Ryan is a wonderful Irish name. But Paul Ryan is no typical Irishman. Ryan carries less of the Irish tradition than does Russ Feingold. The reason is that the Irish are the very symbol of fighters for the common man, for the underdog. Another Ryan, for example, Leo Ryan gave his life trying to save the families of Jonestown from mad evangelist Jim Jones. And why did they call it “Saving Private Ryan?” Lot of Irish in that war. Kind of typical of the average G.I. probably.
Shannons and Ryans and Kennedys and Murphys have all been fighters for the common man. But none of them sold out to the Right Wing for a pat on the back and the promise of a big campaign contribution or a job when the day comes that people discover the truth about your “economic plan.”
How do we know that he sold out? Simple. Ryan is neither stupid nor ignorant. He is smart enough to know that his plan, as he describes its ultimate goal…is a sham, a fake, a phony…a lie. When a guy comes into your bank with a gun and says “Stick em up” you might think he was crazy or a crook. But if you find out that he was not crazy, then you know damned well that he’s a crook.
Ryan thinks that, while talking “austerity” he can give $4 trillion in tax breaks away and still fool the American people into thinking that it will help stimulate the economy. It didn’t in 2002 when he voted for it. Or 2003 when he voted for more tax breaks. Or in 2004, 2005, 2006, or 2007 while those tax breaks were creating havoc with our national debt. And in 2008, tax breaks didn’t help stop the fall of the stock market from 11,000 down to 6,900. Or keep 14.8 million people from losing their jobs. Is Ryan’s phony plan the answer to putting people back to work?
Ryan is either a fool, a moron, an imbecile or a liar. He’s not a fool. Not a moron. What does that leave? He knows what he’s doing. And he’s doing it to you and wants to do more.
Look, we had top tax rates of 74% in 1979. By 1981 we had cut those in half. What was the result? By 1988 we had gone from $800 billion in debt to $2.l4 trillion in debt. From the first day this country was in business up to 1979 we incurred 800 billion in debt. In eight years we nearly tripled that. Tax cuts continued and deficits continued and by the time Clinton stopped the bleeding and left office, having finally nearly balanced the budget, we had a $5.6 trillion debt.
And what did George W. Bush, with the help of Ryan’s Republican Congress do? He cut taxes again (what Ryan wants to do yet again) and we ended up with a $12 trillion debt…doubled the debt in eight years…and a Recession that cost us another $2 trillion and is still costing us enormous amounts every single month.
Ryan wants to continue to pretend that he’s Irish. He pretends that he is only doing what will help get us back on track. He squeezes out a little compassion into a handkerchief and wipes his brow with it but that is as far as it goes because that’s all the Irish he has in him…not quite enough to moisten a handkerchief.
Ryan is so self-serving that he can’t get out of his own way. He has learned the Republican trick of speaking, as Washington Irving would say, “faster than he thinks.” But that’s ok because he doesn’t have to think. Like most of them he has the mantra memorized and lets it fly at top speed.
The reason that they do it is this: to pass over parts that contradict their arguments. For example, Ryan will say something like, “The reason we need to reduce the tax burden is to compensate for the doubling of discretionary spending in the Obama years and go back to the year 2006….” Hold it!
Why did Obama double spending? Well, first of all he had a lot he had to spend just to keep the country from disintegrating after the idiot son and Darth Vader left the White House. Were there or were there not 14.8 million unemployed left on his doorstep?
Would there not have been many more had he not spent some of that money Ryan is talking about? And where was Ryan when Bush was doubling the debt in 8 years? He was one of the ringleaders for the rich…not the common man.
Who is Paul Ryan? If you are a Congressman, it is easy to see who you are. Here is how Paul Ryan of Wisconsin voted:
He voted to deny 9.9 million kids of low income workers the right to affordable SCHIPS medical care. There was no reason for it. It was simply a decision about money versus compassion.
He voted twice against unemployment insurance in 2010.
He voted against setting up a small business lending fund and against regulation and supervision of Wall Street in 2010, after the collapse and after it was clear that the private financial system would not begin to lend to small business. It still has not.
He voted to prevent Medicare from negotiating better prices from pharmaceutical companies for senior citizens.
He voted in favor of sending troops to Iraq and against all bills to bring them home.
He voted for both Bush Tax cuts, which cost the government $3 trillion, and for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars which cost another $2 trillion (thus far).
He voted against increasing minimum wages for the lowest level workers to any more than $5.15 an hour. He did vote for it in a bill that included tax cuts for businesses of all kinds and for a basic repeal of the estate tax. It didn’t pass, thankfully.
He voted against a bill that would have stopped the domestic intelligence services, including the FBI, from secretly obtaining your video store or library records.
He has repeatedly voted for the death penalty. Even after 18 death row inmates who had been executed were later discovered to have been innocent resulting from a study done by then Governor Ryan of Illinois.
He voted to take the decision about how Terri Schiavo should be treated out of the hands of the dozens of doctors who had recommended that she be taken off life support, out of the hands of her husband and put in the control of her parents, who quite naturally simply did not want her taken off life support.
While he voted for stimulus plans by Bush that did not work, he voted against two plans by Obama, the ARRA, $787 billion plan that thus far has put about 2.5 million people to work (you can look it up on the stimulus web site by congressional district) and the Cash for Clunkers program that economists now say was a major factor in saving the domestic auto business.
He voted against homosexual marriage, for shorter periods to get a gun, against allowing people to sue negligent gun manufacturers and for privatizing Social Security. He is a hard-core Right Winger, so designated by all the independent groups who score these things.
He voted to allow the Director of National Intelligence and the Attorney General..in other words the CIA, the NSA and the FBI…to tap your phone if they think something is suspicious. (Or if Dick Cheney or Karl Rove doesn’t like you.)
He was right there voting for all the things that caused the $8 trillion dollars that was added to the debt by the Bush administration.
Now here’s the thing, folks. A guy walks in and shoots at you and you pick up a gun and let’s say that you’re going to retaliate and, still pointing his gun at you, he says…”don’t worry, I’m on your side…just lower your weapon and you’ll see.” You’ll see all right. He’s going to shoot you with the gun he still has pointed at you (a $4 trillion addition to the debt) while saying not to worry (“we’ve got to lower the national debt.”) He already took shots at you before that almost killed you. That was called the Bush Administration.
Paul Ryan is a shill for billionaires. He is not a captive of the orthodoxy of Neoconservative economics. He is a shill for rich, white American racist oil billionaires. He is working as hard as he can every day to put the health care insurance companies back in control of your life. He is working for gun manufacturers who want literally to introduce guns onto college campuses. He is working to cut back on Social Security, to privatize Medicare and drop Medicaid altogether. He is a radical Right Wing activist parading himself around as an Irishman.
Don’t buy it.
