Take a Look at What Paul Ryan Did to His Own Congressional District, and Be Very Scared

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/election-2012/take-look-what-paul-ryan-did-his-own-congressional-district-and-be-very-scared-your



Before Paul Ryan was anointed as the Republican vice presidential candidate, Ryan reigned as the GOP’s resident economic genius and “leading intellectual.”

However, this praise from major media outlets has long been divorced from the reality 1,000 miles away back in Ryan’s 1st Congressional District in southeastern Wisconsin. Even while Beltway media — and even President Obama — heaped kudos on Ryan for his bold economic proposals and “intellectual audacity,” the productive base and social health of his constituents have been severely deteriorating under the impact of the very policies he has aggressively championed.

Ryan trumpeted the $1.2 trillion in Bush tax cuts showered largely on the richest 1%, pushed for the deregulation of Wall Street financial manipulations, opposed 2007 efforts to rein in the financial industry’s increasingly risky practices but then voted for a virtually unconditional bailout of the big banks after the meltdown in 2008 in order to “save the free enterprise system.” Ryan also voted for the auto bailout without any provisions to prioritize US jobs including those in his district. Further, Ryan has been a consistent supporter of the “free trade” deals with low-wage, repressive regimes that have fueled the offshoring of jobs.

In recent years, Ryan’s home district has lost thousands of family-sustaining jobs. Its economic foundations have been dangerously hollowed out: Delco in Oak Creek shut down at a cost of 3,800 jobs, mostly going to Mexico; Chrysler in Kenosha had 850 jobs sent to Mexico with the help of auto industry “bailout” funds; and General Motors in his hometown of Janesville eliminated 2,800 jobs directly with its pre-Christmas 2008 plant closing, while GM kept open a low-wage plant with parallel capacities in Silao, Mexico. The GM shutdown in Janesville wiped out another 3,000 jobs in nearby supplier plants.

[Selatius]

1. Not to punch a hole in the article, but recent free trade deals didn't kill Ryan's district.

As far as free trade goes, his district was dying by the end of the 1970s when the first of the major corporations started moving manufacturing centers to China under their regime's impetus to open up their economy to the west. Both political parties are on record as supporting free trade and things like NAFTA.

Stopping global labor arbitrage, or "free trade" as the captains of industry like to call it, was something that should've been done roughly 1984.

It's 2012.

As far as dollars and cents go, there's no way they're going to hire Americans when they can pay Chinese workers 60 cents an hour to do the same thing. You can do it in Viet Nam for 40 cents and less. There's just no way. The borders are wide open to allow any businessman to exploit differences in labor costs.

Those manufacturing jobs are long gone as well as the middle class base that was built upon it, and we're going to have to accept the reality that the United States is dependent upon China and India for many of its manufactured goods.

For the record, I'm not a supporter of free trade as much as I am of fair trade. If there are no minimum safe labor standards, environmental protocols, or agreements to respect the right of workers to assemble as a union and to account for pay disparities, then I would be opposed to all these agreements, and I largely am.

If I had 75 Bernie Sanders in the US Senate, one in the White House, and another 300 of him in the US House, I'd tell them to begin a crash course in reviving American manufacturing with fair trade policies, not free, A Manhattan Project to build up US manufacturing and make the United States reclaim the title of industrial powerhouse.

But with the way our Republic operates with these privatized elections, two-party system, and the level of the population being propagandized to accept right-wing ideology as "conventional wisdom," I can tell you that it will NEVER HAPPEN.

I don't mean to come off as overly gloomy, but we're in a real bind here, and we should all recognize that blaming Ryan for disastrous free trade policies is somewhat dishonest if we're going to remain silent on the same policies pushed by Democrats on the dole of Wall Street finance.

[Major Nikon]

4. Even if they did what you're suggesting, it still might not bring manufacturing back

Factories commonly operate inside interconnected industrial clusters where they can support each other. For instance, Silicone Valley is one of these areas. Car manufacturing in Bavaria is another. Transport aircraft production in Seattle is another. Once the industrial base goes somewhere else, it's very difficult to bring it back. That's why Steve Jobs told Obama that Apple production wasn't going to come back to the US.

[Selatius]

9. And you brought up a good point.

If this nation had adopted early on policies of fair trade where it's not a race to the bottom as far as wages go, neither of us would be arguing about whether or not it would even come back. It wouldn't have left in the first place.

But the genie is out of the bottle, and I generally side with the camp that says US manufacturing is over, but I generally think that if the US government offered subsidies to domestic manufacturing, then what is left of our industrial base could become a springboard on which the rest of manufacturing could be rebuilt. It'll take decades, but that's likely the price of rebuilding the entire Rust Belt.

[Major Nikon]

2. Like Bill Maher says

There's not one single policy position of Ryan's that isn't fundamentally different than Sarah Palin, yet they call him an "intellectual" and Palin is widely regarded as one of the biggest political morons.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. Ryan may not be a dimwit like Palin, but he has a lot of handwaving & few numbers to back him up. nt

[sendero]

7. Ryan's got nothing.

..... but the same tired Libertarian bullshit of lower taxes and deregulate everything THAT GOT US INTO THIS MESS TO BEGIN WITH.

Libertarians are IDIOTS. Intellectuals think. They observe the results of actions. They do NOT double down on policy ideas that are a PROVEN FAILURE.

[Cosmocat]

10. He is a fraud

simple and undeniable.

He looks cute, so his spewing the same tired and relentlessly disastrous trickle down ecomomics BS has appeal for people who want to believe it and the "liberal media" who have to be "fair" about news.

[sendero]

11. Yep..

... "fair" as in "didn't we try the tax cut deregulate thingie before?". You will never hear that simple question in the MSM. MSM, another paragon of intellectual might.

Fact is, most of these people know it is all bullshit, the media and the politicians, but their masters force them to act like idiots that believe it.

[Major Nikon]

12. It's not surprising. His hero is an even bigger fraud.

When Ayn Rand first published her books, they received terrible literary ratings and real philosophers of the day said she only had a rudimentary knowledge of philosophy. She built a whole career on "objectivism" which was nothing more than pseudo-intellectual BS.

[CrispyQ]

19. To Ryan's credit, at least you can diagram his sentences!

[greiner3]

3. All of those plant closings;

Are (read were), or mostly are, now ex-union jobs.

Now let me see;


Union jobs are to Paul Ryan

Is as

Democrats are to Republicans.

Hell, he's just trying to shore up his reelection, since this present endeavor is sinking.

Now THAT'S Republican Values with a capital FUK U 47%ERS!

[Doctor_J]

6. This part

President Obama — heaped kudos on Ryan for his bold economic proposals and “intellectual audacity,

[Tennessee Gal]

8. Isn't he running for re-election to Congress?

How's he doing with that?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. He's at risk for being defeated in his Congressional seat even as he goes down in flames for VP. nt

[Pakid]

13. The best solution

Would be a world wide minimum wage and decent working condition standard that of course will never happen. The next best thing would be a US law that said in order to sell goods in the US the factory must meet certain wage and working conditions. That would make it far less attractive to business seeking to leave America for low wage and poor working condition nations. That of course will not happen until we get money and nuts like Ryan out of politics.

[Honeycombe8]

14. So....is his district NOT going to re-elect him?

How did this guy get elected?

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

15. PLEASE!!! Give what you can to Rob Zerban!

Make Lying' Ryan a two-time loser on November 6!!!!

http://www.robzerban.com/

[ProfessionalLeftist]

16. recommend

and suggest donating what you can to Rob Zerban:

http://www.robzerban.com/

[formercia]

17. Paul Ryan's 'Cargo Cult' Economics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult

--snip--

A cargo cult is a religious practice that has appeared in many traditional pre-industrial tribal societies in the wake of interaction with technologically advanced cultures. The cults focus on obtaining the material wealth (the "cargo&quot of the advanced culture through magic and religious rituals and practices. Cult members believe that the wealth was intended for them by their deities and ancestors. Cargo cults developed primarily in remote parts of New Guinea and other Melanesian and Micronesian societies in the southwest Pacific Ocean, beginning with the first significant arrivals of Westerners in the 19th century. Similar behaviors have, however, also appeared elsewhere in the world.

--snip--

[Ian62]

18. And the lunatic press that is NYT (owned by Murdoch)

makes out that Ryan is some sort of intellectual hero.

When he is a total hypocrite, a reckless spender, wants to destroy healthcare and has a lunatic budget full of holes and misassumptions that would massively increase the National Debt.

Dumbass, total hypocrite Ryan more like.

The Koch brothers are donating to Romney's campaign in the hope of picking up a chunk of Ryan's proposed $45bn big oil subsidy.
Pure corporate welfare.