The Facts Are In and Paul Ryan Is Wrong By Jonathan Chait, NewYorkMagazine
Changes in the way we think about the world are not “news” in the classic sense — they occur gradually, without discrete events to signal them. But they matter. Two such developments have come together recently, both reported in the New York Times. The first is the collapse of intellectual support for the notion that immediate austerity can boost economic growth. The second is a growing consensus that health-care-cost inflation is slowing for deep structural reasons, rather than having undergone a mere temporary dip from the recession. These trends have something in common: They blow to smithereens the intellectual foundations of the Obama-era Republican policy agenda.
During the last four years, the hoary Republican nostrums of lower taxes, spending, and regulation have cohered into a specific view of the world. Paul Ryan has been the leading figure in defining this view and persuading the entire party, almost without exception, to fall in line behind it. The Ryan worldview is that the United States is heading toward a massive debt crisis, that the crisis is driven primarily by rising health-care costs, and only his plan stands any chance of alleviating it. Ryan has expounded this view over and over:
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[T]he conservative program since 2009 has hinged on the absolute truth of both these provisions: The certainty of the imminent debt crisis, and the certainty that Obamacare would worsen rather than ameliorate it, undergirded the party’s entire strategy. It is not merely the ideological extremism but Levin’s dialectical certainty that the welfare state will collapse upon itself that has driven the party’s refusal to compromise.
Good article. The AynRandian/Ryan ideologues can't even see the damage with Europe and Greece going down in flames from their suicidal austerity...And even the recently exposed debacle of the research and simple Excel-spreadsheet failure to explain their incorrect views about growth vs. debt won't deter them. Please...Jus' keep doin' what yer doin'... The more FACTS come in, the more the economic dogma is demolished.
Actually prescription drug costs for Americans did fall last year after decades of steady growth.
(It was just a blip however as many generic replacements were approved and replaced many expensive brand name drugs.)
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
And it may be worse than that. I am running into more and more defeatist right wingers. "Game Over". If the GOP couldn't win against a vulnerable Obama in 2012, they won't win anything ever again. Don't even bother voting.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
The sad truth for the GOP is that they have some messages that do resonate with a majority of Americans, but they keep holding onto those social messages that turn off a growing majority of voters and they are too stubborn to change with the times. My entire family (with, of course, the exception of me) is rooted in the GOP, always have been, always will be.....but they don't vote Republican now.....and are waiting till the party catches up with them before they will return to supporting the party in the voting booth. I doubt they are unusual in that thinking.
archer wrote: The sad truth for the GOP is that they have some messages that do resonate with a majority of Americans, but they keep holding onto those social messages that turn off a growing majority of voters and they are too stubborn to change with the times. My entire family (with, of course, the exception of me) is rooted in the GOP, always have been, always will be.....but they don't vote Republican now.....and are waiting till the party catches up with them before they will return to supporting the party in the voting booth. I doubt they are unusual in that thinking.
So who do your Republican relatives vote for now?
The left is angry because they are now being judged by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin.
archer wrote: The sad truth for the GOP is that they have some messages that do resonate with a majority of Americans, but they keep holding onto those social messages that turn off a growing majority of voters and they are too stubborn to change with the times. My entire family (with, of course, the exception of me) is rooted in the GOP, always have been, always will be.....but they don't vote Republican now.....and are waiting till the party catches up with them before they will return to supporting the party in the voting booth. I doubt they are unusual in that thinking.
So who do your Republican relatives vote for now?
Well my brother sat out the last election.....my mom voted, she has never missed voting in an election, and she is 95.....she voted for Obama....., don't know who she voted for locally, They are both in Ohio. Mr Archer voted for Obama and for the first time in his voting life voted a straight democratic ticket here in CO as a protest against the Republicans who have made him very angry......
I have had some interesting discussions with my Mom.....who was very disappointed with me when she found out I was a registered Democrat, the "our family has always been Republican" kind of discussion, but even at her age she supports a woman's right to choose, thinks religion should be kept personal and in church.....not part of the political discussion, supports equal rights for the gays and lesbians....though that lifestyle she find really strange.....she remembers when Social Security was made law and how it benefited so many of her friends and relatives.....same with Medicare, when the GOP started making noise about changing them she was angry, her generation fought hard for those benefits. But the most important break from the GOP came over this recession, she lived through the Great Depression......she credits the government programs....the jobs the government created and spent oodles of money on for putting this country back on the road to prosperity......a road the she sees the GOP as refusing to take.
archer wrote: The sad truth for the GOP is that they have some messages that do resonate with a majority of Americans, but they keep holding onto those social messages that turn off a growing majority of voters and they are too stubborn to change with the times. My entire family (with, of course, the exception of me) is rooted in the GOP, always have been, always will be.....but they don't vote Republican now.....and are waiting till the party catches up with them before they will return to supporting the party in the voting booth. I doubt they are unusual in that thinking.
So who do your Republican relatives vote for now?
Well my brother sat out the last election.....my mom voted, she has never missed voting in an election, and she is 95.....she voted for Obama....., don't know who she voted for locally, They are both in Ohio. Mr Archer voted for Obama and for the first time in his voting life voted a straight democratic ticket here in CO as a protest against the Republicans who have made him very angry......
I have had some interesting discussions with my Mom.....who was very disappointed with me when she found out I was a registered Democrat, the "our family has always been Republican" kind of discussion, but even at her age she supports a woman's right to choose, thinks religion should be kept personal and in church.....not part of the political discussion, supports equal rights for the gays and lesbians....though that lifestyle she find really strange.....she remembers when Social Security was made law and how it benefited so many of her friends and relatives.....same with Medicare, when the GOP started making noise about changing them she was angry, her generation fought hard for those benefits. But the most important break from the GOP came over this recession, she lived through the Great Depression......she credits the government programs....the jobs the government created and spent oodles of money on for putting this country back on the road to prosperity......a road the she sees the GOP as refusing to take.
