Featured Work
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Pete Peterson’s “Fix the Debt” Astroturf Supergroup Detailed in New Online Resource at PetersonPyramid.org
by Mary Bottari
“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
Madison, WI -- One of the most hypocritical corporate PR campaigns in decades is underway 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.
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. Read the rest of this item here.
Check out our new wiki resource on Fix the Debt at Peterson Pyramid.org.
Conversation with "Fix the Debt," Help Count the Pinocchios
by Lisa Graves
Last week, the Center for Media and Democracy and The Nation magazine worked together to publish a package in The Nation and a new online wiki resource on Pete Peterson and the Campaign to Fix the Debt, an entity we consider an "astroturf supergroup" with a huge budget working hard to create the fantasy that Americans care more about national debt and deficits than jobs and the economy. Fix the Debt is currently exploiting the "sequester" debate in Congress to encourage steep cuts to incredibly popular social programs like Medicare and Social Security.
After the release, Fix the Debt's press person called to confront me about what he said were "false things" in our exposé.
"If you have corrections, I am all ears," I said. Then such an odd (and amusing) conversation took place it struck me as worth writing up as an object lesson in how these big-buck, PR spin-machines operate. Read the rest of this item here
"Racial Entitlements?" Long-Term Effort to End Voting Rights Act and Affirmative Action May Finally Pay Off
by Brendan Fischer
Justice Antonin Scalia
The U.S. Supreme Court may roll back two pillars of the civil rights era this term -- the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and affirmative action -- both of which have long been targeted by the right-wing and whose challenges are backed by the same set of deep-pocketed ideological funders.
Oral arguments on February 26 in Shelby County v. Holder indicated hostility among some justices towards Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA), which requires states with a history of state-sanctioned racial discrimination to get federal pre-approval before implementing changes to their voting laws or procedures. Congress has renewed it four times since 1965 with significant bipartisan support, most recently in 2006, when every U.S. Senator voted for it. Read the rest of this item here.
Walker Walks Away from "John Doe" Investigation, Pushes Budget Deal Only ALEC Could Love
by Meher Ahmad
WI Governor Scott Walker
On March 1, 2013, Milwaukee Country prosecutors shut down the long running "John Doe" probe into corruption in Scott Walker's office during the time he served as Milwaukee County Executive. Six people were charged and convicted, including three former Walker staff, but no charges were brought against Walker. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm issued a brief, telling statement: "After a review of the John Doe evidence, I am satisfied that all charges that are supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt have now been brought and concluded."
There is no doubt that Walker emerges from the scandal in a stronger position to advance his extreme legislative agenda and his plans for higher office.
Read the rest of this item here.
Peterson’s Puppet Populists
by Mary Bottari
Fix the Debt is the most hypocritical corporate PR campaign in decades, an ambitious attempt to convince the country that another cataclysmic economic crisis is around the corner and that urgent action is needed. Its strategy is pure astroturf: assemble power players in business and government under an activist banner, then take the message outside the Beltway and give it the appearance of grassroots activism by manufacturing an emergency to infuse a sense of imminent crisis.
Behind this strategy are no fewer than 127 CEOs and even more “statesmen” pushing for a “grand bargain” to draw up an austerity budget by July 4. With many firms kicking in $1 million each on top of Peterson’s $5 million in seed money, this latest incarnation of the Peterson message machine must be taken seriously. Read the rest of this item here
Find out more about our new resources on Fix the Debt at Peterson Pyramid.org.
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Recent Articles from PRWatch.org
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WI Senate Passes Mining Bill, Opposition to Continue
by Harriet Rowan
A controversial mining bill, which opponents say will weaken environmental standards and threaten the state's water resources, has passed the Wisconsin State Senate. The bill, the first to be introduced in the 2013-2014 legislative session, passed 17 to 16 with one Republican, Senator Dale Schultz, voting against along with the 15 Senate Democrats. SB1 is nearly identical to the bill that failed to pass in 2012.
Critics charge that the bill weakens environmental protections in order to facilitate a specific project proposed by Gogebic Taconite. The company, a local subsidiary of the Cline Group, has proposed a 20-mile open pit iron-ore mine in the Penokee Hills of Northern Wisconsin and played a major role in writing the bill. Despite the expected passage of the bill, opponents predict the proposed mine will be held up in federal court. Read the rest of this item here.
New Study by National Employment Law Project Documents ALEC’s Attack on Wages
by PRW Staff
Since the Center for Media and Democracy's launch of ALEC Exposed in July 2011, CMD has known that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and its corporate funders are accelerating the race to the bottom in wages and working conditions for America's working families. ALEC has a raft of "model bills" to lower wages and slash benefits for workers, even one to repeal state minimum wage laws.
Now the National Employment Law Project (NELP) has joined in the effort to take a closer look at this ALEC agenda, tallying the bills introduced and pushed in states in the last few years. Read the rest of this item here.
New Report By U.S. PIRG Targets Cash Stashed Overseas
by PRW Staff
In our new report on Fix the Debt, CMD reveals that part of the Fix the Debt's hidden corporate agenda is to push for new tax loopholes that would actually add to the deficit. Specifically, many Fix the Debt firms want to exempt money made offshore from taxation in the United States. Opening this new loophole would cost the Treasury some $1 trillion over 10 years according to Citizens for Tax Justice. Read the rest of this item here.
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Editors' Pick of the Week
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Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? Fix the Debt
by Mary Bottari
President Barack Obama
As sequester cuts start to bite a little harder, the Fix the Debt gang is pushing for a "grand bargain," deep cuts to earned benefit programs like Social Security and Medicare in exchange for some vague promises about "tax reform."
They may have a powerful ally in the White House. Rather than barnstorming the country demanding that Congress cancel the sequester (Representative John Conyers, Jr. wrote the one sentence bill to do this) and address our jobs deficit (now topping 9 million), President Obama seems ready to make a deal on the deficit, which is already in a steep decline. Read the rest of this item here.
Pete Peterson’s Chorus of Calamity
by Lisa Graves
Pete Peterson
Fix the Debt financier Peter G. Peterson knows a thing or two about debt: he’s an expert at creating it. Peterson founded the private equity firm Blackstone Group in 1985 with Stephen Schwarzman (who compared raising taxes to “when Hitler invaded Poland”). Private equity firms don’t contribute much to the economy; they don’t make cars or milk the cows. Too frequently, they buy firms to loot them. After a leveraged buyout, they can leave companies so loaded up with debt they are forced to immediately slash their workforce or employees’ retirement security.
In 2006, Blackstone ransacked Travelport, a travel reservation conglomerate, piling on $4.3 billion in new debt, then pocketing $1.7 billion to pay shareholders and itself. Travelport promptly fired 841 workers to meet its new debt obligations. It was a great deal for Blackstone but “a horrible one for Travelport,” according to one investment adviser, who described Blackstone as trading in “poisoned waters.” Read the rest of this item here.
Find out more about our new resources on Fix the Debt at Peterson Pyramid.org.
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Read Our Fix the Debt Package
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The Nation, March 2013 cover art
- PRWatch.org, Pete Peterson’s “Fix the Debt” Astroturf Supergroup Detailed in New Online Resource from the Publishers of ALECexposed.org, February 21, 2013.
- Lisa Graves, Pete Peterson's Long History of Deficit Scaremongering, The Nation, February 21, 2013.
- John Nichols, The Austerity Agenda: An Electoral Loser, The Nation, February 21, 2013.
- Dean Baker, Fix the Debt's Fuzzy Math, The Nation, February 21, 2013.
- Mary Bottari, Pete Peterson's Puppet Populists, The Nation, February 21, 2013.
- Fix the Debt Main Resource Page
- Fix the Debt's Leadership
- Fix the Debt Leaders' Conflicts of Interest
- Fix the Debt's Partner Groups
- Fix the Debt's State Chapters
- Fix the Debt's Lobbyists
- Fix the Debt's Parent Group
- Fix the Debt's Corporations
- Pete Peterson
- Peter G. Peterson Foundation
- Social Security
- Medicare
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Featured SourceWatch Article
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Pete Peterson
Peter G. Peterson, born June 5, 1926, is a controversial Wall Street billionaire who uses his wealth to underwrite numerous organizations and PR campaigns to generate public support for slashing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, citing concerns over "unsustainable" federal budget deficits. In 2007, he made a fortune from the public offering of the private equity firm he co-founded, Blackstone Group, and pledged to spend $1 billion of this money to "fix America's key fiscal-sustainability problems." He endowed this money to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, which he launched in 2008. His son, Michael A. Peterson, is the President and Chief Operating Officer of the foundation.
See the SourceWatch article on Pete Peterson for more.
Fix the Debt Leaders and Conflicts of Interest
Fix the Debt biographies posted on the organization's website fail to reveal that their core leadership team is riddled with conflicts of interest. Public Accountability Initiative (PAI) examined federal lobbying records and found at least 13 steering committee members with financial ties to firms that lobby on deficit-related matters that are not disclosed in their Fix the Debt bios. These firms lobby to preserve dozens of costly tax breaks (including the “carried interest” tax loophole that made Pete Peterson a rich man) or to hold off new taxes, such as the “Robin Hood Tax,” a proposed financial speculation tax that could raise as much as a $1 trillion over 10 years.
See the SourceWatch article on Fix the Debt Leaders and Conflicts of Interest for more.
Fix the Debt's State Chapters
In January 2013, Fix the Debt told Fortune that in an attempt to “rally a volunteer army” they were moving outside the beltway. “Up to this point, Fix the Debt's ad campaigns have been largely Washington-focused, combined with a heavy dose of CEO-lobbying. The next phase, Romano says, is national outreach. The campaign increasingly resembles a presidential race, with grassroots-style organizing and offices in places like New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida and Michigan.” [2] By our count, at least 90 Fix the Debt state leaders are lobbyist or former lobbyists.
See the SourceWatch article on Fix the Debt's State Chapters for more.
Find out more about our new resources on Fix the Debt at Peterson Pyramid.org.
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Featured Video
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Democracy Now! Interview With CMD's Lisa Graves and The Nation's John Nichols - "Fix the Debt" Campaign Exposed
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"Billionaires for Austerity: With Cuts Looming, Wall Street Roots of "Fix the Debt" Campaign Exposed" video
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