Brendan Nyhan

Edmund Andrews documents some classic White House goalpost-shifting and tricks with numbers in the NYT:

While Mr. Bush has alluded only vaguely to the idea [of “progressive indexing”], White House officials have promoted it in considerable detail. According to one White House chart, people at every income level appear to end up winners.

Middle-income workers, for example, those with average annual earnings of $36,000 today, would receive about $1,380 a month in today’s dollars – about $172 more than today’s system could afford to pay – if they retired in 2050.

Even high-income workers, whose benefits would be trimmed the most, would end up with $1,626 a month, about $100 more than today’s system could afford. “All earnings groups in 2050 would receive higher benefits than the current program can afford to pay,” the White House declared in a briefing paper.

But as Mr. Bush’s critics quickly pointed out, the happy outlook omitted two major points. The first is that, under Mr. Bush’s cuts, Social Security would still not be able to afford all the benefits being promised. The second is that the comparisons look favorable only for people who retire within a few years of 2050.

Using projections by the Social Security trustees, White House officials based their comparison on the assumption that, if nothing changed, the Social Security trust fund would be out of reserves in 2041. At that point, Social Security would be allowed to pay out only as much as it took in through payroll taxes and would have to cut total benefits by about 27 percent.

The problem is that Mr. Bush’s plan would not keep Social Security from running out of money. An apples-to-apples comparison would have to take into account that the government would eventually need to cut benefits or raise taxes even if the government did adopt progressive price indexing.

White House officials contend that the changes Mr. Bush has outlined would close about 70 percent of the long-term deficit, but most analysts say the changes would eliminate less than 60 percent…

White House officials do not dispute those estimates, but they have redefined the problem. Instead of saying they would solve 70 percent of the 75-year deficit, the measure most analysts use, administration officials say the plan would reduce about 70 percent of the deficit in the 75th year of their plan. The difference is worth about $500 billion over 75 years.

“The real question is how close you are to getting the system back to positive cash flow by the final year,” said Andrew G. Biggs, deputy director of Mr. Bush’s National Economic Council. “How much of the final-year deficit does it eliminate? By that measure the plan closes about 70 percent of the deficit.”

The White House also shined up its estimates by comparing benefits for a single year, 2050. If the trust fund became insolvent as projected, benefits for a middle-income worker in 2050 would be only $1,208 a month. Benefits under Mr. Bush’s plan would be $1,380, or $1,532 if the person had a personal account that earned higher returns.

But the comparison is misleading. Mr. Bush’s cuts would begin in 2012, whereas people would be claiming full benefits through 2040 if there were no changes in Social Security.

For more on the 2050 trick, see this Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analysis, which takes apart the briefing paper referred to above in more detail. (I’ve asked them to make it public; no response yet.) And for more on Bush administration’s long history of distorting tax and budget figures, see Chapters 4 and 7 of All the President’s Spin.

Has anyone noticed that the debate among fans of the old and new Star Wars trilogies mirrors the debate over the old and new Simpsons almost perfectly? Here’s USA Today on Star Wars – check out the parallels:

We’re not talking Jedi knights vs. Sith lords, Obi-Wan vs. Anakin or even good vs. evil.

When Star Wars, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith hits screens next Thursday, fans of George Lucas’ six-part opus will again clash over which films rule: the original hits of the 1970s and ’80s or the prequel that began six years ago.

Conventional wisdom has the original films — 1977’s A New Hope, 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back and 1983’s The Return of the Jedi — winning hands down.

Fans of the early movies tout the breakthrough technology, the story lines and the birth of such unforgettable characters as Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Yoda and the suave Han Solo. (Related story: Compare Anakin and Luke)

“There is no personality in the new movies,” says Michael Walker, a 39-year-old Star Wars devotee from Decatur, Ala. “The new movies, it seems that they are trying to win you over with fantastic special effects.”

But fans younger than 25 — many of whom had their first Star Wars theater experience with 1999’s The Phantom Menace or 2002’s Attack of the Clones — have a different perspective. They find the old films slow, the dialogue corny and the special effects crude.

“I watched the originals to learn the whole story, but I couldn’t watch them more than once,” says Jean Burton, a 22-year-old Los Angeles retail sales employee. “I like the worlds in the new Star Wars.”

The dispute can get downright testy. Yale Tindell, 28, a Baltimore automotive service manager, says “These new ones are an abomination. They have weak actors, weak stories, weak effects. They’ve bled the originals for profit.”

Of course, my generation is right that the new Star Wars and Simpsons are terrible. I can’t believe they found people who would even compare Episode I and II to the original trilogy — that’s sacrilege. (I am hopeful, though, that Episode III will be better than I and II. It would be hard to be worse.)

By the way, the capper to the article is a set of comparisons between aspects of the two trilogies — check out the reasoning they use to claim that Jar-Jar Binks is better than the Ewoks:

The winner: Jar Jar, by a nose. Sure, half the film galaxy loathes him, but he’s the third-most-popular toy, behind Yoda and R2-D2, according to Lucasfilm.

Who says logic is dead?

Via Eszter Hargittai at Crooked Timber, I see that the American Political Science Association (of which I am a member) has taken a strong stand (PDF) against the boycott of two Israeli universities by a British higher education union:

The American Political Science Association, through action by its Council and its Committee on Professional Ethics, Rights, and Freedoms, supports the views expressed in the May 3, 2005 statement by the AAUP against academic boycotts. We join in condemning the resolutions of the AUT that damage academic freedom and we call for their repeal.

Goddamn right. As Eric Alterman points out, even the Middle East Studies Association — no one’s idea of a pro-Israeli body — has rejected the AUT action as contrary to academic freedom and open debate. Let’s hope all the other disciplinary associations quickly follow suit.

Via Editor and Publisher and Gawker, one of the best corrections ever:

Because of a transcription error, an article last Sunday in Summer Movies, Part 2 of this section, about the director Don Roos rendered a word incorrectly in his comment about the use of onscreen titles in his film “Happy Endings.” He said, “I love foreign films, which have a lot of signage in them” – not “porno films.”

Tom McMahon, DNC executive director, sent out yet another email full of nuclear option agitprop today:

Reports say that this week the fringe Republican leadership plans to make its final move in the battle over judicial nominees — they will change the rules to crush dissent in the Senate and throw out the principle of a fair and independent judiciary.

Repeat after me: it will not “crush dissent” and it will not “throw out the principle of a fair and independent judiciary.” Senators will have the right to dissent all they want; they just won’t have the right to use the 60-vote cloture requirement to block judicial nominees. Those aren’t the same thing. Nor does it follow that approving judicial nominees with a majority vote means that the judiciary isn’t independent anymore.

(See my nuclear option archives for more hysterical spin on this issue.)

The intellectual hooligans at the Center for American Progress are up to old tricks. Here’s how they present President Bush’s Social Security plan in today’s edition of their Progress Report newsletter:

LEG ONE – SOCIAL SECURITY: The first leg of retirement security is Social Security. President Bush’s new plan to privatize Social Security will mean a benefits cut for many Americans. (No wonder so many Americans are against his plan.) Under the Bush plan, millions of American workers will see their Social Security checks shrink dramatically. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, under Bush’s plan, by 2055, Social Security benefits for medium earners “would drop 66 percent, or two thirds, compared to the current benefit structure.” Instead of seeing $1,844 a month, someone making $36,600 a year would receive a mere $626. The cut is even higher for middle-class Americans making a little more: under the Bush plan, workers making $59,000 today will see their Social Security benefits slashed by 87 percent in 2055. That means instead of a monthly Social Security check of $2,441, their benefit would be just over $300. (Here are more details on how the president’s plan will hit American workers.)

They quote the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, linking to this paper to support their claim that benefits would drop 66 percent for medium earners and 87 percent for a worker who makes $59,000. But they never make clear that these figures refer only to cuts in the defined Social Security benefit for workers who opt in to private accounts. Those workers would also receive benefits from their private accounts. Look at how much clearer CBPP is about what the statistics represent:

Once again, CAP is carefully following the White House playbook: say things that aren’t quite false, but are deeply misleading.

For more on their pattern of deception, make sure to read:
-my previous blog posts about them
-my Spinsanity column about the way the Progress Report distorts quotations
-the pathologically dishonest response from CAP to earlier Spinsanity articles by Ben Fritz (here and here)
-our discussion of CAP in All the President’s Spin

Here’s the DNC chairman displaying some of his trademark subtlety and discretion:

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Party, said yesterday that the US House majority leader, Tom DeLay, ”ought to go back to Houston where he can serve his jail sentence,” referring to allegations of unethical conduct against the Republican leader.

Dean’s remark, in a speech to Massachusetts Democrats at their party convention, drew an immediate rebuke from US Representative Barney Frank, the Newton Democrat and one of DeLay’s harshest critics. ”That’s just wrong,” Frank said in an interview on the convention floor. ”I think Howard Dean was out of line talking about DeLay. The man has not been indicted. I don’t like him, I disagree with some of what he does, but I don’t think you, in a political speech, talk about a man as a criminal or his jail sentence.”

When Barney Frank says you’re being too partisan, you’ve clearly crossed the line. Let’s all stop and thank the Iowa caucusgoers who kept this man far away from the presidency.

I’ve done some additional digging, and it turns out that George Allen, the Virginia senator who is being touted as the GOP presidential frontrunner for 2008, has more ugly racial history than I first thought.

First, there’s the noose he hung from a tree in his law office, which suggests an approving attitude toward lynchings. In 2000, Allen and his Senate campaign manager disavowed any racial connotation, describing the noose as part of a collection of Western memorabilia that represented his law-and-order stance on criminal justice. Then, in February of this year, he tried to claim that it was “more of a lasso” and “has nothing to do with lynching.” But reports on the matter that I have read all describe it as a noose, and Allen and his representatives appeared to refer to it as such all the way through 2004. And of course, if the noose “has nothing to do with lynching,” why was it hung from a tree? The symbolism seems obvious. As the Richmond Times-Dispatch put it in 2000, the noose was “a reminder that [Allen] saw some justification in frontier justice.” Official hangings carried out under the auspices of the law presumably used real gallows, not trees.

Allen also used to display a Confederate flag at his house, which he claims was part of a flag collection.

That’s all my initial post covered. But sadly, there’s much more to the story.

A March 2005 report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution notes that, “as governor of Virginia, [Allen] signed a ‘Confederate Heritage Month’ proclamation while dubbing the NAACP an ‘extremist group.’” Here’s how the Washington Post described his actions in an article last year:

[I]n the late 1990s, former governor George Allen (R) issued a Confederate History Month proclamation, calling the Civil War “a four-year struggle for independence and sovereign rights.” It was observed during April, the month in which the Civil War essentially began with the Confederates’ attack on Fort Sumter, S.C., and ended with the Army of Northern Virginia’s surrender at Appomattox. The declaration made no mention of slavery, angering many civil rights groups.

Allen also opposed the 1991 Civil Rights Act in Congress, and as a state delegate he opposed creating a holiday for Martin Luther King and voted against changing the racially offensive state song (though as governor he later signed legislation dropping the song).

Given all this, it’s not surprising that Allen initially defended Trent Lott when he came under fire in 2002 for comments praising Strom Thurmond’s presidential candidacy. Initially, Allen called Lott a “decent, honorable man” and said that it is “unacceptable to use the issue of race as a political weapon and try to pin the sins of the past on the leaders of the present.” But when Lott’s comments provoked a national outcry, Allen reversed field, saying that the “comment was offensive to many Americans, particularly those who have been personally touched by the viciousness of segregation.” And after Lott resigned, he added, “This is a day that the United States Senate, with Trent Lott’s resignation, has buried, graveyard-dead-and-gone, the days of discrimination and segregation,” with an obvious eye toward leaving aside questions about his own past.

Ever since then, Allen has been trying desperately to clean up his record. Last year, he traveled with Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), a civil rights pioneer, to the bridge in Selma where Lewis and other protestors were beaten, and in February of this year he introduced a resolution apologizing for the Senate’s role in preventing the passage of anti-lynching legislation.

I certainly believe in redemption, but this strikes me as too little, too late. Allen’s pattern of offensive actions and racial insensitivity will make it impossible for him to be a president who represents every American.

Update 5/16: Despite reader claims to the contrary, I’m not saying Allen is a racist — I have no way of knowing what his private thoughts are. I can only judge him on his public actions and statements, and that record is troubling at best.

The personal lives of journalists are none of my business — except when they involve the public figures whom the journalists cover. A case in point is NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, who frequently comments on matters involving the Federal Reserve without disclosing that her husband is Fed chairman Alan Greenspan. It’s inappropriate.

So I was dismayed to discover today that Ron Brownstein, one of the best political journalists in the business, just got married to Eileen McMenamin, John McCain’s communications director. According to the Times blurb and a report by the Washington Post’s Al Kamen, McMenamin left CNN to take the job in February.

Here’s the problem — Brownstein wrote a column on April 25 that unrealistically touted McCain as a third party presidential candidate:

[I]f the two parties continue on their current trajectories, the backdrop for the 2008 election could be massive federal budget deficits, gridlock on problems like controlling healthcare costs, furious fights over ethics and poisonous clashes over social issues and Supreme Court appointments. A lackluster economy that’s squeezing the middle-class seems a reasonable possibility too.

In such an environment, imagine the options available to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) if he doesn’t win the 2008 Republican nomination, and former Democratic Sen. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, now that he’s dropped his flirtation with running for mayor of New York. If the two Vietnam veterans joined for an all-maverick independent ticket, they might inspire a gold rush of online support — and make the two national parties the latest example of the Internet’s ability to threaten seemingly impregnable institutions.

No disclosure of Brownstein’s personal relationship with McMenamin appears in the online version of the article — why? Isn’t this an obvious conflict of interest that readers deserve to know about?

From his syndicated column:

Members of the inner circle of high-ranking House Republicans privately agree that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York is an absolute lock for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination and will not be easy to defeat in the general election.

The same lawmakers believe the Republican race to oppose Clinton is wide open but regard Sen. George Allen of Virginia as having the edge over Sen. Bill Frist of Tennessee. The consensus among them is that Allen is a better candidate than Frist and will the advantage over him in GOP primaries. The House members see little or no prospect for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Sen. John McCain of Arizona or Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The Clinton-vs.-Allen forecast by the leading House members duplicates the National Journal’s poll of insiders from both parties.

First of all, calling Hillary an “absolute lock” is crazy. It’s not even clear that she’s running for president — if she is, then why is she running for re-election in New York where she may get trapped into pledging not to run for president? Also, party elites and primary voters are far too strategic to back her without a good long look at John Edwards (who is vastly more electable than her) and John Kerry (who is not). Otherwise Democrats would be cursing Howard Dean right now instead of Kerry. And there’s no reason to think she’d be a particularly formidable candidate — her 2000 victory in New York is overhyped and almost half the public sees her, accurately, as a liberal. That doesn’t mean she couldn’t win in a bad economy, but “formidable” is ridiculous.

That said, the GOP is in trouble if George Allen and Bill Frist are the best candidates they can offer who could run the primary gauntlet. Frist is an uncharismatic stiff (remember what the press did to the last one of those from Tennessee), and running for president as a Senate leader is extremely difficult (ask Bob Dole). I guess it helps him to be a doctor, but his history of killing stray cats, his penchant for abusing his medical background, and disturbing comments like this will neutralize any advantage that he might otherwise gain. And Frist is from an exceptionally privileged background, which could hurt him in a general election against Edwards (but not Kerry).

I know less about Allen, but again, senators make lousy candidates, plus his racial history looks ugly. As I wrote in February, he’s apparently in the process of trying to rewrite history:

It looks like George Allen is

Senator George Allen, a Virginia Republican accused in the past of insensitivity on race issues, introduced a bill on Tuesday to apologize officially for the Senate’s role in blocking antilynching legislation through decades of killings across the South.

…In his 2000 campaign to unseat Senator Charles S. Robb, Democrats and civil rights groups accused Mr. Allen of racial callousness for having displayed a noose in his law office and a Confederate flag in his home.

Mr. Allen described those as parts of collections of flags and Western memorabilia. “I had all sort of Western stuff in my office,” he said, characterizing what others called a noose as “more of a lasso.” He said, “It has nothing to do with lynching.”

Whatever else is wrong with his tactics, George W. Bush deserves credit for moving the GOP away from Willie Horton-style race baiting. Nominating a candidate who hangs nooses from trees and displays the Confederate flag would be a major step backward for the party and the country.