Ryan's Recycled "Tipping Point" Scare Tactic Divides Americans, Hides Hypocrisy.

Have you seen the Paul Ryan headline yet?

Ryan says U.S. at financial and cultural 'tipping point'

Hmm, that late breaking headline sounds really familiar. Oh my gosh, here’s that same story as summarized so perfectly by Dana Milbank way back on March20th: 

Ryan’s justification (for his plan) was straight out of Dickens. He wants to improve the moral fiber of the poor. There is, he told the audience  at the conservative American Enterprise Institute later Tuesday, an “insidious moral tipping point, and I think the president is accelerating this.” Too many Americans, he said, are receiving more from the government than they pay in taxes.

Deja vu. That’s what Ryan said in the story I read today on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal. He's a demagogic genius and class warrior.

But are conservative voters just plain stupid? Think about it; with more people relying on unemployment, state Medicaid programs and food stamps, Paul Ryan has decided to attack the problem his party created, by going after these victims of Wall Street and corporate off shoring. Ryan, like most Republicans, is a freeloader with an easy answer. Cut, cut, cut:

Ryan would cut $770 billion over 10 years from Medicaid and other health programs for the poor, compared with President Obama’s budget … and $1.9 trillion from a category simply labeled “other mandatory.” Pressed to explain … Ryan allowed that the bulk of those “other mandatory” cuts come from food stamps, welfare, federal employee pensions and support for farmers … Ryan would cut spending on such programs by $5.3 trillion, much of which currently goes to the have-nots. He would then give that money to America’s haves: some $4.3 trillion in tax cuts, compared with current policies, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.

Dana Milbank went on to explain:

After recalling his family’s immigration from Ireland generations ago, and his belief in the virtue of people who “pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” Ryan warned that a generous safety net “lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency, which drains them of their very will and incentive to make the most of their lives. It’s demeaning.”

Demeaning, like when Ryan pulled himself up by the bootstraps with the help of Social Security?

FiredogLake: Turns out, when Ryan was an able-bodied young lad, he used that hammock to pay for his college education.

One day as a 16 year old, Ryan came upon the lifeless body of his father. Paul Ryan, Sr. had died of a heart attack at age 55, leaving the Janesville Craig High School 10th grader, his three older brothers and sisters and his mother alone. With his father’s passing, young Paul collected Social Security benefits until age 18, which he put away for college. College costs have skyrocketed since Ryan entered Miami University in 1988, yet Ryan wants to slash the very system that he benefited from because it produces “dependency.” Figures. This is a guy who requires his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged, and we now know that Ayn Rand was a big welfare queen herself.

There's no bigger hypocrite in congress right now, which is why he deserves the VP nomination. 

Ryan-To-Walker: Garbage In, Garbage Out

Paul Ryan finds his budget labeled "trash" in a Washington Post online column. And Walker thinks this will help him during the recall election:

...because, as you should recall, Ryan’s budget — which is now the House Republican budget — entirely wipes out the federal government in the longer run. By 2050, assuming that military spending holds at current levels (and Ryan and especially Mitt Romney are against any cuts), there won’t be any room remaining within Ryan’s budget for anything other than Social Security and health-care entitlements. Zero. No FBI, no FEMA, no spending on veterans … nothing. Which makes the whole idea of fighting over what would happen in the first 10 years just a sideshow.

Oh, Goody: Ryan Will Drag His Medicare-Slashing Persona Into Walker's Recall

Not sure if it's part of his Veepstakes preening, or if some consultant thinks that somewhere in Wisconsin's uncommitted 3% there are voters who might choose Walker because the country's #1 Medicare slasher recommends it, but I think the upside for Dems having Paul Ryan to kick around as a Walker surrogate for a few weeks is great news.

Marvelous Paul? Marvelous Paul? Marvelous Marv?

The first pitch of the baseball season is just hours away, and Mitt Romney has conjured up the ghost of Marvelous Marv Throneberry just as the GOP nomination seems in sight.

Call it pitch perfect.

Ryan's Big Government Vision; Dissent will not be tolerated.

Paul Ryan is dumbfounded: Calling into question leaders who do what must be done, even if the people don't like it?

Ryan: "I would say courage is on the ballot. What governor or state legislator is going to have the courage of addressing the structural problems of their state, if when they do that this is what happens to them. That is really profound."

Democracy to Paul Ryan is a "profound" repugnant idea.

Ryan is saying you should never question your "courageous leaders," the controlling authority, the ones who are doing things you don't want them to do. It doesn't even matter if half of the voting age public signed a petition to throw that leader out of office. That penalizes courage and authority. 

Such a shocking notion is unfortunately still under the media radar. This is not a minor comment by Ryan, but a point blank admission he has stated over and over, that we're on the path to an authoritarian Republican state. 

Maybe the word democracy sounds too much like the Democratic Party? 

Ryan treats dissenters like whiny children who don't want to take the bad tasting medicine. It's for our own good, don't cha know. 

As for the recall, it wasn't a reaction to anything Scott Walker did, was it? Can you say "autocrat?"

Calling Ryan out for boiler plate, mind numbing demagoguery.

Watch Rachel Maddow rip Ryan a new one for his bad introduction to Wisconsin primary winner Mitt Romney:

Is Paul Ryan Not Merely A Flimflam Man, But A Fraud As Well?

What the DCCC should have run

Over at DownWithTyranny we've been castigating the DCCC for campaigning against Paul Ryan everywhere in the country-- except WI-1, his own congressional district. Now, for the first time in a decade-- yes, first time in 5 congressional races (even though Obama won the district)-- they've finally put up on medium sized billboard (which doesn't mention Rob Zerban's name and isn't in a place that will be seen by anyone and, in fact, is smack in the middle of Democratic territory anyway). But at least they're not actively sabotaging Rob-- unless you count when DCCC Chair and "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel whispers to major donors not to contribute to his campaign. Anyway, besides the DCCC, DSCC and DNC all attacking Paul Ryan and his dystopic plans for America, half the Democratic candidates running for office are also attacking him. Sunday night, for example, we ran a great OpEd by Carol Shea-Porter, tying Ryan to her own opponent, teabag-idiot Frank Guinta.

I decided to ask some of the Blue America candidates if they'd consider contributing some of their own campaign funds to Rob Zerban. Alan Grayson, who has been raising money like mad for Democratic candidates all over the country, was very straightforward: "The most effective way to beat the Ryan Budget is to beat Paul Ryan in November." I don't want to spoil any surprises though.

The next guy I asked was Dr. Lee Rogers since we were on the phone discussing his call for a single-payer health care system to replace the flawed conservative individual mandate. He informed me that he had already sent Rob a pretty hefty contribution out of his personal funds a couple months ago and that he and Rob have been communicating directly!

Rob Zerban is fighting a difficult fight and truly it's a battle for all of us. I personally contributed to his campaign for that reason. Here I am, a Democratic candidate in California speaking about the Ryan/GOP budget every day to voters and the effect it will have for Americans on Medicare or even veterans. I felt obligated to help Rob in his battle against the author of the "Reverse-Robin Hood" budget. Because if Rob can beat Paul Ryan, I know it will have a national impact.

This kind of thing is right up central Florida candidate Nick Ruiz's alley and he thinks about forging a strong progressive alliance inside and outside Congress all the time:

Liberal and progressive Democrats have a vital lesson to learn about getting things done. Up until now, we've practiced the unproductive rigamarole of "every man for himself." Hence we've appeared to the world like an unorganized morass of jellyfish washing up on the beach, stinging here and there, but accomplishing nothing of recent gravity and import.

This has to change. We have to school like dolphins. One for all and all for one. Each and every one us is important to this movement, and has something vital to contribute to it. But most importantly, we need the numbers. We have to reach a critical mass in the Congress.

Pass a Budget4All? Defend the social safety net? Create jobs? Raise wages and benefits? Tether Wall St. to Main St.? We need new political minds and we need the votes to make this happen. Minds to create legislation and votes to pass that legislation into law. We have little of this at the moment. You know why? Because too many of us refuse to help one another. Whether it's out of fear of retribution by the Democratic establishment, or personal vendettas, or straight-up selfishness. Who knows? In any case, forget about them. Liberal and progressive Democrats need only stick together, and we'll have the power and numbers to get things done, but only if we are willing to let go of the fear that keeps us complicit.

If we play the game by the political establishment's rules-- I guarantee you liberals and progressive Democrats will lose. You'll get the wrong people elected every time. We have to hold each other up. It is the only way we can win-- and if we do this, we will prevail.

Nick's leadership PAC has endorsed Zerban. Yesterday Steve Benen over at Rachel Maddow's blog gave Ryan a little schooling on what the word "misspoke" means-- and how a verbal slip is different from an attempt to deceive or slander.

On Thursday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, insisted that he, not America's military leadership, should be trusted when it comes to Pentagon spending levels. Ryan went on to say that he believes Pentagon leaders may be deliberately misleading Congress about spending cuts that they've requested, but which Ryan does not want to make. A day later, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was not at all pleased with the congressman's public comments.

Frightened of getting into a public spat with the Pentagon when his district-- Les Aspin's old district, mind you-- is already turning against him, he backed down and whined that, "like, dude, I totally misspoke, dude." Benen ran a video of Ryan again playing politics with national security and again calling the Pentagon budget "dishonest and dangerous."

Yesterday, Ryan used the identical language. How can someone claim he "totally misspoke" and then say the same thing again?

Ryan still thinks military leaders lied to Congress; he still thinks he knows better than the Pentagon what spending levels are necessary to keep America safe; and he still thinks Congress should give the Defense Department money the Pentagon doesn't want.

The only difference between Thursday and Sunday is that Ryan has stopped attacking U.S. military leaders and started attacking the president. But since it's the same attack, and this is a distinction without a difference, it's laughable for Ryan to say he "misspoke."

And misspeaking is about the only thing Paul Krugman has never accused Ryan of. Krugman may find Ryan a serious threat to America but he doesn't find him a serious intellect, just a lightweight shill for the Wall Street and Insurance Industry interests which have paid for his political career. Yesterday Krugman liked his vision to Pink Slime Economics, an apt analogy. He explains why the Ryan budget is "surely the most fraudulent budget in American history."

And when I say fraudulent, I mean just that. The trouble with the budget devised by Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, isn’t just its almost inconceivably cruel priorities, the way it slashes taxes for corporations and the rich while drastically cutting food and medical aid to the needy. Even aside from all that, the Ryan budget purports to reduce the deficit-- but the alleged deficit reduction depends on the completely unsupported assertion that trillions of dollars in revenue can be found by closing tax loopholes.

And we’re talking about a lot of loophole-closing. As Howard Gleckman of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center points out, to make his numbers work Mr. Ryan would, by 2022, have to close enough loopholes to yield an extra $700 billion in revenue every year. That’s a lot of money, even in an economy as big as ours. So which specific loopholes has Mr. Ryan, who issued a 98-page manifesto on behalf of his budget, said he would close?

None. Not one. He has, however, categorically ruled out any move to close the major loophole that benefits the rich, namely the ultra-low tax rates on income from capital. (That’s the loophole that lets Mitt Romney pay only 14 percent of his income in taxes, a lower tax rate than that faced by many middle-class families.)

So what are we to make of this proposal? Mr. Gleckman calls it a “mystery meat budget,” but he’s being unfair to mystery meat. The truth is that the filler modern food manufacturers add to their products may be disgusting-- think pink slime-- but it nonetheless has nutritional value. Mr. Ryan’s empty promises don’t. You should think of those promises, instead, as a kind of throwback to the 19th century, when unregulated corporations bulked out their bread with plaster of paris and flavored their beer with sulfuric acid.

Come to think of it, that’s precisely the policy era Mr. Ryan and his colleagues are trying to bring back.

So the Ryan budget is a fraud; Mr. Ryan talks loudly about the evils of debt and deficits, but his plan would actually make the deficit bigger even as it inflicted huge pain in the name of deficit reduction. But is his budget really the most fraudulent in American history? Yes, it is.

...What’s going on here? The answer, presumably, is that this is what happens when extremists gain complete control of a party’s discourse: all the rules get thrown out the window. Indeed, the hard right’s grip on the G.O.P. is now so strong that the party is sticking with Mr. Ryan even though it’s paying a significant political price for his assault on Medicare.

Now, the House Republican budget isn’t about to become law as long as President Obama is sitting in the White House. But it has been endorsed by Mr. Romney. And even if Mr. Obama is reelected, the fraudulence of this budget has important implications for future political negotiations.

Bear in mind that the Obama administration spent much of 2011 trying to negotiate a so-called Grand Bargain with Republicans, a bipartisan plan for deficit reduction over the long term. Those negotiations ended up breaking down, and a minor journalistic industry has emerged as reporters try to figure out how the breakdown occurred and who was responsible.

But what we learn from the latest Republican budget is that the whole pursuit of a Grand Bargain was a waste of time and political capital. For a lasting budget deal can only work if both parties can be counted on to be both responsible and honest-- and House Republicans have just demonstrated, as clearly as anyone could wish, that they are neither.

Last week Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) took to the floor of the House to blast Ryan and his Wall Street anti-family budget as flying in the face of centuries Judeo-Christian civilization-- which is exactly what Ryan's mentor, Ayn Rand, had in mind for her disciples. "Why does your budget resolution take away the Medicare guarantee?" and quoted Leviticus 19:32, "You shall give due honor and respect to the elderly." Going back to what Alan Grayson said earlier-- and what the DCCC doesn't seem to want to understand, if you're serious about getting rid of the Ryan budget, defeat Paul Ryan in November. And the way to do that is by electing Rob Zerban to represent Wisconsin's first congressional district. You can help accomplish that here.

UPDATED: He didn't 'misspeak' Loose cannon Ryan apologizes for calling generals liars

This is the loose cannon they keep touting for vice-president?
AP reports:

Representative Paul Ryan said Sunday that he has apologized in a telephone call to the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman for accusing the military of not giving its “true advice’’ on President Obama’s budget plan. 

Military generals are required under oath to provide lawmakers their personal views on security matters, even if those views conflict with the White House.

In this case, General Martin Dempsey had testified that he thought Obama’s $614 billion plan for defense spending next year was adequate. Dempsey said he stood by his testimony, despite Ryan’s remarks. 

 At issue were comments Ryan made Thursday regarding the military budget.

 “We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice,” he said at an event hosted by National Journal. “We don’t think the generals believe that their budget is really the right budget.”

 In response, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman  Dempsey said he stood by his testimony on the Pentagon’s spending request. “There’s a difference between having someone say they don’t believe what you said versus. . . calling us, collectively, liars,” Dempsey told reporters Thursday night. “My response is: I stand by my testimony.”

On Sunday, Ryan said he was wrong for suggesting the generals were not on the up and up.

“I really misspoke,” Ryan said during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union.

“Yeah, I totally misspoke,” he said later on ABC’s This Week.

UPDATE:  Maddow blog says he didn't "misspeak:"

...Ryan added that he perceives the Pentagon's budget as "a budget-driven strategy, not a strategy-driven budget.

Yesterday, Ryan used the identical language. How can someone claim he "totally misspoke" and then say the same thing again? 

Ryan still thinks military leaders lied to Congress; he still thinks he knows better than the Pentagon what spending levels are necessary to keep America safe; and he still thinks Congress should give the Defense Department money the Pentagon doesn't want. 

The only difference between Thursday and Sunday is that Ryan has stopped attacking U.S. military leaders and started attacking the president. But since it's the same attack, and this is a distinction without a difference, it's laughable for Ryan to say he "misspoke."

TV spot asks: 'Does Ryan think we were born yesterday?'

Americans United for Change and AFSCME are launching TV spots this week to attack four Midwestern Republican congressmen who voted for Ryan's budget, including Ryan himself. The ads will run against Ryan in the Milwaukee market, as well as targeting Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy in the Wausau market.

From the script: "Duffy just voted again to replace Medicare's guaranteed benefits with private vouchers that won't even cover the cost of care. Can you imagine! He voted to cut Medicare benefits to give millionaires and big oil companies another tax break!"

Did Ayn Rand say that...

...yes! Does this jibe with Paul Ryan's economic austerity plan?

It only stands to reason that where there’s sacrifice, there’s someone collecting the sacrificial offerings. Where there’s service, there is someone being served. The man who speaks to you of sacrifice is speaking of slaves and masters, and intends to be the master. Ayn Rand (ein Rand)

Paul Ryan revealed.

On the Military Budget Cuts, Ryan thinks: "We don't think the generals are giving us their true advice."

So far, Paul Ryan came out today and endorsed Mitt Romney and didn't rule out an interest in the vice presidential spot. But get a load of the following video clip.

According to Ryan, all the generals are lying, or are being coerced into saying something Obama wanted them to say.

Paul Ryan: "We don't think the generals believe that their budget is really the right budget."

The "we" is really Paul Ryan.

Ryan repeats "What I believe..." and "I think..." a number of times. What is clear;  it doesn't matter what other people say, because what really matters is only what Paul Ryan believes or thinks.

At least one general wrote back to Ryan and told him what he believes. Here's Rachel Maddow:

Ryan and Romney: 'That's Amore'

NY Times debate: Is Ryan budget viable policy, or just a political gesture?

The Ryan budget is the subject of an online discussion in the NY Times's "Room for Debate" series. Here's how the Times introduces it:

Representative Paul Ryan’s budget may have as many opponents on the right as on the left. One set of critics sees the proposal as “Robin Hood in reverse,” a way to cut millionaires’ taxes and “take health insurance away from tens of millions of people, while effectively eliminating the federal government except for entitlements and defense spending.” 

The other group faulting the plan considers it weak and vague, an election-year promise to cut taxes and increase defense spending, without a concrete idea of how to do this while lowering the deficit. Is the House Republicans’ budget a viable policy proposal? Or just a political gesture?

Read the discussion among five debaters  here.

New round of reviews for Ryan's budget: "Total garbage'

The early reviews of Paul Ryan's 2012 budget plan were dreadful, and the second round isn't any better. A quick roundup:

David Grant, of the Christian Science Monitor, says Ryan learned a few things after his 2011 budget ran into so much flak and frightened Republican candidates:

Ryan 2011 sounded like a graduate thesis on statistical steroids. Ryan 2012 is like an 80-page campaign commercial.

Dean Baker, writing for Huffington Post, says Ryan's budget isn't worthless; it can always serve as a bad example:

By throwing a piece of total garbage on the table and pretending it is a real budget plan, he allowed us to see who in Washington is serious about the budget and who just says things that will push their agenda. 

It is easy to see that Ryan himself could not possibly be serious about the document he put out as a "Path to Prosperity."

And Jonathan Bernstein of the Washington Post agrees that Ryan's not serious:

There’s no one quite like Paul Ryan out there. All of his budgetary bluff and bluster, which he fails to back up with actual numbers and actual choices, while simultaneously insisting that his proposals be recognized as courageous and unusually serious — no one else dares attempt such a thing.

The amazing thing is that House Republicans will no doubt pass it, safe in knowing it will never become law, then blame the Democrats in the Senate for not passing a budget.

Paul Ryan: Boy genius or big windbag? You decide.

Ryan "path to prosperity" actually increases national debt

... and, increases it much more than Obama's own, far less draconian proposals. From ThinkProgress.org, which quotes an analysis by Center for American Progress Tax and Budget Policy Director Michael Linden:

But the House budget’s entire claim to deficit reduction is built on the foundation of those fantasy revenue levels. Without them, the debt goes up, not down. In fact, with all the House budget’s tax cuts properly accounted for, revenue would average just 15.3 percent of GDP from 2013 through 2022, not 18.3 percent. The result: deficits would never drop below 4.4 percent of GDP, and would rise to more than 5 percent of GDP by 2022.

The national debt, measured as a share of GDP, would never decline, surpassing 80 percent by 2014, and 90 percent by 2022. By comparison, President Barack Obama’s budget proposal, released in February, would stabilize the debt by 2015, and bring it down to 76 percent by 2022.

As Linden notes, the GOP’s “debt reduction” isn’t just based on fantasy levels of revenue — it’s based on “massive, unrealistic” spending cuts as well...

More here

Budget punishes those in poverty, exposes Paul Ryan's phony focus on dignity

Greg Kaufmann of the Nation:

 “Promoting the natural rights and the inherent dignity of the individual must be the central focus of all government.”

That’s what Congressman Paul Ryan wrote earlier this month in an exclusive commentary for Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity. This week, he revealed exactly where his laser-like focus on dignity would lead this nation... 

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means a cut in food stamps of $133 billion over ten years, even though 76 percent of participating households include a child, senior or disabled person, nearly half of all recipients are children and 40 percent of single mothers use food stamps to help feed their families.   

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and attacking Medicaid with his block-granting light saber. The repeal results in at least 33 million people losing their healthcare... 

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means not only extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy but handing them an additional $3 trillion in tax cuts to boot. If he just extended the Bush tax cuts, but nixed the Don’t Worry Rich People, Ryan Loves You additional tax cuts—that alone would pay for the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, the Medicaid cuts, the SNAP cuts and domestic discretionary spending cuts.

All told, Ryan hands out about $4.4 trillion in tax cuts that primarily benefit the very best off, and pays for it with $4.15 trillion in spending cuts to programs that primarily benefit the poor and middle class.

There's lots more. Read it and weep.

There Is An Alternative To The Ryan-Romney Pauperization Budget

The DCCC, as expected, hasn't taken us up on our challenge to match a $5,000 check to Rob Zerban, the candidate running to defeat Paul Ryan. Blue America has already contributed over $5,000 to Rob's campaign but we agreed to write a $5,000 PAC check if the DCCC put their money where their mouth is-- they're big about talking smack about GOP villains like Ryan, Boehner and Cantor but never support their opponents and try to actually beat them. They just whine. And "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel... no interest in beating Paul Ryan whatsoever. Ryan's his kinda guy-- and they both take money from the same corrupt corporate sources. Paul Krugman, on the other hand, he's still telling the truth about Ryan and his toxic agenda. Friday:

[H]is plan is really about transferring money from the poor to the rich, with no credible deficit reduction at all... But leaving aside the predictable right-wing cheerleaders, it looks as if the emperor’s nakedness is now common knowledge.

The predictable right-wing cheerleaders may be confused about what to do regarding Ryan's "new" budget, but they can make a lot of noise. Romney, the putative head of the party-- let's face it, all these running around is just to make it seem dramatic and exciting and help raise money-- seems vaguely disoriented by Ryan's assertiveness on behalf of the Wall Street titans who finance both their careers. Maybe he's confused but Romney insisted on Wisconsin radio Friday that Ryan's plan "does not balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the elderly ... It instead preserves Medicare and preserves Social Security." He's wrong, whether confused or just lying again.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's budget plan would get at least 62 percent of its $5.3 trillion in nondefense budget cuts over ten years (relative to a continuation of current policies) from programs that serve people of limited means. This stands a core principle of President Obama's fiscal commission on its head and violates basic principles of fairness.

While giving a massive tax break to the wealthy, the Ryan budget plan Romney is so fond of slashes funding for Medicaid, food stamps, and other for low-income programs, nearly all of which Ryan's plan would eliminate over the next couple of decades.

As the CBPP's Robert Greenstein put it, "[T]he Ryan budget would impose extraordinary cuts in programs that serve as a lifeline for our nation's poorest and most vulnerable citizens, and over time would cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their health insurance or become underinsured." He added that Ryan's plan "would cast tens of millions of less fortunate Americans into the ranks of the uninsured, take food from poor children, make it harder for low-income students to get a college degree, and squeeze funding for research, education, and infrastructure."

If this doesn't "balance the budget on the backs of the poor," for crying out loud, what exactly would such a budget plan look like?

As for "preserving" Medicare, the Ryan plan that Romney supports would turn Medicare into a voucher program, scrapping the guaranteed benefit altogether; weaken Medicare solvency; and bring back the Medicare Part D prescription drug "donut-hole."

Predictably enough, early on in his brilliant book, The Fifteen Biggest Lies About The Economy, Joshua Holland dealt with Romney's dishonest "roadmap," the foundation of the budget Romney was attempting to defend. Holland pointed to an analysis of the Ayn Rand-inspired roadmap by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center: “The Roadmap’s tax provisions would be highly regressive compared with the current tax system.” If the Roadmap were enacted, the bottom 80 percent of the economic ladder would see their after-tax incomes remain about the same, those in the top 1 percent of the economic heap would see theirs shoot up by 26 percent, and the incomes of those in the top tenth of the top 1 percent would increase by 36 percent. The result? According to the Tax Policy Center’s figures, “The share of total taxes paid by the bottom 80 percent would rise from 35 percent to 42 percent,
while the share paid by the top 1 percent would fall by nearly half from 25 percent to 13.5 percent.”

Putting it even more starkly, Holland explains that "Ryan’s proposal would replace the surety of Social Security with privatized accounts held by Wall Street brokerage firms (these firms, in
turn, would gain a fat new stream of fees and have lobbied for the scheme for years)."

A couple of chapters on, Holland is done with Ryan but talking about one of Ryan's favorite topics: so-called "free" markets, something he insists is the basic for a budget that would destroy the middle class and pauperize more than half the families in America.

Perhaps the central and most enduring myth of conservative economics is that there exists an organically functioning “free market.” Conservatives like to portray themselves as self-reliant actors content to brave the cutthroat world of unregulated capitalism and let the chips fall where they may. And they like to portray liberals as timid, looking to the state to be their protective “nanny.”

But economist Dean Baker, the codirector of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, explained why that’s a myth. “What the conservatives have done is they’ve rigged the deck,” he told me. “They’ve made sure that certain people come out ahead, that income flows upward, and that other people are put at a disadvantage-- and these things are built into the rules of the system. And then what they want to do-- in talking about ‘free markets’-- is they want to kick back and say, ‘No, no, no; those are the rules, and we can’t talk about them.’”

According to the dominant narrative, the free market may have some flaws, but it is ultimately such a dynamic force that the meddling of pasty government bureaucrats, no matter how well intentioned, can only throw a wrench in the works and ultimately screw us all.

The kernel of truth behind the mythology is that the free market’s opposite-- the centrally planned economy-- has indeed proved disastrous. It’s pretty clear that economies in which entrepreneurs have the ability to start new businesses, take risks on new ventures, and hopefully come up with a better mousetrap fare significantly better than do those that lack the
relative freedom of liberal capitalism.

From that little nugget of truth, a number of commonly held myths have arisen. First, conservatives conflate the kind of public interest regulations that one finds in all liberal democracies with the central planning that’s helped doom North Koreans to decades of destitution and famine. The reality is that although central planning has been a demonstrable failure, regulation in the public interest is absolutely necessary for markets to work. Greed may be a factor that motivates people to work hard, but unchecked greed-- unconstrained by regulations that protect the public interest-- is a disastrous force. As Robert Pollin, the codirector of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, put it, “It is time to recognize that unregulated financial markets always have, and always will, cause financial crises. There are no historical exceptions to this observation at all. This point has to be grasped.”

Second, listening to the free-marketeers, one might imagine that markets are like mushrooms: organic entities that would grow just fine without the intervention of a human hand. That may have been the case when there were actual physical markets where people came to trade sheep and chickens. But when we speak of the modern “market”-- this complex system for distributing the fruits of a society’s economic output-- we’re talking about an entity created by the government, with rules established by the government.

And it’s the rules of the game, much more than some unseen but all-knowing “hidden hand,” that ultimately determine who wins and who loses.

Yes, the law of the Jungle-- which, of course, is very much what Ryan's-- and Romney's-- Wall Street financiers long for... the freedom to exploit everyone else for their own private interests. The alternative isn't the DCCC and their nagging e-mails soliciting donations for Blue Dogs and other conservative hacks and corrupt careerists. The alternative, the one chance we finally have to defeat Paul Ryan and end his political career, is Rob Zerban. Please consider helping his cause by clicking on the thermometer... and doing what you can.

Reviews on Ryan 'mystery meat' budget are not kind

The reviews are in on Paul Ryan's 2013 budget. If it were a Broadway play, it would be closing tonight.

A Christian Science Monitor column by Howard Gleckman calls it Ryan's "mystery meat budget" saying he "airily promises both trillions of dollars in tax cuts and a nearly balanced budget within a decade, but never says how he’d get there."

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones says:

Paul Ryan has released the latest Republican budget, and it's a blizzard of numbers, gimmicks, weird comparisons, and obfuscation. It's no more serious than any of Ryan's other budget proposals, no matter how many PowerPoint slides he includes... 

Dana Milbank, in the Washington Post, says Ryan's idea is to help the poor by hurting them:

Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, is on record as saying, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” And Ryan has just written a budget that supports Romney’s boast.

In an editorial, the Post calls Ryan's plan "dangerous and intentionally vague."

The Post also says Democrats want to know how much taxpayer money was spent to produce those slick videos with Ryan to try to sell his budget.  So far, no one's saying.

No wonder Democrats are celebrating.

Can Ryan get away with this...

Dems launch 'Medicare March' to expose madness in Ryan's new budget

  Politico reports: 

Pegged to the release of Paul Ryan's new budget this week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will launch a new paid and grassroots campaign today called "Medicare March" in 41 Republican districts. The message is that the new Republican budget puts "Millionaires over Medicare." The first phase will use automated phone calls to patch voters through to their congressman's office so they can try pressuring them to vote against the budget. A new microsite gives info on upcoming town hall meeting locations to get Democrats to go and talk about Medicare. At the "Medicare Action Center," voters can do "Medicare March Madness" brackets: http://bit.ly/xn08rD. [If you haven't been following, Jake Sherman takes a look this morning at the GOP thinking behind pushing another politically-risky budget: http://politi.co/zthwIP.]

SAMPLE SCRIPT - THE PATCH-THROUGH PHONE CALL: "Hi, this is Anne from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee calling about Congressman Charlie Bass and House Republicans' newest scheme to end Medicare. Republicans in Washington have a new budget that chooses millionaires over Medicare. One independent analysis found that the plan would 'shift substantial costs to beneficiaries' and 'lead to the demise of traditional Medicare.' Congressman Charlie Bass has the wrong priorities...We all agree Washington needs to cut spending, but it should be done the right way, not on the backs of seniors. Press 1 to be connected to Congressman Bass's office and tell him to protect Medicare for seniors, not tax breaks for Millionaires." 

Members being targeted with calls include three Wisconsin Republicans -- Sean Duffy, Reid Ribble, and Paul Ryan himself.

A challenge to DCCC to actually help Rob Zerban defeat Paul Ryan

Howie Klein, of the Down With Tyranny blog and Blue America PAC, calls out the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for failing to help Rob Zerban in his underdog campaign to defeat Paul Ryan:

The DCCC loves using Republican cartoonish arch-villains as whipping boys. They're always sending out press releases and even putting together ads attacking the worst GOP figures, particularly Cantor, Boehner and Ryan. But they don't actually do anything about defeating any of them at the polls.... 

And this year, when Ryan finally does have a serious opponent, Rob Zerban, what does the DCCC do? Kick back and issue press releases about how awful Paul Ryan's Medicare-killing plans are-- to the media everywhere in America. But take on Ryan directly? Or even help Zerban go after Ryan? Don't be silly....  

I challenge the DCCC to help Rob Zerban actually beat Paul Ryan and put an end to the gravest threat facing the American middle class. If the DCCC writes a check to Zerban's campaign this week for $5,000, Blue America will match it, dollar for dollar. Come on, big shots. What about you, Israel? Crowley? Wasserman Schultz? Let's see a DCCC check for Rob Zerban's campaign to actually put an end to Ryan's career instead of all the bullshit sending petitions to Republicans so they have something to laugh about.

Tough talk. How about it, DCCC?

Read it all here.

Penny-pinching Ryan spends your tax money on self-promotional budget video

 
Penny-pinching Paul Ryan is so worried about government spending that he's spent some of your hard-earned money on this political video to push the Republican agenda and attack President Obama and the Democrats.

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post calls it, "heavy on theatrics, light on specifics."

When they come, we won't like the specifics, which are tailored to please the most conservative members of the House GOP caucus, and which will renege on budget agreements Ryan and the GOP made last year, slashing spending by as much as $19-billion.

Thursday night, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee blasted Ryan for reportedly planning once again to propose changes to Medicare and for using “a taxpayer funded self-promotional video” to criticize Democrats for the nation’s fiscal woes.

“Ryan and House Republicans are responsible for getting our country into this debt crisis and now want seniors to be the first to sacrifice to get us out,” DCCC spokesman Jesse Ferguson said in a statement Thursday night.

Poor Paul Ryan: First $350 wine, and now $4 gasoline

Poor Paul Ryan. He has to pay $350 a bottle for wine, and now it costs more than $75 to fill up his gas-guzzler. What next?

By the way, his story of not being able to fill his tank on a credit card sounds vaguely familiar. Is this recycled from an earlier year?

Paul Mulshine in the New Jersey Star Ledger says Ryan doesn't seem to understand how the free market works.

But what does Rycan care, as long as he and his GOP cronies can blame it all on President Obama?

Here's Mulshine:

...[I]magine that the U.S. really did have a goal of achieving energy independence. Say goodbye to that big SUV, congressman. You won't be able to afford it on your salary. Gas prices would have to double because of the massive taxes imposed to discourage consumption. That's what the British did, and it worked like a charm - assuming of course you don't mind $8-a-gallon gas and small, fuel-efficient vehicles.

But it's one or the other. If you want to drive a big vehicle, then just tell the voters there's nothing particularly bad about importing oil. We import a lot of other products as well. 

But if you want to drive a big SUV on ski trips, don't whine when the world price for oil rises. You're going to have to import a lot of it to keep that gas-guzzler on the road.

May 25, 2011-- Bill Clinton, Paul Ryan And The Conservative Consensus

I can't find that old video of President Obama referring to Paul Ryan as "serious" and giving Village credibility to his corporate-written harebrained schemes to reverse the New Deal, destroy Medicare and privatize Social Security. It was one of the first indications I had after the 2008 election that Obama was in way over his head. Paul Krugman's 2010 columns on Ryan's ignorance and unseriousness helped put the lie to Obama's foolish-- and presumably now regretted-- assertion. Krugman's classic Flimflam Man OpEd:

One depressing aspect of American politics is the susceptibility of the political and media establishment to charlatans. You might have thought, given past experience, that D.C. insiders would be on their guard against conservatives with grandiose plans. But no: as long as someone on the right claims to have bold new proposals, he’s hailed as an innovative thinker. And nobody checks his arithmetic.

Which brings me to the innovative thinker du jour: Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

Mr. Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable; on Monday, the Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G.O.P.’s fiscal conscience. He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.”

But it’s the audacity of dopes. Mr. Ryan isn’t offering fresh food for thought; he’s serving up leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce.

...So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense. And last but not least, there’s deference to power-- the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes.

But they don’t. The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.

Has Bill Clinton been taken in too? Or is he part of the scam? Last week we saw Clinton endorsing one of the most corrupt conservatives running for Congress anywhere, Maryland multimillionaire loan shark, John Delaney. Want to feel sick to your stomach? Just watch this video on Clinton offering to help Ryan with his plans to kill Medicare the day after Democrats won a Republican seat in upstate New York based almost entirely on opposing Ryan's Medicare plans:



It's less than a minute long, caught surreptitiously on someone's cell phone... but it speaks volumes about the corporate money-driven conservative consensus that rules Washington, a consensus that allowed Clinton and Rahm Emanuel to succeed in passing George H.W. Bush's tragic NAFTA legislation and that allowed Obama to continue George W. Bush's policy of bailing out criminal banksters-- instead of jailing them. That's why Blue America is a progressive PAC, not a Democratic Party PAC and it's why you'll see us fighting against corrupt conservatives regardless of political party. Aside from Ryan, our primary targets right now, are a Republican corporate whore in California, Buck McKeon, and a Democratic corporate whore in Pennsylvania, Blue Dog Tim Holden. Corrupt members of DC's conservative consensus are frantic to save both their necks. Their constituents are having second thoughts. And as for the Flimflam Man himself... he has his very own Blue America page, Stop Paul Ryan. Have you visited it lately?

You can read the rest of this post at DownWithTyranny but, let me warn you, there are no more goofy pictures of Ryan there.

Is Ryan ready to renege on budget agreement, risk government shutdown, to satisfy extremists?

Is Paul Ryan ready to cave in to the extremists in his caucus (even more extreme than he!) and renege on a budget deal the House Republicans agreed to last summer, even if it means shutting down the government?
That's an unanswered question so far, but it's beginning to look more likely that the House Budget Committee, which Ryan chairs and the GOP controls, will back out of the agreement.

Talking Points Memo reports:

The House GOP faces a trying dilemma. Leaders want to stick by federal spending levels agreed to in the Budget Control Act — better known to most as the debt-limit deal. But they’re having a hard time corralling conservative members, who want to cut much deeper into domestic programs. Passing a budget with lower spending caps would risk binding their appropriators to those levels — an outcome Senate Democrats will reject, and which could easily lead to an election-season government shutdown fight this September. The third option is to not pass a budget at all, which would be an embarrassment for House Republicans who have bashed Dems consistently for months for not passing a taxing-and-spending plan of their own...

Republican leaders have been chewing this over with their members behind closed doors. Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said Tuesday that there’s a deep-seated desire for “fiscal sanity” in his caucus, while Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) admitted he doesn’t know where the GOP will ultimately come down on the spending caps, according to Roll Call.

One reason to cave in committee, one GOP staffer told Roll Call, is to save Ryan some embarrassment:

“It doesn’t get passed if there’s absolutely no concessions to conservatives,” said an aide to a RSC member. “There will be at least some deal to get it out of committee ... [and] save them the embarrassment of Paul Ryan being defeated in committee.”

That's leadership, Paul Ryan style.

'Zombie-eyed granny starver' Ryan doesn't want to discuss social issues

Charles Pierce of The Politics Blog:

Pity poor zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan. There he was, being a serious man of ideas and being all policy intellectualish, and dying to lay out a precise plan for two decades of granny-starving, and suddenly, all anybody wanted to talk about [on CBS This Morning] was lady parts and what should be done about them...

But, in respect to Paul Ryan, let's talk again about his budget, the one that the CBO laughed at, the one that will burn Medicare down to the ground and paint "Medicare" on the urn holding its ashes, the one that was partly responsible for at least one lost GOP House seat, the one that had his fellow Republicans running for cover back home, and the one that dropped his approval rating back home like a stone dropped into a well. Personally, I think they might rather talk about birth control.

Ryan Mischaracterizes Auto Loans, Doesn't consider State Loss of Auto Manufacturing Important.

Like the title says, Rep. Paul Ryan made one hell of a miscalculation about Wisconsin’s hard hit auto plant closings. He also couldn't resist backhanding and abandoning the working class families that relied on those jobs. 

Sorry Paul, we still want to bring those jobs back, in a big way.

Charlie Rose asked Ryan about the auto bailout, which has particular resonance in Michigan. "Should that be an issue? And should the voters look at [critics] of the bailout and say, 'We had an economic bailout of the auto companies and look what happened? Profits are up and they're both doing well'?" Rose asked.

"Well, if you give any company tens of billions of dollars and wipe their debt off the books, I would expect them to do well," Ryan said.

The government never “gave” the auto industry money, but it did LOAN them some, which they paid back. Ryan supported those “bailouts,” although it sure doesn’t sound like cares much about it now.

Ryan also doesn’t have time to talk up GM and Chrysler’s new found success, and encourage them to return to Janesville and Kenosha, where workers there would welcome a chance at manufacturing cars again:

"I think it's a big issue in Michigan; I'm not sure that it's a big issue in the rest of the country. In my hometown of Jamesville and Kenosha that I represent, we lost our auto plants. So where we come from in auto country, we don't see them as great success stories because we had plant shutdowns irrespective of those bailouts."

And Paul Ryan is the guy we want out there promoting Wisconsin’s hard working middle class? It looks like Ryan has moved on from creating those kind of jobs.  

Song: Paul Ryan's Lies

For your enjoyment, the song Paul Ryan's Lies, discovered by the folks at Sly in the Morning. Originally just an audio track with no artist credit, the video here is something I basically threw together, with a bunch of Ryan pictures, so I could post it.

Absolutely no production value whatsoever. I just liked the song.

Krugman to Ryan on moochers: It takes one to know one

Republican talk radio's Charlie "Fireworks" Sykes is promoting a blurb from Paul Ryan on his new book:

Charlie Sykes’ A Nation of Moochers provides a much-needed wakeup call for a nation approaching two perilous tipping points: a moral one and a fiscal one. With our country facing unprecedented challenges and stark political choices, principled leaders will benefit from Sykes’ clear vision, keen insight and intellect. If we’re serious about getting our nation back on track, then we would be wise to follow the lessons laid out in A Nation of Moochers.” -- Congressman Paul Ryan.

Mentioning Paul Ryan and moochers in the same breath brought this to mind, from economist Paul Krugman:

 Rick Santorum declares that President Barack Obama is getting America hooked on “the narcotic of dependency.” Romney warns that government programs “foster passivity and sloth.”

Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, requires that staff members read Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” in which heroic capitalists struggle against the “moochers” trying to steal their totally deserved wealth, a struggle the heroes win by withdrawing their productive effort and giving interminable speeches. (Ha!)

Many readers of The Times were, therefore, surprised to learn, from an excellent article published earlier this month, that the regions of America most hooked on Santorum’s narcotic -- the regions in which government programs account for the largest share of personal income -- are precisely the regions electing those severe conservatives. Wasn’t Red America supposed to be the land of traditional values, where people don’t eat Thai food and don’t rely on handouts?

Krugman's column: Moochers against welfare.

Ryan votes to allow oil drilling in Great Lakes

Paul Ryan voted last week against banning drilling in the Great Lakes, as part of a House-passed energy bill. Rob Zerban, his Democratic opponent, has some thoughts about Ryan's sellout of his home state, which borders two of the lakes in question:

 The House defeated, 176-241, a bid by Democrats to bar energy drilling within five miles of the Florida Everglades or the Great Lakes. The Wisconsin delegation split along party lines, with Republicans all voting against the ban. Roll call.

No wonder oil and gas interests have given Ryan nearly $250,000 in campaign money since he's been in Congress.

The GOP majority, and Ryan, also voted to build the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil pipeline, open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling and start oil-shale extraction on federal land in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah.

Fortunately, there is still a Democratic majority in the Senate and a Democratic president in the White House.

Paul Ryan Steps In It On Meet The Press

Yesterday, the NBC corporate message machine presented one of their top-paid corporate shills, Rep. Paul Ryan, on one of their top Sunday shows, Meet the Press which was last useful and relevant several decades ago, to pound home their carefully crafted, thoroughly misleading message pushing-- what else?-- Austerity. Ryan was waving the specter of Greece in front of the viewers, some of whom don't have the good sense to ignore him as a propaganda agent for the one percent and an admitted follower of the childish nonsense of Greed and Selfishness guru Ayn Rand.

On of Ryan's primary claims is that the payroll tax reduction for ordinary working families doesn't do any good. He and his ilk-- i.e., the Republican Party and their plutocratic financiers-- would much prefer more massive tax breaks for the already woefully undertaxed multimillionaires. The pompous little ignoramus, propped up by the entire right-wing think tank industry whined that he doesn't "think this works to grow our economy” and compared the payroll tax cut to “sugar-high economics.” He may be Budget Chairman-- a decision made by John Boehner-- but that doesn't mean he knows squat about budgets. As Nobel economist Paul Krugman explained, Ryan is nothing but a tawdry flimflam man who "don't know much about economics. Professionals at the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office found that extending the payroll tax cut is more cost effective to promote economic growth and employment than the tax breaks for millionaires that Ryan and his zombie colleagues continue to insist on.

In January 2010, the CBO wrote that reducing payroll taxes for firms was among the policies “that would have the largest effect on output and employment per dollar on budgetary cost in 2010 and 2011. By contrast, policies that would temporarily increase the after-tax income of people with relatively high income, such as an across-the-board reduction in income taxes […] would have a smaller effects because such tax cuts would probably not affect the recipients’ spending significantly.”

And last November they tried reminding Ryan and his single-minded cronies that they weren't kidding. “Policies that would have the largest effects on output and employment per dollar of budgetary cost in 2012 and 2013 are ones that would reduce the marginal cost to businesses of adding employees or that would be targeted toward people who would be most likely to spend the additional income. Such policies include reducing employers’ payroll taxes (especially if limited to firms that increase their payroll), increasing aid to the unemployed, and providing additional refundable tax credits in 2012 for lower- and middle-income households.” That's what Ryan's been calling “sugar-high economics" for the sake of his benefactors from GE-TV.

DWT readers probably know by now that we're pitching in, in the nationwide effort to replace Paul Ryan with Kenosha County Supervisor Rob Zerban, someone whose vision for America is as diametrically opposed to Ryan's dark, dystopian views as possible. I spoke with him right after GE inflicted Ryan on us. He had a lot to say:

Paul Ryan's performance on Meet the Press today underscores how desperate Republicans are to shift the conversation away from the recovering economy. Instead of talking about proactive steps and investments we can make to accelerate growth, Ryan wants to implement an austerity plan that would be detrimental to our society and our economy.

Ryan's argument is that the President's budget is not serious enough. He prefers his own paln. Ryan is continuing to advocate for the radical ideas he first wrote in the "Path to Prosperity" 2011 House GOP Budget. He insists we need huge cuts to the social safety net, including making Medicaid a block grant program and phasing out Medicare. This approach will reverse our current trajectory of recovery.

His attack on the President's budget is a mischaracterization of what the President is proposing. President Obama has proposed a budget that makes hard choices, and hard cuts, and reduces the debt responsibly. I believe, as our President does, that we must end the tax loopholes that allow the wealthiest Americans, like Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, to pay a lower tax rate than everyone else. I also support using the funds we are saving from our drawing down of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan to reduce our deficit and continue to grow our economy. This is a much more realistic plan for our economic future as opposed to just cutting programs for students, seniors, and the middle class.

Not only was Paul Ryan wrong today about the economy, he was wrong on women's rights. Ryan's attempt to divide Americans by attacking affordable contraception to women is not going to work.

Denying contraception, by funding or by provision, is not a "religious freedom" issue. No one is denying a religious person's right to believe anything they want. What is wrong is when someone uses the government to force their morality upon others. That is what is happenging. Paul Ryan's attempt to defund and regulate women's personal choices is a great example of how far-right Republicans are alienating women.

Paul Ryan has once again shown how rigidly ideological his approach is to our nation's problems. This will contiunue to make him a darling to conservatives like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, but he will continue to lose the support of the American people.

But we don't have to be in an election battle with Paul Ryan to know his phony medicine show is toxic for America. Norman Solomon comes from a district that doesn't spawn Republicans that anyone takes seriously. So the business power structure up in northern California tries holding onto power by pushing conservative Democrats who would be Republicans if they lived in other parts of the country. If Norman wins the primary, he'll, in effect, be the next congressman from Marin, Sonoma and Mendocino. And he's as aware as Rob Zerban of the dangers inherent in Paul Ryan's approach. Yesterday after he watched Ryan on Meet the Press he shook his head sadly that there are still people being hoodwinked by this prepackaged crap:

As a high-ranking cleric for the political faith of austerity, Ryan used his appearance on Meet the Press to sprinkle some holy water and whine about the supposed failure of federal stimulus efforts. In fact, tax-cutting dogmas-- combined with huge military spending, loopholes for the wealthy and Wall Street impunity-- have thrown the U.S. economy into a very deep ditch. We know that the Republican leadership is hellbent on deepening that ditch for most people while large corporations reap massive gains from enormous human pain. What remains to be seen-- and, more to the point, determined by our actions-- is how effectively we can fight for a present-day Green New Deal, providing sufficient public investment to overcome the vast obstacles to social equity and economic fairness. As an independent progressive Democrat, I'm running for Congress to occupy a seat for the 99 percent. It's not enough to pooh-pooh the likes of Paul Ryan. We need to create viable, long-term alternatives for the future.

Norman Solomon and Rob Zerban are on the same page-- a page I hope you'll visit right now and contribute what you can. Today's my birthday and I've been getting a slew of beautiful e-cards and well-wishes on Facebook. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, thank you. And if you'd like to make me smile on my birthday, give what you can to the Blue America candidates-- even if it's just a dollar. Grassroots campaigns aren't funded by $5,000 checks; they're funded by small contributions from people who believe in the future of the country. Again, here's the place: Blue America.

Ryan: Why are we wasting time talking about gay marriage?

Paul Ryan's mind is made up: Marriage should only between a man and a woman.  So why, he wondered on Meet the Press, are we wasting so much time talking about marriage equality.  Ryan wanted to talk about the budget.

Unfortunately, his Dem counterpart of the House Budget Committee, Chris Van Hollen of Massachusetts, also complained he was there to talk about the budget, but he did at least support the gay marriage law passed by Maryland's legislature but vetoed by Gov. Chris Christie.

More, and video, at Raw Story.

Ryan's false arguments on payroll tax break exposed

Paul Ryan spoke out against and voted against extending the payroll tax cuts -- a position on which his House Republican colleagues finally faced reality and folded. Ryan says the long impasse over the issue caused the GOP some political damage, but he doesn't take any responsibility for that, of course.

Ryan says the problem is that the debate muddied the differences between the parties, but the real damage is from people seeing the real differences between them, and understanding which party -- the Democratic Psrty -- is willing to fight for the middle class and low-income families.
Think Progress says:

Last year, when Democrats and Republicans were negotiating a short-term extension of the payroll tax holiday, multiple Republicans pushed the false idea that extending the payroll tax cut would undermine Social Security by robbing its trust fund of vital revenue. Those claims were repeatedly debunked by media outlets, members of Congress, and even the Social Security Trust Fund’s chief actuary...

And while Ryan now claims to have “a problem” with diverting funds out of the Social Security Trust Fund and worries about “what happens” if such a plan is followed, he didn’t have the same concerns last year, when he proposed a privatization plan that would divert $1.2 trillion — a whopping 1,200 times the size of the payroll tax cut extension — out of the Social Security Trust Fund, and would only restore that money over the next quarter of a century through deep benefit cuts.

The Maddow Blog chimes in:

Ryan is somehow concerned about the integrity of Social Security. Remember Ryan's "Roadmap" budget plan? It had quite a few interesting ideas related to Social Security.

The Ryan plan proposes large cuts in Social Security benefits -- roughly 16 percent for the average new retiree in 2050 and 28 percent in 2080 from price indexing alone -- and initially diverts most of these savings to help fund private accounts rather than to restore Social Security solvency.

{T]hose who oppose Social Security shouldn't pretend to be its champions. If Paul Ryan opposes the middle-class tax cut, he should say so, and not behind a transparent fig leaf.

How Wisconsin members voted: Democrats — Baldwin, Y; Kind, N; Moore, Y. Republicans — Duffy, Y; Petri, N; Ribble, Y; Ryan, N; Sensenbrenner, N. In the Senate, Herb Kohl voted yes and Ron Johnson no.

There's Exactly One Way To Protect America From Paul Ryan's Extremism-- Replace Him With Rob Zerban

Tuesday Blue America will be officially endorsing Rob Zerban for Congress-- looks like I let the cat out of the bag-- and he'll be our special Valentine's Day live guest over at C&L (1pm, CST). When I spoke to him earlier today I reminded him that to the Netroots and to progressive activists outside of the district, Paul Ryan is known to be one of the most extreme and dangerous members of the conservative movement. This view is shared by many in Wisconsin, of course, including in the First Congressional District, but there is a still a great deal of work to be done convincing undecided and independents. I wanted to know what Rob is doing to make sure voters in Janesville, Kenosha, Racine, the southern Milwaukee 'burbs and even Waukesha get that. He says "there are 3 main factors why people are energized about this race and fed up with Ryan-- Ryan's ideas, his behavior, and the movement in Wisconsin. My campaign is focusing on harnessing these opportunities, drawing clear contrasts, and delivering that message to voters." When I asked for details, they came out like a gusher:

The privatization of Medicare and Social Security is an awful idea. Let’s start there. That is something the vast majority of people understand in this district, and across the nation. Supporters of Paul Ryan’s plans have admitted it does not save money. These proposals open these programs to huge risk and cuts, and are clearly just a ploy to take money away from seniors and put it into the hands of Wall Street and private health insurance companies. (Of course, these are the same special interests funding Ryan’s political career).

Paul Ryan’s agenda is not just cuts and privatization, but also wasteful spending on big tax cuts for the wealthy. Everyone is furious that Mitt Romney is paying only 13.9% on his millions while many in the middle class are paying tax rates in the 30%s. I point out to people that Paul Ryan makes this possible. He has pushed for every tax cut for millionaires and billionaires possible including the Bush tax cuts, capital gains, carried interest, and many other loopholes. Ryan wants to protect these loopholes for Mitt Romney instead of funding our students, seniors, and economic recovery efforts.

Paul Ryan likes to sell himself as a big thinker similar to the way Newt Gingrich has done. I realized early on that his grandiose and self-promoting plans, including the Path to Prosperity, are little more than the reheated and repackaged extremism of past eras.

The second problem many Wisconsinites have with Ryan is his behavior. He is cavorting with the ultra-wealthy at every opportunity and only occasionally returns to the district. His “listening sessions” with constituents compromise of him delivering a PowerPoint presentation on topics including why students don’t need Pell Grants and why seniors programs should be privatized. He routinely kicks out anyone who disagrees with him. He behaves like people’s boss- not their representative. In my opinion, he acts like someone who does not feel he owes his district or his constituents any consideration. He is a man with a philosophy and everyone else can take his way or the highway. This makes people mad!

The third and final factor I think is playing a big role in why people are so energized is the movement in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is the epicenter of the movement by the middle class to stand up for themselves and for their futures. The Recall effort of the Governor is an inspiring grassroots effort to get rid of someone who has stepped far outside of the lines to attack the middle class. The crushing and coordinated political attack on working families that happened in Wisconsin was outrageous. The attack was orchestrated by outside money networks and secret coalitions, including the Koch Brothers and ALEC, which allowed for radical legislation to be quickly rammed through Wisconsin state government. It was clear to everyone that our legislators and Governor were acting as puppets for outside interests and had little understanding what they were doing.

This all-out assault on the middle class woke a lot of people up. We saw great things in Madison. The Recall has also spread to my district and had a great impact. Formerly Republican-leaning areas of the district, including Waukesha County, had record participation in the Recall.

In short, things have changed here in Wisconsin! People have woken up and blue collar retirees are remembering just how unacceptable the Republican agenda is. Seniors and students are realizing the deep cuts Ryan is ramming through will hurt them and will force many in the middle class to fall into poverty.

It doesn’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows! Paul Ryan has the wrong ideas for America and we just need to keep promoting the simple truth.

Good answer! Come meet Rob Tuesday, right at CrooksandLiars.com-- 1pm (CST)-- and help us kiss Paul Ryan good-bye. And if you'd like to help his campaign before then... be our guest, over at the Blue America ActBlue page.

Charles Pierce executes a perfect Ryan take-down

Charles Pierce, Esquire magazine columnist and general observer of all things horrific and decayed in America, takes but a few words to demolish Paul Ryan after the congresscritter's latest opus. The choice beginning:

Make no mistake. You can have your Bachmanns and your Cains. You can have your Coulters and your Malkins and - what the hell - your Breitbarts. You can certainly have your Marco Rubios, who gained 100 CPAC points for making the conference's first teleprompter joke, though there may be several more amongst the murmuring when Willard Romney takes the stage here this afternoon. You can even have your your Santorums and your Ron Pauls. But that zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan is the wonk every wingnut woman wants and every wingnut man wants to be. He thinks Serious Thoughts about The Big Issues Facing The Nation, and they truly dig him the most. If Ayn Rand, that randy old crackpot, were still alive, she'd whack him over the head, stuff him in a sack, and drag him off to her apartment, where they would make hot Objectivist monkey-love until the rafters knocked and the angels wept.

Paul Ryan is also a remarkably accomplished bullshit artist.

His speech on Thursday night was chock-full of the usual goodies: praise for the brave Republicans who voted for his "budget" last year, the one that would have eviscerated Medicare to the point where Newt Fking Gingrich called it "right-wing social engineering," and that was before Willard had driven Newt around the bend

'

More here.

GOP Sen. Tom Coburn says Paul Ryan's a liar on Medicare

Think Progress reports:

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) inadvertently referred to prominent Republicans like Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and Eric Cantor as liars during an interview with Oklahoma’s News on 6 Thusday night.

“Any politicians that stands up and says, ‘We’re not going to touch your Medicare’ is a liar,” Coburn said, apparently forgetting that the GOP has used the talking point as a center piece in their campaign to sell Medicare premium support to the public. Watch Coburn’s remarks:

More here.

Groundhog Day in Congress: Dems again target GOP over Medicare

Greg Sargent in Plum Line blog on Washington Post:

Over the weekend, GOP Rep. Paul Ryan confirmed that the House Republican budget would again contain key elements of his plan to transform Medicare — even though some polls have shown the idea to be deeply unpopular and Dems have vowed to run on it in 2012.The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is set to go on the offensive on the issue in the increasingly close battle for the House — and it’s very possible the issue could have a real impact on the presidential race.

The DCCC went out Thursday, Groundhog Day,(that's a Green Bay groundhog pictured) with what it called  a “Groundhog Day Alert” in the districts of some 70 vulnerable House Republicans, reminding voters of their last vote on Medicare and warning of the next one to come. [That presumably included at least three Wisconsin districts now held by Reid Ribble, Sean Duffy, and Ryan.] Here’s what the alert in the district of Rep. Dan Benishek of Michigan says:

“Michigan voters don’t need a groundhog to come out of the hole in order to tell them how this will end: Voters will reject Dan Benishek putting the ultra wealthy ahead of seniors once again. Even though voters already rejected House Republicans plan to end Medicare, this Groundhog Day Republicans like Benishek are resurrecting their plan to protect billionaires and Big Oil, while leaving seniors out in the cold. It’s the same thing again from Dan Benishek — double health care costs for Michigan seniors, more tax breaks for the ultra wealthy.”

DCCC chair Steve Israel has reportedly instructed House Dem candidates to be relentless in stressing the GOP position on Medicare, to make it a “defining issue in the 2012 elections.” A recent poll by the Dem firm Democracy Corps found that the Dem message — that House Republicans voted to “end Medicare as we know it” — tests well, with 77 percent in 60 House GOP districts saying it raises serious doubts about incumbents.

Read the rest here/

Ryan to Fed: Why are you trying to lower unemployment?

The "let them eat cake" congressman from southern Wisconsin is at it again.

At a House Budget Committee hearing yesterday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-You Kidding) chastised Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke for simultaneously trying to lower inflation and stimulate job growth, even questioning whether it's the Fed's proper mission to worry about jobs (it is, actually).

Ryan's puerile stance boiled down to: Why is the Fed trying to stimulate job growth when inflation is up? Gee, congressman, why would anyone from your party want to focus on jobs?

The Associated Press summarized the meeting this way:

Ryan criticized the Fed's decision to establish an annual inflation target of 2 percent. He said Bernanke seemed willing to accept higher inflation in order to get lower unemployment.

Yup. The chair of the powerful House Budget Committee is far more worried about inflation than about helping tens of millions of Americans get back to work. Never mind that if you don't have a job, inflation is the least of your problems. Nothing times nothing is still nothing.

Throughout the hearing, Ryan and his fellow Republicans on the budget committee seemed to be channeling presidential candidate Mitt Romney's statement this week that he simply didn't care about the poorest Americans. Of course the underlying ideology remains: Fix the economy for rich folks and hep will trickle down.

The dripping faucet theory of the economy began under Reagan and we're still waiting for the drips to come through.

UPDATE: John Nichols of The Nation has more.  And the Capital Times editorializes on Paul Ryan's cruelest ploy.