He asks, Why should anyone trust Paul Ryan’s poverty plan? That’s easy: nobody should. This has been another edition of simple answers to simple questions.

In case you want the longer answer, however, there are multiple reasons to distrust Ryan. It’s not just that this plan is completely inconsistent with his budget proposals, and that he has given no indication of how he would resolve this inconsistency. It’s not just that the methods he proposes, especially block-granting, have in the past simply been back-door ways to slash aid to the poor — which is what his budgets involve, after all. And it’s not just that everything he has said about the causes of and cures for poverty is all wrong.

No, it’s also the fact that Ryan’s previous proposals — all of them — were con jobs. It’s four years since he was challenged to explain the magic asterisk in his original budget proposal — how he could slash tax rates for the wealthy and corporations without reducing revenue. He has never explained it; all he’s done is put in more magic asterisks on discretionary spending and more.

So the question isn’t why or even whether you should trust him — you shouldn’t, period.

No, the real question is why so many people in the news media still want to find reasons to praise this con man. Of course, the answer has been clear for years: people are still trying

to slot Ryan into a role someone is supposed to be playing in their political play, that of the thoughtful, serious conservative wonk

He has never given any sign of actually fitting that role — but there’s nobody else out there, and so he keeps being given the benefit of the doubt no matter how many times he gets caught in the same old con.