With his choice of Paul Ryan for his VP nom, Mitt Romney made it clear to the world that he intends to carry through the most draconian of GOP agendas on all fronts, social, financial, and economic, should Romney be elected President.
Mitt Romney just threw down THE gauntlet on the American way of life.
Ryan's budget plan calls for deep tax cuts for the wealthy, including elimination of capital gains taxes, taxes on dividends, and taxes on "interest". These three income sources are peculiar to the wealthy and the 1%. In fact, many in this singularly privileged group make ALL their money through these three avenues. For the vast majority of Americans, NONE of these are available to them at current wage structures. Those who have jobs, that is.
Those in all other income classes, all lower-earning, lower-financial and property resource classes, will be excluded from these tax breaks.
Ryan's budget calls for massive cuts to safety net programs, turns Medicare into a 'voucher' program, with all those connotations and stigmas, and eliminates Social Security. And then there's the jobs:
Paul Ryan’s latest budget doesn’t just fail to address job creation, itaggressively slows job growth. Against a current policy baseline, the budget cuts discretionary programs by about $120 billion over the next two years and mandatory programs by $284 billion, sucking demand out of the economy when it most needs it and leading to job loss. Using a standard macroeconomic model that is consistent with that used by private- and public-sector forecasters, the shock to aggregate demand from near-term spending cuts would result in roughly 1.3 million jobs lost in 2013 and 2.8 million jobs lost in 2014, or 4.1 million jobs through 2014.*
And Romney has declared to the world that he thinks this is the way to go, that the wealthy are who he will represent, almost exclusively, if elected President. It's the GOP wet dream.
Recently, articles circulated about the owner and founder of Papa John's Pizza. The man lives in a 40,000 square foot house with a 22-car garage, situated on a 16-acre estate. The owner, John Schnatter, listed as #17 by Forbes on its 'richest people in the world under age 40' list, complained bitterly that he would have to raise the price of his pizzas 11 to 14 cents to cover employee health care once ACA goes into full effect in 2014. (Or maybe he should just rent out a few rooms of that 40,000 sq. ft. house to cover the costs, if he's that hard up.) One can only imagine the amount of money John Schnatter stands to gain with the Ryan tax plan.
If the Ryan budget ever becomes law, it will represent the clearest and most effective move, by government, that very same entity which the GOP hates so much, to impose 21st century feudalism on the majority of American workers EVER.
We haven't even addressed Romney's promises to eliminate Planned Parenthood or abortion in any medical situation whatsoever. His eagerness to finally join a war - the GOP War on Women - underscores that little glimpse into his personality that we all saw when the story came out about how he bullied an underclassman at his very exclusive private school. He would finally have the opportunity to express that especially dark side of his nature and personality, with the full-on help of the GOP, through anti-woman legislation, the likes of which would be historically repressive.
Between the Ryan budget, Romney's promises to overturn our entire way of life in America, and the GOP's blatantly oppressive domestic and social agendas, the American Dream would die a grisly death, and along with it, most Americans would see the end of their futures, the end of their plans and dreams, the end of their opportunities, which, it turns out, are all make-believe when the GOP runs the country. Remember September 2008.
By choosing Paul Ryan to run as VP, Mitt Romney has thrown 98% of Americans under the bus. And we all have to think about this as we enter the voting booths (those of us lucky enough to be able to, thanks to the GOP's concerted efforts to limit our voting rights):
The President of the United States is supposed to represent ALL the people - not just the ones who write checks to his campaign, and not just the ones with 16-acre estates.
If GOP candidates are elected to the White House and Congressional majorities this fall, this country will have chosen its own path to its own self-destruction.