by Charles
[For a little background, check out Part I and Part II]
It’s been a while since I wrote the first two parts, mainly because I lost interest, both in writing this series and in listening to talk radio in general. I still listen frequently but the blogosphere is so much more informative, interactive, stimulating and enlightening, that I’d rather blog. Also, the commercials on talk radio are killing me. Like accruing mercury or lead poisoning, they’ve built up in my system to toxic levels. They play the same ones, over and over, all day long, day after day, week after week. Ugh. What’s more, I’m not interested in what they’re selling. At all. I don’t want to try hutia and gingko biloba or some other crackpot concoction, or listen to Larry King tout health products and grape juice (Larry King?! Health?! He’s had more heart attacks than wives!), or buy gold, or incorporate in Nevada, or consolidate my debt, or get a credit report, or try exercises to improve my eyesight. [To all station managers, are you getting this? You’re not attracting new listeners with this awful pablum.] So anyway, I’m a little down on talk radio for now.
I wrote earlier that I developed a Ten List, based on the criteria of content, presentation and entertainment value. NPR is more focused on news content while the other shows are mostly about opinion content, for example, and I make no claim that the criteria is either scientific or objective. Some of my opinions have changed over time, or maybe some of the hosts have changed a little. Michael Savage has been less screechy and more contemplative over the past few months, which is a good step. He’s much better when he’s speaking his mind without the shouting and histrionics.
Another thing. In my mind, there’s not a lot of difference between numbers three to seven in the Ten List in terms of my criteria. NPR could sparkle for a few days and then fall flat, as have the other hosts in that group.
Over the past six months, I’ve had the opportunity to listen to Air America and I’m less than impressed, but not so much for the opinions. I just wish someone would find the key to break them out of that liberal echo chamber they’ve imprisoned themselves in. In all the months that I’ve listened, there was not single guest who was right-of-center, and only about one out of twenty callers were right-of-center. So what you have are lots of affirmations for the host (you da man, Al! right on, Janeane! you tell ’em, Randi!) and few real challenges. How supremely boring. What makes talk radio tick are the discussions and arguments between opposing points of view. Unfortunately, Air America is less talk radio and more activist/advocacy air. A few opinions on some of the hosts I’ve heard:
- Al Franken: The man has zero radio charisma. No doubt he’s a talented writer, but that talent doesn’t extend to the gift of blarney, which is a necessary prerequisite. Dave Barry unfortunately fits in that category as well. Oddly enough, for a guy with Franken’s looks (let’s face it, he is kind of goofy looking), he has a much better television persona, even going back to his early Franken & Davis days on Saturday Night Live. For some reason, on television he has that intangible undefinable it that translates well onto television screens. The Stuart Smalley skit with Michael Jordan still cracks me up. He really should’ve stayed in television, because on radio he’s not funny or particularly entertaining. Because of this, it’s hard to even get to the content of what he says. He needs co-host Katherine Lanpher on the program just to keep it from falling to pieces. If I were to rank him, he would be #11, or worse.
- Randi Rhodes: She is the Sean Hannity of liberal talk radio, and for the most part that’s not a compliment. I’ll put her at #9, sharing the ranking with Mr. Hannity.
- Ed Schultz: Although not affiliated with Air America, he is on the local liberal talk station. Good program, well-reasoned arguments, good rapport with listeners, probably the best in the group as far as debating right-of-center callers. I’d rank him #6½, below Rush but above O’Reilly, but that could change with more listening.
- Janeane Garofolo: Also not officially with Air America. Better than Al Franken, possibly better than Randi Rhodes, but I’ve haven’t listened to her enough to really judge. The title of the program, Majority Report, is misleading and dishonest since her opinions are firmly in the minority. Janeane, baby. Change the name of your show. Please.
And now to the final rankings.
Number 4. Tony Snow and Laura Ingraham.
Both are conservative, both are telegenic, both have great hair, and sadly both have cancer, so I’m not sure about that hair part anymore (by the way, prayers to both for full recoveries). I would put Snow slightly ahead of Ingraham because he gets good guests from both sides of the aisle. He’s Midwestern and folksy in terms of humor and common sense and perspective, which is easy to listen to. Ingraham is a little more kinetic and funny. She can be merciless at times (sometimes too merciless), especially regarding Lou Dobbs’ hair, which she likened to the horse that changes color in the Wizard of Oz. Both hosts express conservative opinions and articulate them pretty well, and they are generally less polarizing and more informative than Rush.
Number 3. Hugh Hewitt.
If not for his total immersion into the blogosphere, he would not have been ranked this high. But give him credit for putting weblogs on the airwaves, and not just conservative ones. He had Josh Marshall on for a while, and Peter Beinart is a regular. Quite a few callers are webloggers, and Hewitt lets them talk and he lets them give shameless plugs. The Beltway Boys appear once a week, as do a regular group of others. A couple of weeks ago, Hewitt interviewed columnist Tom Oliphant in the wake of his post-7/7 comments on NPR, and it was highly informative. He regularly features James Lileks, Captain Ed, Glenn Reynolds, Powerline and others. By the way, if liberals really want to make inroads, they should appear on as many talk radio shows as possible. I have much higher opinions of Beinart and Oliphant and David Corn and other liberals because they were game enough to put their views to the test, and to do so in "hostile" territory. Hewitt is a good interviewer and good advocate for conservative actions. He is not as talented as Limbaugh or Snow in articulating conservative viewpoints, which perhaps explains why he doesn’t do lengthy monologues.
Number 2. The Local Guys.
Seattle has a number of talented radio talkers, enough that on the whole it ranks number two on my scale. My favorites:
- John Carlson: I first met him when I delivered the Seattle Times to his house, way back in seventh grade. He was two years ahead of me in high school and at the U, where I watched him found the Washington Spectator, the conservative alternative to the Daily. After college, he did a Point Counterpoint segment on Channel 7 News, but he never called his opponent an ignorant slut. Finally, he moved on to talk radio, interrupted by a stint at running for governor and after he got fired for his involvement in a state initiative campaign (he was hired back by the same station a year or two later). Fact-based and funny, he covers a mix of local and non-local news and is one of the very best, right up there with the nationally syndicated hosts. Credit Carlson also for effectively using local webloggers such as Stefan Sharkansky and David Goldstein on his show.
- Dave Ross: Another talk show host who ran for office and lost. He is also fact-based, and one of the most challenging hosts out there for conservatives. Since his campaign for U.S. Congress last year, he has turned markedly more partisan.
- Bryan Suits: Lieutenant Bryan Suits, that is. He came back from National Guard duty in Iraq last March and he has an excellent perspective on Iraq and the War on Terror in general. His knowledge of the military and grasp on military technology and tactics is informative and enlightening, combining this knowledge with unusual flair and eloquence.
- Dori Monson: He might’ve been guarding me when I poured in a career-high 31 points back when he was a Ballard High Beaver (I hope you read this, Monson). He’s not affiliated with any political party and I clearly remember him calling George W. Bush a moron in the 2000 campaign, but he tends to be more right-of-center than not. He provides a valuable public service by going after the financial and operational maladies of the monorail project and Sound Transit. During football season he has a segment called One-on-One with the Nuns, where he pits his NFL predictions with a couple of local nuns (those nuns do pretty well).
- Mike Webb: If you were to imagine the most stereotypical Birkenstock-wearing, Volvo-driving, Workers’ World reading, Berkeley-influenced socialist, Mike Webb would appear before you. In my first minutes listening to him, he rhapsodized about a Frank Rich article and then spoke fondly of the statue of Lenin in the Fremont district. His politics are solidly left fringe, yet oddly, I find his show compelling. Perhaps because it’s helpful to know what the fringies are thinking and perhaps because it’s amusing to observe strange life forms.
Number 1. Michael Medved.
He is bar none the best, in my humble opinion. He was originally a Democrat, working on the McGovern campaign, and is Yale-educated. He went to Yale Law School with Bill and Hillary Clinton. He combines an amazing classical knowledge with a sharp mind and a conservative point of view, putting it all into a great radio show. His series on American history far surpasses any college history lecture I’ve ever heard, and he regularly brings left-of-center guests and callers onto the show, so his shows consistently have the sharpest debates. He’s had several segments with Andrew Sullivan, and the conversation and debate were one of the best I’ve heard. Sullivan should get on the show more often.
I don’t want to try hutia and gingko biloba or some other crackpot concoction, or listen to Larry King tout health products and grape juice . . . or buy gold, or incorporate in Nevada, or consolidate my debt, or get a credit report, or try exercises to improve my eyesight. [To all station managers, are you getting this? You’re not attracting new listeners with this awful pablum.] So anyway, I’m a little down on talk radio for now.
Hahahahaha. Two choices here:
1) Advertisers and ad sales managers know their business better than you do, and know that the audiences they do attract do, in fact, want those things.
2) Nobody with better reputations wants to advertise on those shows.
#2 is probably closer to the truth only insofar as so much talk radio is on the AM band, and few big advertisers want to advertise on AM at all. Washington, DC’s AM news giant, WTOP 1500, has ads for all manner of niche products and services of interest to investment analysts, government contractors, and IT professionals. Ugh. But, they know who is listening to their station.
Michael Medved lost all respect from me many, many years ago, in his book Hollywood Vs. America, because it was just such a poorly reasoned, poorly researched, poorly argued polemic of a book that, after reading it, I couldn’t imagine listening to anything the man said ever again. (And this was when I considered myself pretty conservative. I used to hang out with the College Republicans at the time, and my professors used to get in my shit about supporting Reagan.) The two things about the book that still stick in my mind are:
— His high dudgeon over who he referred to as “a performer who calls herself ‘Madonna.'” This was in 1992, for pete’s sake; for one thing, Madonna Shock was old even then, and for another, everyone knew by then that her birth name was, in fact, Madonna Louise Ciccone. (An Italian Catholic named Madonna? outrageous!)
— His going on and on and ononononononandon about REM’s “Losing My Religion,” when a) the song had absolutely nothing to do with anything actually religious, and b) the phrase “losing my religion” was a regionalism familiar to the band which meant “at my wit’s end.”
I figured, if he couldn’t get even basic stuff like that right, I couldn’t be bothered to listen to him.
I dug Janeane Garofalo back when she was funny. Today, not so much. She’s succumbed to Robin Williams syndrome, in that her utter suckitude now has travelled backwards in time to ruin stuff I used to enjoy.
Parts one and two are not appearing for me.
Actually, Janeane Garofalo is affiliated with Air America, doing a show called “The Majority Report” with Sam Sedar on AAR from 7-10PM.
Anatomy of a Right-Blog Scandal
Well, it is about Air America in a kinda tangential way, so not completely OT. And heck, if what Jess Taylor says about the right-blogosphere is correct, I have sorta forwarded the chain-letter, so to speak.
….
I listened to Randi Rhodes for an hour in my car once, thought:”Really tough to fill up all that dead air-time, huh.” Never looked back, but I do admire those who can fill hour after hour with low key relaxing blather. Listen to any of them sometimes, a high-pitched very fast style doesn’t work. I sometimes wonder what someone who didn’t understand English would hear.
…..
Sorry to hear about Snow and Ingraham. They were both nice to look at, and sometimes made me laugh. Always felt Snow was much smarter than Hume, and laughing at Hume’s pretentiousness and and self-importance.
In fact most of the political entertainment has that purpose, Fox is pretty good at soft-toned snark, but I never felt Hume quite got it.
If you’ve got the media player for it, the New York City local NPR political show, The Brian Lehrer Show, is very very good. Lehrer is a liberal but has managed to cultivate conservative callers: his efforts to be fair and transparent about his biases should appeal to ObWi types. Oh, and he’s been reading the blogs as well. He’s had Marshall and Atrios on to debate conservative bloggers (whose names I’ve forgotten) on specific issues.
Don’t let his picture on the link alarm you: he’s got an excellent radio voice.
Parts one and two aren’t coming up for me, either.
Well, it is about Air America in a kinda tangential way, so not completely OT. And heck, if what Jess Taylor says about the right-blogosphere is correct, I have sorta forwarded the chain-letter, so to speak.
Wow. That’s kinda disgusting. Thanks.
You need to scroll way down to see the old stories–both links work for me.
Aha. Thanks, M. Scott.
Parts one and two are not appearing for me.
If you’re using IE, John, scroll down a ways. BTW, what’s going on with Redstate? It’s been down since last night.
Not just IE, I’m using Firefox on Linux and I have to scroll down to find the text of the old posts, on a blue background, below the blogroll sidebar.
Garafolo used to be a beautiful, curvy, dark-haired actress with no small amount of talent who appeared in movies that I enjoyed. Now she’s a scary, anorexic, blond radio host that I can’t listen to for more than five mintes. I can’t say that the transition was in any way positive.
I’ll go along with the rest of the commenters here on Janeane. I actually used to have a slight crush on her (I loved The Truth About Cats and Dogs), but now she just comes across as shrewish. Generally speaking, I don’t listen to the radio at all anymore. With all the advertisements and consolidations, it’s hard to find anything unique and interesting out there anymore. That being said, a few comments…
As far as having respect for writers like Corn for going on the shows…it basically depends on if you can get an invitation or not. I think many shows will only book guests who are of the same political bent because:
1. The shows only want to hear like minded pundits, and…
2. Guests on the opposite end of the political spectrum don’t want to get ganged up on by the host and regular callers
That’s one of the reasons I like the Daily Show so much. Jon Stewart is an admitted partisan, but he treats his conservative guests with a level of respect that you usually don’t see on other shows. Of course, if they have no arguments to defend themselves, then, he calls them on their bullsh*t. If a conservative comes across as foolish on his show, it’s usually because they couldn’t back up their opinions.
My partisan side also suggests the reason liberals don’t get invited on the conservative shows is that the left has been destroying conservatives lately on so many issues.
I mean, it’s hard to argue in favor of torture, blowing the cover of CIA agents, etc, etc… Has there been any good news out of this administration recently?
Of course that’s the partisan side of me speaking. YMMV.
I would say that Charles has given the most neutral review of Janeane Garofalo’s show.
“Shrewish” vs. “crush”-worthy? “curvy n’ dark-haired” vs. “scary n’ blond”? C’mon, guys! How’s her content? How’s her radio-voice? Don’t run for the sexist tropes, if you can help it!
So, now that I’m a bit pissed about how people I think of as leftists think of women in the media, I should link to one of my favorite women in radio media, Brooke Gladstone’s wonderful, awards-winning show (hosted also by WNYC), On The Media, available for podcasting. The show is smart as hell and up-to-date on blogging–they were the ones who made a radio-play out of the Poor Man’s “Where The White Women At?”
(Oh, and the scroll-down problem is also happening on Firefox.)
(Oh, and I think it a bit unfair of CB to rate two to three hour single-person talk shows on the same level as NPR in general, which contains multitudes.)
No one has come to Franken’s defense? I’m not a huge fan, but I think he’s pretty good. I don’t like most of the other Air America people I’ve listened to, so I’m not saying that because I agree with Franken’s politics (which are a little too moderate for my tastes, actually). Randi Rhodes , for instance, is awful–I know at least two people (besides myself) who are Franken fans and then turn Randi off with disgust when her show comes on.
Here’s my problem with talk radio: no transcripts.
It’s not just problem with blogging about them. It is an accountability problem. They deserve even less respect than they get because they won’t hold themselves accountable for their statements. It’s not about making a gotcha out of a misspoken sentence. It is about things like Limbaugh’s day in and day out outright lying about particular issues or pieces of legislation. Gitmo anyone?
Don’t underestimate the free market powers of advertisers to know their audiences…
There is a reason why KJR Sports radio advertises baldness remedies, male herbal enchanment and lawyers who will take your ex-wife to the woodshed and get you custody of your kids.
Similarly, the Weekly World News, most notable for its cover art of Bat Boy emerges from Crater together with Statan’s minions, story on page 3, has ads where you can send in $20 and have a hex removed, complete with a certificate to that effect (suitable for framing?).
I guess my point is that if the advertisers treat you like a dummy for listening, perhaps they are right, and you are a dummy for listening.
I actually find Franken mildly irritating. It’s not so much his content; I think he’s fairly funny and does an extremely good job of researching and triple-checking his facts. It’s his voice: it just grates on me.
That said, he’s pretty much the go-to guy for debunking the legions of right-wing bullshit, particularly Limbaugh’s.
The rest of Air America isn’t a lot better. Their problem is that they’re trying to do to right-wing talk radio what Redstate is trying to do to Daily Kos, with about the same degree of success, and for similar reasons.
Medved still beats the straw man pretty bad, although he does it with far more subtlety that the other loudmouths. He conveniently equivocates and dissembles when it helps his point. This, coupled with his calm demeanor gives a shroud of objective intellectual observation to cover up the run-of-the-mill sophistry. Still, he is fair to his guests, doesn’t yell, and doesn’t try to pull any rhetorical sleight-of-hand when he has a guest with an opposing viewpoint.
I suppose if you are picking AM talk show hosts (which is akin to choosing among venereal diseases, in my opinion) he is worthy of consideration.
I don’t know much about Medved in general. But I remember some attention to what sounded like a pretty disgraceful incident this spring, where he was involved in yelling, being unfair to a guest, calling the guest a “liar” when what he was saying was true, and so on.
http://blog.rockthevote.com/2005/05/michael-medved-twisting-in-wind.html
I think I saw this first on Josh Marshall’s site.
But I remember some attention to what sounded like a pretty disgraceful incident this spring, where he was involved in yelling, being unfair to a guest, calling the guest a “liar” when what he was saying was true, and so on.
I actually listened to that segment, and Riemer was being evasive and dishonest. Medved showed how dishonest he was with regard to RTV’s “non-partisanship” and how it portrays SS. His blog entry was CYA, but too late because his ass was already exposed on a national radio show.
Mr. Bird–
I said nothing of Reimer’s honesty, or of RTV’s non-partisanship. The issue that I raised was whether Medved had yelled at a guest, and whether he had called a guest a “liar” in reference to an issue on which the guest was speaking the truth. (As I recall, it turned on whether Bush had ever used the word ‘privatization’. Reimer showed that he had.)
You raise some completely different issues, about which I don’t have any opinion. Even about the issues I raised I have no *first-hand* opinion–I didn’t hear the show, and I don’t really care much about Medved or Reimer (hadn’t heard his name till now).
Still–it sounded like an episode in which Medved was being
1) rude to a guest and
2) yelling at him, and
3) called him a ‘liar’ when the guest had the facts–and quotes–on his side.
Is any of that wrong? Or do you just prefer to bring up some other issues instead?
I don’t remember Medved yelling or “hollering”, but I do remember him cutting short and challenging Riemer’s talking points. He did so strenuously and he pointed that some of his statements were lies and falsehoods. Too bad there isn’t a transcript because all you’re reading is Riemer’s side of the story, which was a fraction of what was on the show. Anyone listening would have concluded that Riemer’s credibility was in tatters.
“Too bad there isn’t a transcript…”
Well, here’s a transcript of part of it, from Media Matters:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200505120007
Doubtless many other things happened in other portions of the broadcast.
Anyone listening would have concluded that Riemer’s credibility was in tatters.
Knowing absolutely nothing about the topic, I’ll take that bet.
And to be clear, I mean that in a non-trivial way.
Anarch–
Are you saying “I doubt that Riemer’s credibility was in tatters,” or “I can well imagine that Riemer’s credibility was in tatters”?
I’m not being snarky here, I just have difficulty decoding betting idioms. E.g. I say “p” and you say “I’ll take that bet”–does that mean you are willing to wager money that p is true, or that it is false?
(This is part of why I’ve never been a betting man. Also why it took me years to realize that in “Fugue for Tin Horns” in Guys and Dolls, they were not saying “it’s better than, even, money” as hyperbaton for “it’s even better than money”.)
Anyone expecting REM’s lyrics to actually mean anything is doomed to a life of confusion.
It’s interesting that you say “What makes talk radio tick are the discussions and arguments between opposing points of view.” and dis a show that has “lots of affirmation for the host” and “few real challenges.” The real king of that approach is Limbaugh. He hardly ever has guests at all, by choice, and he has the champion call-screeners.
As a left-of-center listener, I have to agree about Randi Rhodes. I have a lot of trouble listening to her, and she’s often misinformed. I do like Al Franken when I have a chance to hear him, not so much for the skits, which are often weak, but for the policy and political discussions laced with humor. He does know his issues, and he does do his research. And he cares about getting it right.
On the local scene I enjoy Michael Smerconish here in Philly, even though he really started drinking the Kool-Aid. By nature, he tries very hard to listen to opposing viewpoints, and engage rather than harangue. Like any radio personality, he rides his few hobbyhorses hard, but more often than not he’s worth listening to.
(He’s giving free campaign time weekly to Santorum, though, through a regular “interview”; and that will have to stop once challengers are declared next year).
“On the local scene I enjoy Michael Smerconish here in Philly, even though he really started drinking the Kool-Aid.”
I was in Smerconish’s class in the mid- 80’s in law school (when he ran for State Legislature during his second year). He was drinking the Kool-Aid even then.
I don’t have an evening drive to fill up, so I’ve never listened to much talk radio of any variety at all. Doug Henwood’s WBAI show is fascinating whenever I listen to it, but that’s it, mostly.
I did hear Paul Harvey’s remarks last week when he was overcome with teary-eyed nostalgia for genocide, biological warfare, and slavery. I always thought of Harvey as just another crusty old fart, not the barking mad King of the ‘wingers. Is this just drooling senility or was he always crazy?
Harvey MP3
Doubtless many other things happened in other portions of the broadcast.
Yes. I didn’t listen to the segment that Media Matters recorded, but I did listen to the first half hour. Medved took Riemer to task for his statements to the effect that Republicans intended to dismantle Social Security, not to mention other misrepresentations. Riemer defended his words and Medved asked him which Republicans proposed such dismantling. Riemer hemmed and hawed and evaded the question, over and over. That’s why he brought up Chocola in the next segment, but it was a deceptive maneuver since Chocola mentioned privatizing, not dismantling. Riemer was trying to falsely equate privatization with dismantlement. Two entirely different concepts. It’s no surprise Media Matters and Riemer chose the snippet that they did, because the prior segment was a supreme embarrassment for Riemer. I actually stayed in the car an extra three or four minutes because it was one of the thorough and complete takedowns I’ve listened to on talk radio.
“two entirely different concepts”
Mr. Bird–
Yes, of course “privatization” and “dismantlement” are entirely different concepts.
So are “states rights” and “enslaving blacks”. So are “final solution” and “genocide”. The fact that a fundamentally dishonest group refuses to state its intentions in honest terms only shows that we sometimes must look past the slogans to see what the policy really amounts to.
When people won’t tell the truth about what they are up to, you have to look at the effects of their proposals. The effects of the various plans put on the table by the Bush administration and its allies have all been uniform (even while the cover-stories and rationales have shifted as quickly as excuses for the Iraq war): the destruction of Social Security.
It has been demonstrated, numerous times, on this blog and elsewhere, that Bush’s entire Social Security bamboozle was and is a part of the decades-long, well-documented right-wing policy of attempting to destroy and dismantle Social Security. The vast majority of the American people now understand this. It surprises me that at this late date you should even dispute this.
And *that* is how Medved embarrassed Reimer? By noting that the Republican leadership has been uniformly dishonest about its intentions?
“It has been demonstrated, numerous times, on this blog and elsewhere, that Bush’s entire Social Security bamboozle was and is a part of the decades-long, well-documented right-wing policy of attempting to destroy and dismantle Social Security. The vast majority of the American people now understand this. It surprises me that at this late date you should even dispute this.”
I suspect that if he does so, and actually convinces anyone, he earns points towards his very own VRWC secret decoder ring. đŸ™‚
It has been demonstrated, numerous times, on this blog and elsewhere, that Bush’s entire Social Security bamboozle was and is a part of the decades-long, well-documented right-wing policy of attempting to destroy and dismantle Social Security.
OK, then I’ll ask you the same question Medved asked Riemer: Which Republicans have proposed dismantling Social Security? C’mon, Tad, what overwrought nonsense. Factcheck.org or a synopsis here are the most reasonable takes.
No, the Factcheck.org piece was not reasonable. It confused the historical rate of returns on stocks with the projected future returns of personal accounts, thereby overlooking (a) the point that projected future anything need not be the historical average of that thing, and in the case at hand there’s good reason to suppose that the future returns on stocks will not match their historical average, and (b) that personal accounts will not be composed solely of stocks in the first place. It also criticized MoveOn’s ad for using ‘cuts’ in a sense that is so common that the very ad MoveOn was criticizing for involving ‘cuts’ used ‘cuts’ in that same sense.
But let’s be precise and say: Bush’s plan would result in benefits being cut dramatically. The progressive price indexing part would lead, by 2100, to all workers getting the same benefits (in real dollars) that workers making $20,000 get today. When you add in the private accounts, those benefits might rise or fall, depending on how the private accounts do. But it’s hard to imagine that they’d rise enough to offset the enormous cuts the plan would impose, especially when you take into account the fact that workers’ social security benefits would be decreased by the amount of their private accounts plus interest (at 3% above inflation.) (cite)
And besides cutting benefits so drastically, the Bush plan would also: (a) exhaust the SS trust fund by 2030, thirteen years earlier than under the current system, and by 2050 it would increase the national debt by 19.3% of GDP, a staggering number.
“Thus, by 2050, the President’s plan would require more than half as much borrowing as the federal government has undertaken for all purposes in its first 216 years. In 2050, the interest on the additional debt created by the President’s plan would be equivalent to $133 billion in today’s economy, or more than the federal government will spend this year on all education, veterans’ health care, science, conservation, pollution control, and job training programs combined.” (cite)
Or, to put it another way: “In the decade starting in 2031, the U.S. would spend more servicing debt from the Bush Social Security plan than on the U.S. Army, Navy or Air Force.”
Dismantling? We report; you decide.
Bush’s plan would result in benefits being cut dramatically.
Compared to what, Hil? We’ve gone over Moveon.org’s objections before and I’m still not buying, and factcheck.org already answered them quite well. It is a fact that stocks provide the highest historical return over the long relative to bonds and the like, and there is little or no evidence to suggest that this will change. The CBO uses projections all the time based on the best available information. You can’t just toss some of their numbers when you don’t like the outcome, then keep others that better fit your agenda.
Progressive price indexing was one proposal to soften the blow prior to 2043, and that’s all it is. A proposal. It’s either going to happen slowly, or there’s going a massive tax increase/benefit cut when the bill comes due. Either way, major benefit cuts and/or tax increases will happen. As for your cite to a left-wing think tank, I’ll withhold judgment until I’ve studied it further.
Hilzoy–
Thank you for assembling some of the evidence for me–I did not have it ready to hand.
Something like this happened to me once before when I could not explain the details of Foucault’s pendulum to someone who insisted the earth is stationary. Rather awkward. And I felt so inadequate about the fact that he walked away unconvinced.