Paul Ryan wins well-deserved award: Scam Artist of the Year

Madison's Capital Times does the honors:

Paul Ryan is a hustler. The Republican congressman from Janesville has gotten very good at fooling political and media elites into thinking that his schemes to steer federal money into the accounts of Wall Street speculators (by taking steps to privatize Social Security) and for-profit insurance companies (by turning Medicare and Medicaid into voucher programs) would balance budgets or in some other way improve the circumstances of working families.

But Ryan’s having a harder time fooling Americans who take fiscal matters and the future of the republic seriously.

...The fact is that millions of Americans are actively protesting against the political corruption that floods corporate cash into the campaign accounts of pliable congressmen like Paul Ryan. The American people are furious with the pay-to-play politics that has tipped the balance in Washington away from the best interests of people in communities such as Janesville and toward the special interests on Wall Street.

Paul Ryan embodies this corruption of America’s promise. He may still be able to fool the editors at Time. He may still be able to scam a headline out of the PolitiFact folks. But he is having a harder time fooling the American people. That is some of the best news to come out of 2011. But the even better news could come in 2012 — if Ryan is finally rejected by voters who have tired of being “represented” by a political scam artist who serves Wall Street rather than Main Street.

Read more here.