Here is The Good Doctor (TGD) attacking ‘deficit demagoguery’ in defense of the dubious economics of Representative Paul Ryan. By the accounts of other Conservative thinkers, Cockeyed Platonist and The Great Will, Ryan is the seminal economic thinker and planner of 21st Century America and the next and future leader of 2012: the man to beat the timid New Democrat presently occupying the White House. But Paul Krugman finds him to be a bit of the usual Conservative economic humbug. TGD mentions in the defense of Ryan’s budget proposal, the welfare reform of President Clinton 1996, but perhaps some more recent statistics would be beneficial as regards childhood poverty in America. Below is a link to a July 2010 article that is revelatory of the actual condition of poor children. But let me first quote from the article:
‘How many children in America live in poverty? It's an important question. According to the federal government, 14 million children in the United States officially live in poverty. That's 19 percent of all children, and what's worse, that number has been on the rise. There are 2.5 million more children living in poverty in America now than in 2000.’
http://news.change.org/stories/the-shocking-statistics-on-child-poverty
Do we need any further exacerbation of the problem, or any inexcusable apologetics for the state of some of our children, and their dire prospects for the future? Or that the ‘Welfare Reform’ of 1996 was pure New Democratic mendacity.
TGD goes on to defend Mr. Ryan’s plan as ‘classic tax reform’, while others seem absolutely doubtful as to the believability of his proposal, except as a charade, as pantomime economics, engaged in by a desperate, leaderless Party playing on the real fears of voters: a continuing Republican political trope. The last couple of paragraphs of his essay are worth quoting in full:
‘Ryan’s overall plan tilts at every windmill imaginable, including corporate welfare and agricultural subsidies. The only thing left out is Social Security. Which proves only that Ryan is not completely suicidal.
But the blueprint is brave and profoundly forward-looking. It seeks nothing less than to adapt the currently unsustainable welfare state to the demographic realities of the 21st century. Will it survive the inevitable barrage of mindless, election-driven, 30-second attack ads (see above)? Alternate question: Does Obama have half of Ryan’s courage?
I think not (on both counts). But let’s hope so.’
Not the usual Neo-Conservative bellicosity that TGD puts on display, but in its own way at least as destructive.
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