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My guess is that Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s highly-touted budget guru, doesn’t have a very tight grip on the concept of irony.

Otherwise, why would he choose April Fool’s Day to release the latest version of what the GOP intends to do to federal programs (and to the people who count on them) if it takes total control of Congress? But there he was on April first, declaring with a straight face that, “We [Republicans] believe that we owe it to the country to offer an alternative to the status quo. It’s just that simple.”

Sure it’s simple. He just Xeroxes the same stale budgetary flim flams that he always puts out, even though the public keeps upchucking at the sight of them. Ryan’s “alternative” to the status quo is the status quo ante, taking Americans back to the harsh days before there were any programs to help unemployed, elderly, sick, and other people in need.

Ryan turns Medicare into a “We don’t care” privatized program, and, he wants to outright pull the plug on the new health care law that extends coverage to millions of people, replacing it with… nothing. Hey, it’s just that simple! His budget scheme also slashes job training, education, infrastructure repairs, medical research, public broadcasting, the arts, and… well, pretty much anything that regular people need.

Still, he claims that he’s “helping” people – in an ideological, Republicany way. For example, Ryan explains that whacking food stamps “empowers recipients to get off the aid rolls and back on the payrolls.” What payrolls, you ask? That’s not my problem, says the guy drawing $174,000 a year and a gold package of benefits from the government he pretends to despise.

Yeah, let ‘em eat right wing ideology! I wish it was an April Fool’s joke – but Ryan’s joke is on us.

“Ryan’s Budget would Cut $5 Trillion in Spending Over a Decade,” New York Times, April 2, 2014

“Ryan’s Faith-Based Budget,” New York Times, April 2, 2014

How income inequality happens

Where’s Charles Dickens when we need him? The novelist, who laid bare the shame of gross income inequality in 19th century England, came up with some perfectly-fitting names for his fat cat characters, including Scrooge, Mr. Tulkinghorn, Miss Havisham, and Nickleby. So I’m wondering what moniker Dickens would’ve given to Robert Marcus.

He’s the CEO of Time Warner Cable who has just won gold in the Greed Olympics for Grabbing the Most Gold with the Least Effort in the Shortest Time. Marcus became chief of the cable company on January 1st, and he immediately reached out to his corporation’s biggest rival, Comcast, offering to sell Time Warner to that giant. Only six weeks later, the deal was done.

Why would a CEO rush to eliminate both his corporation and his own job? Perhaps because of a lucrative little provision in the contract he signed to become Time Warner’s honcho. It’s a CCC – a “change of control clause.” This is yet another way for CEOs to feather their own nest, for a CCC hands a big golden parachute to the top executive of a corporation that gets sold.

In this case, Robert pockets $80 million. Yes, that’s roughly $1.8 million a day for each of about 45 days he “worked” to sell off the company.

What we have here is a perverse form of incentive pay for corporate chieftains. Rather than rewarding them for outcompeting their rivals, a CCC encourages them to sidle up to their competitors and whisper: “Psssst, wanna buy my corporation?”

Not only did Marcus sell off Time Warner, but his self-serving deal will also sell out untold numbers of its employees who’ll be made “redundant” by the merger. We hear about America’s widening gap in income inequality, but here we can actually see it widen – one rich man gains an extra $80 million, and hundreds of workers lose their income.

“$80 Million for 6 Weeks for Cable Chief,” The New York Times, March 20, 2014.