taxes apply to 90% in income, as they did decades ago.

Obama "endorsed the panel's proposal to tie future benefits to a less-generous inflation index."

Less generous? The current index understates the real increases in living costs for people on Social Security. It isn't "less generous"- it's a benefit cut.

"Retirement benefits were available at 65, at a time when life expectancy was significantly lower than today."

False - and disproven repeatedly. The shorter lifespans in Roosevelt's day were primarily due to infant and childhood mortality. The life expectancy for working adults is only a few years longer than it was then.

This should get readers started on the topic. They can read Baker's piece for more.

Boo! W. Post Dresses Up Like a Newspaper To Tell a Social Security Ghost Story

Richard Eskow — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 13:44:08 -0400

What do they call the night before Halloween? Oh, yeah. Hell night. That makes tonight just right for grabbing a fistful of mashmallows and candy corn before sitting down to read this article.

It'll make your blood run cold, and afterwards you'll probably agree: It's time to stop letting this propaganda outlet keep dressing up as a newspaper.

A History of Mendacity

The paper's own media critic, Howard Kurtz (no liberal himself), reported fairly extensively on the paper's bias back in 2004.

And the paper's former ombudsman, Michael Getler, wrote that the Post " displayed a pattern of missing or downplaying events that unfolded in public-events that might have played a role in public opinion during the run-up to the war." Getler cited a long list of cases where the paper prominently featured inaccurate assessments of the Iraq situation, ignored prominent critics of the prevailing pro-war sentiment, and buried evidence of the hawks' misstatements in its back pages.

Kurtz reported that the paper's Executive Editor, Leonard Downie Jr., later displayed remorse and reflection: "(W)e were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea ... We didn't pay enough attention to the minority."

They expressed remorse. But they didn't change.

Judy Lives

Today the Post seems determined to play the same vital role in destroying our elder safety net that it played in leading us into war.

It's easy to imagine that journalists there are in a tough spot. But Judith Miller's fate should be a cautionary story for anyone who writes a story like this one. After Miller's "Curveball" stories played a key role in the drive for war in Iraq, and were then discredited, she went from Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist to blogger (at last report) for the right-wing "Newsmax" site.

One imagines that, even worse than the ignominy, is the guilt (or karma, or whatever you want to call it) that flows from causing all that needless suffering.

Curveball Comes Home

This time it's elderly and disabled Americans who will suffer the consequences. How can a 2,363 word piece in on Social Security be so densely packed with inaccuracies, falsehoods, and downright lies?

It almost takes a cryptographer to unpack the deceptions contain in an article published Saturday with the headline, "The debt fallout: How Social Security went 'cash negative' earlier than expected."

The piece's author sits us down by the campfire, holds the flashlight up to her chin, and spins a yarn filled with quotes from right-wing ideologues from both parties. Most of her "sources" have a long history of trying to gut Social Security, often under the employ of billionaire former Nixon Cabinet member Pete Peterson (whose own organization, Fiscal Times, provides financial journalism services for thePost. Coincidence? You decide.)

How many quotes are included from the organizations and groups defending Social Security? None.

How many quotes from economists like Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Dean Baker, who have a proven record of accuracy of domestic economic matters? None.

How many quotes from truly nonpartisan observers like Harry C. Ballantyne, the Chief Actuary for Medicare and Social Security appointed by Ronald Reagan who coauthored a report which put the lie to many of these claims? None.

A director of the AARP is quoted, but only so that he can be characterized as the spokesperson for an 'interest group.' conducting a "public relations campaign."

Reporting like this makes Judy Miller look like John Peter Zenger.

Close-Captioned For the Economically and Ideologically Non-Impaired

If we had the space we'd deconstruct the entire piece. Instead we'll use a selected sample, beginning with the first line:

" Last year, as a debate over the runaway national debt gathered steam in Washington, Social Security passed a treacherous milestone. It went "cash negative."

Holy cow, that's a lot of deception in one sentence. First, the sentence conflates the national debt with Social Security. But Social Security is expressly forbidden by law from contributing to the debt! It must be entirely self-sustaining. So why connect the two in one sentence?

And that "treacherous milestone" isn'tnot treacherous at all. The plan's huge surplus, currently $2.6 trillion, was amassed because planners know that baby boomers would retire someday. That supposedly "treacherous" switch to "cash negative" has been anticipated for decades.

"Now, Social Security is sucking money out of the Treasury. This year, it will add a projected $46 billion to the nation's budget problems, according to projections by system trustees."

No. Social Security is entirely self-funded. This is a falsehood. And note the use of the word "sucking."

"Replacing cash lost to a one-year payroll tax holiday will require another $105 billion."

The President and Congress agreed to use the payroll taxes that fund Social Security as the mechanism for a tax break. That was a bad idea, in my opinion, precisely because it opened the program up to this kind of deception. But it's misleading at best to complain that this is adding to the nation's budget woes.

"Lawmakers in both parties are ducking the issue, wary of agitating older voters and their advocates in Washington, who have long targeted politicians who try to tamper with federal retirement benefits."

The word "ducking" is straight out of the Pete Peterson playbook. If you're not willing to back unnecessary cuts to Social Security to please billionaire political patrons like Peterson, you're somehow a cowardly politician.

Another Peterson trick is to ignore disabled recipients of Social Security and focus on the elderly, painting them as demanding, selfish, and cruel for expecting the benefits they'd paid for all their working lives. (Remember Alan Simpson's "greedy geezers" remark?) In Montgomery's case, these aggressive oldsters are "agitated" and have a practice of "targeting politicians" who cross them.

"In his February budget request, Obama ignored the Social Security blueprint put forth by his own bipartisan panel on debt reduction."

Get it? He didn't reject it; he ignored it. Coward.

"Social Security is hardly the biggest drain on the budget."

That's how one makes oneself reasonable, while at the same time reinforcing the lie. Social Security doesn't drain the budget at all.

"Many Democrats have largely chosen to ignore the shortfall ..."

See Obama, above.

"Last week, Reid softened his stand, backing a ... change in the Social Security inflation index ... "

Modest? Dean Baker can clear that one up for you. (He also explains the sleight of hand that's used by throwing Medicare into the equation.)

"Even that modest change to Social Security is drawing fire, however, from a powerful network of organizations representing the elderly, unionized workers and traditional liberals."

The reporter marginalizes groups working to protect Social Security as "traditional liberals," which in DC is like calling them "flat-earthers." Yet polls prove this is not a "traditional liberal" position: 75% of Republicans and 76% of Tea Party members oppose cutting Social Security benefits to balance the budget.

Our Liberal Overlords

And as for that "powerful network of organizations": You mean the one that's so powerful it stopped the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, pushed through the level of stimulus we needed to fix unemployment, broke up the big banks, passed the EFCA to help unions, and resisted destructive budget cuts to programs that range from law enforcement to helping the needy? You mean that network?

Oh, right. It doesn't exist. And why not? Partly because organizations like the Post suppress or distort their views while relentlessly promoting those of their powerful and well-funded opponents, often in the guise of "news" articles like this one.

Behind the Mask

There's more - much more - but you get the drift.

It's time to accept the fact that the Post is no longer a reputable newspaper. It's been criticizing again and again for its slanted and biased reporting and yet it refuses to correct itself. It requires extraordinary credulity to keep assuming this is accidentally sloppy reporting.

What thePost does isn't journalism. It's propaganda dressed up in a newspaper outfit, going door to door to its subscribers and shouting "Trick or Treat!" Problem is, we keep getting the trick instead of the treat.

Happy Halloween.

___________________________________________________________________

UPDATE: Some guy with a beard and a Nobel Prize weighs in on this. He was not quoted in the Post piece. Apparently he lacks the economic gravitas of people like Erskine Bowles, who's on the Board of the bailed-out financial firm Morgan Stanley.

UPDATE II:

A Huffington Post commenter insists that I "claimed 'inaccuracies, falsehoods, and downright lies' but delivered problems of tone, and emphasis." Then, without irony, the commenter links to a 'fact sheet' on Social Security from - the Washington Post!

Here's a fact sheet on those "inaccuracies, falsehoods, and downright lies" - as many as I could squeeze in, anyway.

Back To School: The Vain Search For The Right 'Formula' For Education

Jeff Bryant — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 16:23:06 -0400

Much in the same way that September ushers in a new football season every year regaled by a bombast of armchair quarterbacks analyzing "the game," the month also brings on yet another Back to School Season with a chorus of commentators declaring their prescriptions to "fix our schools." Unfortunately, too often the rhetoric of these two orations sounds an awful lot alike.

For instance, take a recent blog post by edu-journalist Jay Mathews. Writing at the Washington Post, Mathews exhorted his readership to "get serious about fixing our schools" without ever identifying exactly who the "unserious" are in the ongoing conversations about education. Then he suggested what may be one of the most "unserious" education observations of all: that the way to "fix" American public education is to find the right "formula."

First off, it's interesting to note, that formulas for public schools that always seem most in demand, as is true in Mathew's post, are ones that will work for "low-income children," as if somehow schools that seem to work well in better-off communities -- you know, schools that are adequately funded, that are safe and inviting, that have a broad curriculum emphasizing critical thinking with ample opportunities to engage in extra-curricular learning activities -- somehow are inappropriate for the lesser-off in our society.

Second, the sample formulas that are frequently cited by edu-pundits tend to steer around the very things that currently make public education in America today so fraught with complications. Take the examples offered by Mathews for instance.

The first, is a network of high schools in New York that are allowed to be exempt from four of the five New York state tests that students in all other NY public schools are required to take. The second is a prominent chain of charter schools, KIPP, that has never actually run a school district, has a reputation for pushing out students who misbehave or perform poorly academically, and practices a form of instruction that I can't imagine many middle class American parents would like for their children.

Not to pick on Mathews alone, one of the most popular flavors of school reform being peddled this new school year is for schools to spend goo-gobs of money on laptops, software, and Smart Boards in order to create "technology-centric classrooms." Even during a year when state legislators and governors are cutting public school spending back to levels below what was being spent in 2008, many of these very same officials are requiring schools to ramp up their outlays for tech.

Here again, as yesterday's article in the New York Times revealed, there's no silver bullet -- even when it has been digitized:

In a nutshell: schools are spending billions on technology, even as they cut budgets and lay off teachers, with little proof that this approach is improving basic learning.
This conundrum calls into question one of the most significant contemporary educational movements.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not opposed at all to the idea that school systems should borrow interesting ideas and practices from each other to try out in their own situations. But I would submit that the nation's fixation on getting the right "formula" for our public schools is less of a solution than it is part of the problem.

There are reasons why perfect formulas for public schools are so elusive. First, education is a complex endeavor that often defies simple solutions. Just as no two kids are the same, the dynamics of any two classrooms are apt to differ, as will the strengths and character of the teachers, and the environment in different schools. The fact that research identifies some factors that appear to be more critical than others gives us a baseline only -- one worth working from, for sure. But by no means something to roll out across the country.

Second, public schools by their very nature reflect their communities. Scratch any dysfunctional public school, and what you're apt to find is a dysfunctional community. Not that schools don't occasionally rise above their surrounding circumstances. But community inputs matter -- a lot. To argue otherwise is to assert that schools for black children in the Jim Crowe-era South would have somehow gotten better on their own without a strong federal intervention.

So let's start this new school year off with a vow to resist the rhetoric of education's armchair quarterbacks pushing simple solutions to fix public schools. Unless of course, they're actually proposing to literally "fix" schools, by providing funds to repair and renew dilapidated school buildings in our most impoverished school systems.

Instead, what we need from the national media are the voices of teachers, parents, and students who live and learn from their experiences with teaching and learning every day.

Ezra Klein Is Right About Social Security, Wrong About The Threat

Roger Hickey — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 14:30:19 -0400

Ezra Klein has a prominently displayed piece in the Washington Post this morning, entitled The Pro-Social Security case for Social Security reform. He takes to task liberals most committed to Social Security for being unwilling to “reform” Social Security out of fear that reform would turn out to harm the system. He then goes on to outline his version of reform that no liberal would ever quarrel with: no cuts to benefits, dealing with future shortfalls by lifting the cap so all the income of the wealthy is subject to FICA tax – and improving Social Security benefits for low income retirees and spouses.

And then he pooh-poohs the fears of program’s defenders who, he says

“are so concerned that conservatives will slash benefits — now or down the road — that they are afraid to open the pension plan to any reforms at all. I think they’re wrong. This country is better than that. A political party that tries to tell ordinary Americans their retirements are too secure and too long will quickly learn its lesson when the election rolls around. Poll after poll shows the vast unpopularity of cutting Social Security benefits, and Republicans can read those surveys as easily as Democrats can. A politician may as well burn a flag on the Capitol’s lawn.”

My only response is to ask: “What planet have you been living on, Ezra?:

This country is, indeed, better than the huge number of proposals to cut Social Security benefits. Polls show that voters hate the idea of benefit cuts, and increases in the retirement age. But in Washington, these kinds of plans are everywhere. For example:

Yesterday, as Richard Eskow reported, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had to hold a big rally and press conference to vow to protect Social Security from the deficit hawks in both parties who want to cut benefits.

Gene Sperling, who Ezra quotes approvingly for his plan for “add-on” private accounts, is now the national economic czar for Barack Obama. President Obama appointed Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, whose proposals to cut Social Security benefits and raise the retirement age are being cited as the centerpiece of bi-partisan Senate budget negotiations. Neither Sperling nor Obama have denounced those Social Security cuts, and they keep signaling that “everything is on the table.”

Ezra might want to read the countless editorials by his own paper and columns by Samuelson and others, all calling for cuts to Social Security and increases in the retirement age. Washington Post editorials have repeatedly asserted that Social Security contributes to the Federal Deficit, denied that the Social Security trust fund is real, and urged Social Security cuts as the first step to reducing deficits.

Even good liberals, like John Podesta, who in a piece about the Deficit Commission, acknowledge that Social Security contributes not a dime to the federal deficit, but urges cuts anyway because Social Security “reforms could starkly demonstrate to skeptical debt markets that the United States is willing to take on a politically difficult fiscal issue." This is akin to the argument that the real problem is rising health care costs, driving Medicare costs, but another round of health reform is too difficult right now, so cutting Social Security is the easy place to start, even if it has nothing to do with the deficit.

The point is that politicians and policy wonks from both parties all over Washington are calling for drastic cuts to Social Security. Some, like the folks at the conservative Third Way Democratic corporate front group, are making the case that Social Security benefit cuts are the best way for liberals to “save Social Security” even if what remains is a welfare system that abandons the middle class who are now struggling to figure out their own retirement and have only Social Security to count on.

Ezra Klein’s reputation is as a straight shooter who looks at the data and the facts. He courageously changed his position on raising the retirement age when he realized its impact on older working people. His position on Social Security is a good one: no cuts, raise revenues, and improve. But he ignores the strong and deadly serious push that is swirling all around him. The enemies of Social Security want to do all those destructive cuts that Ezra opposes. And they call their destructive policies “reform.” Defenders of Social Security are right to oppose that kind of “reform” coming from conservatives and misguided liberals – and we are going to have to defeat even them, even as we wait for the right time to strengthen the social insurance system that means so much to all Americans.

For similar take on Klein’s column, see Dean Baker today.

Can't Get By On $250K? Try Leaving Your Bubble!

Dave Johnson — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 00:17:12 -0500

The Washington Post ran a story how hard it is for a family making only $250K a year. Just who could a story like this be written by and for? How many ways does this story mislead its readers? If you want to write about hardship write some stories about and for the rest of us!

Over the weekend the Washington Post carried a story labeled as a "Fiscal Times" piece, Where does $250,000 a year go? Summary:

It's the annual income that President Obama and others have repeatedly used to define what it means to be "rich" in America today. ... Just how flush is a family of four with a $250,000 income?

... The bottom line: Living in high-tax areas on either coast can leave our $250,000-a-year family with little margin.

Richard Eskow hit the nail on the head in his post, A Quarter Of A Million Little Pieces: Pete Peterson & The Washington Post Have A New Fiscal James Frey, writing,

This "analysis" was written by someone named Karen Hube, and it's based on two phony premises: First, that "President Obama and others have repeatedly used (that level of income) to define what it means to be 'rich' in America today," and second, that it's a hardship to get by on $250,000 a year.

(Please read Richard's post, because he gets into what the Fiscal Times is, and why it carries stories like this one.)

The story claims that President Obama and others label them as "rich" because $250K would be the lower borderline if the Bush “tax cuts for the rich” expire. But this misleads readers because the family making $250,000 will NOT see any tax increase at all. If you understand how tax brackets work you know that only amounts above $250K get taxed the additional 4.6%, so someone making $250,001 will pay an additional tax of $0.046. Yes, that’s right, four point six cents. The amounts become large only with very (very) high incomes, but those incomes are so high that the additional tax is still almost nothing. A person making $1,000,000 would pay an additional tax of $2,875 a month on their $83,333 a month of income. (Sorry, it's hard to write a number like that without shouting.)

So Who Is The Story For?

Just who is going to feel the pain of the people who "only" make $250K? The Joneses in the story actually have retirement savings and life and disability and health insurance! They have student loans to pay off because they went to expensive universities and they will have the high expenses to send their kids because their kids will, too. 98% of us understand that when we read this story. Since anyone who makes less than $250K is going to know better from their own experience than to believe what they read in this story, who is this story written for? Hint: the Washington Post is in ... wait for it ... Washington!

What about the rest of us? If $250K a year -- the borderline for entering the top 2% -- leaves the Joneses "with little margin" then shouldn't there be 49 articles for every article like this, explaining how people who make less than $250K are doing -- since that is almost all of us? Shouldn't there be 49 articles about how 98% of us are not getting by, and have no margin at all?

Anti-Government

The story tries to make an anti-government point by claiming that taxes are squeezing the Joneses, complaining that the Joneses "only" take home $173K after all taxes (incl cell phone tax). (That is "only" $14.4K a month take-home.) But a careful reading shows that the opposite might be the case. It might really be limited government that is squeezing them:

College Costs: One of the factors in the cost analysis is college costs. They are paying off high student loans, and are getting ready to send kids to expensive colleges. But college costs are so high because we have less government, because of tax cuts. This is clearly true in California, for example.

Child Care: Child care costs are high because government is "limited" in our conservative on-your-own society.

Health Care: The Joneses health insurance bill is another product of our on-you-own limited government here. Health care is covered anywhere else.

Retirement: The Joneses are saving a lot for their retirement. This drain on their income is high because in conservative America you are on your own. Corporations got rid of most pensions through the 401k scam, while the Social Security system is inadequate.

There are many other areas where limited government puts a squeeze on people: insufficient transportation options and high energy costs due to fossil-fuel reliance among them.

They Did One For The Rest Of Us

To their credit the Post also has a story this weekend, In the U.S., Christmas remains a great divide, but the story misses the point by blaming the recession for the difficulties regular people face,

A new division is emerging in America between those who have moved on from the recession and those still caught in its grip.

This holiday season, those two worlds have been thrown into stark relief: At Tiffany's, executives report that sales of their most expensive merchandise have grown by double digits. At Wal-Mart, executives point to shoppers flooding the stores at midnight every two weeks to buy baby formula the minute their unemployment checks hit their accounts. Neiman Marcus brought back $1.5 million fantasy gifts in its annual Christmas Wish Book. Family Dollar is making more room on its shelves for staples like groceries, the one category its customers reliably shop.

But many, many people with jobs are having a hard time buying baby formula, too, these days. It was like this for more and more people before the recession. In fact, many say that is why there is this bad economy. Where I live people go through my recycle bin looking for cans - and were doing so before the recession. People living on Social Security are having a very, very hard time while the people making $250K "with little margin" can talk casually about cutting the program in order to avoid having the cap lifted causing them to pay a bit more into the system.

The Post story attributes the divide to the “grip” of the recession and not to the problems caused by policies that have led to our intense concentration of wealth. The problem is that our economic system for thirty years has been increasingly rewarding a few at the very top, and not the rest of us. Tax cuts, bailouts and bonuses for them, government cutbacks and stagnant wages for us.

But flawed as it is, that is one down, only 48 more stories about the other 98% to go to catch up with the one about getting by on only $250K.

A Quarter Of A Million Little Pieces: Pete Peterson & the Washington Post Have a New Fiscal James Frey

Richard Eskow — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 20:40:12 -0500

Right-wing billionaire Pete Peterson continues to use the Washington Post as an outlet for deceptive anti-tax and anti-government propaganda. His "Fiscal Times" is a factory for churning out James Frey-like mendacity, which the Post then deceptively packages and distributes as "journalism." For those of you who have forgotten, James Frey's deception, in his book A Million Little Pieces, was to pose as a former drug addict who got clean through the force of his own unaided will.

The Washington Post, on the other hand, poses as a newspaper.

The latest Peterson production, "Analysis examines what it's like to be a 'rich' family in America," is a grab-bag of misinformation and fiscal ignorance. This "analysis" was written by the latest Frey from Peterson's shop, someone named Karen Hube, and it's based on two phony premises: First, that "President Obama and others have repeatedly used (that level of income) to define what it means to be 'rich' in America today," and second, that it's a hardship to get by on $250,000 a year.

There's so much deception, confusion, and ignorance in Hube's piece that it's hard to know where to begin. For starters, there's the assertion that the $250,000 figure is arbitrary - and therefore presumably unjust. Hube quotes only one source, in order to paint this figure as a randomly and thoughtlessly selected "mantra." But it's not a random figure. It was chosen because approximately 2% of the nation's households make this much or more.

That's one person in fifty - which, coincidentally, also happens to be the number of people who think the government's top priority should be taxes. And one of them is Pete Peterson.

Nor has anybody described a household with $250,000 in income as "rich." Instead, the President and others have suggested a tax on income earned above this level - a fact Hube either doesn't understand or about which she deliberately prevaricates. When people talk about a tax on the "wealthy," the starting point for "wealth" is somewhere above the $250,000 figure. Here's why: If you tax earnings above that amount but continue to reduce them for earnings below it, which is the Democratic proposal, total income would have to be well above that amount before higher taxes began taking a significant bite.[1]

Hube depicts a fictional struggling family, which in a burst of creativity she dubs "the Joneses." The Joneses are living so close to the financial brink, Hube suggests, that they may have nothing left in the bank - that is, after they're done paying for summer camp, music lessons, and of course the maid. Hube writes: "In reality, to make ends meet, this couple would have to cut back on discretionary expenses - take a pass on a new suit, skip an annual vacation and drop some activities for the children."

But "to make ends meet" after what? The implication is that these terrible austerities - fewer music lessons for the kids, one less Brooks Brothers suit for Dad - would be forced on them by the draconian new taxes proposed by our Robespierre-like President and his party. And therein lies the most Frey-like deception in Hube's piece: The family in her example wouldn't pay a single penny more in income taxes under the Democratic proposal. Not one. The Democratic tax proposal would allow taxes to move toward pre-Bush levels, but only for income above that amount.

Since the Joneses "only" earn $250,000, the Democratic proposal would keep their present tax break completely intact. Undeterred by reality, Hube continues to hammer away at her deceptive scenario: "Unfortunately, the family would also probably save less, at the expense of retirement or college funds." What? No retirement funds? Then thank God for Social Security, which will provide some level of protection for them in their old age.

Oh, wait.

We almost forgot. Peterson's been trying to slash those benefits for decades - and he's finally making some headway. The Post's disclaimer - overlooks Peterson's lifelong aversion to having the rich (the truly rich, like himself) pay their fair share in taxes. While he poses as someone who's willing to increase taxes, Peterson has consistently made his position on taxes clear: He wants to cut spending much more than he would raise taxes in order to balance the budget. He wants to lower the highest tax rates for the wealthy, and he wants to replace the lost income with regressive taxes on consumption.

With only minor variations, that's the classic right-wing, anti-government, anti-tax position. How does the Post's disclaimer describe Peterson when it (belatedly, in the case of the online article) discloses his role in paying for the Hube piece? ""Hube contributes to the Fiscal Times, an independent news organization that specializes in fiscal and economic matters. It is funded by Peter G. Peterson, who seperately supports groups that advocate for long-term debt reduction."

That's not right. Peterson actually "supports groups that advocate for long-term debt reduction" by cutting spending - especially for vital programs like Social Security and Medicare - while at the same time lowering the tax burden for the very wealthy. Peterson's mission to cut taxes for the wealthy is overlooked. That's a telling omission in an "analysis" of taxes for high-income earners!

Here's another deeply embarrassing Hube touch: She suffuses the Jones with the nobility of sacrifice by pointing out that "they don't send their children to private school." And yet when she (or rather Peterson) hired accountants to estimate their total tax level - a burden she characterizes as onerous - she placed them in eight different cities with "top-notch public school districts."

What pays for those "top-notch" schools, the ones that save the Joneses from the expense of private educations? Taxes. Good private schools in the cities she's listed can cost anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 a year. $10,000 in property taxes vs. $20-$50,000 in private school tuition? That sounds like a good bargain to me.

Here's Hube's soliloquy on her hardy little family's painful burden of taxation:

"Taxes take a hefty toll. Everything from property taxes and the alternative minimum tax to the taxes tacked on to cellphone bills and the cost of gas, when combined, takes a large bite out of earnings - in some cases even more than the federal income tax toll."

Regarding that Alternative Minimum Tax - yes, there's been bracket creep since it was imposed in 1969, and it has become an unfair burden on the middle class. But what was the marginal tax rate for income above $200,000 back in 1969?

Seventy-seven percent.

Today it's 35% - and Peterson's minions want to cut it down to 28%. Even adjusting for bracket creep, the Joneses would have paid a higher percentage of their income (in its1969 equivalent) than they pay today. And Pete Peterson would have paid lots more. And about those property taxes: Why didn't the Joneses rent, instead of buying? That's not an unthinkable alternative, here in the real world. Neither is apartment living, as opposed to the split-level American dream. And how much is the Federal taxpayer giving the Joneses in a tax break for their mortgage interest? Lower-income renters don't get that kind of public subsidy. What's more, Peterson's dead set on ending the mortgage interest deduction, at a time when that's all keeping millions of underwater homeowners from going under permanently.

Then there's this:

"... (C)osts assumed by the Joneses could be significantly higher if their circumstances changed. If they worked for themselves, for example, they would have to foot the bill for all of their medical insurance premium, which averages $14,043. As it is, they pay 30 percent of the premium and their employers pay the rest."

But if the Joneses worked for themselves, they would presumably incorporate. That would allow them to deduct the corporate contribution for health insurance and give themselves a tax break. They might even be able to deduct 100% of the premium, which would pretty much leave them at break-even. More importantly, Hube, despite the prowess she must undoubtedly possess as an "analyst," never asks why their premiums are more than $14,000 - or what might be done to control them.

The answer to that question is this: We live in the only developed nation with a privatized health insurance system, so we pay far more in premiums for far less in medical care than any of the others. We could fix that, with more government involvement in the health sector. But that would mean Pete Peterson's fellow billionaires might have to pay more in taxes.

What's more, Peterson wants to end the deduction for health insurance benefits. That would decimate the Jones family budget by forcing them to compete on an open market, where they'd pay ever-increasing premiums for ever-dwindling coverage.

Others will no doubt comment at greater length about the bubble in which Hube and her editors live - a bubble that seems to provide near-perfect isolation from real world concerns. To the Joneses, and to Hube, the everyday sacrifices which most people make unthinkingly are inconceivable. And prosperity isn't a privilege, but a burden. Oh, my dear, you just can't imagine ...

I don't know what Peterson's paying to fund the "The Fiscal Times," but here's what I do know - followed by what I suspect. I know that, thanks to the Washington Post, he's getting his money's worth. And I suspect he's taking a tax deduction for it, too.

"$250,000 goes quicker than you think," concludes Hube. The median household income in the United States is about $52,000. If you want to know how fast that goes, you'll probably have to look elsewhere. The Fiscal James Freys - those inventors of financial fictions manufactured in Pete Peterson's workshop and distributed to the world by the Washington Post - don't deal in figures less than a quarter of a million.
_______________________

[1]According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, a family of four with $300,000 in income - $50,000 more than Hube's supposed "rich" figure of $250,000 - would see their taxes go up only 1.1% more under the Democratic plan that it would under the Republicans.

But a couple earning $1,000,000 would see their taxes go up by nearly 3% more - not an astronomical figure, but one that's starting to make a difference. And at Pete Peterson levels the difference would be significant.

(Figures do not incorporate the proposed Obama/McConnell tax compromise.)

This post was produced as part of the Strengthen Social Security campaign.

Parasites, Politics, and the Press: Social Security Attackers' Covert Ops

Richard Eskow — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 17:19:57 -0400

This week Leonard Downie, the former Executive Editor of the Washington Post, attacked blogs in general and the Huffington Post specifically, saying they're "parasites" who live off "journalism produced by others." His comment would have carried more weight if Downie's old newspaper still produced all its own journalism, instead of outsourcing a portion of its reporting function to a bureau funded by a special interest group. (See correction/clarification, below.)

Downie's comment about blogs whose "opinions reflecting a predictable point of view on the left or the right of the political spectrum" unfortunately also applies to his former employer. This slant is most unforgivable in its news coverage, given that paper's claim of journalistic objectivity. In fact, the Post's coverage of Social Security and the budget deficit makes it the poster child for media outlets who are accelerating their own demise by compromising their professional standards in the pursuit of leaner business models.

It's not news that there's a highly-funded campaign to cut Social Security, primarily by manipulating the public into thinking the program's in an urgent financial crisis. (See here and here, for starters.) A lot of politicians in Washington want to go along with this idea, but they have a problem: Voters hate it. A "bipartisan" consensus to cut the program, either by reducing benefits or increasing the retirement age, would amount to a suicide pact between politicians of both parties.

How do politicians and their benefit-cutting benefactors handle that? By concealing their true intentions long enough to change public opinion. One of the best ways to do that is through compliant press organs who keep pumping out misinformation and prefabricated talking points. That's where the new Post comes in (Washington, not Huffington).

Campaign for America's Future co-director Roger Hickey explained how the Washington Post outsourced its entire financial division to the "Fiscal Times," a "news" operation financed by Pete Peterson. Peterson's the right-wing billionaire best known for his views on Social Security (cut it), the deficit (slash it), and taxes (he doesn't want to pay 'em). As Hickey noted, the very first article produced for the Post was headlined "support grows for reducing the nation's debt," and only presented opinions that aligned with Peterson's. Economist Dean Baker pointed out that the article falsely stated that social spending costs were "skyrocketing." Even worse, it cited people who work for institutions that Peterson finances without noting a conflict of interest.

The dictionary definition of a "parasite" is "an organism that grows, feeds, and is sheltered on or in a different organism while contributing nothing to the survival of its host." Actually, blogs drive readers to newspapers, which should increase ad revenue and therefore contribute to their survival. And to me that definition of "parasite" more closely suits a billionaire who doesn't want to pay his full share of taxes - but then, anybody who reads me knows they're getting a political opinion and not unfiltered news. (Apparently parasite also means "a professional dinner guest, especially in ancient Greece," but I'm not enough of a Washington insider to think of an appropriate Sally Quinn joke.)

Peterson was also a major backer of the President's Deficit Commission, which we now learn has a "heavy tilt" toward spending cuts rather than tax increases - which presumably includes tax increases for billionaires. Quelle surprise.

On the other hand, politicians aren't insane. They can tell which way the wind blows, as Dave Johnson observed. The Democratic Party is trying to emphasize Social Security as a campaign issue, while in many cases giving itself wiggle room for a post-election deal. A number of Congressional Democrats are signing a pledge to oppose any cuts, Sens. Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders are introducing a "sense of the Senate resolution" to oppose any cuts and encourage lifting the cap on payroll taxes.

That leaves the anti-Social Security crowd in stealth mode, attempting to camouflage their intentions with confusing or indirect language. Alice Rivlin, an economist known for her longstanding advocacy of Social Security cuts, suggested this week that this a "convenient time" to push benefit reductions and along with some (presumably symbolic) revenue increases. "The only better time to fix Social Security than this year," said Rivlin, "is last year or the year before." She added: "The stars are aligned." That may be the most inaccurate astrological reading since Jeanne Dixon predicted the Beatles would die in a plane crash in 1964.

"Fix" Social Security? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It sounds reasonable enough - until you realize that Rivlin has a history of using that phrase as a euphemism for cutting it.

The Republicans who are pushing the hardest for cuts have suddenly gone vague, as in their pledge to require "a full accounting of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, setting benchmarks for these programs and reviewing them regularly and preventing the expansion of unfunded liabilities." When it comes to public opinion, they're running scared and could use some help.

Enter the Washington Post, which published an article today that said the GOP plan lacked specifics, and then gave three examples - all benefit cuts - of ways to fulfill the Pledge's inchoate directive. A reader wouldn't know from reading this article that revenue increases, like the simple act of raising the payroll tax cup, would also ensure that Social Security never has "unfunded liabilities." Dean Baker dissected the column further, but that's the main takeaway.

As someone who's worked in freelance journalism, I'm actually quite sympathetic to Downie's concerns. But get with the program, man! While it's not perfect, the Huffington Post is actually hiring journalists. The Washington Post is laying them off and outsourcing their jobs to ideologues. Downie's wrath is misdirected. The news industry is in crisis, but we can't fix it by selling journalistic integrity to the highest bidder.

The Washington Post has some great people on staff, including one of the blogging world's most effective and informative writers, Ezra Klein. Ezra's an excellent example of the way advocacy writing and journalism can be integrated online (even if we've differed here and there). And yet part of his effectiveness comes from the fact that he often does exactly what the Huffington Post does - he "aggregates" stories and comments on them.

People who come to the Huffington Post expect to see the news reported - and "aggregated" - with a political slant. People who read the Washington Post expect objective journalism. When it comes to Social Security, whose readers are getting a raw deal? I share Len Downie's concerns, but he should be focusing his attention somewhere a little closer to home.

CLARIFICATION: This piece as originally written stated that the Post had "outsourced an entire news department to a special interest group." That was incorrect: The paper does, in fact, still have reporters on the financial beat. Here are the specifics: The first Post/Fiscal Times article was published on December 31, 2009 (the highly slanted "nation's debt" piece cited above), after the partnership was announced on December 17. The Post's own ombudsman found the story slanted ("not sufficiently balanced"), chided the paper for a "lack of transparency," and agreed that the timing of it was "problematic, coming weeks before the Senate may consider the (Debt) commission idea."

The timing was also troubling for other reasons. The Post cut a reported 10-12 positions the month before this relationship was announced, after conducting its fourth round of employee buyouts the previous March and closing its book review section that February. (The wave of layoffs began in 2006 with a reduction of approximately 80 journalists' jobs, about 9% of its reportorial staff.)

The above is reason for concern, and the fundamental questions about the Post/Fiscal Times relationship remain. Nevertheless, our original statement was incorrect and is hereby retracted with apologies.

____________________________

(Conflict of interest note: I frequently write for the Huffington Post, but am not paid by them - see, I told you they weren't perfect. I am a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future and support policies that can ensure Social Security's solvency without resorting to benefit cuts. Such policies exist, even if they are not immediately visible to the readers of the Washington Post.)

Handcuffs For Wall Street, Not Happy-Talk

Zach Carter — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 14:48:23 -0400

The Washington Post has published a very silly op-ed by Chrystia Freeland accusing President Barack Obama of unfairly "demonizing" Wall Street. Freeland wants to see Obama tone down his rhetoric and play nice with executives in pursuit of a harmonious economic recovery. The trouble is, Obama hasn't actually deployed harsh words against Wall Street. What's more, in order to avoid being characterized as "anti-business," the Obama administration has refused to mete out serious punishment for outright financial fraud. Complaining about nouns and adjectives is a little ridiculous when handcuffs and prison sentences are in order.

Freeland is a long-time business editor at Reuters and the Financial Times, and the story she spins about the financial crisis comes across as very reasonable. It's also completely inaccurate. Here's the key line:

"Stricter regulation of financial services is necessary not because American bankers were bad, but because the rules governing them were."

Bank regulations were lousy, of course. But Wall Street spent decades lobbying hard for those rules, and screamed bloody murder when Obama had the audacity to tweak them. More importantly, the financial crisis was not only the result of bad rules. It was the result of bad rules and rampant, straightforward fraud, something a seasoned business editor like Freeland ought to know. Seeking economic harmony with criminals seems like a pretty poor foundation for an economic recovery.

The FBI was warning about an "epidemic" of mortgage fraud as early as 2004. Mortgage fraud is typically perpetrated by lenders, not borrowers—80 percent of the time, according to the FBI. Banks made a lot of quick bucks over the past decade by illegally conning borrowers. Then bankers who knew these loans were fraudulent still packaged them into securities and sold them to investors without disclosing that fraud. They lied to their own shareholders about how many bad loans were on their books, and lied to them about the bonuses that were derived from the entire scheme. When you do these things, you are stealing lots of money from innocent people, and you are, in fact, behaving badly (to put it mildly).

The fraud allegations that have emerged over the past year are not restricted to a few bad apples at shady companies-- they involve some of the largest players in global finance. Washington Mutual executives knew their company was issuing fraudulent loans, and securitized them anyway without stopping the influx of fraud in the lending pipeline. Wachovia is settling charges that it illegally laundered $380 billion in drug money in order to maintain access to liquidity. Barclays is accused of illegally laundering money from Iran, Sudan and other nations, jumping through elaborate technical hoops to conceal the source of their funds. Goldman Sachs set up its own clients to fail and bragged about their "shitty deals." Citibank executives deceived their shareholders about the extent of their subprime mortgage holdings. Bank of America executives concealed heavy losses from the Merrill Lynch merger, and then lied to their shareholders about the massive bonuses they were paying out. IndyMac Bank and at least five other banks cooked their books by backdating capital injections.

For the past decade, fraud has been a mainstream business on Wall Street. That's to be expected—massive financial crashes simply do not occur without widespread fraud. After the savings and loan crisis, more than 1,000 bankers went to jail for fraud, and the S&L bust was a much smaller debacle than the frenzy that took down Wall Street in 2008.

This is not to suggest that everyone on Wall Street is a criminal—many of these frauds were committed against reasonable financial professionals. But the only reason we haven't we seen throngs of financiers in handcuffs over the past two years is precisely because Obama has been listening to people like Freeland, trying to avoid "demonizing" bankers who broke the law. Obama critics like hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb have been calling him "anti-business" precisely because some fraud charges have surfaced in the past two years-- even though his agencies have gone easy on the fraudsters themselves.

The regulators Obama kept on board at the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) have not recommended any fraud prosecutions to the Justice Department—and we know that the OTS itself was involved in the illegal backdating scheme at IndyMac and other banks. The SEC has not pursued civil fraud cases against some of the executives it believes were involved in Citibank's subprime scam, nor is the agency seeking serious accountability for Barclays. Nothing has happened to Lehman Brothers or Bank of America for their Enron-style derivatives scams that hid debt from investors, or to Merrill Lynch for its self-dealing of subprime derivatives. The Justice Department is letting Wachovia off the hook for laundering drug money. Let me repeat that: the Obama administration has been so eager to please Wall Street that it is letting bankers get away with laundering drug money.

Applying the law equally to all citizens isn't demonization and it isn't socialism-- it's a basic proponent of justice. When you steal a lot of money, you go to jail. When your theft crashes the global economy and throws 8 million people out of work, you go to jail for a long time. Obama doesn't just need tough talk for Wall Street, he needs to prosecute the frauds that were committed, and explain them to the American people. Nothing about this should be threatening to the millions of fair and reasonable American financial professionals who have done nothing wrong.

If you examine Freeland's two examples of so-called "demonization," her story simply becomes absurd. When hedge funds who owned Chrysler bonds complained about losing money in the Chrysler bankruptcy, Obama called them "speculators" who needed to take losses. That's perfectly reasonable. They were speculators, and they speculated on a company that went bankrupt. When you invest in a bad company, you lose money. That's how capitalism works.

Freeland also claims that Obama was "out of line in permitting the denunciation of Goldman Sachs." Goldman deserved to be denounced-- their ABACUS scam was abhorrent, and it wasn't the only egregious act the company engaged in (see: "shitty deal"). But Obama has had plenty of nice things to say about Goldman. He defended the massive bonus that Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein paid himself, and praised Blankfein as a "savvy" fellow.

You cannot reason with someone who claims he is being demonized when you call him "savvy," nor should you. Any president who neglects basic principles of justice and standards for economic security in order to pamper princely executives isn't doing his job. Ethical financiers and reasonable business editors should have nothing to fear from a president who criticizes and prosecutes illegal finance.