"An Extreme Choice": Embracing Ayn Rand, GOP VP Pick Paul Ryan Backs Dismantling New Deal

by Beverly Bandler

Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's presidential running mate, is “a deep, deep scholar of and reader of Ayn Rand.” According to Ryan, “Rand makes the best case for the morality of democratic capitalism.” But, Ayn Rand not only contradicts Judeo-Christian principles, she contradicts the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

Rand writes that: “Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which denies individual rights: the Majority can do whatever it wants with no restrictions... Democracy is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form of freedom.” Ryan has made no mention of having read James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin (or those who influenced them--a list that includes Charles de Montesquieu and John Locke), our Founding Documents (one which a federal elected official is bound by the federal oath office to “support”), or any U.S. historian. Russian émigré Rand gives no indication of having read any of these individuals either. Or U.S. history. Or our founding documents. Ryan has publicly rejected his atheist idol Rand in the face of a backlash, and now embraces Thomas Aquinas. Is Ryan running for Pope?

Just how long is it going to take for the American public, and the enabling corporate media, to understand just how extreme and detached from reality Paul Ryan and the Republican Party have become, and to recognize the latter is now a cult. (Paul Ryan's Biggest Influence: 10 Things You Should Know About the Lunatic Ayn Rand )

John Nichols, political writer for The Nation magazine and Matthew Rothschild, editor and publisher of The Progressive magazine, join Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now, to discuss Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's VP running mate. (video transcript)

As Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney names Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his vice-presidential running mate, we speak with two Wisconsinites about the seven-term congressman’s record and how his views are influenced by the controversial philosopher Ayn Rand.

"This is not necessarily a foolish choice by Romney," says John Nichols, political writer for The Nation magazine. "It is an extreme choice. And it does define the national Republican Party toward a place where the Wisconsin Republican Party is, which is very anti-labor, willing to make deep cuts in education, public services, and, frankly, very combative on issues like voter ID and a host of other things that really go to the core question of how successful and how functional our democracy will be."

Ryan is chairman of the House of Representatives Budget Committee and architect of a controversial budget plan to cut federal spending by more than $5 trillion over the next 10 years. "Ryan gets a lot of mileage for understanding, so-called, the budget and economics," says Matthew Rothschild, editor and publisher of The Progressive magazine. "But if you look closely, he doesn’t really get it."

Ryan’s planned Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security reform would essentially dismantle key components of the social safety net. Ayn Rand is the progenitor of a sweeping conservative “moral philosophy” that justifies the privilege of the wealthy and demonizes not only the slothful, undeserving poor but the lackluster middle-classes as well for taking Social Security and Medicare benefits. Her books provided wide-ranging parables of "parasites," "looters" and "moochers" using the levers of government to steal the fruits of her wealthy heroes' labor, but in the real world, Ayn Rand herself grabbed social security and medicare when she needed them.

Almost Half of Americans Die Close to Penniless: A new economic study has found that nearly half of Americans reach the end of their lives with virtually no assets, relying entirely on government programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The results indicate that any changes to these safety net programs would indeed threaten the welfare of older Americans. About 46 percent of senior citizens in the United States have less than $10,000 in financial assets when they die. Most of these people rely almost totally on Social Security payments as their only formal means of support, according to the newly published study, co-authored by James Poterba of MIT, Steven Venti of Dartmouth College, and David A. Wise of Harvard University. - Sarah Seltzer.*

From the Democracy Now discussion:

Will A Romney Win Result In War With Iran?

DBN Opinion Editorial by Sudhir Joshi

With less than 90 days left before the election, President Obama and Mitt Romney are trading rhetoric about the economy, jobs, and Medicare on the way to their respective conventions. But there is a much more ominous possibility to consider if Mitt Romney is elected president – war with Iran.

Imagine a freshly elected President Romney faced with a sluggish economy and mounting debt. And if Romney wins, that will more than likely mean a Republican majority in one or both houses of Congress. How does he create jobs and balance the budget?

Wise County Democratic Party Fiesta For TDP Chair Gilberto Hinojosa

The Wise County Democratic Party is hosting a reception for Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa at Rubens Ballroom in Decatur (map) this Friday August 17th, 6:00pm to midnight. Music, entertainment and food are free of charge ~ Open Event.

Special Guests include Ms. Mary Gonzalez, our Hispanic Outreach Coordinator, and the North Texas Tejano Democrats Club. Ms. Gonzalez is a State Representative Elect from El Paso.

Obama And Cruz Outpace Opponents In Social Media Strategy

by Michael Handley, DBN Managing Editor

A new Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism study of how the campaigns are using digital tools to talk directly with voters finds that the Obama campaign posted nearly four times as much content as the Romney campaign and was active on nearly twice as many platforms.

More than ever before, voters expect to be given an opportunity to express themselves and interact with information by sharing with friends, posting to Facebook, tweeting and commenting on posts.

Candidates must effectively engage the social sphere from the outset of their campaign to remain competitive in this election cycle. Voters of all ages and persuasions are increasingly turning to social media for information about political issues and candidates.

According to a May 2011 study conducted by digital agency SocialVibe, 94 percent of social media users of voting age engaged by a political message read or watched the entire message, and 39 percent of these people went on to share it with an average of 130 friends online. Social Media Engagement Will Decide Election 2012.

"Disruptive Innovation" can change the rules of the game! Without Barack Obama's disruptive innovation in using the Internet to drive and support his 2008 campaign, he probably would not have won in the primary race against Hillary Clinton.

If presidential campaigns are in part contests over which candidate masters disruptive innovation in campaign strategies, Barack Obama holds a substantial lead over challenger Mitt Romney. President Obama, for example, has 18.5 million Twitter followers verses Mitt Romney's 840,300 followers ~ and some suspect Romney has purchased a certain number of fake Twitter followers.

The Pew study of how the campaigns are using digital tools to talk directly with voters finds:

Older Voters Oppose Romney/Ryan Medicare Voucher Plan

A Pew Research survey in June of 2011 found that those 65 and older had a very negative reaction to Ryan’s plan to change Medicare into a voucher plan: 51% opposed the plan (including 43% who opposed it strongly) compared with only 25% who favored the plan. This could spell trouble for every Republican listed on the ballot with the GOP Romney/Ryan Presidential duo, given that age group is a key GOP voting block.

Trouble because Paul Ryan and nearly every Republican in the U.S. Senate and House, breaking a promise Republicans made during the 2010 mid-term election to protect Social Security and Medicare, voted for Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) sharply conservative 2011 budget bill.

Ryan's conservative budget bill eliminates Medicare, as it exists today, and replaces with a private insurance premium voucher program. Ryan's Republican budget also guts Medicaid. Ryan's budget takes the money cut from Medicare to give additional tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. Ryan's budget even gives big taxpayer handouts to big pharma, insurance and petrochemical industries. The Republican budget explodes deficit spending in the near term and doesn't actually balance revenues and spending until the year 2040.

Romney has admitted he would sign the Ryan budget if it crossed his desk, calling it “marvelous” and an “important step.”

Romney adviser Ed Gillespie said last weekend following Romney's announcement of Ryan as his VP pick, "Well, as Governor Romney has made clear, if the Romney, sorry, if the Ryan budget had come to his desk as a budget, he would have signed it, of course, and one of the reasons that he chose Congressman Ryan is his willingness to put forward innovative solutions in the budget.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said, "First of all, he did embrace the Ryan budget. He embraced it."

The June 2011 Pew survey found that most seniors said they were happy with how Medicare and Social Security operated. About six-in-ten (61%) said Medicare does an excellent or good job serving the people it covers; 57% said the same about Social Security. By contrast, most of those under 65 said these programs do an only fair or poor job.

In addition, just 33% of those 65 and older said they think Medicare needs major changes or needs to be completely rebuilt. Similarly, few seniors (30%) supported major changes or a complete rebuilding of Social Security. Support for changing Social Security and Medicare was far higher among those under 65.

Voters 65 and older are much more likely than younger voters to name Social Security as a top potential voting issue. A June 2012 survey found about as many senior voters saying Social Security is the issue that matters most to their vote (45%) as saying jobs (48%).

Seniors – along with the public overall – prioritize the protection of Medicare and Social Security benefits over deficit reduction by wide margins. In June 2011, two-thirds (66%) of those 65 and older said it is more important to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are compared with just (20%) who prioritized deficit reduction.

A wide majority of seniors (66%) said people on Medicare already pay enough of the cost of their health care, compared with 24% who said people on Medicare need to be responsible for more costs to keep the program financially secure. Most seniors (54%) also said low income people should not have their Medicaid benefits taken away, compared with 34% who said states should be able to cut back on who is eligible for Medicaid to deal with budget problems.

In addition to presenting challenges among seniors, the issue of entitlements divides the GOP base.

Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 63% of those with family incomes of $75,000 or more say it is more important to take steps to reduce the budget deficit; a nearly identical percentage (62%) of Republicans with incomes of $30,000 or less say it is more important to maintain Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are.

Read the full Pew Research Report.

More:

• Mitt Romney Set To Pick Paul Ryan As Running Mate
• Obamacare Gives Women Health Security
• Republican's Want To Repeal Affordable Care Act (Obama-care) Health Insurance Reform

U.S. District Court Continues Hold On Five Deputy Voter Registrar Restrictions

Today, U.S. Southern District Court Judge Gregg Costa denied the state of Texas' request to stay an injunction issued earlier this month. That injunction prevents Texas from enforcing several of its restrictive deputy voter registrar laws.

On Thursday Aug. 2, U.S. Southern District Court Judge Gregg Costa issued an injunction to suspended five provisions of Texas law that place restrictions on groups and individuals who work to register new voters. These provisions place restrictions on groups like the League of Women Voters, making it significantly more difficult for them to register voters. The provisions are suspended until a trial in the Voting for America v. Hope Andrade case on whether the entire law violates the 1993 National Voter Registration Act can be held. The Houston Chronicle has more:

Under Judge Gregg Costa injunction, Texas may not require that deputy voter registrars live in Texas, a law Voting for America said prevented it from organizing voter registration drives.

It also may not prevent deputy registrars from registering voters who live outside their county; prevent organizations from firing or promoting employees based on the number of voters registered; prevent organizations from making photocopies of completed voter registration forms for their records; or prevent deputy registrars from mailing completed applications.

On Friday Aug. 3, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a motion to stay Judge Costa's order to suspended those provisions, arguing an injunction would lead to confusion and possibly disenfranchise more voters if third party volunteers improperly handled registration.

Costa wrote in his opinion that "no other state of which this Court is aware has gone as far as Texas in creating a regulatory web that controls so many aspects of third-party voter registration activity." Costa said that voter-registration fraud remains illegal without the new laws: "Defendants have not demonstrated that the challenged provisions are needed to buttress the direct tool of preventing fraud by prosecuting those who actually engage in fraud."

Mitt Romney Set To Pick Paul Ryan As Running Mate

Romney will announce Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) as his VP choice on Saturday morning at the beginning of a four-day bus tour through key battleground states, the campaign said Friday night.

The Weekly Standard reported earlier Friday that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has been asked to be ready to make the case for Ryan beginning Saturday.

Mitt Romney told a group of seniors last January that “we will never go after Medicare or Social Security. We will protect those programs.” Barely a month earlier, Romney became a strong backer of the Paul Ryan budget which would essentially end Medicare by privatizing it into a corporate insurance company voucher program.

Mitt Romney is trying to “change his tune,” DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in response to Romney's declared support for the Ryan budget plan as a way to save Medicare. “We had always assumed he’d be saying anything to voters in the Sunshine State to get elected.”

Democrats highlighted policies Romney has supported in order to argue that his promise to protect the two entitlement programs is “patently dishonest.” In addition to his support for Paul Ryan, his own plan creates a voucher Medicare system, which in their phrase leaves traditional Medicare to “wither on the vine.” And beyond Medicare, Romney’s support for a Cut, Cap, and Balance approach to the budget would result in drastic cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Romney has been careful in his campaign comments to leave the door open for the Ryan plan, or a similar reform effort, by hinting that in order to “protect” Medicare it might be necessary to reform it.

“So if I’m president, I will protect Medicare and Social Security for those that are currently retired or near retirement,” Romney assured the seniors he spoke to, adding, “and I’ll make sure we keep those programs solvent for the next generations coming along.”

Romney and Ryan propose to privatize Medicare by converting it into a corporate insurance voucher program for everyone younger than 5o years of age.

How committed to ending Medicare is the Republican Party? Committed enough to resurrect in 2012 Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare voucher plan of 2011, the plan that enraged seniors and helped Democrats win a special election in the House.

DCCC Video - Broken Promises
Constituents Erupt Over House Republicans Voting to End Medicare

The Republican Party endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) sharply conservative 2011 budget bill when all but four Republicans in the U.S. House voted for and passed the bill before the 2011 Easter recess.

Breaking a promise Republicans made during the 2010 mid-term election to "protect Social Security and Medicare" Ryan's budget bill deeply cuts Medicare funding and replaces with a private insurance premium voucher program.

Ryan's Republican budget eliminates Medicare, as it exists today, and guts Medicaid as well as the rest of the government. The budget also gives additional huge tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires plus further big corporate taxpayer handouts to pharma, insurance and petrochemical industries. The Republican budget explodes deficit spend in the near term and doesn't actually balance revenues and spending until the year 2040.

Collin County's Republican Congressional representatives Sam Johnson, Tx-3rd and Ralph Hall, Tx-4th voted for Ryan's bill.

Threat To North Texas Water Supply From Tar Sands Oil Pipeline

From Nation of Change by Christine Leclerc

Just when it seemed that the Keystone XL pipeline was on hold, TransCanada Corp. segmented the project and the U.S. government fast-tracked the environmental review process. This allows TransCanada to begin construction on the southern part of the Keystone XL this summer.

With a nonviolent direct action camp that started July 27, 2012 in East Texas, grassroots opponents are working on a construction project of their own: Tar Sands Blockade, a coalition of landowners, community members, students, and others dedicated to stopping the pipeline through direct action.

Building in Segments to Get around Opposition

The Keystone XL pipeline was originally proposed as a single line that went from Alberta to Texas. However, in February, TransCanada announced that the southern part of the Keystone XL had been reconceived as a separate Gulf Coast Project Seaway pipeline.

The Seaway pipeline is an aging 36-year old low pressure crude pipeline that passes through Collin, Grayson, Rockwall, and Kaufman counties, and crosses tributaries to Lake Lavon and other water sources supplying the DFW area.

In this plan, tar sands crude will travel 500-miles between Cushing, Oklahoma and refineries on the Gulf Coast. Tar sands is far more toxic, acidic, and corrosive than conventional crude since it has to be liquified with natural gas condensate and other chemicals to dilute it enough to push it through a highly pressurized pipeline.

The Seaway pipeline will be developed by Enbridge Inc., the operator responsible for the largest and most expensive tar sand spill in U.S. history, in a 50/50 partnership with Enterprise Partners. The toxic Enbridge spill on the Kalamazoo River in Michigan was due to a rupture in an aging, 43-year old repurposed pipeline, not unlike Seaway. Now, two years and $720 million later, people along the Kalamazoo are sick and their property is ruined.

DFW's already scarce water supply will be at risk with the transport of tar sands crude through this aging, repurposed pipeline.

Rita Beving, North Texas organizer for Public Citizen, talks about the Seaway Pipeline project - June 23, 2012

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Rachel Maddow reports on the NTSB review of the 2010 Enbridge oil spill that dumped tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River, requiring two years of futile clean-up efforts and ultimately becoming the single most expensive onshore oil spill in U.S. history. July 10, 2012

TransCanada spokesperson David Dodson characterizes the Gulf Coast pipeline as important for the energy security of the United States.

According to Dodson, domestic producers “do not have access to enough pipeline capacity to move the production to the large refining market along the U.S. Gulf Coast.”

In March, U.S. President Barack Obama expedited the review process for pipelines going from Oklahoma to Texas. “In part due to rising domestic production, more oil is flowing in than can flow out, creating a bottleneck that is dampening incentives for new production while restricting oil from reaching state-of-the-art refineries on the Gulf Coast,” reads the president's March 22 memo.

In a whopping 86-word sentence, the president goes on to explain that all agencies are to “coordinate and expedite their reviews, consultations, and other processes as necessary to expedite decisions related to domestic pipeline infrastructure projects.”

Following the President's order to expedite the review process, the Sierra Club, Oklahoma and Texas landowners, and the Texas communities of Reklaw, Gallatin, and Alto filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which issues water permits.

Restrictions On Deputy Voter Registrars At Issue

Last Thursday, U.S. Southern District Court Judge Gregg Costa issued an injunction to suspended five provisions of Texas law that place restrictions on groups and individuals who work to register new voters. These provisions place restrictions on groups like the League of Women Voters, making it significantly more difficult for them to register voters. The provisions are suspended until a trial in the Voting for America v. Hope Andrade case on whether the entire law violates the 1993 National Voter Registration Act can be held. The Houston Chronicle has more:

Under Judge Gregg Costa injunction, Texas may not require that deputy voter registrars live in Texas, a law Voting for America said prevented it from organizing voter registration drives.

It also may not prevent deputy registrars from registering voters who live outside their county; prevent organizations from firing or promoting employees based on the number of voters registered; prevent organizations from making photocopies of completed voter registration forms for their records; or prevent deputy registrars from mailing completed applications.

One day later, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a motion to stay Judge Costa's order to suspended those provisions, arguing an injunction would lead to confusion and possibly disenfranchise more voters if third party volunteers improperly handled registration. Judge Costa will rule on A.G. Abbott's motion on Wednesday to determine whether to allow those five provisions of Texas law to remain in effect pending a full trial.

KVUE News

KVUE News

There are more than 13 million registered voters in Texas, roughly 71 percent of the voting age population, however, there’s a fight brewing over exactly who can register the rest.

At issue are a five provisions of current Texas law, from a pair of items passed during the last session to legislation dating to the mid-1980s. One provision keeps third-party voter registration groups from working in more than one county.

Another specifies only Texas residents who are themselves registered to vote in a county can can become a deputy registrar to register new voters who reside only in that same county. Other elements include legislation to keep registrars from being paid in relation to the number they sign up, from photocopying registration certificates and from mailing completed forms.

Last week, a federal judge put those laws on hold with an injunction against the State of Texas. In his 94-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Gregg Costa of Galveston called the rules “more burdensome… than the vast majority, if not all, other states.”

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott replied Friday with a motion to stay, arguing an injunction would lead to confusion and possibly disenfranchise more voters if third party volunteers improperly handled registration. ”I just think it’s another straw man,” said Dicky Grigg, an Austin attorney representing Voting for America, an organization that includes non-partisan voter registration organization Project Vote and a plaintiff in the original lawsuit against Texas.

Grigg characterizes the legislation as a whole as “sort of like a thousand small cuts,” designed to disenfranchise minority voters under the guise of preventing statistically rare voter fraud. ”What they’re trying to do is to prevent the registration of minority voters. That’s basically the bottom line of what the legislature has done,” said Grigg. “Talking to the media they talk about voter fraud, but there wasn’t one piece of evidence of voter fraud put on before this judge because it doesn’t exist,” said Grigg. “It’s not a problem.”

Read the full story @ KVUE News.

GOP's Serious Vulnerability To A Democratic Wave Election

Democracy Corps

Less than 100 days until the election, the latest battleground survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner for Democracy Corps shows Democrats with an advantage in the most vulnerable tier of Republican districts. The first Democracy Corps survey of the reapportioned battleground shows Republican incumbents in serious and worsening trouble. The 2012 campaign has just turned the corner on 100 days and the message of this survey could not be clearer: these 54 battleground Republicans are very vulnerable and many will lose their seats.

These members, on average, are barely ahead of their challengers and are as vulnerable as the incumbents in 2006, 2008 and 2010. Those elections we now know crystallized earlier—in 2010, incumbent vulnerability translated into anti-Democratic voting by March as health care came to a close in 2010. These incumbents are equally vulnerable but have not yet paid the price for the Ryan budget and their priorities, but it is clear that their support is now falling.

These Republican incumbents now hold a marginal edge against their unnamed challengers—47 to 45 percent.

In the most competitive half of the battleground – the 27 most vulnerable Republican-held seats, where Democrats lead the named incumbent by 6 points, 50 to 44 percent—two-thirds could lose their seats.

While Democrats start behind in the vote in the second-tier districts, a balanced battle on the Ryan budget and tax cuts erodes the Republican advantage by two-thirds, getting Democrats to within 3 points in these districts.

A number of things have come together to make these incumbents vulnerable. Obama has made significant gains in these districts—he edges Romney on the ballot by a 2-point margin—just two points short of his margin in these districts in 2008. The Republican brand is also in trouble in these Republican seats, and the party image is growing increasingly negative. Finally, these incumbents themselves are very weak on the traditional measures of incumbency, like fighting for people in their own district.

Read the full story @ Democracy Corps.