DCPetterson Profile picture
Oct 16 8 tweets 3 min read
Republican proposals:

1) First statement is an outright lie. Social Security and Medicare contribute ZERO to the federal deficit. They're entirely paid for by FICA taxes, which can't be used for anything else.

1/8
Furthermore, that means cutting benefits will NOT reduce the deficit, because FICA TAXES CAN'T BE USED FOR ANYTHING ELSE.

Got it? Good. Let's go on.

2/8
2) Second paragraph: Social Security can pay 70%-80% of promised benefits FOREVER. They other 20%-30% can be made up by eliminating the income cap on FICA contributions. We DON'T have to reduce benefits as Republicans want to.

3/8
3) Third paragraph: Raising Medicare eligibility to 75 also raises the Soc Sec retirement age to 75, because otherwise retirees won't be able to afford healthcare--specially since Republicans want to repeal the ACA.

Fuck. That.

4/8
4) More on the third paragraph: Eliminating eligibility at age 90 is Republican Death Panels, intentionally punishing and killing Americans who were so self-centered as to NOT DIE. Republicans are anti-life.

Fuck. Them.

5/8
5) Taxing VA Disability and employer-sponsored healthcare plans will do NOTHING to help Social Security or Medicare, because those programs get NO money from the federal budget. Only from FICA taxes.

Which means...

6/8
... taxing VA Disability and employer-sponsored healthcare plans is intended for one reason only: to make these things more expensive for Americans, and thus to kill the plans, and to kill Americans.

Republicans want YOU to die. Period.

7/8
6) The final paragraph: NO. These proposals are designed to make die you desperate, impoverished, ill, and helpless, and to force you to work until the day you die, naked and alone.

This is terrifying.

8/8

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More from @dcpetterson

Oct 11
If the Fascist Party wins the House, expect:

* endless fake impeachments
* constant mock "hearings"
* eternal fauxvestigations
* repeated attempts to repeal everything since 1940
* absurd Constitutional Amendments
* bills to end civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights

1/4
If the Fascist Party wins the Senate, expect all the above, plus:

* no more federal judges
* Reconciliation Bills to tax the poor and middle class, and cut taxes for the morbidly wealthy

2/4
If the Fascist Party wins the either House, expect:

* nothing at all to get done
* frequent and prolonged government shutdowns
* end to Ukraine aid

3/4
Read 4 tweets
Oct 10
For those impatient for DOJ to indict Trump:

Teri Kanefield pointed out, had Trump been indicted on Jan 7 2021, he'd have been accused of inciting a riot by giving an incendiary speech. No more than that.

And he'd have walked.

1/6
All Trump's defense attorneys would have had to do was put the leaders of the Proud Boys on the stand to claim credit for executing the insurrection (they had detailed plans to do it), and to say they weren't even at Trump's speech, so couldn't have been incited by Trump.

2/6
Trump would have been found not guilty, and would have walked.

See, in the months since the Jan 6 assault on the Capitol, we've discovered Trump did NOT "incite a riot" with his speech. He'd been planning an insurrection for months, which is far worse.

3/6
Read 6 tweets
Sep 28
There is a historical novel to be written that culminates in the ten months from July 1881 to April 1882. It would be an epic encapsulating what we think of as the "Old West".

In that single ten-month period:

1/6
Billy the Kid was killed in Fort Sumner, New Mexico, on July 14, 1881.

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral took place outside Tombstone, Arizona on October 26, 1881.

Jesse James was killed in St. Joseph, Missouri on April 3, 1882.

2/6
Any such novel should not play down the brutality of time times or of the people involved--the "heroes" as well as the villains.

These were, of course, independent events. But they carry repeating themes, and they form the basis for much of American myth.

3/6
Read 6 tweets
Sep 23
A really BIG part of making fascism acceptable requires making reality unknowable.

Fascism relies on getting people to believe (or at least, to parrot) nonsense. Because people who believe absurdities will commit atrocities.

Yes, some things are true. And others are false.

1/4
Reality IS knowable. Not every "issue" has "two sides."

1+1=? has an actual answer. There is a knowable difference between up and down. The Earth is round, and orbits the Sun. Evolution happened (and still is happening). Humans are changing Earth's climate.

2/4
I know some of the statements in the previous tweet are "controversial" in the sense that rightists deny them. Also, COVID is not a hoax, Russia helped Trump in 2016, and Trumpists attacked the Capitol on 1/6 in an attempt to end democracy. These things are objectively true.

3/4
Read 5 tweets
Sep 21
DOJ wants to use the classified documents that were seized from Mar-a-Lago to conduct a National Security Assessment of the damage done by having them in an insecure location, and then to possibly bring criminal charges based on that Assessment.

Trump doesn't want this.

1/14
Trump's lawyers are contesting whether the documents are actually classified. Of course, this won't affect the National Security Assessment (which cares about the information contained in the docs, not really their classification status), or any possible indictments.

2/14
The reason Trump is contesting the classification status is, DOJ asked that the classified documents be omitted from the Special Master's examination, since 1) them being classified, the SM and all the lawyers would have to get special security clearances to see them and...

3/14
Read 14 tweets
Sep 21
DeSantis wanted to prove that liberals are just as cruel as fascists. He wanted the people on Martha's Vineyard to recoil in horror at the influx of brown people seeking asylum, because fascists like DeSantis are convinced everyone hates, the same way he does.

1/9
DeSantis wanted to prove he (DeSantis) is better than liberals, because he is honest about his hatred. He wanted the "rich liberal elites" on the Vineyard to treat these people (who are in the country legally) as cruelly as he himself did, to prove his superior honesty.

2/9
Turns out, the Vineyard rapidly organized to help the asylum seekers. To DeSantis, this is even better. Fascists, you see, not only hate everyone, but are convinced everyone else also hates in the same way. So the Vineyard liberals are hypocritically virtue signaling.

3/9
Read 9 tweets

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