Each morning, Bill Scher and Terrance Heath serve up what progressives need to effect change on the kitchen-table issues families face: jobs, health care, green energy, financial reform, affordable education and retirement security.
MORNING MESSAGE: Ryan Puts The Con In Conservative
OurFuture.org's Robert Borosage: "The most Orwellian Big Lie of the Republican convention isn’t the race bait nonsense about work requirements in welfare. It isn’t the mind-numbing repetition of the 'built it' deception. It is Ryan’s brazen and dangerous posturing about Medicare. Ryan and Romney have apparently decided that Americans are easily misled and a docile press won’t hold them accountable … And Ryan and Romney’s bet may well be right … CNN’s David Gergen, the sonorous prattler of convention, grudgingly acknowledged some 'misstatements' while hailing 'a speech about big ideas.' Big ideas? There were platitudes about the founders, speech-writers’ bits about family, the blame Obama meme. Through it all, I waited for Ryan to say one thing about what Romney proposes to do differently to get the economy moving."
Ryan's Pants Are On Fire
"The Most Dishonest Convention Speech … Ever?" declares TNR's Jonathan Cohn: "At least five times, Ryan misrepresented the facts … It’s one thing to hear them on a thirty-second television spot or even in a stump speech before a small crowd. It’s something else entirely to hear them in prime time address, as a vice presidential nominee is accepting his party’s nomination … The [Janesville GM] plant shut down. But it shut down in 2008—before Obama became president … [Ryan's] own budget called for taking the same amount of money from Medicare … Romney has pledged to put that money back into Medicare … But the claim is totally implausible given Romney's promise to cap non-defense spending at 16 percent of gross domestic product … What Obamacare did not do is take away benefits. On the contrary, it added benefits … this decade’s big deficits are primarily a product of Bush-era tax cuts and wars. And you know who voted for them? Paul Ryan."
More lies chronicled by TPM: "Ryan said the Obama presidency, 'began with a perfect Triple-A credit rating for the United States; it ends with a downgraded America.' Standard & Poors downgraded the country’s sovereign debt rating in 2011 because congressional Republicans, of which Ryan is a key leader, threatened not to increase the country’s borrowing authority … Ryan even briefly toyed with the idea that the country’s creditors would forgive default for 'a day or two or three or four' … Ryan sat on that [White House debt] commission. He voted against it … Ryan claimed the campaign’s top priority is protecting the poor … Just under two thirds of the dramatic spending cuts in Ryan’s budget target programs that benefit low-income people."
"Paul Ryan Bets on the Ignorance of America" says NY Mag's Dan Amira: "Most of the millions of people who watched the speech on television tonight do not read fact-checks or obsessively consume news fifteen hours a day, and will never know how much Ryan's case against Obama relied on lies and deception. Ryan's pants are on fire, but all America saw was a barn-burner."
The so-called man of ideas didn't bother explaining his. Time's Michael Crowley: "Ryan made little effort to detail his own ticket’s budget plans, which would involve a wrenching reduction in the size of government. And on the most sensitive issue Ryan has tackled in Congress—reining in Medicare—he skipped the details of his own ideas, instead repeated his attacks on Medicare cuts in Obama’s health care bill."
"With Ryan Speech, Romney Campaign Goes Full Tea Party" says Mother Jones' David Corn: "…the question is, do middle-class voters worried about the economy (especially those who are still undecided) see sanctimonious central planners in Washington as the main evil and believe that they would prosper if government would just leave them alone? … I asked a former George W. Bush administration official about the Ryan pick. He admitted to being baffled, even after talking to Romney aides about the choice. 'They're in a mania. They think America is ready for a grand reconfiguration of its social insurance system. It's like they're in the middle of their own housing bubble, and they're talking only to themselves.'"
But he tried to mask his conservatism, argues American Prospect's Harold Meyerson: "The Ryan who spoke in Tampa didn’t throw down a conservative gauntlet, as once such conservative leaders as Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan did. Rather, he repackaged conservative abstractions as consensual mush. At times, he deviated completely from his hard right faith. Does he really believe, as he proclaimed from the podium, that the truest measure of a society’s merit is the degree to which the strong protect the weak? How could an avowed Ayn Rand acolyte believe such things? But today’s conservatism, not to mention Ryan’s own, is so hard-edged it needs a triple coating of mush, lest the glint of its blade scare off potential supporters."
Dean Baker explains economics to Ryan and his fawning fans in the media: "Representative Ryan seems impressed by big numbers (i.e. trillions), but seems to have difficulty with simple concepts. If we look at the ratio of our interest burden as share of GDP , it is close to 1.5 percent. This is near its low point for the post-war era. In other words, instead of having a burden that is at a record high, the interest burden that we are now facing is near a post-war low. How can a budget wonk be so far from reality? In fact, if we factor in the $80 billion in interest earnings that the Fed is refunding to the Treasury each year, the net interest burden is only about 1.0 percent of GDP , its lowest level since World War II."
Ryan Not Alone
"GOP Governor Acknowledges That Romney’s Welfare Attack Ads Are False" reports ThinkProgress.
GOP whitewashes role of government in American history. McClatchy: "…Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin boasted that people rushed into her state in the Great Land Run of 1889 with only their own grit to thank, and no help from the federal government … Fallin’s characterization omitted major chunks of federal government involvement, including the Dawes Act of 1887 and other measures that forced Indian tribes onto reservations, freeing 'open' surplus lands for white settlers. Oil later was found on some of that land. The Homestead Act of 1862 provided the method by which the land was distributed to settlers. 'Those pioneers who came to settle in Indian territory were benefited by federal government largess at every hand,' said historian W. David Baird…"
Obama Stumps In VA, On Reddit
President highlights Romney campaign's attitude towards facts. HuffPost: "'I mean, somebody was challenging one of their ads -- they made it up -- about work and welfare. And every outlet said, this is just not true. And they were asked about it and they said -- one of their campaign people said, we won't have the fact-checkers dictate our campaign,' Obama said … Obama was referencing comments [Romney pollster Neil] Newhouse made at a panel organized by ABC News on Tuesday."
And defends health care reform. NYT: "Telling supporters that Mr. Romney has vowed to repeal Obamacare on his first day in office — Mr. Obama said he had 'affectionately' adopted the Republicans’ term for the health care law — the president said that by doing so, 'with the stroke of a pen' Mr. Romney would end insurance coverage for young people who, under the law, are covered until age 26 on their parents’ insurance policies. 'I call his plan Romney Doesn’t Care,' Mr. Obama said."
President touts constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United ruling. Politico: "In a chat with the website Reddit, President Obama called for serious look at a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. 'Over the longer term, I think we need to seriously consider mobilizing a constitutional amendment process to overturn Citizens United (assuming the Supreme Court doesn't revisit it). Even if the amendment process falls short, it can shine a spotlight of the super-PAC phenomenon and help apply pressure for change,' Obama wrote."
Another loss for voter suppression forces in FL. NYT: "A federal judge said on Wednesday that he planned to block provisions of a Florida measure that made it harder for organizations to register voters in the state … The 2011 Florida election law required groups that registered voters to turn in their completed forms within 48 hours or risk penalties. As a result, several organizations, including the League of Women Voters and Rock the Vote, stopped working in the state … [But] the all-volunteer voter registration groups now face an arduous task. The registration deadline for the November election is five weeks away."
