Tax Cuts for the Rich on the Backs of the Middle Class; or, Paul Ryan Has Balls

[Octafish]

Matt Taiibi nails one nutjob worth nailing in the worst way:

Tax Cuts for the Rich on the Backs of the Middle Class; or, Paul Ryan Has Balls

By Matt Taibbi
POSTED: April 7, 11:52 AM ET | Rolling Stone

Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s latest entrant in the seemingly endless series of young, prickish, over-coiffed, anal-retentive deficit Robespierres they’ve sent to the political center stage in the last decade or so, has come out with his new budget plan. All of these smug little jerks look alike to me – from Ralph Reed to Eric Cantor to Jeb Hensarling to Rand Paul and now to Ryan, they all look like overgrown kids who got nipple-twisted in the halls in high school, worked as Applebee’s shift managers in college, and are now taking revenge on the world as grownups by defunding hospice care and student loans and Sesame Street. They all look like they sleep with their ties on, and keep their feet in dress socks when doing their bi-monthly duty with their wives.

Every few years or so, the Republicans trot out one of these little whippersnappers, who offer proposals to hack away at the federal budget. Each successive whippersnapper inevitably tries, rhetorically, to out-mean the previous one, and their proposals are inevitably couched as the boldest and most ambitious deficit-reduction plans ever seen. Each time, we are told that these plans mark the end of the budgetary reign of terror long ago imposed by the entitlement system begun by FDR and furthered by LBJ.

Never mind that each time the Republicans actually come into power, federal deficit spending explodes and these whippersnappers somehow never get around to touching Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. The key is that for the many years before that moment of truth, before these buffoons actually get a chance to put their money where their lipless little mouths are, they will stomp their feet and scream about how entitlements are bringing us to the edge of apocalypse.

The reason for this is always the same: the Republicans, quite smartly, recognize that there is great political hay to be made in the appearance of deficit reduction, and that white middle class voters will respond with overwhelming enthusiasm to any call for reductions in the “welfare state,” a term which said voters will instantly associate with black welfare moms and Mexicans sneaking over the border to visit American emergency rooms.

CONTINUED...

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/tax-cuts-for-the-rich-on-the-backs-of-the-middle-class-or-paul-ryan-has-balls-20110407

Was at a wake and met a hard-working woman who absolutely loves this turd, Ryan. Anyone got dirt on Mr. Ryan to share?

[fredamae]

1. No "balls"!

With his logic one can instantly tell his are shrunk to "raisins".
One does not need to be in the medical field to make this diagnosis.:)

[Octafish]

5. 'No Balls' is the very definition of a Conservative

"A conservative is a man who is too cowardly to fight and too fat to run." -- Elbert Hubbard

And a hearty welcome to DU, fredamae!

[bobbolink]

2. I'm so relieved to know that Matt Taibi doesn't think there will be cuts to us poor folk!

Oh wait... he didn't even include us in the equation.

What a fucking surprise. :puke:

[Octafish]

6. Not in that particular post, per se. His point was raising taxes on the rich.

And he did slam the living hell out of the Vampire Squid of the global economy, Goldman Sachs and how they've set the table for their next bailout.

[bobbolink]

13. Why is it so difficult to admit that it is all about the middleclass?

[Uncle Joe]

3. If having balls, means he's courageous, Ryan doesn't have any.

If he was bold, or courageous, he would be taking on the wealthy and powerful instead of brown nosing them, while trashing the weak, poor and disenfranchised.

Ryan is a coward; believing that should his political career come to an end, the uber-rich will take care of him in one way or another for the hand-job, he gave them.

Thanks for the thread, Octafish.

[Octafish]

8. Absolutely.

He dwells amongst the lowest of the low: a small man who comforts the comfortable and afflicts the afflicted.

Paul Ryan is a little chicken shit* who reminds me of someone they're prepping for bigger things. Maybe he'll give a speech at the GOP Hate Fest and end up on the 2016 ticket with Jebthro as the frustrated despot for the next eight years.

*"Who's that little chicken shit?" -- George H.W. Bush after meeting Paul Wellstone

[hfojvt]

4. Taibbi has part of that backwards

he says "when Republicans come into power, Federal deficit spending explodes"

that just buys into the myth that the deficit is the result of spending, and that spending needs to be cut, but Republicans never really cut it.

Read my lips - the deficit is the result of tax cuts, especially tax cuts for the rich

Tax Cuts and the Deficit

Look at just five years and the income and taxes paid by the richest 1%. In 2006, the richest 1% made over $388,806.


year * income * taxes * average rate

1986 ** 285. 2 ** 94.5 ** 33.1%
2003 ** 985.8 ** 268.6 ** 24.3
2004 ** 1,054.6 ** 256.3 ** 23.5
2005 ** 1,306.4 ** 306.9 ** 23.1
2006 ** 1,791.9 ** 408.4 ** 22.8

Consider the revenue that could have been raised if the top 1% paid the same tax rate in 2003-06 that they did in 1986. In 2003 it would be $93 billion. In 2004, $126 billion. In 2005, $159 billion, and in 2006, $185 billion for a total of $563 billion in just four years.


The deficit resulted from Reagan tax cuts

In 1980 the National Debt was $907.7 billion. By 1985, it had doubled to $1,823.3 billion and by 1989 had tripled to $2,857 billion and by 1991 it had quadrupled to $3,665 billion. Was that because of spending? Spending did grow by 112% in the 1980s, but it also grew by 112% in the 1960s and by 202% in the 1970s when the debt did not grow by $2.7 trillion in those decades. Taking inflation into account, spending grew by 57% in the 1960s, by 41.9% in the 1970s and by only 35.3% in the 1980s. And it was in the 1980s that the deficit exploded.

According to standard economy theory, deficits are caused by mostly wars, recessions, and, since the 1980s, by tax cuts.

http://www.koch2congress.com/11.html

[Octafish]

9. Great point. GOP aided by DEMs pushed through Tax Cut City, Big Time.

You and Taibbi make clear that fiscal policy since GE's puppet Ronald Reagan's administration has meant happy times for the rich through lowered taxes, targeted military spending, and rewards through Wall Street deregulation.

Economic Legacy

Reagan Policies Gave Green Light to Red Ink

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 9, 2004; Page A11

EXCERPT...

The fiscal shift in the Reagan years was staggering. In January 1981, when Reagan declared the federal budget to be "out of control," the deficit had reached almost $74 billion, the federal debt $930 billion. Within two years, the deficit was $208 billion. The debt by 1988 totaled $2.6 trillion. In those eight years, the United States moved from being the world's largest international creditor to the largest debtor nation.

To some economists, the impact was clear. Interest rates rose in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the economy slowed, then slipped into recession, and productivity barely advanced. Americans feared their nation had slipped into the shadows of Japan and Germany.

Reagan's "economic policy . . . was a disaster," University of California at Berkeley economic historian J. Bradford DeLong wrote this past weekend on his Web site. "The tax cuts made America a more unequal place, and the deficits slowed economic growth in the 1980s significantly."

But after the boom years of the 1990s, and the steady economic slides of those international rivals, some economists are reevaluating that version of history. The argument against deficits is more about self-righteous moralism than economics, they say.

CONTINUED...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A26402-2004Jun8.html

Screwing America: A tradition started with that Robin Hood in Reverse, Red Ink Ronnie.

[Dappleganger]

7. Too bad, he was such a promising young lad...

[Octafish]

10. There's something about a frustrated despot man...

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_31YKhnbrW0s/S7gSJam-R1I/AAAAAAAACXY/4qsnR0_4qbA/s1600/Paul+Ryan+1984.jpg

... that is a bit of the old hobnailed boot stamping on a human face forever about him.

[hadrons]

16. More like this kid ....

[unkachuck]

11. K&R....n/t

[jpgray]

12. Taibbi's great, but I have one little nit to pick

Thus is already an adverb. Thusly is therefore akin to quicklyly. Still, I'll accept any and all vitriol flung on the media for their portrayal of Captain Serious, Paul "Pragmatic" Ryan. Wonderful piece.

[salin]

14. Worse is the unspoken reality of his proposals - try to save 30-40k a year now

on top of living expenses - to pay for retirement and health care (in replacement of medicare) in the future. Who earns enough money to set that kind of money aside? OH ya - the really wealthy who he proposes should pay less.

What I don't get - is the silence per the reality of those of us who don't get grandfathered in. That we have to find the income each year beyond our living expenses - to save for not only retireent -but also all medial care - and given his (and other far right conservatives) opposition to healthcare - we not only have to start saving for funding our own health care - but we also would be (if the end healthcsre reform) subject to "preexisting conditions" - where most health care costs wouldn't be covered in the first place.

Hey tea partiers - what you are pushing requires you to set 20=40K aside a year - beyond cost of liing - just not to die in destitution.

[amborin]

15. k&r