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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@hotmail.com href="mailto:tanstl@hotmail.com">David Sladky</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Thursday, December 06, 2012 8:22 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Who are Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles?</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<H2>Who are Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles?</H2>
<H5>By Andre Damon <BR>6 December 2012</H5>In the media hysteria over the
“fiscal cliff”, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of the Obama
administration’s deficit reduction committee, are being lionized as impartial
wise men whose recommendations are independent of political or social
interests.<BR>But in reality these two men, both millionaires and born to wealth
and privilege, who made their fortunes in the revolving door between finance,
corporate law, and Washington, are nothing more than the representatives of the
most selfish and socially regressive interests of the ruling class.<BR>In
December 2010, the committee co-chaired by Simpson and Bowles put forward a plan
to slash social services and implement an array of regressive tax measures,
including attacks on entitlements and the introduction of consumption taxes long
associated with the extreme right wing of the Republican Party.<BR>Now, with
both parties scrambling to cut trillions of dollars from vital social services,
Simpson-Bowles committee’s results have been presented as the ultimate “grand
bargain.”<BR>Meanwhile Simpson and Bowles have been on a national speaking tour
with their “Campaign to Fix the Debt,” earning as much as $40,000 per speaking
engagement.<BR>In their 2010 report, Simpson and Bowles proposed to reduce the
federal deficit by $4 trillion through a combination of spending cuts and tax
increases targeted predominantly at the working population.<BR>The plan
would:<BR>* Slash $1,661 billion in discretionary federal spending, including
social services and infrastructure.<BR>* Lower corporate taxes, while increasing
taxes on middle-income-earners, including an increase of the gasoline tax by 15
cents per gallon.<BR>* Cut $341 billion from federal spending on healthcare,
including Medicare and Medicaid<BR>* Increase the eligibility age for social
security and cut the program's spending by $238 billion<BR>
<H4>Erskine Bowles</H4>Erskine Bowles is a multimillionaire financier and former
White House Chief of Staff.<BR>His father, Hargrove “Skipper” Bowles, was an
investment banker and North Carolina and Democratic Party kingpin who in 1972
won the Democratic primary for Governor of North Carolina but lost the general
election to James Holshouser.<BR>Erskine Bowles got his start in finance at
Morgan Stanley in the 1960s, before starting Bowles, Hollowell, Connor &
Co., a leveraged buyout and private equity investment firm, in 1975.<BR>In 1992,
Bowles became a fundraiser for Bill Clinton, who appointed him to lead the Small
Business Administration in 1993. The next year, he went on to serve as Clinton’s
chief of Staff, an office he held till 1996, when he returned to
finance.<BR>After serving in Clinton’s Cabinet, Bowles ran for a North Carolina
Senate seat twice and was defeated both times. He currently sits on the boards
of directors of General Motors, Morgan Stanley, and Facebook.<BR>
<H4>Alan Simpson</H4>Alan Simpson is a partner at a high-profile law firm and a
former Republican US Senator from Wyoming who served as Majority Whip from 1985
to 1987. His father, Milward L. Simpson, was a U.S. Senator and governor for the
state of Wyoming.<BR>As a youth, Simpson was, to use his own words, “dumb and
rebellious and stupid.”<BR>A court brief describes how he liked to spend his
time. “Simpson and his friends went shooting throughout their community. They
fired their rifles at mailboxes, blowing holes in several and killing a cow.
They fired their weapons at a road grader.”<BR>“We just raised hell,” Simpson
says. Federal authorities charged Simpson with destroying government property
and Simpson pleaded guilty. He received two years of probation and was required
to make restitution from his own funds—funds that he was supposed to obtain by
holding down a job.<BR>Simpson went on to get a law degree and began to practice
law in Cody, Wyoming before being elected to the state’s house of
representatives, and moving on to the U.S. Senate in 1979.<BR>Simpson did not
seek reelection to the Senate in 1996, but instead returned to his law-firm,
Simpson, Kepler and Edwards, which is recognized as one of “America’s 25 Most
Influential Law Firms” by the National Trial Lawyers. On its website, the
32-employee law firm lists over a billion dollars in settlements, verdicts, and
lawsuits, including major class actions and product recalls.<BR>In 1997, he
authored a book, entitled <EM>Right in the Old Gazoo: What I Learned In A
Lifetime Of Scrapping with the Pres</EM>s.<BR>It is fitting that the Obama
Administration, in demanding the slashing of social services in the guise of
“deficit reduction”, should pick two figures as Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles
to present the “tough choices” necessary to “fix the deficit.”<BR>The two men
represent nothing more nor less than the ruling class in all its baseness and
corruption, putting forward the proposal that the working class pay for the
crisis of capitalism through tax increases and the destruction of Medicare,
Medicaid, and Social Security.<BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>