I just read New York Times columnist David Brooks' April 5 column [may require you to pay - I don't log on to the NYT site more than 20 times a month] on Rep. Paul Ryan's 2012 budget proposal, which Brooks calls, "the most comprehensive and the most courageous budget proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes." [Gag!]
I happened across the column in the April 6 (Wednesday) edition of the St. Petersburg Times.
The following passage, in particular, set me off:
The Ryan proposal will help settle the fight over the government shutdown and the 2011 budget because it will remind everybody that the real argument is not about cutting a few billion here or there. It is about the underlying architecture of domestic programs in 2012 and beyond.
The Ryan budget will put all future arguments in the proper context: The current welfare state is simply unsustainable and anybody who is serious, left or right, has to have a new vision of the social contract.
My response to Mr. Brooks is below the fold.
This column displays exactly what's wrong with what The Nation's Eric Alterman calls the "punditocracy" - most have no clue what life is like in the real world. It is that lack of understanding of the struggles 90 percent of Americans face just trying to get through life in one piece which leads them to embrace the unjustifiable cruelty of proposals like Rep. Ryan's as "courageous" documents which "anybody who is serious" must accept as the new reality for America.
Horse. Puckey.
As soon as I finished gagging my way through this self-absorbed bit of Republican boot-licking fluff, I logged on to David Brooks' page on the Times web site, clicked on the e-mail link, and sent him the following missive:
Dear Mr. Brooks:
I just read your column on Paul Ryan's budget plan in today's St. Petersburg Times. You and Rep. Ryan are, of course, full of crap. The "welfare state" is NOT unsustainable. The deficit could be cut in half tomorrow by allowing the Bush Tax Cuts to expire (I'm willing to give mine up, and the payroll tax cut enacted last December, as well - but I understand you probably have your eye on a new Rolex, so hey, I can see why you wouldn't want to give up yours). Further reductions could be made by ending corporate farm and oil industry subsidies, bringing the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to a conclusion, cutting defense spending and forcing mega-corporations like GE and Bank of America to pay their fair share in taxes.
But no, you and Rep. Ryan would rather end programs which help the working poor put food on their tables, heat their homes in the winter time, have affordable and efficient transportation options, buy medicine for their children and keep people like my brother, who just underwent triple bypass surgery and has no health insurance, alive. But hey, what's my brother's life to you .... you really need that Rolex.
As for Rep. Ryan's Medicare proposal, I'm 50 years old... I've paid into Medicare all my life. And now you and Rep. Ryan are telling me you expect me to take my chances in the private insurance market with a coupon that will come nowhere close to covering my premium costs? F.U.
So, "anybody who is serious, on left or right, has to have a new vision of the social contract?"
Here's a new vision of the social contract for you - why don't I come up there and take your job, making what you make to spout complete and utter drivel, and you can come down here to Florida and do the actual work that I do in freezing cold, driving rain and burning sun for the $13,500 a year I make. Then tell me about your "new vision of the social contract."
The screwed up priorities of people like you - those of us at the bottom have to sacrifice our health, our nutrition, our homes, in some cases our very lives, so the oil company robber barons can have taxpayer-funded subsidies, and the rich can buy more Bentleys, Gulfstream jets, Hatteras yachts, Rolex watches and vacation homes in Palm Beach - make me sick. Take your "new vision of the social contract" and shove it, sir. And I say that with all due respect.
Look to Madison and tremble, Mr. Brooks. The bottom 90 percent are catching on. The revolution is coming. You might want to buy that Rolex soon.
I don't know. Do you think I was too hard on the guy?