Having been unemployed earlier this year (and 2009-2010) I think it needs to be pointed out that we unemployed are still required to pay taxes, both state and federal - including social security. You can elect to not have them withheld from your individual disbursements but they are still tallied as (unearned) income come April 15th.

In Oklahoma even though I did not have to previously pay federal taxes I STILL had to send money in to the State of Oklahoma - despite the Frank Keating, Todd Hiatt and Vince Cargil "tax cuts".

And our beloved "conservative" legislature and Governer believe that even though we can not affoard to remove state sales taxes on groceries, or pay previously contracted pension payments to State employees or teachers we still need to cut the income taxes.

The republican right-wing bubble machine continues to propaganise Oklahomans so it is all the Democrats and Obamas fault.

For starters 8 out of 10 citizens oppose cutting Medicare and Medicaid. So as usual Ryan's plan has nothing to do with representation of the will of most people. This even includes those, who because of some bizarre impulse, voted for him.

Ryan's role as the House Budget Chairman reminds me of one of those clowns who has himself videotaped in the act of some outlandish stunt, usually self injurious. It's kind of like the stunt where someone stands waiting for a basketball to be whipped into their junk area. Next thing you know the poor guy is bent over and breathless holding his mid-section. Funny thing is, he still has that grin and is quite pleased with all the attention his Tea Party gets and likewise they're quite pleased with his repetitive idiocy on their behalf.

So once again Ryan will stand there and take a hit and the House Teapublicans will bend over breathless for the billionaires with synchronized voting on the budget plan. This will also once again afford us all with the opportunity to spread the word that the Teapublicans voted yes on legislation virtually 80% of us oppose.

Will this also mean that come 2014 the Republicans get no more than 20% of the vote?

HEY KEN WARE...Check out post 66 from just this past Friday. I'm interested to hear your answers to my direct questions...Of course I'll be expecting your comentary, but I am more interested to hear your answers.

namsté

Since Reagan, budgets have mainly been used to facilitate the upward redistribution of wealth. What the rich are doing to the middle class is simply what the middle class already did to the poor. When the Great Society (welfare) was wiped out, who didn't know that the New Deal (Social Security) would be next? Each time the richest few gained too much power over our politics/policies in the past, the poor and middle class united to push back, to the benefit of both. This generation almost pushed back with Occupy. Occupy began as a powerful peoples' movement that had the potential to actually change the course we're on, which made the right wing very nervous. But it was quickly redefined -- largely by media marketed to liberals and progressives --as being all about, only about, mddle class workers, the better-off. The rest of us walked away, and Occupy fizzled out. Any resistence to the right wing agenda was effectively divided and conquered.

Get Medicare out of politics, that's what I've been thinking. I'm so sick of hearing the same old trite sound-bite babble, "On-the-table; Off-the-table; Going tit's-up; Secure well into the future ...." -- round and round the same meaningless blather year after year, all predictable, meaningless and going nowhere.

David Goodhill in The Washington Post, "The High Cost of Medicare's Low Prices" acknowledges that Steven Brill's TIME cover Story, "Bitter Pill" is comprehensive and insightful. He also claims that while Medicare drives it's own covered costs down, Healthcare vendors simply game the system by either focusing on price (a few big-ticket items); or where prices are low, expanding Volume to maximize profits (and total Medicare expenses). While we are the healthiest generation in history, we pay a huge price for more and more procedures (real costs, including physical side-effects).

So, there are two sound-bite facts: Negotiated costs going down; total costs going up -- both true. And our political arena simply can't handle such apparent complexity. We need to somehow get such management analysis and decisions out of the political circus, and into some quiet process that is charged with responsible data-gathering, analysis and results-based management decisions -- perhaps, reporting somehow to responsible oversight.

I'm not sure the structure, nor how we might ever get there; but clearly anything more complex than scheduling recess-breaks seems beyond today's political processes. That's what I've been thinking.

Ref: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-medicares-low-prices-inflate-health-costs/2013/03/10/1d2b11d2-89a7-11e2-98d9-3012c1cd8d1e_story.html

You had a listener today who was complaining about his Social Security being cut because he was a retired federal employee. He can thank Saint Raygun for that. In 1984 I believe it was, he was complaining that federal employees get full Social Security and he proceeded to screw them even though they had their 40 quarters. At the same time he proceeded to screw federal employees who were employed after 1983 . These employees, upon retiring, only get a maximum of 1 percent of their salary. Employees hired before 1983 get a maximum of 2% their salary.

He really put the salami to federal employees.

I work with a lady whose husband is a retired railroad worker. He cannot get Social Security although I don't know if they paid into it or not.

I understand that Saint Raygun also screwed the military retirees out of Social Security. When I was in the Army during the Vietnam Era, I paid into Social Security. I guess this means that Saint Raygun put the screws to everyone.

Saint Raygun is also the one who imposed a Medicare tax on incomes, took away our deductions for sales taxes paid and credit card interest as well as limiting our deduction for medical care.

Saint Raygun was a real gem.

Yet, the neocons bow at the ankles daily when anyone even mentions the name. Why are republicans such bastards?

Right on Thom.. And why is it Ryan's budget? Shouldn't it be our budget, these fuks need a course on getting something accomplished.

I'd like to add a bit of information about the Iran/Contra cover up. The congressional committee that covered up the deal to hold Americans hostage was chaired by an Indiana Democrat, Lee Hamilton. He later became the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission that told a 757 disappeared into a 16 foot hole in the Pentagon.

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