(John Backderf via GoComics.com — click link for full-sized image)
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Dave Weigel at Slate asks the un-musical question “Why Has Pete Peterson’s Expensive Campaigna Against the Deficit Failed?“:
… For 20 years, a coalition of wealthy people—Pete Peterson chief among them—has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build public support for austerity. They have held annual summits, then semiannual summits. They’ve written books. They’ve started up coalitions. They’ve partnered with MTV. It’s been five weeks since Barack Obama was re-elected, and there’ve been two gatherings in downtown D.C., put on by Peterson-tied organizations, asking politicians to do something about that debt.
But do what, exactly? Here’s the current problem with Peterson-ism: As scary as it seems to liberals, as clear as it may be that Peterson wants to build momentum for entitlement cuts, the actual work of these groups has moved us no closer to those said cuts…
Not that the professional courtiers of the Media Village aren’t working hard for Peterson’s estimated $458million largesse. Here’s Charlie Pierce at Esquire on the most fragrant recent effort:
One of my primary criticisms of Tiger Beat On The Potomac has been that the entire enterprise has been dedicated totally to gossip, triviality, and Drudge-baiting to the exclusion of what’s actually going on in the country to the people these politics are supposed to serve. Alas, today, the two presiding intellects of the publication put their watery heads together to discuss “bold” policy choices. I hereby take back everything I wrote in the former vein. If this is their idea of discussing policy, I wish to the god that gave me breath that they’d go back to who’s zooming whom at some lobbying shop.
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