Paul Ryan - Caricature by DonkeyHotey, on Flickr

It is Monday so what do I find in my in-box but another tightly coiled steaming pile of conservative idiocy by Robert Samuelson. It is a real drag to write about him because there really are no snappy pejoratives to describe him that don’t insult the people or item one compares him to. So I am not going to try that today, I am just going to call it straight, Robert Samuelson is a partisan liar.

His entire column is filled with half-truths, false comparisons and blatant lies. Let’s break it down. He starts out by trying to co-opt the “Ending Medicare as we know it” meme that not only Democrats but just about any person that can read and reason understands is the outcome of the Ryan budget. But then Robby ups the ante he says:

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that unless we end Medicare “as we know it,” America “as we know it” will end.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, a lie. There is no chance that our taking care of the elderly has to end America as we know it. Well, unless you have been so brainwashed by the conservative movement that you are still living in the 1880’s idea of what America is. You know, white, rich and a bunch of basically peasants that are just there to turn the wheels of industry and take the crumbs the Robber Barons deign to leave behind. Then it might be end to that America, which the rest of us left behind long ago.

He then conflates health care spending for government programs (which do include the VA, but he doesn’t mention it since he wants to kill Medicare and Medicaid) and private health care spending. He says:

Uncontrolled health spending isn’t simply crowding out other government programs; it’s also dampening overall living standards. Health economists Michael Chernew, Richard Hirth and David Cutler recently reported that higher health costs consumed 35.7 percent of the increase in per capita income from 1999 to 2007. They also project, that under reasonable assumptions, it could absorb half or more of the gain between now and 2083.

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Whoomp! Whoosh! That was the sound of Tim Pawlenty self-immolating. T-Paw (what kind of presidential candidate gives himself a nickname like that?!?) was thought to be one of the “serious” candidates. While he had been a very conservative governor, there was still this impression that he was one of the smart ones, if also one of the most boring ones.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2011/05/pawlenty-says-if-he-were-president-he-would-sign-paul-ryans-budget.html

However today he drank the Republican Jonestown Kool-Aid. This is what ABC News is reporting he said:

“First of all, I applaud Congressman Ryan for his courage and his leadership in putting his plan forward. At least he has a plan. President Obama doesn’t have a plan. The Democrats don’t have a plan. And I really applaud his leadership and his courage in putting a plan on the table. Number two, we will have our own plan; it will have many similarities to Congressman Ryan’s plan, but it will have some differences, one of which will be we’ll address Social Security. He chose not to; we are addressing Social Security. And the Medicare part of our plan will have some differences, too. It will have some similarities also. So we’ll have our own plan. But if I can’t have my own plan — as president, I’ll have my own plan – if I can’t have that, and the bill came to my desk and I had to choose between signing or not Congressman Ryan’s plan, of course I would sign it.”

You know he is trying. You really have to give him that, he is trying. He takes a disingenuous swipe at the President and the Democrats by saying they don’t have a plan. It is true, the White House and the Democrats have no plan to privatize Medicare or Social Security. Those ideas are strictly Republican ones.

Still he has done it, he has signed on with the suicide pact that is the Ryan Budget. He has said out loud and in front of reporters that if he were president and the Ryan budget came to his desk he’d sign it.

It is more than a little astounding that Republicans are starting their campaign season by defending and doubling down on a plan that is massively unpopular. No one is willing to see Medicare cut to give more tax breaks to the wealthy. We should always keep sight of the fact this plan does not just cut funding for Medicare so drastically that seniors would have to pay an estimated $6,000 year in out of pocket expenses, it does it so that we can give the wealth another massive tax break.

For a long time I and others have talked about epistemological closure in the Republican Party. It is the idea that no new information or information that contradicts a pillar of Republican orthodoxy is allowed into the world of Conservatives/Republicans or Teahadists. For a long time is was a question of having a very little opening to the real world where some new data could slip in through the cracks.

Now it seems the Republican informational horizon has sealed itself and is cut off from most of reality, like the other dimensions that are rolled up smaller than the Plank length and can’t really be seen.
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mistake by doobybrain, on Flickr

Go Republicans! Go! You just keep doing what you’ve been doing this year, and by early 2013 you won’t have to worry so much about working on the problems of the nation. You will have lots and lots of time to spend with your families and at cushy jobs as lobbyist for the remaining few Republicans in the House and Senate.

After a month that has seen not one, not two but four Democratic wins in various special and regular elections that were supposed to be cake walks for Republicans, last night it was topped off with a Democrat beating a Republican in one of the reddest of gerrymandered-to-be-red districts in the entire North East.

Still, I know you guys. I have been watching you for a very long time and I know that today is not going to be about lessons learned. Nah. Today is going to be all about rationalizations found. You’ll say that it was the third party guy (though of course that does not explain losing the other four elections you expected to win). You’ll say it was outside money (which of course ignore the million or so your outside money groups spent, nice investment there Karl!). You’ll say it is anything but what it really is.

Why are you losing where you should be winning? Especially since you keep saying the American people on behind you? It is pretty easy really. You’re policies and the way you talk about them make you look like a bunch of mean assholes who want to help the rich and stick it to the poor at every turn. This has the added problem, for you, of being true.
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Poor Jane Corwin! When the New York State Republicans picked her to be their nominee in the 26th Congressional District it must have felt like she was being crowned prom queen. After all the 26th has only elected 3 Democrats in the last 130 years.

Now she must feel like a developmentally disabled child who has been handed a rubber bon-bon. She knows it should be a treat but the more she chews it, the worse it seems to get.

As the results start to trickle in tonight, State Rep. Corwin knows one thing for sure, no matter what the vote is, it won’t be certified. How does she know that? Because today she went to court to ask for just such an injunction. Now in New York State this is not that uncommon a move but again it should not be one that a Republican in the NY-26th should have to take.

How did this come about? You probably know but I am going to run it down. There is a third party (Teahadist) candidate in the race who is splitting the Republican vote. But more important than this is the fact of Paul Ryan’s Medicare killing coupon program. You see the NY-26th CD is mainly older folks. They are not too keen on any talk of cutting Medicare or worse replacing it with a voucher program.

This is where Republican unity really cuts the other way. Instead of making them more effective by them all voting like a bunch of robots, the fact they voted for something that no one in America wants really allows someone like Corwin a chance to wiggle out.
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Scott Walker: Dunce by ann-s-thesia, on Flickr

So, here we are, already at our borrowing limit and living on borrowed time as the Federal Reserve shuffles money around, to temporarily keep us from defaulting on our obligations. The Republicans still think that this is a good thing to play politics with. While I have some belief (e.g. faith without any proof) that they will not take us over that cliff because Wall St and the people that fund them understand how bad it would be, I am still a little worried,.

One thing I am worried about is that the Dems might cave on this. That would be really bad as it would just encourage hostage taking like this in the future; as well as the fact that whatever cuts the Republicans demand would hurt the economy as a whole and lots and lots of real people in the very short term.

Still we see it being played out. Talking Points Memo has a story tonight where Rep. Paul “I want to kill Medicaid” Ryan is saying, against evidence of many business groups saying the opposite that “The Wall St I know is totally okay debt default fore a few days” Here lets let the Medicaid Massacre Maestro tell you in his own words, from the TMP article:

Ryan told the network that he talks to “lots of bond traders” and “lots of economists” and they all say that investors are willing to put up with a default of “a day or two or three or four” if it produced massive budget changes as part of a Capitol Hill debt limit deal.

“They all say, ‘whatever you do, make sure you get real spending cuts,’” Ryan said. “Because you want to make sure that the bond-holder has the confidence that the government’s going to be able to pay them. You’re putting the government in a better position to pay them.”

What the Rep of Very Little Brain seems to fail to understand is that an actual default, or even showing signs that we would actually do something like that could ruin the credit of the United States for a very long time. Worst case scenario, after the collapse of the world credit markets, the world decides that A) it is not going to use dollars as the default currency anymore and B) that never again will US Treasury bonds be a stone cold safe investment.
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Paul Ryan - Caricature by DonkeyHotey, on Flickr

I had a friend who had ambitions of being a comedian, the problem was that he wasn’t always that funny, even though he was convinced he was. This led the rest of his friends to develop the “Death of a Joke” pathology; which described how a not funny joke descended into an excruciating experience.

If joke does not get a laugh, tell it again.
If it still does not get a laugh tell it again, louder.
If it still does not get a laugh, tell it again and explain it.
Still no laugh, try telling it in a funny (as in odd not as in ha-ha) voice.

It was kind of sad to see Ricky do this, but it is going to be even sadder to see Rep. Paul Ryan doing his version of this with the Medicaid killing provision of his regressive budget.

He genuinely fails to understand that people don’t like the idea of changing the existing fee-for-service system of Medicaid into a voucher program that won’t actually cover the cost of insurance going forward. Rep. Ryan seems to think that people just don’t get the plan, just like Ricky thought that we did not understand the joke.

Today we saw part one, of this theater of the absurd where Rep. Ryan went and tried to re-spin the plan by retelling his “joke” saying that it his plan was going to give seniors more choice while the Dems plan will deny them health care.

This is of course the same BS that all the Republicans tried to spin about “choice” when they went home and got that grandma and granddad beat down at the Town Halls. What they seem to always fail to include is that this choice means a choice not just of plans (that won’t want to cover them because they are older and more expensive) but between Fancy Feast and that blood pressure medicine. But Grandma and Granddad weren’t fooled the first time, so don’t expect them to be fooled this time.
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Wrong way by Crystl, on Flickr

What do you do when you’ve completely overreached? Well if you are the Republicans you cave and hope like hell that the voters don’t remember in 18 months that’s what you do.

What am I talking about? The whole ‘privatize Medicare” plan that was one of the central pieces of Paul Ryan’s budget proposal, of course. You see after two weeks of getting one elderly person beat down after another it seems that the Republican leadership have figured out that just because you say the American people are behind your plan over and over does not make it true.

It is not like it should have been a surprise , after all the Republicans owe part of their House majority to the fact that they claimed that the Democrats were cutting Medicare as part of the ACA. It was the kind of thing that senior citizens don’t like to hear and remember when they go to vote (and they do vote unlike younger voters, especially in midterm elections).

Though it does seem to have caught the House Republicans flatfooted that the when they actually propose the plan they have been using a boogeyman for two years that seniors don’t just fall in line and let them screw the country out of one of the most popular entitlement programs of all time.

Today, the fourth day back from a two week recess, so Committee Chairs, Senators and the Speaker of the House himself basically saying that this plan was dead. After all when the House Ways and Means Committee Chair says that he is done laying down markers and his committee won’t take action on it, any plan is dead.

What is so startling is that the Republicans had to know that this plan was going nowhere. It was never going to get past the Senate, and it sure has hell was never going to be signed by this President. At best it was a political statement. Which is all well and good, but the House Republican Leadership didn’t just let it go at making a statement they introduced it and made their members vote for it.
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FY2011 Budget by TalkMediaNews, on Flickr"

So, now that House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan has unveiled his steaming tightly coiled pile of a budget the argument in the media is starting. It is to be strongly hoped that the Traditional Media outlets will look at the facts of this budget.

You know the little problems like the draconian cuts are not going to actual deficit reduction because they are being used to pay for tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Just to raise your blood pressure a little this morning, let me give you and example. Under this budget a single person making $75,000 a year (a nice chunk of change) would pay the same tax rates as people who make multiple millions a year.

Another issue that has to be brought up again and again is that this budget would gut the newly minted financial regulations, would gut the EPA, would gut the Social Security Administration (setting up the argument that it is poorly run and needs to be ended all together) as well as ending Medicare and Medicaid as we know them within ten years.

As if all that shite were not enough, there is the fact that like all of the proposals that Rep. Ryan puts forward, the numbers don’t work. He assumes that if we pass his budget in 4 years, just 48 months, the unemployment rate will fall to 4%.

I’d love that to happen, but I have this mental defect, I can’t get behind something that has no basis in reality, or as in this case is actually counter factual. Over the last two years the only thing that has kept the economy afloat was major federal spending. Business is sitting on 1.4 trillion in cash and has shown no sign of wanting to use it to stimulate demand. Rep. Ryan wants to slash hundreds of billions from the budget every year for the next decade. Is there really anyone out there who thinks that the resultant loss of jobs is going to improve the growth rate or the unemployment numbers?
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