Paul Ryan Wants to Destroy Social Security & Medicare

ssThe election of Worse and Worser continues. We now know Romney's VP pick, Paul Ryan. Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan managed to get the House Budget Committee chair, and has been on a quest to destroy Social Security and Medicare.

Ryan proudly is the author of the top 11 idiotic ideas to reduce the budget. He also tried to kill Medicare.

Romney has already promised to enact Ryan's right wing social engineering plan in his first 100 days in office.

What a gift to Obama. Face it folks, we're now stuck with Obama for four more years. AARP alone will surely mount their legions to vote against the Galt/Gekko Replication ticket. Most people know election 2012 is the battle of the billionaires, we sure don't have a say. But now the choice has become astounding. We don't think even the Koch Brothers, with their propaganda armies can turn this tide around.

Paul Ryan's economic insanity is frightening. Economist Menzie Chinn put together a retrospective of his deep analysis where he shows Paul Ryan's overall philosophy is give to the rich and take from the middle class poor. That's the bottom line here. Over and over again we have pure economic fiction coming from the GOP, with about the only creative thinking being how to spin it. That's the new politic, how to hide the disastrous economic consequences that their agenda really is. Spin is in, objective truth is out.

Romney's overall economic plan has been called fraudulent by Paul Krugman and he's frankly right.

The big story of the week among the dismal science set is the Romney campaign’s white paper on economic policy, which represents a concerted effort by three economists — Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, and John Taylor — to destroy their own reputations. (Yes, there was a fourth author, Kevin Hassett. But the co-author of “Dow 36,000″ doesn’t exactly have a reputation to destroy).

And when I talk about destroying reputations, I don’t just mean saying things I disagree with. I mean flat-out, undeniable professional malpractice. It’s one thing to make shaky or even demonstrably wrong arguments. It’s something else to cite the work of other economists, claiming that it supports your position, when it does no such thing — and don’t take my word for it, listen to the protests of the cited economists.

Economist Mark Thomas calls Paul Ryan's budget plan the most fraudulent proposal in American history:

If you think the middle class has it too good, too much security, taxes aren't high enough, not enough fear of unemployment, too much help for education, and so on, while the wealthy haven't been coddled enough in recent years, not enough tax cuts, too little upward redistribution of income, not enough bank bailouts, etc., etc., then the Republican proposals should make you happy.

Economist Brad Delong has a flurry of posts on Ryan. One of them has the title:

Romney's Plan for Dealing with Unemployment: Have the Unemployed Borrow Money From Their Fathers and Start Businesses

Dylan Matthews went digging into Ryan's Congressional record, a 14 year history. Some choice pieces of legislation include privatizing social security and here are the consequences of that Ryan bill:

The Social Security Administration concluded that the Ryan-Sununu plan would require huge increases in general budget revenue to make up the shortfall left in payroll tax revenue. Specifically, revenue would have to increase by 1.5 percent of GDP every year, an analysis by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities found, or about $225 billion at current GDP. That’s a big honking tax hike. What’s more, under the plan, investments in the stock and bond markets would skyrocket such that by 2050, every single stock or bond in the United States would be owned by a Social Security account. This would mean that the portfolio managers at the Social Security Administration would more or less control the entire means of production in the United States.

pigpokeThe national polls have Obama winning. We'll see in the next few weeks what the Ryan pick does. Most polls show Americans are opposed to cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The real battle will be media spin. Can the GOP bury their plans and the consequences in the media and spin a happy face on this screw the poor and middle class pig?

What a choice, worse and worser with a battle of the billionaires. Even with Obama winning a 2nd term, which clearly will happen from this pick, Americans overall are in terrible trouble. Don't forget after all, Obama also wants to destroy Social Security and Medicare under the guise of saving the budget. Regardless of party, we still face more bad trade deals, offshore outsourcing, economic malaise, labor arbitrage through manipulation of the immigration system, wage repression, and our final death knell, a financial system that can get away with murder. All Romney represents at this point is the fire we in the frying pan are trying to avoid.

fryingpanfire

Meta: 

Click to Display The Comments

Comments

Matt Stoller, history of Dems destroying entitlements

To justify further the classification of election 2012 as a choice of worse and worser:

Matt Stoller gives the history of Democrats, yes Democratic presidents and leadership, out to privatize, cut and destroy Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Going after entitlements is in fact a tradition of Democratic politicians since the 1980s. The post-WWII model of dealing with entitlements was to expand them as a way of boosting aggregate demand. But as Carter, Reagan and Volcker ushered in an era of Wall Street greed and austerity, that trend reversed. In the early 1980s, Speaker of the House Tip O’Neil collaborated with Ronald Reagan to raise taxes on the poor and middle class with a “grand bargain” around Social Security. Later on, Bill Clinton had his go at the programs, with an even more aggressive plan to destroy the remains of New Deal liberalism.

One of the little known political stories of the late 1990s is how Bill Clinton tried to work with Newt Gingrich to cut Social Security for recipients and pour some of the Social Security trust fund into the booming stock market. Clinton was willing to oppose the liberal wing of his party to cut a deal, and accept Republican demands for private accounts and a higher retirement age. Gingrich was willing to let Clinton succeed at doing so. And Clinton put Erskine Bowles, a conservative Democrat, in charge of the effort.

Click to toggle the display of the 1 replies to this comment

Matt Stoller, history of Dems destroying entitlements

"House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner spar over debt. Transcript below:

Ryan: Here's the point, if you'll allow me. This is your time, so we'll just take a long time. Here's the point. Leaders are supposed to fix problems. We have a $99.4 trillion unfunded liability. Our government is making promises to Americans that it has no way of accounting for them. And so you're saying yeah, we're stabilizing it but we're not fixing it in the long run. That means we're just going to keep lying to people. We're going to keep all these empty promises going.

And so what we're saying is, in order to avert a debt crisis -- you're the Treasury Secretary -- if we can't make good on our bonds in the future, who is going to invest in our country? We do not want to have a debt crisis. And so it comes down to confidence and trajectory. Do we have confidence that we're getting our fiscal situation under control, that we're preventing the debt from getting at these catastrophic levels?

If we go back to the preceding chart, number 13, you're showing that you have no plan to get this debt under control. You're saying we'll stabilize it but then it's just going to shoot back up. So my argument is, that's Europe. That is bringing us toward a European debt crisis because we're showing the world, the credit market's future seniors -- people who are organizing their lives around the promises that are being made to them today -- that we don't have a plan to make good on this.

Geithner: Mr. Chairman, as I said, maybe we're not disagreeing in a sense. I made it absolutely clear that what our budget does is get our deficit down to a sustainable path over the budget window.

Ryan: And then they take back off.

Geithner: Why do they take off again? Why do they do that?

Ryan: Because we have 10,000 people retiring everyday and healthcare costs going up.

Geithner: That's right. We have millions of Americans retiring everyday, and that will drive substantial further rise in the growth of healthcare costs. We're not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is we don't like yours."

This is a taped interview between both. Geithner knows their plan is bull and does not fix the problems long term. Democrats do not relly want a fix. They want ot control the dole completly..
Ryan points this out a few times, Geithner respons is typical Ob Scam We just do not like your plan, not if it better or worse we just do not like it..
I see Ryan as the guy who can get this thing back under control, OB and company are not going to do that.... Geithners' response should tell all of you that..

article link, or google it your self and many other Ryan Interviews, he shows Debbie Wassermann to be a complete idiot, which she seems to be... Also Chris Matthews and others anbout the budget and such...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/02/16/geithner_to_ryan_on_de...

Click to toggle the display of the 1 replies to this comment

They are all idiots, all corrupt

If either party was interested in America, the national interest and even the debt, they would be canceling federal contracts which offshore outsource, curtailing immigration into the country, confronting China on currency manipulation, putting the Banksters in jail, reenact Glass-Stegall, stop putting foreigners ahead of U.S. state resident students for educational entrance, opportunity, jobs, stop making more bad trade deals, give massive hiring incentives, tax, grants, rebates, tied 100% to U.S. citizen workers, create tax incentives for the return of traditional pensions, enforce anti-discrimination laws that are for U.S. citizens instead of turning those laws on their head or ignoring them...

Put social security in a "lockbox" to use Al Gore's phrase and raise the cap on income taxed, enact single payer universal health care....

the list goes on and on and if you notice, in that laundry list are favorites of conservatives and favorites of liberals. That list is derived from actual statistics and analysis, objective analysis I've read, done on a daily basis and I'm just rattling off a policy list off the top of my head.

All we have is noise, idiots, talking blather, non-issues, and a massive snow job on non-choices (such as destroy Medicare with vouchers or go bust), because the lobbyists and corporations who control our politicians, government, don't want the above laundry list of actions they could take to solve our problems.

We see it everyday, the entire "press" picks "empty issue du jour" and prattles on about it for a 24 hour "news" cycle and they wonder what happened to their readers, why their ratings are tanking.

They are not informing, they are snowing. It's like a gigantic snow job, spin machine.

Both choices are bought-and-paid-for

Look at who made contributions to all of these "choices." It's pretty clear Goldman and every other crony capitalist will be fully protected no matter who wins. Soros, and Koch Bros., and Wall Street, Fortune 500 everyone has bought their protection so no matter who wins, they are all safe unlike us. It's just a question of whether they can drink Dom at the White House weekly or will have to put that off for 4-8 years. And then the social calendar reverts back to when their puppet is back in the WH.

Write in votes work if only to protest and show the choice between two evils isn't really a choice at all. So, would the condemned like the executioner to use a Smith and Wesson or Colt? Wow, options options. Can I choose neither and save my own skin somehow? At least the never mentioned Buddy Roemer discussed the corruption and BS money killing our democracy - but he was summarily ignored and dismissed.

I've done my share of bashing this Congress and administration and the idiocy is always bipartisan, so quickly on to the GOP lest I be called partisan.

I can't wait until Romney and Ryan claim they are all about free markets and American can-do spirit. Horatio Alger stories, no really, just like every other normal American that wants to rule 300 million of their fellow citizens (and who doesn't feel that they are that enlightened and special that they can decide the fates of so many people - talk about narcissism + megalomania). Oh, most people are far too modest and intelligent to think they can be President? Well, that's why only a special breed of person ever seeks office and all the $ people can buy you with and not the fewer real jobs in the USA.

Romney, the son of an automobile lobbyist in DC, Governor of Michigan, who obviously had major connections that got him into Harvard, private equity, and on to a Governorship. Outsider? Pull-yourself up by your bootstraps? He knows financial struggles and hard work like the working poor and overeducated, outsourced American long-term unemployed? Ever worked a job that you might actually lose money in in the baking heat outside or inside because of complete lack of available benefits and low pay? Struggled with medical bills and food and fuel prices that never seem to drop? Nah.

Paul Ryan. Became involved in politics before college and during college (and that's never a good sign - did you really trust those people in high school and would you trust people seeking office/self-promoting that early in life now)? Used Social Security payments to help pay for college (I guess SS is okay for some people). First jobs outside college were in Congress. Had a job with a family company briefly. But he'll claim he's an outsider, someone who despises politics, who is so middle class and knows struggles. There are videos of him attacking OWS and telling them to get a job. Hey, I think a complaint is that jobs keep rushing outside our country and the ones remaining no longer want US citizens. There are no jobs, and every opening has 100+ applicants, including 60,000 hired from 1 million McDonald's applicants. Clueless.

Any one of these people going to take on Wall Street? Hardcore anti-bankster background? Anti-corruption? Outsourcing and immigration/visa exploitation? Why would they, they've been paid-for already and Wall Street CEOs demand ROInvestment. DOJ going to take on Wall Street under either party? No way. But they are like all good bullies, they will have no problem attacking the middle class and those without paid-for representation and billions in the necessary "fees" who will simply never be able to obtain 30 seconds of time to explain how we are being systematically wiped out.

Write in - "No one - s choice for anyone is a choice for corruption." Whether Louis XVI wears a read robe or a blue robe doesn't really matter to any of us, we're doomed either way.

Click to toggle the display of the 1 replies to this comment

hence the phrase "worse and worser"

We'll have to step up analysis based on real statistics, economic theory, facts. The snow has been falling fiercely on reality, hard to keep up. Regardless with this "choice", GOP sealed their claim to being Worser in election 2012. Social security is the only thing left standing for a majority of Americans. Retirement is already long gone between the removal of pensions, corporations squeezing retirement benefits, 401ks where people have lost everything in stock market crashes and the #1, being continually fired and cannot find a job.

We're literally looking at a sea of homeless old people as it is.

Click to toggle the display of the 3 replies to this comment

Wall Street controlling Social Security - what could go wrong?!

Lassie, what's that? The US Government would put the savings and accounts of millions of Americans under the control of Wall Street banksters? The same criminals that bet against their own clients in derivative instruments they bet trillions on but never disclosed a blatant conflict of interest in and the bought-off DOJ and SEC okay? The same 2 and 20 fraudster current hedge fund tools that would laugh all the way to Davos as they would realize they literally get paid trillions more for doing nothing but earn fees for losing to the market indexes? The same Wall Street that commingles funds, steals individuals' money, and escapes any justice despite literally 100s of 1,000s of documents, emails, etc. demonstrating guilt beyond a reasonable doubt mandating life sentences in Leavenworth? The same Wall Street that engages in price manipulation of LIBOR rates and basic commodities like oil, silver, gold, and aluminum (greetings Mr. Dimon and Blankfein, why do investment banks interest themselves in aluminum)? The same Wall Street that contributes to both D & R because real values don't matter, only that you own regulators and law enforcement and policy makers thoroughly? The same Wall Street that cooks books to get Greece into the Euro and then wants austerity and to privatize public assets when countries have 20%+ unemployment? The same Wall Street that bribes public officials to construct economically untenable deals that bankrupt cities and counties (Jefferson County says what)?

Lassie, for a collie you sure are much smarter than "the best and brighest" and "job creators" and every single American politician. Golly, Lassie, it's a damn shame our Constitution doesn't allow dogs to get elected but instead we have to vote for corrupt dolts that are called "wonks" and "experts" and "intelligent" if they can read a teleprompter or impress a TV host or repeat their puppetmasters' script without drooling on themselves. Gosh Lassie, I sure hope these dolts don't invoke our Founding Fathers' because I think Thomas Paine really didn't approve of banksters and saw the need for the elderly and physically and mentally disabled to be taken care of through a social security system, along with an estate tax and many other cutting edge ideas. And don't get me started on banksters, Lassie, rumor has it old Thomas Jefferson and many others didn't trust them at all, but let me check what Bill O says on Fox or what MSNBC tells me, thinking is so old fashioned.

Click to toggle the display of the 1 replies to this comment

exact, Wall Street injection

We've already seen retirement wiped out. The move from traditional pensions to 401ks.

This has been proven to be a disaster multiple times, they did it in Chile as well.

Click to toggle the display of the 1 replies to this comment

Class Warfare?

Romney-Ryan are the embodiment of that.

Frank T.

Indeed

Romney(aka: Mittens) was selected to run because of his innate ability to bend to the wishes of anyone who pulled his strings. By all accounts he's a man who doesn't believe in or stand for much of anything except self-enrichment. Probably quite stupid given how he conducted himself in Europe, he certainly cannot speak extemporaneously about any subject, which is scary.

A modern day Thurston Howell the III without the panache.

The fatal flaw with Mittens is that his own base hates him. They know he's a fake and it shows in the way he acts. Why do you think he's called 'Plastic Romney'. No one I know is enthused by him. The ones who will vote for him aren't voting because they like him, it's because they don't like Obama.

So people will vote because they despise the other guy even more. Wow, what a system.

Rayan OTOH is a Remora and a idiot. A bad combination.
He's never had a real job or run anything except his mouth. Again signs of stupidity and parasitism. On his own he could aspire to be a tape worm. The real bad news is that he'll scare away independents and the elderly, whom no candidate can win the presidency without their support.

Either Mittens is shown to moderate this pasty faced loon or he destroys the GOP chances.

Medicare Advantage Plans, Core of the Medicare Voucher Scam

3 years back, I am ashamed to say, I got hooked up with the good folks selling the Medicare Advantage Plans. The plans are marketed in the "urban" counties (read "poor"). These private plans were designed to supplant fee-for-service Medicare with Private Insurance HMO plans. The Advantage plans were created by that Orwellian bureau called the Center for Medicare Excellence.

The plans had $2500 deductibles before any expenses were paid, unlike the Medicare 80% reimbursement percentage, and other disadvantageous differences too many to name. One noteworthy, though, was the $1 million lifetime limit on expenses (say for the terminally ill).

The Center for Medicare Excellence threw in a sweetner the way car salesmen do. Every customer of the Policies would receive a boost in their Social Security checks of $50. Quite a deal right?

Well, poor people are poor but they are not necessarily stupid. The reaction to the feeble attempts to sell Advantage Plans ranged from icy indifference to angry hostility but no sale. The lesson here is not just about how low-income people can figure the subtleties of the difference in plans to their great and real advantage (in favor or Medicare of course).

Most impressive thing about poor people is that they recognize the idea of large personal liability in the Medicare Advantage plans. Even when tempted by $50 increases in SS checks, many folks living on $1200 per month refuse to buy Medicare Advantage plans.

The Ryans and Sununus and the rest are claiming that "of course people will take private plans". This is plainly a lie. So, if Medicare Advantage plans will not be accepted voluntarily, how will these be forced on the public? Plainly, coercion with have to be used.

So shortly after understanding the Medicare Advantage scam in totality, I bailed.

Burton Leed

Paul Ryan takes contributions from Iran sanctions breakers?

Oh my, I thought "conservatives" (not in the sense of old school, just Fox News) and the GOP didn't like Iran? After all, doesn't Iran help attack our troops overseas through surrogates? Doesn't Iran launder money through HSBC and other banks? Gosh, that sounds illegal. Hey, Bill "No Spin," whatsup? Cato? Rupert "Time to hack 1,000 phones and stalk and bribe police" Murdoch? Home Depot founder and free market guru? Eh? Yeah, they do. But weren't the Koch Brothers busted for trading with Iran? Yup, they were, in 2008. But if a common citizen did that, they'd be in a federal pen right now. But if you are a member of the 1% like Koch or Dimon, no worries! Relax, the noble politicians and DOJ have you covered! I mean you get what you pay for.

But Bloomberg confirmed it, and when a bankster attacks other big $ interests, it must be really, really bad. Didn't the Kochs' father make his money from building pipelines for Uncle Joe in the 1930s when he was killing Ukrainians, free thinkers, democrats, Poles, Germans, Jews, etc.? Gosh, the Gulag, that was pretty freaking horrific for tens of millions of innocent people. Oh well, the Kochs needed their money.

Crazy, I didn't think Iran and Stalin were models of democracy and free market capitalism, but that shows how little this person knows. I wonder, Paul, will you return all money to the Kochs because their entire fortune in the past and present was built on dealing with some really terrible people, Stalin in the past and Iran in the present? Or is that not allowed?

Once again, D & R, all the same, this ain't partisan.
Oh, at least opensecrets says Paul Ryan takes money from beer companies. And looking at America's future bought-and-paid for by the 1%, beer is what we all need. See you at the bar! And if you praise Iran's govt. or Stalin, see how much the 1% have sway among the 99%.

Ayn Rand = Sociopathy

This piece is over the top, but has some tidbits on the culture of Ayn Rand I did not know.

Bottom line, the destruction of the middle class, poor, social mobility under the guise of austerity is alive and well in Europe.

The technocratic elites in Europe are now firmly trying to inflict bone-crushing austerity on ordinary workers, despite visible evidence of its failure (debt to GDP ratios keep rising as the economies contract) and widespread public opposition. There the rationale is a bizarre combination of “punish the borrowers” when countries like Ireland and Spain were held up as poster children of economic success until the bust, and a need to hide the fact that what looks like rescues of the PIIGS is in fact bailouts of French and German banks.

Click to toggle the display of the 1 replies to this comment

Her writing is awful, to say nothing of her personal issues

Let's face it, people who worship her (what sane person does that?) either have no eye for writing and/or are desperately in need of something that only a therapist can help them with, to say nothing of her personal life + hypocrisy. Her heroes are bizarre, including an architect that would rather destroy his work than compromise at all with his paying clients (not exactly good business practices). And I guess all those fancy big-time capitalists that run away built everything with no one else's help in her other piece of garbage. All by themselves they built roads, educated their workers, gave medical care to their workers, built the trains and trucks and cars, guarded borders, fought wars, built guns, discovered medicines, cured diseases, bought the products they were selling, etc.? All by themselves without help from anyone else anywhere at any time - truly astonishing. And the characters deliver monologues/diatribes that go on and on and on. But apparently the 1% really do believe that, as we see banksters and CEOs continuing to claim they really do deserve mega riches despite requiring our helping them for their endless and repeated failures. Yeah, whatever.

As a truly great American writer and wit once said, "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." I doubt politicians and banksters read much Twain, otherwise they would follow his advice. Too witty, too intelligent, and the man gave us "The Gilded Age." Talk about true talent.

Click to toggle the display of the 1 replies to this comment

Ayn Rand's Hypotheses

Alan Greenspan tested one, that the "self-interest will correct market error, and thus markets are rational."

His testimony: "I was wrong."

Frank T.

But inquiring "minds" want to know . . . what is Ryan's workout?

And right on cue showing that thinking American citizens really have no one to look to but themselves for their own safety and protection and welfare, the media asks the truly important question, "What is Paul Ryan's workout routine and is it right for me?" And people get paid for this? And they have jobs? Please, no more. I had no idea Paul Ryan's workout mattered one iota to the Republic, especially in these dark days. It would be funny except every second spent on this madness is a second the real issues are ignored and minimized.

Hey, Paul and the media, that's fascinating. Now go try to find a roofing job or work in a warehouse midnight shift or dig ditches (like Tesla did - and he was a wee bit brighter than you and knew real struggles from Day 1) for a real workout that might just feed and house one person for one day. Just make sure you can find that open job wherever it may be located, they will hire you despite the fact that you are "overqualified" and don't have any experience following college in anything outside Congress, and you can last more than a few days (hopefully you can last until 80+ and don't need any benefits and never get injured). And if you can't, don't come whining to us, it's every man and woman for themselves, that's what you keep telling us.

The air is rarefied in DC and boardrooms, no struggles, no brains needed by anyone, and the media kisses their asses and asks questions that will stroke their egos. Forget banker crimes, the Middle East never-ending conflicts, outsourcing and the loss of the middle class, massive unemployment, endemic corruption in our own country, we really need to know - does Paul like chocolate or vanilla ice cream? Pathetic, truly.

Click to toggle the display of the 1 replies to this comment

the snow machine

The propaganda machine is out there, in full throttle. Everyday there are "non stories" to create a blizzard of bullshit so people are unaware of real agendas, legislation, policy and donors.

Happens every day and why sites like this are important. There is no way you will see a "Michael Jackson" headline on this site.

Click to toggle the display of the 1 replies to this comment

And the BS continues - Paul Ryan is a Gen X'er - that's so cool!

Looks like I picked the wrong decades to stop sniffing glue. CNN reporting Paul "I know hard work - ha! just kidding, I suck at lobbyists' teats like Iran traders Koch Brothers that aid that regime" Ryan is a Gen X'er and drinks beer and listens to grunge music. Awesome!

Every unemployed and overqualified Gen Xer has so much in common with this spoiled asswipe. You know, never having to work a real job, working in Congress, and getting super rich through investments that somehow beat the returns every other American gets (how does that happen? curious). But he's just like everyone else!

So the meme is presented for the unthinking out there - sure, he's a pure insider that will always be rewarded for doing what his masters tell him, but he's just like Gen X, and baby boomers, and people right out of college, etc. because he can walk and talk.

Now, let's go ask Pearl Jam and Soundgarden and the remaining members of Nirvana how they feel about this douche being a grunge fan. Let's go visit the homeless GenXers and those with $150,000 in college debt that have been outsourced. How about vets of all generations that cannot get hired still after 99weeks because they are called "overqualified" for everything, but Fox and Paul Ryan mock the unemployed because the jobs are out there, somewhere, out there, in some country, you know, where there aren't officially 4 people per opening, with few of those spots legitimate and many, many more applicants per job. Let's go ask the parents of kids who killed themselves because they ran out of unemployment benefits and couldn't live with the pain one more day.

But hey, he's just like all of us. Hey, MSM and the puppetmasters, go screw off after you stop collecting paychecks from your corporate and political bosses. Old journalism is dead due to self-inflicted wounds.

After November

Time to take on Obama's politics by supporting people who have vision on what is happening outside the bubble that has been solidly in place for 30 years. Destroying "entitlements" is not new. Jobs issues are even more important. Ivy League Colleges, Wall Street and DC are supporting an economic system that has proven to fail for those outside their small world. They are perhaps more "compassionate" than Romney/Ryan, but their effect is powerful. Obama sees himself in their circle. Obama, within the White House, can make negative changes. It would take Congress to destroy "entitlements".

false choices

The claim one must reduce benefits, destroy social safety nets to balance the budget is a false choice. There is a sure fire way to save Medicare and that's universal single payer health care, the same as Canada, the U.K., Sweden, Norway, and about over 100 other industrialized nations.

Social security has it's funds pillaged and the fix for social security is well known, remove the top income rate cap.

They set up these false choices to convince people they should vote against their own economic interests on some lie this will save the nation down the road.

Snake oil and Brooklyn Bridge sales pitches.

Shyt Onme and His Sidekick Mr. Widow's Peak

Whenever I hear Romney or Ryan claiming that their plan will be kept the same for those "in or near retirement" while also "saving and strengthening Medicare for future retirees", a quote from Judge Judy comes to mind, which goes something like this, "Don't piss on my leg and tell me that its raining."

Although I am one who has been a registered Republican and voting faithfully along party lines since Ronald Reagan because I agree with the Republican Party's stance on the social issues, yet I will drop my party affiliation to become "Independent" and sit this election out. I cannot and will not vote for Obama and Biden because of where they stand on social issues. However, I will not vote for those who would cut my throat the first chance they get after getting elected. At 51, I have paid into Social Security and Medicare all my working life, and after over 30 years, by now I have a vested interest in those programs.

Where did Simpleton/(Toilet)Bowles ever come up with the idea that entitlements ought to be left alone for those who are age 55 and above, while it is okay to throw those who are 54 and below under the bus? There is no doubt in my mind that this was a political calculation. For a long time now, most politicians have known better than to mess with that dreaded "third rail of politics", so exempting those who are 55 and above from the effects of their wonderful "entitlement reform" was designed to mitigate the inevitable backlash sure to follow any attempts by politicians to screw over such a large class of people.

Whatever happened to the constitutional right of "equal protection under the law"? This goes out the window if Romney and Ryan get their way.

How come age discrimination in the workplace is illegal, yet the Romney/Ryan scheme would discriminate against those who are younger than 55, by not giving them the same deal that those 55 and over are getting? Hopefully the despicable plans of Shyt Onme and Cryin' Ryan will never be enacted. If so, then baby boomers who are unfortunate enough to be in the 54 and below age bracket ought to file a lawsuit to protest age discrimination.

http://www.paulryansucks.blogspot.com/