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Ron Paul Suggests Axing 5 U.S. Federal Departments (and Budgets)
sciencehabit writes with this selection from Science: "Presidential hopeful Ron Paul's new proposal to slash federal spending would wipe out large chunks of the government's research portfolio. The congressman from Texas and Republican candidate has unveiled a budget plan to reduce the deficit that would eliminate five federal departments: Energy, Commerce, Interior, Education, and Housing and Urban Development. In one fell swoop, such a step would erase, among other programs, the Energy Department's $5-billion Office of Science, the $4.5-billion National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the $750-million National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the $1.1-billion U.S. Geological Survey."
I like his IRS plan!
Debt.
if folks don't know anything, it can't hurt them, right?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
What a man,
Watch this Heartland Institute video
No more energy research, no more parks, no more public education, no more low income housing, no more roads & bridges. What a grand utopia he has planned for us.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
EOM
Getting rid of the BATFE and the TSA instead?
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
"For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple--and wrong."
--H.L. Mencken
warnings about hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis.
That if this happened, after the next earthquake or hurricane demolishes a few large metropolitan areas people would be wondering why we had no warning.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
There are many niches in several huge departments that need saved. I suspect that Ron Paul would agree with that. Roll these few small portions over into some other existing department that has some constitutional basis for existing and let it be managed from there without the entire overhead of a full department structure. Return control of all the rest to the states where they belong. If individual states feel the services were worth it, they can create their own departments (if they don't already exist) and hire the federal workers. Perhaps some federal workers can be hired into existing state departments. If they have no constitutional basis for existing at the federal level - GET RID OF THEM.
Ron Paul is about less government, so he is realigning money from the government to... I'm not sure, health care?
He is assuming the slack will be picked up by corporate America and independent agencies, or perhaps he wants to offer research grants later?
Either way, not enough information in the article to make an educated opinion on his stance besides it makes him sound like a moron, but it may not be as straight forward as that when you factor in everything. I'd also be interested in seeing department benchmarks to see if these departments are performing as they should, ex. for the longest time NASA was not.
Doesn't the DOE spend a good deal of its time dealing with nukes?
Isn't that kind of important? Even to libertarians?
Yeah, that 1% really does a whole lot.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
We should all have trouble sleeping knowing that a trillion dollars in budget cuts won't eliminate the deficit.
The Department of Energy manages the nation's power supplies, the Department of Commerce collects taxes, the Interior governs our damn national parks and the immense stretches of government-owned land along with all our environmental efforts, the Department of Education mandates school curriculum and is perhaps the only way social mobility even exists, let alone educated poor (free lunches etc.), weather forecasting would be impossible without NOAA, and neither would our current understanding of climate change, without NIST our clocks wouldn't run on time and our industry would not have any baseline standards, and without the USGS, well, we'd have no idea what our natural resources look like--or our flood risk, earthquake data, and so on.
Without government spending a great many things that people take for granted would disappear and the world would become a much more unpleasant place.
Not the departments I would choose necessarily but this is the type of thinking I am on board with. As a states rights individual, I believe that the best way to serve our interests is to make massive cuts in the form of getting rid of Administrative service departments that are not necessary anymore.
CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
is a nutjob.
I had a long dissertation thought out, but man, this shit just boggles my mind. NOAA? Is he kidding? I'm sure all of you remember (probably not, but I'm giving the benefit of the doubt) the fact that he said that "Hurr, Galveston didn't have anyone to bail them out during their hurricane" totally forgetting how many people /died/ because of no hurricane warning and forecasting.
The next time there's a hurricane coming up Galveston Bay, I want Ron Paul to be out in the middle of it. Outside. Naked.
--
BMO
"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch"
If you as an individual value these departments so greatly, you should ask who to make the check out to. Just don't ask me to split the bill, I brought my own lunch.
I like Ron Paul's stance on many things, bringing the troops home, non-interventionalism and auditing/ending the fed. I am wondering though if he cuts these departments if aspects of these programs might be allocated somewhere else? I am pro science, but I am also pro balanced budget, less government intrusion and stopping the government overextension. Ron Paul is also unlike any of the other candidates in that he explains himself instead of parroting buzz words and playing to the public's emotions.
How about getting rid of TSA, DHS, and cutting the military spending budget by something meaningful?
For the record, the hole was dug by that bloody moron called GWB
.. as long as he doesn't cut the military budget.
We'll need the army when the american people revolt and martial law is instituted.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Ron Paul is god dammed retard!!!
*No base closures*? You mean, except all of our overseas bases? With all those troops home, we're probably going to need all the bases we have open right now in the Continental US.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
The US needs a nuclear weapons program. We need border patrol. We need specialized regulatory and enforcement agencies like FCC. Pretending that all these programs are optional to anybody, even the most retrograde conservative, is just empty posturing and shameless pandering to ideologically driven morons.
This sounds like some over the top plan a'la Ross Perot, but in reality there is no way something like this would happen. This wholesale closure would be nixed by Congress, but a moderated plan to review and reduce needless functions would make perfect sense.
NOAA and NIST have huge headquarters in Boulder, Co. Cutting these departments would affect Boulder in a *huge* way - much like GE's pull-out of Michael Moore's home town devastated that town.
Jeez. Because deregulating the financial sector has worked soooooo very well.
He also brings home the troops and ends the empire abroad. That saves nearly a trillion. Per year.
Ron Paul is putting out something that might start to make a dent in looming disaster that is the budget.
Please look for your self and see how long until the amount of interest due on the debt is larger than what the government collects.
All the other politicians are fiddling while Rome Burns.
Ron Paul seems like an intelligent, thoughtful man. Let's avoid a knee-jerk reaction to this "news". Maybe he has an idea to continue providing the core public services of these departments while cutting bureaucratic complexity. I don't think there's enough information here. Then again, it's a lot more fun to get indignant!
How about laying off all the mercenaries? It's not like they have tenure, is it?
The Federal Government has a constitutional mandate to regulate interstate and international commerce. But hey, fuck that right? Pass me a heroine needle and that copy of Atlas Shrugged, it's Ron Paul's world now.
-GiH
Does that apply to software too? The only good software is produced by the private sector?
This just doesn't hold water. There are some things that the private sector does well. Regulate itself is not one of them. Anything that is not immediately (or ever) profitable in and of itself is also something the private sector sucks at.
In the private sector short term profitability is often the only thing that matters and there are so many things for which this is the completely wrong approach.
> What private corporation is going to do what the US Geological Survey does?
Which is what, exactly?
In terms of mapping rocks and whatnot, there are great incentives for energy and mineral companies to perform this kind of research internally.
On earthquake research, there are a number of universities (many of which claim to be privately funded/endowed) that compete with each other on prestige that would likely continue this research.
It's nice to have a federal agency with a nice web site, but at some point in the past we may have hit a point of diminishing returns on additional spend here.
Yeah, that 1% really does a whole lot.
I know this is /. but the article does state that eliminating this spending is part of a trillion dollars in cuts in his first year. Five departments would be eliminated entirely while several more would be greatly reduced in size. So, yeah, twelve billion isn't a lot, but a thousand billion is.
Life is short; think quickly.
The Feds have duplicated many functions of the states - education, health, research and many other things do not belong in the federal government.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
* I see he's not touching the Dept of Agriculture. Too many farmers on the gov't dole vote, I guess.
Have gnu, will travel.
Not everything in all the departments would be eliminated. Some would be moved to other departments.
t
1) Gov't Research reaps massive returns on growth, which spurs gov't income through growth (rather than higher taxes). Look at the moon mission, indirectly responsible for everything from plastic to palm-top computing. 2) For gov't institutions to be efficient they need to be run by talented and reasonably motivated people. Shitting on gov't as wasteful and "the problem" every two years in order to gin up bullshit and votes -- not a winning governance strategy.
-GiH
This is about as newsworthy as Ron Paul declaring that he plans to remodel my kitchen. Barring a long series of astronomically unlikely events, he's not going to get anywhere close to having the authority to do so. Providing passing entertainment on Slashdot during a slow news day may well be his high water mark.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
His defence cuts were main reason I was thinking of supporting him.
So you didn't support him. No surprise then that his actions don't reflect your viewpoint.
Also, the political world is more about what you can do than about empty posturing. I think even this fairly limited proposal is going to fail hard.
Yeah ok, Ron Paul's ideas are a little crazy, but he's the only one who seems serious about dealing with our impending financial doom. He's also the only one who really gives a damn about freedom, fairness, and transparency.
Please - give him one term. Let him trim the federal government - you can always build it back up in a few years. Think of it as a giant refactoring project.
Right now we've got an immensely complicated federal government. It's beyond the comprehension of an average American. If they can't comprehend it, they can't make wise decisions as voters. Let's tear it down so we can build it back up with the lessons we've learned.
We've got the Microsoft Windows of government - slow, poorly designed, with duplicate features - many of which you don't want, and prone to spectacular failure when you need it most. It's inner workings are opaque and it's behavior is oftentimes hard to anticipate.
We need a Unix-like government: efficient, fast, responsive, cleanly designed, compartmentalized, and well documented. People need to feel like they can participate and have a voice, because when you don't have that people end up rioting in the streets.
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
The hole was always there. GWB took a shovel and made it deeper. BHO threw out the shovel and brought in a backhoe.
Apologize all you want for BHO, but he has put us more in debt then GWB did. And all the additional debt has shit for the economy.
Total debt is 10 trillion around, structural debt is around 1 trillion a year and he wants to cut very necessary services for a total of 11.35 billion dollars in savings.
His proposals total to $1 trillion a year; not $11.35 billion.
For the record, the hole was dug by that bloody moron called GWB
Wow, that bloody moron has been alive for over 150 years.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Because private industry has been cutting back on R&D for the past 30 years and shipping it off to China.
And don't even ask about basic science. There's no "profit motive" in it. Corporations don't do any worthwhile basic science. Not biology, not atmospheric, geological, astronomical, or even math. It's all applied science, with the goal of getting a profit next, or better "this quarter." Basic science is too long-range to be even considered.
All you libertarians are goddamn know-nothings and penny wise/pound foolish niggards that cheered when Sarah Palin decried fruit fly research (it's really about genetics, but whatever). I do /not/ want to live in your fantasy world.
--
BMO
Try depending strictly on yourself and entirely corporate-provided goods for a month. Ignoring the fact that you're able to breathe the air without taking in a lethal dose of toxic fumes, I think you'll find it very expensive to get goods shipped to you without using government-built and maintained transportation services. You death would be swift too. Make no mistake.
Insert self-referential sig here.
That's the thing about Ron Paul. He makes a few good points once in a while, but he's such an extremist that he just wants to wildly slash everything in government with a machete. That's not the solution to anything. Most of the organizations he wants to destroy actually do good things and serve important roles, but may need to simply be restructured to better serve those roles instead of just throwing money at them in their current form. And that's not to mention the literally thousands of jobs he would be cutting to serve his agenda.
Ron Paul's mind is still a hundred years in the past. He's regularly citing things from far back in the country's history. Things that worked back then won't work today. Society's complexities and modernizations require some degree of management or oversight. Paul doesn't see that because all he can see is the fantasy of small government he envisions of yesteryear.
The USA isn't a western. Let's stop trying to treat it like one.
I get it, they are reporting what they want to see kept (I want to see them kept too). They are a drop in the bucket compared to the 1 Trillion dollar the plan cuts.
Or in the plans on words:
"Cuts $1 trillion in spending during the first year of Ron Paul’s presidency, eliminating five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education), abolishing the Transportation Security Administration and returning responsibility for security to private property owners, abolishing corporate subsidies, stopping foreign aid, ending foreign wars, and returning most other spending to 2006 levels."
"Makes a 10% reduction in the federal workforce, slashes Congressional pay and perks, and curbs excessive federal travel. To stand with the American People, President Paul will take a salary of $39,336, approximately equal to the median personal income of the American worker. "
He also goes to lower taxes which I don't like, which he can actually "afford" in his plan. The plan is certainly not what I would want, but it's the first serious plan I've seen from the Right in a long time.
Read more. http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/
While these departments probably do need to be scaled back, this is not the way to solve the deficit/debt issues.
Current US budget deficit is about $1,500 billion
Total cuts proposed: 11.4 billion
That's only a reduction of a very small fraction of 1%. Absolutely negligible. It's about as effective as going to a regional flood, taking away a bucket of water and saying "there, I fixed it."
The military budget hovers around $700 billion. Reigning in the military so they are once again simply charged with protecting the continental United States from foreign attack and shrinking the budget appropriately (lets say 30%) would be immensely more functional as a remedy at about $220 billion in savings.
Healthcare totals about $1,600 billion in the federal budget. Get tort reform and mal-practice sorted out, reign in the absurd salaries that hospital executives can make and you can cut 30% out of healthcare as well for another $480 billion in savings.
Lets see, I'm up to $700 billion, half the deficit already.
Eliminate the Federal Reserve Bank system, go back on the gold standard and you eliminate another $200 billion in interest payments the governments pays just to have dollars in circulation. Not an easy task, I know.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Just cut out all the security before the flight and issue a taser to each passenger over the age of 18.
Ah, I too long for the days of Clinton. If only he could come back and we could recommence the internet bubble.
Clinton is a good example of hands off government because the dems couldn't get anything passed and then the Republicans took over and nothing got done.
This isn't good leadership (by either part). It is what happens when the country gets left alone.
The government doesn't make jobs, it doesn't stoke the economy. It can put barriers (regulations) in place or move money from the most successul to less successful endeavors.
t
That should solve our unemployment problem right there.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I suggest you read his whole plan to cut $1 Trillion
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203658804576637633052916922.html
You do realize, right, that all those private companies who are "more apt at the weather stuff" are doing it based on... weather data that they get for free from NOAA, right? Jesus, I wish the "seasteading" movement would get going, so we could export all our libertarians.
one world government
you mean the corporations ?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Why are we paying for a Federal Department of Education when we are already paying for a Department of Education?
Pretending this is my office full of bitter coworkers..
You do realize that the USG pays almost 0 interest right?
I would have thought that even in a loosely-knit group of states like the USA, you'd want to have some standardization of weights and measures.
The amount of work and planning that would go into closing those 5 departments, their assets, and signed federal contracts under those departments, would most assuredly increase costs for that first year.
For the record, the hole was dug when we left the gold standard. Political affiliation has squat all dick to do with the debt problem. We'll just ignore the fact that the executive branch can't spend money.... Who cares about that whole pesky constituion thing...
Ron Paul is on the right track. Unfortunately, I don't see any chance he'll get elected. The U.S. is like an alcoholic that hasn't hit bottom yet. We're going to have to go through a lot more pain before we're ready for rehab.
Yes, this post is redundant. But I'm compelled to say, this dude is fucking crazy. No need to go into details.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Because private industry has been cutting back on R&D for the past 30 years and shipping it off to China.
And don't even ask about basic science. There's no "profit motive" in it. Corporations don't do any worthwhile basic science. Not biology, not atmospheric, geological, astronomical, or even math. It's all applied science, with the goal of getting a profit next, or better "this quarter." Basic science is too long-range to be even considered.
All you libertarians are goddamn know-nothings and penny wise/pound foolish niggards that cheered when Sarah Palin decried fruit fly research (it's really about genetics, but whatever). I do /not/ want to live in your fantasy world.
-- BMO
There are other alternatives to Federal spending then private spending. How about city spending? How about state spending? Why does the Federal government have to be the one doing all the spending?
And watch how fast our enemies invade us. Great plan!
Ahem. "The Congress shall have Power To..." is authority, not a mandate. The Congress can choose not to exercise its power in a given area if it wishes. In fact, in some circumstances, the fact that Congress has chosen not to legislate may itself be considered a form of regulation, and not subject to further regulation by the states.
"Make it ten--I am only a poor corrupt official."
--Captain Louis Renault (Claude Rains), Casablanca
Tell me, what exactly does the Department of Education do? I've been a college professor at a public school for 13 years, and I don't have a clue. I'd love my state to keep all it's education money instead of sending it to DC to be squandered.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
Ron paul's economic ideas are head-crushingly, fucking stupid.
There is no practical acknowledgement of the role of government in his world-view. He's one of those fucking crazy idiots who thinks that economies magically regulate themselves. We've got 30 years of history demonstrating that he and all libertarian fetishists are DEAD WRONG regarding that subject.
Why the fuck is anyone listening to this doddering old fool?
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Was that his budget plan? Or his jobs plan? How many employees is that anyways? Well, not counting the follow-on jobs created by their activities, and only looking at their direct employees:
Energy: 116,000
Commerce: 44,000
Interior: 70,000
Education: 5,000
HUD: 11,000
So not even counting the economic impact of ceasing their activities, or the cost of dismantling those departments and paying off their workers contracts (or, of course the humanitarian and societal effects of the loss of their activities - but this is Ron Paul we're talking about, so I assumed we would ignore those) he's cost the country a quarter of a million jobs before he could even take office.
I'm not saying all of those activities or jobs are necessarily justified, I'm just saying that they exist; you can't wave your hand and make them go away and pretend that that won't have an effect on the country.
is advocating closing the majority for our foreign bases (ie, Japan, Korea).
I'm sure that's a plan China would support.
Don't forget Taiwan, either. They won't.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
We should eliminate the Police Departments, Fire Departments, close all penitentiaries, and remove all restrictions on the purchase of firearms. If there are no restrictions protecting the poor, the middle class, or future generations not destined to receive a trust fund, we should not be forced to pay taxes in any shape or form. If the wealthy do not want our taxes to be used to protect us, do not want to pay taxes themselves, and do not want to protect the world we live in, why should we fund institutions to protect them?
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
At my private school, 98% of the students went on to college, and I can assure the scores were a helluva lot higher than public schools. Maybe you mean charter schools?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
...I would support elimination of DOE. DOE does a random collection of stuff. One of the things it does is support physics research, which is what I was doing -- it sort of plays the same role as NSF does in the life sciences. The thing that most non-scientists don't understand about science is that the vast majority of scientific papers are both (a) correct and (b) utterly unimportant. Researchers get tenure or permanent jobs by publishing as many papers as possible. Quality matters, but quantity is also mandatory. Because DOE does so many different things, I can't comment from personal experience on all of them, but I would be 100% in favor of closing the DOE lab (Argonne National Lab) where I worked. It would have absolutely no impact on the amount of important new scientific discoveries coming out, only on the number of scientific papers coming out. There is really sort of a conservation law at work in science. At any given time iin history, scientific techniques are capable of doing certain things, and people will use those techniques to do the obvious, important things. If you hire ten times more scientists, they'll just continue using that technique to do more of the same.
I currently work in education, and I would say ditto for the department of education. I teach at a community college, and we get 100% of our funding from state and local taxes. Education is not a traditional or proper field for the federal government to be involved in. The federal government does fund research at universities, but that's not education, it's research. (Yes, the two do overlap, but only partially.) If we ever needed a demonstration of what can go wrong when the feds get involved in education, NCLB was it.
Find free books.
The Constitution says that Congress shall have power to regulate interstate and international commerce. It does not say anything about the President (the Commerce Department functions subordinate to the President) regulating commerce.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Because if we left it up to Tennessee, there would be an ORNL.
You are delusional.
--
BMO
will you still eat?
Just because Uncle Sam isn't doing something doesn't mean that is can't/won't be done.
I imagine the States that are threatened by those things are more than capable of paying for the warning systems out of their own budgets.
Some of the people here remind me of my children when they were very little. If they couldn't find the remote they thought they couldn't watch TV. It's like the concept of getting up and walking across the room to change the channel was so foreign to them they couldn't wrap their minds around it.
But he is flat wrong here.
All of these cabinet level departments deal with interstate issues and so are the responsibility of the Federal Government.
No more energy research, no more parks, no more public education, no more low income housing, no more roads & bridges. What a grand utopia he has planned for us.
I'm not a Paul supporter... his foriegn policy views have too much Truther nuttiness to them... but what makes you think eliminating these agencies would get rid of all of what you listed? Has it ever occured to you that much of this could still be done by consolidating the work of some of these departments in other agencies? Why couldn't we move things like geographic surveys to the Department of the Interior? Why do we have to have a seperate agency for that? It just adds another level of bueacracy, and thus cost. Why would eliminating the Department of Education kill public schools? Didn't they exist for over a hundred years before we had a department of education? Aren't public schools run at the state and local level, anyway? So eliminating the Department of Education would mean public schools would dry up and blow away? And are you seriously suggesting that roads would no longer be built if these agencies were eliminated?
The federal government is way too big, does way too much, and the essential stuff can be done in smaller or merged agencies. I'm all for his government reduction plan (except for the POTUS pay cut... I think that's just symbolic silliness). Next, he needs to add some cuts to DOD, where there are a lot of redundancies (why do we have a "national reconaissance office", "national geospatial intelligence agency", "Marine Corps Intelligence Activity", etc). Look up Wikipedia's page on the US Intelligence Community. You're telling me that all this can't be done with CIA, Army Intelligence, and Navy Intelligence? We've got 16 intel agencies and a layer of bueacracy above them.
Liberals want to cut the military, and conservatives want to cut civilian departments. The truth is, we should cut both.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If the federal government is funding education from my tax dollars, then why do I pay thousands of dollars to the school district for property taxes each year? Why do my niece and nephew send me fund raisers for the school district year round? I have no kids in school. If I were to have kids and send them to a private school, I would not get a tax credit.
If the federal government is funding roads and bridges, then why do I pay 31.2 cents per gallon of gasoline to my state to pay for road and bridge maintenance and construction?
Low income housing - cut me a break. That is a scam to absurdly overpay politically favored contractors. They build housing, on the tax payer dime, to house more non-taxpayers and non-contributors. These are persons who will not pay property taxes, yet have plenty of children in school. This results in lower property values, higher taxes, and more diluted education for the taxpayers. Recently, our local government spent $3.8 million to turn an old hall into 12 low income apartments. That is $316,000 per apartment. In this area, I could buy a new construction 3000 square foot home built on an acre of land for less than $300,000. Something stinks.
Parks -> state parks. Easy one.
Energy research - I think Ron Paul may be making a mistake here. I think he's also screwing up by getting rid of USGS and NOAA.
Try Raytheon.
While I do think the government has an interest in making some investment in basic research, having all these little grants done under all this little departments is a stupid way to do it.
The rest of what those departments do, is stuff the federal government should never have been doing in the first place. I am all for this plan. I do think we might want to then consider (not necessarily do), debate anyway there merit of creating a national physics and research department that would make investments in science, and vet grant requests etc. That way we could at least have a clear understanding of what we are really investing in science and what sort of returns we are really getting for it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
If he isn't gutting the military-industrial-spy complex then he is just another fraud and blowhard.
The Dept. of Education never educated one single child. The Dept. of Energy never produced one drop of oil. HUD, by failing to oversee Freddy and Fanny, got us into the mortgage mess we're in now. I'm just sorry the EPA isn't on his list. That agency is totally out of control.
If we got rid of the Dept of Edu -
would my two high functioning autistic kids get any kind of free and appropriate public education ?
They are a pain to deal with sometime, but what else will society afford ?
Peter AI6PG
What about the DEA? It's a total waste of money. Not only that; but legalizing and taxing marijuana would be revenue positive. RP is showing that he has at least a modicum of political savvy. He knows that would never sell in the party in which he has chosen to house himself.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Congress can't regulate commerce without a Department of Commerce? Funny. They did just that for many years.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
If we let the states do everything they want, we'd still have slavery.
But if you don't like what the state your living in is doing it is *much* easier to move to a different state it is easier to move to a different state then to move to a different country.
not if you were a slave.
we're all talking in 19th century terms, right?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
another way is to understand that a lot research we fund today is already in the best interests of the groups getting the funds to do so. Many large corporations receive hundred of millions if not billions to develop technology they are already working on, selling, and profiting on. Another large part of funding goes to politically connected friends to companies that had no future but sound damn good until you look under the covers.
HUD condemned thousands of families into high rise squalor after local politicians took over their homes for politically connected friends to build into office towers and industrial parks. The cover up was getting out of their homes which were defined as ghettos and the like and saving them by putting them prison style in cement monsters. By the way, they have only existed since 1965
The Department of Energy has overseen what great advances? Started by Carter in 1977 and presided over the death of US Nuclear energy programs and practically no progress on any other fronts for how many years? Most of the advances to coal and such came from trying to overcome restrictions imposed by other agencies.
Department of Education, again founded during Jimmy Carters Presidency has overseen explosive growth in costs for educating the children of the US with what results? Horribly poor results.
So while it is easy to do a hit piece on Ron Paul (believe he has lots of other ideas that can be labled kook ville) there are areas where he is right. Research won't stop when these government organizations go away. We already suffer from a lot of duplicate/triple/etc number of efforts all within the government. Hell we have departments which undermine each other.
So don't laugh it off with a cute one line phrase, that cheapens the discussion. The truth is, the US government has grown too large to manage. An example, there are over TWO THOUSAND aid programs available to provide the needy with money and other support - TWO THOUSAND. We spend SIX TRILLION DOLLARS or more per year when you combine all levels of government in the US and for what?
So go look at each department he wants to axe, then ask yourself. Can it be done under another department. Can it be done at the state level. What has this department given us and at what cost. Far more productive than a snide one liner
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
That this might get some in the nerd crowd to stop falling over themselves saying how great Ron Paul is. He's nuts, like the rest of them, just a different flavor of nuts. He's useful for encouraging discussion. Beyond that...
Hear hear.
I find it pretty hilarious that people are either to dense or misguided to realize that Paul doesn't want these things destroyed, he wants control of them taken away from the FEDERAL government. State and local governments can do a much better job of controlling the usage of these funds vs. the federal government, and, as a bonus, if you don't like what your state is doing, move to another state that you do agree with. Novel concept.
This is really mental masturbation anyway, we aren't changing our path in the US at this point, until we hit rock bottom, and we've still a long way to go on that front.
Just another ignorant American.
The Federal Government has a constitutional mandate to regulate interstate and international commerce. But hey, fuck that right? Pass me a heroine needle and that copy of Atlas Shrugged, it's Ron Paul's world now. -GiH
Your strawman is boring.
You are the one smoking crack if you honestly believe we had libertarianism for 30 years. There are so many things wrong with your idiotic assertion I don't even know where to start.
Reading the comments, you'd think this is a libertarian haven.
Well, at least he wants to get rid of the fed, who secretly gave $16 trillion to bailout corporations in less than a three year period. That is more than 10 times greater than the national deficit, and more than the entire national debt accrued by the US in it's 200+ years of spending.
http://www.unelected.org/audit-of-the-federal-reserve-reveals-16-trillion-in-secret-bailouts
When I am short on money, it isn't a matter of cutting spending on things I don't want or need anymore. I want or need everything I spend money on, otherwise I wouldn't be spending it. Still, I have to cut somewhere. Every penny counts, right?
I thought everyone loved Ron Paul last election's cycle? His policies haven't changed, so what has?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
But these programs are only 11.35 billion. They might as well stay in and serve their useful purpose. Not that, of course, they shouldn't be reviewed for efficiency. We can probably dump the DoEd.
Ron Paul should just change his election tag line to "Ron Paul; the Biggest Fucking Narrow Minded Asshole in the USA Government!".
Yet, another stupid idea from the man from Texas who really lives in La La La Land.
Linux O Muerte!
Because if we left it up to Tennessee, there would be an ORNL.
You are delusional.
-- BMO
Maybe they would close that lab; maybe they wouldn't. I don't really know. That would be up to the people in Tennessee.
If they choose to close it and want to use the money for anything else (schools, roads, parks, paying for other research centers besides ORNL) that would be their business. If people outside of Tennessee are concerned about that National Lab they can always pay for it themselves.
We measure reasonable not by comparision to a std, but by comparision to the extremes
So, if someone like R Paul or H Cain takes a super extreme posistion, suddenly previously "extreme" things become "reasonable'
This tactic has worked well for the right in the last 40 years, and instead of arguing with Paul supporters - there is no point, they add 2+2 and get the color of the sound of thunder- I think people should advocate antiPaul posistions, to ensure that the center doesn't change
So, my proposal is that all corporations are required to remit 10% of gross revenue to the gov't
All corporations, and officers, are banned from any political activity
All corporations are required to pay their senior staff no more then 15X the min wage, or no more then 15X the wage of the lowest paid employee or subcontractor or part timer, or, for companies that try to avoid this rule by outsourcing stuff, no more the 15X min wage at the contractor Corporations are not people; they may not publish any information, in any form, not directly related to their sales
No, he really hasn't.
If there is a prize for amount of debt run up, GWB wins by a landslide (unlike his election to office by a handful of Americans dressed in black).
Look at it this way. A driver steers a bus onto a steep, icy hill and accelerates downwards. Then he hands over the driving duties to Obama, and Obama says "right, time to sort this out" and puts the brakes on. Who do you blame for the bus continuing to slide down the hill with the brakes on? What if the solution is to accelerate faster to clear a gap at the bottom?
Then you have issues like the Repubs in the back voting "no" on putting the brakes on (Bush tax cuts for wealthiest americans), or voting to accelerate even faster (defence budget, doubled since 9/11 from an already massive number). Then you discover that your brakes are in really poor shape because the rules on looking after them were slackened, making things much more profitable for the mechanics (global financial crisis triggered by irresponsible practices by Wall Street and major financial institutions).
Obama is in an unenviable position. Not only does he need to make major reforms in a recession, but he has a large number of people working against him *against their own interest* because they've been told he's "ruining America" by powerful vested interests. He's certainly no second coming, but I give him credit for being able to accomplish what he has managed to do already.
Now THERE's a step in the right direction. Don't throw away the things that make your country great (which are only 1% anyway), toss the big line item that doesn't really do you any good anyway.
He want's to butcher the most important thing for RnD and hope for maintaining a technical leader to save 10 billion?
Another step in the Ron Paul plan to return us to a pre 1929 country.
I look forward to the new rise in slum lord and slave wage overlords.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I suppose your awareness of how the financial crisis came to be is pretty limited then. The systematic dismantling of the Great Depression era legislation limiting the amount of risk taking by financial institutions, done in the name of the libertarian 'less regulation, financial markets should be cared for by the great invisible hand' probably means nothing to you.
On an unrelated note, it's interesting how low key the /. crowd reacted to the idea of dismantling NIST. It's one for the history books, but it just goes to show how unaware people are of the importance of standards. Amazing stuff.
It should be noting that Ron Paul is planning on cutting off spending on Iraq/Afghanistan wars and that is where the vast majority of his 1 Trillion in spending cuts would be coming from. Having said that he also plans on lowering corporate taxes to ~15% and extending (again) the bush tax cuts, not doing either of which would probably get us another trillion. I think alot of his ideas are good ones but he's got WAAAAAAAAAY to much kneejerk reaction in his planning for me to ever take it seriously, for fucks sake part of his agenda is to basically abolish financial oversight (his plan includes repealing SOX) and that just wont fly without some more SERIOUS thought about what we can/cant do without.
Personally I'd rather have my idiots at home glued to the TV than out doing idiotic things
For the record, the hole was dug by that bloody moron called GWB
Wow! If you hate Bush for the deficit, you must REALLY hate Obama. He's grown the deficit more than Bush did in less than half the time!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Why is it that whenever a non technology article is submitted to slashdot, the comments devolve into childish name-calling and strongman arguments? Why don't we just stop calling each other stupid and offer an intelligent explanation of our position? Why not debate opposing views in a civil manner? Why not try to learn something from the opposing side?
$12 billion is not a lot?!!?!??!?!
perhaps it this kind of thinking that lead to the whole mess in the first place.
Exactly. I remember being told that if I watched my pennies then the dollars would take care of themselves. In the same way if we watch our billions then the trillions will take care of themselves.
We nickled and dimed ourselves to death. Over decades to get to this point. The longer we wait to get serious about our debt the more it is going to hurt. People need to stop acting like we can make serious cuts and improvements in our debt overnight. It will take us years and decades to reverse the trend - which is what is needed to do it right.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Nose. Face. Cut off. Spite.
--srj/mmv
...I can only assume that in addition to electing Ron Paul as President, you intend to elect Ron Paul to super-majorities in both houses of Congress, and also replace five members of SCOTUS with Ron Paul.
This is why I simply can't take libertarianism seriously: the movement as a whole believes that ideal solutions can somehow be applied directly to real-world problems without having to actually travel the real-world paths that change requires. I have yet to have a conversation with a libertarian where they've proposed a serious, workable plan to transition from the government we have now to the government they'd like us to have; the most common refrain I've received is "well, if we elect Ron Paul, things will change!"
The hard, cold, unpleasant truth that libertarians never seem willing to grapple with is that Ron Paul would almost certainly make a miserable President. He can't magically force Congress to enact the Watch The Country Burn From The Safety Of My Porch in Galt's Gulch Act of 2013. He can't hope to force genuinely unpopular (and frankly insanely risky) ideas, like eliminating the Fed and returning to the Gold Standard, without meeting vicious pushback from all sides of the political spectrum.
Give Ron Paul one term and he won't get squat done. The man has virtually no allies remaining in Congress, and would need Republican super-majorities in both houses to even begin contemplating the kinds of foundation-level changes he wants to enact. The only reason he hasn't been torn to shreds by oppo research is that he's never reached the point where the opposition has needed to take him seriously. The second Paul won the nomination, the country would be learning a whooooole lot about the John Birch society--and that's just for starters. Paul holds enough radical opinions on enough issues that sizable numbers of Americans could fairly easily be convinced that he is, in fact, bat-shit insane.
There are countless real-world barriers to doing the kinds of things Paul is proposing, but not a single ounce of thought seems to be given to that. With libertarians, it's always about how we should be someplace different. It's never about how we would actually get there. Running a country of 300 million people is 99% shit work, minor shifts, and unpalatable compromises--a task which modern libertarians, frankly, aren't up to.
Sure. Go ahead. Elect this nutball, and help hasten the descent of the U.S. into a new Dark Age and into Third World country status.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I don't have a lot to add to this conversation, but I want to say what is horribly lacking in 99% of these comments:
Cutting the Department of Education does not mean no more public education. Cutting even the USGS does not mean no more earthquake and tsunami research. In addition to the United States Geological Survey, there is a California Geological Survey, Mississippi Geological Survey, etc. The states already do virtually everything the federal government does to some degree. Even the interstate highways are handled by the individual states' Department of Transportations, albeit with money and quality standards issued by the US Department of Transportation.
Ron Paul's idea would be a dramatic change in recent US history, one of reducing centralized power and putting the power back into the individual states. It would not be the end of the world, it would be a return to bygone eras. Most of these departments are relatively recent in US history, and some have been good, and some have not produced the results we hoped. There are certainly areas where states do better than the feds (and vice versa) and we could live without the redundancy of some of them (drug laws, anyone?).
Remove tax deductions for churches and charity. Why should churches be exempt when other companies aren't? Apple, just to name one, has more loyal followers than most registered churches. The money stream from "charity" to the needing is spurious and motivated by _any_ whim. Ron Paul needs to shave somewhere else, http://www.ronpaulsalon.com/.
As someone with a light does of the spectrum myself I went to public school from the early 80's to 1996 with absolutely no appropriate education for my learning differences. The department of education was founded well before I was born. I don't see where removing the federal aspect would do any more to hurt.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
My initial reaction was to categorize your remark as meaningless noise due to the following scoring:
-1 Tone: Shouting, Belligerent, Rude
-1 Name Calling
-1 Making up a "fact"
However, I realized that this is about on par with the general level of "political" discourse in the U.S. So your post is now useful insofar as it is an example of how not to discuss an issue. Finally, I should note that there are no points given for minor creativity with phraseology such as "head-crushingly stupid". That stuff has no value when you're honestly trying to communicate to solve a problem or understand an issue. It only gets the attention of those who have no real interest in a legitimate discussion.
Please consider this before you make your next contribution to the topic. Otherwise, shut up. We can easily find meaningless, know-nothing shouting and banter on any of the scores of TV and news networks offered up by the mass media. The rest of us here would like to have an adult discussion.
You do realize that most of the debt that BHO has added is paying for programs and tax cuts from GWB?
Tax cuts and programs that Congress won't let him get rid of.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The Cabinet level Departments are: State, Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, Health & Human Services, Housing & Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.
I may be wrong, but I think that most people would agree that the first four (State, Treasury, Defense, Justice) are essential functions of the Federal Government (perhaps oversized, but in some form a necessary part of the federal government).
Then we get into one's that there can be some debate about. I think that both Interior and Agriculture are outsized, but serve a useful function at the federal level (although if you disagree, I would not argue with you very much).
Commerce and Labor should be one department since from the perspective of the Federal government, labor is just a subcategory of commerce (in any way that it is not, the federal government doesn't really have authority anyway).
Health & Human Services and Housing & Urban Development, in my opinion, do not really belong. Each of them have areas where the federal government may have a constitutional role. Those areas could be moved into either Interior or Commerce & Labor.
Transportation and Energy should have their functions moved back into the Department of the Interior (after the stuff it has picked up that shouldn't be there is eliminated). Some aspects of the Department of Energy should go back into the Defense Department (which I would change the name of back to the Department of War).
Education, the Federal government should only have marginal involvement in education, most education issues are better handled at the state or local level. Whatever functions in the Department of Education that are legitimate for the Federal government can be handled by one of the above departments.
Veterans Affairs are definitely a Federal government issue, but I am not sure why that is a cabinet level department. I would put it in the Department of War with its head answering to the Secretary at the same level as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Finally, Homeland Security, most of its functions should be put back in the Department of Justice with a few going into the Department of War.
Additionally, in a lot of these there should be major downsizing.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The UN is elected. Corporations are not.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
There is no mandate. There is the power, as needed, to do so. Of couse, you know that, and you're just trolling for the fun of it.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Are you trying to be ironic?
Check out the last page:
http://c3244172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/RestoreAmericaPlan.pdf
why do the tea partiers insist that Somalia is the best example of the type of government the US should emulate? I would have thought Japan, Germany, or maybe even China might have been a better choice to model from.
When the first thought is that if the federal govt doesnt do "X" it will not get done, when the initial reaction is that the govt's main function is to coddle and bubble wrap us from every possible evil and ill, then the mass media and the global powers have finished their plan.. you are nothing more than a slave whimpering at the doorstep of your masters.
Criminy, there's a whole lot of stupid in this thread. Smart people playing dumb to make a stupid and controversial point is just pointless.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
I believe Ron Paul is earnest and really believes what he espouses really will work but that doesn't mean anyone should believe it is practical let alone try to implement what he suggests. Just listening to his talks about how he thinks money works should give you enough indication of the impossibility of what he talks about.
People keep mistaking "passion" and "determination" for "throughly thought out planning" which as many even in this have pointed out is completely bonkers. Ron Paul is passionate but often what he says has not been thought out. For instance the side effects of dismantling the Department of Energy has far reaching effects where Paul just hand waves and says "Look at the savings" which doesn't answer "Who is going to be responsible to handling/licensing/processing X?"
We did have ther money.
Remove the loop holes in corporate taxis that ahve been put in place in the alst 20 years, and let the busgh tax cuts expire..as they were designed to do.
Hey, look at that, the vast majority of the money issue are now gone.
The lets tax trades on walls street 7 pennies for 1000 dollars traded. Since the people trading on wall street can cause such an enormousness impact to the country as a whole, they need to bear some of the burden of the impact of emotional trades, and short term gains.
Remove the Child Tax Credit -something I benefit from, but seriously. How about we stop that and start a better planned parenthood program?
Shit gets more expensive. Cutting programs, and not raising taxes is STUPID.
The current problem exists because people who sue wall street screwed everyone else.
"Would you get loans equal to 76% of your pay, per year to help your favorite charities?"
Strawman, stop it.
Please learn what deficit is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Which enemies? World domination will be finally achieved when the rest of the countries signs the ACTA treaty.
He's one of those fucking crazy idiots who thinks that economies magically regulate themselves.
This is why we need the gold standard to provide crucial stabilization and prevent inflation.
*turns away from computer*
*goes back to eating feces*
They don't need a $10B bureaucracy to do it.
Cause we're broke and no one else has come up with a plan? We're damn close to running out of other peoples money. Who's plan is better?
Private schools don't teach the PC nonsense of public schools, like CA's recent gay and transgender silliness. The three "R's," Readin', 'ritin', 'ritmatic, beat your but with a hickory stick. There is discipline and respect for teachers in the classroom. In public schools, you have to murder a teacher to get kicked out. They don't put up with that crap in private schools. The worst thing to happen to education in the US was making it a "right" instead of a privilege.
And BTW, the lower quintiles should be learning a trade in woodshop or metal fabrication, instead of dragging the good students down with the Marxist eqality-of-outcome thinking of the liberal teachers' unions.
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
"Cuts of this scale will also be accomplished by a Paul Presidency abolishing the Transportation Security Administration and returning responsibility for security to private property owners, abolishing corporate subsidies, stopping foreign aid, ending foreign wars, and returning most other spending to 2006 levels."
Source, his campaign website
I'll scream bloody murder for abolishing the Dept of Education and Energy, but I can see where Ron Paul-supporters are coming from.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
These political scumbags are all hypocrites.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
These programs are filed under the wrong parts of government. We need a department of science to aggressively advance all scientific discovery, not just those convenient for politicians.
The last 30 years have seen the biggest increase in regulation. Look at the size of the federal register.
http://www.ronpaul2012.com/2011/10/17/ron-paul-announces-ambitious-%E2%80%98plan-to-restore-america%E2%80%99/
Above is the link to his website directly. Some notable tidbits that the article (along with some slashdot commenters) seemed to miss:
"Cuts of this scale will also be accomplished by a Paul Presidency abolishing the Transportation Security Administration and returning responsibility for security to private property owners, abolishing corporate subsidies, stopping foreign aid, ending foreign wars, and returning most other spending to 2006 levels."
Full plan is here: http://ronpaul2012.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5fe6ba5e2c7e9376850ed45ac&id=bfc0992023&e=8c0ac983f9
So as part of this plan he will get rid of:
-Entire TSA
-Corporate (including Oil) subsidies
-End the wars (likely the largest single current expenditure/drain on the economy)
-End foreign aid (which I suspect will keep the U.S. out of more wars and significantly reduce the terror threat to the U.S.)
-15% of military spending (on top of complete ending of war spending)
-Keeps Social Security and Veteran care in place but allows young people to opt out of social security (basically, ending the Ponzi scheme and recognising the debt owed from it).
I will agree that some things he wishes to cut are not things I would choose to get rid of BUT can anyone point out a single other candidate that has a plan in plain, simple terms like his to actually do something? I sure haven't seen anything like this from other candidates. Then again I feel they are all talk. Real problem solvers would have at least a moderately detailed plan up on their website with rough numbers on how to accomplish things. If anyone finds such from other candidates please post in reply. I'd be very interested in seeing other plans even at as high level as this one is.
The plan is extreme but note that even with everything he is removing and reducing it only ends the DEFICIT (i.e. we stop borrowing more) by year three. Most people seem to not realise or accept how much pain the U.S. will have to endure to climb out from the mountain of debt without defaulting. Much like those that make $40,000 and have $40,000 in credit card debt it's a long suffering process. Much more borrowing at the current rate and defaulting on debt is almost an assured result (hence the lowering of the U.S. credit rating). I should point out European nations, most local governments, etc are all in the same situation. Borrowing to get luxuries you can't afford is endemic in the western mentality currently.
I suspect this will also reduce the corruption considerably since there will be many fewer lucrative grants to bribe senators and congressmen to get. That is, if it passes at all. You'll likely need to toss the bulk of republicans AND democrats out to get anything like this through since it will dismantle many of the incentives for funnelling money to them.
In my state at least, the USGS water monitoring stations have dropped measuring precipitation. Their suggestion was to use the storm / hourly totals provided by NOAA radar stations; hardly point-source accurate.
deregulation... no true scotsman... lol, you really have no idea what the fuck you are talking about. I stand by what I said.
As a parent of a high-functioning autistic kid, I also enjoy the extra services which are required by federal law. However, I don't agree with the idea that such services are required on a national level. Let the school districts and states compete for the students and their tax dollars. If those services were to go away in my area, I would then need to choose whether to spend the extra time/money/effort to procure those services on my own, or go somewhere else. Why should I feel entitled to it?
Help find a cure for cancer. Join the [H]orde
There is no math you can come up with where the government can create a job. It is not mathmatically possible. They have to take money from the individual to hire a government employee. Companies pay zero taxes. Not one penny, never have, never will. It all comes from profits of the individual. Hiring a government worker does not cost the government ANYTHING. However, your personal pay does go down (assuming you pay taxes). There is only ONE way that the government affects job creation and that is regulation.
People are foolish if they think corporations will rule us if we abandon our government. Corporations can't even rule themselves.
Corporations would devolve into cartels and trusts and monopolies and those organizations would pick governments that suited them. Like the railroads did in the second half of the 19th century.
Where does it go from there? Revolution.
Why should "society" pay for your defense?
By what moral right can one demand that others give up some of the fruit of their labor for the benefit of your safety?
15% slash (right there, top line on the second page here: http://ronpaul2012.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=5fe6ba5e2c7e9376850ed45ac&id=bfc0992023&e=8c0ac983f9) AND defunding all (undeclared) wars, resulting in immediate pull-out from all, what is it now, 5,6,7 places?
And, since most libertarians agree that national defence is legitimate function of Federal government, and knowing weather and coast around your country has obvious military uses, I would see nothing wrong with NOAA and USGS being funded from DOD budget.
"Fix weights and measures" is explicitly constitutional, so, I'd guess, NIST would be also safe under Dr. Paul's watch.
Paul B.
Ron Paul is god dammed retard! QED
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think pulling all that stuff from the federal government would be a good thing. If it's really important to you, form a research non-profit and build up a private endowment for the sort of reasearch you want done.
As a scientist who works for the federal government, I actually agree with you, but only in principle. In the real world, the government currently funds a great deal of undirected basic research, and operates a number of shared facilities that are unparalleled in the world. There aren't any non-profits with that kind of money which can suddenly pick up the slack and continue onward as if nothing had happened. The immediate result of slashing these activities will be that all foreign scientists go back to their home countries, and a number of US scientists follow them. The commercial activities that tend to naturally flow from academic research (like the entire biotech industry) will either wither or move. Maybe in a decade we'd be able to rebuild to the point where we were before - the single largest producer of basic scientific research in the world - but by that point, we'd be far behind the rest of the industrial nations, who would no doubt see this as an excellent opportunity to capitalize on our losses.
Now, as I pointed out above, if you believe that we're headed towards national bankruptcy and economic collapse anyway, maybe this is inevitable, and better to get it out of the way now, to improve our chances of recovery. And I'm not entirely unsympathetic to that point of view. But it's delusional to pretend that everything would just work out, and the private sector would take care of the problem.
So Ron Paul's some kind of wacky fundamentalist, now? That's one heck of a leap.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And don't even ask about basic science. There's no "profit motive" in it. Corporations don't do any worthwhile basic science. Not biology, not atmospheric, geological, astronomical, or even math. It's all applied science, with the goal of getting a profit next, or better "this quarter." Basic science is too long-range to be even considered.
You mean like:
(from HERE)
The National Science Foundation gave the Minnesota Zoo over $600,000 so that they could develop an online video game called "Wolfquest".
Almost unbelievably, the National Institutes of Health was given $800,000 in "stimulus funds" to study the impact of a "genital-washing program" on men in South Africa.
The National Institutes of Health spent approximately $442,340 to study the behavior of male prostitutes in Vietnam.
Approximately $1 million of U.S. taxpayer money was used to create poetry for the Little Rock, New Orleans, Milwaukee and Chicago zoos. The goal of the "poetry" is to help raise awareness on environmental issues.
The National Science Foundation spent $216,000 to study whether or not politicians "gain or lose support by taking ambiguous positions."
A total of $3 million has been granted to researchers at the University of California at Irvine so that they can play video games such as World of Warcraft. The goal of this "video game research" is reportedly to study how "emerging forms of communication, including multiplayer computer games and online virtual worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second Life can help organizations collaborate and compete more effectively in the global marketplace.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
-I- don't scream about corps working for the government, I happen to like that system, provided there are enough checks to keep the money-flow from the government to the private sector under control. What I don't like is corporations paying nearly NO taxes, while they get the benefit of, amongst other things : using public infrastructure, and workers educated with government money.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
No more federally funded energy research, no more federally funded parks, no more federally funded public education, no more federally funded low income housing, no more federally funded roads & bridges.
Individual states are more than capable of managing public education, parks, low income housing, roads, bridges, hurricane warning systems, etc. themselves. The idea that these things won't exist if the federal government doesn't give each state handouts for it is ludicrous.
State and local government is more efficient at managing the true needs of its residents than the federal government.
When the federal government funds these programs, there are strings attached. One glaring example of this is no child left behind. Ask the teachers and school administrators if they think no child left behind is good policy and they'll overwhelmingly agree it detracts from student education, yet it's national policy.
Another example: medical marijuana. The residents of many states have voted to legalize its use for specific purposes, yet the federal government refuses to listen to the voice of the people in these states and continues its crusade against it with force.
When you only listen to half of the man's message and act like you're an expert you're doing yourself and everyone else a disservice.
The simple truth is that D.C is as far out of touch with the rest of the people of this country as the British government was with the colonies. The idea that D.C. knows what we need better than our state and local government doesn't hold water.
He's simply advocating state government over federal government, and I for one agree with it.
Ron Paul lays bare for all to see, exactly why he'll never hold higher office. As much as I agree with him on a few issues, his problem is that he keeps talking.
Most people don't literally want to be back in the 1800's.
Congress could pass the 9-9-9 plan tomorrow and shrink the IRS 90%. But it wont.
For all practical purposes, one if not both of the parental units has to be home enough to at least meet state-required minimum teaching hours. This means single-parent households and paycheck to paycheck two income households (the vast US majority) can literally not afford this luxury. So home schoolers fall into one of two categories: religious psychopaths, or members of the Upper-Upper Middle Class. Both are enclaves and neither really help sustain a free, rational, multi-cultural society.
Clinton's reinventing government initiative trimmed and streamlined the federal government with measurable results: http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/whoweare/historypart5.html
You are arguing that we shouldn't have society? What is best for society and best for an individual are not always the same thing. It may be best for you not to pay for other people's education - I presume you paid for yours? - but it is better for society for people to be educated.
In the case of people with difficulties the moral argument is that we can afford, as a society, to help those who are less fortunate. Tell me: if you ever lose your job will you and your family starve to death on principle, because you can't morally justify accepting support that society may give you?
First off mercenaries (the more politically correct term being "Security Contractors") are more expensive than real soldiers. And he doesn't address the Military Intelligence Complex, even scarier than then Military Industrial Complex since their budget are a "black box", another word for "black hole". See "Frontline" and NPR for an analysis.
Some references:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/paul-plan-would-eliminate-cabinet-departments-to-cut-1-trillion/
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/06/140056904/the-top-secret-america-created-after-9-11
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/warriors/view/
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Apparently you're of the mindset that throwing around a bunch of pejoratives somehow lends credence to the myths you propagate.
We've had nothing but government meddling and fascism for the past 30 years. We've had corporatism, not capitalism.
And yet people like you clearly get this mixed up, and blame the free market and capitalism for today's problems, when we've had none of either.
And this "doddering old fool" and his [Austrian] school of economics have accurately predicted the booms and busts we've been dealing with. People like him and Peter Schiff went on CNBC in 2004 and went up against all the talking heads who said the economy was fine and the housing market was in a permanent uptrend, and laughed in Paul's and Schiff's faces when they said it was all going to crash. Economists like Mises and Rothbard have plenty of writings that explain clearly why we're in the mess we're in, and if you didn't know better, you'd think they were clairvoyant. But it's simply that the Austrian school of economics understand reality, unlike today's Keynesians.
But my friend told me I am the other 99% !
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Personally, I don't think they should.
Apparently you've made an assumption about my beliefs that isn't true in the least.
Because "society" is going to pay for it one way or the other. Would you rather have "high-functioning" children on the autistic spectrum that grow to become productive members of society, or for these same children to flounder without society meeting their needs early in life. It has been shown that early intervention can have a huge impact upon the final outcome of these kids. (IAAP - I am a pediatrician, and I know first hand) So yes, you will pay for it. Would you rather pay a little up front, or pay a lot later on caring for autistic adults that cannot take care of themselves? Or would you like to ignore them, and increase the number of homeless with mental health issues because they cannot fit into society? Your choice.
Actually, we have 30 years of history demonstrating that centrally-managed economies and monetary policy produce horrendous boom/bust business cycles; the system is entirely too complex for humans (at their present stage) to attempt to turn their forcasts into policy (it's as if the weatherman gets to pick your clothes for you everyday, and the weatherman has a corrupt relationship with various clothing companies).
Ron Paul's view of government is extremely practical in that it makes government well-defined: The government should be as local to communities as possible and enforce property rights and the contracts to which parties agree.
On a similar note, much of a government's power derives from the government's supply of money. This is why the U.S. Constitution specifically mandates that state and federal GOVERNMENTS (to say nothing of citizens) use only gold and silver as legal tender; the government runs unchecked if it is able to print money whenever it likes, and that is exactly what we've seen happen to the U.S. over the last HUNDRED years (since the introduction of the Federal Reserve banking system).
Is this a joke? Education correlates positively with productive value for society and negatively with burden on society. Put simply, without society paying for childhood education we'll be left with a bunch of drooling half-wits that cost us way more to support than it would to simply give them a K-12 education. If you must see it that way, it's very much self-serving to educate children. In all likelihood, I will never have children of my own so I'm not even talking about it from that angle. Someday when I'm old the current batch of students will be running things and personally, I'd like it if they were at least semi-functional insofar as the average human can be.
There, no moral discussion needed (a blessing since any that puts "moral right" and "fruit of someone else's labor" in the same sentence will always devolved into some mind-bending justification for how it is noble to exploit human beings).
Imagine, if we had 500 hundred departments we could strip from the Federal Government. Too bad that so many cutable agencies were consolidated under the Homeland Security Department.
I like your standardized units. Just to add, he talks about slashing military spending more seriously than any other candidate. In every debate, he is a strong proponent of closing bases and bring troops home from around the world, ending wars, etc...
The economic powerhouse that is Somalia. Let's face it son, you are noting more than a spoiled brat that doesn't want to pay to live in a civilized society, or have the grownups stop you from screwing everyone else over for your own self-serving ends.
is some ignorant bible banging southern white trash determining what gets taught to their kids. McDonalds couldn't build enough stores to hire all of the morons this would produce.
I think you might want to retake Econ 101.
Only parasites like you don't feel like paying for it and want to sponge off of the rest of us.
Telling people they can't afford something is never popular.
But guess what.
We can't afford it.
Actually Ron Paul outlined a very detailed plan on slashing $1T in his first year, balance the budget, and make significant inroads toward paying the nearly $15T debt: http://www.ronpaul2012.com/the-issues/ron-paul-plan-to-restore-america/
because the rest of us pay for their tornado monitoring. Just because you can only think of yourself does not mean that the civilized members of society know how to do whats best for the entire group. Hopefully you'll realize this when you grow up.
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I'm sure he doesn't consider himself to be expendable. I'm not too sure about is immediate family, however.
It's about time someone gets back to the Constitution that our country was founded on. For those of you who think we need government intruding into our lives...go pick another country to live in if you love socialism and communism so much. For that matter, many in this country need to go back and read the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. In case you forgot, America was found because of the British tyranny over the colonists. All these Statists (i.e. govt is everything) need to be squashed once and for all and put back in their place. They are ruining this country now and for generations to come and we can thank good old Roosevelt for his shady govt programs and deceit of the citizens at that time...he took advantage of people when they were most desperate and pushed many government entitlement programs and set them up so people would become addicted to entitlements. it was brilliant in an of itself but now look at us...half the country truly believes the government has their best interest at heart...what planet do you live on? I bet you think the government actually has a Social security trust fund too...wake up people!! You may not agree with Ron Paul or even like the guy but his solutions make sense for this country--LESS GOVT, LESS TAXES, LESS REGULATION!! That is the ONLY way this country moves forward...not going to happen with this administration.
Maintaining and caring for old nuclear weapons and facilities is almost half of the DOE's budget. It's not like we can just lock the doors to all the facilities and abandon them....
"Society" simply means people living together as a community. It doesn't depend on a governmental body that strong-arms its will on its citizens.
What's best for an individual (longer term) always benefits society as a whole.
The argument you make regarding "people with difficulties" is that only government can help them, by stealing from the fruits of my labor to give to them. Of course that's preposterous, since the U.S. is the most generous nation on earth in terms of charitable donations. Just think how much more people would be willing to give up if ~50% of their earnings wasn't given back to the government already.
But regardless, nobody, regardless of circumstance has a "right" to education. You want want the right, but it doesn't make it so.
If it's illegal for me to steal $10 out of my neighbor's pocket when I'm hungry, it should be illegal for the government to steal $10 out of my neighbor's pocket to give it to me.
At least two of these should definitely be cut.
Education
Housing and Urban Development.
I never understood the purpose of the federal department of education. I'm Canadian and education is provided at the provincial level (states). It lets provinces do their own thing. What does the federal dept of education do what individual states cannot? If there is anything that is local, it is education.
Again Housing and Urban development at the federal level? This is such a local matter which should primarily concern cities themselves... and at most states.
Some of the other things make more sense at the federal level. Not that I agree with all of them, but they at least have a plausible rational. Especially things like standards and global issues (Atmosphere and ocean)...
No mention of the vast efficiencies introduced by Standard Oil. They used gasoline to run generators when it was a waste product to others, they even sold the gunk that accumulated on the drills as a salve (a.k.a. Vaseline). They also shut down inefficient units when acquiring competition, and got a much lower shipping rate from the railroads. This was all well before the oil boom hit.
Had Standard Oil never come about, prices probably would have remained about the same under the old, inefficient oil industry.
There was no semiconductor market until Intel invented the semiconductor.
There were no semi-conductors until we understood Quantum Mechanics. How many private companies would be far sighted enough to invest in fundamental research given that the pay-off is 50-100 years away and there is no legal means (thank goodness!) to patent/copyright the fundamental science to ensure a pay out even then?
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Spunk.
While I don't agree with much of what he wants to do, guess what? He needs Congressional approval on many of these issues! And you know what's great about him? He is something genuinely different than the SSDD we have had in office for years.
Bush set in policies that were and are terrible precedents. Obama = change? Ha! Wasn't he supposed to close down Guantanamo? What about the wars? These presidents are just speakers for the people who get them elected; Paul, while a bit crazy, would shake up the pathetic state of government we find ourselves with.
That's not getting rid of it. That's just cost shifting. It should be gone, period.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The overall goal of the plan is to cut spending, and the majority of that is through ending wars ($800 billion over a term). The plan also cuts these departments that happen to provide some science funding, but the goal is *not* targeting science; otherwise, he would have cut NSF and NASA. Ron Paul knows that when the federal government stops doing something, e.g., science funding, the private sector (businesses and non-profits) will fill in -- most likely doing a better job than going through federal bureaucracy. The plan also includes over $500 billion of tax cuts in addition to the $1 trillion cut from spending. These tax cuts will fund the science research without penalizing good companies that get taxed to pay for bad companies that happened to hire the right lobbyists.
Actually, we have 30 years of history demonstrating that centrally-managed economies and monetary policy produce horrendous boom/bust business cycles;
And we've had all of the 1800s to show us that lack of government interventions leads to even more frequent cycles. Except back the things were decentralized enough that such a cycle couldn't take out the whole economy. Now they can.
Remove the government and the next depressions will have your head on a pike as some charismatic communist leader takes over by killing everyone else. Or some corporation would upgrade itself into a government and you'd get corporate feudalism. Even the Romans understood that bread and circuses are needed to keep a concentrated society stable.
Dude, all federal agencies are run by the President (aka, Executive Branch) as it is that branch's job to execute (carry out) the laws that Congress passes. Federal agencies can make rules only because congress allows them to for the sake of expediency. Congress can always override rules a federal agency comes up with.
Why the fuck is anyone listening to this doddering old fool?
I think that's a great question and I'll try to answer it. I've got a few friends who are hardcore libertarian. I've known others who were similarly minded, but I wouldn't call them personal friends although I knew them. It seems to me that theoretically libertarianism should appeal to certain individuals on the left and right but in reality it's become the last place for very hardcore right wingers to go. Some people have shifted so far to the right that they can't turn to fascism (its association with the Nazis has doomed it as a political philosophy) so they turn to libertarianism. Libertarianism basically has this core idea that "If we just destroy the government so that it is small and weak and it can't do anything at all except oversee the military and do a few things with foreign governments, then everything would be so much better if not perfect." I realized some years ago that some libertarian ideas sound great, but the whole system breaks down because it relies on human beings all playing by the rules. All you need is one guy to take advantage of it, just one, and the whole thing collapses. It's little more in my mind than a variation on anarchy. To be blunt, I think that communism, which has been thoroughly discredited, is more rational political philosophy. That's bad.
A certain percentage of the American right, I'd guess maybe 20% or so, have a hardcore hatred of government and want it destroyed or made incredibly weak if possible. Part of me wishes that they could get their wish because it would be an absolute unmitigated disaster and it would kill libertarianism forever as a political philosophy but I'd have to leave the country because I wouldn't want to be here when everything starts to go to hell. I have only met one person who was libertarian who had a rational explanation for supporting it. He's a smart guy and I bluntly asked him how he could support libertarianism when he had to be smart enough to understand that for it to work it requires everybody to play by the rules and that won't happen. He told me that he certainly understood that could never happen, but he was tired of people ducking responsibility for everything and blaming everyone else for their problems and a libertarian government would force people to become responsible for their own decisions.
I wish people would take more than 5 seconds before replying in these threads to stop and consider what precisely the federal government does better than either private industry or state governments.
Yes, there are plenty of things that require a national scope, and oddly enough, a lot of those federal roles are defined in the Constitution.
However when it comes to departments that exist on shaky Constitutional grounds and/or duplicate efforts of state departments, you'll find that they provide the least benefit and are the most vigorously defended.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Lets just talk budgeting:
These programs are TINY; NASA costs more. Even NASA is cheap compared to our stupid military spending which is more than the world combined; it was idiotic during the cold war.... the cold war ended and spending still increased. I'm not even talking about the wars.
I remember when we were talking about removing the base in Greenland-- Why didn't it happen? It helped the local economy! Free USA money to subsidize other economies... Then we have the bases in South Dakota and other states where they are the primary basis for the state's economy!
I'm just talking about budgeting priories on a TWO topics because frankly, most people here seem to struggle grasping more than the budgeting problems.
There is a range of other issues like how the government revenue is almost entirely based upon the economy! DUH! how can people be so stupid?? bad economy = bad tax revenue! Fix the economy = restored tax revenue. Remember, since Clinton left it has all been downhill... then we applied Reaganomics and it got worse...again... Now the solution from the GOP is Reaganomics... again... oh! but it'll work this time we just need to do it longer than a decade so it can turn around! morons...
Any one of the following short list cost MORE money:
New massive tax loopholes (corp, rich, investments.) Huge shifts in the tax burden. Bad policies (see Bankruptcy, drug war or war on terrzm.) Privatized monetary policy (Ron Paul nails this issue.) Private contractor overhead (even when not defrauding) - especially egregious when monopolies. GIVING AWAY public property free or cheaply or even paying them to take our property! (mineral rights, airwaves) FARM SUBSIDIZES (rural welfare) The conversion of the economy from REAL business to CASINO games which are hardly taxed. (Not only does this wreak the economy but it removes tax revenue. You profit more from investment gambling than providing capital to real businesses; the big justification for the investment market.) National Laboratories -- as in, the long term cost of NOT properly funding them. 1.2 million green jobs (today) which could be boosted much higher resulting in a net gain; instead we've always undermined it to support the 80,000 coal workers...
Government is not business; its just currently run by business interests. Its also not your household. Anybody claiming it should be run like either lacks fundamental understanding is trying to fool people.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
The poster I replied to appealed to the Constitution as the basis for the existence of the Commerce Department. The Constitution does not mention the Commerce Department (which was my point, I fully understand how the various executive departments derive their authority).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
It is in the Constitution, which is what our government is based on.
Schooling, however, is in the various State constitutions and not a matter for the Federal government.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"Why does the Federal government have to be the one doing all the spending?"
Because the problems the government addresses are national-scale, the expertise for specific problems is not distributed uniformly across states, and the benefits accrue to the nation in its entirety. And because believe it or not, Federal employees, especially in scientific R&D areas, are much smarter and more ethical than most State employees.
While we are talking semantics, Congress has the authority to do what the people mandate. If the people believe that the government should regulate interstate commerce then the congress has a constitutional obligation to regulate it.
The idea behind a republic is that the congress should act on the wishes of the people they represent not what their party dictates. It seems the parties have forgotten what a representative government really means. Now a days, the congressmen seem to represent lobbyists who aren't necessarily within the geographical region they are suppose to represent instead of the voters who placed them in office. And while I'm on the subject, the congressman has a moral and legal obligation to represent the views of all voters within his district regardless of their vote casted.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
No business or businessman would work towards maximizing income from customers, to the point it impoverishes them and also run down their business, just to make a personal profit
Too much work. Embezzling is faster.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
WIthout federal backing, state parks will be gone in a decade.
Says who?
What about parks the move across several states?
I was waiting for this one. I don't really know. I'm sure the expenses can be shared.
When Bush added NCLB, it's budget shot up dramatically. from 14B to what is project to be 71 Billion. Get rid of NCLB. and you will save far more the RP will.
Agreed. NCGA ( no child gets ahead ) does more harm than good.
Becasue school expensic go up, but no one wants to pay for them, so they nede other avenue of revenue.
I think this approach is wrong. I also think going to parent to hepl with class room itrems is wrong.
IT hides the growing cost until it get to big, then suddenly its a massive problem instead ogf a growing concernt hat culd ahve been planned for.
Expenses are going up. Yet the average cost per pupil per year for private schooling, is less than the average cost per pupil per year for public schooling. Arguably, the private education is better as well. The government is unable to efficiently run schools, that is the primary reason for the increased expenses.
"I have no kids in school."
And you still reap the benefit of an educated society.
A common argument. Indeed, property values are also higher in areas with better school districts. The point is, the amount you pay towards a school district should be determined by more than your property value. Somehow the number of children you have enrolled should be accounted for.
If I were to have kids and send them to a private school, I would not get a tax credit.
Nor should you. Please bear in mind you would have the right to participate in all extracurricular activities.
That is your only argument? Those are some darn expensive extra-curricular activities. Why not just a participation fee for those?
Maybe I'm biased because I lived in public housing; which allowed for an education and now I am better off then my mother was. Or I could have lived o the street with no education and still be a drain.
And contractor are monitored and regulated.
I didn't say we don't need any public housing, but I argue the need for more of it. I also argue the cost of building it. Have you nothing to say about the $316,000 per apartment fee for renovating an existing structure to provide low income housing? These end up being pork barrel projects for politicians to hand out to their contractor friends. Then, they are monitored and regulated by the same people that hired them. You completely dodged that issue and took my comments personally, throwing in an insult.
"Rhetorical question" on Wikipedia?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I somewhat like his liberterian view but all pure forms of government taken to their idelogical conclusion yield total shit.
He is too ideologically driven... too quick to invoke abstract ideas when the situation calls for more careful consideration of competing interests.
"The entirety of human history has been dominated by overbearing governments. Libertarianism has never been given a fair chance. "
You'll always have Somalia.
All the Federal student aid program has done is make tuition rise far past inflation. The taxpayers of my state and city pay my salary. And yes, California gets a lot less back from the feds than it pays out. How can you possibly believe this giant federal bureaucracy doesn't needlessly squander money?
Slashdot "libertarians": Small government for me, big government for those I disagree with. -1, I disagree with you
I RTFA (I know...) The linked article is an editorial. It links to another article summarizing Ron Paul's plan. That article links to the actual proposal: http://c3244172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/RestoreAmericaPlan.pdf The plan is actually really interesting. It DOES cut DOD by 200B per year. It makes some deep cuts, and balances the budget by 2015. I don't know if he could get it though congress, but at least he is proposing SOMETHING. We can't keep our heads buried in the sand and spend money we don't have. Even with RP's plan, it shows national debt as 92.5% of GDP in 2013! Getting out of the mess we are in is going to require some hard choices, and sacrifice.
In other nations, less capitalism in medicine results in lower costs.
The airlines won't treat their customers with malice and disrespect.
HAH! Have you ever flown before? :)
The TSA is easily the worst of two evils, but airlines are notorious for their poor customer service. The big difference, of course, being that you can usually choose a different airline.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
It is long past the time that people stop the stupidity- being against gunverment science does not mean we are against scientific research. being against the EPA does not mean we do not care about the environment. being against the FDA does not mean we want to eat nuclear waste. The gunverment is not your friend. It hates you with passion and prejudice. You must hate it equally so. Work tirelessly to defeat it. It is not "the people" - not for a long, long, long time- that is fiction still taught in gunverment re-education camps and we all know it. Anyone who cares about science can fund projects they find worthy. If they can't do it alone they can work with others- each taking only from their own wallets to pool their money. The gunverment only funds things that serve its interest- you know, like drone killings of brown people in other countries as target practice so they can start rolling drones out over our "unfriendly skies". This is the true price of your precious gunverment research projects and don't you ever ever forget it! How many brown people you never met so far away had to DROP DEAD to fund your precious project? The "science" it facilitates is political. First they say "we want the science to agree with us" then they buy off the scientists who will parrot it. It is not unlike the washington press core- mere stenographers for the state. Want a seat in the press room? "Repeat after me..." Remember Steven Colberts roasting bush and the press? No one is against real, scientific research. If you are interested, you can seek out the private individuals and private companies doing it- and open up your own wallet. If there is enough interest (validating your ideas) then like any business, it might get off the ground. If not, keep plugging away like Edison. When you have your big "A Ha!" the money will come. People like Light, for example. All taxation is theft. "But I really want to help people but no one will help me and I'm smarter than they are, so I need the gunverment to take their money against their will, so I can do this smart thing that only costs Billions of Dollars"... right. some people freely assist private companies in their research- you may have heard of it- its called Open Source and it does not require taxation. Ron Paul 2012 Google "black this out" Stop the wars Bring the troops home Stop the spending Occupy Wall Street End the FED
Ok, so Ron Paul wants to slash a bunch of Federal agencies. ....So?
Just because we've done things one way for the past 100 years, doesn't necessary make it correct, right?
Do you honestly think we wouldn't innovate new ways to provide these same basic services? I mean, after all, the civilized world didn't just spring into being 200 years ago when we founded this country. Many different civilizations have been providing for the basic welfare of their respective people for thousands of years.
We elected to federalize/centralize these services, and 200 years later, the people are beginning to widely object to the many different kinds of fallout of that decision.
Services like welfare, low income housing, helping the poor - these are services that churches and other charity groups have been providing for a long, LONG time. By and large, they've even managed to do a damn good job of it.
Just because Ron Paul wants to make changes that impact "the way it's always been done" doesn't immediately make his ideas wrong. They're just more scary than the other guy's softer, easier to digest ideas. He's not saying people shouldn't, or wouldn't get the help they need, he's just saying it shouldn't be the Federal government doing it. State and local governments? Charitable organizations? Regional service providers? Sure, why not? At least if you don't like the way your area is handling something, you and your local communities have more ability to affect change.
Well.. At least it is 1% in the RIGHT direction. Remember the old adage, 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.'
This is going to be fun.
The US has been living on tic for 40 years. China has bled you dry, basically your options are:
1. Ron Paul
2. Banana Republic.
I'm betting on 2 BTW.
Deleted
Paul wants to give up on science. Science is too communist. Everyone on the planet benefits from science. As a physicist who is getting funded by the DOE, I don't like this. I suppose us researchers will just have to emigrate. Maybe to China; they are upping their investment in science.
Not really. Most of those guys don't do anything except tell people who already know what they are doing what to do.
Nobody on the Right ever seems to suggest eliminating the Department of Agriculture, which operates various welfare programs for farmers. 3/4 of farm subsidies go to the top 10% of farms.There are still tobacco subsidies and cotton subsidies, and those aren't even foods.
Texas, Ron Paul's state, is #1 nationally in farm subsidies.
He proposes to cut 15% from the DOD, including ending all foreign wars. No mention of mercenaries in his budget proposal, but I'd never expect such specific language there.
the size of the federal government and the body of regulation has grown every single year over the past 30 years. furthermore, blaming our current situation on "trickle down economics" is absolutely ludicrous. it is government institutions like central banking and the federal reserve that have caused most of our problems.
you are truly living in fairy land if you think we have anything even remotely close to libertarianism.
We know what private industry would have done wrt creating the Internet in the absence of the federal government. Because they did create it. Or rather them.
Compuserve.
AOL
MSN
Prodigy
and others.
Each a walled garden, isolated from and incompatible with the others. Each created to require enforce the idea that customers are clients, rather than allowing arbitrary client/server or peer-to-peer relationships (as business has been trying to do with the Internet).
We already know what business would have created without the Internet. And they sucked in comparison to the real thing. That's why all of these networks began to wane the second the Internet became available to the public. They turned into nothing more than ISPs with portal websites and they only did that because it was that or disappear instantly.
In 1995 Bill Gates was saying that the Internet was a fad and everyone would return to the safety of MSN real soon now.
The idea that if the Internet didn't exist that private industry would have created it is simply a-historical.
The enemies of Democracy are
The question was one of the moral right of the individual to demand something of society by way of the government, which is completely independent of the legality of a program providing for said demands in a specific country.
Well, at least you're consistent, I guess. Good for you on that front.
Serious question: did you come to this ultra-individualist (I gather you'd accept that description) philosophy of government independently, and if not, what sources influenced your thinking?
People are bitching and moaning. Paul is not going to get elected and the government is not going to cut anything of real consequence. The out of kilter financial system will bring things back into equilibrium when the debt and deficit becomes so large (we may already be past the point of no return) that the U.S. has to default on all or part of it's debt.
Does anybody REALLY think we are going to pay back 15 trillion dollars with increases at over a trillion dollars a year with no end it sight? It's not going to happen, the bond holders either don't realize this yet or think somebody else will get screwed.
We will all get screwed once the dollar collapses. At this rate it will not be long.
Make us up some more lies. These were to easily dispensed with via a simple glance at the actual budget.
And we need the FCC for what, exactly? To save us from Jackson Family nipples?
One of the ideas is that government shouldn't be doing so much because churches, charities and other groups do some jobs very well already. To tax them makes it harder for them to perform those services.
However, I would support a strong look at profitable churches that are basically hiding behind the tax exemption.
Wait, let me back up: is it not that your views on the proper role of government differ much from the norm, but rather that you simply believe its legitimacy is based somewhere other than morality, since that was the specific thing under discussion?
Defense (offense) (the ongoing useless, futile wars) and the plethora of secretly funded military programs make up almost 70% of the total budget, but as the governmental pie charts don't even list these expenditures most people innocently believe the lies that Social Security and Medicare are to blame, when, in fact SS is partially funding other activities (off the books) and is solvent for the foreseeable future, medicare is expensive because the gov can't bargain with drug companies or hospitals and MUST pay whatever is demanded! You can thank the crooked scum in Washington for the mess that we're in, remember EVERYTHING the government says should be regarded as a LIE!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
ZOMG!!!11one. Paul would dissolve the USGS?
It's bullshit of course. The USGS was established in 1879 for good and sufficient reasons of its own. It predated NOAA by over 90 years, and could be restored to an independent administration just as it was prior to 1970.
No more energy research, no more parks, no more public education, no more low income housing, no more roads & bridges. What a grand utopia he has planned for us.
The 'liberal fallacy' is defined as "if the government doesn't do it, it doesn't happen."
I'll bet you who gets men to Mars first.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Ron Paul says: "And why should we have this Department of Agriculture, just to subsidize farmers? You take money from the taxpayers; you subsidize farmers; then, the taxpayers pay for higher prices in the grocery store."
I would describe myself as an anarcho-capitalist, and the single biggest source of ideas come from LewRockwell.com and the Mises.org blog.
I've read Ron Paul's most recent book, he has very plainly outlined the problems with that department. Think of it as second wave.
As for singling Texas out as #1 in farm subsidies remember the shear number of square miles Texas has, especially the number of square miles that count as farm land. Texas has more square miles of farm land than many states have in any kind of square miles.
Couple that with being a red state that is in the black. Texas sends more money in the federal direction than it gets back.
Don't try to use the very size of Texas as anecdotal evidence against Ron Paul.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Perhaps it's because I didn't sleep well last night, but I'm having trouble understanding your question. What's the "norm"?
I would say my view on the legitimate function of government varies greatly from what we have now.
As far as morality, I don't speak of it all that much. But I would say that that everything that is right and proper comes from what is moral. The example I used recently was that if it's wrong for me to take $10 from my neighbor's pocket because I'm hungry, it's wrong for the government to take $10 from my neighbor's pocket to feed me. And it's wrong for you to petition the government to take such action. Government-sanctioned (i.e. legalized) theft is still theft, and still wrong.
I have no idea if I've even come close to answering your question. :)
He sure is. Except his church is Atlas Shrugged, and his messiah Ayn Rand.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Quite often states enter into standardization or other agreements between them. For example, you've probably heard of the Uniform Commercial Code. Check out the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws.
Interesting, thanks.
You've taken my answer out of context. I was referring that while the original poster said that the constitution only gave congress the authority to regulate interstate commerce, the people mandated that it shall be done.
Furthermore, Congress should represent the wishes of the people that they represent. It is up to the judicial branch to determine the legality of the legislation passed by congress, and the executive branch also gets a say in the matter too.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
9/11 was clearly an inside job, yet they make ludicrous claims about pancakes. I say good riddance.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
>He's one of those fucking crazy idiots who thinks that economies magically regulate themselves.
Actually libertarians believe in what's called Public Choice Theory. Public choice is the application of economic principles to the political realm. You see some economists believe that somethings shouldn't be handled by the free-market so they advocate we place those industries in the hands of politicians. The problem with that implicit assumption that the incentives in the public realm are structured in a way that will give better result. Public choice explodes that assumption. The rampant corporatism in the US (and in other nations) drives that point in quite nicely. So it's not so much that markets do it well, it's that they do it less bad.
So my argument would be that maybe we shouldn't be so quick to think that those who believe in free-markets are doing wishful thinking. There is a lot of theory behind that statement.
That sounds like a solution, rather than a problem!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It does, thanks.
It is probably your state government that pays for the majority of their education right now.
But ask yourself this - if their needs are so expensive and difficult to fulfill appropriately, is it moral of you to force others to pay for their education? Or should you or your wife or other partner or friends step up and devote the difference in effort needed to educate them properly?
Why do politicians (DemRepInd...) and godmatist (Christian, Muslim, Crazies...) always want to Fuck the United States FUS people?
Yes, it is a rhetorical question.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
He's one of those fucking crazy idiots who thinks that economies magically regulate themselves.
While your ostensibly right - your also wrong. Regulation has been utterly decimated by the corporate-political partnership over the past few decades. What's left of regulation is used as a competitive barrier by the large corporations.
For instance, Toyota lobbied in 2007 to keep low CAFE fuel standards in the USA. Why? To keep US automakers at a competitive disadvantage.
Meredith Baker, former FCC commissioner, was co-opted to approve a monopolistic merger and promptly was hired by the companies she formerly regulated.
The Federal Reserve bank, itself a private bank, approves mergers and acquisitions while at the same time having those very members on it's own managerial boards.
When I was a kid I was a firm believer in government regulation and a public-private system of corporate governance... but now all I see is unrestrained and unfettered insanity. To call this capitalism is an insult to Marxist Philosophy.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
After that, it's Banana Republic time.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."
Deleted
Its weather duties do not require a whole agency. Eliminate it, and put all weather duties under the Department of Defense, which already has a legitimate national security reason to know the weather all over the world. Actually there is serious duplication right now, since the Navy and Air Force already employ a lot of meterologists.
Do some poking around and you'll find 90% of the ground work in science is laid by gov't funds, mostly in Europe & Asia these days. The 'research' most companies do is figuring out how to monetize gov't funded research.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
and where'd the money for the equipment come from?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
But you can split it back up. DHS contains things like customs, immigration and Coast Guard, which are legitimate, necessary, functions of the federal government.
However, I guess the Coast Guard could just be made a branch of the Navy. All the different border-related services such as USCIS, CBP, APHIS and ICE should be rolled into one department. Give protection details and anti-counterfeiting to the FBI.
Politicians won't look at the mission and necessity, but whether the money goes to their districts.
Ron Paul has a lot of interesting things to say, but very few of them make me want him as my president.
Instead, I like Gary Johnson. Fiscally conservative libertarian, but socially quite liberal. He wants both a balanced budget - and promises to submit one in 2013 - and the legalization of online gambling and marijuana.
Former 2-term New Mexico governor, term-limited out of office. Grew a construction company from a 1-man handyman company to the largest construction company in NM. Climbed Mount Everest. Rode his bicycle across New Hampshire as part of his campaigning there.
He's been largely excluded from polls and debates. (If you saw the Florida Republican debate in September, he had the joke about shovel-ready jobs.)
http://www.garyjohnson2012.com/
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
It makes no sense for our elected Congressmen and Senators to be outside the control of the states for 4+ years in a row. Tax their income at 100% using the state tax system, and then pay them via State revenues the balance. If they perform. If they vote and can show they are reading and understanding the laws they are voting on. And if they screw up, you have an instant tether to pull them back into line. No money.
Why are we allowing them to be paid by people who are not us? We might as well let people from other states vote on the elections as well.
You want to fix problems, make sure they know who they work for. Every other week when they get their paycheck. Signed by the Governor of their state.
So I take it you didn't read the whole budget proposal in which the country would have a balanced budget by 2015?
http://c3244172.r72.cf0.rackcdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/RestoreAmericaPlan.pdf
Why does the Federal government have to be the one doing all the spending?
Because they have the most money.
so it doesn't really matter.. more the same inc.
So I agree with all your sentiment about the productive and beneficial uses of education in society. What I don't agree with is the notion that somehow a federal bureaucracy infrastructure has anything to do with the education of my children other than interference.
The plan actually cuts $1 trillion. The article is only focusing at some of the tiniest cuts for some reason.
Ron Paul has come out saying he is going to remodel Angst Badger's kitchen. Stating it was about "Stove's Right's" Ron Paul plans on moving things like heating and cooling to the kitchen. The kitchen will also get its own electrical grid, water main and gas hook-up. "Kitchens can do this cheaper and better" he declared. "This way even the toaster gets a vote on how water should flow."
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
Would you rather have "high-functioning" children on the autistic spectrum that grow to become productive members of society, or for these same children to flounder without society meeting their needs early in life.
That depends how much is costs.
You people seem to want to discuss this like we arent making trade-offs in the process, that apparently money is no object when it comes to "special needs." Explain to me that it only costs twice as much per special needs student per year and I'm all for it, as long as we arent classifying large swaths of students as such.
"His name was James Damore."
Yes, and letting loose Ron Paul on the US government would be like a company replacing all their Windows desktops with VT100 terminals connected to a server running Gentoo overnight, and telling the secretaries and PHB's that, hey, you've got C and Perl installed, so you can build the functionality you want better yourselves. You clearly have no idea whatsoever of the immense amount of pain and dislocation that would be caused by such a "refactoring".
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Much hatred there is in this one...
That should read '10x' not '100x'
Nice straw man you built there. To bad you have to beat the stuffing out of it like that.
Have you considered that there are libertarians that understand the need for a Federal government (interstate roads are a responsibility of the Feds, and for good reason), but they also understand that there needs to be restraint on the scope of the central government due to consolidation of power. There is also a need for state and local governments, each with limited and controlled powers. If you think pushing control back down toward the people is crazy, you just need to get out more.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Because Toyota likes selling high-margin SUV's and trucks right along with Detroit.
Except this is the natural end result of capitalism: consolidation, elimination of competition, regulatory capture, and industry-friendly legislation written by people hired from the same industry. Like the Health Insurance Profit Protection Act signed by Obama last year, for example. Written by a woman who used to head up the lobbying division for Wellpoint.
So what are you going to do when California decides that it wants to run 117 volts AC, Nevada 204 volts AC, and Oregon decides to go DC ? Sure, it isn't an insurmountable problem but it greatly complicates selling products that use electricity or transferring excess power to neighbor states. The same thing applies to roads, rail ways, and a whole host of other public utilities. Having one body setting down standards benefits everybody.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Even if he was elected president, how would this ever pass in Congress?
Ok, let's look at the actual budget for DOE:
http://www.cfo.doe.gov/budget/12budget/Content/FY2012Highlights.pdf
Surprise, Surprise! The largest item in there is for the National Nuclear Security Administration which manages our strategic nuclear fleet.
And the reason we need the FCC is obviously to enforce property rights for the broadcast spectrum. You wouldn't think I would need to explain this to a Libertarian since preserving property rights is ostensibly at the core of Libertarian conception of government. And yet I frequently encounter libertarians who substitute empty sloganeering for serious policy analysis.
I homeschool - my kids kick ass and I don't need your fucking State education
This is where people who don't support public education miss the GODDAMED BUS. You aren't paying to educate just your kids. You are paying to educate everbody's kids, so when your kids grow up, they can live in a nice community full of other educated people. There is a pretty direct correlation between lack of education and crime. Do you want your kids to get murdered by a mugger in twenty years because they have a nice watch?
I am selfish. I want to live in a country full of interesting, educated people. If you think this isn't important, take you brilliant kids and move to Somalia and tell me how it works out for you.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
The Federal Government has a constitutional mandate to regulate interstate and international commerce. But hey, fuck that right? Pass me a heroine needle and that copy of Atlas Shrugged, it's Ron Paul's world now./quote> And the Department of Education is engaged in what sort of commerce, exactly?
Education had been state run and progressively getting better up until the 1970's when the feds took it over and it has now flat lined for 40 years.
Roads and bridges are also paid for by and maintained by the communities / counties in which they run through.
The Federal Government adds nothing of value to education and minimal value to our roads and bridges.
Work Safe Porn
Why? Because there's no record of spending ever helping to get a country out of recession... you're right... oh wait... the other thing.
Stop the handouts and quotas for agribusiness, handing out juicy federal contracts to companies that offshore their profits and have a per transaction stupidity tax on financial companies that don't put money away for a rainy day while they engage in highly complex, high risk financial transactions and expect the US taxpayer to bail them out. Then move on to screwing over the little guy.
That's easy. I like: "the initiation or threatening of violence against a person or legitimately owned property of another". I subscribe to the Axiom of Non-Aggression (a.k.a. the Non-Aggression Principle):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle
http://www.lewrockwell.com/block/block26.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dYNk0QGdBw
Enjoy,
-Mike
Well, with an army stealing petrol all around the world, an energy department is not really necessary. Commerce, is not necessary either as the US can force any country into a “free” trade agreement at gunpoint. Education? Who cares about education? You don’t need it to go and die fighting for your country while stealing petrol in Iraq. Housing, almost irrelevant, there is no need to build houses because every body able person should be invading another country. Urban Development are you joking? Nobody needs urban development, just build training camps!
No wonder you posted as AC
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Agreed, I am sick and tired of being the worlds police, and footing the majority of the bill for keep the world safe (so to speak) Let them all pay their own way.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rick-perry-ron-paul-have-mixed-record-on-energy-subsidies/2011/10/19/gIQA457kyL_story.html
It's "scum" to get back money that has been paid out in taxes?
Maybe it's better to dismantle the system that forces people to act in such a way, and to stop lambasting people trying their best to change the system from within without any bloodshed. If this budget issue isn't fixed, their will be blood, and a lot of it. Civil Wars, like divorces, are often started over economic issues.
Why are we debating the Interstate Highway system? Ron Paul is all about doing things the constitutional way. Interstate roads are explicitly authorized in the constitution (look for "post roads"). Facilitating interstate transportation of people and goods is a legitimate federal function.
Also: The Interestate highway system (National Defence Highways) was a MILITARY project, promoted during his presidency by former general Eisenhower, as part of the "Cold War" and preparation for hot war. In addition to its uses for transporting industrial products and raw materials and otherwise supporting wartime transportation, it is designed so traffic can be diverted to one set of lanes while the other set is used as a runway for certain military aircraft, which can be hangered under an overpass. In time of war the whole country becomes an airfield.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
People often forget that most of the things they want from government are not provided by the federal government. Libraries, schools, roads, police and firefighters all get funding from sources closer than the federal government. There are very few (arguably zero) services that cannot be provided by a state and can be provided only by the federal government.
I can't decide whether to write Ron Paul off as a nut or to admire him for bringing up discussions that other candidates wouldn't dare give voice. On the one hand, this will be widely taken as "Ron Paul will destroy our collective investment in our society" which will effectively end any chance of him being a serious presidential hopeful. On the other hand, if it were seen as "Let the people have more say in how their taxes are used" then it would be a widely popular idea.
When I pay taxes to my city or county, they go toward funding those things that my neighbors want, except where they pay to follow laws from my state or federal government. My votes have the largest effect at this level of taxation, so I have the most say in how my taxes are used at this level. When I pay taxes to my state, it goes toward the things people in my state want. My votes don't have as much impact as they do locally, but they still have about 50 times the impact they do at the federal level. At the federal level, they go toward the things that my fellow citizens want, but my votes have the least impact and I have the least control of how my taxes are spent.
TC Wilcox observed that state control of services allows them to try different approaches and see which work better, which is very true. It is also true that what works best in one place is often not the best choice in another. I cannot help but agree with the idea that moving the decisions closer to the voter is a good idea. I suspect that people who prefer federal solutions to state solutions do so because they believe that their own preferences are unpopular in other regions and thus their preferences should be forced on those unwilling people who refuse to realize how right they are. Nothing says freedom so ironically as "you can't move out of the state if you disagree, you have to move out of my country."
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
That government is best which governs least.
Liberty.
All those government agencies evolved because we needed them.
It only takes one counter-example to debunk your statement. My counterexample is the Drug Enforcement Administration. If you're claiming that we need a federal agency to harass cancer patients, then to hell with you.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
1) The departments he's attacking have been a critical central component to the U.S. throughout their existences. Yes, they're huge and financially screwed up and possibly irreparable, but let's face it... they are important. The alternative would be to be entirely dependent on organizations like Lockheed (bet he owns a few stocks there) which would be disastrous. Just because he doesn't understand what's being researched there doesn't mean that some of the most important scientific research in the U.S. isn't occurring there.
:
2) The movement throughout many states to force Christianity into the government, the schools etc... at the expense of the freedoms which the U.S. was established upon is hurting the country terribly. Scientists are being viewed as the enemy because they keep coming up with these silly facts that conflict with what was written for a group of uneducated brick layers travelling through the dessert 3700 years ago. Because of that, they are seen as unnecessary by uneducated people. Maybe someone should explain to them that their god sent these scientists to fix all the problems they keep praying for answers to. But, as a result, the Christian movement keeps getting stronger and stronger in government and it almost certainly will push the world (or at least the U.S.) into a new dark age where science is denounced.... well as long as it doesn't cut off their cell phone and TV signals.
3) Even educational TV isn't that educational anymore. Those networks are trying to get ratings in order to justify the cost of producing programs and broadcasting the signals. TV infrastructure companies keep wanting to pay less and less since they have to support having more channels for the same amount of money to the consumer. This is dumbing down the world as even Discovery is hardly educational anymore and is broadcasting mainly programs like Top Gear (while cool... is more of a sports program or game show than educational).
4) The secondary educational system is completely and totally broken. For the most part, general education that is required in junior and senior years is an utter waste of time.... at least at that age of the student. While there are students who will certainly benefit from it and appreciate it, for the vast majority, the raging hormones in the age group makes it a ridiculous waste of time at that point. I personally believe that from the end of tenth grade and for two years after, students should be able to choose
a) a vocational school
b) community service (local, military or peace corp)
c) to stay in school (for the ones who will attend the university
Then, after those two years, the students will hopefully have matured a bit... maybe even gotten laid a few times to level out their raging hormone problem, send them back to school for junior and senior year courses. It would be the same as making junior college compulsory. In addition, it will help the kids have a little more time to figure out who they'll be for the rest of their lives... a decision they're thoroughly unsuited for making at the age of 16.
In addition, for students who are interested in an undergraduate level of education, that should be part of the secondary education program in the government. This way, kids can just continue high school for the additional 4 years or switch to a university undergraduate program. Point being that while it would cost a great deal more money to support this system, it'll also generate a much higher amount of tax revenue for the government by making it possible for a much larger population to get a college level education and to choose their path for the rest of their careers at the age of 24 instead of 17 or 18. Additionally, by making vocational school freely available for 2 years during junior and senior years, a great deal more of skilled workers will be available. Kids would have better options available than to work at Walmart or the gas station if they are even slightly motivated.
The biggest pr
this is why Ron Paul will not be the nominee
The only way that could be true is if you believed that you had a "right" to the fruit of your neighbor's labor, which is quite the abhorrent notion.
Uh... them be the guys giving weather info to airports and such, they also maintain the air routes for commercial pilots and navigational charts for commercial ships. Yeah, shutting them down is a great idea. You go Ron.
~Syberz
... they could axe the Presidency and Congress. That would save trillions! Oh, wait, then it would be Paul who would be out of a job.
And you fail at reading comprehension. The GP never said that there has been 30 years of libertarianism. Rather that we have 30 years of data to show that libertarians are wrong thinking that the free market can regulate itself.
I disagree.
We have at least 300 years of evidence showing that libertarians are wrong.
sorry, but you are dead wrong. you are deluding yourself if you think we had any semblance of a free market over the past 30 years. especially with the financial system.
there was something close to a free market 300 years ago. but that was soon abandoned, starting with the constitution and going downhill quickly from there.
Ron Paul economic ideas are no-fucking-brainers. We've got 150 years of history prior to the creation of the various social programs, where the US was an economic powerhouse that the rest of the planet was immigrating into. There were no federally-run social programs at that time; why do you think everyone wanted to be here?
You can't honestly think that his desire to return the federal government to the responsibilities that were laid down in the founding documents is unfounded and stupid. There's no way you can be that ideologically biased.
And that "old fool" has been saying these same things for decades. Every warning he's given us has come true. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gk3FwJTjVi4
Hello little man. I will destroy you!
On a recent anti-Murdoch story, many conservatives moaned how it was all just political and didn't belong on slashdot. Now every US slashdotter's favourite tax-hating libertarian comes up with a plan to cut government spending, and there's already 2000 posts, most of them pretty much dick-sucking "me too"'s.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Because society paid for your education, you fucktard.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Except that's exactly what they are doing. The natural, end result of capitalism is consolidation and eventual monopolies - which limit choice and prevent new competitors from entering the market, further limiting choice.
Libertarian policy is faith-based policy, as that's all it has to support it.
False.
BUT can anyone point out a single other candidate that has a plan in plain, simple terms like his to actually do something?
I take that to mean do something about the deficit. Barack Obama has an even simpler plan - get more people working with his jobs bill, raise taxes slightly on the wealthy, reduce spending on wars and cut oil subsidies.
The current deficit comes from 3 main reasons:
- massive unemployment and recession caused by unregulated and unaccountable bankers
- the Bush tax cuts (now the Obama tax cuts, since he renewed them)
- very expensive wars
My solution to each in turn would be:
- stimulus (to help the current situation) and return of glass steagall (to prevent the next banking crisis)
- return to '90s income tax rates
- get out of Iraq and Afghanistan
I'd add:
- treat capital gains as regular income (why do we value *having* money more than *working*?)
- breaking up the large banks
- serious invesitgation and indictment of fraudulent bankers
- option for all to buy into medicare and allow medicare to be able to negotiate prices
- publicly funded elections (if it costs us $1Billion or even $10Billion, does anyone think that's more than what we lose to corruption caused by beholden politicians?)
No, we don't. In a sane system, we'd have surpluses during a good economy and spend it (i.e. use stimulus) during a poor economy. That should be as controversial as storing up food for the winter and then eating it. Stimulus damps the bad economy swings (by hiring, by putting more money in the hands of people that will spend it). Austerity amplifies the bad economy swings (by laying even more people off, taking money out of an already hurting economy).
I just read 200 comments and not one mentioned increasing revenue.
Taxes are at historic lows. The wealthy survived just fine with > 50% taxes for decades. Likewise, all of us (middle/upper middle class) survived just fine with Clinton era rates.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=3490
The bush tax cuts, the wars, and medicare part d, combined with the recession, are what is causing the deficit. If we just stop those three things and the economy recovers, the deficit will go away.
Personally I'd have gone with the TSA. Since 9/11, potential terrorists are handled just fine by other passengers on the plane. I think we could safely have zero security at the airports now, because if you start some shit on an airplane, your fellow passengers will KILL you if they have to. I don't need a 48 year old Harry Tuttle fondling my balls for 5 minutes to stop terrorists. Um Harry... I didn't say "stop"...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
IIRC, in the "golden age of air travel", airlines were heavily regulated.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
>Go read up on what it was like back when cocaine was legal.
I have it on good authority that cops weren't in the habit of staging military raids to serve routine warrants back then.
> People decided they didn't want their doctor to be high on cocaine while they were being operated on.
They don't want to be under the knife of a drunk, either. What's your point?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Mary Jane and my body don't get along
I'm curious... what do you mean by that?
I agree from a macro and idealistic standpoint. Why? Other than for the purpose of creating secure, lifetime jobs for career bureaucrats, the government does a poor job at just about everything that it sinks its teeth into--with the exception of WAR IN SELF-DEFENSE versus WAR OF CHOICE --although, at the onset, it always begins with the best of intentions.
However, from a realistic standpoint, I disagree. Why? That's because you'd wind up playing a shell game with the American people. Now you see it, now you don't. Politicians just can't help it - it's in their DNA to create huge and bloated bureaucracies as the answer to every problem. Once you create one of these bureaucracies, they tend to take a life of their own, become completely unrestrained, and just BLOAT and BLOAT until they implode under their own weight. The minute you get rid of one bureaucracy, 1-5 more would pop up in its place. The net savings is $0 or a negative $1 trillion dollars.