Update!

The very first post I threw up here was about how Paul Ryan's "courageous" budget - which eliminates Medicare - was Dead On Arrival both in the Congress and with the American public, but made perfect sense if he was contemplating a presidential run in 2016.

Well . . . now CNN has given Ryan a big sloppy kiss for his continuing "courageousness" in trying to rob the poor and the old to give money to the rich and the corporate. But my favorite piece has to be this bit:

Ryan was pushed again this summer to run for the Republican presidential nomination by assorted GOP luminaries. His answer: No, not yet.

(emphasis added)

Okay . . . I'll be the first to admit that my political predictions don't always pan out -- but, seriously? I called Ryan running for president in 2016 -- very first thing I wrote down.

Of course, I hope he does run and gets crushed . . . but I really do hope he runs.

'Cause then I will look prescient and will get to do a Happy Dance for being so goddamned smart.

Some Unsolicited Campaign Advice for Democrats

As a general rule, Republicans are very good at devising smart, pithy ways to encapsulate or, more frequently, obfuscate their policy goals. Of course, they have the advantage over Democrats in that a lot of their policy goals are so simplistic that they can be reduced to slogans and bumper stickers.

For example, "Drill, Baby, Drill!" is a bad idea for a lot of reasons, but I'm not going to get into them here because that isn't the point of this post and because explaining why this is a bad idea would take too long. And, of course, this is why "Drill, Baby, Drill!" is a bad idea but a great slogan. In three words it sums up the Republican energy policy, it does so energetically and enthusiastically, and anybody who wants to explain why it is a bad idea has to drone on and on about how more drilling wouldn't substantially affect oil prices, wouldn't result in substantially more oil on the market, wouldn't have any effect at all for at least a deade, does result in further taxpayer giveaways to large oil companies, does carry the potential for further devastating ecological damage . . . .

And did you see what just happened there? I said I wouldn't list all the things wrong with the idea, but it is so stupid for so many reasons I went ahead and did that anyway. My response is much, much longer than the three word slogan that provoked it, and an explanation as to why any of these listed objections is true would be longer still. Republicans know that something like 30% of everybody who picks up a newspaper don't read much beyond the headlines, and they realize that you can win public debate if you can distill your message until it is nothing but a headline.

At least "Drill, Baby, Drill!" has the virtue of accurately describing the Republicans' position. Too often during Bush, Jr.'s reign we were saddled things like "The Clear Skies Act," which allowed for increased air pollution, or "The Healthy Forests Act," which gave away huge logging concessions on public land to well-connected private companies. (And don't even get me started on the Republicans' recent effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which they titled "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act.")

Quite simply, Republicans understand the importance of concise, simple, one-sentence messages. While Democrats fidget and twist to make sure that every nuance and policy permutation is explained accurately, Republicans understand that elections can be won or lost based on nothing more than a catchy phrase.

With that in mind, let me suggest to the Democrats that they abandon attacking Republicans for their support of "the Ryan Plan," or "the Ryan Budget." Don't get me wrong -- they should not stop attacking Republicans for supporting this atrocity. Eliminating Medicare is a political no-go in America, as the recent Dem win in NY-26 (an extremely conservative district that hasn't elected a Democratic Representative in more than 40 years) proved.

But continuing to refer to this abomination as "the Ryan Plan" or "the Ryan Budget" makes it sound like this is the idea of one guy -- Paul Ryan. And the Dems' goal for 2012 has got to be more than holding on to the White Housee and the Senate; they've got to get the House back too. Otherwise we'll be saddled with two more years of what we are experiencing right now: a total and complete inability to move foward significantly on the economy, in a climate where significant economic, job-creating action is a necessity.

Which means that the Dems can't be seen to be running against only one guy's idea. If Dems want to hang this piece of shit around the collective neck of the Republican party, then they've got to start referring to it as "the Republican Plan," and "the Republican Budget," and -- most importantly -- as "the Republican Plan to Destroy Medicare."

This isn't even disingenuous. Every single Republican in the House voted in favor of this piece of shit, and every single Republican Senater except five voted in favor of it as well. This is no longer a "proposal" put forth by Ryan to "get the ball rolling" or to "start a conversation" (which increasingly is how Republican apologists in the media are characterizing it, now that its intense unpopularity has become apparent).

This unpopular dog turd is what the Republicans voted for. When Newt GinGrinch described it on Meet the Press as radical social engineering the Republican leaders (no, not Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell or John Boehner -- I'm talking about Rush Limbaugh and Fox News) required a week's worth of groveling by GinGrinch before he would once more be allowed into the fold, and that only grudgingly. This thing is what Republicans want, and the public hates them for it.

So please, Dems . . . for the love of all that is Holy and for your own election chances, stop calling it "the Ryan [whatever]." This is the Republican Plan to Destroy Medicare; hang 'em with it.

What It Takes to be Considered "Serious" in Washington

The very first post I threw up on this site was about Paul Ryan’s budget.  I have to admit to a kind of horrified fascination with it.  Even in the beginning, when the Beltway cognoscenti were enthusing over how “mature” and “serious” the thing was, I was absolutely taken aback.

And this was for any number of reasons:  it doesn’t really balance the budget, not for decades; it envisions massive tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, but doesn’t explain how this lost revenue will be made up (other than by some vague mouthing that unidentified “loopholes” will be closed); its numbers only come close to adding up if the U.S. achieves some never-before-seen unemployment rate of about 2.8%; it anticipates shrinking the federal budget to a portion of GDP not seen since before we had a standing military.  (And do you really think America is going to go back to not having a military?  Having a military is the one thing at which we are indisputably the world’s best).

But above all, the idea that Medicare should be eliminated entirely, and then replaced with $15,000 a year vouchers with which seniors (you know, the poor, the tired, the really sick) can fail to buy can attempt to buy private insurance (although we are still gonna call this bastard spawn of a GOP wet dream “medicare”) . . .   well that is truly revolting.  Not merely because the plan calls for nothing less than throwing our most vulnerable members to the howling wolf of inevitable human decay, which is bad enough, but because its proponents argue that doing so is nothing less than virtuous pragmatism.

The thinking appears to go something like this: 

            (1) providing a minimum social safety net for the most disadvantaged among us is something that the vast, vast majority of people in this country like (“keep the government out of my Medicare!”); but

            (2) increasingly expensive medical costs means that we are either going to have to roll back some of those tax cuts for the wealthy or else get very serious about limiting medical expenses (for example, by using the collective bargaining power of a single-payer system to demand cuts in the prices health care providers charge); but

            (3) both of these ideas are opposed by a small but very wealthy (and thus, very powerful) part of our population, and therefore all Serious People know that these solutions are “off the table”; which means that

            (4) since we aren’t allowed do anything to lower rising medical expenses, and since we aren’t allowed to collect enough money to pay for rising medical expenses, we can no longer afford to maintain that minimum social safety net that is so very popular with the American people; so therefore

            (5) we must get rid of Medicare because (under these self-imposed rules) we can’t pay for it; but since

            (6) Medicare is a very, very popular system – see No. 1, above – any proposal to eliminate it can be counted on to be very, very unpopular; now, therefore,

            CONCLUSION:   Since Paul Ryan has proposed eliminating Medicare in favor of even more tax cuts for the wealthy, he must be considered “politically courageous” and “very serious.”

Only in the bizarro realm that is American politics can an idea that is both inherently revolting and wildly unpopular be considered courageous and serious.  And yet, there it is.  But, to be sure, common sense and rationality must ultimately prevail, right?  Something this evil and ludicrous can’t continue to be taken seriously forever, can it?  I’ve gotta believe that. 

Ayn Rand Was Very Silly, But Conservatives Are Just Evil

"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life:
The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish
fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable
heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood,
unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

--John Rogers
Kung Fu Monkey


Johann Hari has a new column up over at the UK's The Independent that simply is a must-read. He excoriates today's Republican party for its crass insistence on promoting only the interests of the country's uberwealthy at the direct expense of the less fortunate 99% of Americans. For example, of the Ryan Budget plan he points out that "it halves taxes on the richest 1% and ends all taxes on corporate income, dividends and inheritance. It pays for it by slashing spending on food stamps, health care for the poor and elderly, and basic services. . . . Ryan says 'the reason I got involved in public service' was because he read the writings of Ayn Rand, who described the poor as 'parasites' who must 'perish', and are best summarized by the title of one of her books: The Virtue of Selfishness."

However, the vast majority of Hari's column devotes itself to Donald Trump and what it says about the modern Republican party that he is now the party's frontrunner in Presidential nominee polls. Describing Trump as "the Republican Id, finally entirely unleashed from all restraint and all reality," Hari offers up a few choice quotes from the Donald about how America should deal with the rest of the world. On Libya: "I would go in and I would take the oil . . . I would take the oil and stop this baby stuff." On Iraq: "We stay there and we take the oil. . . In the old days, when you have a war and you win, that nation's yours."

* * *

In the liberal blogosphere, which I frequent, there has been for a number of years now a good deal of focus on the new, ersatz Republican followers of Ayn Rand's writings. Alan Greenspan himself, the maestro of our current financial debacle, was one of Rand's most devoted followers -- he actually sat at her feet as a college student and was editor of one of her Objectivist publications. As a result, to this day he so objects to any government regulation of any business or financial activity that he once told Brooksley Born that he was not even in favor of prosecuting financial firms that committed fraud because that would only interfere in the market's ability to punish such firms itself. (He, Larry Summers and Bob Rubin were also instrumental in crushing Born's attempt to impose derivative regulations while she was with the CFTC; of course, given that unregulated derivatives trading is a large part - if not the largest part - of how the financial industry got into the mess it did, that decision seems in retrospect very, very stupid).

In Congress, of course, we have Rep. Paul Ryan and his plan to wage war against almost everyone in America for the benefit of his small number of rich paymasters, and we have newly elected Senator Rand Paul who makes no bones about the fact that he is an Ayn Rand devotee (although it is not true that he was named after Rand; my understanding is that his name is short for 'Randal').

And this constant reference to Ayn Rand's writings by our new Republican Overlords -- who, despite controlling only one chamber of Congress, somehow manage to decide what issues must be taken up by the government (abortion and the deficit, but not jobs or the economy) and how those issues must be framed -- and by bloviating Conservative pundits and TeeVee talking heads, has had an affect on the people who listen to such folk.

For example, about two years ago, shortly after Obama had been sworn into office and the first glimpses of Tea Party Madness were beginning to emerge among the nation's more conservative elderly, I was checking out a few books at my local library. A sizable percentage of the immediate population where I live consists of retirees. Whilst checking out my books I got into a brief conversation with the librarian, who told me that she had just started reading Atlas Shrugged as part of a local book club. She told me she thought it was important that as many people as possible read Ayn Rand's opus because the book is "so relevant, given what's happening in the world today."

Now, a couple of things about this statement struck me immediately. First, I could think of nothing that was "happening in the world" right then that would make Rand's so-called philosophy more relevant than before -- that is, unless you count the fact we now have a black man sitting in the White House. Second, the library doesn't sponsor book clubs; this apparently was something she had gotten into with some unspecified number of friends, and they all had suddenly decided they needed to read Ayn Rand. Third, I couldn't just let this statement go unchallenged, because the last thing we need is people interested in reading Ayn Rand for the lessons they think they can learn from her.

So I explained to the librarian, as gently as I could, that I had read Atlas Shrugged and nearly all of Rand's writings years and years ago, back when I was in High School, and that - like a lot of people who stumble across Rand - I had enjoyed them immensely. However, after I grew up some and gained a greater appreciation of how people work in the real world, I came to see Rand's writings as fairly juvenile. I told her (as nicely as I could) that I thought they were not writings anyone should ever make the mistake of taking seriously.

Why Medicare Kicks the Crap Out of Paul Ryan's Voucher Plan

So I was talking with a friend of mine earlier today about health care, Medicare, and the Paul Ryan plan to privatize Medicare. One important point came up that I think should be discussed more because (i) it points out how dangerous the Ryan plan is to everybody, including those already 55 or older, and (ii) it provides a simple illustration why a single-payer system (i.e., "Medicare for All") would actually do more to curb rising health care costs in this country than any other proposed health care reform. And that point is this: Medicare is entirely voluntary, not only for the patients being treated under the program but also for those physicians who provide the treatment.

The way things stand, a lot of health care providers (physicians, private hospitals, HMO's, etc.) don't really look forward to treating patients covered under Medicare. This is because the government has limits on what it is willing to pay for any particular procedure, and these payment limits make treating patients covered by Medicare less lucrative than treating patients who have a private insurance plan. However, many - if not most - of the country's health care providers cover Medicare patients anyway, simply because there are so many people in the country reliant upon Medicare. In other words, the health care providers make less per Medicare patient than they would treating patients covered by private health insurance, but there are so many Medicare patients out there who need treatment that it doesn't make financial sense to turn them away: "How can I sell these [health care services] so cheap? Volume!"

Now as to one reason the Ryan Plan is so bad . . . consider what happens to those currently 55 or older who would still remain eligible to participate in Medicare as it exists today. Everybody else would be forced to purchase private insurance in the market when they turned 65; Ryan's Plan would have the government give you a voucher to help defray the costs of that private insurance, but the voucher would be capped and -- even assuming you could find an insurance company willing to insure you at a rate you could afford after you turned 65 -- the voucher would be worth less and less each year as health care costs went up. Which means that, year after year, seniors would be forced to pay more and more just to have insurance coverage (which would not include co-pays or deductibles, which means the cost of actual health care would increase even more).

But for those 55 and over today . . . eventually, their even older cohort (say, those who are 70 and older right now) would die off. Which means that, with no additional people joining the Medicare ranks, the pool of Medicare patients needing treatment would inevitably shrink. At some point it would not be unreasonable to expect health care providers to refuse Medicare patients outright; they would be too small a pool of patients to justify the lesser charges the health care provider could expect. Which means, of course, that a significant portion of even those the Ryan Plan says could remain with Medicare as it is now can still expect, before they die, not to have access to any entity willing to treat them under that plan.

Paul Ryan's Real Plan

So, I was looking through some other blogs and reading yet another pundit who made the same (by now) repetitive point: Far from being "courageous," "gutsy," "adult," or (my favorite) "serious," Paul Ryan's budget proposal is a pointless piece of hard-right GOP whimsy. It is based on fantasy numbers, does nothing to actually address the deficit or balance the budget, but consists of a huge giveaway to the rich and the corporations, while paying for that giveaway by taking chunks out of the elderly, the disabled, the poor, the children, the working class and the increasingly middle-class.

I've heard all of these criticisms, I've read the arguments (see Krugman's column in today's NYT), and based on the numbers presented and the information left out of Ryan's plan -- for example, tax cuts are specified, but the loss of revenue those cuts result in will be made up with by unspecified "loophole" closings -- I pretty much agree with these criticisms.

What is becoming more and more clear is that the more one examines Ryan's so-called budget "proposal" is that it is a non-starter. There is no way anything close to this could ever get passed through the Democratic-controlled Senate, much less get by Obama's veto pen.

So why would Ryan author such a dead-letter bill? If he is actually trying to address budget issues and the deficit, why issue such a sloppy, wet, full-tongued French Kiss to the GOP base, when he must know it is going to go nowhere?

Because Paul Ryan is planning to run for President in 2016.

I am sure there is someone else, somewhere (maybe a lot of other someone elses out there, in a lot of other different somewheres) who already has made this prediction. But I've not seen it yet, and it just occurred to me, and so I figured I'd get this post up now and maybe, if I'm right, four years from now when he announces I'll look like a genius.

But . . . think about it. He's young, he's not a bad looking guy. He's a family man and the press absolutely loves him. And I mean, like, really loves him. I got a phone call the other day from a friend of mine about this:

"Dude, you would not believe the kind of shit I'm having to watch on my TeeVee about this Ryan guy. I just listened to some supposed political pundit gush about how much this guy works out!"

(It reminded me of an article I read some years ago about Petraeus, and how much he works out. Back when Petraeus was the next big Daddy Thing for the press to gush over.)

"Seriously, dude," my friend asked me, "is this what our political press has come to? I gotta know about this guy's fitness habits?"

But with the promulgation of this new Very Serious, Gutsy, Provocative, Adult plan to truly screw over all the rest of us in service of his rich overlords, Ryan has gained instant credibility with the Punditocracy. Now they can gush over his gravitas, while still maintaining that special authoritarian Strong Daddy man-crush that they only let themselves develop for Republican candidates who prove their seriousness by their willingness to screw over the poor and defenseless among us. The ones who truly don't have a voice in our politic society.

(I swear, the political press in the United States reminds me of nothing so much as those lickspittles from Middle School that we all sneered at, the ones willing to side with and even suffer a little abuse at the hands of the school bully, if only it meant that they could consider themselves someone among the outer fringes of the bully's hangers on.)

Mark my words . . . Ryan released this sloppy kiss to the Republican base because he knew the Villagers would eat it up. And they have. And he is eyeing a presidential run in 2016.

Please write to congratulate me on my prescience, four years from now when he announces.