Little Lord Bootstraps

Let's see what Little Lord Bootstraps, the man who managed to give birth to himself, educate himself, and rise to power purely on courage and pluck without any help whatsoever, is up to.

Paul Krugman:

Ryanomics is and always has been a con game, although to be fair, it has become even more of a con since Mr. [Paul] Ryan joined the ticket.

...

...[I]f we add up Mr. Ryan’s specific proposals, we have $4.3 trillion in tax cuts, partially offset by around $1.7 trillion in spending cuts — with the tax cuts, surprise, disproportionately benefiting the top 1 percent, while the spending cuts would primarily come at the expense of low-income families. Over all, the effect would be to increase the deficit by around two and a half trillion dollars.  

Yet Mr. Ryan claims to be a deficit hawk. What’s the basis for that claim?

      

Well, he says that he would offset his tax cuts by “base broadening,” eliminating enough tax deductions to make up the lost revenue. Which deductions would he eliminate? He refuses to say — and realistically, revenue gain on the scale he claims would be virtually impossible.         

At the same time, he asserts that he would make huge further cuts in spending. What would he cut? He refuses to say.

      

What Mr. Ryan actually offers, then, are specific proposals that would sharply increase the deficit, plus an assertion that he has secret tax and spending plans that he refuses to share with us, but which will turn his overall plan into deficit reduction.

      

If this sounds like a joke, that’s because it is.

Lyin' Ryan is like every other libertarian, long on theory and lies about the wonder of removing government assistance to the lower classes while increasing government assistance to the upper classes. It's their world and we just live in it. Why should the little people get something for free when the rich have worked so long and hard for everything they have?

For instance, we all know how young Paul Ryan worked at menial jobs to support himself after his father died suddenly. This is admirable, of course, but Ryan's entire professional career has been political, concentrating on fantasy-based supply-side economics and developing close ties with the Koches and their allies.

Betty Ryan reportedly urged her son to accept a congressional position as a staff economist attached to Kasten's office, which he did after graduating in 1992.^[26][39] In his early years working on Capitol Hill, Ryan supplemented his income by working as a waiter, as a fitness trainer and at various other side jobs.^[16][28]

A few months after Kasten was defeated by Democrat Russ Feingold in the 1992 election, Ryan became a speechwriter for Empower America (now FreedomWorks), a conservative advocacy group founded by Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and William Bennett.^[16][40][41]

And that was the end of menial jobs for Ryan. He worked for Kemp and Sam Brownback, and when those jobs ended he fell back on his large and successful family for assistance, who gave him a job in marketing. In 1992 1998 he was elected to the House of Representatives for the first time. While there he developed "close ties" with libertarians and the Koches.

When Mr. Romney announced that Mr. Ryan would be his running mate, his campaign emphasized the congressman’s detailed knowledge of the federal budget and his chemistry with Mr. Romney. Less well-known are Mr. Ryan’s close ties to the donors and activists who have channeled Tea Party anger into a $400 million political machine, financed by a network of conservative and libertarian donors that now rivals, and occasionally challenges, the Republican establishment behind Mr. Romney.
      

Mr. Ryan is one of a very few elected officials who have attended the Kochs’ biannual conferences, where wealthy donors sit in on seminars on runaway government spending and the myths of climate change.

      

He is on first-name terms with prominent libertarians in the financial world, including hedge fund billionaires like Cliff Asness and Paul Singer, and spent his formative years immersed in the Republican Party’s supply-side wing, working for lawmakers and conservative policy advocates like Jack Kemp.

      

He has appeared for years at rallies, town hall meetings, and donor briefings for groups like the Club for Growth, which spends millions to defeat Republicans deemed squishy on taxes and spending, and Americans for Prosperity, a grass-roots group focused on economic and budget issues that is now trying to channel Tea Party energy into a permanent electoral force. Its fourth chapter was founded in Mr. Ryan’s home state, Wisconsin.

Now Mr. Ryan could provide Mr. Romney with a critical political and intellectual bridge to the rising conservative counterestablishment represented by the Kochs and their allies, who are planning to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and deploy thousands of volunteers to defeat Mr. Obama. Should Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan win in November, a constituency that has for years fulminated against the failure of Republicans to live up to their own principles could soon have a close — and powerful — friend in the White House.

No wonder Megan McArdle favors Ryan. They both support obscenely wealthy libertarian sugar daddies who try to eliminate government regulation and taxes by lying about economics.