Late yesterday, I posted a link to an invaluable new Social Security web log to help see you though the coming season of lies and distortions as the Bush administration tries to reform the system.


Golly, and you already need to go there this morning–there’s a round up on this morning’s headlines on Social Security.


One link is to the American Spectator, which has an incisive story dissecting the bias in a USA Today report on Social Security. The Spectator suspects that USA Today reporter William Welch–who penned a “humdinger of a hit job against Social Security reform”–doesn’t even know he’s biased:


“First up was Welch’s ‘statement of fact’ that Bush and his surrogates aren’t warning you of the fine print about personal accounts:


“President Bush is selling his idea to transform Social Security with private investment accounts as part of a new ’ownership society’ for Americans. The accounts, Vice President Cheney says, would be ’a retirement fund they control themselves and can call their own.’


“But the reality would produce a lot less individual control than Bush and Cheney suggest.


“Yet barely a month ago Bush was talking about just that reality:


“’You can’t take [money in personal accounts] to the race track and hope to really increase the returns. It’s not there for the lottery,’ Bush said at an economic conference promoting his domestic proposals, including Social Security, his leading legislative issue for next year….


“’There will be reasonable guidelines that already exist in other thrift programs that will enable people to have choice about where they invest their own money, but they’re not going to be able to do it in a frivolous fashion,’ Bush said.


“Funny, but I only had to put ’Bush,’ ’Social Security’ and ’Lottery’ into Google to find that article — I didn’t even have to use Lexis/Nexis! I wonder why the reporter didn’t mention Bush’s previous statements? Could it be that it is easier to discredit Social Security reform if you can portray Bush as not being fully honest? …”