Posts tagged Paul Ryan

Cantoring Through Crises

68
2 months ago
by dcpetterson in

Dr Evil 700 Billion

As a little-​​heralded fea­ture of the recent fis­cal bat­tles between the White House and Con­gress, Amer­ica has largely achieved the goal of the “grand bar­gain” pur­sued dur­ing the sum­mer of 2011.

If you recall, back then Pres­i­dent Obama and Speaker Boehner at one time came close to an agree­ment that would reduce the fed­eral deficit by roughly $4 tril­lion over the next decade. A deficit reduc­tion of this size was seen as the Holy Grail of bud­get talks, a reduc­tion that was suf­fi­cient (even if barely) to sta­bi­lize the nation’s eco­nomic future. Talks fell apart then because of Repub­li­can refusal to accept rev­enue increases. But since then, slowly, halt­ingly, painfully, that magic $4 tril­lion goal has come very close to reality.

We’re almost there. Too bad so few peo­ple know it. Even worse, it’s too bad that polit­i­cal strate­gists choose to pre­tend oth­er­wise. Per­haps there’s some­thing evil in the (inten­tional?) avoid­ance of the real­i­ties. (more…)

Romney’s Tax Plan: You Can’t Get There from Here

11
6 months ago
by Logarchism.com in

Editor’s note: PWS con­tributed this fol­lowup arti­cle to his ear­lier one. We love receiv­ing and pub­lish­ing your sub­mis­sions, as it gives an oppor­tu­nity for a broader spec­trum of views to be explored in depth. Please, keep them coming.

Reed Davis posted an arti­cle on Hal­loween with juicy links to the “six stud­ies” quoted by Paul Ryan as sup­port­ing the Rom­ney tax plan, and even juicier links to rebut­tals and counter-​​rebuttals. I had already writ­ten up a dis­cus­sion of most of these papers, so at the risk of some dupli­ca­tion, I’m going to post it here.

As much as pos­si­ble, I’m work­ing with pro­jec­tions that the Tax Pol­icy Cen­ter would have used, rather than Har­vey Rosen’s 2009 SOI. I pre­fer these because 2009 is already three years old, and was an anom­alous year because of the eco­nomic slow­down. Where pos­si­ble I have links to under­ly­ing doc­u­ments.  (more…)

Vice Presidential Debate

171
7 months ago
by Monotreme in

Martha Rad­datz, mod­er­a­tor and light­ning rod.

Tonight is the only Vice Pres­i­den­tial debate of the 2012 elec­tion, mod­er­ated by Martha Rad­datz of ABC News. The venue is Cen­tre Col­lege in Danville, Kentucky.

The stakes for tonight’s con­test were raised by Pres­i­dent Obama’s per­for­mance in the first Pres­i­den­tial debate, which most pun­dits regarded as lack­lus­ter. Accord­ingly, the pre-​​debate pos­tur­ing has begun.

The Daily Caller and Tucker Carl­son have claimed that Rad­datz has a con­flict of inter­est because Barack Obama attended her 1991 wed­ding to Julius Gena­chowski. At the time, both Obama and Gena­chowski were Har­vard law stu­dents. Rad­datz and Gena­chowski were divorced in 1997, and Rad­datz is now mar­ried to NPR cor­re­spon­dent Tom Gjelton.

The Democ­rats will try to cut off the Repub­li­can team’s momen­tum that they gained from the Den­ver Pres­i­den­tial debate. Biden’s exten­sive for­eign pol­icy expe­ri­ence and four years of inten­sive, on-​​the-​​job train­ing as a val­ued advi­sor and assis­tant to Obama are his strengths.

On the Repub­li­can side, Ryan will try to close the deal. He has been in Con­gress 14 years, and has worked in pub­lic ser­vice his entire adult life (with the excep­tion of a stint at the wheel of a Wiener­mo­bile). He now chairs the House Bud­get Com­mit­tee and is the prin­ci­pal author of the Repub­li­can plan to cut the deficit, pri­mar­ily by repeal­ing Oba­macare and replac­ing the cur­rent Medicare fund­ing sys­tem with a voucher-​​based fund­ing model. (more…)

Ballot Watch: Obamacare

22
8 months ago
by dcpetterson in

This is Bal­lot Watch. Today is the fourth in the series of arti­cles on the upcom­ing bal­lot ini­tia­tives and some key local elec­tions. Some of these will cover top­ics in com­mon with mul­ti­ple states, while oth­ers will look at a state level.

Pun­dits used to say that Pres­i­dent Obama would not (or, some­times they claimed, “could not”) run for reëlec­tion on his record as Pres­i­dent. They specif­i­cally claimed he could not (or would not) run on his great­est sin­gu­lar leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ment, the Afford­able Care Act (ACA), also known as Oba­macare. Of course, most of these pun­dits also claimed this elec­tion would be a “ref­er­en­dum” on the President’s first term, not so much a “choice elec­tion” where the pub­lic was pre­sented with an option between visions for the future.

Con­found­ing these par­tic­u­lar pun­dits, Pres­i­dent Obama is, in fact, run­ning on his record, and is press­ing the case for Oba­macare. Even Repub­li­can Vice Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Paul Ryan has pre­sented the upcom­ing elec­tion as a “choice” (“You are enti­tled to the clear­est pos­si­ble choice, because the time for choos­ing is draw­ing near…”). The Demo­c­ra­tic defense on these issues is hav­ing an effect. Just this last Sun­day, Mitt Rom­ney had to admit there were many things he “liked” in health care reform, after hav­ing repeat­edly promised to “repeal” it, on “day one.”

A num­ber of states, appar­ently in an effort to affect the vote this Novem­ber, have bal­lot ini­tia­tives deal­ing with Oba­macare. What will be the effect of these mea­sures on the upcom­ing elec­tion? What prac­ti­cal effect might they have on the future of health care reform in Amer­ica? (more…)

You Can’t Hide Your Lyin’ Feat

64
8 months ago
by Monotreme in

Source: AzureGhost, polit​i​cal​gates​.blogspot​.com

Those who know me, know that I like to run half-​​marathons. The dis­tance (13.1 miles) is not too great, and as a friend said this morn­ing, “I can run a half-​​marathon and still mow the lawn that after­noon.” I’ve tried the marathon dis­tance, run­ning some­where between 15 and 20 of them (I’ve lost count).

When you’re a run­ner, scrupu­lous hon­esty is prized. That’s why a lot of us perked up our ears when Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Paul Ryan (R-​​Janesville, WI) claimed to have run a marathon in under three hours (called a “sub-​​3″ by run­ners). My PR (per­sonal record) is 4:12, a num­ber that’s burned in my mem­ory. Every time I run I have that num­ber in mind. An “aver­age” marathon time nation­wide, across all age groups, is about 4:15. For­mer Sen­a­tor John Edwards posted a blaz­ing 3:30 (the bet­ter to run away from com­pro­mis­ing sit­u­a­tions, appar­ently); for­mer Pres­i­dent George W. Bush owns a much-​​more-​​than-​​respectable 3:44:52; for­mer Gov­er­nor Sarah Palin has a damn good 3:59:36; and for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore has a rather piti­ful 4:54:25. As About​.com snark­ily sug­gests, “If you’re hop­ing to beat a politician’s time and think Bush and Palin’s marks are a lit­tle out of your league, Al Gore’s time is a lot more achievable.”

On the Hugh Hewitt [HH] radio show, Ryan [PR] makes a smooth claim that he was a fan­tas­tic run­ner as a young man. From the transcript:

PR: No, I was stu­dent gov­ern­ment and ath­let­ics, honor soci­ety, you know, that kind of thing. I was kind of a com­bi­na­tion. I was class pres­i­dent my junior year, I was the school board rep my senior year. I let­tered in var­sity, you know, my first year in high school, mostly soc­cer and track. I was a dis­tance run­ner and a soc­cer player. So kind of well-​​rounded. I can’t, I can play a cow­bell. That’s about it for instruments.

HH: Are you still running?

PR: Yeah, I hurt a disc in my back, so I don’t run marathons any­more. I just run ten miles or yes [ed.: he said ‘less’].

HH: But you did run marathons at some point?

PR: Yeah, but I can’t do it any­more, because my back is just not that great.

HH: I’ve just gotta ask, what’s your per­sonal best?

PR: Under three, high twos. I had a two hour and fifty-​​something.

HH: Holy smokes. All right, now you go down to Miami University…

PR: I was fast when I was younger, yeah.

(more…)

Policy or Judgment?

128
9 months ago
by Michael Weiss in

Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-​​Bainbridge Town­ship, OH), a casu­alty of vot­ers’ shift to a pol­icy focus

I’ve been intrigued by what seems to me to be an evo­lu­tion in the way we choose our elected offi­cials. From my under­stand­ing of his­tory, the pur­pose of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive form of gov­ern­ment is to have the peo­ple col­lec­tively choose a sub­set whom they trust to make deci­sions that would reflect, as closely as pos­si­ble, the desires that they would have, were they to be informed of the rel­e­vant infor­ma­tion. That is, they are sup­posed to choose some­one in whose judg­ment they trust.

When an elected offi­cial uses judg­ment, it’s not unrea­son­able to expect a shift in pol­icy as new infor­ma­tion becomes avail­able or the fun­da­men­tals change. In fact, not only is it not unrea­son­able, it should be expected.

But increas­ingly our gov­ern­ment offi­cials are being pil­lo­ried for using judg­ment. (more…)

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