Tag Archives: Ryan

Political Rants

W.B.G. (We’ll be gone)

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Back before the start of the financial crisis in 2008, the guiding principle of Wall Street bankers was i.b.g./y.b.g. – when the whole thing comes crashing down, “I’ll be gone and you’ll be gone.” We will get away with it. That was prescient, to say the least. They pretty much did get away from it, except a handful of bad actors that hurt the wealthy as well as the ordinary. (Bernie Madoff is one of those.)

As we stand at the cusp of another presidential election, witnessing the terrifying aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, it’s clear that for the “conservative” (i.e. statist reactionary) side of the political equation, i.b.g./y.b.g. appears to apply to the climate crisis as well. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has adopted his party’s Luddite stance on global warming, advocating massive expansion of fossil fuel extraction, processing, and use and joining the crackpot consensus on the right that sees extreme weather as a series of unfortunate (and wholly unrelated) accidents best ignored.

That the G.O.P. standard bearer can maintain this position after a year of unprecedented extreme weather is remarkable. That he can do it in the wake of Sandy’s devastation is pathological. Madness though it may be, it has a goal: profit. Romney is fighting for his class, and fighting hard. He is the champion of short-term gain, narrowly shared.

His beloved Keystone pipeline is case in point. Romney speaks of this project as a means of “energy independence”. I’m guessing he’s not ignorant enough of global markets to think that any resulting fuel would simply be shared amongst Americans. Any oil produced in the U.S. goes into the global market. Even more importantly, Keystone would carry tar-sands sludge, mixed with toxic chemicals, down to refineries on the Gulf coast where it would be refined into diesel fuel and shipped to China. The bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Who cares if it contributes mightily to the collapse of our ecosystem? They make their money, then i.b.g. / y.b.g., right?

Trouble is, w.b.g. (we’ll be gone), too. That plainly won’t do. Do the right thing on Tuesday, and send Romney back to his mansion and his $100 million I.R.A.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Bite back the bad news.

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I’m not going to say much about politics this week. Just bracketed with work, school, more work, etc. A few quick comments and I’m out – sorry for the lameness.

Watched the Biden / Ryan matchup. My thought about presidential and vice presidential debates is that you tend to feel the person you agree with was the winner. Only makes sense, right? This was a much easier contest to watch than the last one, I must say, but it retained one of the central themes of the presidential debate: Romney/Ryan does not want to talk specifics about anything, and are now in full flight from their own positions.

The purported “numbers guy” seems very reluctant to use any when it comes to talking about their tax plan. They are planning to cut marginal tax rates to 20% across the board, while increasing military spending something like a trillion dollars or more above current spending levels. Ryan was claiming that this can be balanced by closing loopholes on upper income earners. Horseshit. Where’s the proof? They don’t have any numbers. They can’t name deductions that they would suggest in any negotiations with Congress. They’re talking about an enormous gap that their plan would greatly expand, they claim they can close it, but they offer no details. They’ve got a secret plan to cut taxes and balance the budget while raising military spending: it’s called “Just trust us.”

The laser focus on the Benghazi terror attack is instructive about how efficient the right-wing echo chamber is. Fox News blows this story to its many millions of viewers, along with Rush and the gang; the more mainstream outlets pick it up out of nervousness. What the hell – they are blowing this thing up as if it were a bigger failure than 9/11. They certainly talk about it more than Afghanistan, where Americans are killed every week, for chrissake.

That’s all for now. More later.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Crying thief.

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My guess is that Marco Rubio is speaking now as I write these lines, serving up a fitting introduction for the nominee – or Rominee – of last resort for the Republican party. A speech filled with platitudes about freedom from, I don’t know, the tyranny of a pension or reliable health insurance in your old age, spoken by the son of escapees from communist Cuba. As Ryan put it on Wednesday night, the present-day G.O.P. sees everything to the left of Ayn Rand as sclerotic socialism, including legislative initiatives – like the individual mandate and cap and trade – that they themselves invented only a handful of years ago. (Ryan himself couldn’t even stick to his Randian creed for three minutes, decrying a nanny state where “everything is free except you” then paying tribute to the Medicare his mother purportedly depends on.)

I don’t know about these guys, but that “everything free” part probably sounds pretty attractive to a lot of Americans right now. While they equate Obama with Castro, Barry is much, much closer to them than he is to the bearded one in Havana. Would that he had put his shoulder behind expanding Medicare instead of this republican inspired, Heritage Foundation formulated health insurance scheme they call “Obamacare”. Would that he had committed himself to full employment along the lines of what Robert Pollin is recommending, among others. Those are positions worth defending. The problem Obama has right now is not the Republicans … it is his own flaccid liberalism, hopelessly compromised from the first stage of negotiation.

In truth, the Republicans, led by millionaire Romney, should be easy as hell to beat. They have zero credibility on the economy, no track record to speak of. Obama at least had the Clinton years – what does Romney have? The Republicans crashed the economy; now they want the driver’s seat back. They nearly destroyed the empire it took decades of rapacious interventionism to build. They have an ex-president, a mere four years out of office, that played no role in their convention. Did anyone mention him even once? They appear to think that by disowning the historically incompetent Bush/Cheney and pretending not to remember their tenure that they can induce amnesia amongst the rest of the body politic. They believe that by pointing elsewhere and crying “thief”, they can rob again.

Now that the balloons have fallen on Romney/Ryan (and we have been treated to the spectacle of evident dementia-sufferer Clint Eastwood rambling aimlessly on national television), it’s fair to respond to that question they always ask four years into an opponent’s presidency – namely, are you better off than you were four years ago. Four years ago, we were in free fall, the credit system of the world’s largest economy was shutting down, and hundreds of thousands were being thrown out of work. Four years ago, Bush’s war of choice in Iraq was still killing young soldiers by the dozen. Unless you’re as demented as Clint Eastwood, you probably remember all that.

Yes, we’re better off than we were in 2008. Still not good, but it takes a lot of work to get out of a hole as deep as the one Romney’s party dug us into.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

American taliban.

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Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Rep. Todd Aiken is some kind of outlier or “knuckle dragger,” as Boehner might put it. He represents the core of where the Republican party is on women’s reproductive rights today. The tea party-fueled G.O.P. has been on a mission about abortion since they took power in January of last year, advancing radical anti-abortion legislation on both on the federal and the state level. The 2011 “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion” act – HR3 on the docket, meaning this is literally the third bill they got to since taking power – included in its original form a redefinition of rape that established the somewhat dubiously defined category of “forcible rape”. The final version would ban federal funding of abortions in cases of “statutory rape”, meaning that rape victims would have to undergo some kind of audit to avoid bringing the child of their rapist to term.

The motivation behind this is pretty obvious. Attempts to ban abortion have always run into three exceptions that block an outright ban – rape, incest, and saving the life of the mother. Of these three categories, anti-abortion fanatics see rape as the least problematic to game. They keep trying to find ways around that exception, resorting to narrowing the definition of “legitimate” rape, junk science theories about female reproductive biology, and so on. Aiken got his theory from a crackpot preacher that served as a surrogate for Romney during the last election.  This same guy has met with both Romney and Ryan this year.

The Republicans do not want to have this conversation. But the simple truth is that they are committed to this notion of no abortion, no exceptions. They are becoming the American / Christian version of the taliban, adding a “no exceptions for rape or incest” anti-abortion plank to their national party platform just this past week. They are running away from it, but it is not going anywhere, and if you dig deep enough, you will find plenty of true believers like Aiken who will say what they believe, no matter how extreme. And this is an extreme position by any measure – the most extreme advocated by a national party on the subject of abortion since it became a national issue in the 1970s.

Extremism has gone mainstream. This should be an interesting convention, if it doesn’t get washed out by that hurricane.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Ryan’s express.

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So it’s budget guy. Interesting choice, governor. At least we know where he stands (even if your position is still a little vague). We’ve apparently reached a pass in American politics where an unapologetic acolyte of Ayn Rand can be put forward as a candidate for vice president. This may have been unthinkable a year ago, when the Occupy Wall Street movement was in full swing, at least in terms of media coverage. Now that the “austerians,” as Tom Tomorrow calls them, have once again found their full-throated voice, Ryan can be seen as a serious contender for high office. Though they are backing away from the details of his Medicare proposal like it’s a live grenade, concentrating instead on Medicare reductions in the Affordable Care Act – reductions that are included in Ryan’s budget, incidentally.

My favorite dodge, though, is the one about sparing current retirees and near-retirees from painful cuts. Everyone 55 and over will keep the same system as current law, they claim; people younger than that can expect a voucher. Maybe that will buy some time with the elderly, I don’t know. But it seems to me that they’re risking pissing off people in the 45-55 bracket (namely, people like me), who have been in the private health insurance market their entire lives and have seen the magic of the marketplace at work first-hand. After decades of that, I can tell you that the notion of being handed a voucher when I’m finally allowed to retire is unacceptable.

Let’s take a closer look at Ryan’s competitive healthcare marketplace that will somehow work for seniors now better than it did prior to the advent of Medicare in the 1960s. The fact is, we’ve had competition in health insurance basically forever with respect to people under 65. Has the price gone down at all? Next question. If competition results in skyrocketing premiums for younger, relatively healthier people whose healthcare costs tend to be  more manageable, what will happen with elderly people who inevitably incur higher costs due to deteriorating health, age-related illness, palliative care, etc? That’s the reason why Medicare was created in the first place as a government guarantee of coverage for elderly people. Pushing more of its costs onto the people it’s supposed to be protecting is hardly a solution.

Same deal with Ryan’s Medicaid brainstorm. The super-genius wants to whittle that down by replacing it with block grants and reducing it by a third. People hear Medicaid and they think poor people (and, therefore, get apathetic about it). But when it comes to being elderly and needing nursing home care, practically everyone is poor… poor enough to need Medicaid. That’s where a good deal of custodial care funding comes from. Ask someone with elderly parents or someone who has done basic estate planning. Only the Romneys of the world need not rely on some kind of insurance support in their dotage.

This is a good conversation to have, frankly. Let’s have it, and make certain the elderly and the near-elderly understand what’s at stake before the November election.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Rights and wrongs.

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G.O.P. congressional fiscal policy wunderkind (somehow) Paul Ryan was talking about rights on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos the other day, and he said this:

We [Republicans] disagree with the notion that our rights come from government; that the government can now grant us and define our rights. Those are ours. Those come from nature and god according to the Declaration of Independence.

I’ve heard similar stuff emanating from the heads of various conservatives over the years, of course. It just amazes me, though, that this creature they present as such an intellectual heavyweight in the area of legislative statecraft can seemingly lack the knowledge a pre-teenager might glean (between naps) from civics class. Rights are given to us by god and nature just as food and water are; which is to say, not really at all. Rights exist; we may (or may not) be aware of their existence. But they are not “given” to us in any respect.

Government is, at its best, an imperfect guarantor of rights; that is one of its primary functions. If people are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights, what of the African Americans owned by the very man who penned the Declaration of Independence? Were they not also handed the gift of freedom by the almighty at birth? I think not. They were chattel, for chrissake; uncounted millions were born into forced labor and indeed died therein. It took a civil war, fought for other purposes, to abolish institutionalized slavery, but the fight for freedom was far from won when the guns fell silent.

The civil rights struggles of the 20th Century carved out some basic rights of citizenship that were then encoded in federal law and implemented and enforced by federal authority. No miracles there. No, the government doesn’t hand you freedoms; neither does god, nor business. We scratch for every inch, and if we’re persistent (and fortunate), the government can assist us in holding on to our gains. Or it can throw us under the bus, with the wrong people at the helm. The only role any god might play is if s/he gives us enough brains and enough strength to fight.

All I can say is, if Ryan is the best thinker they have … they’ve got some thinking to do.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Occupatience.

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This has been quite a year. Who would have thought it? One that started with massive uprisings in the middle east and is ending with a major economic justice movement in the United States – perhaps even more unlikely than the popular overthrow of Mubarak. Now we’ve seen renewed attempts to evict the protesters from Zucotti Park and other encampments across the country, but as many have said, you cannot kill an idea. The Occupy movement has gotten people accustomed to standing up again. And to paraphrase Dr. King, a man – even if he’s a millionaire – can’t ride on your back when you stand up straight.

And contrary to what is argued by Ayn Rand acolytes like Paul Ryan and (Ayn) Rand Paul, the wealthy truly do ride on the backs of working people. That has always been the case. Rand imagined the world being brought to a standstill by a wealthy, innovative class of overlords who withhold their beneficent participation in Rand’s dystopian top-down economy. The truth is, they are far more reliant on us than we are on them. Sure, the wealthy can choose to invest their capital in ways that create jobs. But where did that capital come from? How does an industrialist, a banker, an entrepreneur, an oil executive gather all that wealth? Mostly through the under-compensated labor of millions of workers.

The supply siders are always touting small businesses as the primary engine of our economy, so let’s use them as an example. Take a small to medium-sized privately held company. The owner hires people to create whatever product or service the firm sells, whether it be mint jelly or Web applications. Increased productivity means fewer workers doing more work, so the incentive is always there for small business owners to lay people off and shift their responsibilities to their fellow workers. This happens all the time, as anyone who’s ever held a job in a small company knows very well. This is the process by which fortunes can be made. If those workers refuse – if all workers withhold their labor, Galt-like, that’s what would bring the whole thing to a halt. We’ve seen owner-less factories work just fine everywhere from Argentina to right here at home. Name one worker-less factory.

The occupy movement shows that we have a long road ahead of us. But thanks to them, we can say – astoundingly – that we’ve actually begun that journey to a better nation.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Medigap.

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My first thought at a Democrat winning the 26th district congressional race in upstate New York was one of deja vu. Didn’t this happen two years ago, with that seat up near Watertown, when McHugh was appointed Army Secretary? Bill Owens won, then won again last fall – the only Democrat in my little backwater region of upstate to manage reelection, as it turned out. Dems and liberal commentators tried to read that race as a bellwether, too, but it didn’t turn out to be predictive at all of the 2010 election. What matters is what the party does in between. If the Dems sit on their asses and wait for the check to arrive, they’ll be sorely disappointed.

There’s no denying, though, that this speaks to a strong undercurrent of distrust in the Medicare “reform” cooked up by Paul Ryan and company. As much as they try to dress up their voucher / privatization program, it’s still just a pig with way too much lipstick, and any fool can see it.  I am a bit heartened that their attempt to buy off the elderly by saying their privatization scheme would only affect people under 55 (i.e. me) has thus far failed miserably. Perhaps they neglected to consider that eighty-year-olds might have fifty-year-old children. In the midst of all their yak about family values, they apparently forgot about families. Nice try, mothers!

This should be a gift to Democrats, but if they keep participating in the GOP narrative about deficit reduction, any political benefit will evaporate. Democrats have to overcome the generalized distrust people tend to have for all politicians, and they won’t do that by agreeing to choke off the sick, poor, and elderly person’s lifeline a little bit more gradually than their colleagues across the aisle. If they’re truly on the side of ordinary people, they should say to the Republicans: Want to cut the deficit? Bring tax rates on the wealthy at least back to where they were prior to 2001… or wherever they need to be. Shut down the wars, shutter the overseas bases, and cancel the over-the-top weapons programs. And join the rest of the developed world in building a single payer health care system for everyone, not just the oldest, poorest, and sickest people in the country. And by the way – insist that everything the U.S. government purchases is made in America.  

Do all that, and if there’s still a massive long-term deficit, I’ll eat my shoes. (I don’t have a hat.)

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Wunderkind.

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Paul Ryan has come up with a remarkable innovation – gradually bring elderly and disabled folks back to the standard of living they enjoyed in the 1930s. Brilliant! Obviously the idea behind moving Medicare to a voucher system is to save the government – and, therefore, the collective “us” – money.  But it’s only a savings if you don’t count the vast, vast majority of elderly people for whom that voucher will be worth very little in terms of health services. This is a very serious issue for anyone planning to become elderly one day. (Note: if you care nothing about the elderly and disabled and plan on jumping off a cliff when you turn 65, the Ryan plan will probably be fine by you.)

I’ve blogged about this before, so forgive me for covering the same ground – it’s just that when a person of influence advances a legislative plan that overtly calls for the dismemberment of Medicare and Medicaid, I feel compelled to repeat myself. This isn’t a question of saving money. This is a question of what we collectively decide is necessary to preserve the well-being of the nation. I’m not trying to appeal to your sense of charity. I’m saying that virtually every one of us is liable to need this type of coverage at some point in his/her life. Like investing in first responders, this is something we all have an interest in preserving.

No matter how much Ryan and his associates claim that is precisely what they are trying to do, don’t buy it. A voucher plan will throw elderly people into the private insurance market – one that is already way too expensive for pre-retirees to afford. What kind of premium will an Excellus ask of a 75 year old with a weak ticker? Seriously… Medicare is there for a reason. Before its existence, elderly people relied on charity, family members, etc., and many had access to neither.

The only reason why wunderkind Ryan and his express can feel comfortable criticizing such vital programs is that Medicare and Medicaid cost so much. They do because they cover those most prone to serious illnesses. If we had a reasonable single-payer system – Medicare for all – the system would also cover those many millions of us who see a doctor once a year and no more. Include them (i.e. us) and the system will finance itself. And frankly, wouldn’t you be willing to trade whatever plan you have (if you have one) for Medicare coverage at a reasonable cost?

Note to Dems: there’s a reason why Medicare is a third rail issue. It’s because it’s freaking necessary.  

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Talking points.

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This week will really be short swipes at various topics. I’m utterly up to my eyeballs… so the rascals are safe!

State of It. Republicans and Democrats sat together, nice-nice, during the State of the Union address. Such an endearing sight, was it not? In some cases, it seemed like something they may actually have wanted to do; others seemed pressed to do so by a sense of the public mood, perhaps. Either way, it’s a bit like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic or spec’ing new curtains on the top floor of the Towering Inferno. (Name checking Irwin Allen here.) Congress is poised to choke ordinary Americans off from a range of federal benefits and services, just as they are dealing with similar reductions at the state and local levels. They have the votes to do it.

Sad thing is, Obama seems ready to assist them in this. His somewhat schizophrenic SOTU lurched from major investments to multi-year spending freezes. Domestic spending kept level for five years? Sounds like McCain. What would the impact of that be on all of these domestic initiatives he’s mentioning in the same breath? We shall see how that shakes out. Of course, the CBO came out with dire estimates regarding both the federal budget and Social Security practically while Obama was speaking. The primary culprit? The tax cut deal, which is blowing the predictable hole in the Federal budget and starving Social Security of its payroll tax funding. Guess how they’re going to try to fill that hole. Ask Paul Ryan.

World Service. The uprising in Tunisia has sparked some pretty serious protests across the Arab world, most notably Egypt. That oppressive regime for which torture is as fundamental a part of the penal system as iron bars is a bit unnerved, to say the least, and will no doubt rely upon the good graces of its sponsor the United States more heavily than before. It’s hard to imagine Egypt without Mubarak, but it will come one day. What that will look like I can only guess. 

Goodbye and Good Luck. MSNBC’s firing of Keith Olbermann is not good news in my house, particularly around the 8:00 pm hour. I don’t think I need comment on the stupidity of this decision, but I feel compelled to say that coverage of it has been pretty lame. NPR’s Talk of the Nation  is one example, which featured Bill Carter of the New York Times talking about how NBC thought him too “aggressive” and how they were concerned about incitement to violence. No comment on whether that was a reasonable position to take – just bland assurances from the man whose very tempered paper helped get us into Iraq.   

Science! The internets are abuzz with speculation about NASA chief scientist Waleed Abdulati and his mysterious past. Stop guessing, conservative bloggers – I know right where he comes from…. across the street from my childhood home in New Hartford, NY, that’s where! He lived there from about 4 years old until after high school, and a brighter and more decent guy you couldn’t imagine – so stop obsessing, you knee-jerk racists.  

luv u,

jp