Billionaires planning town hall astroturfing to demand cuts to Social Security!

[Report1212]

I hope these people get caught at town halls and called out for doing what they're doing.

--

The so-called ”Campaign To Fix The Debt” is being run by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles and is designed to pressure Congress to enact an austerity plan that cuts Social Security and guts investments in Main Street America while lowering corporate taxes.

...

If you sign up as a volunteer for the group, you’ll be e-mailed a “toolkit” that you’re supposed to use to engage in pro-austerity activism on behalf of the billionaires who run the group.

One of the instructions in the tool kit is to “bird dog” campaign events and town halls that feature Members of Congress. Here’s the sample questions that the campaign is asking people to dog lawmakers with. Notice that they are designed to pressure legislators to agree to cuts to Social Security and enact other devastating spending cuts:

Read more: http://boldprogressives.org/uncovered-billionaires-planning-astroturf-movement-to-pressure-congress-at-town-halls-to-cut-social-security/

[HiPointDem]

1. funded by pete peterson from his tax-free private foundation. why do we allow rich people

to set up tax-free foundations to fuck us with?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/03/austerity-war-peter-peterson_n_1937089.html

[Laurian]

2. Erskine Bowles has turned into a real asshole.

I was not especially impressed with him when he worked for Clinton, but he seems to have adopted a real nasty attitude since being appointed to that commission.

PS- Simpson was never anything but an asshole.

[Report1212]

4. I was too young during the Clinton years

I wasn't politically active. But I can tell from everything he's doing these days that he's no good. Wonder how he jimmied himself into heading the UNC system.

[MannyGoldstein]

24. Bowles brokered a deal between Clinton and Gingrich to cut

Social Security when he was Clinton's Chief of Staff. Congress declined, fortunately.

[Faygo Kid]

13. He didn't turn at all. He always was an a-hole.

That doesn't even begin to describe it for Simpson.

[George II]

17. No, he always was one, he just kept it hidden

[flamingdem]

3. This is loathsome, volunteer to help billionaires cut your Social Security!

>>>> snip
If you sign up as a volunteer for the group, you’ll be e-mailed a “toolkit” that you’re supposed to use to engage in pro-austerity activism on behalf of the billionaires who run the group.

One of the instructions in the tool kit is to “bird dog” campaign events and town halls that feature Members of Congress. Here’s the sample questions that the campaign is asking people to dog lawmakers with. Notice that they are designed to pressure legislators to agree to cuts to Social Security and enact other devastating spending cuts:

[Report1212]

6. Notice they don't phrase it like that, but you hit the nail right on the head nt

[Hydra]

12. So. Much. Irony.

Volunteer to get robbed, and you have the added benefit of helping rob everyone else in you know as well!

That, and the fact that it's VOLUNTEER work. The billionaires don't even have to pay to get good slaves these days...

[aquart]

5. Greedy, unpatriotic billionaires are a disease rotting our nation.

85% from all sources after first seven million. Deliberately punitive death duties. They won't fight our wars. It's past time they anted up to pay for them.

Greedy, unpatriotic cowards.

[woo me with science]

7. We drown in propaganda, lies, and deceptions.

These vultures have money, time, and planned, relentless penetration into every place where opinions can be shaped, including the new DU. And the propaganda will be just as thick at the Town Hall meetings.

Meanwhile, every legitimate poll shows that Americans across party lines want to protect Social Security benefits.

[freshwest]

8. +1

[Report1212]

11. Indeed: even tea partiers want to protect it

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/01/24/140555/tea-partiers-social-security/

[SoapBox]

20. Ditto to Drowning.

[jsr]

9. Colonel Sanders recruits chickens to demand more chickens to be killed

[Report1212]

10. apt analogy nt

[Zalatix]

14. Ho ho ho! Who are they gonna get to sign up for that bullshit?

The AARP?
The Tea Party?
They couldn't get a sizable portion of BLUE DOG VOTERS for that bullshit.

Lemme guess, all of Ron Paul's army, which you could fit inside a telephone booth, will be showing up?

[Report1212]

38. I'm hoping you're right

There doesn't seem to be a sizable portion of the American population that agrees with this crap.

[Zalatix]

41. They don't even need to astroturf. They just buy a few politicians and make it so.

[Report1212]

43. That's part of it

But the only way you push otherwise progressive Members around is to convince them the public wants it.

[Zalatix]

46. In that case we fight back by showing up in very large numbers.

Had we done that to the Tea Party in 2009... there wouldn't be a Tea Party.

[libodem]

15. Ah, you know the drill

FUCK THEM.

[DhhD]

16. Social Security Insurance Trust to be turned over to Congress to be used to buy war machines.

Does anybody have the video link with John Bonher saying that the SS money would be used for war machines if Conservatives could legally get their hands on it? Wars are ending. So contracts are ending for warmongers. Looks like the Trickle-Up may be ending and they are furious that they will have to fund their own war(s). Furious that hoarding has to stop and THEIR money could move into the world economy.

Social Security is a TRUST fund and not part of the National Budget. That is a simple reply.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

18. What gets me is people are only focused on the debt because they've been told to....

After Republicans lied us into a war and lost their National Security reputation and lost their Deregulation argument with the crash of Wall Street they actually announced they would be using their old "cheapskate" reputation and focus on the National Debt that they had just run up by unfunded wars and a massive giveaway to Big Pharma as well as boondoggles to well connected donors for things like bridges to nowhere and rain forests in the desert. Bush didn't veto a single spending bill. The goal was to bankrupt America so they could eliminate any program designed to lift people out of the lower class into the middle class. Much less maintain the middle class.

We are expected to forget the "Republicans spending like drunken sailors" part of history and accept that they are fiscal hawks. The media obediently accepts this as a fact and the Democrats say they are even better at reducing the debt than Republicans and the whole discussion is on what to cut with Republicans claiming the Democrats are all about raising taxes and America supporting the idea of raising them on the rich.

This same nonsense took place during the Great Depression.

Paul Krugman has it right. The debt can wait.

[Populist_Prole]

42. So very true, and it's maddening

Of the people I'm around in daily life I hear so many ignorant, unread, low-information types bleating about debt and "the deficit". Trying to sound all informed and stirred up. BAH! You can tell they're so full of BS when you try to discuss the issues with them because they can't go one iota any deeper than the soundbites or talking points they just heard. It's only a foul if the other team does it. It's just tribal politics and nothing more.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

48. Tell them they are cowards.

They allowed themselves to be manipulated by fear of terrorists and now they are allowing the same people who did that to them make them afraid the government,...what,...is gonna bounce a fucking CHECK?

Then to prove it, ask them to name the #1 problem and they treat EVERYTHING as the #1 problem and when you get right down to it they claim ALL of the problems are the fault of Liberals and deep down inside they think of eliminating Liberals.

"The Final Solution".

[Populist_Prole]

54. I do just that, in so many words.

When confronted with having to answer directly without the cover of talking points or slogans, they get really angry and drop any pretense of objectivity and basically circle their wagons around their most base feelings/desires. It's 1 of 3 things:

-Guns
-Religion
-Race

They take it even more personally since they think I'm being some kind of wise guy engaging in a "gotcha" move or they feel, especially my friends, it's some sort of "whose side are you on?" mantra. We never talked politics much before but the last several years has seen them get VERY partisan/political.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

55. It's like a documentary I saw on the rise of the Tea Party.

It featured a housewife who was fucking oblivious all though the Bush Years. Didn't pay attention to the war, the economy, couldn't even name the President or Vice President and didn't even VOTE in 2008.

Then she saw a black guy in the White House and discovered FOX "News" and most importantly Glenn Beck and learned the "truth".

[SoapBox]

19. Ya...if you volunteer, you'll be emailed a "toolkit"...

Just what a Bagger-Lemming would need, since only the TOOLs would be helping these freaks.

[truedelphi]

21. Will somebody here please answer tthis question:

Why is my "Dem" House of Representatives critter, Mike Thompson, already aboard with demolishing Social Security.


The guy made the rounds back in 2010-2011, saying that he feels that both MediCare and Social Security need to be on the chopping block, in order to help the deficit. One lady activist used to attempt to get him to address her talking point - that Social Security is a Surplus program, and holds 2.1 trillion or more in surplus, and it is funded independently of the Federal Government. He never would call on her.

Thompson also reminds us voters that he is a Blue Dog me and proud of it.

[SamKnause]

25. Billionaire Trolls

These cockroaches have infested every crevice of our political system, the MIC and Wall Street.

They have infiltrated the Supreme Court and every other court in the land.

They show no signs of letting up.

Like cockroaches they use to hide in dark rooms and scurry when the light was flipped on.

Today's new breed of cockroaches are in your face, loud and aggressive.

I really don't see how this can end well.

It seems the more we expose about them, the bolder they become.

[truedelphi]

59. I agree. And I don't kwow what to do about it.

Obviously Di Feinsteiin wants this guy to be in the House - heaven help us if a Progressive tried to run inside this district.

There are people out there who will vote for anyone or anything with A D after their name but I am not one of those types of voters.

[Oilwellian]

22. Gee, where have I seen Alan & Erskine recently?

And who was the genius that appointed them to the Catfood Commission? Grand Bargain anyone?

[MannyGoldstein]

23. Why are people upset at this?

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles were appointed by our Democratic President to lead the effort to reduce the debt. They've taken the ball and are running with it. They're acting in a way that's perfectly consistent with everything they've ever done.

Why the fuss? Everything is going just as planned, nobody could have expected otherwise.

[tokenlib]

27. LMAO!!! For a second I was pissed at your comment...:)

[woo me with science]

32. Oh, Manny.

The truth hurts.

[hay rick]

35. Next you're going to say our Democratic President agrees with Mitt on Social Security.

That's right, you don't have to. The POTUS beat you to it in the debate. Quoting:

"I suspect that on Social Security, we've got a somewhat similar position. Social Security is structurally sound. It's going to have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker -- Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill. But it is -- the basic structure is sound."

Not that this should be a cause for concern...

[Report1212]

36. I'm hoping he just misspoke

Or was trying to be too polite.

[hay rick]

37. Suggest you trade in your hope for some anger. nt

[Unknown Beatle]

26. George Carlin

Said it best.

[woo me with science]

33. Love George Carlin.

Thanks.

[Report1212]

40. RIP nt

[LiberalAndProud]

51. I never get tired of that clip.

It isn't comedy.

[underthematrix]

53. Retweeted and FB'd

George my man ain't playin. Y'all this is some serious shit. I keep wondering y there so many peeps who can be manipulated into believing for instance MITTNOCCHIO now cares about the 47%. Hell his citizenship is determined by where he keeps his money - SWISS, CAYMAN, BAHMAS

[lonestarnot]

28. I wonder which of the 47% will throw them out of their birddog positions onto the lawn?

[rurallib]

29. thanks - sent a heads up to a guy I know on my congressman's campaign

[Initech]

30. Ugh!!!!!! Can we start arresting the grifter criminals already???

They're fucking thieves - no better than the guy who steals from the liquor store - but on a much grander scale - and now they're coming for Social Security and hiring a "liquidator" (corporate serial killer) as First CEO will allow them to do it.

[kelliekat44]

31. The world-wide "austerity" programs and initiatives are nothing more than social Darwinism at

their core. The billionaire "takers" and "stakers" never want to see their wealth and power diminished in any way...even if it means that their own countries (if they really have allegiance to any country) and millions of their fellow citizens suffer and their civilization destroyed. It is really sad that this is not realized on a large scale. But most people are too busy trying to survive to even give it much thought. Sooner or later, in the "clash of civilizations" the 1-2% will come to realize that they are sorely out numbered. We can see already that their power is almost useless in the face of the extreme. Soon their wealth will follow. That's just an observation from studying what is going on around the world. There are lessons to be learned from Iraq and Afghanistan. Seems we didn't learn anything from Russian engagement in Afghanistan and that is tragic.

[gkhouston]

34. We never seem to learn from history. Hungry, desperate people can be dangerous.

The idiots probably could have gone on skimming off the top indefinitely if almost all of the rest of us enjoyed a comfortable (if not lavish) lifestyle. They just got too damned greedy.

[Zalatix]

39. In about 20 years, the drones will make successful revolution impossible.

I can build a flyable drone right now that's half the size of a shoebox.

In 20 years the military will mass produce drones of that size with guns and missiles.

[socialist_n_TN]

56. This editorial talks about austerity..........

http://www.workerspower.net/our-fate-is-not-sealed

[LongTomH]

44. We need to fight this by educating Democratic voters AND getting more progressives elected!

[nc4bo]

45. So the billionairres want us to ask for our own descent into austerity?!

I do declare that these mofo'ers have completely lost their friggin' minds!!

[Oilwellian]

47. It's not as crazy as you think

Judging from some of the posts I've seen on DU lately, I wouldn't be surprised if there are a few DU'ers who are fired up and ready to volunteer.

[LiberalAndProud]

50. Only with sabotage in mind, in my case.

[LiberalAndProud]

49. Do they screen volunteers?

I'm thinking I might sign up.

[underthematrix]

52. so what products do these billionaires sell?

I'm sure most of us have friends around the world. We need to vote out as many GOPKKKers as we can. I'm voting the straight DEM ticket. If these assholes win, the only peeps who will have the right to vote are the OWNERS of PRODUCTION.

[sabrina 1]

57. These two disgusting anti-People morons should be thoroughly exposed for what they are.

They have been running ads against Democrats also. Why they were ever appointed to that Commission by a Democratic president is simply incredible.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

58. This should be illegal. nt