“For a detailed explanation of how the Romney-Ryan tax plan is able to cut taxes by $5 trillion without exploding the deficit or requiring tax hikes on the middle class, simply click the button below”.

No other explanation needed:

http://www.romneytaxplan.com

UPDATE: My esteemed blogging colleague, Fort Buckley, has been claiming in the comments that this RomneyTaxPlan website – owned & controlled by the Democratic National Committee – tries to “disguise themselves as someone else”, in effect site is designed to look like a Romney site, and they are trying to fool people. I think it is very clearly a parody, mocking that Romney won’t provide any details on his “tax plan” – at least not until after the election. Here is a screenshot of the Democratic site:

Notice the “half” pointing up into the “Romney believes in (half of) America? And the “Paid for by the Democratic National Committee” at the bottom?

Here’s MittRomney(dot)com:

I had to cut & play around with the URL to get to the main page – when I first went to the site it put up a big donation form, with no option to skip to the main site. Then when I cut that out of the URL it came back with another form wanting my email address & zip code. Finally got the main page on the third try. Are you “fooled” by the Democratic site?

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I grew up watching Gilligan’s Island on TV and loved the show. Gilligan and the Skipper, the Professor and the bombshell Ginger – they all made me laugh. But it was Thurston Howell the Third and his wife “Lovey” that made me laugh the most. They would make my Republican father and Democrat mom share a laugh over their complete lack of understanding of the lives of “common folks”. Like the episode where Gilligan and the Skipper build a small raft to try to get off the island and get help, and Mr. Howell demands he and Lovey go with them. “Mr. Howell, You don’t know what it’s like out there in the ocean, you may be bitten by a shark!” the Skipper tells him. “A shark bite a Howell, ha ha he wouldn’t dare!” Mr. Howell retorts. “Besides we don’t have room enough for your luggage” the Skipper adds. Mr. Howell responds: “Well that’s different. If I can’t go first class I won’t go at all!”

I also enjoy David Brooks, columnist for the New York Times. I look forward to the Shields and Brooks segment every Friday on the PBS Newshour, where Mr. Books squares off with the liberal columnist Mark Shields. David Brooks is a conservative, but a Northeastern conservative – articulate, thoughtful, knowledgeable and not afraid to be bluntly critical when a Republican goes to far off in the right wing la la land. Northeastern conservatives are fiscal conservatives, but socially moderate and reasonable.  Here in Arizona conservatives call people like that “bleeding heart libruls” or, more affectionately, “libtards”. Mr. Brooks wrote an opinion article the other day entitled Thurston Howell Romney, in which he was bluntly critical of comments that Mitt Romney made last May at a $50,000 a plate fundraiser – comments that he thought would never leave the room.

These are not the sensible arguments that Mitt Romney made at a fund-raiser earlier this year. Romney, who criticizes President Obama for dividing the nation, divided the nation into two groups: the makers and the moochers. Forty-seven percent of the country, he said, are people “who are dependent upon government, who believe they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to take care of them, who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it”.

This comment suggests a few things. First, it suggests that he really doesn’t know much about the country he inhabits. Who are these freeloaders? Is it the Iraq war veteran who goes to the V.A.? Is it the student getting a loan to go to college? Is it the retiree on Social Security or Medicare?

It suggests that Romney doesn’t know much about the culture of America. Yes, the entitlement state has expanded, but America remains one of the hardest-working nations on earth. Americans work longer hours than just about anyone else. Americans believe in work more than almost any other people. Ninety-two percent say that hard work is the key to success, according to a 2009 Pew Research Survey.

Ninety-two percent of Americans believe that hard work is the key to success. But what about the other 8%? I’m inclined to believe many of them think the key to success is to just be smarter that the other guy. To sell investors mortgage backed securities that you assure them are solid, safe investments – while buying derivatives that will make you a pile of money when those mortgages go belly up. To buy companies, load them up with debt and milk their cash reserves dry with “management fees” so that you and your investors make millions in profits as the company goes bankrupt, lays off all it’s workers and closes up. To make sure your income is classified as “capital gains” and taxed at only 15%, instead of income from wages & salaries like “commoners” and taxed at a much higher rate, with Social Security and Medicare taxes to boot. And if that’s still too much taxes to your liking, you hide your money in the Cayman Islands and Swiss bank accounts. As the wealthy hotel magnet Leona Helmsley once told her hired help: “Only little people pay taxes“. She was later convicted and jailed for income tax evasion.

You see, that’s the real contradiction here – Romney and his fellow Republicans condemn the 47% who don’t pay federal income taxes as “leeches and moochers”, feeding off the “Culture of Dependency”. Never mind that those 47% pay plenty in other taxes – sales taxes, utility excise taxes, gasoline taxes, property taxes either directly or though rent that their landlord uses to pay property taxes.  How dare they not pay income taxes, they have no skin in the game! But at the same time they think it’s their duty to use every quirk and loophole in the tax code, to use every trick in the book – to not pay income taxes!. Offshore tax havens? That’s our right and our duty to avoid the clutches of the evil big government! Carry forward losses recorded when times are bad, like 2008, to shield your income from taxes when times our good? That’s our God given right! They’ve made figuring out ways to avoid paying taxes on their loot into a competitive sport. But if someone doesn’t pay incomes taxes because they’re living on Social Security and retirement savings that don’t add up enough to meet the federal income tax threshold? Freeloader! Bottom feeder on the ‘Culture of Dependency’! They live by the Golden Rule: He who has the gold rules.

That’s the hypocrisy of the well off, those who pay $50,000 a plate to listen to a guy who is promising them yet another tax cut – so they won’t have to work so hard to avoid them. As Thurston Howell the Third said: “It is rather difficult being rich. If it wasn’t for the money, I’d rather be poor“.

Then there’s the hypocrisy of politicians like Paul Ryan. He was out on the campaign trail yesterday echoing that ‘Culture of Dependency’ meme. Well, at least he knows what he’s talking about. When his father died when he was only 16, Ryan collected Social Security Survival Benefits until he was 18. He saved them and used the money to pay for part of his college tuition. He paid the rest of it with student loans – federally guaranteed, federally subsidized low interest student loans. And then he’s been on the federal government payroll pretty much since he graduated from college. He knows it’s no ‘Culture of Dependency’, it’s the role of government ensuring that everyone gets a fair chance to work hard, get ahead, and succeed. Paul Ryan just thinks it politically advantageous to repeat the false claim of ‘Culture of Dependency’ to play to the conservative party base who have been told that enough times they believe it. Paul Ryan is a hypocrite, but he’s no dummy – he also probably knows that is was Ronald Reagan’s Tax Reform Act of 1986 and George W Bush’s 2001 & 2003 tax cuts that wiped out the income-tax liability for many Americans. GW Bush sold his tax cuts in part by saying it would remove over 8 million people from the tax roll with his new 10% tax rate and doubling the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000. It was also part of the Welfare reforms in the 1990s – income tax credits for the working poor to be the working poor, not welfare queen poor. But welfare poor or working poor they’re still poor and the people Romney was speaking to at that fundraiser still consider them “the help” and look down on them. So Mitt pitched to his audience, belittling those who don’t pay income taxes as “moochers” and “freeloaders”.

Republicans a quick to accuse Democrats of “class warfare” and “class envy”, resentful of the wealthy. Not at all – I’m loving that well to do person who paid $50,000 for lunch so they could take their video camera into Mitt’s fundraiser to record what he said when he thought only rich folk like him would hear what he really thinks. And I’m loving that the very well to do Mitt Romney is running the most inept campaign challenging an incumbent President since George McGovern in 1972.

I admit I haven’t watched much of the Republican convention this week, it tends to give me a bad case of heartburn and indigestion. But I gave in to curiosity last night and watched Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan give his acceptance speech. I was curious of he would address head on his plan to turn Medicare into a voucher system, to subsidize the health insurance industry. Would he present his budget plan that continues deficits for almost 30 years, because it cuts taxes so much, primarily for the wealthy? Not quite. My jaw muscles are still sore today from my jaw dropping so much, aghast, as he told one big whopped of a lie after another. The media world is ablaze today as they point out they huge lies Ryan tried to foist on what he must think are dumb voters:

• Dave Weigel, Slate.com: “”incredible string of false or misleading statements”
• Jonathan Cohn, the New Republic: “The Most Dishonest Convention Speech … Ever?”
• Michael Tomasky, the Daily Beast: “Paul Ryan pushed American politics into new territory with his convention speech, effectively daring Democrats and the media to call him out on his string of blatant falsehoods”
• Dan Amira, NY Magazine: “Paul Ryan Bets on the Ignorance of America”
• Washington Post Editorial Board: “Mr. Ryan’s misleading speech”

What’s that you conservatives say? “Librul rags and Lamestream Media”? Well, how about the non-partisan Factcheck.org?

• Factcheck.org: “Paul Ryan’s acceptance speech at the Republican convention contained several false claims and misleading statements”

Or, how about:

• Fox News contributor, Sally Kohn: “Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech.”
• Matt Drudge, the Drudge Report: “Ryan Lied About Janesville GM Plant”

So, what were some of misleading, if not outright dishonest things Ryan said? Ryan blamed Obama for the closure of auto plant in his district, in Janesville WI:

“A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: ‘I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years,’” Ryan recalled. “That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.

Here’s a picture of the auto plant from Ryan’s hometown newspaper, the Gazette:

If you have trouble reading the sign it says “Last Vehicle off the Janesville Assembly Line”, with the date at the bottom: December 23 2008 – when George W Bush was President and Obama’s inauguration a month away. And an auto plant in his district, in his home town – Ryan knows darn well when it closed, but he’d like you to think it was “Obama’s fault”.

And Ryan implied it’s Obama’s fault that the U.S. credit rating was downgraded:

“The Obama presidency, “began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States; it ends with a downgraded America.”

Yes, that is correct, but it clearly implies that the credit downgrade is all Obama’s fault. No, Standard & Poors downgraded the country’s sovereign debt rating in 2011 because congressional Republicans, of which Ryan is a key leader, threatened not to increase the country’s borrowing authority — risking a default on the debt — unless Democrats agreed to their demands to slash trillions of dollars from domestic social programs. Standard & Poors specifically cited the actions of Congressional Republicans as the reason for their downgrade:

“Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.”

Ryan criticized Obama on the Simpson-Bowles Debt Commission:

“He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report. He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.”

Ryan was on that commission. He voted against adopting it’s recommendations. Following his lead, so did the panel’s other House Republicans. Budgetary matters must pass the the House and then the Senate before it makes it to the President’s desk for him to take any action. Ryan and his fellow Republicans killed it.

Ryan claimed the campaign’s top priority is protecting the poor.

“We have responsibilities, one to another — we do not each face the world alone. And the greatest of all responsibilities, is that of the strong to protect the weak.”

Just under two thirds of the dramatic spending cuts in Ryan’s budget target programs that benefit low-income people. Those spending cuts are intended to help offset the deep cuts in tax revenue from more tax cuts for the wealthy.

And Ryan’s biggest whopper of them all? Medicare:

“You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama.”

Yes, repeat the Republican lie that Obama “stole” money from Medicare. Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) healthcare providers – hospitals, clinics, etc. – agreed to reduced compensation for the care they provide to Medicare patients. The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) estimates it will save Medicare $716 Billion dollars over the next 10 years. Why did healthcare providers agree to this? Because with the expanded health insurance the ACA provides, they will have many more patients with insurance to pay for their treatment, and far few indigent patients who have no money to pay for their care, but they must treat anyway, by law (signed by President Reagan).  Saves Medicare that money. That money isn’t being taken away, it adds up in the Medicare Trust Fund, strengthening it’s reserves. And Paul Ryan knows that perfectly well – he’s included those savings in his last two budgets. You see, while they would repeal the ACA, they would hold those healthcare providers to their reduced payment, without giving them those more patients with health insurance.

Ryan and the Republicans repeating that lie so often that “Obamacare stole $716 Billion from Medicare” reminds me of the saying attributed to Adolf Hitler’s Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels: “If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth”. But I won’t make that comparison. It angers me when people make frivolous comparisons of something or somebody to the Nazis. Because doing that lessens the memory of the incredible suffering endured by millions of Jews and others. Because frivolous comparisons to the Nazis lessons the the memory of the incredible sacrifices made by so many U.S. and Allied servicemen and women in their liberation of Europe from the Nazi oppression. My father was one of them.

So instead I’ll compare Paul Ryan’s lies and attempts to mislead to someone more recent:

“There are no American troops in Baghdad. Obamacare steals $716 Billion from Medicare. My budget plan doesn’t take money from programs to help the poor and the elderly to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, I love my mother, and she’s older than dirt.  S&P didn’t really downgrade our credit rating because of me & my fellow Republicans threatening to let the U.S. default if we didn’t get our way. I know the Janesville auto plant shut down under President Bush, but it’s still all Obama’s fault. The drought in the Midwest? All Obama’s fault. Hurricane Issac? A devious plan by Obama to take attention away from our wonderful convention.”

Missouri Republican U.S. Senate Candidate Rep. Todd Akin became probably the 3rd best known Republican candidate in the country when in an interview last Sunday, after being asked why he would outlaw abortion even in the case rape he replied  “First of all, from what I understand from doctors that [pregnancy from rape] is really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” He’s been apologizing profusely every since, saying he “misspoke” in “off the cuff remarks”. That’s not good enough for the GOP establishment, who haven’t stopped calling for Akin to withdraw from the race pretty much since the words came out of his mouth. A chorus line of GOP party bosses have all called for Akin to drop out of the Missouri US Senate race. When they couldn’t force Akin out with talk, they tried money – Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS Super-PAC says it won’t spend any money for the Missouri Senate  race. For now.  A GOP official said the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) would pull the $5 million it planned to spend on the race unless Akin quit. Why? While he may have mangled the explanation of his rationale for supporting making abortion illegal under all circumstances, even in cases of rape, incest, or when a pregnancy endangers the life of the mother, that position is shared by Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan, and is a “plank” in the Party’s platform – the official position of the Republican Party. No, these GOP leaders don’t disagree with Rep. Akin’s underlying position – they just worry he might lose his Senate race because he spoke too frankly about what they support. Any hope that the GOP might win control of the U.S. Senate runs right through Missouri. They care much more about that then standing up for their close friend and collegue.

I don’t believe would be Republican Senator Rep. Akin really misspoke – the extreme right anti-abortion folks have been pushing this notion that somehow a woman’s body has this magic defense mechanism to prevent pregnancy from rape from some time. It’s their defense from being accused of being heartless bastards for wanting to force a woman carry a pregnancy from a brutal rape to full term. One of the folks Rep. Akin might have got this nonsense from is radical anti-abortion activist Dr. John Wilke who, despite overwhelming actual statistical evidence to the contrary, claims the pregnancies from rape are “very rare”. Willke, president of the Life Issues Institute, wrote a book with a chapter on rape from which Akin could have easily gotten his ideas:

“Her body is upset.Every woman is aware that stress and emotional factors can alter her menstrual cycle … Hormone production is controlled by a part of the brain which is easily influenced by emotions. There’s no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy.”

That’s likely also where Rep. Akin got his notions about “legitimate rape” – only a “real rape” would produce the trauma to trigger this magic defense to thwart pregnancy. In a “not-real rape” (she just wasn’t really in the mood, drank too much, or perhaps just had a headache?), there wouldn’t be the trauma to induce the magic defense. Never heard of Dr. John Wilke? Well, Mitt Romney knows exactly who he is. In a Press Release from the Romney Campaign, Mitt Romney enthusiastically accepted Dr. Wilke’s endorsement:

Today, Dr. John Willke, a founder of the Pro Life Movement, endorsed Governor Mitt Romney and his campaign for our nation’s highest office. Dr. Willke is a leading voice within the pro-life community and will be an important surrogate for Governor Romney’s pro-life and pro-family agenda.  [...]

Welcoming Dr. Willke’s announcement, Governor Romney said, “I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country. He knows how important it is to have someone in Washington who will actively promote pro-life policies. Policies that include more than appointing judges who will follow the law but also opposing taxpayer funded abortion and partial birth abortion. I look forward to working with Dr. Willke and welcome him to Romney for President.”

In 2007, Wilke praised Romney as the “the only candidate who can lead our pro-life and pro-family conservative movement to victory”. Mitt Romney is happy to have the support from a man who formulated what Rep. Akin claimed, that women have a magic defense from getting pregnant from a “real” rape, yet now he calls for Rep. Akin to withdraw from the race? Et tu, Brute?

Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has an especially close relationship with Rep. Akin. They’ve served together in the House for almost 12 years, and Ryan has co-sponsored many of Rep. Akin’s anti-abortion bills, including including some that make no allowance for rape.  Among the bills Ryan co-sponsored was a measure that would require a woman seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound first. Yes, that requirement that Virgina Republican legislators tried to pass last year – that any woman considering an abortion have her most sensitive body part be penetrated with a vagina probe, even if she had already been penetrated against her will as a victim of rape. Two bills that Ryan co-sponsored with Todd Akin last year would have restricted the definition of rape. The measures sought to prohibit federal funds from being used for abortion, except under certain conditions, with both bills as introduced using the term “forcible rape” as an exception to the funding ban. No bruises, no broken bones? No abortion for you. Yet Rep. Akin reports that his good friend Paul Ryan called him personally yesterday and “advised me that it would be good for me to step down”. Et tu, Brute?

Rep. Akin says “The people of Missouri chose me to be their candidate, and I don’t believe it’s right for party bosses to decide to override those voters”. That’s probably the one of the few areas in which I can agree with Mr. Akin. He won a hard fought primary battle just weeks ago, with Missouri’s Republican voters choosing him over two other conservative Republicans – two conservatives who stressed their fiscal conservatism, not religious conservatism that Todd Akin stressed. Republican voters chose Rep. Akin, and they deserve candidate they chose, not someone party bosses pick.

Rep. Akin also says the voters deserve a race based on the issues, and that voters deserves to know where the candidates stand on the issues. No disagreement from me there either. Mitt Romney says “Congressman Ryan and I disagree with Mr. Akin’s statement, and a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape”. Oh yeah? Well, you say alot of things that change over time. And your Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan was a co-sponsor of a House bill last year defining human life as beginning with fertilization and granting “personhood’’ rights to embryos, a bill which would outlaw abortions in all cases, and would also restrict some forms of birth control such as the “morning after pill”. And the platform of your party says if they gain control they would pass a Constitutional Amendment that will outlaw any and all abortion forever, even in cases of rape, incest, or if the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother. If you want us to really believe that a Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape, then repudiate those positions. As you told Harry Reid: Put up or shut up.

David Stockman is probably best known as President Ronald Reagan’s Budget Director. He was a strong advocate for “supply-side economics”, the doctrine that tax cuts would supply the stimulus to drive strong economic growth. He also strongly advocated the curtailment of what he called the “welfare state”.  Prior to his role in the Reagan Administration he was a 3 term Republican Congressman from Michigan. He’s still a Republican, and is  chairperson emeritus of the Republican Majority for Choice. He’s just a strong critic of what the Republican Party has become. In a hard hitting article in the Nov. 9 2011 issue of The Rolling Stone entitled “How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich”, he said:

“The Republican Party has totally abdicated its job in our democracy, which is to act as the guardian of fiscal discipline and responsibility. They’re on an anti-tax jihad — one that benefits the prosperous classes.”

A pretty good description if the George W Bush Presidency – $5 Trillion added to the National Debt in mainly good economic times, by cutting tax revenue with tax cuts that primarily favored the wealthy, coupled with out of control spending with unnecessary wars in far off lands in the name of “regime change”.

In an article last Monday in the New York Times he detailed his thoughts on Paul Ryan’s Budget: Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan

The Ryan Plan boils down to a fetish for cutting the top marginal income-tax rate for “job creators” — i.e. the superwealthy — to 25 percent and paying for it with an as-yet-undisclosed plan to broaden the tax base. Of the $1 trillion in so-called tax expenditures that the plan would attack, the vast majority would come from slashing popular tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, mortgage interest, 401(k) accounts, state and local taxes, charitable giving and the like, not to mention low rates on capital gains and dividends.

The Paul Ryan “Path to Prosperity” Budget Plan is notoriously vague about ending tax deductions to partially offset the huge loss in tax revenue with tax cuts for the super-wealthy. Well, it’s not a very good campaign strategy to tell the middle class upfront that you’re going to raise their taxes by ending deductions for mortgage interest, contributions to their retirement savings, or for the state & local taxes they pay. Kudos to Mr. Stockman for telling it like it is.

In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices. And it couldn’t pass even if Republicans were to take the presidency and both houses of Congress. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have no plan to take on Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or the nation’s fiscal calamity and no plan to revive capitalist prosperity — just empty sermons.

No plans to take on Wall Street??? Who do you think is funding the Romney-Ryan campaign? Wall Street, Mega-Corporations, Billionaires like Casino Mogul Sheldon Anderson, the Koch Brothers, etc. No plans to take on the military-industrial complex??? The Ryan “Path to Prosperity” calls for prosperity for the military-industrial complex with huge increases for defense spending even while it slashes domestic programs. Another Republican, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us about the dangerous power of the military-industrial complex 50 years ago. As Mr. Stockman explains:

Mr. Ryan professes to be a defense hawk, though the true conservatives of modern times — Calvin Coolidge, Herbert C. Hoover, Robert A. Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, even Gerald R. Ford — would have had no use for the neoconconservative imperialism that the G.O.P. cobbled from policy salons run by Irving Kristol’s ex-Trotskyites three decades ago. These doctrines now saddle our bankrupt nation with a roughly $775 billion “defense” budget in a world where we have no advanced industrial state enemies and have been fired (appropriately) as the global policeman.

The Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan Fairy Tale Budget: More tax cuts for the super-wealthy, paid for with tax increases on the middle class and gutting domestic programs for the disadvantaged and elderly. And increases for defense spending when it’s already nearly double what it was when General Eisenhower left office as President and we had every reason to fear the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal. No wonder Romney-Ryan have been running such a negative campaign with such personal attacks on President Obama – when you’re a pair of empty suits running on an empty sermon, it’s pretty much all you got.

Once in a generation Americans find themselves at a crossroads, with the voters faced with the task of deciding the direction the country needs to take. In 1932 the voters chose Franklin Roosevelt to leads us out of the darkness of the Great Depression. They didn’t know it at the time, but they also chose him to lead us through the most horrific war mankind has ever known. And Roosevelt implemented Social Security, so that our more vulnerable seniors need not live out their twilight years in fear of poverty.  Almost 30 years later the voters chose a young John F. Kennedy to lead us through the heights of the Cold War and the challenges of the Civil Rights movement. An assassin cut short JFK’s leadership, but his successor, LBJ, signed into law the landmark legislation of the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid. Thirty-two years later Americans chose Bill Clinton to lead us through the boom times of the Information Age. And boom the economy did, with nearly zero unemployment – with tax rates the Republicans now claim would lead us to disaster if we revert back to by letting the Bush tax cuts expire. And now again in 2012, America finds itself at a crossroads, and with Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, the competing visions for the future of our country could not be more different.

President Obama and the Democratic Congressional leadership propose a balanced approach to reducing the deficit and spurring economic growth while maintaining the fairness and equality that defines us as Americans. They propose a reasonable balance of increased tax revenues and reduced spending by allowing tax rates revert back to those in the Clinton years for those most able to afford them, and reduce spending by ending America’s “regime change” military adventures and focused, targeted domestic spending reductions. They propose that those brought to America as young children by their parents should not have to pay for the sins of their parents, but instead should be allowed to live the American DREAM. They propose that all Americans have the equality to chose their marriage partners based on who they love, not based on discriminatory laws telling them who they can marry and who they cannot. They propose that women get to chose their own healthcare options, not the religious or moral beliefs of their employer – or state legislator.

And the Republican vision? While the Republicans claim the mantra of “smaller, limited” government, since their takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives and many state legislatures and governorships in the 2010 election, they have been busy expanding government into lives of Americans to further their religious and moral beliefs. Laws severely restricting a woman’s right to chose her healthcare options, even laws that claim to define when the moment of life itself begins. Here in Arizona the Republican legislature had the audacity – and idiocy – to claim life begins at a woman’s last menstrual period! Albert Einstein is credited with having said “Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results”. The Republican U.S. House has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act 32 times, and guess what? It’s still the law of the land. Republican state legislatures have voted in laws which are in search of a problem – Voter I.D. laws in several states, even though they can’t point to a single instance of in person voter fraud. Over one million voters may be disenfranchised in this election because they don’t have the required identification. Why? Because those most likely to lack I.D. – the poor & elderly living in cities and don’t drive – are most likely to vote Democratic.

But all you have to really look at is Ryan’s budget plan, which he calls the “Path to Prosperity” to see where Romney & Ryan want to take the country. Ryan’s plan would begin by cutting way back on health insurance, leaving as many as 60 million more Americans without basic health protection.  According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, over the next decade Ryan’s Medicaid plan would cut funding by one-third ($810 billion) compared to current law. Ryan’s budget plan call for many other drastic cuts in domestic spending. All Americans would suffer, but millions living in poverty or close to it would face the most devastating cuts. Food Stamps, housing assistance, and college grants for needy students are among many programs that would be severely cut back. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities uses cautious estimates to conclude that at least 62% of the Ryan cuts would fall on low-income households. It doesn’t sound like much “prosperity” for them. And Ryan’s plan also attacks Medicare for the elderly. He would raise eligibility to age 67, and turn it into a voucher system. Seniors would be forced to shop for their own health insurance and the federal government would make direct, fixed payments to the insurance company. More government subsidy for private businesses. And if the fixed voucher payments don’t cover the cost of private insurance? So sorry, you’re own your own. But Republicans like to claim that “we’re broke” and don’t have the money to pay for programs assisting the disadvantaged or to pay for the Medicare that we were promised and paid into all our working lives. Well, at least the Ryan budget plan quickly ends the deficit and balances the budget, right? Guess again – even though Republicans claim we’re “broke”, the Ryan “Path to Prosperity” continues more deficit spending for almost 30 years. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects Ryan’s budget plan won’t lead to a balanced budget until 2040. Why? The Republican’s magic formula for “prosperity” is more tax cuts for the wealthy – it permanently extends the Bush tax cuts and then doubles down with even more tax cuts for the wealthy.

Republicans howled last week when Senate Majority Leaders Harry Reid said he’d been told that Romney didn’t pay any taxes for a decade. Well, Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity” would ensure that Romney wouldn’t pay any taxes for the next decade. The single year of tax returns Romney has releases shows he paid a tax rate of just 13.9% on income of over $21 million. That’s about half the tax rate a middle class family with both spouses working pays. Does that seem fair? Well, fasten your seat belts – Matthew O’Brien of The Atlantic estimates that under the Ryan budget plan Romney would have paid just .82% in taxes on over $21 million in income. That’s because the Ryan plans calls for an end to taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends. And since Romney doesn’t actually work and receive a salary, almost all his income is from those vehicles of income for the wealthy – capital gains, interest and dividends. A middle class family with an annual income from wages & salaries of between $35,350 to $85,650 pay a federal tax rate of 25%. The Mitt Romney family would pay less than 1% on income in the millions. The “Path to Prosperity”? For whom??

Why are these men laughing? They’re laughing at what they thought was a great joke. Unfortunately, the joke is on us.

The path Forward could not be more clear.