FOOLED ABOUT SCHOOLS: Science and math!

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2012

Part 3—Let’s look at the rest of the record: Last year, the United States took part in the PIRLS, a major international assessment of fourth-graders’ reading skills.

The PIRLS is administered every five years. Last year, about fifty other nations took part—and U.S. fourth graders pretty much kicked major keister.

That said, you’d have a hard time learning that fact from reading our major newspapers. How did American fourth graders do in reading?

They did this well:

American fourth-graders outscored their peers in Canada, England, Germany and France; each is a large, well-known nation. They also outperformed their peers in Spain, Italy, Australia and Taiwan—four other rather large nations. (Technically, Taiwan is still part of China.)

They outscored almost every smaller European nation, including such lights for the world as Ireland, Denmark, The Netherlands, Sweden and Norway.

They outscored Israel and New Zealand. They outperformed The Czech Republic and The Slovak Republic. The outperformed Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Lithuania and Poland. They bested their peers in Portugal and Belgium (Flemish region only).

This doesn’t mean that U.S. fourth graders did as well as they might have done. This doesn’t mean that there isn’t a great deal of room for improvement in basic skills. (And in creativity. And in enjoyment.)

But good God! U.S. fourth graders outscored the bulk of the world on this latest reading test. Especially given the heavily-scripted doom and gloom about our horrible failing schools with their hopelessly selfish teachers, you’d almost think it would have counted as news when the man bit the dog in this surprising fashion.

That story might have counted as news—in a world where the big newspapers didn't struggle to conform to the views of the billionaires.

American students kicked the ass of most of the developed world! And yet, when the AP discussed the latest test scores, here’s how its news report started:

LEDERMAN (12/11/12): American fourth-graders are performing better than they were four years ago in math and reading, but students four years older show no such progress, a global study released Tuesday revealed.

Although the U.S. remains in the top dozen or so countries in all subjects tested, the gap between the U.S. and the top-performing nations is much wider at the eighth-grade level, especially in math.

Speaking of problems with basic skills, you might get the impression from that report that eighth graders were also tested in reading. (And that they badly trailed the world's top-performing nations.)

If you got that impression, you were misled; there was no testing in eighth grade reading. As U.S. fourth graders improve their skills, the AP keeps lagging behind! Meanwhile:

“The U.S. remains in the top dozen or so countries in all subjects tested?” That statement certainly isn’t wrong. But a person might feel that it’s misleading or perhaps under-informative.

But then, a reader might also have gotten a false impression from reading the Washington Post. Here how its news report started:

LAYTON (12/11/12): Students across the United States have made some gains but continue to lag behind many of their Asian counterparts in reading, math and science, according to the results of two international tests released Tuesday.

U.S. fourth-graders' math and reading scores improved since the last time students took the tests several years ago, while eighth-graders remained stable in math and science. Americans outperformed the international average in all three subjects but remained far behind students in such places as Singapore and Hong Kong, especially in math and science.

From that opening paragraph, a reader might get the impression that American students “continue to lag behind many of their Asian counterparts in reading.” Based on this latest testing, we’d have to say that is pretty much wrong.

Do American students “continue to lag behind many of their Asian counterparts in reading?” Only fourth graders were tested in reading. These are the only five entities American kids lagged behind:

Entities which outscored the U.S. in fourth-grade reading:
Hong Kong, Russia, Finland, Singapore, Northern Ireland

That's it! Only two Asian entities are involved—and as small, wealthy city-states, they aren’t exactly “counterparts” of the United States. (Hong Kong is now part of China.) In fact, the United States was outscored by only one large nation—Russia—even as it outscored such large nations as Germany, England, Canada, France, Australia and even Taiwan.

The U.S. was also outscored by one small European nation, Finland. And by Northern Ireland, a very small part of Great Britain.

Russia is a large, well-known nation. The other four entities which outscored the U.S. have a combined population of twenty million. Otherwise, U.S. fourth-graders outscored the rest of the world!

To us, that's a bit of a man-bites-dog story, given the perpetual gloom about U.S. schools, with their ratty teachers and bumbling kids, which gets pimped on a regular basis by the mainstream press corps.

Was something wrong with those news reports? Did they misstate (or withhold) any basic facts? Was their overall emphasis wrong?

A few basic facts may have been misstated; others may have been withheld. Regarding the overall emphasis of those reports, we’re dealing with matters of judgment. Along with the reading results from the PIRLS, these newspapers were also reporting new scores from the TIMSS, which tests fourth- and eighth-graders around the world on math and science.

On the international stage, American kids don’t do as well in eighth grade as they do in fourth. And they don’t do as well in math and science as they do in reading. But even when it came to the TIMSS, we’d have to say that the gloom was overstated a tad in several major news reports, in line with the well-established plutocrat theme that our ratty teachers and our failing schools are just no goddamn good.

How well do American students score in math and science? Not as well as a person might like—although you may be surprised by some of the breakdowns in scores which we'll start reviewing tomorrow.

That said, U.S. fourth graders outperformed most of the world in science. Here is the most simple-minded breakdown of their performance on last year’s TIMSS:

Grade 4 science, TIMSS 2011:
The United States was outscored by (full list):
South Korea, Singapore, Finland, Japan, Russia, Taiwan

The United States outscored (partial list):
Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Hungary, Sweden, Slovak Republic, Austria, Netherlands, England, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Croatia, Australia, Serbia, Belgium (Flemish region), Spain, Poland, New Zealand, Norway

In this case, U.S. fourth graders were outscored by their peers in three major Asian nations, and by their peers in Singapore. They were also outscored by Russian and Finland—but they outscored the rest of the world!

American fourth-graders outscored Germany, England and Australia. (France did not take part in this test.) Presumably, they would have outscored Canada. Ontario and Quebec took part in the testing as regions; the U.S. outscored both.

In fourth grade math, the U.S. did a tad worse—although, in the breakdown shown below, they only trailed England and Russia by the slimmest possible margin. Almost surely, the U.S. would have outscored Canada. Three large provinces took part in the testing, and the U.S. outscored all three:

Grade 4 math, TIMSS 2011:
The United States was outscored by (full list):
Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Northern Ireland, Belgium (Flemish region only), Finland, England, Russia

The United States outscored (partial list):
Netherlands, Denmark, Lithuania, Portugal, Germany, Ireland, Australia, Hungary, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, Slovak Republic, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, Poland, Spain

England and Russia outscored the U.S. by one point on the TIMSS scale. According to the official report from the NCES, these scores are “not measurably different.”

(Finland outscored the U.S. by four points. Again, “not measurably different.”)

On this test, we see a basic pattern emerge, a pattern which tends to get muddled in our myopic, gloomy education reporting. Here is that basic pattern:

In math, Asian nations currently tend to outscore the rest of the world! In our myopic reporting, readers get told that the Asian tigers outscore the United States. That’s true, of course. But it may obscure the larger picture, which we’d summarize thusly:

On this particular math test, the Asian tigers outscored the U.S.—and the U.S. outscored almost everyone else. In essence, U.S. fourth graders matched the performance of Russia and England while outscoring Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain and the vast bulk of boutique Euro nations. (Again, France didn’t take part.)

We’ve now reviewed all fourth-grade scores from the 2011 testing. Essentially, U.S. fourth graders outscored the vast bulk of the world in reading; except for the Asian tigers, they matched or outscored almost all nations in math and science. We’ll guess that many people would be somewhat surprised by this, given the way international test scores get treated in the mainstream press.

On the eighth-grade level, United States students don’t rank quite as well—although fewer nations took part in the eighth-grade testing. On the most simple-minded basis, here’s how things looked in eighth-grade math—although the scores of Israel, Finland and the U.S. were “not measurably different:”

Grade 8 math, TIMSS 2011:
The United States was outscored by (full list):
South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Russia, Israel, Finland

The United States outscored (partial list):
England, Hungary, Australia, Slovenia, Lithuania, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden, Ukraine, Norway

Here too, American students were outscored by the Asian tigers (plus Russia), tied or outscored everyone else who took part. (The scores of all these nations were “not measurably different:” Israel, Finland, the United States, England, Hungary, Australia, Slovenia, Lithuania.)

Here's your eighth-grade science:

Grade 8 science, TIMSS 2011:
The United States was outscored by (full list):
Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Finland, Slovenia, Russia, Hong Kong, England

The United States outscored (partial list):
Hungary, Australia, Israel, Lithuania, New Zealand, Sweden, Italy, Ukraine, Norway

In this case, the following scores were “not measurably different:” England, the United States, Hungary, Australia, Israel. American students outscored their counterparts in Quebec and Ontario, though the scores were “not measurably different.”

Did news reports in our major newspapers take a sensible approach to this brace of international test scores? That is a matter of judgment. In our view, the AP really had its thumb on the scale; it tipped its work toward mandated gloom and doom while obscuring some overall patterns. Tomorrow, we’ll look at some similar tilting by the Washington Post, which kept stressing the nations which outscored the U.S. (and some of its states), while omitting significant data which cut in the other direction.

Where did the AP perhaps mislead readers? Along with the points we’ve noted in the past two days, consider again this gloomy passage from its news report:

LEDERMAN: But the U.S. is far from leading the pack, a distinction now enjoyed by kids in countries like Finland and Singapore who outperformed American fourth-graders in science and reading. By eighth grade, American students have fallen behind their Russian, Japanese and Taiwanese counterparts in math, and trail students from Hong Kong, Slovenia and South Korea in science.

The emphasis falls on smaller number of nations we trailed, not on the larger number of nations we surpassed. In the highlighted passage, the AP reports the greatness of two small nations—two small nations with ten million people between them.

From the American perspective, this is gloomy work. In particular, note the highly conventional emphasis on the greatness of Finland.

Within the press corps’ spin machine, Finland has been pimped for years as a great embarrassment to the U.S.—as the educational giant from which we should be taking our cues.

In that passage, the AP extended that script—a script which has never made any real sense due to Finland’s status as a small, middle-class, unicultural nation. But uh-oh! On the tests from 2011, Finland did little to separate itself from the U.S.!

The AP was still pimping Finland’s greatness. But was that widely ballyhooed greatness displayed on this new set of tests?

In much more perceptive news reports, USA Today and the Christian Science Monitor specifically noted the failure of Finland to separate itself from the U.S. in these recent tests.

We agree with the news judgment displayed by those two papers. Especially given the past propaganda, we think that was the real story here concerning the performance of Finland—although the AP, still embracing the script, continued to pimp Finland’s greatness.

Tomorrow, we’ll compare the U.S. to Finland on these recent tests. We’ll even “disaggregate” American scores—and we’ll look at the performance of certain states which took these tests on their own, as Ontario and Quebec did.

We think you may be surprised by some of the scores we show you. If you are surprised by the data we show you, that may mean that you’ve been misled by the press corps in the past. It may even mean that you were misled as recently as last week!

American students kicked the keister of most of the world on last year’s PIRLS reading test. Our questions:

Did you learn that news, or get that impression, from reading our major newspapers? Should you have learned that news? Why the heck weren’t you told?

Tomorrow: Outscoring Finland!

Taking a look at the record: To examine TIMSS data, just click here. From there, you're on your own.

Santa, please bring me the chained CPI!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012

The way we the peasants get governed: Is it possible that a budget deal is nearing completion?

Needless to say, no one knows. But Jonathan Weisman presented this outline in today’s New York Times:

WEISMAN (12/18/12): The two sides are now dickering over price, not philosophical differences, and the numbers are very close.

Mr. Boehner had offered the president a deficit framework that would raise $1 trillion over 10 years, with the details to be settled next year by Congress’s tax-writing committees and the Obama administration. In response, Mr. Obama reduced his proposal to $1.2 trillion from $1.4 trillion on Monday at a 45-minute meeting with the speaker at the White House. That was down from $1.6 trillion initially.The White House plan would permanently extend Bush-era tax cuts on household incomes below $400,000, meaning that only the top tax bracket, 35 percent, would increase to 39.6 percent. The current cutoff between the top rate and the next highest rate, 33 percent, is $388,350.

On spending, the two sides are also converging.

The White House says the president’s plan would cut spending by $1.22 trillion over 10 years, compared with $1.2 trillion in cuts from the Republicans’ initial offer. Of that, $800 billion is cuts to programs, and $122 billion comes from adopting a new measure of inflation that slows the growth of government benefits, especially Social Security. The White House is also counting on $290 billion in savings from lower interest costs on a reduced national debt.

Of the $800 billion in straight cuts, the president said half would come from federal health care programs; $200 billion from other so-called mandatory programs, like farm price supports, not subject to Congress’s annual spending bills; $100 billion from military spending; and $100 billion from domestic programs under Congress’s annual discretion.

To make all this happen, Mr. Obama proposed fast-track procedures to help Congressional tax writers overhaul the individual and corporate tax code and make changes to other programs.

If this is accurate, future Social Security benefits would get reduced due to the new measure of inflation.

Around the web, various people are forming their view of this general outline; for Paul Krugman’s take, just click here. We will simply offer a few thoughts about the way this possible deal has possibly been reached:

Whatever one may think of this possible deal, this is feudal governance. There aren’t three regular people in the country who have given a second’s thought to the idea of “switching from the regular CPI to the chained CPI.” Very few people have ever heard of the chained CPI.

An election season just came and went with no one ever asking Obama what he would accept, or refuse to accept, in a budget deal. The fiscal cliff was never mentioned in any presidential debate. In particular, Obama was never asked about the possibility of lowering future Social Security benefits through a switch to the chained CPI.

No one would have understood the question if it had been asked. Almost surely, that would include the "journalist" who asked it.

Within our major newspapers, there has been nothing resembling a real discussion of this admittedly complex possible deal. Our society doesn’t work like that. It would be astonishing to imagine the Washington Post or the New York Times conducting a real discussion of, let us say, the chained CPI and its effect on future Social Security benefits.

Our political culture is more feudal than that. At junctures like this, our leaders meet in “quiet rooms,” usually at 3 in the morning as some deadline looms. They spring their deal when the world is asleep.

Then they rush to vote.

As this happens, no one has the slightest idea what the new policies mean. Nor has any major news org made any real attempt to examine such topics.

Make no mistake—this is in part the doing of the liberal world. We liberals are now told that we have a liberal news channel. But there has been no real attempt on that One True Channel to thrash out these topics. Instead, we get handed various furies about cultural issues. Did you see Lawrence play all those (pathetic sad) race cards last week?

Yes, he actually said this:

O’DONNELL (12/13/12): Grover [Norquist] has controlled the Republicans in the House and Senate so long that he now thinks he is actually one of them. That is one desperate and delusional, highly delusional anti-tax fanatic.

NORQUIST (videotape): We, the Republicans in the House and Senate, will make him actually make those spending restraints in order to get the continuing the resolution out, a week, two weeks, a month. Obama will be on a very short leash, fiscally speaking, over the next four years.

O’DONNELL: Now, "very short leash" is a common phrase in this kind of situation. So I don’t want to think that Grover deliberately used that phrase to create the imagery of Barack Obama as a dog or a slave. But Grover actually specializes in deliberately vicious hate speech—hate speech against anyone who takes a responsible approach to financing the federal government.

And so I’m sorry to say that Grover is not above suspicious on that phrase about the short leash.

Lawrence didn’t want to think that Grover was using that phrase to picture Obama as a slave! But he just couldn't help himself.

(There was much more that night before Lawrence was done. In our view, O’Donnell comes close to being a very bad man.)

So it goes on The One True Channel as we liberals get thrilled and distracted. These thrills give us the false idea that a group of fiery liberals are looking out for our interests. On the larger stage, the shootings in Newtown only provide added cover for the negotiators as they move toward the possibility of reducing Social Security benefits. Whatever one thinks of the discussions which have emerged from the Newtown killings, they provide one more way to avoid discussing the future adjustments which may or may not emerge in a last-minute, hurried, un-discussed budget deal.

Everything is done this way within our political culture. We live in a very unintelligent political culture. But as long as we liberals keep getting our tribal gruel, we liberals don’t seem to notice.

Santa, how does the chained CPI really work? Children may find it in their stockings this year without anyone having asked!

One final point about the all-encompassing silence: We have been told, again and again, that everyone has to feel some pain as part of a budget settlement. Within your largest news orgs, have you seen anyone attempt to report the way the gains of the past twenty years have all gone to those at the top?

Have you seen any news divisions report the way tax burdens have shifted downward on the highest earners? No, you haven’t seen your big news orgs do that—and you never will.

By the way, did you ever see that type of reporting on The One True Channel? Not really! Instead, you were handed a very bad, very rich man talking about racist Grover.

This is the con game in which we all live. Question: Do the transient thrills about “short leashes” make up for the defeats?

What the heck is an assault weapon!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012

The New York Times tries to explain: Is anyone in the nation more faux than our own Lawrence O’Donnell?

We don’t know how to answer your question. That said, the Newtown killings seem destined to produce a debate about various gun control measures.

In theory, that’s good—but will we the people have any idea what we’re talking about? This morning’s New York Times made us wonder.

In our hard-copy Times, exactly half of page A26 is devoted to a graphic which asks a very good question: “What Makes An Assault Weapon?”

“What Makes An Assault Weapon!” That’s what the headline asks on this morning’s graphic. The graphic runs from the top of page A26 all the way to the bottom. But uh-oh:

But because it doesn’t appear on-line, we can’t link you to it!

On-line, the Times has replaced the graphic in our hard-copy paper with this different graphic. Go figure! They do this all the time.

That said, the graphic at which we’re currently staring appears in our hard-copy Times. It tries to explain what an “assault weapon” is.

It tries, and in our view it fails. But then, what else is new?

The New York Times graphic features a large photo of a “Colt AR-15-type rifle”—a rifle which “is similar to the one used by Adam Lanza.” According to the Times, “It would have been an illegal assault weapon in the United States from 1994 to 2004, but it now can be purchased legally.”

That last sentence is a bit misleadingly written. But let's move right along.

At this point, the Times tries to explain what makes a rifle a (potentially illegal) “assault weapon.” We were glad to see this large graphic, because we’ve been trying to figure that out, based in part upon confused TV discussions.

Alas! This is the start of the New York Times’ explanation:

NEW YORK TIMES (12/18/12): Under Connecticut law and the national ban that lapsed in 2004, an assault weapon is a semi-automatic rifle with a removable magazine that also has two other military-style features.

But omitting enough if these military-style features—pictured in GRAY below—renders this weapon legal.

The [pictured] rifle is SEMI-AUTOMATIC, which means it automatically chambers a new round after a shot but will not fire until the trigger is pulled again. Some variants of the military’s M-16, which this weapon resembles, allow you to fire continuously as long as the trigger is held down. Such AUTOMATIC weapons are illegal.

The New York Times does it again!

According to this explanation, an assault weapon must be semi-automatic. We’re then told what semi-automatic means: It means the rifle “automatically chambers a new round after a shot but will not fire until the trigger is pulled again.”

Here at THE HOWLER, we have no clear idea what that means. We asked a focus group at the bagel joint.

Our focus group didn’t know either.

Here’s the problem: What sort of gun doesn’t “automatically chamber a new round after a shot but will not fire until the trigger is pulled again?” We don’t exactly know, and neither did our focus group.

One wag began to pantomime a Hollywood-style flintlock rifle, with Mel Gibson pushing a ball down into the barrel with a very long stick. But no one knew what kind of gun does not behave in the manner described, although for ourselves we could pretty much guess. (We're saying this hours later.)

Presumably, some Times readers do know what that explanation means. But explanations are generally meant for readers who don't know. And by the way:

On TV, pundits often bat this question around. As a general matter, it’s abundantly clear that they have no idea either.

Based upon our focus group, the Times, as usual, faltered or failed. This is the way our public discourse has worked for a great many years.

Final point about semi-automatics: In the graphic which now appears on-line, the Times doesn’t even try to explain what “semi-automatic” means.

Given the skills of this famous great paper, it may be better that way.

FOOLED ABOUT SCHOOLS: Taking a look at the record!

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2012

Part 2—The AP pours on the gloom: Where do American students stand in the latest international test scores?

(For part 1 in this award-winning series, click here.)

Last Monday, the TIMSS and the PIRLS released the scores from their 2011 international tests. At the Associated Press, Josh Lederman’s news report leaned fairly hard on the gloom:

LEDERMAN (12/11/12): US students far from first in math, science

American fourth-graders are performing better than they were four years ago in math and reading, but students four years older show no such progress, a global study released Tuesday revealed.

Although the U.S. remains in the top dozen or so countries in all subjects tested, the gap between the U.S. and the top-performing nations is much wider at the eighth-grade level, especially in math.

"When you start looking at our older students, we see less improvement over time," said Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which coordinated the U.S. portion of the international exam.

Even where U.S. student scores have improved, many other nations have improved much faster, leaving American students far behind many of their peers especially in Asia and Europe.

For our money, Lederman was straining to see the glass not especially full. As he continued, he reached the claim which drove the AP’s gloomy headline.

Unlike Finland and Singapore, the United States “is far from leading the pack:”

LEDERMAN (continuing directly): With an eye toward global competitiveness, U.S. education officials are sounding the alarm over what they describe as a recurring theme when American students are put to the test. Lamenting what he described as "sober cautionary notes," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said it was unacceptable that eighth-grade achievement in math and science are stagnant, with U.S. students far less likely than many Asian counterparts to reach advanced levels in science.

American students still perform better than the global average in all subject areas, the study found, although students from the poorest U.S. schools fall short.

But the U.S. is far from leading the pack, a distinction now enjoyed by kids in countries like Finland and Singapore who outperformed American fourth-graders in science and reading.

For the record, Finland is a middle-class, unicultural nation of some 5 million people. Singapore is a wealthy city-state with a similar small population.

Those nations did outperform American fourth-graders in reading on this latest international test. But only one other nation did—Russia. Meanwhile, those American fourth-graders outscored their peers in these well-known nations:

Nations outscored in reading by U.S. fourth-graders, 2011 PIRLS (partial list):
Denmark, Croatia, Taiwan, Ireland, England, Canada, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Israel, Portugal, Hungary, Slovak Republic, New Zealand, Slovenia, Austria, Lithuania, Australia, Poland, France, Spain, Norway, Belgium (Flemish region)

Really? American fourth-graders outscored their peers in England, Canada, Germany, France? In Australia, Spain, Italy and Taiwan—and in a host of smaller European nations?

Would a reader gain any idea of this fact from reading this gloomy AP report? Would that reader ever guess that U.S. fourth-graders were outscored by their peers in only three actual nations, plus Hong Kong and Northern Ireland, even as they kicked the keisters of fourth-graders spanning the globe?

Obviously, a reader would get no such impression from this AP report. Nor would that reader understand that there was no testing in eighth-grade reading—the PIRLS tests only fourth-graders—since Lederman’s opening paragraphs plainly implied that U.S. eighth-graders were “showing no progress” and losing ground in that (untested) subject.

Alas! So it goes when our biggest news orgs report on public schools. That doesn’t mean that American students really are “number one” in the world, since that plainly isn’t the case. It doesn’t mean that Lederman’s news report is wrong in all particulars.

(For every nation's score on the PIRLS, click here, scroll down to page 8.)

But in the passages we have posted, Lederman leaned on the scales again and again, tipping his report toward the gloom and despair. One day later, the Washington Times reported on the new international test scores—and its headline helped us recall where all this propaganda has taken the American discourse:

WASHINGTON TIMES (12/12/12): Jindal slams teachers unions in mediocrity of U.S. schools

Are U.S. schools “mediocre?” Can that claim be derived from these new international test scores?

Those are matters of judgment. But again and again, major news orgs pour on the gloom (and the misstatements) when it comes to the performance of American students and teachers. This fuels the drive to condemn our ratty teachers and their infernal teachers unions—the same teachers who were in American classrooms when these results were recorded:

PIRLS, Grade 4 reading, 2011:
The United States was outscored by (full list):
Hong Kong, Russia, Finland, Singapore, Northern Ireland

The United States outscored (partial list):
Denmark, Croatia, Taiwan, Ireland, England, Canada, Netherlands, Czech Republic, Sweden, Italy, Germany, Israel, Portugal, Hungary, Slovak Republic, New Zealand, Slovenia, Austria, Lithuania, Australia, Poland, France, Spain, Norway, Belgium (Flemish region)

Think of the Connecticut teachers you’ve seen on TV in recent days. Have they seemed like the ratty, grasping people often described in the war against unions? And do you mind if we send a note to Gail Collins and her legion of misled readers:

Many teachers in Texas schools are hard-working, upstanding people too. It’s good solid fun when tribal players like Collins teach Yankees to sneer at these red-state rubes—at teachers whose students score very high on our own most reliable testing program.

But Lady Collins’ uninformed sneering only fuels the movement which issues headlines like the one found in the Washington Times last week. It’s fun to clown about schools in Texas—and it makes pseudo-liberals feel good. But it grossly misleads the public and it fuels reactionary movements.

Important note: On international tests, American students rank better in reading than in science and math. And just as Lederman suggested, American fourth-graders tend to rank better in the world than their eighth-grade siblings do.

(Just a guess: There’s no such thing as “Fast Times at Singapore Middle.”)

That said, we think Lederman tended to err on the side of the gloom in his report for the AP—a report which went to newspapers all over this endlessly misinformed country. But that is a matter you’ll have to judge when we show you the rest of the scores.

For today, we thought we’d leave it right here, with those scores from the new fourth-grade reading test. Yes, American students were outperformed by Singapore and Finland—although the gap in the scores wasn’t nearly as large as the AP report suggested.

But from that gloomy news report, would you ever have imagined how high our fourth-graders actually stood in the world? Or are you possibly saying this:

Huh! I wouldn’t have thought that!

If you’re saying something like that, you’ve perhaps been misled a bit through the years. Tomorrow, we’ll look at the new math and science scores—and you can make further judgments.

Tomorrow: Math and science

Lederman’s next paragraph: As Lederman continues, the gloom continues too.

So does the misdirection, which is almost surely deliberate:

LEDERMAN (continuing directly): The results of the study, conducted every four years in nations around the world, show mixed prospects for delivering on that promise. A nation that once took pride in being at the top of its game can no longer credibly call itself the global leader in student performance. Wringing their hands about what that reality portends for broader U.S. influence, policymakers worry it could have ripple effects on the economy down the line, with Americans increasingly at a competitive disadvantage in the international marketplace.

From that highlighted statement, a reader is likely to get the impression that the United States was once “the global leader in student performance.” That isn’t true, of course. And please note—Lederman is very slippery in the way he seems to assert that.

Readers are being conned at that point; almost surely, they're being deliberately misled. But this has been the reliable norm for a very long time—and you will never see the career liberal word issue a word of protest.

Glenn Kessler debunks Reagan’s bogus old tale!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2012

And it only took twenty-three years: Almost every part of our public discourse is built around false, bogus tales.

These bogus tales get memorized, then widely presented as fact. Depending on who is behind the tales, the bogus tales will be widely accepted by the mainstream press corps.

In Sunday’s Washington Post, Glenn Kessler debunked one of those hoary old tales. And by our count, it only took twenty-three years!

As far as we know, Kessler did a good job in this piece—although he failed to name the people who have been telling this hoary old tale in recent weeks. That said, he named the original source of this bogus tale.

It came from Ronald Reagan!

KESSLER (12/16/12): It had become an article of faith by conservatives that President Reagan reluctantly agreed to raise taxes in his first term in office—and that Congress then failed to follow though on promised spending cuts. The frequent recitation of this story during the current fiscal debate made us wonder: What actually happened three decades ago?

It’s not hard to find the source of this story—Reagan’s own memoir, “An American Life.” Here’s what he wrote: “I made a deal with the congressional Democrats in 1982, agreeing to support a limited loophole-closing tax increase to raise more than $98.3 billion over three years in return for their agreement to cut spending by $280 billion during the same period; later the Democrats reneged on their pledge and we never got those cuts.”

When Reagan made a nationally-televised speech in support of the tax hike—trying to refute charges that it was the biggest tax increase in U.S. history—he also cited a 3-to-1 agreement:

“Revenues would increase over a three-year period by about $99 billion, and outlays in that same period would be reduced by $280 billion. Now, as you can see, that figures out to about a 3-to-1 ratio—$3 less in spending outlays for each $1 of increased revenue. This compromise adds up to a total over three years of a $380 billion reduction in the budget deficits.”

The Washington Post did not have a Fact Checker column back then, and this speech certainly would have been ripe for fact checking.

According to Kessler, “conservatives” have been retelling this story in recent weeks. This is plainly true, of course. This is one of the ways hard-liners have argued against the idea of accepting higher tax rates.

But uh-oh! As Kessler explains in great detail, with strong sourcing, this hoary old story is wrong!

To watch Kessler debunk this hoary old tale, go ahead—read his whole piece. For ourselves, we were struck by one of the dates involved in his presentation.

According to this bogus old story, Congress failed to follow through with promised spending cuts after the 1982 budget deal. How does Kessler know this story is wrong?

In this passage, he cites a key source:

KESSLER: Here’s the actual breakdown of the three-year agreement, according to a June 1982 chart prepared by the GOP-controlled Senate Budget Committee staff, which appears in the 1989 book “The Deficit and the Public Interest,” by Joseph White and Aaron B. Wildavsky.

[...]

“In essence, the funny numbers, meant to impress voters and maybe the markets, fooled the president. They also fooled Donald Regan and Ed Meese,” write White and Wildavsky. “To Stockman, Baker, [Richard] Darman and congressional leaders, this sense of betrayal was ludicrous; no one ever said Congress would pass three-for-one. The [congressional budget] resolution was clear enough about that.”

You’ll have to read Kessler’s report to get the whole story. Warning: His presentation of that June 1982 chart is hopelessly confusing.

That said, please note the date of the book Kessler cites as a source. If Kessler’s presentation is right, this hoary old tale was debunked in 1989. But conservatives have been still out there pimping the bogus tale this past month!

Do you live in a banana republic? Inside a journalistic Babel?

This is the way your discourse works in almost every area! Even after bullroar gets debunked, it may be widely repeated—and widely accepted—for many, many years!

Go ahead—just ask Paul Krugman. Or you can just click here.

Almost all parts of our public discourse function this way. Favored pols or powerful interest groups simply invent false stories. Even after the stories have been debunked, journalists keep lapping them up.

This fall, the press kept repeating a bogus tale by McCain—a tale which took down Susan Rice. But that was really a blip on the screen:

Good God! For the past thirty years, they’ve been accepting this bullroar from Reagan!

Where does the press corps get its facts!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2012

Does Scott Pelley actually know that: We’ve been struck by the maudlin nature of much of the coverage of the most recent mass shooting.

To our ear, Alexandra Petri’s column was wondrously faux at the Post. But so were large amounts of the coverage, as journalists took turns assuring the nation that they’ve never been so upset.

This morning, on Way Too Early, even Mike Barnicle played that card. For ourselves, we didn’t especially believe him. That said, if he wasn’t upset before this, he too must be mentally ill.

The journalists want you to know how upset they are. But then, there’s the same old relationship they maintain with the world of facts.

Last night, on 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley started by debunking a string of false facts. This would have been a constructive act, except for where he went next:

PELLEY (12/16/12): First reports of this tragedy have turned out to be inaccurate. We were told that the gunman's mother was a teacher at the school, that he was allowed in because he was recognized, and that he targeted his mother's classroom with two handguns. Well tonight, we know that all of that is wrong.

Wait a minute! We were told that the gunman’s mother was a teacher at the school?

Who’s that “we,” kemosabe?

In fact, the public was told that Nancy Lanza was a teacher at the school. The public was told that by Scott Pelley, among many others, on Friday's CBS Evening News.

Why did Pelley report that false fact? Last night, he forgot to say.

Aside from a bit of role reversal, Pelley’s listing of the false facts was a constructive act—in principle. That said, we were struck by something he did just a few minutes later.

Pelley spoke to two neighbors of the Lanzas. Instantly, he was advancing another fact—a fact which strikes us as unverified.

Questions: Did Adam Lanza have Asperger's syndrome? Does Pelley know if he did? We’ll guess that Pelley doesn’t know. But after debunking the earlier facts, he was soon broadcasting this:

PELLEY: Family friends told us that he was being home-schooled by his mother, Nancy Lanza. Nancy Lanza told her friends Mark and Louise Tambascio that Adam was brilliant but disabled.

(Begin videotape)
PELLEY: Did Nancy Lanza ever tell you specifically what her son's medical condition was? And she put a name to it?

MARK TAMBASCIO: Asperger's.

PELLEY: That's what she said?

MARK AND LOUISE TAMBASCIO: Yeah. Yes.

PELLEY: That it was Asperger's syndrome?

MARK TAMBASCIO: Absolutely. There's no question.

PELLEY: And for her it was a full time job taking care of him?

MARK TAMBASCIO: Absolutely. Oh my goodness, yes.
(End videotape)

“Absolutely. There's no question,” Mark Tambascio said. Of course, the fact that Lanza’s mother may have made that statement doesn’t mean that the statement is accurate.

But so what? Pelley simply plowed ahead, seeming to assume the accuracy of the diagnosis. There was no warning that we should be careful about this claim in the wake of those other false facts:

PELLEY (continuing directly): Asperger syndrome is a disorder within the spectrum of autism. It's characterized by social impairment, communication difficulty and repetitive patterns of behavior. An Asperger's support group told us today that patients are more prone to be victims of violence than the perpetrators of violence. And we don't know whether Asperger's played any role in the shootings, but friends told us that the condition did dominate the Lanza's lives.

(Begin videotape)
LOUISE TAMBASCIO: I mean, I know he was on medication and everything, but she home-schooled him at home because he couldn't deal with the school classes sometimes. So she just home-schooled Adam at home. And that, that was her life.

PELLEY: She wasn't working. She devoted her time to Adam?

LOUISE TAMBASCIO: Yeah, she didn't have to work, so that's what she did. She home-schooled him and you know and she did a lot of charitable work and everything.
(End videotape)

PELLEY: Nancy Lanza appeared well off, living with her son in an upscale home...

Pelley said he didn’t know if the condition played any role in the shootings. But he seemed to assume the diagnosis was accurate, based on that one couple’s statement.

Did Adam Lanza have Asperger’s syndrome? We’ll guess that Pelley doesn’t know. But so what? Just like that, he was advancing this new alleged fact!

For us, there has been a third part to the basic set of reactions, although we’ll save that one for another day. And this latest mass shooting raises many larger questions—for instance, about the kinds of people who only get upset, or pretend to get upset, when it’s children who get shot down.

That said, we were struck by the way Pelley worked his way through that chain of false facts.

Do we ever get anything right? Allegedly, Nancy Lanza said something to one of her neighbors.

Apparently on that basis alone, it quickly became our latest new fact. When Pelley’s old facts turned out to be wrong, he simply moved on to another!

FOOLED ABOUT SCHOOLS: The latest scores!

MONDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2012

Part 1—Keep gloom alive: In late November, the New York Times published an op-ed piece about our public schools.

The piece was written by Michael Brick, a former Times sports writer who has become an overnight expert on education. As Brick started his piece, he played a pair of familiar tunes:

BRICK (11/23/12): For the past three decades, one administration after another has sought to fix America's troubled schools by making them compete with one another. Mr. Obama has put up billions of dollars for his Race to the Top program, a federal sweepstakes where state educational systems are judged head-to-head largely on the basis of test scores. Even here in Texas, nobody's model for educational excellence, the state has long used complex algorithms to assign grades of Exemplary, Recognized, Acceptable or Unacceptable to its schools.

So far, such competition has achieved little more than re-segregation, long charter school waiting lists and the same anemic international rankings in science, math and literacy we've had for years.

Brick suggested—but did not say—that Texas’ schools are a bit of a mess. For liberals, this is the same pleasing tune Gail Collins sang in her massively uninformed new book, As Texas Goes.

That was Brick’s snark on the Texas schools. Concerning the nation’s public schools, Brick was more direct—though here too, he sang a familiar tune.

Concerning the nation’s public schools, Brick was no less gloomy. American schools produce “anemic international rankings,” he directly alleged. According to Brick, we’ve had these same anemic rankings “for years.”

Brick seemed to say that our scores are anemic—and that we’re making no progress. These are very familiar tunes. They’re sung all over the press corps.

At the time, we challenged Brick’s snark about Texas. We noted that, after disaggregation, Texas students score near the top of the nation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the widely-praised “gold standard” of educational testing.

We’ll guess that many readers were surprised by the strength of those Texas scores. Now, it’s time to review what Brick said about America’s schools.

Last week, the nation’s biggest newspapers reported the release of new international test scores. The new scores came from the TIMSS and the PIRLS, two of the three most widely reviewed international testing programs.

(All acronyms get unpacked below.)

Every four years, the TIMSS tests math and science in fourth and eighth grades. Every five years, the PIRLS tests fourth grade reading. Last week, these programs released their new international scores—and major newspapers in the U.S. reacted in two different ways.

Three of our biggest news orgs stuck to the familiar framework found in Brick's op-ed column. Below, you see the gloomy headlines those three news orgs produced:

Gloomy headlines about the new scores:
Associated Press, December 11: US students far from first in math, science
New York Times, December 11: U.S. Students Still Lag Globally In Math and Science, Tests Show
Washington Post, December 11: U.S. still trails Asia in student test scores

The gloom was general in those headlines. They told a very familiar tale—the same gloomy tale upon which Brick drew in his column.

In fairness, it should be said that those headlines are technically accurate. On the new international tests, American students actually are “far from first” in most areas (depending on what you mean by “far”). In that limited sense, our students do “lag globally in math and science,” just as that Times headline said.

Beyond that, it’s true that Americans students “still trail Asia” (their Asian counterparts) in most, though not all, test scores. That Post headline wasn't “wrong.”

When they reviewed these new test scores, the Post, the AP and the Times saw a familiar old story. But two other major news orgs seemed to see something different. This is what their headlines as said as they reviewed the new scores:

Upbeat headlines about the new scores:
USA Today, December 11: USA's schools move up in international rankings
Christian Science Monitor, December 11: How does US compare in math, science, reading?
Younger students do better
Two international studies show fourth- and eighth-grade scores in math, science, and reading in 2011. In the US, there's no cause for alarm, or celebration.

Our “younger students” are “doing better,” the Christian Science Monitor said in a large stack of headlines. And USA Today saw something similar. Its headline said that American schools have “moved up in international rankings.”

Please note: The cheerful headlines at those two papers don’t contradict the gloomy headlines from the Post and the Times. American schools could “move up in international rankings” (USA Today) and still “lag globally” (New York Times).

In our view, none of those headlines made a claim which was simply false. And yet, those dueling headlines almost seem to describe two different sets of test scores.

The headlines in the Post and the Times advanced a familiar old story. The headlines in the other two papers seemed to suggest something new. All this week, we will be looking at the actual test scores those headlines were describing.

We’ll also look at the full reporting done by those major news orgs.

As we review the actual scores, you will have to decide which of those news orgs seemed more perceptive in their appraisals. We will offer one criterion by which you might render your judgment.

Here’s the criterion: Will you be surprised by the data we show you? Will you find yourself saying this?

I had no idea!

Last month, readers may have been surprised to learn that Texas students score near the top of the nation, especially in math. If you were surprised by that fact, that may mean that you’ve been misled along the way—given a false impression.

As with Texas, so with the nation. We will guess that you may be surprised by some of these new international test scores. You may find yourself saying this:

How strange! I had no idea!

Your results may differ from ours. But in our view, the prophets of public school gloom and doom have been, on balance, misleading the public in recent years. In our view, USA Today’s Greg Toppo was more perceptive about these new test scores than was his counterpart at the script-ridden New York Times.

In our view, USA Today was more perceptive than the Post and the Times—more observant, more alert, more aware, more nuanced. Beyond that, we think the paper was simply more competent than the Times—but that is nothing new.

In our view, the Post and the Times are largely wed to a largely misleading old tale about public schools. In their news reports last week, they almost seemed to be trying to Keep Script Alive.

How gloomy should we be about our schools? If you’re surprised by the data we show you this week, you may decide that a gloomy old script has perhaps been misleading you too.

Tomorrow: Let’s take a look at the record!

The TIMSS, the PIRLS and the PISA: What the heck are the TIMSS and the PIRLS? Below, we unpack the acronyms of the three most widely reviewed testing programs:

The TIMSS: The TIMSS is more clumsily known as The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Every four years, it tests fourth- and eighth-graders around the world in math and science. It last tested in 2011.

The PIRLS: The PIRLS is properly known as The Progress in International Reading Literacy Study. Every five years, it tests fourth-graders in reading. It last tested in 2011.

The PISA: The third major international program is the PISA—The Program for International Student Assessment. Every four years, it tests 15-year-olds in reading, math and science. It last tested in 2009.

Last week, the TIMSS and the PIRLS released new scores. Two major news orgs saw positive signs. Three other news orgs tilted toward gloom.

Which news orgs were more perceptive? All week, you get to decide!

Mrs. Obama, please tell me a story!

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2012

A photo that’s well worth viewing: Page A2 of this morning’s Washington Post is topped by a photo that’s well worth viewing.

The photo was worth the price of the paper—and then some. To view the photo, just click here—though in truth, the photo is better in black and white, the way it appears in the hard-copy Post.

Regarding that photo:

Jordyn Akuoko is 5—or so it says in the caption which appears in our hard-copy Post. Mrs. Obama encountered her “during an annual event at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington,” the caption reports.

Judging from that photo, this five-year-old didn’t want to miss a single word of the story Mrs. Obama was reading. Story-telling is powerful! We’ll take that photo over some of the standardized columns appearing elsewhere in this morning’s Post.

"This will be the only thing we talk about for a very long time?" We've asked before how some young people can get so faux so fast.

As always, your results may differ. But even in color, we’d have to say that photo is well worth viewing, on this or any day.

The rest of the story: For a brief report on Mrs Obama's trip to the medical center, just click here. According to this brief report, "her visit was part of a tradition by first ladies dating back to Bess Truman."

In all, four photos are offered there by the Post. For our money, they picked the best one for the hard-copy paper, though any one of the other three would have been valuable too.

Latest installment of These Kids Today!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2012

Steven Spielberg, the TIMSS and the PIRLS: It seems to be the world’s oldest story.

We refer to the pleasing tale about the manifest dumbness of These Kids Today. In this morning’s New York Times, Timothy Egan offers a lightened version of this relentless old tale:

EGAN (12/14/12): History is always utilitarian, and often entertaining. It stirs the blood of any lover of the past to see Steven Spielberg’s majestic “Lincoln”—at its core, a drama about politicians with ZZ Top beards writing legislation—crush the usual soulless, computer-generated distractions at the box office.

But history, the formal teaching and telling of it, has never been more troubled. Two forces, one driven by bottom-line educators answering to corporate demands to phase out the liberal arts, the other coming from the circular firing squad of academics who loathe popular histories, have done much to marginalize our shared narratives.

David McCullough, the snowy-headed author and occasional national scold, says we are raising a generation of Americans who are historically illiterate. He cites Harry Truman’s line that the only new thing in the world is the history you don’t know. And today, in part by design, there’s a lot of know-nothingness throughout the land. Only 12 percent of high school seniors are “at or above proficient” in American history, which, of course, doesn’t mean they’re stupid.

Will someone get These Kids Today off this columnist’s lawn?

Are these claims and implied claims true? Has the formal teaching of history “never been more troubled?” Are we “raising a generation of Americans who are historically illiterate?”

If only 12 percent of seniors are rated proficient, does than mean they know less than kids knew in the past? And how high has the bar for "proficient" been set on the unnamed test to which Egan refers? Does that statistic mean “there’s a lot of know-nothingness throughout the land?”

Like Egan, we don’t know how to answer those questions. But we’ll have to admit it: We’re sick of casual complaints about These Kids Today, even modified putdowns like Egan’s.

For ourselves, we saw Lincoln this Wednesday afternoon; we'll admit we didn’t find it majestic, or even see much of a point. It hasn’t stirred our blood to see liberal intellectuals fighting over relatively minor details of this history when these same people can't even seem to explain what Susan Rice said this fall.

We’ve also been reviewing the latest international test scores, the scores from the 2011 TIMSS and PIRLS. What do these test scores say and suggest about These Kids Today? And how did our big press organs cover the release of these scores?

We think these new scores are quite intriguing, in various ways. We found the coverage intriguing too. Once again, USA Today struck us as much more insightful in its education coverage than the mightier Post/AP/Times. For our money, the Christian Science Monitor drained a deep three right there in its third paragraph.

We’ll discuss various topics next week. To review results from the TIMSS, click this. To check out the PIRLS, just click here.

Susan Rice said she invented the Internet!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2012

Just as it ever was: Would Susan Rice have been a good secretary of state?

We have no idea. But we did recoil when our old friend, Chuck Todd, said this on last evening’s Hardball:

TODD (12/13/12): Look, I think that she’s a victim of an old-fashioned media feeding frenzy that we’re going to look back on and feel as if this is pretty unfair to her, the way this went down. But those are the breaks in Washington, and she made this decision that she made.

Here at THE HOWLER, we love Chuck Todd. But why is he saying this now?

Todd could have confronted this frenzy in real time, when it might have mattered. But as recently as November 14, he presented one of the most absurdly cherry-picked quotations from Rice we saw in this whole feeding frenzy.

Last night, Chuck said the whole thing had been very bad. Why didn't he speak in real time?

The analysts also recoiled when they watched Chris Hayes last night. Speaking with Lawrence, Hayes said this:

HAYES (12/13/12): Look, the question to me is, and I think there’s a really deep question here, which is how much does the secretary of state affect the trajectory U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy?

And I think there are different cases to be made and you make cases about, you know, what the Condoleezza Rice secretary of statehood meant as opposed to the Colin Powell one, and what Hillary Clinton has meant. But it’s just none of— We never have gotten to any of that during this whole thing and it’s just to me, is just this object lesson in the stupidity of our conversations and politics in the Beltway and specifically on foreign policy, where no one ever actually wants to talk about the stuff that is happening. They want to talk about these atmospherics.

As usual, Hayes was after the “really deep questions.” He was appalled by the “stupidity” of the discussion surrounding Rice.

We largely agree, but here's our question: If that discussion was so stupid, why was Hayes reciting its claims as late as October 13? See THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/21/12. Prepare to avert your gaze.

As late as October 13, Hayes seemed to be thoroughly conned concerning Rice’s statements. Last night represented the second time we have seen him saying how stupid the attack on Rice was. But in prime time, he has never acknowledged that he himself was reciting the con four weeks in.

In real time, when it would have mattered, Hayes wasn’t sharp enough to smell a con. It didn’t occur to his gullible self that the real title of this scam should be this:

Susan Rice said she invented the Internet!

As with Gore, so too with Rice! Very bad paraphrases were ginned, then sold all through the land. And good God:

Thirteen years after the war against Gore, youngsters like Hayes couldn’t smell a familiar old type of right-wing/mainstream press con! More experienced hands like Todd weren’t willing to speak till last night.

Would Rice have been a good secretary of state? We don’t know. But we do know what happened on The One True Liberal Channel:

Until Obama spoke up in mid-November, Rice was completely left for dead on MSNBC. As she was slimed again and again, all the children kept their traps shut—all the children except Hayes, who was pushing the John McCain line.

Asleep at the switch! From September 16 through the end of October, Susan Rice was never mentioned on the Maddow Show. She was never mentioned on The Last Word, where Lawrence is always so fiery and brilliant. She was never mentioned on the Ed Show or on Al Sharpton’s program. She wasn’t mentioned on Hardball until October 26.

As the hustlers staged their frenzy, as they conducted their object lesson in the stupidity of our conversation, our TV liberals refused to act. And as with Gore, so too with Rice:

Now that the scalp has been attained, Todd and Hayes aren’t going to tell you why they were silent or how they got conned. If this was such a stupid frenzy, why didn’t they speak in real time?

You might even say it was like Gore on Rice! It was the same old type of attack, accepted by a new gang of Kool Kid liberals who failed to notice the con. And by the way—when they finally began to speak in mid-November after Obama took the lead, they never mentioned the big mainstream journalists who were still sliming Rice.

They never mentioned Bob Schieffer, for instance. And guess what? They never will!

You ought to be very unhappy about this—and suspicious of the new TV liberals you are being sold.

BUDGET BABEL: Missing in action!

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2012

Conclusion—In search of a liberal framework: At this point, is Social Security adding to the federal deficit?

A recent remark by Senator Durbin set off a renewed discussion of this somewhat irrelevant point. But as Krauthammer, Kessler and Drum talked it out, an important figure was missing in action.

Missing in action as usual.

Who or what was missing in action, away without leave, non-existent?

Who or what else? The liberal perspective or framework was missing in action! But then, this has been the case for at least the past thirty years.

The plutocrat framework on Social Security has never been hard to find. Responding to Durbin’s remark, Krauthammer tickled some very familiar strings in the Washington Post.

The plutocrat framework is very well known. Charles played a very familiar tune:

KRAUTHAMMER (11/30/12): [Y]ou get a sense of the Democrats' [dis]inclination to reform entitlements when Dick Durbin, the Senate Democrats' No. 2, says Social Security is off the table because it "does not add a penny to our deficit."

This is absurd. In 2012, Social Security adds $165 billion to the deficit. Democrats pretend that Social Security is covered through 2033 by its trust fund. Except that the trust fund is a fiction, a mere "bookkeeping" device, as the Office of Management and Budget itself has written. The trust fund's IOUs "do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits." Future benefits "will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures.”

The trust fund is “a fiction,” “a mere bookkeeping device,” Charles quickly said. It's a bunch of IOUs! To help advance this familiar claim, he cherry-picked a much-quoted statement from page 337 of a single budget report from the year 2000.

Charles spared us the familiar talk about the left hand borrowing from the right. Breaking with his tribe’s usual practice, he didn’t repeat the dumbest statement in human history: “The money isn’t there—we’ve already spent it.”

But he did repeat the familiar old saw about what the government will have to do to make payments to that trust find. What will the government have to do to honor the trust fund’s “fictional” “IOUs?” According to Charles’ alarmist script, the government will have to raise taxes, borrow more money or reduce other expenses.

Of course, those are same things the government has to do to repay any of its loans—the loans it repays every day! (Generally, it just borrows more money.) Presumably, Charles understands that fact. He may assume that his readers don’t—and of one thing you can be sure:

He himself won’t be bringing it up.

Neither will anyone else, of course. That elementary fact has long been AWOL, MIA, thoroughly missing in action. Also missing: Any attempt to produce an accessible liberal perspective concerning the endless assaults on this seminal program.

The conservative world has been very active in this long-standing debate. Everyone has heard the standard scripts, including that dumbest of all human statements. Here it is, the standard statement about the “trust fund”—the money the Social Security system has loaned to the federal government:

The money isn’t there—we’ve already spent it.

To the unschooled ear, that sounds alarming. Of course, all the money the government borrows gets spent; that's why the government borrowed it.

When Chinese banks lend the government money, that money also gets spent, just like the money from Social Security. But when it comes time to repay those loans, would anyone ever dream of saying this to the Chinese?

The money isn’t there—we’ve already spent it!

No one would ever dream of making such an absurd, inane statement. And yet, the conservative world has scared the country with this nonsense for decades—as “liberal leaders” looked silently on, unwilling or unable to open their well-stuffed pie holes.

In the coming years, will it add to the deficit when the government repays the large sums of money it has borrowed from Social Security? In one sense, it obviously will—but then, it adds to the deficit any time the government repays its loans! Only in the case of money borrowed from Social Security do the Krauthammers emerge from their well-provisioned caves, repeating their highly effective scare words and bulldozing legions of journalists.

In our view, Glenn Kessler’s fact-check of Durbin’s statement constitutes terrible work—and we've been fans of Kessler's overall work through the years. Eventually, Kessler presents his idea of the conservative
“argument:”

KESSLER (12/2/12): As we noted before, this is partly a matter of theology. Democrats look at those trust funds and see actual assets, built up over time, that must be honored.

In their view, the government's general fund-which is now making payments to Social Security to cover the cash flow shortfall-has benefited greatly in the past 30 years from annual Social Security trust fund surpluses that were invested in Treasury securities. In other words, Social Security has helped finance deficit spending in the rest of government-rather than contributing to those deficits. So any cash flow problem should be viewed as a deficit in the general fund rather than in Social Security.

The counterargument is that this is just paper shuffling among different parts of the U.S. government.

Ultimately, those bonds are part of the overall U.S. national debt. In other words, it doesn't matter what happened in the past with Social Security monies; what matters is whether Social Security is generating enough money today to pay for its bills on its own. The plain fact is that it is not, and thus it adds to the government's overall fiscal imbalance.

For instance, the White House budget documents (see Table S-4) show that on an annual basis, Social Security outlays exceed Social Security payroll taxes, thus boosting the bottom-line federal deficit. (Indeed, President Obama is often careful to say that Social Security is "not the primary driver" of deficits and the debt, suggesting that he understands it does play some role.)

In one obvious sense, that "counter-argument" is accurate. When the federal government repays the money it has borrowed from Social Security, that will “boost the bottom-line federal deficit.” The federal government would have more money if it simply refused to repay that loan—if it simply refused to honor a long-standing, well-known promise.

But look again at the remarkable words Kessler describes as an “argument:”

In other words, it doesn't matter what happened in the past with Social Security monies; what matters is whether Social Security is generating enough money today to pay for its bills on its own.

“What matters is whether Social Security is generating enough money today to pay for its bills on its own?” That would of course be true—if it weren’t for “what happened in the past.” And here’s what happened in the past:

In 1983, many millions of American taxpayers were directed to pay more money in taxes each year than was needed for Social Security. They were told the extra money would be borrowed each year—and that the money would be repaid when their own retirements started.

If those taxpayers hadn’t been told those things "in the past," then the only thing that would matter now might be “whether Social Security is generating enough money today to pay for its bills on its own.” But that promise to repay was made in the past. It's the same promise that is made in the case of all government borrowing.

Kessler isn’t describing an “argument.” He is describing something quite different; he is describing the slippery suggestion that the government fail to honor a very large public promise. He is describing a camouflaged proposal—the proposal that millions of citizens should get conned out of their money.

Elsewhere, this is known as theft. To journalists, it sounds like an argumewnt.

Why do many bright people like Kessler think this sounds like an argument? Because your liberals heroes have been missing in action, away without leave, for the past thirty years.

Journalists have heard Charles' stock scripts for that same thirty years. They have never heard an aggressive liberal perspective simply and clearly explained.

This is where a liberal framework might start:

Thirty years ago, many millions of American taxpayers began to act on a public promise. They loaned vast sums of money to the federal government—on the promise that they would get it back.

But uh-oh! Charles doesn’t want to pay it back! Rather than simply state this preference, he and his type have been pimping stupid but misleading frameworks for the past thirty years.

The money isn’t there—we’ve already spent it! The trust find is just an accounting fiction! These misleading remarks could be made about all the money the government borrows. But these misleading remarks are only advanced in the case of the money borrowed from Social Security—from many millions of American citizens.

Charles and his tribe have loudly proclaimed, again and again. And over here, from our own self-proclaimed Very Smart Tribe?

Thirty years of pure silence!

The professors have been too lazy to address these ridiculous claims. The liberal journals have gamboled and played. Your liberal columnists are largely Potemkin. And this is what Big Democrats still do when this topic is raised:

KESSLER (continuing directly from above): "We come down somewhat in the middle on this debate," we wrote last year. "The fact that the system is running a negative cash flow now—and the foreseeable future—is an important warning sign of fiscal imbalance."

Durbin's office declined to comment.

Cue "The Sounds of Silence," the song we've sung all these years.

For ourselves, we can’t make this framework simple enough today. Simplicity comes from repetition. Propositions start seeming “clear” when people have heard them stated many times.

The liberal world has almost never bothered addressing this nonsense.

Everyone has heard Charles’ claims—the silly claims which get applied to loans from Social Security alone. No one has heard the liberal world’s claims, because we’ve never made them.

Lazy, indifferent, unintelligent, dumb? Feckless, uncaring, self-satisfied, useless? What are the best words to apply to a political class as persistently missing as our own?

If you put on your TV machine thingy, if you read liberal sources on-line, you will see our deluded tribe’s answer: Brilliant, smart, deeply caring, highly moral, upstanding.

Delusionally, these are the attributes we think we see when we look deep into our own eyes, even as we get our asses kicked by the people we love to deride.

They’ve kicked our asses for twenty-nine years. We’re still quite sure we’re the smart ones!

Nausea watch: The selling of the new Kool Kidz!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2012

This is the way it’s done: Sam and Cokie were finally done after a very long, fatuous run.

Today, a new class of TV Kool Kidz is being assembled and sold. This is one of the ways its members con you into the deal:

WALSH (12/13/12): There’s no real mystery about why House Speaker John Boehner and his allies keep screaming about wanting spending cuts, but never propose any: The kinds of cuts they are known to want, like raising the eligibility age and/or means testing Social Security and Medicare, are wildly unpopular. So on Thursday Boehner held a ranting press conference where he railed about “spending” but didn’t propose one single cut.

On MSNBC’s “Now With Alex” (guest-hosted by the great Joy-Ann Reid), congressional correspondent Luke Russert told the unvarnished truth about why the party that’s for cuts won’t lay any out...

At least she didn’t refer to “the great Luke Russert.”

If you possess an ounce of self-respect, you should be insulted by that highlighted chunk—and this isn't a criticism of Reid.

The children, including the older children, routinely refer to each other as “the great [name here].” It’s their way of saying they think that you are easily conned.

The theory:

If they call each other “great,” you will swallow it whole. Your're so dumb you’ll believe it.

“Guest-hosted by the great Joy-Ann Reid?” Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss! Joan Walsh has become truly sad.

Smile-a-while: Kristof believes some very good news!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2012

Scribe, take a good look around: In this morning’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof was proclaiming some very unlikely good news.

Right from his puzzling headline on down, the scribe saw the glass very full:

KRISTOF (12/13/12): It’s a Smart, Smart, Smart World

Before I get to the dreary budget debates in Washington, here’s a bright spot of good news: We’re getting smarter.

My readers are all above average. But if I ever had average readers, they would still be brilliant compared with Americans of a century ago.

The average American in the year 1900 had an I.Q. that by today’s standards would measure about 67. Since the traditional definition of mental retardation was an I.Q. of less than 70, that leads to the remarkable conclusion that a majority of Americans a century ago would count today as intellectually disabled.

Kristof was citing data from a new book by James Flynn, “the New Zealand scholar who pioneered this area of research.” Eventually, Kristof acknowledged a key fact: “While I.Q. measures something to do with mental acuity, it’s a rubbery and imperfect metric.”

IQ seems like a somewhat fuzzy concept. Beyond that, we find it hard to believe that the average American was functioning at that level in 1900.

Soon, though, Kristof was believing the best again:

KRISTOF: The average American I.Q. has been rising steadily by 3 points a decade. Spaniards gained 19 points over 28 years, and the Dutch 20 points over 30 years. Kenyan children gained nearly 1 point a year.

Those figures come from a new book by Flynn from Cambridge University Press called “Are We Getting Smarter?” It’s an uplifting tale, a reminder that human capacity is on the upswing.

Is human capacity on the upswing? Of all people, Kristof should know better! Across from him on today’s op-ed page, another piece started like this:

COLLINS (12/13/12): It appears that a lot of people believe the world will come to an end next Friday, possibly during a zombie apocalypse.

Now that I have your attention, let’s proceed with a discussion of how various accounting principles are influencing Congressional negotiations over the “fiscal cliff.”

Just kidding! We are going to talk about the end of the world and the zombie apocalypse.

That right! It was Lady Collins, using her favorite hook again. She pretended she was going to discuss something serious, then made a run for the piffle.

Back to Kristof. “None of this means that people today are born smarter,” he said at one point—a fairly obvious jab at Collins. A bit later on, he even wrote this:

KRISTOF: It’s not that our ancestors were dummies, and I confess to doubts about the Flynn Effect when I contemplate the slide from Shakespeare to “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Likewise, politics does not seem to benefit: One academic study found a deterioration in the caliber of discussions of economics in presidential debates from 1960 to 2008.

Fifty Shades of Grey? A declining discourse? Was this a shot at Dowd?

Completing the hat trick, Joe Nocera wrote about college sports again on Tuesday morning’s op-ed page. Is it really a smart, smart, smart world?

Scribe, take a good look around!

Cable pratfalls: Cable host Matthews clueless again!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2012!

Big Ed answers Ezra's question: Over the years, we’ve often been struck by Chris Matthews’ lack of preparation. Remember when he kept saying that Obama’s mother was “Islamic?”

It happened in December 2007—after nine months of campaigning by Obama! For a surprising time, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/21/07.

Last night, Chris was at it again. He played tape of something Mitch McConnell said in the Senate last Thursday. Then, he commenced to bungling:

MATTHEWS (12/12/12): Let’s listen to what he said last week on tape.

MCCONNELL (videotape): For months, the president’s been saying all he wants is to raise taxes on the top 2 percent so he can tackle the debt and the deficit. However, yesterday, he finally revealed that’s not really his true intent. By demanding the power to raise the debt limit whenever he wants by as much as he wants, he showed what he’s really after is assuming unprecedented power to spend taxpayer dollars without any limit at all.

MATTHEWS: Chip, is that accurate, what he just said that? I think the president means, “How about a ceasefire the next time this thing comes around in two months?” He’s not going to get a law that gets rid of the debt ceiling requirement. It’s a law that Congress passed years ago that says they’ve got to raise it every time they have to borrow more money.

He’s—I don’t think he's asking to get rid of the law. He’s simply saying, “Next time around, guys, let’s not have another stop-the-government game, another hostage situation.”

How do you read what McConnell said there? I think he misrepresented the president.

Good God, that’s awful. As everyone else in Matthews’ business must know, Obama did advance a proposal in recent weeks which would have changed the way the debt limit provision works. That’s what McConnell was talking about in the videotape Matthews showed.

Rosalind Helderman handled the play-by-playin last Friday’s Washington Post:

HELDERMAN (12/7/12): In an opening bid last week, Obama called for essentially shifting the responsibility for raising the debt ceiling from Congress to the president. Obama’s proposal was modeled on one originally crafted by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last year, which allowed the president to raise the debt ceiling unless Congress rejected the action by a two-thirds vote.

But McConnell’s proposal was good only through this year and was never meant to be permanent. Many Republicans have been angered by what they see as a White House attempt to give the president unlimited borrowing power.

“Look: The only way we ever cut spending around here is by using the debate over the debt limit to do it. Now the president wants to remove that spur to cut altogether. It gets in the way of his spending plans,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday. “I assure you: It’s not going to happen.”

On Thursday, McConnell proposed an immediate vote on the issue, wagering that many Democrats would resist granting the president such powers. Instead, Democrats huddled and called McConnell’s bluff. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) emerged to announce that they were prepared to proceed with an up-or-down vote on the idea. McConnell then essentially announced a filibuster of the very vote he had suggested, noting that nearly all votes of consequence in the Senate require a 60-vote threshold.

This got a lot of attention on MSNBC because of McConnell’s self-filibuster. Last night, Matthews seemed to have no ideas what McConnell had even been talking about. And yes, this occurred on Matthews’ own show. The presentation of that videotape should not have been a surprise.

Here’s the good news: Given the way cable works, no one corrected Matthews’ blunder. Chip Saltsman and Gene Robinson talked around their host’s latest lapse.

A bit later, we were struck by the way Ed Schultz handled the Michigan “right-to-work” story. Yesterday, we noted the trouble a labor official had when Ezra Klein asked her why it’s OK to make a worker pay union dues even if he doesn't approve of the union (click here).

If progressives hope to attack the new Michigan law, this question is likely to come up. Last night, Schultz explained the situation in a way which tends to heighten the sense that such a requirement may be unfair.

Schultz spoke with former Ohio governor Ted Strickland:

SCHULTZ (12/12/12): The big political picture here is, governor, they [the Republicans] are after the Rust Belt.

STRICKLAND: They are.

SCHULTZ: If they can break the backs of the unions and their infrastructure of funding and pass laws to make it so people don’t have to pay dues, this, of course, is going to break the backs of the Democrats in those state. Or is that a bridge too far?

STRICKLAND: Well, I don’t think it's a bridge too far. Ed, this Michigan governor is intellectually dishonest. He is not speaking the truth. This is an attack upon organized labor. It's an attack upon the middle class. And he is doing this at the behest of the Tea Party right wing elements within his party. He absolutely was dishonest with the people of Michigan. He said this was not a part of his political priority.

SCHULTZ: But they’re going to the money in the Democrats. They’re going right to the heart and soul of what supports the social networking—

STRICKLAND: Absolutely.

SCHULTZ: —and the knocking on the doors and making the phone calls and the get-out-the-vote effort that really makes a difference in elections. Mayor, what about this? You know, the front page of the Detroit Free Press says that this fight isn’t over. What does that mean? How are you going to fight this new law?

We're not saying that Schultz was wrong. But if progressives plan to fight the Michigan law, they will have to answer the question Klein posed on Tuesday night: Why is it OK make someone pay union dues if he doesn’t like the union?

According to Schultz, those union dues are really important because they help Democrats win elections! This struck us as a very bad way to answer that question from Klein.

BUDGET BABEL: Removing gorilla dust!

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2012

Part 4—Transactions become more clear: Is Social Security adding to the deficit this year?

It all depends on who you ask within the Babel we describe as our “budget discourse!” In the past few weeks, three major voices have weighed in on that question:

Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 11/30/12: “In 2012, Social Security adds $165 billion to the deficit.”

Glenn Kessler, Washington Post, 12/2/12: “In 2012, the cash flow deficit was $58 billion.”

Senator Richard Durbin, 11/27/12: "Social Security has not added one penny to the deficit."

We’re back to the famous tale about the unsighted men and the elephant. In the Babel surrounding Social Security, the program added $165 billion to the deficit in 2012. Or it added $58 billion—or it added nothing at all!

When it comes to Social Security, our Potemkin public discourse has functioned this way for decades. The liberal world has made little attempt to address this vast conceptual chaos.

In the process, the public has come to believe wild and crazy things about this seminal program.

It takes a very unintelligent people to let such a Babel continue. We Americans are such a people—and that very much includes us liberals, who have gotten our brains beaten out on this topic, for decades, as this Babel continues.

That said, who is right? Is Social Security adding to the deficit this year?

Krauthammer says it is—but he has become a reliable purveyor of almost all right-wing lines. But Kessler isn’t a movement conservative. He is instead a high-ranking journalist who writes the Fact-Checker blog at the Post.

On December 2, Kessler critiqued that statement by Durbin in a Fact-Checker report. In our view, he produced a tremendously woolly piece. But he rather clearly seemed to judge that Social Security has in fact started to add to the deficit.

Is that a reasonable judgment? Phrased a bit differently, is it true? Is Social Security adding $58 billion (or perhaps $165 billion) to the deficit this year?

Given the screeching and yelling surrounding this topic, inquiring minds should want to know the answer to such questions.

In our view, Kessler’s piece was terrible work. (Over the years, we have often been fans of his work. We even suggested at one point that he might be “The Man.”) In large part, the confusion found throughout his piece is a tribute to the power of the right-wing frameworks which have long been dumped on this program.

That said, why did Kessler seem to judge that Social Security is adding to the deficit? It all began with this woolly account of the way the program works—a woolly account which includes some data about fiscal year 2013:

KESSLER (12/2/12): Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today are immediately used to pay benefits. Until recently, more payments were collected than were needed for benefits. So Social Security loaned the money to the U.S. government, which used it for other things, which in effect masked the overall size of the federal budget deficit. In exchange, Social Security received interest-bearing Treasury securities, which now total more than $2.7 trillion.

As we have repeatedly explained, the bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. The bonds are a real asset to Social Security, but—here’s where it gets complicated—they also represent an obligation by the rest of the government. Like any entity that issues debt, such as a corporation, the government will have to make good on its obligations, generally by taking the money out of revenue, reducing expenses or issuing new debt.

So what is happening today? The Congressional Budget Office tracks the flow of money in and out of the Social Security fund, and below is a summary of the data for fiscal 2013. To keep things simple, we will include transfers made for the payroll tax holiday as part of “other income.”

Social Security Income (in billions of dollars)
Revenues 675
Interest 110
Other income 70
Total income 854

Outgo
Total outgo 819

This looks like surplus, worth about $36 billion after rounding.

Who but a ranking journalist would write that final sentence? Do those numbers really “look like [a] surplus” of “about $36 billion?”

Rather plainly, that looks like a surplus of about $35 billion—$854 billion in income minus $819 billion in outgo.

Are we picking nits at this point? Two paragraphs later, Kessler uses another number which doesn’t seem to match the figures in this chart. These bumps in the road slowed us down on our first several readings of his piece. Who but a ranking journalist would fail to smooth this pointless confusion?

(Here’s what Kessler could have written to help his readers: “This looks like a surplus, of roughly $35 billion—$854 billion in income versus $819 in outgo.”)

That said, Kessler’s piece is larded with elements which add to the long-standing air of confusion surrounding this Babelist topic. Irrelevant facts are interjected, adding to the air of gloom. Eye-glazing technical terms are used where they aren't needed.

When these terms are replaced by everyday language, the situation may become more clear. At this point, let’s make just one minor adjustment to that second paragraph:

KESSLER’S ACTUAL PARAGRAPH: As we have repeatedly explained, the bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. The bonds are a real asset to Social Security, but—here’s where it gets complicated—they also represent an obligation by the rest of the government. Like any entity that issues debt, such as a corporation, the government will have to make good on its obligations, generally by taking the money out of revenue, reducing expenses or issuing new debt.

KESSLER REWRITTEN: As we have repeatedly explained, the bonds held by Social Security are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. The bonds are a real asset to Social Security, but—here’s where it gets complicated—they also represent an obligation by the rest of the government. Like any entity that borrows money, the government has to pay the money back.

We have no idea why a writer would talk about “issuing debt” and “making good on obligations” when he could use the common language which shows the real relationship here:

Over the years, the government has borrowed money from Social Security. In future years, just as was planned, that money will be paid back.

Below, we’ll rewrite the first three paragraphs by Kessler. In our view, a great deal of gorilla dust obscures what Kessler is saying in that passage. But essentially, he is saying three things:

(1) The government has borrowed several trillions of dollars from Social Security. (2) Eventually, the money will be paid back. (3) When that money gets repaid, those payments will add to the deficit.

That logic isn’t exactly “wrong.” But it’s a type of logic which gets applied to the Social Security system—and to nobody else. Consider:

The federal government has borrowed money from many sources in the past thirty years—from Chinese banks, for example.

All that money gets paid back! But we rarely say that those Chinese banks are “adding to the deficit” when they accept repayment for the money they loaned us.

That would be a strange thing to say—and no one ever says it.

Needless to say, our balance sheet would look much better if those banks forgave those loans—if they said, for some strange reason, that they don’t want their money back. But no one expects them to say such a thing—and no one writes articles about how much better our balance sheet would be if they’d get off their assess and do that.

Is Senator Durbin’s statement true? Is it true that “Social Security has not added one penny to the deficit?”

It’s obvious why Durbin would say that:

As Kessler notes in needlessly technical language, Social Security has taken in trillions more, in the past thirty years, than it needed to make its annual payments. Each year, the extra money was loaned to the government, as was required by law.

It’s hard to see why someone would think that a program performing that way had somehow been “adding to the deficit.” It’s obvious why Durbin might say what he said.

But Kessler adopts a strange perspective as he judges that Social Security has started adding to the deficit now. In this passage, he pretends to tell us what “Democrats see” when they look at the Social Security trust fund—when they consider the $2.7 trillion Social Security is owed:

KESSLER: As we noted before, this is partly a matter of theology. Democrats look at those trust funds and see actual assets, built up over time, that must be honored.

In their view, the general fund—which is now making payments to Social Security to cover the cash flow shortfall—has benefitted greatly over the past 30 years from annual Social Security trust fund surpluses that were invested in Treasury securities. In other words, Social Security has helped finance deficit spending in the rest of government—rather than contributing to those deficits. So any cash flow problem should be viewed as a deficit in the general fund rather than in Social Security.

Please note: In this passage we quoted earlier, Kessler says, in his own voice, that “the bonds held by Social Security” actually are “a real asset.” In this passage, he seems to say that that’s only what “Democrats see.”

So it goes when major journalists try to explain this seminal program! But how about Kessler’s full explanation of what “Democrats see” when they look at the trust fund? (We note that no Democrat is quoted.)

Is that really what “Democrats see?” Translating his work into everyday English: Do Democrats really think that “the general fund has benefitted greatly over the past 30 years” from the money it borrowed from Social Security?

Has the general fund “benefitted greatly” from the money it borrowed from Social Security? That’s an odd way to put it—and we will guess that no Democrat ever put it that way.

In fact, that sounds more like the way you would describe annual gifts to the government. If a generous benefactor made annual gifts to the government, you might well describe his or her action that way.

But those annual Social Security surpluses were never given to the government. That money was borrowed, with the promise that it would be paid back. (This allowed the federal government to borrow less money elsewhere.) The same types of transactions occurred with those Chinese banks and with a range of other sources from which the government has borrowed.

In all those cases, the government borrowed large sums of money and promised to pay it back. Only in the case of Social Security do clouds of gorilla dust appear to confuse the nature of the transaction.

It’s true: The government’s balance sheets would look better if the government refused to repay the money it borrowed from those Chinese banks.

But no one considers doing that. The only loan which gets treated that way is the money which was borrowed from the Social Security system.

Let’s return to our basic question: Will Social Security “add to the deficit” in future years when its money gets paid back? In one sense, yes—of course!

The government would always be better off if it refused to repay its loans! The deficit gets worse every time the government pays a bill. The deficit also gets worse when the government repays one of its loans.

That said, the government keeps its deal with everyone else. The Chinese banks get their money repaid, as do a wide range of others. The Krauthammers only appear and start yapping when it’s time for the government to keep the deal it made with a bunch of tax-payers back in 1983.

In that one case, the Krauthammers start reciting the misleading lines they’ve been pimping for thirty years. (The money isn't there—we've already spent it! It's the dumbest thing that has ever been said.)

The government made a bunch of deals with big Chinese banks when it borrowed money from them. Similar, the government made a deal with a bunch of tax-payers back in 1983.

Money was borrowed from those Chinese banks. And money was borrowed from a whole bunch of tax-payers, with the promise that it would be repaid when it came their turn to retire.

Krauthammer wants to repay the Chinese banks—and he wants to stiff the American citizens! Journalists spread confusion about, as has been done for years.

Tomorrow: Why do these transactions remain so confusing?

Rewriting all three paragraphs: If we were Kessler’s editor, we would have rewritten that three-paragraph passage found near the top of our post. We are omitting extraneous material and replacing technical language.

Please note: As we make his passage easier to follow, much of its punch disappears:

KESSLER REWRITTEN: Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today are immediately used to pay benefits. Until recently, more money was collected than was needed for annual benefits. So Social Security loaned the extra money to the U.S. government, which was running budget deficits.

In exchange, Social Security received “interest-bearing Treasury securities,” which now total more than $2.7 trillion. That is the amount of money Social Security is owed.

As we have repeatedly explained, the bonds held by Social Security are backed by “the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.” Like any entity that borrows money, the government will have to pay it back!

So what is happening today? The Congressional Budget Office tracks the flow of money in and out of the Social Security fund. Here’s a summary of the data for fiscal 2013.

We’ve removed a lot of gorilla dust. Is the nature of this transaction perhaps a bit more clear?