The Genesis of a Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory

As the conservative movement heads relentlessly ever more towards the World Net Daily- black helicopter-Elvis-is-alive-and-stole-by-baby-and-gave-him-to-aliens territory, I see the beginning of a new conspiracy theory looming in the shadows. Take a look at this Investor's Business Daily op-ed, entitled "First, They Came For The Cypriots...".

The passage that caught my eye was this:

Already Congressional Democrats are plotting the expropriation of Americans' private 401(k) and IRA retirement savings accounts in favor of "a guaranteed income." If bank accounts can be casually expropriated in Cyprus to pay for big-spending governments and bailouts, there is no reason a nice slice of the $19 trillion in retirement accounts can't get the same treatment.

If it happens, it will signal the end of individual freedom and the return of feudalism.

I found it interesting that the "Congressional Democrats are plotting the expropriation of Americans' private 401(k) and IRA retirement savings accounts in favor of "a guaranteed income."" passage included no link. What EXACTLY are congressional Democrats "plotting" and is it really a tax on savings to finance a government bailout (the Cypriot example)?

Well, no.

As far as I can tell, there is no pending legislation on this front at all. I did a Google search on "guaranteed income legislation" and "401k replacement legislation" and several hybrids, and all I could come up with were stories about how the 401k instrument--which is not a constitutional provision, but instead created by an act of Congress in 1978--has not worked out very well. A variety of studies have shown that workers do consistently better with traditional company pension plans, that the average 401k nest egg is shockingly low, and that the tax incentives to encourage 401k contributions are not very effective. Finally, the only alternative I have seen even discussed are plans that require contributions and structure the program more like an annuity.

So at some point in the distant future, perhaps the tax incentives that support the 401k approach and be repealed and the 401k system might be replaced with another system that will require more savings into safer investments that guarantee lifetime income--sort of a  private supplement to Social Security benefits.

Is this "feudalism"? I don't think so. But then again, what about the fate of our precious bodily fluids?

Bob Woodward's Reputational Decline

In case you haven't caught it, there was a recent incident that has garnered quite a bit of press attention concerning the quality of Bob Woodward's reporting. He received a harmless, even friendly, e-mail from White House adviser Gene Sperling and basically tried to turn it into a mini-scandal. Woodward ended up looking either foolish or incompetent.

Tanner Colby has written an astonishingly good Slate article exploring Woodward's apparent tendency to exaggerate and over-dramatize. What is especially interesting about Colby's article is that he uses as a case study the one book Bob Woodward wrote that wasn't about Washington. The book was Wired, his 1984 biography of John Belushi. What makes this such an interesting and useful approach (Colby is writing his own book about Belushi) is that the sources in Wired did not speak to Woodward in secret, as is common with government sources. There was no Deep Throat here. They are basically all Hollywood and other entertainment people who Colby was able to re-interview, and they talked freely. He was essentially able to re-report Woodward's book by talking to people who knew and worked with Belushi like John Landis, Blair Brown, and Al Franken. They all told Colby the same thing: while Woodward got the essential facts correct, he twisted their meaning and context to the point that the larger story they told was unrecognizable from the reality that the eyewitnesses described.

Colby makes a compelling case that this is essentially what occurred in les affaires Sperling. It is a good read.

Postscript: Speaking of celebrity biographies, I recently read a biography of Clint Eastwood about which I was initially skeptical. It was so negative and painted such a relentlessly unflattering portrayal of the subject that I assumed the writing was based on bias or personal animus. Until I read the book's afterward, that is. The author openly, almost apologetically, acknowledged the negative tone of the book and made a real effort to explain it. He compared it to another biography he had written about Jack Nicholson. He explained that he tried to get his sources to relay salacious and negative stories about Nicholson, but was unsuccessful. "Everyone", he wrote, "just seems to love Jack." He contrasted this with the instant willingness of numerous sources to say bad things about Eastwood. Clint, it appears, has made a lot of enemies.