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Media Infiltrations: Obama's Social Security Fine Print  The Wall Street Journal June 25, 2008 Commodity-Prices Scapegoats The Wall Street Journal June 3, 2008
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 7:00 pm EDTTuesday, July 1 |
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Chronicle of the Conspiracy
Join us as we discover, document, expose and challenge the bad people, the bad institutions and the bad ideas that stand in the way of wealth creation -- and show you how to fight back!
Friday, April 29, 2005
THE HUFF DISCOVERS BLOGGING It's a sneak preview of Arianna Huffington's celebtrity blog! Here's but a fraction of the cutting edge insight you will get from this innovative new medium!This is so blogciting, posted by Tina Brown on Mon May 9 at 11:04 PDTThanks to Irwin Chusid for the link.Today we are entering a new paradigm: the energy and passion that I see on this mega-blog will ensure that it becomes not just the premiere electro-salon of the liberal elite, but the soul-search engine for the entire Alter-net. In today's fast-moving, cross-pollinating media perfect storm we don't always want considered essays or spelled-out arguments. Sometimes we just want to say "Bush sucks". Although his wife is really sweet.
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Re: Does anyone know how to get red wine stains out of a wool carpet? posted by BarryDillerCEO.IAC/InterActiveCrop on Mon May 9 at 11:17 PDT
pour white wine over it & then blot GENTLY with a clean cloth. Rinse with warm water & repeat until gone. Whatever you do, don't rub. Who's got a good sourdough bread recipe, btw? The last loaf I made was like a paving stone.
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I know I'm just providing the megaphone but. posted by "Huff" on Mon May 9 2005 at 11:34 PDT
perhaps I could suggest a topic? The president's proposals for private investment accounts are aimed at improving the long-term solvency of social security, but does it come at too high a price, namely sacrificing the commitment to guarantied benefits? comments 0 :: trackbacks 0 :: post a comment
Dear hopeless liberals, Posted by David "Axis of Evil" Frum on Mon May 9 2005 at 11:45 PDT
Unless you got to that stain right away, white wine ain't gonna do jack. You need BLEACH and plenty of it, and you need to rub hard. Hope this doesn't shatter your cosy little worldview.
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OH MY GOD ARIANNA Posted by G Paltrow on Mon May 9 2005 at 12:22 PDT Did you just like take that text I sent you and post it on your stupid frigging blog? That was private! How dare you! Don't post this email either!
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Update... From reader Bryan Evenson:
I don't normally participate in blog comments, but I saw the request for information about removal of red wine stains from white wool carpets. I've actually used the following strange-sounding method on several occasions to remove red wine stains from light beige or white carpet, upholstery, linen table cloths, etc. and it really works. It's worked so well, I just have to pass it on. I couldn't figure out how to add this comment to the blog online, so maybe you'll pass this along for me.Immediately after the wine is spilled, quickly blot any standing wine with any available napkin, paper towel, etc. Don't press too hard or you'll just drive the wine deeper into the fabric. Just blot the wine with light downward pressure, don't rub it around with a lateral or circular motion. Then, immediately, while the wine stain is still wet, get your can of bulk salt from your kitchen. I mean the main supply can from which you fill your salt shakers, not the shakers themselves. Dump the salt in the can on the wine spots. I mean bury the stain an inch deep or more in salt. The more salt, the better. Dump, don't just sprinkle. (Obviously, this will take a lot of salt, and is the reason you need the bulk supply can of salt, not just a shaker) The salt immediately draws the wine up and holds it off the fabric. The wine seems to keep "migrating" to the very top of the layer of salt, so the thicker the layer of salt, the better. A thick layer of salt will hold the wine further up off the fabric. Let the wine-soaked salt completely dry. It will become crusty. This may take a day, but don't worry about it. Then thoroughly vacuum up all of the salt. This will remove most of the wine, and there will be little if any remaining stain. Any slight remaining stain can usually be further treated with various commercial stain removers. This sounds weird and looks even weirder when you do it, but it really works. The keys, however, are speed and the volume of salt. When someone spills wine, run immediately for the can and just dump it all on the stain. The same method can be used on darker fabrics. However, the salt may leave a slight whitening effect which might be visible on darker fabrics after it's removed.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 4:49 PM | link
COUNTERING THOSE PREDICTABLE LIES Something tells me the White House wasn't entirely surprised by the mainstream media's mischaracterization of President Bush's attempts to slow Social Security benefit growth as "benefit cuts." I'll bet they had this fact sheet ready before the President even started talking last night.
Setting The Record Straight: Social Security Reform Means Funded Benefit Growth, Not "Benefit Cuts"
Today, some opponents of fixing Social Security are suggesting that the President's proposals would result in "benefit cuts." This rhetoric recklessly disregards the facts about the President's proposal:
- Fact: Under the President's proposal, benefits would grow relative to today's levels. Future generations of seniors would receive benefits that are at least as high as seniors receive today (even after adjusting for inflation.)
- Fact: The Pozen proposal referenced by the President would allow for faster overall long-term benefit growth than can be paid by current-law Social Security.
- Fact: Under the Pozen proposal referenced by the President, lowest-income Americans would get the fastest benefit growth of all, significantly faster than inflation.
- Fact: Under the Pozen proposal referenced by the President, medium-wage workers would also receive faster benefit growth than the current system can pay.
- Fact: The current Social Security system can fund only 74% of promised benefits in 2041. The Social Security actuary's analysis of the Pozen proposal finds that at the same time, each of "Low Earners," "Medium Earners," and 'High Earners" would all receive benefits that are higher than the current system can pay.
- Fact: All of the above figures exclude income from personal accounts. Social Security Administration figures show that expected benefit growth will be even greater for those who choose to participate in voluntary personal accounts.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 3:38 PM | link
THIS ABOUT SUMS IT UP Keith Burgess-Jackson really says all there is to say about Paul Krugman's column today:
He thinks the only ideologues are conservatives. Here is a paragraph from today's New York Times op-ed column:You see, America is ruled by conservatives, and they have a private obsession: they believe that more privatization, not less, is always the answer. And their faith persists even when the evidence clearly points to a private sector gone bad.Liberals don't rule America, mainly because their ideas are bankrupt, but if they did, the following would be true:You see, America is ruled by liberals, and they have a private obsession: they believe that more government, not less, is always the answer. And their faith persists even when the evidence clearly points to a public sector gone bad.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 3:19 PM | link
JOKE OF THE DAY
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:51 AM | link
WHO'S BEING "CLEAR AND HONEST"? Of course as details of President Bush's ideas for reining in the unsustainable growth in Social Security benefits emerge, the media is going to fall all over itself to portray this as an effort to "cut benefits." See today's "Today's Papers" at Slate for a field guide. But in the self-righteous minds of the leftists who write the mainstream media headlines, it's hard self-sacrificing work to be biased against the president. As Slate's Eric Umasky puts it, "The [President's] rhetoric left papers in a tight spot, forced to contradict the president if they were going to give readers a clear and honest account." You see, it's "clear and honest" to pretend that today's promised benefit accelerations are able to be delivered costlessly and risklessly, and Bush is being unclear and dishonest to fail to characterize reining in those undeliverable promises as "benefit cuts." It's Bush who's being clear and honest here: clearly and honestly admitting that promises made in the past can't be fulfilled in the future. Them's the facts, and he's had the courage to say them.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 7:04 AM | link
DETAILS BEGIN TO EMERGE President Bush moved the ball forward in his prime-time press conference last night, outlining principles for Social Security reform that he thinks should guide Congress's deliberations. What's new here -- what the President hasn't explicitly said before -- is that he's endorsing what is basically a slightly revised version of the thoughtful and fair package of measures proposed in the 2002 report of the Presidential Commission to Strengthen Social Security to rein in the runaway growth in benefits.
- Benefits Should Grow Faster in the Future For Low-Income Workers Than For Those Who Are Better Off. Under a reformed system, low-income workers should receive benefits that grow faster than inflation. In order to return the system to solvency, the benefit increases for wealthier seniors should grow no faster than the rate of inflation. This would be accomplished by adopting a sliding-scale benefit formula, similar to the Pozen approach.
- Eliminate Poverty Among Future Seniors. Today, roughly two million retirees who paid into Social Security their whole lives are collecting benefits that leave them below the poverty line. The President believes we should make good on a great national commitment: if you work hard and pay into Social Security your entire life, you will not retire into poverty.
- This Reform Would Solve Approximately 70 Percent Of The Funding Problems Facing Social Security. A responsible, reasonable and sustainable rate of benefit growth for wealthier seniors will help return the system to fiscal balance and would enable us to help those seniors in the greatest need.
- Replace The Empty Promises Being Made to Younger Workers With Real Money. Younger workers should have the option of putting a portion of their payroll taxes into a voluntary personal account which will allow them to build a nest egg that belongs to them. This money will give workers an opportunity to receive a higher rate of return than the current Social Security System can provide.
- Voluntary Personal Accounts Should Include The Risk Free Option Of Investing In Treasury Bonds. Voluntary personal accounts should include an investment option that allows workers to invest in U.S. Treasury bonds, which have no risk. Workers who have reservations about investing in the markets will still be able to rely on a Social Security check that is equal to or higher than today's retirees.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 6:54 AM | link
WHERE ALL THE CHILDREN ARE ABOVE AVERAGE Maybe some people really are too stupid to manage their own money in personal Social Security accounts -- at least the people who run the liberal media might be. Take a look at this chart from Reuters. These guys don't even know where 90% is.
Thanks to reader Richard Davis.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 6:44 AM | link
Thursday, April 28, 2005
OUTSTANDING David Hogberg really marshalls the facts here in a cogent refutation of Paul Krugman's series of columns on health care.Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:51 PM | link
WIPE THAT LOOK OF SURPRISE OFF YOUR FACE A new study from the Media Research Center's Free Market Project found Social Security coverage on the five major networks biased toward the left by a margin of 2 to 1. In total, 44 percent of the 125 stories studied were liberally slanted compared to just 22 percent that were conservative. Check it out...
- CBS and CNN Most Biased: On “CBS Evening News,” 56 percent of stories were liberal with just 20 percent conservative. CBS reports were loaded with extreme examples that played up liberal points. CNN’s “Inside Politics” was worse statistically with 61 percent liberal and 22 percent conservative.
- Fox News Most Balanced: Fox News’ “Special Report with Brit Hume” delivered an equal 30 percent liberal and 30 percent conservative stories, with the remaining 40 percent neutral.
- Networks Embrace ‘Transition Costs’ Scare Tactic: Journalists repeatedly indicated that the cost of changing over to personal accounts was too high. This point was made 10 times more often than it was challenged, and the financial principles that refuted it were largely ignored.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:48 PM | link
FEELING BLUE? Confessions of a Republican in a blue milieu, with a great punchline:
I still get those glances when people discover my political views don’t fit my social background, my religion, or my neighborhood. But, as I’ve said before, I can deal with all that … because I’m smart enough, I’m good enough, and, doggonit, my guy won.Thanks to Irwin Chusid for the link.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:04 AM | link
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
SEPARATED AT BIRTH? Or just by the Washington Post? Dan Gainor at the Free Market Project deconstructs Dana Milbank's story trying to emphasize the differences between GWB and FDR on Social Security. Good stuff.Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 3:54 PM | link
BUSH COMMITS Strange choice of messenger, but a great message. From today's New York Times:
Update... Noel Sheppard has an especially optimistic take on this.Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, the senior Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said he met with the president last week and urged him to take private accounts off the table so the two parties could work on solvency.
Mr. Rangel said Mr. Bush replied: "Congressman, I am the president. And private accounts are not coming off the table even if it's the last day I spend in the presidency.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 8:17 AM | link
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
TIMES' TIERNEY SPEAKS OUT FOR PERSONAL ACCOUNTS! The new op-ed columnist at the New York Times, John Tierney, finally engages the Social Security debate -- and it's a whopper. After an endless parade of lies from Paul Krugman about how bad reform with personal accounts has been in Chile (for example, this), Tierney actually got on a plane and checked it out himself (Krugman, of course, never leaves his office in Princeton; he gets all the facts he needs from radical leftist websites). Here's what Tierney discovered, upon conferring with a Chilean pal Pablo:After comparing our relative payments to our pension systems (since salaries are higher in America, I had contributed more), we extrapolated what would have happened if I'd put my money into Pablo's mutual fund instead of the Social Security trust fund. We came up with three projections for my old age, each one offering a pension that, like Social Security's, would be indexed to compensate for inflation:
(1) Retire in 10 years, at age 62, with an annual pension of $55,000. That would be more than triple the $18,000 I can expect from Social Security at that age.
(2) Retire at age 65 with an annual pension of $70,000. That would be almost triple the $25,000 pension promised by Social Security starting a year later, at age 66.
(3)Retire at age 65 with an annual pension of $53,000 and a one-time cash payment of $223,000.
You may suspect that Pablo has prospered only because he's a sophisticated investor, but he simply put his money into one of the most popular mutual funds.
Welcome to the fight, John!
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 12:19 AM | link
Monday, April 25, 2005
SURPRISE! WALL STREET HATES PRIVATE ACCOUNTS! A Washington friend notes that Democratic senators Ron Wyden, Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer have sent a letter to Senate majority leader Bill Frist -- co-signed by a group of investment professionals (most of whose names would mean absolutely nothing to most people; even to me, who has spent his whole life in that profession) -- opposing Social Security modernization with personal accounts. My friend quips,Think that the Democrats will now admit that their charges about management fees and windfall profits were bogus? Ha! I can see the talking points now: 1) Reform is a bad idea because Wall Street fat cats will be the only ones to reap the benefit. In fact, Wall Street is one of the biggest proponents of privatization. 2) Privatization is such a bad idea that not even Wall Street supports it!
Sigh...
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:45 PM | link
THE VAST CONSPIRACY THAT COULDN'T SHOOT STRAIGHT All I can say is if there's a vast right wing conspiracy that has co-opted the federal government, then it's not doing a very good job of taking over the world.
Soros Foundation Given $30 Million by US GovernmentThanks to readers Jill Olson and Paul Anderson for the heads-up.(CNSNews.com) - The Open Society Institute, a private foundation controlled by liberal billionaire and political activist George Soros, received more than $30 million from U.S. government agencies between 1998 and 2003. Last year, Soros donated at least $20 million of his own money to such liberal groups as Moveon.org, in a failed attempt to block the re-election of President George W. Bush.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 9:28 PM | link
OUT OF TOUCH? Robert Musil notes that Paul Krugman's column today is an awful lot like one from July 2004:
Herr Doktorprofessor was last seen dismissing a "Bush Boom" back in July of 2004 (Bye-Bye Bush Boom). In fact, today's column could be a hasty recycling of that pre-election effort, as these excerpts from the old column indicate:And David Hogberg notices that the jobs situation isn't quite as dire as Krugman seems to believe (even students educated at universities like Krugman's seem to be able to get employed).When does optimism - the Bush campaign's favorite word these days - become an inability to face facts? On Friday, President Bush insisted that a seriously disappointing jobs report, which fell far short of the pre-announcement hype, was good news ... But Mr. Bush has already presided over a bust. ... Americans badly need a boom to make up the lost ground. And we're not getting it. .... And economic growth is passing working Americans by. ... Whatever boost the economy got from the tax cuts is now behind us... One last point: government policies could do a lot about the failure of new jobs to come with health benefits, a huge source of anxiety for many American families. John Kerry is right to make health care a central plank of his platform...Well, there you have it. As of July 2004 President Bush was hopelessly out of touch, the Bush Boom was a delusion, John Kerry was then on a roll with his health care talk and, of course, was resoundingly elected president in November 2004 after seizing the idea-weaponry handed to him by Herr Doktorprofessor (that intellectual Vulcan to the Democratic gods!), as the Democrats swept control of Congress from the delusional Republicans!Gee, where did that syllogism go so badly off the tracks?
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 1:16 PM | link
DISHONORABLE MENTION Our friend Noel Sheppard has arrived! Yep, you know an aspriting conservative pundit has made it when he gets trashed in the New York Review of Books, when some leftist critic rounds up all the usual suspects. Okay, it's parenthetical -- but Noel's just getting started. Here it is:
(A less well-known conservative, one Noel Sheppard, added to this vision of conspiracy his startling discovery that the liberals commenced their "coordinated attack on Christmas almost immediately after Senator Kerry conceded," thus revealing it as part of their sinister plan to prevail in 2006 and 2008.)
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:57 AM | link
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"Members of labor unions think offering personal retirement accounts to workers under age 55 is a good idea by more than a two-to-one margin, so long as nothing changes for workers age 55 and older, and six out of ten union members say they are at least somewhat likely to create an account if given the opportunity."
So just whom are labor unions representing when the spend millions lobbying to defeat Social Security modernization?
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:35 AM | link
OKRENT NAILED Irwin Chusid points us to a terrific take by Mediacrity on Dan Okrent's lame column on the way the Times covers Israel. It's spot on.
Instead of dealing with any of the actual allegations that have been made, he just shrugs his shoulders like a janitor with a faucet he can't fix and says, "not my problem."...Okrent says "I'm still waiting for one reader to say the paper has ever been unfair in a way that was damaging to both sides."
Imagine that. To be inaccurate is not enough. To be damaging to one side--the definition of bias, after all--is not enough. In order for this Dan Okrent out of bed on this issue, it has got to be "damaging to both sides." But if something is "damaging to both sides" it can't be bias, can it? So what worries this guy? Non-bias?
Actually what I'm doing here is assuming Dan actually thought out what he put on paper. He just wanted to collect his last paycheck, clear out his desk and move on.
The new Public Editor, a veteran Wall Street Journal editor named Barney Calame, is a good man. Unfortunately he hasn't much of an act to follow.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 11:25 AM | link
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY FROM HOG HAVEN David Hogberg is kind enough to mark the second anniversary of our best-ever Krugman gotcha -- the infamous "divide-by-ten" scandal! Here's the whole story...
Update... Here's a column from Hogberg today that lays out some good, practical ideas for dealing with the so-called transition costs in Social Security personal accounts.
Posted by Donald L. Luskin at 10:36 AM | link