Yves Smith set off a firestorm in her criticism of several progressive groups that have joined forces with Pete Peterson to whip up deficit hysteria. There are three issues that need to be addressed.

More Americans say that the cost of war has contributed a “great deal” to the deficit (60%), as opposed to those who say the same about domestic spending (24%) in a recent Pew poll.

A blog post published last week on Naked Capitalism raises an interesting question – what exactly is the Roosevelt legacy? For us at the Roosevelt Institute, we believe it is based in engaging in dialogue and promoting progressive people and ideas. It is also about encouraging young people to get involved in public service and public policy debates.

I’m surprised that my post, “Bribes Work: How Peterson, the Enemy of Social Security, Bought the Roosevelt Name” has created a bit of a firestorm within what passes for the left wing political blogosphere. It has elicited responses from Andy Rich of the Roosevelt Institute, Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konczal, as well as two groups only mentioned in passing in the piece, the Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Support on Capitol Hill for saving Social Security must be stronger than I thought: Pete Peterson’s flying monkeys are working overtime dropping dungbombs on anyone who opposes gutting the government program that lifted elderly Americans out of the grinding poverty that was their standard fate before 1935.

Ho-hum. Another day, another set of Peterson patsies explaining yet again why Grandma must starve so that their billionaire bosses and their buddies can keep their twenty-odd homes in the Hamptons and Hobe Sound.

At a Peter Peterson deficit fest last spring President Clinton said: “I wanted to cut Social Security, but they wouldn’t let me.” In 10 years, maybe President Obama will be able to say the same thing.

Sheila Bair, Chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, is supposedly one of the few at least halfway sensible federal regulators who actually warned about the banks’ risky behavior and maintains a healthy skepticism of the laissez faire ideology that shielded their predatory behavior both before and after it tanked the US and Western economies.

I wanted to highlight something about the Cat Food Commission to permanently shrink government, something we’ve all known about, but which hasn’t been laid out in specific detail in a while. This Presidential commission has been borrowing paid staffers from groups that are ideologically committed to destroying the social safety net in America. This hasn’t been well-reported in the traditional media until today.

Matt Bai claims that his version of the trouble with Social Security comes from a non-partisan organization. I don’t think Peter G. Peterson qualifies, and neither do groups he funds.