americaspeaks

Archon Fung recently wrote a piece in the Huffington Post entitled "The Left Should Learn to Trust Americans," which mocked Dean Baker and me for criticizing AmericaSpeaks and the "national town meeting on the deficit." We both felt the presentation was skewed toward creating a right-wing set of recommendations, while Professor Fung claimed the attendees' progressive conclusions meant that we had been alarmist - and didn't trust the intrinsic wisdom of the American people (a mischaracterization he quickly expanded to include the entire "Left").

That's like making fun of the Fire Department after the fire's been put out. more »

More »»

After much hype and buildup, the AmericaSpeaks "national town meeting" on cutting the deficit was held on Saturday. I watched the proceedings via webcast for much of the morning, knowing that Digby was liveblogging it and David Dayen was on the scene here in Southern California, so that I could take part in a radio interview before heading out to experience the event in person. What I found in sunny Pasadena was a cross between a corporate "team-building" and "motivational" exercise and one of Stanley Milgram's sinister "obedience to authority" experiments.

The good news for America seems to be that, as Roger Hickey points out, the experiment went horribly wrong ... for its organizers. The bad news is that they'll probably try to spin it the way they wanted to anyway. more »

More »»

I was on Hannah-Beth Jackson's radio show this Saturday discussing two topics:  Social Security and the "AmericaSpeaks" events, and the financial reform bill.  Here's Part I of the discussion, on Social Security.  I'll get the financial reform piece up as soon as I have time to clean up the audio.

more »

More »»

The organizers of AmericaSpeaks, tomorrow's "town hall meeting"/media event designed to focus attention on budget-cutting, have issued a document called "Myths & Facts About AmericaSpeaks: Our Budget, Our Economy." A number of excellent pieces have already been written about the slanted point of view in their materials, which are d more »

More »»

This Saturday an organization called AmericaSpeaks is sponsoring a "National Town Meeting" on the budget deficit in twenty cities. more »

More »»