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From this Saturday's Up With Chris Hayes, panel member and Hayes' fellow contributor at The Nation brought up a topic at the end of the show that we unfortunately don't hear too often on MSNBC, which is the fact that the "Fix the Debt" campaign is not really interested in "fixing" anything. They're funded by a bunch of billionaires that are pushing for austerity measures and who are really just interested in lowering their taxes.

Sadly I don't expect we'll be seeing any disclaimers from the network every time they have one of these lobbyists from Pete Peterson's group on any time soon though, especially considering they've got one of them on their payroll. The more we complain, the more the so-called "liberal" network puts Ed Rendell on the air without disclosing his conflict of interests on the matter and he's just the tip of the iceberg when you look at the entire list of their leadership.

As Nichols informed the viewers here, there is a new web site that's been launched by The Center for Media and Democracy called PRWatch which has a lot more information on "Fix the Debt." You can check out the site here: PRWatch.

And here is more from one of their recent posts: Pete Peterson’s “Fix the Debt” Astroturf Supergroup Detailed in New Online Resource at PetersonPyramid.org:

Madison, WI -- One of the most hypocritical corporate PR campaigns in decades is advancing inside the beltway, attempting to convince the White House, Congress, and the American people that another cataclysmic economic crisis is around the corner that will destroy our economy unless urgent action is taken. Soon this astroturf supergroup may be coming to a state near you.

“We would not be here if it wasn’t for the Peterson Foundation and Pete Peterson. They laid the groundwork and we stand here on their shoulders.” – Fix the Debt Co-Founder Erskine Bowles

Today the Center for Media and Democracy launches a new wiki resources on the funding, leaders, partner groups and lobbyists of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, see it here at PetersonPyramid.org.

Move over David Koch and George Soros! The effort is being bankrolled by one of the wealthiest men in the nation. Peter G. Peterson made a fortune at the Blackstone Group on Wall Street. He conveniently cashed out with $2 billion shortly before the 2008 financial meltdown and now has pledged to spend $1 billion of that payout to convince Americans -- who overwhelmingly want to keep and strengthen Social Security and Medicare -- that these programs threaten our very existence as a nation.

His task is a tough one. [...]

Key to the strategy is ginning up a crisis. In lockstep, the CEOs, politicians, and partner organizations stormed the media last fall warning of the looming disaster of the so-called “fiscal cliff.” Breaching the fiscal cliff “will lead to chaos,” warned Erskine Bowles; “derail the fragile recovery,” said Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein; generate a "shock to the financial markets and a painful return to the recession,” said the CEO of Morgan Stanley.

But this chorus of calamity was pure hype. One Fix the Debt steering committee member, former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen, let slip that the strategy was to create an “artificial crisis” that would force Congress to act.

Their goal is to achieve a Simpson-Bowles style “grand bargain” on an austerity agenda for the United States by the nation’s 237th birthday on July 4, 2013. [...]

Many Fix the Debt firms pay a very low or even a negative average tax rate, contributing to the nation's deficit. Fix the Debt is secretly pushing for a major tax break that would exempt profits earned overseas by U.S. firms from taxation and encourage the offshoring of U.S. jobs. While the Fix the Debt CEOs call for cuts to Social Security, many of the publicly-traded Fix the Debt firms underfund their employee pension plans -- making their workers even more dependent on the popular social insurance plan that American workers pay into with each paycheck.

And as Hayes mentioned during the segment as well, Nichols contributed to The Nation's article on Peterson's group here: Stacking the Deck: The Phony 'Fix the Debt' Campaign.

I hope everyone checks out the entire article and the rest of the resources at PRWatch and I wanted to share just one more item from there. From their SourceWatch page: Fix the Debt Leaders and Conflicts of Interest:

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Ed Schultz and The Nation's John Nichols discuss the latest on Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker as the recall efforts there continue.

Scott Walker Slams Out-Of-State Money In Wisconsin Recall While In Washington For Fundraiser:

As Wisconsin Democrats continued their push to force his recall, Gov. Scott Walker (R) came to Washington on Thursday to raise funds for the election that is all but certain to occur. But while Walker has slammed the influence of out-of-state money in the recall effort, he defended his own fundraising from non-Wisconsinites as fundamentally different from what he called the "excessive amounts" raised by unions and liberal groups.

"The people from around the country who are helping us at the grassroots level are trying to match the amazing levels of money coming in from unions from Washington and throughout the country," said Walker at a question-and-answer event at the American Enterprise Institute on Thursday morning. Walker spoke at AEI before meeting with Republican donors at the Capitol Hill Club later in the day.

According to his latest campaign finance report, Walker has raised $5.1 million since the start of the recall effort on November 15th. Nearly half of that amount, $2.4 million, has come from outside of Wisconsin. Read on...

Meanwhile as Ed and John discussed, this additional news doesn't bode well for the odds of him being recalled either -- Milwaukee D.A. Announces Charges Against Ex-Walker Aide, Two Others In ‘John Doe’ Probe:

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Ed Schultz talked to The Nation's John Nichols about the recall drive of Gov. Scott Walker that just started this Tuesday in Wisconsin. Although as John noted, due to the dirty tactics of Walker allies with their fake recall petition, the money rolling in for Walker already started last week.

Here's more from Nichols' article at The Nation -- From Ohio to Wisconsin: Stage is Set for Scott Walker Recall:

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker claims that Ohio’s overwhelming rejection of anti-labor legislation modeled on the measures he developed and promoted in the Badger State will have no bearing on the debate about whether he should remain in office.

The governor is in full spin mode.

No surprise there. The governor faces the threat of a recall drive that begins at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday — a grass-roots initiative organized by the same sort of labor, farm and community coalition that overturned the Ohio law.

By any measure, last Tuesday’s election results from Ohio represented a devastating rejection of the agenda Walker and his allies have been peddling since February. Offered an opportunity to endorse a Walker-style attack on collective bargaining rights for state, county and municipal workers and teachers, Ohioans voted “no” by 61-39 percent.

Of Ohio’s 88 counties — with big cities, small towns and rural areas — 82 voted to defend public employees and their unions.

More Ohioans took a pro-union position in 2011 than voted for the governor who promoted the anti-labor legislation, John Kasich, in 2010.

Faced with the facts, Walker’s political team claimed that comparisons of Wisconsin and Ohio were “ridiculous.” The governor, appearing at a hair-styling school in Green Bay, said of the Ohio results: “I don’t think they will have any correlation (here in Wisconsin).” Read on...

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Chris Matthews has been on somewhat of a roll over the last week or so, asking why the labor unions in the United States aren't taking a page from these astroturf tea partiers and showing up in Washington D.C. to protest on the weekends and send President Obama a message that they're concerned about jobs and getting our economy back on the right track.

On this Thursday's edition of Hardball, The Nation's John Nichols pushed back at Matthews assertion that there aren't union members out there hitting the streets and protesting and talked about what's been going on in Wisconsin for months on end now. What he did not really respond to is why we're not seeing massive numbers of protesters in our nation's Capitol. Nor did he ask Chris Matthews why our national media has largely been ignoring the protests that have been going on in Wisconsin and across the country and in our Capitol for weeks and months on end now.

I wish Nichols had asked Chris Matthews why, when unions and other liberal groups have held rallies in D.C., they've been either largely or completely ignored by our national media. The AFL-CIO just held a rally to protest Wal-Mart last week in D.C. in conjunction with some other groups. Did we hear any of these pundits on cable television talking about it? Of course not. But if twenty of these astroturf "tea party" members show up somewhere, we've got at times more from the media showing up to cover the events than we've got protesters.

I think Chris Matthews needs to look himself in the mirror if he doesn't understand why it appears to most people who watch cable television and apparently to himself that there aren't large numbers of working people and union members taking to the streets and holding rallies and why it's completely dishonest and disingenuous to compare real grass roots and union protests who don't have any big money behind them to the astroturf events they love to hype so much.

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During some of MSNBC's extended coverage of the recall elections in Wisconsin and with things looking like it could come down to Waukesha County again after what we already went through with the Supreme Court race there, John Nichols stated the obvious. Rep. Tammy Baldwin was correct to say that Waukesha County county clerk Kathy Nickolaus should be investigated by the Department of Justice.

The question is, why hasn't Attorney General Eric Holder done anything about it? Or need I ask given his track record?

Here's a reminder from this past April on the call for Nickolaus to be investigated -- Tammy Baldwin Asks Eric Holder To Investigate Wisconsin Supreme Court Election:

After the bombshell announcement that a Waukesha County clerk forgot to report thousands of votes in Wisconsin's Supreme Court election, Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) is asking U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to involve the federal government in the ongoing investigation.

Last Tuesday's election, which pitted conservative incumbent David Prosser against progressive candidate JoAnne Kloppenburg, appeared to end with Kloppenburg winning by a razor-thin margin, with initial results showing her just a couple of hundred votes ahead. But on Thursday, Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus held a dramatic press conference and admitted that she had forgotten to report the votes of the city of Brookfield. The adjusted total gave Prosser a 7,500-vote advantage.

On Friday evening, Baldwin sent a letter to Holder, saying that many of her constituents had expressed concern about the announcement. She requested that the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section, which oversees the federal prosecution of election crimes, investigate the handling of Waukesha County's vote records.

"For our democracy to endure, we, the people, must have faith in its laws and system of justice, including faith that our elections for public office are fair and free from any manipulating or tampering," wrote Baldwin. "Following this week’s election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, numerous constituents have contacted me expressing serious doubt that this election was a free and fair one. They fear, as I do, that political interests are manipulating the results."

A Justice Department spokesperson told The Huffington Post that they had received the letter and are reviewing the matter. Read on...

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Some good news tonight from Wisconsin. All six of the fake Democrats the GOP put up to run against actual Democrats in the recall primary elections lost tonight. I wonder if this will cause any backlash for them wasting the taxpayers' money for pulling this stunt.

Ed Schultz talked to the Nation's John Nichols about the results and here's more from USA Today -- Fake Democrats lose in Wisconsin primary recalls.

And as Ed and John discussed, the GOP running fake Democrats weren't the only dirty tricks that went on with these elections.

Deceitful Robocalls Added to List of Dirty Election Tricks in Wisconsin:

Adding to the list of dirty tricks, reports are surfacing that a “Right to Life” group is robocalling Wisconsin Democrats and telling them not to go to the polls today, and instead to wait for an absentee ballot to arrive in the mail. This is false, as July 12 is the last day to cast a vote in the Democratic primary, and there is not enough time to cast a vote by mail. Apparently, the robocalls are coming from a 703 area code (Virginia).

We do not know yet exactly who is ultimately responsible for these calls, and even if an individual is caught and takes the fall, we may never find out who’s really pulling the strings. Whoever they are, they are obviously people in synch with the right wing agenda of Governor Walker and the Koch Brothers. Disenfranchising voters by tricking them into not voting is a tried and true method of voter suppression. So is finding excuses at the polling place to keep certain people from voting, as GOP-pushed voter ID laws do. What all the tactics we see in Wisconsin have in common is that the right wing is pulling out the stops to prevent the people from exercising their constitutional right to remove them from office.

Karoli: Fortunately, Wisconsin's recall elections will go forward with actual Democrats running against their recall targets. Despite the best efforts of Koch Industries and their American Majority puppets, the real Dems won by large margins.

Daily Kos:

8:01 PM PT (Steve Singiser): To put our own shiny bow on Wisconsin, here are the margins of victory for each of the real Dems: Nancy Nusbaum (SD-02) wins 65-35; Sandy Pasch (SD-08) wins 67-33; Shelly Moore (SD-10) wins 54-46; Fred Clark (SD-14) wins 67-33; Jessica King (SD-18) wins 69-31; Jennifer Shilling (SD-32) wins 71-29.

Of course, it means the Republicans get another 30 days before they lose, but at least the fakers were sent home summarily.

Next up: Republican attempts to recall Democrats on July 19th. Because the two parties really are not alike at all, there will be real Republicans facing real Republicans in a couple of the primaries, as opposed to fake ones screwing up the landscape. However, that doesn't mean the races won't be interesting.

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Ed Schultz talked to Wisconsin state Sen. Chris Larson and The Nation's John Nichols about the latest in Wisconsin. As Larson noted, he's supporting his fellow Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin in asking Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the voting irregularities and the "surprise discovery of 14,000 votes" in the Supreme Court race in Waukesha County.

Congresswoman asks U.S. Attorney General to investigate Waukesha vote reporting:

Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) is asking for a federal investigation into the surprise discovery of 14,000 votes in Waukesha County for the Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

Rep. Baldwin sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Friday night asking him to assign the Justice Department Integrity Section. It oversees the federal prosecution of election crimes.

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus said "human error" resulted in the miscount there. The change gave incumbent Justice David Prosser a 7,500-vote edge over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg.

Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle said Saturday in an email that the department would review the letter. He declined further comment.

In the letter, Baldwin says the mishap raises serious doubts as to the integrity of the state's electoral process.

And as they noted, their wingnut Governor Scott Walker went running to Newsmax to accuse the unions of trying to "steal" the election from Prosser and compared what happened to Al Franken's narrow election win there. That's rich, isn't it?

Meanwhile, Scott Walker is going to be called to testify before Rep. Darrell Issa's committee next week. I'm sure we'll get to watch a union bashing side show from the Republicans during that hearing.

And as the recall efforts in Wisconsin are still moving along where it would be very nice to see this union busting Republican shown the door -- Wis. Dems To File First Recall Petitions Against GOP State Sen. Dan Kapanke.

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Looks like Scott Walker's prank phone call may end up getting him in some trouble with their Government Accountability Board and his remarks about bringing in agent provocateurs to cause trouble at the rallies isn't sitting too well with the voters. Ed Schultz discussed Governor Walker's conversation with the fake Koch brother with The Nation's John Nichols who filled Ed in on some of the latest developments in Wisconsin.

NICHOLS: The governor’s not walking a fine line Ed. He tripped off the cliff. The fact of the matter is that Wisconsin has the toughest ethics laws in the nation. We pride ourselves on that. That goes back more than a hundred years to the progressive era with Bob La Follette. Those ethics laws require that an elected official keep faith with the people of Wisconsin. Those statements raise deep concerns here in Madison and around the state.

The former Attorney General of Wisconsin, Peg Lautenschlager told me tonight that she is in the reviewing this, of the transcript of this conversation, for several hours found what she determined to be multiple ethics, election law and labor law violations. And she will tomorrow morning suggest that the state Government Accountability Board begin to review those ethics violations.

Ed Schultz asked Nichols if the Republicans running the state would allow the investigation to go forward.

NICHOLS: The Government Accountability Board is an independent, non-partisan board, staffed by former judges who are elected in a non-partisan manner without any Republican or Democratic control.

Nichols wasn’t sure where the investigation would end up going and pointed out to Schultz that the residents of Wisconsin aren’t too happy with some of the other statements he made during the call as well.

NICHOLS: But second, there’s a moral component to this. People around Wisconsin are talking tonight about the fact that they brought their children to peaceful, very attractive and popular rallies in Madison and other communities and now they find out that their governor says that he considered sending agent provocateurs into those rallies to screw things up and cause trouble, perhaps to begin violence and he only decided not to do it, not because he’s worried for the people of his state, but because he was worried that it might not play well politically. That’s a very troubling thing to have a governor of an American state talking about.

It looks like the tactics being used by these Koch brother teabaggers are finally coming back to bit them.

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Ed Schultz had some of the most amazing coverage of the protests this Friday night as his show went live in Wisconsin instead of MSNBC's usual edition of Lock Up and this interview with The Nation's John Nichols was no exception. Schultz and Nichols discussed why the tea party and Breitbart are coming to town in Wisconsin this weekend. They're afraid labor is winning this battle, and they should be.

Nichols: Governor Walker is clearly cornered at this point. I can tell you as somebody who’s covered him for a long time. This man doesn’t want to be where he’s at. He would love to have a way out. That’s one of the reasons why the tea party is coming to town tomorrow. They’re going to rally here. They’re going to do that for a reason. And that is because they’re trying to shore the governor up.

They’re trying to scare him from backing down. The fact of the matter is these people are winning. On Thursday, these people are winning. On Thursday, they connected with the state Senate in such a powerful way that 14 Senators made the ultimate sacrifice for Wisconsinites. They went for a weekend in Illinois.

Now today, today they connected with the Assembly sufficiently that the Assembly adjourned action. These are victories each day and there’s simply no question. The power here right now is in the streets, not in the capital.

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Ed Schultz and The Nation's John Nichols discussed the protests we're seeing in Wisconsin today that Karoli wrote about earlier. Even if you're not normally a fan of Ed Schultz's show, he's really been doing a good job this week with covering what's going on with these Republican governors like Scott Walker, John Kasich in Ohio and Chris Christie in New Jersey and their attacks on the public sector unions in their states.

And he's managed to do it without bringing in Ron Christie or Heidi Harris or some other right wing talker that I really don't care to watch Ed argue with.

Ed and John talked about this being the new Republican game plan and they're exactly right, if anyone thinks this isn't going to affect you as well, think again. If the Republicans succeed in destroying the public sector unions in these states, look for more of this all across the country. They want to break the backs of every union in the United States and the core of the Democratic donor base. And they're happy to destroy what's left of our economy while they're at it as well. Everyone needs to be showing solidarity with these workers and doing what you can to support them in their efforts.

Here's Nichols latest post on from The Nation on Gov. Walker's attack on the unions there -- A 'Dictator' Governor Sets Out to Cut Wages, Slash Benefits and Destroy Public Unions:

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s proposal to strip public employees of most collective bargaining rights, cut pay and gut benefits without any negotiation the most radical assault yet by the current crop of Republican governors on the rights of workers has inspired outrage in a historically progressive and pro-labor state.

With unions calling on members an allies to “fight back” against a “blatant power grab,” tensions are running so high that the governor, who took office in January, is threatening to call out the National Guard in case of industrial action by state, county and municipal employees. “Even if you don’t like unions,” says Rich Abelson, executive director of AFSCME Council 48, the union that represents Milwaukee County workers, “surely we all can agree that anti-freedom attacks that deny public employees the right to negotiate a fair contract…are outrageous and wrong.”

Even Republicans are unsettled, with a senior GOP legistator, state Senator Luther Olsen, describing the governor’s announcement a “radical” move that threatens “a lot of good working people.”

Walker never discussed ending collective bargaining during a campaign in which he promised to work across lines of partisanship and ideology to create jobs.

Much more there so go read the rest.