[Don't forget to click to enlarge.]

-- Harold Meyerson, in his Washington Post column,



1. Over his career, Paul Ryan received more than $2.1 million in campaign contributions to his campaign account and his leadership committee, Prosperity PAC, from health and insurance interests.



2. Insurance interests alone accounted for more than $850,000 of that total, with health professionals providing more than half a million dollars and pharmaceutical interests giving more than $250,000.



3. Among Ryan’s biggest backers were:



* Blue Cross/Blue Shield, whose PAC and executives gave him $75,650 in campaign contributions;



* America’s Health Insurance Plans, whose PAC and executives gave him $29,500; and



* Koch Industries, whose PAC and executives gave $100,500, including $2,500 from billionaire David Koch.

The cover under which Ryan and other Republicans operate is their concern for the deficit and national debt. But Ryan blows that cover by proposing to reduce the top income tax rate to just 25 percent. He imposes the burden for reducing our debt not on the bankers who forced our government to spend trillions averting a collapse but on seniors and the poor. The reductions in aid to the poor, says the budget blueprint that Ryan released, will be made “to ensure that America’s safety net does not become a hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens into lives of complacency and dependency.” That’s a pretty good description of America’s top bankers, but Ryan’s budget showers them with tax cuts.



Republicans can’t take sole credit for creating a vision of a diminished America. Most of the Washington-based commentariat has focused on the debt over the past year, ignoring both the persistence of high unemployment and the absolute stagnation of wages even as profits have soared. Those who applaud the macroeconomics of Ryan’s cuts should at least be compelled to explain how ordinary Americans, whose incomes haven’t risen since the late ’90s, can take up the slack, in their own purchasing and in the nation’s economic activity, created by these cuts. They might even want to think about raising taxes on profits and capital gains, since these forms of income are rising even as wages flatline.



And, finally, there’s talk that we have a president who’s a Democrat — the party that created the American social contract of the 20th century. Initially, he focused on reshaping and extending that contract into the 21st. Now that the Republicans want to repeal it all, he’s nowhere to be found. Has anybody seen him? Does he still exist?

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I don't want to talk about it. You name it, I don't want to talk about it. I don't even want to talk more about Charlie Sheen's "show." But let me just say a couple of things about the Bold New Economic "Vision" of Paul Ryan. (I reckon that this slug's "vision" is to actual vision very much what Charlie Sheen's "show" (see link above) to actual shows.)* How come when the chorus of lying hooligans of the New Right were spreading their fabrications about "death panels" contained in the health care legislative package, every infotainment nooze outlet picked it up and treated the lies seriously, but now when Paul "Drop Dead, Grandma" Ryan unveils a plan to turn the health care of the elderly over to the tender mercies of the predatory health care industry, hoping to sign -- not figuratively but literally -- a suffering-and-death warrant for the non-rich elderly, there's nary a peep?* Speaking of Paul "You've Lived Long Enough, Grandma" Ryan and the predatory health care industry, while I realize it would be asking too much to hope that infotainment noozers, who are predominantly economic illiterates themselves (their interest in economics tending to extend only to the point where their inflated paychecks clear the bank), to raise any questions about the supposed economics credentials of a man who is a total and unequivocal economic ignoramus. Still, how come none of the noozers ever ask the hideous troll about any of those nauseating numbers Howie passed on the other day from Public Campaign Action Fund:Shouldn't the little toad be fighting for his political life against a growing chorus of cries of blatant corruption, rather than getting away with his pretense to being anything but the sleaziest kind of megacorporate whore?* And speaking of those selfsame predatory insurance companies, would it be possible to nominate them to the role of senior seniors liquidators if the Baucus-Emanuel-Messina-Obama axis hadn't made it an inviolable principle of health care "reform" that not even the slightest whisper be allowed to surface regarding their thieving, murderous performance and its role in the economy-destroying explosion of health care costs? Is there any limit to the price we will pay for that profile in gutlessness? (No, I don't think there is any limit.)* And on the general subject of the extremely special interests represented by the economic "vision" of Paul "Why the F*&k Aren't You Dead Yet, Granny?" Ryan, Harold Meyerson has another great column in today's, the one from which I quoted at the top of this post (" Who's hurt by Paul Ryan's budget proposal? ").Here are the final paragraphs:Sure, the banksters and the rest of the megacorporate elite are entitled to buy as much government as they can afford, especially as the thug imbeciles of the Supreme Court Far Right prepare to extend the crackpoint notion-turned-constitutional "principle" that money = free speech. But at the very least, shouldn't their bought whores be encouraged, if not actually required, to label themselves as Wholly Owned Stooges of Your Corporate Masters?

Labels: Doonesbury, Harold Meyerson, Insurance Industry, Paul Ryan