Truth About Social Security and Medicare

There are so many misleading statements about Social Security and Medicare, it's sometimes easy to lose sight of some fundamental facts--funding Social Security and Medicare has nothing whatsoever to do with the budget deficit. They are funded separately from all the rest of government spending by dedicated payroll taxes. Now under the guise of reducing the deficit, the Republicans want to gut Medicare. Stephen Suh has more.

Republican Unemployment Fairies

The Heritage Foundation has presented a projection for Rep. Ryan's health care proposal showing how the economy will prosper over the next decade. The plan is based on the projection that unemployment will fall below 4% by 2016. Let me assure you, if unemployment goes below 4%, you'll see inflation equal to the 1970s and the Fed will have no choice but to put the brakes on. For a party dominated by inflation hawks who are worrying about inflation now with nearly 9% unemployment, this transcends the ridiculous. This kind of trash is --I almost said unbelievable, but with the Republicans, it's all too believable. The data are here.

Read the Comments on the Post

Paul Krugman on the Republican Medicare/Medicaid proposal. The comments by readers are priceless! One hopes that others are beginning to see the scam.

Republicans Just Won't Give Up Trying to Fool People

Matt Yglesias and Paul Krugman on the unworkability of Rep Ryan's Medicare proposal. Is Ryan an idiot or just a political opportunist? For a party that claims to be saving America in the long run, the Republicans are remarkably short sighted. I wonder if they can once again get people to vote against their own best interests. The fact remains if we want these programs, we have to pay for them. No amount of charlatanism is going to change that. I hope what Lincoln said is true:

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

One has to hope that the time is up for Ryan and his ilk.

At Least the Earth Stopped Spinning for a Picosecond

Steve Benen in the Washington Monthly.

Jenny and Johnny--Big Wave

New (economic) protest rock for the 'teens. From Sir Charles on Cogitamus.

Living your life in the gray
Is the new American way
We're spending what we haven't made

And we save our money in good faith
And we work hard for our living wage
But still the banks got a break

Because the dream's a lie
And the snake, it bit you
When you were awake
And the books all fried
You are bankrupted
Because all the loans you take

Apparently Republican Senators Are Required to Give Up All Reason upon Election

Bruce Bartlett on the balanced budget amendment proposed by the Republicans.

How Rhetoric Gets in the Way of Reason

There's been a lot of commentary on Senator Ron Johnson's criticism of the Affordable Care Act, too much of it needlessly vituperous. Uwe Reinhardt, probably the most thoughtful writer on health care policy, provides a more reasoned response. Both Johnson and his critics miss the most important points within the health care debate. Simply put the current approach to health care in the US has left too many people uninsured and has provided no limits of the escalating cost of our health care. Our health care costs more than it ought to and is less effective than health care elsewhere. There are many different models in other industrialized countries that achieve results superior to ours. Those of us with access to good care at a "reasonable" cost sometimes seem to forget that the care Senator Johnson's daughter received is not available to a large fraction of Americans, especially children. The Affordable Care Act is aimed at helping children who, unlike Senator Johnson's daughter, don't have access to life saving procedures. The response of Republicans to the Affordable Care Act is especially troubling, given that it is consistent with a host of past Republican proposals, including most recently, the health care legislation in Massachusetts. Are Republicans willing to sacrifice the health of American children for partisan political gain?

Why US Drug Policy Is a Subsidy for the Drug Cartels

Ed Dolan explains why the war on drugs is a losing proposition. We need to lose the puritanical approach to drugs, just like we eventually got over prohibition (how well did that work?). America finally got tired of financing organized crime and the bootlegging business. Why do we seem to forget the lessons history teaches us?

Notably Rare Exceptions

Alan Greenspan was a distinguished Chairman of the Federal Reserve until he stopped bring an empiricist and started believing the free market drivel that pases for economic theory in some parts of academia (mostly around the southern tip of Lake Michigan). Instead of doing a mea culpa regarding the tremendous misread on the financial sector (what housing crisis?) he is now engaged in a incredibly ridiculous attack on Dodd Frank because it might stifle the financial sector's ability to "capture financial rents" and thus hurt the economy. This despite the fact that it was the financial sector's grasping after those same rents that caused the crisis in the first place. Greenspan is a continuing master at double speak, where if you look deeply into what he says, it means nothing. Remember, after all, if he seems clear we must have misunderstood what he said.