Matt Taibbi: Tax Cuts for the Rich on the Backs of the Middle Class; or, Paul Ryan Has Balls
Here's a better proposal...
Means test Social Security and Medicare - only the wealthy will pay more, cut defense 50% over the next 10 years, fix Medicare part D - the prescription drug benefit - so that we can actually negotiate prices with Big Pharma, lower the corporate tax rate to 25% and eliminate ALL loopholes, deductions and sweetheart deals, flatten the personal income tax structure and eliminate deductions and loopholes, and then if need be, we can talk about further cuts.
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Matt Taibbi
Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so, has come out with his new budget plan. All of these smug little jerks look alike to me – from Ralph Reed to Eric Cantor to Jeb Hensarling to Rand Paul and now to Ryan, they all look like overgrown kids who got nipple-twisted in the halls in high school, worked as Applebee’s shift managers in college, and are now taking revenge on the world as grownups by defunding hospice care and student loans and Sesame Street. They all look like they sleep with their ties on, and keep their feet in dress socks when doing their bi-monthly duty with their wives.
Every few years or so, the Republicans trot out one of these little whippersnappers, who offer proposals to hack away at the federal budget. Each successive whippersnapper inevitably tries, rhetorically, to out-mean the previous one, and their proposals are inevitably couched as the boldest and most ambitious deficit-reduction plans ever seen. Each time, we are told that these plans mark the end of the budgetary reign of terror long ago imposed by the entitlement system begun by FDR and furthered by LBJ.
Never mind that each time the Republicans actually come into power, federal deficit spending explodes and these whippersnappers somehow never get around to touching Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. The key is that for the many years before that moment of truth, before these buffoons actually get a chance to put their money where their lipless little mouths are, they will stomp their feet and scream about how entitlements are bringing us to the edge of apocalypse.
The reason for this is always the same: the Republicans, quite smartly, recognize that there is great political hay to be made in the appearance of deficit reduction, and that white middle class voters will respond with overwhelming enthusiasm to any call for reductions in the “welfare state,” a term which said voters will instantly associate with black welfare moms and Mexicans sneaking over the border to visit American emergency rooms.
Continue reading at Rolling Stone...
Apr 19, 2011 at 11:49 AM
Reader Comments (16)
http://redactednews.blogspot.com/2011/04/pentagons-trillion-dollar-spending.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/visalli4.1.1.html
http://revolutionarypolitics.tv/video/viewVideo.php?video_id=14545
"Barack Obama Is The Black Mascot Of The Wall Street Oligarchs"
Wake up Tater, "left wing" and "right wing" are only made up terms so people who can't think for themselves align with the "other side". All the while, the powers that be pilfer your savings.
When is the serious class going to acknowledge that increasing the size of the shovel of money to insurance companies is not going to provide healthcare?
I would ask Ryan what is the role of the insurance company in providing services and what do the vouchers accomplish? If the point is to have a death panel, i.e., when you run out of healthcare dollars you die, why can't we spend our allotted care dollars directly? What does turning over our allowance to Papa Insurer add? Isn't it an elaborate dance to protect insurer's profits and GOP campaign contributions?
Real costs controls would be like what DB said about negotiating drug costs, one of the out-of-control costs baked in the LAST time the GOP "fixed" healthcare. Negotiate drug costs and get rid of the current supply chain cartel by creating an open internet market. There is a lot that could be done if either party was interested in stopping the monster they created when they made a Frankenstein system that socialized the demand but privatized the profit motive. It's the worst of both worlds. We wold be better off if we went either way, to a completely ruthless non-subsidized system in which costs would go down dramatically, or go for universal care. The system we have now is killing our economy, not providing care and not providing insurance that does what insurance is supposed to do, which is to protect from catastrophic loss.
1) put the financial criminals in jail
2) watch the financial crimes cease because they are being punished, not rewarded
3) watch the economy mend itself once fraud and financial crimes are a thing of the past
It may not solve the debt crisis overnight, but continue NOT doing this, and all the other austerity crap we invent to deal with it will be for naught.
Of course, we'd have already done this if the financial criminals weren't in bed with government (see Orszags departure to Fed Trillion Plus Club discount window winner CITI as the latest swing of the revolving door) but we're going to have to do it eventually anyway.
We can do it the "civilized" way ... or the hard way. Their cronies, their choice.
We had regulatory agencies, but they failed because Washington set up a revolving door between industry and regulator. Anything that couldn't be accomplished there could be managed via the White House and executive orders. Regulators became facilitators for those who could afford to buy influence.
Then law enforcement surrendered. Since big corporations have more lawyers (and loopholes) than God, the Corporate Integrity (what an oxymoron) Agreement was created. The CIA guarantees that the fines paid for criminal activity will be disproportionately light AND paid by someone else. No one will ever go to jail, and no corporate supercitizen will ever get the death penalty. Like regulators, law enforcement has become a facilitator, merely adding a cost of doing business to the connected while helping cull less connected competition.
The solution to the budget is not squeezing the American people more than they have already been. The solutions lie in speaking honestly about the corruption in Washington and the failure of letting money run government.
Obamacare’s backroom deal
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/aug/14/obamacares-backroom-deal/
"The deals really were ugly. One involved an $80 billion closed-door pact between Obama and the top pharmaceutical industry lobbyist, a pact to lower drug costs that critics charge was entirely too soft on the industry. Then came the $100 million deal to benefit Senator Ben Nelson’s home state of Nebraska to secure his vote."
PBS Doc on Obama's Deals with Health Industry Lobbyists
Here's the full video.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...amasdeal/view/
25 Shocking Facts That Prove That The Entire U.S. Health Care Industry Has Become One Giant Money Making Scam
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/25-shocking-facts-that-prove-that-the-entire-u-s-health-care-industry-has-become-one-giant-money-making-scam
Fire John Boehner – America Watched Boehner Fold Like A 20 Dollar Suit So Boehner Must Go In 2012
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/fire-john-boehner-america-watched-boehner-fold-like-a-20-dollar-suit-so-boehner-must-go-in-2012
G Street, I agree with you. The big Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries have become extortion rackets with the Government acting as their enforcers. When they double the cost of my medications and the Government says I can't buy it overseas for 80% less, seem like extortion to me.
Vote em all out and keep voting em out till they learn they work for us. not the FIRE sector.
The Real Housewives of Wall Street
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-real-housewives-of-wall-street-look-whos-cashing-in-on-the-bailout-20110411
Remember who they donated to..
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/09/21/baracks-wall-street-problem-is-now-americas/