Don't Blink. The DC Machine Is Killing Medicare Right Before Our Eyes

This last week we've seen how Washington's elites are able to suppress popular opinion, work against the public interest, and wrap it all up with a bow so that it looks like 'democracy in action.' It's not. What we're seeing isn't democracy, and it isn't a free press either. It's merely another cynical ploy to rob Americans of government programs they both need and want.

The latest assault is on Medicare. The "Ryan/Widen plan" is a perfect case study in the cynical workings of an antidemocratic machine - a machine whose cogs are lazy journalists, whose gears are selfish politicians, and whose levers are pulled by the wealthy and powerful.

I held my fire on this for a few days, to see if more details would emerge on the proposal from Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Paul Ryan, who were initially (and deliberately vague) on its specifics. That wow gold turned it into Rorschach test for observers, and where the Washington Post sees a butterfly I usually see a vampire bat.

But Malcolm Gladwell would be pleased: It turns out that the first 'blink' impression of Ryan/Wyden is the right one. It's a Medicare-killing publicity stunt that undermines the financial security of the 99%. And if you happen to be reading this in the Nation's Capital, please note: The 'lefty' position on Medicare is supported by most Republicans.

Let's not kid ourselves. Unless we act quickly and aggressively, the Machine will succeed in killing Medicare.

The Program

We've seen this software before. It's been run against Social Security, jobs, and other government services that are both popular and effective. Here's how it works:

1.Concept: An intellectually thin but runescape gold highly-funded network of corporate-funded and billionaire-backed "think" tanks draft a proposal that would eviscerate a popular government program.
2.Rollout: Congressional Republicans act in lockstep to implement the think tank's policy by gutting something that's typically supported in overwhelming numbers by Democrats and independents - and which is often backed most registered Republican voters, too.
3.Blowback: The backlash from aggrieved citizens comes from all across the political spectrum, but is spun by compliant media figures as a reflexive hostility to "new ideas" from "ideologues" and "extremists" on the left.
4.Sellout: A cynical, self-serving Democrat sees an opportunity to curry favor with billionaires, corporations, and media outlets by endorsing the radical moves the Republicans have proposed.
5.Spin: buy wow gold The media uses that Democrat's endorsement as proof that the corporate position is actually that of "responsible" and "moderate" politicians in both parties.
The software has a political side effect, too: The distinction between Republicans and Democrats is blurred a little more, depriving Democrats of a winnable election issue.
Think of these five steps as a computer program you can run in almost any situation. The only variables are the program that is to be killed, the Democrat that'll do the dirty work, and which media outlet will deliver the machine's message this time. Plug in those three items and the program pretty much runs itself - or, as they used to say in the tech world, it "executes."

The Execution

This time around the government program is Medicare, the Democratic hack who's willing to undermine cheap wow gold it for selfish reasons is Ron Wyden, and the media outlet is (who else?) the Washington Post. Here's how the five steps played out this time around:

1.Concept: Rightists in think tanks like the Heritage Foundation designed a system that dismantles Medicare, replacing it with vouchers that would provide less and less medical coverage with each passing year. The dovetails nicely with the rightwing Peterson Foundation's twenty-year jihad against so-called "entitlements," Social Security and Medicare, which have very little fiscal relationship to one another.
2.Rollout: Congressional Republicans dutifully encoded this radical scheme into a proposal called the "Ryan Plan," after Rep. Paul Ryan, who was chosen to present this idea as if it were his own. Their voted nearly unanimously for Ryan's plan, placing their party in an extremely vulnerable world of warcraft gold position with voters (while ingratiating it to many high-dollar corporate and individual campaign donors).
3.Blowback: The Machine media tried to claim it was not a plan to end Medicare, a radical reality inversion which had an hallucinatory effect on your correspondent. But no Orwellian inversion could conceal this plan's true nature or protect Republicans in Congress from a public backlash. That's why so many Republican representatives ran into a hailstorm during the next recess.
4.Sellout: Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon dutifully stepped up to play the 'Democratic hack' role that's been played by so many of his colleagues, co-authoring a modified 'Ryan/Wyden plan' that was nothing more than a diluted version of Ryan's radicalism.
5.Spin: And now - with a predictability that should be astonishing, but isn't - the Washington Post is celebrating Ryan as a shining example of true bipartisanship in action.
Make no mistake about it: This program would have a devastating effect on Medicare. (See here,, here, and for a more general overview of "premium support" programs, here.)

How would we recognize real bipartisanship? It's what you'd see if some Republicans heeded their base by crossing the aisle to oppose the Ryan plan, since polls show that 56% of registered Republicans are against a voucher system. But that ain't gonna happen. And if a single Republican on the Hill strays from corporatist/Republican orthodoxy, you can be they won't be the subject of a laudatory editorial in the Washington Post.

What's more, if voters are told that plans like Ryan/Wyden won't cover all the costs currently covered by Medicare, overall opposition to the idea rises to 84%. But who's going to tell them that -- the Post?

Don't hold your breath.