An Answer to Moivory’s question on Paul Ryan

It is more than evident that the diseases of misinformation as well as blatant disinformation have taken complete control of Americans in pandemic proportions resulting in vertiginous outcomes. This morning while in the truck I was listening to talk radio as usual. Given it was too late for NPR; I turned to WAOK, a radio station in Atlanta that only promotes talk radio programming.  Unfortunately this episode was all talk, little fact and even less substance. Listening to the host, Mo Ivory, it was reminiscent of something I had read by Daniel Foster. For listening to the host ramble on about Paul Ryan, Romney and President Obama was fit of his description of being “a mélange of relentlessly provocative half-insights garbled by ponderous jargon…delivered by a narrator who seems to delight in [their] unreliability.” For as like Conservative Talk Radio, she too was all venerate in her support of Obama as they are of Conservative stalwarts – since there was nothing said to inform an already dumbed down audience.

First there was the rant that suggested since Romney introduced Ryan as the next President, that it showed he was not prepared and unfit to be President. Although several callers correctly informed her that Obama did the same thing, she asked that they show her proof commenting that they are all hypotheticals and can’t back up what they with facts. Next she attacked a caller who correctly discussed capitalism without a political slant and she cut him off saying that he was trying to make it a republican and democratic issue (she has poor listening skills). After a few statements addressed to vilify Mr. Ryan, asserting that he had ran a state or a budget, another caller confronted her on this and indicated that neither had Obama, since he had not been a governor of a state or balanced a budget (both jobs off the governor). He was attacked as well and here logic then morphed into being in state politics.

None the less her question, which she never supported or answered was would Ryan be a benefit or liability for the November 2012 election. So to assist her I will provide a substantive argument to answer her query and suggest why Ryan will be a liability. I hope if she reads this it will assist her in the future.

If President Obama had any brains, Romney’s selection of Ryan as his running mate would be like a baseball set on a tee. First, his record or lack of record over a thirteen year career in government would be the ball. During the bush years, Ryan voted for and helped to pass Medicare part D (prescription drug benefit) which just happened to be the largest entitlement since the days of FDR and added trillions to the massively underfunded Medicaid/Medicare system.  He was also one of the twenty Republicans who voted for TARP and even pleaded for others in the GOP to follow suit.  Not only did he support the bailout of Wall Street but of the autoindustry as well.

During the Obama administration, many of the issues that most knowledgeable Americans which are so vehemently against and see as a threat to individual as I do – NDAA, ThePatriot Act and Funding for the Libyan war – he voted for and helped get passed. Which reminds me that also under the Bush administration, he voted for the war in Iraq without it being paid for as a supposed conservative fiscal hawk. These are actions that some in the Tea party will not forget or forgive and will likely isolate a majority of independent voters.

Now some may say I am wrong, that his affiliation with the former senator Jack Kemp will do him some good.  I think it will work against him.  See, I remember Jack Kemp, even remember seeing him on Monday Night football playing quarterback for the Buffalo Bills and the LA Rams before that.  He is the complete antithesis of Kemp.  To start with, It was Kemp who noted and informed conservative neocons that the war in Iraq was unnecessary and would only serve to weaken America economically and bea major waste of our resources.  Unlike Ryan, Kemp has been described by some as an “optimistic realist” who authored and passed legislation for years in the congress. Ryan over his tenure in Washington as authored or passed any major legislation on his own. Not to mention I can’t ever recall Jack Kemp ever voting for a tax increase then turn around and say he was against tax hikes – as Ryan’s record reveals.  Plus Jack Kemp looked out for the poor first and was inclusive of both the poor and minorities when authoring his legislation.

Even staying on his budget may be enough for Obama to pounce.  I won’t discuss the stuff most talk about (Medicare/Medicaid, cuts in education, head start and college aid), but will point out that it does include increasing Pentagon spending by $20 billion and overall it is just a plan for facilitating a plutocratic transfer of wealth.  On second thought maybe Obama should shy away from such since his economic proposals do the same? But if he does, he should attack his logic, for Ryan blames majorentitlement programs for our impending fiscal cliff and doesn’t even include the cost of unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (if I take him from what he said in his speech to the Alexander Hamilton Society).

If Obama wanted to play dirty, he could use the Reverend Wright card and hit below the belt for Ryan’s firm belief in the philosophical views of Ayn Rand. In her 1943 novel “The Fountain head” (if you all recall or ever read it), the in the end of the book the main character blows up a home for mentally retarded orphans.  If this is too low for Obama, then attack him on his profiting on insider information to avoid the 2008 crash.  According to an article published in the Richmonder Newspaper, Ryan was part of a closed door meeting with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and other congressional leaders on September 18, 2008 that informed the congress of the impending economic collapse and to get them to pass the TARP legislation.  The article continues: “on that very same day Paul Ryan sold shares of stock he owned in several troubled banks, and reinvested the proceeds in Goldman Sachs, a bank that the meeting had disclosed was not in trouble.” They even provide a link of PDF files of his transactions.

Now I could continue but in summary, the point is that Obama should have no problem dealing with a Romney-Ryan ticket if he has half a brain. Thus he being selected as Romney’s running mate is more of a liability in the bigger picture than an asset.

Americas Biggest Threat is EU Sovereign Debt Crisis not AQAP

Okay, let’s get this straight. The injudicious assertions promulgated by political charlatans on both side of the aisle from Obama to Congressman Pete King that America’s biggest threat is Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is feculent and even dangerous. In fact it is one of the more laughable jactitations proffered in recent years and ranks up there with the suggestion that America is post racial or even that Wall Street and bankers can police themselves.
In all honesty as things stand, our truest and greatest threat is the European sovereign debt crisis and not AQAP. For if the chickens come home to roost, with the chickens in this sense being the massive preponderance of complex financial papers and derivatives which remain without a true valuation and inundate the global markets, and then we have seen nothing yet in terms of an economic disaster. I means, what is on the horizon given what is occurring in Europe will eventually demonstrate that what we just observed with regards to JP Morgan-Chase and Jamie Dimon will be just a drop in the bucket.

But instead of giving these events the attention they require and other signals, we ignore them and continue with the small thinking myopia that would advance a HR 1838 (SWAP Bailout prevention act) on behalf of Republicans or an HR 3784 (Gas Price Spike Act of 2012) on behalf of democrats. The later under whom oil companies would be taxed at 50 to 100 percent of profits considered to be “higher than reasonable.” Notwithstanding other distractions whether they concern Mayor Cory Booker’s honest remarks on private equity or the President’s personal opinion on Gay marriage, we never seem to be able to be proactive and address real issues that will impact us more than any of the aforementioned in aggregate. Fact is gay marriage has nothing to do with the US economy.

Bush, followed by the Obama administration implemented massive stimulus that were supposed to grow the economy. Unfortunately, such has not manifested as promised by the Keynesian heavy Obama administration (Bernanke, Krugman and Geithner). By their logic the stimulus was supposed to produce fifty cents of GDP growth for each stimulus dollar spent. But instead of increasing demand, what they did was discourage consumption and investment by the private sector who based on all this talk, rightly expect tax hikes to finance the stimulus somewhere in the near future. Meaning that the stimulus actually squashed the private sector spending it desired to stimulate.

This may be why the CBO recently reported the strong chance of another US recession soon. They predict that the US Gross National Product (GNP) will go negative for at least two quarters, given the eventually ending of the Bush-era tax cuts, the extended unemployment benefits and the reinstating of the payroll tax rates back up to 6.2 percent from the current 4.2 percent. Not to mention that currently as a nation, we spend $454 billion a year just on servicing the interest on the national debt alone. Then there is the $642 billion spent on the Afghan war (this includes this year’s spending). And let us not forget the 11 million homeowners in the US with in excess of $800 billion in negative home equity and you can see we have a big mess on our hands without the problems in Europe.

Starting with the UK, Britain's economy contracted by 0.3% in the first three months of the year, faster than previously thought and pushing the country back into another recession and equal to the contraction in the final quarter of 2011. There has been no growth in manufacturing after last year the sector exhibited a decline of 0.7% at the end of last year. The banking sector also contracted, by 0.3%.

Then there is Spain. Spanish banks’ total loan losses could range between 218 billion and 260 billion Euros, more than currently expected according to estimates by the Institute of International Finance. Spain’s economy is in critical condition with 23 percent unemployment of which 50% percent of those under 24 are unemployed (the highest in the Euro zone) and they are in their second recession in three years. Spain like all the European countries that, are uncompetitive, have high debt levels, and suffer from low savings rates that have been forced down in over the past years - one reason why 16 Spanish banks were downgraded last week.

The picture is no different in Italy which saw Moody‘s Investors Service downgraded 26 Italian banks, where investors are needing higher risk premiums for Italian government bonds on fears that Greece may exit from the euro zone and Italy's double-dip recession . Italy is estimated to have around a debt burden of €1.9 trillion (about 120% the size of its gross domestic product), or about $2.6 trillion).

The reality is all the talking and meeting the G-8 just did wasn’t anything and empty, especially without Russia, China and India in attendance. The realty remains that a Greek euro exit is very likely and soon. If it happens, it will lead to runs on Spanish and Italian banks, resulting in the need for the ECB to give out more credit to keep the banks from collapsing. Although the problem isn’t Greece, but rather that Greek banks are undercapitalized. Greece cannot crash the euro zone alone. But what it may lead to can. If they are allowed to leave, the same will be true for other nations.

Ben Bernanke and the politicians in Washington DC speak of recovery while the facts do not support their contention. Not to forget that it was in the 1970s when Nixon enabled bankers and politicians to print and spend at liberty without a gold standard and a Central Bank owned by Wall Street, has resulted in a country where the cost of things we need to live have risen at twice the rate of our income. The truth is that real inflation has been running 5% higher than government is telling us in spite of what is being told to us by Paul Krugman (that there are very few Americans living on a fixed income being impacted by Bernanke’s zero interest rate policy). Maybe this is why Krugman is so bent on another $4 trillion of debt and a debt to GDP ratio of 130% to get our economy back on track.

Yes we cannot see the big picture. The real US deficit is over $5 trillion. Our policy appears to ignore Greece, which after several years of austerity are in the midst of a full-blown economic depression and they still do not have a balanced budget. The Greek economy has contracted by 8.5 percent over the past 12 months and the unemployment rate in Greece is up to 21.8 percent, is already experiencing a depression that will only get worse. If or when they leave, investor confidence in the euro zone will be damaged forever. Already as a nation America has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.

Europe is our largest trading partner, especially as it pertains to exports. Yet our efforts are all over the place. Paul Ryan supposed spending cuts really only slow spending to 3 percent annually while Obama increases spending 4.5 percent a year in his budget. No to mention that like the EU zone banks who are undercapitalized and heavily burden with the uncertainty of how much banks actually hold in bad assets, and the potential need for the government to bail them out at the expense of a bigger debt burden, the same is true for US banks.

Economic growth is stalled both in Europe and in America plus there seems to be a lack of concern here and little if any coordination between the EU and US. None of the nations including the US are recalibrating either fiscal or monetary policy which is a must. Reform not stimulus is the answer if we look at the real world examples here and abroad. Both the ECB and Federal Reserve seem to focus on the nations and not the banks and the Obama administration has only tackled the issue from a short term perspective. So what there is a newly revealed Al Qaeda video that calls on followers to launch cyber attacks on Western targets that has Sens. Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, scared, it aint got nothing on what’s going on across the pond and is nowhere as big a threat to America as the European sovereign debt crisis. Take note you heard it here first.

Ryan and The GOP: Just another 80s Boy Band to Me

Ok, I hate to say (really I don’t) but I was pro-phetic like pro football regarding my reference to Obama as being the New Tricky Dick in My post this past Tuesday. Yep like Jimmy “Super-Fly” Snuka, he dropped kicked Paul Ryan and the Republicans. I could not write this on Wednesday, since I wanted to re-read the Ryan budget again to make sure gloating was appropriate. But like I said, I was prophetic.

In Memphis there is one colloquialism that aptly describe what the President did. 1] He pulled his player card.

Now trying to keep it simple, after reading House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan’s budget, what sticks out is that the GOP's cuts come from overturning Obama Care, which would save $725 billion by repealing the subsidies folk would have get to help buy health insurance. In addition, Ryan would drastically change Medicare. Instead of the government reimbursing doctors and hospitals for certain medical services, seniors would purchase a private health care plan and the Feds would then pay the private insurer up to a specified amount. The so-called "Path to Prosperity" would also lower the highest individual and corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent but neglects to outline which specific tax credits would be eliminated (maybe this is why he was a couple-a-few hundred billion off in his math concerning both cost of interest and Medicare on speculative budget reduction.

Now I can’t be mad at the last one because Obama has not mentioned any specifics either, but he does note the logic in the necessity of taxes, especially for the big Whigs inclusive of individual CEO’s, corporations and their owners. Thus the player card was pulled since Ryan and the GOP (sounds like a 1980s boy band) plainly just wants to use the deficit as an excuse to cut taxes for the rich.

Obama really rocked them with the player card (prescription drug cost reductions in Medicare Part D - ingenious I must admit. This is a real saving compared to Ryan’s proposal which only obtains such from budget cuts. I mean, in my family, I can stop spending as much on going out, but if I have to use it to deal with increasing gas and food prices, what do I actually save? Nothing. The boy band I referenced earlier must think I (representative of Americans, especially the under employed) am stupid. More than 60 percent of Ryan’s cuts come from programs that serve the needy, minorities and the poor specifically.

This is the first time Obama has really impressed me as well as show that he does have gonads. Truth is that Ryan’s plan won’t control costs but rather shift them to the poor and elderly folk who need the most with respect to medical care for example for the latter. Not to mention he states his plan would reduce unemployment to 4 percent in 2015 and 2.8 percent in 2021, figures that America has not experienced since the 1950s

For as Obama stated in his speech: “Around two-thirds of our budget is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security. Programs like unemployment insurance, student loans, veterans' benefits, and tax credits for working families take up another 20%. What's left, after interest on the debt, is just 12 percent for everything else. That's 12 percent for all of our other national priorities like education and clean energy; medical research and transportation; food safety and keeping our air and water clean.”

The Ryan budget shows me that as a nation, we need to invest more in education, especially basic math.

Obama: The New Tricky Dick

For the past several days, since the folk inside the beltway worked out a deal to prevent a government shut down, I have been lmbao. What is strikingly humorous is how the democrats and Obama administration is announcing a moderate defeat and how House GOP leadership and beltway conservatives are claiming victory. Frankly I cannot tell who should get the award for best supporting cast but I will lean toward the Obama administration and I will tell you why. First, I do not see any victory for the GOP. Sure they claim to have cut 39.5 billion from the budget, but it may actually be about 20 billion according to my math, since what I have read seems to buttress the contention that about 20 billion were from the two prior house continuation resolutions to keep all government staff on the job. Now if this is true, Obama is playing wolf when he knows very well that he did not give in as much to GOP grass roots proponents desired. And on the other hand, the GOP leadership in the house has been made to either look like fools or reveal their honest deviancies in basic math. First they said they would cut $100 billion, then around $60 billion, then what they settled for last week. Talk about recapitulation. Then they celebrate as if they won the lottery. In fact they have evinced an approach that merely similar to the metaphorical house of cards. Yes they are on shaky ground for one can best believe they are getting it from the GOP base for not standing firm, and even worse, allowing Obama to usurp the claim of fiscal conservative economics for himself, maybe even inclusive of the democratic party. Now Obama will drop his player card. Supposedly Wednesday he will drop his anti-Paul Ryan plan to reduce the debt. Sure it has basic democratic plans to tax the uber wealthy and cutting defense department spending but surprisingly, it steals a few GOP trump card including slashing programs that aid poor and elderly folk (straight out the republican play book.). But more revealing is that he will show he will be trying to save Medicaid and Medicare unlike the Ryan budget. If you have read what I have read thus far regarding the budget proposal submitted by Paul Ryan, basically changes Medicare to a new program completely. Meaning states with a bunch of seniors like Pennsylvania and Florida may lead to the democrats if they are seen to be fighting against Ryan’s proposed changes to the program. So if house republicans succeed in making their changes via vote this week, changes that will obviate the government from the primary insurer to private corporations, then Obama will be in the driver seat for 2012. He reminds me of Richard Nixon in a way, namely that Nixon was in my eyes one of the smartest Presidents ever. And besides the war in Vietnam and his Watergate issues, earned the name “tricky Dick.” I mean he even got folks to drive 55 miles an hour. This is why Obama is giving his speech today on dealing with the nation’s long term debt. He scooped them; he undercut the GOP at their own game and stole their message. Yes folk, tricky Dick has returned in the form of Barack Obama.