The Importance of Health Care

Our Gov has a history of closing public clinics and shutting down public health care. But, like most Conservatives, he is dead wrong. Public Health Care allows people to seek care before they need the expensive care of an Emergency Room -- the savings should be obvious. But Conservatives seem oblivious to that glaring fact, and Jindal leads the pack.
Today the New York Times published a story to refute those nay-sayers.
Medicare still has lower costs that any insurance company, read this.

Cutting back on Social Security, which is paid by the employees and their employers, and cutting back on Medicare and Medicaid, which are paid for by employees, doesn't reduce the National Debt. It does reduce the welfare of our brothers and sisters.

"Catfood" Simpson

Harry Shearer, a new character for you!

From the Wyoming Capital Journal:        

CHEYENNE--During Al Simpson's nearly 50 years in government, he hasn't been afraid to take on critics and naysayers of his work in the U.S. Senate or on a variety of high-profile commissions and committees.
But as the co-chair of President Obama's debt commission, the Wyoming Republican said he's been taking an unprecedented amount of flak for the commission's draft proposals to help erase the nation's $13.8 trillion debt.

"I've never had any nastier mail or [been in a] more difficult position in my life," said the 79-year-old Simpson. "Just vicious. People I've known, relatives [saying], "'You son of a bitch. How could you do this?'"

 Not surprisingly, many of the debt commission's draft proposals to cut the debt by nearly $4 trillion by 2020 -- from raising the retirement age to 69 by 2075 to bringing in $1 trillion more in tax revenue -- have won strong opposition from liberals and conservatives alike.
But Simpson said that while every interest group that testified before his committee agreed that the mounting federal debt is a national tragedy, they would then talk about why government funding to their area of interest shouldn't be touched.
"We had the greatest generation -- I think this is the greediest generation," he said.

All this hubbub isn't a surprise to Simpson, given how politically polarized the country is these days.
"You don't want to listen to the right and the left -- the extremes," he said. "You don't want to listen to Keith Olbermann and Rush Babe [Limbaugh] and Rachel Minnow [sic] or whatever that is, and Glenn Beck. They're entertainers. They couldn't govern their way out of a paper sack -- from the right or the left. But they get paid a lot of money from you and advertisers -- thirty, fifty million a year -- to work you over and get you juiced up with emotion, fear, guilt, and racism. Emotion, fear, guilt, and racism.
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A few points:
Raising the retirement age will not cut the debt. Social Security is fully funded through 2039--ask the CBO: http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=11580 -- and is paid for by payroll taxes (currently12.5%, matched by the employer, and capped at the first $75,000 of earned income). The Federal debt caused by S.S. is the money invested in T-Bills (which is how China "lends" us money). The trillion bucks raised by the increase in retirement age will keep S.S. in the black but will not reduce Federal debt.
       Here is the real kicker:
"Catfood" wants to raise retirement age because we are living longer, but that is only true in the average life span. In other words, the Rich and their children are living longer--the poor die sooner, making them less likely to collect the S.S. they paid into, more so if they have to work until 69 and, later, 75. And the Poor and Middle Class work harder for their money than do the rich.
A much better way of funding S.S. is to remove the income cap so that all earned income is taxed. That would allow full retirement at 60 years and no chance of depleting the fund. Republicans don't like that because it means the Rich would pay more than they would ever get back. But how do the Rich get rich? By selling oil, credit and insurance to the Middle Class and Poor, so why shouldn't they pay more? Problem solved.

       Okay, "Catfood's" stupid comment about Olbermann and Maddow:
They are not entertainers, they are journalists. Beck and Limbaugh are not either, they are demagogues who make money scaring people who dwell in ignorance (I saw that first hand when, fleeing before the Federal Flood, I wound up with relatives in Lake Charles. These were good, Catholic people with decent educations, but they watched only Fox "news" and so had a very skewed view of the world. When Auntie S, reading the morning paper, asked "Why does the ACLU hate America?" -- because O'Reilly and Limbaugh said so -- I countered with a mild explanation of how the ACLU defends the Constitution and pulled out my card. She didn't speak to me for 3 days).

The Coming Attack on Social Security

The new Congress will make a strong move to can Social Security, and the campaign has already begun on Wall Street. Dean Baker of TPM plainly exposes the forces behind the attack.

"The thing about Wall Streeters is that no matter how much money you give them, they always want more. Now they are using their political power and control over the media to attack Social Security.
This effort is being led by billionaire investment banker Peter Peterson. Mr. Peterson has personally profited to the tune of tens of millions of dollars from the "fund managers' tax subsidy," an obscure provision of the tax code that allows billionaires to pay a lower tax rate than schoolteachers and firefighters. However, Peterson believes in giving back. He has committed $1 billion to an effort that is intended to take away the Social Security benefits that people have worked and paid for." 

Paul Ryan: Bankruptcy of Ideas

Last Monday, The Washington Post ran glowing reports on Paul Ryan Here. They tell us the CBO estimated that his plan would cut the deficit in half by 2020. What they don't say is that Ryan submitted his plan with only Budget cuts and did not include tax cuts. Cutting taxes AND spending would leave the deficit right where it is, $1.4 trillion in 2020.
This is rather like Little Bush campaigning on the need to reform Social Security using unadjusted 1960, 1972, 1980 and 1990 dollars as though they were equal. It is just another way of lying.
Ryan wants Medicare to issue vouchers for people under 55, which was Newt Gingrich's idea back in 1990. The problem with this is that vouchers would only subsidize a portion of private insurance and only a small percentage of the population could benefit.
He also wants to raise the age of eligibility to 69.
He wants to raise retirement age to 70 years and reduce benefits for those now 54 and younger.
Paul Ryan wants to eliminate  "entitlements" like Social Security. Yet Social Security is not an entitlement, it is a form of insurance which workers and employers pay for. He would establish investment accounts that workers would pay into to build their retirement fund. That would benefit stock brokers, but what happens when the market drops (as it did 2 years ago) and you are ready to draw on that fund?
He wants to eliminate taxes on interest, capital gains, dividends, and estates.
He does not want to reduce the defense budget, he wants to increase it. Even the Cato Institute and Ron Paul think we need to slash the Pentagon's Budget and make them accountable for it.
This is the best the Republicans can offer?