As I mentioned earlier in the diary below #LyinRyan, a number of journalists have taken Vice Presidential Republican candidate Paul Ryan to task for his Convention speech. Why? Ryan's speech reeked of lies. The lies weren't white lies. The lies weren't fibs. No, the lies were instead deliberate and so blatant that reporters, journalists and bloggers heard them the second the lies spewed from Paul Ryan's mouth.
The Biggest Lie.
But the biggest whopper that was not included in Mr. Ryan's speech the other night is the most stunning and scariest one of them all. This forthcoming work in arrogant mendacity is one for which the Romney/Ryan team will use every propaganda tool known to mankind. It will use every Rovian trick in the book in order to prevent the public from knowing the truth about Romney/Ryan true intentions for Medicare.
Good luck boys.
The Medicare Killers
Nobel Laureate in Economics Professor Paul Krugman is on to Romney/Ryan's plan for Medicare.
But Mr. Ryan’s big lie — and, yes, it deserves that designation — was his claim that “a Romney-Ryan administration will protect and strengthen Medicare.” Actually, it would kill the program.
Romney/Ryan intend to get rid of Medicare by turning it into a voucher system.
Cross posted on Texas Kaos
Throwing Granny under the bus.
But back to the big lie. The Republican Party is now firmly committed to replacing Medicare with what we might call Vouchercare. The government would no longer pay your major medical bills; instead, it would give you a voucher that could be applied to the purchase of private insurance. And, if the voucher proved insufficient to buy decent coverage, hey, that would be your problem.
In other words "Vouchercare" would cut benefits and increase costs. What a typically Republican thing to do.
Why would anyone think that this was a good idea? The G.O.P. platform says that it “will empower millions of seniors to control their personal health care decisions.” Indeed. Because those of us too young for Medicare just feel so personally empowered, you know, when dealing with insurance companies.
Still, wouldn’t private insurers reduce costs through the magic of the marketplace? No. All, and I mean all, the evidence says that public systems like Medicare and Medicaid, which have less bureaucracy than private insurers (if you can’t believe this, you’ve never had to deal with an insurance company) and greater bargaining power, are better than the private sector at controlling costs.
If Medicare and Medicaid have less bureaucracy than private insurance why would Romney/Ryan want to replace it?
So Vouchercare would mean higher costs and lower benefits for seniors. Over time, the Republican plan wouldn’t just end Medicare as we know it, it would kill the thing Medicare is supposed to provide: universal access to essential care. Seniors who couldn’t afford to top up their vouchers with a lot of additional money would just be out of luck.
Still, the G.O.P. promises to maintain Medicare as we know it for those currently over 55. Should everyone born before 1957 feel safe? Again, no.
For one thing, repeal of Obamacare would cause older Americans to lose a number of significant benefits that the law provides, including the way it closes the “doughnut hole” in drug coverage and the way it protects early retirees.
The vast majority of seniors would not be able to top off their Vouchercare. Given that many are living on fixed incomes with increasing costs in consumer goods, many seniors struggle to make it month to month.
In other words the Romney/Ryan plan would work for the 1%.
Romney/Ryan will try every trick in the book to mislead people. They'll hire smear artists, propagandists, word smiths and they will double down on Fox "News" to make sure it carries their lies.
Ryan's proposed budget is so austere that the Catholic bishops said it fails the moral test. And this is one reason why the nuns on the bus traveled throughout the U.S. to advocate for social justice.
On jobs: The Ryan budget would cost five million jobs in the next two years. That's not five million jobs created. That's five million jobs lost in the extreme austerity his budget would create. [...]
On education: Ryan would take Pell grants away from one million students in the next decade. That's just part of the $291 billion in cuts that also hit Head Start, child care, K-12 education, and job training.
On the safety net: Ryan would cut Medicaid and other health programs for low-income Americans, including the elderly and children, by $2.4 trillion, not billion, trillion.
On food assistance: He would cut food stamps by 17 percent over the next decade, $134 billion. That's $134 billion that's not helping the millions of people newly unemployed by his cuts.
Notice Ryan's budget does not include revenue increases like, God forbid, asking billion and millionaires to pay a few more pennies in taxes. When in doubt make life miserable for the middle class and even more cruel for the poor.
Romney/Ryan's hypocrisy on Medicare takes ones breath away.
It’s only natural that the Republicans don’t want anyone to know that thousands of protesters are in Tampa to protest Republican hypocrisy on a number of issues, much of that hypocrisy centering on how the Republican Party plans to “support” and “protect” Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid, three programs upon which the poor, the disabled and the elderly of the nation depend.
According to the conspiracy theories surrounding the mysterious absence of content at the Republican National Convention—Romney knows if he told Americans what he planned to do his campaign would essentially be committing suicide—the talk of protecting and supporting those social welfare programs comes straight out of George Orwell’s “1984”: War is Peace, Love is Hate, Black is White.
You see, some of us who have been paying attention to how the Republican Party is framing these and other issues know that the Joseph Goebbels of the party, Frank Luntz, has mandated they use such words as “support” and “protect” to mask the fact Republicans plan to gut Medicare, privatize Social Security and abandon Medicaid. That’s right. That’s the Republican plan: Apparently, to them, the debt they created during the Bush Administration, something created as part of a long-term agenda, is much more important than the health and well-being of the nation’s most vulnerable citizens. If Romney betrayed his agenda, he’d lose in a landslide.
Earth to the Fake and the Liar
Take your VoucherCare and shove it, dudes. We don't want it. Leave Medicare alone. Keep your greedy mitts off of our Social Security, Pell Grants, Medicaid, Head Start, Child Care, Education, Food Stamps and Job Training Programs. Create jobs instead of destroying them. If you want to decrease spending stop invading other countries for no reason. If you want to increase revenues, Mitt, bring your money back into the U.S. and pay your fair share of taxes.
One has to wonder what the motives are of a man who bets against his own country by hiding his wealth in foreign ones. Why does Mitt Romney want to be the President of the United States?
Wouldn't it be more appropriate for him to apply for a job as a CEO of a mult-national corporation, or better yet, for CFO of Goldman Sachs instead?