Tag Archives: Ron Paul

Obamanomics

Obama = more of the same (but better P. R.)

– Ron Paul on the budget, war, global governance, the dollar, and blaming freedom:

– Obama’s $163,000 Tax Bomb “The House and Senate are preparing to pass President Barack Obama’s radical budget blueprint, with only minor modifications, by using (abusing would be more accurate) the budget ‘reconciliation’ process. This process circumvents the Senate’s normal rules requiring 60 votes to prevent a filibuster. Reconciliation was created by Congress in the mid-1970s to enforce deficit reduction, the opposite of what the president and his party are aiming for. The immense increase in nondefense spending and taxes, and the tripling of the national debt in Mr. Obama’s budget, have been the subject of considerable scrutiny since it was announced. . . .

[Obama] claims to reduce the deficit by half, to shave $2 trillion off the debt (the cumulative deficit over his 10-year budget horizon), and not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. While in a Clintonian sense correct (depends on what the definition of “is” is), it is far more accurate to describe Mr. Obama’s budget as almost tripling the deficit. . . .

Finally, what of the claim not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year? Even ignoring his large energy taxes, Mr. Obama must reconcile his arithmetic. . . . Mr. Obama is going to leave a discounted present-value legacy of $6.5 trillion of additional future taxes, unless he dramatically cuts spending. (With interest the future tax hikes would be much larger later on.) Call it a stealth tax increase or ticking tax time-bomb. . . . If spread evenly over all those paying income taxes . . . every income-tax paying family would get a tax bill for $163,000.” (Read more from online.wsj.com)

– Obama’s Banking Rescue: O for Opaque
“President Obama has promised to run an administration of unprecedented openness. And in some respects, such as the ground rules for spending stimulus funds, he has. But in the most important area of all, the financial rescue, the administration is making trillion dollar decisions relying on the Federal Reserve and a small Wall Street club of advisors, with no transparency or public accountability.” (Read more from huffingtonpost.com)

– Stealing a Nation
“Bloomberg News reported earlier this week that it had calculated the total spending promised by the Obama administration to date as equaling the nation’s gross national product for one entire year—around $13 trillion. The public has grown inured to daily reports of massive spending programs and the administration’s fear mongering that the world will come to an end—or rather the cushy jobs of its friends on Wall Street will come to an end—unless our government spends and inflates on a scale that has never before been attempted. Ah, all the more reason to admire us, their propagandists proclaim, for the boldness of our actions in the face of such a calamity.

Yes, a calamity is approaching. It is the calamity brought about by reckless spending of the nation’s wealth in pursuit of the unattainable. There is no way that the trillions of dollars of malinvestment of the last few years can be pulled back out of the sinkhole. The money is gone. There is no way to get it back. What the Obama administration is doing is trying to make everyone pay for this massive loss when the proper, legal, ethical policy should be to ensure that those involved accept their losses like men.” (Read more form patrickbarron.blogspot.com)

– Geithner’s Plan Will Tax Main Street to Make Wall Street Richer
“The new consensus among the experts who missed the housing bubble (EMHB) is that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s plan to subsidize the purchase of junk mortgages and their derivatives will help alleviate the stress on the banking system. That’s good news.

These geniuses have devised a plan that for $1 trillion (approximately equal to 300 million kid-years of SCHIP, the State Child Health Insurance Program) can alleviate the stress on the banking system. Note that no one claims that $1 trillion spent on the Geithner plan will actually clean up the banking system – that would be asking too much. The EMHB only assure us that this $1 trillion (more than enough to have energy conserving retrofits for every building in the country) will make things better. Isn’t that enough?” (Read more from truthout.org)

Ron Paul Predicts 15-year Depression

“But the credibility of both western governments and their currencies is waning, and has been ever since the gold standard was abandoned in 1971, says Mr Paul. And that means even ‘safe’ investments are far from safe, he claims. . . .

Unfortunately, cashing out will not protect the value of investments, he insists, because ‘fiat’ currencies will all decline over the coming years as measures to try to haul the world economy out of recession fail. ‘The current stimulus measures are making things a lot worse,’ says Mr Paul.

‘The US government just won’t allow the correction the economy needs.’ He cites the mini-depression of 1921, which lasted just a year largely because insolvent companies were allowed to fail. ‘No one remembers that one. They’ll remember this one, because it will last 15 years.’

At some stage – Mr Paul estimates it will be between one and four years – the dollar will implode. ‘The dollar as a reserve standard is done,’ he says. He sees little hope for other currencies where central banks have also created too much liquidity dating right back to the early 1970s.” (Read more from infowars.com)

Ron Paul debates actor Stephen Baldwin over Drug War

There was no federal laws against Marijuana until 1937. I’m beginning to think our “greatest generation” was only greatest from the point of view of tyranny. See When the United States CONFISCATED GOLD FROM PRIVATE CITIZENS.

Ron Paul: “[The drug cartels] lobby to keep these laws in place because they can’t exist without them.”

See also: Mexican drug lord makes Forbes’ billionaire list

“We need more earmarks”

Once again, Ron Paul is right. If the money must be spent, better to earmark it and spend it publicly, than shroud it in secrecy. Without earmarks, the money still gets spent.

Listen to how Cavuto goes after Ron Paul, trying to spin him as a porker – the very thing Ron Paul has made a career of fighting. Ron Paul crushes him with logic and reasoning, as he does most propagandists.

H.R. 1207 – Federal Reserve Transparency Act

H.R. 1207, the bill introduced by Ron Paul to investigate the super-secretive private organization which controls our money, now has 28 co-sponsors. Write your representatives today!

Rep Abercrombie, Neil [D, HI-1]
Rep Alexander, Rodney [R, LA-5]
Rep Bachmann, Michele [R, MN-6]
Rep Bartlett, Roscoe G. [R, MD-6]
Rep Broun, Paul C. [R, GA-10]
Rep Burton, Dan [R, IN-5]
Rep Chaffetz, Jason [R, UT-3]
Rep DeFazio, Peter A. [D, OR-4]
Rep Duncan, John J., Jr. [R, TN-2]
Rep Foxx, Virginia [R, NC-5]
Rep Garrett, Scott [R, NJ-5]
Rep Grayson, Alan [D, FL-8]
Rep Heller, Dean [R, NV-2]
Rep Jones, Walter B., Jr. [R, NC-3]
Rep Kagen, Steve [D, WI-8]
Rep Kingston, Jack [R, GA-1]
Rep Marchant, Kenny [R, TX-24]
Rep McClintock, Tom [R, CA-4]
Rep Petri, Thomas E. [R, WI-6]
Rep Poe, Ted [R, TX-2]
Rep Posey, Bill [R, FL-15]
Rep Price, Tom [R, GA-6]
Rep Rehberg, Denny [R, MT]
Rep Rohrabacher, Dana [R, CA-46]
Rep Stearns, Cliff [R, FL-6]
Rep Taylor, Gene [D, MS-4]
Rep Woolsey, Lynn C. [D, CA-6]
Rep Young, Don [R, AK]
(Read more from DailyPaul.com)

Watch Sen. Bernie Sanders (I – VT) fail to get answers from Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. The law, in fact, protects the Fed’s secrecy, which is why a bill is needed before we can know anything about this secretive organization.

American altruism and arguments against foreign aid

There are many things morally and constitutionally reprehensible about foreign aid, i.e. forceful government seizure of citizens’ private wealth for redistribution to foreign countries. Ron Paul’s The Revolution: A Manifesto makes a very strong case.

Among his arguments, Ron Paul quotes Kenyan economist James Shikwati of the Inter Region Economic Network who said about foreign aid: “For God’s sake, please just stop.”

Ron Paul also cites a Hudson Institute study which found that in 2006, private, altruistic Americans gave well over three times as much foreign aid as the government. Were the government to stop the unconstitutional practice of foreign aid and allowed to keep more of our money, the amount of foreign aid would likely go up, not down.

From hudson.org about the study:

To capture the magnitude of [private] giving, the Center for Global Prosperity, at the Hudson Institute, has launched the first Index of Global Philanthropy. This in-depth study of U.S. private giving to the developing world combines existing surveys with original research to reveal the true magnitude of American generosity.

U.S. private giving to poor countries—at least $71 billion in 2004—was more than 3 1/2 times U.S. “official” foreign aid. What this shows is that Americans like to give abroad as they do at home—privately—while Europeans assist people overseas as they do domestically—mainly through their governments.

In fact, U.S. private giving abroad comes close to the amount of official foreign aid from all donor nations combined. Private giving and volunteerism by U.S. foundations and other non-governmental organizations, such as CARE, World Vision, and Catholic Relief Services, top $13 billion.

There’s more to be said. Not only do private citizens give more, but I’d bet the house that dollar-for-dollar their money accomplishes more. The people administering private charities sleep on floors, eat local food, and are motivated by compassion, whereas the bureaucrats administering our government’s altruism need armored SUV’s, thousand-dollar office chairs, computers, and bilingual staffs. Careerism inevitably plays a greater role in their motivation. Government altruism also has many more political strings attached that private charity.

Were we in charge of our own money not only would more of it go to charity, it’d be spent much more efficiently.

Conservatives Real and Imagined at CPAC 2009

There is a battle raging for the Republican Party between the conservatives who believe in conservative values (small government, non-intervention, individual liberty) and the neo-conservatives, who are neither conservative nor neo. Guys like Rush Limbaugh are party hacks at best, rationalizing whatever policy Republicans propose regardless any principles.

I hope my liberal friends see past the latter category into the former.

Rand Paul may run for Kentucky Senate

Excerpted at Daily Paul:

Kentucky Progress is reporting: Congressman Ron Paul’s son Rand is going to run for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Jim Bunning if Bunning ultimately decides not to run, he said Thursday night.

The Houston Chronicle / AP has also picked the story: FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Yet another Republican is considering a run for U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning’s seat.