Simpson-Bowles anti-debt group (the can kicks back) is—pause to laugh—deeply in debt & Anti-debt group finds itself in red 13&12FEB14

THEY have been caught with their pants down, and we see just how short (of funds that is) these self righteous proponents of austerity economics are. Lesson learned? As far as the rich and powerful, corporate America, the bank-financial cabal, wall street and the military industrial complex are concerned simpson-bowles have served their purpose in waging class warfare against the 99% and are no longer needed and so are being kicked aside. A few of the 1% may toss some funding their way but the general consensus is stick a fork in them, they're done. Now they have an idea of how the rest of us feel.  From Daily Kos and Politico......
Joan McCarter

attribution: REUTERS

The gig is up for the everyone's favorite deficit fetishists, Simpson and Bowles. It starts great with the headline: Anti-debt group finds itself in red. It gets even better.

A year and a half after launching with much fanfare, a group affiliated with fiscal watchdogs Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson is nearly broke

Well, that was a little sloppy of them. Oh, and about that "grass-roots energy":

“Without someone/something else covering staff costs and without fundraising miracles like Stan or near-Stan happening consistently, I don’t know how we both sustain [an] organization and do meaningful things,” Nick Troiano, co-founder and communications director of the group, wrote in a November email. Troiano was referring to a large donation by hedge fund manager Stan Druckenmiller. According to emails, Druckenmiller provided the group with a $250,000 check in June 2013. That single check accounted for nearly 40 percent of the group’s fundraising haul last year.
... it also took meetings or made fundraising asks of former oil and gas executive T. Boone Pickens, aerospace magnate Norman R. Augustine and First Pacific CEO Bob Rodriguez, among others, since 2012 ... and asked to be set up with former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, eBay CEO John Donahoe and others.

As Politico says, "Both Fix the Debt and The Can Kicks Back have struggled with the perception that they are 'astroturf' advocacy groups that are acting as mouthpieces of Wall Street and corporate interests." Gee, hard to imagine where that perception came from. Frauds. But we already knew that. Now we know they're frauds who can't even balance a budget.

Originally posted to Joan McCarter on Thu Feb 13, 2014 at 07:43 AM PST.

Also republished by Daily Kos

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/13/1277295/-Bowles-Simpson-offshoot-is-broke?detail=email 

Anti-debt group finds itself in red By: Byron Tau February 12, 2014 10:49 PM EST

A year and a half after launching with much fanfare, a group affiliated with fiscal watchdogs Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson is nearly broke. The Can Kicks Back — which targets millennials and was conceived as a partner and affiliate of the group Fix the Debt — is running low on cash, according to emails and documents reviewed by POLITICO. The group left a history of documents, including financial statements and internal deliberations over policy decisions, online in a Google Group that was open to public view but was recently closed. Those documents provide a peek into the day-to-day planning and operation of a modern public affairs campaign, one that publicly presented itself as driven by grass-roots energy but largely relied on big donors and wealthy Wall Street types for funding. Fix the Debt furnished nearly $200,000 in seed money to The Can Kicks Back in late 2012. The groups are part of a loose coalition of anti-debt organizations that sought to pressure House Republicans and President Barack Obama to come to a grand bargain on reducing the debt and dealing with long-term entitlements. But with a grand bargain dead in the water, both groups have struggled of late. Fix the Debt is in the midst of an organizational transition, while The Can Kicks Back is facing questions about the group’s finances and future direction. As of November, The Can Kicks Back was operating at a small loss. The group’s cash reserves were down to $70,000, with more than $75,000 in outstanding donor commitments, according to documents and emails. And the group’s co-founders and management team have expressed concern about its future. (Also on POLITICO: Sign up for Influence lobbying tipsheet) According to emails, the group has no actual debt but only enough cash to last through April. “Without someone/something else covering staff costs and without fundraising miracles like Stan or near-Stan happening consistently, I don’t know how we both sustain [an] organization and do meaningful things,” Nick Troiano, co-founder and communications director of the group, wrote in a November email. Troiano was referring to a large donation by hedge fund manager Stan Druckenmiller. According to emails, Druckenmiller provided the group with a $250,000 check in June 2013. That single check accounted for nearly 40 percent of the group’s fundraising haul last year. Not that the group hasn’t tried. According to emails, it also took meetings or made fundraising asks of former oil and gas executive T. Boone Pickens, aerospace magnate Norman R. Augustine and First Pacific CEO Bob Rodriguez, among others, since 2012. The group has also approached Fix the Debt for additional financial resources and brainstormed a list of donors to be set up with that included former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, eBay CEO John Donahoe and others. The Can Kicks Back denied this week that its financial state is precarious. “The Can Kicks Back is proud to be a voice for our generation on issues related to long-term debt, decreased investment and reckless spending. We have no debt nor do we operate beyond our own financial means. A qualification from cherry-picked internal email months old is hardly representative of TCKB’s current financial situation,” Executive Director Ryan Schoenike said. “We are grateful for the support we have received and have revised our outreach, digital, and fundraising plans in order to continue our work of increasing millennial turnout in 2014 and beyond.” The group is organized as both a 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit — meaning that donations are anonymous. It voluntarily chooses to publish donor names, but not amounts. “There are a number of points here that are factually inaccurate, and we won’t comment on unsubstantiated claims,” Schoenike said, although the group declined to specify which items the statement was referring to. Schoenike and Troiano founded the group with Michael Eisenstadt, Jake Parent and Brandon Aitchison, and all five serve as the organization’s steering committee. Though nominally independent, The Can Kicks Back has always had a tenuous relationship with its partner groups, Fix the Debt and another nonprofit called Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Both Fix the Debt and The Can Kicks Back have struggled with the perception that they are “astroturf” advocacy groups that are acting as mouthpieces of Wall Street and corporate interests. In response to a 2012 Slate piece by reporter Dave Weigel linking The Can Kicks Back with the billionaire anti-debt activist Peter Peterson, Eisenstadt argued that the group should request a correction — saying that the perception that they are Peterson-funded was hurting their credibility, according to an email thread. “Technically one can make an argument that we are …,” Parent wrote back in an email. “We receive most of our money from [Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget], which has received large amounts of funding from Peterson.” Slate never appended a correction to the piece. Other tensions flared with Fix the Debt over that group’s lack of diversity. In one email thread, The Can Kicks Back founders mock a photo of a Fix the Debt event featuring a “bunch of old white guys.” Troiano mocked Fix the Debt’s diversity efforts as “pathetic.” Asked for comment, a senior The Can Kicks Back official said: “We enjoyed working with Fix the Debt and appreciate their efforts toward a cause we share.” But the group also worried about its own public perception and internal diversity issues. “As everyone is aware, our team is all white and 75% male … made all the more glaringly obvious now by the photos on the about page,” Eisenstadt wrote in an email in September 2012. “I strongly suggest we develop a plan to address this in the next couple weeks before we get branded as something we are not.” “Millennials are the most diverse generation in history and we should reflect that,” responded Schoenike, the executive director. “Great suggestion.” In a statement, Fix the Debt praised the work that The Can Kicks Back has done on the issue of debt and deficit awareness among young people. “They are a great group which has worked really hard to engage youth in fiscal issues through a number of incredibly creative efforts, and we supported them because we think engaging youth is so important and wanted to help them get started,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget — Fix the Debt’s parent organization. And when identical op-eds were placed by partner organization Fix the Debt in three college newspapers across the country, The Can Kicks Back team expressed its dismay. “I wrote the op-ed for Fix the Debt to use for our members who participated in their flyin,” a reference to a fly-in, or Washington advocacy day. “I assumed they wouldn’t be such idiots about placing the same one three times,” Troiano wrote in November. Other members of The Can Kicks Back’s own steering committee said they were uncomfortable with Fix the Debt’s public image as a conservative or corporate-backed organization. “Due to the fact we have become so ingrained as part of Fix the Debt, I’m going to have to ask that you remove me from the website and any promotional materials,” Parent wrote in February 2013. “Fix the Debt is increasingly seen (I think in a lot of ways justifiably) as a mouthpiece for corporate America, and particularly Wall Street. Without diversity of backing from other sectors, it’s becoming difficult for me to justify my role supporting such an effort. I’m not sure how this will affect my involvement with the group overall. I’m still considering it. But for now I’d prefer my role be removed from public view.” Parent remains listed on the group’s website. Amid the current cash crunch, The Can Kicks Back’s leadership is hunting around for additional resources. The organization has retained the fundraising firm Rock Creek Advisors. According to the agreement, Rock Creek Advisors will be paid a discount rate until at least $100,000 has been raised, according to emails and documents. With the failure of Congress and Obama to come to an agreement on debts and deficits, the group is planning to turn its attention to the 2014 midterms, according to email conversations between its members. The group leaders came to a consensus in mid-January to “make fiscal issues a top voting issue of Millennials.” According to a January email discussion, the group decided against direct spending in elections on behalf of candidates in favor of a targeted issue campaign to raise young voters’ awareness of debt and deficit issues. “We would probably need to target districts here too,” Schoenike wrote. “Rather than focus on increasing turnout we focus on getting those who turn [out] to vote on our issue. Any increase in turnout would be a bonus. With Millennials now making up the largest voting [bloc] showing we would influence their voting habits could be huge.”

© 2014 POLITICO LLC

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=A4B74432-6450-4EDE-9C68-BB7DE5880BC4 
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/can-kicks-back-group-debt-bowles-simpson-103463.html

Republican Budget Represents a Bleak Future for America 30MAR12 & The Bowles-Simpson Medicine Show Is Back in Town 29MAR12

THE Democratic response to the evil, morally bankrupt budget presented by and passed by the repiglican / tea-bagger controlled House. rep ryan's budget is an open declaration of class warfare, punishing the poor, the working class, the middle class, students, children and seniors for not being rich. It is the public blueprint of the repiglicans and tea-baggers to plunge us into Third World status, denying social justice to the least among us while further enriching the 1%. This has no chance of passing the Senate and the repiglicans and tea-baggers know that. They will use this budget as a propaganda tool and then open negotiations with Pres Obama and the Democrats and then insist on adoption of the bowles-simpson deficit reduction plan as a compromise. The bowles-simpson medicine show is almost as evil and immoral as the ryan budget, and it is time for Pres Obama and the Democrats to stiffen their collective party spine and reject these attacks on the 99%. Let the government shutdown if the repiglicans and tea-baggers insist on protecting their wealthy masters, we the people have had enough of fighting to survive on crumbs and are ready to take the cake from the rich and shove it down their throats! These articles from Huffpost......
This week the House voted on budget proposals for Fiscal Year 2013. The Republican budget, put forward by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, was presented as "a choice between two futures" that would show a stark contrast between their priorities and those of Democrats.
They were absolutely right: the choice could not be more clear. The Republican budget presents the American people with a vivid picture of the direction its authors want to take this country. Its vision consists of ending the Medicare guarantee and cutting taxes for the wealthiest among us, while putting jobs and our economic recovery at risk.
By ending the Medicare guarantee, the Republican budget shifts increasing costs to seniors and the disabled over the next several years. It reopens the Medicare Part D "donut hole" -- that is now closing, thanks to the Affordable Care Act -- which will lead to $44 billion in increased drug costs for seniors by 2020. Furthermore, their budget turns Medicaid into a block grant program and slashes its funding by one-third over the next decade, jeopardizing access to health care and nursing home care for seniors, the disabled, and low-income Americans. And it repeals the patient protections and the cost containment policies of the Affordable Care Act.
At the same time, the Republican budget cuts jobs and puts our economic recovery at risk by slashing critical investments in programs that are key to our economic strength and that protect the most vulnerable among us. It cuts highway funding, which will impede our ability to support commerce and all the jobs that depend on goods moving quickly from manufacturer to market. It decimates investments in education and in building an educated workforce through reductions in financial aid to millions of students -- including cuts to Pell grants -- and it will widen the achievement gap by kicking more than 200,000 low-income preschoolers out of Head Start. Instead of providing a boost to innovation, a driver for economic competitiveness, the Republican budget cuts $11 billion in scientific, medical, and technological research just next year alone. Their budget also guts programs aimed at deploying domestic renewable energy and advanced vehicle technologies -- areas where investments could grow countless middle-class jobs for years to come, and are critical to pursuing an "all of the above" energy strategy.
All of us want to put America back on a sustainable fiscal path, but to do so everyone must be asked to pitch in. The Republican budget, however, places the entire burden of deficit reduction on the middle class, seniors, and the most vulnerable among us while giving $1 trillion in tax cuts to the wealthiest. An individual earning $1 million a year would receive, on average, a $150,000 tax cut.
On top of that, Republicans are breaking the agreement reached last August that set spending levels for this year. By doing so, they are once again putting us at risk for a government shutdown, contributing to the uncertainty American businesses, investors, and families are already facing, and undercutting their credibility in future negotiations.
Democrats take a sharply different view. As a reflection of our values and aspirations, our budget invests in a strong economy, preserves the Medicare guarantee, and moves us toward fiscal soundness. It seeks to build on the progress we've already made in our economic recovery by helping our businesses compete globally, making it easier for Americans who are out of work to find jobs, and reducing the deficit in a balanced way.
The Democratic budget put forward by Budget Committee Ranking Member Chris Van Hollen reflects House Democrats' Make It In America plan for creating jobs and strengthening our economic competitiveness. It contains provisions to help revitalize American manufacturing, and it calls for investments in innovation, education, and infrastructure that will help businesses expand and grow jobs that won't be shipped overseas.
Make It In America is an investment in a future unlike the one that would result from Republicans' disastrous budget. As the budget and appropriations process moves forward, Democrats will use every opportunity to advance Make It In America items.
Democrats welcome the distinction Chairman Ryan and other Republicans seek to draw between their policy priorities of ending Medicare and cutting taxes for millionaires and billionaires and our plan to create jobs, invest in economic competitiveness, lower costs for seniors, and grow the middle class.
Our budget can be a down payment for the kind of country we wish to see in the years ahead, where American businesses thrive, where the middle class is strong and growing, and where seniors' health security is protected. That is the direction our budget should take, and it's the future I know we can achieve.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-steny-hoyer/republican-budget-represe_b_1389254.html?ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=033012&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

The Bowles-Simpson Medicine Show Is Back in Town

When millions of dollars are being pumped into Washington by anti-government and anti-tax ideologues, you're bound to find Democrats willing to play along. And when your Washington press corps can't be bothered to get even the smallest details right -- well, that must mean the Bowles-Simpson Medicine Show is back in town.
It's here, folks. Journalists are still cooing over a failed proposal they're calling "moderate" and "centrist," based on the radical and unpopular plan put forward by two individuals named Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles.
Another budget, one that's both economically sound and more politically popular, was summarily dismissed by the same media as 'partisan' and extreme.
All the News That Fits
Republican Steve LaTourette and Democrat Jim Cooper introduced a proposal based on the Bowles-Simpson assault on the middle class. It was promptly celebrated by the press as the "responsible" deficit-cutting alternative to the radical right-wing Ryan budget - even though it's not responsible and doesn't cut the deficit (not that deficits should be our national obsessions during this time of crisis).
By contrast, the budget proposed by the Congressional Budget Caucus did reduce the deficit, and in a way that suited the preferences of most voters -- Republican as well as Democratic, Tea Party as well as Occupiers.
It was promptly dismissed by both journalists and the Washington elite.
Accuracy Optional
Your press corps can't even get the most basic details right: The Deficit Commission headed by Simpson and Bowles failed to agree on a set of recommendations. So Simpson and Bowles put out their own personal plan, based on ideas developed at the behest of anti-government ideologues like billionaire Pete Peterson.
Their ideas were rejected by members of the Deficit Commission, but a lot of journalists covering the budget don't seem to know that. Take a look:
Associated Press, March 28: " The bipartisan measure, patterned on a plan by President Barack Obama's 2010 deficit commission ... "
Alan Fram, Business Week, March 29: "The measure was modeled roughly on a package produced by Obama's deficit-reduction commission."
Erik Wasson, The Hill, March 29: " a bipartisan budget plan based on the approach of President Obama's fiscal commission ..."
Andrew Taylor, Associated Press, March : "The bipartisan measure rejected Wednesday was patterned on a plan by President Barack Obama's 2010 deficit commission ..."
Ed O'Keefe, Washington Post, March 27: "... the House could vote this week for the first time on a bipartisan deficit-cutting plan, modeled on the suggestions of a presidential commission ..."
There's more, but you get the idea.
Why does this matter? Because it tells you whether what you're reading was written by a journalist who cares about the facts and gets them right. And it matters because the myth-makers and propagandists pushing the anti-government austerity agenda want Americans to believe that this controversial and radical proposal represents the consensus view of a bipartisan commission -- and mainstream political opinion.
It does neither.
A Radical Plan
Bloomberg's Mr. Fram compounds his errors in the typical fashion by saying that the LaTourette/Cooper bill, based on Bowles-Simpson, was a "compromise, bipartisan deficit-cutting plan by moderates of both parties that mingled tax increases with spending cuts."
Like Mr. Fram, a great many journalists have been trained or programmed into calling the Bowles-Simpson policy package "bipartisan" and "moderate." The Post's pre-vote headline even read "bipartisan bill appears headed for defeat" -- a defeat that, as Ezra Klein satisfyingly points out, was truly bipartisan.
Moderate? Make no mistake: This is a radical plan that sharply cuts financial security for the elderly, guts other vital government programs, and -- perhaps most radically of all -- lowers taxes on the wealthy while raising them for everyone else. It's even more radical than the Bowles-Simpson proposal. As Michael Linden and James Horney both noted, it takes Bowles-Simpson's already-unacceptable 2:1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases and hikes it to 7:1.
Those two self-promoting reprobates, Bowles and Simpson, were nevertheless happy to endorse anything with their names on it - even if that meant omitting the fact that this proposal was even more right-wing.
(Daniel Marans has more on the radicalism of the Bowles-Simpson plan here.)
Outside the Political Mainstream
The Bowles-Simpson plan is enormously unpopular among voters across the political spectrum. Members of all political parties and people across the political spectrum - including 76 percent of Tea Partiers -- oppose cutting Medicare or Social Security to balance the budget. That hasn't changed in the two years since Simpson and Bowles introduced their own plan and only six percent of the electorate shared their priorities.
Voters also strongly prefer the exact opposite to the tax policy proposed here. They want tax hikes for millionaires to cover shortfalls in entitlements and other government programs that benefit the middle class.
Tax Hikes for the 99%, Tax Cuts for the 1%
Instead the LaTourette/Cooper proposal, like Bowles-Simpson, eliminates "tax breaks." One of the biggest "breaks" is the home mortgage deduction. Without it millions of additional homeowners would go into foreclosure, and the already-struggled middle class would be devastated once again. LaTourette and Cooper also explicitly planned to tax employer health insurance, leaving millions of working Americans even harder-hit over medical costs.
At the same time the wealthiest among us would have enjoyed a tax cut -- of somewhere between 23 and 29 percent. That means somewhere between 17 to 34 percent less than they're paying with their Bush tax cuts! Sure, those deductions might be eliminated for them, too - but most of these deductions affect a much smaller percentage of their income.
The LaTourette/Cooper proposal compounded this tax assault on the middle class by linking tax bracket changes to the so-called "chained CPI," meaning that people who aren't already in the top bracket will find themselves moving up - and being taxed at a higher rate - much more quickly.
The Pitchman's Secret
The plan radically restructures Social Security and cuts benefits for middle-class varieties in a number of ways (including the "chained CPI" trick). It also raises the retirement age even more than the currently scheduled increases would do.
It's not surprising that the radical far-right Concord Coalition endorsed the bill, since it is as extremist as the Coalition itself - and as far out of the political mainstream. And its equally unsurprising that the nonpartisan Americans for Tax Reform rejected it, noting that it represents a radical blend of tax increass and benefit cuts for the middle class in order to bestow further privilege on the wealthiest among us.
Meanwhile the House Progressive Caucus budget, which includes all the provisions that most voters want - and which most savvy economists agree would be wise. Predictably, it wasn't described by a single media outlet as "moderate," "sensible," "politically popular," or "pragmatic."
Nothing ever changes down at the Medicine Show. As soon as one pitch ends, another begins. So this ain't over, folks, because every good medicine-show pitchman knows: You gotta keep on offering the crowd that "grand bargain" until youl wear 'em down and they buy it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/the-bowlessimpson-medicin_b_1390019.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications