Things Ryan Lyk Has Actually Written
Update: Erik Leist doesn’t like this post (link removed):
Luke Hellier has handed over the keys to the Minnesota Democrats Exposed blog to two new writers: Andy Post and Ryan Lyk. While Hellier’s work was underwhelming in impact, often misleading, and generally rewrites of MN GOP talking points, I think it was better than a few political writing example I’ve found for Ryan Lyk:
Illegal immigrants cross the borders free of charge, do not pay taxes . . .
He seems to be overlooking payroll taxes they’ll never be able to collect on, or sales taxes, or the share of the property taxes for the property they live in, or gas taxes, or taxes on utilities, or taxes on phone plans.
Is Ryan Lyk unfamiliar with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the impact that had on political party affiliations? The guy interned for a politician, Michele Bachmann, who current opposes equal rights for all Americans, so I guess I can see why he’d rather focus on the past than today when making civil rights arguments.
While this may upset people to have some minimum standards for accommodating people with disabilities, education standards for our children, or environmental standards for our air and water, someone would have to be pretty naive to think that America would be as accessible (Americans with Disabilities Act was signed by Republican President George H. W. Bush), educated (No Child Left Behind was signed by Republican President George W. Bush), and clean (Clean Air Act was signed by Republican President Richard Nixon) as it is today without those mandates in place.
Doling out marijuana for medical reasons has too many drawbacks. Having medical marijuana legal, makes it difficult to control. It makes it hard to fight and harder to keep out of places it shouldn’t be. Perhaps the answer is just to legalize marijuana completely. After all, people do it anyways so legalizing it allows us to create taxes, regulations and lowers crime rates and the amount of money spent on fighting crime (though these costs would probably be leveled out by the amount required to oversee regulation). Furthermore, the mental issues associated with smoking marijuana are minimal. Why exactly isn’t it legalized then?
That paragraph gives me a headache. Can I get a prescription to help with that?
I think he’s confusing commercializing weed with fully legalizing weed, which makes some sense, given his politics. Why would a Republican want to allow people to grow something themselves, for free, when pharmaceutical companies can grow it and sell it to us at a higher price? It’s interesting to hear Lyk admit that the drug is relatively safe, yet call for taxation and regulation of it. I thought government was supposed to get out of the way?
One company that is actually doing a lot to fix this crisis is BP. They are looking out for the public interest in the gulf and fixing the mess they made.
BP is giving money to those whose jobs are effected. The money is a generous gift until fishing can continue on the coast.
I think Ryan Lyk gets his news from different sources than the reality based community does.
Whether or not you like Michelle Bachmann, Tarryl Clark is not any better.
In one sentence, Lyk, a former intern for Michele Bachmann, uses a “your candidate is even worse than my candidate” argument, and spells his candidate’s name wrong.
A model that is pointed out to be wrong does not need to be right.
If you’re going to use a model to illustrate a point, the model should, well, illustrate the point rather than mislead readers. At least, that’s what I think. But, as Ryan Lyk pointed out on his blog in response to my post about his misleading writing, accuracy doesn’t concern Lyk.
December 1st, 2010 at 12:39 pm
What exactly are you trying to prove by using his quotes out of context? That you can’t paint a middle class college student as a racist, bigoted, Republican elitist who accidentally put one two may ‘l’s in Michelle? Touche my friend, that is quite revolutionary for left-wing blogs…oh.
December 1st, 2010 at 12:45 pm
I don’t believe I pulled them out of context. In all cases, I linked to the original source, so go see for yourself. Please provide a concrete example to back up your accusation.
I also don’t believe I was painting Ryan as a racist, bigoted, Republican elitist. I was attempting to illustrate that he’s often underinformed about the topics he chooses to publicly write about.
I’m willing to treat the guy with the respect he deserves based on the quality of his arguments. Is that unfair?
December 1st, 2010 at 12:55 pm
I didn’t think it could get worse than Hellier. This is pathetic.
December 1st, 2010 at 3:37 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Ed Kohler, Ed Kohler. Ed Kohler said: @erikleist I explained myself here: http://bit.ly/fWJUyY [...]
December 1st, 2010 at 6:56 pm
[...] « Things Ryan Lyk Has Actually Written [...]
December 1st, 2010 at 8:05 pm
My appologies for the delay.
I suppose I will take your first example.
“Illegal immigrants cross the borders free of charge, do not pay taxes . . .”
If you put what Ryan said in context he is clearly talking about illegal immigrants who cross the border illegal and ‘do not pay taxes’. Of course they pay taxes when they purchase a good or service. Everyone must do this; regardless of if they are a legal citizen, illegal immigrant (undocumented worker for most of you reading this, I am sure), or tourist. The issue that Ryan is getting at, and most people who bring this point up, are getting at is the issue of payroll taxes. Illegal immigrants do not pay a payroll tax because they do not have a social security number and could not successfully complete an I-9 form. If you are not an American citizen and wish to work in the country you must acquire permission from the government to do so; but Ryan is clearly not talking about immigrants whose visas have expired, but people who “cross borders free of charge”. On top of this, the majority of immigrants who use a worker visa or student visa to gain employment in the United States have enough exemptions that they do not end up paying any federal income tax, just like 49% of the country.
It doesn’t matter if you linked to the source; you presented this quote grotesquely out of context in your post. The rest of his post puts to bed all of the claims you made in your entry; he was speaking of income tax, not taxes on goods and services.
You also mention his misspelling of ‘Michelle’(sic) when he meant ‘Michele’. Now if it was on a blog, like this, certainly it is his job to find that mistake; regardless of how small it is. He, however, wrote that article for the UMD Statesman. This is not a blog, but a newspaper. The striking difference producing pieces between a newspaper and a blog is that at a newspaper it is the editor’s job to make these corrections, not the job of the writer. It is the fault of the editor that this mistake made it through, not Mr. Lyk’s.
However, in this very blog post you have multiple misspellings on much more commonly used words.
“…accomodating people with…”
“While is may upset….”
These are just a few examples, but I’m sure they will be changed upon your reading of this response.
Now at least we can forgive Ryan because some women (and French men) spell ‘Michele’ with two ‘l’s. I don’t know anyone who spells ‘accommodating’ with only one ‘m’ in English class and doesn’t see the might red pen give its just ruling upon it, however. So for you to make this attack against Ryan is blatantly hypocritical when in the very same post you commit much worse crimes against the English language.
Finally the screenshot you added to the top of this post does not refer to this entry at all. If you follow http://tinyurl.com/2f5j2y7 it brings you to a completely different post. This again is very misleading of you.
December 1st, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Erik, you raise an interesting point about Ryan Lyk’s take on income taxes. Here is why I think both you and Ryan are wrong on this one: illegal immigrants DO pay income taxes. How? Let’s imagine for a second that Ryan was an illegal immigrant because he moved to this country to improve his time on earth for himself and his family. And, let’s say that he was offered a job, but with one catch: he had to have a social security number. What do you think Ryan would do? I bet he’d find himself a social security number. If we assume that illegal immigrant Ryan worked a job where his income taxes were deducted from his paycheck, that would mean that illegal immigrant Ryan was indeed paying income taxes through payroll deductions.
Now, let’s look at legal resident Ryan (allegedly, I have no proof). He’s a student working at a relatively low income job, which makes him a pretty typical American. I don’t know how much Ryan takes home in a year, but for the sake of argument, let’s say that he works an average of 20 hours/week at $10/hour with a few weeks off here and there for political activities, finals, vacations, etc. If that’s accurate, he may not be paying any federal income tax. That would be the case if his parents don’t claim him as a dependent. If they do, he’d pay something like a whopping $333 in federal taxes on $9,000 in income.
Now, let’s assume that, like many people working in America in similar situations, Ryan (allegedly legal resident Ryan) was going to get a rebate because his employer withheld more than was needed to cover his tax burden. Ryan would surely file a 1040EZ and get that money he rightfully earned. Compare that to an illegal immigrant earning the same money over the year, having the same amount withheld, but not being capable of getting a rebate.
What I’m saying here is that illegal immigrants earning income comparable to Ryan’s likely pay MORE in income taxes than Ryan does.
Clearly, if an illegal immigrant works off the books, they won’t pay payroll taxes, but one doesn’t have to be an illegal immigrant to do that. Agreed?
Want to take this further? What if an illegal immigrant stole Ryan’s social security number, worked as many hours as Ryan at a similar wage, but wasn’t able to file for a refund? It’s possible that Ryan would actually benefit from this in the form of an increased refund and social security benefits since he “earned” additional income due to the hard work of someone who came to this country to improve their life, but doesn’t receive nearly the benefits Ryan does through being born here. That probably sounds insane – especially if you haven’t caught on to the illegal immigrants paying income tax concept – but I think you can follow the logic. In fact, Ryan’s credit could improve if an illegal immigrant stole his identity and used it to paid bills on time.
If Ryan was unintentionally misleading people by saying that illegal immigrants “do not pay taxes” when, as you suggest, he meant that they pay all kinds of taxes (like the rest of us) except income taxes, he was still wrong.
I’m a big fan of typos. That said, I tend to do a pretty good job with the names of people I’ve worked for and people that I admire. I would expect a higher level of personal responsibility from a college Republican on something like that than the editor blame game you’re playing.
I corrected the link and typos. Thanks for pointing those out. I can assure you that they weren’t done to mislead.
Try another one. This is fun.
December 2nd, 2010 at 8:17 am
My God…maybe that explains why Social Security funding is in so much better shape than regular government funding…due to illegal immigrants contributing yet never collecting!
Maybe Ryan and Eric can explain why their party wants to improve our country by privatizing Social Security?
Maybe they can tell us how such a plan would not go bust in the next Wall Street bubble like my 401k did in these last two bubbles?
December 2nd, 2010 at 9:38 am
I’m waiting for Leist (or Lyk) to defend the “government mandates upset people and do not work.” I could add snark here but that statement is so dumb I really don’t need to bother…