The Daily Beast/Newsweek mash-up is an odd entity. It is overly needy, self-important and a bit dull. It is the latest media effort to try and capture “clicks” to capture ad revenue. How one gets the clicks is not nearly as important as getting them and this click mania is well on the way to destroying any integrity left in our modern media (USA Today is even investigating paying writers a “click” bonus). There are other new media and old media efforts playing the same game and trying to “win” using the same business model in one way or another. Perhaps one of them will sort it all out and move us more quickly to complete Idiocracy.
Like all the rest, the DB/N hybrid has assembled their own gaggle of “stars” to be their voice on the political issues of the day. The range of that list moves between the predictable and the boring and features “stars” as varied as Jonathan Alter, Howard Kurtz, Tina Brown and some other folks who seem to be Tina’s cocktail party pals (like the DC consultant taking time away from her website claiming to be “The Modern Girls Guide to Leaders of the Free World” to Mad Lib her own word string version of the always repetitive “how Obama failed Liberals this week” column). And of course we all know by now that this media borg want-a-be is the new home of Andrew Sullivan.
The DB/N Borg Lite also gives space to the concern trolling of Mark McKinnon, the co-inventor of George W. Bush and the man who still markets Bush and his policies to America. In his latest re-invention, McKinnon presents himself as the last reasonable guy still standing up as a trusted voice for sanity in American politics. To that end he is a “Founding Leader” of the deceptive and pro-wingnutopia “No Labels” bamboozlement. And so naturally Mark is shocked, just shocked that President Obama said mean things about Paul Ryan’s plan to end Medicaid, Medicare and dismantle any social safety net (while transferring even more money to the top 1%).
In the pursuit of clicks (which you can give her by clicking here), Tina gives McKinnon space to express his sadness. Mark tells us how Ryan is brave and Obama is just playing politics–concerned only with the next election and ways to win by demagoguing the courageous Republicans into submission. Not surprisingly McKinnon’s main point is that saying mean things about Republicans will hurt America and as proof the Ad Man offers this bit of revisionist history:
The previous occupant of the Oval Office was willing to lead with bold new ideas for Social Security reform. He knew it wouldn’t be popular. He knew it would be demagogued by his opponents. But he also understood the moral compact we have made as nation—for the welfare of our parents and for our future grandchildren as well. President Bush knew it was the right thing to do regardless of the political consequences. Thanks to the distortion of the debate, I doubt that 10 percent of Americans actually understood that the program proposed by Bush was entirely voluntary. Let me repeat, if anyone didn’t want to control and invest in their own accounts rather than have the government do it for them, they could maintain their Social Security accounts exactly as they had been. So, if you didn’t like the idea of “privatizing” your Social Security—meaning investing some of your own money rather letting the government do it for you, you didn’t have to.
With Mark McKinnon the marketing of old lies never ends. Not since Lee Atwater has there been an image maker leaving so much slime on American politics. McKinnon will always be an ass and a liar regardless of what radical Galtian nonsense he is selling and whatever “reasonable” flavor of candy coating he chooses to wrap around his latest turdball of wisdom.
With my mini-rant done, let’s have this be an Open Thread.
Cheers
KiranG
Do you ever for just a second see lower ‘cl’ and read it as a ‘d’?
Yutsano
Y’all need to time this better dengre. And I don’t even read Newsweek in the doctor’s office anymore. If I can even find it there.
arguingwithsignposts
Really? Karl Rove, that former speechwriter for Bush Michael Gerson? Really?
General Stuck
This bat has been bouncing around my belfry more and more lately, even websites I once pretty much trusted without thinking. I think it is getting worse, but if you think about it, it shouldn’t be surprising that it is at this evolving stage of the internets.
And also too, living in a hyper free market capitalistic society and in an already increasingly profit driven news and info business, where money is clicks and enough folks have computers and internet connection to make getting more of them for more cash flow.
Idiocracy is a good term for it, as trusted sources of news not tainted by commercial hooks to the cotton candy region of the brain, seem to be going the way of the dodo.
I am sure my dog has all the secrets I need to know about what is really going on in the universe, and what to do about it. But all the little rascal seems to want to do is chase deer, and the odd house cat.
Stillwater
USA Today is gonna be hooterrific!
Edited to include a crucial ‘r’.
Tara the antisocial social worker
Clicks? where’s clacks?
General Stuck
@Tara the antisocial social worker:
Maybe it’s just clacking season.
Stillwater
@KiranG: Definitely changes the overall thrust of the piece.
Nellcote
fwiw Jonathan Alter is gone from Newsweek
fraught
Since Sidney Harmon died this week isn’t the N/DB mashup owned by Rep. Jane Harmon D-CA, Tina Brown and closet case Barry Diller? this thing has real clown car potential when you throw Sully in as their biggest name blogista.
Batocchio
Thanks, Dennis, I find that McKinnon quotation very interesting, for two reasons. One, he perfectly apes the Ryan groupies’ rhetoric, that Bush was “courageous” but “unpopular,” when in fact Bush was pushing a horrible policy that was ideologically right-wing, plutocratic, and glibertarian (but I repeat myself). Two, one of the major stories in The Price of Loyalty by Ron Suskind is about Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill’s efforts to get Bush to use the surplus to help “save” Social Security. O’Neill also talked to his buddy Alan Greenspan to help in this effort. In any case, knowing that background reinforces that the privatization plan (which originated in the Heritage Foundation, IIRC) was about fulfilling a deliberate conservative strategy when other, better options were available. Plus, the 2008 crash would have devastated Social Security, which the current privatization proponents like to ignore… and they also like to avoid calling it “privatization.”
For a third point, Steve Benen recently wrote a good piece about what the GOP was saying about the budget surplus then, and how it contradicts what they’re saying now. Shocking!
C Nelson Reilly
@Tara the antisocial social worker:
Click Clack:
dww44
@Batocchio:
From one who “took a package” after 9/11 from a national brokerage firm after 28 years of back office employment with the last 15 playing compliance cop over the doings of 50 plus brokers in several branch offices, I know for an undisputable fact that the very worst thing to do with the retirement safety net, aka Social Security, is to allow it to operate and be invested in the same way that 401K plans and IRA’s are.
I saw first hand the damage that both brokers and customers did to those “retirement” assets and always always believed it was a good thing for everyone and for the country that Social Security was not invested in Wall Street. In an era where there are few defined benefit plans (there was none at my employer;it was ended in the mid 80’s), the safety net provided by Social Security is all the more important. It needs to remain safe and secure from the greedy grasp of both individual contributors and Wall Street brokers. To allow it to be broken up and put under individual control is NOT cheaper and will cost all of us more money in the long run. Leave it alone.
Yutsano
@dww44: They’re basing this grand idea off Chile privatizing their social security system in the 1990’s. It turned into an unmitigated disaster but it saved the government tons. The millions of Chileans who lost everything and had nothing to backstop them not so much.
pkdz
I was surprised when Mark KcKinnon stepped down as a McCain strategist, saying that he didn’t want to work against an Obama candidacy.
Villago Delenda Est
No, the “previous occupant of the Oval Office” is a war criminal who should have been given the same treatment as Goering, Tojo, and their various major minions.
asiangrrlMN
@KiranG: Thanks for the chuckle. Made the swill about which dengre is writing a tad bit more palatable to read.
TG Chicago
Why is what McKinnon said a lie? From the 2005 SOTU:
(emphasis added)
What am I missing? Was the final proposal not voluntary?
Uloborus
@TG Chicago:
The lie is more subtle. The debate is not about whether or not it’s voluntary. It’s that as a ‘safety net’ allowing anyone to opt out into an investment system suckers enormous numbers of people into annihilating their savings (which they would most need immediately after the market turned sour, to boot) while shoveling money at Wall Street. You rob the poor, feed the rich, and don’t actually save the government money. Whether or not it’s ‘voluntary’ is a distraction.
Suffern ACE
@Uloborus: The question in 2005 about what to do with existing retirees was also not exactly addressed. I thoght the proposal would have immediately would have ended the collection of the surplus right before the first boomers retired. Shortfall of diverted funds meant retirees paid out of general fund. I thought the cost was going to be tens of billions per year until our elders died off in sufficient numbers…
Hart Williams
Yeah. “Voluntary” makes it all fucking OK.
Troll on, dude. Troll on.
For those with some semblance of wit, the subtext is this: The stock brokers get their hands on all that Social Security retirement money. They tell the gullible how their “return” will far outstrip safe old Social Security, and then, like 2001 and 2008, they fleece a generation.
Fool me once, fuck you. Fool us twice (and thrice) fuck US.
TenguPhule
Every time Mark McKinnon speaks or prints, he needs to lose a finger.
Dennis SGMM
IIRC, Bush’s plan was largely a collection of glittering generalities about allowing the magic of the stock market to solve the Social Security “problem.” The word “churning” was forbidden to be spoken aloud, as were the words “commission” and “fees.”
The Bush plan was courageous in the same sense that sneaking up behind someone, hitting them in the head with a sock full of sand, and then emptying their wallet is courageous.
Hart Williams
@Dennis SGMM
Yup. That’s about it.
Kane
I remember discussions back in the early blog days of summer when some were predicting that the corporations would eventually discover the financial potential of the web and they would attempt to remake the web in their image. Of course back then, the media stars didn’t even know what e-mail was, and they dismissed the Internet as some kind of fad. Now with their click-generated websites, they act as if they invented the place.
RSA
I do like how he puts the Bush Presidency in the proper perspective. The “POOTOO” even sounds like the way I spit when I think about Bush.
Sko Hayes
@TG Chicago: There is a long and deep dark hole between what is proposed and what eventually emerges from the Congress (see: Health Care).
Among the things proposed by Bush:
So, if I’m reading this right, by 2020, you’d still only be investing about $3000 a year. With a very optimistic 12% annual growth in the stock market back in 2005, if you’re 45 years old, and you invest the maximum for the next 20 years, you’d barely have enough to keep the heat on for a couple of years.
Oops.
And look how Bush was planning on structuring it- remarkably similar to Paul Ryan’s Medicare phase out, while protecting Republican voters (the Republican base is older, white voters):
http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/02/retirement/stofunion_socsec/
Steve
@Sko Hayes: Right, we’d have to borrow trillions in transition costs to implement Bush’s plan. It’s hard to convince people that’s a big problem because “transition costs” is the kind of term that makes everyone snore. But fundamentally it means we’d be borrowing tons of money from China to invest in the stock market and calling that our super-improved plan for retirement security. If you think that’s a good idea you probably think you should be able to put an IRA account on margin.
debbie
@ arguingwithsignposts:
Well, their ideas may all be slimy, but did Rove or Gerson stoop so low as to plant a debate strategy book and then claim that an opponent stole it?
Tokyokie
I’ve known the bastard for more than 30 years. Let me assure you that he’s always been that way.
the fenian
That last sentence is a vast lagoon of pig feces all by itself.
Joel
I wonder if McKinnon got his Pat Tillman tattoo removed once Tillman’s family began questioning the army, and if not, does that mean Tillman’s ghost will be waiting to beat his ass when he dies?
Texas Jack
I can remember back in the late 70s when McKinnon
was the editor of the Daily Texan at UT in Austin,
only back then he was an obnoxious left-winger,
before his rather expedient David Horowitz-style
switcheroo.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Dennis SGMM: It seems that your recollection is oddly similar to my own.
Fred
Never heard of this McKinnon guy. Which, being somewhat of a political blog addict, is a statement in and of itself I think.
TG Chicago
So was Dennis G. not saying that the “voluntary” part was a lie? That’s what I got out of that quote, but correct me if I misunderstood something.
It seems that some of you are saying that Bush’s plan was a bad idea (and I would agree with that much), and so for McKinnon to mention a relatively good feature of the plan must constitute a “lie” even if that feature actually existed. I don’t understand that logic.
Now if you’re saying “President Bush knew it was the right thing to do regardless of the political consequences.” was the lie, then okay, I guess. I mean, I wouldn’t call that a “lie” so much as an opinion I (and most people) disagree with. But at least we’re in the neighborhood.
But given the context of the quote Dennis G. provided, I don’t think that’s what he was getting at. Frankly, I was a bit surprised that he called something a lie without linking to evidence of its untruth. As far as I can tell, though, such evidence does not exist.
TG Chicago
@Sko Hayes: I don’t think you’re entirely reading it right. By my understanding, you’re right that the amount that a 45 y/o invested would have — even in a best case scenario — not amounted to all that much. However, there are two parts you’re leaving out:
1) the 45 y/o can only invest a certain percentage of his Social Security withholdings. The rest goes into the regular fund, and he would get standard SS benefits based on that amount after retirement. If he pushed 1/3 of his withholdings to the private account, he’d still get the other 2/3 in standard SS benefits.
2) Assuming the 45 y/o didn’t enter the workforce at age 45, he would have been accumulating standard SS benefits for many years. So he’d get that money as well.
So most of the money the 45 y/o got after retirement would be standard SS benefits — 100% up to age 45 and 67% thereafter. The 45 y/o would be hoping that the amount he put into the investment account would end up being greater than if he had just kept it in the standard SS system. So if the market did well for those 20 years, he’d get a bit more. If it tanked, he’d get a bit less.
One thought: Once our 45 y/o turned 65, would the amount he got per month freeze at the moment of retirement? Let’s say that when he retired at 65, the market was doing great, and he came out a winner. But let’s say that two years later, the market craters. What happens to his invested money? My guess is that it would still be in an investment account, so it would crater as well. Thus, the budget he put himself on after retirement would have to change — perhaps the apartment he set himself up in would suddenly be unaffordable. I can’t imagine many seniors would enjoy spending their retirement under such uncertainty.
Another thought: Let’s say a guy puts money into a private SS account, but before he retires, he dies? What happens to the money in the private account? I believe for standard SS, the money is just kept in the pool that goes to pay everybody. Would the private account money transfer to the main SS pool or would it go to his heirs or what? If it goes to his heirs, that would be a huge incentive to go for the private accounts and would probably lead to the hastening demise of SS (which, of course, was widely believed to be the ultimate goal of the privatization plan).
nice strategy
Bush was right about the specific fiscal outlook for Social Security but his hypocrisy on every other fiscal matter during his Presidency destroys/destroyed his credibility.
The Bush plan included means testing, reforming the index of wage inflation to eliminate benefit creep and make it a true COLA, and a mandatory investment account ON TOP of the trimming of the main program. It would have been a superb reform if paid for with higher revenues, but of course it wasn’t.
The legislative effort was shelved quickly when it ran into trouble. There was never anything approaching a final draft. I agree that Dennis ought to cite something as I wouldn’t be surprised if some draft of the White House plan was less ideologically ambitious than drafts from the GOP majority Congress.
The Bush team (including McKinnon?) messed up the politics by selling the new accounts as fiscally helpful to the program while trying to assure older cohorts that the existing entitlement would remain intact. The country saw through that and the plan died.
Now, unlike in 2005, there are “serious” GOP Senators flirting with the idea of telling Nordquist to go to hell and recreate a 1980s style compromise with revenue and several “serious” Democrats running scared from the TEA party who want a reform credential. Social Security reform will pass in the next 5 years. It could be Obama’s equivalent of Clinton signing Welfare Reform in 1996, and it serves a lot of the political establishment’s interest.
JenJen
McKinnon has always made me cringe. Every time he pops up on Morning Joe, and that clueless idiot Tina Brown is there to cheer him on, it’s time to go re-caulk my bathroom tile or something.
Tina Brown is especially irritating, because she’s utterly clueless about US politics, and has an annoying way of speaking. She’s always stammering, and inserting the banal “kind of” phrase in between every few words. I have no idea why she thinks “sort of” and “kind of” make her sound smarter.
And McKinnon? When speaking of Social Security “reform” and President Dubya, if by “demagogued by his opponents” he actually meant “demagogued by his own party,” then I suppose he’d finally be right about something.
@pkdz:
Well, that’s what he told the Morning Joe and Daily Beast crowd. But behind the scenes, he was helping Palin with her VP debate prep. True story.
AAA Bonds
I kept reading that as “in the pursuit of dicks”.
@KiranG:
Like that, I suppose.
A WORLD OF STUPID CLINTS.
Hart Williams
When I suggested that TG Chicago troll on, it was meant tongue in cheek.
Alas, he took me literally.
I keep forgetting just how literalist these people are.
In such circumstance, suggesting that he go fuck himself would inevitably make me an accessory to an horrific unnatural act.
I will, therefore, refrain.