The Youngs Don't Vote, So Repugs Are Fucking Them Good

Squeaky wheel gets the grease, children, and silence gets taken for assent. Speak out, speak up, organize and vote, or suffer the consequences.

Zandar explains:

Steve Benen makes this nice little find as GOP House majority leader Eric Cantor all but promises that the Republican goal is to end Social Security and Medicare for my generation.

“What we have to be, I think, focused on is truth in budgeting here,” Cantor told The Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal. He said “the better way” for Americans is to “get the fiscal house in order” and “come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many.”

Wow. Came right out and said it, that the promise won't be kept. The GOP plan to end Medicare and replace it with a privatization scheme is still the Republican party's top legislative priority...that and cutting taxes for the rich.

"When we came out with our budget, we said, look, let's at least put people on notice, but preserve those who are 55 and older," Cantor said, referring to a Republican-written budget plan that would turn Medicare, now a fee-for-service program, into a program that subsidizes private health insurance. "The rest of us have got ample time to try and plan our lives so that we can adjust to reality here when you look at the numbers. Again the math doesn't lie."

So the Baby Boomers get Medicare. Anyone younger than 55? Forget it. Sure hope you've been investing in your company's 401(k) for a while. Oh wait, 29% of Americans don't have any money saved up, but they pay Social Security and Medicare taxes still. Too bad Republicans want to take that away for good. And those of us who do have an account? Over a third of US businesses have stopped matching contributions to 401(k) plans. As it is right now, some 25% of Boomers have no retirement savings. At all.

Here's the reality, folks. Republicans want to eliminate these programs and leave tens of millions of us unable to retire. It's difficult to save up for your retirement when you owe $120,000 in student loans and have a mortgage/rent and other bills to pay for. And hey, those of us who are left will get to see their benefits rise and fall on the stock market. How much damage has your 401(k) taken in the last two weeks?

Republicans want to take the money and run and leave anyone under 40 left holding the bag. Cantor's come right out and said it. Still think staying home in 2012 is a good idea to "show the Democrats" a thing or two about "not defending" programs like Medicare and SS?

What do you think is going to happen when as a result the Republicans get in control?

And it's not just Medicare and Social Security they're taking away from you.

Zandar again:

Two-thirds of people who identified themselves as Tea Party or as Republicans followed this story and 20% took action to contact their representatives and senators in Congress. Democrats? Well, Democrats apparently didn't give a damn. Only 5% did. If you wonder why the Tea Party minority can control such a huge swath of Congress, it's because the rest of us are apparently too cynical, too cool, or too depressed to care.

It's 18-29-year-olds who are in the deepest financial hole right now. They are the ones coming out of college and trying to start a family with six figure college loan debt, trying to find jobs that involve not wearing paper hats or asking people how much foam they want on things, who are seeing their dreams crushed right now by the Tea Party right.

Republicans are trying to do everything they can to make it harder to get a mortgage, get a car loan, to get married to who you want to marry, to practice birth control, to have sex without consequences of carrying a child to full term, to get a job with solid pay and good benefits, to fight job discrimination based on sexual preference, race, or gender, and basically to live the American Dream. They are knocking out all the supports, all the help networks, all the safety nets that older generations had because the older generation has been convinced by the Republicans that they can't afford it anymore, because it's all going to "those people". I got mine, screw you.

They're the ones that stand to lose the most by starting out so far in the red in this economy that they'll never see daylight and will end up as indentured servants. And the "professional left" is more than happy to assist Republicans in demoralizing the hell out of young voters. "You're a sucker if you fell for hope and change." "Obama is nothing but a corporate lapdog." "You're wasting your time supporting the Democrats, they're just like the Republicans." When you've grown up seeing Poppy Bush's war for oil, Clinton being impeached and eight years of Dubya's monstrous reign, you'd be too cynical to care...cynical enough to give up on Obama and let the GOP back into control after just two years. Politicians have always been scuzzbags.

But the second you throw away your right to participate in the American political system, it gets hijacked by those who remain until the bitter end...and in this case it's the Tea Party and their enablers who want to profit from the chaos they cause. It should be the 18-29-year-olds lighting up the phones and tweeting their representatives and senators because they are the ones who are going to suffer the most. There's a reason why the debt deal is backloaded to cause some real damage in the years down the road but not to the people on SS and Medicare right now.

Only 1% did. One lousy friggin percent. No wonder Congress thinks "We the people!" consists solely of elderly white angry conservatives. When you don't give a damn politically, politicians really don't give a damn about you. So instead of sniping at each other in the standard circular squad formation, let's actually tell Congress what the hell we think about what's going on. You can bitch and moan, or you can do something. Get involved with OFA. Contact your member of Congress. Tweet your member of Congress. Let them know you exist, you are a voting constituent, and that you have an opinion. (Be polite.)

But for the love of anything, don't be that 99% that doesn't give a damn under 30, or the 66% of Dems that don't care.

Do something. Let them know.

Liberals don't give in to apathy; that lets the bastards win.