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.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
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.