The Predatory Presidency

Forbes made sure to include a caveat under contributor Harry Binswanger's name in their latest issue. Here's how Binswange describes himself-- no joke: "I am a philosopher who was an associate of the late Ayn Rand, and since 1986 I have been a member of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand Institute. I have taught philosophy at Hunter College (CUNY) and the University of Texas at Austin. My forthcoming book, How We Know," is on the theory of knowledge." He's also an heir to the Binswanger Glass Company, founded in 1872 by Samuel Binswanger, and a prominent Climate Change fanatic. But mostly he's just a crazy Randian.

Republicans may secretly agree with his latest Forbes OpEd, put quietly... secretly. No one in their right mind is going to embrace it publicly: Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%. "It's time," he wrote, "to gore another collectivist sacred cow. This time it's the popular idea that the successful are obliged to 'give back to the community.' That oft-heard claim assumes that the wealth of high-earners is taken away from 'the community.' And beneath that lies the perverted Marxist notion that wealth is accumulated by 'exploiting' people, not by creating value-- as if Henry Ford was not necessary for Fords to roll off the (non-existent) assembly lines and Steve Jobs was not necessary for iPhones and iPads to spring into existence."

As far as I know, Binswanger has never run for office, not even in college, not even in his fraternity. But why should he? He always had Paul Ryan to do that.



I guess he's unaware of who builds the roads and bridges... and public safety-- and public education and general prosperity, just as Ayn Rand (and Paul Ryan) were.

Let's begin by stripping away the collectivism. "The community" never gave anyone anything. The "community," the "society," the "nation" is just a number of interacting individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above them. And when some individual person-- a parent, a teacher, a customer-- "gives" something to someone else, it is not an act of charity, but a trade for value received in return.

It was from love-- not charity-- that your mother fed you, bought clothes for you, paid for your education, gave you presents on your birthday. It was for value received that your teachers worked day in and day out to instruct you. In commercial transactions, customers buy a product not to provide alms to the business, but because they want the product or service-- want it for their own personal benefit and enjoyment. And most of the time they get it, which is why they choose to continue patronizing the same businesses.

All proper human interactions are win-win; that's why the parties decide to engage in them. It's not the Henry Fords and Steve Jobs who exploit people. It's the Al Capones and Bernie Madoffs. Voluntary trade, without force or fraud, is the exchange of value for value, to mutual benefit. In trade, both parties gain.

Each particular individual in the community who contributed to a man's rise to wealth was paid at the time-- either materially or, as in the case of parents and friends, spiritually. There is no debt to discharge. There is nothing to give back, because there was nothing taken away.

Well, maybe there is--in the other direction. The shoe is on the other foot. It is "the community" that should give back to the wealth-creators. It turns out that the 99% get far more benefit from the 1% than vice-versa. Ayn Rand developed the idea of "the pyramid of ability," which John Galt sets forth in Atlas Shrugged:

When you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making...

In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the 'competition' between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of 'exploitation' for which you have damned the strong.

For their enormous contributions to our standard of living, the high-earners should be thanked and publicly honored. We are in their debt.

Here's a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it's too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year's top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since profit is the market value of the product minus the market value of factors used, profit represents the value created.)

Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity." That's for the sin of successful investing, channeling savings to their most productive uses, instead of wasting them on government boondoggles like Solyndra and bridges to nowhere.

There is indeed a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity: the Internal Revenue Service. And, at a deeper level, it is the monstrous perversion of justice that makes the IRS possible: an envy-ridden moral code that damns success, profit, and earning money in voluntary exchange.

An end must be put to the inhuman practice of draining the productive to subsidize the unproductive. An end must be put to the primordial notion that one's life belongs to the tribe, to "the community," and that the superlative wealth-creators must do penance for the sin of creating value.

And Ayn Rand is just the lady who can do it.

One thing is certain: Señor Trumpanzee is not the lady who can do it. Republican Party man about town, Alex Castellanos, looked into what the new Trumpified GOP will look like once all of Binswange corrosive and sick philosophy is more fully implemented-- the day after the coming GOP catastrophe known as the midterms. "The sun will rise on a political landscape wrecked" by Señor T, and Republicans "will crawl out from the smoking rubble of a 40- to 50-seat pounding to find they have lost their majority." [I just got off the phone with one of the savviest chiefs-of-staff and he said if the election were held Tuesday, the Democrats would win 60-70 seats. But a lot can change between Tuesday and November-- and it's likely Trump will make matters worse for Republicans so let's call it 70-80 seats.] "How," Castellanos asks in despair, "do we renew our party in the Age of Trump?" Then he tried convincing himself it can be done-- even with Trump hanging around the necks of Republicans like a giant albatross.

It is unremarkable, at this point, to note that good Americans turned to Donald Trump, not because of his many flaws, but despite them. Trump’s threat and his appeal are identical: He is the un-distilled reptilian brain.

Trump is all id, the oldest and most primitive part of our brain, concerned only with the evolutionary basics: sex, sustenance, and survival. His brain is not filtered by our social and emotional brain, much less by the rational, pre-frontal cortex. He has no Jeb Bush brain to digest facts and figures, issues and policy. Instead, Donald Trump is a predator. When something enters his world, he either eats it, kills it or mates with it. That is all his predatory instincts can do.

The president’s primitive nature is the root of his narcissism. Trump’s immediate and voracious appetites allow no concern for others or understanding of tomorrow. He reacts instinctively, not emotionally, morally or intellectually. He is insensitive to truth and incapable of discipline or strategy.

Yet Americans elected this predator, this T-Rex President, as their last resort, in a desperate attempt to protect themselves from the horde of smaller, slimier predators in Washington who were on the verge of devouring them.

We can all see that Donald Trump is, at times, a disreputable human specimen. His supporters see it as clearly as his adversaries. In fact, Trump makes sure we see it. Our T-Rex President is proud of his predatory triumphs. Yet this electorate thought that even Donald Trump was a better bet than the status quo both Republicans and Democrats were offering them. Trump’s victory measured our national frustration, our hunger for an alternative to the impoverished offerings of both parties.

Like the Bourbons after Napoleon, however, Republicans and Democrats “have learned nothing and forgotten nothing.” Since the surprising day Trump was elected, neither party has learned or evolved, despite their humbling defeats at his hands.

The Republicans who make Donald Trump necessary are not the boot-lickers like Corey Lewandowski who blindly follow his parade past Trump Tower, from Fifth Avenue to Pennsylvania Avenue. His enablers are Bill Kristol, Steve Schmidt and Karl Rove. They are Jeff Flake and John Kasich. They count Jeb Bush and Paul Ryan. They include all of us in the Republican Party who left the vacuum Trump has occupied. Yet today, we still offer more of the same but expect different results. If we do not renew this visionless party, it will never lead again.

...Trump’s presidency is hidden behind the clouds, a storm of controversy of his own making. This president, more than anyone else, has made it impossible to credit him for his accomplishments. By any fair measure, there are many: He has crushed ISIS and increased our paychecks with a tax cut.

He has erased regulations that were growing Washington’s economy at the expense of our economy. He has appointed a respected Supreme Court Justice and transformed the judiciary to call balls and strikes. American manufacturing is growing. He brought China to confront North Korea. He is pressing for free trade that works fairly in all directions. He throws missiles at Putin once a year and he is making our military strong again. His ferociously incorrect talk has ripped away the pretension cloaking Washington’s decline and irrelevance.

When the long arc of history judges Donald Trump, it will likely report he left behind a vicious inflationary spiral. That, alongside devouring the country’s expectations for a president’s personal conduct, may be the greatest cost of his T-Rex presidency. He will be assessed as the bipolar leader he has become, both one of the worst and best Presidents Americans have ever elected, perhaps the greatest president to be removed from the Oval Office in chains.

I doubt any other 2016 GOP candidate could have equaled this President’s accomplishments. He has stopped America’s decline and, in many areas, reversed it. Americans should be grateful he was elected President. If he is not disqualified from the ballot, I plan to vote for him again.

But what Trump has done can be undone. He is a man, not a movement. He is an instinct, not an idea. He crushed a hollow Republican Party, but he has not rebuilt it. The Republicans who come after Donald Trump must do what they have not yet done: decide how to lead after this exasperating and heroic president leaves office.

Now That Randy Bryce Knocked Ryan Out Of The Race, Creepy Crawly Peter Barca Wants To Run

Paul Ryan knows why he retired from Congress-- audit's not about teaching his sons, Charlie and Sam, to shoot bows and arrows. Randy Bryce is why Ryan is retiring from Congress. I've been trying for a decade to find a credible candidate to run against Ryan. The local Democratic elected officials in the district were all afraid... every one of them. Political cowards who were afraid to give up their jobs to run against Paul Ryan. In 1993, when Bill Clinton appointed 22-year incumbent Les Aspin to be Secretary of Defense, Assemblyman Peter Barca ran for the open seat to serve out the rest of Aspin's term. He beat Mark Neumann by 675 votes and in 1994 Neumann was back and beat Barca-- part of the Newt Gingrich wave-- 83,937 to 82,817. Barca had been a disappointment for Democrats, particularly for unions who had to pull teeth to get him to oppose NAFTA. Neumann decided to run for the Senate in 1998-- giving up his House seat (and losing the Senate race to Russ Feingold. Meanwhile, Paul Ryan won the GOP nomination to replace Neumann and he ran against a weak Democrat, Lydia Sottswood and beat her 57-43%. Obama won the district in 2008 but the Republican legislature gerrymandered it-- removing union stronghold Beloit and adding on a piece of blood red Waukesha, one of Wisconsin's most backward right-wing counties [When Obama beat Romney 53-46% statewide, Waukesha went for Romney 161,567 (67%) to 77,617 (32%).]

Meanwhile, this cycle Randy Bryce a plainspoken union and veteran activist, has been steadily climbing in the polls and putting the fear of God into Ryan, who has come to realize he had virtually no path to victory in a district with a third independents... independents who had no interest in even hearing Ryan's messaging any longer. As soon as Ryan announced his retirement, Barca started putting out feelers that he would like to run and whispering-- like the reptile he's always been-- that a centrist like himself was a better fit for the district than a progressive like Bryce. He's been running around Kenosha saying Bryce isn't college educated and won't win. He's a really horrible person who was forced out of his job as Assembly minority leader after he worked with Scott Walker on the unpopular Foxconn deal.

Over the weekend, Ross Douthat, opined in the NY Times about Ryan's unsuitability for a national leadership position. And Douthat is not Paul Krugman; he's a Republican. "The mistake about Paul Ryan," he wrote, "the one that both friends and foes made over the years between his Obama-era ascent and his just-announced departure from the House speakership, was to imagine him as a potential protagonist for our politics, a lead actor in the drama of conservatism, a visionary or a villain poised to put his stamp upon the era."

This Ryan-of-the-imagination existed among conservatives who portrayed his budgetary blueprints as the G.O.P.’s answer to the New Deal, among centrist deficit hawks who looked to him to hash out their pined-for grand bargain, and among liberals for whom Ryan was the most sinister of far-right operators, part fanatic and part huckster-- a Lyle Lanley with Atlas Shrugged in his back pocket, playing everyone for suckers while he marched the country into a libertarian dystopia.



It existed among the donors who wanted him to run for president, the pundits who encouraged Mitt Romney to choose him as a running mate, the big names who pressured him into the speakership. And it existed among anti-Trump conservatives, finally, who looked to Ryan to be the Republican of principle standing athwart Trumpism yelling stop.

But the real Ryan was never suited for these roles. He was miscast as a visionary when he was fundamentally a party man-- a diligent and policy-oriented champion for whatever the institutional G.O.P. appeared to want, a pilot who ultimately let the party choose the vessel’s course. And because the institutional G.O.P. during his years was like a bayou airboat with a fire in its propeller and several alligators wrestling midship, an unhappy end for his career was all-but-foreordained.

This is not to say that he lacked principles. The frequent descriptions of Ryan as a Jack Kemp acolyte-- a supply-side tax cutter and entitlement reformer and free trader who imagined a more immigrant-welcoming and minority-friendly G.O.P.-- were accurate enough; there was no question that the more a policy reflected Ryan’s deepest preferences, the more Kempist it would be.

But even there, he came to those principles at a time when they were ascendant within the party-- in the period between the supply-side ’80s and the late-1990s window when centrist liberals seemed open to entitlement reform. And then as Republicans moved away from them, tacking now more compassionate-conservative, now more libertarian, now more Trumpist, his resistance to the drift was always gentle, eclipsed by his willingness to turn.

Thus the Ryan of the George W. Bush era cast votes for the pillars of compassionate conservatism, No Child Left Behind and Medicare Part D. Then the Ryan of the Tea Party era championed austerity, talking about “makers and takers” and tossing out the Ayn Rand references that persuaded many liberals that he was an ideological fanatic. But that Ryan gave way to Ryan the dutiful running mate, which gave way in turn to the more moderate Ryan of Obama’s second term, who negotiated a budget deal with Democrats and moved toward so-called “reform conservatism” in his policy proposals at a time when that seemed like that might be the party’s future.



Then came the 2016 election, in which Ryan temporarily resisted Trump and then surrendered lest he break the party (which a party man could never do), and after that the Trump administration, in which Ryan has obviously steered Trump toward standard Republican policies-- but has just as obviously been steered as well. Most of Ryan’s past big-picture goals (entitlement reform, free trade, minority outreach) are compromised or gone, and while he attempted Obamacare repeal and achieved a butchered version of corporate tax reform, he’s accepted spending policies that make a mockery of any sort of libertarian or limited-government goal.

If you look at all this and see an obsessive ideologue working tirelessly for Randian ends, I think you’re being daft. But it’s equally daft to see this as the story of a great visionary brought low by Trump. The truth is that Ryan probably could have thrived as a legislator in a variety of dispensations: As a Reaganite if he’d been born early enough; as a Kempian or compassionate conservative if the late-1990s boom had continued; as a bipartisan dealmaker in a world where his base supported compromises (the blueprints he drew up with Democrats like Ron Wyden were usually interesting); as some sort of reform-conservative-inflected figure under a President Rubio or Kasich.

But in a dispensation where the G.O.P. was leaderless, rudderless, yawing between libertarian and populist extremes, he was never the kind of figure who could impose a vision on the party-- nor would he would break with the party when it seemed to go insane.

Instead, he only knew how to work within the system, which because the system had turned into a madhouse meant that his career could only end where it ended this past week: in a record of failure on policy and principle that he chose for himself, believing-- as party men always do-- that there wasn’t any choice.

Randy Bryce has shown himself smart enough to oppose Ryan's bullshit and drive him out of Congress... while Peter Barca championed Ryan's and Walker's Foxxconn con. Sure, Bryce didn't go to college and Barca did... but Barca's a moron and a traitor to working families.

Long Before Trump Took Over The Party, The FlimFlam Man Was Turning The GOP Into The FlimFlam Party

Juan Williams betrays himself with his extreme Beltway perspective by asserting in a Hill OpEd Monday, that "Ryan has squandered his stellar reputation as a smart, conservative visionary" by turning himself into a Trump enabler. Yes, Ryan is a Trump enabler. No, Ryan has never had a stellar reputation as a smart, conservative visionary, except among Beltway imbeciles who bought into the carefully propagated narrative paid for by the corporate money men behind Ryan from when they thought this particular well-spoken empty suit could carry their austerity message. Krugman caught on early and warned everyone. Juan Williams, apparently, wasn't paying attention when Krugman explained what a flam-flam man is. Williams sounds like he just woke up from a decades long sleep to discover that "By excusing President Trump’s bad behavior, [Ryan] has made it clear his only priorities are that Trump put conservatives on the Supreme Court and sign tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich and corporations." It's been over a decade that that was clear to everyone Outside the Beltway who pays even a little attention. But that wasn't the end of Williams waking up saga:

And what happened to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)?

McConnell once took pride in defying Trump by having his Republican majority pass a law last year to punish Russia by imposing sanctions on countries buying military equipment from that nation. The penalties were intended to penalize Russia for interfering in the 2016 election and stop its ongoing meddling in American politics.

But McConnell had little to say when the Trump administration said in late January that it would not impose Congress’s sanctions.

Ryan, Corker and McConnell are leading GOP lights who have ceded their party’s moral center in service to protecting Trump.

Until Trump came along, the party stood for cutting federal spending. It was the pro-immigration party. And after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Republicans backed the secret surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act to protect against spies and terrorists.

Now it is a different party.

Currently, congressional Republicans make excuses for refusing to put checks and balances on the excesses of Trump’s executive branch.

Today’s GOP offers political cover for a man with no history in the party as he denigrates, degrades, and destroys vital American institutions, including law enforcement, the free press and the GOP.

Ryan is the biggest disappointment.

Even if you disagree with him, Ryan has a history of standing up for what he thinks is right.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, a fearless Ryan said Trump, then the leading candidate for the GOP nomination, was wrong to attack an Indiana judge because the judge had Mexican ancestry. Ryan pulled no punches in calling out Trump for making “the textbook definition of a racist statement.”

Now Ryan is looking the other way on far more damaging Trump behavior.

He ignored pleadings from the Justice Department and the FBI to stop the release of a classified memo-- written by Republicans-- that purportedly showed wrongdoing by law enforcement in obtaining a warrant to conduct surveillance of a known friend to Russian intelligence, the Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Ryan said the memo had nothing to do with Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign. It was about misconduct by some agents, he said.

But once it was out, Trump tweeted that the memo “totally vindicates” him, even though it said nothing about collusion or obstruction of justice, the focus of Mueller’s work.

When Ryan was asked about this, he mumbled and walked away from reporters.

He had no explanation for allowing his credibility to be used by Trump.

Fox News host Sean Hannity, a Trump supporter, said on the basis of the memo that the Mueller probe ought to be disbanded-- and that charges brought against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn should be dropped.

Ryan opened the door to this nonsense.

“I have been a consistent defender of his good intentions,” conservative columnist Michael Gerson wrote of Ryan recently in the Washington Post. “But after the 17th time saying he ‘knows better,’ it dawns that he may not. By his recent actions, the Speaker has provided political cover for a weakening of the constitutional order. He has been used as a tool while loudly insisting he is not a tool.”

“I believe Ryan to be a good person,” Gerson continued. “But the greatest source of cynicism is not the existence of corrupt people in politics; it is good people who lose their way.”

It has been said that corruption is worst when it happens to the best.

The GOP used to be one of the two great American political parties. It gave the country some of the best statesmen of the last hundred years: Jacob Javits, Everett Dirksen, Edward Brooke, Howard Baker, Bob Dole and John McCain.

But in the age of Trump, there are no more GOP profiles in courage-- only profiles in cowardice.

It’s time for all Republicans to speak out against Trump’s corruption. If not, their party will be forever damaged by the time this Trump horror show fades to black.

Williams forgot to mention Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. I'm not so sure about Dole and McCain, but Jacob Javits served in the Senate from 1957 to 1980 and was succeeded by Al D'Amato, Dirksen from 1951 to 1968, Ed Brooke from 1967 to 1978 and-- if you want to count him-- Howard Baker from 1967 to 1984. Ryan was a physical fitness trainer with the brain of a parrot, an empty cup who was happy to be filled with anything that reminded him of the only two books he apparently read when he was a teenager, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.



I wanted to ask a couple of congressmembers who have worked with Ryan. I've noticed that there aren't any Democrats-- excluding perhaps a couple of Blue Dogs from time to time-- who share the Beltway perspective Juan Williams was propagating again. "The fundamental problem with Paul Ryan," Alan Grayson told me this morning, "has nothing to do with his unrequited love for Donald Trump, or his shallow knee-jerk libertarianism. It has to do with core responsibility as Speaker of the House. He has perpetuated Boehner’s policy of keeping the House on lock-down. The House is passing nothing but right-wing 'message' bills, with no Democratic input, that have no chance of passing the Senate.  Say whatever you want about Pelosi, but her Obamacare bill contained more than 100 GOP amendments, and everything was decided on the merits. Ryan, in contrast, is perfectly willing to do absolutely nothing to address the needs of ordinary Americans, or even to fund the government in a timely manner, as the House of Representatives hurtles toward complete irrelevance."

Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan, the co-chair of the Congressional Caucus, has the district right next door to Ryan's. He's been following Ryan before most of us knew who he was. This morning, he told me that "Since being elected to Congress in 1998, Speaker Ryan has spent the last 20 years fighting for the same misguided policies. And while he has long championed legislation for corporations and the wealthy, rather than the American middle class, his rise to the Speaker of the House, coupled with President Trump’s election, has further shown his true colors. Rather than stand up to the President and act as a check on the Executive Branch, Speaker Ryan acts like a junior member of the White House staff. This should come as no surprise, as Speaker Ryan has always failed to take the moral stance on issues, and tax cuts for GOP donors must come at any cost."

Ro Khanna is serving in the House now. He told me that when he was in high school a number of his friends were "drawn to the simple black and white view of the Ayn Rand novels Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Then they went to college and developed some intellectual humility. They realized that Rand is terrible literature. They realized that life is more complex, that human beings aren’t cardboard cutouts, and that worst of all, Rand is a B list thinker who wrote novels based on a cliff notes version of Neitzsche’s philosophy of the Superman." He continued along those lines:

Paul Ryan never had that evolution in thinking. So we have running our nation's economy policy-- let there be no doubt that Trump has outsourced policy to Ryan-- someone who is stuck in a high school intellectual framework.

Is it any wonder that he would push through a tax plan that will exacerbate income inequality when economists know that the biggest impediment to economic growth is inequality as it restricts consumer demand. In a world on automation, where we know that the rich will do well, our biggest task a a country is to have sufficient consumer spending given job loss and displacement. Totally oblivious to facts, totally oblivious to the software revolution we are living in, Ryan has passed policies that are based on an outdated Randian framework and will hurt the economic growth of the U.S. It just doesn’t hurt working people. Rand’s free market absolutism is undermining the very policies that made America an economic superpower-- namely support for a strong middle class that would buy things and fuel growth!

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

-by Noah

While everyone is so intently focused on evil mentally ill slime like Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein, I thought it important today that we not forget what lies just two heartbeats away from the presidency, House Speaker Paul Ryan. Of course, I am in no way implying that a mass-murderer wannabe like Paul Ryan has anything remotely resembling a heart. When it comes to whatever Paul Ryan is, that "heartbeat away" thing is just a figure of speech. Ryan is a man who, like Trump, is so narcissistic and psychotic that he also lives to cause pain in the lives of as many human beings as he can.

The fact that Ryan loves and worships at the dead armpits of Ayn Rand so dearly is no coincidence. Rand based her whole philosophy on the psychotic ravings of a 1920's mass-murderer named William Hickman who worshipped selfishness to diabolical extremes. You might say that Hickman would feel right at home in today's Republican Party. Ayn Rand was also, like Paul Ryan, a hypocrite of titanic proportions. She railed against government benefits and people who collected them just like Ryan does. She called people who apply for government benefits and "moochers." Paul Ryan calls them "takers." However, Ayn Rand collected Social Security to her dying day. When it comes down to it, that's not unlike her disciple Paul Ryan dedicating his career to destroying Social Security even though he collected it in the form of his father's survivor benefits and used it to go to college.

Evil walks the Earth in many forms. In Paul Ryan's case, it wears a nice suit and tie. That calls for not one but two memes for today. I could be wrong, but I think I smell sulphur.

Republicans Still Eager To Shred The Social Safety Net

A few weeks ago Blue America endorsed Eric Kingson, co-founder of Social Security Works, for the Syracuse-based congressional seat (NY-24), just a few weeks after GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush started espousing raising the retirement age and a few weeks before he started calling for a phasing out of Medicare and an end to the American social safety net-- i.e., the Paul Ryan plan. Bush's agenda couldn't contrast more starkly with what Kingston has in mind. He told us that he wants "to continue the work of blocking cuts and laying the foundation for expanding Social Security as an instrument of social justice... Like a lot of us, I am fed up with political leaders whose allegiance is first and foremost to themselves and their campaign contributors. I share outrage that most Washington politicians are more interested in advancing the next tax-giveaway to special interests and the very rich than investing in infrastructure, jobs, alternative energy and environmental threats to our children’s, grandchildren’s and great-grandchildren’s futures."

This morning, Eric added another thought: "Jeb Bush just told those of us getting Medicare today that he will protect our benefits but that he favors slashing and privatizing the benefits for those who follow. How remarkably insulting? Does he really believe that those of us over age 65 do not care about our younger brothers, sisters, children, and grandchildren? Working persons are facing a retirement income crisis. Rather than talking about cutting their Medicare and Social Security benefits, Mr. Bush should be advocating expansions in both." If you'd like to contribute to his congressional campaign, you can do it here through ActBlue.

Yesterday Paul Krugman's NYTimes column, Zombies Against Medicare, explains the Republican unending antipathy towards the social safety net.

Medicare turns 50 this week, and it has been a very good half-century. Before the program went into effect, Ronald Reagan warned that it would destroy American freedom; it didn’t, as far as anyone can tell. What it did do was provide a huge improvement in financial security for seniors and their families, and in many cases it has literally been a lifesaver as well.

But the right has never abandoned its dream of killing the program. So it’s really no surprise that Jeb Bush recently declared that while he wants to let those already on Medicare keep their benefits, “We need to figure out a way to phase out this program for others.”

...The real reason conservatives want to do away with Medicare has always been political: It’s the very idea of the government providing a universal safety net that they hate, and they hate it even more when such programs are successful. But when they make their case to the public they usually shy away from making their real case, and have even, incredibly, sometimes posed as the program’s defenders against liberals and their death panels.

What Medicare’s would-be killers usually argue, instead, is that the program as we know it is unaffordable-- that we must destroy the system in order to save it, that, as Mr. Bush put it, we must “move to a new system that allows [seniors] to have something-- because they’re not going to have anything.” And the new system they usually advocate is, as I said, vouchers that can be applied to the purchase of private insurance.

The underlying premise here is that Medicare as we know it is incapable of controlling costs, that only the only way to keep health care affordable going forward is to rely on the magic of privatization.

Now, this was always a dubious claim. It’s true that for most of Medicare’s history its spending has grown faster than the economy as a whole-- but this is true of health spending in general. In fact, Medicare costs per beneficiary have consistently grown more slowly than private insurance premiums, suggesting that Medicare is, if anything, better than private insurers at cost control. Furthermore, other wealthy countries with government-provided health insurance spend much less than we do, again suggesting that Medicare-type programs can indeed control costs.

Still, conservatives scoffed at the cost-control measures included in the Affordable Care Act, insisting that nothing short of privatization would work.

And then a funny thing happened: the act’s passage was immediately followed by an unprecedented pause in Medicare cost growth. Indeed, Medicare spending keeps coming in ever further below expectations, to an extent that has revolutionized our views about the sustainability of the program and of government spending as a whole.

Right now is, in other words, a very odd time to be going on about the impossibility of preserving Medicare, a program whose finances will be strained by an aging population but no longer look disastrous. One can only guess that Mr. Bush is unaware of all this, that he’s living inside the conservative information bubble, whose impervious shield blocks all positive news about health reform.

Meanwhile, what the rest of us need to know is that Medicare at 50 still looks very good. It needs to keep working on costs, it will need some additional resources, but it looks eminently sustainable. The only real threat it faces is that of attack by right-wing zombies.

Scott Walker Disputes Ronald Reagan's Admonitions Against Starting A GOP War Against Women

Now that the Republican primary is over, Scott Brown is trying to present himself to New Hampshire voters as more moderate and more mainstream than his record shows he is— particularly on issues important to women voters (and to men who like and respect women). Brown has been lying, claiming he has always supported women having the ability to get contraception easily. He recently said he has supported that "since I was 18 years old." In light of his anti-women voting record from he was a senator from Massachusetts, Politifact rates Brown’s claims “mostly false.” And even a far more radical right-wing Republican, Wisconsin Governor Rick Scott, has tried to close the gaping gender gap by making the absurd claim— in an ad no less— that he’s stayed out of women’s health care decisions. The ad from NARAL Pro-Choice at the bottom, which will start running in the Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay and LaCrosse/Eau Claire media markets tomorrow is the response to his dishonesty.

The most current polling shows his neck and neck with Democrat Mary Burke, Burke leading by one point. Among women, Burke leads by 10 points. Most Wisconsin women know how toxic Walker’s agenda has been for them and for their families. In Elizabeth Warren’s words, “No governor has done more to hurt working families than Scott Walker. He started by gutting Wisconsin's labor unions— the very organizations that built America's middle class and that would fight back hardest against his radical agenda. When he succeeded, he cut $800 million from the state's education budget, starving schools and laying off teachers. Then he rejected federal funding under the Affordable Care Act, leaving tens of thousands of people shut out of the health care system…This week, I'm headed to Wisconsin to endorse Mary Burke, the smart, tough, and experienced Democratic nominee for Governor of Wisconsin.” She continued: 

For a long time, the political pundits said Scott Walker couldn't be beat. There has been plenty of money flowing in from powerful interests, and they said it would be just too much to overcome— don't even try.

What did Mary take from that? That she needed to fight hard and build one of the best grassroots teams in the country to go door to door, person to person, to talk about why this campaign is so important for Wisconsin families.

That's what she did, and here's what she found: the people of Wisconsin were ready to fight back, too. Now the race is officially a tossup. In every single poll conducted in September, Scott Walker and Mary Burke were virtually tied.

And there's one more issue Mary has taken on: she is not afraid to talk about how Scott Walker's record shows he's just another Republican acting like it's 1954, not 2014.

This is a governor who defunded Planned Parenthood, repealed equal-pay-for-equal-work laws, and even removed the requirement for public schools to teach comprehensive sex ed.

And since we're talking about Wisconsin, let's listen to a few words from the most influential thinker and spokesperson of American conservatism in our lifetimes, Paul Ryan's patron saint:



Being anti-Choice— and generally anti-women— has long been a marker go belonging to the right-wing tribe. It’s sometimes been a difficult one for the Greed and Selfishness wing of the Republican Party to deal with. Many conservatives who don’t care about anything but evading taxes are confused by the Republican Party’s relentless war on women by fanatics like Walker. In his new book, The Invisible Bridge, Rick Perlstein looked at the verbal gymnastics Ronald Reagan had to perform to keep from alienating the crazed anti-Choice fanatics in his party.

In 1967, while governor of California, Reagan signed the most liberal abortion law in the country. He defended it, in a very different way than Ayn Rand would, by claiming that “[i]n our Judeo-Christian religion, we recognize the right to take life in defense of our own. Therefore an abortion is justified when it is done in self-defense. My belief is that a woman has the right to protect her own life and health against even her own unborn child. I believe also that just as she has the right to defend herself against rape she should not be made to bear a child resulting from the violation of her person and therefore abortion is an act of self-defense.”

Scott Walker and the rest of the kook on the lunatic fringe of the Republican Party find Reagan’s ideas on this abhorrent and would drum him out of their tribe party today as a RINO.

Conseravtives And The G.I. Bill

Russian subversive Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum (AKA, Ayn Rand) came to America when she was 21 and struggled to make a living as a screenwriter-- and didn't have a single success. She didn't write her profoundly anti-American drivel, The Fountainhead, until after she became a volunteer on behalf of reactionary Wendell Wilkie, running against FDR, and a seriously addicted meth head. She was severely addicted to amphetamines for 3 decades and under their anti-social, psychotic influence, also wrote her second load of garbage, Atlas Shrugged (1957). A third-rate intellect in Wisconsin with the ambition to became a gym bunny, read Atlas Shrugged and has fancied himself a serious economics expert ever since. He was, above all else, always happy to serve the interests of the wealthy donors who put him into Congress. Paul Ryan and Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum came immediately to mind when I tried-- unsuccessfully-- to goad John Boehner into a twitter war yesterday:

Boehner wanted to celebrate the anniversary yesterday of the signing by President Roosevelt (Ayn Rand's bête noire) of the G.I. bill in 1944, the very premise of which horrifies reactionaries like Rand and, of course, Paul Ryan. Conservatives nearly tanked the bill in Congress for two reasons. First and foremost-- and tell me this doesn't sound familiar to you-- the idea of paying unemployed veterans $20 a week freaked them out since they insisted it would diminish their incentive to look for work. That's what Ryan is babbling about in the video above when he's lionizing Rand's explanation of the "moral foundation of capitalism." Other hideous conservatives opposed the G.I. Bill because at the time, college was a privilege reserved for the sons of the rich. They couldn't quite wrap their narrow minds around the concept of sending battle-hardened vets to colleges and universities with elites like their own kids. Robert Maynard Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago expressed what many conservative elitists felt about the bill: "Colleges and universities will find themselves converted into educational hobo jungles… [The GI Bill] is a threat to American education [and] education is not a device for coping with mass unemployment."

Ultimately, though, it was conservative opposition to the $20/week "unemployment insurance"-- the disincentive, as Republicans still call it today-- that nearly defeated the bill. Congressman John Gibson (D-GA) dragged himself out of a sick bed and rushed back to Washington to cast the tie-breaking vote-- and the same week the Americans were spreading out across and beyond the beaches of Normandy. They just hated that the bill provided for unemployment compensation of $20/week for up to 52 weeks for veterans who had served 90 days or more. One conservative lobbyist wrote at the time that "The lazy and 'chisely' types of veterans would get the most benefits, whereas the resourceful, industrious and conscientious veterans would get the least benefits, if any." Right-wing Dixiecrat, vicious KKK proponent, virulent racist, anti-Semite and pro-fascist John Rankin of Mississippi-- who was infamous for referring to African-Americans as "niggers" on the House floor and for having publicly vowed to never sit next to African American congressman Adam Clayton Powell (D-NY)-- was the Richard Burr of his day. He headed the Veterans Affairs Committee and opposed any benefits that might help African Americans, claiming they wouldn't rejoin the work force, if they were being paid "generous" unemployment benefits, which would "spoil" them. "If every white serviceman in Mississippi," he said, "could read this so-called GI Bill, I don’t believe there would be one in 20 who would approve of it...  We have 50,000 Negroes in the service from our state and in, in my opinion, if the bill should pass in its present form, a vast majority of them would remain unemployed for at least another year, and a great many white men would do the same."

Conservatives, of course-- and as they always are-- were wrong. Less than 20% of the money appropriated for unemployment insurance was distributed and most returning servicemen quickly found jobs or pursued higher education. By 1956 approximately 8 million veterans received educational benefits. Under the act, approximately 2,300,000 attended colleges and universities, 3,500,000 received school training, and 3,400,000 received on-the-job training. The law helped to produce 450,000 engineers, 238,000 teachers, 91,000 scientists, 67,000 doctors, 22,000 dentists. The percentage of Americans with bachelor degrees, or advanced degrees, rose from 4.6% in 1945 to 25% a half-century later. Also by 1956, the education-and-training portion of the G.I. Bill had disbursed $14.5 billion to veterans-- and the Veterans Administration estimated the increase in Federal income taxes alone would pay for the cost of the bill several times over. By 1955, 4.3 million home loans had been granted, with a total face value of $33 billion. 11 million of 13 million houses built in the 1950s were financed with GI Bill loans. The results rippled through the rest of the economy; there would be no new depression-- just unparalleled prosperity for a generation.

Back then conservatives were preaching austerity, but their lousy ideas were thoroughly rejected by normal people. WIth their iron grip on the mass media, nonsense like Paul Ryan's budget-- which encompasses all the premises of the case against the G.I. Bill and other progressive legislation-- is taken seriously. And Boehner is kidding himself if he thinks he would even bring the G.I. Bill, or anything vaguely like it, up for a vote on the House floor today.

Paul Ryan's Anti-Jesus Christ Budget

Yesterday, Jerry Nadler (D-NY) was one of several Democrats on the House floor raging against Ryan's extremely ideological Law of the Jungle budget-- what he referred to as "merely a repackaging of the same extreme agenda that the American people rejected last fall."

“The House Republicans’ budget would again try to end Medicare as we know it by replacing the guarantee of health coverage with a private voucher program that would reduce benefits. This throws seniors back onto the mercy of the private insurance market, while every year giving them less and less of the health benefits they have earned through a lifetime of hard work.

"The Republican budget would not only make permanent the arbitrary, across-the-board budget cuts known as ‘sequestration,’ it would go further-- making even more savage cuts to domestic programs. Critical social services like food stamps, college assistance for low-income families, Section 8 housing, home heating assistance, and Medicaid-- all would face drastic cuts. Under the Republican proposal, our transportation investments would be cut by 20% over the next 10 years, exacerbating the challenges posed by our outdated roads, bridges, and airports. The bill also completely eliminates support for PBS, NPR, AmeriCorps, and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.

"The Republican budget makes all of these cuts while refusing to cut a dime of military spending. What’s worse, the Republican plan actually reverses planned reductions to military spending by increasing cuts to vital social programs-- a callously unfair proposal that will have terrible consequences for millions of American families.

"To add insult to injury, the bill before us today would make sweeping, regressive changes to the tax code which would raise taxes on middle class families by up to $3,000. Millionaires, however, would actually see a tax cut that averages $245,000 a year. This is just wrong. Working families should never have to pay more just so the rich can pay less, which is just one more reason why we must defeat this bill.

"According to the Economic Policy Institute, the net effect of all of these policies would decrease GDP by 1.7%, resulting in 2 million jobs lost in 2014 alone. If budgets are truly a reflection of our values, then what does it say about the priorities of House Republicans when their budget increases health care costs for seniors, cuts 2 million jobs, and hits middle class families with a tax increase in order to subsidize another tax cut for the rich?"

And just as Ryan was introducing his toxic Austerity Agenda, Cyprus' new right-wing government was verging on the brink of social collapse for adopting their own version of the Ryan Roadmap and... better news... Ryan's 2012 opponent, Rob Zerban announced the formation of an exploratory committee. (In other words... he's running against Ryan again, hopefully, this time with the support of the DCCC, which stood in implacable opposition to anyone taking on Ryan in 2012.) Last year, even with DCCC hostility, Zerban gave Ryan the closest challenge of his Congressional career-- and shaved nearly 20 points off Ryan's average victory margin, even while Ryan was on the national news almost everyday as part of the Romney presidential ticket. It was the closest 2012 Congressional election in Wisconsin and caused Paul Ryan to lose his home ward, his home town, and his home county. Rob:

"Since the election, I have been inundated with phone calls and emails from people all over the First District urging me to come forward again to give the people of Southeast Wisconsin a viable alternative to Paul Ryan. I've been listening to people from Janesville to Racine talk about their need for jobs and economic security, good schools and fair pay, and a strong social safety net for the hardships life sometimes throws our way. The formation of this exploratory committee is simply a formalizing of that process of listening to my friends and neighbors.

"My hope is that, over the next few months, we will begin to have a conversation about what the people of the Wisconsin's First District really want: a secure future, not federal austerity."

A poll released Monday by the very pro-Republican Rasmussen bunch shows Ryan's approval rating sinking like a stone. What a difference a day makes! Last August fully half the voters had a favorable impression of Ryan and less than a third was through him. Now only 35% of likely voters said they had a favorable impression of him, while 54% said they viewed him negatively. Even Republicans-- who once thought Ryan could do no wrong and backed him with a stunning 83% approval-- are not nearly as sold on the bill of good he's peddling. Only a slim majority (52%) of Republican voters approve.

Ryan's toxic budget passed this morning 221-207. Even more interesting than every single Democrat voting NO-- even the worst right-wing shills in the party (like Kirkpatrick, Matheson, Barrow, Negrete McLeod, Schrader and McIntyre)-- is that 10 Republicans voted against it. The Republicans were a mixture of Libertarians, mainstream conservatives and insane neo-fascists who found Ryan "too moderate" (like the 2 crackpot psychopaths competing for the open Georgia Senate seat, Broun and Gingrey). Raúl Grijalva and Keith Ellison, co-chairs of the Progressive Caucus, obviously both voted against it. They issued a joint statement: "Budgets are about choices, and the Back to Work Budget chooses investing in America’s working families. The Republican Ryan budget ignores the results of the 2012 elections and protects the world’s biggest corporations at working families’ expense. The country needs jobs right now, not a budget that takes away health care and gives massive tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires."

Although Ryan's detractors include many on the lunatic fringe-- like the aforementioned lunatics from Georgia-- the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was horrified by Ryan's jihad against the poor. Although Ryan makes a show of trying to portray himself as a good Catholic, he long ago tossed Jesus' message aside for the admittedly anti-Christian greed-and-selfishness preachings of his favorite childhood story teller, Ayn Rand. Watch:

In twin letters sent to the House and Senate, the bishops said they “support the goal of reducing future unsustainable deficits, but insist that this worthy goal be pursued in ways that protect poor and vulnerable people at home and abroad.”

The bishops blasted the Ryan budget as failing to meet certain “moral criteria” by disproportionately cutting programs like food stamps that “serve poor and vulnerable people.”

...The bishops said the revamped plan would “drastically cut” spending by $800 billion over 10 years.

“This figure is very concerning, since 70 percent of the spending in this budget category goes for programs to help poor and vulnerable people,” they wrote.

The bishops warned the Ryan budget would likely slash safety net programs likes Pell Grants, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, school lunches and the Earned Income Tax Credit, among others.

Ryan first drew the ire of the bishops last year when he said his Catholic faith helped shape his budget plan.

He said that by accelerating the debt crisis, President Obama’s policies will be more damaging to the poor. Ryan also said the USCCB doesn’t represent the views of all Catholic bishops.

The USCCB shot back, saying the officials who penned the congressional letters were elected to represent the bishops on policy matters at the national level.

After you watch Rand trying to whitewash the Robber Barons during her 1959 interview with Mike Wallace, take a look at the clip below from the History Channel:

Jimmy Lee Dykes Is Dead-- But Glenn Beck Isn't

When some kind of clownish right-wing kook-- take Idaho state Senator John Goedde for example (the unlikely chairman of the Education Committee)-- says something outlandish and even insane, I generally just shrug it off and figure the voters are smart enough to eventually deal with it-- even in remote Kootenai County, which voted 39,347 (66%) for Romney in November. Goedde wants the legislature to mandate that Idaho public schools force students to read one of Ayn Rand's adolescent and novels, Atlas Shrugged. Goedde said the book, which is a childish paean to greed and selfishness, turned his son into a Republican.

But there's a far more dangerous kind of speech than John Goedde spouting off in the Idaho state Senate that the people who wrote the First Amendment probably never envisioned. It's now possible to broadcast for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and reach millions and millions of people with perverse lies and instill in their minds-- sometimes very sick minds-- a sense of paranoia, hatred, bigotry, and a loathing for America and the ideals on which its built. That pretty much sums up Hate Talk Radio as a format. And Fox "News."

Jimmy Lee Dykes, the sick wingnut and so-called survivalist who murdered a school bus driver in Alabama and kidnapped a five year old boy and held him hostage for almost a week in his bunker was shot between the eyes by an exemplary FBI agent attempting to rescue the boy. Dykes had planted bombs around his bunker. Where do people get the kinds of hateful, paranoid ideas that motivated Dykes? What made him want to become a movement conservative terrorist for his crackpot beliefs? I bet you can guess. This time, though, the ultimate culprit wasn't billionaire terrorist Rupert Murdoch, the most venal and destructive of the right-wing media barons.

[N]eighbors say that Jimmy Lee Dykes was essentially a conservative extremist who played right wing talk radio most of the time. He was a paranoid and menacing individual who is accused by one neighbor of planning this entire abduction so he could demand a platform to rant his anti-government political opinions. If this is true, will agents release that info? Will it be confirmed or denied by agents who negotiated with the man until contact deteriorated?

The Alabama man wouldn't be the first domestic terrorist who hid behind right wing ideology. Timothy McVeigh has been confirmed by the government as being an anti-government "Tea Party" type, and Jared Lee Loughner is believed to have had an extreme hatred for the gold standard and liberal politics. Dykes' extreme ideology may have led him to committing the crimes he committed, but it's also theorized that he might have conducted the entire event to avoid going to court on prior gun charges.

Was he hearing crap on "conservative" talk radio that drove him mad? You bet he was!

Glenn Beck-- He’s planning a community, known as Independence, USA, ”... [A] $2 billion, self-sufficient, libertarian city-cum-theme park that would mark ‘the rebirth of our nation through its own principles.’”  Free from the tyranny of “King Obama,” and free from the liberties he claims the government (and by that he means President Obama and Democrats in general) is stripping away.

In that same vein, some people, including a dude who blogs under the name “Vernon,” have envisioned a secular community called the Citadel “where you know that residing in every single home in the neighborhood are people who think much as do you, respect most of the values as do you, and will not try to force any of their values on you or your children... has qualified Riflemen inside, ready to come to your aid at a moments notice, whether to help you change a tire, fix a problem, or cover your back in a firefight with an Enemy of Liberty...”  Vernon also noted that “...Militia training will also have a unifying social aspect to it.”  In fact, Drudge reported on the Citadel under a blazing headline that read, GROUP TO BUILD ARMED NEIGHBORHOOD FORTRESS.”

As reported by Talking Points Memo, “The Citadel, as envisioned and advertised by its creators, is to be a walled community of 3,500 to 7,000 ‘patriotic American families’ who are ready for when The Shit Hits The Fan (TSHTF), i.e. the myriad potential society-collapsing disasters, either natural or man made, anticipated by preppers, survivalists, along with other fringe and breakaway strands of -ers and -ists. The Citadel is to be a place for people who want to be ‘removed and protected from peril in order to preserve ourselves, our posterity, and Liberty in the event of a national economic implosion'."

Someone like Jimmy Lee Dykes, who carefully planned his underground bunker and planted homemade bombs inside it, might well have been excited by these folks-- and other survivalist and bunker mentality movements, including the American Prepper Network.  As reported by Salon, “The APN site talks often and explicitly about ‘The End of the World As We Know It,’ which it refer to as TEOTWAWKI.  And judging from the abundance of videos and blogs of self-identified preppers arming themselves while touting conspiracies about government, financial collapse and the apocalypse, it’s clear this isn’t strictly a peaceful movement of people hoarding canned goods.  Preppers don’t just stockpile nonperishables-- they collect weapons... preppers believe having weapons is just as important as having enough water. They are also deeply suspicious of government overreach...”

In fact, the APN, along with other “survivalist” movements, routinely sound alarms about government infringement and the way to survive it, or revolt against it-- largely centered around being well-armed.

The right-wing survivalists and preppers and bunker mentality types, led by Glenn Beck and Wayne LaPierre and Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talking heads, have evolved from “preparedness” to fomenting revolution.  And although Jimmy Lee Dykes will reside for eternity at least six feet under, the fuel for his violent actions lives on.  Though one survivalist with an anti-government, anti-Obama bent was felled, others have already, no doubt, taken root and are evolving into another Jimmy Lee Dykes.

The FBI had better keep its sharp-shooters sharp.

Does that mean, someone should round up inciters and merchants of hate like Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Rupert Murdock, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and shoot them? Of course not! They should be tried first.