Showing posts with label Romneycare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romneycare. Show all posts

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Republicans would even lie to their mothers

How can you trust them?  They'll lie about anything.  They'll lie to anyone.  And now they are even lying to their mothers.

Have you seen the commercials where certain Republican Congressmen are asked by their aging mothers if they would hurt medicare?  It is pitiful that they can lie to their own mothers like that as they look them straight in the eyes and deny it.  Some may be trying to distance themselves from the Ryan budget, but most are just fibbing.  They should have their mouths washed with soap.

This year the Republican National Committee is throwing caution to the wind as they incorporate lying into their arsenal of vote capturing tools.  It seems that everyday RNC Chairpeople, Mitt Romney and now Paul Ryan are telling some new lie about  President Obama or Democratic policies.  They obviously think if they repeat the lie over and over again, eventually the public will believe it.  It seems like an assembly of third graders have organized this Republican campaign.

Democrats have been known to be the champions of social programs like Medicare and Medicaid.  Paul Ryan is famous for his Republican budget proposal which slashes many social programs, including Medicare.  Mitt Romney has publicly announced his support for that budget.

President Obama's Affordable Care Act reduces medicare fraud and excessive payments to Insurers and Doctor's.  It is estimated that this will save about $716 billion in costs but strengthens medicare benefits for the elderly.  It is estimated that with these actions, President Obama will extend the solvency of medicare by eight years.  Mitt Romney intends to repeal the Affordable Care Act the day he is elected.  This would eliminate the cost savings in medicare brought about by that Act.  By these actions, Romney would return the $716 billion to the insurance companies and business owners who are perpetrating medicare fraud.  It's also been estimated by AARP that Paul Ryan's plan would undermine Medicare and lead to additional annual costs as high as $6400 for seniors.

Paul Ryan and Mom
So now Romney and Ryan are claiming that President Obama is reducing medicare benefits by the $716 billion.  This is a total lie that Ryan told at a retirement community in Florida this morning, with his mother listening at his side.  Both Romney and Ryan continue this lie in public appearances across the country.

Romney and Ryan's plan proposes that seniors pay up to an additional $6400 per year to get a private insurance plan that will actually cover their medical needs since their voucher program will allow only minimum medical care.  Perhaps wealthy seniors like Ryan's mother won't find the additional costs too hard to come up with.  But for the most part, that cost could be up to 25% of the annual income of many seniors.  Further, being forced to make choices on how to spend their limited income, some seniors may not be able to afford the care that they need and this could lead to premature death.      

If there is one thing that rings true about Republicans, it is that their approach to cutting the deficit is to cut social programs first.  Worse still, they intend to do this while at the same time giving tax breaks to the wealthy.   With tax revenue reduced at the top, the rest of us will have to come up with the difference if our deficit is to be managed at all.  This can only be accomplished by increasing government revenue by middle class tax increases and slashing or eliminating social assistance programs.

Ultimately, the top 2% are given governmental assistance (let's call it high-class welfare) and the rest of us are pushed under the bus.  Does it make sense to give assistance to people at the high end of the economic scale instead of those in the middle and lower end that really need it?  It does to the Republicans.

Don't let them fool you.  Class warfare is alive and most of the shots are coming from the Republican party and aimed directly at the rest of us.





Saturday, August 11, 2012

The next President of the United States: Paul Ryan

Mitt Romney is smarter than we all think.  Or maybe he is psychic. He knows he doesn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of winning the 2012 Presidential election.  So he wisely introduces Paul Ryan as the next President of the United States today on a crowd filled battleship with much of America watching.

And the crowd roared.  Maybe they thought the same thing.  Perhaps they cheered so loudly because they thought "Thank goodness, Romney's finally come to his senses.  Perhaps we Republicans can really win this thing with Ryan at the helm now!"

Of course he means that Paul Ryan will be the 2016 Republican Presidential nominee and potential President.  He can't mean that he's trading places with Ryan in the current Presidential election.  Or could he?

Maybe Romney's freudian slip occurred because he thinks that Ryan would make a better President than he himself.  Perhaps he thinks with Ryan's help, he will become President but is attributing most of the effort in that cause to Ryan.  Who knows what was really running through Romney's head when he mis-spoke so eloquently?  More likely it was a brain-fart of developing senility showing.

But will Paul Ryan really help the ticket?  Talk is that half of Republicans think Ryan will hurt the Presidential cause, mainly because they don't think he is conservative enough and his budget plan doesn't reduce the deficit fast enough.

Even so, it's doubtful that those Republicans will vote for Obama.  However, it is possible that Ryan's  budget plan, his attack on social security, his attack on medicare and his pledge to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) will drive away elderly Independent voters.  That could be critical in swing states such as Florida and may cause them to lose the election.

Perhaps the best thing that Ryan will do for Romney is to remove some of the focus of the very successful negative attack adds.  But then again, Ryan's "sinful" political reputation is sure to draw fire from concerned religious groups and kind humans everywhere.

Now that I think about it, Paul Ryan may not have been such a good idea for the GOP, but  choosing him for VP mate may just be the best thing that the Republicans could have done for Obama.