So, This Is The Guy Who's Pushing Us Off The Fiscal Cliff...

Peter Peterson Spent Nearly Half A Billion In Washington Targeting Social Security, Medicare

I just found this May 15, 2012 article on Peter Peterson, and it's mind blowing how much this guy is devoted to driving the United States into the same financial straits that the European Union is suffering through. I had no ideas that all of this sudden (since Obama took office) deficit obsession could actually be tied to just one guy, but the money trail connected to all of this shut-the-government-down propaganda leads directly to him. What makes anyone become so dedicated to the suffering of other people, that they would spend so much of their own money to ensure that all avenues of escape from extreme poverty are eliminated for anyone unfortunate enough to fall behind - even for just a moment or two?

This bit of information is particularly jarring.

Peterson is in this debate for the long haul: He's even working on children. Earlier this month, Columbia University's Teachers College released a new curriculum about the federal budget and fiscal policy that will be distributed free to every high school in the country. "Understanding Fiscal Responsibility" was introduced at a ceremony featuring Peter Orszag, a former Obama administration official who left to join Citigroup. The Peterson Foundation has already given $1.6 million of a promised $2.4 million for the curriculum.

The first two lessons are titled "Social Security and the National Debt" and "Medicare and the National Debt." The curriculum wants teens to ask, "How high a value do we place on guaranteeing quality health care to the elderly?"

Another effort to persuade America's youth about the shakiness of the entitlement programs is a joint venture between the Peterson Foundation and mtvU, the campus-based network created by MTV Networks, called Indebted. Peterson has already shelled out nearly $2 million to fund this effort to convince college students that Social Security won't be there for them, so therefore it should be slashed now -- a self-fulfilling policy prescription if ever there was one.

"How high a value do we place on guaranteeing quality health care to the elderly?" - is this guy serious? Maybe he should watch that Les Miserables movie that's coming out to see what happens to a society when the poor and elderly are swept aside by a Randian ideology that's been packaged as enlightened societal morality. Heads roll, but that's already been well established, since they always have when the wealthy few try to steamroll over the impoverished many. Heads that are poor, middleclass and wealthy. Lots of heads. It becomes a pandemic that's impossible to contain and ultimately withers when available heads become scarce.

Hell, look at Egypt even now, and they've already kicked out the ruling class in a relatively peaceful revolution. They're back in the street every other week. In America the response would be infinitely more horrifying than anything we've seen so far from any society to this worldwide trend in obvious and unrepentant wealth disparity. Once the rank and file in America REALLY catch on to the fact that they're not going to ever progress beyond their station in life, watch out. Americans don't know their place, and they never have.

Save your pitchforks for this jack*ss. He's the Wall St. boss of the new GOP anti-recovery intransigence. He's the one to aim your bedtime prayers against when it starts getting scary for you and your family out here in Amerikaland.

Horrifying. It's obscene that one person has access to this kind of money in the first place, never mind actually spend it like this.

reply to post by NorEaster

I'm a little confused about your opinions.

Countries/governments in Europe have been collapsing because they are unable to service their debt. From what I've read, Peter seems to be concerned about government spending, which is an attempt to avoid the European debt crisis.

Peterson has personally contributed at least $458 million to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to cast Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government spending as in a state of crisis, in desperate need of dramatic cuts.

We are in a state of crisis and we do need dramatic cuts. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt. When you factor in the unfunded liabilities, it becomes clear that theres no way America will be able to carry this debt burden.

Hes trying to avoid a fiscal cliff.

However, I disagree with his starting point. As Ron Paul has said repeatedly, before we begin to talk about domestic cuts, we should look at our overseas empire. Close the hundreds of foreign military bases, stop the endless wars and bring our troops home. This would save trillions immediately.

Originally posted by gladtobehere
reply to post by NorEaster

 

I'm a little confused about your opinions.

Countries/governments in Europe have been collapsing because they are unable to service their debt. From what I've read, Peter seems to be concerned about government spending, which is an attempt to avoid the European debt crisis.

Peterson has personally contributed at least $458 million to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to cast Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government spending as in a state of crisis, in desperate need of dramatic cuts.

We are in a state of crisis and we do need dramatic cuts. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt. When you factor in the unfunded liabilities, it becomes clear that theres no way America will be able to carry this debt burden.

However, I disagree with his starting point. As Ron Paul has said repeatedly, before we begin to talk about domestic cuts, we should look at our overseas empire. Close the hundreds of foreign military bases, stop the endless wars and bring our troops home. This would save trillions immediately.

edit on 10-12-2012 by gladtobehere because: (no reason given)

where we are has little to nothing to do with those programs and more to do with being ponzi schemed by the wealthy in the form of debt based society's. we need to quit pointing the finger at each other and start pointing it at the global banking cartel, you know the ones who charge us interest to borrow our own money.

reply to post by LittleBlackEagle

Thats not entirely true.

I COMPLETELY agree that a huge part of the problem is the debt based monetary system setup up by the Rothschilds and their central banking scheme.

However, if politicians were fiscally responsible, there would not be a need to borrow. If they actually lived within their means as we have to.

I'm not sure how this point is lost on people. Government destroys or bankrupts EVERY program it touches from social security to education. They are an incredible failure. Can you imagine, there are people who say that we should give these monsters MORE of our tax dollars???

But with regards to these specific programs, yes, they are unsustainable:

The government added $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations in 2010, largely for retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. That brings to a record $61.6 trillion the total of financial promises not paid for.

The $61.6 trillion in unfunded obligations amounts to $528,000 per household.

usatoday30.usatoday.com...

STOP!!!

Let's look at a few realities, shall we? First, you accuse this guy of being a GOP operative but is working actively with a former Obama appointee... do you understand what this says? BOTH PARTIES are driving this country into the ground. Please stop cheerleading for your team to be first to drive us into bankruptcy!

Next, we do NOT need cuts to programs that were LEGISLATED to be self-funding!!! YOU, me and everyone who works in this country pay SEPERATE taxes for Social Security and Medicare. That money, by LAW, is supposed to be deposited into the trust funds managed by the government to ensure that each of us has those funds available to us when we need them most - during retirement. Newsflash! BOTH PARTIES have bankrupted those trust funds to pay for pet projects that help politicians get votes. BOTH trust funds hold NOTHING except for slips of paper that read "IOU"! Payroll taxes outside of FICA and SS go to the general fund to pay for DISCRETIONARY spending but we haven't seen that happen since the late 1960s.

Finally, BOTH PARTIES are driving this bus over the cliff - the Democrats who can't stop spending on pet projects, handouts and entitlements and Republicans who can't stop protecting the corporations and fund an bottomless defense industry! The solution: THROW BOTH PARTIES OUT!!!

The problem with most Americans is that they can't see forest through the trees!!!

reply to post by gladtobehere


government\global banking cartel, all the same thing, all from the same source, greed and corruption. if we didn't have a large parasite sucking us dry, those programs wouldn't be an issue. the only thing new in this game is the global corporate world joining the banking and government cartels.

Originally posted by gladtobehere
reply to post by NorEaster

 

I'm a little confused about your opinions.

Countries/governments in Europe have been collapsing because they are unable to service their debt. From what I've read, Peter seems to be concerned about government spending, which is an attempt to avoid the European debt crisis.

Peterson has personally contributed at least $458 million to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation to cast Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and government spending as in a state of crisis, in desperate need of dramatic cuts.

We are in a state of crisis and we do need dramatic cuts. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt. When you factor in the unfunded liabilities, it becomes clear that theres no way America will be able to carry this debt burden.

Hes trying to avoid a fiscal cliff.

However, I disagree with his starting point. As Ron Paul has said repeatedly, before we begin to talk about domestic cuts, we should look at our overseas empire. Close the hundreds of foreign military bases, stop the endless wars and bring our troops home. This would save trillions immediately.

edit on 10-12-2012 by gladtobehere because: (no reason given)

Social Security is not bankrupt. It is owed a lot of money by the government. It should have never been borrowed from Social Security. Look at getting rid of the people who allowed this money to be taken, not screwing the ones it belongs to.

Why can't this guy understand that he is going to be in the same place in years to come. Social Security was robbed, go after the people who stole the money from it, make them liable. If it means putting old Congressmen in jail and stripping their wealth they acquired from legal insider trading, then do so.

Originally posted by kozmo
STOP!!!

Let's look at a few realities, shall we? First, you accuse this guy of being a GOP operative but is working actively with a former Obama appointee... do you understand what this says? BOTH PARTIES are driving this country into the ground. Please stop cheerleading for your team to be first to drive us into bankruptcy!

This guy isn't a GOP operative. This guy has the GOP leadership operating on his behalf. I said that this guy is bankrolling the austerity propaganda. That's what I said. The GOP is embracing it, but that's their choice. It's not as if the fact of their embrace of it is open to debate either. That's just reality. My issue is with this idiot and his myopic disregard for the survival of the American society as it exists. I know that he's got operatives in both parties. That's not news either.

The only real news here is the guy's name, and who he is. At least it's news to me. I never knew that there was a "patient zero" in this plague.

Originally posted by gladtobehere
reply to post by NorEaster

 

We are in a state of crisis and we do need dramatic cuts. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt. When you factor in the unfunded liabilities, it becomes clear that theres no way America will be able to carry this debt burden.

Social Security is fully funded by the paychecks of people that have been contributing to it since they started working. Their benefits are specifically tied to the amount that they actually paid into the fund. There's no issue with Social Security other than the fact that tax cuts and wars have been paid for by stealing from that fund, with the IOUs sitting there as a large part of our new fiscal crisis. Just try becoming eligible for Social Security disability benefits, and you'll discover just how difficult it is to "get on the dole" in this country.

Of course, if you listen to the media mouths that Peterson and his ilk fund with their extra cash, you'd think it's easy to fall back and let the government carry you. Hell, if that was true, there'd be no building poverty/homeless problem in this country. We all know that that isn't true. This is becoming the world's richest banana republic, and the one with the most guns and ammo. With that combination existing right outside your front door, do you really want a psychopath like this Pete Peterson character directly steering our public policy? As you consider your answer, take a look around you and your family and see how much protection you actually have against the losers in such a "fiscally responsible" society, and how much real and lasting protection you'll ever be able to afford if such a dystopian societal structure is ever put in place. Then keep in mind that if you ever get to the point where you can't afford to protect yourself and your family any longer, then you'll be tossed in with the rest of the losers by those who haven't lost - yet.

When running with your friend from a bear, you only need to outrun your friend. That's a cold fact, but this is what you'll be looking at with all of your relationships if this guy gets his way. That kind of psychopathic mindset spreads from the top down in whatever society it finds acceptance. As they say "A fish rots from the head".

reply to post by rickymouse

Well it depends on how you define bankruptcy: Social Security to pay out more than it takes in for first time ever.

Its true that the fund has been raided but thats really a side issue.

None of these entitlement programs are sustainable.

People who paid in should get their money back but they wont. The younger you are, the worse it gets. Youll be paying a lifetime of earnings into a program which will never pay you back. And if it does, it will be done with dollars that are so devalued that it wont matter.

Bottom line: government is a failure. They cannot and should not be trusted with your/our money.

They need to cut spending, cut taxes, so we can keep more of what we earn instead of us being forced to give our money to a central bureaucracy which has perfected waste and mismanagement.

reply to post by gladtobehere

Well it depends on how you define bankruptcy: Social Security to pay out more than it takes in for first time ever.

That statement is a fact, but what is the reason for this......

Here’s why: Social Security has a trust fund, and that trust fund is supposed to have $2.6 trillion in it, according to the Social Security trustees. If there are real assets in the trust fund, then Social Security can mail the checks, regardless of what Congress does about the debt limit.

Source

Hmmm, 2.6 Trillion stolen?

Its true that the fund has been raided but thats really a side issue.

How is this a side issue? Shouldn't we be mad as hell at those in the government who stole this money? By saying this is a side issue and addressing the sustainability of the program instead of the cause of it being broke does nothing more than screw those who payed into it and does nothing whatsoever about addressing the issue of criminal elements working in the government who caused this problem in the first place!

None of these entitlement programs are sustainable.

People who paid in should get their money back but they wont. The younger you are, the worse it gets. Youll be paying a lifetime of earnings into a program which will never pay you back. And if it does, it will be done with dollars that are so devalued that it wont matter.

Bottom line: government is a failure. They cannot and should not be trusted with your/our money.

They need to cut spending, cut taxes, so we can keep more of what we earn instead of us being forced to give our money to a central bureaucracy which has perfected waste and mismanagement.

You obviously get it, with the exception that you still believe that if taxes are cut we will be able to keep more of what we earn. Not gonna happen! These bloodsuckers are watching those of us at the bottom of the pyramid turn into skin covered skeletons, while the small minority at the top of the pyramid are growing fat to the point of bursting with our blood!

By turning on one another because of who is getting what and who isn't is doing nothing more than playing into the hands of those who have committed the biggest fraud in the history of our planet. It is admirable for those that are trying to solve our problems, but that isn't going to happen unless we get to the root of the cancer that is destroying our country. Right now, if we buy into this two party fraud that one can save us by doing this or that, we are doing nothing more than cutting out one cancerous tumor without getting rid of all of the cancer. The tumor will just come back......

Take a look at Greece and Spain. Are those people who are spending more in taxes solving their debt problems? We are being lied to on a grand scale and all of these solutions that the talking heads on the MSM keep talking about are nothing more than tiny bandages trying to stop the bleeding on a mortal wound.

We need to get rid of the Federal Reserve Bank and then we need to arrest those in our government who allowed this fraud (cancer) to perpetuate to the point that we will surely die unless we go in and take out all of the tumors and cancerous tissue that has taken over.

BTW, I hear Iceland has one of the BEST cancer doctors in the world........

reply to post by kozmo


Take your own advice and recognize that the "bottomless defense industry" in America employs directly or indirectly roughly 1/5 the country.

Now recognize that cutting or drastically reducing social security / medicaid will drive tens of millions of Americans onto the streets -- or worse. Is that actually what you are calling for? A culling of half of America? To save an imaginary system struggling under the weight of a largely imaginary debt?

Forest for trees, indeed.

reply to post by gladtobehere


Yeah, maybe the old people should just seize the assets of the United states that they are entitled to. We paid for the building of the infrastructure of this country, not the young people. We can combine all our money and give our money and property to a big organization to care for the aged. Leaving our kids nothing to inherit. Sounds good to me. We will charge everyone to use the roads and bridges, the things we paid to build. We will charge every young person a fee to use everything our government owns. If you want to go to the hospitals that we have paid for with our money to build, we get twenty five percent. Think before you speak, if your parents read your post they would blow all your inheritance. Just because we are old, we are not dumb. Start to respect the elderly or you will see the consequences. We have all the money you know, to do whatever we desire to do with it. If my daughter talked like you, she would not see a penny of our money or properties, things that would take her a lifetime of work to acquire.

reply to post by 0zzymand0s


Apparently you're not paying attention. What percentage of the total government spending on defense goes toward actual wages? NOT stock options, equities, bonuses and bloated officer-level pay, actual wages... look it up. HINT: Data available through many, many sources. Compare that then to the actual amount spent. HINT: It is a mere FRACTION of what is paid out by the government. The remainder works its way through a rather circuitous route back to the politicians in the form of campaign contributions, lobbying efforts, stock and dividend payments, etc... In short - MONEY LAUNDERING! How in the hell do you think Barack Obama began his presidency with a net worth of $4Million and is finishing his first term with a net worth of over $12Million???

We could go on for months, heck... YEARS... discussing all of these issues in microcosms. The reality is that all of these issues are inter-related. So yes, the inability to see the forest through the trees is, in fact, the reality! You're doing it with your post - pointing out this single "Tree" and claiming it is blocking the view of the "Forrest".

Keynesian economics has failed every nation that has employed it. It drives the money to the top and forces the money to circulate at the top and remain there. I posit that if taxes and regulations were half of what they actually are, employment would be as close to full as is feasible.

reply to post by kozmo


You are right about the cost of the soldiers, it is small. The money is mostly exported to businesses. Not small businesses either, maybe a little goes there but not that much. The military personnel support many communities on their pay though, seems that their pay stimulates the economy well. This is the biggest scam in the country, buying high priced technology that is obsolete in a few years.

reply to post by kozmo

I posit that if taxes and regulations were half of what they actually are, employment would be as close to full as is feasible.

With loopholes they are half of the rate if not more so. Too many multi-billion dollar in profit corporations have a negative effective tax rate, the more rich a person is or profitable a company is the more tax loopholes they seem to be able to jump through. The argument that taxes are too high on the wealthy is just completely asinine when you see what they actually pay as a percentage, if anything at all.

Something else to consider regarding employment... a business that employs foreign slave labor or holds it's money off-shore is NEVER going to change that practice. It is a fallacy. No one that is accustomed to paying 50 cents an hour for their plastic whatever to be made is going to pay 15 dollars an hour for the same even if you drop taxes to 0%.

Instead what we should be talking about is incentives and penalties. You hire foreign labor your tax rate is higher, you hire American labor your tax rate is lower.

Oh, goodness. More mindless propaganda claiming that turning Americans into powerless paupers somehow makes them better off.
Social security and Medicare need to be drastically reformed. Anyone with simple critical thinking skills knows this.

I love this progressive agit-prop that makes those who prefer freedom and individualism into heartless savages who want to kill poor people. Please. It's getting pathetic.

6000 years of human history easily proves that government overspending, massive debt, and currency devaluation will collapse a civilization. We are no different. It's quite irrational, illogical, and/or extremely naive to believe otherwise.

Originally posted by SELAboy
Oh, goodness. More mindless propaganda claiming that turning Americans into powerless paupers somehow makes them better off.
Social security and Medicare need to be drastically reformed. Anyone with simple critical thinking skills knows this.

I love this progressive agit-prop that makes those who prefer freedom and individualism into heartless savages who want to kill poor people. Please. It's getting pathetic.

6000 years of human history easily proves that government overspending, massive debt, and currency devaluation will collapse a civilization. We are no different. It's quite irrational, illogical, and/or extremely naive to believe otherwise.

edit on 10-12-2012 by SELAboy because: (no reason given)

Government is what we designed to protect us against threats to our lives, and for some reason you people don't realize that poverty and sketchy healthcare kills more of us (the people who ARE this United States of America) in one decade than all the terrorists, invading foreign armies, rogue nation states and their insane tin-pot dictators, and global cataclysms combined since the launch of this entire nation. That means that the fundamental purpose of government - the protection of the citizens of a specific society - in our case, is to protect us from the ravages of poverty and sketchy (or nonexistent) healthcare - as well as the malignant schemes of those predators who would deny us that protection.

And yet, not one of you can imagine that the role of government is not to turn a profit or even balance a spreadsheet. It is to protect the citizens that it was created to protect. Period. This inane obsession with money and the profit motive of a very small and otherwise insignificant slice of this human race has 90+ percentage of us viewing our own lives and the lives of our families as less valuable than a positive quarterly report running over the AP line. Don't forget, the end of the Clinton Presidency had us up by 260 billion (relatively speaking, of course), and that lasted how long...? Not long. The illusion of fiscal solvency is fleeting at best, and the truth is that the way that the Federal Reserve works, there is no possible way for the US to ever be free of debt. That is a fact and yet we're willing to literally destroy our entire nation over this aimless and valueless fight over how much a collection of bankers claim that we owe.

The funniest part of this entire debate is the fact that the US owes itself over 70% of its outstanding debt. China owns only about 10% or so, and yet we're ready to cut each other loose to real and permanent individual levels of hell in honor of something that doesn't even honestly represent the truth concerning how wealthy or in debt the United States actually is. Hell, no one even knows how much money is actually owed by everyone to everyone else anymore. No one even knows the actual relative worth of any specific currency relative to all other currencies. The debt numbers being tossed around are anywhere from 10 to 20 times the actual combined worth of all the world's wealth combined. If that doesn't put this whole idiotic circus into perspective, then you're not really trying to understand the reality of money, wealth, debt and global economics in this modern world.

The individualist is like the Monopoly player who collects 200 bucks every time he passes GO until someone takes him out of the game. No one is strong as an individual. Money means nothing when the rest of your personal world decides that your money means nothing. The human community is the only reliable currency that exists. It's the only currency that's ever survived every economic collapse this world has ever endured. The "tentatively successful" will be the first to learn this, and in unforgiving clarity, if the truly wealthy succeed in establishing their bizarre utopia that's based solely on individual success or failure in this already fractured empire. I would imagine that this group of pioneering individualists includes most of you that have been cheering this effort on. You'd be the buffer that the wealthy are counting on, when the inevitable unpleasantness erupts as the underclass "go through what they'll go through" and rip your lives to shreds in the process.

In the last scene, the streets are cleaned of the mess and the "chosen few" rebuild it all in their image of paradise. It sounds ridiculous, and that's because it is. It's been tried so many times, and it's always failed. Not that this will be an issue for any of us. We won't be around to be disappointed when it fails yet again.