Does Paul Ryan want to permanently end Medicare, the way the program is run now?  Well, yes.  Does he want to keep the name Medicare so that people don't think he's trying to end Medicare?  Yes.  Was Politifact wrong last year when it accused Democrats of lying about Paul Ryan wanting to end Medicare?  Yes, by any reasonable measure, yes. 

This week for The Daily, I wrote about the Obama administration's overruling the FDA and continuing to restrict over the counter sales of Plan B birth control pills to women under 17.  When I posted the news item on this site last week, some of you commented that Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius had legitimate health concerns about how Plan B might affect younger users.  I'm no longer convinced that such concerns are valid, or that they truly factored into Sebelius' decision

In America, various right wing elements have tried to paint the poor, and even the middle class, as moochers who take more from society than they pay back into the system.  This story is meant to counter the seemingly obvious observation that the wealthiest Americans benefit more from our collective system that anyone else.  There's a productive class (rich people) and a consuming class (everyone else) and the morally just have been rewarded while the rest of us learn to be like them.  That's how the fable goes, anyway.