rw prof at Marshall puts foot in mouth-quotes brit hume foul-up as source

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

"This is straight out of the DNC game plan. In the usual hate the rich and their money attitude, Mr. Faulkner characterizes keeping and investing some of our own money as, "personal avarice." He says to not move down the "path of privatization phase-out." Horrors! Not depend on the Gub-mint? The Democratic leadership will have its candy taken away!

Let us read what the architect of Social Security has to say about it: in a document he wrote to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age." He added to that, Gub-mint funds, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."
more at:
http://www.marshallparthenon.com/news/2005/02/24/Opinion/Letters.To.The.Editor-876328.shtml

do a seach on brit hume at mediamatters.org and have fun with a response

[Zenlitened]

1. Wait... thought I was a latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, yuppie elitist...

... with no understanding of ordinary, hard-working Americans.

But I hate the rich and their "money attitude," too? :shrug:

This all gets so confusing, sometimes.

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

2. the irony of a arts professor who gets frequent govt. grants

supporting the GOP

[RobertSeattle]

3. Requires sign-in

Strange, but the first time I went to the page I went straight in, but the 2nd time it wanted a sign-in.

is Stanley Sporny from Marshall? His name is pretty unique.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=%22Stanley+Sporny%22+professor&btnG=Search


http://www.marshall.edu/cofa/art/site.asp?pname=faculty

Here's his Mug:

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

4. those hideous roses on the 8th street viaduct

are his work-he's a painting professor at MU

[Petrushka]

5. Yikes! Like: deja vu . . .

. . . from Brit Hume to Marshall U to the Wheeling News-Register editorial page for Thursday, February 24th! Maybe it's mandatory that every right-winger misquote FDR's 1935 address to Congress?

For some reason, the News-Register didn't see fit to include a certain editorial in its online version of Thursday's paper. Otherwise, I'd give you the URL so that you might read it for yourself and figure out what I'm PO'd about.

Is it possible that the NR editorial--Roosevelt Understood Need For Social Security Change--was meant only for the perusal of readers who paid to read the following question:

"Do AARP and their ilk believe that FDR was wrong about Social Security?"

(sigh) In any case . . . send me a PM if you'd like to have the text of the editorial in question. I'd really like to post the text here but I'm unsure about copyright.

The feedback I sent (by e-mail, of course) to the Wheeling News-Register was/is as follows:

In the Thursday, 2-24-05 editorial--"Roosevelt Understood Need for Social Security Change"--readers are asked, "Do AARP and their ilk believe that FDR was wrong about Social Security?"

Considering that the editorial writer has taken FDR's words out of context and distorted what wasn't "argued" by him, I want to ask if NR's editorial writers and (er, uh) their ilk imagine that readers do NOT check for facts on the Internet and, thereby, learn what FDR actually DID say?!

For shame, NR! Feeding your readers propaganda by saying that "...Bush's proposal is, in a nutshell, almost exactly what FDR proposed 70 years ago:..." is--plain and simply--WRONG!

Gawd! I didn't realize, till now, just how convoluted those sentences of mine can get when I'm miffed! Oh, well . . .

:shrug:

[Adenoid_Hynkel]

6. Two responses today

Teacher lacking class
When I first read the Letter to the Editor in Thursdays' Parthenon, I first assumed it was just another student trying to rile up the already dead Republican vs. Democrat squabble. I was shocked when I reached the bottom of phe letter and found that it had been written by a Professor. It is hard, as well as slightly embarrassing, to imagine a Marshall professor, someone held in high esteem by students and the community, could write something so childish, using terms like "Gub-Mint" instead of government and calling the Democratic mascot a "braying jackass," in response to a student columnist. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but a professor, of all people, should show more class when expressing it.
Jenni Kraft
Sophomore, accounting
Hurricane

AND
Feb. 24, Stan Sporny, shilling for Bush as usual, asks that we "read what the architect of Social Security, Franklin Roosevelt, thought" about privatization.

Sporny claimed FDR said "any Social Security plans" should include, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age." Sporny claimed Roosevelt added government funds "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

Sporny is repeating revisionist history started by FOX News' Brit Hume. Feb. 3, Hume read the abbreviated quote by Roosevelt that Sporny cited in his letter, making the assertion that Roosevelt advocated eventually replacing Social Security with privatization. 

Roosevelt was not suggesting that Social Security be replaced by "self-supporting annuity plans." Instead, he was stating that a completely different fund, established to provide pension benefits to Americans who were already too old in 1935 to contribute payroll taxes to Social Security, would be phased-out because of both mandatory contributions and voluntary annuities. 

Roosevelt wasn't talking about Social Security. He was talking about a temporary supplement to the system - Hume selectively quoted and distorted him.

The Social Security Administration noted, "It was the President's view, that ultimately the welfare pensions funded by the states with federal contributions would become unnecessary as the two programs of annuities would gradually come to obviate any need for such welfare type programs."

Roosevelt knew the separate fund would become unnecessary, as Americans would be covered by paying into the plan through the years. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann accused Hume of "premeditated, historical fraud." When Dan Rather messed up, the supposedly "liberal media" hounded him into resignation. FDR's grandson, James Roosevelt Jr, said that Hume's efforts were "an outrageous distortion, one that really calls for a retraction, an apology, maybe even a resignation." Where's Sporny's retraction?

Knowing Sporny for eight years, I've seen him change from a seeming freethinker to a GOP parrot. Now that I know where he gets his news, this is no surprise.
Heath Harrison
Graduate Student
School of Journalism