I posted this in the PNAC forum, but since others are posting about the repug campaign against the AARP, thought I post it here too.The Diane Rehm Show (NPR) featured the topic "Social Security and Market Risk" a few days ago.
Diane’s pro SS reform guest was James Glassman, fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and host of TechCentralStation.com. I hadn’t heard of Glassman before, so the words American Enterprise Institute raised a red flag. I decided to check him out and take a look at his website, www.techcentralstation.com
So here we have someone appearing on a talk show as a Social Security expert with very close ties to PNAC and the White House. Was the audience told this? Of course not. I didn’t need to listen to Glassman’s part of the discussion – I already knew exactly what he was going to say. I already knew he would follow the neocon agenda by trying to convince people private accounts and the gutting of SS are a good thing. But the average American listener, the ones who don’t know about AEI and PNAC – they may actually think this guy gives a damn about their retirement.
More....
The “Dow 36,000” nickname comes from a book Glassman wrote where he claimed the Dow will eventually reach 36,000 (yeah right).
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609806998/104-8...Here’s his illustrious biography:
http://www.techcentralstation.com/bioglassmanjames.htmlGlassman not only has something to say about Social Security, he has become very good at popping up on newspaper op-ed pages where he doesn’t disclose who really is. He has been all over cable news as a ‘commentator’ (CNN) and is a ‘columnist’ for major publications:
That's why a series of recent incidents, in which major newspapers have published op-eds without disclosing their authors' potential conflicts of interest, seem so troubling. If newspaper op-ed pages aim to enrich debate on key issues of national importance, then newspapers ought to ensure that that unique forum doesn't get abused. Yet through the funding of think tanks and other surrogates, special interests have a relatively easy time acquiring what is essentially advertising space on major op-ed pages. This isn't news, perhaps, but the brazenness of the practice has become rather staggering of late.
Two of the most striking recent incidents involve the same author: James Glassman of Tech Central Station and the American Enterprise Institute. Some essential background on Glassman's operation comes from this article by Nicholas Confessore in The Washington Monthly, which depicts Tech Central Station as a strange hybrid: It quacks like a pro-free market journalistic Web site, but it runs articles that closely favor the interests of the site's corporate sponsors. In fact, Tech Central Station is published by a lobbying shop, the DCI Group. Glassman, Confessore concludes, has "reinvented journalism - as lobbying."
And he's extended that practice beyond Tech Central Station itself and onto major op-ed pages. Recently, for instance, Glassman published a St. Louis Post-Dispatch op-ed attacking Morris Spurlock's new documentary "Super Size Me," which links fast food served at McDonald's to the American obesity epidemic. Glassman called the film an "outrageously dishonest and dangerous piece of self-promotion." What he didn't do is disclose that McDonald's partly funds Tech Central Station.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF...Discussion about Glassman with Eric Alterman and a couple of other guys:
Alterman: How much did I have to pay James “Dow, 36,000” Glassman to prove my point so quickly?
Levine of Cursor: "It continually astounds me how people like James Glassman are still listened to by anybody. In 1999 he didn't predict that the stock market would some day be 36,000 - he said it should have been there at that moment! The reason: He actually believed and preached that stocks and bonds, at that time, bore equivalent amounts of risk! Try telling that to the shareholders who have lost $8 trillion since the market's collapse - much of it due to fraud perpetrated by those at the top of American corporate culture.
In a sane world, Glassman would be forced to pick up his pens and go home. Instead, he is living proof that our mainstream media is a failed institution."
Tom Spencer: "The funniest thing about all this is the fact that this guy Glassman has any sort of job at all, much less works as a columnist for Tech Central. He ought to be working in the local 7-11 if at all. I mean this guy is the snake oil salesman who wrote Dow 36,000 after all. If anybody pays any attention to a thing this guy says, you deserve the incredible loss you're getting ready to take when you try to unload your swampland in Florida. This, my friends, is the sort of reputation that gets you a fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute these days. Glassman is part of a large roster of GOP has-beens, including Newt Gingrich and everyone's favorite graph-fudger, John Lott.
http://mwowatchwatchwatchwatch.blogspot.com/2003_06_08_...Finally, here’s part of an article where Glassman attacks the AARP, courtesy of his Tech Central Station website:
“AARP Invests In Hypocrisy”:
The President has made fixing Social Security his number-one domestic objective, but the fight won't be easy -- in part because of fierce opposition by the AARP, the seniors' lobby, with 35 million members.
The AARP is using an old strategy: trying to scare the wits out of old people. The organization's executives want its members to think that Social Security will be destroyed by offering young people the option of personal accounts.
The President's plan will likely allow workers to put up to four percentage points of what they now pay in taxes into a small number of broadly diversified portfolios of stocks and bonds.
This is hardly radical. Half of American families already own mutual funds, and most AARP members are retirees who don't pay into Social Security anyway, so they won't be exercising the option. But those facts don't stop the AARP from painting a frightening picture that equates investing with casino gambling.
http://www.techcentralstation.com/021505.htmlGlassman is working the domestic side of the neocon agenda, with an occasional venture into foreign affairs. He is making the rounds promoting *’s Social Security plan (what plan??) and has jumped on the AARP hate wagon, proclaiming to be an ‘expert’ on Social Security. Instead of doing their job, the mainstream media will remain asleep, ooohing and aaaahing as he recites THE talking points.
Not that it will make a difference, but I have emailed the Diane Rehm Show demanded full disclosure of her guests (citing Glassman) – listeners need to understand some guests may be paid to promote a point – they aren’t necessarily working for the common good of the American people, but for the advancement of corporate greed. These people are a cancer, plain and simple.
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