Private charity fails to replace social programs

As I've noted before, charitable giving is "pro-cyclical," meaning it decreases during a bad economy when it's needed most.  

Hiltzik also points out that very little of charitable giving is aimed at the needs of the poor; and the rich are more miserly givers than the rest of us:

The smallest allocation of philanthropic giving to basic needs of the poor was made by the wealthiest donors, those with income of $1 million of more, who directed 3.8% of their giving directly to the poor. For the $100,000-$200,000 income group, that allocation was 12.4%.

"The existing evidence doesn't support the idea that wealthy donors will step in" to replace government transfer programs, says Rob Reich, an expert in philanthropy at Stanford. As he wrote last year, "Philanthropy appears to be more about the pursuit of one's own projects, a mechanism for the expression of one's values or preferences rather than a mechanism for redistribution or relief for the poor."

The largest single recipient of philanthropy is religion — 32% of the total, according to Giving USA. But only a small portion of that goes to outreach to the needy; more than three-quarters of donations to religious organizations is spent on "congregational operations," including facilities upkeep.

So here's the upshot:

What all this shows is that there's an unspoken subtext when people like [Representative Paul] Ryan complain, as he did during the 2012 presidential campaign, about "cold social programs from the federal Department of Health and Human Services" built by a government that "took away much of our greatness."

Ryan is evoking a golden-hued fairy tale of a past that never existed. In the real world today, those "cold social programs" from HHS and other federal agencies keep people fed and housed, and alive, and give their children opportunity.

Private charity can't replace government social programs

By Michael Hiltzik

March 30, 2014 | Los Angeles Times

URL: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20140330,0,1556558.column#ixzz2xRw4lXl7

Charity never did, never can, replace safety net

I've argued most of this before, (you can read some here, here and here), but Mr. Konczal lays out the exhaustive historical case that the U.S. never did manage to take care of its poor through private charity.

Contrary to what Paul Ryan, Newt Gingrich, Rand Paul, et al tell us, there never was a golden era in American history when private people and charities provided a safety net, or even anything close to one.

So the burden really is on far-right conservatives who want to tear down the safety net that was built to fix all these historical problems, to explain how they are going to invent something totally novel to American history, and guarantee that it will work when such patchworks or networks of charity have always failed in the past.

There's just no valid study, history or facts to back up their false claim.

The Conservative Myth of a Social Safety Net Built on Charity

By Mike Konczlar

March 24, 2014 | The Atlantic

URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/the-conservative-myth-of-a-social-safety-net-built-on-charity/284552/

GOP's 'Work or Starve' economic program in effect

This food stamp cut should start boosting employment any day now, since the GOTP has given America's millions of hungry children, disabled vets and seniors the best motivation of all: work or starve. 

Indeed, as Rep. Paul Ryan cautioned us, "We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people into lives of dependency and complacency." 

Yep, we've cut those hammock strings, and now all we have to do is sit back and wait for those BLS employment figures to start ticking up as the free market works its magic....

US Republicans make the poor pay to balance the budget

By Gary Younge

November 4, 2013 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3k49k

Krugman: Milton Friedman too soft for today's GOP

It's really saying something that today's Republican party is to the right of Milton Friedman on monetary policy!

Milton Friedman, Unperson

By Paul Krugman

August 11, 2013 | New York Times

URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/12/opinion/krugman-milton-friedman-unperson.html?hpw&_r=0

Rep. McDermott: GOP won't give guidelines for 501(c)(4) tax exemption

Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) nailed it.  And the truth obviously hurt because he forced Rep. Paul Ryan to deviate from his prepared accusations, er, statement about the IRS "tempest in a tea party":

The mistake here was that the staff organizing the organizations used the names of the organizations rather than the work they do and asked improper questions to figure that out.

It’s clearly wrong. It was inept, stupid, and a whole lot of other things.

Let’s not forget, this happened under an IRS commissioner appointed by George Bush and was investigated by a Republican inspector general.

I haven’t heard a single word here about what questions you think we ought to be able to ask you about your tax-exempt request. Anything else, like the circus that’s happening in the Oversight Committee or here, is simply political theater.

EXACTLY!  Why isn't anybody else in Congress thinking about how to prevent such mistakes in the future, by coming up with clear and rational guidelines for the IRS to follow when evaluating whether an applicant for tax-exempt status really is a non-political "social welfare organization?"

I'll tell you why not.  Because Republicans want a big scandal.  (Good luck.)  And because they want to intimidate IRS staff so thoroughly that they'll completely stop checking conservative political groups altogether, no matter how obviously they are engaging in politics.  

As I've said before, this whole 501(c)(4) "social welfare" designation is total bullshit and only political hacks pretend it's real.  The GOP is positively giddy about acting all upset at the IRS, like a bunch of teenage boys booing the "bad guys" at a pro wrestling match when they know the whole thing's fake.

Paul Ryan Blasts Dem Rep. For Claiming IRS Investigation Just ‘Political Theater’

By Noah Rothman 

June 4, 2013 | Mediaite

URL: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/paul-ryan-blasts-dem-rep-for-claiming-irs-investigation-just-political-theater/

Rosenberg: Political 'moderation' is killing us

Rosenberg succinctly explains the destructive and yet politically successful behavior of today's Congressional Republicans:

If unreasonable positions ensure that the other side gets equal blame in the centrist's scorekeeping and resulting media coverage, then they are inherently "can't lose" positions. This provides a basic floor which biases the entire process against being reasonable.

If some sort of action is eventually necessary (as it is with budget issues, and most other governmental questions as well), then the unreasonable side - which by definition cares less (perhaps not at all) about real-world consequences - has an increasing advantage the longer that the issue remains unresolved, thus further motivating them to remain unreasonable. If they start at 50 percent (equal blame), things only get better for them over time, as the blame burden remains constant, but the cost pressure to do something rises much more accurately on the reasonable side.

In the process, argues Rosenberg, politically viable but unworkable political proposals get conflated with politically "serious," i.e. reasonable, ideas -- first among the MSM and with Washington elite, then among the wider public:

So why is the discussion dominated by a non-solution while a real solution can't even be discussed? It's because the "politically viable" sense of serious totally dominates over the "pragmatically effective" sense of the word, and because what is politically viable is circularly defined: extremist Republican non-solutions are politically viable because Republicans adamantly insist that they are, no matter how laughable they may be - and centrist bipartisan ideologues routinely and reliably endorse their false claims as matters of fact when they do so. The fact that they aren't even remotely serious, in the problem-solving sense, never even enters the picture.

And here Rosenberg sounds almost like Rush Limbaugh, who rejects bi-partisanship as an inherent political virtue:

Problem-solving and argument-winning have become two entirely antagonistic activities, and "moderate" "centrist" "bipartisanship" has become the creation of such profound confusion that the voting public won't catch on until it's far, far too late.

Today's Republicans are wrong and unreasonable. Any "middle ground" between their ideas -- the Paul Ryan budget, for example -- and reasonable progressive ideas is still wrong.  We cannot afford to call "less wrong" a job well done. We have big problems and we must be right!

The US on suicide watch: Death by 'moderation'

By Paul Rosenberg

March 22, 2013 | Aljazeera

URL: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/2013320184843513125.html

Ryan's budget either dumb or disingenuous

BOO-ya! Miller can't miss with this shot at the demographically challenged Congressional GOP:

Did I mention that Ronald Reagan ran the federal government at 22 percent of GDP when the country’s population was much younger, and health care consumed about 11 percent of GDP?

Now Paul Ryan says we can run the federal government at 19 percent of GDP as the massive baby-boom generation retires and when health costs (largely for seniors) have already soared to 18 percent of GDP.

Sorry, but Ryan is either deeply confused or doing his best to snooker us.

Miller puts in other words, same upshot:

In 1989, when President Reagan left office, there were 34 million people on Medicare and 39 million on Social Security. In 2025, according to these programs’ trustees, there will be 73 million on Medicare and 78 million on Social Security.

This is not happening because we’re stringing up the “hammock of dependency” that Ryan often invokes. It’s happening because our famously big postwar birth cohort is getting older.

Ryan obviously knows these facts. This means he’s disingenuously trying to use the aging of America to force a severe cutback in the non-elderly, non-defense portion of government, which is already headed toward historic lows as a share of GDP.

And here's what would happen if Ryan got his way:

At 19 percent, Ryan’s vision is an America with 50 million uninsured ... forever. Of infrastructure and R&D investment that trails other advanced nations ... in perpetuity. Of a nation that assigns its least effective teachers to poor children . . . permanently. (Amazingly, Senate Democrats have fallen prey to Ryan’s gravitational pull, with the budget they put out Wednesday coming in at 21.7 percent of GDP in the years ahead, a tad below Reagan-era spending.)

Ryan thinks we’re too dumb to see what he’s up to.

Well I'm not that dumb. Are you? 

Paul Ryan is no Ronald Reagan

By Matt Miller

March 14, 2013 | Washington Post

URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/matt-miller-paul-ryan-is-no-ronald-reagan/2013/03/14/bf1bddfc-8ca2-11e2-9f54-f3fdd70acad2_story.html

Dionne: No matter who wins, Tea Party already lost

It's a Wa-Po twofer today.

Here's the best line I've read in a while:  "Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the conservatives are forgiving Romney because they think he is lying [about his moderate stances], what should the rest of us think?"

Dionne points out that the Tea Party made election gains in an off-year when people were demoralized, distracted and too tired to show up.  It was no revolution.  Nobody wants to buy what the teabaggers are selling except that waning white sliver of conservative Republican "purity" that's shrinking visibly by the day.

The tea party is over

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

October 25, 2012 | Washington Post

The right wing has lost the election of 2012.

The evidence for this is overwhelming, yet it is the year’s best-kept secret. Mitt Romney would not be throwing virtually all of his past positions overboard if he thought the nation were ready to endorse the full-throated conservatism he embraced to win the Republican nomination.

If conservatism were winning, does anyone doubt that Romney would be running as a conservative? Yet unlike Ronald Reagan and Barry Goldwater, Romney is offering an echo, not a choice. His strategy at the end is to try to sneak into the White House on a chorus of me-too’s.

The right is going along because its partisans know Romney has no other option. This, too, is an acknowledgment of defeat, a recognition that the grand ideological experiment heralded by the rise of the tea party has gained no traction. It also means that conservatives don’t believe that Romney really believes the moderate mush he’s putting forward now. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the conservatives are forgiving Romney because they think he is lying, what should the rest of us think?

Almost all of the analysis of Romney’s highly public burning of the right’s catechism focuses on such tactical issues as whether his betrayal of principle will help him win over middle-of-the-road women and carry Ohio. What should engage us more is that a movement that won the 2010 elections with a bang is trying to triumph just two years later on the basis of a whimper.

It turns out that there was no profound ideological conversion of the country two years ago. We remain the same moderate and practical country we have long been. In 2010, voters were upset about the economy, Democrats were demobilized, and President Obama wasn’t yet ready to fight. All the conservatives have left now is economic unease. So they don’t care what Romney says. They are happy to march under a false flag if that is the price of capturing power.

The total rout of the right’s ideology, particularly its neoconservative brand, was visible in Monday’s debate, in which Romney praised one Obama foreign policy initiative after another. He calmly abandoned much of what he had said during the previous 18 months. Gone were the hawkish assaults on Obama’s approach to Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Israel, China and nearly everywhere else. Romney was all about “peace.”

Romney’s most revealing line: “We don’t want another Iraq.” Thus did he bury without ceremony the great Bush-Cheney project. He renounced a war he had once supported with vehemence and enthusiasm.

Then there’s budget policy. If the Romney/Paul Ryan budget and tax ideas were so popular, why would the candidate and his sidekick, the one-time devotee of Ayn Rand, be investing so much energy in hiding the most important details of their plans? For that matter, why would Ryan feel obligated to forsake his love for Rand, the proud philosopher of “the virtue of selfishness” and the thinker he once said had inspired his public service?

Romney knows that, by substantial margins, the country favors raising taxes on the rich and opposes slashing many government programs, including Medicare and Social Security. Since Romney’s actual plan calls for cutting taxes on the rich, he has to disguise the fact. Where is the conviction?

The biggest sign that tea party thinking is dead is Romney’s straight-out deception about his past position on the rescue of the auto industry.

The bailout was the least popular policy Obama pursued — and, I’d argue, one of the most successful. It was Exhibit A for tea partyers who accused our moderately progressive president of being a socialist. In late 2008, one prominent Republican claimed that if the bailout the Detroit-based automakers sought went through, “you can kiss the American automotive industry good-bye.” The car companies, he said, would “seal their fate with a bailout check.” This would be the same Mitt Romney who tried to pretend on Monday that he never said what he said or thought what he thought. If the bailout is now good politics, and it is, then free-market fundamentalism has collapsed in a heap.

“Ideas have consequences” is one of the conservative movement’s most honored slogans. That the conservatives’ standard-bearer is now trying to escape the consequences of their ideas tells us all we need to know about who is winning the philosophical battle — and, because ideas do matter, who will win the election.

Taibbi: 'We shouldn't take it seriously'

It's funny that I'm reading this now, after I just debated with a buddy to what extent the media should be calling "bullshit" on liars, and whether and how the media should show stupid people for what they are.  So in his latest post, Matt Taibbi comes with this:

Sometimes in journalism I think we take the objectivity thing too far. We think being fair means giving equal weight to both sides of every argument. But sometimes in the zeal to be objective, reporters get confused. You can't report the Obama tax plan and the Romney tax plan in the same way, because only one of them is really a plan, while the other is actually not a plan at all, but an electoral gambit.

Anybody who votes for these hucksters, Romney and Ryan, is either retarded or just flat out hates Barack Obama with so much passion, they wouldn't care who was running against him.  That's all there is to it.  There can't be any other reason. Because, since the GOP primaries, Romney's campaign has lacked any rhyme, reason, consistency or facts.  His campaign is the biggest political snow job I've seen in my lifetime.  

What's most baffling is that I don't get why Romney is doing it, why he's promising a 20-percent tax cut that he knows he can't pay for, when he could just wink at Republicans and say, "Oh, I think I'll take a hard look at cutting taxes after I'm elected, but for now, I'm keeping my options open [wink-wink]."  And that would be enough. They're all going to vote for him anyway; he doesn't even need to lie to them and everybody else so brazenly to get their votes.  

The Vice Presidential Debate: Joe Biden Was Right to Laugh

By Matt Taibbi

October 12, 2012 | Rolling Stone

I've never thought much of Joe Biden. But man, did he get it right in last night's debate, and not just because he walloped sniveling little Paul Ryan on the facts. What he got absolutely right, despite what you might read this morning (many outlets are criticizing Biden's dramatic excesses), was his tone. Biden did absolutely roll his eyes, snort, laugh derisively and throw his hands up in the air whenever Ryan trotted out his little beady-eyed BS-isms.

But he should have! He was absolutely right to be doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called "objective" news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, "Come back when you're serious."

The load of balls that both Romney and Ryan have been pushing out there for this whole election season is simply not intellectually serious. Most of their platform isn't even a real platform, it's a fourth-rate parlor trick designed to paper over the real agenda – cutting taxes even more for super-rich dickheads like Mitt Romney, and getting everyone else to pay the bill.

The essence of the whole campaign for me was crystalized in the debate exchange over Romney's 20 percent tax-cut plan. ABC's Martha Raddatz turned the questioning to Ryan:

MS. RADDATZ: Well, let's talk about this 20 percent.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well – (chuckles) –

MS. RADDATZ: You have refused yet again to offer specifics on how you pay for that 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Do you actually have the specifics, or are you still working on it, and that's why you won't tell voters?

Here Ryan is presented with a simple yes-or-no answer. Since he doesn't have the answer, he immediately starts slithering and equivocating:

REP. RYAN: Different than this administration, we actually want to have big bipartisan agreements. You see, I understand the –

"We want to have bipartisan agreements?" This coming from a Republican congressman? These guys would stall a bill to name a post office after Shirley Temple. Biden, absolutely properly, chuckled and said, "That'd be a first for a Republican congress." Then Raddatz did exactly what any self-respecting journalist should do in that situation: she objected to being lied to, and yanked on the leash, forcing Ryan back to the question.

I'm convinced Raddatz wouldn't have pounced on Ryan if he hadn't trotted out this preposterous line about bipartisanism. Where does Ryan think we've all been living, Mars? It's one thing to pull that on some crowd of unsuspecting voters that hasn't followed politics that much and doesn't know the history. But any professional political journalist knows enough to know the abject comedy of that line. Still, Ryan was banking on the moderator not getting in the way and just letting him dump his trash on audiences. Instead, she aggressively grabbed Ryan by his puppy-scruff and pushed him back into the mess of his own proposal:

MS. RADDATZ: Do you have the specifics? Do you have the math? Do you know exactly what you're doing?

So now the ball is in Ryan's court. The answer he gives is astounding:

REP. RYAN: Look – look at what Mitt – look at what Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did. They worked together out of a framework to lower tax rates and broaden the base, and they worked together to fix that. What we're saying is here's our framework: Lower tax rates 20 percent – we raise about $1.2 trillion through income taxes. We forgo about 1.1 trillion [dollars] in loopholes and deductions. And so what we're saying is deny those loopholes and deductions to higher-income taxpayers so that more of their income is taxed, which has a broader base of taxation –

Three things about this answer:

1) Ryan again here refuses to answer Raddatz's yes-or-no question about specifics. So now we know the answer: there are no specifics.

2) In lieu of those nonexistent specifics, what Ryan basically says is that he and Romney will set the framework – "Lower taxes by 20 percent" – and then they'll work out the specifics of how to get there with the Democrats in bipartisan fashion.

3) So essentially, Ryan has just admitted on national television that the Romney tax plan will be worked out after the election with the same Democrats from whom they are now, before the election, hiding any and all details.

So then, after that, there's this exchange.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Can I translate?

REP. RYAN: – so we can lower tax rates across the board. Now, here's why I'm saying this. What we're saying is here's a framework –

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I hope I'm going to get time to respond to this.

REP. RYAN: We want to work with Congress –

MS. RADDATZ: I – you'll get time.

REP. RYAN: We want to work with Congress on how best to achieve this. That means successful – look –

MS. RADDATZ: No specifics, yeah.

Raddatz did exactly the right thing. She asked a yes-or-no question, had a politician try to run the lamest kind of game on her – and when he was done, she called him on it, coming right back to the question and translating for viewers: "No specifics."

Think about what that means. Mitt Romney is running for president – for president! – promising an across-the-board 20 percent tax cut without offering any details about how that's going to be paid for. Forget being battered by the press, he and his little sidekick Ryan should both be tossed off the playing field for even trying something like that. This race for the White House, this isn't some frat prank. This is serious. This is for grownups, for God's sake.

If you're going to offer an across-the-board 20 percent tax cut without explaining how it's getting paid for, hell, why stop there? Why not just offer everyone over 18 a 1965 Mustang? Why not promise every child a Zagnut and an Xbox, or compatible mates for every lonely single person?

Sometimes in journalism I think we take the objectivity thing too far. We think being fair means giving equal weight to both sides of every argument. But sometimes in the zeal to be objective, reporters get confused. You can't report the Obama tax plan and the Romney tax plan in the same way, because only one of them is really a plan, while the other is actually not a plan at all, but an electoral gambit.

The Romney/Ryan ticket decided, with incredible cynicism, that that they were going to promise this massive tax break, not explain how to pay for it, and then just hang on until election day, knowing that most of the political press would let it skate, or at least not take a dump all over it when explaining it to the public. Unchallenged, and treated in print and on the air as though it were the same thing as a real plan, a 20 percent tax cut sounds pretty good to most Americans. Hell, it sounds good to me.

The proper way to report such a tactic is to bring to your coverage exactly the feeling that Biden brought to the debate last night: contempt and amazement. We in the press should be offended by what Romney and Ryan are doing – we should take professional offense that any politician would try to whisk such a gigantic lie past us to our audiences, and we should take patriotic offense that anyone is trying to seize the White House using such transparently childish and dishonest tactics.

I've never been a Joe Biden fan. After four years, I'm not the biggest Barack Obama fan, either (and I'll get into why on that score later). But they're at least credible as big-league politicians. So much of the Romney/Ryan plan is so absurdly junior league, it's so far off-Broadway, it's practically in New Jersey.

Paul Ryan, a leader in the most aggressively and mindlessly partisan Congress in history, preaching bipartisanship? A private-equity parasite, Mitt Romney, who wants to enact a massive tax cut and pay for it without touching his own personal fortune-guaranteeing deduction, the carried-interest tax break – which keeps his own taxes below 15 percent despite incomes above $20 million?

The Romney/Ryan platform makes sense, and is not laughable, in only one context: if you're a multi-millionaire and you recognize that this is the only way to sell your agenda to mass audiences. But if you're not one of those rooting gazillionaires, you should laugh, you should roll your eyes, and it doesn't matter if you're the Vice President or an ABC reporter or a toll operator. You should laugh, because this stuff is a joke, and we shouldn't take it seriously.

GOP's 'fetal personhood' plank threatens IVF

HR 212 "The Sanctity of Life Act" that is co-sponsored by Paul Ryan could threaten IVF procedures.  Meanwhile, two of Mitt Romney's grandchildren were conceived thanks to IVF.

In the U.S., 1 in 8 couples experiences infertility, and 5 percent of couples use IVF, according to CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta.  

Concerns rise from GOP's abortion stand

August 31, 2012 | CNN

URL:  http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2012/08/31/nr-intv-gupta-ivf-anti-abortion.cnn?iref=allsearch

Paul Ryan is not a Catholic and he said so

Remember when the Right said that Obama had to repudiate Jeremiah Wright if he wanted to be President?  Remember how they doubt Obama's confessed Christianity, even to this day?

Why then is Paul Ryan, a self-proclaimed Catholic whose own parish priest has come out against him, and who is opposed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, getting a free pass by the media on his love for the atheistic philosopher of self-interest, Ayn Rand?  Imagine if the Mormon Church came out and said that Mitt Romney did not represent their beliefs!

Here's what Ryan said about his hero Rand in a 2005 interview:

The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand.... I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are, and what my beliefs are.  It's inspired me so much that it's required reading in my office for all my interns.

Note that he didn't mention the Bible, Jesus, Catholic catechism, or anything religious at all.  Ryan said his value system was formed by a dead atheist who hated religion more than Karl Marx.  

Now that Ryan is a VP nominee he's trying to back-track, saying he rejects Rand's philosophy; he just likes her economic ideas.  But not so fast.  Rand's economic ideas are based entirely on a morality of strict self-interest that is in direct conflict with Catholic-Christian teaching.

So, I'm going on the record to say I don't believe Paul Ryan is a Catholic or a Christian.  Nowadays we don't have to take a politician's word for it -- the Right taught us that with Obama.  So I don't buy Paul's recent coming to Jesus.  He was a grown man and an elected Congressman with a wife and children when he said that in 2005, and it's not like he's changed since then.  He's simply telling us now what he thinks we want to hear.  Remind you of anybody?

Ayn Rand & Paul Ryan

August 29, 2012 | The Colbert Report

URL: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/418458/august-29-2012/ayn-rand---paul-ryan

Even FOX busts Ryan's big speech (sort of)

It's pretty bad when a Republican lies so much that even FOXNews has to bust him.

But let's not give FOX credit for coming to Jesus all on its own. Other news outlets were quick to point out Ryan's obvious mischaracterizations.  See here, here, here, here and here.

Plus FOX let an op-ed contributor do the fact-checking, which makes it seem like one person's partisan view instead of the simple truth.

Paul Ryan's Speech in 3 words

By Sally Kohn

August 30, 2012 | FOXNews

URL:  http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/08/30/paul-ryans-speech-in-three-words/#ixzz251rvLkSe

The social compact, and the morality of gov't. budgets

Most conservatives don't believe anymore in the idea of the commonwealth.  They believe "freedom" means the freedom to do whatever they want, free from responsibility to help their fellow citizens.

Recently I was discussing the economic crisis in the EU with a Frenchman.  He said it's basically OK there, because people still believe in The Social Contract of Jean Jacques Rousseau, who was an inspiration to America's Founding Fathers.  Here's what old Jack wrote in 1762:

Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as there is no associate over whom he does not acquire the same right as he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has.

If then we discard from the social compact what is not of its essence, we shall find that it reduces itself to the following terms:

"Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole."

I agree completely with Lakoff that a budget is, among other things, a moral document.  It is not just revenues and outlays.  Conservatives are very concerned with personal morality and behavior; but they overlook or downplay the moral role of the State -- not in its directing individuals' personal behavior, but in upholding the common good, preventing abject poverty, defending the weak and infirm, and applying the law equally.  

Romney, Ryan and the Devil's Budget: Will America Keep Its Soul?

By George Lakoff and Glenn W. Smith

August 22, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL:  http://huff.to/QpUCOe 

Ryan's parish priest: 'He shouldn't wrap himself in Catholic teaching'

So here's what Father Stephen Umhoefer had to say about his hometown boy Paul Ryan:

Umhoefer also laments what he calls an excess of individualism in America that is sometimes abetted by politicians. He prepared for (Center for Media and Democracy) CMD a section of the church catechism, which states that the church "has refused to accept, in the practice of 'capitalism,' individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor." Umhoefer said that he doesn't mean to accuse Ryan of choosing individualism as a creed over community, but that Ryan's promotion of Ayn Rand to his staff and others is "an alternative universe of which he is a member.... What I call an excessive attitude of individualism is doing a great deal of harm to us as a society because we are forgetting society values," said Umhoefer.

"What I wish for Paul -- he is so smart and so articulate and has made this whole budget, which he can defend on his own view ... of how the economy and politics work. I wish he wouldn't bring in the Catholic church. He doesn't need to if his economic and political argument are strong, and I'm sure he believes that they are."

It's too bad Ayn Rand is dead, because then we could get quotes from her saying how Ryan is a "compromiser" who betrayed the absolute principles of Objectivism. Then we'd see how Ryan is neither Catholic nor Randroid, nor anything else at his core except a hyper-ambitious suck-up to the rich and powerful.

VP Role for Paul Ryan Has His Former Parish Priest Worried

By Jonathan Rosenblum

August 15, 2012 | PR Watch

URL: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2012/08/11707/vp-role-paul-ryan-has-his-former-parish-priest-worried

Ryan family fortune from gov't railroad, highway projects

Looks like Payl Ryan is in good company with those Tea Party masterminds, the evil Koch Bros., whose family fortune came from contracts with Stalin to build up the USSR's oil infrastructure.

(Now let's see whether the lib'rul media runs with this story on Ryan's hypocrisy, or just buries it....).

Ryan Family Fortune Built on Public Works Projects That Romney Campaign Mocks

Paul Ryan is a living, breathing GOP example of how public infrastructure and private entrepreneurship work hand-in-hand.

August 15, 2012 | Salon

URL:  http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/ryan-family-fortune-built-public-works-projects-romney-campaign-mocks

GOP restricts voting because it can't win on ideas

"What Obama and Biden and the Democrats represent are their own ideas, and they have to be met with the competing ideas, and we have the winning ideas. This is a battle of ideas, ideology," said Rush Limbaugh on his show a few days ago.

Bulls**t!

The last thing Republicans want is a fair contest of ideas.  They want to use their political power, like states Attorneys General, to purge voter roles of Democrats and give early voting privileges only to Republican-leaning districts.  

It's amazing Republicans have to resort to these dirty tricks in the midst of such a bad economy.  Any Republican with a pulse and a smile should be able to manhandle Obama at the polls.  But, 1) Republicans fight to win and they don't take chances; and 2) their ideas suck. 

I am cautiously optimistic that enough Americans will realize that, as bad as thing are under Obama, they would only get worse under Romney-Ryan, whose "brilliant" economic plan consists of: 1) cutting taxes on the richest Americans, who are already richer than they've ever been, (and raising taxes on the middle class, if you believe Romney's promise to make his tax cuts revenue-neutral);  2) deregulating Wall Street so they can blow up the financial system and get bailed out, again;  3) deregulating extraction industries like coal, gas and oil;  4) decreasing environmental protection; and, of course 5) eliminating Medicare and privatizing Social Security.

Or, as I like to sum it all up: Cut, Deregulate, Pollute.  Somebody should paint that slogan on the side of Romney's campaign bus.

If you see something in the GOP's plans that connects to the good of the middle class then you must be a Grand Master at Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.

Editorial: Overt Discrimination in Ohio

August 14, 2012 | New York Times

If you live in Butler or Warren counties in the Republican-leaning suburbs of Cincinnati, you can vote for president beginning in October by going to a polling place in the evening or on weekends. Republican officials in those counties want to make it convenient for their residents to vote early and avoid long lines on Election Day.

But, if you live in Cincinnati, you're out of luck. Republicans on the county election board are planning to end early voting in the city promptly at 5 p.m., and ban it completely on weekends, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer. The convenience, in other words, will not be extended to the city's working people.

The sleazy politics behind the disparity is obvious. Hamilton County, which contains Cincinnati, is largely Democratic and voted solidly for Barack Obama in 2008. So did the other urban areas of Cleveland, Columbus and Akron, where Republicans, with the assistance of the Ohio secretary of state, Jon Husted, have already eliminated the extended hours for early voting.

County election boards in Ohio, a closely contested swing state, are evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. In counties likely to vote for President Obama, Republicans have voted against the extended hours, and Mr. Husted has broken the tie in their favor. (He said the counties couldn't afford the long hours.) In counties likely to vote for Mitt Romney, Republicans have not objected to the extended hours.

This is just the latest alarming example of how Republicans across the country are trying to manipulate the electoral system by blocking the voting rights of their opponents. These actions have a disproportionate effect on blacks, Hispanics and other ethnic minorities who struggled for so long to participate in American democracy.

Cincinnati, for example, is 45 percent black, and Cleveland 53 percent. Butler County, however, is 8 percent black, and Warren 3.5 percent. This kind of racial disparity is clearly visible wherever Republicans have trampled on voting rights during Mr. Obama's term.

In Florida, more than half of black voters went to the polls early in 2008 largely to support Mr. Obama. So, last year, Republican lawmakers there severely curtailed the early voting period. In Pennsylvania and other states that have imposed strict voter ID requirements, the impact will be felt hardest by blacks, Hispanics, older citizens and students, all of whom tend to lack government ID cards at a higher rate than the general population. At the trial in Pennsylvania over the constitutionality of the state's voter ID law, the plaintiffs introduced clear evidence, compiled by a geographic data analysis firm, that registered voters in Philadelphia who lack government ID cards are concentrated in minority and low-income areas.

In Ohio, as in other states, the Republican Party is establishing a reputation for putting short-term political gain ahead of the most fundamental democratic rights.

David Frum: GOP's ideology trumps economics

So the topic of conservative pundit David Frum's op-ed is what's wrong with Romney-Ryan, and it's definitely worth reading for that, but his explanation of the Great Recession and its aftermath is the most concise and on-target I've seen anywhere.  I'd like to say Frum's observations are obvious, but apparently they are not, not by a mile, not even among some very smart people, because many persist in believing that our current economic malaise has been caused by government debt, or at least is somehow aggravated by government debt, rather than their acknowledging that fiscal deficits and public debt are symptoms of a down economy, not its cause.  See here:

Americans assumed crushing levels of debt in the 2000s to buy expensive homes, homes they assumed would continue to rise in price forever. In 2007, household debt relative to income peaked at the highest level since 1928. (Uh oh.) When the housing market crashed, consumers were stranded with unsustainable debts, and until those debts are reduced, consumers will drastically cut back their spending. As consumers cut back, businesses lose revenue. As businesses lose revenue, they fire employees. As employees lose their jobs, their purchasing power is reduced. As purchasing power is lost throughout the economy, housing prices tumble again.

Rinse and repeat.

Since 2008, the debt burden on households has declined somewhat, partly because of increased saving, mostly because of mortgage default. But household debts have declined nowhere near enough, and the pace of household debt reduction is slowing.

The result: slow recovery of the private economy, weak consumer demand, paltry job growth -- considerably offset by continuing job shrinkage in the public sector.

In other words, as I've been repeating over and over again (apparently talking to myself for all the good it's done), the Great Recession and whatever we're suffering now has been caused by a lack of aggregate demand, i.e. too few people ready & willing to buy stuff.  And low demand is being aggravated by government at all levels cutting spending and public-sector jobs.  

Tragically, neither Obama nor Romney-Ryan has really addressed that core problem, or proposed a credible, much less courageous, solution.  Sadly, a vote for either ticket is a choice to muddle along.

Romney did Obama a huge favor

By David Frum

August 14, 2012 | CNN

URL:  http://edition.cnn.com/2012/08/13/opinion/frum-romney-ryan/index.html?hpt=hp_bn4 

'Neither Christian nor right'

Dr. Giles Fraser, a priest at St. Mary's Newington and former canon chancellor of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, shows succinctly how terribly afflicted by cognitive dissonance are America's so-called Christian conservative politicians:

[Paul] Ryan has now predictably backtracked [on his love of Ayn Rand]. "I reject her philosophy. It's an atheist philosophy. If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas." By the way, this is the same Thomas Aquinas who insisted that, "Man should not consider his material possession his own, but as common to all, so as to share them without hesitation when others are in need," thus espousing the very collectivism that Rand so loathed.

Concludes Giles:

The trouble is that Christianity in the US has become so widely hijacked by the right that not enough people will actually notice.  As the Ryan case aptly demonstrates, the Christian right is neither: that is, Christian nor right.

Bravo, padre!

Paul Ryan's faith in Ayn Rand is a political problem for Romney

Mitt Romney's running mate may be Catholic but his admiration for an author hostile to Jesus's teachings risks losing him votes

By Giles Fraser

August 13, 2012 | Guardian

URL:  http://gu.com/p/39yf6

Catholic Church on the record against Paul Ryan

Has there ever been a similar situation when the U.S. Catholic Bishops went on the record against a Vice-Presidential candidate and questioned his Catholic values?

This is in addition to the letter sent this April to Rep. Paul Ryan by 90 faculty, including 12 Jesuit priests, from Catholic Georgetown University: "Your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love."

It's called tough love, you papist pinkos!  And Jesus Christ would be all for it if he were here today!  U.S. Catholics, you'll just have to take Rush Limbaugh's word for it.  

The Paul Ryan Catholic Dilemma

By Paul Brandeis Raushenbush

August 11, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/PMqFaG

Paul Ryan's guru: Our Medicare plan won't work

The mastermind of Paul Ryan's Medicare reform plan, Henry Aaron, has changed his mind, based on -- gasp! -- evidence that his theories didn't pan out: "The evidence to date is not encouraging," Aaron testified, noting a recent study that isolated the effects of competition on Medicare Advantage costs from government-related influences. "After controlling for all those factors, Medicare Advantage plans are more expensive than is traditional Medicare."

Premium support is key to Ryan's plan.  Ryan has assumed that if free markets are left to work by themselves (health insurance exchanges) then prices will eventually come down; and the gov't. should provide a small subsidy to pay for premiums in the meantime.

But Aaron went on to say, with Rep. Ryan in the audience, that premium support as envisioned in Obamacare should be left to work, to see if his ideas have any merit:

The passage of the Affordable Care Act means we have put in place a key element of the premium support idea for the rest of the population, namely health insurance exchanges.  The Medicare population is vastly more difficult to deal with than the population under the Affordable Care Act. We should prove that the health insurance exchanges work, get them up and running before we take seriously, in my view, calls to put the Medicare population through a similar system.

Aaron also noted that the current "pro-business" Republican Congress won't enact the strict regulation needed to prevent insurance companies gaming the system:  "The regulatory climate has changed.  It is far more hostile to the kinds of regulatory intervention that...I thought were essential."

Henry Aaron, Inventor Of Paul Ryan's Medicare Reform Concept, Explains Why It's Wrong

By Michael McAuliff

May 3, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/henry-aaron-paul-ryan-medicare_n_1466826.html