Pepper - the spice of our family

Pepper, our toy poodle, died last Saturday after a month long sickness.  Pepper lived to be almost 15 years old.  He was rarely ever sick until the end.  The vet thought it was a tumor.  He seemed to get better after some medicine.  Enjoyed Christmas with us, opening his presents, playing with family and friends and meeting our new grandson.  But the last week he got very weak and was not eating.  His red blood count was very low.  Took him to the vet twice and the vet said nothing could be done as he was bleeding internally.  At the end he could not stand up.  We held him as he was put asleep.  It was very sad.

But I want to write about what Pepper was like and how he was totally part of our family.

Mandy making Pepper a "French Poodle"




• In 1998, Mandy, who kept begging us for a dog finally convinced us and she choose Pepper from a litter of puppies.   He was the most active and friendly one.   We all went to doggy school to learn how to live together.  Pepper learned to sit, to come and to walk with us.

• Back home over time, Pepper learned lots of tricks.  He could shake your hand, roll over and dance on his hind legs.  He would sit patiently looking at a treat you put in front of him until you said "OK".   You could tell him to go to sleep and he would lay down on his side.  He would do most anything for a treat!

• Pepper loved to play ball.   Over the years developed two games with him.  In the morning,  he would run after and return a white ball, but to confuse him I would throw other items - little stuffed animals, little football, tennis ball, etc.   He learned to watch carefully what I was throwing and where I would throw them.   Generally, only when I threw the white ball would he chase after it.  

Then in the evening, we would play with a different set of balls.  There were 4 fluffy balls in a cloth cube which he would pull out.   Then I would throw out the balls and he would chase them or I would throw them up in the air and he would jump up to catch them or I would throw them back and forth under my legs and he would jump in and grab it.    Also, he liked to run and catch a soft Frisbee.

• Pepper loved to play hide and seek.   Scott and Bev loved to play this with him also.  We would run and hide and he would try to find us. 

• Pepper loved to run back and forth very fast in the hall way and family room and if you laid down he would jump over you and then turn around and jump over you again and again.  Or run between your legs.

• Our "doggy in the window".  Whenever we left him alone in the house, he would sit on the front sofa (or a chair at grandparent's home) looking out the front window waiting patiently for us to come back.  When we came home he would jump up and greet us going back and forth between us.

• Pepper loved to open his Christmas and birthday presents.  He would tear off the wrapping paper and then tear open the bag containing treats.  We would have to pull it away from him otherwise he would eat all of it then and there!  

• Almost every day, except when it was raining or very cold, we went for about a mile walk around the neighborhood.  We met lots of other dogs and other neighbors.  And we got lots of exercise!

• Pepper loved to go on trips with us - visiting friends, relatives and vacations.

George, Charlotte & Pepper on the Mississippi

Pepper & Gene at falls in Lanesboro Minn.

 Bev & Pepper riding boat to Mackinac Island

Norma with Pepper in Iowa

Visiting Gene's brother and family in Jacksonville Florida

• When I work in my workshop at home, Pepper would come check on me every so often.  Sometimes he would lay on the floor and watch me.

• When Bev fixes dinner, Pepper would hang around the kitchen waiting for something to fall on to the ground.  He liked people food.   After a while, if he didn't get any food he would start barking. 

• Pepper would attack the vacuum cleaner.  We would have to put a barrier up to keep him on one side of the house while we vacuum the other.

• When we would watch a movie usually on Friday or Saturday evening, he would get very excited about half way through.  Not of the movie, but in the expectation that we would soon get out the cheese.  He loved cheese. 

• One time I wrote down all the words I think Pepper knew - it was over a hundred!  We had to start spelling words if we did not want him to know what we were talking about!

• Pepper liked getting his hair cut.  Poodle's have hair rather than fur.    After grooming he was soft and fluffy.   Initially Pepper was all black, but with age, his hair became whiter and whiter.

• Pepper slept in his own bed next to our bed.  If it was storming, he would jump in bed with us.  In the morning after Bev would leave for work, he would jump in bed with me.

 The house is so empty now.   We miss him.

The fork in our road to this century is bent backwards!

Americans are looking at a fork in our road in this November election.  One tong continues straight ahead, but the other bends backwards!

The left tong represents President Obama's continuing to deal with the Great Recession created by the 21st century's first President - a President chosen by the Supreme Court and not by the majority of us. (Consider how different the world be today if Gore had been our first 21st century President!)

Despite having to deal with the Great Recession and a very resistant Republican Congress, President Obama has succeeded in moving our nation into the 21st century.  Among his many accomplishments:

• He has expanded our health care system to cover everyone even those with medical pre-conditions and to include those who work part time, or on their own or in small companies.
• He has made progress on fighting climate change by promoting green energy such as solar, wind and electric cars and improving energy efficiency such as getting cars companies to agree to double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks by 2025.

You can read about his goals for the next 4 years on his web site and which he has documented in more detail here including:

• Quality education: strengthen our schools by recruiting 100,000 math and science teachers, training 2 million workers for real jobs at community colleges, and cutting tuition growth in half.
• Cutting The Deficit By More Than $4 Trillion. By eliminating special loopholes and tax breaks that benefit big business and the wealthiest – as part of a balanced deficit reduction plan that also cuts spending we can’t afford – we can grow our economy without burdening our children and grandchildren with debt.

In contrast the right tong represents Governor Romney's plans along with the Tea Party that backs him to return us back to an earlier time. They talk about getting rid of or at least greatly reduce Healthcare Reform, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, EPA, regulations, taxes (especially on the rich), public education, gay rights, women rights, etc.   Read:

• ObamaCare repeal.
• Increase cost of Medicare.
• Medicare and Medicaid changes will effect current seniors.
• Privatize Social Security.
• Tax cuts for the rich.
• Cuts in federal programs while increasing military budget.
• Large public sector cuts may result in second recession.
• Deny climate change.  Focus on more oil and coal.
• Reducing EPA regulation of mercury and greenhouse gases.
• Reducing power of Consumer Financial Protection agency.
• Reduce federal funding for education.  Cut financial aid as it increase tuition costs.
• Support constitutional amendment to prevent gays getting married.
• Women's rights: abortion - overturn Roe v Wade, contraceptives, family planning.
• Reduce organized labor rights.
• Allow unlimited donations directly to candidates - make it easy for rich to buy politicians.

These plans would revert our country into 3rd world status where a small group of super rich run the country and most everyone else is poor.

• Romney is a plutocrat running on the plutocracy's agenda.
• The Gilded Age vs. the 21st century
• The Rise of the Super Rich
• The Romney Triumph, Paving the Way for Plutocrats
• Plutocracy -- a system of government of, by and for the wealthy

The decision for America - do we want to continue as a democracy working together to address the problems of the 21st century or do we want to retreat to the 19th century where the rich ruled our nation and everyone else was poor and had few rights - a plutocracy run by the elite?

Create 12 million jobs or a new recession?

A major reason people may be voting for Mitt Romney for President is his claim that he will create 12 million jobs in the next 4 years.   Pressed on where he came up with this number he said in a campaign television ad:

I will create 12 million jobs when President Obama couldn't. First, my energy independence policy means more than 3 million new jobs, many of them in manufacturing. My tax reform plan to lower rates for the middle class and for small business creates 7 million more. And expanding trade, cracking down on China and improving job training takes us to over 12 million new jobs.

However, the Washington Post fact checker awarded Romney Four Pinocchios for this statement!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mitt-romneys-new-math-for-jobs-plan-doesnt-add-up/2012/10/15/fd1d1e1c-170f-11e2-a55c-39408fbe6a4b_blog.html 

The claim that 7 million jobs would be created from Romney’s tax plan is a 10-year number, derived from a study written by John W. Diamond, a professor at Rice University.

The 3-million-jobs claim for Romney’s energy policies appears largely based on a Citigroup Global Markets study that did not even evaluate Romney’s policies. Instead, the report predicted 2.7 million to 3.6 million jobs would be created over the next 8 years, largely because of trends and policies already adopted — including tougher fuel efficiency standards that Romney has criticized and suggested he would reverse.

The 2-million-jobs claim from cracking down on China is also very suspicious. This figure comes from a 2011 International Trade Commission report, which estimated that there could be a gain of 2.1 million jobs if China stopped infringing on U.S. intellectual property rights. It is unclear when China might implement the improvement in IPR protection envisioned in the analysis.

The candidate’s personal accounting for this figure in this campaign ad is based on different figures and long-range timelines stretching as long as a decade — which in two cases are based on studies that did not even evaluate Romney’s economic plan. The numbers may still add up to 12 million, but they aren’t the same thing — not by a long shot.

Interestingly, it noted that:

The 12 million figure is not a bad bet by Romney. Moody’s Analytics, in an August forecast, predicts 12 million jobs will be created by 2016, no matter who is president. And Macroeconomic Advisors in April also predicted a gain of 12.3 million jobs.

http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/economy/247081-experts-say-economy-should-grow-despite-who-wins-white-house-in-november

"Most forecasts for employment growth are very close to 12 million over the next four years regardless of who wins the presidency," Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody's Analytics.  

The Labor Department has projected that employers will create 20.5 million jobs from 2010 to 2020 with the healthcare sector expected to grow the most rapidly, while construction jobs could struggle to recover positions lost during the recession. 

So it is predicted that we will see 12 million new jobs if Obama remains our President for the next 4 years!

However, Romney says we need to do tax reform. What effect will that have?

Bruce Bartlett, who held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul, says of Romney's claim that tax reform will create jobs:

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/romneys-tax-plan-and-economic-growth/

if Mr. Romney’s plan is enacted as proposed the growth effect will be small to nonexistent.  The idea that tax reform will jump-start an economy suffering from the after-effects of a cyclical downturn is nonsense. 

More likely the tax reform will result in big tax cuts for the rich.  Read:  http://genesview.blogspot.com/2012/10/are-we-being-scammed.html


Furthermore Romney says we need to do massive spending cuts to reduce the national debt.  Read:  http://genesview.blogspot.com/2012/10/does-romney-have-plan-to-reduce.html

What effect will that have?

http://www.thenation.com/blog/169373/romney-ryan-economic-plans-would-increase-unemployment-deepen-recession#

it would cost the US economy millions of jobs. Ryan’s 2011 budget plan proposes what the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities calls “the most severe and wrenching budget cuts in US history—two-thirds of which would come from programs for people of low or moderate incomes” (Medicaid, Pell Grants, food stamps and low-income housing). According to the Economic Policy Institute, “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.

Romney’s ideas would do little or nothing to fix the immediate crisis, and could in the short term make things worse.” Said Mark Hopkins, senior adviser at Moody’s Analytics: “On net, all of these policies would do more harm in the short term. If we implemented all of his policies, it would push us deeper into recession and make the recovery slower.”

One example, recall that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is expanding medical coverage to 30 million Americans and the Medicaid expansion will cover 17 million more. That means lots more jobs for doctors and nurses. But Romney says he will back out Obamacare and cut Medicaid funding by 30%! That means lots fewer jobs needed for doctors and nurses.


In fact, Romney's plans may push us back into a recession!

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-04/nobel-winner-stiglitz-sees-more-recession-odds-in-romney.html

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said the election of Mitt Romney as president in November would “significantly” raise the odds of a recession because it would herald a shift to a much tighter budget.

History shows that the adoption of fiscal austerity when an economy is weak can have disastrous consequences, as happened in the U.S. in 1929 on the eve of the Great Depression, Stiglitz told Bloomberg editors and reporters in New York yesterday. Republican candidate Romney risks making that same sort of mistake by backing a plan to slash the budget deficit, he said.

 http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/08/romneys-recovery-plan-could-bring-on-another-recession.html

In today’s Wall Street Journal, the Columbia economist Glenn Hubbard, who is one of Mitt Romney’s top economic advisers, has an op-ed piece entitled “The Romney Plan for Economic Recovery.”

Romney is promising austerity. Hubbard reiterates that he would aim to reduce federal spending from roughly twenty-four per cent of G.D.P. in fiscal 2012 to twenty per cent by 2016. Romney hasn’t spelled out how he would reach this target, but simple arithmetic suggests he would need to impose about five hundred billion dollars in annual spending cuts, which is equivalent to more than three per cent of G.D.P.

Spending cuts on this scale would be a big shock to an economy that is already sputtering badly. As we’ve seen in other developed countries over the past few years, the imposition of austerity policies can easily turn modest recoveries into renewed recessions. It has happened in the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy. Romney is asking the American voters to believe things would be different here. The obvious question to ask is: Why? Like the U.K. and Spain, the United States economy is still suffering the after-effects of a big housing bust. Rather than going out and spending, households and businesses are husbanding their resources and rebuilding their savings. In economies such as these, there is a heavy reliance on the government to maintain demand. If fiscal policy is tightened prematurely, a recession is a very likely result. Japan in the nineteen-nineties provides another pertinent example.

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/labor/report/2012/10/16/41608/romney-has-no-real-jobs-plan/

The truth is, Gov. Romney is ignoring facts and history while employing seriously flawed economic logic. The evidence shows that the kind of tax plan Gov. Romney proposes to implement is a job killer. What’s more, successful tax plans of the past followed a different path than the one Gov. Romney now outlines. A number of economists dug into the numbers to demonstrate that the Romney economic plan would, if anything, push our economy back into recession and cost Americans jobs.

Figure 1 shows, no matter how you cut it, Romney’s plan is worse than the status quo. His plan will either create a paltry number of jobs, far slower than the current pace, or will actually eliminate jobs and push the United States back into recession.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2012/04/25/british-economic-austerity-bombs-as-england-double-dips-into-recession/

the moment English Prime Minister David Cameron instituted his government austerity program in the belief that taking huge sums of money out of the British economy would get England back on more solid financial footing, American conservative leaders have been fawning all over their Conservative Party counterparts—if not the actual nation that the British Conservatives lead.

Today, the report card is in and the results are clear—the GOP has been backing the wrong horse…again.

The British Office for National Statistics confirms that the country’s GDP fell 0.2 percent in the first quarter of this year after contracting by 0.3 percent during the last quarter of 2011. These two, consecutive contractions make it official- England has doubled-dipped itself into another recession.

So instead of creating 12 million new jobs, Romney's plans will result in millions more out of a job and may result in another recession!

Does Romney have a plan to reduce the national debt?

Romney talks a lot about the large growing national debt but talks little about his plan to reduce it.  However, his web site does address this:  http://www.mittromney.com/issues/spending

On his web page he says we need to cut federal spending by $500 billion per year. To do this he lists the many things he would cut or reduce.  Amazingly, if you add up all the money he says we will save it adds up to only $320 billion per year.

So what does this mean?  Either with all the spending cuts he lists the national debt will still be increasing or he has another $180 billion more cuts in federal spending that he is not telling us about.

Further, one big item he is cutting is Obamacare which he says will save us $95 billion a year.  But the Congressional Budget Office says that will increase the deficit by about $210 billion over 10 years.  http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/jun/28/mitt-romney/mitt-romney-says-obamacare-adds-trillions-deficit/  Thus instead of saving us $95 billion a year, repealing Obamacare will cost us $21 billion a year. So if we correct this, his total savings is now only $204 billion per year!

The other item on his list with big savings is cutting Medicaid by $100 billion per year.  This will result in a 30% cut in benefits that help children, disabled and the elderly.  More than half of all nursing-home residents are covered by Medicaid, which pays nearly half of the nation’s total costs for long-term health care.  Read more about this at my blog posting: http://genesview.blogspot.com/2012/10/alert-romneys-plans-will-hurt-todays.html
Hopefully, Congress at least the Democrats will prevent this disaster.  So if we assume that Medicaid is not cut, then the savings from the remaining cuts is now only $104 billion per year!

One of the things he wants to spend more money on is the military (even though this has not been requested by our military leaders).  On his spending web page he says he needs to do a "reversal of irresponsible Obama-era defense cuts".  On his national defense web page he will "seek to devote 4% of our GDP to national defense"  http://www.mittromney.com/issues/national-defense.  To achieve this has been calculated to cost an additional $200 billion per year.  http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/05/barack-obama/obama-says-romney-would-spend-2-trilllion-military/.  Romney has agreed to this number.

Thus if we make this adjustment we are left with just $4 billion per year in savings toward reducing the national debt and that is assuming the massive Medicaid cuts.  If the Medicaid cuts do not happen, then we are left with a growing deficit of $96 billion per year.

What about Obama you ask?  On his web site he claims to have a plan that reduces the debt by $4 trillion over the next decade.  http://www.barackobama.com/plans/taxes-budget. However, the Tax Policy Center calculates that it would raise "$1.7 trillion in revenue over the coming decade" although that depends on what baseline is used given the coming financial cliff.  http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/2013-Budget.cfm.

The Tax Policy Center has not calculated Romney's budget impact: "because Gov. Romney has not specified how he would increase the tax base, it is impossible to determine how the plan would affect federal tax revenues or the distribution of the tax burden."   http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/romney-plan.cfm

Finally, don't forget Romney's tax cut plans which he claims he will make revenue-neutral. However, many experts say it is not possible or even probable.  If he goes ahead with the tax cuts but fails to make it all revenue-neutral that will increase the debt - up to $500 billion a year!  More details at my blog: http://genesview.blogspot.com/2012/10/are-we-being-scammed.html

So to answer the question Romney does have a plan to reduce the national debt, the answer appears to be no.

Are we being scammed?

People need to consider carefully the following...

This to what Mitt Romney says on his web page (as of Oct 16, 2012): http://www.mittromney.com/issues/tax

Individual Taxes

• Make permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates
• Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains
• Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends, and capital gains
• Eliminate the Death Tax
• Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)

Corporate Taxes

• Cut the corporate rate to 25 percent
• Strengthen and make permanent the R&D tax credit
• Switch to a territorial tax system
• Repeal the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)

This will provide big benefits especially to the very rich and big corporations.  http://www.alan.com/2012/07/19/how-romneys-tax-plan-hurts-the-poor-and-helps-the-rich/

The Romney plan would significantly exacerbate the already serious problem of income inequality in America, conferring extraordinarily large tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans while raising taxes on people making less than $30,000 a year. TPC [Tax Policy Center] estimates that people who make over $1 million a year would get an average tax cut of $250,000 in 2015 (increasing their after-tax income by an average of almost 12 percent), while people making between $40,000 and $50,000 would get an average tax cut of $512 (increasing their after-tax income by an average of 1.3 percent), and people making between $10,000 and $20,000 would pay an average $174 more in taxes (decreasing their after-tax income by an average of 1.1 percent).

However, the fact check organizations say that implementing the above changes to our taxes would result in a $5 trillion deficit over the next decade.

    http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/04/barack-obama/obama-says-romneys-plan-5-trillion-tax-cut/

    http://factcheck.org/2012/10/the-facts-according-to-obama-and-romney-ads/

To address the criticism that this will increase the national debt, Romney has started promising verbally that these tax cuts will be revenue-neutral (http://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2012/10/12/five-things-you-should-know-about-mitt-romneys-5-trillion-tax-cut/).   Here is what he said in an interview with Fortune magazine on August 6.  http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2012/08/15/mitt-romney-interview/

I announced my tax plan that the key principles included the following. First, that high-income people would continue to pay the same share of the tax burden that they do today. And second, that there would be a reduction in taxes paid by middle-income taxpayers. 

[I will] work with Congress to identify which of the alternative methods we should apply to reduce deductions, benefits, and exemptions. 

First note that these "key principles" are not listed on his web site:  http://www.mittromney.com/issues/tax

Further he refuses to even specify any substantial deduction, benefit and exemption that he would seek to reduce. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/04/barack-obama/obama-says-romneys-plan-5-trillion-tax-cut/

Romney has yet to specify what tax breaks he would change. The impact of changing deductions on the scale needed to offset the tax cuts would be great. The largest deductions include interest on home mortgages, state and local taxes and the tax free treatment of health benefits. These are real pocketbook issues for most households and tinkering with them could have significant effects on large sectors of the economy.

So what do the economists say about his plan?

The Tax Policy Center tried to make his 20% tax cut revenue neutral.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-02/romney-tax-plan-on-table-debt-collapses-table-.html

The analysts assumed that any cuts to deductions or loopholes would begin with top earners, and that no one earning less than $200,000 would have their deductions reduced until all those earning more than $200,000 had lost all of their deductions and tax preferences first. The numbers never worked out... ended the same way: with a tax increase on the middle class. The tax cuts Romney is offering to the rich are simply larger than the size of the (non-investment) deductions and loopholes that exist for the rich. That’s why it’s “mathematically impossible” for Romney’s plan to produce anything but a tax increase on the middle class.

 If Romney tries to pay for his tax cuts by reducing spending, the results, as the Tax Policy Center notes, would be even more regressive. Romney has promised to increase defense spending and hold benefits steady for the current generation of seniors. The only remaining big spending programs are those that help the poor; that’s where Romney’s cuts would have to be concentrated. Paying for tax cuts for the rich by curtailing programs for the poor is even more of a reverse-Robin Hood act than paying for tax cuts for the rich by cutting the tax expenditures (deductions and the like) of the middle class.

Besides the Tax Policy Center there have been a number of other studies some done by conservative economists and groups such as the Heritage Foundation.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/27/wonkblogs-comprehensive-guide-to-the-debate-over-romneys-tax-plan/

All of the above analyzes assume that Romney totally eliminates the charitable deduction, mortgage-interest deduction, all education tax breaks, all state and local tax deductions the employer-provided health care exemption, all Health Savings Account and medical expenses deductions, and more for people making over $200,000. Even if TPC is wrong, you’d probably have to limit them for people making under that amount too, so middle-class people pay the same amount when you take into account the rate cuts.
These are enormous changes. Eliminating the charitable deduction for the rich could effectively wipe out funding for thousands of charitable, artistic, and educational institutions. Eliminating the mortgage-interest deduction would upend the housing sector, reducing demand to buy dramatically and shifting the sector toward renting. Eliminating the employer health exemption could mark the beginning of the end of the employer-based health system as we know it.

Here is a professor in the economics department at Harvard University attempting to find feasibility in Romney's tax plan gets into eliminating deductions and exemptions for those in the middle class.  http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-reply-from-martin-feldstein.html

eliminating all deductions for taxpayers with AGI above $100,000
eliminating the exclusion of employer payments for health insurance for those with AGI over $100,000
eliminating the exclusion of municipal bond interest for taxpayers with AGI over $100,000

In addition to the potential deficit caused by his 20% tax cut, Romney is also planning on spending $2 trillion (over the next decade) on the military more than Obama's budget and above what the military has asked for.  http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/05/barack-obama/obama-says-romney-would-spend-2-trilllion-military/
Romney has not said how this additional military spending will be paid for other than in unspecified spending cuts.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3658

Governor Mitt Romney’s proposals to cap total federal spending at 20%  of gross domestic product (GDP) and boost defense spending to 4%  of GDP would require very large cuts in other programs, both entitlements and discretionary programs.

For the most part, Governor Romney has not outlined cuts in specific programs.  But if policy­makers repealed health reform (the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) and exempted Social Security from cuts, as Romney has suggested, and cut Medicare, Medicaid, and all other entitlement and discretionary programs by the same percentage to meet Romney’s overall spending cap and defense spending target, then they would have to cut non-defense programs other than Social Security by 22% in 2016 and 34% in 2022.  If they exempted Medicare from cuts for this period, the cuts in other programs would have to be even more dramatic — 32% in 2016 and 53% in 2022.
If they applied these cuts proportionately, the cuts in programs such as veterans’ disability compensation, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) for poor elderly and disabled individuals, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly food stamps), school lunches and other child nutrition programs, and unemployment compensation would cause the incomes of large numbers of households to fall below the poverty line.  Many who already are poor would become poorer.

The cuts in non­-defense discretionary programs — a spending category that covers a wide variety of public services such as elemen­tary and secondary education, law enforcement, veterans’ health care, environmen­tal protection, and biomedical research — would come on top of the substantial cuts in this part of the budget that are already in law, due to the discretionary funding caps in last year’s Budget Control Act.

Note that Romney and Ryan never promise that they will not reduce the benefits for the poor.   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/22/the-real-romney-ryan-budgets-cuts-arent-to-medicare-theyre-to-programs-for-the-poor/

Ryan cuts nearly $1.4 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years. That’s a 34% cut to the program’s expected spending over the next decade.

Ryan’s budget cuts $134 billion from food stamps, which is enough to kick 8-10 million people off the program.

Ryan cuts $166 billion from the portion of the budget that houses our education, training, employment and social services funding.

Romney’s budget is much, much more aggressive than Ryan’s. Ryan’s got about $5.3 trillion in cuts. Romney’s looking for $7 trillion. To make Romney’s numbers add up, you have to assume that by the end of his presidency, Romney will have cut every federal program that’s not Medicare, Social Security or defense spending by 57%.

So for Romney to not increase the national debt by $7 trillion dollars ($5 trillion by his 20% tax cut and $2 trillion for additional military spending),  he would have to cut most popular deductions and exemptions to middle class as well as to the rich and make drastic cuts to federal programs that serve the poor and middle class.

Questions:

1. Why is this 20% tax cut necessary if it is going to be revenue-neutral?  If it is revenue-neutral - some will gain some will lose - but on average there is no benefit.
2. If this revenue-neutral 20% tax cut is going to eliminate popular middle class deductions - why do it?
3. Why spend an additional $2 trillion above what the military asks for especially if it means drastic cuts in federal programs benefiting the poor and middle class?

The answer?

First please note again that Romney never says anything on his web site about his tax cuts being revenue-neutral or that loop holes, exemptions and deductions must be eliminated.  That promise is only verbal.  Plus they are keeping it a secret what specifically they will eliminate.  Perhaps there is no list.  Have you ever heard of the saying "get it in writing"?

Romney with a Republican Congress will institute his tax cuts first. Then perhaps when they have time they will look into eliminating unspecified popular deductions and exemptions. Doubtful that it will really occur.  What Republican Congressman would vote to increase taxes (by eliminating deductions and exemptions) on businesses and on the rich?  Even if it does happen, it will not be good for the middle class.

Likewise, the military will get their additional funding up front. New ships, submarines and aircraft will be built (http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/asd_10_09_2012_p02-01-504216.xml).   Then Congress especially if it is Republican controlled will start cutting federal programs.   If they succeed that will not be good for the poor and middle classes.

If the $7 trillion is not fully balanced by elimination of deductions and exemptions and massive cuts in federal spending, then they will say what is a few more trillion?  Note that the biggest growth in debt came under Republican Presidents. http://www.businessinsider.com/who-increased-the-debt-2012-9

So why?  Because the rich will get big tax cuts.  Big companies will get billions of dollars from tax cut savings and increase military spending.

Recall that Romney is very rich and benefits from the low capital gains tax rate.  http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/16/news/economy/romney-taxes/index.html

Romney is in that group of people who really, really benefit from low tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
Romney's financial disclosures suggest his net worth is as high as $264 million, making him one of the wealthiest candidates in history to seek the U.S. presidency.

Obama proposes to raise capital gain tax from 15% to 20% which means that Romney would have to pay more taxes. http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/08/14/obama-vs-romney-which-tax-plan-works-for/

It would also allow Romney to pay back his rich backers.  http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2012/1004/Election-2012-top-seven-super-PACs/Restore-our-Future

The top 1% of donors (105 people) have contributed 58% of all super PAC funding, mainly directed to help conservatives

Romney is throwing candy at us - lower tax rates and bigger military - but is hiding how this might be paid for.   Either the national debt is increased by $7 trillion or many of us will to pay for this.  And he has made it clear that it will NOT be the rich that will face higher taxes; that leaves most of us with higher effective taxes, decreased benefits and a higher national debt to be paid off by our grandchildren.

Definition: scam - to swindle someone by means of a trick - deprive somebody of something by deceit

This may be the biggest scam on Americans in history - 7 trillion dollars!

Alert! Romney's plans will hurt today's seniors

Romney has been saying about his health care changes will not affect those over 55.  But various news media sources including fact check organizations say otherwise.  In fact, the New England Journal of Medicine recently published an article verifying this: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1210265

If you are over 55 or have family over 55 please read:

1. Patients Would Pay More if Romney Restores Medicare Savings!

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/us/politics/costs-seen-in-romneys-medicare-savings-plan.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Mitt Romney’s promise to restore $716 billion that he says President Obama “robbed” from Medicare has some health care experts puzzled.

The 2010 health care law cut Medicare reimbursements to hospitals and insurers, not benefits for older Americans, by that amount over the coming decade. But repealing the savings, policy analysts say, would hasten the insolvency of Medicare by eight years — to 2016, the final year of the next presidential term, from 2024.

    Note: 2016 is 4 years from now!  To prevent Medicare ending in 4 years more money would have to put into Medicare but from whom?  Would those on Medicare have to pay more or would those not yet on Medicare pay more?

restoring the $716 billion in Medicare savings would increase premiums and co-payments for beneficiaries by $342 a year on average over the next decade; in 2022, the average increase would be $577.
Beneficiaries, through their premiums and co-payments, share the cost of Medicare with the government. If Medicare’s costs increase — for instance, by raising payments to health care providers — so, too, do beneficiaries’ contributions.

    Note: restoring the $716 billion means that Medicare costs would go up by an additional $340 a year.

And those costs would be on top of the costs involved with a full repeal of the health care law, which would eliminate expanded coverage of prescription drugs, free wellness care and preventive checkups.

    Note: back to the donut hole and no more free preventive checkups.

Romney is proposing to take more money from seniors in higher premiums and co-pays and hand it over to private insurance companies and other providers in the Medicare system.

    More references:
        http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-fact-check-romney-medicare-cut-20121003,0,3111207.story
        http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/03/mitt-romney/romney-says-obama-cut-716-billion-medicare/
        http://www.factcheck.org/2012/08/medicares-piggy-bank/
        http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-potus-debate-fact-check-20121004,0,5248662.story


2. Medicaid (helps seniors in nursing homes) reduced by 30%!

    http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1012/82003_Page2.html#ixzz28J1trsHU

Governor Romney talked about Medicaid and how we could send it back to the states, but effectively this means a 30% cut in the primary program we help for seniors who are in nursing homes, for kids who are with disabilities.

Independent economists — some working largely from Paul Ryan’s budget blueprints, others examining the less specific and more recent Romney plans — have come up with similar assessments of deep, deep cuts.

    http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec12/medicaid_10-01.html

Compared to Medicare, Medicaid, the nation's health insurance for low-income Americans, actually covers more people. It covers children, the disabled and the elderly.  Medicaid covers 62 million Americans; covers 40% of the births in this country; covers the majority of publicly funded long-term care services."

Any one of us at an advanced age really is just one fall away from a broken hip and then a spiraling out of conditions that could end you up in a nursing home or some other kind of life-altering decision.

President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney have laid out very different visions for Medicaid.

For the president, the program is a critical component of expanded coverage under the health reform law. Beginning in 2014, Medicaid would grow to cover as many as 16 million more people. Many of the new beneficiaries would include childless adults who don't qualify under current law.  The federal government would spend about $440 billion more to cover these people for the first five years of the program.

Romney wants to give states a set amount of money, effectively a block grant that would be more limited than what states receive today. States would be granted more flexibility.  Romney has not spelled out whether he would allow local officials to deny Medicaid to some current patients altogether or restrict health benefits they now receive.  Romney also says he wouldn't have Medicaid spending keep pace with projected health care inflation.  the largest cut to Medicaid that has ever been proposed, a cut that, according to one nonpartisan group, would take away health care for about 19 million Americans.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/30/romneys-budget-would-require-a-40-cut-to-everything-but-medicare-social-security-and-defense/

Romney promises that there will be no other changes to Social Security or Medicare for those over 55, which means neither program can be cut for the next 10 years. But once you add up Medicare, Social Security and defense and you’ve got more than half of the federal budget. So Romney is going to make the largest spending cuts in history while protecting or increasing spending on more than half of the budget.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities indulged this idea back in May. If Social Security and Medicare are spared from cuts, then to get federal spending under 20% of GDP while holding defense spending at 4% of GDP, “all other programs — including Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, education, environmental protection, transportation, and SSI — would have to be cut by an average of 40% in 2016 and 57% in 2022.

    http://money.cnn.com/2012/08/13/news/economy/ryan-medicaid/index.htm

Ryan says his plan would curtail Medicaid spending by $810 billion over 10 years. In 2022, federal Medicaid funding would be about 34% less than states would receive under current law, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

    http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicaid/index.html

Medicaid serves 56 million (18% of the US). 77% of people enrolled in Medicaid were children and families, while 23% were elderly or disabled. But 64% of Medicaid spending was for older Americans and people with disabilities, while 36% went to children and families.

    http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=2223

More than half of all nursing-home residents are covered by Medicaid, which pays nearly half of the nation’s total costs for long-term health care.

Why would you NOT want healthcare insurance?

You may have read recently that an Appeals Court ruled against the requirement in the 2010 healthcare law that those that can afford it must buy healthcare insurance. [1]  The media talks as if this is a defeat for Obama and his healthcare reform package.  But consider these points:

1. This court ruled that the rest of the Obama healthcare package is legal.

2. Other courts have ruled that the mandate is legal, so ultimately this issue is expected to be settled by the Supreme Court.

3. The mandate to buy healthcare insurance was not Obama's idea but a Republican idea going back to Nixon in the 1970s, the Republicans in the 1990s and most recently by Mitt Romney as Governor in Massachusetts.  In Obama's original proposal there was a public option which would handle those people that did not buy health insurance.  But the Republicans were against the public option so as a compromise Obama went with the Republican idea of requiring everyone to buy insurance. [2] [3]

     So Republicans in their finest anti-Obama mode now reject their own idea!

     Mitt Romney, now running for the GOP candidate for President, has been forced to backpedal his successful accomplishment of providing healthcare to all in Massachusetts - which was based on requiring everyone who could afford it to buy healthcare insurance.

4. If the Supreme Court rejects the Republican idea of requiring everyone who can afford it to buy healthcare insurance, then the fall back is to do what Medicare D does. [4] [5]

     Under Medicare D if someone chooses not participate, fine, then you have to buy your own drugs with no help from the insurance companies.  Further, if you ever want to get back under Medicare D there is a big penalty to join.

     Likewise under this alternative proposal, if a person does not buy any health insurance, then they are on their own to pay hospital, lab, doctor and drug bills if they get sick.  They can go to the emergency room even if they don't have healthcare insurance but will only get basic treatment and will be sent bills putting them further in debt.  If they get really sick (e.g. cancer) and the bills get really big, they may now want to get health insurance but there will be a big penalty that grows over the years.  Basically, paying for the health insurance that they had not gotten.   Many people may never be able to get back into the health insurance pool and thus will face an early death because they will not get the treatments they need.

    This alternative has the disadvantage that it will probably result in higher healthcare insurance premiums for those that do buy healthcare insurance - depending on how many people refuse to buy insurance.   First because they are not contributing to the general pool and second because everyone else will have to pay their emergency room visits.  Perversely, it does have the benefit over time of eliminating stupid people who can not see the benefit of having healthcare insurance.

     Of course, if a person is very rich, they don't need any insurance which is why this is being pushed by the very rich.  For everyone else, why would you NOT want to have healthcare insurance?