I know what you're thinking...not ANOTHER Paul Ryan diary.
But I'm not sure if this aspect of the man has been covered on here or not.
Even though Ryan professes endless love and admiration for the Queen of Heartless Capitalism, Ayn Rand, I don't think the feeling would be mutual. Oh, she might praise him for his words and for promoting her agenda, but I doubt she would approve of the actual life he's lived. In fact, Ryan's life would be completely anathema to her because it goes against everything she stood for.
1) Ryan financed his college education with Social Security benefits he received upon the death of his father when Paul was a teen.
From Joan Walsh in a brilliant article in Salon
http://www.salon.com/...
When his lawyer father died young, sadly, the high-school aged Ryan received Social Security survivor benefits. But they didn’t go directly to supporting his family; by his own account, he banked them for college. He went to Miami University of Ohio, paying twice as much tuition as an Ohio resident would have...
2) Much worse, Ryan has spent almost his entire adult life working in that same public sector he professes to abhor and now works his hardest to demonize and decimate for everyone else. That's right,
virtually every dollar he's ever made or any health care benefit he's ever received has been paid for by the tax payer.
After his government-subsidized out-of-state education, the pride of Janesville left college and went to work for government, where he’s spent his entire career, first serving Republican legislators and then in his own Congressional seat, with occasional stints at his family-owned construction business when he needed a job (reportedly he also drove an Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile for a while).
Walsh really calls him out on his hypocrisy here:
Ironically, Ryan came to national attention trying to dismantle the very program that helped him go to the college of his choice, pushing an even more radical version of President Bush’s Social Security privatization plan, which failed. He has since become the scourge of the welfare state, a man wholly supported by government who preaches against the evils of government support. He could be the poster boy for President Obama’s supposedly controversial oration about how we all owe our success to some combination of our own hard work, family backing and government support. Let’s say it together: You didn’t build that career by yourself, Congressman Ryan.
Thus Paul Ryan represents the fakery at the heart of the Republican project today. It starts with the contradiction that Mr. Free Enterprise has spent his life in the bosom of government, enjoying the added protection of wingnut welfare benefactors like the Koch brothers...
He also voted to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, bail out the banks and the auto industry, and to create an unpaid-for subscription medicine benefit for seniors.
And this is the guy who is being touted as the conservative poster-boy for small government and for private-sector job creation! This is the ultimate example of "Do as I say, not as I do," and the Republicans need to be called out on it.
