“A Move Toward A Less Prosperous America”: Afflicting The Afflicted And Comforting The Already Comforted
Mitt Romney has chosen as his running mate U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the author of an ill-conceived budget plan that he ambitiously named “The Path to Prosperity.”
In fact, Ryan’s budget plan aims to put more money in taxpayers’ pockets through massive cuts to many programs that have a direct impact on the quality of life in the United States.
There is more to “prosperity” than money in our pockets. Financial prosperity does no one any good if there is not concomitant happiness or, at least, contentment. The ability to lead a happy and satisfying life is the best measure of true prosperity. A happy life is made up of basic American values: access to health care, access to a good education, security, access to sustenance.
Given this, the happiness of our citizenry does not seem to figure into the GOP’s notion of prosperity. Our nation’s founders were wise to emphasize the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The GOP seems to have lost sight of the pursuit of happiness.
True happiness is difficult to define. It is not just short-term pleasure or immediate gratification. It transcends money. We are all familiar with the phrase “money doesn’t buy happiness.” Research shows that real happiness involves a sense of well-being, a deep connection to others, the freedom to autonomously pursue one’s interests and the ability to find personal meaning in one’s life.
Just how happy are we Americans?
Combined data from the Gallup Poll; the Heritage Foundation, the quintessential conservative think tank; the World Economic Forum and – surprisingly – the CIA, from more than 100,000 people show that the U.S. doesn’t fare well. Many countries are happier than we are, mostly in northern Europe: Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Austria, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands.
What are the major factors that contribute to the reported happiness in these countries? Here are the top 10:
- Individual freedom
- Democracy
- Governmental transparency
- Capitalistic economies that promote individual entrepreneurship
- Political support for workers’ rights
- A strong work ethic with the – supported – belief that hard work pays off
- Governmental commitment to improving the quality of life for all residents, that is universal access to health care and a quality education
- A strong infrastructure with efficient public transportation
- Tolerance for all ethnic groups and religions
- A commitment to preserving the environment
These components cannot come from the private sector alone. The U.S. has many of these key components already, yet there are not only glaring omissions, but a few of these are in jeopardy from Ryan’s budget proposal. “The Path to Prosperity” is a radical example of a growing trend that subordinates the building of a society that will improve happiness and prosperity for all to the financial demands of a relatively small cadre of the very rich.
Many supporters of Ryan’s budget and other austerity plans are skeptical about whether building a society based on happiness and prosperity for all citizens is fiscally responsible. They speak of “living beyond our means.” They wail that government programs that promote happiness and prosperity for all will saddle future generations with crippling debt.
But remember the list of the happiest countries? They tend to be fiscally conservative and do not live beyond their means. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development data show the U.S. deficit (10.7%) is more than double the average of that of the happiest countries. Here are the others: Denmark, 5.4%; Finland, 4.8%; the Netherlands, 5.9%; Sweden, 3%; Switzerland, 1.3%. And Norway has a 9.9% budget surplus. CIA data show that our national debt, at 59% of gross domestic product, is one-third higher than the average of 45% in the happier Scandinavian countries.
So what’s the difference between these happy, prosperous countries and the U.S.? It is simply shared sacrifice. All, not just some, of their taxpayers are willing to forgo the goals of personal acquisitiveness for the greater happiness of the country as a whole. This is the true “pursuit of happiness” enshrined in the Declaration of Independence.
We cannot slash our way to prosperity, as it places an undue burden on people who have caught relatively few breaks already. To extend an op-ed title from columnist Paul Krugman, the Ryan budget, “afflicts the afflicted and comforts the comforted.” It is imperative that our country’s leaders focus less on tax cuts for those who don’t need them and more on fiscally sound policies that will promote happiness and prosperity for all.
By: Jan Van Schaik, Immediate Past President of the Wisconsin Psychoanalytic Institute and an Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the Medical College of Wisconsin, JSOnline, August 18, 2012
“Missing The Medicare Forest For The Trees”: GOP Want’s You To Believe They Are The Defenders Of “Socialized Medicine”
I was reading Charles Krauthammer’s column this morning, and noticed that he’s adopted the Romney/Ryan talking points on Medicare — the far-right columnist accused President Obama of “robbing Granny’s health care.”
My first instinct was to explain how wrong this is, but it occurred to me how disjointed the nature of the debate has become. The fight over Medicare, on a conceptual level, got off track recently and has been careening in the wrong direction ever since.
Given how critically important this is in the presidential election, let’s pause for a moment to consider the bigger picture.
The Romney/Ryan argument is that Obama/Biden is cutting Medicare, hurting seniors, and undermining the financial security of the Medicare system. All week, I’ve been making an effort to set the record straight by pointing to the facts: Obama’s savings strengthen the system; benefits for seniors have been expanded, not cut; the Republican budget plan embraced the same savings Romney/Ryan is now condemning; the GOP privatization alternative is dangerous; etc.
The facts are, to be sure, still true, and they’re important. But let’s ignore the trees and look at the forest.
What is Medicare? It’s a massive, government-run system of socialized medicine. It’s wildly popular, very successful, and one of the pillars of modern Democratic governance. This government-run system of socialized medicine was created by Democrats against the opposition of conservative Republicans, and it’s Democrats who’ve fought to protect it for more than a half-century.
Or to summarize, the left loves Medicare and always has; the right hates Medicare and always has. For liberals, the system is a celebrated ideal; for conservatives it’s an unconstitutional, big-government outrage in desperate need of privatization.
In 2012, once we get past all of the talking points and attack ads, we’re left with this: Romney/Ryan wants you to believe they’re the liberals. No, seriously. Think about what the Republican presidential ticket, Fox News, Krauthammer, Donald Trump, and the Republican National Committee have been saying all week: those mean, rascally Democrats cut our beloved Medicare and voters should be outraged.
In other words, the argument pushed by the most right-wing major-party ticket in a generation is that Barack Obama is a left-wing socialist who wants government-run socialized medicine and that Barack Obama is a far-right brute who wants to undermine government-run socialized medicine.
If you care about protecting the popular system of socialized medicine, the argument goes, your best bet would be to put it the hands of conservative Republicans who steadfastly oppose the very idea of a government-run system of socialized medicine.
The questions voters should ask themselves, then, are incredibly simple: putting aside literally everything else you’ve heard this week, why in the world would a Democratic president want to “gut” Medicare? Why would liberal members of Congress and the AARP join a Democratic president in trying to undermine the system Democrats created and celebrate?
Why would voters expect conservative Republicans to be the trusted champions of socialized medicine?
As a political matter, I understand exactly what Romney/Ryan is trying to do. As Greg Sargent explained this morning, “It’s important, though, to get at the true nature of the Romney strategy here. It isn’t about drawing an actual policy contrast with the Obama campaign. It’s about obfuscating the actual policy differences between the two candidates over the program.”
That’s exactly right. The Republican plan to deal with the intense unpopularity of the Romney/Ryan plan is to simply muddy the waters — both sides are accusing the other side of being against Medicare; the media doesn’t like separating fact from fiction; and voters, even well-intentioned folks who want to know the truth, aren’t quite sure what to believe. For all I know, this obfuscation strategy might actually work.
But while assorted hacks may find partisan value in falsely accusing Obama of “robbing Granny’s health care,” does that make any sense on a conceptual level? Since when do Republicans look at President Obama and think he’s too conservative when it comes to socialized medicine?
All I’m suggesting is that a little critical thinking on the part of the electorate and the political world can go a long way.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, August 17, 2012
“Mitt’s Plot To Confuse You”: Goal Isn’t To Win Over Voters On Medicare But To Make Them Frustrated
What’s most noteworthy about the new Medicare-themed ad that the Obama campaign unveiled today is its defensive tone. The spot opens by referring back to a Romney ad that claims the president “robbed” $716 billion to pay for the new healthcare reform law, then contrasts AARP’s favorable assessment of Obama’s actions on Medicare with its ominous take on what Paul Ryan has proposed.
There’s a lot going on here, and that might be problematic for Obama.
Medicare is a supremely popular program, and attempts to cut or alter it dramatically always poll terribly. The hope for the Obama team is to replicate the success that Bill Clinton and Democrats enjoyed in 1996, when they positioned themselves as the last line of defense between Medicare and the Republicans who would (in the famous words of Newt Gingrich) let it “wither on the vine.”
But the issue is more complicated in this year’s campaign, because of the Medicare changes that Obama made through the Affordable Care Act. That the law cuts spending by $716 billion over 10 years is true, but the reductions do not affect benefits; instead, they’re aimed at hospital reimbursement rates and the excessively costly Medicare Advantage private insurance program, with smaller cuts for home healthcare providers and others. What’s more, Ryan’s own Medicare plan, which House Republicans almost unanimously endorsed (and which Romney has indicated he would have signed as president), upholds all of these cuts. But Ryan says he’s now running on the Romney plan, not his own, and the Romney plan (such as it is) calls for wiping out the Medicare cuts.
It’s all rather slippery, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. The upshot is that Romney and Ryan are now running around blasting Obama for making savage cuts in Medicare, and running ads to the same effect. This, of course, is also what Republicans did in the 2010 midterms, when their landslide was keyed in part by an anti-Obama backlash among senior citizens. This complicates Obama’s hopes of replicating Clinton’s reelection strategy. Clinton never had to answer for his own cuts; he could just fire away at the “Dole-Gingrich” attempt to raid Medicare. Obama’s task is trickier. He has to explain his own actions first, then pivot to an attack on his rivals. As Greg Sargent points out, all the GOP needs to do here is to muddy the waters enough that swing voters throw up their hands in confusion and move on to other issues – like the economy.
If there’s a silver lining for the Obama side, it’s that voters still instinctively regard his party to be more supportive of Medicare than the GOP. A poll a few months ago found that voters trust Democrats over Republicans by a 40-24 percent margin to look out for the program. Obama has also enjoyed a wide advantage over congressional Republicans on this front. The gap is tighter when Romney enters the picture; a poll of swing state voters this week found Obama running 8 points ahead of Romney, 42 to 34 percent, on who would better handle Medicare. By comparison, Clinton was running more than 20 points ahead of Dole on the issue at this point in ’96. (Of course, he was also running about 20 points ahead of Dole in the horse race.)
That said, voters are more inclined to give Obama and Democrats the benefit of the doubt on Medicare than Romney and the GOP. And the Democratic assault on Ryan-ism is only beginning. The polls may look different a few weeks, or months, from now. But just because Romney’s running mate is the author of a reviled Medicare plan doesn’t necessarily mean that the GOP ticket will pay a price for it.
By: Steve Kornacki, Salon, August 17, 2012
“Mitt’s Non-Power Power Point”: Romney’s Whiteboard Presentation Proves “Wonk” Is a Meaningless Word
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have been celebrated as a team that might not be the most charismatic, but who are details-oriented number-crunchers who care deeply about policy—i.e., wonks. The w-word is a favorite faux-self-deprecating term of Washington people who are pretty sure they’re pretty smart. With Romney’s choice of Ryan, “wonk” is everywhere.
When The Wall Street Journal editorialized in favor of Ryan, they dismissed worries that he’s “too young, too wonky, too, you know, serious.” After his pick, he was described as “Jack Kemp wonky,” “a policy wonk,” “the Republican wonk star,” “a fit 42-year-old policy wonk,” and “the best of a policy wonk.” Ryan was a perfect match with Romney because “two wonks bonded during the Wisconsin primary,” a Republican strategist told National Journal. Romney and Ryan played up this idea in their first interview as a team with CBS’s Bob Scheiffer. Romney said, “This is a man who’s also very analytical. He’s a policy guy. People know him as a policy guy. That’s one of the reasons he has such respect on both sides of the aisle. I’m a policy guy, believe it or not. I love policy.” That “believe it or not” suggests there might be some doubt. You’d be right to have it after watching his whiteboard presentation on Medicare Thursday.
Romney has a reputation for loving data, as expressed through his love of PowerPoint. The PowerPoint presentation and the whiteboard are supposed to signal smart data-driven analysis. But the whole point is to actually show the data. Romney did not do that today, as you can see in this video posted by Politico’s Alexander Burns. Romney divided up a whiteboard into two columns and two rows, showing how current seniors and the next generation of seniors would be affected under his and President Obama’s proposals. He did this because Democrats are attacking him for Ryan’s old plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program and his new plan to make the vouchers an option. Democrats have also screamed bloody murder over Romney’s attacks that Obama will cut $716 billion from Medicare, when Ryan’s plan keeps those cuts, and the cuts affect how much providers are paid, not what health services old folks receive. But Romney’s counter-counter-counter attack did not address those attacks. Instead, he reiterated his claim about the $716 billion. As for the next generation of seniors? Under Obama, Romney wrote “bankrupt.” Under Romney, Romney wrote “solvent.” Well, that explains everything.
Just because a campaign’s talking points were written on a thing used to show details doesn’t mean actual details were shown. The Romney campaign has been careful to avoid getting too deep into the details of the candidate’s economic proposals, because they want to make the election a referrendum on President Obama. But refusing to dip into the details is not the sign of a wonk, it’s the opposite. This was most apparent when Fox News’ Brit Hume pressed Ryan on when his plan would balance the budget. Ryan tried to get out of answering by saying he didn’t want to “get wonky on you” before admitting he didn’t know, because the numbers have not been crunched.
Hume: “I get that. What about balance?”
Ryan: “I don’t know exactly what the balance is. I don’t want to get wonky on you, but we haven’t run the numbers on that specific plan. The plan we offer in the House balances the budget. I’d put a contrast. President Obama, never once, ever, has offered a plan to ever balance the budget. The United States Senate, they haven’t even balanced, they haven’t passed a budget in three years.”
Hume: “I understand that. But your own budget, that you —
Ryan: “You are talking about the House budget?”
Hume: “I’m talking about the House budget. Your budget will be a political issue in this campaign.”
Ryan: “The House budget doesn’t balance until the 2030s under the current measurement of the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) baseline.”
By: Elspeth Reeve, The Atlantic, August 16, 2012
“Selfishness As Virtue”: The Narcissistic Politics Of Paul Ryan And The Servicing Of The Super-Rich Generation Of Termites
Often labeled a “reformer” for his determination to privatize Medicare and Social Security, Paul Ryan on closer inspection appears to be simply another Republican politician – like his new patron Mitt Romney – whose first priority is his own self-interest.
Both the ideology and the legislation he champions prove that he is utterly sincere in his admiration of Ayn Rand, the kooky libertarian author who elaborated her philosophy in a book candidly titled The Virtue of Selfishness. (The flavor of this 1964 essay collection can be gleaned from its original title, The Fascist New Frontier. Its first draft included a Rand screed that compared President John F. Kennedy with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.)
Ryan is a millionaire – one of the most affluent members of Congress – chiefly owing to a series of inheritances from his own family and the family of his wife, an Oklahoma heiress. And like Romney, he would certainly benefit from the tax proposals in the “Ryan budget,” which provides even greater benefits for wealthy families like his own than the Bush budgets that he supported during the past decade. The Romney-Ryan ticket’s chief policy preoccupation, in fact, is cutting their own taxes yet again while gutting government functions that serve the middle class (while raising taxes on them).
But the self-serving short-sightedness epitomized by Ryan’s ideas extends well beyond cutting taxes for himself and people like him. Consider his voting record on energy and environmental issues, where he has been a faithful servant of Big Oil and “skeptic” of climate change caused by carbon emissions.
That record happens to coincide perfectly with the interests of his wife Janna and her father, a lawyer representing oil and gas interests. Ryan and his wife have already inherited millions of dollars from a trust established by her family; and they own shares in several companies leasing property in Oklahoma and Texas to energy firms that benefit from taxpayer subsidies protected in Ryan’s budget. Although Ryan occasionally complains about “corporate welfare,” he and Romney both oppose any reduction in the multi-billion-dollar tax breaks enjoyed by the oil and gas industry.
As for Ryan’s own inherited wealth, it is money that mostly came from the huge construction company established by his great-grandfather in the 19th century. Ryan Incorporated’s success grew from the construction of railroads, then highways, airports, bridges and other basic public infrastructure – in short, from government contracts. (Its website proudly outlines the company history and notes that today “the Company performs residential, commercial, industrial and power site work, landfill construction and capping and full-service golf course building/remodeling for both public and private customers.”
But while Ryan benefited personally from more than a century of construction that helped to create American society and a prosperous middle class, his budget serves only the super-rich generation of termites who would allow U.S. infrastructure to crumble, rather than provide sufficient resources to maintain and modernize it. Should the Ryan budget ever become law, very little or no federal money will remain available in future decades for such basic purposes of government. That is fine with him, evidently because Ryan’s own fortunes are no longer tied to the family construction business. (His cousins who still run the company would be wise to vote for anyone but him.)
Then there is Ryan’s longtime obsession with abolishing Social Security as a public insurance system, which first drew attention to him during the Bush administration in 2005. The Bush White House suffered political disaster by pursuing a privatization plan as he urged them to do. Strangely, while Ryan is decades away from retirement age, he has already collected Social Security in the form of survivor benefits. For two years he received a check every month, following the tragic early death of his father when the future Congressman was only 16 years old.
Thanks to Social Security, Ryan was able to save money for college – a story similar to that of Senator Al Franken’s wife Franni, who lost her father at an early age and attended college thanks to federal survivor benefits. But while Franni Franken’s experience ensured that she and her husband became staunch defenders of Social Security, Ryan is eager to deprive future orphans of the guaranteed support that he received.
If selfishness is truly a virtue, then Ryan is without peer. His ideas comprise a taxonomy of narcissistic public policy – from taxes to climate change, infrastructure, and social insurance — that would surely gratify his idol.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, August 15, 2012
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