All I hear, over and over, is that Paul Ryan is the grand GOP smart leader.. he's the future. He's the one to watch. It's his ballgame and we're all just spectators..
so if the presidential ticket you're on runs on a certain theme in 2012, and loooses the pop vote by a landslide... is it smart to come back with a re-vamped theme that is much more painful than the one that was wholly shutdown 6 months earlier?
I guess the 'brain of the GOP' is a really low bar..
And judging by the budget he just released, the "how" here is pretty darn important. T
he budget will be balanced, if Ryan gets his way, through a campaign of thoroughgoing class warfare aimed at Americans in the bottom half of the income distribution in order to protect the interests of a small high income minority.Ryan's plan starts, like all good GOP deficit reduction plans, with a giant tax cut. Specifically he wants to replace the current progressive rate structure with a two-rate structure—10 percent and 25 percent. If you're currently an individual paying a 39.6 percent marginal tax rate on your income over $400,000 that's an enormous tax cut. If you're currently an individual paying a 25 percent marginal tax rate on your income of $70,000 a year you may wonder what's in it for you here. The answer is, most likely, higher taxes.We went through this when Mitt Romney and Ryan were running for president, but the proposal here is to make the enormous rate cut for the highest earners affordable through unspecified tax reform. Since the tax reform is unspecified, it's difficult to say exactly what the consequences of it would be. But a 2012 report for Brookings by Samuel Brown, William Gale, and Adam Looney
found that Romney/Ryan-style tax reform (PDF) would result in higher taxes for most families earning less than $100,000 a year. I'm sure DC's eager think tankers will be re-running the numbers on this relative to the updated policy baseline later today so I'll update you.
Beyond lower taxes on the rich and higher taxes on the middle class you can expect cuts in programs for the poor. Medicaid expansion? Repealed. The Affordable Care Act will offer sliding-scale subsidies to anyone earning less than 400 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (that's $45,960 for an individual, $78,120 for a family of three) to help you buy health insurance. That's going to be
repealed. For those currently enjoying
Medicaid benefits, Ryan will "provide states flexibility on Medicaid"—which is to say flexibility to
rescind your eligibility for Medicaid. If you're on
food stamps, Ryan will "allow states to customize SNAP to address the needs unique to their citizens"—which is to say allow them to
cut benefits and eligibility. There's also some
Pell Grant cuts in there and, of course, overall cuts to the domestic discretionary budget.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/03/12/class_war_budgeting_paul_ryan_and_house_gop_want_more_money_for_the_rich.htmlrecord highs on wall street means money is whose pocket? mine, yours... Trumps? BUt let's not tax Trump, he's a maker.. we're just the takers of his hard earned wealth.
HSBC launders money for the cartel and Iran and nothing happens because they have too much money and it would hurt them to punish them... we, otoh, get pulled over with a dime bag and go to jail for 7 days until the family can get bail money, of course losing our $7.75 a hour minimum wage,no healthcare job while being incarcerated those 7 days.. and that's justice at work.
an election decided with blaring red letters that we not only want more income equality, but when asked on the campaign trail for months leading up to the election, should the rich pay more, the resounding nation-wide answer was YES! and congress stalls any attempt of democracy to actually work.. and instead try to implement the ideas from the party that was trounced in the election.
instead of jobs bill, we get abortion-banning bills... instead of high taxes on the 1% we get sequestration furloughs for low-paid workers. instead of dampening healthcare costs they sky-rocket into the stratosphere and GOP governors dig in and not just refuse to take the money that would pay for the health of their poorest workers,but cut their aid as well..
which fucking party won the election again?
if that list doesn't scream what needs to happen in the 2014 mid-terms.. doesn't scream it loud enough to make it happen.. we
are going to slide into Greece, just like the GOP planned on all along..
I've never seen such clueless-ness from a party before. clueless-ness pushed front and center by a splinter group from the whole.. while the rest of the party cowers like frightened school children...I always thought the Dems were pussies. The main-stream GOP is really re-defining that position aren't they?... well, that's not totally fair since the Dems are too fucking scared to fight back as well... but atleast we know they've always been the pusses, so there's that.
I guess I should give Paul Ryan some credit for smarts... included in his 'austerity for you,money-money-money for Trump' budget bill is the 'repeal Obamacare' section.. meaning, if a single GOP'er doesn't like Paul's plan tough shit sherlock, you can't vote against it.. because if you do then you just voted to keep Obamacare and now they'll primary you for it.
