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As the government shut down drags on and the debt ceiling approaches in October 2013, Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson and his "Fix the Debt" wrecking crew are hard at work pushing for steep cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and other programs that keep millions of Americans out of poverty. CMD exposed Peterson and the "Fix the Debt" gang on the cover of [http://www.thenation.com/article/173022/stacking-deck-phony-fix-debt-campaign The Nation] in 2013.
Fix the Debt is just the latest Peterson-funded front group that has been trying to hype rapidly decreasing debt and deficits into a "Pearl Harbor"-level crisis. In 2007, Wall Street billionaire Peterson pledged $1 billion of his Blackstone Group fortune to fund groups that would make slashing "entitlement" programs a number one priority. Since then, he has funded every think tank, every bus tour, every propaganda movie and every "youth group" touting the responsible "shared sacrifice" line. Today, Fix the Debt is releasing press statements urging Congress to resolve the government shut down, calling it a "manufactured crisis" -- but only because they have been working so hard to manufacture another one!
Better yet, they have sent their phony "Can Kicks Back" youth group out on a classic astroturf road tour (see the schedule here) with another alarmist movie about our nation's apocalyptic debt, this time underwritten by Travelers Insurance. It is a classic Peterson flick, with urgent doom-laden music and the same cast of elder statesmen (turned lobbyists) as his previous films touting the "responsible" must-slash-entitlements line.
In honor of Peterson's many decades of work hyping a nonexistent deficit crisis and neglecting to warn America about real issues, such as the housing bubble and reckless gambling on Wall Street that caused the 2008 crash, CMD is releasing its own short movie on Peterson and crew along with Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist Mark Fiore.
