Asleep At The Wheel

It should be no surprise to anyone that most of the political establishment - including the media - is still freaking out about the choice of Paul Ryan for the Vice Presidential slot on the Republican ticket.

For our e-mail edition, in the last two days alone, we've collected almost double the number of stories about Paul Ryan that we've published. We've also published nearly twice as many links relating to Rep. Ryan as we have of all other categories of story combined.

In short, there are a huge number of stories in the media about V.P. Nominee Ryan. However, it isn't just because he stands out as a fit, trim, unusually friendly member of a Congress that's still made up mostly of fat, doughy, old white men. If his looks honestly translated to action, Mr. Ryan would be the younger man sparking the engine of Congress to get as many common goals accomplished as possible.

In reality, Ryan's extremist, rigidly partisan ideologies have been a driving factor for Congress remaining asleep at the wheel.

The Farm Bill is a perfect example of this.

As President Obama noted at his campaign stop in Council Bluffs this week, Paul Ryan - who was a major player with serious clout in the House, even before becoming the VP nominee - caused a serious problem with the passage of the Farm Bill this past spring.

When Republicans chose to introduce the most recent version of the Ryan Budget as their official budget proposal in March, other members of the House immediately noted that a Farm Bill would not pass before the fall election cycle. The reason was simple: the cuts proposed in the Ryan budget were so draconian, even Republicans could not agree on whose metaphorical ox would be gored.

Tea Party conservatives were pitted against moderates, while rural and urban republicans saw the commodity programs and subsidies to each other's favored programs as fat, and their own favored programs and subsidies as meat. Even farmers of different kinds of crops were fighting amongst themselves. As ag consultant and writer Burleigh Leonard said in The Hill back in July, "The Speaker’s caucus is split six ways from Sunday on the farm bill."

If Paul Ryan had been the kind of House Republican leader many Americans remember from the "old days", Ryan might have been able to twist arms, make deals, and bend his GOP colleagues to a compromise Farm Bill like that achieved in the Senate in June.

The Senate's bill had some serious cuts, and even saved $23 billion over the next decade - but House Republican leaders like Paul Ryan could not rouse their colleagues to action. So the deadline for passing a Farm Bill came and went, and the farmers continue to suffer.

The House Republicans could have done their jobs. They could have been LEADERS.

Instead, President Obama once again was forced to take executive action and put together a $170 million dollar emergency aid package for drought affected farmers and ranchers, as he did in Council Bluffs on Monday.

Congress has been asleep at the wheel since the Tea Party Republicans took over - and their record low approval rating proves it. Representative - now Vice Presidential Nominee - Paul Ryan should have wakened them from their slumber to generate some true bipartisan success.

If he was a real leader, he would have already done so. But alas, he's only Mitt Romney's running mate.

Shiny Distrations & Smoke Signals

After a flood of records and documents about Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan filled the media on Monday, inevitably, some pants-on-fire lies from both ends of the standard political spectrum were sure to surface. Both the liberal rumor that Paul Ryan had engaged in insider trading, and the conservative lie that Ryan was ever a bipartisan leader were swiftly debunked.

The flood of new stories about Paul Ryan had another effect too. The stories that focused on Mitt Romney still refusing to show his tax returns to the American people got put to the back of the proverbial stack, as so many media lapdogs chased the shiny new V.P. stories.

This is exactly why we're turning our attention back to the pants-on-fire lies the Romney campaign still hasn't answered about Mitt's tax returns. Contrary to the fearful whining of right-wing partisans, Mr. Romney's tax returns ARE a substantive issue, for multiple reasons - primarily credibility.

Candidate Romney has insisted since nearly the beginning of 2012 that he hadn't ever paid an income tax rate of less than 14%. However, during an interview at the end of July, Romney told ABC News' David Muir that he was unsure if he'd ever paid less than "13.9%". Romney promised to get back to Muir - but has yet to do so.

When Mr. Romney picked Paul Ryan as a running mate, the Ryan budget that Romney has said - more than once - that he would sign, became another key piece of this burning credibility question.

To answer the question, economics and business reporter Matthew O'Brian sat down with the only tax return the Romney campaign has released so far, and the Ryan budget plan, to figure out what Mitt would pay under his running mate's proposal. Under the Ryan budget plan, Romney and wealthy Americans like him would pay way less than 14%. Try 0.82 percent. That's less than one percent - a perfect allegory for Romney, Ryan and company.

For the record, we - and millions of other Americans - would be very interested not only to see Mr. Romney's more recent tax returns. We'd also love to see how Mitt's returns compared to the accounting records from Bain Capitol for the years 1999 through 2002.

The goal isn't to see the exact numbers from Romney's taxes. The goal is to find out how honest Mr. Romney is and has been about a subject like taxes - and whether or not Romney truly shows, through his actions, that he believes that "all men are created equal."

We're willing to blow off as a miscommunication the Romney campaign's claim their candidate had to skip a planned event in Florida Monday night due to exhaustion - even though Mitt was caught exercising at his hotel later that same evening.

However, when the Romney campaign asked those it was considering as a potential Vice Presidential running mate for more than two years of their tax returns? Yet he still refuses to give Americans the same documents so that we can consider whether we want to hire him?

That kind of double standard causes us to seriously question Mr. Romney's credibility, as it should for any honest American.

Sadly, many of our media colleagues won't be chasing this story today. They've already been distracted by the actions of the Romney campaign bringing Rep. Ryan on board.

We still smell smoke, however.
And where there's smoke, there's usually fire.

The Point Of Decision

Over the weekend, amid the din of kids and parents preparing for school, and the 2012 Summer Olympics winding down, Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney announced his choice for a Vice Presidential running mate: Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.

We agree with those who say choosing Ryan was not a bold or courageous choice by Romney. It was a choice, however, that tells us a great deal about Mitt Romney.

The Romney/Ryan ticket is the end result of a Republican Party that has given on up functional governing for pure ideology. Ryan, in fact, has long been known as an ideological devotee of the extremist right-wing author Ayn Rand - a woman who blasted government assistance, but took Medicare and Social Security when she did not need to. Ryan's ideology seems to mesh perfectly with Romney's: One set of rules for us, and another for "those people."

Of course, as columnist E.J. Dionne noted over the weekend, we all know how well sticking to ideology at the expense of progress worked out for the Democratic Party in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

To put it bluntly, for seniors, the working class, the middle class - basically anyone who enjoys Medicare, Social Security, and a fair day's wage - the Romney/Ryan combo is a ticket straight to Screw U. That isn't an educational institution and it's nowhere any sane American wants to be.

As we discussed in one of our most widely read commentaries ever, "Barrel Full' O Stupid", the Ryan budget plan would raise medical costs for the elderly and poor significantly. It would also destroy Medicare as we know it, and would replace it with a coupon/voucher system. If you ran out of voucher coupons and needed medical care? Too bad for you. The wealthiest American people and corporations would be fine, though, as they'd be receiving a multi-trillion dollar tax cut. The Ryan plan would blow also a massive hole in the deficit, as we noted back in March, and would continue racking up massive debt. At best, it might balance the Federal budget sometime between 2030 and 2040 if everything went perfectly - which, in the real world, never happens.

Not surprisingly, you heard none of these facts from the Romney/Ryan camp over the weekend. In fact, the full range of both Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan's twisting the truth was on display multiple times over the weekend - notably in a "60 Minutes" interview that was full of baloney, and not much else.

Most tellingly, Mr. Romney insisted over the weekend that while he respected Paul Ryan's ideas, Romney would not run on the Ryan budget plan. By the end of the weekend, however, the Romney campaign was telling everyone that if Mitt were President, he'd happily sign the Ryan budget plan into law.

On top of all this, the Romney campaign also was caught insisting on seeing multiple years of tax returns from those people they considered for VP choices. Meanwhile, the Romney camp steadfastly refuses to show more than one full year of his tax returns to the American people.

This dual standard of rules and positions is guaranteed to be a hallmark of the Romney/Ryan campaign. One set of rules for Romney, Ryan, and those they are pandering to that day, and another set of rules and proposals that will put the screws to "those people".

In America, however, the great majority of us are "those people" at some point in our lives. Which means that if America picks Romney and Ryan, almost everyone will get screwed.