The uncritical coverage of Paul Ryan’s budget plan continues. In the new issue of Time magazine, Michael Crowley and Jay Newton-Small tell us that Ryan is “the new face of federal frugality”:
Just 41 years old, with jet black hair and a touch of Eagle Scout to him, the House Budget Committee chairman unveiled an ambitious package of huge budget cuts designed to dig the country out of its crippling debt crisis. For Ryan, reining in spending is nothing less than an act of patriotic valor.
Valor. Eagle Scout. Great hair!
Ryan’s critics have noted that his plan actually does very little about the “crippling debt crisis.” Brian Beutler at Talking Points Memo reports that the Congressional Budget Office’s score of the plan “finds that by the end of the 10-year budget window, public debt will actually be higher than it would be if the GOP just did nothing.”
The Time reporters add:
He may be a modern political star, but there’s still something a little old-fashioned about Ryan, right down to his crow’s-beak nose. Maybe it’s the premature seriousness that comes from finding your father dead of a heart attack when you were 16 and then helping to care for a grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease.
Now a married father of three, Ryan is a PowerPoint fanatic with an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents. “I love the field of economics,” Ryan says. “I have a knack for numbers. And I’ve just delved into this issue for my adult life, basically.”
Deep into the piece, after these tributes to Ryan’s wonkery, comes this parenthetical:
(He’s also been criticized for peddling fuzzy math and rosy projections. A Washington Post factcheck deemed his budget full of “dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures.”)
Huh. I thought he had “an almost unsettling fluency in the fine print of massive budget documents”?
By placing the factcheck so deep into the piece, and in parentheses, Time is all but saying that it doesn’t matter what the facts are about Paul Ryan’s plan. What’s more important is that he’s a patriotic number-cruncher.
With great hair!
ummm… the two statements are not in opposition as you suggest. The fine print of massive Federal budget documents is and always has been full of “dubious assertions, questionable assumptions and fishy figures.”!!!
Call Ryan the next water boy of the GOP – his assertions are mostly fabrication ( to be polite).
Supremely ironic to talk about Ryan caring for his dear old Grandma, as he sets about to screw so many others’, don’t you think?
Or, as it’s Time in question, maybe just a supreme indifference to reality.
The answer to all this budget deficit is reinstating the transaction tax on all stocks and securities trading, all commodities trading and all foreign exchange trading.
Do the numbers on this and you can reduce to the top income rate to 15% and eliminate all corporate income taxes, because most of them avoid it through loopholes anyway.
The tax of 2% on all trading taxes hurts noone and would not slow down the volume on any of the trading exchanges.
Get with it GOP and do something right for a change
It is well worth mentioning that Ryan’s proposal would take government money (your taxes) and pass it on to insurance companies who would make a profit. Medicare is much more efficient use of tax money because it is cheap to operate and not-for-profit. In the end, under Ryan’s plan, the taxpayer would end up paying more and getting less in return.
Leo Toribio
Pittsburgh, PA
http://corticalsense.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/federal-deficits/
Bob Robinson has hit the nail on the head. These paper transactions by the financial industry under much fraud are the root of the downturn in the economy not only in the United States but around in some 70% of the “advanced” countries of the world. By bundling paper that was essentially worthless and selling and reselling such paper around the world while getting them rated as safe investments literally trillions of value was lost to the public. Each transaction made huge profits for their own pocket while, at the same time, they discussed the “house of cards they were building”. These crooks need to bear the cost of this debacle and an easy way is to tax their transactions and make the ones responsible pay. A better way is to prosecute them for their fraud and conspiracy and put them in jail for long sentences so that others are warned that basic decency requires they not feather their own nest while gambling with funds that are not theirs. But unfortunately, the financial industry has bought President Obama and his buds (along with Congress and the Supreme? Court) long ago with campaign backing and funds.
What really stinks is the huge salaries and bonus packages they take home while running this Ponzi scheme. Meantime the MSM continues to paint the problem of the deficit as requiring a severe cut in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Pell grants, and most any other program that helps the old or the poor or even the middle class.
Each transaction made huge profits for their own pocket while, at the same time, they discussed the “house of cards they were building”. These crooks need to bear the cost of this debacle and an easy way is to tax their transactions and make the ones responsible pay.
Great comment, I would like to see Congress, yes all the rich millionaires who have the Free benefits that you and I don’t have pass a bill to join the American people. Cut, go ahead, but they must have the same healthcare, medicare, medical and social security as all of us. YOU watch their tactics change if they did. Why doesn’t some Democrats push the envelope and put this on the table. Have every Dem join the cause. Look at Paul Ryan blowing smoke, at a time when the budget is going back and forth. This is all planned by the GOP. Democrats do something. Tell the World your willing to be taxed 2% because you have millions, PUT your money where your mouth is GOP, Screw the American people, then YOU should be screwed too. Recall a Republican. Do something NOW
The “reporting” is offensive–simply a stroking puff piece that is way beneath the standards even on “Entertainment Tonight” or some other such program. The relentless need to make the insane sound sweet, or downright homey, is unnerving. Ryan’s a nincompoop enthralled by a morally bankrupt ideology, and the drones who wrote the drivel above are his bowing and scraping vassals. The sheer idiocy of all the above-quoted fawning nonsense (he’s doing “old-fashioned” yeoman budget work because his grandma died from Alzheimer’s–get this man’s story to Hollywood!) is so outrageous because it’s so commonplace. Years from now, after grinning lunatics and well-meaning fatheads and simpletons have done their ignorant yeoman best to wreck our democracy (all in the name of liberty and freedom for capital), many of these proud fools, secure with their government pensions and sinecures at “think-tanks” will sit securely in chaise lounges behind high barbed wire fences at beautiful country clubs whilst Mr. Crowley and Mr. Newton-Small (perfect names for their future work!) fetch them drinks and polish their nails.
Do people who “matter” see any critical writing to compare to the puff pieces? If we don’t find ways to enlarge the audience who are exposed to accurate reporting this venting will have no effect. What is the point of ranting to the choir about things we already know?
@Doug Latimer: I have a few conservative acquaintances who endured harrowing experiences as children and overcame their psychological barriers to become successful people. They found a lot of inner strength and drew upon it to pull themselves up. Their conservative values seem to arise from a belief that self-reliance was key to their personal growth; so everyone else would benefit from being left alone to deal with their problems, and everyone else should be capable of solving them too.
Now I think such a belief reflects ignorance of the subtle external forces that give us or deprive us of the assets we need to succeed — genes, early experiences, luck, institutional structures, etc. But knowing the conservatives in my life, I can easily see how Paul Ryan’s beliefs are consistent with the very real reality of his experience.
Social Security (and Medicare) work well because of their low expenses and no profit margins. The government may have a few faults, but it delivers low B.S. and brutal efficiency when its bureaucracy is used to deliver monetary benefits to deserving citizens. These citizens may do better using private investments, but there were too many poor and hungry people during the Great Depression (following the 1920’s economic boom) when Social Security was established as a government-run retirement insurance program.
A battered and bloated system it is — our “national health service.” As long as I’ve worked in it the math has always been a little fuzzy.
But Ryan’s and his GOP and Repugnicrat allies in Congress still have to run their “cost-effective” health care reform past Big Pharma and Big Health Care. For once, watching C-span will be more than watching paint dry. The new “reform” agenda before Congress will undoubtedly be the most interesting clash of special interests in years.
Medical Centers know unequivocally that they’ll be expected to pick up the tab for treating the uninsured and under-insured. Who else can? And — unlike yesteryear — a lot fewer people can hock their homes as a last resort to pay for the extended primary or secondary health care for their loved ones. One million homes a year disappear from the primary housing market. And we all remember just how well people did in the sub-prime mortgage market before the Great Bailout.
More and more, job seniority and security have vanished — even across class lines. The “disposable” worker never gets sick. Meanwhile, unions have rolled over and played dead over two-tiered pay scales in manufacturing — just to get control of their members’ health insurance.
It really is a mess. Especially when the MSM laps up the bullshit from Ryan and his co-horts and beg for more.
Do Ryan and his cronies even live in the moment? It’s hard to believe they do. Many retired workers already get nothing on top of their meagre social security and Medicare benefits. Their pension and health care plans were swept away in favor of boosting stock prices and keeping the company “competitive.”
What a crock of shit.
Well i noticed the hardest hitting lib attacks came about an hour after his budget was released.And that says it all.No time to study it.One of the worst was released 20 minutes after he let fly.That aside….As always the devil is in the details.It will take quite some time to run the numbers.My feeling is a little like Bill” from mars”.At this time it is fantasy.We have created ,and are creating an entitlement society.Getting rid of that system and mentality is a tough nut.Any budget that kicks that, is going to get kicked right back in the face of (Paul).I look at this budget as a shot across the bow of our current fiscal fandangale.It is throwing serious numbers in what I consider a not completely serious attempt.
Look back on Obamas campain promises.Cut the deficit by half. Balance the budget.Bla bla bla bla bla.Ok he was found to of been wrong….not serious…or a liar.Dems idea of a budget is 6 words…KICK THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD.The republicans have in effect said “halt no further with that dang can”.And they want to start kicking it back up the hill.Sadly this budget is three weak words.ITS A START
to michael e.:
“Look back on Obamas campai(g)n promises…”
OK, I’m looking back at his campaign promises and see the parallel promises made by the opposition:
“Our job is to make Obama a one-term President.”
To that end, everything he’s attempted has been blocked by the Republicans or has not been adequately supported by the Democrats (who seemed to be bargaining from a position of weakness even when in the majority).
Could you do any better? I doubt it, and neither could I.
Can our media, including (or especially) Time provide un-distorted and un-biased reporting? No; they have a history of making themselves irrelevant.
How can anyone who works for a living support the Republican Party that attacks your way of life with their every breath?
Are you better off now, after the past 30 years of attacks on working people by (mostly) the Republican Party?
Sadly, every bit of progress in this once-great Country has been made over the fierce objections and obstructions of the so-called Conservatives…
Oh, I almost forgot to mention: the Republicans have proved they can’t govern (yes, you may characterize the following as a “screed”): Eisenhower Administrations hands-off policies allowed the CIA and “military-industrial complex” to grow unimpeded, then he “warned” us about them when turning over the Government to President Kennedy….. Nixon drove himself from office because of his and his Administration’s criminal activities; Gerald Ford pardoned criminal Nixon for his actions; the oblivious Ronald Reagan was propped up by his handlers who together with him allowed the Iran-Contra crimes (anti-American, anti-Constitution); Bush the first, deeply embedded with the CIA from his early years, covered up and obstructed investigations into crimes like the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit; and Bush the second, with his handler Cheney committed war crimes….
calling the ryan “budget” a fantasy is an insult to fantasy.
it’s not serious and neither is he, but our mainstream media continues to find some the newest republican flavoe of the month to label as such. scott brown being a recent example.
any discussion of the ryan “budget” that doesn’t include the word “unicorns” isn’t being serious.
not only is Time and every other mainstream media outlet giving the American people false reporting on Mr. Ryan, but I was aghast to hear NPR do the same shallow discussion of Ryan last night (4/8/2011).
We are going to let this man continue to gut the middle class, pour money into wars, all because he is a fitness buff and he proposed to his wife at a fishing hole?????
Amen to Pelle Lindbergh. The Republicans’ new motto should be: Let ’em eat cake.
It’s interesting to see how the discourse has changed almost completely to ways of cutting spending after the tax break for the wealthy was passed. To pay off debt, the government needs revenue. A flat income tax rate on individuals and corporate persons, without special breaks for select few, could fund the government and reduce the debt. It could reduce the tax burden for 98% of individuals.
@Jedna DvatÅ┞¢i and @nancy dunnampierce
I, too, was astounded to hear NPR’s “glossy fashion magazine” description of Rep. Ryan, but I did pick up two pieces of information that help to illuminate Rep. Ryan’s beliefs on one hand and his lack of appreciation of how the federal social safety net helped him on the other:
1. His so-called “self”-reliance was enabled, in large measure, by Social Security benefits that he began to receive at age 16, when his father died; and
2. He is a devotee of the writings of libertarian extraordinaire, Ayn Rand. I have no doubt that his wholehearted subscription to the teachings of Ms. Rand are reflected in his proposed 2012 budget. Maybe he doesn’t know that Ms. Rand, in her later years, was also a recipient of Social Security?
John, A flat tax is unfair, it is a regressive tax that was removed and replaced with progressive taxation. The tax system that allows some to pay less than others because they have the money to hire high paid tax accountants to find way to pay less is also wrong. Congress will probably not change the system that allows this. 7 out of the top 10 highest earning Congressmen are DEMOCRATS and they are all multi-millionaires.
Ryan is a joke.
“Ryan says. “I have a knack for numbers. And I’ve just delved into this issue for my adult life, basically.””
His method is to shift the burden from the rich to the poor and middle class. He wants to tax the rich at 25%, not 35%. His plan shows that 1.2 trillion dollars will go to prop up the tax cuts of 1.3 trillion dollars for the rich. Guess where it will come from? The elderly, the poor, the disabled, the sick, and anyone who is not rich.
He is no math wizard, or if he is, then it is worse than we thought. That would mean he is being deliberate in dishing out the pain to the less fortunate.
The top 1% has 40% of the net worth of the US. That is 40% of 54.6 trillion dollars and comes to 21.84 trillon dollars. Taxing just these people an added $550,000 would come to 1.65 trillion dollars, which is more more than the yearly deficit. And they would still be multi-millionaires and billionaires.
The top 5% has 62% of the 54.6 trillion dollar net worth which comes to 33.85 trillion dollars leaving for the remainder of 294,500,000 people a mere 20.74 trillion dollars. These 5% can afford to contribute an extra 1 million dollars in tax. If they did, it would come to 15.5 trillion dollars…huh…that would be enough to erase the accumulated 14 trillion dollars plus the yearly deficit of 1.5 trillion dollars. And they would still be millionaires and billionaires!!!
If Ryan has such a “knack for numbers” than he very well knows this. Then why is he so against getting taxes from those who have so much and will not be hurt by giving more? Okay, some dick is going to say, hey that isn’t fair, this money is not the government’s, it belongs to hard workers that give jobs to people and they deserve to keep what they make. To these people, I say, that they would not have been able to become so rich if they did not rely on the government infrastructure and its pro corporate policies. Hell, the so called miscreants and idiots, as portrayed by Ayn Rand, in society just bailed these elite “hard workers who deserve their hard earned money” out with no stipulations about where the money was to go, which means they are back to the same old risks and irresponsible betting that tanked the economy in 2008.
There has been a concerted effort on the part of corporations to pay less taxes for many years.
The figures are from the office of Management and the Budget in the White House:
Over the last 65 years corporations have shouldered less and less of the tax burden ranging from paying 147% above the individual in 1943, to individuals paying from 200% more to a maximum in 1988 of 424% more than the corporations. And yet they lobby more and more every year for a lower tax burden. All the while, hiding their funds in tax havens. America is a tax haven for the very rich.
Tax Year Individual income tax Corporate income tax
1943 6,505 9,557 individuals paid 68% of corporate rate.
1948 19,319 9,678 individuals paid 200% of corporate rate.
1968 68,726 28,665 individuals paid 239% of corporate rate.
1988 401,181 94,508 individuals paid 424% of corporate rate.
2008 1,145,747 304,346 individuals paid 377% of corporate rate.
If there is anyone who believes that the corporate press who belong in the top 5% are going to give a story a fair hearing then they are deluded. There has been a centrist bias for a long time out of fear dregged up by conservative no-thinktanks that there is a liberal bias. It shows that if you say something emphatically and often enough, even if it is wrong, it will take hold and become true. The conservatives have been distorting the meaning of words for a while. Take Newt for example:
In 1990 Gingrich’s political action committee, GOPAC, sends out a memo titled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control” to several thousand Republican candidates running for state and local offices. It includes a list of words they should use to describe Democrats:
decay, failure (fail) collapse(ing) deeper, crisis, urgent(cy), destructive, destroy, sick, pathetic, lie, liberal, they/them, unionized bureaucracy, “compassion” is not enough, betray, consequences, limit(s), shallow, traitors, sensationalists, endanger, coercion, hypocricy, radical, threaten, devour, waste, corruption, incompetent, permissive attitude, destructive, impose, self-serving, greed, ideological, insecure, anti-(issue): flag, family, child, jobs; pessimistic, excuses, intolerant, stagnation, welfare, corrupt, selfish, insensitive, status quo, mandate(s) taxes, spend (ing) shame, disgrace, punish (poor…) bizarre, cynicism, cheat, steal, abuse of power, machine, bosses, obsolete, criminal rights, red tape, patronage.
Oddly enough, most of these words can be used to describe conservatives or Rethugnuts as I like to call them.
Sorry for such a long post.
credit where it’s due– michael grunwald at time.com writes this:
You may not like Congressman Paul Ryan’s budget plan, but you must admit that it’s courageous. You simply must. By order of the Washington establishment, you may question whether Ryan’s plan is sensible or humane or even remotely honest, but you have to confess that it is undeniably an extraordinary act of bravery, or else pundits will beat the confession out of you with swoony prose.
To New York Times columnist David Brooks, Ryan’s 73-page budget outline â┚¬” it’s not an actual budget â┚¬” is “the most comprehensive and courageous budget reform proposal any of us have seen in our lifetimes.” Here at Time.com, Joe Klein wrote that it’s “without question, an act of political courage,” while Fareed Zakaria declared that “Ryan’s plan is deeply flawed, but it is courageous.” The Economist agreed: “Credit where credit is due; whatever you think of Paul Ryan’s budget, it is politically gutsy.”
This is just weird. Ryan is a conservative Republican committee chairman in a conservative Republican caucus. He was reelected last year with 68% of the vote. Sorry, Joe, but I do question whether it was really courageous for him to propose huge tax cuts for the rich, squeeze health care for the poor, and promise that nobody over 55 â┚¬” the heart of the conservative Republican base â┚¬” will have to make any sacrifices. I just don’t understand what’s so brave about fuzzy math in the service of Tea Party ideology.
——————
Supposedly, Ryan is brave because he’s willing to start an “adult conversation” about the deficit and entitlements in Washington. But politicians talk about the deficit and entitlements all the time.
Some close observers of American politics may recall that President Obama proposed a health care bill last year; it included half a billion dollars in Medicare cuts, which Republicans attacked as vicious rationing that would pull the plug on Grandma. I don’t recall a lot of David Brooks commentary about the courage of that plan, even though, unlike Ryan’s, it had a chance of becoming law.
Oh, wait: It did become law. And the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that repealing it would add $230 billion to the deficit.
Needless to say, Ryan’s budget would repeal it. Courage!
————–
whole thing
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,2063967,00.html
“a touch of Eagle Scout” if I remember correctly Boy Scouts help little old ladies cross street not push them out into traffic.
Jedna, I’d consider such thinking on the part of those persons to be delusional, to be kind.
Whatever their own experience – and we don’t know that Ryan didn’t take advantage of some form of gummint assistance in helping his grandmother – these persons would have to be blind to not see the desperate need for these programs, don’t you think?
It betrays a void in their humanity, an inability to empathize, to place themselves in another’s situation. Perhaps there are exceptions, but I’d also characterize it as wilful. It’s a matter of refusing, rather than being unable, to see.
That’s the generous explanation. For politicians like Ryan, though, this isn’t about blindness, wilful or not. It’s about consciously putting the lives of others at risk for personal gain, and in the service of a vicious ideology that celebrates social Darwinism, and denigrates the values of cooperation and compassion, the very qualities which give our existence meaning.
Michael “Look back on Obamas campain promises.Cut the deficit by half. Balance the budget.Bla bla bla bla bla”
—————-
There is no evidence that Obama made either of those promises….in fact, it was the other candidate who promised a balance budget.
NYTimes Oct 29, 2008
Presidental candidate Obama has vowed to reduce the deficit and put it on a path to balance. He also promises an expensive effort to make health care insurance more widely available, a raft of other spending programs and tax cuts for most families and small businesses. He would raise taxes on the wealthiest households to help pay for his health care plans.
McCain, the Republican nominee, has proposed bigger tax cuts. He has also promised more in spending cuts, but he has not specified where most of them would come from. Even now that the financial crisis has given rise to one bailout package and prompted both candidates to call for billions more in stimulus spending, McCain has stuck by his promise to balance the budget by the end of his term, a pledge that fiscal analysts call unachievable.
————
Presidential debate Oct 15, 2008
Bob Schieffer Do either of you think you can balance the budget in four years? You have said previously you thought you could, Sen. McCain.
McCain: Sure I do. And let me tell you…
Schieffer: You can still do that?
McCain: Yes…. I will balance our budgets and I will get them and I will…
Schieffer: In four years?
McCain: … reduce this — I can — we can do it with this kind of job creation of energy independence. Now, look, Americans are hurting tonight and they’re angry and I understand that, and they want a new direction. I can bring them in that direction by eliminating spending.
——————-
At that point McCain goes off on a tangent and attacks Obama, so Obama responds to them and doesn’t say anything about balancing the budget.
@Doug: If empathy is that raw emotional “feeling with another” — I hope I reading your argument fairly here — then doesn’t empathy have its limits in your ethical calculus and mine? I can put myself in the place of a dog who wants to run into traffic, of a child squirming in a dentist’s chair, or of a drug addict seeking a fix; I think I can connect with the anguish of each. Yet wouldn’t you admit it’d not be good for any of them if I fulfilled their wishes and immediately relieved them of their pains?
You may be right. He may just not care. Maybe he’s not even be aware of what he’s doing. Or he may just be doing what he thinks is best for others — I hope I’ve demonstrated that it’s plausible. I don’t know how to tell what his feelings and motivations are, though I may have my suspicions. But I can definitely argue that this “tough love” approach is patriachal and hypocritical, that it will do more damage than good, etc. So I think it’s best for us to criticize actions instead of motives.
Jedna, in each of those hypotheticals, and every other situation, empathy – at least how I define it – would compel me to act in the best interests of the other, as I understood them.
That would mean restraining the dog, allowing the dentist to do her job so the child’s dental health is maintained, and getting the addict help.
So it’s not a raw emotional reaction, but rather one of compassion combined with reason to effect a humane result.
I can’t speak to your acquaintances’ motives, although I too have known many conservatives – I grew up in the South in the ’60s (another term could be substituted for “conservative” here, but be that as it may) – and it wasn’t a misplaced but sincere desire to help others that guided their actions, I can assure you.
Again, that’s not meant to be a blanket description. Ignorance plays its part, but in many cases that ignorance is wilfully embraced, and that entails responsibility for its consequences in my eyes.
In the case of someone in Ryan’s position, it simply isn’t possible for ignorance, wilful or not, to play a role. He knows as well as you or I the impact his actions will have on folks in dire straits, and he could care less. For all I know, he has wet dreams about their anguish.
I say this as one who will feel that pain directly, who receives a minor, but important, amount of assistance, which will no longer be available to me should his plans come to fruition.
Of course, Dear Misleader’s path to “hope and change” is the slightly lesser of two extreme evils, so this is a bipartisan bloodbath, isn’t it?
My overarching point is that we need to do the mensch thing, big time, if our time on this rock is to mean a goddamn thing.
Am I a hypocrite in saying that? Of course. In a relative sense, I may be better than some, but I’m still a piece of shit compared to what I need to be.
All I can do is try to act as my conscience demands and my courage allows, and never be satisfied with the limits of either.
If I can, at the end, honestly feel I made a good faith effort to do that, I can say, “Stick a fork in me. I did what I could, and I’m done.”
And that’s be the best way I know of to go out.
I have been reading all these blogs.Lots of misinformation and wrong headed thinking.AND….lots of good perceptive insights.But i don’t know if there are 5 words that can be rubbed together that say it like it is.HUGE CUTS MUST BE MADE!.The republicans have just let Obama slip by again, and should be ashamed(.Lot of time wasted if we just have to vote this lot out as well).Everyone is afraid to say we are broke I suppose…..So massive cuts, plus massive curtailing of government spending, plus igniting the economy to recreate wealth,all to pay down this crushing dept.And a simplification/reworking of the tax system towards paying for (and down) the endless government f#%k ups without destroying productivity,and motivation.Of course with an eye toward fairness.Do you see anything but baby steps?
TIME is still in business…and still pushing tripe? Lots of “wrong-headed thinking”.
@michael e: Really, we’re broke? Crushing debt? IF you were serious about this so-called
scenario, the tbag crowd would be pushing the following adult steps..not baby steps:
* an end to throwing tax $ into the black hole in Iraq
* an end to throwing tax$ into the black hole in Afghanistan
* no further involvement in Libya
* no tax breaks for the top 2%
* ending tax breaks for oil companies
* ending tax breaks for corporate farming
* ensuring corporations doing business in the US, i.e. GE, pay their fair share of tax
*Redo our entire corporate tax code.
*Raise the rate on dividends and capitol gains [and make those taxes progressive].
*Raise the top marginal rates.
*Raise the inheritance tax [and make it progressive].
*Add a micro tax to all financial investment transactions.
*Cap the home mortgage deduction.
*Allow the government to negotiate bulk drug prices for Medicare part D
*Cut defense spending
**And most importantly, get serious about capping medical costs. That’s the number one factor in rising Medicare spending and the future “crushing debt.”
James Fallows discusses both “bravery” and “seriousness” while taking some whacks at Ryan’s “budget” pinata.
1) A plan to deal with budget problems that says virtually nothing about military spending is neither brave nor serious. That would be enough to disqualify it from the “serious” bracket, but there’s more.
2) A plan that proposes to eliminate tax loopholes and deductions, but doesn’t say what any of those are, is neither brave nor serious. It is, instead canny — or cynical, take your pick. The reality is that many of these deductions, notably for home-mortgage interest payments, are popular and therefore risky to talk about eliminating.
3) A plan that exempts from future Medicare cuts anyone born before 1957 — about a quarter of the population, which includes me — is neither brave nor serious. See “canny or cynical: take your pick” above.
4) A plan to reconcile revenue and spending, which rules out axiomatically any conceivable increase in tax rates, is neither brave nor serious. Rather, it is exactly as brave and serious as some opposite-extreme proposal that ruled out axiomatically any conceivable cut in entitlement spending or discretionary accounts.
5) A plan to reduce the federal deficit by granting big tax reductions to the highest-income Americans, at a time when their tax rates are very low by historic standards and and their share of the national income is extremely high, and when middle-class job creation is our main economic challenge, is neither brave nor serious. See “cynical,” above.
6) A plan that identifies rising health-care costs as the main problem in public spending, but avoids altogether the question of how to contain those costs, is neither brave nor serious. This is a longer and more complicated discussion (see below*); but I submit that the more closely anyone looks at the Ryan plan, the less “serious” it will seem on this extremely important front.
7) A plan that reduces, among other things, research on future energy sources and technologies by about 85% may be “brave,” but it’s also crazy and short-sighted.
I could go on, but I’ll just say that Ryan’s plan utterly avoids the challenge of “bending the curve” of medical costs, which “serious” people have struggled with for years.
Instead it relies on two nostrums:
(a) The myth that letting people comparison shop for health-insurance policies will hold costs down, despite exactly zero evidence from the real world that this has worked;
(b) The idea that decreeing lower spending for older people will hold down overall cost growth, rather than just apportioning it on economic grounds and denying it, “death panel” style, to people who run out of money.
Medicare costs and health spending generally have to come down. But this is not a “serious” step toward controlling them.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2011/04/the-brave-and-serious-mr-ryan/237008/
The Salt Lake City Tribune peeks at Ryan’s fuzzy numbers and concludes “Ryan plan would destroy Medicare”
Paul Ryan’s â┚¬Ã…“Path to Prosperityâ┚¬Ã‚ runs through various fantasy lands, envisioning that large tax cuts, mostly for the rich, and huge spending cuts, mostly in programs that benefit the poor and middle class, will lead to unprecedented booms in hiring, homebuilding and other economic activities.
Ryan’s plan is mostly a means to shelter those who have already benefited from a half-century of fiscal irrationality and dump the burden on those who are to come later. Under Ryan’s plan, traditional Medicare will only be available to people who are already on it or less than 10 years away. Ensuing generations would instead be given government vouchers and tossed out into the very health insurance market that has gobbled huge portions of the private economy and given us the worst health-care outcomes in the developed world.
Ryan daren’t touch the benefits of people already, or soon to be, on Medicare, partly because it’s too late for them to arrange an alternative, but mostly because those are the age cohorts with the highest percentage of active voters.
Ryan’s plan is anchored in an open contempt for anyone who isn’t wealthy enough to completely take care of themselves in their old age. He describes Medicare as some kind of cushy â┚¬Ã…“hammockâ┚¬Ã‚ that people laze about in, when in fact it has been the difference between moderate comfort and grinding poverty for generations of retired Americans.
It sounds all too much like the view expressed by Utah Senate President Michael Waddoups the other day when he denigrated unemployment benefits as an attractive alternative to working, when in fact it is a red-tape nightmare that barely keeps the wolf from the door.
Ryan reasonably criticizes Obama’s Affordable Care Act as doing far too little to cut health care costs. But the Ryan plan does nothing to cut costs. Instead it shifts them to future generations of retirees, placing them in a situation where virtually all of their Social Security benefits â┚¬” if there are any â┚¬” will be eaten up by health insurance premiums.
Couple all of that with giant tax cuts, the key ingredient in the budget deficits we already have, and Ryan’s plan is a path to something. But not something that most people would recognize as prosperity.
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I’ll admit I admire their restraint in not simply calling this plan by its obvious name “Class War.”
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/opinion/51586147-82/ryan-plan-already-care.html.csp
Helen and Max….I left the table clear for innovative ideas to help turn the corner toward a more profitable future. But you seem to be treading the same tired water.Tax the rich, and spend spend spend. Hell …Kill the rich.Kill the profitable corporations.Fund fund fund an entitlement society(with a massive government). Create anger and hatred at anyone who makes more than you.One word…..Non sustainable
As a tea party member I would say everything is on the table(in accordance with constitutional rules of course).Even hirer taxes.But also a possible massive CUT in taxes.Lets say cut corporate taxes from 36 to 19% toward the creation of jobs.Why do we have damn near the highest tax rates(corp)in the world?Is not the goal to make this country thee most free market business friendly country on the planet?The fear is not people making and creating massive wealth.That is the goal.The recreation of wealth.Please look at New York. Mass exodus of the wealthy. Some would say near 50%. With a correlating crash in the tax base. . Liberalism in action.I remember when Rush left New York.The gov said good riddance.No you utter moron. Not good riddance.Is this the ultimate goal?Like minded people believing in a nanny state entitlement society unable to provide for it because they have driven out those who produce?Those with the money to help the tax base?I believe this idea will soon be transcended.
Anyone noticing Obama taking credit lately for cutting taxes.Also for pandering to tea party wishes?Pa-lease.Weak attempt to pull independents back”.WE” dont believe him for a moment
uh, Mike…I didn’t propose a single spending increase…..and proposed a number of spending cuts.
I certainly didn’t suggest we kill the rich or provoke hated toward them…..
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In 1986 Reagan set the corporate tax rate at 34% in return for dropping the top rates on individuals.
Currently the effective rate corporations pay is 25%, with many major corporations paying less than 10%.
Ironically, one American company that does pay the whole 35% is Wal*Mart. Doesn’t seem to be effecting their abilities to create jobs.
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PS
Six of the top 30 of America’s wealthiest Zipcodes are in New York City with at least 5 more in their metro area.
http://wealth.mongabay.com/tables/100_income_zip_codes-10000.html
Bit more….. Check how the AMT did in catching the so called rich. This weak expect Obama to come out with a revolutionary idea never before seen as a reply to the republican budget.He is going to (wait for it)……… raise taxes on the wealthy!!!!So that it. Half his presidency gone by. And thats it.Christ
How about he think about another problem. Gas prices. Heading north. Five dollars a gallon in Burbank today. Eight in England! His solution…….. Destroy the coal industry.A 50% drop in refining capacity of gas since he took over.Stop drilling to the point that a Fed Judge is holding his labor dept. in contempt for refusing permits(and taking credit for the few dwindling successes that were Bush holdovers)And of course nuclear is now on hold. Letting loose his green hounds for natural gas exploration… How does he expect us to create energy?Windmill …. solar?What?Are hybrid cars going to save us?This is a man consumed to the point of complete inaction by his special interest handlers.
The AMT was designed by Reagan as part of the ’86 “tax reform” to shift tax burdens from the top to the middle class and it worked.
“This legislation expanded the AMT from a law for untaxed rich investors to one refocused on middle class Americans who had children, owned a home, or lived in high tax states. This parallel tax system hit middle class Americans the hardest by reducing their deductions and effectively raising their taxes. Meanwhile, the highest income earners (with incomes exceeding $1,000,000) were proportionately less affected, thereby shifting the tax burden away from the richest 0.5% to poorer Americans.”
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The reason gas prices are rising: Libya, commodities speculation and the weak dollar. Besides, increased drilling in the Gulf will not produce sufficent quantities of oil to make any meaningful dent in crude prices.
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We don’t get much gasoline from coal at the moment and the shale extraction in the Bakkan range in North Dakota is increasing as I type.
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The reason nuclear power is back on hold [other than recent events in Japan] is because of all the recent natural gas discoveries. Until the cost of electricity produced from coal and gas rises to the point where it would match the cost from nuclear generation it’s doa. Wall Street has zero interest in nuclear power plant investing. Not to mention there are few companies with the cash available to fund public utilities projects on this scale.
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There is no evidence that there has been “A 50% drop in refining capacity of gas since he took over.” I’m assuming you mean U.S. capabilities. That’s simply wrong.
However, according to the Energy Information Administration, the number of operable refineries in the United States has been reduced by more than 50 percent over the last two plus DECADES(there were 302 refineries in 1982, today there are 143). Improvements in efficiency have resulted in almost no reduction in refining capacity (17.9 million barrels per day in 1982, compared to 17.4 million bpd).
It’s obviously easier to somehow blame Obama for all this, but reality won’t cooporate.
David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s Office of Management and Budget Director takes a look at Ryan’s unicorn filled feverdream :
“It doesn’t address in any serious or courageous way the issue of the near and medium-term deficit. I think the biggest problem is revenues. It is simply unrealistic to say that raising revenue isn’t part of the solution. It’s a measure of how far off the deep end Republicans have gone with this religious catechism about taxes.”
The Reagan Miracle continued…….
The tax cuts for the rich boosted their income, especially from stocks. Unskilled workers, meanwhile, saw their jobs disappear, reinforcing the widening of inequality which was one hallmark of the Reagan era.
Average hourly earnings for manual workers actually fell, while average household income was only maintained because more women went out to work.
Benefit levels for the poor, already low, were frozen……
Those were the days.
“Trickle-down” wasn’t a complete success though….Only the bottom 40% found themselves worse off at the end of Ronnie’s era than they were when it started.
Bu$hco’s “trickle-down on steriods” did much better….the bottom 90% found themselves worse off at the end of W’s eight years than they were when it started.
Nice work, Helen. All true, all outrageous. Of course Ryan’s plan will destroy Medicare . . . that’s the whole idea, isn’t it? Next up–Social Security. Watch for our socialist president to sadly (oh so sadly) force himself to make cuts there, because those mean and crazy Republicans are making him do it. They’re holding the budget hostage! Wow! Why, just today “spokesman” Jay Carney, his voice a-tremble, warned that those mean bastards better not play games with the debt ceiling (read: you better not make the president cave again!), or it will be “Armageddon.” Does the President and his handlers really not understand, at this late date, who and what they’re dealing with? The Reactionaries and insane tea-baggers would be crazy to not threaten Armageddon–they know the Conciliator in Chief will cave, every time. As long as the President can say to himself that he “brought the sides together” and a “deal” has been struck, the country will continue to be raped by the sickie boys (and girls!) on the Right. Very, very bad.
Michael e: “And of course nuclear is now on hold.”
I have insider information that shows that Obama caused the Japanese earthquake and tsunami just so he could shut down the nuclear industry here in the U.S.
He even figured out how to get gasoline prices (in Britian!) to go up by attacking nuclear power.
He IS the messiah!
The shrill Paul Krugman, quoting West Virginia’s finest, John Cole, has a few words to describe the media’s response to Ryan’s hope, that very very brave and serious “and a pony” budget
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I’ve been reading various â┚¬Ã…“news analysesâ┚¬Ã‚ of the Ryan plan, and I’m feeling depressed. In the past, I’ve complained about false equivalence â┚¬” of â┚¬Ã…“views differ on shape of the planetâ┚¬Ã‚ type reporting. But what I’m seeing here is worse: supposedly objective, even-handed reporting that actually prejudges the issue according to current conventional wisdom.
The stories I have in mind say things like this: â┚¬Ã…“There are those who criticize the Ryan plan, saying that it’s too radical/goes too far.â┚¬Ã‚Â
As a card-carrying member of Those Who, I protest. This is just wrong.
People like me don’t say that the Ryan plan is too radical; we say that it’s a fraud.
The spending cuts are largely fake, either because they’re just magic asterisks or because they wouldn’t survive politically; the revenue estimates are fake, because they combine huge tax cuts with vague assurances that extra revenue will be found by closing loopholes. There’s no there there â┚¬” except for big tax cuts for the rich and pain for the poor.
All I can think here is that reporters are so deep into the Beltway conventional wisdom that this is a Bold, Serious Plan that they just tune out the people saying that no, it’s not.
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And what makes this especially bad is the fact John Cole points out, that the people praising the plan don’t seem to have actually read it:
The plan is bold! It is serious! It took courage! It re-frames the debate! The ball is in Obama’s court! Very wonky! It is a game-changer! Did I mention it is serious? The math demands it! We need to have shared sacrifice! This puts us on the right course! It’s serious and bold!
Read any one of their pieces the last couple of days, and it was like conventional wisdom/villager mad libs. Actually reading the bill, realizing it isn’t serious, it isn’t bold, that it won’t set us on the right path because it gives away as much in taxes as it cuts from the needy, realizing the only people sacrificing are the poor while the well-off are lavished with trillions in tax cuts- well, doing that and actually thinking, like Bruce Bartlett, James Fallows, Paul Krugman, Dean Baker, and others managed to do, that would be just way too much work.
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I like that phrase, conventional wisdom mad libs.
Anyway, no, I don’t think the plan goes too far. I think it’s disingenuous and fraudulent. And the reason I think that is that I have actually done the math.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/a-word-from-those-who/
Im trying to somehow fathom how all of you (it seems)are trying to prove how life has improved under Obama’s stewardship, as compared to lets say Reagan.I see in these blogs this falsehood that things have not gotten horribly worse in our energy problems(Helen uses the few positive things going on in the gas industry without realizing everything she mentioned is simply a Bush spillover),and i am amazed at the flaunting of stats that are just nice paint- on a train wreck.Stats Helen states were used against Reagan in the elections.Swept aside.He won in landslides.It did not work then- yet you think reframing it will work to change the perception of people today.Yawn yawn yawn…
So i will leave it open.Prove how things are better in any way shape or form today -and attribute it to BAM(and forget the blame game).Good friggin luck.
Tim kind of agree with you.Obama is the Concitiator in chief.And he does cave.But dont think he is any better than the Republicans.They promised a measly 100 bil in cuts and accepted 35.I know you hate the tea party but they at least are standing for real change.Ryans budget is a dud,and we know it.Obamas is a joke(and you know it).Now he wants to raise the dept ceiling.The country is being raped.Not by the right or left alone……But by stupidity in this government.
Cher Obama is no Messiah.He is no evil wraith sent to cause mischief upon the world either.But sadly he is no President.Just a man so far out of his depth that he is dangerous in the job. Ineffectual,uninspired,and unqualified.It reminds me of a car mechanic having a go at brain surgery.Well intentioned Im sure…. but could you please remove that sledge hammer from my patients Medulla Oblongata.My feeling is( your constituents belief in you aside)that it could have a negative effect ON HIS LIFE!!
“Please look at New York. Mass exodus of the wealthy. Some would say near 50%. ”
This is simply false: that 50% number was pulled out of thin air. Most of the migration out of NYC has been middle and working class people because the city is simply too expensive for most people to live in [or raise a family].
NY Times 3/18/09
Between 2003 and 2005 New York City imposed a temporary surcharge on incomes of more than $100,000.
While the city lost residents in 2005, according to a 2007 study of population data published by the city comptroller, William C. Thompson Jr., households with incomes of $250,000 and higher were the least likely to leave.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/nyregion/19leave.html
“Im trying to somehow fathom how all of you (it seems)are trying to prove how life has improved under Obama’s stewardship, as compared to lets say Reagan.”
Uh, nobody’s making that argument.
The question that matters “Is the economy today better than the one Obama inherited?’
The answer to that is, of course, yes. GDP is up, job creation is up, unemployment is down……
PS
It’s no wonder you don’t like statistics since you cite fake ones on a regular basis here.
“Ryans budget is a dud and we know it.’
That’s an interesting admission since it’s the tea party/Heritage Foundation idea of a fantastic fiscal blueprint.
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The consensus on cutting spending in the middle of a fragile recovery is that it’s extremly risky and could bring on a double dip recession.
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Refusing to raise the debt ceiling would cause the U.S. to default on various bond payment obligations. The fallout would be disasterous.
And this isn’t just Obama’s call…. “Rep. Frank Lucas (Okla.) predicted there will be “gamesmanship” between the two parties over lifting the $14.3 trillion debt limit, but said both sides must come to an agreement to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt. ”
PS
The only thing that makes our President “dangerous in the job” is when he listens to Republicans on the economy. Their track record has been to be wrong about everything.
Points for consistancy on their part, i guess
PPS
If you see nothing wrong with using coal and/or natural gas, then our energy picture hasn’t gotten worse in the last few years, and even if it had [which it didn’t] nothing Obama did caused the change.
The Reagan Miracle as explained by Anne Laurie and Tom Levenson:
The enormous increase in debt under Reagan, marks the point when we first were confronted with the great tax cut lieâ┚¬”Âwhat I think of as that huge steaming pile of that which emerges from the south end of a north facing horse captured beneath the Laffer Curve.
Reagan inherited a debt level of 32.5% of GDP from President Carter. His tax cuts and profligate spending left us owing 53.1% of GDP at the end of his second term, and the Bush extension pushed that total to 66.1%.
Bill Clinton’s combination of tax increases and constraint on the rate of government growth (and, for the most part, a policy of minimal military recklessness) enabled him to leave office having pushed the debt back down to 56.4%â┚¬”Âwhich model of prudent, small â┚¬Ã…“câ┚¬Ã‚ fiscal conservatism was so wholly abandoned by Bush the Minimal that he left office having blown the debt up to unprecedented heights: 83.4%.
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2011/04/09/children-with-matches-playing-in-the-powder-magazine/#more-65788
â┚¬”Ââ┚¬”Ââ┚¬”Ââ┚¬”–
In the interest of equal time, I will point out that chunks of the increase in the debt that belongs to President Obama was caused by jis decisions to keep the wars Bush started going and extending the Bu$hco tax cuts on the top earners.
The other big chunk was the decreased tax revenues and increased safety net spending caused by Bu$hco’s collapse.
Helen I disagree with all your points but one.Liberal claptrap.I would say conservatism has always worked and liberalism always failed.You would see the opposite.One thing though….The debt ceiling.If it is blocked im not sure everything will be honkey dory.The things you noted may happen,and worse.In my talks 5 years ago I often spoke about the collapse of Fanny and Freddy,followed by bank collapses.Home and corporate mortgages. Uncertain energy and finally a forced raise in the debt ceiling that could result in the loss of the dollar as the world standard.All these things I blamed on specific developments from the cancer of liberalism.All these things and more I have not (sadly) been wrong on .You would of said two things during those talks .First it is not liberalism that is at fault.And second…..it will never happen and I am nuts.Well I do feel sad that those things that seemed so obvious -we in conservatism could not stop.Now we will stop what we can.Notice we are not really arguing at cross purposes as much as it would seem.You can try to prove that Carter ,Clinton,and Obama poop Lemons and Gumdrops.And you would think I am arguing politics of personality as well.I am not.What I am saying is ideology aside we can not spend anymore.That is primary.STOP SPENDING.And dont believe that raising a couple sheckles from the so called rich is going to solve anything.Stop spending and then and only then can we talk about restructuring the tax code.Hell I will make it so simple that even Obamas cabinet(who have too many tax cheats)can understand it.
The housing collapse and the banks failing brought down Fannie and Freddie, not vice versa.
We don’t need to stop spending, we need to start spending smarter.
“I would say conservatism has always worked and liberalism always failed .You would see the opposite. ”
And I would be correct , as history has born me out repeatedly.
As Wall Streeters point out, if we default on the debt that would damage the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
IN A PIGS EYE!!!!!(Except for the bit on our debt.—–Just putting off the day)
Did you see the VP sound asleep last night as Obama spoke.And the woman behind Biden was snoozing the night away as well?Tax n spend….tax n spend….. tax n……I think im gonna take a nappy too……………………………WAKE UP!!!!!Oh my God im sorry.Forgot im a tea party member.Almost fell asleep at my post.Helen it does not fly,and it won’t fly.
Another part of the banking collapse Fannie and Freddie had no part in [which also preceded their takeover by the government.]
(Reuters) – Moody’s Corp and Standard and Poor’s triggered the worst financial crisis in decades when they were forced to downgrade the inflated ratings they slapped on complex mortgage-backed securities, a U.S. congressional report concluded on Wednesday.
In one of the most stark condemnations of the credit rating agencies, a Senate investigations panel said the agencies continued to give top ratings to mortgage-backed securities months after the housing market started to collapse.
The agencies then unleashed on the financial system a flood of downgrades in July 2007, the panel said.
“Perhaps more than any other single event, the sudden mass downgrades of (residential mortgage-backed securities) and (collateralized debt obligation) ratings were the immediate trigger for the financial crisis,” the staff for Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn wrote in their report.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/04/13/us-financial-regulation-report-ratingage-idUSTRE73C8GX20110413?WT.tsrc=Social%20Media&WT.z_smid=twtr-reuters_%20com&WT.z_smid_dest=Twitter
The reagan miracle continued:
Since 1980, when Reagan won the presidency promising prosperity through tax cuts, the average income of the vast majorityâ┚¬”Âthe bottom 90 percent of Americansâ┚¬”Âhas increased a meager $303, or 1 percent. Put another way, for each dollar people in the vast majority made in 1980, in 2008 their income was up to $1.01.
Those at the top did better. The top 1 percent’s average income more than doubled to $1.1 million, according to an analysis of tax data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. The really rich, the top one-tenth of 1 percent, each enjoyed almost $4 in 2008 for each dollar in 1980.
The top 300,000 Americans now enjoy almost as much income as the bottom 150 million, the data show.
http://www.wweek.com/portland/print-article-17350-print.html
The talks I gave to so many audiences dealt with the inevitable collapse of Fanny and Freddy and the results to such a calamity. Dodd,Schuman,Franks all lied to my face and called it solvent.I was specific.I was right.My audiences were often liberal, and that means they were screaming banshees of derision.I always ended by pointing to the deniability factor “built in” to the system that would allow Dems to blame it on the Banks,ratings systems,wall street and so on. Again I was specific and correct.( The Senate panel you quoted were almost all left as I recall.) Fanny and Freddy today have a bottomless loan ,actually gift- from the taxpayers. Some of the same people who ran this titanic are now running the reorganization of our financial woes.Insanity.But hard heads can change.One man…A mr ward I believe is his name ,recently met me on the street and apologized.He had been at a symposium and was one who screamed loudest.He called me a liar.That I had no care for the poor and so on.I gently told him…”someday you will see i was right,i hope you will then extend the olive branch”.He did that day on the street.
Liberals today have learned to obfuscate factuality to fit the template of their beliefs.They practice the art of personal attack against anyone who hinders their ideology. Politics of personality is another liberal four star game. Pseudo intellectual elitists who use class warfare as an election tool.
The wealthy, the Teabaggers they dupe and the Republicans denounce any facts that show that the last 30 years have been very very good to the rich and pretty crappy for eveyone else as “provoking class warfare” in order to obscure the class war by Government policy that they have successfully conducted, [and continue to as I type], that has laid waste to the middle class and poor. Their assault on unions being the last act.
Anyone continuing to try and act as if it wasn’t the mortgage lenders, the banks, the appraisers, the speculators, the securitizers and/or the rating agencies for the housing collapse is simply practicing an astonishing level of intellectual dishonesty.
“Liberals today have learned to obfuscate factuality to fit the template of their beliefs.” Actually, reality has a liberal bias. Conservatives have a dozen think-tanks whose only purpose is “to obfuscate factuality to fit the template of their beliefs.”
“Politics of personality is another liberal four star game.” …..What a joke! Palin! Ryan! Commander Codpiece! The ghost of Reagen! Heck, they’ve been trying to rehabilitate Hoover and Joe McCarthy……The GOP is the ultimate cult of personality.
“They practice the art of personal attack against anyone who hinders their ideology.”
Shouldn’t talk about conservatives that way.
No reason to mention “Terrorists! Elitists! Baby Killers! Parasites! Anti-Semites! Enviroment Extremists! “Unpatriotic! Dirty Hippies! Feminazis! Etc, etc
I am an Eagle Scout, and i can assure you that Paul Ryan is NOT at Eagle Scout. He was a scout as a youth, but simply didn’t have it within himself to reach Eagle.
It’s a fact– https://beascout.scouting.org/filestore/pdf/210-571.pdf
Let’s e clear, Ryun COULD HAVE BEEN an Eagle scout but he COULD NOT HANG.
Those of us who really are Eagles resent those who would pretend to be Eagles. It wasn’t easy to get the rank,as evidenced by the fact that Ryan didn’t qualify.
RYAN’S DAD IS NOT AN OLYMPIC CHAMPION AND HE IS NOT AN EAGLE SCOUT.
please make a note of it, and thank you for listening.
To be fair, only 3% of all boys who enter the Boy Scouts achieve the rank of Eagle Scout. To suggest that someone did not achieve the rank because he “…didn’t have it within him…” or “…could not hang…” misses the point, not only of the award, but of Scouting. Advancement is one of several METHODS Scouting uses to achieve its AIMS of building citizenship, character, and personal fitness. A boy who grows up to become a good citizen, of good character and personal fitness achieves the aims of Scouting far more than someone who completes the requirements for the Eagle medal, but who grows up to be unkind, arrogant, and discourteous.
I do not know what Mr. Ryan had or didn’t have within him, but I have observed in almost 50 years with the Boy Scouts that the quality of a person’s character has practically nothing to do with rank advancement. Some of the finest Scouts I have ever known were NOT Eagle Scouts. They were just boys who loved Scouting. I do my best to live up to the high ideals of Scouting, not because I am an Eagle Scout (which I am, by the way), but because I was taught the value of the Scout Oath and Law by men of great character, none of whom, incidentally, were Eagle Scouts themselves.
It is an honor to achieve the rank of Eagle Scout, but it is no dishonor to participate in Scouting and not achieve that rank. And, it has been my experience that wearing the Eagle Scout medal is far more of a burden than an honor. As an Eagle Scout, I would think long and hard before I spoke in denigratory terms of a fellow Scout who had not achieved that rank.