If Lesley Stahl chose to leave the Peterson Board and disassociate herself with that group's agenda, she made the right decision. But opting for secrecy was the wrong choice.
Media touted the event without looking deeper. Clips the day after did the same. Nary a mention of Pete Peterson or his vicious austerity agenda which will slash government spending, kill jobs, condemn students to higher rates of debt and make it much harder for graduates to succeed.
WASHINGTON -- Most people don't think of partying at rock concerts in the name of debt reduction. Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, after all, are cert...
If you're a jobless person looking for food or a wounded vet who needs health care,Ā 60 MinutesĀ has a solution: Beg a billionaire for it.
Even a minimal "vision" of an America that can still accomplish something would appear to be far more uplifting than the austerity snake oil the current crop of Republican politicians keep pushing.
WASHINGTON -- Former President Bill Clinton began his appearance at Pete Peterson's annual fiscal summit Tuesday by approvingly invoking the name of t...
WASHINGTON -- Companies in the Fix the Debt coalition, which advocates for federal austerity policies, qualified for $1 billion or more in tax breaks ...
WASHINGTON -- Late in 2012, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), the leading organization promoting a grand budget bargain that incl...
I am a longtime fan of MSNBC. I have watched it regularly for years and admired its growth into a commercially successful platform for smart news and analysis. That is why I am so disappointed.
The "sequester" -- mindless, across-the-board spending cuts designed purposefully to be abhorrent to both political parties -- now seems likely to go into effect on March 1. The sequester cuts added to spending cuts and tax increases already scheduled will slow growth and cost jobs. Government austerity has already contributed to the worst recovery in post-World War II history. Why would the U.S. repeat this folly, despite warnings from the IMF and Federal Reserve officials? Every calamity has many authors -- Obama's premature turn to deficit reduction in 2009, the Tea Party zealots, a hapless and clueless Republican congressional leadership and more. One major contribution comes from the money and monomania of Pete Peterson, a Wall Street billionaire who has committed about half a billion bucks rousing hysteria about deficits and debt.
WASHINGTON -- More than 100 union members and progressive activists marched to a Capitol Hill hotel Wednesday to protest a meeting of corporate chiefs...
Alan Simpson's the lead pitchman for a billionaire- and corporate-funded initiative to slash Social Security that has subjected the public to years of nonstop haranguing and lecturing. But when the public makes tough decisions, the tough-talking Mr. Simpson is nowhere to be found.
Seemingly, President Obama has moved off the deficit-hawk kick that marked his posture in 2010 when he appointed the Bowles-Simpson Commission, and 2011 when he agreed to a budget deal with massive cuts and automatic triggers adding up to about $4 trillion in deficit cuts over a decade. Seemingly, too, the corporate-led "Fix the Debt Campaign" -- millionaires and billionaires telling the rest of America to tighten its belt for the greater good -- isn't getting a great deal of traction. But despite the sheer unreality of their claims, the austerity lobby keeps winning by defining the terms of debate. Nearly everyone, right, center and left, is arguing about the economic recovery in terms of what the debt-to-GDP ratio should be in 2023. That is the wrong question. The right question is: how do we get a stronger recovery going now?
Austerity is the leading cause of the election of national leaders who promise that if elected they will stop "submitting" to creditors' demands that they inflict austerity on their people.
The New York Times should be embarrassed. On December 24 it gave a Christmas present to the corporate-backed lobby group Fix the Debt with its front-page Business section puff piece about the organization.
Fix The Debt's Maya MacGuineas, who is largely responsible for shaking down corporate CEOs for spare millions which are then used to fund America's De...
President Obama and the Democrats' willingness to accept cuts to Social Security in the form of the gimmicky "chained CPI" right after an election where no candidate for federal office campaigned on it shows that the Right's long-term project of undoing the New Deal marches on despite the electorate's wishes.
WASHINGTON -- New York mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Wednesday that he has joined Campaign to Fix the Debt, a controversial debt-reduction group f...
A reasonable person might ask why any group which claims to be concerned about deficit spending would try to lower tax rates for the most privileged among us, since that would make those deficits much worse. Good question: It doesn't make sense.
WASHINGTON -- The multi-million dollar lobbying campaign to fix the national debt opened a new front this week, when a group of retired foreign policy...
WASHINGTON -- A conservative scholar at the Heritage Foundation, Edmund F. Haislmaier, attacked a nonprofit employee Tuesday morning in a hotel where ...
WASHINGTON -- Members of the influential Campaign to Fix The Debt struck a posture of post-partisan political neutrality this past week, as they swarm...
We know nothing about President Obama's meeting on Wednesday with CEOs to discuss the fiscal cliff. But we can hope that it was hostile and unproductive, because the CEOs are hypocrites with terrible ideas.
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) called out President Barack Obama for softening the commitment he made during the 2008 campaign to protect Social Secur...
WASHINGTON -- Billionaire private equity mogul Peter Peterson is investing millions of dollars in a new Washington-based campaign for austerity, plann...
