Since I am talking to republicans who live in Amherst County it is safe to guess your income is lower. Republicans make up about 60% of the voters in the county so it is within your power to access and stop this madness at the county level. How can we reach out and educate you to what the GOP has in mind for you. What delusional world have the words of tea party, republican and GOP dreamers taken you to? Wake up please, once you loose the benefits Eisnhower, Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan fought hard for you to enjoy, you will be out of luck. Todays GOP is Ultra Right Hard Core Conservative and they do not represent normal people. They do not represent you, they pose a great danger to your lifestyle. Where our country goes from here is up to you. Use your mind. It is not impossible to see the GOP Plan and lets hope it can be stoped. The GOP is not talking about taking things from people in other states, You Are Included in the Benefit Losses.
ACVDN
Republicans have chosen Rep. Paul Ryan, the new chairman of the House Budget Committee, to respond to the president's State of the Union address tonight. In the civility intermission that has followed the assassination attempt against Rep. Gabby Giffords just outside Tucson, Ryan will no doubt be respectful, and sorrowful that he must dissent from the president's course. Don't be fooled.
Ryan is an Ayn Rand-quoting zealot, one of the Republican Party's self-styled "Young Guns." He's spent his adult life inside the Beltway, on the political right, with no experience in the world of business, labor, the executive branch or the private sector. Incubated in a right-wing think tank, writing speeches for Jack Kemp and William Bennett, he was elected to Congress at age 28. Ryan became the most loyal of loyal foot soldiers in the Congress presided over by Tom DeLay and Denny Hastert, a fact Ryan now glosses over as he describes those Congresses as "corrupt."
Ryan has been dubbed a Republican "thinker" by national reporters desperate to find someone they can praise in a party that was extreme before the Tea Partyers came to town. But, in fact, his rhetoric is a barely varnished echo of the ravings of Glenn Beck.
He accuses Obama of a "treacherous plan," saying that Democrats have a "hardcore-left agenda," and claims that Democrats are steering the country "very far left, very fast" - a direction he describes as "completely antithetical to what this country is about."
This sort of rhetoric, once scorned as sophomoric at best, is now common currency on the Republican right. While Ryan will be careful to avoid such language in the GOP response to the State of the Union, he'll reveal his ideological zealotry in the policies he will propose.
Most of those policies will come from Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future," a budget manifesto published last year that The Post's Ezra Klein aptly described as "nothing short of violent."
In a nation where the top 1 percent already captures 25 percent of the nation's income and possesses more wealth than the bottom 90 percent, the roadmap would give the richest households a new round of staggering tax cuts. It would reduce tax rates, eliminate taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest, and abolish the corporate tax, the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax.
The respected Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, drawing on estimates of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, concluded that the average tax cut for the top 1 percent of the population (with incomes over $633,000) would be $280,000.
The richest one-tenth of one percent, who had incomes over $2.9 million in 2009, would pocket a handsome $1.7 million a year in tax breaks. Some of this revenue would be replaced by a value-added tax that would raise the cost of every good Americans buy,
ensuring that middle-income people would pay far more in taxes than they do now. Some would be made up by drastic cuts in health-care spending. Ryan's giveaway to the rich would also drive up federal deficits and debt.
Understanding the purpose of the "roadmap" is key to understanding Ryan. When he speaks of "fiscal responsibility,"
what he really means is that middle-class and working Americans will shoulder the responsibility of tackling debts and deficits, while multinational corporations and financial institutions will reap the benefits of favorable government policies and taxpayer-funded bailouts.
His plan would unravel employer-based health care by ending the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance. It would eliminate traditional Medicare, eviscerate Medicaid, and terminate the Children's Health Insurance Program.
These would be replaced by a voucher system designed to lose value over time. Ryan would also use "price indexing" to
slash average Social Security benefits by 16 percent for those retiring in 2050 and 28 percent in 2080.
As head of the House Budget Committee - accorded what House Speaker John Boehner calls "stunning and unprecedented" power
to shape the budget - Ryan is leading the GOP's charge to cut $100 billion out of "non-security discretionary spending" this year - requiring cuts of 20 percent in everything from the FBI to cancer research, Pell grants for students, Head Start and grants to public school districts.
This is a recipe, given the country's faltering growth, for increasing unemployment and misery. Mitch McConnell sees this as the way to destroy Obama and for the Republicans to win the 2012 Preasidental election.
Ryan, of course, refuses to identify which programs would be cut, or how deep the damage would be. "I'm a budgeteer," Ryan says. "I just bring down the cap" - an utterly irresponsible description of budgeting, which is entirely a question of choosing priorities.
As a career politician steeped in the art of "framing" a poll-tested, focus-grouped message to make it palatable, Ryan will no doubt sound reasonable, invoking basic American values, promising that jobs, growth and opportunity will result if only we adopt his priorities. But don't just listen to State of the Union platitudes. Consider the record and the proposed policies. Beneath that shock of unruly hair is an ideologue with extreme notions that, if adopted, would endanger our future, and leave most Americans far worse off.
Martins Store Virginia, Amherst County
ACVDN thanks Katrina vanden Heuvel for this story.
Katrina vanden Heuvel has been The Nation's editor since 1995 and its publisher since 2005. She is the co-editor of Taking Back America—And Taking Down the Radical Right and editor of The Dictionary of Republicanisms.
She is also co-editor of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev's Reformers and editor of The Nation: 1865-1990, and the collection A Just Response: The Nation on Terrorism, Democracy and September 11, 2001.
A weekly columnist for WashingtonPost.com, she is a frequent commentator on American and international politics on MSNBC, CNN, ABC and PBS and public radio. Her articles have appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Boston Globe and now in the Amherst County Virginia Democratic News. Her blog for the nation.com is Editors Cut .
Meadowview Hills Virginia News, Amherst County
Hey its up to you. These politicians have more money than God and they have sold heir souls to big business but your vote still belongs to you. All I'm asking is that you use your mind before you give your vote away. That is not a lot for one person to ask of another. If you will do that I will return the kindness by scrutinizing the bull crap on the Democrat side. Together we can make our country strong and great again. If we continue to play the GOP's say No to everything game there is no hope.
Amherst County Virginia Democratic News
If we don't wake up and back these crazy republicans back to reality they will destroy our way of life. I see these ignorant poverty stricken dummies in the grocery store and can only wonder how anybody can be so stupid. They are driving around with Sarah Palin stickers on their cars and cling to their McCain/Palin stickers like their lives depended on displaying the fact that they vote for losers. Thats like shouting to the world I'm dim-witted take advantage of me, please. They are living on the benefits the republicans are plotting to take away from them and they are supporting republicans. How completely useless their heads are for anything but a hat rack. President Obama is a black man and they can't get beyond it. They are sowing the seeds and working the fields of their own demise.
ReplyDeleteHello Amherst County seniors drawing Social Security and being medically looked after by medicare. Thank you for offering to give up those benefits and struggle by on your own. The GOP appreciates all that you can do for them and big business. Keep voting republican and we can convert what you are costing us now into a tax break for the rich. Its so nice of you to pay in for all your working years and then with your vote donate your benefits to Paul Ryan and the republican party. We are just sorry that you have only one government account to donate. Vote GOP.
ReplyDeletePaul Ryan's six core issues are:
ReplyDelete1-fundamental tax reform, scrapping the federal tax code in favor of a flat tax (23%). Supplemented by a consumption tax.
2-Social Security reform to include large personal retirement accounts [PRAs] for individual workers and a voucher system to replace medicare.
3-tort reform to end alleged lawsuit abuse. Cap recovery at $250K
4-school choice to increase parental control and competition in education. Voucher system.
5-economic growth to push for allegedly "pro-growth" regulatory and trade policy changes. Free businesses from regulation.
6-welfare reform to emphasize work, personal responsibility, and greater access to capital.
Perhaps your church will carry you when all your government benefits have faded to dust. When your voucher the republicans give you to buy insurance with covers 60% or less of the cost of your medical needs call Bob Goodlatte. He won't take your call but call him anyway. You voted him and the rest of the business loving worker hating GOP into office. Once you lose everything you worked your whole life for you'll start voting for Democrats. You're only gonna see it when you feel it in your life. When poverty beats down your door. You are a sucker and your ignorance hurts everybody. You are a republican and the worst part is you are proud to be ignorant.
Something must be understood here. The run of the mill republican voters don't have a clue what the GOP leadership is up to. These folks have been voting republican year after year without question and if you were to push them for an answer as to why, they wouldn't have one other than Limbaugh/Beck/Hannity talking points. They are ditto heads. Part of their comfort with the GOP is that it pretends to be christian and for family values, control of spending and low taxes. Most of that is malarky. They do stand for low taxes and are willing to let the government fold to get them. Our roads and structures in this country are falling apart. They are in the pocket of the military industrial complex and will fight any war, for any length of time, at any cost, as long as they don't have to pick up arms themselves. But back to the local Amherst folks who vote republican without thought. They truely don't have a clue. They will lose their social security check and their medicare and not have a clue what happened to them. They will pay the 23% flat tax with no exemptions and the additional consumption tax. They are so brain washed they will most likely blame the Democrats and keep on voting republican. Yes, it is sad.
ReplyDeleteHow far to the right will republicans drift? They have been tracking right for years, decades.
ReplyDeleteWill they ever reach a self correction point? The answer is no because their swing right is being dictated by big business. Big business will squeeze every penny out of the country and destroy it before it quits crying for more profit. The real question is Are republicans smart enough to realize what is happening? There is no indication that republican voters and the word smart should be used in the same sentence.
When republicans end medicare and social security will people stop getting sick and old? or will they just go bankrupt and die? This will be a problem for the republicans too, they can't afford to lose all those old peoples votes.
ReplyDeleteReleased by Senator Reid's office. “In an unsettling development for America’s seniors, ending Social Security and Medicare is now the official position of the Republican Party. Republicans tapped Rep. Ryan, the architect of a plan to end Social Security and Medicare, to
ReplyDeletedeliver their response to the President’s State of the Union, and his plan has been endorsed by the House Majority Leader and the top Republicans on the House and Senate budget committees. In fact, Republicans are not only endorsing Rep. Ryan’s extreme plan, but giving him unprecedented power to carry it out. It’s enough to make you ask ‘what’s next?’ But I’m not sure hard-working Americans would want to hear the answer.”
Thank God for Paul Ryan and the republicans. If those old people would have got to keep their social security and medicare they would have lived 25 years longer. The GOP is just quickening the pace to the end and saving time and money. Now they do it for todays seniors and later they will do it for you. Do the religious leaders ever take a stand on anything? What did they lose first their ability to speak or their ability to recognize a need to speak?
ReplyDeleteRepublicans love nut jobs and wing nuts and bigots and any other small mindless group that will cast a vote with them. They tolerate and protect Birthers and encourage their madness for the votes this group of loons feeds to the GOP. The GOP will invent and fund outreagous lies and repeat them over and over in their daily talking points. At election time the Republicans are masters at holding down the vote and dirty tricks.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans have no ethics or morals. These people are dirtbags from the top office holder to the lowest voter. Republicans are a canser on America.
I hope I have communicated my feelings and thoughts clearly enough for you to understand on the value of Republicans in society.
Republicans are indeed dirtbags.those low wage working class people that support them are absolute fools!!republican policies are nothing but dangerous to the working class people in every imagineable way.i agree with every comment above that condems these republican corporate traitors to the american people.we really need to mobilize our voting base so that in 2012 we can actually have a good chance to vote out of office these republican idiots.
ReplyDelete