DOWNLOADS: (549)

PLAYS: (6929)

Embed

Who would have thought a study that wasn't peer reviewed could have caused so much misery for so many? Stephen Colbert did a great job of taking down the deficit hawks who relied on the flawed Reinhart-Rogoff study, as only he can on his show this Tuesday evening.

Now if we could just get our President and Congressional leaders to quit listening to the likes of Simpson and Bowles, who are still out there pushing a new plan for austerity, even after it was revealed that theirs relied on the discredited research.

Colbert got in a lot of good shots during the segment, but I think this was my favorite, other than what he did with Reinhart and Rogoff's names.

Colbert: Of course they didn't share their data. If they can't use Excel, I doubt they can send an email attachment.

DOWNLOADS: (197)

PLAYS: (1840)

Embed

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:

Continue reading »

For anyone that missed it, former Sen. Alan Simpson, one of the co-chairs of the President's now defunct deficit commission, appeared on The Daily Show earlier this month and as Sam Seder rightfully pointed out in the clip above, the interview was just awful. Stewart allowed Simpson to get away with a ton of lies on everything from who owns our debt, to whether we're in danger of becoming like Greece where no one wants to loan us money any more, to the Peterson Foundations' lies about Social Security.

Sam's exactly right here and if Stewart was going to allow Simpson on his show, he should have done a better job doing his homework first. It's really just unacceptable that he allowed his audience to listen to this much garbage out of Simpson without more of it being debunked right on the spot.

It's a little long, but well worth the time if you have it to watch it and I'd highly recommend passing it along to anyone you know who might not realize what a load of garbage Simpson and his fellow fearmongers over the so-called bond vigilantes are peddling. Seder also took Simpson to task for his ridiculous “Gangnam Style” ad he's got out there trying to convince kids to buy into this "The Can Kicks Back" campaign of theirs.

Salon's Alex Pareene did a similar take down of Stewart shortly after his appearance which you can read here: Alan Simpson spins Jon Stewart and they've got the full interview posted as well for anyone that might want to watch it.

DOWNLOADS: (71)

PLAYS: (402)

Embed

It seems that, as Susie formerly called him, Pete Peterson's pet dog, the smarmy David Walker, made his way back onto MSNBC this Friday and surprise, surprise, he's endorsing Mitt Romney. Color me not shocked, even though the media constantly tries to portray this guy as some bipartisan straight shooter.

Apparently Walker isn't too happy that he hasn't managed to get his "grand bargain" passed under President Obama and he twists himself in knots trying to defend Romney's fuzzy math on his budget numbers that simply don't add up without raising taxes on the middle class and resorts to more or less questioning what the definition of middle class is.

As Susie noted in the post linked above, regardless of what Walker says here, she went to one of his seminars and the people who were in attendance were not buying the snake oil the man and his group were selling. You can read more about Walker and Pete Peterson here: Peterson's Grand Bargain Campaign To Kick Off After Election and here: Meet Pete Peterson, Architect of Social Security and Medicare Cuts.

Rough transcript of Walker's interview below the fold.

Continue reading »