Rather than dancing with those that "brung" him, Obama eyes making a deal with the Devil

[Samantha]

31. The more you think about it, the more murkier it becomes

I believe a large part of the problem is the Fix the Debt cast of characters. Bowles is a co-founder. I believe Simpson is also a part of this group, but I am not going to take the time to double-check that now. Look at this:

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/john-nichols-fix-debt-run-lot-billionaires

Here are a few interesting paragraphs:

"Key to the strategy is ginning up a crisis. In lockstep, the CEOs, politicians, and partner organizations stormed the media last fall warning of the looming disaster of the so-called “fiscal cliff.” Breaching the fiscal cliff “will lead to chaos,” warned Erskine Bowles; “derail the fragile recovery,” said Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein; generate a "shock to the financial markets and a painful return to the recession,” said the CEO of Morgan Stanley.

But this chorus of calamity was pure hype. One Fix the Debt steering committee member, former Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen, let slip that the strategy was to create an “artificial crisis” that would force Congress to act.

Their goal is to achieve a Simpson-Bowles style “grand bargain” on an austerity agenda for the United States by the nation’s 237th birthday on July 4, 2013. [...]

Many Fix the Debt firms pay a very low or even a negative average tax rate, contributing to the nation's deficit. Fix the Debt is secretly pushing for a major tax break that would exempt profits earned overseas by U.S. firms from taxation and encourage the offshoring of U.S. jobs. While the Fix the Debt CEOs call for cuts to Social Security, many of the publicly-traded Fix the Debt firms underfund their employee pension plans -- making their workers even more dependent on the popular social insurance plan that American workers pay into with each paycheck." (emphasis supplied)

A lot of this sounds familiar, doesn't it? Nichols says it is funded by billionaires who want lower taxes. I guess that is why Social Security needs to be cut -- so they can pay less....

Sam