“Budgetball is an innovative sport that combines fiscal strategy and physical play.”
– Budgetball Rulebook, “Pass the Ball – Not The Buck”

Billionaire Pete Peterson is funding an elaborate campaign to convince a nation with more than 15 million unemployed citizens that the most urgent crisis we face today is not unemployment … or poverty, or inadequate healthcare, or the decimation of the middle class. He’s already created a “news service” to propagate his ideas – the Washington Post outsourced its financial reporting to him – and hosted a “deficit summit” headlined by the same people that got us into the mess we’re in today. (Greenspan? Rubin? That’s not called a “summit.” It’s called “rounding up the usual suspects.”)

Now Peterson’s funding an “America Speaks” series of town halls with participation from President Obama’s deficit commission. No matter who’s in charge, money always talks. (“Money doesn’t talk, it swears,” said the folksinger.) In an especially peculiar use of his wealth, Peterson has also paid consultants to come up with the game of “budgetball.” And in a Marie Antoinette-ish gesture, Peterson’s deficit mavens will be playing this “game” on May 21, on the National Mall of a nation whose middle and lower classes are still racked by financial misery.