CLICK HERE FOR INFO
According to the Free Dictionary, wickedness means: “To reveal one’s evil intentions; to expose one’s malicious, venomous, or insidious nature.” This terrible word, wickedness, prompted the question in my mind, “Is There Wickedness in the Republican Party?” As I pondered this question in relation to the application of this definition, I decided to review some of the policies and initiatives going on in Federal and state governments. Two Federal government examples come to mind – the Ryan and Issa proposals.
With a colorful video presentation, Republican Paul Ryan presented his 2012 “Path to Prosperity” budget blueprint which showed a scary looking graph titled, “We are in a Spending-Driven Debt Crisis.” Ryan claims that his budget is based on the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) Alternative Fiscal Scenario. However, when you actually look at one of the CBO supporting documents, the scary scenario is also based on taxes being too low, not just spending being too high. Of course, Ryan decided to withhold that information from the CBO. In addition, Ryan relies on parts of the CBO analysis but blatantly ignores CBO estimates that repeal of the health care law would lead to an increase in the deficit as well as leaving millions of middle class America without health insurance.
This radical plan that most House Republicans voted for and most Republican senators and all presidential candidates endorse, penalizes senior citizens by changing Medicare into a voucher program that would be used to purchase private health insurance and turning Medicaid into a block grant for states to spend as they choose. Ryan also includes a drastic tax reform proposal to lower top individual and corporate rates to 25 percent and end deductions. The plan also caps domestic spending, repeals Obamacare and slashes farm subsidies. In addition, the plan proposes cuts on future retirees, working families, and the poor. In my view, the Ryan Plan definitely fits the definition of “wicked” by assaulting seniors and middle-class America.
Republican Representative Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, co-sponsored a bill, H.R. 2309, that literally destroys the Postal Service as we know. This Bill passed the House subcommittee on September 21, 20011, by a vote of eight to five. All Republicans voted for the bill, Democrats voted against it. This Bill, designed to eliminate the Postal Union and destroy the Postal Service, empowers a newly-created “solvency authority” to unilaterally cut wages and abolish benefits. The Bill mandates 2 billion dollars worth of processing facility closures and reduces “door delivery” by 75 percent within two years. The Bill also includes several changes that would negatively affect workers who are injured on duty, including one that would cut the monthly compensation of totally disabled employees from about 66 percent to 50 percent, once they meet the age and service requirements for retirement. The Postal Service is a critical part of the US economy and is the center of a $1.2 trillion industry that employs 8 million people, including printers, mailers, and other businesses that rely on the Postal Service. The Issa Bill certainly meets the definition of “wicked” since it is another assault on middle class America and encourages the termination of thousands of employees.
As we prepare for the 2012 presidential election, Republican state officials have launched an exceptional, centrally focused crusade to suppress the Democratic voters. Republican governors and state legislators have passed a variety of measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from voting in the 2012 election. This is perhaps the most significant setback to voting rights in this country since passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In an orchestrated and uniform ploy, Republican governors and state legislators are trying to do everything in their power to drive Democratic voters away from the polls in 2012.
CHECK OUT PART II TOMORROW
Free 86 Minute Fully-Loaded FaceBook Webinar will teach you EVERYTHING you must know to make money on FaceBook. Click Here.
If you want a simple step by step way to build a list in online presence and make money from social media, Click Here to learn about the only government approved way to make money on Facebook. (You will need to authorize the app to view the presentation.)
If you are interested in getting more information on acquiring wealth through the accumulation of silver click here to view the video. If not, just delete.
Unabridged CBO Director’s blog:”The specifications may dfiefr in some ways from the plan released today by Chairman Ryan in The Path to Prosperity: Restoring America’s Promise. CBO has not reviewed legislative language for the proposal, so this analysis does not represent a cost estimate for legislation that might implement the proposal. Rather, it is an assessment of the broad, long-term budgetary impacts of the proposal, with results spanning several decades and measured as a share of gross domestic product (GDP). It is therefore quite dfiefrent from a cost estimate for legislation, which would require much more detailed analysis, focus on the first 10 years, and be based on more recent baseline projections.The proposal would also: set all other spending (excluding that for Social Security and interest) on a path that would cause such spending to decline sharply as a share of GDP from 12 percent in 2010 to 6 percent in 2022 and 3 percent by 2050; the proposal does not specify the changes to government programs that might be made in order to produce that path. The proposal would also: set revenues on a path that would cause them to rise from 15 percent of GDP in 2010 to 18 percent in 2022 and 19 percent in 2030 and beyond. No specifications were provided to CBO of the particular revenue provisions that might generate that path.Those projections included two scenarios an extended-baseline scenario based on then-current law and an alternative fiscal scenario that incorporated several changes to then-current law that were widely expected to occur or that would modify some provisions of law that might be difficult to sustain for a long period. Both of those scenarios deviate significantly from the nation’s past budgetary experience. In the extended-baseline scenario, both spending and revenues are well above historical norms as a share of GDP, and federal debt rises to 90 percent of GDP by 2050; under the alternative fiscal scenario, tax revenues remain within their historical range relative to GDP, but with spending above that range, federal debt skyrockets on an unsustainable path and exceeds its historical peak relative to GDP by the mid-2020s.CBO’s long-term scenarios and the proposal analyzed here are all subject to pressures over the long term that would make them difficult to sustain.It is unclear whether and how future lawmakers would address the pressures resulting from the long-term scenarios or the proposal.”Translation:Actual witch doctors would get angry, if you insulted their profession by calling Ryan’s plan “voodoo economics.”