By

Nancy Bordier and Joseph M. Firestone

Overview

The two of us met recently at an AmericaSpeaks event in Fairfax, VA, on June 26th. We decided independently to attend the event, but for the same reason. We wanted to protest the undue attention being given the federal budget deficit compared to the far more critical need to restore job-creating economic growth. Increasing tax revenues by getting the unemployed into new jobs is a more effective way to reduce the deficit than self-defeating cuts in entitlement expenditures. We also wanted to protest the bias built into the event, which Joe later analyzed in a seven part series, The Procrustean Democracy of AmericaSpeaks.

After the AmericaSpeaks event, we discussed the problem of powerful special interests that mislead the public, distort U.S. priorities and deform public policies. A prime example is the billionaire deficit hawk who is advocating entitlement cuts and funded the event. We agreed that the increasing enfeeblement of the electorate is part of the problem. Voters’ influence over the agendas of the Democratic and Republican parties and their elected representatives grows weaker as the influence of the business and financial interests that finance the parties and the campaigns of their candidates grows stronger.

Corporate-funded mainstream media have joined forces with the compromised parties and their elected representatives to put special interest priorities in the limelight, and create a political climate conducive to the enactment of public policies they favor, to the detriment of the public interest. Governing officials who should be protecting the American people from predatory special interests have joined forces with them to further their depredations.

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the Co-Chairs of “the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform,” would have us believe that a deficit and debt crisis threatening the fiscal future of the United States is upon us, that “This debt is like a cancer,” and that unless we begin to make across the board cuts in expenditures, and also raise taxes in a way that distributes the pain across all segments of the population, there is no way we will return to fiscal sustainability. This view is false and also alarmist for many reasons.

In my last post, I continued my analysis of the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, focusing on Step Five in the decision process used in the meeting. In that post I presented the specific option choice frameworks AmericaSpeaks presented to participants in the categories of Non-Defense and Defense spending, and revenue raising, and also analyzed the biases inherent in the way they were structured. In this post, I’ll wind up this analysis of the AmericaSpeaks event, the materials provided to participants, and the biases in their process as I saw them.

In Part 5, I continued my analysis of the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, focusing on Step Five in the decision process used in the meeting. In that post the specific option choice frameworks AmericaSpeaks presented to participants in the categories of Health Care and Social Security spending, and analyzed the biases inherent in the way they were structured. In this post I’ll analyze the
Other Non-defense; and Defense Spending categories of Government spending presented to participants in the community conversation and national meeting processes. I’ll also analyze the revenue raising options included in the options workbook.

In my last post I continued my analysis of the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, focusing on Step Five in the decision process used in the meeting. In that post I was critical of the overall bias in the general orientation toward the options workbook and the choices to be made in the process. In this post I’ll continue with my examination of step five of this process, shifting my attention to the specific option choice frameworks and the bias inherent in the way they were structured by AmericaSpeaks. Here once again is a statement describing step 5.

In my previous three posts analyzing the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, I presented the steps in the decision process used for the event, and discussed the pre-conference phase and the first four steps. These reflect a strong and consistent bias toward socializing participants into the idea that there is a deficit problem and that it has to be treated by cutting expenditures and/or raising taxes. The bias was reflected in many little ways in the materials used for the meetings and in the way the first four steps were carried out. The framing of exercises in the decision process continually restricted choices to ones that bring participants back to the supposed problem of a deficit and debt crisis. The web-streamed talks about national conference proceedings and orientations, and the brief constricted discussions of major values issues all worked to fit participants’ thinking to the ideas and frames presented in worksheets and the Federal Budget 101 presentations. Lines of discussion that would have led outside of the intended framing were politely aborted by the facilitators, pleading limited time, and the need to get through the agenda, and give everyone a chance to speak, so that any person developing counter-themes to the major narrative did not have a chance to develop these counter-themes and counter-narratives in the context of the supposedly unbiased process. In this post I’ll continue with my examination of step five of this process.

Video interviews with Margaret Flowers of PNHP and Katie Robbins of Healthcare-Now! on the deficit cutting agenda being pushed by AmericaSpeaks through “town hall meetings.” Last weekend, 21st Century Town Hall Meetings were held involving citizens in discussion and debate on the budget and economy, allowing citizens to talk about what they would like to cut so economic problems in this country could be properly addressed and solved.

In my first two posts analyzing the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, I presented the steps in the decision process used for the event and discussed the pre-conference phase and the first two steps. As we saw, these steps reflected a strong bias toward socializing participants into the idea that there is a deficit problem and that it has to treated by cutting expenditures and/or raising taxes. The bias was reflected in many little ways in the materials used for the meetings and in the way the first two steps were carried out. Here I continue my account with Step Three.

In my first post analyzing the June 26th AmericaSpeaks Community Conversation event I attended in Falls Church, VA, I presented the steps in the decision process used for the event and then began a discussion of the steps. I broke off my account in the middle of my narrative of Step Two.

Primary Facilitator states the purpose of the meeting, reviews the agenda, and hands out materials for the event, including a pre-survey, short survey on basic values, Federal Budget 101, and the Options Workbook. Participants watch the web-streamed Philadelphia event, including various notables speaking about the deficit problem, and also The Federal Budget 101 video giving the AmericaSpeaks narrative about the “fiscal crisis.” (continued)

On June 26th, AmericaSpeaks, an organization claiming unbiased neutrality on deficit issues, but funded by the Peter G. Peterson and other Foundations who share the Peterson view that US deficits and the National Debt are something to worry about, convened some 19 Town Meetings, and more than 40 smaller “community conversations,” all tied together through web streaming, to elicit citizen views on “this problem.” Here are some claims by AmericaSpeaks about their neutrality and lack of bias.