With the announcement of an April 28th Deficit Summit, Pete Peterson has cemented his reputation in media circles as the pre-eminent deficit hawk.

While superficially accurate, the description is misleading in that fails to recognize that Peterson's deficit reductions are to be achieved along very narrow, reactionary lines. In particular, invariably omitted from his proposals are revenue enhancements in the form of reasonable taxes on the income and accumulated wealth of billionaires such as himself and the corporations he does business with. Also, on the spending side, Peterson is always careful to exempt "national security" from the government programs placed on the chopping block.

Rather, Peterson targets his formidable arsenal of PR guns, assorted media hangers-on and academic mercenaries on "entitlements": the relatively small sums which have, since the New Deal, prevented tens of millions from dying of easily treatable illnesses, provided minimal support for those experiencing what is now euphemistically called food insecurity, and via social security, allowed our parents and ourselves to maintain some semblance of dignity in old age.

Starvation, destitution and early death were facts of life in the first decades of the last century and if Peterson gets his way, our future will return us to the Dickensian ugliness of our past. A troubling aspect of the Deficit Reduction Summit is what Peterson accurately trumpets as bipartisan participation, ranging from the reactionary right to the liberal left. Most disconcertingly, the administration's supposed voice of the middle class, Joe Biden will confer the President's blessings, raising fears of another Obama Nixon in China moment: a Democratic President signing off on massive reductions to, or maybe even the effective elimination of Social Security.

It is time for a serious, organized push back to what would have been unthinkable even a few years back. But since so much of official Washington has signed on to Peterson's agenda, it will need to come from the bottom up and from the outside in. And since they remain in thrall to Obama's charms, it won't come from the establishment liberal organizations such as MoveOn or organized labor, or from so-called "access blogs" like DailyKos.

A promising development along these lines is the Fiscal Sustainability Teach-in. Hastily organized by a few regular participants of dissident blogs, the teach-in will feature the participation of several respected albeit relatively low profile academic economists whose work challenges Peterson inspired orthodoxies of the establishment.

Despite its humble origins, the counter-summit has begun to attract attention and is catching on: Economist James Galbraith summed up the views of many in a e-mailed message of support: "The Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter Conference will be the important event in Washington on April 28. Unlike the other meeting, this one will feature important work by honest scholars. It deserves at least equal attention, and very much more respect."

It is our job to re-establish Social Security and Medicare as the third rail of Washington politics. Meddling with our future might get our representatives access to the highest reaches of the establishment and Peterson's billions, but it will place them in mortal danger, targeted and eventually dispatched by a slow but surely developing people's movement.