Jamie Dimon: Wall St Titan and major dick

Macho man and JP Morgan Chase Chairman, President and CEO Jamie Dimon is regarded as a titan on Wall St, and a dick by pretty much everyone else. Dimon is a balls-to-the-wall capitalist and unapologetic advocate of the system that makes people like him rich, and brought the global economy to its knees in 2008.

In April 2o12, JP Morgan reported a loss in a London-based division, first calculated to be $2 billion. The estimates then kept going up, finally reaching over $6 billion. Dimon dismissed the incident initially, calling it a “tempest in a teapot”, then embarrassingly had to walk back his statement and accept his bank screwed up big time.

Thankfully, Dimon might get dealt a small dose of humility tomorrow as shareholder groups are calling for the bank to strip him of his chairman job. At the bank’s annual meeting in Florida, several groups including the union AFSCME, the NYCCO (New York City Comptroller’s Office) will ask bank shareholders to approve a proposal that splits the roles of chairman and CEO, giving the chairman job to someone outside the bank. This would essentially strip Dimon of much of his power and ensure he faced far more scrutiny in his job.

But of course Dimon wants none of this, claiming the event is a “sideshow” orchestrated by unions. Dimon wants everyone to understand just how how vital rich bankers are to the survival of America.  ”I am not embarrassed to be a banker” Dimon once told a roomful of corporate clients in response to attacks on his industry.

Quite the claim given the public had to put up $12.8 trillion to keep his industry from collapsing.

Dimon, described by the New Yorker “as an overgrown frat boy” has a long history of making dick statements, making his impending comeuppance all the more gratifying.

Here’s 9 quotes from the Wall St mogul that definitively prove that he is in fact, a giant dick:

1. “That’s why I’m richer than you.”

- Jamie Dimon Speaking to Mike Mayo CLSA analyst when asked whether he agrees that customers should feel safer with banks that have higher capital ratios (like JP Morgan).

2. “I have gotten disturbed at… some of the Democrats’ anti-business behavior, the sentiment, the attacks on work ethic and successful people. I think it’s very counter-productive.”

- Jamie Dimon on Meet the Press in 2012 forgetting that his industry almost wrecked the entire global economy.

3. “You read constantly that banks are lobbying regulators and elected officials as if this is inappropriate. We don’t look at it that way.”

-Jamie Dimon in his annual shareholder letter arguing that banks have the right to corrupt the political system with money (JP Morgan spent $7.5 million on lobbying in 2011).

4. “I am not embarrassed to be a banker. I am not embarrassed to be in business.”

Jamie Dimon defending the business of taking tax payers money and lending it back to them at extortionate rates.

5. “The term ‘too big to fail’ must be excised from our vocabulary.”

- Jamie Dimon forgetting that the public bailed out the banks because the were indeed, too big to fail (and still are).

6. “Giving debt relief to people that really need it, that’s what foreclosure is.”

-Jamie Dimon arguing that banks taking people’s houses and kicking them onto the streets was in fact, a good thing for people ruined by debt.

7. ”JPMorgan would be fine if we stopped talking about the damn nationalization of banks. We’ve got plenty of capital. To policymakers, I say where were they? … They approved all these banks. Now they’re beating up on everyone, saying look at all these mistakes, and we’re going to come and fix it.”

— Jamie Dimon in 2009 at Davos speaking about the financial crisis, forgetting that his own bank required nearly $100 billion in taxpayer help to fill its own lack of capital during the meltdown.

8. “Just because we’re stupid doesn’t mean everybody else was.”

— Jamie Dimon on the losses incurred by JP Morgan in 2012, rejecting the notion that more regulation is needed to prevent them happening again.

9. “We don’t think there are cases where people were evicted out of homes when they shouldn’t have been.”

— Jamie Dimon in 2010 responding to the investigation led by 49 state attorney generals into bank foreclosure practices. Along with several other banks, JP Morgan settled with regulators after widespread mortgage abuse was found and paid out a combined $9.2 billion to those it foreclosed on illegally.

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Monstrous liar Dick Cheney is at it again (spirit of america / Shutterstock.com)

Dick Cheney will rightly go down as one of the most despised figures in American political history. The ruthlessly cold neo con was one of the major architects of the Iraq War and the ‘War on Terror’, and used his power in office to do an astonishing amount of damage at home and abroad. Cheney represents cartoon character evilness – a sinister, lying bastard who would sell his own mother if it meant more power.

After his turn in office, Cheney has thankfully disappeared for the most part. But the Dark Lord has returned to offer his poisonous opinion on the so called Benghazi scandal, adding to the mounting bullshit coming from Republicans in a pathetically obvious attempt to smear Obama. Speaking with Sean Hannity via phone, Cheney told the Fox News host that he thought Benghazi was “One of the worst incidences, frankly, that I can recall in my career.”

It seems Cheney may have forgotten one small event that happened on his watch (here’s a clue):

Never one for self reflection, Cheney continued, “It put the whole capability claiming the terrorist problem solved once we got Bin Laden, that Al Qaeda was over with. If they told the truth about Benghazi, that it was a terrorist attack by an al-Qaeda-affiliated group, it would destroy the confidence that was the basis of his campaign for re-election.”

Never mind the fact that there is absolutely no proof of this WHATSOEVER. As Max Read at Gawker points out after State Department memos were released:

The memos don’t make the State Department look noble, but they also show that before and throughout the revision process the top talking point across all memos was still about spontaneous protests—and that the motivation was more inter-agency cover-your-ass jockeying than protecting Obama.

So Cheney has literally pulled this out of his ass.

Not satisfied with the accusation that the Obama administration were attempting to gloss over events in Benghazi, Cheney went on to claim that the White House told direct lies to the American public about what happened. “They lied,” he went on. “They claimed it was because of a demonstration video, that they wouldn’t have to admit it was really all about their incompetence. They ignored repeated warnings from the CIA about the threat. They ignored messages from their own people on the ground that they need more security. They reduced what was already there.”

Again, if you look at the facts, this is utter horseshit. The released emails show that the CIA itself originally believed it to be a spontaneous attack. As Salon notes:

While references to terrorism were removed at the behest of the State Department, the CIA’s original draft of the talking points stated that the attack was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.” In fact, all 12 drafts did.

It’s clear now that some people in the administration, including those on the ground, believed it was a terror attack from the get-go, but the CIA’s job is to synthesize disparate and often conflicting intelligence and make its best guess about the truth. So even if there was conflicting intelligence, the White House was correct in saying they were merely following the intelligence community’s lead, as they have maintained all along, by blaming the attack on a protest.

But no, facts will not suffice for Mr Cheney who insists on creating a totally new reality where actual evidence is disregarded in favor of whatever he wants it to be.

“The cover up included several officials up to and including President Obama and the cover up is still ongoing,” said Cheney.

So desperate to cover up the scandal that they released all the emails  to members of the House and Senate intelligence committees….

The memos released do show that there were mistakes made in regards to the events in Benghazi – there’s clear evidence that there was a lot of inter-agency back and forth between the State Department, the White House and the CIA that resulted in references to terrorism being removed from initial public briefings. But so what? As the administration learned more, it accepted the facts that it was indeed a terrorist attack and told the public so.

The truth is that some people believed it to be a terrorist attack from the get go, and some didn’t. The White House waited for the State Department and the CIA to give them a briefing to run with, and that happened to be one without reference to terrorism. And that’s about it.

Cheney running with this line of attack is particularly annoying for anyone living in the real world given the monstrous lies he told while in office. As WashingtonsBlog notes, Cheney:

• Falsely linked Iraq with 9/11 (indeed, the entire torture program was aimed at establishing such a false linkage; and Cheney is the guy who pushed for torture, pressured the Justice Department lawyers to write memos saying torture was legal, and made the pitch to Congress justifying torture. The former director of the CIA said Cheney oversaw American torture policies)

• Falsely claimed that spying on Americans, torture, the Patriot Act, the Afghanistan war, the Iraq war and the “war on terror” were all necessitated by 9/11 … when all of them started or were planned before 9/11

• Falsely stated that an attack such as 9/11 was unforeseeable, when Al Qaeda flying planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon was something which American military and intelligence services – and our allies – knew could happen

• Falsely pretended that he was out of the loop during the 9/11 attacks

• Falsely blamed others for 9/11, when Cheney was in charge of all of America’s counter-terrorism exercises, activities and responses on 9/11. See this Department of State announcement and this CNN article

So it’s no surprise that the liar Dick Cheney is telling lies about other people telling lies.

It’s what he does.

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The Obama Administration has found itself in yet another scandal this week after it was revealed that law enforcement officials had obtained records for the telephone lines of journalists at the Associated Press. From the NYTimes:

The A.P. said that the Justice Department informed it on Friday that law enforcement officials had obtained the records for more than 20 telephone lines of its offices and journalists, including their home phones and cellphones. It said the records were seized without notice sometime this year.

The organization was not told the reason for the seizure. But the timing and the specific journalistic targets strongly suggested they are related to a continuing government investigation into the leaking of information a year ago about the Central Intelligence Agency’s disruption of a Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner.

Gary Pruitt, the president and chief executive of The A.P was not amused and wrote to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr calling the seizure a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into its operations and told him that “there can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters.” He continued: “These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news gathering activities undertaken by The A.P. during a two-month period, provide a road map to A.P.’s news gathering operations, and disclose information about A.P.’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.”

A Justice Department spokesman said that the agency was “always careful and deliberative in seeking to strike the right balance between the public interest in the free flow of information and the public interest in the fair and effective administration of our criminal laws.” The JD’s reference to the ‘public interest’ referred to the complicated CIA operation in Yemen that was attempting to thwart a plot by Al-Qaeda to attack a US bound airliner. From the Huff Post:

On May 7, 2012, AP reporters Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, citing anonymous sources, reported that the CIA had thwarted a plot by an al-Qaeda affiliate to “destroy a U.S.-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.”

The AP acknowledged then that it had agreed with the White House and CIA requests “not to publish” its story “immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still under way.” But “once officials said those concerns were allayed,” the news organization went ahead with its story rather than wait for the Obama administration’s official announcement.

It was later revealed that the “would-be bomber” was actually a U.S. spy planted in the Yemen-based group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. On May 18, U.S. and allied officials suggested to Reuters that the leak to the AP had forced the end of an “operation which they hoped could have continued for weeks or longer.”

Regardless of public safety threats, media freedom advocates are maintaining that the ability of the press to maintain confidential relationships with their sources should be protected at all costs.  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released the following statement:

“The media’s purpose is to keep the public informed and it should be free to do so without the threat of unwarranted surveillance. The Attorney General must explain the Justice Department’s actions to the public so that we can make sure this kind of press intimidation does not happen again…..

Obtaining a broad range of telephone records in order to ferret out a government leaker is an unacceptable abuse of power. Freedom of the press is a pillar of our democracy, and that freedom often depends on confidential communications between reporters and their sources.”

And the Newspaper Association of America issued a statement saying:

“Today we learned of the Justice Department’s  unprecedented wholesale seizure of confidential telephone records from the Associated Press. These actions shock the American conscience and violate the critical freedom of the press protected by the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

The Obama Administration’s record on civil liberties is becoming increasingly worrying - the NDAA, the Material Strikes Law and drone strike policy all point to a general disregard for basic constitutional rights, and make it difficult to argue that Obama is any better than the Bush Administration in this regard. Government attacks on press freedom is nothing new – the Bush Administration launched broad initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources, but this is no excuse.

Obama was elected in part to put a stop to the egregious abuses of executive power by the Bush Administration. Instead, it appears to be upping the ante.

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Just when you thought Republican delusions had reached their limit, Dark Lord Dick Cheney re-emerges from the political wilderness to remind everyone how competent the Bush Administration was. Speaking to the Daily Mail, Cheney told the British paper that the non scandal in Benghazi would never had happened under his old boss:

‘When we were there, on our watch, we were always ready on 9/11, on the anniversary,’ he recalled. ‘We always anticipated they were coming for us, especially in that part of the world.’

‘I cannot understand why they weren’t ready to go,’ the former two-term vice president said of the Obama administration.

‘You’ve got units in the Defense Department that are superb. They practice for this contingency. And they didn’t have anybody in the area,’

It’s difficult not to get angry when reading this type of nonsense given the fact that 9/11 happened on their watch, and when Bush found out about it, he sat staring a ‘My Pet Goat’ FOR 7 MINUTES:

That’s real preparedness for you.

The politics being played with this are moving into unchartered territory in terms of delusion (for a thorough and completely unnecessary debunking of the garbage Republicans have been throwing at the President check out Kevin Drum’s piece in Mother Jones). What exactly would Cheney have the Obama Administration do? Attack Poland? Start a ‘War on Unpredictable Political Upheavals’?

Seriously.

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The fact that Jay Z and Beyonce went to Cuba on vacation apparently means that the celebrity couple endorse communism, dictatorship and all the abuses committed by the Castro government over the years. Republican lawmakers Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart sent a joint letter to the Treasury Department demanding to be told who approved the couple’s travel why they were allowed to go. They wrote:

“Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple’s trip as tourism, and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda….

The restrictions on tourism travel are common-sense measures meant to prevent US dollars from supporting a murderous regime that opposes US security interests at every turn and which ruthlessly suppresses the most basic liberties of speech, assembly and belief….We support the Cuban people by refusing to sustain their jailers.”

The Right is gleefully latching on to this as they get to inadvertently accuse President Obama of giving the couple permission to go because, er, Jay Z has donated to Obama’s Presidential campaigns, and Beyonce sang the national anthem at the President’s second inauguration (and because they are a black power couple). Yes, seriously.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Cuban born U.S. Representative for Florida’s 27th congressional district, is apparently so concerned about human rights that when she met one of the worst abusers, Former President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe, who according to Human Rights Watch was responsible for widespread illegal surveillance and wiretapping, “systematic” extrajudicial killings of civilians, anti-union violence (Colombia has the highest rate of killings of trade union members and leaders in the world), paramilitary targeted killings, and the forced displacement of civilians, she tweeted out the following statement and photo:

Fmr Prez of Colombia Alvaro Uribe remains a strong partner 4 freedom in Latin America http://t.co/a9DBAxSN

What is the lesson here? If you are a human rights abuser but friendly to the United States, you are called ‘a strong partner 4 freedom’, and if you’re not an ally to the United States, you get called a ‘murderous regime’. Or translated from Republican speak: Moral consistency.

Also, the notion that because you go on holiday somewhere, you are explicitly endorsing that country’s government is also quite a stretch. I live and work in America, but I don’t agree with many of the US government’s policies. I have visited China (Hong Kong), but wasn’t doing it to support the communist dictatorship there. I have friends who have been to Iran, Burma, and Saudi Arabia, and I’m sure none of them agree with their respective government’s atrocious human rights records.

Maybe Jay Z and Beyonce were visiting Cuba because of the island’s cultural vibrancy, its music, food, history and nightlife. Perhaps they wanted to go somewhere sunny and sit on the beach without the paparazzi following their every footstep. Maybe they don’t know too much about the Castro regime and simply wanted a nice vacation. Or maybe they do, and have sensibly moved on from the Cold War mentality that still permeates Washington and much of America.

After all, the Berlin wall fell almost 25 years ago and the rest of the Western world normalized relations with the island shortly after. Then again, Europeans are a bunch of Commie loving pinkos…

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Bill O’Reilly has not shied away from calling Congresswoman Michele Bachmann out when he sees fit. This week he was at it again after her CPAC speech in which she bashed the Obama White House for the president’s lavish lifestyle (the gardiner walks the dog!).

If you missed this, you might enjoy it.

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The Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare turns three today.  Many of the provisions will go into effect in January 2014 and you may be unsure about how this may impact your coverage.  Some states have seen insurance companies increase their premiums and you may be concerned that will happen to you.  A new web site has been set up to explain the bill and what your options will be.  If you are interested, check this out.

PS.  I recently had a heated conversation with someone who was convinced the ACA could have been written by Hitler (really, it was surreal, I am such a freak magnet).  Nothing I have read about makes me think that, if you have evidence to prove me wrong, please let me know.

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The House of Representatives voted this morning on Congressman Paul Ryan‘s budget proposal.  It passed by a vote of 221 to 207.  The 221 yeahs were all Republican, 197 Democrats and 10 Republicans voted no.   You can read the official vote count here.  You can read the official vote count here.  Read more about the actual legislation here.

This is how the House Budget Committee describes the Republican budget plan:

Washington owes the American people a responsible, balanced budget. This is a plan to balance the budget in ten years. It invites President Obama and Senate Democrats to commit to the same common-sense goal. This budget will achieve the following:

1. Stop spending money we don’t have by cutting wasteful spending.
2. Fix our broken tax code to create jobs and increase wages.
3. Protect and strengthen important priorities like Medicare and national security.
4. Reform welfare programs like Medicaid so they can deliver on their promise.

You can read the summary here and the full plan here.

Before I give my critique of Ryan’s budget, I would like to be very clear about something.  I do not have anything against him.  I just disagree with the approach he has taken to the overall budget and Medicare.

So, I do have problems with Ryan’s budget.  They are:

1. It doesn’t go anywhere near defense spending.  Not only that, despite claiming to be supporters of “fiscal responsibility” the GOP controlled House voted to give the Defense Department more money than it requested.  From the Associated Press, “The House Armed Services Committee on Thursday overwhelmingly backed a $642 billion defense bill that calls for construction of a missile defense site on the East Coast, restores aircraft and ships slated for early retirement and ignores the Pentagon’s cost-saving request for another round of domestic base closings.”  
2. Since the Defense Department budget is off the table, major cuts will be made to other discretionary spending.  It should be noted that this part of the budget is really small and cuts to these programs will not do a lot to impact the deficit or debt.
3. The Obamacare “repeal” isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  Sure, it gets rid of a lot of it but “Ryan’s budget doesn’t actually assume the repeal of all of Obamacare. It keeps the tax increases and Medicare cuts so that it can balance in 10 years, as top Republicans in the House promised conservatives.”  Link here.
4. It does nothing to address the sequester.  According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the sequester’s impact on the economy is very real.  They looked into this and found, “In the absence of sequestration, CBO estimates, GDP growth would be about 0.6 percentage points faster during this calendar year, and the equivalent of about 750,000 more full-time jobs would be created or retained by the fourth quarter.” More on that can be found here.
5. It fails to address economic growth.  In 1992, one Clinton/Gore campaign slogan was “It’s the economy, stupid.”  That idea applies today.  A better rate of economic growth would solve a lot of our deficit and debt problems.  Louis Woodhill writes this in Forbes: ”The FY2014 Budget Resolution makes a few vague statements about economic growth, but it doesn’t promise that following Ryan’s plan will deliver a growth rate above the woefully inadequate CBO baseline, which peters out to a pathetic 2.19% rate by FY2023. This is what makes the whole exercise a suicide mission for House Republicans.”
6. Yes, we have a divided government but all the reports I have read indicate House Democrats received more votes than House Republicans and the only reason the GOP has a majority is gerrymandering (see my post on the Reform We Need for more on my view on this — and no, both sides try to do it so I don’t put all the blame for gerrymandering on the right side of the aisle).  The bigger issue, is that voters rejected the GOP budgetary priorities when they rejected the Romney/Ryan ticket.  Read more here.

While those are my basic problems with the plan, the specifics of which programs will be cut bother me a lot.  I watched Ryan this morning on the House floor talk about the differences between how Republicans and Democrats view government and I am going to address some of that now.

Ryan said, “This budget debate was constructive. It revealed each side’s priorities. We want to balance the budget. They don’t. We want to restrain spending. They want to spend more. We think taxpayers give enough to Washington. They want to raise taxes by $1 trillion—just take more to spend more. We want to strengthen programs like Medicare. They seem complicit in their demise. We see Obamacare as a roadblock to patient-centered reform. They see it as a sacred cow. We think national security is a top priority. They want to hollow out our military. We offer modernization and reform, growth and opportunity. They cling to the status quo.”

You can watch that below.

My belief is that government exists to do for us collectively what we cannot do individually.  While I do not share Ryan’s view that a balanced budget is the end all, be all of everything (to me that is a GOP “sacred cow”), I am not opposed to it.  The last time we had a balanced budget was not under a GOP administration but during President Clinton’s tenure.  Moreover, the Republicans spent a lot like drunken sailors when they had control so I am not sure what he is talking about there.  I also do not want to “hollow out our military.”  I want to make it more efficient.  I suspect if I were to talk to Ryan, he would have a similar answer to questions about Medicare — he says he doesn’t want to destroy it, he wants to save it by making it more efficient.

I do not think we should cut:

1. Education spending:  our workers compete against workers all over the globe. I would like our people to be as (or more) qualified as anyone else.   I saw an interview with Apple where they said they would love to manufacture more products in the US but we don’t have the numbers of qualified people they need to do it all.  We need more engineers, scientists, etc.  We face shortages in healthcare (nurses, techs and a variety of physician specialties such as primary care doctors and surgeons).  This is not the time to cut education spending.
2. Transportation & infrastructure spending:  Our infrastructure is crumbling.  Our highways, bridges and rail lines are so far behind other countries, it is crazy.  Repairing these systems would be a way to get large numbers of people jobs that cannot be exported anywhere.
3. Clean energy research and development.  I know, I know there have been some bad companies but the more energy sources we have, the lower the costs will be and the less dependent we will be on unstable and unfriendly regimes.
4. Programs to help the poor.  With unemployment where it is, too many people depend on food stamps, unemployment insurance and other programs to cut them off.  One of my mom’s friends (and no, Ryan has never said anything like this — as far as I know), she said “when the little squirrel cannot find a nut, he dies.”  I don’t want that to be our country’s approach to the poor.
5. Medicare — it should not be a voucher system.  You can read about my thoughts on Ryan’s plan for that here.

Watch Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) talk about the GOP budget plan.  He is also the Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee.

Originally this post was going to be solely about the Republican budget plan in the context of Ryan’s religious views. The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) opposed Ryan’s budget last year and have expressed similar concerns with this year’s proposals.  Their opposition stems from cuts to programs such as food stamps, child tax credits and others that help the poor.  Their letters to Congress last year were in response to comments the Budget Committee chairman made:

“A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private,” Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, said in the interview. “So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person?

“Those principles are very, very important,” Ryan said. “And the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenets of Catholic social teaching, means don’t keep people poor, don’t make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life, help people get out of poverty, out into a life of independence.”  Source: the Hill.

A statement by the USCCB released yesterday laid out their case for including provisions to help the poor in any budget:

“We support the goal of reducing future unsustainable deficits, but insist that this worthy goal be pursued in ways that protect poor and vulnerable people at home and abroad,” said Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, and Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, chairman of the USCCB Committee on International Justice and Peace.

“The moral measure of this budget debate is not which party wins or which powerful interests prevail, but rather how those who are jobless, hungry, homeless or poor are treated. Their voices are too often missing, but they have the most compelling moral claim on our consciences and our common resources. The bishops stand ready to work with leaders of both parties for a budget that reduces future deficits, protects poor and vulnerable people, advances the common good, and promotes human life and dignity,”

The bishops also suggested the following three principles guide lawmakers:

• Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity.
• Every budget proposal should be measured by how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.
• Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times.

Ryan responded to the Bishops’ concerns and argued that his budget proposals neither hurt the poor nor do they violate his Catholic faith.  From Town Hall Magazine.

“Our budget incorporates solidarity by recognizing a critical role for government in providing a strong safety net for those in need. And it restores the balance between solidarity and subsidiarity by returning a lot of power to individuals, to families and to communities. We are a nation that prides itself on looking out for one another—and government has an important role to play in that. But relying on distant government bureaucracies to lead this effort just hasn’t worked.

Some Catholics seem to mistake the preferential option for the poor for a preferential option for Big Government. When you look at the results of that approach—one out of every six Americans in poverty today, many of them mired in programs whose outdated structures often act as a trap that hinders upward mobility—that’s just not consistent with how I understand my Catholic faith. We need to break down the barriers to opportunity and attack the root causes of poverty. Informed by constitutional oath and my Catholic faith, this is a moral obligation I take very seriously.”

Ryan also defended the morality of his budget in The World Over with Raymond Arroyo, EWTN:

“These programs aren’t working the way they should. One in six Americans are in poverty today. We have the highest poverty rates in a generation. What House Republicans proposed in our budget was sensible reforms  want to do is put the kind of reforms in these programs – using subsidiarity, solidarity, local control, ideas that worked when we tried them in some other areas in the 1990’s. We want to reform these programs with the idea of getting people out of poverty onto lives of self sufficiency. Right! And there isn’t a monopoly. That’s my point. I can no more claim exclusive justification for my economic and political views than a liberal can for theirs within the Church’s social teaching. This is a matter for prudential judgment left to the laity to exercise their discretion. People of good will can disagree on these things. You have these hits come at you — like that letter — but we should raise the tone of the debate. We shouldn’t just try to shoot the messenger and try to nullify the notion that there are other ways in which to implement Church teaching. That just does a disservice to the kind of debate we need to have.”

Now, I do not doubt Ryan’s sincerity in this area.  I think he does believe that his plans will help the poor and I don’t think he cares more about the rich.  I cannot say the same thing about Mitt Romney — I do believe he thinks his wealth has more to do with how great he is and not so much to do with the incredible opportunities he has had that others have not.  Yes, I am aware of and appreciate the work he has done in his communities to help others, I don’t think he is a fundamentally evil or awful person, I just think he doesn’t get it.  I have read reports that Ryan had suggested the Romney/Ryan 2012 campaign spend some time in lower income neighborhoods in the cities they visited to educate people on how their policies would be more helpful to poor Americans than Obama’s.  These ideas were allegedly shot down because the campaign did not see the value as they did not expect to get any votes in those areas.

(Side note: if these reports are true, Ryan’s idea was a great one and should have been followed.  It may not have gotten a huge number of votes in those areas, though I am sure it would have gotten some, but it would have made the ticket more appealing to a number of people who may have been on the fence.)

The bottom line, however, is that Ryan’s budgets and Medicare plans violate what I think of when I think of Jesus’ teachings.  I am all for the idea that “if you give a man a fish, you feed him for one day but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime” but cutting off assistance to people in real need, won’t accomplish that goal.

And if you want to read more about Ryan’s views on how to help the poor and his religious ideology:

1. Op-ed “Government Must Refocus its Safety Net to Those in Need”.
2. Interview with National Catholic Register’s Charlotte Hays – Ryan: ‘We have pursued solidarity but abused Subsidiarity’.
3. National Catholic Register Op-ed:  Applying Our Enduring Truths to our Defining Challenges.
4.  Ryan’s Opening Statement at House Budget Committee hearing on reforming the safety net.

Thank you to everyone who helped with this by sending supporting materials and documents.  Also I was impressed that Congressman Ryan went out of his way to praise his staff (that’s the former Hill staffer in me talking) and with Congressman Chris Van Hollen for thanking Ryan for his professionalism.  I may disagree with him but we should be able to disagree with people while remaining civil and it seems these two men have.  Good for you.

I promise to do an analysis of the Senate Democrats’ budget proposal.

And now for something completely different… (and hopefully fun)

I write political satire as Alyson Durden for Pardon the Pundit.  I have written a number of pieces where I call Ryan a vampire.  Now, I know Ryan is not a vampire and truly hope his staff, who were most helpful when I was researching his response to Catholic opposition to his budget plans, will not be totally offended because I meant it all in good fun.

Some are:

1. Paul Ryan Denies Allegations He Is a Vampire.
2. Ryan Claims “Twilight” Success Means He Does Have a Mandate, Admits He Is a Vampire.
3. Revealed! The Real Reason Romney Picked Ryan Was to Woo the All Important “Twilight” Voters.
4. As the Markets Worry about the Fiscal Cliff, Washington Works to Reassure America it is Working to Save “Twilight”.

And here is a goofy, fake add I put together making fun of a Democratic commercial bashing Ryan for his Medicare plans.  I did send it to his staff and it has received at least one thumbs down so I do hope it wasn’t from them because I was actually trying to point out the absurdity of the idea that his goal is to kill old people.

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And I am, well, I cannot think of anything more ridiculous than considering James O’Keefe anything but a major douchebag so you

James O’Keefe — the good news is we all know what he looks like so we can just walk the other way.

can just come up with the second part of that sentence yourself.

If you have forgotten who O’Keefe is — good for you! I’ll have what you’re having — he was eventually paid by infamous liberal hater the late Andrew Breitbart (my theory is his heart was broken by a liberal when he was young he asked a liberal out and they said “hell, no!” and he became the bitter shell of a man we got to know and watch with disgust/pity). He went around the country and filmed unsuspecting workers at Acorn and Acorn Housing and then edited the video to look much worse than it was. O’Keefe had an accomplice, Hannah Giles. She claimed to be a prostitute. He claimed to be her boyfriend (he was dressed in khakis when he made the tapes, in an outfit from a 70s era pimp in the finished videos). The duo met their match when they filmed Jose Carlos Vera, who called the police on the two after they left (they said they needed help smuggling under age girls into the country) and sued them later for taping him without his knowledge. Giles settled with Vera last summer but today a court just ordered O’Keefe to pay Vera $100,000 within 30 days.

Also, O’Keefe was arrested for tampering with Senator Mary Landrieu’s (D-LA) office telephones and was caught trying to coax a CNN reporter on a “sex boat.”  She was tipped off by one of O’Keefe’s then-coworkers.  Read about that here.  He has also been accused of sexual harassment.  He has tried to take down teachers’ unions and Planned Parenthood but hasn’t been able to recreate the magis sauce that created the Acorn furor.  Maybe, we’re just not that interested in his “undercover journalism.”

PS.  Some polls show that approximately 49 percent of Republicans think Acorn, which has not existed since 2010, “stole” the 2012 election. Yes, you read that correctly.  I did NOT mean 2008 election, which they did not steal but at least they existed then.

What will become of independent journalism? Read more at Wonkette.

Update: (8 March 2013, 9:40 pm EDT) I removed several words from this piece because they could be viewed as homophobic (on my part) and I like to think that is something I am not.  Also, this blog is a place for me to express my thoughts on political matters and not how to endorse racism, sexism, homophobia or anything like that. If I offended anyone (other than James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles), I apologize.  I appreciate Christopher Foxx’s comments pointing this out and welcome any other criticisms of this and anything else I write.  It was completely unintentional.

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Wayne LaPierre, president of the NRA

In the wake of the horrific Sandy Hook shooting, the National Rifle Association (NRA) missed a golden opportunity. They could have been a voice for gun safety.  As a leading gun organization, this is something they should know a lot about.  They could have taken a stand that without compromising a single one of their pro-gun ownership values and ideals. Not a single one.

This is what I would have told Wayne LaPierre to say:

“What happened in Connecticut was an unspeakable tragedy and our hearts go out to the victims and their families.  We cannot imagine what they are going through. 

“We do not believe gun control measures would have prevented this terrible act.  The weapons used in Newtown were purchased legally by someone who had undergone a thorough background check.  We do think a better understanding of gun safety — and that includes gun storage — might have prevented this.  Our membership understands guns and gun safety.  We plan to hold gun safety workshops in all 50 states and encourage both gun owners and people without guns to attend.  We will showcase how guns should be stored and secured.  

“Gun safety alone is not enough.  Guns were used to commit this dreadful act but they did not cause it.  We need to have an open and honest conversation about the role violent movies, television and video games play in our society.  We need to reevaluate how we deal with mental health issues and find a way to get the people who need treatment the help they need.  We need to make the discussion about gun safety part of a broader conversation about violence and what causes it.  Until we do that, we will continue to lose our children and our fellow citizens to the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of 27 innocent people in Connecticut.”

Can you imagine the response a statement like that would have received?  How responsible the NRA would have looked?  How reasonable?  They would have put themselves in a much better position to participate in that conversation and the assault weapons ban they oppose would not have the broad support it has today and lacked immediately following the shooting.

Mr. LaPierre’s NRA went in an entirely different direction.  First, he blamed everyone and everything other than guns.  Then after blaming violent video games, the NRA released an app where anyone aged four and up can use tiny coffins for target practice.  And their coup de grace?  A web commercial that looks like it targets President Obama’s daughters.  Stay classy, NRA.

Now the argument can be, and probably has been, made that they are just trying to appeal to their base.  I am not sure who their base is — gun owners or manufacturers? — because it seems even most of their membership supports universal background checks and bans on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.  The NRA will counter that by saying guns sales have skyrocketed and their membership is up.  This may be true but it strikes me as sad that the leading guns rights organization has effectively worked its way out of the most substantive conversation this country has had about guns in a very long time.

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