Thanks to kosnomore (I like it!) over at mydd for the alert to the latest 'Social Security sky is falling!' bull doodoo from a right-wing Democrat, Alice Rivkin, former Clinton official and now of the very inside-the-beltway Brookings Institute:

With the large baby boom generation retiring and Americans living longer, the ratio of workers to Social Security beneficiaries is falling fast. Quite soon the payroll taxes coming into the Social Security system will be inadequate to pay all the benefits promised to retirees.

Of course the above is lamely, abjectly false. Here's Dean Baker:

. . . all the projections show that the Social Security program is fundamentally sound. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the program can pay every penny of benefits through the year 2046, with no changes whatsoever. The changes needed to keep the program fully funded over its 75 year projection period are no larger than the changes made in each of the decades from the fifties to the eighties.

Rivkin continues:

Fixing the Social Security program is relatively simple -- far less complex than reforming health care. It requires choosing a combination of revenue increases and benefit reductions . . .

Hey, Alice, why are benefit reductions required when a very small increase in revenue would assure no benefit reductions? Who is paying your salary? And, by the way, as Dean Baker sez below, reducing benefits to people who have paid in with the understanding that they'd receive a certain amount of benefits amounts to a default on government bonds:

As the Daily Howler wrote on Friday, it was a week for peering inside the dead souls of the U.S. media elite. And the most revealing two paragraphs came from the corporate media's least self-aware disinfotainer, Chris Matthews. Jealousy probably underlay the MSNBC Hardballer stating, immediately after hearing of boss Tim Russert's death, that Russert was the targeted dupe for the 'scary nukes' issue that Bush/Cheney used to get us into Iraq. Here's Matthews on Thursday, June 13 (emphasis added):

One other thing, and may be tricky to say this and I'll say it. When we went to war with Iraq, he and I had a little discussion about that and this is where he is every man. This is where Tim is Mr. or Miss America or Mrs. America. He is us as a country. I said, why--how can you believe this war is justified?  And he said, "The nuclear thing. If they have a bomb that they can use, we've got to deal with. We can't walk away from that."

And that to me was the essence of what was wrong with the whole case of the war. They knew the argument that would sell with Mr. America, with the regular guy, with the true American patriot. They used the argument that would sell, that would get us into that war. Tim was right on the nail. He was us, the American people. And that to me is something that has been coming in my head the last couple of hours when Tim and I had that conversation, that that was the thing that sold America. And the guys who wanted the war used that one thing that would sell the patriot in Tim Russert.

In sum, Cheney felt that Russert was the key guy he had to dupe, and it couldn't have been easier: 'TRUST ME TIM, SADDAM'S GOT NUKES!' That's all: no push back, no inquiry, End of F-cking Story. The Howler quotes Matthews and adds (emphasis by fairleft):

Matthews, of course, is describing a private discussion. There's no proof that this discussion occurred . . . But did Russert really get played, as embellishments led us to war in Iraq? You don't have to rely on Matthews. Who can forget the embarrassing exchange Russert had with Bill Moyers, just last year? Had Russert been duped by the war machine? Fairly plainly, Moyers was asking--and as he answered, Russert made one of the most embarrassing statements a big journalist ever has made:

The survivors of those killed in the U.S.'s war in Iraq since the 2003 invasion cannot simply blame Bush. Under the guise of "tough journalism" Russert and others disseminated lies and built the case for invasion even before Bush got to the White House.

How Tim Russert Planted The Seeds For Iraq War

December 19, 1999: With Al Gore as guest, Tim Russert says on Meet the Press: "One year ago Saddam Hussein threw out all the inspectors who could find his chemical or nuclear capability." Russert asks Gore what he's going to do about this.

Soon afterward: Sam Husseini leaves a message on Russert's answering machine, and speaks to two of his assistants, telling them the inspectors were withdrawn by the UN at the request of the United States.

January 2, 2000: With Madeleine Albright as guest, Tim Russert repeats the error on Meet the Press: "One year ago, the inspectors were told, 'Get out,' by Saddam Hussein." Russert asks Albright what she's going to do about this.

January 21, 2000: Sam Husseini writes a letter to Russert, again laying out the facts, and requests a correction.

January 22, 2000-March 19, 2003: Russert never corrects his error.

March 19, 2003-present: Hundreds of thousands of people die in Iraq War. Russert dies, not in Iraq War. Official Washington weeps copious tears for Russert and his Extraordinary Journalistic Standards.

Many people . . . have tried to call Russert's attention to the actual numbers on Social Security; he obviously does not care. He wants to cut the program and he will not let the evidence stand in his way. And, he has absolutely no hesitation about deliberately misrepresenting the facts on national television to advance his agenda.

Tim Russert, if family is reading may he rest in peace, was a tool of Wall Street and Jack Welch and therefore a dedicated enemy of all Americans who aren't rich or yuppie. There are any number of ways to establish that fact, but I'll handle his long and largely successful scare campaign aimed at killing or drastically cutting back Social Security while funneling mountains of taxpayer money to our nation's already very obscenely wealthy investor class. First up is Dean Baker, who supplied the quote above:

Tim Russert Bashes Social Security, Yet Again
Dean Baker, September 4, 2006

If Social Security was a private corporation, Tim Russert would be unemployed and NBC would be out of business. (When you misrepresent the financial state of a private business in the way that Russert misrepresents the financial state of Social Security, you get sued for libel.)

Note how the fact that Social Security, Medicare, and everything else that fits under "entitlements" becomes a Social Security problem, as Russert points out that entitlements account for 52 percent of the budget, approaching 70 percent. (I believe that these percentages exclude interest payments, but it's not clear where Russert is getting these numbers.) Note that Mr. Russert ignores the fact that Social Security is funded by a designated tax that will keep the program fully funded until 2046, according to the most recent projections of the Congressional Budget Office.

Many people, including me, have tried to call Russert's attention to the actual numbers on Social Security; he obviously does not care. He wants to cut the program and he will not let the evidence stand in his way. And, he has absolutely no hesitation about deliberately misrepresenting the facts on national television to advance his agenda.

More recently, here's lefty economist Tim Weisbrot, who is reacting to an appearance by (the apparently successfully misinformed) Barack Obama on Russert's Meet the Press last November (emphasis added):

The fact that a major Democratic presidential candidate (Obama) could attack the front-runner in 2007, for not proposing a solution to a problem that is so relatively small and uncertain and nearly four decades away, is testimony to the power and durability of well-financed right-wing propaganda -- especially when there is no matching effort on the other side. The right spent more than two decades, and millions of dollars, discrediting Social Security with nothing more than verbal and accounting tricks - they never even bothered to make their own projections to compete with Social Security's Trustees. Some of the money that altered public opinion came straight from Wall Street financial firms who stood to make a fortune from privatization.

These efforts should be regarded as one of the most successful disinformation campaigns in modern history. These people managed to convince tens of millions of Americans that they are never going to see their Social Security benefits, an event about as probable as the United States disappearing from the political map.

Surely the leading voice of that right-wing disinformation campaign was Tim Russert. What an attack that has been, on the millions of less well-off Americans who will be forced to rely on what Jack Welch, NBC and Wall Street decide to leave us of Social Security. (Unless we stay vigilant and fight back!)

At about the same time as Weisbrot, Paul Krugman was also attacking Russert for his Social Security b.s. The NY Times column quote below is taken second-hand from the Daily Howler, which has hammered Russert's anti-Social Security campaign for a very long time. The concluding comment is the Howler's:

KRUGMAN (11/16/07): Inside the Beltway, doomsaying about Social Security--declaring that the program as we know it can't survive the onslaught of retiring baby boomers--is regarded as a sort of badge of seriousness, a way of showing how statesmanlike and tough-minded you are.

Consider, for example, this exchange about Social Security between Chris Matthews of MSNBC and Tim Russert of NBC, on a recent edition of Mr. Matthews's program "Hardball."

Russert: "Everyone knows Social Security, as it's constructed, is not going to be in the same place it's going to be for the next generation, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives."

Matthews: "It's a bad Ponzi scheme, at this point."

Russert: "Yes."

But the "everyone" who knows that Social Security is doomed doesn't include anyone who actually understands the numbers.

More below from the venerable Daily Howler `Russert vs. Social Security' vault. The first outtake is long because you have to note how Russert disappears what establishment pillar Alan Greenspan had just told him three days earlier (much of Howler's italics removed):

The Fiorina/HP story is complicated and not exploitable the way some think it is. She did dismantle the old HP culture and privileges, and did very foolishly get herself and her 'Carly-ness' out front in the process, which was very easily exploited by her enemies as 'Carlyism is replacing St. Hewlett and St. Packard and their good old huMANistic HP culture'. The woman had not completely checked herself out, and should've known the 'old HPers' would have it in for the individual most easily labeled the murderer of the good old days. And she did put the company through several quarters of poor profits in the pursuit of her medium-term HP transformation. But I don't see how this amounts to much politically for Obama.

Here's what's really exploitable: Fiorina also was and still is a huge fan of outsourcing (as is her successor). She is a terrible person to have fronting your campaign if you think the election key is the pissed off working class of Ohio and Michigan. So, dumb move McCain, exploit away Obama lovers!

Anyway, Fiorina transformed HP and turned a declining dinosaur into the long-term profitable firm you see now, but only after several quarters (hell, was it years?) of weak profitability. One of the many problems with the Reagan era corporation (btw, we're still in the Reagan era, and will be whoever is elected this fall) is its obsession with quarterly results and frequent inability to execute any plan that doesn't pay off in 6 to 9 months.

U.S. manufacturing jobs must come back (pp. 20-21 of the link):

Manufacturing is key to long-run prosperity because it is a major center of productivity growth and innovation. When U.S. manufacturing moves offshore, associated R&D can move too, thereby further diminishing future innovations at home. Another problem is that international trade remains concentrated in goods. This means that, over the long haul, countries need to be able to produce and sell manufactured goods in order to finance imports. The erosion of U.S. manufacturing capacity undermines this ability, potentially risking a future decline in U.S. living standards . . .

And we know basically what has been happening for a helluva long time: other countries have been helping their manufacturing industries, manipulating their exchange rates, and/or under-paying their workers, while the U.S. has been sucking money out of domestic industry and putting it into financial speculation and overseas investment. These (obviously) have made our manufacturing industries uncompetitive:

U.S. consumers buy imports rather than American-made goods because imports are cheaper. This price advantage is often due to under-valued exchange rates in places like China and Japan, which often swamps U.S. manufacturing efficiency advantages.

Under-valued exchange rates are only one of the policies countries use to boost exports and restrain imports, so that they run trade surpluses while their trading partners (including the U.S.) run deficits. Other policies for export-led growth include export subsidies and barriers to imports.

In the modern era of globalization export-led growth is supplemented by policies to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), a pairing that has been particularly successful in China. Such FDI policies include investment subsidies, tax abatements, and exemptions from domestic regulation and laws.

These policies encourage corporations to shift production to developing countries, which gain modern production capacity. This increases developing country exports and reduces their import demand. Meanwhile, corporations reduce home country manufacturing capacity and investment, which reduces home country exports while increasing imports.

Most electable candidate in 2000: Al Gore. Mainstream media destroys him: it starts with attacks on Gore's character and a Bill Bradley love fest, gets worse in the race against Bush, and finishes with a media firestorm demanding Gore concede Florida and the election.

Most electable candidate in 2004: Al Gore. He tests the waters, finds the same crazed Gore-hating media, and decides not to run; doesn't want to deal with that sh*t again.

Most electable candidate in 2008 other than Gore: Clinton. Mainstream media destroys her: the attacks on her character are overwhelming, accompanied by a Barack Obama love fest and absurdly early and overwhelming 'loser' catcalls demanding she concede.

Most electable candidate in 2012 (assuming Obama loses in 2008; it's a strong possibility (see below) though I think he'll win by a nose): Clinton. She decides not to run, doesn't want to deal with that sh*t again.

On Clinton's electability and Obama's relative weakness there, check out electoral-vote.com any time in the past month. Here are the latest numbers:

Right now for those of you with the mainstream media too 'inside' your heads, you're likely living the lie that somehow it was Hillary and Bill who played the race card and innocent Obama who has repeatedly been the victim, and that the 'liberal' media, radio and blogosphere have heroically come to the rescue of racism victim Obama. Because it's so overwhelmingly the preferred narrative, I assume that media lie will actually slime its way into 'pop histories' and then real histories of the campaign. Despite the actual reality, the South Carolina chapter well told here (I've highlighted where the 'race card' playing started):

. . . Obama himself prepared the ground [for the media's all out assumption of Clinton evil intent no matter how innocuous the actual statements] by making the first gratuitous personal attack of the campaign during the televised Congressional Black Caucus Institute debate in South Carolina on 21 January, although virtually every follower of the media coverage now assumes that it was Clinton who started the negative attacks. Following routine political sniping from her about supposedly admiring comments Obama had made about Ronald Reagan, Obama suddenly turned on Clinton and stared intimidatingly at her. "While I was working in the streets," he scolded her, ". . . you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Wal-Mart." Then, cleverly linking her inextricably in the public consciousness with her husband, he added: "I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes."

One of his female staff then distributed a confidential memo to carefully selected journalists which alleged that a vaguely clumsy comment Hillary Clinton had made about Martin Luther King ("Dr King's dream began to be realised when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964") and a reference her husband had made in passing to Nelson Mandela ("I've been blessed in my life to know some of the greatest figures of the last hundred years . . . but if I had to pick one person whom I know would never blink, who would never turn back, who would make great decisions . . . I would pick Hillary") were deliberate racial taunts.

Another female staffer, Candice Tolliver - whose job it is to promote Obama to African Americans - then weighed in publicly, claiming that "a cross-section of voters are alarmed at the tenor of some of these statements" and saying: "Folks are beginning to wonder: Is this an isolated situation, or is there something bigger behind all of this?" That was game, set and match: the Clintons were racists, an impression sealed when Bill Clinton later compared Obama's victory in South Carolina to those of Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 (even though Jackson himself, an Obama supporter, subsequently declared Clinton's remarks to be entirely inoffensive).

The pincer movement, in fact, could have come straight from a textbook on how to wreck a woman's presidential election campaign: smear her whole persona first, and then link her with her angry, red-faced husband. The public Obama, characteristically, pronounced himself "unhappy" with the vilification carried out so methodically by his staff, but it worked like magic: Hillary Clinton's approval ratings among African Americans plummeted from above 80 per cent to barely 7 per cent in a matter of days, and have hovered there since.

I suspect that, as a result, she will never be able entirely to shake off the "racist" tag. [So, Dem hierarchy, faggedabout 2012 (assuming Obama loses in 2008) even if Hillary would be the Dems' best chance for a winner, she's toast.] "African-American super-delegates [who are supporting Clinton] are being targeted, harassed and threatened," says one of them, Representative Emanuel Cleaver. "This is the politics of the 1950s." Obama and Axelrod have achieved their objectives: to belittle Hillary Clinton and to manoeuvre the ever-pliant media into depicting every political criticism she makes against Obama as racist in intent.