Economy, Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, Ron Paul

Politics Liberty, Ron Paul

Politics, World Afghanistan, Big Federal Government, Militarism, Ron Paul

Sadly, the disaster in the Gulf continues this week as BP’s efforts at containment keep hitting snags and residents along the coast scramble to clean up and defend their shores and wildlife. Many have criticized the federal government in the past weeks for not doing enough. The reality is there is only so much government can do to help, yet a lot they can do to prolong the problem and misdirect the pain. For example, in the interest of “doing something” the administration has enacted a unilateral ban on offshore drilling. This is counterproductive. I am proud to cosponsor legislation to lift that ban. Why punish other oil companies and their hard-working employees who had nothing to do with this disaster, and who have better safety records?

And, as usually happens after disasters, countless people – even officials in local and state government – have come forward who know what needs to be done and are willing to help, but have been stymied by federal bureaucratic red tape as the oil continues to gush. The real problem is not so much a lack of government assistance, but government getting in the way of those who have solutions. We witnessed the same phenomenon during hurricanes Katrina and Ike. It seems government’s main role in these situations is to find excuses to stall relief, hold meetings and press conferences, waste money, punish the wrong people, and over-regulate.

Yet even after many examples of past incompetence, people still look to government to solve problems in the wake of disasters. A government that tries to be all things to all people might engender a lot of learned dependence, but ultimately it only harms the very people it is supposed to serve as they wait helplessly for salvation from Washington.

Government could help by holding the appropriate parties fully liable for damages and clean-up costs. I am hopeful that efforts to do this are genuine and BP is indeed held responsible for all damages, not shielded by liability caps or reimbursed under the table by taxpayers. Unfortunately, a large sum of taxpayer money has been slipped into the upcoming supplemental bill for Gulf cleanup costs that should fall on BP. Taxpayers should not have to bail out a major oil company that has caused this horrible damage to our shores.

It should be noted that BP is not exactly a bastion of free market capitalism. Rather, they are very vested in acquiring government subsidies, favorably slanted policies, and competition-hobbling regulation. BP has even been a major lobbying proponent of cap-and-trade because of certain provisions in the legislation it could profit from. Considering who lobbies for them and what they lobby for, my concern is that attempts to hold them strictly and fully accountable could end up being nothing more than a shell game, with taxpayers ultimately holding the bag.

If the government’s idea of action in crisis is to punish the innocent, bail out the guilty, and raise prices at the pump on everybody, we should want them to do less, not more. Recent polls show sharply waning support for offshore drilling. We still need oil, and a lot of good jobs depend on oil production. It is crucial to the functioning of our economy. But if accidents continue to be handled this way, it is easy to understand why so many see more cost than benefit to off-shore drilling, and that is also a tragedy.

Texas Straight Talk by Congressman Ron Paul

Politics, World Ron Paul

Economy, Federal Reserve, Gold, Politics CNBC, Ron Paul

How Rand Paul became the Tea Party’s Obama

His father’s libertarian army and Rush Limbaugh’s “Dittoheads” aren’t natural allies. But Rand Paul has united them

On the afternoon of Dec. 16, 2009, the 236th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, Rand Paul left the office of his small ophthalmology practice in Bowling Green and drove 30 miles to Russellville, Ky. In an election year without the Tea Party movement, Rand Paul’s campaign to become Kentucky’s next U.S. senator would be just as quixotic as the bid his father, Ron Paul, made for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. The younger Paul has never before run for political office, and he shares many of his father’s unorthodox views, including a desire to abolish both the Federal Reserve and the Department of Education. Yet, today he would address Kentucky’s Logan County Republicans as the race’s front-runner.

At the Republican Party headquarters in Russellville, Paul took the podium. Dimpled and handsome, 47 years old, with boyishly tousled salt-and-pepper hair, he surveyed the audience, a crowd of mostly retirement-age GOP stalwarts. Then, in a casual and articulate drawl, Paul committed an act of heresy that would have once doomed any Kentucky Republican: He attacked the state’s senior senator, the minority leader, Mitch McConnell. The oratory opened with a display of subtle rhetorical agility worthy of Mark Antony.

“I got into this initially because there were rumors they were trying to push Jim Bunning out of office,” Paul began. “I said to a reporter, ‘I think that’s wrong.’”

The two-term Sen. Jim Bunning was the slain Caesar of the stump speech. Playing the role of Brutus, of course, was McConnell, whose hand rests on the GOP’s national fundraising taps, and who, with a twist of the wrist, had effectively forced Bunning into retirement. Without directly accusing the honorable Republican leader, Paul decried Bunning’s martyrdom.

“I think he’s done a good job for us,” he said. “He has been conservative, and when the bank bailout came up, Jim Bunning had the courage to vote against it.” Paul didn’t need to tell this group that Bunning had done so in defiance of McConnell — and he was too gentlemanly to belabor the point. The implication was clear: The party boss had taken Bunning down for his principles.

To take Bunning’s place, McConnell had groomed Trey Grayson, a five-generation Kentuckian and fellow graduate of the University of Kentucky Law School — the “leadership academy” of Kentucky politics, as some call it — who is Kentucky’s current secretary of state. Most impressive on Grayson’s political résumé is that he won reelection in 2007, even as the state overwhelmingly elected a Democratic governor. In a state where 60 percent of voters are registered Democrats, Grayson (who is himself a lapsed Democrat) had valuable crossover appeal. When McConnell began assessing Bunning’s electoral prospects in early 2009, Grayson must have seemed especially appealing in contrast. The insubordinate and gaffe-prone Bunning had recently responded to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer by coldly forecasting that she would be dead within a year.

Grayson started the race with party backing, a reputation for competence, an ideal political résumé, and a 6-foot-5 frame that gave him an air of authority that his unspectacular public speaking sometimes lacked. When the first polling was done in September ‘09, Grayson had a 34-25 percent lead. Within four months, though, the numbers had reversed, and Paul told the Logan County Republicans why.

“If there’s ever a year for an outsider who has never held office before, this is the year,” Paul said. He recounted tales of Tea Party events. Seven hundred people in his hometown of Bowling Green had rallied on April 15; there were 4,000 in Louisville a few months later. By contrast, Paul said, “The biggest GOP event I’ve been to in the last seven months — 200 people in Louisville. You can see how the Tea Party movement is big and it captures the discontent that’s out there, and sometimes discontent with both sides.”

The political divide between Paul and Grayson broadly represents a larger fault line within the GOP: It’s Republicans who blame the Democrats versus Republicans who blame the government. A day earlier, on Dec. 15, 2009, a coalition of Tea Party groups had held an emergency “Code Red” rally in a park just north of the Capitol. Addressing the crowd was Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, who appears to be making a bid to replace McConnell as the leader of the Senate Republicans.

The crowd was about 1,000 strong and half were wearing bright red jackets and hats, to signify the imminent threat posed by the healthcare bill, which at the time seemed close to passing. Several were waving the yellow Gadsden flags of the American Revolution, which feature the words “Don’t Tread on Me” and the image of a coiled rattlesnake ready to strike. Most of the protesters were middle-aged and white, more men than women — a representative sampling of the Tea Party movement, which (polling has since shown) is slightly older, wealthier, better-educated and angrier than the average American.

“Over a year ago,” DeMint said, “Americans voted for a president who promised to cut taxes, cut spending, cut debt.” His amplified voice drowned in a chanted chorus of “liar, liar.” A woman with short gray hair and rosy cheeks that matched her red sweat shirt held a sign that read “Obama bin Lyin.”

DeMint finished his attack on Obama, then pivoted to Republicans.

“Democrats and Republicans, if they’re not standing up for our Constitution, for a balanced budget and the principles of liberty … then you send us people that believe as you do that this country is about freedom and now is our time to fight for it,” he said, and waved to the applauding crowd.

In the GOP’s soul-searching after its 2008 losses, DeMint has been a conservative hard-liner. The rise of the Tea Party has dovetailed with DeMint’s ambitions to trim the moderate fat, push the party to the right, and ultimately lead it. To that end, DeMint has grown his leadership PAC, the Senate Conservatives Fund, into a powerful alternative to the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is the fundraising arm of the Senate Republican caucus that McConnell leads. Over $340,000 worth of support from DeMint’s PAC fueled one of the Tea Party’s biggest electoral victories to date, when the right-wing Marco Rubio pulled so far ahead in the Florida polls that the incumbent Republican governor, Charlie Crist, left the party to run as an independent rather than lose in the primary.

DeMint’s endorsement of Paul came only recently, on May 5, the same day McConnell gave his official backing to Grayson.

According to Paul’s campaign manager, David Adams, Paul and McConnell met seven months ago at the Louisville airport, but haven’t met since. Adams confirmed that Paul has not pledged his support for McConnell as leader of the Senate Republicans.

“We haven’t even really seriously talked about the fall election,” Adams said, “and that’s way before something that might happen in the beginning of 2011.”

It seems likely that Paul is waiting to see where the fault line breaks after this election. With his own fundraising machine, he hasn’t needed McConnell’s support. And if Tea Party candidates are widely successful, then DeMint could become the GOP’s new kingmaker. Rand Paul would certainly be a favorite son. In fact, he is already the telegenic, silver-tongued, politically savvy son of the man who won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, which gauged Republican sentiments in anticipation of 2012.

It all started with a bomb

Rand Paul’s success can be understood in the genealogy of the Tea Party movement. Its viral and decentralized traits, the intellectual foundations of its libertarianism, and its fundraising tactics all come from Ron Paul’s presidential campaign.

The first Tea Party event of the Obama era was arguably a Ron Paul “money bomb” fundraiser; and the story of that event is the primal example of how the medium of the Internet and the power of American mythology have combined to unify a movement of militant individualists.

The forefathers of the money bomb are two Paul-ites in their mid-30s, Trevor Lyman and Vijay Boyapati. They met online in the fall of 2007 through their shared enthusiasm for Ron Paul, quit their jobs, and moved to New Hampshire to start Operation Live Free or Die, a PAC with the goal of recruiting 1,000 fellow supporters to knock on every door in the state before the presidential primary. Boyapati, an early Google employee who cashed out at the height of the market, bankrolled much of the operation and coordinated the door-knocking. Lyman built the bombs.

His inspiration was the movie “V for Vendetta,” which had gained a cult following among libertarians. The film depicts a dystopian vision of a modern British government co-opted by corporations and transformed into a totalitarian state, which is violently attacked by a masked insurgent who styles himself after Guy Fawkes, the terrorist who was caught on Nov. 5, 1605, attempting to bomb Parliament while its members and the king were inside.

Lyman designed a time bomb of his own: a website that would, over several weeks, collect pledges to donate to Ron Paul. On scores of Ron Paul websites, MySpace and Facebook groups, and libertarian message boards, users began posting live tickers tied to Lyman’s database, which continuously updated the pledge total. On the 402nd anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, the money bomb would trigger a multimillion-dollar blast of coordinated individual donations. It was a novel method of small-donor bundling. A campaign contribution feels important and exciting in proportion to its size; with the money bomb, small contributors became co-conspirators in a larger scheme, and every additional donor they recruited gave them a larger stake in the fundraising total. The first money bomb on Nov. 5th raised $4.2 million.

The Ron Paul online message boards are usually chaotic and contentious — libertarians are by disposition even less likely to sublimate their egos than your average Internet commentator — but within a few days a consensus formed that another money bomb should be set for Dec. 16. “The free market of ideas,” as some Paul-ites call their online community, was functioning efficiently.

Meanwhile, in Dartmouth, Mass., a 49-year-old floor installer named Bob Dwyer had been exploring some Internet message boards and clicked a link to a video of Ron Paul. Like many who are drawn to Paul, Dwyer felt he was finally hearing a convincing explanation of the country’s problems. Unlike the traditional left-right debates, Paul’s was a story of freedom versus oppression that paralleled the original American Revolution.

“Traditionally, I used to think the Democrats are for the poor, Republicans are for the rich, and I was always a poor person, so why would I vote for a Republican?” Dwyer said. “But Ron Paul, he was teaching me, maturing me, educating me.”

A registered Democrat for most of his life, Dwyer had never been politically active, beyond simply voting. Yet he found himself discussing Ron Paul with fellow dads on the sidelines of his daughters’ soccer games with such enthusiasm that people began asking if he was volunteering for the campaign. He used Ron Paul’s website to find and join a Boston-area Meetup group. After the first money-bomb success, the group began discussing what they should do for Dec. 16.

The inspiration struck Dwyer in his sleep. On Tuesday morning, Nov. 13, he awoke with the idea to hold an event, in conjunction with the upcoming money bomb, at Boston’s Faneuil Hall –  where many of the Founding Fathers met to plot their responses to the oppressions of the British Parliament, including the original Tea Party.

“I hate to say it, man, but if it’s not spooky to you, I feel like it was divine providence,” Dwyer said, looking back on that morning. “It was like the Founding Fathers came to me in my sleep and stuck the torch of liberty in my hand.”

Read the rest at Salon.com

Politics Liberty, Rand Paul, Ron Paul

Federal Reserve Ron Paul

Politics, World Federal Reserve, Liberty, Militarism, Ron Paul, United States Bankruptcy

Written by Warren Mass
Monday, 26 April 2010 15:20

In a speech before the House of Representatives on April 22, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) voiced opposition to H.R. 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, referring to the legislation as “this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised.”

Rep. Paul drew parallels between the current push to isolate Iran and the events that led up to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003: “Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.”

Continuing his speech, Paul was critical of what he described as “scare-mongering,” such as assertions that Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States in one year, and that Iran will soon be able to detonate a nuclear weapon. Asking where we had heard such claims before, Paul cited examples of similarly alarmist warnings issued about Iraq during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

The congressman also noted that Iran, which is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Furthermore, noted Paul, Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. Finally, according to the entire U.S. Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program.

In summing up his case, Paul observed that the sanctions proposed in HR 2194, and the blockade of Iran that would be necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. Therefore, he asserted, a vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran.

This was not the first time that Dr. Paul has spoken out emphatically against imposing sanctions against Iran. He has frequently used his “Texas Straight Talk” column posted on his congressional website to bolster his argument. For example, in his TST column for April 17, 2006, “Sanctions against Iran,” he noted: “Economic sanctions are acts of aggression. Sanctions increase poverty and misery among the very poorest inhabitants of targeted nations, and they breed tremendous resentment against those imposing them. But they rarely hurt the political and economic elites responsible for angering American leaders in the first place.”

Westerners often wonder how radical terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda so easily recruit committed followers willing to risk their lives to attack us. It is quite likely that the “tremendous resentment” that Rep. Paul attributes to the use of sanctions has played more than a minor role in inciting such fanaticism.

Addressing a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on October 30, 2009, Rep. Paul spoke out against H.R. 2194, the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act of 2009. In making his case, Paul noted how our previous interventions into the affairs of other nations have usually backfired. As on case-in-point Paul noted:

When we went into Iraq, there were unintended consequences. There is still no stability there, but one thing for certain… Iraq is a much closer ally of Iran right now. We drove the Iraqis into the hands of the Iranians and there has been an expression here that this is good [...], but we still should be concerned about China. Well, if you’re concerned about China, this is the best thing in the world for China. They are motivated. They have already invested in Iran. The production of petroleum products has gone up significantly in Iran, so this is a big motivation for the Iranians to do exactly what you don’t want them to do….

How can we get terrified of a threat from the Iranians? You know, they are a Third World nation, up until recently, they couldn’t even make their own gasoline. But because of our pressure so far, they’re getting quite capable of doing it. We’re driving them into the hands of the Chinese. [The Chinese] have our money. They can control us through the dollar and yet, we’re driving the Chinese into taking over just as we drove the Iraqis to become close allies of the Iranians. I think our policies are deeply flawed.

Rep. Paul’s December 15, 2009 congressional speech against H.R. 2194 demonstrated the value of not only knowing our history, but remembering important lessons drawn from our history:

In the late 1930s and the early 1940s the American people did not want to go into war. But there were some that were maneuvering us into war and they used the argument that you needed an event. So in June of 1941 sanctions were put against Japan, incidentally and ironically to prohibit oil products from going into Japan. Within 6 months there was the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Excerpts from an article published by Wikipedia help us understand some of the circumstances to which Dr. Paul referred:

In an effort to discourage Japanese militarism, Western powers including Australia, the United States, Britain, and the Dutch government in exile, which controlled the petroleum-rich Netherlands East Indies, stopped selling iron ore, steel and oil to Japan, denying it the raw materials needed to continue its activities in China and French Indochina. In Japan, the government and nationalists viewed these embargoes as acts of aggression; imported oil made up about 80% of domestic consumption, without which Japan’s economy, let alone its military, would grind to a halt. The Japanese media, influenced by military propagandists, began to refer to the embargoes as the “ABCD (”American-British-Chinese-Dutch”) encirclement” or “ABCD line.”

Faced with a choice between economic collapse and withdrawal from its recent conquests (with its attendant loss of face), the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters began planning for a war with the western powers in April or May 1941.

In his 1905-1906 work, The Life of Reason, the Spanish philosopher, essayist, poet and novelist George Santayana stated an oft-quoted principle: “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

While many Americans have heeded this principle, few of them, unfortunately, have held key positions directing U.S. foreign policy. As a result, our nation has endured the suffering wrought by almost a century of foreign entanglements and pointless wars.

thenewamerican.com

World Foreign Policy, Iran, Ron Paul

Ron Paul – The Mouse that is Roaring – Beats all Contenders in Poll

By Doug Wead April 15, 2010

HE CAN ACTUALLY WIN !

Today’s Rasmussen Poll Rocks the Washington Establishment. Ron Paul can actually win!

According to a Rasmussen Poll released today, if the 2012 presidential election were held now Barack Obama would defeat Ron Paul by a narrow margin of 1% of the national vote. It would be 42%-41%. Only a sliver separates the popular president, beloved by the media and the national establishment, from an insurgent candidacy that calls for an end to foreign interventionism, government intrusion into our private lives and bailouts of big banks and private businesses.

Even more stunning, according to the poll only 11% prefer some other candidate and 6% are undecided.

This is earth shattering news in the corridors of power of New York and Washington, D.C. Hey, it is stunning news in Peoria, Illinois.

Two years ago I wrote a blog entitled The Mouse that Roared. It told the surprising story of how a little known congressman from Texas, Ron Paul, had surged too late to win the Republican nomination but not too late to awaken the nation to his remarkable political platform. Just as the John McCain clinched the nomination Paulistas appeared everywhere, like mushrooms after the rain. The GOP went into emergency mode to change state party rules and sometimes shut down their own conventions to kill the embarrassing phenomenon of Ron Paul supporters winning delegates after the mathematical certainty of the McCain win was in the bag. (See How a GOP conspiracy continues to hurt Ron Paul.)

Even as the Republican Party experienced the Sarah Palin boomlet and then tanked in the general election the Paulistas were growing and spreading across party lines. Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal, Evangelical and Gay, Black and White, old and young, Ron Paul’s message of limited government had wide appeal.

When the Obama Stimulus plan appeared to be nothing more than a looting of the US Treasury for unions and narrow Democrat activist groups, and none of the most basic tweaks of the mortgage crisis were addressed, the Paulistas began to pick up steam. How could the public turn to establishment Republicans when the Bush administration had started the most recent mess? And yet, what was Barack Obama doing? Looting the treasury for his party at a time when unemployment was still soaring?

Ron Paul offered something different. It appeared to most to be a libertarian message, although Paul himself pointed out that it was pure Republicanism, a message that has been missing from the public debate since the days of Robert Taft. Ronald Reagan had espoused much of the same thing but the pragmatic realities of the Cold War had put his plans on the back burner. Ron Paul was saying that in the name of one emergency or another America was playing loose with the constitution, that our foreign policy was out of control. It was time for America to back away from its arrogant “rule the world” philosophy. We were going bankrupt, he warned.

“Why are we borrowing $10 billion from China,” Paul asked, “Only to give it to Musharaf [in Pakistan,] who is a dictator, who overthrew an elected government, and then we go to war to promote democracy in Iraq?”

Good question.

But nothing drew more support than Ron Paul’s campaign against the inside power brokers of the American establishment. Paul was making the point that no group of men and women, no matter how important or well connected, had the right to loot the US Treasury or devalue the money supply by printing more money, all without accountability. His calls to audit the Federal Reserve were portrayed as “goofy” until citizens began asking the obvious question, “Well, why not. It’s our government, our money. Who is the Federal Reserve?” It was like a scene out of the Emperor’s Clothes and the public was saying that the Wall Street Princes of Power were naked. And so they are.

If you have been reading this blog you have followed this unlikely, Cinderella story for the last few years. You learned how Ron Paul heroically stood up in the Republican Nation Debates in 2004. (SeeRon Paul’s best YouTube moment. ) How his opponents will try to defeat him. (See Is Ron Paul too old?) And how he can pull an upset? (How Ron Paul Wins.) But who would have thought the numbers would look this good this early?

During the 2008 Fox News Debate, an anchor brought up the dilemma,

“Congressman Paul, another question about electability. Do you have any sir?”

There followed raucous laughter and ridicule at the congressman’s expense. But Ron Paul patiently let the laughter pass over him and then made his passionate point, that he would win when the American people began to see the truth. Well, it has begun to happen. Ron Paul is not only in double digits, he is 1% away from the incumbent president.

GOP experts were quick to dismiss his recent win at CPAC as meaningless. Only the result of young voters. But 41% of the American electorate represents a lot more than

Welcome to the revolution.

Visit Doug Wead’s Blog Here

Politics Doug Wead, Liberty, Ron Paul