Scare Tactics? What About Scary Candidates?

Posted on October 15, 2010 by Matt Osborne

Ramona, my fiancee’s mother, lived 55 years by the rules. She worked sixteen-hour days. Disabled now by a car accident, she cannot be covered by Alabama’s state-run Medicaid program because SSI disability payments are too much income. They barely cover the cost of her mortgage and utilities, but disqualify her for food stamps.

Medicaid means-testing goes away because of Obamacare. In Third-World America, it’s like getting rid of the literacy tests for voting. But it isn’t single-payer and there’s no public option, so of course it doesn’t count as “progress” for the firebagger. When I suggest that perhaps they should focus on passing a public option, the invariable response is that I’m some kind of administration mouthpiece.The Democrat running for governor of Alabama pledges to implement the federal law. His Republican opponent promises to fight it tooth and nail. I take him at his word, just as I take seriously Republican tea party candidates who want to do away with the minimum wage, alter the 14th Amendment, privatize Social Security and the VA, etc.

These people are real and so is their sick agenda. But when I talk about these things in a blog post, there is always a cohort of commenters who accuse me of “scare tactics.” Sharron Angle and Rand Paul and Christine O’Donnell aren’t scare tactics, they’re scary candidates. Firebaggers say these people and their Democratic opponents are exactly the same — but that’s demonstrably untrue.

When Republicans talk about taking away Ramona’s unemployment, they’re not kidding. When they talk about taking away Ramona’s SSI and leaving her on the “tender mercies” of a free-market insurance system, they are not kidding. This is what they actually will do if they gain office, and it will set back any progress in America by literally decades.

Firebaggers yap about being “progressive” like they read about it in a book; they wouldn’t recognize progress if it slapped them in the face. Like the tea party, they want revolution and they want it right now! The slow, incremental progress of the last two years is not worth defending because they will do better…after the ossified corpse of conservatism has put Ramona out on the street, of course.

As far as I’m concerned, teabaggers and firebaggers can both stuff it. They are more alike than Democrats and Republicans are alike. The image of Jane Hamsher on FOX News is all the confirmation I need.

About Matt Osborne

Veteran blogging the culture wars from Alabama. Video journalist, mash-up artist, aspiring novelist, and metalhead. Expect bunnies, geekery, dark humor, and snarky empirical analysis to annoy idealists of all stripes. You can follow me on Twitter, but be ready 'cause it might get loud.
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  • http://www.angryblacklady.com/ Angry Black Lady (also STM)

    ::wild applause::

    i really cannot stand jane hamsher and her firedogasshats. i just finished reading some stupid post about how obama insulted youth voters by referring to midterms as “silly season” and that’s not going to motivate ME to go vote, what about YOU? of course the commenters are all running around screaming about it, not having bothered to actually read the fucking speech. we get it. you don’t like obama. you like saying the word “catfood commission” because you’re oh so fucking clever.

    but here’s what he ACTUALLY said:

    ” THE PRESIDENT: Well, first of all, let me just say something about these projections. According to the Congressional Budget Office, what’ll happen is around 2018, we’ll start taking in less money than we’re sending out. So right now Social Security generally runs a surplus; that surplus will start getting drained around 2018.

    Now, that doesn’t mean that Social Security is going bankrupt. It doesn’t mean that Social Security is going away. What it does mean is if we don’t do anything about it, right around the time — you guys are a little young for you to retire — but let’s say when I’m retired. (Laughter.) What’s going to end up happening is, is that if you expected a dollar of benefits, you’ll only get about 75 cents, so people won’t get the full bargain that they thought they were getting when they paid into Social Security.

    That’s why we’ve got to strengthen it. And I have said that all options are on the table. I think we’ve got to look at how we preserve it for the next generation. I do think that the best way to do it would be to look at the fact that right now you only pay Social Security taxes up to about $106,000, and after that, you don’t pay any Social Security tax. So that means Warren Buffett, who makes more than $100,000 a year, the vast bulk of his income, he doesn’t pay Social Security taxes on it. That could be modified or changed in a way that would help extend the solvency of Social Security.

    But this is an area where — I’m sorry, what was the young lady from Austin — this is where Cynthia’s point about bipartisanship is so important. I set up a bipartisan fiscal commission that is made up of Republicans and Democrats to sit and meet over the last several months to start looking at how we generally start reducing our debt and our deficit so we’re not leaving it to the next generation. They’re supposed to report back to me after the election because we specifically designed it so they wouldn’t get caught up with silly season and would be able to just focus on what makes sense.”

    these “progressives” are already planning their November 3 “i told you so” party with complete disregard for what that means for the people who are actually being helped — perhaps slowly — but surely by the democrats. yes, they need to be doing more. but handing country back to the asshats on the right is about dumbest idea i’ve ever heard.