Portside

"It’s important for people to know that important things are, in fact, getting done, and setting this Google News alert is one of those things.”

A draft framework being circulated this week would pretend to keep the parts of Obamacare that people like, but allow states to take these benefits away.

Is Paul Ryan's desire to snatch coverage from millions so he can give an enormous tax break to wealthy people utterly monstrous? Absolutely. But if nothing else, Ryan isn't trying to convince us he believes something he doesn't. Strip away the complex politics involved and it becomes evident that Republican proposals are based upon the belief that, as Ayn Rand preached, the government has no obligation to help anyone.

For followers of Hayek eager to smash the “para-government,” Trump must look like a godsend. How might conservatives do so? By advancing drastic institutional changes even Hayek conceded could seem undemocratic, such as making voting a once-in-a-lifetime act, for example, and lengthening legislative terms to fifteen years. Resting on popular support, the welfare state’s curtailment required attacking democracy.

100 corporate CEOs possess company retirement funds totaling $4.7 billion - an amount equivalent to the entire retirement savings of 41 percent of U.S. families. Things were not always like this. From 1946 to 1980, a combination of union action and government policy led to the expansion of pension benefits for American workers. Now, Donald Trump's pick to direct the Office of Management and Budget says: We have to end Medicare as we know it.

 “If we keep control of the Senate in the Republican hands…a nice guy named Mike Enzi from Wyoming is the Senate budget chair and he helps us get these budgets to the president’s desk, gets these tax bills through,” he said.  On the other hand, Ryan warned, “If we lose the Senate, do you know who becomes chair of the Senate Budget Committee? A guy named Bernie Sanders. You ever heard of him?”

Protesters at Rep. Ryan's office denounced Trump as a consequence of the system, not an aberration. The occupation launches a "bold millennial-run campaign to demand racist Republicans and Wall Street Democrats disown the politics of racism and greed."

There’s a paradox to all this. Despite his ideological kinship with the anti-government crowd, Paul Ryan is the embodiment of the troika of money, power, and politics that corrupts and controls the capital, the very thing the tea partiers detest.