Today, FactCheck.org — a website run by UPenn’s Annenberg Public Policy Center — lambastes critics of President Bush’s Social Security privatization scheme for suggesting that his plan would be a “windfall” for Wall Street. They base their criticism entirely on new data about the administrative costs of Federal Thrift Savings Plans, which they claim are the model for the Bush proposal.

I guess they missed this article in today’s Washington Post:

Bush’s proposed accounts differ substantially from the 19-year-old TSP [Thrift Savings Plan]. Moreover, they would be much more difficult to run than the TSP and have far higher administrative costs than the president and his supporters let on, some experts say.

[snip]

“It’s not really like TSP at all,” said James Sauber, chairman of the Employee Thrift Advisory Council, a 15-member panel of representatives from federal labor and managerial organizations.

[snip]

The White House acknowledges that there are many differences between the TSP and the proposed accounts, and that Bush’s system would be more expensive to run.

George W. Bush likes Jose Piƒ±era. A Harvard-trained economist, Mr. Piƒ±era was labor minister of Chile in the 1980s and lately he’s been a top spokesperson for the president’s plan to privatize Social Security. Not only does he agree with the Bush plan — indeed, he was an adviser to Bush on Social Security as early as 1997 — his style reflects that of the president too. Piƒ±era, who was dubbed “Jose the Evangelist” by the Chilean magazine Capital, considers his work on privatization to be his “mission, a calling, a moral cause.” When he talks about retirement security, he combines the themes of “values and savings” and talks to workers about “hopes and aspirations for their children and grandchildren.” Sound familiar? It gets better. According to Piƒ±era, privatization requires “moral courage” and can eventually “deliver freedom and democracy.” However, the people of Chile probably disagree.

Mr. Piƒ±era’s record in Chile is nothing to be proud of — he left Harvard to work for the brutal dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled by murder and intimidation for 25 years after ousting the democratically-elected President Salvador Allende in 1973. Nonetheless, Piƒ±era “says he has no doubt that coming back home to work for the dictatorship was the right thing to do.” (He probably wasn’t reading the latest White House talking points on that one.)

What else would the White House prefer to keep quiet about the Chilean experience in the 1980s? How about the fact that the Pinochet regime and the Bush administration share a disturbing tolerance for torture. Considering that the Chilean National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture concluded last year that more than 28,000 Chileans were subjected to state-sponsored torture during the Pinochet regime, one has to wonder: Do George and Jose agree on Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib?

Obviously President Bush and Mr. Piƒ±era prefer not to discuss such subjects publicly and they would probably argue that crimes of the past have nothing to do with the future of Social Security in the United States. But what they won’t tell you, and many Americans may be interested to know, is that shortly after releasing the torture report, the Chilean government began contributing approximately $190 per month to the private savings accounts held by victims of Pinochet’s torture campaign. That’s not exactly what President Bush has in mind when he talks about personal accounts!

– Jeremy Sturchio

Yesterday Glen Reynolds — the king of the conservative blogosphere — wrote that “the Left certainly seems to be identifying with Ward Churchill,” the professor who made offensive comments about the people who died on 9/11.

The only evidence Reynolds provided for this smear was a newspaper article which noted that, before Churchill spoke recently on a satellite campus of the University of Wisconsin, a couple left leaning groups — including one called the “Whitewater United for Peace Party” — held “a student rally celebrating free speech.”

Maybe I’m missing something here but, as Armando noted on Daily Kos yesterday — it is completely ridiculous to use a free speech rally by a couple of student groups to brand the entire left as sympathetic to Churchill’s hateful, reprehensible comments.

Reynolds took note of Armando’s post and used it as an excuse to make the same illogical argument again. As proof of his theory the left is smitten with Churchill, Reynolds gleefully published an email which informed him, “Look what happened!! The comments [of Armando's post] turned into support for what Ward Churchill said.”

Anyway, I’ve skimmed through the comments section and there are probably six or seven people — with names like Planet B, Ksecus and TheChanMan — who say favorable things about Churchill’s comments. For all anyone knows, Planet B could be Reynolds’ nephew.

This is the right-wing playbook. An obscure college professor makes an outrageous statement. The Whitewater United for Peace Party holds a free speech rally. TheChanMan says he’s sympathetic. And, according to the right-wing blogger of record, all of a sudden “the left” is “identifying” with terrorist sympathizers.

President Bush, 1/16/05
Q: Why do you think [Osama] bin Laden has not been caught?
A: Because he’s hiding.

President Bush, 3/3/05: “We’re on a constant hunt for bin Laden. We’re keeping the pressure on him, keeping him in hiding.”

In late January when President Bush staged a call to groups marching against women’s reproductive rights, he pledged his allegiance to “a culture of life, a culture that will protect the most innocent among us and the voiceless.” Interestingly enough, in a speech on the same day, Sen. Hilary Clinton (D-NY) expressed very similar sentiments, “We should all be able to agree that we want every child born in this country and around the world to be wanted, cherished, and loved.” The difference is that Clinton and other progressives have brought both their ideology and their ideas to the table while conservatives sit uncompromisingly in the corner.

Take a look at how poorly the Prevention First bill has fared in this predominantly conservative Congress. Congressional conservatives have willfully ignored the Putting Prevention First Act of 2004, which would expand “access to preventive health care services and education programs that help reduce unintended pregnancy, reduce infection with sexually transmitted disease, and reduce the number of abortions.” The bill has run ashore because its “multipronged” family-planning strategies include sex education and contraceptives which conservatives state as “not the solution [but rather] part of the problem.” Actually, “7% of American women who do not use contraception account for 53% of all unintended pregnancies” and comprehensive sex education, which includes abstinence teaching, has shown its effectiveness in stemming the spread of HIV infections. Read more

Grover Norquist likes to think of himself as the king of conservatism, holding high-profile meetings from his corporate-funded headquarters in downtown Washington. The problem for Norquist, though, is that high-profile conservative officeholders are now publicly exposing him as removed from reality.

Take Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R.), whom Norquist attacked in the Indianapolis Star. Daniels said flatly that the self-important Norquist is, in fact, almost entirely inconsequential. “The only Grover they know in Indiana is the fuzzy creature on Sesame Street,” said Daniels. Read more

“I think you should talk to Senator Frist’s office, because if you look at what he said, he said he was encouraged by the progress that is being made [on Social Security].” — Scott McClellan, 3/2/05

Encouraged?…

“I don’t want to take something to the Senate floor where I’ve got every one of the members across the aisle saying there’s a problem…In terms of whether it will be a week, a month, six months or a year as to when we bring something to the floor, it’s just too early [to tell].” — Bill Frist, 3/1/05

CLAIM:
“Taking on gang life will be one part of a broader outreach to at-risk youth, which involves parents and pastors, coaches and community leaders, in programs ranging from literacy to sports.”
- President Bush’s State of the Union promise to focus on ending gang activity, 2/2/05

FACT:
“Law enforcers say Bush budget cuts would hamper anti-gang efforts…[b]ecause it proposed to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to state and local programs that help troubled kids and anti-gang efforts.”
- Knight Ridder, 3/2/05