Social Security - Part 20: Cheap Shots

[UPDATE: Mr. Weisbrot has informed Crabby Old Lady that she is mistaken in taking him to task for misquoting President Bush. Crabby sincerely apologizes. You can read her retraction here.]

While President Bush’s plan to privatize Social Security appears to be moribund, at least for the moment, two House members, a Democrat and a Republican have put forth separate tweaks to the proposal that are so half-hearted and unsupported by fellow congress members that Crabby Old Lady can’t work up the enthusiasm to tell you about them.

Meanwhile, Crabby ran across an interesting piece by Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C., imagining what an article from the media apologizing for its poor and misleading coverage of the Social Security privatization issue might say.

The piece accurately recounts some of the media’s mistakes until Mr. Weisbrot gets to this statement:

“President Bush can say, as he did recently, ‘Without changes this young generation of workers will see a UFO before they see a Social Security check.’”

- cepr.net, 12 May 2005

Even Crabby, who is no fan of the current administration, couldn’t believe Mr. Bush (or his writers) is dumb enough to say something that egregiously false in public, and she is correct. Here is what Mr. Bush actually said at the 2005 Latino Small Business Economic Conference on 5 May 2005:

“There was an interesting survey once that somebody pointed out to me, that said younger people think it's more likely they're going to see a UFO than get a Social Security check.”

Crabby could easily be persuaded that the president intended that statement to be understood by his audience as Mr. Weisbrot reported it, but the fact is – it is not what he said.

The CEPR is a think tank of the lefty persuasion, with whom Crabby usually agrees. Several newspapers published Mr. Weisbrot's story - without correction - as did tompaine.com.

But how can critics of the media and of the administration, Crabby wants to know, expect to have their arguments taken seriously by the public when they are equally at fault? Because Crabby follows the Social Security issue closely, she knows that the rest of Mr. Weisbrot’s story is factual, but it is undermined by a cheap shot that Crabby proved to be false in two minutes with Google.

We are living in a political era overwhelmingly dominated by one party whose values are opposed by half the population. They lied to us about Iraq. They lied to us about the effect on jobs and poor people of tax policies they have instituted. And they are lying to us about Social Security privatization, a proposal that must be defeated if we are to continue to live in a country that believes in cooperation, compassion and the duty to help care for one another.

Those values haven’t a chance of competing with the status quo unless the opposition is squeaky clean in its tactics. Mark Weisbrot – and everyone who published his piece without fact-checking it - should be ashamed of themselves.

Crabby has spoken.

...to be continued...

Social Security Privatization Series Index

Comments

[AlwaysQuestion]

Amen to that, Ronni!
It's appropriate to bemoan the typical American's lack of involvement in politics... but it is wearing to always have choose the lesser of two evils to represent us. One would think that the truth would suffice to make a legitimate point.

[Old Horsetail Snake]

And Crabby spake well.