There are few people who benefits more and have done more to earn those benefits that people who receive SSDI. These are people who have become disabled and who have paid premiums from every paycheck throughout their entire working lives. Now Republicans are moving to gut the funding for the benefits they have earned.
Fellow Democrats, after an extremely demoralizing off-year election cycle for our Party, in a time where there have been so many issues and arguments that have divided the Party into bickering factions and niches, a line has been drawn in the sand that should unite Democrats of all stripes to a common rallying cause. Protecting Social Security from those who would destroy it. Social Security is under deliberate and malignant assault. The deranged extremist fringe far-Rightwing ideological zealots of the House Republican caucus have decided to deliberately engineer a Social Security crisis. No matter what your issues with the Democratic Party, now is the time to set aside other matters and begin to come together for the greater public good.
A huge number of Social Security beneficiaries are disabled Americans and other non-Retirees who would be in dire crisis without the aid of a vital part of the most important program within the American Social Safety Net. On Tuesday, the Republicans in the US House acted like the predatory cowards and gutless worms that they are and created a rule that would prevent clean reallocations to fund the nation’s Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). This, like the deliberate sabotaging of the US Postal Service by creating forces that no other agency or arm of the US Government has to deal with, is the kind of cancer you get from Conservative Republican reigns of error and terror. This is a wake-up call to rally. All of us. United together.
Let us be clear. "Reformers" are never people acting in blatant bad faith and with malice of intent to their actions. Damn the Village, and Social Security Saboteurs, and walk a wall for the sick, the poor, the eldery, and the disabled. There is no "good" Social Security and "bad" Social Security, there is only Social Security. The Republicans are not interested in "reforming" Social Security, they want to destroy it and use the lazy "both siderisms" of the Village news media to obfuscate their actions and their agenda. This is a manufactured crisis. Pure and simple. It is also a challenge to Americans of good faith who support the Safety Net. Time to stand up.
Here we have an act of deliberate political terrorism and social sabotage that is being carried out to disrupt the lives of Americans in crisis and on the margins. We must all say "HELL NO!" … [emphasis added]
Inserted from <Daily Kos>
I could not agree with this author more. This is not the first time that Republicans have attacked SSDI. During the Bush Regime, his gutted the Social Security Department, so there were almost no employees to review SSDI claims. He also made it standard practice to deny most valid claims until a lawyer appealed the claims all the way to the top, in the hopes that the claimant would die before resolution, rendering back benefits moot. It transformed a process that took weeks into one that took years.
It took me over three years to get SSDI. During those years I ate mostly rice and beans. Veggies were a treat. Meat was a rare luxury. I went without several basic needs. I often had to decide between food and medicine. On three separate occasions, I had to pull one of my own teeth, because there was no money for a dentist. When my case finally got to the judge, he said it was so obvious that it should have been approved on day one. He did not even require testimony.
Now I’m past SSDI and am now just a retiree, so I won’t be effected by this Republican atrocity. However, I don’t want others to suffer, as I did. Please contact your Congress Critter.
Every penny that is spent in earned benefits to the poor and middle classes is a penny Republicans can’t spend as welfare for billionaires.
The Frederick County, Maryland, council member recently threatened his local paper, the News-Post, with a lawsuit if it printed his name without permission. The dispute was the result of what Mr Delauter says was unfair coverage by Bethany Rodgers, one of the paper’s reporters.
Sen Ron Wyden’s [D-OR] staff was not prepared for what happened at his annual Multnomah County Town Hall, held at SCC Southeast on Saturday afternoon. When "Hands Up Pdx" demonstrators took over the meeting and stopped the Senator from taking questions, his staff scrambled for a way to regain control and let the town hall proceed.
If you had any doubt that gun nuts and racists have a little something in common, consider the case of Larry Pratt. This outstanding citizen heads up Gun Owners of America, a right-wing, pro-gun group, so comfortingly, he is armed to the teeth. He offered up his sterling analysis of the root cause of racism in America this week: it’s the black people.
