New Ad Campaign Says You Owe the Government $483,000
By Paul Bedard
Posted April 09, 2009 11:19 AM ET

By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers

Paying taxes isn’t fun, but what more can you do but laugh when considering your household’s piece of the national debt: $483,000? To help that chuckle along, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation today is unveiling some Web spots featuring the comic team Stone and Stone in roles as accountants Owen & Payne. Their punch line after detailing the $483,000 bill: “You’ll be owing, and you’ll be paying.” Whispers was given the exclusive early look at the videos here.

Dave Walker, Peterson president, says, “Owen & Payne was created to help alert Americans in a light-hearted way to a critical problem: the $56.4 trillion federal financial burden that young people and future generations are inheriting.” The bottom line, he says, is that “every American household bears a $483,000 burden, or $184,000 per person, on top of his or her actual taxes.”

The Peterson Foundation, a group dedicated to highlighting the woes of the national debt, has come up with other innovative ways, like teaming with MTV’s college network mtvU in the InDebtEd awareness campaign.

As for Stone and Stone, they are brothers Todd Stone and Adam Stone, who’ve performed at many comic clubs and appeared on NBC’s Last Comic Standing.

[Post edited by moderator - Please don't post entire articles in comments Bean. Link to them. Thx - Ged]

Better make a few last-minute signs for the Tea Party. Obama’s DHS is watching:

Honk if you’re a radicalized rightwing extremist!

Guilty of rightwing extremist chatter

Anti-government, pro-freedom: Sue me

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Previous: Missouri retracts report linking militias, 3rd party candidates.

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Oh, I’m sure DHS will be issuing its report on self-proclaimed bank terrorists like Bruce Marks of NACA and criminal rackeeters harassing private citizens in their homes to “exploit the economic downturn” any day now.

Have only been reading Rick’s blog for a few months now and while his posts themselves can be thoughtful and thought-provoking, he has an annoying habit of primarily promoting negativity. In recents posts he’s dumped on CPAC, he keeps dumping on the very idea of the tea parties, and in this post he dropped a great big dump-load of negativity on Glenn Beck and the other talking heads. I think the overwhelming response (more replies than I usually see in a week or two of his posts) was in this case driven primarily by that same negativity. I’ve seen Rick get called on this before and his usual response is that it’s not his job or position to be positive or to suggest solutions.

Fine, Rick doesn’t like Glenn Beck and thinks he’s a kook, that’s certainly his perogative. Don’t agree with him, but fully support his right to say so. He only helped whip up this frenzy by posting an update calling several responders ‘idiots with less reading comprehesion of a three-toed sloth’. However fitting that may have been, this is typical Rick Moran fare. Disagree with him and, at best, you get a bitingly sarcastic response; at worst, out comes the potty mouth and threats to block your IP. (Guess Rick thinks he has the power to shut down the entire Internet).

As they say, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen’. Knowing his style, I thought I understood his ‘Glad Game, Join ‘Em’ post, but shutting down his blog for two days now really makes me wonder.

Don’t be an idiot. Rick closed it to ALL comments. What you’re seeing are links, not comments.

Ged, you have it right. It’s why I read Moran. The last rational Republican standing.

I’ll be the first to admit I’m not intimately familiar with Moran’s writing, but I did find his post about Beck to be sincere. If you could point me at some pieces he’s written that show that to be untrue, please link to them here if you would. I didn’t have time to go back and read a year’s worth of posts on his blog before writing my thoughts up.

As for him closing comments to all but “sympathetic” links, I have no control over what he does on his own blog. My post isn’t necessarily to show support for him, it was meant to highlight the weak knees the right has had since the election. Bash Rush one day, submit a public apology the next. If he’s pulling the wool over progressive bloggers like myself, then I’ll happily admit I’ve been had.

You might want to take all this up with Andrew Sullivan as well since he’s mentioned Moran’s voice several times.

Now, had you bothered to read the posts on his website you would have noticed some major differences than the lunatics over at DailyKos or HuffingtonPost; no one was profane, no one was radical.

The only thing that Moran’s entry proves is that he is really great at dishing it out, but not worth a flip at taking it. So he posts his “pity me” entry and wholla! you join in the feeding frenzy by calling those of us who object to Moran’s practice of killing the messenger as “a pack of rabid dogs.”

Moran has his message, and if he wants to get it out, then he should “cowboy up” and be man enough to take it when he gets called down on it. The fact that you even consider him a “moderate” Republican is laughable. Perhaps you can explain to me who “moderate” Democrats are; Pelosi? Reid? Barney Frank?

So what did Moran do after posting his “pity me” entry? He closed his comment to all but you and one other sympathetic blogger. Wow! What a brave person who is willing to stand by his convictions and take the flack that come from them; NOT.

Moran decided to get in the mud by attacking others, but then didn’t like it when he got dirty.

By closing his comments, linking only to his sympathizers, he lost any credibility he might have maintained.

Thanks for helping him with his loss by showing his support comes from the liberal side who screams about Glenn Beck but loves Chris Matthews with his tingling leg.