paul ryan

More on Ryan's follies and the overall quality of thinking we find in this young “guru”! more »

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Paul Ryan's looks are often compared to an actor's, and that's no accident: He's being groomed for the role of a lifetime. more »

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In celebration of Paul Ryan's nomination, and in consideration of his reputation among Washington, DC villagers as a fiscal guru, I thought it might be fun to do a series of posts, of which this is the first, critiquing examples of Ryan's past wisdom. Here's the first example: more »

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A spring awash with Etch A Sketch conservatives, camera-wielding GOP con men and a bogus deficit reduction budget from House Republicans shows that for the right, wrong is justified when it achieves the desired results.

A perfect example of this political philosophy is the work of James E. more »

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Economic radical Paul Ryan has endorsed Mitt Romney, Romney's embraced the Ryan budget, and the House Republicans have voted to enact the Romney/Ryan vision of the future into law. Yet an eerie silence has settled over the vision itself: How would it affect our daily lives? more »

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By now most people have heard some of the worst things about the Republican budget proposal - commonly called the "Ryan plan" and unironically described by the GOP as "the Path to Prosperity": That it decimates programs for middle class and lower-income Americans while giving even greater tax breaks to the rich - more »

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This last week we've seen how Washington's elites are able to suppress popular opinion, work against the public interest, and wrap it all up with a bow so that it looks like 'democracy in action.' It's not. What we're seeing isn't democracy, and it isn't a free press either. It's merely another cynical ploy to rob Americans of government programs they both need and want.

The latest assault is on Medicare. The "Ryan/Wyden plan" is a perfect case study in the cynical workings of an antidemocratic machine - a machine whose cogs are lazy journalists, whose gears are selfish politicians, and whose levers are pulled by the wealthy and powerful.

I held my fire on this for a few days, to see if more details would emerge on the proposal from Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Paul Ryan, who were initially (and deliberately vague) on its specifics. That turned it into Rorschach test for observers, and where the Washington Post sees a butterfly I usually see a vampire bat.

But Malcolm Gladwell would be pleased: It turns out that the first 'blink' impression of Ryan/Wyden is the right one. It's a Medicare-killing publicity stunt that undermines the financial security of the 99%. And if you happen to be reading this in the Nation's Capital, please note: The 'lefty' position on Medicare is supported by most Republicans.

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An unelected and unrepresentative group they call the 'Super Committee' has been given extraordinary power over our own economic destiny. Think if it as a political Justice League of America, except that its mission is to rescue Treasury bonds, not people.

Problem is, the bonds don't need to be rescued. People do. more »

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Some say that maybe it is a bad idea to base a political party's ideology on a belief that altruism, democracy and Christianity are "evil." Others say that maybe it is a bad idea to base a country's policies on fictional novels rather than science and history. more »

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On Wednesday forty radicals in the United States Senate took an extremist position by voting to end Medicare.

That simple sentence will be challenged by a lot of political and media people. They'll say I don't understand the popular mood, and that I'm applying my own values to Wednesday's vote. But I can prove this statement is true, using only a dictionary and some polling data. They'll even say they didn't vote to end Medicare! But that can be proved, too.

When 40% of the Senate votes for a policy that's opposed by 78% of the public, it suggests that one of our political parties has been profoundly radicalized. In a two-party system, that's a serious challenge for democracy.

A radical, extremist vote

Rep. Paul Ryan's budget proposal was rejected by 57-40. All the Senate's Democrats voted against it, and so did Republican Senators Rand Paul, Olympia Snowe, Scott Brown, Susan Collins, and Lisa Murkowski. On Medicare at least, these five Republicans did not reveal themselves to be radicals or extremists on Wednesday. Good for them.

Let's be clear: Americans in all walks of life, including politics, have every right to hold radical or extremist views. Some of our best and noblest ideas have come from radicals. The abolition of slavery, a woman's right to vote, financial security for elderly and disabled Americans -- each was considered a radical or extreme position at some point in history.

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