Things that make you go, hmmmmm

• Ever since 2010 the U.S. deficit has been decreasing BUT 90% of Americans think it is going up.
• The GOP is trying to fix elections under the guise of wanting to voting reform. Several different states (for example, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Virginia) have the state GOP pushing to divide state electoral votes according to congressional districts. Why? Because of gerrymandering, the current layout of congressional districts favors Republicans–i.e., rural districts with low populations would have an equal say with urban districts with high populations. If those proposals are passed into law, then it will be that much more difficult to elect a Democratic President in the future. What’s missing from the proposals? Actual voting reform.
• The NRA is against background checks because they will lead to gun confiscation. Yep, they don’t care if child molesters or bank robbers or crazy people buy a gun. That’s brilliant!
• Ashley Judd, of the famous Judd family, is acting like she will be a candidate for Senator in Kentucky for the Democrats. Right now, Kentucky’s Senator Mitch McConnell’s popularity in his home state is the lowest in the entire nation. Polls to show a match of McConnell and Judd, show turtle boy losing. I haz a happy over this.
• MSNBC hired two former White House staffers.  So much for objectivity.

 

 

Everything old is new again

I and many other people have been saying that the Republican Party is destroying itself from within and seems to need little help from their opponents in this matter. Every day I am becoming more convinced that we are seeing the GOP in it’s death throes (1) because the things they are doing are getting crazier and dumber.

Today we find out that Ted Nugent, the gun loving, draft dodging (2) and liberal hating singer, is going to be attending the State of the Union tonight as a guest of Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX).  Nugent most recently and famously had this to say about Pres. Obama and three of the most powerful and respected women in the world all while brandishing assault weapons:

Obama, he’s a piece of shit, and I told him to suck on my machine gun. Let’s hear it for him. And then I was in New York. I said, “Hey, Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch. Since I’m in California, how about Barbara Boxer, she might want to suck on my machine gun. And Dianne Feinstein, ride one of these you worthless whore. Any questions?

Yes, that’s the kind of man that the Republican Party wants to highlight on national television while the President has invited regular folks who REALLY represent America.  Part of me is delighted because it shows just how far off the Rails the GOP has gone and probably will alienate moderate voters.  The other part of me is pretty angry.  This guy has implied threats to the President’s life (to the point the Secret Service had to have a little talk with him), said some of the most inflammatory things about women and blacks I’ve heard spoken in public, and threatened to turn traitor.  Now yes, we have freedom of speech and no one is saying he can’t say such stupid and offensive things.  I’m just saying he doesn’t belong at the State of the Union because his views are so insulting, ugly and yes, violent.  You won’t see the left doing things like this.  You won’t see Bill Maher, who called Sarah Palin a cunt, attending the State of the Union.  You know why?  Because it’s totally inappropriate and does not help bridge the gap between the parties.  If anything, these kinds of people only make bipartisanship that much harder.  Dems know that and care who gets to represent them. The parties should show their best face forward at such events.  The American people and indeed the world, is watching.  Republicans must not give a shit about what anybody thinks.  They must want a racist, woman hating coward to represent them.  To channel Senator McCain, that’s a problem, my friends.

How about this one…..there is a right-wing radio host, Kevin Swanson, who had this to say:

[W]omen who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies, that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.

Did you know this idea is called a homunculus (3) and it dates back to Ancient Greece, in particular to Aristotle?  Did you know that Aristotle and most Greek men at that time hated women?  To them the highest form of love was between two men.  Women were only there for two things:  serving as slaves to their husbands and for breeding.  The idea was adopted by the Catholic Church and stood for a couple of thousand years (may still be part of their catechism).  But in the 19th Century modern science began to understand about sperm and eggs and development of the fetus, etc so that this homunculus theory has been proven wrong.  Pushing this kind of ignorant and debunked thought is now makes no sense unless they want people to start thinking this way again.  After all it won’t be too much of stretch for many Republicans, if their politicians are any indication.   Why?  Let me show you.

• A bill was recently introduced in New Mexico that would make any woman who aborted a baby conceived due to rape a criminal.  For what?  Tampering with evidence.  The bill was withdrawn, however the fact that they thought it was perfectly acceptable to bring it up for discussion is horrifying to me.
• So many politicians have said stupid and offensive things about rape in the last couple of years so that the GOP held a retreat and had to have an outside consultant talk to them and convince them that they needed to stop using the word “rape”.  Not change their thoughts about it, not reconsider their position or become more empathic to their constituents positions on it, but just stop saying the word.  Nothing about the wrong and right of it, just completely stop talking about the topic.  See, if a guy thinks that “some women rape easy” or that the vagina has defensive mechanisms to repel a rapists sperm or that there are forms of legitimate rape (4), then they can think it, the ethics of it be damned, all they want but they can’t alert their female constituents to their beliefs because it will cost them votes.  Hmmm, wonder why it would cost them votes…..? Because it’s completely wrong and  horribly offensive, maybe?!?!
• Besides an attempt to have a national amendment for Personhood, several state Republican legislators have been pushing Personhood laws and amendments as well.  In which things like abortion at any stage would be murder.  IVF (5) would be murder.  Miscarriage would be investigated because what causes a woman to miscarriage?  You don’t know until you investigate, right?  And the fetus would be a person, so did the mother do anything to cause it? Can you imagine just having had a miscarriage while you are grieving you could be investigated for murder for that very same thing?

Such willful ignorance as Swanson spewing is falling upon very fertile ground.  That ground is full of conservatives who think in similar ways, believe similar things, and who reject science if it doesn’t fit their narrative.  They home school their kids and teach their kids abstinence.  They believe what their preacher, their priest, their favorite  right-wing TV and/or radio host, and their Republican politicians tell them, even if it is just batshit crazy.

Yet another example of the nutso caucus was the decision to have not one but two Republicans give a response to the State of the Union.  See it’s tradition for one of the opposing party to speak after the President. The GOP decided they would have Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) speak in English and then Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) speak in Spanish.  This idea was quickly squashed by others in the Party not because it is breaking with the tradition of only one response. Not because it is a waste of time since all three of the Hispanics who really want to watch the speeches can find a million other ways to hear and read it translated.  It was squashed because Republicans didn’t want to give the impression that they supported any other language but English.  That’s right.  They turned down the opportunity to reach out to the fastest growing ethnic group in the U.S., a group whose vote they resoundingly lost in 2012, because they didn’t want to legitimize that group’s language.  Keep going Republicans, you’re doing great!

Another….the President receives 30 threats against his life every day.  This is 400% increase.  He is so threatened that the Secret Service is being overwhelmed.

And so many others like…..

• the rapid growth in the gap between rich and poor and the corresponding shrinking of the middle class,
• the extreme opposition to reasonable requests for gun control reform,
• the rise of a propaganda arm of the conservative agenda that disguises itself as objective journalism (Fox News),
• the gamble with the debt ceiling and putting the global economy in jeopardy,
• the willingness to let the sequestration occur and slow down the U.S. economy’s growth just after a recession,
• the number of threats of impeachment the President has received,
• the entire “Birther Movement”,
• the purposeful misconstruing of the health care law,
• the surge in actual political power enjoyed by shock jockeys and TV grifters like Limbaugh and Beck,
• the resurgence of secession talk, etc, etc, etc.

I know that none of these things alone are all that unusual and they have all happened before (except for the Nugent thing, I guess, but we could consider the “You lie!” yell during the 2009 State of the Union to be in this class of offensive and tasteless behavior).  But put together, I am beginning to see a pattern of hate, rage even, that is coordinated, stoked and growing.  And it is helping the Republicans destroy themselves.  Which, in all honesty, is to the good in my eyes.  Unfortunately, it’s also hurting the rest of the country too.   If we don’t learn from the past we are doomed to repeat it and I can tell you, minorities and women do not want to and WILL NOT allow us to go backwards to the dark days when we only had second-class status.

Notes:  

1.  It will take several more election cycles, but I’m thinking around 2020

2.  Just in case you didn’t know, this man who is constantly brandishing guns and bragging about how he would revolt and fight against the evil Government, wasn’t so brave when he actually had a chance to serve his country, in order to avoid going to Vietnam Nugent by his own admission smeared shit all over his body and feigned insanity.  He got a deferment 4 times and was eventually given a 4-F.   But now, now he’s a big, big man and people should fear him.  Did he grow a pair over the last 20 years or is it that his kettle of bigotry and misogyny finally boiled over?

3.  various spellings, not sure which is official

4.  there are too many examples to link to here

5.  IVF, test tube babies, usually they fertilize many eggs, implant them in the womb and then once they attach, those that aren’t attached are removed and disposed of

Paper Thin

There’s a lot of talk lately about the future of the Republican party with speculation about the 2016 candidates (yes, God help us it has already begun) and supposed “new blood”.  Who are the fresh faces that are supposed to save  the Grand Old Party?  Well, if you believe Time Magazine it will be Marco Rubio.  But if you believe Jon Stewart of the Daily Show it’s Frank Luntz ¹.    Even Bobby Jindal is still being hailed by many in the media as a potential savior in spite  of the fact that when given the chance to become his party’s torchbearer he failed miserably ².  Some on the left are thinking that Chris Christie, the very large and in charge Governor of New Jersey might be someone even liberals could vote for, mainly because he uncharacteristically praised the President for his reaction to Sandy, that massive storm that struck the Northeast  in October of last year ³.  On the other side of the spectrum some conservatives are once again trying to revive Paul Ryan as the new face of the GOP.  Of course, Ryan is not all that new but he is definitely young and that has to count for something right?

One thing that all these men have in common besides being male ⁴ is that they are all being framed, packaged, sold, and hawked to the American public as being more moderate than the “old leaders” of the GOP that failed so miserably in the last election.  The only problem is is that it’s a lie.

None of these men really represent anything moderate or all that different from the frothing at the mouth Republican base.  Rubio signed the Norquist pledge to never under any circumstances raise taxes–a stupid and foolish thing.  He voted against raising the debt ceiling and in so doing helped to put the world economy into jeopardy.  He helped ensure that the Violence Against Women Act didn’t get voted on in Congress.  This is only the tip of the iceberg.

Bobby Jindal isn’t any better.  He is rated as being a 100% pro-life candidate.  That means on any issue having to do with abortion, he always sided with the pro-life stance.  Always.  He voted to make the Patriot Act, one of the most egregious violations of civil rights this country has ever seen, permanent.  Not long after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, he voted to end the moratorium on drilling the Gulf….his state hadn’t even begun to recover much less his state’s environment.

What about Christie?  He’s essentially taken the same stance on gun control as the NRA.  He has vetoed tax increases on millionaires while slashing education in his state.  He has vetoed two bills that would have helped NJ families suffering from foreclosures.  He is very pro-life and anti-reproductive rights.

And then of course, there is Ryan.  He is all for gutting Social Security and Medicare.  He has co-sponsored legislation for “personhood” laws as well as seeking to ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest.  It doesn’t get any further right on this issue than that.  He voted against regulating the subprime mortgage industry who preys on the poor and lower middle classes like leeches.  He wanted to keep “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, was against gay adoption and enforcing hate crimes legislation for LGBT victims.  He voted against alternative sentencing and supported more prisons.  He voted to spend more money on sentencing and punishing juveniles.  Ryan is the epitome of an ideologue.  There’s no way on God’s green Earth he should be considered even remotely moderate.

The final person is Frank Lundstrom. He’s not a politician….he’s a Republican Strategist.  His is famous for coming up terms and slogans that evoke emotional reactions in people in order to change the actual perception of the party’s stance on issues.  For example, he’s the one that advised Republicans to call the Estate Tax a “Death Tax”.  He is the one that coined the name for Newt Gingrich’s “Contract with America”, which was in truth, a manifesto for how Republicans would fuck us all over but with a smile on their face.  He told Republicans not to say “privatize” in regards to Social Security, but use “personal accounts” instead–when in fact, all they want to do is privatize Social Security.  Back in the 1990′s he famously told Republicans in Congress to use the following specific words every single time they talked about Democrats and Democratic policies:   “corrupt,” “devour,” “greed,” “hypocrisy,” “liberal,” “sick,” and “traitors.”  He is the one who coined “government takeover” when referring to healthcare reform.

So, no he’s not a politician but he tells the politicians what to say to get an emotional reaction out of people and manipulate how they feel about an issue.  Never mind the truth, never mind provable facts….he’s helped to make you feel a certain way and you never even knew he was behind it all.  Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain folks. Except we have to start paying attention to the fact that not only Luntz, but most of the mainstream media is desperate to revive the sagging fortunes of the Republican Party.  After all, without two opposing sides to an issue, you can’t have controversy and controversy is what makes news popular.  So we will be told that the GOP will be “new and improved” with all the same old tired ideas and the same old tired faces but with different words–essentially it will all have a shiny new wrapper on it provided by Frank Luntz, the U.S. news media, and their filthy rich backers (Murdoch, Koch Bros, etc).  Don’t get distracted by the sparkly paper….remember, it’s a paper thin cover over a box that is quite simply full of shite.

Notes:

1.  This is a short video that I implore you to watch.  You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll laugh while you’re crying.

2.  I am referring, of course, to his disastrous speech given on behalf of the GOP after Pres. Obama gave Congress the State of the Union speech 2009.  If you haven’t seen it, you really should.  It is a primer on what NOT to do in public speaking.

3.  You know that bi-partisanship is dead when anyone gets overly excited about praise justifiably given from a member of one party to another. I mean, really? Regular compliments are now “newsworthy” and praiseworthy in themselves?

4.  At least liberals have Hillary Clinton as their current front runner and “face” of the Democratic Party.  She’s neither young nor new, but that doesn’t matter to us.  What matters is the substance of her ideas.  We’re so silly that way.

Best Analysis Ever

You know it’s a shame when a satirist does a better job at analyzing the issues around the gun control debate in this country than our vaunted journalists have done.  Jon Stewart once again schools us all in how to break down an argument and get to the core of what is really going on.   Below is some transcription of the most salient parts IMHO of the video, but if you prefer to watch it yourself, here’s a link to part 1 and to part 2 of his monologue.  Bold emphasis is mine and parts in brackets are my descriptions of video segments he runs during the monologue.

All of us, on any side of the debate, are anti-massacre. If some commonsense firearms regulations might cut the number of these killings, why not try?

Then he shows a video of former Gov. Jesse Ventura using drunk driving as an example, saying ‘do we go to the motor companies and say stop making these automobiles because people get drunk, drive and kill people?’  Jon responds:

No, but we do enact stricter blood alcohol limits, raise the drinking age, ramp up enforcement and penalties, charge bartenders who serve drunks, and launch huge public awareness campaigns to stigmatize the dangerous behavior in question and we do all these things because it might just help bring drunk driving rates down by, I don’t know, by two-thirds in a few decades.

Jon said the latter while displaying a chart showing the reduction in drunk driving from 1973 to 2007 by, surprise, two-thirds.  Then in response to Wayne LaPierre’s videotaped statement that ‘the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun’ Jon says:

So the school principal with a gun is going to stop a guy with an assault rifle and a bullet proof vest? You know I don’t think Principal Belding is as bad ass you think he might be. Here’s the problem, technology has democratized carnage. And it’s very weird to me that gun enthusiasts won’t even entertain…let me amend that, some gun enthusiasts won’t even entertain the idea of common sense law enforcement supported small bore, so to speak, moves to try and rein in this violence. What’s really going on here?

Next the plays a video of Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) saying we have a Constitutional right to keep and bear arms and responds:

Yeah, yeah, for a “well-regulated militia”, not a personal arsenal free for all. There’s all sorts of stuff you can’t have already: tanks, F-16 fighter jets, surface to air anything! When that Constitution was written people had muskets. So, okay, you can have all the muskets you want. You can even have assault muskets for all I care. Jazz it up with a bayonet. Go fucking nuts!

But why is it that there is no other issue in this country with as dire public safety consequences as this that we are unable to make even the most basic steps towards putting together a complex plan of action to slow this epidemic spread? What is really going on here?

Jon then shows a video of a variety people talking about how they fear the government will take away their guns.  He says:

Now we’re getting somewhere. So this isn’t really about the Constitution or efficacy of regulation or about intruder defense. It’s about how perilously close some people in this country feel they’re living to a tyrant’s rule.

The video continues with the same commenter and then of rightwing radio host Alex Jones citing examples in history of guns being taken away.  Jones BTW was out and out crazy in this video, you can see it here.  Jon reacts:

Holy Shit! No one is taking away ALL the guns. But now I get it. Now I see what’s happening. So this is what it is. They’re paranoid fear of a possible dystopic future prevents us from addressing our actual dystopic present. We can’t even begin to address 30,000 gun deaths that are actually, in reality happening in this country every year because a few of us must remain vigilant against the rise of the imaginary Hitler.

As I’ve said many, many times on this very blog.  The fringe paranoid element of gun owners is holding the rest of the country hostage and preventing us from even beginning the conversation about how to properly and effectively regulate guns in this country and people die every day as a result.  While it is infuriating that this fringe element thinks the imaginary potential for tyranny trumps the very real lives of gun violence victims, it’s pure madness that we as a country, all 99% of us in the middle, allow it to happen.

________________________

Note: Principal Belding, in case you don’t know, is a pop culture reference to an American TV character from the show “Saved by the Bell” on the air in the late 1980′s and early 90′s.

We’re all just mice in their world

Remember when Romney/Ryan and the Republicans accused the President of taking out $700 billion worth of Medicare benefits? Now they are salivating at the chance to do something much, much worse. And the “very serious people” (VSP), the David Brooks’ and Thomas Friedman’s of the world, who love to experiment with people’s lives are backing the GOP up on the idea.  Have you ever seen a cat play with a mouse?  They can be pretty laid back and very unconcerned about the mouse’s welfare.  That’s what it is like watching the VSP’s on TV…they’re just sitting back and playing around with us, with ideas that affect us tiny people, all while mugging a serious face while spouting certain catch phrases that make them sound like genuine experts.

These “gen-u-wine” experts are weighing what to do about Entitlements and their ideas are being seconded by Congressional Republicans.  The Republicans believe that to cut expenses and reduce our national deficit entitlements must be “reformed”. What’s an entitlement? Generally speaking it’s anything you have a right to receive. In the case of government benefits, it’s any monies you qualify for as a result of your circumstances. Below is a chart that summarizes (and simplifies) what entitlements there are and their differences.

Supposed Entitlement Programs	Description	Who administers?	Funding	Income Matters?*	Other Qualifications	Current Stats
SSI (Supplemental Security Income)	Welfare	Fed	Fed	Y	None	**> 42 million
SSDI (Social Security Disability Insurance)	Welfare	Fed	Fed	N	Disabled > 6 months	> 8 million total
SSR (Social Security Retirement)	Insurance via a Trust Fund	Fed	Paid by us	Sort of***	> 67 years old and retired	> 33 million
Medicare	Health Insurance	Fed	Paid by us	N	> 65 years oldDisabled, any age	40 million +8 million = 48 mill total
Medicaid	Health Insurance	Fed and State	½ Fed ½ State****	Y	Disabilities	Average > 50 million per year
Unemployment Compensation	Insurance	Fed and State	Paid by both employers and by us*****	Y	Unemployed but looking	Approx. 8.5 million

Note that many people qualify for multiple programs. For example, in 2008 there were 9.2 million people who qualified for both Medicare and Medicaid funds. These people tend to be among the most critically ill and vulnerable in our population. Many of the elderly in assisted living and nursing homes rely completely upon BOTH programs to make their care possible. There are other ways these programs either overlap or effect one another. If someone reaches the end of their unemployment compensation and they fall below certain poverty levels they qualify and most likely will turn to the SSI program.

The reason I bring this up is because ANY change to one program has ripple effects on the other programs. And that ripple effect is a true “multiplier effect”. For instance, a change to the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67, which is what Congressional Republicans are proposing now, would on the surface save the Federal Government $5.7 billion in the first year. EXCEPT there are some ripple effects that they conveniently fail to mention. A couple hundred thousand seniors aged 65 and 66 would lose Medicare benefits. For every dollar saved by the Federal Government, it will cost those seniors and the rest of us $2. The only people who would benefit would be private health care businesses (private insurance companies, doctors, etc), who would no longer be forced to accept set wholesale rates determined by the Medicare plan and could then charge these unfortunate people anything they want.

Not only would their healthcare costs increase, they would become a greater burden to society (not that old people are a burden but if they are pushed into poverty, we will all end up paying for them, one way or another).  The net result would be about $11 billion more being spent. So yeah, they want to save $5.7 billion but spend $11 billion to make that happen.  Ummm, that’s a $5.3 billion loss…over a decade we’d end up in the hole for these reforms to the tune of about $60 billion.

That’s some crappy math right there and the VSP and Republicans really, really don’t like math. Because the math also points out who this kind of change hurts…again the most vulnerable among us–it would not affect the wealthy in any way, shape or form. Heck even if these supposed reforms return us to a Recession, the 1% are predicted to come out of the whole thing in good stead. After all, corporations and the 1% saw their profits increase about 38% while the rest of us were decimated in this most recent Recession.

Here’s some other things that the VSP and the Republicans don’t want you to know:

• Social Security Retirement (SSR) is NOT an entitlement and it has NOT contributed to past deficits.
• Medicare is only an entitlement IN PART.
• Medicare is already more efficient than private insurance. Spending for Medicare rose only 4.3% whereas Private Insurance rose at 6.5% per year. Only 2% of Medicare’s costs are due to operating expenditures; whereas, for private insurance, it’s more like 17%–a figure that doesn’t even include marketing costs. And this is an estimate because private insurance companies basically won’t publicly reveal with their true budgets are. In local markets, providers have monopoly power. Private Insurance companies, therefore, have no bargaining power and cannot drive down prices. Medicare has been consistently able to bargain provider costs down. Finally, we the public have more control and more transparency over what happens in the Medicare program than we have with private insurers.
• SSR is solvent and will remain so for several more decades. It might need some slight tweaks but nothing major.  Once the baby boomer generation peaks out, however, the in/out will be more balanced and it should be fine. But we still need to remain vigilant in protecting this Trust Fund.******
• There are other ways, or a combination of ways, to save money in Medicare besides an across the board increase on eligibility age.
  • Lower the eligibility age. We have always known that spreading risk out is what makes insurance possible–the larger and more diverse the pool the lower the risk, the better the return on investment. We also know, for a fact, that Obamacare has already started to slow the rate of increase on health care costs because of this. Expanding Medicare to everyone will increase that effect exponentially. This would lower health care costs but also force us to raise taxes. So it’s not the best solution but it is better than throwing a couple hundred thousand elderly patients to the wolves, turning around and having to help support them via less efficient programs AND increase our deficit at the same time.
  • Implement a Public Option and increase the eligibility age over time. The national healthcare exchanges that are to be set up in 2014 as part of Obamacare would have the OPTION to link to Medicare and its payment rates. They wouldn’t be required but would have the OPTION to do this. Many private healthcare providers, who are less concerned with profit and more concerned with actually helping people, will jump at the chance to treat these people and set guaranteed prices.  In fact, many are happy to work with Medicare and would be even happier to have more patients on it.  It’s good for everyone.
  • Keep what’s good about Medicare and fix what’s wrong with it. For example, there is a proposal to cut $716 billion of inefficiencies from the program. The President’s proposal is a legitimate and smart proposal that only makes Medicare a more efficient program. Congress should approve it.
  • Means-Test it. There are some limited means-testing going on in Medicare right now but apparently only a tiny percentage of the wealthy pay more for their benefits. This can be phased in over longer periods of time. In fact the President has already proposed these kinds of changes in his 2013 budget proposal. Romney called for means-testing during his campaign–let’s see how many Republicans who once supported it now refuse to consider it. There are those on the left who believe it won’t save enough money and this is probably true. But it could be combined with other measures to increase savings. It should be on the table at the least.
  • Provide less benefits for the wealthy. This is the opposite of means-testing. If you don’t want them to pay more, you can simply offer them fewer benefits. They certainly don’t need them and most will never use them. So this is an option where grandma doesn’t have to get kicked out of the nursing home but Warren Buffett won’t have to pay more for the free prostate exam coverage that he doesn’t need. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

Are you starting to get the picture? A portion of what we call entitlements simply aren’t entitlements–they’re trust funds.   Trust funds like SSR shouldn’t be touched in a major way.  So tell your representatives and senators to keep their mitts off of it.  Also, these programs are large, complicated programs that affect up to 20% of the U.S. population directly and the other 80% of us indirectly. Proposing simple solutions to complicated problems looks good on a bumper sticker but it isn’t smart governance.

We need people who not only understand these government programs, but understand that sacrificing those in the middle class and the poor should not be an option in order to protect the wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes.   And make no mistake about it. If they raise Medicare’s eligibility age, that’s exactly what will happen–the middle class elderly who needed Medicare to maintain that standard of living in their retirement years will no longer have that–more will fall into poverty, their health will get worse and everything will end up costing everyone  more.

But the Very Serious People think that suffering and sacrifice is the only true measure of a good deficit reduction plan–but it’s the suffering of the dirty masses from whom they are so far removed.  Always beware wealthy TV personalities and Politicians who talk about “sacrifice” and “austerity” through drastic across the board solutions. On the surface they sound reasonable and they’re easy to understand–only problem is they won’t solve the problem. Indeed they often only make it worse. This group of “very serious” pundits are the one’s who truly have no skin in the game and they have the rest of us right where they want us–ignorant and vulnerable and scared. We entertain them.  We give them status by listening to them and allowing them to become rich and famous for airing their “ideas”.  And they get to affect the national discourse–how very thrilling for them.  We need to be the ones affecting the national discourse because we ARE the nation.

Call your Congresscritters now. Tell them not to accept the simplest solution but to accept one that will actually work.  And stop watching and reading the David Brooks of the world….they’re just playing around with us and our lives.

Notes:

* indicates whether the recipient’s income affects their qualification for the benefit. In government parlance, they call this “means-testing”, i.e., to receive Medicare it doesn’t matter how rich you are but it does matter with Medicaid, so Medicaid IS “means-tested”

**Most of the stats are from 2009. One should expect these numbers to increase over the last few years and into the future NO MATTER WHO WAS IN THE WHITE HOUSE because 1) we have an aging population of baby boomers who outnumber the rest of us and are turning 65, 2) the national population is increasing, therefore so will the number of those who are disabled—a percentage of the population will ALWAYS be disabled, and 3) we had a major Recession (that was decades in the making).

***The “Sort of” for SSR, is slightly different. Income matters but it is NOT truly means tested.  One can receive benefits and still be working, so that reduces your benefits WHILE you work. One can also receive benefits early and work but again, how much you make determines how much your payment is reduced WHILE you work. Once you fully retire and/or are over the age of 65 you get your full payment. This 65 year old restriction is set by Congress.

****this is what they refer to as “matching funds”, where whatever the state gives out in Medicaid, the Federal Government must give the state that much money in return.  Really what happens is the State foots the entire bill until the Fed pays out their half.  So a State does have to deal with putting out the full amount in the beginning and that is a burden, particularly if a state’s economy is poorly run.  Gov. Brewer, I’m looking at you!

***** I’ve worked steadily since I was 14 years old….I think it’s fair to say that I have more than paid my share into various “pay in and get it out later” funds and I have never drawn a penny of that money out (and God willing, I never will have to). There are few people that get more out of the system that they put in. Not the mythical welfare queen but the very real white male who hasn’t worked near as long as I have, who is terrified of “soshulism” without acknowledging that socialism is the only thing keeping his bloated head above water. These individuals fail to acknowledge the largesse of people like me…a liberal who has worked her ass off the majority of her life so they can get Medicaid or SSID, etc. If I see one more sign or hear one more idjit that says, “keep your government hands off my Medicare” I think my head will explode. Just shut your piehole, really just shut it.

******We can’t let Wall Street get their greedy hands on the money in that Trust Fund for private investment. I mean, the market, that they control has decimated our 401Ks (the ones lucky enough to have them) and conservatives have destroyed traditional pensions, so to let that group of vultures get a hold of Social Security Retirement funds would be national suicide.

Sources:  

http://thedailybanter.com/2012/12/killing-medicare-by-pretending-to-save-it/
http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10069.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicaid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Disability_Insurance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Security_Income
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3564
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-to-fix-medicare-the-right-way-2012-12-03?pagenumber=1
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2012/12/medicare_retirement_age_raising_medicare_eligibility_age_to_67_would_cost.html
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/10/is-this-really-the-worst-economic-recovery-since-the-depression/
http://healthaffairs.org/blog/2011/09/20/medicare-is-more-efficient-than-private-insurance/
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/10/15824325-in-fiscal-bargaining-buzz-over-means-testing-grows-louder?lite
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/means-testing-medicare/