That’s Paul Ryan on Medicare and Social Security.
Brad DeLong is right: Ryan’s Atlas Society speech, and the extremist record it reflects, ought to be better known. Romney can say that he doesn’t back the Ryan Plan; but he picked Paul Ryan.
Footnote The sheer creepiness of running Ryan’s Congressional office as a Rand-Mises-Hayek indoctrination program hasn’t attracted much comment. In my misspent youth I worked on the Hill, and never heard of anything like it.
i’ve read the transcript to ryan’s speech now and i am once again gobsmacked at how the factchecking organizations have so consistently labeled as false democratic ads saying the republicans are trying to end medicare as we now know it. it’s almost as if they can’t believe these people mean what they say.
I’m too lazy to look back, but do I remember that what they labeled as false was the original statement, which left out the “as we know it” phrase. They argued that the statement that the Ryan plan “ends Medicare” was false. But I’ve slept a few times since that kerfuffle, and I may very well be wrong.
Even without the “as we know it”, the fact-checkers shouldn’t have labeled the statement false. Calling a tail a leg and all that. (Or, in more recent terms, anyone who criticized Clinton for saying he didn’t have sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky, or applauded GWB’s evidence for invading Iraq has no appendage to stand on when trying to cavil at the “end Medicare” line.)
Reading the transcript, I’m reminded of L. Ron Hubbard’s leaked speeches.
a socialist based system? excellent!
At least one representive had staff meetings that were the opposite of indoctrination.I remember staff of Rep. George Brown Jr. (D-CA) (Chair of what was then called the House Science & Technology Committee) tell me that their staff meetings were like research seminars-freewheeling discussion of current or important articles on research or policy. Brown looked like the classic machine politician, but he was an industrial engineer who looked closely at the issues from a progressive viewpoint.
My mistake. Brown’s degree was in Industrial Physics. He was a Quaker, a civil rights activist, and early opponent of the Vietnam War, and I miss having his intelligence and sharp wit in Congress.