Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney & complete destruction of the middle class
By Thom Hartmann A...
The GOP ticket is set – Mitt Romney will be running for president alongside Republican Congressman from Wisconsin – Paul Ryan. Ryan is the powerful House Budget Committee Chairman who this year authored the most radical budget to ever pass the House of Representatives. Newt Gingrich referred to the Ryan Budget as “right-wing social engineering” – and it’s an appropriate description, since it decimates the poor – with more than $3 trillion in cuts to programs for low-income Americans.
The Ryan Budget slashes the Medicaid program on which so many working families depend on – cutting it by one-third over the next ten years. It ends Medicare as we know it, raising the eligibility age and turning guaranteed health insurance for seniors into a voucher program that will result in seniors paying more than double what they currently pay in out-of-pocket costs. It screws college students with huge cuts to Pell Grants that will affect more than one million Americans.
Yet despite all these cuts, Ryan’s budget doesn’t balance itself for several decades. That’s because it also includes massive tax cuts for the rich – giving the average tax cuts of a quarter-million dollars each year – while raising taxes on all Americans who make less than $30,000 a year. And it includes preserving billions in taxpayer subsidies to transnational oil corporations. According to the Economic Policy Institute – the Ryan Budget will kill more than 4 million jobs over the next several years – taking the unemployment rate to nearly 12% by 2014.
Over the next few months, some political pundits will comment on how “bold” or “courageous” Paul Ryan is for taking on sacred cows like "entitlement" programs. But there’s nothing “bold” or “courageous” about giving more tax cuts to the rich and cutting off more benefits for the poor. That’s exactly what’s been going on for thirty years in America, and Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney want to finish the job that Reagan started – the complete destruction of the middle class.
Comments
#2
" the Ryan Budget will kill more than 8 million jobs over the next several years – taking the unemployment rate to nearly 12% by 2014."
You should be ashamed for telling such lies!
#3
Who cares about the Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan ticket. Vote for Romney or vote for Obama you get the same results, a President who caters to the rich.
If you want a real Progressive change vote for Jill Stein, for President and Cheri Honkala, for Vice President of the Green Party.
#4
I think Louise Hartmann should not attack others views.
I remain worried that an uninformed electorate whose source of "information" is Fox News (which is not a "news" organization but, rather, a propaganda machine) has the potential to lead us back to the failed policies of the Bush era, and maybe a step further off the rails. People do not understand that the current unemployment situation largely stems from the housing bust which was made possible by lack of regulation and corruption in the banking industry. The "job creators" have had 10 years of tax breaks so-where are the jobs? Our deficit is overwhelmingly due to the Bush tax cuts and two unfunded wars-but my fellow citizens don't get that. Corporate welfare, special interest treatment as a quid pro quo for campaign donations and a tax policy that favors the rich at the expense of the middle class are costs my fellow Americans just don't take the time to grasp. They also do not understand that the greatness of the United States rests in large part on the social programs we have long had in place.
To the Tea Party I say:
Who will educate your kids if you can't afford private school? Who will provide affordable lending to students and military personnel? Who will pay for roads and infrustructure? Should churches continue to operate as untaxed organizations while consuming community services? Who will put out the fire in your home? Are you or your loved ones collecting Social Security? Medicare? Unemployment? Medicaid? Do you understand that most receipients of Social Security have funded this benefit themselves through payroll deductions throughout their working life? Thats why its called "Insurance". Want accomodation for the disabled? Who will ensure those laws are enforced? And, finally, how will we breathe 20 years from now when Big Oil has continued to receive subsidies to foul our air at the expense of research and development that could give us clean energy? Do you care about the world your children and grandchildren will inherit?
#5
This is exactly why we have to raise the level of consciousness and co-create a new paradigm, a new future. So few control the many. The many have the power if the many will only wrap their minds & hearts around this truth. Coulove
#6
On Medicare, Ryan’s budget will take taxpayer money and give it to Insurance Companies. His plan now for seniors younger than 55 would be to give them a voucher equivalent to the average the government spends on Medicare recipients. Medicare spent $555 billion in 2011. If Obamacare is still in effect the law allows private insurance to charge no more than 25% of the premium on Administrative Cost. This is the money that goes to the Insurance Executives and the Shareholders. Medicare operates on a 3% Administrative Cost which is a 22% difference. This difference is $122 billion. Won’t the insurance companies love this money coming to them from taxpayers?
#7
While Ryan's virtues are reportedly rooted in the virtues of solidarity and subsidiarity––a Catholic response to communism that encourages decentralized power and that the organizing principle that matters favors the smallest, lowest or lea
st centralized competent authority, he fails to recognize, at least publicly, that economic power, and thus political power, has to be universally distributed amongst individual citizens and never allowed to concentrate. Ryan has never stepped up to author legislation that would democratize economic power. Instead he, along with Romney, subscribe to the capitalism practiced today and what, for a long time, I have termed “Hoggism,” propelled by greed and the sheer love of power over others. “Hoggism” institutionalizes greed (creating concentrated capital ownership, monopolies, and special privileges). “Hoggism” is about the ability of greedy rich people to manipulate the lives of people who struggle with declining labor worker earnings and job opportunities, and then accumulate the bulk of the money through monopolized productive capital ownership. The resulting impact of our current approaches and those proposed by Romney and Ryan, has been and will continue to be plutocratic government and concentration of capital ownership, which denies every citizen his or her pursuit of economic happiness (property). While Americans believe in political democracy, political democracy will not work without a property-based free market system of economic democracy. The system is the problem, but it can and must be overhauled. The two prerequisites are political power, which is the power to make, interpret, administer, and enforce laws, and economic power, the power to produce products and services, whether through labor power or productive capital.
#8
Wake up, folks. Per Karl Rovian campaign logic: Ryan rather than dstroying programs; he will be SAVING Social Security and Medicare from bankruptcy, by removing it from the present destructive politics and governmental bureaucratic inefficiencies, and putting it onto a much sounder competetive market-based foundation. Watch for the transformation. Black is white; and white is black-- see?
#9
At least Ryan wasn't afraid to offer something real. You don't like it? No surprise there, But is everyone suckling on the Gov teets, while only a few actually work at REAL jobs, you know ones that actually produce something tangible? Is that really the ideal situation you progressives all wet dream of every night? Do you really want more and ever more government giveaways especially to non-Americans, when they can't even afford the hundredsof programs they have now? I'll bet yiou do. Well wake up the golden bubble has popped, it's time to throw all the bums out starting with the biggest one at the top.
#10
Remember when Paul Ryan stood in front of his constituents and was surprised to find that the people became agitated when he explained the plan to "restructure" the holy trinity of SS, Medicare, and Medicaid? He responded by telling the listeners that, "it won't affect you, only those who are under 55 years of age. Paul Ryan has no consideration for the vast majority of citizens in this nation, and does not understand that those of us who are older have family and friends who depend on those benefits. It was one example of the cold heartlessness of a student of Ayn Rand. Ryan should read "the rest of the story" about Rand; in her later years she benefited herself and received payments from Social Security. To help balance the budget, return the monies that were "borrowed" from these programs.
Romney/Ryan are two peas in a gold plated pod, they appear arrogant, isolated from reality, focused on themselves, and the shills of the wealthy who own them. The deluded Tea Party members have the idea that their interpretation of the Constitution, with smaller government, and the elimination of the social programs will be the answer. They do not seem to recognise that our nation has evolved with complex issues. The evangelical fundamentalists will vote without vetting the GOP candidates, often on the one plank of "right to life".
#11
What a sigh of relief, we're finally talking about the Ryan Budget Plan, it's like shoving a cross right in the vampire's face.
I have a gut feeling Romney's wife made the pick!
Anyway, Don't be fooled by the nice guy crap, Ryan amounts to someone every bit as arrogant and out of touch with the middle class as the Romney's are, which makes such a reckless and self destructive choice understandable.
It's all about privatization...cut revenue by slashing Romney's taxes and pull the austerity lie. Demonize the WELL LOVED socialist programs that are cost effective and paid for by workers ....all because a few bankster bastards on Wall street want to get their grubby hands on the money involved. These same guys realize once we have programs like single payer health insurance, there's no turning back. Ryan is simply their good little boy, a scoundrel who thinks nothing of the misery his own ambition could cause millions of honest hard working people, who all eventually get to old to enrich the rich anymore. His solution...die in poverty!
Ryan can go to hell, his own roadmap will show him the way .....that's what I think about the choice!
#12
First of all, PR is 90% BS and 10% substance. In the totally unbelievable scenarario where Romney wins, there is 0% chance that the "ryan budget" will ever become reality. In fact, there is probably a greater chance of budget reform if Obama is elected than if romney wins. Why?- because if romney were to win you can bet that they will begin on day 1 to assure re-election, which means swpending like drunken sailors. History proves this, so get over the panic.
The only thing romney cares about is cutting his own taxes. Anything and everything other than this is up for negotiation. Ryan, on the other hand views himself as the next cheney. Other than taxes, he will be in charge. His delusional view is that the US needs to emulate Galt's Gulch where there are no rules, only the strong survive, and everyone else deserves the crap they get.
What is unfortunate and somewhat ironical, is that if he were really an Ayn Rand groupie, then he would advocate freelove, atheism, and end to all wars. Can you imagine a republican buying this?
"Atlas Shrugged" as a blueprint for America? The heroine, Dagny Taggert, is aptly named since she was tagged by all three of the main male heroes of the story. Paul Ryan probably sees her as a prototype for the American public who are going to get :"tagged" by the romney-ryan administration. for the next four years.
#13
Paul Ryan is to Mitt Romney what Sarah Palin was to John McCain. Choosing Mr. Ryan is equivalent to swallowing a poison pill. Paul Ryan will only energize the far right wing of the Republican Party. Independents will like him less than Romney. Obama should be cheering. I watched a bit of Paul Ryan today, he was dismissive and uncaring about the people. He is a male version of Sarah Palin and no smarter than she is.
#14
No one really wants bigger and bigger government. What we "progressives" want is a more efficient and care oriented government, one that's truly conservative: conserving what is best around us, in our people, in our land, in our culture, taking care of what remains and trying to heal the damage we've done as a civilzation. What we want is the end to "corporate" welfare that is carried out thru the "Farm Bill" which continues to fund mostly what is wrong with our agriculture or the constant give aways to the oil, pharmacutical/medical/insurance, Wall Street investment interests and Military Industrial Complex. (And boy is this violence demanding industry complex: its tentacles stretch thru out every state in the nation, fueling local economies and creating dependency on supporting the evil of continued killing and domination around the world.) What we want is to see our common interests supported: good roads, good well inforced envirnmental, food and drug, consumer and financial regulations, that these agencies be given the "man-power" to do the job. We want to get graft and corruption out of our government, which is a great deal thru the corporate alliances and the "need for money to campaign for office". We want our government to think more about health and healing than about punishment and "protection from criminals"; in other words get out of supporting the "prison industrial complex" that has made jail into a profit industry and sending people there an economic benefit. We want our government to stop feeding the fear imagination that feeds into the corporate benefit for "Homeland Security" and fighting an endless war everywhere abroad and on the streets and in the homes of our own cities. We want there to be less government in terms of all this "protection" we're being offered from aliens, both imaginary and real, from drugs and guns. Deal with economic problems that stretch across boarders so that immigration is dealt with compassionately. Deal with drug and substance addiction as a health problem and not a criminal one. Get the money out of politics, most of which goes to advertising and media corporations by requiring equal time for all legitimate candidates and giviing equal print and air time and enforce it. Make campaigns 3 months long and go back to paper ballots so we can have a little more control concerning the legitamacy of our votes. Start printing our own money with a true Central Bank, then all the money we'd owe is only to ourselves and we don't have to not do all the things the government should be able to do for the common good just because we owe a bunch of banks too much money. Deal honestly and compassionately about the World Economy. Invest in the transfer of our energy needs to sustainable forms and stop the Oil Oligarchy from ruling our planet. We want good government, one that does good instead of promoting disease, disharmony, and destuction.
#15
Charlatans
I feel (and hope with all my soul) that Mint Robbinme has sealed his fate by picking Ryan as his running mate. If the majority of people in this country (middle class and below) have one lick of sense there should be an outcry so loud that it will be a moot point as to whom is re-elected.
We need to get the word out, provide the links to facts that expose these guys for what they are-puppets to the wealthiest charlatans to ever have too much money and power in the history of our nation.
Nobody deserves a free ride which the right touts as the problem. The problem is, the ones with the most power and money ARE the ones who have been given a free ride through inheritence, submissiveness to the all might dollar, or outright thievery and don't have a clue what it means to do an honest days work. Nor do they have a clue what it's like to be down on your luck and have to worry about where the next meal, or rent payment will come from. They have no compassion. But maybe we shouldn't blame them. Perhaps they were raised by wolves. Likely.
#16
Paul Ryan is a shill for the Banksters, along with Mitt Romney. Here is what history says:
Thomas Jefferson said, “I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.” Sixty-three years later, Abraham Lincoln expanded that warning. Here is what Lincoln said: “I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the financial institution in the rear. Of the two, the one in the rear is the greatest enemy… I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before in the midst of war.”
Let Jefferson and Lincoln remind us of the of yesteryears and the same foreboding of today…
#17
Yeah, and I want them to quit putting saw dust in our food, too! I wonder if they ever use Poison Oak saw dust?
#18
"But is everyone suckling on the Gov teets, while only a few actually work at REAL jobs, you know ones that actually produce something tangible?"
Who do you think that is??? The biggest Welfare Queens are corporations that send our jobs overseas! They are after cheap labor which maximizes their profits.
We don't produce much of anything anymore...because the corporations, instead of investing in America, invest in China and elsewhere. Instead of investing in R&D and capital equipment...they found it more profitable to invest in real estate and foreign adventures. Their quest for maximizing their short term profits at the expense of the historical production of goods and services results in the inevitable inability to be a viable first world country. We are fast becoming a third world country in so many ways.
The only thing we have left is a lot of high tech weaponry and lots of cash (at least the ruling elite has these things). The only thing that is missing is right-wing death squads patrolling the streets killing civilians. But, of course, they are getting all the practice they need in the Middle East. We will soon have drones flying overhead spying on us and, perhaps later, murdering us in the streets and in our homes. The ruling elite are our modern day Nazis.
The argument that the right-wing holds out: that all we have to do is to give rich people more tax breaks and more corporate welfare and squeeze the workers more....just does not make sense since the corporations will continue to ship our jobs overseas and lay off workers in America no matter what the government does to "help them out".
Corporations have proven over and over again that if you try to entice them into creating more jobs in America they will continue to destroy them in America.
The government tried to make a deal with the rich people in America that if they would repatriate their money from off-shore banks that the government would give them a special tax break on what they repatriate. The quid pro quo was supposed to be that these people would use that tax break to increase jobs in the US. But, once they got their tax break, they reneged on the deal and kept off shoring more of their money and jobs.
The biggest government "teat suckers" are the ones that have a lot of useful idiots voting for them when they vote for Romney/Ryan. But then there are the useful idiots that will vote for Obama as well...Obama is just part of the smoke-and-mirrors illusion that the ruling elite holds over us.
They will make the specter of a Romney/Ryan win so scary that people will vote for Obama. We won't win either way. The ruling elite will continue to win. The only way the ruling elite will not win is if masses of people totally disrupt the crooked political/economic system and make them very scared of losing everything they fought (connived) for. They just laugh at us, and scorn us, otherwise!
#19
MITT THE TWIT !
#20
I agree about Jill Stein. She is a serious candidate and much better as an alternative, than Ron Paul. She has solid policies. She would end "more of the same" in DC.
#21
In F. William Engdahl's book "A Century of War: : Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order", he tells about how Germany, in the years leading up to WW1, was beating the pants off of England economically. Germany was modernizing into using oil instead of coal in powering many things including their Naval Forces. England was quite satisfied with using coal. With oil, the German Navy could deploy faster and their ships would be faster at sea. And Germany was building their ships out of a better kind of steel.
Also, unlike England, who was doing a kind of "NAFTA" by importing cheap labor and goods and services while reducing the wages or even jobs internally, Germany produced their own goods and services and highly trained their workers in technology. Germany, unlike England, did not foolishly invest heavily in risky foreign ventures. Their bankers were kept in check. England's bankers sold their people down the drain for maximizing their short term profits. This all sounds very much like what is happening in the US today...we are doing the same things that England did prior to WW1.
Of course, England was getting just a little worried....they were turning their people into paupers...but they were mostly worried about the success of Germany in developing technology and a more efficient energy and powerful Naval Force. France and Britain were invited to participate in building the railway but stuffy old Britain wanted to do things their way and also didn't like the 25%/35% England/Germany split. So, what did England do? Try to compete? Build their own railway?
Nah, they tried to undermine Germany in being able to acquire oil. They sent their "diplomats and spies" out to the countries that lay in the path of the new construction of a railway system (Berlin to Baghdad railroad) that the Germans wanted to use to transport oil from Iraq.
The English managed to destroy any previous agreement with those countries by using lies and propaganda to taint any previous relationship and agreements that Germany had with those countries. The Germans had even tried to get England to partner in the building of that Railway system so they too could modernize into oil. The arrogance, nastiness and underhandedness of the British in playing their deceptions in that part of the Balkins eventually led to WW1...then the US had to go in and bail them out.
#22
Hidden Motives: Millions of Murders from the Orient Express
"One of the motives for the First World War less publicized in the USA was the planned construction of a Baghdad to Berlin Railway in the dying Ottoman Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century."
The Big Boys Play Dirty
"While on the surface Great Britain shrewdly supported the project, watching Germans foot the bill for laying the rails and pouring money into the project,apprehension simmered beneath because this railway might one day compete with British trade in Mesopotamia, plus it bypassed British tariffs."
"In 1914, the German government was forced to concede that those areas would remain exclusively under British financial control. The Germans, who had spent a fortune by now, perhaps in vain, were also required to have two British members sit on the Baghdad Railway Company board and had to agree not to extend the railroad past Basra or establish a port or railway terminus anywhere along the Gulf without British approval. Meanwhile, Britain was bankrupt by January 1914, and when Bank of England notes consequently became emergency legal tender, all gold was removed from circulation and England’s gold reserves went to the Rothschild's Bank of England to use for profit-producing warfare."
http://www.forumeerstewereldoorlog.nl/viewtopic.php?p=213116&sid=e7cf95a...
#23
I also agree....Jill Stein!
#24
I agree with your decision on the choices for the next presidency.
#25
Obama is being sued by Chris Hedges and 6 other plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
"This section of the NDAA, signed into law by Obama on Dec. 31, 2011, obliterates some of our most important constitutional protections. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists."
"Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies."
"The Justice Department’s definition of a potential terrorism suspect under the Patriot Act is already extremely broad. It includes anyone with missing fingers, someone who has weatherproof ammunition and guns, and anyone who has hoarded more than seven days of food."
"....the Obama White House ..... permits the government to detain and assassinate U.S. citizens they deem to be terrorists."
“The essential thrust of the NDAA is to create a system of justice that violates the separation of powers,” Mayer told the court. “[The Obama administration has] taken detention out of the judicial branch and put it under the executive branch.”
"Barack Obama’s administration has appealed Judge Forrest’s temporary injunction and would certainly appeal a permanent injunction. It is a stunning admission by this president that he will do nothing to protect our constitutional rights. The administration’s added failure to restore habeas corpus, its use of the Espionage Act six times to silence government whistle-blowers, its support of the FISA Amendment Act—which permits warrantless wiretapping, monitoring and eavesdropping on U.S. citizens—and its ordering of the assassination of U.S. citizens under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, is a signal that for all his rhetoric, Obama, like his Republican rivals, is determined to remove every impediment to the unchecked power of the security and surveillance state. I and the six other plaintiffs, who include reporters, professors and activists, will most likely have to continue this fight in an appellate court and perhaps the Supreme Court."
"The corporate state has convinced the masses, in essence, to clamor for their own enslavement. There is, in reality, no daylight between Mitt Romney and Obama about the inner workings of the corporate state. They each support this section within the NDAA and the widespread extinguishing of civil liberties. They each will continue to funnel hundreds of billions of wasted dollars to defense contractors, intelligence agencies and the military. They each intend to let Wall Street loot the U.S. Treasury with impunity."
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/criminalizing_dissent_20120813/
#26
Paul ryan is Sara palin in pants......only he has a worse record of insanity.
#27
Romney and ryran, both stand for
Vulture, vouchers and vampires......"V" does not stand for victory any more.
Mitt did the Democrates a big favor selecting this one. LOL
#28
Funny how there were Dems praisong Ryan before he got named the next VP.
Check out the following link to see 8 Dems that have praised Ryan in the past:
#29
The frequently run video of Paul Ryan...right after being named Romney's running mate...reminded me of Il Duce (Mussolini). Ryan's demeanor of a resolute grimace, nodding his head repeatedly, while turning from side to side...just was a spitting image of that famous video of Mussolini doing the same thing.
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