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Vote for Paul Ryan? That’s rich! Romney VP pick most extreme candidate ever to run

Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 at 09:14 AM

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Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan

Here they come, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Two grinning robots that want to take your money. And some of you are even going to vote for them.

Romney’s plan is to give record tax breaks to the rich, lowering their tax rate down to 28 percent. Ryan is a little different. His plan is to give the rich even bigger tax breaks, lowering their tax rate down to 25 percent. No wonder billionaires are bank rolling them.

Both of these men understand exactly how to advocate for their own class. If elected it'll be just like the George W. Bush years again, except this time, along with launching exciting new wars overseas, they’ll finally be able get rid of the remaining tax breaks that benefit low-income Americans.

Comforting the comfortable while punishing the American mainstream is now open Republican practice, so the far right have finally stepped out from behind the curtain to watch their candidate Ryan take on the mantel of power in full public view.

The timing is fortuitous because it's become apparent to most observers that the truth about Romney would probably end his presidential campaign.

He cannot sell himself on Romneycare, his signature achievement, because it would be too damaging. He cannot disclose his own income tax returns -- apparently they would be too damaging too.

Enter Ryan and his big toothy grin. But who is Paul Ryan, that’s the question?

Well, tremble now American seniors, because Ryan is the man who genuinely believes in turning Medicare into a voucher program.

Under his budget plan senior citizens would no longer be entitled to comprehensive medical benefits designed to protect them from financial ruin. No more guarantee of benefits, just take a voucher instead, and you know what a voucher's good for, don’t you?

Ryan also believes in ending Medicaid, turning it into a “block grant” instead. It’s estimated between 14 and 27 million low-income Americans would lose their health insurance over it.

Ryan also wants to privatize Social Security. In fact his plan to take a wrecking ball to the New Deal is so radical that even the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and Bush rejected it out of hand.

So why do very rich people like Romney and Ryan hate government programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid?

Well, the nation’s top earners don’t want the financial burden of the welfare state, since they don’t benefit from it, so their plan is to hand the entire cost of it over to the middle class, who do.

America’s rich no longer feel the need or the responsibility to contribute one thin dime to the upkeep of this nation. Instead they open Swiss bank accounts to hide their earnings from the IRS; they ship jobs overseas while closing companies here; they play Wall Street like a private casino and hand you the bill for their excesses.

I don't know how they can make this fact any plainer. They don’t actually care what happens to America.

Under Romney/Ryan it’ll be tax breaks for the rich and social Darwinism for the poor. These would be the deepest, most biting cuts ever attempted by a sitting government.

Have you noticed all of that crumbling infrastructure from sea to shining sea? Under Ryan’s budget the government would be so starved of resources that by 2050 it wouldn’t have enough money for basic functioning, never mind overdue road works or highway repairs.

Ryan’s massive and historic cuts to government funding would mean debilitating cuts to law enforcement, education, highway repair and even basic even food inspection.

Ryan does want to increase defense spending, however, so while you're watching all the bombs drop on new wars overseas you can try to console yourself that your money's being well spent.

But predictably, Ryan’s most characteristic ambition of all is Robin Hood in reverse.  He wants to preside over the largest transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class over to the rich in American history.

According to Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the new Ryan budget “would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history, and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times (and possibly in the nation’s history).”

So that's who Paul Ryan is. Another partisan plutocrat with faraway eyes comes to squeeze the last few drops out of the American century.

A man who has never once in his life had to ask himself, which bill can I afford to pay this week? A man who once used Social Security checks to pay for his education, but who now wants to see Social Security scrapped.

And some of you will even vote for him. Just don’t ever get sick or lose your job, all right?




41 Comments

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We have a "Community Organizer" President who has helped bring the national debt to over 16 Trillion Dollars, more than the Gross National Product, and tells David Letterman "debt doesn't matter in the short term" and you call Paul Ryan extreme. This President is spending our descendants money and is not brought to bear any responsibility by the likes of media supporters like Mr. O'Doherty here. The President doesn't need a campaign committee, he has the media running his reelection campaign for him.
hannah gruen, here's the first set of facts; you'll find it in the article's second paragraph: "Romney’s plan is to give record tax breaks to the rich, lowering their tax rate down to 28 percent. Ryan is a little different. His plan is to give the rich even bigger tax breaks, lowering their tax rate down to 25 percent." Specifically what is your complaint? Do you think these two claims are false? Have you done your "research" and found evidence that these claims are not true? What is that evidence, specifically? Did you find it by "checking out Mr Ryan's website" as you advise the writer to do? And you say that you do not like the article's "tone," well la-dee-da! If your comment is an example of the sneering, slip-shod critiques you give your student writers, they should be embarrassed to have you as a teacher.
This is one of the poorest written articles I've seen. There's not a whit of thesis support. I'd fail a student who turned in an essay like this. Tone is shrill, sneering, cliched, unoriginal. Why not try checking out Mr Ryan's website and using facts, actual quotes, reputable citations without using outdated CBO estimates. Also, compare Ryan's plan to save Medicare with Obama's plan to do nothing and let it go insolvent in 12 years. This is a carelessly written, lazily "researched" article. This column makes me embarrassed to be Irish.
How depressing to read how worthless you two consider people.
Ephraim, today's NY Times has an interesting article in the philosophy section on interdependence and connectedness. An excerpt: "We can hardly fathom the depth of our dependence on government, and pretend we are bold individualists instead.... Ryan’s signature work, his proposal for the federal budget, calls for drastic cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Pell grants and job training programs, among others. To no surprise, as The New Yorker revealed in a recent profile of Ryan, the home district that supports him is boosted by considerable government largesse.... But the fate of the middle class counties and urban ghettos is entwined. When the poor are left to rot in their misery, the misery does not stay contained. It harms us all. The crime radiates, the misery offends, it debases the whole. Individuals, much less communities, cannot be insulated from it" ("Deluded Individualism"). Ideology is powerful, and it can delude us into thinking that we are and ought to remain fully self-sufficient, all of us "frontiersmen," as in the great John Wayne American myth. I hope enough people shake off this delusion before election day.
@eiriamach - Why can't the 1% see that they need the 99% far more than the 99% need them. It is the demand of the 99% that created the wealth of the 1% suppliers. After the Black Death ravaged Europe the 1% of the time was left with a vastly reduced 99%, their few remaining serfs escaped, their manor houses fell to ruin, their estates became overgrown and they starved meanwhile what was left of the 99% carried on. Interestingly the current disparity between wealth of the 1% and that of the 99% is even greater than in the Middle Ages. It is time that the 99% saved the 1% from themselves and their greed. Four more years and both houses!
In 1961, John F. Kennedy warned, "If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." With the exception of a handful of smart rich guys like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, the wealthy do not seem to realize that they need to be saved too, that they are marching in lockstep with Ryan toward a very steep cliff. As the American middle-class shrinks, possibilities for profitable investments and business start-ups, as well as continued corporate revenue, dwindle. Without middle-class buying power, the economy will continue to contract. Along with the US, economies around the globe will stagnate. Then US outsourced employment and investment will become liabilities. As Obama says, we are all connected. Those who think the rich can stay rich while everyone else loses purchasing power will realize their delusions only when they're at the edge of the cliff with no way to go except down ... fast. But I do not believe it will happen unless voter suppression succeeds.
Excellent article. Thanks for telling it like it is. Folks, this election is more than just about jobs. It's about fairness, righteousness, equality, equal pay, rights, no more wars, no more voodoonomics, gun control and much much more. Romney and Ryan will only make the rich richer and make the rest of us miserable.
Hollabackgurl, Please explain President Obama's plan to save Social Security and Medicare. So far he has only managed to drain funds from these programs.
Hoollah, you insult a commenter for being ignorant, senile, fat, dumb, and sexual deviant, I guess that's ok because you are progressive
Tom Mo, any man who uses the term 'pipsqeek,' even if he has ignorantly misspelled it, as you just did, betrays something about himself: he's very old, probably has a commodious posterior, and he mistakes hurling insults for intelligent discussion. No one but a Tea Bagger thinks that's classy.
No michaelidaho, you don't understand your own candidate. Paul Ryan believes that Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare, and government generally, should be taken to a bath and drowned because they interfere with the purity of capitalism. His hero Ayn Rand called altruism evil. He believes helping others diminishes you.
What I find most interesting about the left-wing’s critique on Paul Ryan are his plans for Social Security and Medicare. They argue that he is seeking to dismantle the programs. Actually, he is trying to develop a strategy for their long-term fiscal stability. Ironically, Obama has actually worsened the situation for Social Security (remember the 2% reduction in payroll tax) and his health care legislation will take money from Medicare. In short, Obama has no long-term plan for Social Security or Medicare. Ryan's plans are not perfect, especially the part about privatizing Social Security, but at least he recognizes these programs are unsustainable in their current form.
I read Cahir O'Dorthy's rant again. The man is a commumist thru and thru. Impossible to argue with an ass. "Under Romney/Ryan it'll be tax breaks for the rich and social Darwinism for the poor. These would be the deepest,most biting cuts ever attempted by a sitting government." A sitting government? Ever? How many governments have you lived under in you miserable life? You pipsqeek. Try Stalin, Mousillini, Hitler, Pol pot.
Garythomas/Lane2445 Attaboys. two thumbs up. Semper Fi.




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