Raging Cynic

In Mr. Ryan’s vocabulary, it seems so. Paul Ryan (Rep - Wi), the Republicans’ guy on the House Budget Committee has found it fitting to label Obama’s budget plan, should it pass, as “the moment America turned European.”[ WSJ - 1 Apr., 2009]. This, as opposed to the GOP plan which, as he puts it, would “preserve our system of protecting our natural rights.” I must be confused, would this be the right to pay through the nose for public education on the colleges that are hiring more part time faculty and raising tuition due to lack of government funding? Or the right to take a tragic credit hit due to some unforeseen medical expense? Maybe the right of our veterans to have to drive farther and farther to visit a VA clinic since the Bush administration cut their funding.

It’s far past the time that we as Americans stopped letting pundits and politicians try to scare us with xenophobia. Germany, with the largest GDP in Europe and fourth largest in the world, offers great health-care benefits to citizens, nearly (and in some regions, completely) free college, a safety net for retirement and unemployment. All of this while taxing corporations LESS than America does (so Mr. Ryan can get off his high-horse and shut up about how the Obama tax plan would strangle the small-business). By using a (shock) progressive tax system, which places more responsibility on those who benefit more from the national well-being.

The Cold Ware is long over. And even when it wasn’t, Communism was never Socialism. The American citizenry needs to realize, at long last, the benefits of socially responsible spending and taxation.  Mr. Ryan can watch from the corner.

In an April 1st opinion piece released to the Wall Street Journal [l ink], former Bush “Adviser” Karl Rove accused the Obama administration of engaging in tactics of intimidation to bolster support for the proposed economic plan. I’m not going to argue costs and benefits of the plan here. This is a “pot calling the kettle black” rant. Karl Rove, whose campaigns of intimidation and mudslinging  got Bush into the White House and helped start us down this road of insanity and prove to the world that and idiot can run the world (so long as we don’t care how it’s run), has the gaul to start saying Obama isn’t playing fair by reminding a Democrat which side he’s supposed to be on?

It seems to me that what Rove is really upset about is the (extremely vague) possibility of his job description becoming obsolete with the arrival of politicians who choose not to hide behind hatchet men.