The Can Likes Kickbacks.

“In 2014, for the first time in three years, the vote to extend the nation’s debt ceiling did not bring the US to the brink of default in a high-stakes game of slash and burn…It was a striking turnaround for the forces of austerity. One of the biggest losers? The Campaign to Fix the Debt, the $40 million AstroTurf austerity group, financed by Pete Peterson and other Wall Street big wigs, and fronted by Maya MacGuineas, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Call it Alan Simpson’s last harrumph.”

In general, I think victory laps are a bad idea, especially since sequestration continues and it’s not like austerity is suddenly out of fashion in this godforsaken town. Nonetheless, The Nation‘s Mary Bottari looks at how citizen and netroots activism helped beat back (for now) the deficit witchhunt, and much of the corporate rapacity and profiteering attending it.

The pic above is my friend Alex Lawson crashing a Pete Peterson Astro-Turf event a few months ago. “‘Aaar!’ he said. ‘Fix the debt, but let me keep my corporate booty! Fix the Debt’s founders have more than $500 million in offshore corporate booty.'”

“Told that the data came directly from the Social Security Administration, Simpson continued to insist it was inaccurate, while misstating the nature of a statistical average: “If you’re telling me that a guy who got to be 65 in 1940 — that all of them lived to be 77 — that is just not correct. Just because a guy gets to be 65, he’s gonna live to be 77? Hell, that’s my genre. That’s not true,’ said Simpson, who will turn 80 in September. Understanding life expectancy rates at age 65 in 1940 is central to understanding Social Security itself.“

In keeping with his informative interview with Alex Lawson last fall, former Wyoming Senator and co-head of the president’s deficit commission Alan Simpson — while railing against AARP — proves once again knows as little about Social Security as he does about hip-hop. So, yeah, by all means let’s put him in charge of social insurance “reform.”

“Simpson’s forceful gesture came after an extended diatribe against Social Security, which he said is a ‘Ponzi’ scheme, ‘not a retirement program.’ Simpson argued that Social Security was originally intended more as a welfare program.” Um, no. But, in Simpson’s defense, the president who appointed him also harbors some misunderstandings about Social Security. And at least the Senator is right on public financing of elections. So, there’s that.