Joan Walsh on "Paul Ryan: Randian poseur" (no better example of fakery at heart of GOP)

[highplainsdem]

From Salon:

Paul Ryan: Randian poseur
Mitt Romney couldn't have chosen a better example of the fakery at the heart of today's GOP

http://www.salon.com/2012/08/12/paul_ryan_randian_poseur/

Paul Ryan was born into a well-to-do Janesville, Wisc. family, part of the so-called “Irish mafia” that’s run the city’s construction industry since the 19th century. When his lawyer father died young, sadly, the high-school aged Ryan received Social Security survivor benefits. But they didn’t go directly to supporting his family; by his own account, he banked them for college. He went to Miami University of Ohio, paying twice as much tuition as an Ohio resident would have; the in-state University of Wisconsin system (which I attended) apparently wasn’t good enough for Ryan. After his government-subsidized out-of-state education, the pride of Janesville left college and went to work for government, where he’s spent his entire career, first serving Republican legislators and then in his own Congressional seat, with occasional stints at his family-owned construction business when he needed a job (reportedly he also drove an Oscar Mayer Wiener Mobile for a while).

Ironically, Ryan came to national attention trying to dismantle the very program that helped him go to the college of his choice, pushing an even more radical version of President Bush’s Social Security privatization plan, which failed. He has since become the scourge of the welfare state, a man wholly supported by government who preaches against the evils of government support. He could be the poster boy for President Obama’s supposedly controversial oration about how we all owe our success to some combination of our own hard work, family backing and government support. Let’s say it together: You didn’t build that career by yourself, Congressman Ryan.

Thus Paul Ryan represents the fakery at the heart of the Republican project today. It starts with the contradiction that Mr. Free Enterprise has spent his life in the bosom of government, enjoying the added protection of wingnut welfare benefactors like the Koch brothers. If Herman Cain is Charles and David Koch’s “brother from another mother,” as he famously joked, Ryan is the fourth Koch, swaddled in support from Americans for Prosperity and other Koch fronts. The man who wants to make the world safe for swashbuckling, risk-taking capitalists hasn’t spent a day at economic risk in his entire life.

The other component of GOP fakery Ryan exemplifies is the notion that a pampered scion of a construction empire who has spent his life supported by government somehow represents the “white working class,” by virtue of the demographics of his gradually gerrymandered blue collar district. I write about this in my book: guys like Ryan (and his Irish Catholic GOP confrere Pat Buchanan) somehow become the political face of the white working class when they never spent a day in that class in their life. Their only tether to it is their remarkable ability to tap into the economic anxiety of working class whites and steer it toward paranoia that their troubles are the fault of “other” people – the slackers and the moochers, Ayn Rand’s famous “parasites.” Since the ’60s, those parasites are most frequently understood to be African American or Latino – but they’re always understood to be the “lesser-than” folks, morally, intellectually and genetically weaker than the rest of us.

-snip-

[Whisp]

1. Joan Walsh is awesome.

She is such a good writer and thinker and has a great presence when she's on tv.

yay.

[highplainsdem]

3. +1,000

[BeyondGeography]

2. He's lovin' that fancy guaranteed gov't pension and HC down the road, too

Little fraudster.

[xxqqqzme]

5. He's a welfare king!

[cali]

7. he doesn't need it. he's wealthy. his wife is wealthy

he grew up in an affluent family.

[BeyondGeography]

11. You'd have a point if he had renounced the benefits

The pension amount is determined by a formula that takes into account the years served and the average pay for the top three years in terms of payment. In 2002, the average pension payment ranged from $41,000 to $55,000. For example, a member of Congress who worked for 22 years and had a top three-year average salary of $153,900 would be eligible for a pension payment of $84,645 per year.

It's a good deal, one that, unfortunately, very few have access to. It's disgusting that any member of Congress with access to this kind of security, wealthy or not, would participate in undermining the retirement security of average Americans.

[warrior1]

4. Did romney even vet this guy?

Because the media and the democrats certainly will!

[Junkdrawer]

6. Randians: 2nd/3rd rate minds who are SURE they are smarter than everyone else.

Seen it a million times.

[grantcart]

8. Ryan would have continued to get a SS every month he was in college too.

I know because I did.

[Silver Swan]

13. Benefits for college students

were phased out under the provisions of the 1981 Amendments to the Social Security Act. Ryan would have been to young to have received benefits post high school.

[grantcart]

14. thanks, too bad they were phased out.

[livetohike]

9. LOL @ "Oscar Mayer Weiner Mobile"

someone with good photoshop skills could have fun with that image .

[Raven]

10. Out of state college struck me too...

from what I've read, he was the youngest of 4 or 5 and his mother went to work after going to school for interior design. He also supposedly took care of his ailing Grandmother which is where, he said, he learned the benefits of the social safety net. My, my, my, aside from being a fake, this guy has a huge and dangerous disconnect.

[Monk06]

12. I hope the Obama campaign is taking advantage of Walsh's excellent critique.

[senseandsensibility]

15. Please go to the link and especially read the last paragraph.

I hope Obama does not appoint Erskine Bowles (sp). The last sentence of the article says it all.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

16. The particular appropriate line:

The man who wants to make the world safe for swashbuckling, risk-taking capitalists hasn't spent a day at economic risk in his entire life.