Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He writes, Paul Ryan in Your Pockets: Government by People Who Hate You:
When it comes to redistributing money upward, the bar for intellectual coherence is set very low. Pundits from across the political spectrum had a hard time containing their enthusiasm for Ryan’s plan even if few were willing to embrace it in its entirety. And, if there was not enough substance over which to get excited, then there were always the 37 footnotes which Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer trumpeted last week.
In principle the country’s elite should be laying low right now. After all, their greed and ineptitude has given us the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. But after getting the Wall Street banks back on their feet with trillions of dollars of government subsidized loans, the elite are once again making a full-frontal assault on the living standards of the middle-class. Last week it was Medicare, but they promise to be back to attack Social Security in the not-too distant future.
The ostensible rationale for this attack is the country’s huge budget deficit. This is garbage. As all the pundits know, the country has a huge deficit today because the Wall Street boys drove the economy off a cliff. If the government deficit was not propping up the economy we would be looking at 11 or 12 percent unemployment, rather than 8.9 percent. Spending creates jobs and at this point it is not coming from private sector, so the government must fill the hole. ...
And the pundits call Ryan’s plan “serious.” Yes, it is very serious. It is a serious plan for taking tens of trillions of dollars from low-income and middle-income people and giving them away as tax breaks to the rich and to the health care industry. It is about as serious as a robber with a gun pointed at your head.
One of the moments of high hilarity Wednesday came when GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX-05) led the Republican rebuttal to President Obama's debt-reduction speech by calling it "a new standard for class warfare." That he could say this with a straight face while sharing the microphone with class warrior Paul Ryan is yet another example of the upsidedownism of the right-wing economic message. Ryan's Roadmap for the Future of the Ruling Class epitomizes what Woody Guthrie was talking about when he wrote the lyrics, "Some will rob you with a six-gun/And some with a fountain pen."
With President Obama offering a center to center-left pole in the budget discussions, and the People's Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus offering a more leftward pole, expect the Republicans to be howling even more about class warfare during the next few months. In reality, it's called self defense. And it's the basic right of anyone under assault. Too many elected Democrats seem squeamish about that idea. I don't mean the pretend-Democrats, some of whom are probably cooking up a Ryan-Lite plan as I write this, but rather those Democrats who care about rank-and-file Americans but are shy in the action department.
We activists are not freed from responsibility in this matter. Our job is to nudge them into overcoming that shyness. And to stand firmly behind them every time they do, even on the little stuff.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:
Washington, DC's alternative news source, Washington City Paper takes on Fred Hiatt today over WaPo's Sunday editorial defending BushCo leaks, but the lesson from it is entirely applicable to today's WaPo editorial on Iran.
That lesson? Fred Hiatt is an administration shill, refusing to take accountability for his editorial page's role in spreading BushCo's misinformation leading into the Iraq War.