deficit commission

What caused the deficits and rising public debt? The answer comes in two parts: present deficits and projected future deficits. more »

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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 »

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

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A video of retired Sen. Alan Simpson's foulmouthed rant toward activist Alex Lawson is making the Internet rounds, as well it should: The sheer audacity and rudeness of the guy makes this clip "must-see TV." It's a political bloopers reel (it can be seen at the bottom of this post).

But, while Simpson's outrageousness makes the video entertaining, here's what makes it important: Alan Simpson is one of two chairs of a bipartisan commission created by President Obama to study the Federal deficit. His comments reveal a number of very important things about his biases, his tendency to distort and mislead, and his ideological extremism. These traits are likely to taint the Commission's work - work which has great implications for the future.

Your future. more »

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Over the last few months, Texas’ far-right Board of Education has been in the national spotlight as they prepare to debate new, highly ideological textbook standards for high school. more »

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"Budgetball is an innovative sport that combines fiscal strategy and physical play."
- Budgetball Rulebook, "Pass the Ball - Not The Buck"

Billionaire Pete Peterson is funding an elaborate campaign to convince a nation with more than 15 million unemployed citizens that the most urgent crisis we face today is not unemployment ... or poverty, or inadequate healthcare, or the decimation of the middle class. He's already created a "news service" to propagate his ideas - the Washington Post outsourced its financial reporting to him - and hosted a "deficit summit" headlined by the same people that got us into the mess we're in today. (Greenspan? Rubin? That's not called a "summit." It's called "rounding up the usual suspects.")

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Last week I livestreamed the first closed door meeting of the president's fiscal commission. I did this out of frustration that we received no response to a letter that we sent from 81 organizations representing over 61 million Americans, asking that all the work of the commission be done in the open. Letters were also sent by Chairman John Conyers and Minority Leader Boehner asking for transparency.

Today is the mandatory spending working group and we will be livestreaming it the whole time (we brought a power cord this time).

This post is part of our ongoing "Virtual Summit on Fiscal and Economic Responsibility for People Who Did Not Wreck The Economy."

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Anne Kim and Jonathan Cowan of Third Way took to the Politico Arena op ed page (and url) on Thursday with the hoary slander that progressives care only about "expanding the entitlement state" and have no interest in economic growth or expanding wealth. Apparently blind to the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, they then replay New Democrat staples from the 1990s as if they were somehow new or relevant. They get it wrong.

This post is part of our ongoing "Virtual Summit on Fiscal and Economic Responsibility for People Who Did Not Wreck The Economy."

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Probably not going to be the most riveting livestream ever. more »

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Also posted at Ian Welsh's blog

1) Social Security, at current rates, is not expected to run short of money before 2037. more »

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