Cato also targeted the media big time, and began to cast doubt on Social Security in the minds of reporters and editors through information breakfasts and gobs of materials designed to sow the seeds that privatization was the makeover needed to save a broken system. For the most part, the press bought in, I reported in The Nation in early 1997. So many anti-Social Security stories were appearing, I wrote, that the AFL-CIO and the AARP held their own media briefings. The AFL-CIO’s Gerald Shea told me that he and his colleagues discovered that journalists had a deep cynicism about Social Security and “took it personally that they couldn’t keep their own money.” Perhaps the seeds sown by Cato are now bearing fruit as seen in the absence of serious, in-depth reporting on Social Security that Campaign Desk has observed. The long-term strategy to change public opinion that Mayer noted seems to be paying off.
Citizens for a Sound Economy, too, was active in the privatization drive with its own portfolio of projects. At the time, I reported that privatizers were “engaging in one of the most concerted, sophisticated and deceptive sales campaigns in recent times.” Leila Bate, who was then in charge of tax and budget policy for Citizens for a Sound Economy, said that the think tank planned to spend “millions” on the privatization effort. “Unless your average American buys into this, the best-laid plans have no chance of success,” she said.
As good as Mayer’s story is, it would have been that much better had it connected the dots between Social Security, Cato, and Citizens for a Sound Economy, and placed the Koch brothers and the activities of those organizations in the context of this latest round of attacks on Social Security. Average Americans may be starting to buy into privatization and other changes to Social Security. They need to know where all these ideas came from.
Social Security - 'this year's hot-button issue'? Hot-button to Trudy Lieberman, maybe. Out in the real country, it's jobs and federal spending and cultural issues like immigration and the national identity. I always thought that urban-Left journalists suffered from their distance from ordinary voters. Almost every piece I read in CJR confirms it. The staff simply cannot grasp thinking that differs from its own.
Oh, I forgot. New York.
#1 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 8 Sep 2010 at 02:31 PM
I guess NH isn't the "real" country. We're mighty concerned about jobs AND Social Security. In fact, our conception of "national identity" involves fairness, and looking out for one another. We're not interested in the politics of fear and xenophobia.
It sure is nice to know that we aren't part of the "real" country. Apparently Mr. Richard is using the "real America" map drawn up by the Alaskan Goobernatorial Drop Out.
#2 Posted by Susan Bruce, CJR on Wed 8 Sep 2010 at 02:58 PM
So Cato was successful at "convincing" what you portray as a hapless media that Social Security privatization was/is a viable option to Social Security bankruptcy? Seems your beef should be with the media.
#3 Posted by Khristine Brookes, CJR on Wed 8 Sep 2010 at 03:10 PM
Brilliant! Thanks for shedding light on where these proposals come from. Sad that journalists don't do the extra research to understand the program. Where did we go wrong? How could they be unaware that information packets from CATO would be highly one-sided to borderline false? So weird how your stories get pounced on but please keep them coming.
#4 Posted by Jamie, CJR on Wed 8 Sep 2010 at 04:11 PM
Good reminder, Trudy. They're still coming after SS, and will keep on doing it until they win or they're beaten back. No one's even tried yet.
Part of the problem, I think, is the abandonment of SS by some government employees. Police and fire fighters in Baltimore opted out a couple generations ago. Now that their pensions are radically under-funded, part of their pitch to the public is that "we don't get Social Security."
Aside from its disingenuousness (their 20-years-and-out pension and liberal moonlighting regs allows them to work a whole second career inside the SS system), the argument (and the opt-out itself) undermines the system for the rest of us who depend on it. But this is never discussed.
#5 Posted by edward ericson jr., CJR on Wed 8 Sep 2010 at 05:18 PM
Thanks for your excellent essay, citizens need the dots connected as the msm fails to do so on a daily basis. Between the hostile rhetoric of conservative talk radio dominating drive time radio to and from work, the 24/7 fear mongering by FOX News on cable tv which regularly features experts from AEI, CATO and CSE, and the msm's willingness to quote from AEI, CATO and CSE as if they were neutral academics, "The New Yorker" profile of the Koch brothers was desperately needed.
As if on cue, NPR conducted an interview with a libertarian and a liberal commentator on the Koch brothers shortly after the Mayer article was published. Unfortunately for the listeners of NPR, the discussion equated the funding by Norman Lear and George Soros of liberal causes and think tanks with the Koch brothers funding of conservative causes and think tanks. There's a big difference however, and NPR never connected the dots for its listeners.
NPR's moderator never put into context that the Koch brothers fund think tanks designed to conduct research and lobby for legislation that will directly improve the profit margins of Koch corporations. How? By relaxing safety standards and pollution regulation, all in the name of "deregulation" and "libertarian principles". If the Koch funded think tanks succeed: workers' lives are put at risk; citizens downwind breath dirty air; and waterfowl, fish and animals down stream swim and drink in polluted water.
Soros and Lear don't profit through maiming workers, Soros and Lear don't profit from polluting the air and water, but the Koch brothers do.
While Mayer's profile could have been a lot better, I'd wager had Mayer connected the dots, NPR and other news organizations may have been more willing to do so as well.
#6 Posted by Greg, CJR on Wed 8 Sep 2010 at 05:59 PM
To Susan, Lieberman identified Social Security as 'the' hot button issue of the elections this year. If you are a Democratic activist, yes, the Democrats are doing their every-four-years number of scaring Granny. But I haven't seen a single 'issue poll' that names Social Security as the Number One topic on the minds of voters, likely or otherwise. If said activists are operating on the assumption that it is, as they operated on the assumption that the Obama health care bill was more important to voters than job creation, it is no wonder they appear headed for a setback this November.
I usually write in commenting on a story, rather than to get the party line from the sorts of liberal Democrats who populate this thread. I already know the party line. I'd appreciated it if, instead of defending Lieberman's push-button leftist framing, someone would stick his neck and assert - with the kind of evidence they usually demand of their political adversaries - that the elections this year are going to turn on Social Security first and foremost. If this is the case, what is the message the polls are sending? Would Lieberman assert, should Nov. 2 produce GOP majorities, that The People Have Spoken, and it's time to rethink Social Security? My guess is that people on the Left will be perversely pleased to be able to inhabit their self-image as an Enlightened Minority vs. the stupid, easily-led masses. And is Lieberman entirely pleased that she only has defenders and credibility with that paper tiger of American electoral politics, left-wing opinion?
#7 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Wed 8 Sep 2010 at 08:14 PM
Mark, it isn't so much that it is polling as a hot-button issue, so to speak. The point is that a majority of those polled don't think the program is viable, that it needs to be reformed (it won't be there in the future, etc) Here is one such poll, you can Google a whole lot more.
http://www.pollingreport.com/social.htm
This is what makes it a hot-button issue and a legitimate topic for journalists. Millions of voters are being mislead and misinformed. IT IS NEWS when millions of voters are being mislead this way, regardless of who is responsible for misinforming the voters (journalists, think tanks, politicians, etc).
#8 Posted by David Black, CJR on Wed 8 Sep 2010 at 09:12 PM
David, thanks for your civil disagreement, but . . . Lieberman didn't say Social Security was 'a' hot button issue in this year's elections. She said it was 'the' hot button issue. I never said it wasn't a legitimate topic for journalists, either. But it's been a legitimate topic, year after year, since 1935. It's also a legitimate topic for the Koch brothers and Alan Simpson, by the way.
The amount of 'misleading' (usually just dissenting from the urban, generally democratic socialist impulses of journalistic conformists like Lieberman) by the Koch brothers does not begin to match the misleading done by the proponents of Social Security. Opponents assert it's radically regressive nature; the social-dems change the subject. Opponents seek a distinction (other than transparency) between Social Security and Ponzi schemes (perhaps this term should be updated to 'Madoff schemes'); proponents change the subject. Opponents using Social Security's own projections argue that the current generation entering the work force will not get back anything like what they are compelled to contribute; opponents call them names. So it goes. And for journalists of the quality of Jane Mayer (all over the Clarence Thomas case, but found with her guts in a blind trust during Bill Clinton's peccadillo-stained heyday) and Trudy Lieberman, it's attack the opposition ad hominem, rather than engage their arguments.
#9 Posted by Mark Richard, CJR on Thu 9 Sep 2010 at 12:40 PM