Ayn Rand's true disciple

It is neither a realistic nor an acceptable agenda. It is a draconian agenda that not only repudiates, but is designed to gut or dismantle years of progress in ensuring that the poor, elderly, sick, and powerless are guaranteed the right to the same health and well-being as everyone. This, of course, is anathema to Ryan and his Republican cohorts. To them, these people are nothing more than the parasites, looters, and moochers who are described in the writings of Ryan’s mentor, Ayn Rand.

It’s the same agenda that constitutes the major theme of the Republican Party. It’s the redistribution of wealth to those who do not deserve it and have no right in demanding it. It’s a distribution of the hard-earned money of the wealthy to the lazy, irresponsible loafers who believe they are entitled to the government dole. It’s a cynical, simplistic, and self-serving rational that allows them to comfortably decry all government programs that supposedly deprive them of their rightful wealth and position in life.

Who are these lazy, irresponsible loafers who demand that the wealthy part company with their hard earned millions? It’s the more than 17 million workers who were sent to the unemployment lines because of the Republican-inspired great recession. It’s the same 17 million-plus, who the Republican-dominated Congress fought so hard to curtail unemployment benefits from because they were convinced that an extension would create a dependency on government welfare.

It’s the arguably 2 million workers who lost their jobs forever, when they were shipped overseas. It’s the millions of poor dependent children who are now provided medical care where none existed before, and whose benefits Mr. Ryan and company intend to drastically cut in order to offset the tax cuts he is planning for the wealthy and corporate America. It’s the millions of unemployed and desperately poor families, including single women with children for whom food stamps are their only recourse from hunger. These will be on the chopping block as well.

It’s the millions of elderly who depend on Social Security and Medicare, without which there would be little quality of life in their remaining years. The Republican fraud is clear and unrelenting. Dismantle Medicare and replace it with vouchers that will allow the private insurance industry to impose the same provisions that gave us denials for preexisting medical conditions, limits on coverage for the most severe medical procedures, and exorbitant co-pays and premiums that have already priced millions out of the market. The fraud is that Ryan and his fellow Republicans assure us that their voucher system will provide the same level of health care for the elderly while at the same time controlling costs. What they don’t say is that the cost control will come about through severe cuts to critically needed health care for those in need.

No one should be fooled by the Republican intent to dismantle Social Security. That was made clear when the Bush administration attempted to convert it to the whims of Wall Street in 2005. He proposed a number of interim measures to soften the blow, but it was clear even then, that the right wing goal was to eliminate it altogether. Three years later we were subjected to the greatest Wall Street collapse since 1929. Had Social Security been under the control of the Wall Street investment houses, there would be no Social Security to worry about.

It’s Ayn Rand all over again and, except for her atheism, Paul Ryan is her most loyal and devoted prophet. A $3 trillion tax cut for the so called "producers" and offsetting cuts to the social programs that have historically provided lazy welfare recipients a comfortable living off the government. They are cuts that will finally require that these people find productive employment and relieve the wealthy from the injustice of taxation to subsidize people who do not deserve it.

Those few Republicans who are uncomfortable with Ryan’s far right agenda are quick to explain that it will be Mitt Romney’s economic policy and not necessarily Ryan’s that will prevail. They should be reminded that it is Ryan and not Romney who is the darling of the Republican Party and the Tea Party that controls it. If the far right retains control of the House of Representatives and takes control of the Senate, Romney will find himself bound to the same agenda that Ryan and his Tea Party allies demand. He has pandered to that agenda since announcing his run for the presidency. When that happens America will finally be indoctrinated into the benefits of the great plutocracy advocated by Ayn Rand.