Lying Paul Ryan: The Brown Noser

      He was supposed to be the Serious One, who was bold with straight talk about "making the hard choices."

     Yet what we see lately is Ryan not leveling with us and not telling us the truth about either great things or small.

     First of all, guess what his high school class voted him for in the year book? Would you believe biggest brown noser? I kind of can:

     "Paul Ryan wasn't voted the most likely to succeed by his Janesville, Wisconsin, high school peers. In fact, according to the Washington Post, his classmates selected him as the “biggest brown-noser" in 1988.
  
     "That may be why he now appears to many as someone with the appearance of an earnest eagle scout, but with the inner balefulness of Eddie Munster. Ryan carefully cultivates the sincere demeanor of someone who would take the time to help an elderly woman across the street, but he's likely be to pick pocketing her as he is doing it. That pretty much serves as an anecdotal image of what he is doing when he assures seniors he is out to save Medicare and Social Security, knowing full well that his intention is to dismantle them as safety nets that are secure and efficiently run."

    http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/item/11671-paul-ryan-voted-biggest-brown-noser-by-his-senior-class-nothing-s-changed

    Now consider one whopper he's been telling a lot lately: that's he is not a follower of Ayn Rand or he stopped reading her once he realized that she's an atheist. So, in April he claimed this to the National Review:

     ""I reject her philosophy," Ryan told National Review on Thursday. "It's an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person's view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas. Don’t give me Ayn Rand."

       Time was though, he claimed differently:

        "The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said during a 2005 event honoring Rand in Washington, D.C., the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in April 2009.

        "In 2009, Ryan posted two videos on his Facebook page raving about the importance of Rand's views.
"If 'Atlas Shrugged' author Ayn Rand were alive today, here's the urgent message I think she'd be conveying," Ryan wrote alongside the first video, titled "Ayn Rand's relevance in 2009."

        "What's unique about what's happening today in government, in the world, in America, is it's as if we're living in an Ayn Rand novel right now. I think Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build the moral case for capitalism. And that morality of capitalism is under assault. And we are going to replace it with a crony capitalism, collectivist, government-run system which is creeping its way into government. And so if Ayn Rand were here today, I think she would do a great job in showing us just how wrong what government is doing is. Not the quantitative analysis, not the numbers, but the morality of what is wrong with what government is doing today."

       "In the second video, titled "Ayn Rand & 2009 America, Part 2," Ryan says it doesn't surprise him that sales of "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged" have "surged" since President Barack Obama took office.
"It's that kind of thinking, that kind of writing, that is sorely needed right now. And I think a lot of people would observe that we are living in an Ayn Rand novel right now, metaphorically speaking," Ryan says. "The attack on Democratic capitalism, on individualism and freedom in America is an attack on the moral foundation of America. And Ayn Rand more than anyone else did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism. This, to me, is what matters most."

       http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/27/paul-ryan-ayn-rand_n_1459098.html 

       From lies about whether or not he's a Randian-he is even if he doesn't share her atheism;  one thing they do have in common is that they both at one time lived on Social Security benefits-we get to lies Ryan tells about Medicare.

      He's been running around claiming the President cut over $700 billion dollars in Medicare benefits. Let's see if Washington Post gives that four Pinocchio's like it gave Harry Reid.

      That's what it deserves anyway. Ryan always skips two points when he tells and retells this whopper:

       1. He has the same $700 billion cut to Medicare in his budget-as well as block granting out Medicaid. Romney by the way has again affirmed that his plan and Ryan's are "close to identical."

       http://news.yahoo.com/mitt-romney-paul-ryan-medicare-plans-close-identical-152042263--abc-news-politics.html

       2. The President's cuts, however, don't take anything away from Medicare recipients but only overpayments to the health insurance companies. Ironically, while Romney is now claiming-at the same time he's admitting his and Ryan's plan are "very close almost identical" he is also insisting that he'll put the $700 billion back now to contrast to President Obama.

       What's ironic is that this will actually take money away from seniors and the poor by redirecting the funds to overpayments to the insurance providers. At the same time, this would give Medicare 8 years less solvency than it has under the President's current plan where applicative and indeed funds are directed away from overpaying the insurance companies to where they can better help both seniors and the poor in Obamacare.

        So what this amounts to is Romney wants to redirect funds from American seniors and the poor back to the insurance companies while making Medicare solvent fro 8 fewer years and reopening the "donut hole."

        If Romney does do what he now claims and take the $700 billion he falsely claims the President "stole" and put it back in Medicare this would have the following effects.

       A) It would take money away from seniors and the poor who benefit from the funds in ACA-aka Obamacare.

       B) It would take that money from A) and redirect it back to the insurance companies-money that they haven't earned. These were overpayments which is why the President cut them out of Medicare to direct it to better ends while also accomplishing C):

       C) This would reduce Medicare's solvency from 2024 to 2016.

       D) Rip open the Donut Hole all over again, which Obamacare was meant to address among other things.

        "The Medicare Part D coverage gap — informally known as the Medicare donut hole — is the difference of the initial coverage limit and the catastrophic coverage threshold, as described in the Medicare Part D prescription drug program administered by the United States federal government. After a Medicare beneficiary surpasses the prescription drug coverage limit, the Medicare beneficiary is financially responsible for the entire cost of prescription drugs until the expense reaches the catastrophic coverage threshold.}

       http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_Part_D_coverage_gap

       Ironically, Ryan himself voted for the original DH in 2003 when the GOP passed Medicare Part D for the prescription drug benefit.

       So he along with his fellow GOPers created the DH. The President went a long way towards repairing it in 2010. Now he and his buddy Mitt Romney plan to reopen it in 2012.

       Another thing he likes to do is blast the President for not adopting Simpson-Bowles, ignoring the fact that he himself left the panel.

       Ryan has no sense of shame. Clearly his high school class knew him well. He was a brown noser then, and truly nothing has changed.

      P.S. I was talking to Nanute today-he kindly took me to lunch at Popeye's, Hey listen after the number the NYS Unemployment Insurance office did to me, I'm a tremendous charity case.

      He mentioned something that I didn't realize-that Paul Ryan's den mother, Ayn Rand, actually herself was on Social Security and Medicare benefits towards the end of her life. And Ryan himself was on SS survivor benefits in college.

     So even John Galt's mother ended up on the dole. Say it ain't so! You wonder how well Rand would have done under Ryan's privatization scheme?