It depends who you are talking to what will be achieved by Privatizing Ryan's Roadmap to Ruin budget plan should it be enacted. Most people either come down on the side of "it ends Medicare" or "it ends Medicare as we know it," while the Randians like Ryan insist on pretending that it "saves Medicare (okay, something we will call Medicare) for future generations."

Those in the last group are engaging in that age-old-and-time-tested political tactic that we call "lying" when they make that claim. They may call whatever private-insurance apostasy that they want to foist on those of us under 55 "Medicare" but it will look as much like the Medicare our parents know and love as a McNugget looks like a chicken.

Medicare has been wildly popular and extremely effective at delivering healthcare to America's elderly and disabled people for nearly fifty years, and as a result of that, it has been in the crosshairs of republicans and other assorted miscreants and privatizers for it's entire existence.

It was Rahm Emanuel who said "never let a crisis go to waste" and immediately he got hammered by republicans and their mouthpieces, but they were only protesting because they wanted to deflect attention from their own pioneering work in that same field of endeavor. It was just short of brilliant the way they ran up the deficit and depleted the nation's coffers when they were in power, making it possible for them now to scream, wail, gnash their teeth and rend the cloth from their breast as they decry the deficit and insist that "we're broke!" and all the safety net programs have to be gutted, if not outright shut down, otherwise the republic is doomed.

Credit where credit is due: When they get rolling, they can be far more melodramatic than any 8th-grade girl's-school production of Romeo and Juliette, and just hope that no one fact-checks them.

For a plan that they insist is necessary because the current system is headed for bankruptcy, it sure doesn't save any money. In fact, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, privatization would actually cost 11 percent more for the exact same services than leaving the current system in place -- and that cost disparity would widen over time, not shrink. The CBO, the non-partisan research arm of Congress, estimates that by 2022, the year the Ryan plan would start screwing retirees, it would cost a whopping 34% more than simply maintaining the current system.

The hard, cold truth is that those of us under 55 would pay more for less than our friends, siblings and spouses who are a little bit older. Our out-of-pocket expenses would skyrocket, amounting to about $6400 per year more than those born a year or two earlier.

Pity the person in their late forties who finds him- or herself struggling in this economy, underemployed, and likely to stay that way. Those poor folks get screwed seven ways from Sunday if Ryan gets his way. They will get no respite at age 65. The formerly middle class middle manager who is stocking shelves at Wal-Mart and depleting their 401K to pay the mortgage on a house that has lost a third of it's value is suddenly paying in a lot less in payroll taxes and this will affect the amount of benefit they are eligible for at retirement. Where they were on track to draw the maximum, they now stand to see their monthly benefit reduced by two or three hundred dollars, and they are depleting their savings now to save their house, so there may be nothing to supplement it. To add insult to injury, that thing they, in the spirit of George Orwell, want to call Medicare takes five hundred and change off the top of what they will get, eating up about half of their future Social Security checks, transfering that money directly to insurance companies and removing it from the economy of the areas where the seniors reside and spend their Social Security checks on living expenses.

The CBO also found that the greater cost-sensitivity could result less frequent use of newer and more expensive -- but frequently beneficial -- technologies and procedures than occur now under current law. In other words, the Ryan plan would kill that innovation that the republicans are forever insisting that free-market forces will certainly bring to bear if we just unfetter the market and let it work it's magic on our healthcare system.

There is one thing that republicans always say when healthcare is the topic that I can't believe they get away with. They always, without fail, say that they don't want a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor.

This has to register a full five cow-pies on the BS-o-Meter.

Let me provide a little anecdotal evidence and tell you about my experience with reimbursements and the filing thereof, since I did some of that in both of my two most recent jobs.

I was the second shift supervisor of a hospital phlebotomy crew...this meant that we had a waiting room full of patients up until 4:30 or so, and then we saw any stragglers that came in. I did the paperwork and filed for payment for the stragglers. When I went to another hospital and worked third shift, part of that job was processing specimens that came in to the hospital lab from doctor's offices and smaller hospitals either for in-house testing or as send-outs to Mayo, ARUP or Quest/Nichols. After I processed the specimens, I processed the "paperwork" for payment and filed the claims electronically.

I can count on one hand the times I had a Medicare claim bounce back requiring more information or a call to their offices during business hours that I had to leave in the day shift's inbox -- and it was almost always a coding error that was quickly resolved. Private insurance was just the opposite. The technologists on day shift in that facility finally revolted at the revolving insurance-resolution job that no one wanted to do, and the lab director had to go to the budget committee and add a full-time employee to her staff, an associates-level technician who did nothing but resolve insurance claims five days a week, eight hours a day.

The dirty little secret is this: There already is a bureaucrat standing between you and your doctor. But he or she doesn't work for the government. They are bean counters for an insurance company, and their bonus depends on them denying you the care your doctor deems you need.

If Ryan's plan were to see the light of day, every claim for every procedure would get that sort of unreasonable scrutiny by a Utilization Management Panel. You are familiar with these -- Sarah Palin called them "death panels" and they are the stock and trade of the private insurance / managed care / profit driven healthcare system she was desperately trying to preserve.

I realize that Ryan tends toward Randianism, and Randians are, by definition, emotionally stunted, amoral and selfish. Indeed, selfishness is not merely a virtue, it is the highest, if not only, virtue to the true Randian.

So I have to wonder, what's in it for Ryan to put in place a policy that would transfer massive amounts of formerly middle-class wealth to private insurance companies? If he is really a Randian, he has an angle he is working. And if he doesn't, he isn't a Randian, he's just a garden-variety sociopath.

Good grief, this nonsense is just exhausting. Nothing is ever settled with these people, they have been coming after Social Security for 75 years, and they just don't quit, no matter how many times they get chased down with walkers and eaten alive by gray panthers. It's like they are programmed or genetically manipulated, like one of those creepy super-soldiers from science fiction that can't stop fighting after the war is over, even though they recognize the reality.

Nah, I give them too much credit in that scenario. They are just zombie-nihilists and Social Security is the brain they are driven to eat.

To prove the charges I just filed against them, I offer into evidence Rep. Pete Sessions, of Texas.

House Republicans on Friday introduced legislation that would allow workers to partially opt out of Social Security immediately, and fully opt out after 15 years.

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas), who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee, and several other Republicans introduced the Savings Account for Every American (SAFE) Act. Under the bill, workers would immediately have 6.2 percent of their wages sent to a "SAFE" account each year.

That would take the place of the 6.2 percent the workers now contributed to Social Security.

Another 6.2% is sent to Social Security by employers. Under the Sessions bill, employers would continue to make this matching contribution to Social Security, but after 15 years, employers could also send that amount to the employee's SAFE account.

Sessions said this transition to a private retirement savings option is needed because Social Security last year began paying out more money than it took in.

"Our nation's Social Security Trust Fund is depleting at an alarming rate, and failure to implement immediate reforms endangers the ability of Americans to plan for their retirement with the options and certainty they deserve," Sessions said. "To simply maintain the status quo would weaken American competitiveness by adding more unsustainable debt and insolvent entitlements to our economy when we can least afford it."

Sigh. They just keep telling the zombie-lie about the trust fund. Okay, let's do this once more, this time with feeling: There is no Social Security crisis. The trust fund he is pretending to be panicked about was established to deal with the baby boom generation that started retiring and coming into the system this year. It was built up over the last three decades for this very purpose. And Sessions knows this full well. When one tells an untruth that doesn't square with reality and one knows one is telling an untruth, that is a lie and the person doing the lying is what is known, in the common vernacular, as a liar. Pete Sessions is, therefore, a liar. This is now an established fact, verified by empirical evidence.

The legislation is couched in inoccuous, friendly even, terms like "employee choice" but the part that they don't mention and the press hasn't bothered to report is what would happen if legislation like this were to pass...it would collapse the system.

Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system. If large numbers of people "opted out" then it would collapse -- which is really what the privatizers want, they just can't come right out and say that.

Now let's be realistic. This legislation is not going anywhere so long as Democrats control one chamber of Congress and the Presidency. Privatizing Ryan left Social Security out of his crosshairs because even he knows that Social Security privatization is a non-starter. It's only been six years since Bush floated his privatization scheme, and he never recovered politically from the attempt. The bill has only attracted a handful of co-sponsors and they could all be accurately described as "the epitome of wingnuttery." There is no rush to bring it to the floor for a vote, and I seriously doubt John Boehner lets one take place, not with the Medicare fiasco still nipping at his heels and threatening the republican majority in the House.

But that hasn't stopped the Democrats from making hay out of it anyway.

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Republican candidates for office are finding out the hard way that support for Privatizing Ryan's Serfin' USA Roadmap to Ruin is really, really unpopular. Take Mike Haridopolos, for instance. He is the president of the Florida State Senate and one of three would-be GOP candidates vying to challenge Democrat Bill Nelson for his U.S. Senate seat. During a call-in interview to a St. Augustine radio show, he was asked the question point-blank: Would you vote for or against a Republican plan to overhaul Medicare?

He refused to give a straight answer, trying to play it both ways. He hemmed and hawed and called the question "hypothetical" -- while simultaneously positing that Ryan's plan was a "good start" and that it had "a lot of merit."

The host eventually became so frustrated with Haridopolos' refusal to simply answer the damned question that he simply hung up on him. It's an important question requiring an honest, straightforward answer. Especially in the state that has the highest per capita number of Medicare recipients in the country. In sheer numbers, Florida, with 3.2 million Medicare recipients is second only to California, with 4.4 million.

It's also a vivid reminder that Medicare has become as much a "third rail" in American politics as Social Security. While the entire republican caucus in the House held hands and jumped off the cliff together, voting as a bloc in favor of the Ryan budget plan, it has also provided a wedge that has been used with some success to split the republicans.

Take for example hand-picked GOP candidate Jane Corwin in last month's special election in the New York 26th. That is Jack Kemp's old seat and one of my grandma's lived in that district. No Democrat had held that seat in my conscious memory. It was as solidly Republican as the district I currently live in is Democratic.

But Jane Corwin said she agreed with Paul Ryan's scheme to destroy Medicare as we know it and it cost her the seat she should have won standing up. The NRCC and the GOP leadership in the House can spin until they generate a gravitational field, insisting that Corwin was a "bad candidate" until the cows come home. The establishment still hand-picked her, after grooming her for higher office for years. If she really were a bad candidate, it would say more about them than it would about her. Medicare decided that election and even those who spin it otherwise know that statement is true, whether they will admit it or not.

The fact of the matter is, polling shows that over half of the American people hate the Ryan plan, with the highest level of opposition coming from senior citizens -- the exact group of people who would be spared it's ravages.

The irony isn't lost on me that the very people who would get hurt the worst is the demographic that registers the highest support for the plan -- but when you're still on your parents insurance and don't have any pre-existing conditions and have never looked for insurance on the private market, it's easy to think you can navigate the system.

Remember how much smarter your parents got in the ten years it took you to get from 15 to 25? Same principle here.

But it doesn't really matter, because guess who votes?

That's right. The old people who oppose it the most.

I also have to admit that my inner armchair-psychologist is bemused by Ryan.

As we all know, he is a Randian, and Randians embrace an "ethic" of selfishness. I honestly believe that Paul Ryan thought that those 55 and older would be totally cool with throwing their kids and grandkids to the wolves, so long as they themselves didn't have to pay the penalty. I think he was taken aback when people asked "but what about my kids?" because he lacks the capacity for empathy that is required before one can think to ask such a question.

When it turned out that most people aren't sociopaths, I truly believe that Ryan was genuinely shocked. Not only that, it was a possibility he failed to consider, because he lacked the empathy necessary for that sort of foresight. Fortunately, that flaw always proves to be the undoing of the Objectivist Libertarians like Ryan -- not just because it energizes and mobilizes the left, but because it mobilizes people of faith as well, and as we well know, there are many people of faith in the ranks of the GOP.

I have long said that the republicans were headed for a split, that the religious right was going to get sick of getting nothing and split from the libertarian wing of the party. I think that all the bring-back-DADT and anti-abortion nonsense that they know is going nowhere is an effort to keep them from splitting off sooner rather than later.

But fat lot of good that pandering is doing when the most prominent piece of republican legislation out there, that has dominated the news for three months now, causes true Christians to recoil in horror.

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This post originally appeared at Show Me Progress and is part of a series I am writing as a blogging fellow for the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, a coalition of more than 270 national and state organizations dedicated to preserving and strengthening Social Security.

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The budget proposal put forth by Paul Ryan is a vicious and cruel all-out attack on everyone under the age of 55, but the cuts to Medicare and Medicaid that the Ryan plan propose would be felt in a particularly acute way by women, who make up more than half of the beneficiaries of both programs, and women retire closer to the poverty line than men do. Women who are alone, who either never married or who are divorced or widowed and never remarried are particularly vulnerable.

The attack on Medicare is one that rallies everyone. Not everyone over 55 is a psychopath who couldn't care less so long as they get theirs. I honestly think that Paul Ryan was counting on people over 55, the largest republican voting bloc out there, not giving a damn so long as they got to keep theirs. I think he is so steeped in Randianism that he was actually taken aback by the pushback he got from people who actually care about their kids and their younger siblings and everyone else who paid in all their adult lives and stand to get rogered roundly if Ryan's scheme sees the light of day.

The CBO, the non-partisan number-crunching office of Congress, estimates that the Ryan scheme would double the out-of-pocket healthcare expenses of seniors. The estimated annual cost of $12,000 for medical coverage would leave grandma eating catfood in the homeless shelter. On average, female seniors have an annual income of only $14,000. Of that annual income, about $12,000 comes from Social Security. (Could you live on $2000 per year?)

Here is the bottom line: Ryan's plan would amount to transferring the entire monthly Social Security benefit for female seniors to private health insurance companies.

I can't possibly sum it up any more succinctly than Senator Barbara Boxer did when she said "This is a sick proposal," during a press conference with other Senate Democrats last week.

As bad as that is, the assault on Medicaid is even worse. Women comprise about 70% of all Medicaid beneficiaries, and while Medicaid has been demonized and branded as welfare, as "free" healthcare for "those people." The right-wing social conservatives have been very successful in projecting the face of Medicaid as an inner city "welfare mother" with several children, presumably with different fathers. That is the implication, anyway, when GOP politicians dismiss Medicaid as a progenitor of promiscuity. But in reality, most Medicaid recipients are elderly people in nursing homes, and idea of making Medicaid a block grant that states could use to deliver healthcare as they saw fit would only make matters worse. States have already mucked up their end of the joint federal-state program, and block grants would make matters far worse.

The CBO estimates that Republicans' proposed plan to block-grant Medicaid would reduce federal program expenditures by 35 percent by 2022 and by 49 percent in 2030 relative to current law. In return, states would have greater flexibility to restructure Medicaid benefits.

How governors would actually use this flexibility is another matter. Medicaid is flexible right now. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that about 60 percent of state Medicaid spending consists of expenditures to cover people or to reimburse services that are not required under federal law.

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People who are insured have been self-rationing as a result of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. So of course the insurance companies are whining that they need rate increases because the day is coming when their policy holders will actually use their insurance is surely looming, and then they won't have record profits any longer.

And of course, everyone who is fortunate enough to have insurance knows that rationing occurs every time you go to the doctor. If you buy insurance and have a pre-existing condition, there is no coverage for that condition for a specified waiting period, if ever. You also know that you can't just walk in and demand procedures. You have to get preauthorization letters to see specialists, who then have to get the authorization from your insurance company before they can perform any procedure deemed necessary and appropriate.

And pity the poor soul who turns up with a serious condition that requires long term or intesive treatment. They will spend all their time and energy fighting for the care they need to survive. What is this if not rationing?

Or consider lifetime caps. A million dollar lifetime cap is pretty standard. Now consider the family whose seven year old child gets cancer. It can easily happen that such a child will reach that cap in two or three years. Then the family that is probably on the hook for 20% of every charge the child has incurred face paying cash for all future care for that child, unless they are so financially wiped out by the disease that the child can get Medicaid. You know Medicaid -- that is the other program they are out to kill.

Do they really want to talk about "death panels" considering the way the system they not only defend, but want to return the worst parts of, really works?

Mitch McConnell is continuing with his gig singing backup on the Paul Ryan Roadmap to Ruin tour, telling Fox news Sunday yesterday that Ryan's scheme is "very sensible" and will "save Medicare." He then trotted out the discredited "death panels" BS, saying that the ACA will empower "a board that would ration health care," before adding "Let's just stipulate that nobody's trying to throw grandma off the cliff," alluding to an ad run by an "independent" interest group against Jane Corwin in the recent New York 26th Congressional Districe special election.

Let's unpack what McConnell is asserting, shall we?

McConnell seems to be implying that rationing is not occuring now, when it most certainly is, in every healthcare delivery system, everywhere. For starters, the uninsured are subject to the harshest rationing of all. If they can't pay cash, they don't get healthcare.

People who are insured have been self-rationing as a result of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. So of course the insurance companies are whining that they need rate increases because the day is coming when their policy holders will actually use their insurance is surely looming, and then they won't have record profits any longer.

And of course, everyone who is fortunate enough to have insurance knows that rationing occurs every time you go to the doctor. If you buy insurance and have a pre-existing condition, there is no coverage for that condition for a specified waiting period, if ever. You also know that you can't just walk in and demand procedures. You have to get preauthorization letters to see specialists, who then have to get the authorization from your insurance company before they can perform any procedure deemed necessary and appropriate.

And pity the poor soul who turns up with a serious condition that requires long term or intesive treatment. They will spend all their time and energy fighting for the care they need to survive. What is this if not rationing?

Or consider lifetime caps. A million dollar lifetime cap is pretty standard. Now consider the family whose seven year old child gets cancer. It can easily happen that such a child will reach that cap in two or three years. Then the family that is probably on the hook for 20% of every charge the child has incurred face paying cash for all future care for that child, unless they are so financially wiped out by the disease that the child can get Medicaid. You know Medicaid -- that is the other program they are out to kill.

Do they really want to talk about "death panels" considering the way the system they not only defend, but want to return the worst parts of, works?

Now I realize that McConnell was on Fox, and I don't expect any challenge from the propagandists there. But I do expect the person who is sent out to be the "token leftie" on a round table to be not Ruth Marcus who, on /Meet the Press/ had the following exchange with David Gregory:

GREGORY: So, Ruth Marcus, what wins here: bold leadership on Medicare and the argument that the Democrats won’t do something courageous, or the Democrats who say, “Hey, those guys want to take away my Medicare”?

MARCUS: I regret to inform you that I think it’s the latter. And I think when you were asking Senator McConnell if Medicare was the new third rail of American politics, I think the question was wrong in a sense because it’s the old third rail of American politics.

GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

MARCUS: This play has been run time after time. If you go back and look at the quotes from President Clinton back when he needed to win re-election, they sound a lot like the quotes from Democrats today about don’t let those Republicans take away your Medicare. The difference is that the debt is bigger, the deficit is bigger, the gap is bigger, and the situation is more dire. But I think that, sadly, the lesson of New York 26 is “mediscare” works.

"Mediscare" Ruth? Seriously? And why is it a sad state of affairs when the truth wins out? And why is is scandalous to show an ad that shows the republicans throwing Grandma off a cliff, but "Death Panels" got parrotted by the mainstream media as if they were real; the M$M dutifully "reported" the lies of republicans as "republicans say," and no investigation or actual journalism takes place.

Sadly, the transcript fails to note how very close David Brooks came to wetting himself, he was so eagerly in agreement.

Steve Benen shares my exasperation and summed it up perfectly.

Sigh.

It’s exasperating, but it’s worth reemphasizing what too many establishment types simply refuse to understand: Democrats are telling the truth. Indeed, Dems are doing what the media is reluctant to do: offering an accurate assessment of the Republican plan for Medicare. If voters find the GOP proposal frightening, the problem is with the plan, not with Democrats’ rhetoric.

I’m at a loss to understand what, exactly, Ruth Marcus, David Brooks, and their cohorts would have Dems do. Congressional Republicans have a plan to end Medicare and replace it with a privatized voucher scheme. The proposal would not only help rewrite the social contract, it would also shift crushing costs onto the backs of seniors, freeing up money for tax breaks for the wealthy. The plan is needlessly cruel, and any serious evaluation of the GOP’s arithmetic shows that the policy is a fraud.

Which part of this description is false? None of it, but apparently, Democrats just aren’t supposed to mention any of this. One party is allowed to present this agenda, but the other party is expected to sit quietly on their hands.

Once again, it’s important that the establishment recognize the difference between demagoguery and ringing an alarm. Demagoguery relies on falsehoods to scare people — it’s about playing on folks’ worst instincts, being divisive in a deceptive sort of way, effectively fooling people into believing something they shouldn’t.

But political rhetoric isn’t “demagoguery” when it’s true. If a political message leads the mainstream to feel scared, it’s not necessarily “scare tactics” if people have good reason to worry.

What the Democrats are doing is not demagoguery, it is sounding an alarm. The republicans are up to no good. They are out to do real damage and destroy Medicare as we know it. What is offensive isn't that the Democrats are calling the republicans out. What is offensive is that the cocktail-weenie-waggers in the Washington press corps steno-pool find the truth offensive.

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You know the time-tested-and-proven adage -- a gaffe is when a politician opens his mouth and what he or she really believes comes out. Sometimes it's the revelation that the politician is barking mad and doesn't have the foggiest notion what they are talking about.

We only have to look back a week for a perfect example of this phenomenon, when Mitch McConnell said this in an interview with Congressional Quarterly:

"Last week, the Social Security trustees issued a report saying Social Security and Medicare are not sustainable under their current structure."

Back in the day, when we had a functioning press corps instead of a cocktail-weenie-wagging press corpse; back when we had real reporters doing actual journalism instead of the steno-pool full of faithful scribes who can be counted on to regurgitate right-wing talking points unchallenged; back then, that sort of nonsense would have been a bit in the teeth of the reporter, who would have done his or her homework ahead of time, and McConnell would have been hammered mercilessly with the fact that the trustees said no such thing.

"Projected long-run program costs for both Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable under currently scheduled financing."

There is a world of difference between what McConnell said the trustees reported and what the McConnell said they reported.

McConnell's implication is that there is a hair-on-fire emergency and Social Security has to be fundamentally changed because it's doomed to bankruptcy otherwise; when in fact what the trustees presented was an either/or -- either revenues will have to be raised, or benefits will have to be cut decades down the road.

The essential Dean Baker had the best analogy I have seen on McConnell's misrepresentation:

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Ever since Social Security became the law over 75 years ago, there have been conservatives who wanted to kill it, finding the very notion that elderly or disabled people should retain any dignity or independence after their productive years have passed anathema. If you're no longer "useful" in their particular definition of the word, then you've got a lot of damned gall even thinking you should be able to stay out of poverty.

What the hell right does Grandma have to a flu shot and a living allowance? There are a lot of ways that money could be better spent, so far as they are concerned. It could be used to pay down the debt, or it could be invested on Wall Street. All Grandma does is spend it on rent and groceries and the like. She just pisses it away on avoiding poverty, the parasite.

As best I can tell -- I sometimes have trouble translating "bloodless goon" into ordinary, American English -- that is at least part of Robert Samuelson's position in his latest post at /Real Clear Politics/. That, and making sure that the deficit problem that Bush and the GOP Congress created gets solved by making the people who have realized no benefit from the Bush tax cuts and can least afford it pick up the tab:

Suppose we increased the federal gasoline tax by 25 cents a gallon, from 18.4 cents to 43.4 cents. That would raise $291 billion over the decade from 2012 to 2021, estimates the CBO. Or we could advance the ages for early and full Social Security benefits; one suggestion is to raise them (now 62 and 66) by two months a year until reaching predetermined targets (say, 64 and 70). The CBO reckons the decade's savings at about $264 billion. How about slowly moving Medicare's eligibility age from 65 to 67. The savings: $125 billion.

Are we finished? Nowhere near. At most, these crowd pleasers would make noticeable dents. Recall that the deficits total almost $10 trillion over the next decade under President Obama's original 2012 budget. That's the point: even discounting the effects of the deep recession, prospective deficits are so large that they can't be cured by tinkering. We should be asking basic questions:

-- How big a government do we want? For four decades, federal spending has averaged 21 percent of gross domestic product. An aging population and high health costs mean that average spending, as a share of GDP, will rise by a third or more in the next 10 to 15 years if today's programs simply continue.

-- Who deserves government subsidies and how much? About 55 percent of spending goes to individuals, including the elderly, veterans, farmers, students, the disabled and the poor.

-- How much, if at all, should social spending be allowed to squeeze national defense?

-- If taxes rise, how much and on whom? What taxes would least hurt economic growth?

Perhaps Samuelson calls an increase in the gas tax a "crowd pleaser" because it would hit those at the bottom of the economic ladder the hardest, since simple economics dictates that the lower the rung one occupies the less likely they are to drive a newer, more fuel-efficient car -- and cashiers and construction workers don't have a telecommute option to exercise. But let's not get distracted with the gas tax issue, because what he really wants to do is eviscerate the social safety net.

He is being disingenuous at best and deliberately dishonest at worst when he says "the deficits total almost $10 trillion over the next decade under President Obama's original 2012 budget. That's the point: even discounting the effects of the deep recession, prospective deficits are so large that they can't be cured by tinkering." That same CBO that he touts in his very first 'graph also says that if nothing is done, other than simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire and tax rates return to the Clinton-era levels, the deficit disappears.

Now let's answer some of those questions that he says no one is asking.

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On Thursday morning I attended a breakfast and roundtable discussion sponsored by the Missouri Health Advocacy Alliance that discussed the Affordable Care Act one year on, and how it has benefited Missouri small businesses since the first provisions started kicking in last September.

When I walked up to the table to sign in, I was surprised that they were so thrilled to see a B-list blogger show up with a netbook and a digital recorder to capture and report on the event. Then when I walked into the room I knew why. There was not another soul in that room that even remotely resembled a reporter, even though a press release went out last week announcing the event.

This meeting was held at the Plaza Marriott, at 45th and Main in Kansas City. The KKFI studio is at 39th and Main, the KCUR studio is at 48th and Troost and the Kansas City Star is at 17th and Grand. It isn't like it was held in an inconvenient location. I didn't expect television cameras, but I did expect some coverage by either the print or radio press.

I mean, if 50 teabaggers who are against healthcare reform get together and wave misspelled, grammatically incorrect signs around, the Star covers that. But 50 small business owners and administrators who have benefited from the provisions of the law that have already kicked in, gathered in a meeting room to discuss those benefits? Nothing to see there, they don't even bother to send a reporter.

They will report on people who scream about "death panels" and "government takeover of healthcare" -- both rated "lies of the year" by PolitiFact for 2009 and 2010, respectively -- but they don't report on the very real benefits of the legislation.

No wonder the law isn't more popular.

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Apparently, our General staff is shot through with Little Caesars who fancy themselves the masters of the universe or something. Last year it was McChrystal and insubordination. This year it is Caldwell, a three-star in charge of training Afghan troops who stands accused of using psy-ops against visiting American Senators and Congressmen so they would give the war effort more troops.

He needs to be relieved of command immediately and his ass needs to be on a plane bound for Washington for a public humiliation and firing.

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as "information operations" at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

"My job in psy-ops is to play with people’s heads, to get the enemy to behave the way we want them to behave," says Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, the leader of the IO unit, who received an official reprimand after bucking orders. "I’m prohibited from doing that to our own people. When you ask me to try to use these skills on senators and congressman, you’re crossing a line."

The list of targeted visitors was long, according to interviews with members of the IO team and internal documents obtained by Rolling Stone. Those singled out in the campaign included senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, Jack Reed, Al Franken and Carl Levin; Rep. Steve Israel of the House Appropriations Committee; Adm. Mike Mullen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the Czech ambassador to Afghanistan; the German interior minister, and a host of influential think-tank analysts.

The incident offers an indication of just how desperate the U.S. command in Afghanistan is to spin American civilian leaders into supporting an increasingly unpopular war. According to the Defense Department’s own definition, psy-ops – the use of propaganda and psychological tactics to influence emotions and behaviors – are supposed to be used exclusively on "hostile foreign groups." Federal law forbids the military from practicing psy-ops on Americans, and each defense authorization bill comes with a "propaganda rider" that also prohibits such manipulation. "Everyone in the psy-ops, intel, and IO community knows you’re not supposed to target Americans," says a veteran member of another psy-ops team who has run operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. "It’s what you learn on day one."

Of course, we all realize that it goes on. Images are manipulated and messages are massaged. Before they appear before Congress, Generals confer with image consultants to lead the star-struck officials before them where they want them to go.

But this is a whole new level of evil. Not only did Caldwell intentionally violate U.S. laws against propagandizing American legislators, he punished the guy who stood up and said it was wrong. If that isn't intent and malice aforethought, I don't know what is.

Congressional delegations – known in military jargon as CODELs – are no strangers to spin. U.S. lawmakers routinely take trips to the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they receive carefully orchestrated briefings and visit local markets before posing for souvenir photos in helmets and flak jackets. Informally, the trips are a way for generals to lobby congressmen and provide first-hand updates on the war. But what Caldwell was looking for was more than the usual background briefings on senators. According to Holmes, the general wanted the IO team to provide a "deeper analysis of pressure points we could use to leverage the delegation for more funds." The general’s chief of staff also asked Holmes how Caldwell could secretly manipulate the U.S. lawmakers without their knowledge. "How do we get these guys to give us more people?" he demanded. "What do I have to plant inside their heads?"

According to experts on intelligence policy, asking a psy-ops team to direct its expertise against visiting dignitaries would be like the president asking the CIA to put together background dossiers on congressional opponents. Holmes was even expected to sit in on Caldwell’s meetings with the senators and take notes, without divulging his background. "Putting your propaganda people in a room with senators doesn’t look good," says John Pike, a leading military analyst. "It doesn’t pass the smell test. Any decent propaganda operator would tell you that."

At a minimum, the use of the IO team against U.S. senators was a misue of vital resources designed to combat the enemy; it cost American taxpayers roughly $6 million to deploy Holmes and his team in Afghanistan for a year. But Caldwell seemed more eager to advance his own career than to defeat the Taliban. "We called it Operation Fourth Star," says Holmes. "Caldwell seemed far more focused on the Americans and the funding stream than he was on the Afghans. We were there to teach and train the Afghans. But for the first four months it was all about the U.S. Later he even started talking about targeting the NATO populations." At one point, according to Holmes, Caldwell wanted to break up the IO team and give each general on his staff their own personal spokesperson with psy-ops training.

Remember the blurbs in the news about unnamed politicians whose records had been improperly accessed? Maybe it wasn't just one guy at the State Department. Maybe he was the fall guy, but the real culprits were these psy-ops folks accessing records on politicians before visits. My Senator, Claire McCaskill, is a pretty high profile member of the Armed Services Committee and she has made several trips to Afghanistan. Was she one of those against whom these tactics were employed?

Caldwell shouldn't just get to walk away from the mess he created like McChrystal did, though. He needs to face criminal charges, and possibly he needs to face war crimes charges if an intrepid prosecutor can build that case. He needs to hang high and be made an example of. He definitely needs to lose his rank and his bennies. He needs to be made to suffer public humiliation. If he is not, then the civilians have ceded control and we aren't that far from being ruled by a de facto military junta, and that is not the country I want to live in.

I've been saying it for -weeks- months over a year...it is time for Obama to channel Truman and fire a whole bunch of these flag rank f***heads and pin stars on the shoulders of men like Lt. Colonel Holmes, Paul Yingling and Bob Bateman.

Believe me yet?

This is the first post in a series I am writing as a blogging fellow for the Strengthen Social Security Campaign, a coalition of more than 270 national and state organizations dedicated to preserving and strengthening Social Security.

Do you have a mother?

Is she over 65?

How is she set financially?

How would she fare if she was entirely on her own?

Now answer that question and take her Social Security out of the equation. How would she fare if she was entirely on her own?

You may not realize it, but Social Security is the single most effective program to keep women out of poverty in their retirement years that the nation has ever created.

Here are some facts about women and Social Security that you may not know, but should:

• 26% of women aged 65-69 are reliant upon Social Security for virtually all of their income (90% or more) and that number climbs as women age.

• Although women are more reliant on Social Security to provide their basic needs in retirement, men receive benefits that are about 25% more than those of women. The average benefit for a woman is around $12,000 per year, while for men it is about $16,000 per year.

• This is especially important for women, because far more American women than men -- 11% versus 7% -- lived in poverty in 2009 (the last year for which complete numbers are available.)

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