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On Saturday Governor Romney announced his running mate on the 2012 Republican ticket, Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan. He made his announcement — and Ryan accepted — aboard the USS Wisconsin, a battleship named after a battleground state in a dogfight presidential election. Admittedly, great imagery.
Conservatives have uniformly fallen in behind Romney’s pick, calling it a brave move that shows immense character on Romney’s part.
One Latino conservative, Daniel Garza of The LIBRE Initiative, also approves:
“This pick says much about the priority that Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, has decided to set in his campaign and the focus that he would have as incoming President. It is true that wonkish, complicated, and hard to decipher reforms concerning things such as entitlement programs, defense spending, and healthcare reforms have not typically been sexy campaign topics; yet, they are necessary to put our fiscal house back in order. The fact is that there are none more important to address at this point in our nation’s history.”
Undoubtedly, Garza represents an ideological minority within the Latino community that believes economic freedom, long denied Latinos by the Democrats, would allow Latinos to flex their industrious, entrepreneurial muscles and lift themselves out of perpetual poverty. “Rugged individualism,” as Being Latino’s own Nick Baez regularly terms it, is indeed a growing trend in our community. The rich are rich, says the argument, because they’ve bust their humps and earned it; conversely, the poor are poor because they just don’t try hard enough. And because greed was a virtue for Ayn Rand and continues to be so for her followers — like Ryan himself — some conservatives look to reward the rich by cutting their tax liability and punish everyone else by raising taxes on the middle class and cutting programs much of the country relies on in times of need.
Randians argue that people either fail or succeed based on personal initiative and effort, and Latino Randians insist that the Democrats have fattened their Latino base through dependency on entitlements like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (commonly known as “food stamps”). Since blacks and Latinos are disproportionately poor, the line of reason seems to suggest that blacks and Latinos are also generally lazier or less ambitious than their white counterparts. The Democrats are to blame, say these conservatives, because it’s the Dems who have transformed entire sections of society into entitlement addicts firmly latched onto the government teat.
Before arguing the moral principles of the Ryan budget plan any further, we must point out that, fiscally speaking, Ryan’s budget is “a fraud,” as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explains:
“Ryan hasn’t ‘crunched the numbers’; he has just scribbled some stuff down, without checking at all to see if it makes sense. He asserts that he can cut taxes without net loss of revenue by closing unspecified loopholes; he asserts that he can cut discretionary spending to levels not seen since Calvin Coolidge, without saying how; he asserts that he can convert Medicare to a voucher system, with much lower spending than now projected, without even a hint of how this is supposed to work. This is just a fantasy, not a serious policy proposal.”
Ryan’s plan will do nothing to alleviate the nation’s economic crisis in the short-term. But even if it did eliminate current economic woes, his plan still remains morally bankrupt. Randian policies are diametrically opposed to the well-being of the Latino community, who are disproportionately poor not because of laziness or lack of drive, but because Randian economic policies have created a highly stratified socioeconomic class system — with a small, ravenous, well-protected elite gorging itself at the top.
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And what’s wrong with Rand – millions of Americans read her bestselling books to this day. You Latinos are just afraid because there might be a chance that the country might be now run by adults who believe in personal responsibility and are fiscal conservatives. No more entitlements for you! What qualifies a VP or president to be good for
Latinos? Last time I checked, Latinos were individuals with individual goals and needs. There is no such thing as a political candidate being good for Latinos since Latinos are not this monolithic group with identical goals and beliefs. And as much as the BL crowd wants you to believe we are all one and thinking that a certain politician is going to do good things for Latinos is naive and very greedy. What I care about is a candidate that is going to be good for the country – to hell with what Latinos think or want, or any other special interest group for that matter – it’s not all about you Latinos – stop thinking as “me, me, me, me”! And if that offends you – too bad. The rest of America is beginning to pick up on your chauvinism and selfishness – always trying to see how much you can get for nothing, or thinking that an invasion from illegals that is burdening already scarce resources is nothing, and expecting the Federal government to grow bigger so it can give you entitlements. This is not going to fly with the rest of the American population anymore.
Remember Latinos, its not only about you.
It’s about time we have Atlas shrug.
Mario Ramirez fun fact: Rand received social security and medicare payments when writing this doorstop of right-wing psychobabble. Hypocrite much? http://boingboing.net/2011/01/28/ayn-rand-took-govern.html
Wasn’t Rand also anti-religion? Didn’t she say it was a sign of psychological weakness?
First of all, Mario Ramirez, you are not speaking to me ’cause what you say does not pertain to me. Now, as far as prosperous individuals being prosperous due to their hard work, gimma a break! They are prosperous due to the tax breaks they get. Please!
Being Latino, you didn’t make this facebook page, Obama did.
@Mario Ramirez, do you really hate yourself that much that you speak of Latinos as if you’re last name isn’t Ramirez? Correct me if I’m wrong, but last time I checked, that is NOT an Anglo-Saxon surname. Self-loathing must be hell on your psyche.
I am speaking to all Latinos.
No, no one said Rand was perfect – but she sure is better than Marx. I’ll take her and her quirks over Marx anytime.
You can be Latino and conservative. I disagree with them as I do with all conservatives, but you’re allowed to think what you want.
You can be Latino and conservative. I disagree with them as I do with all conservatives, but you’re allowed to think what you want.
Everyone with a smart phone is instantaneously an expert on rand.
Let’s start from this premise. The vice-president and the president, while exerting some influence, have neither the power, nor authority, to create create a budget. This is the job of congress as per that foreign document to the current president, the US Constitution. So, all the comments on Ryan’s budget proposal, which cannot not commit any future congress to abide by, is fodder and an a distraction.
Uh, no Kev. Ryan put a budget out there that completely gutted Medicare. That’s not a distraction, that’s his world view and a legitimate point of debate. Romney just kissed the senior vote goodbye by picking Ryan. I’m not surprised you want to dismiss his teabagger budget as ‘a distraction’. It’s poison! President Obama isn’t going to let you forget, though.
And as far as President Obama’s knowledge of the Constitution, when you, Kev, are elected the editor of the Harvard Law Review and become a faculty member at the 5th best law school in the country maybe your opinion on the matter will have some weight.
Tuco, elected editor of the Harvard Law Review means squat, look he was elected president and he isn’t doing any right with that but he and his wife can sure spend taxpayers’ money. And he was only a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago although he like to refer to himself as a professor. http://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/obama-a-constitutional-law-professor/
Michael – Did you even read the article you linked to? Here, I’ll summarize it for you:
From the University of Chicago: “Senior Lecturers are considered to be members of the Law School faculty and are regarded as professors”
So thanks Michael! You verified and confirmed that what I said about Obama being on the faculty was 100% accurate!
I was wrong about one thing, though. President Obama was not elected editor of the Harvard Law Review. He was elected President of the Harvard Law Review.
Only someone with their head up their attic would say that being ‘elected editor… means squat’. Only seven Supreme Court justices have served as EDITOR (not President) of HLR, including Scalia and John Roberts. NO Supreme Court Justice, in the history of this nation, has been elected PRESIDENT of the Harvard Law Review.
I understand that the Harvard Law Review is way above your reading level, but that doesn’t mean you should dismiss it. The editors of the HLR are the people who become Supreme Court Justices and Presidents, and they decide whether it’s okay to discriminate against the mentally disabled. You want them on your side.
Doesn’t look like either one helped Obama with the Constitution does it. ObamaCare is not a tax, either he was wrong or lied, take your pick.
Silly Michael. I guess according to you every time the Supreme Court hands down a decision someone was lying? And every time Scalia writes in the minority he’s wrong or lying?
That’s deep ignorance right there.
Naturally socialist and Marxist minded Lateeenos are going to say the usual things they say.
Naturally socialist and Marxist minded Lateeenos are going to say the usual things they say.