paul ryan

Romney, Ryan, GOP Demand Obama Stop Strengthening Welfare Work Mandate

Leo Gerard — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 10:34:15 -0400

Republicans in two Congressional committees voted last week to press forward with legislation that would deny states the flexibility they requested to help more welfare recipients get jobs.

That’s right.

Not only that, Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP vice presidential candidate, said last week he is eager to return to Washington this week for a floor vote on the Republican measure prohibiting the Obama administration from, as the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) described it:

“encouraging states to consider new, more effective ways to meet the goals of TANF (welfare), particularly helping parents successfully prepare for, find and retain employment.”

That’s right.

Republicans don’t want the Obama administration to help states get welfare recipients off the dole and into jobs. In July, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney launched an attack on the administration’s offer to meet a demand from states for more flexibility so states could move more people to work instead of pushing more paper around. Now, Republicans in Congress are taking up the cause of thwarting Obama’s plan to grant states’ request for flexibility. Historically, Republicans supported moving welfare recipients off the federal rolls and onto private pay rolls. But they’re not going to let Obama get credit for accomplishing that.

This dispute began with an attempt by the Obama administration to reduce regulatory burdens. Here’s what President Obama wrote Feb. 28, 2011 in the Administrative Flexibility memo:

“I am instructing agencies to work closely with state, local, and tribal governments to identify administrative, regulatory, and legislative barriers in federally funded programs that currently prevent states, localities, and tribes, from efficiently using tax dollars to achieve the best results for their constituents.”

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) took the directive seriously and asked states for suggestions. Some state officials complained about burdensome welfare reform paperwork requirements and asked if HHS would provide flexibility. Among them were Utah and Nevada, both of which have Republican governors. Utah also has a Republican supermajority in its legislature.
HHS responded with a memo to states issued on July 12. It offers states a chance to achieve flexibility through waiver of some welfare rules if states conduct HHS-approved pilot programs that move additional welfare recipients to work in measureable ways.

The memo states at least 10 times that the goal is increased employment. For example, there’s this:

“HHS will only consider approving waivers relating to the work participation requirements that make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals of TANF (welfare).

“Moreover, HHS is committed to ensuring that any demonstration projects approved under this authority will be focused on improving employment outcomes and contributing to the evidence base for effective programs; therefore, terms and conditions will require a federally-approved evaluation plan designed to build our knowledge base.”

In a letter that accompanied the memo, HHS repeats incessantly that all proposals must fulfill the goal of increased employment. Of the 21 sentences, at least 10 specify that less welfare and more work is mandated by the law, is important and will be required for waiver. For example, there’s this:

“The (HHS) Secretary is only interested in approving waivers if the state can explain in a compelling fashion why the proposed approach may be a more efficient or effective means to promote employment entry, retention, advancement, or access to jobs that offer opportunities for earnings and advancement that will allow participants to avoid dependence on government benefits.”

Despite all that, Mitt Romney began condemning the waiver offer immediately after it was issued. Congressional Republicans hope this week to bludgeon it to death with legislation forbidding HHS from providing the flexibility requested by governors, including Republicans Gary Herbert of Utah and Brian Sandoval of Nevada. Herbert’s state department of HHS wrote the federal HHS in 2011 seeking flexibility:

“Nevada is very interested in working with your staff to explore program waivers. . .”

Like welfare-to-work, Republicans have long supported “flexibility” for states in implementing federal mandates. For example, in 2005 every Republican governor in the nation – 29 of them – wrote Congress to support a bill that would have allowed waivers to welfare reform law requirements. The governors told Congress they wanted “flexibility to manage their TANF (welfare) programs.” The letter said:

“Increased waiver authority, allowable work activities, availability of partial work credit and the ability to coordinate state programs are all important aspects of moving recipients from welfare to work.”

Mitt Romney signed that letter. He was among the 29 governors seeking flexibility through waivers to manage welfare.

That’s right. The same Mitt Romney who now is denouncing the Obama administration’s effort to provide flexibility.

Now, Romney despises flexibility. Now, he hates waivers. Now, he’s demanding an end to the effort by HHS to give states the ability to experiment with pilot programs to increase the employment of welfare recipients.

It’s yet another Romney flipflop, another Romney Etch-A-Sketch moment. Said it once, erase it now. Romney figures GOP inconsistency doesn’t matter as long as it hurts President Obama somehow.

Takin' It To the Suites

Richard Eskow — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 23:55:04 -0400

When we turned on the TV to watch the Republican Convention this evening we saw what appeared to be a hyperactive GOP advance man gesticulating from the stage. But he wasn't barking out canvassing instructions to local ward heelers or scouting Holiday Inns to find the one with the best lines of sight to the podium.

So who was this guy?

Was he a slightly out-of-shape Secret Service agent waving the crowd back with a little too much enthusiasm? We turned on the sound and learned that the individual in question was Taylor Hicks, the American Idol contestant turned professional performer.

Mr. Hicks' performance would hardly seem worth mentioning on such an important night if it weren't for the song he was performing, or the way he was performing it: Takin' It To The Streets. That song stood out from the mid-1970's pablum of the airwaves, both for Michael McDonald's soulful (yes, I said soulful) voice and for its overtly political message:

You don't know me but I'm your brother
I was raised here in this living hell

I know, I know, boomers are lame. And the ones who reminisce about Michael McDonald songs are the lamest of all. Wave your AARP cards in the air like you just don't care! But take it from us: That song mattered. And yet here was gray-haired Taylor Hicks, parading and strutting and shakin' his rump-a before the richest crowd this side of the Romney bundler's yacht party - and the dullest crowd this side of Forest Lawn:

You don't know my kind in your world ...
Yeah, you ... telling me the things you're gonna do for me
I ain't blind and I don't like what I think I see

Get it, people? The "things you're gonna do for me" guy is Obama, and the rich and pampered crowd at the RNC were the authentic people who can't be fooled because they "ain't blind."

I expect that by now you think you know where I'm going with this, and you're mostly right - but not completely. The moment wasn't striking just because of the incongruity of hearing these words sung for the campaign of a couple rich kids anointed by Corporate America to lead the counter-revolution. Nor was it striking just because those words were used as an implicit invocation of the Tea Party, that "populist" uprising that began with brokers on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and became the tool of billionaire executives and Republican apparatchiks.

It's not just those things.

The forced nature of that performance offered a glimpse of the vast seas of emptiness and yearning that are swelling out there in the dark, and of the desperate need for an illusion big enough to fill them. Taylor Hicks has a great voice, but he has no soul. He was singing the words, but he didn't convey any meaning.He was a well-engineered song delivery vehicle, but he wasn't carrying a payload.

In other words, he was the perfect opening act for Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney, who looks like a President, and talks like a President, and acts ... Well, he looks like a President, anyway. Mitt Romney: He's not a leader, but he plays one on TV. Mitt Romney: the American Idol candidate.

Think of the great, transformative musical stars of the past: Skinny and awkward Frank Sinatra. Elvis, young and erotic and mascara-masculine beyond his time. The gender-bending yet unmistakably boyish and brilliant Beatles. Rhythmically revolutionary and visually addictive James Brown. Gravel-voiced, shapeshifting Dylan. Octave-jumping, Mingus-chording Joni. That dance-track Dvorak, Sly Stone. Anarchic, tormented, grainy, guitar-torturing, William S. Burroughs-loving Kurt Cobain.

What do all these geniuses have in common? None of them could ever have won on American Idol. They weren't reflecters of society's assumptions, wants, or desires. They were reshapers of them.

Politics has had its reshapers, too: Tom Paine. Thomas Jefferson. Abraham Lincoln. Mohandas K. Gandhi. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Martin Luther King.

Barack Obama was born with a reshaper's gifts. But he's chosen to surround himself with the Disney-esque Democratic designers of synthetic pseudo-centrism, the architects of animatronic activism who have pitched him on more sanguinity and less Social Security, more mediation and less Medicare.

Watching Obama bend himself to the misguided advice of Clintonian retreads - and undoubtedly of Bill Clinton himself - is like watching a musical great like Steve Winwood or Marvin Gaye sing cover versions of lesser artists' songs. And their collective near-fetishistic avoidance of disagreement misses the point of the process: Elections are about disagreement. Compromise is what comes afterwards.

But let's go back to the RNC for a moment:

The only thing you can safely predict about a reshaper is that she or he will not give you what you expect - or what you think you want. Reshapers don't pander to the crowd. But the RNC was made for pandering. And there was Taylor Hicks, like Paul Ryan before him and Mitt Romney after him, whipping up an empty simulacrum of emotion with prefabricated passion and engineered emotion.

The crowd loved it.

There they were in the Disney State, that Land of Artifice, acting out a mass simulation of democracy like Civil War buffs re-enacting the Battle of Bull Run: "nominating" a candidate who had already been chosen, "accepting" a platform that had already been written, laughing at each moment of orchestrated "spontaneity."

Of the night's few authentic moments, most of them belonged to Clint Eastwood. I even felt moved once or twice at Romney's comments about his family life and his childhood. But the attacks were too phony, the lies too naked. The political papier-mache behind their make-believe world had already begun cracking by the time the curtain rang down.

A nation wrapped in the ongoing agony of permanent depression needs relief. That's why we go to Disney World. A simulated Caribbean boat ride isn't an ocean voyage, but at least it gives us a few minutes of escape from a world of decaying middle class dreams. A nation that goes to Disney World is a nation that could elect Romney and Ryan. And they still might, unless they're given an authentic choice.

Here's something the Democrats need to learn: You can sing a ballad or you can sing a screamer, but you can only sing one at a time. (Unless you're Kurt Cobain, but even then you have to alternate verses.). Yet here's what Obama recently told the Associated Press: "I'm prepared to make a whole range of compromises, some of which I get criticized from the Democratic Party on, in order to make progress."

Process, process, process.

"But we're going to need compromise on your side as well," the President continued.

"You don't know me but I'm your lawyer ..."

Is that the kind of tone the President plans to strike next week in Charlotte? With the middle class dying, houses underwater, Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block, and tens of millions of Americans looking for work? "Compromise ..." But compromise from what?

The GOP Convention was a pathetic set of cover songs by a second-rate bar band. But oldies are still songs that a crowd can recognize. If you can't write good originals, give 'em good oldies. If you don't know any good oldies, give 'em bad oldies. People can still sing along and pretend they were living the good times again - or the times they think were good.

You can't get people singing along unless you give them a tune. Even karaoke bars play music.

The Democrats used to write great originals. Hopefully they'll let the people hear a few next week, and hopefully they'll sing 'em with conviction. But the people have to hear something. If they don't, next November voters may find themselves shouting the scripted words they've heard from trivial sports stars and celebrities at dozens of events as artificial as tonight's:

I'm going to Disney World.

Are Republicans 'Crazy?' Not If You Follow the Money

Richard Eskow — Thu, 30 Aug 2012 11:17:37 -0400

Their opponents shouldn't be too quick to call Republicans "crazy." It makes more sense to employ that time-honored investigative principle: Follow the money. Sure, they've said crazy things -- in their speeches and in their official platform. But crazy?

Like a fox.

Take that "we built it" theme. Sure, they're lying about a selectively-edited phrase for political advantage. But why this particular phrase? Because the President was defending government's role in building America's infrastructure, educating its children, and improving its technology.

They don't want those things anymore. The argument fell on deaf ears because GOP isn't really the "party of business." It's the the party of mega-business, of globalized multinational corporations. Those corporations don't need America any more. They don't need its roads, they don't need its technology, and they certainly don't need its educated middle-class workforce.

(See "An Old Industrial Era": GOP Platform Mocks Blue-Collar America, Declares It Dead.)

It's time to follow the money.

Money Source: Bankers

The rapid rise in the abuse of (c)(4) organization has allowed corporations and the mega-wealthy to inject hundreds of millions of dollars into election campaigns without revealing their identity. The Romney campaign has refused to follow Obama's lead by revealing the names of its "bundlers." But thanks to the efforts of the Sunlight Foundation, USA Today and others we know that 25 percent of them are Wall Street types who include:

Steve Schwarzman, who notoriously compared taxing bilionaire hedge funders like himself the same way we tax teachers or firefighters to Hitler's invasion of Poland -- an invasion which resulted in the deaths of men, women and children in concentration camps;

Daniel Loeb, the self-entitled whiner we called the "Robespierre of the hedge fund revolution" after he issued an "investor letter" in which he described hedge fund billionaires as exploited "labor," a persecuted minority, and the victims of socialist-style wealth distribution -- which, as he fails to mentioned, somehow resulted in increased wealth inequity;

Bill Harrison, who engineered the creation of too-big-to-fail JPMorgan Chase and recently made an inept attempt to defend megabanks like his own Frankensteinian creation;

Executives from repeat corporate lawbreakers like JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, along with representatives from morally compromised and scandal-ridden accounting firms. (See When Accountants Go Bad: Scandal-Plagued Firms Turn Out For Romney); and,

An executive from Barclays, the bank which has now admitted to illegal rate-fixing in the LIBOR scandal.

Their Money's Worth: The Bankers

Are these bankers and their fellow-travelers getting their money's worth?

A Republican President appointed Republican economist Ben Bernanke to run the Federal Reserve, only to have the Fed double down on policy that makes the rich richer at everyone else's expense. (Yes, Obama reappointed Bernanke. We'll get to that during their convention.)

The "financial sector" -- that is, Wall Street -- had a great recovery from the Great Recession, thanks to the American people, while the rest of the country remains mired in an ongoing depression which Wall Street created. And it's once again capturing a greater share of this nation's profits, squeezing out productive businesses that create jobs:

(via Business Insider)

Looks like something's working. Bankers contribute to both parties, but lately most of their love is going one way: to the GOP.

Money Source: Billionaires

Non-banking billionaires contributed to the war-chest too.New GOP-backed bills -- and more importantly, GOP-appointed judges - have allowed billionaires to keep on giving enormous sums of money to their cause once they've reached the official limit for campaign contributions. So far SuperPACs have raised nearly a quarter of a billion dollars from wealthy individuals for this year's election. And nearly 60 percent of that money came from just 47 people.

It's the finest election money can buy.

Big billionaire donors include Sheldon Adelson, Bob Perry, the Crow brothers, and assorted members of the Marriott family.

And for those of you who were worried that the bankers and billionaires might have been inconvenienced by God's wrath toward the GOP convention, you'll be relieved to know that the bundlers all got together for a nice yacht party.

Like they say down South: They're just folks.

Their Money's Worth: Billionaires

Are they getting their money's worth? Take a look at this table from William Domhoff:

The richest Americans have most of their wealth in business assets, financial securities, trusts, stocks and mutual funds, and non-home real estate. The vast majority of the population has its assets in bank accounts, home value, and pension accounts.

This table shows clearly that the Republican Party (along with a number of Democrats) is pushng policies that increase the assets of the wealthy, while at the same time fighting laws or regulations that protect everyone else's. They're fighting to keep capital gains taxes low and reduce even them further when it's now been proven that these cuts don't create jobs.

In any given year the country's 400 highest-income households earn between four and nine times as much of their income from capital gains as they do from salaries. They, along with other wealthy GOP backers, are benefiting from tax policies on everything from inherited wealth to unearned income.

And all those "hawkish" cuts avoid harming the business interests that make the wealthy even wealthier. They're targeted toward Medicare, assistance for low-income households, and anything else that can lighten the 1 percent's tax load without cutting into its profits.

Money Source: Big Corporations

In addition, every big corporation in the country has one, as do most corporate special interests, and SuperPACs collect from a variety of high-income sources.

High-dollar bankrollers for the GOP include the defense industry (surprisingly exempt from its supposed "hawkish" anti-spending stance), drug companies, and outsourcing corporations.

Then there's the US Chamber of Commerce, which receives preferential (c)(6) tax treatment while boasting that it provides political cover to unpopular corporate causes. The ugly causes it supports include bribery (through its attacks on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), child labor (through its promotion of Uzbek cotton sales and other goods), totalitarian Communist workforces (through its Shanghai and other chapters), and environmental destruction (through its defense against the authority of Ecuadorian courts).

If Evil ever forms its own corporation, it will know where to go for lobbying.

The Chamber overwhelmingly supports Republicans. (It endorsed only one Democrat in 2010, and didn't give him any money.) The New York Times reports that it spent nearly $90 million on lobbying, employing 98 internal lobbyists and 90 others through outside firms. It's also closely allied with the anti-democratic, anti-union organization known as "ALEC." The Chamber gets most of its funding from a few sources, and overwhelmingly from large corporations. Its positions on a variety of issues are routinely described as "extremist" -- and it has enormous influence on the GOP.

This year outside sources have already been responsible for $167.5 million in campaign spending, as of last report, of which $12.7 million was "secret" or "dark" money that can't be traced to its source.

(No wonder Republicans killed a law that would have required more transparency in campaign finance.)

Their Money's Worth: Corporations

The GOP is the ultra-large-business party. It uses rhetoric about "small entrepreneurs" and "individual initiative" to disguise the fact that is policies support the giant corporations which are crushing individual entrepreneurs, Mom and Pop operations, and start-up companies.

In fact, when President Obama offered to cut $28 million from the Small Business Administration (wrongly, in our opinion) that wasn't enough for the GOP. House Speaker John Boehner immediately demanded another $100 billion in cuts.

The big-corporation bias explains language which says that "regulation should be a helpful guide, not a punitive threat." That'll stop the outlaws! There's even stranger language which speaks of "lawmaking agencies," the "overcriminalization of behavior," and the "Federalization of offenses."

Translation: They want the Federal government stripped of its ability to regulate business or punish rogue corporations. They want to roll back the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946 which gave modern agencies their powers, leaving the Federal government powerless to protect us from the depredations of the GOP's corporate sponsors.

Romney's proposed oil and gas policies are following the money from that industry, too.

Meanwhile, new loopholes and tax breaks are leaving corporations paying less of their fair share than at any time in modern memory:

You can call all of this disgusting, or venal, or corrupt. But crazy? Not on your life. Critics should stop describing it that way and start calling it what it really is: the prostitution of democracy to the highest bidder.

Insecurity Separates Middle Class from Romney, Ryan

Leo Gerard — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 11:28:09 -0400

The rich, those born sucking silver spoons like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, really are different from the middle class. The wealthy grow up and live their lives wrapped in security. That’s what gives them the arrogance to organize a posse to hold down a fellow prep school student and chop off his hair, mock NASCAR fans’ clothes and ridicule cookies offered by supporters. No matter what, Romney and Ryan will remain rich and secure.

By contrast, those born into poverty or the middle class live lives nagged by insecurity. They know their jobs could be off-shored at any moment. They know their employers may raid their pensions in bankruptcy. Their major asset in life, their home, may have lost a third of its value when the Wall Street-inflated housing bubble burst. Rich would be great, but those born without trust funds work hardest just to attain a little security.

Last week, the Pew Research Center issued a report detailing how insecurity has increased for the middle class since 2000. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a report predicting increased insecurity for the middle class if Congress takes no action on taxes and budget cuts within the next four months. A third report released last week, called Prosperity Economics, describes how to revive the economy and broaden security.

A true democratic republic, where the majority rules, would reverse the past decade’s trend against the middle class, forestall the CBO prediction, and increase security for the masses. The silver spooners seeking the Oval Office have given no indication, however, that they intend to ease the uncertainty of the plastic spooners.

The Pew Research Center looked at how the middle class fared since 2000. In a word, it’s badly. This is what Pew called its findings: “The Lost Decade of the Middle Class: Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier.” Here’s how the center sums it up:

“Since 2000, the middle class has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some – but by no means all – of its characteristic faith in the future.”

Over the past 40 years, the percentage of adults in the middle class shrank from 61 to 51. Also, the rich seized a greater portion of the nation’s household income. Their cut rose from 29 percent to 46. Almost all of that came from the middle class, whose share fell from 62 percent to 45.

Similarly, the middle class suffered a 28 percent drop in wealth over the past decade, much of that in housing value.

The losses intensified middle-class insecurity. Those interviewed by the Pew researchers expressed pessimism. For America, which sees itself as the land of opportunity, this survey result is dispiriting: 29 percent of the middle class said hard work and determination no longer guarantee success for most people. The American Dream is dying.

Middle-class insecurity and gloom will worsen if Congress allows the country to fall off the fiscal cliff – if it fails to renew at least some tax cuts set to expire at year’s end or temper scheduled budget cuts. The CBO, in its Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022, said if Congress does not change its current tax and spending plan, the United States will descend into recession again next year and unemployment will rise to 9 percent.

The budget cuts were demanded last year by House Republicans, led by Ryan, who refused to raise the nation’s debt ceiling until they got a deal guaranteeing the budget slashing. President Obama has repeatedly sought money for infrastructure improvement and other job-creating projects to relieve unemployment and prevent a double dip recession, but Republicans have rebuffed him. They also have rejected his plan to renew middle class tax breaks while terminating the massively larger breaks for the rich.

Republicans like Ryan have decided relieving the deficit is more important than relieving uncertainty for the middle class. The perfect symbol of that is Ryan’s plan to voucherize Medicare. Social Security and Medicare are beloved by the middle class because of the security they provide in retirement. Ryan’s vouchers would end that security because they would dramatically increase costs for senior citizens. Ryan and his followers demand austerity for the middle class and tax cuts for the rich.

Austerity is not necessary, according to two Yale researchers. They offer an alternative, Prosperity Economics.

Jacob Hacker, a Yale professor and director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and Nate Loewentheil, a Yale law student, describe how to create a dynamic economy and foster a society “marked by greater health, broader security, increased equality of opportunity, and more broadly distributed growth.”

They believe in resurrecting the American Dream. While the middle class is losing faith, Hacker and Loewentheil say it doesn’t have to be that way.

In their plan, everyone benefits, not just the silver spooners. It’s not, however, a strategy likely to be adopted by austerity advocates Romney and Ryan, who have never experienced the pain of economic insecurity suffered by the plastic spoon class.

Romney, Ryan Don’t Get the Average Joe

Leo Gerard — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:39:18 -0400

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney foolishly revived the dust up about his income tax secrecy last week. He claimed he paid at least 13 percent, an assertion easy enough for him to prove by releasing his tax documents.

But he’s refusing to do that. He called the concern about his tax rate “small minded.” Much more important issues overshadow it, he contended.

Maybe so. But the American people, the Average Jane and Joe, do care whether Romney used tricks and loopholes and offshore accounts to manipulate the tax system and pay nothing. And they’re not “small minded,” as Romney accused them of being, for wanting to know.

For them, a quarter billionaire who paid nothing or paid a rate lower than the middle class lacks the principles they like in a president. The vast majority of voters aren’t going to dissect the budget proposed by Romney’s running mate Rep. Paul Ryan, but they will vote based on the values it reveals. Romney’s ability to rattle off technical details won’t decide the election. Morality, or Jane and Joe’s perception that Ryan and Romney’s policies lack it, will.

Other millionaires have led the nation. In fact, the majority of those in the past presidents club were millionaires. But some of the nation’s wealthy presidents had spent time with America’s Average Janes and Joes and understood their dreams and struggles and were sympathetic to them.

Though raised on an estate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew suffering firsthand after being cut down by polio as a young man. He spent long periods with working men and women in Southern recuperation centers as he tried in vain to get his legs to work again. Immediately on his election to the presidency, he launched programs to aid the impoverished.

By contrast, Romney and Ryan, both raised in privilege, have demonstrated remarkable insensitivity to everyday Americans.

Romney, scion of a Detroit car company executive, said as GM and Chrysler struggled in the midst of the Great Recession, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” He’d have countenanced an uncontrolled bankruptcy for the two corporations, costing tens of thousands of middle-class workers at assembly plants, car dealerships and auto part manufacturers their jobs, their homes and their hopes. He’d have done nothing and let them all suffer. There’s a certain carelessness, a heartlessness to that. Those aren’t values many middle-class workers cherish in a president.

Ryan also grew up without worry about money, in a small town where his family owned a construction business and his father was a lawyer. Because his father died when Ryan was 16, Social Security helped him pay for college. Ryan’s plans, however, imperil Social Security for future generations, for the next decade’s 16 year olds who lose fathers.

Ryan sponsored legislation during the Bush administration to privatize Social Security, allowing the fund to be weakened by the draining of untold billions that would be risked on Wall Street, on the very stock market that crashed during the last year of Bush’s reign, sucking the value out of private pension funds. Many middle-class workers don’t find gambling with their retirement security attractive in a president.

Ryan and Romney are in trouble with America’s Average Janes and Joes over their tax proposals as well. Romney says he wants to cut income taxes by 20 percent for everyone, which he claims he would pay for by ending tax deductions. He has declined to specify which ones, however. Here’s what the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said about his plan: it would cost the wealthy like Ryan and Romney less and the Average Jane and Joe more.

That’s right. Specifically, the plan would reduce taxes each year for the nation’s wealthiest 5 percent, ranging from a cut of $1,800 for the least rich to nearly $250,000 for the most rich. For the other 95 percent of taxpayers, the nation’s middle class, Romney’s “tax cut” would mean a tax increase averaging $500 per household because, the Tax Policy Center said, tax breaks that the middle class depends on, like the one for mortgages, would disappear. The center said it was a fantasy for Romney to suggest he could fund his plan by eliminating only tax breaks for the rich.

The Average Jane and Joe may not read the entire report. But they do understand this one key fact: The Romney tax plan will cost them more and Romney less. Many will find the injustice of that to be unattractive in a president.

Similarly, Ryan’s budget “Roadmap” would also lower Romney’s tax rate. Ryan would require him to pay less than 1 percent. That’s because the vast majority of Romney's $21 million income in 2010 came from capital gains, interest and dividends, and Ryan would eliminate all taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends.

Most middle-class household income, all of $50,000 a year and declining, comes from wages, not capital gains, interest and dividends. So those families would be paying rates way higher than 1 percent. In fact, the Tax Policy Center determined that Ryan’s budget would raise taxes on the bottom 30 percent of wage earners.

The Average Jane and Joe may not memorize all those facts and figures. But they will recall that Ryan wants quarter billionaires to pay 1 percent and them to pay way more. That’s just galling. Far from what the middle class finds to be a desirable trait in a vice president.

When a reporter asked Romney about his tax rates last week, the Republican candidate had just finished lecturing the ensemble on the intricacies of his Medicare plan using a white board.

What Romney can’t comprehend is that for the middle class, it’s not the numbers.

What the Average Jane and Joe will recall is that Romney and Ryan plan to privatize Medicare, to destroy a beloved program on which the middle class depends. What they’ll know about Romney and Ryan is that their proposed policies show they don’t have a clue what it’s like to struggle. And don’t care. Carelessness is not a quality the middle class finds desirable in the occupants of the Oval Office.

It's Paul Ryan - Not School Teachers - Putting Children At Risk

Jeff Bryant — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:54:25 -0400

Just like you can count on "Back to School" season cranking up retail sales this time of year, you can also count on it bringing on a new volley of criticism aimed at school teachers and their unions.

Leading off the charge this year was an op-ed written by ex-NBC talent Campbell Brown. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, she claimed that "teachers unions go to bat for sexual predators" and that parents in New York City have a "tremendous fear about what is happening in the classroom" due to the "trifling consequences or accountability" imposed on misbehaving teachers.

At the same time Brown was slinging accusations toward teachers and their unions, marketing hype was building for the new movie "Won't Back Down" that portrays how a group of parents use a law called the Parent Trigger to take over a "failing school" from teachers and their union. Brown, in fact, mentions the movie in her piece as yet more proof of how people have "turned on unions."

Writing about the movie in The New York Times, Frank Bruni explains that the film portrays teachers unions as having lost their way, "resisting change, resorting to smear tactics and alienating the idealists in its ranks."

His conclusion is that teachers unions, in sticking up for job protections and working conditions, "seem indifferent to the welfare of schoolchildren" and are prone to "reflexive, defensive attachments to the old ways of doing things."

Adding a third blow in the pummeling, CNN made an interview with education historian Diane Ravitch -- who is a persistent critic of the current education policy -- into an opportunity to blame teachers for the alleged poor performance of American students on assessments.

In what was anticipated to be, at least from Ravitch's expectations, a counter balance to a recent interview with Michelle Rhee -- who was allowed during her time on camera to speak freely about the "failure" of America's public school -- what Ravitch encountered instead was "one of the most biased interviews" she had ever experienced.

Amidst this media fascination with blaming teachers and their unions for America's much-maligned public school system -- always an understood assumption in these portrayals -- a much bigger and more significant endangerment to the nation's children went generally unnoticed.

Sexual Predators, Teachers, And Test Scores -- Oh My!

What endangerment to children could possibly be worse than sexual predators, teachers' job protections, and low scores on tests?

First, in the case of Brown's accusations about the cover-ups of teacher sexual misconduct, there's a lot more sizzle here than steak. She didn't describe a single instance when the union actually "went to bat" for a teacher accused of sexual misconduct. Instead, her main beef, hidden under the hyperbolic header, was that independent agents investigate and adjudicate complaints of teachers' sexual misconduct toward students.

Her preference was to do away with any independent actors, so any accused teacher can quickly be fired by the Chancellor with only "the opportunity to appeal terminations in court." Sound fair to you?

Frank Bruni's observations of the movie "Won't Back Down" took quite a leap in turning a fictional portrayal to an accurate assessment of reality.

To accomplish this feat, Bruni left a lot of the context surrounding the movie completely out of the picture, including the divisive history of Parent Trigger laws, the powerful interests behind these laws, and why opposition to them may be warranted.

Fortunately, Leonie Haimson from Parents Across America explains the bigger picture "Won't Back Down" leaves out:

While the movie depicts an inspiring story of parental revolt, actual efforts to use the Parent Trigger have been driven by billionaire-funded supporters of privatization… None of these efforts has actually improved a school.

And regarding CNN's "gotcha" interview with Diane Ravitch, turns out that the indicators of education performance that the news outlet pointed to happened to be completely misunderstood by the interviewer Randi Kaye and the CNN staff.

As Ravitch explained at her own blog, in the interviewer's "relentless effort to 'prove' that US education is failing," she failed to discern the difference between a scale used to examine trend lines and a standard used to discern performance -- wonky for sure, but required knowledge if you want to make statements about the performance of American students on tests. That section of the interview ended up being cut. Ooops!

Meanwhile, Back On Earth

As teachers and their unions experience an assault from the media on their integrity and commitment to children, there's another far more damaging attack on school children that remains generally under-reported.

Just this weekend, the Obama White House made an attempt to detail the carnage in issuing the report "Investing In Our Future: Returning Teachers To The Classroom."

Writing at Huffington Post, Joy Resmovits highlights some of the report's disturbing findings, including

The rationale behind this hack-job on the nation's public schools is, of course, a "times are tough" mantra spouted by our nation's political leaders -- especially conservative Republican governors and other supporters of "austerity measures."

Far too often, media outlets are complicit in spreading the message that the nation's schools must make do with less while they pile on the pressure to "raise standards" and do more to "measure up."

This is absurd. The problem, as John H. Jackson, President of the Schott Foundation for Public Education, explained in an interview with the National Education Association, is that the media is helping to enable an environment in which "it's easier to talk about standards" than it is to talk about what would actually support "teachers to teach and students to learn."

"Look at it this way," Jackson continued, "For any student who is drowning at school, moving the life preserver further away isn’t going to make them a better swimmer. Our challenge is to identify the supports that will allow that child to become a better swimmer."

Those kinds of supports, Jackson maintained, should include investments in high quality early childhood education, reading programs, and a "more student-centered approach" that provides "additional academic, social, and health supports."

Yet this discussion about "better supports" is barely on the agenda. And now we have a Republican presidential candidacy that is determined to make the situation even worse.

The Republican Party's Devastating Duo

With expected nominee Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate, the Republican party's presidential platform has cemented the party to a platform that guarantees deeper and crueler cuts to America's children -- especially those who are the least served.

While lots of media attention has focused on Ryan's record of hurting the poor and elderly, his reputation for hurting children is arguably even worse.

Ryan's record on supporting the nation's children -- including his budget proposal that passed in the House -- is a minefield littered with

Cuts to child nutrition programs

Cuts ($2.7 billion) to Title I grants,

Cuts to the Head Start early childhood education program,

Bloggers at Think Progress calculated that Ryan's budget would result in "$5.3 trillion less in education spending than President Obama’s budget over the next decade," with massive cuts of 33% less in spending during a time when the nation's population of school children -- especially young children of black and Hispanic origin -- will continue to rise.

According to Think Progress, Ryan endorsed the A-Plus Act, which would "strip resources and protections away from disadvantaged children" and "prevent the Secretary of Education from holding states accountable for results until three years after receiving federal funds."

What Think Progress also noted is that while a Paul Ryan approach to education would require heavy cuts to current programs for children, there would be no new investments in programs that would "actually improve schools once the cuts are made."

With Ryan teaming up with Romney, what we have is a devastating duo when it comes to supporting children. A page at the website for Care2.org lists even more travesties:

Romney-Ryan don't spare higher education from the assault either, as they've voiced opposition to federal funds and lending that help disadvantaged students attend college and promoted privatization of the public university system.

Despite the Republican ticket's general abandonment of investments in children's health, education, and well being, so many in the media have portrayed Paul Ryan's addition as adding "seriousness" and "deep convictions" to the presidential contest. How is that?

The Bands Played On

While the Republicans rolled out an agenda devastating to the well being of children, the media remained more fascinated with the subject of teachers and their apparent Herculean powers to overcome just about any kind of crappy circumstances our society shovels their way.

The preference for fantasy was on grand display at the recent event"Teachers Rock"

During this "celebration of teachers," there were no doubt (full disclosure: I did not attend) plenty of opportunities for the stars in attendance and those performing to rhapsodize about a "great teacher in my life" and "the sacrifice" that teaches make "for the kids."

In the meantime, few seem to have noticed that sponsors of the event are some of the very same organizations that oppose teachers unions and push for Parent Trigger laws that most teachers are against. (Scenes from the move "Won't Back Down" played during the event.)

And one of the charities receiving proceeds from ticket sales was Teach for America, an organization that has developed into more of a leadership pipeline for a political movement than a legitimate source for effective teachers who are committed to years of practice in the classroom.

How odd that America's affection for teachers is preoccupied with the ones from our past, while we attack the ones in the classroom today. And how confusing that teachers are told again and again how valuable they are to the country as the press fawns over leaders who cut teachers' support. And then, of course, when teachers organize to speak out about those confusions, so many Very Serious People seem to find that . . . well, unbecoming.

Wonder when someone will make a movie about that?

http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/08/parent-leaders-hail-p...

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Ryan's Follies: Back to Liberty

Joseph M. Firestone — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 22:38:19 -0400

More on liberty from Ryan's reply to the President's 2011 SOTU. These are about that old Republican hypocritical favorite, “small government.”

”The President and the Democratic Leadership have shown, by their actions, that they believe government needs to increase its size and its reach, its price tag and its power.”

What planet does Congressman Ryan live on? The Democrats have done very little to increase the size of Government. The measure of that is that the average annual growth in Federal Government spending is the lowest it's been in the period since Dwight Eisenhower became President. In addition, Federal spending as a percent of GDP is still extremely low compared to National Government expenditures by the nations mentioned in my last post, and has only risen about 5 percentage points from Bush Administration levels, in response to the economic crisis, which, remember, was caused by policies avidly supported by Paul Ryan and conservative Republicans.

In addition, the President, much to his discredit, has done all he could to keep Government expenditures revenue neutral or revenue positive, beyond expenditures for defense, the stimulus, and increases in social safety net expenditures resulting from the recession. His health care reform bill is a disgraceful attempt to bailout the insurance companies without taking them over, because he would not entertain Medicare for All, since it wasn't “revenue neutral.” Never mind that enhanced Medicare for All would have saved the private sector $900 Billion per year in Medical Costs, and that the stimulus involved in an additional $800 Billion of Federal deficit spending would probably have created an addition 2 million jobs, at least.

”We believe a renewed commitment to limited government will unshackle our economy and create millions of new jobs and opportunities for all people, of every background, to succeed and prosper. Under this approach, the spirit of initiative – not political clout – determines who succeeds.

“Millions of families have fallen on hard times not because of our ideals of free enterprise – but because our leaders failed to live up to those ideals; because of poor decisions made in Washington and Wall Street that caused a financial crisis, squandered our savings, broke our trust, and crippled our economy.”

The history of America is largely the history of extending initiative from the economic sector to politics and gaining advantage in both sectors. We've seen that with the railroads, the steel and oil industries (including Paul Ryan's sponsors, the Koch brothers), coal, the mass media, telecommunications, the software industry, the FIRE sector, and most other industries that have scaled the economic heights in this country. There is no way to separate economic initiative from its extension into politics. The idea that these two can be separated is a myth to persuade Americans without much power that what is happening to them is due to impersonal economic forces, rather than the use of previously accumulated wealth and political power to rig the context of the economic system so that the already wealthy can reap even greater rewards in the future.

So, unfortunately, as much as we would like to believe that a company's success in America has nothing to do with politics. It, most often, is intertwined with either favorable political conditions, political influence, or both. Congressman Ryan knows that very well because he, and his Republican and Democratic colleagues, are the recipients of attempts to "fix" the political system, so that certain private sector businesses can profit.

So, I don't know whether Congressman Ryan thinks that's the “spirit of initiative” or not. But I think it's just as much, if not more, about buying political clout than it is about economic initiative, innovation, and '”free enterprise.”

Ryan goes on to blame Washington and Wall Street for decisions that caused the financial crisis. I certainly agree; But I also think that the wrong decisions made by Washington include de-regulating Wall Street, so that the spirit of “free enterprise” and the influence of the FIRE and energy sectors reigned supreme.

That happened during the Clinton Administration under the influence of Robert Rubin and Larry Summers, and then the Bush Administration saw to it that the SEC would not enforce the inadequate regulations that still remained. Unregulated “free enterprise” produced unprecedented accounting control frauds and bubbles in the Real Estate markets which eventually led to the crash of 2008. Then the Obama Administration bailed out the banksters/fraudsters and until now has refused to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators, while moaning about how we have to look forward and not backward.

Meanwhile, Paul Ryan, along with Mitt Romney, are responding to all this by telling us that we need to back off regulation of the private sector, and that will make everything all right. But anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that the only thing that will clean up the banking system, and restore public faith in it, is cleaning up the frauds and punishing the people responsible.

Why isn't Paul Ryan calling for that if he wants people to have faith in “free enterprise” again? He needs to keep in mind that there's no freedom without responsibility and accountability, and that his prescription, and that of the Republicans is to put responsibility and accountability aside, and to let working people bear the burden of the failings of the Wall Street FIRE sector and the corrupt Congresses and Administrations that failed, and still fail, to regulate them.

Finally, Congressman Ryan's plea for a return to limited Government would be far more credible if he were as much concerned about limitations on the size and intrusiveness of Government when it comes to privacy, a woman's reproductive rights, civil liberties, rights of habeas corpus, protections against torture, and the right to a speedy trial, as he is about the non-existent rights of businessmen to subvert markets through fraudulent activity hiding beneath the skirts of the ideal of “free enterprise. He would also be much more credible in his concern for liberty, if he were concerned that “necessitous men, are not free men,” and were willing, in the interests of liberty, to strengthen, instead of weaken, the social safety net by making its provisions as generous as the safety net in other civilized nations. He would, further, be still more credible, if his concern for liberty were great enough that he would support Medicare for All, so that employees in the United States would no longer be tied to jobs that they don't like, and were free to move to other employment without having to worry about interrupting or degrading their health care coverage, and risking their lives in the process.

He would, further, be even more credible, if his concern for liberty extended to providing a Federal Job Guarantee (see posts 42-50) to everyone who wanted to work, so that they had the freedom to do so. And he would, finally, be even more credible that that, if he recognized that liberty is not about small sized Government or big Government, but is, instead, about Government that is the right size, to do those things that will maximize the liberty of as many people as possible in our nation.

It's about recognizing that the liberty of individuals is often in conflict with the liberty of other individuals, and that you can't maximize liberty across all individuals by giving some people (big business people and FIRE sector people) complete economic liberty from any reasonable rules, when that means removing or restricting the liberty of many or most of the other people in the United States, by chaining them to the wheel of extreme economic insecurity.

Joe Biden just famously accused Romney of wanting to “let the big banks once again write their own rules. "Unchain Wall Street!” And then continued: “They gonna put y'all back in chains." Biden was right.

For most of American history, farmers and small businessmen have been chained to the banks. The New Deal ended that. But the banks are back, more powerful than ever, and they do want to chain most of us to the wheel of economic insecurity for their own profit. Ryan, Romney, the Republicans, and too many Democrats are their agents in this. They must be stopped!

Government does need to be limited, but only a simpleton can fail to recognize that its limits have less to do with its size, and much more to do with its having processes that are just and fair and maximize liberty, rather than processes which enshrine arbitrariness, favoritism, exposure to political influence, and special favors for one group, placing them above the law.

Does Congressman Ryan understand that it is not about size, but about justice and activities that maximize liberty? If he does, and if he were really interested in justice and liberty, then he would be worth listening to when he talks about limited Government, and his Party would gain the trust and honor among the American people that it has not had since the time of Teddy Roosevelt, and before that Abraham Lincoln.

But don't hold your breath waiting for either that interest in justice and liberty, or that understanding about size to happen. It's just not in the DNA of the 21st Century Republican Party, the party of injustice and of serfdom for the 99%.

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.com.)

Ryan's Follies: Limited Government, Liberty, and Effective Government

Joseph M. Firestone — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 23:55:59 -0400

More Ryan's follies from his answer to the President's 2011 SOTU. These are about that old Republican hypocritical favorite, “small government.”

”So I’d like to share with you the principles that guide us. They are anchored in the wisdom of the founders; in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence; and in the words of the American Constitution.

They have to do with the importance of limited government; and with the blessing of self-government. . . .

We believe, as our founders did, that “the pursuit of happiness” depends upon individual liberty; and individual liberty requires limited government.”

I find myself in general agreement with this position; but I think it raises a very big issue, and that issue is: in exactly what ways ought the Government to be limited? Unfortunately, the Constitution doesn't tell us that in a completely clear way. It leaves it up to us to figure it out. It isn't so much that individual liberty requires limited government; but that it requires government that is limited in the right ways. So let's see what Congressman Ryan thinks about this issue.

”Limited government also means effective government. When government takes on too many tasks, it usually doesn’t do any of them very well. It’s no coincidence that trust in government is at an all-time low now that the size of government is at an all-time high.”

Well, suddenly we've moved away from “liberty” to talking about effective government, trust, and the size of government. OK. Let's talk about that!

There are a lot of factors that determine the effectiveness of Government. It's pretty clear that Government won't be effective if it's badly led and managed. So, since 1981 we've seen that Government wasn't very effective in many of its functions when managed by Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes. I wonder why. Could it be that these Republican Presidents wanted Government to be ineffective in the various areas of Government activity established by legislation they disapproved of?

It's also clear, that Government won't be effective if the people chosen to lead it by our presidents intend for it to perform poorly. So, when presidents have appointed Secretaries of Labor who were anti-labor, it's not surprising that the Labor Department performed poorly. Nor is it surprising that when they appointed people to head the FCC, or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that the work of these agencies suffered. And how about their record of appointments to the SEC, or the Treasury or the Fed. If presidents appoint people to these agencies that look the other way, and refuse to regulate accounting control fraud, then you get accounting control fraud run rampant. Or take the EPA, the Republicans keep appointing EPA Directors who are opposed to environmental regulation. Clearly, they are there to stop the Government from performing not, to manage its enforcing the law.

As to the Government having too many tasks to do anything very well, it's quite clear that the size of the Government is not as important as the size of the units of Government performing the tasks they need to perform, and as the communications among units that need to coordinate to perform tasks well. Also, whether units perform well is a function of the resources available to them to perform particular tasks.

For years Republicans and, to a lesser degree, Democrats, as well,have been trying to shrink the Government (because small government is better, don'cha know?), so that much of its work, has to be contracted out to the private sector. Of course, this introduces incentive problems in doing the contracted out government work, and also communication problems, between the private contractors and the government supervisors, which interfere with both efficiency and effectiveness.

After 30 years of this, there is no evidence that the policy of shrinking Government's permanent civil service employees, and contracting out government work to the private sector has been either less expensive for the Government, or more effective than Government operations of the 1950s and 1960s, which used many more civil service employees, and fewer private contractors to perform Government's work. In fact, it's likely that contracting out has been far more expensive and less effective than the old way of doing things, because private contractors have a tendency to stretch out work, and continue it as long as they can, so that their billings are extended.

In any event, the size of the Government doesn't necessarily correlate with effective performance. We can see this by comparing national governments across the World. Many nations spent more, and some far more, as a percentage of GDP than the 34.6% the United States spent on Federal, State, and local Government in 2007; for example: France; Sweden, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Norway, The Netherlands, Austria, Finland, the UK, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Switzerland. Arguably all of these Governments performed more effectively than the US Government in that year. But, even if you don't believe that, it's hard to deny that they performed at least as well.

On the other hand, many nations that spent more on Government as a percent of GDP than the US, performed much more poorly than we did. My point is that there is no clear, strong, correlation between nations whose Governments are obviously effective, and nations with a particular size of Government, and certainly there is no empirical evidence that smaller Governments work better than larger ones.

Finally, the size of Government, viewed in terms of Government spending as a percent of GDP, is not at an all time high relative to the rest of the economy. It was larger in WWII for one thing. For another, its recent increase is due to the effects of the recession and additional Government expenditures made to combat it. Nor does this increase take into account Government spending at the State and local levels. At these levels, Government spending has been cut drastically inhibiting economic recovery by introducing fiscal drag, exactly when we needed the Government sector to step up and inject funding into the private sector.

Trust in the Government may be at or near an all time low, but that is due to the failures of the Bush and Obama Administrations, the crash of 2008, the Federal bailout of the banks without a corresponding bailout of Main Street, and the actions of a Congress paralyzed by deficit hawkism and small government ideology. That is, the Federal Government hasn't performed very well, in large part due to the role of the Republicans, including Congressman Ryan, in opposing the passage of Government spending sufficient to create full employment, and in supporting the continued bailout of the banks, the payment of undeserved bonuses to FIRE sector personnel. And also in taking Federal spending hostage through paralyzing the Federal budget process and using the debt ceiling to force spending cuts, and block income tax increases on the wealthy, and in opposing investigations of the mortgage and accounting control frauds that have put so many out of their homes.

This lack of trust, isn't due to too much Government action, except perhaps in the areas of trans-vaginal ultrasound procedures and onerous voter ID laws, and won't be fixed by Mr. Ryan's preferred policies of ineffective, or no regulation of the FIRE sector and fiscal austerity. On the other hand, it may well be fixed by:

-- an effective Federal Job Guarantee program,

-- a Federal Revenue Sharing program restoring and saving state and local government jobs,

-- a full payroll tax holiday for employers and employees including Federal reimbursement of the Social Security account,

-- ending the wars in the Middle East completely,

-- passing an enhanced Medicare for All bill,

-- forgiving student loan debt,

-- prosecuting accounting control frauds in the FIRE sector, and

-- doubling Social Security benefits.

In other words, if the Government starts doing some things that actually benefit the majority of the population, then it's very likely that people will trust it a lot more. That's not rocket science, is it?

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.com.)

Ryan's Follies: Bureaucracy, Austerity, and Depression

Joseph M. Firestone — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 23:33:19 -0400

Here's the next group of Ryan's follies from his answer to the President's 2011 SOTU.

On bureaucracy and innovation:

”Depending on bureaucracy to foster innovation, competitiveness, and wise consumer choices has never worked – and it won’t work now.”

That may be. But depending on the big banks and big US corporations to either get lending going again, or to bring innovation and jobs to the United States also won't work. What will work is for the Government to increase aggregate demand by deficit spending in areas of the economy we want to grow.

“Bureaucracy” is just a scare term. The big corporations that Ryan, the Republicans, and many Democratic Congresspeople serve are all just as bureaucratic, and in the case of the health insurance companies, even more bureaucratic than the Government. The dirty little secret of the social sciences is that bureaucracy comes with large size whether we're talking about private or public organizations. So, unless Ryan has plans to break up the large banks, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, telecommunications companies, and exporters he loves so much, he really ought to shut up about “bureaucracy,” because his precious private sector has absolutely nothing to crow about when it comes to that feature of large organizations.

If we don't like bureaucracy, then what we need is regulation that will break up large organizations, making them illegal beyond a certain size. Then perhaps we might create functioning markets and be able to shrink the Federal government too. But this kind of solution is off the table for Ryan and Romney since regulation is a no-no from the standpoint of their ideology.

On other nations acting soon enough when they rising debts:

”Just take a look at what’s happening to Greece, Ireland, the United Kingdom and other nations in Europe. They didn’t act soon enough; and now their governments have been forced to impose painful austerity measures: large benefit cuts to seniors and huge tax increases on everybody.”

First, I've heard just about enough of the mindless comparisons of Greece and Ireland to the United States and other nations that are sovereign in their own currency. Greece and Ireland use the Eurozone's currency, so they have solvency risk not shared by nations like the United States. They can be driven into insolvency by the bond markets. Currency-wise Euro nations are like the states of the United States, and not like the Federal Government which is the creator of US currency. These cannot avoid insolvency by simply creating Euros, because they have given up their power to issue currency. We, on the other hand, can spend dollars, and in the act of spending create high-powered money in private sector accounts.

Second, Ryan may say that the British Government was forced into its austerity measures. But this is nonsense, no one forced it into its austerity moves. It just decided to follow the policies that Ryan wants for us here. And what's happened to Britain since they introduced austerity policies should be a lesson learned for every other nation in full control of its currency that decides to ape Euro austerity.

Contrary to Ryan's neoliberal economic theory, austerity has created economic contraction in the UK, since the fourth quarter of 2010. The UK National Accounts show a decline of 0.5% in real GDP growth in that quarter, a little over 6 months after the new coalition took office and passed its austerity program. That decline was prior to the implementation of some of the heaviest austerity measures, and reflected the attempts of UK households to anticipate the bite of austerity. The UK VAT was then increased by 2.5%. And its impact has been another decline in GDP caused by the Government's removal of private sector financial assets through the increase in the VAT, and its spending cut policies since the Spring of 2011.

Everyone in America should be watching Europe very carefully. Ireland and Greece had the choice of austerity or withdrawing from the Eurozone. They chose austerity. Both economies continue to struggle with Greece on the brink of collapse, and Ireland still mired deep in depression. In addition, Spain, Italy, and Portugal are also choosing austerity, and all of them are in trouble as the Euro crisis treated with austerity policy, gradually kills the economy.

In the UK, the British public is suffering from the stubborn Tory-liberal experiment in austerity, with the ruling parties continuing to deny facts obvious to everyone about how their experiment is working out. Let's hope that the deficit hawks and doves in this country watch that carefully, so that they can see that austerity won't work, before they subject Americans to one of their variety of unnecessary long-term deficit reduction plans.

On endless borrowing and spending cuts:

”We believe the days of business as usual must come to an end. We hold to a couple of simple convictions: Endless borrowing is not a strategy; spending cuts have to come first.”

I believe that business as usual has to end too. For the past 30 years or more we've heard nothing but economic theory that confuses the Government with a household or other economic units that cannot create their own currency. And we've heard all through that time that we cannot keep borrowing, and that spending cuts must come first, while we've kept borrowing largely to provide lower tax rates for wealthy people, in the hopes that greater disposable income for them would trickle down. Ryan and Romney are giving us that same ideology again.

If endless borrowing is really not a strategy, than why won't Ryan work to restore the marginal tax rates of the 1960s and close all loopholes? We all know why; because he doesn't believe in shared sacrifice; only in sacrifices by the poor and the middle class so he can further enrich his supporters. Congressman Ryan, the Republican's young guru is exactly the same as their old gurus. His one prescription for everything is to leave the poor little rich people alone, so they can, out of the goodness of their hearts, leave the rest of us a few scraps.

Apart from this however, while ending borrowing and cutting spending may increase the well-being of a private sector household, if everyone does that in the private sector, then there will be rapidly declining demand, and as surely as night follows day there will be a double-dip recession harming everyone, unless Government spending takes up the demand slack coming from the private sector.

The Government can borrow endlessly if it wants to, as long as its accompanying Government spending doesn't cause demand-pull inflation. Or, alternatively, if Ryan and Romney are as bothered by the debt as they claim, then they can work to repeal the Congressional mandate forcing the Treasury to issue new debt when it deficit spends. That way, the debt will gradually be reduced to zero as time passes and they won't have to worry about it anymore.

Even better, if Ryan and Romney hate the debt so much, they can propose that the Executive cause the US Mint to issue a $60 Trillion proof platinum coin, deposit it at the Fed in return for electronic credits which will end up in the Treasury General Account. With the $60 T in credits, the debt subject to the limit can be paid off entirely as it falls due, leaving $44 T in credits to use for deficit spending over the next 15 years or so. Romney and Ryan will never do this however, since if they did and also implemented this plan, then they'd have no excuse for cutting Federal spending that benefits the poor and the middle class.

The more important point is that cutting the level of Government deficit spending is not what ought to be done when we have an economy that is operating so far below its full capacity. If we do that and move to balance the budget as Ryan/Romney want us to do, then we will take financial assets out of the private sector, reduce aggregate demand and further decrease our use of the economy's productive capacity. That is, we'll have greater unemployment, greater suffering, and much less growth.

That's because Government deficit spending, other things equal, increases net financial assets in the private sector; while Government surpluses decrease net financial assets. There's just no getting around that macroeconomic identity. So, spending cuts and budget balancing are a strategy that won't effect the Government's capacity to spend at all, but it will impoverish the private sector.

If that's really what Ryan, Romney, the Republicans, and a variety of Democrats, as well, want to do, then let them try to do it. But I guarantee that sooner or later the American public will have its revenge for their bringing back Herbert Hoover's nightmare.

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.com.)

Ryan's Follies: Health Care Reform, Bankruptcy, and Tipping Points

Joseph M. Firestone — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 19:24:42 -0400

Still more Ryan's follies from his answer to the President's 2011 SOTU.

On the Affordable Care Act (ACA)

”Then the President and his party made matters even worse, by creating a new open-ended health care entitlement.

“What we already know about the President’s health care law is this: Costs are going up, premiums are rising, and millions of people will lose the coverage they currently have. Job creation is being stifled by all of its taxes, penalties, mandates and fees.”

Well, Congressman Ryan's right about most of this. The ACA doesn't contain direct measures to prevent insurance companies from raising premiums, but relies on exchanges that won't be fully operative until 2014, by which time insurance companies will have raised rates far higher than they were when the ACA was passed in 2010. On the other hand, Paul Ryan and the Republicans wouldn't support any cost-cutting measure that would be effective anyway, such as, for example, prohibiting increases in premium costs greater than the rate of inflation in the rest of the economy, because the Republicans and Ryan himself, along with many Democrats are bought and paid for by the health insurance companies and big Pharma.

Ryan's claim that job creation is being stifled by the ACA bill, is currently unsupported by evidence. And his claim about job creation is pure theory, especially since most of the bill isn't operational yet and its impact can't be assessed. One thing's certain, however, and that is that there's no way that either the ACA, or alternatives based on the free competition and confidence fairy theories Ryan favors will produce the 2.5 million new jobs predicted by the California Nurses Association study if the Democrats had rid themselves of the filibuster in January of 2009 and passed Medicare for All, rather than collaborate with the Republicans and the Blue Dogs to cut the heart out of health care reform.

On the ACA and bankruptcy:

”Businesses and unions from around the country are asking the Obama Administration for waivers from the mandates. Washington should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. The President mentioned the need for regulatory reform to ease the burden on American businesses. We agree – and we think his health care law would be a great place to start.

“Health care spending is driving the explosive growth of our debt. And the President’s law is accelerating our country toward bankruptcy.”

Health care spending is driving the explosive growth of debt, both public and private, but as we saw in my first Ryan's Follies post, the public debt accompanying health care deficit spending is reducing debt in the private sector and also increasing demand. Unfortunately, the explosive growth of private debt from health care costs visited upon individuals is causing great suffering in the form of bankruptcies and foreclosures. In addition, these costs result in deaths when people can no longer afford co-pays and decide to forgo treatment they need before illnesses or injuries cause serious damage.

I don't believe that Ryan is right that “the President's Law” is accelerating the Government towards bankruptcy, because it has no risk of “bankruptcy,” unless Congressman Ryan and his colleagues decide to force insolvency by not using their constitutional authority to appropriate Government spending or to raise the debt limit. The “explosive growth” of the public debt is, for reasons stated in my first Ryan's Follies post, of little or no concern. However, I do believe that the growth of private sector debt due to health care costs is a major issue, as is the portion of the US GDP spent on the health care sector, which is way out of line with other industrial nations, and which at the same time produces much worse outcomes for too many Americans whether they have insurance “coverage,” or not.

Of course, the Congressman is not concerned about these real problems, but only about his imagined “problem” of the Government becoming insolvent due to excessive spending. That is, one of the reasons, why, I suppose, he opposes Medicare for All. If he and his Republicans were to join with Democrats to pass that, it would relieve both the increasing private sector debt problem, and also reduce the GDP proportion of health care spending by perhaps one-third. But, I guess we should just expect this kind of public service out of someone who proposes to return the United States to 19th century economic rules and behavior.

Congressman Ryan, criticizes the waiver process, by saying that Washington should not be in the business of picking winners and losers. But, this is one of the most hypocritical remarks in the history of politics coming from Congressman Ryan, since he has gone out of his way to see to it that lack of regulation would ensure that the health insurance companies, big Pharma, the FIRE sector, and businesses in his and other Congressional Districts that wanted to move jobs to other nations would be big winners while American workers and people needing Medical insurance would be big losers. The Congressman has always picked winners and losers.

Unfortunately, for America, however, he has never picked them in the public interest; but only to benefit his own political career. And this has meant, when it comes to jobs, that he has picked foreign winners and American losers while always wrapping himself in the flag.

And back to public debt:

”Our debt is out of control. What was a fiscal challenge is now a fiscal crisis.

"We cannot deny it; instead we must, as Americans, confront it responsibly.

“If we act soon, and if we act responsibly, people in and near retirement will be protected.”

As shown in my first Follies post, the national debt isn't out of control at all. But Ryan is right to think that we have a fiscal crisis that we have to confront responsibly. That crisis is that the Government including Congress, the Federal Reserve, and the Executive Branch isn't using activist fiscal policy to achieve the public purpose, even though there is no solvency risk and little inflation risk in the United States doing so. The United States has so many problems right now that letting these problems go unsolved, by kicking them down the road is the real meaning of fiscal irresponsibility.

When it comes to fiscal irresponsibility no one is better described by that term than Paul Ryan. Of course, he has a lot of company in Peter G. Peterson, the Koch brothers, and all the advocates of balanced budget amendments, Republicans and Democrats who think it's responsible to manage the US Government's spending as though it were a household or still on the gold standard. These people, who have, apparently been joined by Barack Obama, will destroy the economic foundations of the United States, and create a nation where everyday life is “nasty, brutish, and short,” and the sick “die quickly.”

And, of course, “tipping points” into dependency:

”Our nation is approaching a tipping point.

“We are at a moment, where if government’s growth is left unchecked and unchallenged, America’s best century will be considered our past century. This is a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency.”

Anyone who has experienced unemployment, or living on Social Security alone, or Medicare, not supplemented by other medical insurance, knows that the social safety net is no hammock, and that it is not nearly as generous as social safety nets in other modern industrial nations. Our social safety net is the most stingy and mean of all these, and also the one most immersed in false economies that undercut demand and prevent the social safety net from doing its job of making recessions less punishing for poor people, people out of work, the sick, and most of the 99%.

Congressman Ryan makes Mr. Potter, the banker in “It's a Wonderful Life,” look like a generous man, for he means to drain America of real wealth so he can serve the job exporters he loves so well better. If he has his way, the social safety net will become a bed of nails. If we simply leave it where it is, there's no danger of hammocks anytime soon. And even if we were to extend it by passing enhanced Medicare for All, and say, doubling Social Security payments in recognition of the fact that the financial sector of the economy has, by now, nearly destroyed both the savings, and the pension legs of the proverbial three-legged retirement stool for a very large percentage of the middle class, there is no way that even that would tip us all over into “hammocks.”

A strong, generous, social safety net is not a social invention that will make people dependent. Instead, it is an invention to make them more free. FDR wisely said that “necessitous men are not free men.” What angers me so much about Romney, Ryan, the Koch Brothers, Peter G. Peterson, and all who follow him, is that they want to make most of us “necessitous” while they lack for nothing!

(Cross-posted from Correntewire.com.)