Political Junkies’ Thursday News & Rants

For junkies only: The Democratic debate is on CNN, beginning at 5PM PT (8PM ET). The debate is in Nevada. Last night, PBS Newshour asked some of the most knowledgeable Nevadans about their concerns — check out the fascinating analysis at “Las Vegas Development Boom Puts Added Strain on Natural Resources” — and how the presidential race might help them get their concerns addressed. Their biggest worry? Competition for water, and a huge brewing battle between the city of Las Vegas with its need to keep growing in order to sustain profitability versus the cattle ranchers who grow alfalfa on naturally arid lands.

Barack Obama, wake up! Actually, it’s I who he has a hard time keeping awake. I know Obama is trying to capture some momentum, but he’s buying into the Republican meme on the supposed Social Security crisis to do so. There are warnings galore out there for Obama to STOP it. Now. Here are two of the better warnings:

• “Obama clueless on Social Security — Mark Weisbrot: Memo to Obama: No Rush to “Fix” Social Security” (”The right has created powerful and lasting myths about the state of the program’s finances.”)
• “Why, Barack, why?” — columnist and economics professor Paul Krugman at his New York Times blog

WARNING REGARDING TIMMY RUSSERT: He thinks he’s THE expert on Social Security. And he loves to ask hard questions reflecting I-am-the-most-expert-expert-ever-on-Social-Security in the presidential debates. Thing is, Timmy doesn’t know squat. The Daily Howler laid it out on Sept. 28 — and the Daily Howler also slaps Obama and Edwards silly for their FALSE comments about Social Security:

How inept is our multimillionaire press corps? Let’s start with Russert’s introduction of this topic at Wednesday’s debate:

RUSSERT (9/26/07): And we’re back at Dartmouth College talking to the Democrats. I want to talk about Social Security and Medicare.

The chairman of the Federal Reserve, the head of the Government Accountability Office, have both said that the number of people in America on Social Security and Medicare is going to double in the next 20 years—there are now 40 million; it’s going to go to 80 million—and that if nothing is done, we’ll have to cut benefits in half or double the taxes. That is their testimony.

Senator Biden, in order to prevent that, would you be willing to consider certain steps? For example, back in 1983, Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill, Patrick Moynihan and Bob Dole got together and changed the retirement age. It’s going to be going up to 67 in a gradual increase.

Right now, you pay tax for Social Security on your first $97,500 worth of income. Why not tax the entire income of every American? And if you do that, you’ll guarantee the solvency of Social Security farther than the eye can see.

“I want to talk about Social Security and Medicare,” Russert said at the start of this segment. And then, just like that, for whatever reason, he switched his field to a (largely bungled) discussion of Social Security only. The absurdity of this approach should be obvious; everyone agrees that the real problem with future entitlements concerns the costs of Medicare, not of Social Security. Indeed, the former head of the federal reserve had said this to Russert just three days before the self-impressed burgher led Wednesday evening’s debate. On Sunday morning’s Meet the Press, Alan Greenspan laid out the shape of the entitlement problem, as even the Greenspans now limn it:

RUSSERT (9/23/07): Do you believe either political party has stepped up to the crisis we face with Social Security and Medicare in the coming years?

GREENSPAN: I do not.

RUSSERT: How big a crisis will that be?

GREENSPAN: Social Security is not a big crisis. We are approximately 2 percent points of payroll short over the very long run. It’s a significant closing of the gap, but it’s doable, and doable in any number of ways.

Medicare is a wholly different issue… We’re going to double the size of the retired population, and by all of the analysis I go through in the book, it’s very evident to me that we are not able to actually deliver on the Medicare we are promising…

[WORDPRESS SOFTWARE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND NESTED BLOCKQUOTES -- THE FOLLOWING IS STILL A QUOTE FROM THE DAILY HOWLER.] The problem lies with Medicare, Greenspan said, voicing an utterly standard analysis. But for whatever reason, Russert quickly turned Wednesday’s segment into a discussion of Social Security. He blathered ahead with his typically useless data about the number of future recipients—and about the typical age of death back in the mid-1930s. None of these facts are even slightly relevant to a real discussion of Social Security, as pundits have made clear many times, especially during 2005, when Bush’s privatization plan hit the deck. (Duh. These useless facts are already part of the future funding formulas!) But Russert rolled out his standard old cant—and drove the discussion away from Medicare, the actual source of future problems. Why did he do this? We have no idea; there seems to be no partisan reason. But we’ll offer a suggestion: Inevitably, this is the type of self-impressed, bungled work a middle-class democracy will get—if its lets its major news orgs be run by a mogul elite.

You might call this Nantucket-style journalism. The deeply self-impressed Burgher Russert provides such work in spades.

Because yes, Russert has done this forever. Back in January 2000, he monopolized a Republican debate with his own set of facts about Social Security, blathering on until Alan Keyes heroically told him to shut his big yap. (See THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/8/04, with a link to real-time reporting.) That summer, he and Joe Klein staged a savage and stupid discussion, trashing Candidate Gore in the strongest terms because he wouldn’t go along with Bush’s privatization (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/7/07). In such discussions down through the years, Russert has sometimes been overblown and inept; often, he has been openly partisan. Inevitably, he has adopted the positions favored by Republicans, and by upper-class journalistic elites. (By general acknowledgment, wealthy media elites had come to favor privatization by the time of Campaign 2000.)

But Russert thoroughly bungled this discussion Wednesday night; indeed, he had created a pointless discussion as soon as he turned a segment about “Social Security and Medicare” into a discussion of Social Security alone. Beyond that, a thoroughly jumbled discussion ensued—so jumbled that it was basically useless even as a debate about SS alone. Basic question: How many viewers knew what the candidates meant when they kept talking, without explanation, about “raising the cap” and “lifting the ceiling?” Very, very few, we would guess. And Russert made no attempt to clarify any of this as the long discussion unfolded. He was too busy looking for ways to spring his “gotchas,” to recite his irrelevant data.

Honesty forces us to note that some of the candidates were quite hopeless too. Most hopelessly, here is Obama, joining Russert in reciting a piece of pure RNC cant:

OBAMA (9/23/07): My personal view is that lifting the cap is much preferable than the other options that are available. But what’s critical is to recognize that there is a potential problem.

As I travel around Iowa and New Hampshire I meet young people who don’t think Social Security is going to be there for them. They don’t believe it’s going to be there for them.

And I think it’s important for us, in addition to getting our fiscal house in order, to acknowledge as Democrats that there may be a problem that we’ve got to take on.

There are no words for how awful that was. For the most part, young people “don’t think Social Security is going to be there for them” because they’ve been deceived, for year after year, by an army of pseudo-conservative dissemblers who are given free rein by our sad, hapless press corps. But there was Obama reinforcing this framework—and Edwards quickly jumped in to support what Obama had said. (Three cheers for Richardson, who noted the very conservative growth estimates which produce Social Security’s small projected shortfalls.)

Greenspan explained it to Russert on Sunday. Social Security is easy to solve; Medicare is the real future problem. But so what? Russert has become a pure buffoon in the years since he was air-lifted off to Nantucket. He now presents the eternal image of the pompous, uninformed, self-righteous burgher. He knows that Dems should be more godly. And he knows what to pay for a haircut.

After the debate, another store-bought Nantucket denizen loudly asked college kids in his audience if they thought they’d ever get SS. But then, Chris Matthews is a long-standing numbskull too—and he pummeled Clinton in his post-debate hour, as he has done to Major Dems ever since his patron, Jack Welch, allowed him to become a “Lost Boy of the Sconset.” What does a middle-class democracy get when it hands control of its public discussion to a bunch of corporate-picked multimillionaires? Russert’s performance was gruesome this Wednesday—and Matthews was there with Howard Fineman to fawn to this great island man.

WE DON’T KNOW IF THIS IS ACCURATE: For the record, we don’t know who said this, or when:

RUSSERT: The chairman of the Federal Reserve, the head of the Government Accountability Office, have both said that the number of people in America on Social Security and Medicare is going to double in the next 20 years—there are now 40 million; it’s going to go to 80 million—and that if nothing is done, we’ll have to cut benefits in half or double the taxes. That is their testimony.

Does Russert refer to Bernanke and Walker? We can’t find where they made the statements Russert gloomily paraphrases. But surely, no one has said such a thing about the fate of SS alone. Russert staged a hopeless discussion. But how about an occasional cite when we’re offered such high-powered “testimony?”

[FOR SOME REASON, WORDPRESS DOESN'T GET DOUBLE-BLOCKQUOTES SO LET ME TELL YOU THAT THE ABOVE, starting with the link to the Daily Howler is all from that blog.]

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Media Matters has more on Russert’s expertise: “Russert misrepresented debate exchanges on Social Security to accuse Clinton of having ‘one public position and one private position’.”

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LAST BUT NOT LEAST, SOME HUMOR FOR THE JUNKIES: Other Lisa’s mom Carol is on our little mailing list, and sends along the best quotes from the newsletter e-mailed by the San Diego Democrats. These Rudy Giuliani quotes are priceless:

“Today’s comments come from a guy — Rudy Giuliani — who said Dick Cheney, the architect of Bush’s failed policy in Iraq, was a great choice for vice president and who recommended the now discredited Bernie Kerik to be Secretary of Homeland Security. Once again, Rudy has demonstrated his complete lack of knowledge of U.S. foreign policy.” — Senator Joe Biden responds to Guilaini’s assertion that Senator BIden didn’t have any foreign policy experience.11.02.07

Giuliani is a dangerous man. George Bush with brains. Dick Cheney with better aim. Consider yourself warned. — Michael Tomasky in the Guardian 11.05.07

“America deserved” 9/11 for embracing secularism, gay rights and sundry other evils .. — Giuliani-backer Pat Robertson agreeing with Jerry Falwell. Video

That same newsletter also has these gems:

The Republicans are playing Russian roulette with America’s future with their bigoted anti-Muslim rhetoric. Muslims may constitute as much as a third of humankind by 2050, forming a vast market and a crucial labor pool. They will be sitting on the lion’s share of the world’s energy resources. The United States will increasingly have to compete with emerging rivals such as China and India for access to those Muslim resources and markets, and if its elites go on denigrating Muslims, America will be at a profound disadvantage during the next century. — Juan Cole 11.01.07

But, Meredith, part of the challenge the news media has had in covering this story is the old habit of taking the on the one hand, on the other hand approach. There are still people who believe that the Earth is flat, but when you’re reporting on a story like the one you’re covering today, where you have people all around the world, you don’t take — you don’t search out for someone who still believes the Earth is flat and give them equal time. — Al Gore, responding to Meredith Viera who brought up climate skeptic Joh Christy. 11.05.07

“If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you’d be saying: God, I love freedom, because that’s what’s happened.” – Bush at a joint press conference with French President Nicholas Sarkozy. 11.08.07