Well, isn’t this just dandy. The Republicans have picked their team and it’s made up of one man with no conscience and one with no soul. Take that America! We’ve truly become the fabled Emerald City of Oz where the Scarecrow with no brain and the Tin Man with no heart can be considered legitimate contenders for the highest office in the land.
Iv'e given up trying to figure out what Mitt Romney stands for. It changes from day to day, hour to hour and depending on the crowd he is addressing. So, who is Paul Ryan? It seems that not too many people know. He has been a congressman for thirteen years representing Wisconsin Congressional District 1 which encompasses the southeast corner of the state including the Lake Michigan bordering cities of Kenosha, Racine and Oak Creek. His district is:
90.1 percent White,
4.7 percent Black,
1.0 percent Asian,
5.7 percent Hispanic,
0.3 percent Native American
0.3% other.
It’s probably this rich cultural diversity that has given him insight into the problems facing every day Americans.
From his official website:
“. . . I understand that the last few years have been especially difficult for the residents of Wisconsin’s 1st District. Many plants in Southern Wisconsin have closed or reduced their payrolls in response to mounting economic hardships.”
"These layoffs and closures have been a painful blow to our communities because manufacturing jobs are and always have been the bedrock of Southern Wisconsin’s economy. My thoughts, prayers, and efforts are focused on helping the affected workers and their families. . . "
"As our economy slowly tries to recover, it is vital that our leaders provide support for those who have been hit hardest by these closures. I have continued to work with state, local, and union officials in an effort to bring new companies and new jobs to replace those that we have lost."
The truth:
“. . . I understand that the last few years have been especially difficult for the residents of Wisconsin’s 1st District.
Just before Christmas, 2008, General Motors closed its gigantic assembly plant in Janesville, Wisconsin and terminated the jobs of 2,800 GM workers and those of about 3,000 in plants supplying. Last fall, Chrysler, with the help of a taxpayer bailout, relocated 850 engine jobs from Kenosha to its new plant in Saltillo, Mexico. Andy Gussert, the director of the Citizens Trade Campaign wasn’t fooled he said “. . . Ryan consistently supported free trade agreements which send our jobs overseas,” notes . “There was a total disconnect between his ads and his record.”
“My thoughts and prayers and efforts are focused on helping the affected workers and their families. . .”
It’s always thoughts and prayers, isn't it. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a natural disaster, a mass shooting at a movie or a soldier needlessly killed in some godforsaken country most of us can’t even find on a map. Thoughts and prayers are great. They don’t cost anything and they don’t require that we actually do anything other than remember that the mantra is thoughts and prayers not prayers and thoughts. Saying it backwards might have the same result saying Candyman to a mirror three times had. It might, too, but we don't want to find out.
“I have continued to work with state, local, and union officials in an effort to bring new companies and new jobs to replace those that we’ve lost."
When you click the Displaced Workers Assistance link on Ryan’s official website you are taken to another page with links to finding jobs with federal, state and county agencies. It seems strange that someone who was so anxious to cut public sector jobs that he voted against the $26 billion emergency aid package passed by Congress (the funds helped to prevent layoffs in the school systems by providing $4.5 million to Racine and $4.3 million in Kenosha) would be so anxious to promote government jobs on his website.
Despite the hardship in his district, Ryan voted against extending unemployment benefits in November on the pretext that it would add more than “one dime to the deficit,” something he had sworn to Grover Norquist he wouldn’t do, then turned around and voted for the benefits when they were coupled with an extension of the Bush tax cuts, cuts that would have added seven trillion dimes (700 billion dollars) to the deficit.”
The facts are clear; the three major industrial counties in Ryan’s district have endured devastating manufacturing job losses since 2000, with Kenosha County losing 30 percent, Racine County 33 percent, and Rock County an astonishing 54 percent. All this, I assume, while Ryan was busy fervently praying things would get better. We’ll come back to the praying issue again in another post.
When the congressman wasn’t praying he was busy working on the two, that’s right, two pieces of legislation Ryan actually wrote and saw enacted during his thirteen years in office. One bill named a post office (which Ryan now wants to privatize) after Les Aspin, a Wisconsin congressman from 1971 to 1993 and President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense. The other changed the way excise tax was charged on arrow shafts. Essentially, his bill amended the federal tax code to impose a 39-cent flat tax per arrow shaft instead of the 12.4 percent tax on the sales price previously charged. The bill also included points suitable for use with arrows in an 11 percent excise tax on arrow parts and accessories. Parenthetically, Ryan is an avid bow hunter. I’m not suggesting any wrongdoing here; I’m just sayin’.
Actually, Ryan is an enthusiastic hunter with a number of weapons, bows and arrows, rifles, shotguns and he likes to kill a lot of things: elk, deer, moose, caribou, old people, kids, sick people, poor people. He voted no on expanding the State Children’s Health Care (SCHIP) program, legislation intended to provide health care to an additional two to four million poor children. The latest census data available revealed that twenty-five percent of very young children in America are living in poverty. By the way, poverty for a family of two, a mother and young child of example, is defined as $14,218 per year or $1,184.33 per month. An average apartment in the US costs about $850 per month. The number of children under six living in poverty rose to 5.9 million in 2010 from 5.7 million in 2009 A lot of them could probably have used the medical care SCHIP would have provided since we, as a country, don’t care enough about them to provide decent daily nutrition. Ryan’s budget, passed by the House in May (but later stalled as expected in the Senate) would shave cut 280,000 low-income children off automatic enrollment in the Free School Lunch and Breakfast Program. Those same children and one and one-half million other indigent people would also have lost their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly food stamp benefits. But don’t be afraid; Ryan’s budget adds to military spending so the war-profiteering defense contractors won’t go hungry.
I’m not going to spend a lot of time here discussing Ryan’s plan for Medicare. That’s already the focus of most of the cable news pundits, analysts and paid shills. The issue here is clear; instead of Medicare, Ryan wants give you " premium coverage," Don't be fooled. Just like Humpty Dumpty speaking to Alice, words mean what Republicans say they mean. Here, what is actually a coupon in Republaguistics becomes a voucher seniors get each year to be used to buy "premium care" from a an insurance company. Call it what you like, a voucher is still a coupon, pretty much like the ones you cut out of the newspaper and use at the grocery store. The difference is you always know how much of the price of catsup or pet food or whatever that coupon is going to cover. Here, the the store is a greedy, edacious insurance company and the coupon pays an ever decreasing part of the bill each year. Romney and Ryan want you to believe that this is OK because it only applies to those under fifty-five It seems to me that a lot of people under fifty-five will be over sixty-five at some point. They also want you to believe that their plan is necessary to save Medicare. Medicare isn’t in trouble and it doesn't need saving from anyone but Romney, Ryan and the Republican party.
For the past few years Ryan has been touted by the beltway media as a “serious person,” the highest honor you can get in present day Washington D.C. That’s politispeak for someone who appears to have an I.Q. higher than a turnip, something a great many politicians don’t have but get away without because, once they get there and we see what we’ve done, we really don’t want to admit that we elected someone that stupid to represent us. It seems that Ryan has been given this accolade because he has a nice face, is pleasant to be around, always raises his hand and waits to called on before speaking and appears to have a grasp of numbers which no one in Washington has except economists and who can understand them anyway. The problem is, his grasp of numbers is flawed making his numbers almost always wrong. How about we look at just a few?
Ryan: Thinks the national debt has increased what it costs the US to borrow money.
Truth: The interest the US currently pays on a loan is at an all time low because a great many investors worldwide see US Treasury bonds as a safe bet. It fact, we pay so little that what we should be doing is borrowing more money and then loaning it at a higher rate in the form of small business loads to companies involved in infrastructure construction and repair, research and development loans to companies exploring alternative energy sources, the list goes on. We might even want to consider using money borrowed at the current rate to pay off loans taken out at a higher rate.
Ryan: Thinks the current level of spending is unsustainable because of spending on infrastructure, education and social safety net programs
Truth: The problem isn't spending as much as it is revenue. So many Americans are making a lower wage now since George Bush and the economic policy Romney praises so highly almost destroyed the US economy, significantly less is being paid in taxes. At the same time, the past forty years and particularly the ten) have seen a massive shift of wealth to the hand of the very rich who received a unneeded and unconscionable tax cuts under Bush. It alo doesn't help that nearly all Republican legislators believe that their oath to Grover Norquist ("I swear by almighty God this sacred oath:
I will render unconditional obedience
to (the uber-wealthy) of the (plutocracy) and to(Grover Norquist)
Supreme Commander of (all the oligarchs.")
is more sacred that their oath to you to discharge their duties in a true and faithful manner.
Ryan: Thinks cutting tax rates for the rich and corporations and eliminating taxes on capital gains, interest, dividends, estates, and corporate income.is the way to reduce the national debt.
Truth: This is just more "supply side," nonsense. What it actually does is deprive the government of critical revenue in time when it needs to be stimulating consumer buying by spending in areas that put Americans to work.
Ryan: Thinks Social Security is going broke.
Truth: In April of this year the Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Social Security Program was released. The trustees announced that," . . . the program can pay full benefits until 2033 and roughly three-quarters of benefits promised beyond that time."Social Security doesn't need to be cut; it needs to be tweaked and with AARP now supporting changes the outlook is good.
Ryan: Thinks Medicare should be privatized.
Truth: First, think of what would have happened to Social Security if it had been in the hands of the Wall Street money changers during the 2008-09 mini-great crash if GWB had succeeded in privatizing it. Medicare needs to take a look at its long-term financing issues but, according to the Center on Budget Priorities, it (along with taxpayers) has been helped greatly by the Passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). (I'll have more to say on the Republican lies about the ACA in another article).
How wrong can Ryan be on economics? On the day the House voted on President Obama’s stimulus bill, Ryan said, “This is not a crisis we can spend and borrow our way out of—that is how we got here in the first place. Yet this is precisely the path the majority chose today. We’re repeating the mistakes of a flawed economic doctrine that deepened our Depression in the 1930s.” That is simply not true. In 1930, just after the catastrophic stock market crash unemployment stood at 8.67 percent. In 1931 unemployment had reached 15.82 percent. Franklin Roosevelt first took office and introduced the first New Deal in 1933 when unemployment had risen to 24.75 percent The rate dropped to 21.60 percent in 1934, 19.97 percent in 1935, 16.80 percent in 1936 and 14.17 percent in 1937 when the better known and more extensive second New Deal kicked in. At that point, Roosevelt, looking ahead to another election, uncharacteristically caved to Republican pressure and ended a number of New Deal programs. The unemployment rate immediately rose to 18.91 percent and didn’t fall below 10 percent until 1941. It seems that Congressman Ryan needs to learn that if you are going to lie, don’t lie about facts so widely known.
I’m digressing, though. The question is what is he serious about? Well, he is serious about getting federal dollars (i.e. your and my tax dollars) while denouncing government spending as useless and wasteful. Let’s start with earmarks. Everyone in Washington claims to hate earmarks. So far, Ryan has obtained 1.3 million dollars for a bus service, 1.3 million dollars for the Ice Age Scenic Trail and 730,000 dollars for a transit system in his hometown. My point here isn’t that these are extravagant or inappropriate expenditures; they might very well be money well spent. My point is, don’t decry earmarks at the same time you are asking for some.
How did he do on stimulus money? According to the Boston Globe, In 2009, as Ryan was attacking President Obama's $787 billion stimulus package as a "wasteful spending spree," Ryan wrote at least four letters to Obama's secretary of energy, Steven Chu, asking that millions of dollars from the program be granted to a pair of Wisconsin conservation groups. The advocacy appeared to pay off, as both were awarded federal the economic stimulus funds. Ryan’s letters to the energy secretary praising the energy initiatives as he sought a portion of the funding are in sharp contrast to the House Budget Committee chairman’s image as a Tea Party favorite adamantly opposed to federal spending on such programs.
(Ryan's spokesman said that just because the stimulus was wasteful and wouldn't help didn't mean that Ryan shouldn't strive to help his constituents by getting some of those funds. The tautology here defies reason. For once, I really don't know what to say.)
The documents obtained by the Boston Globe also showed that Ryan’s attempts to take advantage of the stimulus funds even after he voted against them was more expansive than previously reported. Ryan was criticized by some House Democrats in 2010 after the Wall Street Journal reported that he was among several Republicans lawmakers who sought the stimulus money for their constituents by, in Ryan’s case, writing a letter in 2010 to the Department of Labor.
So, here’s the way this race is shaping up. If you want a candidate who is thought to be a serious person because he has blue eyes, a handsome face and an amiable personality but one dedicated to protecting the the wealthy and the defense contractors, in that order, has an anachronism and harmful view of macro-economics, one who would like to see America return to a pre-1890 country and one willing to lie at the drop of the hat, Ryan is your man. but remember, Jack the Ripper, when he wasn't chopping up prostitutes, might well have been considered a “serious person” by those standards. On the other hand, if you are looking for a true progressive, one who clearly recognizes that government has a moral obligation to protect all of those governed, not just the rich and the powerful, one who will block the doors of the White House and deny access to the influence peddlers and will not tire in his defense of the social safety net so many of the elderly, the very young, the very poor and sick depend on, you don’t have a candidate in the race but President Obama is the best choice you have this year. Maybe we can do better in 2016.
I will have to admit, however, that the selection of Ryan has added a new element to the race. I was impressed by the faces in a photograph taken of the crowd at Ryan’s first appearance after being named as Romney’s running mate . The faces of the people cheering wildly for a candidate who was going to do his best to take what small piece of the pie they had left and give to the wealthy bore an eerie similarity to the same mindless devotion and the same fundamental lack of an understanding of the issues that faces in the crowd of townsfolk chasing Frankenstein's monster showed..
Coming Next: The Strange Affair of Paul Ryan and Ayn Rand.
First posted at The Last New Dealer at rodgzblog.blogspot.com