After the current turmoil in the markets, I was hoping that new Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke would see the big picture and act judiciously. Instead he signaled, with an aggressive rate cut, that we can expect a continuation of the monetary policies that got us here to begin with. Alan Greenspan released his memoir this week explaining his policies and decisions in the wake of the irrational exuberance they fueled. His successor should see that it is now time for a change of policy that addresses the root of our troubles. But instead of seeing an inflation problem, the Federal Reserve sees a liquidity problem, which is a little like extinguishing a forest fire with gasoline. In the wake of the rate cut, the Dow jumped and brokers cheered. Behind the headlines, however, the dollar quietly fell and was abandoned by more of the world in favor of more solid stores of wealth.
The Fed does not act in a vacuum. Mr. Greenspan rightly criticizes Congress and the administration for abandoning principles of fiscal responsibility. However, monetary policy at the Fed did nothing solve money problems, but merely delayed impending crises by creating bubbles.
In a very real sense, the Fed and the government are close to going over the spending limit of our nation’s credit card. We rely on foreign investors to buy our debt so our government can maintain its appetite for spending. Yet the market for US Treasury Bills is rapidly shrinking as yield declines. Still the government will need an estimated $100 billion more for every year we “stay the course” in Iraq , not to mention what a possible conflict in Iran could cost.
Yes, the money has to come from somewhere, but we are running out of sources to tap.
Printing more money is the Fed’s typical answer, but we are on the verge of runaway inflation. We have printed so many dollars now that we are at parity with the Canadian dollar for the first time since 1976. Since the Fed stopped publishing M3, which tracks the total supply of dollars in the economy, we can’t even be sure how many dollars they are creating. Reported inflation is around 2%, but the method for calculating inflation changed in the 1980’s, largely at Mr. Greenspan’s urging. Private economists using the original method find actual inflation to be over 10%, which matches more closely the pain consumers in the real economy feel.
The reality is that this type of manipulation of the markets masks where resources, or money, ultimately comes from. It comes from the taxpayer. The government doesn’t create Gross Domestic Product, they just limit and control how it is done.
They then absorb much of the value produced in the economy through taxation and inflation, so they can squander our nation’s wealth with runaway spending.
The Fed tries to keep up with government’s spending habits, but is sending inaccurate signals to mask bad monetary policy. Ultimately, we’ll get back on track financially only when government spending is held in check and the free market controls monetary policy, not the other way around.
Thursday
WHAT I THINK....DR. JAMES HERNDON
Would the Pope agree to debate an atheist? Well, Roman Catholics (like me) already know the answer to that one. I think even atheists, deep down, know the answer, too. The Pope’s decision would be a model of clarity: No.
But, the politically-correct crowd is bound to ask: How come? Is the Pope opposed to "ecumenism" or something?
Well, fundamentally, yes. After all, it’s arguable that a principled person could never truly embrace the relativism inherent in a philosophy of ecumenism.
Today’s almost panicky enforcement of ecumenism in all things is among modernism’s most tyrannical by-products. Here’s my definition of ecumenism – a worldwide movement committed to making the Devil feel better about himself.
Nonetheless, all this presents a quandary: Aren’t we, by refusing to publicly confront a dangerous opponent, forgoing an opportunity to bring others to our cause?
By now, it should be plain to anyone with even modest media-antennae, that someone out there has been having a head-to-head battle with the most monstrous foe of America’s freedoms, and by doing so, gaining converts left and right. And that someone is – Ron Paul.
Political debating in today’s goose-stepping environment contains a bold warning-label, one that embodies a unique, neo-con-ized twist on ecumenism: Only candidates who pay obeisance to the Frankenstein Monster are welcome. Everyone else must prepare to be slandered and marginalized.
"Everyone else" being, again, Ron Paul.
So, what’s all this about the Frankenstein Monster? Remember him? He’s that quasi-human atrocity, pieced-together with body-parts from stolen corpses, including a brain from a criminal. He terrorizes the countryside, and tales of his horror and disruption have spread to the four corners of the earth.
Sounds remarkably like a description of the Federal Reserve.
So, who has Ron Paul actually been debating all this time? Well, it hasn’t been his Republican opponents.
Dr. Paul has been debating (very successfully) his, and America’s, most evil nemesis – Franken-Fed, the economic undead, financial adviser to Satan, destroyer of the middle-class, hypnotizer of politicians, godfather of the mass-media, master of the inflationary universe, promoter of social decay, purveyor of paper-or-plastic, and history’s most gifted warmonger.
To insure that the playing-field is as uneven as possible, Franken-Fed’s acolytes have even established special rules-of-engagement for debating their soulless master.
First of all, acknowledging Franken-Fed’s "usefulness" in working so hard to "manage" the economy is an absolute must.
You’re allowed, occasionally, to question his policies (very gently). And, sometimes, you’re even permitted to suggest ways to help him bail out his friends. But, never, ever, under any circumstances, are you permitted to threaten Franken-Fed, much less to condemn him to the hell he so richly deserves.
And the final proscription? It’s the most important one of all: When Franken-Fed wants to go to war, you’d better not give him any resistance. Because, if you do, he’ll accuse you of giving aid and comfort to those persons opposed to his dictatorial ambitions – terrorists.
Ron Paul (unlike the Pope) can’t (and doesn’t) refuse, on sheer principle, to be drawn into a debate with the Devil, even though the debate itself is a game where the Devil is allowed to write the rules.
What other politician in recent memory (or in any kind of memory) has jumped so boldly, and so unafraid, into the fray? It’s truly heartwarming to observe just how "un-ecumenical" our Good Doctor really is. And Americans are taking note...in a big way.
And guess what? The establishment is noticeably less steady on its feet since Dr. Paul (the real Dr. "No!") stepped into the ring. Why? Because he has landed some staggering blows squarely to the jaw of The Monster.
But, beware. The Beast’s frustration is rising. By the day.
Ron Paul is not an opponent of any political party. He is not an adversary of individual politicians. He represents an enemy of a system of financial power which, by its very nature, is antithetical to basic American freedoms.
I believe that Ron Paul, and we, are on the path to victory against The Monster. Let us remind ourselves, however, of one of The Beast’s least ingratiating traits – his ability to rise from the ashes.
Remember the old Frankenstein movies? Just when the poor villagers thought they were free – it was déjà vu all over again. Back to the torches and pitchforks.
But the villagers repeatedly took their (always temporary) freedom for granted, and routinely paid the price for their lack of vigilance. Their message for us? The American Revolution is, indeed, a process, not an event.
Ron Paul has been standing-guard for our freedoms, now, for many-a-year. And every day, thousands more Americans are joining him on the ramparts.
All of us are duty-bound to continue to spread his message, both far and wide.
These days, with Dr. Paul on-call, the Devil is definitely not feeling better about himself.
In fact, he’s worried like hell
But, the politically-correct crowd is bound to ask: How come? Is the Pope opposed to "ecumenism" or something?
Well, fundamentally, yes. After all, it’s arguable that a principled person could never truly embrace the relativism inherent in a philosophy of ecumenism.
Today’s almost panicky enforcement of ecumenism in all things is among modernism’s most tyrannical by-products. Here’s my definition of ecumenism – a worldwide movement committed to making the Devil feel better about himself.
Nonetheless, all this presents a quandary: Aren’t we, by refusing to publicly confront a dangerous opponent, forgoing an opportunity to bring others to our cause?
By now, it should be plain to anyone with even modest media-antennae, that someone out there has been having a head-to-head battle with the most monstrous foe of America’s freedoms, and by doing so, gaining converts left and right. And that someone is – Ron Paul.
Political debating in today’s goose-stepping environment contains a bold warning-label, one that embodies a unique, neo-con-ized twist on ecumenism: Only candidates who pay obeisance to the Frankenstein Monster are welcome. Everyone else must prepare to be slandered and marginalized.
"Everyone else" being, again, Ron Paul.
So, what’s all this about the Frankenstein Monster? Remember him? He’s that quasi-human atrocity, pieced-together with body-parts from stolen corpses, including a brain from a criminal. He terrorizes the countryside, and tales of his horror and disruption have spread to the four corners of the earth.
Sounds remarkably like a description of the Federal Reserve.
So, who has Ron Paul actually been debating all this time? Well, it hasn’t been his Republican opponents.
Dr. Paul has been debating (very successfully) his, and America’s, most evil nemesis – Franken-Fed, the economic undead, financial adviser to Satan, destroyer of the middle-class, hypnotizer of politicians, godfather of the mass-media, master of the inflationary universe, promoter of social decay, purveyor of paper-or-plastic, and history’s most gifted warmonger.
To insure that the playing-field is as uneven as possible, Franken-Fed’s acolytes have even established special rules-of-engagement for debating their soulless master.
First of all, acknowledging Franken-Fed’s "usefulness" in working so hard to "manage" the economy is an absolute must.
You’re allowed, occasionally, to question his policies (very gently). And, sometimes, you’re even permitted to suggest ways to help him bail out his friends. But, never, ever, under any circumstances, are you permitted to threaten Franken-Fed, much less to condemn him to the hell he so richly deserves.
And the final proscription? It’s the most important one of all: When Franken-Fed wants to go to war, you’d better not give him any resistance. Because, if you do, he’ll accuse you of giving aid and comfort to those persons opposed to his dictatorial ambitions – terrorists.
Ron Paul (unlike the Pope) can’t (and doesn’t) refuse, on sheer principle, to be drawn into a debate with the Devil, even though the debate itself is a game where the Devil is allowed to write the rules.
What other politician in recent memory (or in any kind of memory) has jumped so boldly, and so unafraid, into the fray? It’s truly heartwarming to observe just how "un-ecumenical" our Good Doctor really is. And Americans are taking note...in a big way.
And guess what? The establishment is noticeably less steady on its feet since Dr. Paul (the real Dr. "No!") stepped into the ring. Why? Because he has landed some staggering blows squarely to the jaw of The Monster.
But, beware. The Beast’s frustration is rising. By the day.
Ron Paul is not an opponent of any political party. He is not an adversary of individual politicians. He represents an enemy of a system of financial power which, by its very nature, is antithetical to basic American freedoms.
I believe that Ron Paul, and we, are on the path to victory against The Monster. Let us remind ourselves, however, of one of The Beast’s least ingratiating traits – his ability to rise from the ashes.
Remember the old Frankenstein movies? Just when the poor villagers thought they were free – it was déjà vu all over again. Back to the torches and pitchforks.
But the villagers repeatedly took their (always temporary) freedom for granted, and routinely paid the price for their lack of vigilance. Their message for us? The American Revolution is, indeed, a process, not an event.
Ron Paul has been standing-guard for our freedoms, now, for many-a-year. And every day, thousands more Americans are joining him on the ramparts.
All of us are duty-bound to continue to spread his message, both far and wide.
These days, with Dr. Paul on-call, the Devil is definitely not feeling better about himself.
In fact, he’s worried like hell
WHAT I THINK....KOEN SWINKELS
The Ron Paul presidential campaign has the potential to become the best thing that has happened to the cause of liberty since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The campaign may well develop into a mass education program spreading the ideas of liberty throughout the nation, exposing the only true class conflict in society, thereby giving rise to a populist grassroots movement sowing the seeds of revolution.
Obfuscation
The state depends for its continued existence on the enthusiastic support of only a few. It requires the acquiescence of many more. The few that are enthusiastic about the state are the ones that profit from it, such as politicians, bankers, bureaucrats, contractors, big corporations, mainstream media (MSM), intellectuals, lobbyists and unions. The profit comes at the expense of the many. This as the classical liberals explained is the only meaningful class conflict in society. The trick to keeping the many complacent is to deceive them into thinking they are actually not being plundered. This is achieved in at least three ways:
1. Intellectuals will come up with theories justifying state institutions before or after they are created; for example, they say that the Federal Reserve is needed to manage the economy; that only the welfare state and redistribution of income keep people from dying in the streets and being exploited by evil capitalists; and that foreign wars must be fought to keep us safe at home. These theories are then spread by state education, the majority of intellectuals and the mainstream media and they are passively absorbed by ordinary people who then think they have a stake in the continuing existence of the state.
2. Mainstream media and intellectuals will drastically narrow the terms of acceptable debate by taking statism as a given. So instead of debating whether there should be an income tax at all, the question is merely whether it should be 35 or 32 percent. Rather than arguing for or against the existence of a Central Bank at all, pundits and experts will only discuss by how much the Fed should lower or raise its interest rate. Instead of discussing the very idea whether the US government's military branch should busy itself with waging war and killing innocent people all around the world, pundits discuss how the latest surge is working out, whether 5,000 or 20,000 new soldiers are needed. Instead of talking about the coming bankruptcy of the welfare state and the devastating consequences this will have for so many people, they talk about with what programs we should expand it.
Moreover, serious intellectual debate is replaced by what we could call 'gossip for the intellectuals'. Just as others will read and talk about the latest scandals involving Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan, or about salary conflicts in baseball teams, upcoming football matches, intellectuals will talk endlessly about things like conflicts between the president and one of his appointees, the possible sacking of one or the other administrator, non-verbal communication during presidential debates, the sexual escapades of politicians or the latest rapport about the situation in Iraq. All this talk about trivialities numbs the mind and makes it unsuitable for rigorous thinking: we are no longer able to see the forest for the trees.
3. In the ultimate act of deviousness politicians manage to obfuscate their exploitation of the people by using a divide et impera technique: the state creates conflicts between racial groups by giving some preferential treatment at the expense of others, between young and old over social security, between producers and consumers by saying that the former would exploit the latter if it weren’t for the government, between Iraqi's and Americans. The state creates these conflicts and then goes on to profit from the resulting divisiveness and the MSM echo and get worked up over these conflicts continuously, only rarely investigating whether the conflicts are not artificially created by the state.
It is astonishing to see how successful this approach has been: without too much fanfare or discussion the United States has slowly but surely turned into a near fascist war-mongering police state only awaiting a person who will officially assume the throne as dictator. Debate about these developments has been relegated to the back pages of newspapers, short news clips, and blogs on the internet. The general population has been like the Polish man who was in a coma for 15 years only to wake up to a free and non-communist Poland. We have been held in a near-coma only to start waking up to the realities of the fascist police state. And we have the politicians and MSM to thank for it.
Truth and Class Conflict
Enter Ron Paul, the silver-haired knight in the battle of ideas.
In direct debates, Q&A sessions, speeches, get-togethers and interviews, Ron Paul immediately gets to the core and truth of the issues.
The Federal Reserve required to manage the economy? Nonsense! The Fed impoverishes us all through inflation, it causes economic instability and booms and busts and only helps and bails out the big banks and enables politicians to finance their wars!
The war in Iraq is fought to keep us safe at home? Ridiculous and dangerous! Our foreign policy over the past decades is the main cause of terrorists wanting to get at us. It’s called blow-back! We need to stop military and political meddling in other nation’s affairs and instead engage in free trade with people of all nations.
To Mike Huckabee’s remark that we have a responsibility to stay in Iraq because we broke it, Ron Paul directly made clear why this is the wrong way of looking at the situation: "The American people didn't go in. A few people advising this administration, a small number of people called the neoconservatives hijacked our foreign policy. They're responsible, not the American people."
And rather than arguing about how to implement the latest police state techniques such as a national ID card or more gun control, Ron Paul condemns the entire project and invokes the Founders when he warns of the government turning on the citizens.
What Ron Paul is consistently doing is bringing real ideas into political debate and forcing his opponents and the MSM to pay attention and justify themselves. Paul uses libertarian theory and Austrian Economics to show that what the state is doing is morally wrong and that it is wrecking our economy and so many people’s lives. He shows why the pseudo-theories justifying pre-emptive war, the Federal Reserve, the police state and the welfare state are morally and practically wrong and he exposes the true interests that these institutions serve. By doing so he makes clear what the only true class conflict in society is: that of the taxpayers vs. the tax-consumers. And the former are the large majority.
By exposing this class conflict Ron Paul stirs up strong emotions among people and thereby awakens the many out of their complacency. A sign of this is the huge and ever-growing grassroots movement that has sprung up and that is spreading the message of liberty all around the country. What is different from other populist movements is that the strong emotions motivating it arose after intellectual reflection, not before it. Only when people, thanks to the ideas espoused by Ron Paul and others, start to understand what is really happening, what the state is really doing, do their emotions flare up. So there is a lot of both intellectual and emotional ammo to do something about the situation.
The grassroots approach itself shows the wonders of liberty: there is no or very little central planning of Ron Paul’s campaign; instead out of the uncoordinated efforts of thousands and thousands of people, each doing as they see fit, there arises a formidable spontaneous order swarming over the country and the media outlets. The Ron Paul campaign is a true populist movement and only such a movement will have the power and energy to achieve lasting change.
Mainstream and Alternative Media
This is wonderful news for libertarians everywhere: libertarian ideas are entering the mainstream and to the extent that they are not they are at least causing a shift in the balance of power between the MSM and the new media such as blogs and other websites.
Ron Paul takes part in the Republican presidential candidates debates and thus gets exposure on national TV. Because he was attacked on his ideas on foreign policy during these debates first by Rudy Giuliani and later by Mike Huckabee his ideas got even more exposure and were discussed (no matter how ignorantly or viciously sometimes) in all sorts of TV programs. Furthermore, Paul was a guest on the popular Daily Show, the Colbert Report and Bill Maher’s show and was well received by both the hosts and their young audiences who at times cheered his every word.
Mainstream media have reported on the large numbers of crowds Paul draws when he speaks out, and the video of his visit to Google headquarters was by far the most popular video of all Google visits by presidential candidates.
The beauty is that although the majority of people have still never heard about Ron Paul, he does appear on their radar screen more and more and once they hear him talk about his ideas, many get enthusiastic. This is no wonder because people tend to have an excellent antenna for detecting sincerity, which in the realm of politics is nothing less than a breath of fresh air.
Of course, much of the MSM so far have also been doing their best to ignore, dismiss or ridicule Ron Paul and his rapidly growing popularity. And so the Ron Paul campaign forces people to look to alternative sources of information and it makes them see that the MSM are not impartial journalists covering the news but instead are often in bed with the state one way or the other. Through this people will start to realize that the official versions of events are often quite biased, to say the least. They will start to question what they hear and what they thought they knew more and more. If anything, the MSM and the politicians will go down together.
The switch to alternative media creates opportunities for libertarian bloggers, professors, columnists, economists and TV personalities. They will get more visitors to their own sites and more invitations to speak elsewhere, more air time to get their message heard, thereby in turn exciting more people still. So libertarian theorists will get greater exposure and more job opportunities because of it which helps the whole movement.
Bottom-up and Top-down
Some libertarians oppose Ron Paul’s campaign because they hold that it is immoral or impractical to achieve liberty through top-down political means. Whether or not these views are correct (I think they are not) actually does not matter much because all libertarians can profit from what Ron Paul is doing, by his getting libertarian ideas to the masses and building up a bottom-up grassroots and populist movement.
Ron Paul’s campaign introduces a great number of people to the ideas of liberty, to a viable alternative to the suffocating statism. Because of this people will go look for more information about these ideas and may come into contact with anarcho-capitalism and may be swayed by it while others will, at least initially, not go farther than minarchism. Some will start to work in political action, while others will devote their time and energy and creativity to non-political action such as education, popularizing, convincing others, protests and joining organizations.
The increased publicity and sympathy for said ideas and especially this remarkable grassroots movement will also inspire activist groups such as secessionists and may help those to become more serious and powerful. Should public opinion change enough then people will be more likely to object to a crackdown on a serious secessionist movement. And in case Ron Paul actually becomes president he will have some power to block military intervention or other crackdowns on such a secessionist movement, especially when the people interested in armed revolt team up with the secessionists and help in the defence of the territory should there be a crackdown and possible guerrilla warfare. Once a territory has seceded it can lead by example and other territories will surely follow, especially since the first territory got away with it, thereby imploding the US of A.
So the Ron Paul campaign will likely benefit both theoretical and practical libertarians, both minarchists and anarcho-capitalists, and both libertarians who are using the political process to achieve change and those who are working in bottom-up, non-political movements. All these individuals can go on to campaign for liberty in whatever way they choose and continue to hack away at the state in ever larger numbers and in ever different ways. Likely it is only a combination of bottom-up and top-down action that can successfully bring down the state once and for all.
All that libertarians have to do is tolerate the (non-aggressive) strategies of other libertarians instead of devoting their time and energy to bickering with each other.
While we are of course a long way from achieving liberty in our lifetime, the Ron Paul campaign may prove itself to be the biggest educational lesson in liberty since the fall of the Berlin wall. And libertarians of all stripes can seize the opportunity.
When ideas start to matter, libertarians will win.
Obfuscation
The state depends for its continued existence on the enthusiastic support of only a few. It requires the acquiescence of many more. The few that are enthusiastic about the state are the ones that profit from it, such as politicians, bankers, bureaucrats, contractors, big corporations, mainstream media (MSM), intellectuals, lobbyists and unions. The profit comes at the expense of the many. This as the classical liberals explained is the only meaningful class conflict in society. The trick to keeping the many complacent is to deceive them into thinking they are actually not being plundered. This is achieved in at least three ways:
1. Intellectuals will come up with theories justifying state institutions before or after they are created; for example, they say that the Federal Reserve is needed to manage the economy; that only the welfare state and redistribution of income keep people from dying in the streets and being exploited by evil capitalists; and that foreign wars must be fought to keep us safe at home. These theories are then spread by state education, the majority of intellectuals and the mainstream media and they are passively absorbed by ordinary people who then think they have a stake in the continuing existence of the state.
2. Mainstream media and intellectuals will drastically narrow the terms of acceptable debate by taking statism as a given. So instead of debating whether there should be an income tax at all, the question is merely whether it should be 35 or 32 percent. Rather than arguing for or against the existence of a Central Bank at all, pundits and experts will only discuss by how much the Fed should lower or raise its interest rate. Instead of discussing the very idea whether the US government's military branch should busy itself with waging war and killing innocent people all around the world, pundits discuss how the latest surge is working out, whether 5,000 or 20,000 new soldiers are needed. Instead of talking about the coming bankruptcy of the welfare state and the devastating consequences this will have for so many people, they talk about with what programs we should expand it.
Moreover, serious intellectual debate is replaced by what we could call 'gossip for the intellectuals'. Just as others will read and talk about the latest scandals involving Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan, or about salary conflicts in baseball teams, upcoming football matches, intellectuals will talk endlessly about things like conflicts between the president and one of his appointees, the possible sacking of one or the other administrator, non-verbal communication during presidential debates, the sexual escapades of politicians or the latest rapport about the situation in Iraq. All this talk about trivialities numbs the mind and makes it unsuitable for rigorous thinking: we are no longer able to see the forest for the trees.
3. In the ultimate act of deviousness politicians manage to obfuscate their exploitation of the people by using a divide et impera technique: the state creates conflicts between racial groups by giving some preferential treatment at the expense of others, between young and old over social security, between producers and consumers by saying that the former would exploit the latter if it weren’t for the government, between Iraqi's and Americans. The state creates these conflicts and then goes on to profit from the resulting divisiveness and the MSM echo and get worked up over these conflicts continuously, only rarely investigating whether the conflicts are not artificially created by the state.
It is astonishing to see how successful this approach has been: without too much fanfare or discussion the United States has slowly but surely turned into a near fascist war-mongering police state only awaiting a person who will officially assume the throne as dictator. Debate about these developments has been relegated to the back pages of newspapers, short news clips, and blogs on the internet. The general population has been like the Polish man who was in a coma for 15 years only to wake up to a free and non-communist Poland. We have been held in a near-coma only to start waking up to the realities of the fascist police state. And we have the politicians and MSM to thank for it.
Truth and Class Conflict
Enter Ron Paul, the silver-haired knight in the battle of ideas.
In direct debates, Q&A sessions, speeches, get-togethers and interviews, Ron Paul immediately gets to the core and truth of the issues.
The Federal Reserve required to manage the economy? Nonsense! The Fed impoverishes us all through inflation, it causes economic instability and booms and busts and only helps and bails out the big banks and enables politicians to finance their wars!
The war in Iraq is fought to keep us safe at home? Ridiculous and dangerous! Our foreign policy over the past decades is the main cause of terrorists wanting to get at us. It’s called blow-back! We need to stop military and political meddling in other nation’s affairs and instead engage in free trade with people of all nations.
To Mike Huckabee’s remark that we have a responsibility to stay in Iraq because we broke it, Ron Paul directly made clear why this is the wrong way of looking at the situation: "The American people didn't go in. A few people advising this administration, a small number of people called the neoconservatives hijacked our foreign policy. They're responsible, not the American people."
And rather than arguing about how to implement the latest police state techniques such as a national ID card or more gun control, Ron Paul condemns the entire project and invokes the Founders when he warns of the government turning on the citizens.
What Ron Paul is consistently doing is bringing real ideas into political debate and forcing his opponents and the MSM to pay attention and justify themselves. Paul uses libertarian theory and Austrian Economics to show that what the state is doing is morally wrong and that it is wrecking our economy and so many people’s lives. He shows why the pseudo-theories justifying pre-emptive war, the Federal Reserve, the police state and the welfare state are morally and practically wrong and he exposes the true interests that these institutions serve. By doing so he makes clear what the only true class conflict in society is: that of the taxpayers vs. the tax-consumers. And the former are the large majority.
By exposing this class conflict Ron Paul stirs up strong emotions among people and thereby awakens the many out of their complacency. A sign of this is the huge and ever-growing grassroots movement that has sprung up and that is spreading the message of liberty all around the country. What is different from other populist movements is that the strong emotions motivating it arose after intellectual reflection, not before it. Only when people, thanks to the ideas espoused by Ron Paul and others, start to understand what is really happening, what the state is really doing, do their emotions flare up. So there is a lot of both intellectual and emotional ammo to do something about the situation.
The grassroots approach itself shows the wonders of liberty: there is no or very little central planning of Ron Paul’s campaign; instead out of the uncoordinated efforts of thousands and thousands of people, each doing as they see fit, there arises a formidable spontaneous order swarming over the country and the media outlets. The Ron Paul campaign is a true populist movement and only such a movement will have the power and energy to achieve lasting change.
Mainstream and Alternative Media
This is wonderful news for libertarians everywhere: libertarian ideas are entering the mainstream and to the extent that they are not they are at least causing a shift in the balance of power between the MSM and the new media such as blogs and other websites.
Ron Paul takes part in the Republican presidential candidates debates and thus gets exposure on national TV. Because he was attacked on his ideas on foreign policy during these debates first by Rudy Giuliani and later by Mike Huckabee his ideas got even more exposure and were discussed (no matter how ignorantly or viciously sometimes) in all sorts of TV programs. Furthermore, Paul was a guest on the popular Daily Show, the Colbert Report and Bill Maher’s show and was well received by both the hosts and their young audiences who at times cheered his every word.
Mainstream media have reported on the large numbers of crowds Paul draws when he speaks out, and the video of his visit to Google headquarters was by far the most popular video of all Google visits by presidential candidates.
The beauty is that although the majority of people have still never heard about Ron Paul, he does appear on their radar screen more and more and once they hear him talk about his ideas, many get enthusiastic. This is no wonder because people tend to have an excellent antenna for detecting sincerity, which in the realm of politics is nothing less than a breath of fresh air.
Of course, much of the MSM so far have also been doing their best to ignore, dismiss or ridicule Ron Paul and his rapidly growing popularity. And so the Ron Paul campaign forces people to look to alternative sources of information and it makes them see that the MSM are not impartial journalists covering the news but instead are often in bed with the state one way or the other. Through this people will start to realize that the official versions of events are often quite biased, to say the least. They will start to question what they hear and what they thought they knew more and more. If anything, the MSM and the politicians will go down together.
The switch to alternative media creates opportunities for libertarian bloggers, professors, columnists, economists and TV personalities. They will get more visitors to their own sites and more invitations to speak elsewhere, more air time to get their message heard, thereby in turn exciting more people still. So libertarian theorists will get greater exposure and more job opportunities because of it which helps the whole movement.
Bottom-up and Top-down
Some libertarians oppose Ron Paul’s campaign because they hold that it is immoral or impractical to achieve liberty through top-down political means. Whether or not these views are correct (I think they are not) actually does not matter much because all libertarians can profit from what Ron Paul is doing, by his getting libertarian ideas to the masses and building up a bottom-up grassroots and populist movement.
Ron Paul’s campaign introduces a great number of people to the ideas of liberty, to a viable alternative to the suffocating statism. Because of this people will go look for more information about these ideas and may come into contact with anarcho-capitalism and may be swayed by it while others will, at least initially, not go farther than minarchism. Some will start to work in political action, while others will devote their time and energy and creativity to non-political action such as education, popularizing, convincing others, protests and joining organizations.
The increased publicity and sympathy for said ideas and especially this remarkable grassroots movement will also inspire activist groups such as secessionists and may help those to become more serious and powerful. Should public opinion change enough then people will be more likely to object to a crackdown on a serious secessionist movement. And in case Ron Paul actually becomes president he will have some power to block military intervention or other crackdowns on such a secessionist movement, especially when the people interested in armed revolt team up with the secessionists and help in the defence of the territory should there be a crackdown and possible guerrilla warfare. Once a territory has seceded it can lead by example and other territories will surely follow, especially since the first territory got away with it, thereby imploding the US of A.
So the Ron Paul campaign will likely benefit both theoretical and practical libertarians, both minarchists and anarcho-capitalists, and both libertarians who are using the political process to achieve change and those who are working in bottom-up, non-political movements. All these individuals can go on to campaign for liberty in whatever way they choose and continue to hack away at the state in ever larger numbers and in ever different ways. Likely it is only a combination of bottom-up and top-down action that can successfully bring down the state once and for all.
All that libertarians have to do is tolerate the (non-aggressive) strategies of other libertarians instead of devoting their time and energy to bickering with each other.
While we are of course a long way from achieving liberty in our lifetime, the Ron Paul campaign may prove itself to be the biggest educational lesson in liberty since the fall of the Berlin wall. And libertarians of all stripes can seize the opportunity.
When ideas start to matter, libertarians will win.
WHAT I THINK....JASON RINK
They say Ron Paul is skinny because he won’t let special interests buy him lunch. While this may be true, the grassroots campaign is incredibly fat with the volunteer efforts and contributions from Ron Paul Revolution foot soldiers who are taking the movement to the street. This grassroots movement has sprung up partially due to the fact that Ron Paul’s National Campaign initially had significantly less money than their corporately-funded opponents. However, is it possible that this lack of funds has actually been a blessing in disguise?
Necessity is the mother of invention, and there seems to be no end in sight to the inventions being created on a daily basis by individual Ron Paul supporters. These creations range from professional quality banners, signs, flyers and posters, to eloquently written articles across the web, and in local newspapers. On a micro level, the grassroots campaign efforts are a demonstration of the unregulated, free-market forces that Ron Paul espouses. A simple internet search will reveal a number of websites that are designed, hosted and paid for by individual Ron Paul supporters. These websites contain everything from news articles to video clips to products. Nearly all of this content is created or contributed by individual supporters. Need a t-shirt? Currently, there are dozens of different t-shirt designs produced by independent people. In addition, you can find stamps, buttons, bracelets, commemorative coins and even pizza-delivery-style illuminated car toppers. All of this in response to a huge demand in the marketplace, with innovative Ron Paul supporters rising up to meet it.
There has been no external oversight committee or price controls. There have been no marching orders from a central location. Supply and demand has taken over. The best products are passed along word of mouth through a decentralized web of email addresses and social networking sites. Local Meetups in various parts of the country are all passing out some of the same materials, no prompting necessary. It’s called “emergence.”
It is also an example of the open-source trend that seems to be emerging on the web. Different people from across the country are sharing their creative content for free in many cases. Reproducible files for business cards and banners are posted for download. DVD content is freely distributed for copying.
All of the financial resources and personal effort expended by the “Paulites” has not eroded the National Campaign’s ability to raise funds, either. Though they started with almost nothing when he announced his candidacy, the National Campaign recently raised more money than the entire GOP at the Texas Straw Poll. In San Francisco, Ron Paul spoke at three sold out fundraising events, with $500–$2,000 admission prices. Thousands of dollars were contributed in the Meetup Fundraising Contest held last month. The grassroots effort is contributing money and materials through every avenue available, and it is growing every week.
It has been estimated that the value of the man-hours and energy being put into the campaign on a local level by individual supporters is in excess of $10 million per quarter. This is excluding contributions made directly to the campaign. This catapults Ron Paul’s real campaign war chest into the same stratosphere currently inhabited by only Clinton, Romney and Giuliani. Can anyone say “first-tier candidate?”
The grassroots movement has no written constitution, but has proven to be self-legislating when it comes to handling schisms and in-fighting that has periodically surfaced concerning tangent issues. An unwritten code has been almost unanimously accepted. Focus on the issues that Ron Paul is focusing on. Present Ron Paul’s public position papers and debate responses. Don’t get sidetracked on issues he has not specifically addressed.
The National Campaign has made suggestions and given some guidance to local groups, but there have been very few national conference calls. There has been little “damage control” necessary. It’s as if there are hundreds of sovereign “states” with thousands of individual citizens, and a “federal government” that has exercised a few limited powers, but is otherwise leaving things to the people. Sound familiar?
The truth is that the other candidates wish they could manufacture what is happening organically in the Ron Paul revolution in their own campaigns. They wish they could get thousands of individuals to sacrifice their money and their time, to contribute their creative energy and vision, to get their name out in front of the masses. But they can’t.
The Ron Paul Revolution may end up being one of the great contemporary examples of the free market in action. It promotes personal sovereignty, and keeps power concentrated at the local level. It rewards creativity and excellence, and creates stability and diversity in the marketplace.
Imagine that. The Founding Fathers may have been onto something after all.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and there seems to be no end in sight to the inventions being created on a daily basis by individual Ron Paul supporters. These creations range from professional quality banners, signs, flyers and posters, to eloquently written articles across the web, and in local newspapers. On a micro level, the grassroots campaign efforts are a demonstration of the unregulated, free-market forces that Ron Paul espouses. A simple internet search will reveal a number of websites that are designed, hosted and paid for by individual Ron Paul supporters. These websites contain everything from news articles to video clips to products. Nearly all of this content is created or contributed by individual supporters. Need a t-shirt? Currently, there are dozens of different t-shirt designs produced by independent people. In addition, you can find stamps, buttons, bracelets, commemorative coins and even pizza-delivery-style illuminated car toppers. All of this in response to a huge demand in the marketplace, with innovative Ron Paul supporters rising up to meet it.
There has been no external oversight committee or price controls. There have been no marching orders from a central location. Supply and demand has taken over. The best products are passed along word of mouth through a decentralized web of email addresses and social networking sites. Local Meetups in various parts of the country are all passing out some of the same materials, no prompting necessary. It’s called “emergence.”
It is also an example of the open-source trend that seems to be emerging on the web. Different people from across the country are sharing their creative content for free in many cases. Reproducible files for business cards and banners are posted for download. DVD content is freely distributed for copying.
All of the financial resources and personal effort expended by the “Paulites” has not eroded the National Campaign’s ability to raise funds, either. Though they started with almost nothing when he announced his candidacy, the National Campaign recently raised more money than the entire GOP at the Texas Straw Poll. In San Francisco, Ron Paul spoke at three sold out fundraising events, with $500–$2,000 admission prices. Thousands of dollars were contributed in the Meetup Fundraising Contest held last month. The grassroots effort is contributing money and materials through every avenue available, and it is growing every week.
It has been estimated that the value of the man-hours and energy being put into the campaign on a local level by individual supporters is in excess of $10 million per quarter. This is excluding contributions made directly to the campaign. This catapults Ron Paul’s real campaign war chest into the same stratosphere currently inhabited by only Clinton, Romney and Giuliani. Can anyone say “first-tier candidate?”
The grassroots movement has no written constitution, but has proven to be self-legislating when it comes to handling schisms and in-fighting that has periodically surfaced concerning tangent issues. An unwritten code has been almost unanimously accepted. Focus on the issues that Ron Paul is focusing on. Present Ron Paul’s public position papers and debate responses. Don’t get sidetracked on issues he has not specifically addressed.
The National Campaign has made suggestions and given some guidance to local groups, but there have been very few national conference calls. There has been little “damage control” necessary. It’s as if there are hundreds of sovereign “states” with thousands of individual citizens, and a “federal government” that has exercised a few limited powers, but is otherwise leaving things to the people. Sound familiar?
The truth is that the other candidates wish they could manufacture what is happening organically in the Ron Paul revolution in their own campaigns. They wish they could get thousands of individuals to sacrifice their money and their time, to contribute their creative energy and vision, to get their name out in front of the masses. But they can’t.
The Ron Paul Revolution may end up being one of the great contemporary examples of the free market in action. It promotes personal sovereignty, and keeps power concentrated at the local level. It rewards creativity and excellence, and creates stability and diversity in the marketplace.
Imagine that. The Founding Fathers may have been onto something after all.
WHAT I THINK....DOM ARMENTANO
For those paying any attention, the recent Republican presidential candidate debate in New Hampshire was an eye-opener. No, there were no surprise announcements or gaffs from the so-called front-runners. Romney, Giuliani, and McCain came off predictable and scripted in their replies to questions; yawn, yawn. The real fireworks, instead, came from 10-term congressman Ron Paul who showed up to debate, yes actually debate, U.S. foreign policy.
Unlike the other Republican candidates for president, Paul has always opposed the U.S. war in Iraq. He voted against the war resolution in 2002; he opposes the "surge" and would withdraw ALL U.S. troops immediately from the Arabian peninsula. The other candidates giggled as Representative Paul explained his non-interventionist positions to debate moderator Chris Wallace. Given the frequent audience cheers to Paul's arguments, however, they had best stop giggling and listen up.
The mainstream media has pretty much decided that the "Republican" position on the war is identical to the Bush administration's position: Iraq is a part of the war on terror and the U.S. military must "win" so that Iraq's various factions can establish a viable democracy. Now that's a real cute story, and perhaps all of the Republican big-whigs really believe it; but in my judgment it is emphatically NOT what many rank and file conservative Republicans believe at all. Indeed, my guess is that many rank and file conservatives believe that nation-building is not an appropriate activity for our government and military, that "democracy" there is an impossibility, and that the U.S. occupation in Iraq is a tragic mistake and not worth one more American life.
We need some history here. The Eisenhower/Goldwater/Reagan school of Republican conservatism held that individual liberty was the highest political goal and that the federal government was generally inept at managing the economic and social affairs of society. This is why old fashioned conservatives believed in free enterprise, tax cuts, balanced budgets, and school vouchers, and why they were skeptical about government regulation and interventionism, including and especially foreign military interventionism. Even George W. Bush ran in 2000 on a basically conservative platform but he abandoned the bulk of that platform when the looney neo-conservatives hijacked U.S. foreign policy.
Both Eisenhower and Reagan may have carried a big "stick" but they never fired many shots, never started a foreign war and never attempted to invade and "nation build" an occupied Arab country. Indeed, both were extremely leery of any Middle East military adventure involving U.S. combat troops. When push came to shove in places such as Suez or Beirut, both U.S. Presidents decided (correctly) that a direct long-run military confrontation was ill-advised. After all, protracted wars meant higher taxes, mountains of red-ink federal debt, and a larger "military industrial complex" and these results were impossible to square with basic conservative principles and a minimalist reading of the Constitution.
Ron Paul's chances of becoming President are thin; nonetheless, his candidacy of ideas is a stark reminder that to be a conservative Republican is not necessarily to be "pro-war." As our heavily mortgaged economy slides into recession and as the quagmire in Iraq continues, Paul's "peace and freedom" libertarian supporters may well provide the crucial swing vote in the presidential election of 2008.
Unlike the other Republican candidates for president, Paul has always opposed the U.S. war in Iraq. He voted against the war resolution in 2002; he opposes the "surge" and would withdraw ALL U.S. troops immediately from the Arabian peninsula. The other candidates giggled as Representative Paul explained his non-interventionist positions to debate moderator Chris Wallace. Given the frequent audience cheers to Paul's arguments, however, they had best stop giggling and listen up.
The mainstream media has pretty much decided that the "Republican" position on the war is identical to the Bush administration's position: Iraq is a part of the war on terror and the U.S. military must "win" so that Iraq's various factions can establish a viable democracy. Now that's a real cute story, and perhaps all of the Republican big-whigs really believe it; but in my judgment it is emphatically NOT what many rank and file conservative Republicans believe at all. Indeed, my guess is that many rank and file conservatives believe that nation-building is not an appropriate activity for our government and military, that "democracy" there is an impossibility, and that the U.S. occupation in Iraq is a tragic mistake and not worth one more American life.
We need some history here. The Eisenhower/Goldwater/Reagan school of Republican conservatism held that individual liberty was the highest political goal and that the federal government was generally inept at managing the economic and social affairs of society. This is why old fashioned conservatives believed in free enterprise, tax cuts, balanced budgets, and school vouchers, and why they were skeptical about government regulation and interventionism, including and especially foreign military interventionism. Even George W. Bush ran in 2000 on a basically conservative platform but he abandoned the bulk of that platform when the looney neo-conservatives hijacked U.S. foreign policy.
Both Eisenhower and Reagan may have carried a big "stick" but they never fired many shots, never started a foreign war and never attempted to invade and "nation build" an occupied Arab country. Indeed, both were extremely leery of any Middle East military adventure involving U.S. combat troops. When push came to shove in places such as Suez or Beirut, both U.S. Presidents decided (correctly) that a direct long-run military confrontation was ill-advised. After all, protracted wars meant higher taxes, mountains of red-ink federal debt, and a larger "military industrial complex" and these results were impossible to square with basic conservative principles and a minimalist reading of the Constitution.
Ron Paul's chances of becoming President are thin; nonetheless, his candidacy of ideas is a stark reminder that to be a conservative Republican is not necessarily to be "pro-war." As our heavily mortgaged economy slides into recession and as the quagmire in Iraq continues, Paul's "peace and freedom" libertarian supporters may well provide the crucial swing vote in the presidential election of 2008.
Tuesday
THE SUNLIGHT RULE
Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously said “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Indeed some of the most malignant growth of our government has been nurtured under a cover of darkness.
Literally, in the dark hours of the morning at the end of the year, it has become tradition for the Appropriations committee to rush the famous omnibus bill to the floor for a vote, mere hours after it is introduced. The vote took place at 4 am the last time an omnibus spending bill was before us. We had all of 4 hours to deliberate on almost 1400 pages of important legislation. My colleagues somehow found this acceptable, however, and the bill passed 212-206.
The bill for the Expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was also rushed to the floor with little time to examine the lengthy text of the legislation. If approved by the Senate this measure would increase taxes by an additional $53.8 billion over 5 years and further extend the federal government’s reach into the healthcare of American citizens. Similar processes were followed for raising the minimum wage, providing funding for stem cell research and implementing the 9-11 conference.
Of course, the most well-known example of this phenomenon might be the Patriot Act. Legislators passed the 300+ page bill less than a day after it was introduced, many out of an urgency to do something. But we are sent to Washington to make informed decisions on public policy. The very least constituents expect is that their elected representatives read the legislation citizens will be subject to, and taxed for. And once they have read it, to weigh the constitutionality and the merits of the legislation. How can lawmakers possibly do that without reasonable time allotted?
This has long been a concern of mine, and for this reason I have reintroduced The Sunlight Rule. (H.RES 63) This proposed rule stipulates that no piece of legislation can be brought before the House of Representatives for a vote unless it has been available to members and staff to read for at least ten days. Any amendments must be available for at least 72 hours before a vote. The Sunlight Rule provides the American people the opportunity to be involved in enforcing congressional rules by allowing citizens to move for censure of any Representative who votes for a bill brought to the floor in violation of this act.
So far I have two co-sponsors. It is my belief that this simple new rule could greatly disinfect the House of the creeping, insidious growth, merely by shining the light on legislation before it is voted on. We need time to think before we enact. The American people deserve at least this much from their Congress.
Literally, in the dark hours of the morning at the end of the year, it has become tradition for the Appropriations committee to rush the famous omnibus bill to the floor for a vote, mere hours after it is introduced. The vote took place at 4 am the last time an omnibus spending bill was before us. We had all of 4 hours to deliberate on almost 1400 pages of important legislation. My colleagues somehow found this acceptable, however, and the bill passed 212-206.
The bill for the Expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was also rushed to the floor with little time to examine the lengthy text of the legislation. If approved by the Senate this measure would increase taxes by an additional $53.8 billion over 5 years and further extend the federal government’s reach into the healthcare of American citizens. Similar processes were followed for raising the minimum wage, providing funding for stem cell research and implementing the 9-11 conference.
Of course, the most well-known example of this phenomenon might be the Patriot Act. Legislators passed the 300+ page bill less than a day after it was introduced, many out of an urgency to do something. But we are sent to Washington to make informed decisions on public policy. The very least constituents expect is that their elected representatives read the legislation citizens will be subject to, and taxed for. And once they have read it, to weigh the constitutionality and the merits of the legislation. How can lawmakers possibly do that without reasonable time allotted?
This has long been a concern of mine, and for this reason I have reintroduced The Sunlight Rule. (H.RES 63) This proposed rule stipulates that no piece of legislation can be brought before the House of Representatives for a vote unless it has been available to members and staff to read for at least ten days. Any amendments must be available for at least 72 hours before a vote. The Sunlight Rule provides the American people the opportunity to be involved in enforcing congressional rules by allowing citizens to move for censure of any Representative who votes for a bill brought to the floor in violation of this act.
So far I have two co-sponsors. It is my belief that this simple new rule could greatly disinfect the House of the creeping, insidious growth, merely by shining the light on legislation before it is voted on. We need time to think before we enact. The American people deserve at least this much from their Congress.
Monday
WHAT I THINK....JOHNNY KRAMER
The Ron Paul campaign has the establishment running scared.
For the latest proof, witness the addition to the race of yet another pro-war neocon – Alan Keyes.
Many people find it unsettling to ask questions about the reality of democracy, especially when the answers may contradict the bromides drummed into them for years in their government school civics classes.
But let’s leave aside fundamental questions about the legitimacy of democracy for another day – even though such inquiries are extremely important. For now, let’s assume that democracy in principle is the panacea it’s supposed to be, and examine how it works in the United States in practice.
This may be discomforting for some to consider, but elections are mostly scams perpetrated by the ruling elite to con average, unsophisticated people into thinking that they control the government. This is best evidenced by the farcical presidential elections held every four years, where the establishment fields two interchangeable candidates as your "choice."
It’s not necessarily that vote counts are being rigged (although such fraud undoubtedly occurs in some cases); it’s that, regardless of who receives the most votes, the government is re-elected. Whether the voters chose interchangeable Socialist-Fascist Candidate A or B is mostly irrelevant.
Going back over the last generation, what was the urgent difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry, George W. Bush and Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, or George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis?
In reconsidering these races, don’t look back on them in terms of relatively trivial distractions like gay marriage, stem cell research or medical marijuana; think in terms of fundamental questions about the legitimacy and nature of the state:
For example, by what right does the state presume to tax your income at any level?
Are you still a free person when you have a portion of your income confiscated as the price of making a living? If you believe you are still free now, at what level of (arbitrarily determined – but, of course, not by you) confiscation would you no longer consider yourself to be free?
By what right does the state presume to steal another 15% of your income, supposedly on the assumption that you’re too inept to save for your own retirement?
By what right does the state presume to tell you what you can put in your own body? Does the state have the right to protect you from harming yourself?
If so, should it also prevent you from drinking too much alcohol, smoking cigarettes, eating fast food, or not exercising? If not, why should it try to stop you from ruining your life with heroin, but not with gambling, bourbon or cheeseburgers?
By what right does the state presume to tell you whom you can hire to perform a service for you, through things like licensing laws?
If an unlicensed professional offers cheaper services and can provide evidence to reassure your doubts, what business is it of the state’s?
Etc.
Think back again to the presidential races of the past generation. Based on such fundamental questions, should you have had a preference between either of the two major candidates in those elections – even if you personally choose not to vote or to even endorse the political process or the state? Would your life have been significantly better or worse by any of these fundamental criteria if one candidate had been elected over the other? If so, how? Even if one seemed preferable, did that candidate do what he promised, or not do what he promised not to do?
Even the "lesser of two evils" argument is deceptive. For example, a fairly strong case could’ve been made for a libertarian in 2000 that Bush was at least the lesser of two evils compared to Gore. Many who were aware of third-party candidates Harry Browne, Howard Phillips or Pat Buchanan preferred them, but voted for Bush anyway to keep Gore out of office, and because none of those other candidates had a chance to win.
But look how that turned out – "lesser evil" Bush has enlarged the budget roughly three times faster than did Clinton; has invaded two countries, one of which was clearly a criminal violation of international law, totally based on lies; has enacted the largest increase in entitlement spending since LBJ’s "Great Society"; has shredded civil liberties, including issuing a series of Executive Orders that lay the groundwork for martial law and allow the government to detain American citizens indefinitely without the habeas corpus protection that is a basic right of civilized society going back over 700 years to the Magna Carta, and helping to create a massive, monstrous new federal bureaucracy, all in the name of fighting "terrorism"; and has allowed the real inflation rate to climb as high as 15% on his watch; among other atrocities.
What could Gore have done that would’ve been worse than all of that?
The nature of this farce and the illusion of choice is further evidenced by the fact that third-party candidates who might disrupt the establishment’s script are not allowed into the debates (Perot was invited in 1992 only after he spent enough of his own money to make himself so visible that the establishment was embarrassed into including him. He got 19% of the vote, which is why they didn’t make the same mistake with him in 1996, or with anyone else in 1996 or since) and are crippled from raising, and effectively spending, money through campaign finance and ballot access laws.
Even one year ago, 2008 promised to be yet another farce.
It was obvious on Election Night 2006 that the media had already anointed the "viable" candidates for 2008: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards on the Democrat side; John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney on the Republican side.
While these things can never be certain until the primaries, things appear to have basically gone according to plan on the Democrat side.
Anointed front-runner Hillary Clinton has been polling around 40% all year, likely in large part because the establishment has been pushing her as the "anti-war" alternative against the Republicans, even though she has made it obvious that she intends to keep their Iraq War, and their military-industrial complex, going throughout her term (not to mention the war she intends to make on American citizens through her social programs).
Anointed contenders Obama and Edwards are still in contention, making the foregone conclusion less obvious.
And the establishment even made it look like the voters were controlling things by placing Bill Richardson into that gray area between the anointed "top tier" and the rest, which is a hint at whom they might choose for the other half of the ticket as the vice-presidential candidate.
But, on the Republican side, something odd is happening: No matter how much the establishment media recites the script, the voters keep losing the plot.
The establishment didn’t foresee when they anointed their front-runners in November 2006 that Ron Paul would enter the race.
Dr. Paul noticed the growing disdain for Bush; the fact that none of the anointed front-runners were even attempting fake, libertarian-sounding rhetoric; and the miraculous rise of the Internet and its ability to sidestep the establishment’s gatekeepers. He decided that this might be an opportunity to be a contender, so he reluctantly agreed to pursue a campaign if the grassroots, bottom-up support was there.
To his astonishment (and the establishment’s horror), there was more support for his message than he ever dreamed.
The candidacy of Ron Paul wasn’t in the script. And, as a sitting Congressman running for a major party nomination, the establishment was unable to keep him out of the debates, even though they tried to otherwise ignore him. That, combined with the open gate of the Internet, has made him a real threat to the whole scam.
In Ron Paul, liberty-loving voters – even those who totally reject the state – have a clearly preferable, major party choice: A candidate who is promising to drastically cut spending, end all foreign entanglements, end the theft of inflation, and repeal the income and Social Security taxes, bust the medical cartel, plus much more.
Among the anointed GOP front-runners, McCain crashed and burned, largely due to his stubborn, overt support for continuing – and even escalating – the Iraq debacle. He budgeted his campaign expenses at the beginning of the year based on his plans to raise $100 million this year. His voluntary donations have been nowhere near that, and he was nearly broke at the end of the second quarter. He has even had to resort to accepting federal matching funds to keep his campaign alive. In other words, he’s stealing money from the taxpayers to keep his campaign alive until January, when he can steal even more to pay off his campaign debt. But, as a contender, he’s finished.
That left the establishment scrambling to anoint a new front-runner to head off the Paul threat, when in any other year they could just calmly anoint interchangeable Candidate B.
Rudy Giuliani was chosen in an attempt to further exploit his 9/11 fame and lingering fears about terrorism. While he has polled at 25–30% for most of the year, that’s still a softer lead than Hillary enjoys against her opponents.
Maybe the average person sees through Il Duce for what he is: a fascist low-life who made a career out of ruining the lives of innocent people and who just had the dumb luck of being mayor of New York on 9/11, and who has squeezed every last penny and every last drop of fame from that dumb luck that he possibly could.
A President Giuliani promises to make libertarians pine for the days of Bush.
When Giuliani failed to catch on as well as they’d hoped, the establishment began promoting Mitt Romney harder, the handsome, oily-slick, multi-millionaire former CEO and left-liberal governor of Massachusetts.
As governor, Romney’s dubious "accomplishments" included forcing all of the state’s citizens to obtain health insurance under the penalty of a $2,000 fine; a fine of $295 per employee for any company with 11 or more employees that does not provide their employees with health insurance; raising $560 million by increasing hundreds of fees, including for things like court filings, professional regulations, driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and firearm licenses; and raising other taxes by $309 million.
Somehow, such stellar accomplishments and his phony, used car salesman demeanor failed to translate into much support; on average, Romney is still polling at 10% or less and he has had to loan his campaign over $10 million to keep it afloat.
With their anointed front-runners failing to capture the public’s enthusiastic imagination, the establishment frantically searched for something else they could throw at the wall to see if it would stick.
So they recruited Fred Thompson, former movie and TV star and former Senator from Tennessee. Tall, silver-haired and with a slow, folksy Southern drawl, Thompson entered the race spouting rhetoric about the Constitution, limited government and states’ rights that belies his voting record in the Senate, making it highly likely that he was recruited into the race by the establishment in some sort of back-door deal specifically to head off the growing threat of Ron Paul.
However, despite incessant coverage by the establishment media, his poll numbers, while roughly tied with Il Duce at about 20–25%, are still soft compared to Hillary’s; and his fund-raising totals are rumored to be anemic.
So where can the GOP establishment turn now?
With only four months until the primary season begins, the only possible front-runner who’s not already in the race is Newt Gingrich. He promises to make a decision by next month, but it’s too late for him to build enough momentum and raise enough money now, and his poll numbers have been steadily eroding all year, to about 6% currently.
Besides, what does he have to offer that the other anointed front-runners don’t? He’s another pro-war neocon, and Ron Paul would rip him to shreds in the debates about his miserable failure to enact even the most modest proposals of his "Contract with America" upon taking control of Congress in 1995.
Plus his scandal-ridden personal life doesn’t help, although that’s yet another category in which he can impressively compete with Il Duce.
To show how desperate the establishment is getting, after his second-place showing at the Iowa Straw Poll, which was bolstered by his months of campaigning in Iowa and his latching on to the prominently-represented "Fair Tax" faction, the mainstream media informed the public that Mike Huckabee was now in the "first tier." This despite the fact that Huckabee has little money, little or no visible grassroots support, is still (over a month after Iowa) polling at 3–4%, and has done horribly in every other straw poll. Huckabee isn’t really in the first-tier; he’s in the gray area of lobbying to be chosen for VP, similar to Richardson on the other side. (Even so, Huckabee did best Brownback in Iowa as they were competing for the same pro-war evangelical vote. Now Brownback is toast.)
The desperation over the growing Ron Paul threat was no longer hidden at this month’s Fox News debate, when the establishment moderators and candidates were heard numerous times openly, rudely laughing at Ron Paul’s calm, rational, sensible answers.
Of course, if Ron Paul were really the nut the establishment assures the public he is, they wouldn’t have to laugh or do anything; they could just let Paul speak and expose himself. But they can’t do that, because when Paul exposes himself, it’s as being the best-educated, most honest, most sane person in the race. What we’re seeing is the establishment’s hysterical reaction to someone successfully disrupting their script.
Things got worse for them when, during the debate, Paul successfully goaded "first-tier" Huckabee into a lengthy exchange, much as he had Giuliani in May. And, as he had with Giuliani, Paul clearly got the better of it, as he asked intelligent, specific, relevant questions about the Iraq debacle, such as what its proponents hope to accomplish, how "success" is defined, how much longer it will go on, and at what financial and human cost. Typical of a politician, Huckabee responded with vague, mindless platitudes about "honor."
Of course, the establishment media informed the public that Huckabee made a fool of Paul. When the public, as usual, indicated otherwise by voting Paul the winner of the text-messaging poll, establishment gatekeepers Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes lied about the result, claiming Paul’s (few) supporters were "dialing and re-dialing" to obtain a phony result. Of course, re-dialing in a phone poll from the same phone is impossible. So, unless Paul has only a few supporters who each own thousands of phones, the result was real.
Dr. Paul further exposed the lie a few days later in his campaign journal, when he wrote:
"After the debate, many young people gathered around the stage to discuss our ideas and ask questions about them (and to have me sign their badges). My colleagues got no such response, and after a few moments, ‘security’ ordered me off the stage."
Don’t think the anointed front-runners and their handlers don’t notice things like this.
This embarrassment is likely why Alan Keyes has just entered the race, because Keyes appeals to the same pro-war, neocon Evangelicals as does Huckabee, but Keyes is smarter, better-educated and much better-spoken.
But why would Keyes, a former Harvard roommate of über-neocon Bill Kristol, enter the race, especially this late, when he surely has no campaign money and little chance (or time) to raise any, and when he’s never won even one of the numerous elections in which he’s run, including for president in 1996 and 2000 and for U.S. Senate from Illinois against Obama in 2004?
Very likely, the establishment has decided to replace (or at least augment) Huckabee with Keyes as the prime Evangelical pro-war candidate, because it further muddles the line-up of candidates and because they want to avoid Paul distinguishing himself during any more debates if they can (which, of course, they can’t).
So what’s in it for Keyes? While, of course, he won’t be the nominee, or even the VP nominee, he may have been promised a cabinet post or another ambassadorship. And, even if he hasn’t, even a failed presidential run can be lucrative; it bolsters his celebrity, which he can parlay into speaking fees, book contracts, and possibly talk radio or TV gigs. Besides, a man with an ego the size of Keyes’ can’t resist the attention.
That the establishment is now turning to an also-ran like Keyes to help deflect attention from Ron Paul shows how scared and desperate they are – and it shows they’re about out of options.
What fun!
For the latest proof, witness the addition to the race of yet another pro-war neocon – Alan Keyes.
Many people find it unsettling to ask questions about the reality of democracy, especially when the answers may contradict the bromides drummed into them for years in their government school civics classes.
But let’s leave aside fundamental questions about the legitimacy of democracy for another day – even though such inquiries are extremely important. For now, let’s assume that democracy in principle is the panacea it’s supposed to be, and examine how it works in the United States in practice.
This may be discomforting for some to consider, but elections are mostly scams perpetrated by the ruling elite to con average, unsophisticated people into thinking that they control the government. This is best evidenced by the farcical presidential elections held every four years, where the establishment fields two interchangeable candidates as your "choice."
It’s not necessarily that vote counts are being rigged (although such fraud undoubtedly occurs in some cases); it’s that, regardless of who receives the most votes, the government is re-elected. Whether the voters chose interchangeable Socialist-Fascist Candidate A or B is mostly irrelevant.
Going back over the last generation, what was the urgent difference between George W. Bush and John Kerry, George W. Bush and Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, or George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis?
In reconsidering these races, don’t look back on them in terms of relatively trivial distractions like gay marriage, stem cell research or medical marijuana; think in terms of fundamental questions about the legitimacy and nature of the state:
For example, by what right does the state presume to tax your income at any level?
Are you still a free person when you have a portion of your income confiscated as the price of making a living? If you believe you are still free now, at what level of (arbitrarily determined – but, of course, not by you) confiscation would you no longer consider yourself to be free?
By what right does the state presume to steal another 15% of your income, supposedly on the assumption that you’re too inept to save for your own retirement?
By what right does the state presume to tell you what you can put in your own body? Does the state have the right to protect you from harming yourself?
If so, should it also prevent you from drinking too much alcohol, smoking cigarettes, eating fast food, or not exercising? If not, why should it try to stop you from ruining your life with heroin, but not with gambling, bourbon or cheeseburgers?
By what right does the state presume to tell you whom you can hire to perform a service for you, through things like licensing laws?
If an unlicensed professional offers cheaper services and can provide evidence to reassure your doubts, what business is it of the state’s?
Etc.
Think back again to the presidential races of the past generation. Based on such fundamental questions, should you have had a preference between either of the two major candidates in those elections – even if you personally choose not to vote or to even endorse the political process or the state? Would your life have been significantly better or worse by any of these fundamental criteria if one candidate had been elected over the other? If so, how? Even if one seemed preferable, did that candidate do what he promised, or not do what he promised not to do?
Even the "lesser of two evils" argument is deceptive. For example, a fairly strong case could’ve been made for a libertarian in 2000 that Bush was at least the lesser of two evils compared to Gore. Many who were aware of third-party candidates Harry Browne, Howard Phillips or Pat Buchanan preferred them, but voted for Bush anyway to keep Gore out of office, and because none of those other candidates had a chance to win.
But look how that turned out – "lesser evil" Bush has enlarged the budget roughly three times faster than did Clinton; has invaded two countries, one of which was clearly a criminal violation of international law, totally based on lies; has enacted the largest increase in entitlement spending since LBJ’s "Great Society"; has shredded civil liberties, including issuing a series of Executive Orders that lay the groundwork for martial law and allow the government to detain American citizens indefinitely without the habeas corpus protection that is a basic right of civilized society going back over 700 years to the Magna Carta, and helping to create a massive, monstrous new federal bureaucracy, all in the name of fighting "terrorism"; and has allowed the real inflation rate to climb as high as 15% on his watch; among other atrocities.
What could Gore have done that would’ve been worse than all of that?
The nature of this farce and the illusion of choice is further evidenced by the fact that third-party candidates who might disrupt the establishment’s script are not allowed into the debates (Perot was invited in 1992 only after he spent enough of his own money to make himself so visible that the establishment was embarrassed into including him. He got 19% of the vote, which is why they didn’t make the same mistake with him in 1996, or with anyone else in 1996 or since) and are crippled from raising, and effectively spending, money through campaign finance and ballot access laws.
Even one year ago, 2008 promised to be yet another farce.
It was obvious on Election Night 2006 that the media had already anointed the "viable" candidates for 2008: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards on the Democrat side; John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney on the Republican side.
While these things can never be certain until the primaries, things appear to have basically gone according to plan on the Democrat side.
Anointed front-runner Hillary Clinton has been polling around 40% all year, likely in large part because the establishment has been pushing her as the "anti-war" alternative against the Republicans, even though she has made it obvious that she intends to keep their Iraq War, and their military-industrial complex, going throughout her term (not to mention the war she intends to make on American citizens through her social programs).
Anointed contenders Obama and Edwards are still in contention, making the foregone conclusion less obvious.
And the establishment even made it look like the voters were controlling things by placing Bill Richardson into that gray area between the anointed "top tier" and the rest, which is a hint at whom they might choose for the other half of the ticket as the vice-presidential candidate.
But, on the Republican side, something odd is happening: No matter how much the establishment media recites the script, the voters keep losing the plot.
The establishment didn’t foresee when they anointed their front-runners in November 2006 that Ron Paul would enter the race.
Dr. Paul noticed the growing disdain for Bush; the fact that none of the anointed front-runners were even attempting fake, libertarian-sounding rhetoric; and the miraculous rise of the Internet and its ability to sidestep the establishment’s gatekeepers. He decided that this might be an opportunity to be a contender, so he reluctantly agreed to pursue a campaign if the grassroots, bottom-up support was there.
To his astonishment (and the establishment’s horror), there was more support for his message than he ever dreamed.
The candidacy of Ron Paul wasn’t in the script. And, as a sitting Congressman running for a major party nomination, the establishment was unable to keep him out of the debates, even though they tried to otherwise ignore him. That, combined with the open gate of the Internet, has made him a real threat to the whole scam.
In Ron Paul, liberty-loving voters – even those who totally reject the state – have a clearly preferable, major party choice: A candidate who is promising to drastically cut spending, end all foreign entanglements, end the theft of inflation, and repeal the income and Social Security taxes, bust the medical cartel, plus much more.
Among the anointed GOP front-runners, McCain crashed and burned, largely due to his stubborn, overt support for continuing – and even escalating – the Iraq debacle. He budgeted his campaign expenses at the beginning of the year based on his plans to raise $100 million this year. His voluntary donations have been nowhere near that, and he was nearly broke at the end of the second quarter. He has even had to resort to accepting federal matching funds to keep his campaign alive. In other words, he’s stealing money from the taxpayers to keep his campaign alive until January, when he can steal even more to pay off his campaign debt. But, as a contender, he’s finished.
That left the establishment scrambling to anoint a new front-runner to head off the Paul threat, when in any other year they could just calmly anoint interchangeable Candidate B.
Rudy Giuliani was chosen in an attempt to further exploit his 9/11 fame and lingering fears about terrorism. While he has polled at 25–30% for most of the year, that’s still a softer lead than Hillary enjoys against her opponents.
Maybe the average person sees through Il Duce for what he is: a fascist low-life who made a career out of ruining the lives of innocent people and who just had the dumb luck of being mayor of New York on 9/11, and who has squeezed every last penny and every last drop of fame from that dumb luck that he possibly could.
A President Giuliani promises to make libertarians pine for the days of Bush.
When Giuliani failed to catch on as well as they’d hoped, the establishment began promoting Mitt Romney harder, the handsome, oily-slick, multi-millionaire former CEO and left-liberal governor of Massachusetts.
As governor, Romney’s dubious "accomplishments" included forcing all of the state’s citizens to obtain health insurance under the penalty of a $2,000 fine; a fine of $295 per employee for any company with 11 or more employees that does not provide their employees with health insurance; raising $560 million by increasing hundreds of fees, including for things like court filings, professional regulations, driver's licenses, marriage licenses, and firearm licenses; and raising other taxes by $309 million.
Somehow, such stellar accomplishments and his phony, used car salesman demeanor failed to translate into much support; on average, Romney is still polling at 10% or less and he has had to loan his campaign over $10 million to keep it afloat.
With their anointed front-runners failing to capture the public’s enthusiastic imagination, the establishment frantically searched for something else they could throw at the wall to see if it would stick.
So they recruited Fred Thompson, former movie and TV star and former Senator from Tennessee. Tall, silver-haired and with a slow, folksy Southern drawl, Thompson entered the race spouting rhetoric about the Constitution, limited government and states’ rights that belies his voting record in the Senate, making it highly likely that he was recruited into the race by the establishment in some sort of back-door deal specifically to head off the growing threat of Ron Paul.
However, despite incessant coverage by the establishment media, his poll numbers, while roughly tied with Il Duce at about 20–25%, are still soft compared to Hillary’s; and his fund-raising totals are rumored to be anemic.
So where can the GOP establishment turn now?
With only four months until the primary season begins, the only possible front-runner who’s not already in the race is Newt Gingrich. He promises to make a decision by next month, but it’s too late for him to build enough momentum and raise enough money now, and his poll numbers have been steadily eroding all year, to about 6% currently.
Besides, what does he have to offer that the other anointed front-runners don’t? He’s another pro-war neocon, and Ron Paul would rip him to shreds in the debates about his miserable failure to enact even the most modest proposals of his "Contract with America" upon taking control of Congress in 1995.
Plus his scandal-ridden personal life doesn’t help, although that’s yet another category in which he can impressively compete with Il Duce.
To show how desperate the establishment is getting, after his second-place showing at the Iowa Straw Poll, which was bolstered by his months of campaigning in Iowa and his latching on to the prominently-represented "Fair Tax" faction, the mainstream media informed the public that Mike Huckabee was now in the "first tier." This despite the fact that Huckabee has little money, little or no visible grassroots support, is still (over a month after Iowa) polling at 3–4%, and has done horribly in every other straw poll. Huckabee isn’t really in the first-tier; he’s in the gray area of lobbying to be chosen for VP, similar to Richardson on the other side. (Even so, Huckabee did best Brownback in Iowa as they were competing for the same pro-war evangelical vote. Now Brownback is toast.)
The desperation over the growing Ron Paul threat was no longer hidden at this month’s Fox News debate, when the establishment moderators and candidates were heard numerous times openly, rudely laughing at Ron Paul’s calm, rational, sensible answers.
Of course, if Ron Paul were really the nut the establishment assures the public he is, they wouldn’t have to laugh or do anything; they could just let Paul speak and expose himself. But they can’t do that, because when Paul exposes himself, it’s as being the best-educated, most honest, most sane person in the race. What we’re seeing is the establishment’s hysterical reaction to someone successfully disrupting their script.
Things got worse for them when, during the debate, Paul successfully goaded "first-tier" Huckabee into a lengthy exchange, much as he had Giuliani in May. And, as he had with Giuliani, Paul clearly got the better of it, as he asked intelligent, specific, relevant questions about the Iraq debacle, such as what its proponents hope to accomplish, how "success" is defined, how much longer it will go on, and at what financial and human cost. Typical of a politician, Huckabee responded with vague, mindless platitudes about "honor."
Of course, the establishment media informed the public that Huckabee made a fool of Paul. When the public, as usual, indicated otherwise by voting Paul the winner of the text-messaging poll, establishment gatekeepers Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes lied about the result, claiming Paul’s (few) supporters were "dialing and re-dialing" to obtain a phony result. Of course, re-dialing in a phone poll from the same phone is impossible. So, unless Paul has only a few supporters who each own thousands of phones, the result was real.
Dr. Paul further exposed the lie a few days later in his campaign journal, when he wrote:
"After the debate, many young people gathered around the stage to discuss our ideas and ask questions about them (and to have me sign their badges). My colleagues got no such response, and after a few moments, ‘security’ ordered me off the stage."
Don’t think the anointed front-runners and their handlers don’t notice things like this.
This embarrassment is likely why Alan Keyes has just entered the race, because Keyes appeals to the same pro-war, neocon Evangelicals as does Huckabee, but Keyes is smarter, better-educated and much better-spoken.
But why would Keyes, a former Harvard roommate of über-neocon Bill Kristol, enter the race, especially this late, when he surely has no campaign money and little chance (or time) to raise any, and when he’s never won even one of the numerous elections in which he’s run, including for president in 1996 and 2000 and for U.S. Senate from Illinois against Obama in 2004?
Very likely, the establishment has decided to replace (or at least augment) Huckabee with Keyes as the prime Evangelical pro-war candidate, because it further muddles the line-up of candidates and because they want to avoid Paul distinguishing himself during any more debates if they can (which, of course, they can’t).
So what’s in it for Keyes? While, of course, he won’t be the nominee, or even the VP nominee, he may have been promised a cabinet post or another ambassadorship. And, even if he hasn’t, even a failed presidential run can be lucrative; it bolsters his celebrity, which he can parlay into speaking fees, book contracts, and possibly talk radio or TV gigs. Besides, a man with an ego the size of Keyes’ can’t resist the attention.
That the establishment is now turning to an also-ran like Keyes to help deflect attention from Ron Paul shows how scared and desperate they are – and it shows they’re about out of options.
What fun!
Tuesday
REGULATION, FREE TRADE AND MEXICAN TRUCKS
Another NAFTA nail is about to be hammered into the coffin Washington is building for the US economy. Within the next few days our borders will be opened to the Mexican trucking industry in an unprecedented way. A "pilot" program is starting which will allow trucks from Mexico to haul goods beyond the 25 mile buffer zone to any point in the United States . Officials claim this is being done with utmost oversight, but Americans still have their legitimate concerns. Rather than securing our borders, we seem to be providing more pores for illegal aliens, drug dealers, and terrorists to permeate.
Not only that, but the anti-competitive and burdensome yoke of over-regulation of our industry at home is about to send a lot more Americans to the unemployment lines. The American Trucking industry has been heavily regulated since 1935. The express purpose of The Motor Carrier Act was to eliminate competition through permitting, regulating tariff rates, even approving routes. American trucking companies have been fighting ever since for some relief from the substantial regulatory burdens placed on them. Regulatory compliance is the single most daunting barrier to entry, and eats up huge amounts of profit. Now, to add insult to injury, Mexican trucking companies, not subject to the same onerous standards, will be allowed to roll right in and squeeze American industry further. This will severely undermine the ability of American trucking companies to remain solvent.
The fact that this is being done in the name of free trade is disturbing. Free trade is not complicated, yet NAFTA and CAFTA are comprised of thousands of pages of complicated legal jargon. All free trade really needs is two words: Low tariffs. Free trade does not require coordination with another government to benefit citizens here. Just like domestic businesses don't pay taxes, foreign businesses do not pay tariffs – consumers do, in the form of higher prices. If foreign governments want to hurt their own citizens with protectionist tariffs, let them. But let us set a good example here, and show the world an honest example of true free trade. And let us stop hurting American workers with mountains of red tape in the name of safety. Safety standards should be set privately, by the industry and by the insurance companies who have the correct motivating factors to do so.
Free trade is not the problem, and pseudo free trade is what is being offered in the wrongly named North American Free Trade Agreement and all its offshoots. The problem is a government-managed economy and the burdensome regulation that results. For our economy to remain competitive in the world, we must remember what it is to be truly free. We must lift the regulatory shackles threatening to sink our industries into oblivion. Free trade begins with freedom domestically, and we can't afford to lose that.
Not only that, but the anti-competitive and burdensome yoke of over-regulation of our industry at home is about to send a lot more Americans to the unemployment lines. The American Trucking industry has been heavily regulated since 1935. The express purpose of The Motor Carrier Act was to eliminate competition through permitting, regulating tariff rates, even approving routes. American trucking companies have been fighting ever since for some relief from the substantial regulatory burdens placed on them. Regulatory compliance is the single most daunting barrier to entry, and eats up huge amounts of profit. Now, to add insult to injury, Mexican trucking companies, not subject to the same onerous standards, will be allowed to roll right in and squeeze American industry further. This will severely undermine the ability of American trucking companies to remain solvent.
The fact that this is being done in the name of free trade is disturbing. Free trade is not complicated, yet NAFTA and CAFTA are comprised of thousands of pages of complicated legal jargon. All free trade really needs is two words: Low tariffs. Free trade does not require coordination with another government to benefit citizens here. Just like domestic businesses don't pay taxes, foreign businesses do not pay tariffs – consumers do, in the form of higher prices. If foreign governments want to hurt their own citizens with protectionist tariffs, let them. But let us set a good example here, and show the world an honest example of true free trade. And let us stop hurting American workers with mountains of red tape in the name of safety. Safety standards should be set privately, by the industry and by the insurance companies who have the correct motivating factors to do so.
Free trade is not the problem, and pseudo free trade is what is being offered in the wrongly named North American Free Trade Agreement and all its offshoots. The problem is a government-managed economy and the burdensome regulation that results. For our economy to remain competitive in the world, we must remember what it is to be truly free. We must lift the regulatory shackles threatening to sink our industries into oblivion. Free trade begins with freedom domestically, and we can't afford to lose that.
Monday
RON PAUL WINS....34%
Ron Paul wins another debate for the Republicans in New Hampshire. He came in first with 34% of the vote. The next in line was Giuliani 17% and everyone else was below that.
Wednesday
WHAT I THINK....LOGAN DARROW CLEMENTS
Nothing seems to stop the unrelenting growth of government. Every year spending increases, taxes rise and our freedoms are diminished. Property rights, free enterprise and personal freedom are being wiped out.
Freedom is not a slogan. It's a requirement for human life and prosperity. As humans our mind is our primary tool of survival. To live and thrive we must be allowed to act on the product of our thinking so long as it does not involve initiating force or fraud against others. Likewise, we must be protected against theft whether it is carried out by a criminal or a politician. To take away your property is to take away that portion of your life that gave rise to it.
Free enterprise is the engine of prosperity that turns this thinking into products and industries. It has elevated man from caves to skyscrapers, increased our lifespan and given us flight. Government on the other hand has the unique ability to destroy. It can wipe out your industry with a new tax, it can wipe out your savings with inflation. Each new batch of laws takes a thousand little bites from your freedom like a swarm of piranhas attacking a cow in the Amazon River.
Ron Paul would scale back government more than any other candidate. He'd blast away at the millions of chains that restrain American prosperity the moment he became president. The economy would boom and our economic might would translate directly into military might and security. Mounting an effective defense is extremely expensive whether we are opposing nations or terrorist groups. Only a thriving economy can support such a huge modern military. Look at the former Soviet Union if you need proof of this.
The other Republican candidates are caretakers of the welfare state. They express very little desire to shrink government and many of them have expanded the size and scope of government when they've had the chance. Only Ron Paul promises the revolution that America so urgently needs, the same sort of revolution that got our nation started in the first place.
So I'm not going to let the mainstream media push me into the circular logic of voting for a candidate simply because they are ahead in the polls. The poll leaders are ahead because the MSM decided to give them more attention in the first place. The mainstream media has its own agenda and it definitely does not involve reducing government. I'm throwing out the media darlings and supporting a man who will make America greater than it's ever been before by stomping out the cancer of government. I'm voting for the doctor from Texas, Congressman Ron Paul.
Freedom is not a slogan. It's a requirement for human life and prosperity. As humans our mind is our primary tool of survival. To live and thrive we must be allowed to act on the product of our thinking so long as it does not involve initiating force or fraud against others. Likewise, we must be protected against theft whether it is carried out by a criminal or a politician. To take away your property is to take away that portion of your life that gave rise to it.
Free enterprise is the engine of prosperity that turns this thinking into products and industries. It has elevated man from caves to skyscrapers, increased our lifespan and given us flight. Government on the other hand has the unique ability to destroy. It can wipe out your industry with a new tax, it can wipe out your savings with inflation. Each new batch of laws takes a thousand little bites from your freedom like a swarm of piranhas attacking a cow in the Amazon River.
Ron Paul would scale back government more than any other candidate. He'd blast away at the millions of chains that restrain American prosperity the moment he became president. The economy would boom and our economic might would translate directly into military might and security. Mounting an effective defense is extremely expensive whether we are opposing nations or terrorist groups. Only a thriving economy can support such a huge modern military. Look at the former Soviet Union if you need proof of this.
The other Republican candidates are caretakers of the welfare state. They express very little desire to shrink government and many of them have expanded the size and scope of government when they've had the chance. Only Ron Paul promises the revolution that America so urgently needs, the same sort of revolution that got our nation started in the first place.
So I'm not going to let the mainstream media push me into the circular logic of voting for a candidate simply because they are ahead in the polls. The poll leaders are ahead because the MSM decided to give them more attention in the first place. The mainstream media has its own agenda and it definitely does not involve reducing government. I'm throwing out the media darlings and supporting a man who will make America greater than it's ever been before by stomping out the cancer of government. I'm voting for the doctor from Texas, Congressman Ron Paul.
WHAT I THINK....LILA RAJIVA
What is it about Ron Paul that attracts as many and as diverse a group of people as are repelled?
For a number of people, right and left, it is his consistent opposition to the Iraq war.
It is a good reason. Moral courage allied with wisdom is as much in short supply these days as chastity at a political convention.
For others, it is Paul’s fiscal responsibility.
Dr. No has been pursing his lips at every form of political candy offered by the junk food vendors at the Capital. While many of his colleagues are letting out their belts, the wiry obstetrician is running marathons at 71.
While they keep getting caught in what used to be called "indiscretions," he has been married for fifty years. We would be foolish to judge people by the externals of their lives, for saints and sinners, puritans and bohemians not only cohabit, they frequently snuggle under the same skin. Nonetheless, it’s a relief to have a few people around in politics to remind us that it’s also perfectly all right to live uneventfully, even stodgily.
I say this as someone who has spent a large part of her life among musicians, writers, and now, financial newsletter writers – whose professional lives depend on their eccentricity and even contrariness.
There is however one critical difference between selling financial advice and intellectual nostrums on the one hand and delivering babies on the other – which is what Dr. Paul has done for most of his professional life. The success of obstetrics is pretty easy to ascertain. Either the child breathes and lives – or it doesn’t.
One can’t be a good obstetrician on theory alone. The practice is all.
Check the track record of the average stock tout and you might find nothing but bankruptcy filings and credit card debt. That, of course, will count for little with the tout’s avid customers who would mortgage their four walls and roof for his advice. And toss in their wives as a bonus.
As for the pedant, you wish he’d trip over one of his obtuse, meandering sentences and break his scrawny neck before he stuck it into the real world. But does anyone care? No. His pet theories may have driven the nation into premature recession if not down-right impotence, but the expert will be given not only anInstitute of his very own at some Ivy League, but the whole Earth along with it to run as he wishes.
There, winsome coeds will no doubt ornament every step of his way to a Nobel Prize.
Theory is easy. Any biped with a larynx and functioning synapses can come up with one.
It is practice that separates the goats from the sheep.
And that is the principle reason that the pundits are afraid of that revolution of the people that is the rise of Ron Paul.
Ron Paul wants to put the practice of citizenry back in the hands of citizens and take it away from the theorists.
Oh, the critics will tell you differently. They will tell you that Ron Paul is a theorist himself – and a crack-pot theorist as well. A patron of fringe economics. A gentlemanly loon. Or at least, dangerously far out on the right bank of the mainstream.
Since the mainstream has just finished wrecking a whole country abroad in a manner that Genghis Khan would have been proud of and is busy adding yet another to its sights; and since, in the meantime it’s also managed to find the time to dismantle several centuries worth of legal structure at home, you wonder why anyone would worry about that anyway.
But there you have the sad truth about man. He isn’t much concerned about anything besides how other people think of him. That’s all he thinks about all day long. For that he sweats and schleps, roils and toils. Status. Image. In groups. Out groups. Pariahs. Brahmins. The sum total of it all is – what does the other fellow think of me?
Right or wrong counts for far less. His conscience or soul for nothing at all. If he feels a pang, he swigs gelusil and turns on the hypnotic lights of his TV set.
And why? Because with no real, concrete practical knowledge anywhere between his ears, his skull rings with the lethal chatter of newspaper headlines and talk shows.
The patter of Those Who Know Better.
Hedge-fund managers who promise that all risk can be ironed out of your portfolio and make you pay for the wrinkles that aren’t.
Political scientists who invade a country from their desktops but don’t know how to boot it up again when it crashes.
Hucksters who dream up great stories for their products – and make a punch line out of the patsies who buy them.
We live in an empire run by experts.
But in the empire of experts, the man with horse sense is king.
And Ron Paul has horse sense.
The horse sense of mustangs, not geldings.
The kind of horse sense that bucks and sends you for a toss just when you thought you have everything under control. The horse sense that stops you from thinking about things so far off you couldn't possibly have spotted them – while tripping over things so close by you shouldn't ever have missed them.
The experts would have you believe that they can control your life and the life of entire nations by thinking long enough and hard enough about it. This is a theory so full of holes, it puts Swiss cheese to shame.
Studies have even shown (Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment – How Good Is It? How Can We Know?) that canny laymen do as well as experts when it comes to predicting the future. In fact, many do even better.
But it’s the experts who have broken us in.
The reason is simple. Experts promise us a simple sharp tool to dissect the complexity of the real world. But a dissection that thorough can only be a post-mortem. Cut through the warm body of society that fiercely and you turn it into a cadaver.
Gray is all theory, says Mephistopheles, in Goethe’s Faust. The golden tree of life is green.
We will improve on the devil. Between book covers, theory may be gray – but it is an intricate gossamer of gray – like the tracery in a Gothic cathedral or the mysterious depths of an engraving by Gustave Dore.
We have no quarrel with it. Indeed, we have a weakness for it, as for all rich, superfluous things.
But a map is not a road, and a silhouette is not a human being. The trouble begins when experts begin to take their expertise so seriously that they forfeit their own road sense and their readers'. When they are so neutered by their reasoning that they cannot act – or worse yet, cannot desist from acting. And the trouble grows into disaster when their credulous followers, junkies of every news and TV show, rush behind them like rats behind the Hamelin piper – into every frippery and fad, every financial folly and military madness.
And that is what we have today in our empire of experts.
Worse than any war – which must at some point end – is the ideology that makes for war.
For that can go on forever. That tells us that "whatis" is also "what must be." You see, empires are made for experts as experts are made for empires. Without their theories to hold it up, the flimsy scaffold of government would fall of its own feebleness. And without that scaffold, the little men on top would be cut down to the same size as the rest of us.
And that, my friends, is the real reason why the experts fear Dr. Paul and the people love him.
For a number of people, right and left, it is his consistent opposition to the Iraq war.
It is a good reason. Moral courage allied with wisdom is as much in short supply these days as chastity at a political convention.
For others, it is Paul’s fiscal responsibility.
Dr. No has been pursing his lips at every form of political candy offered by the junk food vendors at the Capital. While many of his colleagues are letting out their belts, the wiry obstetrician is running marathons at 71.
While they keep getting caught in what used to be called "indiscretions," he has been married for fifty years. We would be foolish to judge people by the externals of their lives, for saints and sinners, puritans and bohemians not only cohabit, they frequently snuggle under the same skin. Nonetheless, it’s a relief to have a few people around in politics to remind us that it’s also perfectly all right to live uneventfully, even stodgily.
I say this as someone who has spent a large part of her life among musicians, writers, and now, financial newsletter writers – whose professional lives depend on their eccentricity and even contrariness.
There is however one critical difference between selling financial advice and intellectual nostrums on the one hand and delivering babies on the other – which is what Dr. Paul has done for most of his professional life. The success of obstetrics is pretty easy to ascertain. Either the child breathes and lives – or it doesn’t.
One can’t be a good obstetrician on theory alone. The practice is all.
Check the track record of the average stock tout and you might find nothing but bankruptcy filings and credit card debt. That, of course, will count for little with the tout’s avid customers who would mortgage their four walls and roof for his advice. And toss in their wives as a bonus.
As for the pedant, you wish he’d trip over one of his obtuse, meandering sentences and break his scrawny neck before he stuck it into the real world. But does anyone care? No. His pet theories may have driven the nation into premature recession if not down-right impotence, but the expert will be given not only anInstitute of his very own at some Ivy League, but the whole Earth along with it to run as he wishes.
There, winsome coeds will no doubt ornament every step of his way to a Nobel Prize.
Theory is easy. Any biped with a larynx and functioning synapses can come up with one.
It is practice that separates the goats from the sheep.
And that is the principle reason that the pundits are afraid of that revolution of the people that is the rise of Ron Paul.
Ron Paul wants to put the practice of citizenry back in the hands of citizens and take it away from the theorists.
Oh, the critics will tell you differently. They will tell you that Ron Paul is a theorist himself – and a crack-pot theorist as well. A patron of fringe economics. A gentlemanly loon. Or at least, dangerously far out on the right bank of the mainstream.
Since the mainstream has just finished wrecking a whole country abroad in a manner that Genghis Khan would have been proud of and is busy adding yet another to its sights; and since, in the meantime it’s also managed to find the time to dismantle several centuries worth of legal structure at home, you wonder why anyone would worry about that anyway.
But there you have the sad truth about man. He isn’t much concerned about anything besides how other people think of him. That’s all he thinks about all day long. For that he sweats and schleps, roils and toils. Status. Image. In groups. Out groups. Pariahs. Brahmins. The sum total of it all is – what does the other fellow think of me?
Right or wrong counts for far less. His conscience or soul for nothing at all. If he feels a pang, he swigs gelusil and turns on the hypnotic lights of his TV set.
And why? Because with no real, concrete practical knowledge anywhere between his ears, his skull rings with the lethal chatter of newspaper headlines and talk shows.
The patter of Those Who Know Better.
Hedge-fund managers who promise that all risk can be ironed out of your portfolio and make you pay for the wrinkles that aren’t.
Political scientists who invade a country from their desktops but don’t know how to boot it up again when it crashes.
Hucksters who dream up great stories for their products – and make a punch line out of the patsies who buy them.
We live in an empire run by experts.
But in the empire of experts, the man with horse sense is king.
And Ron Paul has horse sense.
The horse sense of mustangs, not geldings.
The kind of horse sense that bucks and sends you for a toss just when you thought you have everything under control. The horse sense that stops you from thinking about things so far off you couldn't possibly have spotted them – while tripping over things so close by you shouldn't ever have missed them.
The experts would have you believe that they can control your life and the life of entire nations by thinking long enough and hard enough about it. This is a theory so full of holes, it puts Swiss cheese to shame.
Studies have even shown (Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment – How Good Is It? How Can We Know?) that canny laymen do as well as experts when it comes to predicting the future. In fact, many do even better.
But it’s the experts who have broken us in.
The reason is simple. Experts promise us a simple sharp tool to dissect the complexity of the real world. But a dissection that thorough can only be a post-mortem. Cut through the warm body of society that fiercely and you turn it into a cadaver.
Gray is all theory, says Mephistopheles, in Goethe’s Faust. The golden tree of life is green.
We will improve on the devil. Between book covers, theory may be gray – but it is an intricate gossamer of gray – like the tracery in a Gothic cathedral or the mysterious depths of an engraving by Gustave Dore.
We have no quarrel with it. Indeed, we have a weakness for it, as for all rich, superfluous things.
But a map is not a road, and a silhouette is not a human being. The trouble begins when experts begin to take their expertise so seriously that they forfeit their own road sense and their readers'. When they are so neutered by their reasoning that they cannot act – or worse yet, cannot desist from acting. And the trouble grows into disaster when their credulous followers, junkies of every news and TV show, rush behind them like rats behind the Hamelin piper – into every frippery and fad, every financial folly and military madness.
And that is what we have today in our empire of experts.
Worse than any war – which must at some point end – is the ideology that makes for war.
For that can go on forever. That tells us that "whatis" is also "what must be." You see, empires are made for experts as experts are made for empires. Without their theories to hold it up, the flimsy scaffold of government would fall of its own feebleness. And without that scaffold, the little men on top would be cut down to the same size as the rest of us.
And that, my friends, is the real reason why the experts fear Dr. Paul and the people love him.
SURRENDER SHOULD NOT BE AN OPTION
Faced with dwindling support of the Iraq War, the warhawks are redoubling their efforts. They imply we are in Iraq attacking those who attacked us, and yet this is not the case. As we know, Saddam Hussein, though not a particularly savory character, had nothing to do with 9/11. The neo-cons claim surrender should not be an option. In the same breath they claim we were attacked because of our freedoms. Why then, are they so anxious to surrender our freedoms with legislation like the Patriot Act, a repeal of our 4th amendment rights, executive orders, and presidential signing statements? With politicians like these, who needs terrorists? Do they think if we destroy our freedoms for the terrorists they will no longer have a reason to attack us? This seems the epitome of cowardice coming from those who claim a monopoly on patriotic courage.
In any case, we have achieved the goals specified in the initial authorization. Saddam Hussein has been removed. An elected government is now in place in Iraq that meets with US approval. The only weapon of mass destruction in Iraq is our military presence. Why are we still over there? Conventional wisdom would dictate that when the "mission is accomplished", the victor goes home, and that is not considered a retreat.
They claim progress is being made and we are fighting a winnable war, but this is not a view connected with reality. We can't be sure when we kill someone over there if they were truly an insurgent or an innocent Iraqi civilian. There are as many as 650,000 deaths since the war began. The anger we incite by killing innocents creates more new insurgents than our bullets can keep up with. There are no measurable goals to be achieved at this point.
The best congressional leadership can come up with is the concept of strategic redeployment, or moving our troops around, possibly into Saudi Arabia or even, alarmingly enough, into Iran. Rather than ending this war, we could be starting another one.
The American people voted for a humble foreign policy in 2000. They voted for an end to the war in 2006. Instead of recognizing the wisdom and desire of the voters, they are chided as cowards, unwilling to defend themselves. Americans are fiercely willing to defend themselves. However, we have no stomach for indiscriminate bombing in foreign lands when our actual attackers either killed themselves on 9/11 or are still at large somewhere in a country that is neither Iraq nor Iran. Defense of our homeland is one thing. Offensive tactics overseas are quite another. Worse yet, when our newly minted enemies find their way over here, where will our troops be to defend us?
The American people have NOT gotten the government they deserve. They asked for a stronger America and peace through nonintervention, yet we have a government of deceit, inaction and one that puts us in grave danger on the international front. The American People deserve much better than this. They deserve foreign and domestic policy that doesn't require they surrender their liberties.
In any case, we have achieved the goals specified in the initial authorization. Saddam Hussein has been removed. An elected government is now in place in Iraq that meets with US approval. The only weapon of mass destruction in Iraq is our military presence. Why are we still over there? Conventional wisdom would dictate that when the "mission is accomplished", the victor goes home, and that is not considered a retreat.
They claim progress is being made and we are fighting a winnable war, but this is not a view connected with reality. We can't be sure when we kill someone over there if they were truly an insurgent or an innocent Iraqi civilian. There are as many as 650,000 deaths since the war began. The anger we incite by killing innocents creates more new insurgents than our bullets can keep up with. There are no measurable goals to be achieved at this point.
The best congressional leadership can come up with is the concept of strategic redeployment, or moving our troops around, possibly into Saudi Arabia or even, alarmingly enough, into Iran. Rather than ending this war, we could be starting another one.
The American people voted for a humble foreign policy in 2000. They voted for an end to the war in 2006. Instead of recognizing the wisdom and desire of the voters, they are chided as cowards, unwilling to defend themselves. Americans are fiercely willing to defend themselves. However, we have no stomach for indiscriminate bombing in foreign lands when our actual attackers either killed themselves on 9/11 or are still at large somewhere in a country that is neither Iraq nor Iran. Defense of our homeland is one thing. Offensive tactics overseas are quite another. Worse yet, when our newly minted enemies find their way over here, where will our troops be to defend us?
The American people have NOT gotten the government they deserve. They asked for a stronger America and peace through nonintervention, yet we have a government of deceit, inaction and one that puts us in grave danger on the international front. The American People deserve much better than this. They deserve foreign and domestic policy that doesn't require they surrender their liberties.
Monday
TEXAS STRAW VOTE
16.17%
On Saturday the State of Texas was having a straw vote for the Republican Party. Ron Paul didn't fair as well as his last couple of outings. And I am sure people will be quick to point that out.
But get this,in a single night Ron Paul took in more money -$102,000 - than the entire GOP apparatus did with its convoluted “first ever” straw poll - $97,500.
They expected 2,000 to vote, only 1300 reportedly did. Meanwhile, Ron Paul, who finished third in the highly restrictive straw poll, had his most successful fund raiser ever in Texas.
Hmmmm! Still my man...
On Saturday the State of Texas was having a straw vote for the Republican Party. Ron Paul didn't fair as well as his last couple of outings. And I am sure people will be quick to point that out.
But get this,in a single night Ron Paul took in more money -$102,000 - than the entire GOP apparatus did with its convoluted “first ever” straw poll - $97,500.
They expected 2,000 to vote, only 1300 reportedly did. Meanwhile, Ron Paul, who finished third in the highly restrictive straw poll, had his most successful fund raiser ever in Texas.
Hmmmm! Still my man...
Saturday
WHAT I THINK....RICK FISK
The worst rhetorical device used when discussing immigration and border control is the ad hominem, "illegal alien." It is used daily but its absurdity is rarely challenged other than to suggest it is a politically incorrect term.
There is no such thing as a person whose very nature makes him illegal. Nobody is born into a state of illegality.
The U.S. Constitution enumerates the rights we all possess as individuals. It doesn’t grant them nor does it claim to be exhaustive or authoritative on the subject. It is quite specific as to who possess rights; people; persons. In other words, anyone who can fog a mirror has rights.
Geographical location is thus not a barrier to the endowment of one’s rights. We possess rights by virtue of being alive. Merely being alive can never be construed, either morally or logically, to be an illegal act.
An alien is generally defined as a person who is a citizen of another country or state. If you travel from Texas to Arizona, you are an alien there until you have complied with Arizona law on the matter of legal residency. That only means you are entitled to certain privileges such as less-expensive college tuition, a driver’s license issued by the state, etc. It does not mean that you are illegally in the state until such time as you become "legal." A state doesn’t have any legitimate power to deny your rights, but it can deny you certain privileges if you are an alien.
Traveling, without interference by some government official, is a fundamental human right. When I was a kid, you could travel between Mexico and the U.S. and between Canada and the U.S., without any identification. Nobody demanded you produce ID. A trip down to Ensenada or Tijuana was a regular occurrence for my family during the late 60s. Crossing the border was no big deal and that was at the height of the Viet Nam war. But today, we are told that this is no longer possible. The government cannot obey the constitution because that would lead to anarchy. See, if you obey the Supreme Law of the Land, that is anarchy. (Orwell would be so proud).
A border is not a property boundary; it is a demarcation of legal jurisdiction. A person, who crosses a border, has not committed a common law crime. If he hasn’t trespassed, there isn’t a moral or just legal reason to demand he show papers or submit to a search. By making this demand, the government is insuring that those who want to retain their privacy do so by trespassing.
The U.S. Constitution grants no authority to harass people crossing the border unless those crossing are obviously intent on committing harm. The only authority given to congress relating to immigration was to determine what constituted citizenship. Since it is allegedly supposed to protect our rights, it has no legal authority to demand identification or to detain us merely because we cross a border. We celebrate Ellis Island, but we shouldn’t. It was a detainment camp that violated the rights of everyone who entered even if they gladly accepted it. Many people died there unnecessarily.
Now before you get upset with me, I am not asserting that we don’t have an immigration problem. We do, but, the current system is so corrupt, some are considering further ruining the rights of Americans in order to solve the problems created by it. Unfortunately, most of the remedies proposed will either make things worse, or only treat the symptoms.
The issue of illegal immigration is a political minefield. There are many causes and therefore no one solution can resolve them. As Dr. Paul has said on multiple occasions, the first problem that has to be addressed is birthright citizenship. You can’t do that without replacing or amending the 14th amendment with something that repudiates Supreme Court decisions holding that rights are conferred by birthright citizenship.
The 14th amendment is an abomination as was the legal opinion of the Supreme Court that incented its creation. It isn’t terrible because it presumes to tell states that their citizens have rights. It doesn’t do that at all. It is terrible because it legitimizes the milestone Supreme Court decision, Scott v.Sanford. Justice Taney in that decision "discovered" a legal loophole. You see, in spite of the plain words of the constitution, Taney argued that "people" and "persons" really meant "citizen". Since there was no legal decree making people citizens by birth, Dred Scott, who was born in the U.S., had no rights. What Taney meant to say, was that Dred Scot, a black man, was not human.
In a better world, Congress would have impeached all of the Justices who supported that decision. Instead, they proposed an amendment legitimizing the decision though intending to remedy the injustice wrought by the decision. The Dred Scot decision has never been overturned. If you don’t believe me, read US v Verrdugo-Urquidez decided in 1990. The court claimed that "people" is a "term of art" meant to describe citizens. In other words, rights are conferred by citizenship.
To work and to travel internationally, you must prove to authorities that you are a citizen. This renders you guilty until you can prove your innocence. Due to other abominable laws and decisions, you are also forced to pay to educate, feed and care for citizens who are such by consequence rather than allegiance.
Healthcare is the most oft-cited expense lending to bad immigration policy. The charity hospitals, country doctors and house calls of the past are but a memory as are reasonable costs for healthcare. It wasn’t always so expensive. My father made ninety cents an hour in 1962. He had no health insurance and didn’t need it. When I was born, he was able to pay for the entire hospital bill, which included a 3 day stay and a battery of drugs and test, in cash.
By 1990, when I was 28, if you didn’t have insurance, you couldn’t pay for a hospital birth in cash unless you were very well-to-do. Multiply the cost of just one hospital birth today by the tens of thousands per year who come here just to do that, and you have the initial cost of birthright citizenship given to those who have no means.
States have recently sought ways to curtail the cost of illegal immigration. California passed a proposition some years back that was struck down by the Supreme Court. Essentially the court said that privileges can’t be denied anyone, including non-citizens. Too bad the court isn’t as generous with rights.
A law passed in Oklahoma, sponsored by State Senator Randy Terrill, "terminates public assistance benefits to illegals; it empowers state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; and it punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens."
Oklahoma is no longer "O.K." for illegal aliens, Terrill observes. "When you put everything together in context," he contends, "the bottom line is illegal aliens will not come here if there are no jobs waiting for them, they will not stay here if there is no government subsidy, and they certainly won't stay here if they know that if they ever encounter our state and local law enforcement officers, they will be physically detained until they're deported. And that's exactly what House Bill 1804 does."
Now, this may seem like a great idea. It’s certainly working to rid Oklahoma of inherently illegal people. A mass exodus of the work force in Oklahoma is currently taking place in advance of the law taking affect November, 1, 2007. Parts of this law deal with the problem, and parts simply trample on the rights of all people working and living in Oklahoma, not just those considered illegal.
The Oklahoma law legitimizes the idea that it is moral and just to compel a person to show his papers in order to earn a living. It also interferes with business owners and presumes to tell them who they may hire. Lastly, the law gives federal police powers to local authorities. A side effect of this law will be the ruination of Oklahoma’s economy.
The wages for unskilled labor will rise, but so will prices. In order to attract workers, assuming that there are enough people to fill those roles, businesses will have to raise wages and then prices to cover the margin.
But that’s not the worst thing that will happen. The worst is that the legislature of Oklahoma will view the reduction in health and welfare costs to the State as a surplus that they can spend elsewhere. It will not only ruin the economy, but will also expand government.
Dr. Paul hasn’t just offered a solution which seeks to treat a symptom. He has repeatedly pointed out that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy poses a hidden tax on citizens as well as non-citizens; particularly those in the middle and lower income brackets. By devaluing the currency through inflation, immigrants who come here to work can’t afford healthcare and education because the costs are so high. Then again, neither can a large number of us "legal" people.
Healthcare has enjoyed an attack from both monetary policy and government regulations, making anything more than a cold or flu a potentially bankrupting event.
Ron Paul’s proposed solutions to the immigration problem make the most sense. He isn’t suggesting we further encroach on the rights of individual citizens. Immigration is one of the reasons given by some politicians for the necessity of a national ID card but Dr. Paul argues convincingly that it is not needed.
He also hasn’t suggested that we immediately start deporting people. His call to end birthright citizenship and welfare incentives, along with a monetary policy which restores confidence and value to the currency, attacks the root cause of systemic abuse rather than the symptoms. However, this will have to be preceded by a fundamental shift in the view that our rights are granted by virtue of citizenship rather than birth.
If we don’t adopt Ron Paul’s suggestions, and instead adopt the solutions proposed by his challengers, being illegal will be the only option available to us to preserve our own rights and liberties.
There is no such thing as a person whose very nature makes him illegal. Nobody is born into a state of illegality.
The U.S. Constitution enumerates the rights we all possess as individuals. It doesn’t grant them nor does it claim to be exhaustive or authoritative on the subject. It is quite specific as to who possess rights; people; persons. In other words, anyone who can fog a mirror has rights.
Geographical location is thus not a barrier to the endowment of one’s rights. We possess rights by virtue of being alive. Merely being alive can never be construed, either morally or logically, to be an illegal act.
An alien is generally defined as a person who is a citizen of another country or state. If you travel from Texas to Arizona, you are an alien there until you have complied with Arizona law on the matter of legal residency. That only means you are entitled to certain privileges such as less-expensive college tuition, a driver’s license issued by the state, etc. It does not mean that you are illegally in the state until such time as you become "legal." A state doesn’t have any legitimate power to deny your rights, but it can deny you certain privileges if you are an alien.
Traveling, without interference by some government official, is a fundamental human right. When I was a kid, you could travel between Mexico and the U.S. and between Canada and the U.S., without any identification. Nobody demanded you produce ID. A trip down to Ensenada or Tijuana was a regular occurrence for my family during the late 60s. Crossing the border was no big deal and that was at the height of the Viet Nam war. But today, we are told that this is no longer possible. The government cannot obey the constitution because that would lead to anarchy. See, if you obey the Supreme Law of the Land, that is anarchy. (Orwell would be so proud).
A border is not a property boundary; it is a demarcation of legal jurisdiction. A person, who crosses a border, has not committed a common law crime. If he hasn’t trespassed, there isn’t a moral or just legal reason to demand he show papers or submit to a search. By making this demand, the government is insuring that those who want to retain their privacy do so by trespassing.
The U.S. Constitution grants no authority to harass people crossing the border unless those crossing are obviously intent on committing harm. The only authority given to congress relating to immigration was to determine what constituted citizenship. Since it is allegedly supposed to protect our rights, it has no legal authority to demand identification or to detain us merely because we cross a border. We celebrate Ellis Island, but we shouldn’t. It was a detainment camp that violated the rights of everyone who entered even if they gladly accepted it. Many people died there unnecessarily.
Now before you get upset with me, I am not asserting that we don’t have an immigration problem. We do, but, the current system is so corrupt, some are considering further ruining the rights of Americans in order to solve the problems created by it. Unfortunately, most of the remedies proposed will either make things worse, or only treat the symptoms.
The issue of illegal immigration is a political minefield. There are many causes and therefore no one solution can resolve them. As Dr. Paul has said on multiple occasions, the first problem that has to be addressed is birthright citizenship. You can’t do that without replacing or amending the 14th amendment with something that repudiates Supreme Court decisions holding that rights are conferred by birthright citizenship.
The 14th amendment is an abomination as was the legal opinion of the Supreme Court that incented its creation. It isn’t terrible because it presumes to tell states that their citizens have rights. It doesn’t do that at all. It is terrible because it legitimizes the milestone Supreme Court decision, Scott v.Sanford. Justice Taney in that decision "discovered" a legal loophole. You see, in spite of the plain words of the constitution, Taney argued that "people" and "persons" really meant "citizen". Since there was no legal decree making people citizens by birth, Dred Scott, who was born in the U.S., had no rights. What Taney meant to say, was that Dred Scot, a black man, was not human.
In a better world, Congress would have impeached all of the Justices who supported that decision. Instead, they proposed an amendment legitimizing the decision though intending to remedy the injustice wrought by the decision. The Dred Scot decision has never been overturned. If you don’t believe me, read US v Verrdugo-Urquidez decided in 1990. The court claimed that "people" is a "term of art" meant to describe citizens. In other words, rights are conferred by citizenship.
To work and to travel internationally, you must prove to authorities that you are a citizen. This renders you guilty until you can prove your innocence. Due to other abominable laws and decisions, you are also forced to pay to educate, feed and care for citizens who are such by consequence rather than allegiance.
Healthcare is the most oft-cited expense lending to bad immigration policy. The charity hospitals, country doctors and house calls of the past are but a memory as are reasonable costs for healthcare. It wasn’t always so expensive. My father made ninety cents an hour in 1962. He had no health insurance and didn’t need it. When I was born, he was able to pay for the entire hospital bill, which included a 3 day stay and a battery of drugs and test, in cash.
By 1990, when I was 28, if you didn’t have insurance, you couldn’t pay for a hospital birth in cash unless you were very well-to-do. Multiply the cost of just one hospital birth today by the tens of thousands per year who come here just to do that, and you have the initial cost of birthright citizenship given to those who have no means.
States have recently sought ways to curtail the cost of illegal immigration. California passed a proposition some years back that was struck down by the Supreme Court. Essentially the court said that privileges can’t be denied anyone, including non-citizens. Too bad the court isn’t as generous with rights.
A law passed in Oklahoma, sponsored by State Senator Randy Terrill, "terminates public assistance benefits to illegals; it empowers state and local police to enforce federal immigration laws; and it punishes employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens."
Oklahoma is no longer "O.K." for illegal aliens, Terrill observes. "When you put everything together in context," he contends, "the bottom line is illegal aliens will not come here if there are no jobs waiting for them, they will not stay here if there is no government subsidy, and they certainly won't stay here if they know that if they ever encounter our state and local law enforcement officers, they will be physically detained until they're deported. And that's exactly what House Bill 1804 does."
Now, this may seem like a great idea. It’s certainly working to rid Oklahoma of inherently illegal people. A mass exodus of the work force in Oklahoma is currently taking place in advance of the law taking affect November, 1, 2007. Parts of this law deal with the problem, and parts simply trample on the rights of all people working and living in Oklahoma, not just those considered illegal.
The Oklahoma law legitimizes the idea that it is moral and just to compel a person to show his papers in order to earn a living. It also interferes with business owners and presumes to tell them who they may hire. Lastly, the law gives federal police powers to local authorities. A side effect of this law will be the ruination of Oklahoma’s economy.
The wages for unskilled labor will rise, but so will prices. In order to attract workers, assuming that there are enough people to fill those roles, businesses will have to raise wages and then prices to cover the margin.
But that’s not the worst thing that will happen. The worst is that the legislature of Oklahoma will view the reduction in health and welfare costs to the State as a surplus that they can spend elsewhere. It will not only ruin the economy, but will also expand government.
Dr. Paul hasn’t just offered a solution which seeks to treat a symptom. He has repeatedly pointed out that the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy poses a hidden tax on citizens as well as non-citizens; particularly those in the middle and lower income brackets. By devaluing the currency through inflation, immigrants who come here to work can’t afford healthcare and education because the costs are so high. Then again, neither can a large number of us "legal" people.
Healthcare has enjoyed an attack from both monetary policy and government regulations, making anything more than a cold or flu a potentially bankrupting event.
Ron Paul’s proposed solutions to the immigration problem make the most sense. He isn’t suggesting we further encroach on the rights of individual citizens. Immigration is one of the reasons given by some politicians for the necessity of a national ID card but Dr. Paul argues convincingly that it is not needed.
He also hasn’t suggested that we immediately start deporting people. His call to end birthright citizenship and welfare incentives, along with a monetary policy which restores confidence and value to the currency, attacks the root cause of systemic abuse rather than the symptoms. However, this will have to be preceded by a fundamental shift in the view that our rights are granted by virtue of citizenship rather than birth.
If we don’t adopt Ron Paul’s suggestions, and instead adopt the solutions proposed by his challengers, being illegal will be the only option available to us to preserve our own rights and liberties.
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