WAPO Front-Page JOURNALISTIC MALPRACTICE On Social Security Draws BACKLASH

[Segami]

" On Sunday, the Washington Post ran as a front-page item a story about Social Security that intimated the Trust Fund was a fiction and generally put a right-wing slant on the matter, in favor of the idea that the social insurance program was in crisis. Dean Baker pounced immediately, setting off a chain reaction that has the writer backpedaling.


Here’s Dean:

As the article notes the trust fund currently holds $2.6 trillion in government bonds, so it is nowhere close to being unable to pay benefits. The whole point of building up the trust fund was to help cover costs at a future date when taxes would not be sufficient to cover full benefits. Rather than posing any sort of crisis, this is exactly what had been planned when Congress last made major changes to the program in 1983 based on the recommendations of the Greenspan commission.


The article makes great efforts to confuse readers about the status of the trust fund. It tells readers:


“The $2.6 trillion Social Security trust fund will provide little 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.”


This is the same situation the the government faces when Wall Street investment banker Peter Peterson or any other holder of government bonds decides to cash in their bonds when they become due. In such cases it “must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors.” The Post’s reporters and editors should understand this fact.



http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/washington-post-discards-all-journalistic-standards-in-attack-on-social-security

Paul Krugman piled on, http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/social-security-bait-and-switch-a-continuing-series/ re-emphasizing the thudding stupidity behind the assumption that a trust fund backed by the full faith and credit of the US government is somehow a fiction. And others joined in. Even the Atlantic Wire reports that the “overall lack of clarity and understanding about one of the nation’s most cherished social programs is alarmingly persistent.”



This journalistic malpractice has a real-world impact, too. The perception of crisis in the Social Security program is exactly what the various Gangs of bipartisan deficit scolds (in this case, a literal “Gang of New York”) need to force their favored solution of austerity down the gullet of an American public speaking out about jobs and inequality, not the deficit. Americans favor social spending and higher taxes on the rich; the deficit scolds can’t have that. So they invent fictions about Social Security to position themselves as saviors, destroying the program in order to save it. This has been the impact of propaganda down the line.



The pressure on WaPo writer Lori Montgomery has been intense. Here was her response to a reader:

I am a journalist, not an economist. :rofl: If you view Dean Baker as the voice of
god, then I’m afraid we’re not going to get very far.


My article is as accurate and as objective as I could make it. :rofl: Perhaps you’d like to point out some of these blatant falsehoods so I can respond to them directly.:rofl:

Voice of God Dean Baker has already done the honors on that. She called the cash-negative position of Social Security, completely expected and planned by those who built up a $2.6 trillion surplus in the Trust Fund, as a “treacherous milestone.” And it goes downhill from there.


It’s good to see what passes for the liberal noise machine at least get the attention of the media disinformation campaign to make it easier to steal retirement insurance from the American public.




http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/10/31/wapo-front-page-journalistic-malpractice-on-social-security-draws-backlash/



.

[Major Hogwash]

1. "Dean Baker as the voice of god" -- that's a good one -- or she could have used facts.

Why are shitty reporters always snarky after they are called out as liars for writing articles that are pure crap??
I don't get that.

[Segami]

2. These are establishment shills disguising themselves as ' fair & balanced ' reporters.

[suston96]

3. This is how the Social Security Trust Fund works........

http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html#n4

If more people would take the trouble to read up on the subject, the Social Security Trust Fund would be a source of solid reassurance to its subscribers - the American people, instead of misinformation and fable from its detractors.

That includes those ill-informed and malevolent authors who purport to have researched the subject.

[Alameda]

4. I thank G-d for Social Security! I can not imagine my situation

without it.

[LaydeeBug]

5. Lori Montgomery is, and always has been, a right wing HACK. nt

[grasswire]

6. the blame, then, lies also with the editors and publisher of The Post.

Was this published as an opinion piece? If not, then The Post's bias in publishing it as journalism should be thumped hard by the AARP and millions of individual citizens who will one day rely on SS.

[grasswire]

7. Lori Peterson: The Post's Judith Miller? n/t

[robdogbucky]

8. RW has been trying to discredit SS since its inception

Can't stand to see working people survive or to have any security. Goes against their concept of never-ending Cheap Labor.

This is nothing new, but the mainstreaming of it with the help of Fascist-owned media outlets keeps re-cycling the same propaganda in hopes the sheeple give up and acquiesce to yet another of their lies.




Hands off my Social Security!
Hands off Latin America!

[Nuclear Unicorn]

9. The supposed debunking article doesn't give me much comfort

As the article notes the trust fund currently holds $2.6 trillion in government bonds, so it is nowhere close to being unable to pay benefits. The whole point of building up the trust fund was to help cover costs at a future date when taxes would not be sufficient to cover full benefits. Rather than posing any sort of crisis, this is exactly what had been planned when Congress last made major changes to the program in 1983 based on the recommendations of the Greenspan commission...

Why is this comforting? It admitting exactly what the problem is -- there is no there, there. It's just a bunch of IOUs from a group that is already $14 trillion in the hole (BTW -- this means we're really $16.6 trillion underwater). Where will the government get the money to pay benefits when SSA wants to cash-in those bonds?

[Harmony Blue]

10. Read up carefully

how it works. To be blunt, don't fall for the sophistry coming from the RW propagandists.

[Johnyawl]

11. Government bonds are not exactly IOU's - they're interest bearing financial instruments...

...backed by the richest nation in the world. AND the $2.9 trillion in government bonds is ALREADY included in the total debt of $14 trillion that the government owes.

Where will the government get the money to pay benefits when SSA wants to cash-in those bonds?. Raise taxes. It's really that simple, and this is what all the propaganda is about, the rich don't want to pay us back. You notice they're not talking about the government defaulting on the bonds that the fucking banks hold.

[Scuba]

12. How come the Army isn't "broke"? Why not the Air Force? How about those...

..tax rebates to GE and Exxon? Are they "broke"?

[rgbecker]

13. Government passes “treacherous milestone.”

Pays Soldiers with dollars borrowed from Chinese. President Obama thanking the Chinese for his monthly paycheck, says he'll work for one more week then will look for work which pays in gold.

[chill_wind]

14. K & R once again for the excellent Dean Baker.