Paul Krugman: The GOP cult of Paul Ryan

April 9, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

A great column today from Paul Krugman of the New York Times on the GOP's "boy genius" and Ayn Rand acolyte, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and the feckless media villager "serious people" who advance his economic nonsense. The Gullible Center:

So, can we talk about the Paul Ryan phenomenon?

And yes, I mean the phenomenon, not the man. Mr. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and the principal author of the last two Congressional Republican budget proposals, isn’t especially interesting. He’s a garden-variety modern G.O.P. extremist, an Ayn Rand devotee who believes that the answer to all problems is to cut taxes on the rich and slash benefits for the poor and middle class.

No, what’s interesting is the cult that has grown up around Mr. Ryan — and in particular the way self-proclaimed centrists elevated him into an icon of fiscal responsibility, and even now can’t seem to let go of their fantasy.

The Ryan cult was very much on display last week, after President Obama said the obvious: the latest Republican budget proposal, a proposal that Mitt Romney has avidly embraced, is a “Trojan horse” — that is, it is essentially a fraud. “Disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country.”

The reaction from many commentators was a howl of outrage. The president was being rude; he was being partisan; he was being a big meanie. Yet what he said about the Ryan proposal was completely accurate.

Actually, there are many problems with that proposal. But you can get the gist if you understand two numbers: $4.6 trillion and 14 million.

Of these, $4.6 trillion is the revenue cost over the next decade of the tax cuts embodied in the plan, as estimated by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. These cuts — which are, by the way, cuts over and above those involved in making the Bush tax cuts permanent — would disproportionately benefit the wealthy, with the average member of the top 1 percent receiving a tax break of $238,000 a year.

Mr. Ryan insists that despite these tax cuts his proposal is “revenue neutral,” that he would make up for the lost revenue by closing loopholes. But he has refused to specify a single loophole he would close. And if we assess the proposal without his secret (and probably nonexistent) plan to raise revenue, it turns out to involve running bigger deficits than we would run under the Obama administration’s proposals.

Meanwhile, 14 million is a minimum estimate of the number of Americans who would lose health insurance under Mr. Ryan’s proposed cuts in Medicaid; estimates by the Urban Institute actually put the number at between 14 million and 27 million.

So the proposal is exactly as President Obama described it: a proposal to deny health care (and many other essentials) to millions of Americans, while lavishing tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy — all while failing to reduce the budget deficit[.]

Three Sonorans is back

April 9, 2012

by David Safier Three Sonorans is back as an independent blog with its own domain, http://threesonorans.com, and an in-your-face header: "History is being made today, What side will you be on?" David Morales gets thoughtful and meditative in his most recent post, discussing the nature of his blog and his now-severed relationship with Mark Evans … Read more

Jon Perr’s analysis of the Ryan 2.0 GOP Budget

April 9, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Unlike the "patrician prevaricator" at the Neoconservative Washington Post, George Will, Jon Perr actually knows of what he speaks on economic issues, and he is no fan of the GOP's "boy genius" and Ayn Rand acolyte, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).

Perr has an excellent analysis of the Ryan 2.0 GOP Budget at perrspectives.com. The Resurrection and Immaculate Deception of Paul Ryan:

Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan has become the perfect Republican Easter story. Each spring, Ryan reemerges with a new version of his draconian "Roadmap for America's Future" [or as I call it, the Roadmap to America's Ruin]. Despite being crucified each time by most Democrats, much of the press and even some members of his own party, Ryan nevertheless rises again, earning more followers (like Mitt Romney) each time. But at the heart of his budget plan – one that guts domestic spending, delivers a massive tax cut windfall to the rich and ends Medicare as a guaranteed health insurance program for the elderly – is a miraculous fraud, an immaculate deception. By refusing to name a single tax deduction or loophole he would close, Ryan's holy book produces not a balanced budget but trillions more in new national debt.

The Gospel of Paul begins on April 1, 2009. As it turned out, April Fool's Day was a fitting launch date for what Ryan touted as the "GOP's Alternative Budget." Short on details beyond steep cuts for the rich and privatizing Medicare, Ryan admitted his was merely a "marketing document."

But the glossy pamphlet Ryan and then House Minority Leader John Boehner waived around created the template for the annual spring ritual to come. While the Center for American Progress concluded the Boehner-Ryan giveaway would hand an annual tax bonanza of $1.5 million to the average CEO, an analysis from the Center for Tax Justice last week concluded that by 2011, the GOP scheme would drain the Treasury to the tune of $300 billion more than the Obama plan.

The Fire Next Time: The Euro Financial Crisis – Austerity a Recipe for Depression

April 9, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I have been doing a series of posts on The Fire Next Time: The Euro Financial Crisis, warning of the "other shoe" to drop following the American financial system meltdown in 2008. The title is borrowed from a column by Paul Krugman, warning that our failure to correct the casino capitalism of Wall Street and to hold any of the banksters of Wall Street accountable for their crimes leaves the world's financial system vulnerable to another financial system meltdown. Paul Krugman: The Fire Next Time.

It is also to inform you on economics reporting that our feckless corporate mainstream media does not provide. This is an election year. The soft employment numbers for March last week led the chorus of the right-wing noise machine to sing that President Obama's economic policies are not creating jobs fast enough, and the corporate mainstream media who are economics ignorant simply took stenography and repeated these statements in the echo chamber. They do not report the facts that it was the faith based supply-side "trickle down" GOP economics that created the Great Recession, and that conservative austerity economics is slowing the economic recovery, as Paul Krugman frequently writes.

Conservative austerity economics is a recipe for Depression, as it was in the 1930s, and it is on display for all the world to see in the Euro financial crisis. This contagion cannot be contained to Europe. We have a global economy, and the contagion will eventually find its way to our shores and the "other shoe" of the financial crisis of 2008 will drop. There is little this country can do to guard against this European contagion.

When our economy suffers as a result, as it will, Tea-Publicans will say that it is all President Obama's fault, because this is an election year, and our economics ignorant corporate mainstream media will simply take stenography and repeat these statements in the echo chamber. The consequence is possibly electing Tea-Publicans to office who are blindly committed to doubling-down on their disproved and discredited faith based supply-side "trickle down" GOP economics and conservative austerity economics responsible for worsening the financial crisis. It is a recipe for disaster.

On Sunday, 60 Minutes finally caught up to reporting on this story and did an outstanding job of reporting. An Imperfect Union: Europe's debt crisis – CBS News:

Ten European countries are in a recession. In order to avoid default, three have needed bailouts from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, and more might be necessary. What's at stake? A lot, including the future of the currency, the euro, and the health of the United States' largest trading partner. Steve Kroft reports on the European debt crisis, including how the austerity measures being demanded of Greece are rekindling the ghosts and even enmity of World War II.

Must view video below the fold.

Frack! Earthquakes and poisoned water are ‘safe, clean energy’?

April 8, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

I do not watch much television, and yet I have seen these ads from Exxon-Mobil for what seems like a million times.

A century's supply of natural gas was right here in North America.
With technology, ExxonMobil is safely unlocking this important resource.

Oil Sands projects like Kearl and the Keystone Pipeline will create jobs,
while providing secure and reliable energy to North America.

And a series of ads like this one from energytomorrow.org featuring this actress/spokesperson a million times more:

With advanced drilling, we can access more domestic oil from a
single location, increasing our energy while decreasing our impact.

The money you are paying at the gas pump is being used for a saturation advertising campaign to influence public opinion for the oil & gas industry, the single most profitable business in the history of the world, for things not directly mentioned in these ads: eliminating the Environmental Protection Agency; rolling back provisions of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act; exempting their practices from the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund, and other environmental quality laws and regulations; continuing taxpayer subsidies for oil and gas; limiting their exposure to legal liability, etc.

At the state level, disturbing legislation like Pennsylvania's Act 13 gives gas companies the right to drill anywhere. Fracking Democracy: Why Pennsylvania's Act 13 May Be the Nation's Worst Corporate Giveaway (This is the first of two articles about Pennsylvania’s Act 13, perhaps the worst new environmental law in the nation, and the effort to stop it from taking effect. You can read the second one here.) The law strips rights from communities and individuals while imposing new statewide drilling rules that favor oil and gas companies.

If you have seen the documentary film Gasland, a film by Josh Fox, there is reason to doubt the "safe, clean energy" claims of the oil and gas companies. Our dwindling fresh water supplies are threatened with contamination by the "fracking" process. Fresh water is the one resource humans cannot live without. People have and wil kill each other over water.

There are two recent reports about the U.S. Geological Survey study that has linked oil and natural gas drilling operations to a rash of recent earthquakes from Alabama to the Northern Rockies. Scientists: Increase in US Earthquakes Almost Certainly Manmade:

As hydraulic fracturing has exploded onto the scene, it has increasingly been connected to earthquakes. Some quakes may be caused by the original fracking — that is, by injecting a fluid mixture into the earth to release natural gas (or oil). More appear to be caused by reinjecting the resulting brine deep underground.

ICYMI: Romney associated with Russell Pearce and Scott Walker

April 8, 2012

Posted by AzBlueMeanie: In case you missed it last week, Willard "Mittens" Romney was associated with Arizona's nativist and disgraced recalled Sen. Russell Pearce, and soon-to-be-recalled Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. In an interview last week, Russell Pearce said he's endorsing Mitt Romney in the November elections, in part because of Romney's position on illegal immigration. … Read more

The coming week…

April 8, 2012

By Craig McDermott, cross-posted from Random Musings   As usual, all agendas and calendars are subject to change without notice… Much like last week, there aren't many things scheduled down at the lege, not because things won't be happening, but because we've reached the point in the session where the main activity is going on … Read more