I have been thinking about what I heard on CBS tonight. And I am so bothered by the story they aired On SS in Chile. I sent CBS a comment with facts they left out, cause it wouldn't be a success story if you told the truth now would it.
CBS should be called on the carpet for this. The omissions and slant were glaring. They simply left out anything about the old system, about Pinera and the CATO tie to Bush or about the struggle of people in Chile under the current system and why they are trying to change it back. It was like Dan left and the flood gates for Rove, GOP opened wider.
So I sent this to CBS and to Paul Krugman..........................
Your story tonight on the Chilean Social Security system "success Story" is "divorced from reality". You portrayed privatization of SS in Chile as a success. President Bush used this line too. He has the support of Jose Pinera, the architect of the Chilean plan and now a member of the CATO Institute. He supports Bush's plan despite the abysmal record in his home country. It has been a failure. Please note the following quotes of information which clearly dispute your story:
"As the Bush administration pushes to privatize Social Security, many people are looking at countries where state-funded pensions have been privatized. One of them is Chile. President Bush lauded Chile’s privatized social security system as a "good example" for the U.S. when he visited Santiago last November to participate in the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Today even the government itself and the AFPs have admitted that at least half of the Chilean people will never accumulate enough to be able to get the minimum pension equivalent to $100 (US) monthly."
"Today even the government itself and the AFPs have admitted that at least half of the Chilean people will never accumulate enough to be able to get the minimum pension equivalent to $100 (US) monthly. The Chilean Center for Alternative National Development (CENDA) has said that "two-thirds of the population will never qualify for a minimum pension." Manuel Riesco, CENDA’s director, added that "the Chilean private pension system will provide pensions on its own only to the upper-income minority."
If there is one sector in Chilean society that has benefited from the privatized system, however, it is the AFPs. Many have former Pinochet cabinet officials on their boards of directors and they are among the most profitable companies in all of Chile.
Just like in the U.S., the people’s movement in Chile is fighting not just against the privatization schemes, but to expand programs for people’s needs. Its trade union federation, CUT, has set as one of its six priority "points of struggle" for 2005 "to change the current pension system" so that there is greater coverage and that it pays at least 70 percent of wages after retirement. CUT is also calling for an end to "the abuse of excessive fees by the management of the pension funds," as well as stopping the fund monies from becoming profits for the AFP owners.
The key architect of the Chilean plan under the fascist dictator Pinochet was José Piñera. Where is Piñera today? He’s a senior fellow at the Washington-based, libertarian Cato Institute, one of the main proponents of Social Security privatization in the U.S."
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/659...As Media Matters for America has previously noted, Chile's system of private accounts has been less effective for poor and middle-class workers than the public pension system that preceded it. The New York Times reported on January 27 that middle-class workers have discovered that private accounts "are failing to deliver as much in benefits as they would have received if they had stayed in the old system," and many poor Chileans don't receive "even a minimum pension" or "remain outside the system altogether." According to a Chilean government official specializing in pensions, "If people really had freedom of choice, 90 percent of them would opt to go back to the old system," the Times noted.
http://mediamatters.org/items/200503040004Is it prophetic that Dan spoke of courage on his last night on air? Did he know you would 'overlook' the Pinera /Pinochet connections to the CATO Institute and its support for Bush's similar privatization plan? Was Dan likely to have allowed people to air an outright fictitious story on the state of privatization of social security in Chile? You did this the day after he left. You aired a story with a slant Karl Rove would have paid for.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/10/eveningnews/main679435.shtml
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
