This weekend the New York Times ran what seemed to be a somewhat overly flattering piece about right-wing anti-entitlement hawk Pete Peterson, and the piece included this paragraph:
Progressives like Mr. Baker or Richard Eskow of the Campaign for America’s Future often paint Mr. Peterson as a disingenuous tycoon who made his fortune from the low carried-interest tax rate (it allows hedge-fund operators to shield earnings from the government). They argue that Social Security’s trust fund — while supplied with Treasury bonds, not dollar bills — will nonetheless stay solvent for decades, and accuse Mr. Peterson of shrewdly couching entitlement reform as a way to protect future generations when, in fact, it is today’s elderly who will suffer.
That would be Dean Baker, prominent economist, who describes Peterson with considerable accuracy:
"“He’s not focused on the debt so much as on cutting Social Security and Medicare,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Even in the late ’90s, when we had a surplus, he was saying the same thing and the debt wasn’t in any obvious way a problem then.”
Real men, real human beings, with feelings and families, fought and died at Gettysburg to preserve the Union, to ensure, as their president, Abraham Lincoln, would say later, that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” more »
Today’s absurd William Cohan column actually argues that we don’t need consumer protections in banking—nevermind the subprime explosion, the $8 trillion dollar housing bubble or the 1.2 million foreclosures expected this year. more »
Long-suffering victim is hardly the American image. Paul Revere, Mother Jones, John Glenn, Martin Luther King Jr. -- those are American icons. Bold, wry, justice-seeking.
So how is it that America finds herself in the position of schoolyard patsy, woe-is-me casualty of China’s illegal trade practices that are destroying U.S. more »
Picture this: You're lying in the dark with a broken leg. Somebody comes by every couple of days to give you water and a little food, but you're wasting away. Suddenly a figure appears holding a candle. In the flickering light we see Tim Geithner's face. "Hey, there!" He says. "Do you realize that if we hadn't acted so promptly, both of your legs would be broken? Good news, huh? more »
This week the New York Times decided to scare the bejeezus out of everyone by publishing several articles with slanted statements about Social Security. I’d like to revisit some key points in Williams Walsh’s piece from March 24 – statements from her article are in bold below. more »
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