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Has Ron Paul Quit?
Lally Singh sends us to the inside-the-Beltway blog Wonkette for a quick take on a letter Ron Paul sent to his supporters. In this analysis, Dr. Paul has basically called it quits. "Late Friday night, Dr. Congressman Ron Paul posted a letter to his fans basically saying it's over, but he will continue talking about his message, and plus it would be completely embarrassing for him if he also lost his congressional seat."
I'm an avid Ron Paul supporter, and voted for him in the primaries. That said, reality cannot be ignored or distorted, McCain will be the nominee. Focus should now be reshifted to helping Dr. Paul keep his seat in the House.
Let's learn from our lessons this time around. (Money bombs -can- work, Internet support doesn't necessarily translate to high election numbers, the power of the MSM to shape opinion, etc..) Next time around, if we have another candidate who supports liberty, with a voting record to back it up, we can try again. I may be an old man by then...
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
The "fight on" or the "every primary and caucus and at the convention" part?
You can't take the sky from me...
We still have Obama. Party doesn't really matter anymore.. the country is getting further and further fargone and needs real leadership. McCain (war hero or not - honestly, it's noble but doesn't impress me) and Clinton both represent entrenched politics and more of the same old. Sounds funny, if I can't have Ron Paul, I want Obama.
Yes, libertarianism for how to use a military and conduct some foreign policy and the domestic policy ala new deal. If we had taken the nearly 1 trillion dollars we have currently spent on the war and invested in this country's infrastructure we would not be in so many shit holes at once.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Considering the economic wreckage that "science and empiricism" have delivered to the door, I wouldn't be too proud of traditional economic schools of thought right now. Measuring economic progress by the state of the stock market is a complete bust. The middle class and below are in pretty severe trouble right now. and have been for some time. A doctor's visit that cost $5 when I was a kid (the 60's) is now $90 (18x); fuel is up from 30 cents to three bucks (10x), cars from a few thousand to tens of thousands (10x to 20x and more), houses... houses are insane. In the face of all of this, minimum wage has risen from $1.25 in 1965 to $5.85, an increase of 4.7x altogether.
Maybe it is time for money to be backed by something tangible and valuable, instead of the federal nothing-in-reserve notes we have now, backed only by the printing of nothing-in-reserve notes on the one hand, and the incineration of nothing-in-reserve notes on the other. Maybe it is time for infinitely corrosive tax schemes like the income tax to go away. Maybe it is time we stopped trying to be the world's police presence, and shut down all those foreign bases. Maybe it is time for us to stop borrowing money, pay back our debts, and begin to spend only those monies that we can afford to spend.
Not that anything like this will happen. The US is going to find out what continuing these policies far past where they even appear to be doing any good takes us, because very few people are willing to disturb the status quo.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I submit that the fundamental problem with the United States is excessively concentrated power.
This is played out in both domestic and foreign arenas.
If there are indeed infrastructure problems within a state, why is the state impotent incapable of fixing them, instead relying on federal handouts?
Federal handouts put more layers in between the taxpayer and the civil servants managing the projects.
Thus, the real place to begin the reform is to avoid giving the nearly 1 trillion dollars to the Fed.
This simple logic can then be applied to the vampiric parade of entitlements currently sucking your wallet, and your future, dry.
Or is pointing out the elephant in the room unforgivably unfashionable in these United States?
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Backed by something? Other currencies aren't backed by anything tangible either. That's not the reason the US dollar is crapping out.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The problem is that Republican candidates advocate a limited government, but only when it comes to wealth redistribution. They are perfectly happy to expand domestic surveillance programs, pass laws imposing their moral standards on everyone else (why should marriage definition be a federal issue?), subsiding big corporations of lobbyist buddies and so on. Basically, they want a government good for old, rich white men. I would vote for any Democratic, Republican or independent candidate who would vow to de-escalate federal power in an issue-neutral manner. For starters, apply the famed "strict constructionist" viewpoint to the rule that the feds will only be responsible for foreign policy, enforcement of constitutional rights of citizens and regulating interstate commerce in the most literal and narrow interpretation of settling trade disputes. Let the states define their own criminal codes and extradition agreements and prosecute crimes in jurisdiction(s) where they have occurred. Let some states decline to criminalize prostitution, internet gambling or smoking pot and learn from their own experience if they are willing to live with the consequences. Let liberal-leaning locales create their own universal health care and living wage programs as long as the residents are willing to pay the taxes. Let South Dakota outlaw abortion and teach biology from the Bible and deal with the consequences of most young women and college graduates leaving the state for California.
Until that happens, I would rather have some of the federal budget used on social programs and education than to have all of it be channeled into corporate welfare, unnecessary wars and enforcing personal viewpoints of the politicians.
I was elected to be a delegate on Feb. 5 for my precinct in Colorado, and I plan to go through with representing Ron Paul to the county level March 2 (and then possibly also to the state level on May 31) so that he does not lose any of the projected 42 delegates nationwide he is counting on.
There is one last additional hope to further spread the message this cycle, and that is if Ron Paul can get first place in four states (he has no first place finishes so far, at least according to official tallies), then he will be allowed to speak at the Republican National Convention. And perhaps if that happens, some of the "limited government" planks of pre-2000 Republican party platforms can be reinserted. Not that a Republican president elected in 2008 would honor that, but it would ensure that in the 2012 debates that a small-government candidate can score points by quoting the platform and criticizing the neocons.
Stick Ron Paul's brain inside Obama's head and you'd have a super candidate. It's not insulting Obama's intelligence the man is extremely intelligent but I'm not hearing a lot of reform ideas come from him. They blew off Ron Paul as the funny old guy but if you had Obama saying the same things he'd be the young guy with new fresh ideas. Hillary is a left wing Bush with a brain and McCain wants to win Nam. We need fresh blood but we also need fresh ideas about how to fix this mess.
While I am sure you are right, if "empathy" in politics lead to censorship, war, torture, and injustice -- I think I will stick to Dr. Paul's libertarianism.
If we hadn't spent that 1 trillion dollars on anything, we wouldn't be in debt as badly as we are.
We shouldn't spend money we don't have. Not for infrastructure, not for social programs, not for anything. Any money left over by a budget surplus should go directly to paying down the national debt.
The value of the dollar is almost directly related to the amount of debt we have, so the priority should be lowering said debt, not spending more.
Gone!
I agree with you about party not mattering, but in what universe is Barak Obama a viable alternative to Ron Paul? Politically, they're pretty much polar opposites. You can talk about "leadership" all you want, but I'm not particularly willing to be led by someone who is going in the opposite direction of where I think we should be. "Different" does not always mean "better."
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
It failed because they overspent on their imperialist boondoggle in Afghanistan, just like we're doing in Iraq.
That you even ask the question is surprising to me. Minimum wage sets the floor at which jobs create an earner's ability to interact with the economy. Minimum wage also sets the base cost of anything that requires workers to create, be it product or service. From there, costs and wages go up as skills become scarcer. So minimum wage is a critical issue for both earners and job providers. Furthermore, minimum wage, by setting the earning level for the very lowest earning class of people who actually work within the system, places a hard line that cannot be crossed with regard to what such a worker can obtain within the system. You can't get below it, because you can't be paid less. An hour of labor gets you a minimum of $5.85, period. No less. About ten hours of work gets you one very short, very cursory doctor's appointment. An hour of work gets you about two gallons of gas. And so on. Earlier, you would have gotten more product or service, for less work on your part. This is a direct and concrete measure of economic conditions for the lowest class of earner, which is what I was talking about above.
This is irrelevant; there *is* one and there has been for some time, so we can use it to measure available standards of living at the lowest participating tier at any point during the period which it has been enforced. You want to argue economic issues based on a situation that does not exist. I am simply pointing out the situation that actually *does* exist. My observation is that given the demonstrated effect on earning and buying power that our current economic system has had at the base level, we are going backwards. What one would hope for is that purchasing power would increase, not decrease. It has, however, decreased in real terms, and because of that, I think change is called for.
Minimum wage *is* the actual wage paid for the lowest levels of people participating in the system. It has been since the 1930's or thereabouts. This gives you a direct lever, at the bottom, to relate an hour's work to the purchase of various goods and services. That's what I'm telling you: At the lowest economic level, it took less work to see the doctor in 1965 than it does today. That's going backwards. It took less work in 1965 to buy a house. That's going backwards. It took less hours of work in 1965 to buy a car. That's going backwards. It took less hours of work to buy a gallon of fuel. That's going backwards. It took less hours of work to put your kid through college or trade school. That's going backwards. It took less hours of work to buy heat for your home. That's going backwards. Life is getting more difficult for these people, not less difficult. That's going backwards. It is as plain as the nose on your face if you'll just stop and think about it for a minute.
There are areas in the economy where people get more for their hour of work (electronics is one such instance) but in general, and especially for the basic requirements of day to day life, the ratio of hours worked to products and services obtainable are all going the wrong way.
Proceeding in a course of action(s) that continues to make life more difficult for the lowest levels will eventually result in a situation where life within the systems is perceived as too difficult and people will turn to alternative means of making money; this is where black markets, under-the-counter wages, illegal products and services all gain a foothold in the economy. When working within the system fails to provide people with a tolerable lifestyle, they will look outside the system for relief. And furthermore, they will inevitably find such relief in a society that encourages out of bounds earnings mechanisms with laws that insist upon characterizing all manner of consensual acts as crimes.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Agreed. But that concentration isn't just the federal government; it's the control of the majority of the nation's wealth into the hands of a few.
This concentration isn't something that just happens, it occurs because of government action and policy - it's governments that issue corporate charters, land deeds, and the like.
States vary enormously in their wealth. New Jersey's median household income is $64,169; Mississippi's is $35,261. If all states are part of one nation, if companies in New Jersey want to ship their goods to Mississippi, it's not unreasonable to share that wealth around so that everybody has decent infrastructure.
The big problem with entitlements is medical care. What drives the rising costs? The for-profit medical "care" model.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
WTF?
Obama is not change. He's heavily for the welfare state, won't cut spending, has said he could support Real ID but only voted against it because the states lacked federal funding to implement it, voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act, and continues to fund the war.
He is not a Ron Paul replacement by any measure. He's even #8 on this list:
http://www.judicialwatch.org/judicial-watch-announces-list-washington-s-ten-most-wanted-corrupt-politicians-2007
For what that is worth. I'm sorry, but he sounds a lot like Clinton '92. Vague on specifics, big on "Hope" and "Change" and some call him a "Washington Outsider" (just like the last two president when entering).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVKSfwfy0h8
It's not entitlements that's killing us
Sure they are. Only the entitlements are going to Haliburton, KBR, Blackwater, AT$T, CACI and other companies cooperating in the looting of our treasury and trashing our liberty. The new entitlements are for agencies like DHS that consume more and more resources, inconvenience millions of innocent people, yet don't make us any safer. Conservatives supposedly supported Bush because he believed in small government, but he created a massive and invasive new federal bureaucracy on the fringe of functionality.
We've replaced welfare for the poor with welfare for rich and powerful. We owe those companies billions, we waste billions more on a false sense of security. Where did you think the money was going to come from? You want unlimited government spending but no new taxes. How's that working so far?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
We shouldn't spend money we don't have. Not for infrastructure, not for social programs, not for anything. Any money left over by a budget surplus should go directly to paying down the national debt.
There is nothing wrong with a limited amount of debt. I will leave the Slashdot "philosopher-kings" to sort that one out.
Consider the following example, which basically is my world right now: You owe about $150,000 in a 30-year mortgage at a rate between 6%. Do you pay off the mortgage, or do you invest the money?
If you said pay off the mortgage, you fail.
If you can find an investment that pays more than 6% on average (nothing is guaranteed) you put your extra dollars above and beyond the mortgage payments into that investment. Why?
1) liquidity. Investments are liquid, easy to cash out on a moments' notice the value of your house is not (the sale price and sale time of your house is tied to the market). Plus if you sell your house, you have to spend some of that money for future housing. In the same way, there are certain things the government can spend money on that have a higher return-on-investment than paying off debt.
2) time value of money. If you sock away even a little bit of money each month, over 30 years you have a whole lot of money. If you pay down your house in 15 years and then spend the next 15 years saving, you would have to invest a lot more of you own money to match what you could have had, if you were just investing a little bit since day 1 and paying the default amount on your loan. In the same way, the government setting up infrastructure now is often cheaper and more cost-effective in the long run than waiting to pay off debt.
3) the value of debt. Some loans are cheaper than others. In your mortgage's case, you can use it as a tax writeoff, which effectively lowers the interest rate an additional few percent. There are similar 'features' to the national debt. The value of the dollar is almost directly related to the amount of debt we have
The dollar has only started to drop in very recent history, and we have held a high amount of debt for a long time. It has much more international implications than just the national debt.
Weaker than... what? Vulnerable to... what? Do you think for even one second that if we take our bases out of Germany, Russia will attack us? If we take our bases out of Saudi, you think Iran will build a fleet of transports and invade? If we take our bases out of South Korea, you think North Korea will nuke us? What are you smoking?
Personally, I don't think you know what "weak" and "vulnerable" even mean. Weak means our currency is no longer a world benchmark, vulnerable means we have to borrow to keep our economy from tanking on a regular basis. We are not the world's mommy, and we should stop pretending we are. We can't afford it, and they sure as heck aren't paying us enough to perform the service. You want to keep a forward base in another country? Fine. We can do that. Let me know when they're ready to foot the bill, plus set-up costs up front, and take-down costs in escrow.
In the meantime, we need to be working on achieving a balance of self-reliance and equitable trade.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
You are really missing his point entirely. Stop, stop, stop. Let me try give you a concrete example: I do similar work to my dad. At my age my dad was able to support a family of several kids and buy a reasonable sized house. I live on my own and can only afford a much smaller place.
Look around in the real world - this is a common pattern for just about EVERYONE. THINGS ARE GETTING HARDER. I can see this with my very own eyes, or are you trying to convince me that somehow I indeed have it 'better' than my folks? You have to work much harder/longer to be able to afford the same amount of 'stuff'. Also in the older days usually only the male worked, now it takes two working professionals as a couple to be able to get a similar amount of household wealth. We get less "wealth" for the same amount of work, when intuitively it should be the opposite due to leaps in technology.
3rd world countries are complete irrelevant to this, unless you're suggesting that somehow that is where my wealth is going now.
NO! We have a decent economy and a great nation because we don't subscribe to any one idiot's "master plan"! We absolutely need a society where everyone has a say. The Soviet Union, communist China, Nazi Germany -- pure systems, all which were doomed to failure from the start. Communism, in particular, cannot work and never will, no matter how nice and wholesome people are, because it's a horribly broken system that throws away all the important resource-allocation information. America's strength has always been that we are suspicious of anyone who thinks they have all the answers.
I know it's popular to go on about how America is going down the tubes, but there just isn't much truth to it. So we're having a recession? Big deal. No economist seriously believes that it's possible to have an economy that doesn't go through recessions. I'm sorry, but you are completely wrong -- we need a proper national dialogue among people with different views, and the problems we face today will all be solved in their own different ways (some with government programs, some with the free market, some with a hybrid of the two).
Since this is Slashdot, it's time for a systems design analogy: it's a huge mistake to believe that a system should be completely centralized on one giant mainframe, just as much as it's a mistake to think that it should be completely distributed to individual PCs. Both systems seem to have a kind of elegant beauty, and both systems are completely unworkable.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
This isn't insightful in the slightest. It's just another rich get richer, poor get poorer argument. Without those "social programs", poor people have exactly zero chance of ever getting back on their feet, and rich people get more money. And education? Well, we can see how affordable that is when left to the private sector. No, leaving everything to the private sector is a very bad idea.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
You're assuming that all corporations are equal. They may all be equally greedy. They may all be equally unethical. However, the GP is talking about channeling money to corporations that educate people as opposed to channeling money to corporations that kill people. Do you truly believe that both are equally offensive?
I agree that the government *should* have as little money as possible, but I'd be much more comfortable living in a country that pissed away my money inefficiently trying to help people rather than pissing my money away efficiently killing people and reducing my civil liberties.
His decision seems fairly logical to me when the main goal of an on the ground campaign is to get out the vote and most of the elections are over (there are still some late caucuses left though) that he should lean up his machine (less votes to get out).
Bah, people say that the media was totally fair with Dr. Paul. These people weren't paying attention. When the media did cover him, they only questions they asked him were whether or not he planned to run as a third party candidate or to paint him as a racist. Of course when the chairman of the NAACP refuted the claim that Dr. Paul was a racist, you didn't see that on the news.
I am just disgusted with this whole political process. You have both parties that are leading us down the path of a corporatist/fascist police state and the one man who calls a duck a duck is the crazy whacko. The one candidate who won't take corporate donations and he is called nuts and un-viable. Guess who are the ones calling him not-viable...the ones he won't take donations from...but whatever.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Your post just shows how well the propoganda swinging this country into a corporate fascism dominated by what is essentially nobility while the rest of us are forced to work as wages slaves.
Ron Paul is not a wackjob- he is a man of principles- some of which would be very good for the long term health of our country.
We are currently riding down to national collapse and at this point, everyone has given up trying to save the country and is just looting it as best as they can for their personal benefit.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Wait a minute, you're worried about corporate fascism and wage slaves, but you're supporting the guy who has sponsored bills to remove all regulation from corporations? Everything from the minimum wage to worker safety laws to anti-trust law? Explain to me how that makes sense. I don't get it.