Kick Him, Get Rewarded


When the movie "The Pat Tillman Story" was released in August, 2010, it appeared in precious few cities nationwide and died a quick death. Perhaps it was the tendency of the viewing public to cringe at anything suggesting venality, incompetence, or inefficiency on the part of the military brass, whom conservatives cherish conflating with "our brave troops." Or perhaps it was the deadly serious and boring title, which would have been better marketed as "Murder By Military," "Killed By Cover-Up," or something else. As CBS News noted at the time

Pat Tillman gave up his professional football career with the Arizona Cardinals to join the U.S. Army Rangers after September 11.

In 2004, Pat was shot and killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire. But the story told by the government was quite different.

Mary Tillman, Pat's mother, documents her family's crusade to uncover the truth and expose the cover-up by senior military officials in her book, "Boots on the Ground by Dusk: Searching for Answers in the Death of Pat Tillman," which is being re-released to coincide with the August 20 release of the documentary "The Tillman Story."

On "The Early Show" Monday, Mary spoke with "Early Show" co-anchor Erica Hill from Mountain View, Calif., about some additional information that's coming out in the paperback version of her book, about former Gen. Stanley McChrystal's handling of her son's death.

Mary explained, "I wrote the book, came out in 2008, and I indicate that McChrystal was involved in orchestrating the cover-up. He falsified the Silver Star. He was very aware that Pat was killed by friendlies. And then, when he was going to be promoted to the head commander in Afghanistan, I had contacted President Obama, I e-mailed him and written a letter and contacted members of Congress, just trying to remind them that this man needed to be scrutinized very carefully. And in the end, it turned out that he was pretty much meant for that position. He was a shoo-in. Of course, he was promoted. And, that is part of the foreword."

A couple of months earlier, Matt Taibbi had reported in Rolling Stone that in the the fall of 2009, General McChrystal at a speech in London described the counter-terrorism strategy of the Vice President as "shortsighted" believing it would lead to a state of "Chaos-istan." He quoted the General as more recently calling National Security Advisor Jim Jones "a clown" and President Obama "unprepared" for a strategy meeting. Promptly, in one of the few bold moves of his presidency, Barack Obama removed McChrystal from the command of American forces in Afghanistan. But this is the "on the one hand, and on the other hand" presidency and McChrystal is back:

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who was relieved of command in Afghanistan after a magazine profile quoted his subordinates as disparaging senior civilian leaders, has been invited back to public service by the Obama administration to help oversee a high-profile initiative in support of military families, White House officials said Sunday.

General McChrystal will lead the three-member advisory board for the initiative, called Joining Forces, whose aim is to encourage companies, schools, philanthropic and religious groups and local communities to recognize the unusual stress that is endured by families of active-duty personnel, reservists and veterans, and to strive to meet their needs.

The appointment is to be announced Tuesday by Jill Biden, as well as by Michelle Obama,who described McChrystal in an e-mail as "a unique and powerful advocate for the millions of Americans who serve our country selflessly.”

As journalist Jon Krakauer describes him, this is the guy the Obamas believe will be "a unique and powerful advocate" for members of the armed forces:

After Tillman died, the most important thing to know is that within--instantly, within 24 hours certainly, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew it was friendly fire. There's never any doubt it was friendly fire. McChrystal was told within 24 hours it was friendly fire. Also, immediately they started this paperwork to give Tillman a Silver Star. And the Silver Star ended up being at the center of the cover-up. So McChrystal--Tillman faced this devastating fire from his own guys, and he tried to protect a young private by exposing himself to this, this fire. That's why he was killed and the private wasn't. Without friendly fire there's no valor, there's no Silver Star. There was no enemy fire, yet McChrystal authored, he closely supervised over a number of days this fraudulent medal recommendation that talked about devastating enemy fire.

It is also the guy who disregarded the relationship traditionally assumed by military officials with the President of the United States, the commander-in-chief of the armed services when called into the actual Service of the United States. And now Obama, who evinces mere contempt for his supporters, once again has demonstrated that getting your way with this President is as easy as standing up to him.

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Obama And Boehner Happy


They say sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And "they" would be right.

On April 3 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told Bob Schieffer "The tea party is dictating a lot that goes on in the Republican leadership in the House… it shouldn't be that way." Three days later, Chuck Schumer would maintain on Good Morning America "The Tea Party just continues to pull Speaker Boehner further back and back and back." The following day, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, told reporters "Speaker Boehner is not in control. The tea party caucus has their hands on the steering wheel and they are prepared to drive right into a government shut down if they don't get 100% of their demands met."

In the midst of top Democrats characterizing the Speaker as reasonable, boldly holding back the extremist hordes at the gate, Boehner put on what appeared to be a brave public face. He assured ABC's George Stephanopoulos

Listen, there’s no daylight between the Tea Party and me,” Boehner told me today during our exclusive interview.... What they want is they want us to cut spending. They want us to deal with this crushing debt that’s going to crush the future for our kids and grandkids. There’s no daylight there.

Two days later Democrats, led by President Obama, had completed their total capitulation on fiscal matters to the weepy Republican leader as they agreed to $38.5 billion in cuts from the 2010 baseline, $5.5 billion more than Boehner's original proposal. (The Democrats fared better on the policy riders but are not out of the woods yet- and then, this was a budget measure, after all.) Barack Obama announced himself pleased, stating

Last night, after weeks of long and difficult negotiations over our national budget, leaders of both parties came together to avert a government shutdown, cut spending, and invest in our future. This is good news for the American people.... Reducing spending while still investing in the future is just common sense.

Despite Democratic relief that a semi-shutdown had been averted, it appears that the daylight top Democrats saw between Boehner and the tea party now bears some resemblance to an Alaskan winter. The Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Levitz write

Leaders of the small-government, tea-party movement are generally giving House Speaker John Boehner high marks for his leadership in the spending showdown, even though the agreement eventually reached Friday night fell short of the cuts the tea party once demanded.

House Speaker John Boehner, shown Friday as negotiations continued to reach a budget deal, appears to have gained from risking a shutdown.

The relationship between the Republican leadership and these activists is one of the most important determinants of how this Congress will manage the fiscal fights to come.

Tea-party backers have been leery of Mr. Boehner for months, questioning his zeal and driving him toward a tougher line on spending.

As negotiations inched close to a deal late Friday, much of the movement's institutional leadership resisted raising the temperature and were willing to cut Mr. Boehner some slack, in hope that he will extract more dramatic concessions in the budget showdowns to come.

Within weeks, the House will press forward on a blueprint to dramatically change Medicare and Medicaid, lower tax rates, simplify the tax code, and cut nonsecurity spending by $1.6 trillion over the next decade.

By mid-May, another showdown will come as the federal government reaches its statutory limit on borrowing. And this summer, Congress must go to work on spending bills for fiscal 2012.

Conservative activists will rely on the leadership of Mr. Boehner, a man who re-emerged into Republican leadership on a platform of fiscal rectitude. His management of his restive caucus and the unpredictable tea-party movement has proved more successful than even some of his colleagues thought possible when the new Congress convened earlier this year.

"They're doing pretty well so far," said Matt Kibbe, president and chief executive of FreedomWorks, a conservative organization that has helped fund the tea-party movement.

"If the Republicans back down from the fight just because the Democrats are itching for a government shutdown, that'll be disappointing to us, but we understand they only control a third of the policy-making here"....

Some tea-party members voiced support for Republicans pushing for policy issues.

"The government is wasting tax dollars on things that should not be paid for by the general public," says Diane Canney, a 48-year-old stay-at-home mother who is also a co-founder of the Valley Forge Patriots. "For me as a Catholic who does not believe in abortions, to take my taxes and fund Planned Parenthood, that is not fair," she says.

Predictions of a full-scale tea party revolt now appear overblown. Mr. Boehner's initial offer of $35 billion in cuts infuriated many activists and conservative lawmakers, forcing him to raise the ante to $61 billion.

He ended up with $39 billion. By holding out and risking a government shutdown, the speaker appears to have redirected tea-party anger toward the Democrats.

Gene Clem, a director for the Michigan Tea Party Alliance, a coalition of some 30 tea-party groups in the southwestern part of the state, says members are "pretty happy" because "we got quite a few cuts and we made the point that we have to change our way of thinking and that the deficit just can't go on."

Some may be keeping their powder dry for future rounds. "I'm really disappointed, but I know [Mr. Boehner] is in a difficult situation," said retiree Betty Dunkel, the 75-year-old co-founder of the Valley Forge Patriots, a tea-party group outside Philadelphia. "I don't like it, but at this point, let's just get something done, let's get on with it and then work very, very hard on 2012 budget—and we also have the debt ceiling to deal with."

President Obama, however, is figuring that it's only his party's pockets- not his won- which have been picked. Howard Fineman explains

But politically, this is where Barack Obama wants to be. He wants to be the budget cutter. He has an unerring instinct for the middle of the political spectrum, the middle of the political conversation generally among independent voters right now, which is about budget cutting, so politically he's making the gamble that he's moved to the right political place and that economically, the economy is recovering fast enough now, we've had good growth, job growth numbers in the last couple months.

He's making a bet that those job growth numbers will continue and whatever stimulus is removed by this will not adversely affect the economy enough to counter balance what he thinks is a smart move to the center.

And he looks like he's been pushed there, but politically that's where he wants to be.

President Obama didn't need to be pushed too hard in order to focus the attention of Congress and the American people from the economy to the budget, to cut a deal allowing him to boast about "the biggest annual spending cut in history" during an economic slump, or to bring the tea party and House GOP leadership closer to each another. If the economy continues to recover (even at its slow pace) and the President is re-elected, Barack Obama will be justly gleeful but, as Taylor Marsh notes

The Democrats aren’t making the case for progressive economic justice anymore, because in the era of Obama the boss doesn’t have the principles or belief in foundational Democratic ideals to do it, because he’s too busy making tactical moves to look non-ideological. That may be good for him, but it’s awful for Democrats.

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Distortion And Venom Wrapped Into One


It's useful periodically to step back and probe the conservative mind. Often ignorant, sometimes dishonest, occasionally valid, the modern conservative is nothing if not consistently crafty.

Blogger Lori Ziganto has posted "WaPo’s Ezra Klein Supports Killing Black Babies" at the venerable right-wing blog RedState and at her own site. She remarks sarcastically "Don’t you realize that a dead child is a cheap child?" and claims

Ezra Klein, writing at the Washington Post, actually proffers that argument in favor of taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood; that abortions are cheaper for the government than having an “unintended pregnancy”. (That’s their euphemism for unborn baby killed by abortion.) His article is filled with predictable talking points, all easily disproved....

Uh, no. "Unintended pregnancy" is a euphemism for.... unintended pregnancy. One might assume, initially, that Klein had written "a dead child is a cheap child" or at least utilized the phrase "cheap child." One would be wrong, however, and she proceeds to quote Klein maintaining (emphasis Ziganto's)

The fight also isn’t about cutting spending. The services Planned Parenthood provides save the federal government a lot of money. It’s somewhat cold to put it in these terms, but taxpayers end up bearing a lot of the expense for unintended pregnancies among people without the means to care for their children.

Ziganto comments

Did you mean among “those people”, Ezra? After all, the majority of babies aborted are minority babies. In New York City alone, nearly 60% of unborn African-American children were aborted.

Read Klein's post once or twice; it's worth it. It's also necessary to confirm that the Washington Post writer and blogger never referred to those people. At the risk of provoking the classic response of victimhood of the right, one needs to consider the possibility of psychological projection, that Giganto herself holds the attitude she is attributing to Klein. (Or perhaps she has fallen prey to the underrated conservative political correctness.) The latter never mentions "blacks" or "African-American children" or "minorities." Nor does he even invoke the concept of minorities or race, though at one time noting that a loss of federal funding for Planned Parenthood would make cancer screening, contraception, and STD testing "less available to poor people." (And "poor people" is not a euphemism, or anything else, for African-American.)

Ziganto is not motivated primarily, or perhaps not at all, by racism or racial animus. (Why, she probably isn't even from Mississippi!) Ironically, though, her piece does bolster Klein's argument that "the fight also isn’t about cutting spending. The services Planned Parenthood provides save the federal government a lot of money." Nowhere does Ziganto even allege that the services provided by Planned Parenthood, including preventing unintended pregnancies, saves the government and taxpayers money. She links to a site citing twelve reasons to support defunding Planned Parenthood- and even that avoids the issue of the burden placed upon taxpayers of supporting a child from an unintended pregnancy.

One solitary blogger on an important right-wing blog site does not the conservative movement make. Still, GOP ideologues appear intent on eliminating federal funding for an effective source of women's health care, even while leaving the military budget untouched. Cost savings from the likes of cancer screening and STD testing, as well as from audits performed by the IRS (an agency the GOP is committed to slash), are well-documented. If the traditional media were paying attention, it, too, would notice, as Susie Madrak notes

And can we drop the political game pieces and get back to reality? Republicans don’t care about the deficit. Repeat after me: Republicans don’t care about the deficit. Did you hear a peep out of them during the Bush years? Of course not. Because Republicans don’t care about the deficit.

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Next Up: Reproductive Services


It's over for now.

Congress on Friday night/Saturday morning approved a stopgap bill, which would continue funding the federal government through the fiscal year if final approval is given by Congress next week. Besides cutting $38.5 billion from 2010 levels, the measure reportedly includes several riders. Through the efforts of the party of small government, the District of Columbia will be prohibited from using its own money to fund abortions, but it will receive funds for its private schools, presumably in an effort to deliver the death knell to its troubled public school system. Additionally, the Senate must consider two measures, defunding health care reform (by one account) and eliminating Title X subsidies.

Even before agreement was reached Friday, the GOP's propaganda machine had been revved up against Planned Parenthood, which would lose its federal funding if Title X is rescinded. Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), arguably Congress' most fanatical opponent of abortion rights, dismissed Democratic support for continued federal funding of reproductive health services, claiming “You would think this is about women’s health care. It’s about abortion.” Especially because federal funding of abortion already is prohibited by law and Title X services, the point of contention the last day or two of negotiations, does not apply to abortion, other than by reducing its incidence.

Exuding class, Rush Limbaugh on Friday maintained "The only women's health issue these clowns care about on the left is abortion but they don't dare call it that. They want to fund Planned Parenthood. Why? Planned Parenthood earns its money performing abortions. That's their definition of family planning." No, actually, Planned Parenthood's definition of "family planning" includes reproductive and sexual health services required by Title X:

• pelvic exams and pap tests (early warning about cervical cancer)
• breast exams and instruction on breast self-examinations
• testing for high blood pressure, anemia, and diabetes
• screening and appropriate treatment for sexually transmitted infections
• safer-sex counseling
• basic infertility screening
• referrals to specialized health care

Oddly, though, the most brazen propaganda came not from a member of the House or of the right-wing media but from a United States Senator. In debate on the floor, Arizona Republican Jon Kyl declared

Everybody goes to clinics, to doctors, to hospitals, so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.

By now, Rachel Maddow, AMERICAblog (the source here), the Center for American Progress, Ezra Klein, and half the liberal blogosphere has picked up on the pie chart from Planned Parenthood illustrating that fully 3% of its clientele receive an abortion:
















Everyone can make a mistake. But when caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Kyl (through his office), according to anchor TJ Holmes, told CNN

his remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, a (sic) organization that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer does subsidize abortions.

You have to admire a politician who does not issue the standard non-apology apology, something along the lines of "Senator Kyl apologizes if he offended anyone." No, here is a guy who admits he lied: was not intended to be factual. He lied, and he's proud of it, although his office pretended that he was drawing attention to the subsidization of abortions. Sleaziness Rush Limbaugh would be proud of.

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Feeling The Heat, Religion Edition


Perception is not reality; otherwise, perception wouldn't be called perception but, instead, reality.

Still, perception can exert a mighty impact upon mere mortals or even Presidents.

Barack Obama a Socialist? I'll show them- I'll cut income taxes for millionaires and billionaires. A free-spending liberal? I'll cut spending by $30-$45 billion during an economic slump, jeopardizing recovery from recession. Soft on terrorism? To heck with campaign promises, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad will be tried in military court demonstrating, as Slate's Dahlia Lithwick put it, "The only lesson learned is that Obama's hand can be forced. That there is no principle he can't be bullied into abandoning."

And it has happened yet again. Last August the Pew Research Center reported that 31% of people whom it had surveyed believe President Obama is a Christian, 18% believe he is a Muslim, and 43% don't know his religion. That would leave 8% as, presumably, uncertain whether they know his religion. After Obama had been President of the United States for 18 or 19 months, over two-thirds of the American public did not definitively accept the reality that Barack Obama is a card-carrying Christian. Not 69% of Republicans- 69% all Americans.

Whether one calls it ignorance, stupidity, bigotry, or perhaps even enlightened skepticism makes little difference except as it affects the public's perception of Barack Obama and his perception of their perception. And he is very, very concerned.

Although recent surveys of the same subject are hard to come by, we do know that the skepticism about Barack Obama's religious affiliation had increased since Pew's survey in March, 2009. Similarly, the skepticism then was higher than it was during the presidential campaign, when in March, 2008 Pew found that only 10% of the public believed Obama was a Muslim, 53% identified him as a Christian. and "about a third of Americans said they don't know what Obama's religious beliefs are."

Little wonder, then, that presidential nominee Obama would maintain in October, 2008 in an interview with the Detroit Free Press (excerpt in this article and by blogger/commenter Wendy Davis in Firedoglake)

That, I think is the kind of justice that I’m looking for — somebody who respects the law, doesn’t think that they should be making law … but also has a sense of what’s happening in the real world and recognizes that one of the roles of the courts is to protect people who don’t have a voice.

That’s the special role of that institution. The vulnerable, the minority, the outcast, the person with the unpopular idea, the journalist who is shaking things up. That’s inherently the role of the court. And if somebody doesn’t appreciate that role, then I don’t think they are going to make a very good justice.

That individual who sincerely advocated 28-29 months ago a Supreme Court justice who would protect "the vulnerable, the minority, the outcast, the person with the unpopular idea" now, as someone whose Christian leanings are doubted by so many voters, takes an incompatible view of the First Amendment's wall of separation between church and state. Davis reports

the High Court refused to overturn an Arizona law that allows taxpayers to receive a dollar-for-dollar state tax credit for their contributions to school scholarships even if they are for religious schools. The credit allowed is up to $500 per person or $1000 per couple.

Constitutional law professor Erwin Chemerinsky remarks

The Obama administration’s brief supporting an Arizona law which creates a tax credit system which substantially benefits religious schools is inexplicable and deeply disappointing. Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn (Nos. 09-857 and 09-991), to be argued on Wednesday, November 3, does not involve a federal law and did not require any participation by the Obama administration. Yet, the Solicitor General’s office filed a brief for the United States which argues that taxpayers lack standing to challenge a state tax program which subsidizes religious schools and that this does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It is exactly the brief that would have been expected from the Bush administration, but disturbing to have come from the Obama Justice Department.

Obviously, Barack Obama as president has moved steadily to the right; hopefully, he'll move back to the center from his current, center-right stance. It's highly unlikely, however, when the Chief Executive continually accedes to the demands of conservatives and moderates, whom he fears, rather than of his supporters on the left, of whom he takes advantage. As Glenn Greenwald, cynically and realistically, notes

if you were a Democratic Party official, wouldn't you also ignore -- and, when desirable, step on -- the people who you know will support you no matter what you do to them? That's what a rational, calculating, self-interested, unprincipled Democratic politician should do....

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Limbaugh's Prejudices Widespread


Dictionary.com defines "racism" as "a belief or doctrine that inherent differences among the various human races determine cultural or individual achievement, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule others." "Inherent," in turn, is defined by the same source as "existing in someone or something as a permanent and inseparable element, quality, or attribute: an inherent distrust of strangers."

It is a narrow, probably appropriately, definition of racism and probably fails to qualify Rush Limbaugh as a "racist." He does, however, give new meaning and power to the concept of "racially bigoted." Wednesday, he commented

Well, the simple fact is, speaking of dead and dying, the simple fact is that the Democrats are deathly afraid that we are going to take away their power to enslave people. The Democrat Party is to this government what plantation owners were to slavery. This is indentured servitude. This is how the Democrat Party looks at the citizens of this country. We are going to reduce the size of government. We are going to enhance individual liberty and economic liberty. Democrats get their power by enslaving minorities through welfare.

Let's just say it the way it really is. They create a class of utter dependent slaves, people who end up being addicts, who know no other way to get through the day, who know no other way to get through life. Enslave them to government for virtually everything.

And in case the listeners didn't figure out yet that Rush is proud to hate black people, he made sure to explain

The Democrat Party denies individual ambition. It retards it. In exchange for their never-ending votes to the Democrat Party, minorities and any other constituent group are given handouts for their needs, and they are told by the Democrats that their economic situation was caused by the Republicans.

The civil rights coalition goes further. They say that their problems, their economic situation has been caused by white people. Any cut in social spending, no matter where, no matter how little, threatens this arrangement. So the Democrat Party enslaves minorities, enslaves the poor.

This is a particularly reprehensible application of moral equivalence. Drawing- or rather, trying vainly to draw an analogy with the institution of slavery between the long-time support of the Democratic Party for programs geared to smooth out the vagaries of life or to give the least privileged among us increased opportunity is vaguely disgusting.

Limbaugh's prejudices, of course, go far beyond racial bigotry and embrace elitism. After six times using the terms "slave," "slavery," "enslaves," or "enslaved" (and, for good measure, "plantation," once) and assuring you he is thinking primarily of blacks, he complained about extending unemployment benefits, then remarked

And it's not just minorities, anybody who's too lazy or too afraid to look out for themselves. The Democrat Party is waiting to glom onto them and basically turn them into parasites.

Ah, yes: the American people as parasites. On March 9 Rush had told us who these parasites are:

We declared war on poverty, and what do we have? Thirty-five percent of our people living on the dole! Thirty-five percent of American citizens living on "handouts"....

So there is, we must say, there is a working system. There's a system for people to get on disability insurance, Social Security. There's a pathway. It's been spelled out, sort of like the Americans with Disability Act itself which has allowed a lot of people to jump on the dole....

It's just there. It's like it's etched in stone like the Ten Commandments. (That's what they mean by an "entitlement.") To other people an entitlement is something a bunch of lazy people think is theirs simply because they were born in America, and that, as Americans, they are entitled to their country giving them enough for these to live on....

I'm simply saying that 35% (and growing, by the way) of the American people receiving money that they are not earning is not a way to sustain anything that anybody thinks is great about this country. Not possible....

One more time, to me 35% -- and to have some of this called wages, folks, we're losing -- 35% of American adults on the dole, to me, is the single reason why I have been doing this show since I started in Sacramento, hoping that number would never be more than 20, 25%. It's the single reason....

The whole theme of the thing here was America on its knees. I'm telling you, go back, this number, 35% of our population living off of what others earn.


Minorities, unemployed individuals, recipients of Social Security disability payments, the elderly receipients of Social Security ("that's what they mean by an' entitlement'"), the elderly in need of health care: all parasites. (The CNBC article which sparked Limbaugh's diatribe began with" overnment payouts—including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance—make up more than a third of total wages and salaries of the U.S. population.") If not among Rush's "producers," they simply are parasites, no more and no less.

If not a unique perspective expressed by Limbaugh, it is relatively unusual in American politics. Certainly, society has been practicing, or wrestling with, racism and racial discrimination for decades. It's always been easy to dump on individuals on the other side of town, "the other side of the tracks," or in another town. But these- the unemployed, the disabled, the elderly- are our neighbors. The spread of resentment the past 24-29 months may not be unprecedented, but it is remarkable, insufficiently understood, and too readily accepted.

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(Recent) History Repeats Itself


Kevin Drum notes "if it walks like voucher, talks like a voucher, and quacks like a voucher, then it's a voucher."

That should be obvious but when asked about it during his press conference on Tuesday, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan responded, incredibly (but not surprisingly), "this is a different proposal."

Oh, sure it is. The plan would not harm people currently on Medicare or nearing retirement age, most of them being aware of how well Medicare works and how necessary it is to keep them alive. But individuals who turn 65 years of age in 2021 or thereafter would receive money to purchase health insurance on their own. Princeton University economist Uwe Reinhardt explains

Under the Rivlin-Ryan Plan, as it has come to be known, Medicare would be changed from the defined-benefit plan it has been since its inception to a defined contribution plan.

Under the defined-benefit plan, the government promised to procure specified medical goods and services for Medicare beneficiaries, as medical necessities assessed by the beneficiary’s physician. That puts the risk of escalating costs for that health care mainly onto the shoulders of taxpayers, although Medicare beneficiaries share in these costs through premiums for Part B of Medicare (chiefly physician services) and co-payments at the time of service.

Under the defined contribution approach envisaged by the Rivlin-Ryan plan, most of the risk of future health-care cost increases would be shifted onto the shoulders of Medicare beneficiaries. This feature makes the proposal radical.

"Radical" or not (and it is), this is a classic voucher scheme. But where have we seen such message manipulatization in service of privatization before? A year ago, when as then-ranking Republican on the Budget Committee Paui Ryan proposed the Roadmap for America's Destruction, Paul Krugman recalled

Ryan’s claim that diverting a substantial share of payroll taxes receipts into individual accounts does not constitute partial privatization of Social Security You see, there’s a history here.

Back when the Cato Institute first began pushing for individual Social Security accounts, it called its push, well, The Project on Social Security Privatization. As the Bush administration got ready to make its privatization push, however, it became clear that “privatization” polled badly. So the project was renamed The Project on Social Security Choice. And Republicans began bristling at any suggestions that they were proposing privatization, calling that a slander. Really.

Wait, it gets better. Cato engaged in Orwellian tactics — deleting the term “privatization” from older web posts and even from records of old conferences. But they were sloppy; there were traces of the true history throughout. I don’t know if they’re still continuing the practice.

In any case, Ryan’s attempt to deny that what his own movement used to call privatization is, in fact, privatization should settle the question of his sincerity

Thirteen (13) months ago, Krugman was onto the Wisconsin Republican, recognizing "Ryan’s attempt to deny that what his own movement used to call privatization is, in fact, privatization should settle the question of his sincerity." Now Ryan has a scheme to privatize health care for the elderly.

This shouldn't have been surprising, really, and not only because of the Roadmap of a year earlier. His campaigns for Congress have included $209,184 from the real estate industry, $226,745 from commercial banks, and $301,949 from the securities and investments industry.... and $460,901 from his biggest benefactor, the insurance industry. So Representative Ryan is not only misguided about the needs of the elderly and ignorant about economics. He is also marvelously self-serving.

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