Right now - we are in the cancer stages of capitalism. I should say...the cancer stages of Reagan’s capitalism. It's lingered for 30 years - and has now gone malignant in America.

Republicans on Capitol Hill this week are calling for the privatization of Medicare and the dismantling of critical social safety net programs - it's part of their effort to make Reagan’s revolution - started back in 1981 - complete today. It was a revolution that tried to render the greatest invention man has ever come up with - a democratic self-rule government - into a nasty, evil beast. He may have stopped campaigning but his cult of Reaganites never did - and neither did his billionaire backers.

Because it's not JUST about starving government so corporations can step in and take over and make money on what should be public functions like parking meters, bridges, healthcare, and education. To take that kind of power, the rich guys behind the Reagan Revolution had to bring in more than just the rich. So they appealed to fundamentalist Christians and misogynistic men.

Case in point - yesterday, Republicans passed legislation in the House to disempower women by redefining rape - another symptom of Reagan and his embrace of the so-called Moral Majority - a marriage that's still going strong within the Republican Party today.

In the last four months since Republicans took power in state legislatures all around the nation and in the House of Representatives here in Washington, DC - we’ve seen them usher our nation into the final stages of this cancer.

After busting up his state employee unions in the name of Ronald Reagan - Governor Scott Walker’s Republicans in Wisconsin are telling college students they can’t vote anymore, just like Reagan killed free public college education in California when he was governor there \\ .

And there’s a constitutional battle underway in Michigan where the Benton Harbor City Council ruled that Governor Rick Snyder’s “Financial Manager” - or dictator - brought into break up unions - fire local elected officials - and sell the city off to corporations and Republican cronies - is unconstitutional.

Unfortunately - their ruling isn’t going too far since Gov. Snyder has already stripped them of their powers.

And this cancer is also infecting New Jersey - Georgia - Florida - Ohio - Iowa - Pennsylvania - Maine - South Carolina - Kansas - and Arizona - where Republicans are setting fire to government programs that heal us - educate us - and keep us safe - in order to give away billions in tax cuts for millionaires - billionaires - and transnational corporations.

This was Reagan’s ideal vision - a nation where the rich were swimming in cash - the poor were on their own - the government was neutered and ineffective - women were marginalized - working people screwed - and democratic voters disenfranchised.

This is what a nation that's on the verge of going terminal looks like - 25 million people un- or underemployed - 1 in 7 people on food stamps - more than 52 million without health insurance - 1 in 6 people living in poverty - including 1 in 3 African American children.

All the while - the rich have never been richer in America. That's the result of Reaganomics.

If Republicans are successful in these final stages - then by the end of this decade America will look completely different than it looked just 30 years ago.

We’ll be a gaunt, limping, deteriorating nation - ready to succumb to the Reaganism cancer that’s eaten us up from within. But there’s one problem for Republicans - the American people are tired of being sick - and they’re not ready to give up yet on the vision America had of itself for the first 200 years before Reagan came to power.

Unlike the cheers Reagan got 30 years ago - take a look at how Americans are responding over the last two weeks to these Reagan Republicans - these political cancer cells led by Paul Ryan - at townhall meetings across the nation:.

The only question today is - will this public outrage last and help America cut out this cancer?

Or - will the millionaires and billionaires who view the cost of buying Republican politicians as simple investments to get more corporate welfare and massive tax cuts - will they be able to spend enough on political advertising and think tanks and right-wing pundits that they will continue to convince Americans to vote against their best interests?

Will they convince us all to just be complicit in this illness?

Will they continue to lie, cheat, and steal to win more elections in the future?

This is the challenge in front of us - do we organize and fight back nationally, like people are doing in Wisconsin and Michigan - or do we succumb to the cancer?

I don’t know about you - but I’m going to keep fighting.

That's The Big Picture.