My visits to the 2007 and 2011 Ames Straw Polls
Voting often feels like begging. You only get to decide which bully will take your lunch money. The best approach may be to turn your back on the whole thing and at least deny them the respect they presume to have. You can’t keep your money, but by ignoring them, you can keep your self-esteem.
I once again put that feeling aside to support the one politician who doesn’t seem to want my lunch money: Ron Paul.
In 2007, Ron Paul supporters were fewer, younger and louder.
Perhaps the older, calmer and more numerous supporters are a sign of the main-streaming of the liberty message. In 2007, Ron Paul’s area was relegated to an obscure corner of the straw poll:
This corner wasn’t even occupied on Saturday:
If I understand correctly, the campaigns bid for spots. In 2007, Mitt “the plastic man” Romney had the central area:
This year, it was Paul:
In the surrounding area, Santorum and Ron Paul seemed to dominate signage, with the edge going to Ron Paul.
In 2007, now-forgotten Senator Brownback had an impressive presence in the front area between the event and the parking lot:
I had the feeling his campaign was in trouble though, because his goons wouldn’t let me or my girlfriend into his tent to eat some of his barbeque. First they said I needed to vote. So I voted (for Ron Paul), and returned to show them my stained thumb:
Then they didn’t let me in because they didn’t believe I was a Brownback supported. I honestly don’t know how they concluded that. I wasn’t wearing any liberty paraphernalia. Perhaps my appearance and good manners were insufficiently pro-war and pro-Patriot Act.
So we went to eat some of the plastic man’s food. Grey burgers on white bread, if I remember correctly. The free food helps me feel better implicitly endorsing these sociopaths through my participation.
This year, I ate three free snow cones from the large wind-energy tent:
Here’s how it works. (This an important lesson for anyone entering politics.) You go up to them, point to what you want and say “give me this, please.”
As a mere participant at the straw poll, you’re relegated to snow cones, burgers, a pro-wind power battery-operated fan, pens, barbeque, pepsi’s, tote bags, buttons and bumper stickers. But I imagine as you claw your way up the political ladder, all America becomes your point and take buffet, and as our wars progress, much of the rest of the world too.
Energy people had a big and scary presence.
Somewhere they found people to wear “I’m an energy voter t-shirt”:
One of the speakers, an industry consortium rep. spoke about reducing regulation and creating jobs. I suspect he speaks to Republicans about reducing regulations (except for regulations which eliminate competitions) and to Democrats about subsidizing energy alternatives.
To show your obvious enthusiasm for wind energy, you were allowed to go sign a giant wind turbine blade.
There are many such turbines in Iowa and neighboring Illinois. You can see them driving on 80. They look as still and beautiful as if they were painted onto the horizon.
Here’s what I magic markered as a show of my appreciation for this important subsidy:
I entered the main arena to listen to a few speeches:
An excellent and logical video explained that Iowa is first in the nation for several reasons:
– Iowans ask tough questions and can’t be fooled by slick ads
– Iowans volunteer their time
– Iowa is voted #1 by young professionals
– Iowa is #1 in wind energy
– Iowa is #1 in corn, soy and other crops
– Iowa is #1 in medical care . . . “without the federal government’s help,” they added.
Then I listened to Rick Santorum. (Have you ever tried Googling his name?) He had just exhaustively toured the state and wanted to make sure all Iowans got a chance to meet him and sit down “in their living rooms and libraries,” because listening to people is what’s missing from politics.
How sensible!
He talked about his “little engine that could campaign.” What an outsider!
And talked about how the media has been reluctant to give his campaign the coverage it deserves. Don’t you HATE when the media ignores a candidate! It’s obvious to me that Santorum is an honest politician who the elites don’t want you to know about.
He said the “United States is in jeopardy of losing its freedom because of one man and one bill. Obama-care.”
Instantly, I felt relief from my concern about unsustainable wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, militarism toward Iran, TSA groping, the Patriot Act, domestic spying, fiat money, fractional reserve banking, bailouts and nationalization of major industries. phew!
Santorum also said he wanted people to look him in the eye and kick his shins like they were tires, which sounded exceedingly sensible to me.
I also listened to Tim “T-Paw” Pawlenty’s speech which was occasionally interrupted by chants of “T-Paw,” from his genuine and grassroots supporters.
When he said that Valley Forge wasn’t easy, settling the West wasn’t easy, World War II wasn’t easy, going to the moon wasn’t easy, but it’s not about easy, I felt dizzy with patriotic fervor, and might have pulled my pants down and opened my wallet right then and there if friends had not physically restrained me.
He spoke about maintaining the peace by maintaining our strength, and I tingled all over with the extacy of America’s greatness. I stumbled from the auditorium in search of a military contractor who’d accept as a donation what little remained in my wallet after purchasing my $10 bus ticket.
But after getting another free snow cone, I lost momentum and decided instead to walk around and enjoy the spectacle:
Michelle Bachmann was so important and presidential, that a whole bunch of official looking people ran behind her golf cart as she waved to confused and indifferent attendees. The flashes of many cameras with long lenses quickly had their effect, though. The confused because curious. The curious gathered, and the crowd became an attraction in itself.
This is another important lesson for the many aspiring politicians who read my blog.
This year, there was no fair tax Ferris wheel:
There also seemed to be far fewer buses than in 2007:
which may or may not have anything to do with non-participation of Mitt Romney, widely rumored to have bused in Iowans from all over the United States in 2007.
I’d heard the results would be announced at 4:30. Then I heard they’d be announced at 5, then 5:30. At almost six o’clock, they were read. I watched C-SPAN which was broadcast on televisions outside.
They announced that over 16,000 people participated, and the winner was . . . . . Michelle Bachman!
Then they showed the number of votes received by Santorum, then Cain, then Mitt Romney, then Newt, then Huntsman, then McCotter. I didn’t know how may Paul received, but it obviously wasn’t important.
Then they showed the number of voted received by Gittering, then Pawlenty, then they went down the list of important, viable candidates again: Santorum, Cain, Romney, Huntsman, McCotter . . . .
Arithmetic told me that Michelle Bachman and that Ron Paul guy must have split about 10,000 votes between them. It was only back at the bus that I discovered they had almost tied, and only after I returned to the loving embrace of my neighbor’s wifi network that I gained more perspective:
– How Michele Bachmann Bought the Ames Straw Poll
– Ron Paul got ‘shafted’ by the media: Politico’s Roger Simons
– Jon Stewart exposes media censorship of Ron Paul
From the 2008 campaign:
– Censoring Ron Paul – Why the rEVOLution will not be televised
Texas RLC Sends Out Warning on Rick Perry
Texas Governor Rick Perry may be the flavor of the day for a lot of Republicans, but Texas Republicans who are familiar with his record are a lot less enthusiastic about his presidential run. “Perry has a unique talent for finding new ways to raise taxes and loves to use taxpayer money to subsidize his business cronies,” says Secretary Dave Nalle of the Republican Liberty Caucus of Texas. “His supposed belief in limited government and states rights conveniently disappears whenever it conflicts with the demands of the special interests and corporate cronies who he serves.”
. . . .
1. Business Slush Funds: Perry made heavy use of business incentive “slush funds” which used taxpayer dollars to subsidize selected businesses, many of them run by his major campaign contributors. Just two of these funds, the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Texas Emerging Growth fund, spent over $700 million to subsidize businesses to move to Texas or expand operations in Texas, with little evidence that these handouts of taxpayer money produced job or revenue growth anywhere near sufficient to justify the expense. In fact, many of these businesses eventually downsized or relocated long before they had earned the money Perry gave them, or even went bankrupt with $25 million fund dollars like Countrywide Financial. source
2. Toll Roads and Land Seizures Perry has never met a toll road project he wasn’t willing to seize huge amounts of private land for and then give the exclusive management contracts to foreign corporations. Perry’s time in office has set records for eminent domain land seizures – over a million acres have been seized. His toll road projects have confiscated family farms and torn communities apart. Toll roads have been used as a massive off-the-books tax program, taking money from Texas drivers and feeding it to foreign financial interests and management groups which lobbied the governor for special deals which produce much higher tolls and higher profits than are typical in other states. source
3. Forced Vaccinations: In 2007 Perry issued an executive order which would have forcibly vaccinated every girl in Texas entering the sixth grade with Merck’s Gardasil vaccine for Human Papilloma Virus. This massive violation of the privacy rights of Texas teenagers and their parents would have come at a cost of $360 in taxpayer money per shot. It would have been a huge windfall for Merck, which had paid Perry’s former Chief of Staff $250,000 to lobby the governor and legislature to promote the forced vaccination program. source
4. The Job-Killing Franchise Tax: Knowing that it would be impossible to pass an income tax against popular opposition in Texas, Perry promoted the idea of a special business tax called the “Franchise Tax” which taxes businesses at different arbitrary rates set by the government. This tax expands business taxes to types of businesses which are not taxed in most states and in many cases taxes small businesses more than large corporations they compete with. For example it taxes small car repair shops at double the rate it taxes large dealerships for car repairs. It’s a small business and job killer. source
5. Scuttled the Anti-TSA Bill When Rep. David Simpson led the Texas legislature towards passage of an enormously popular bill (HB1938) to hold the TSA accountable for intrusive searches of airline passengers, Perry played a key role in making sure that the bill was not passed. When the TSA and the Justice Department began pressuring him, although Perry had promised to submit the bill to the special legislative session, he delayed submitting the bill until it was so late in the session that it was virtually impossible to hold the constitutionally mandated votes necessary for passage. That way he could score points with the public for submitting the popular bill while at the same time making sure that it wouldn’t pass. It’s a classic example of Perry’s insincere pandering.
(Read more from rlc.org)
How Michele Bachmann Bought the Ames Straw Poll
Headlines on FoxNews, CNN, MSNBC, and all over the web should have been “Randy Travis Wins Ames Straw Poll Edging out Ron Paul” instead of headlines which touted Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s victory.
Bachmann spent upwards of $1 million, paid for over 6000 tickets, paid for Grammy Award winning, country musician Randy Travis to show up, and bussed in Randy Travis fans in order to secure 152 more votes than Congressman Ron Paul. Michele Bachmann’s camp handed out flyers, which stated that in order to see the entertainment, you had to vote for her first. Here is an image of the flyer that was around Ames, (Read more from unelected.org)
Ron Paul got ‘shafted’ by the media: Politico’s Roger Simons
Politico’s chief columnist, Roger Simon, on Monday accused the media of under-reporting Congressman Ron Paul’s significant achievement in the Ames Straw Poll.
Paul came in second place in the Ames Straw Poll, with 4,671 votes, barely falling below Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s 4,823 votes. But the media has almost exclusively focused on Bachmann and other Republican presidential candidates, despite Paul having only 152 less votes than the congresswoman.
“I admit I do not fully understand Ron Paul and his beliefs,” Simon said. “But I do understand when a guy gets shafted, and Ron Paul just got shafted.”
“If Bachmann’s victory at Ames was good enough to gain her enormous publicity and top-tier status, why was Paul’s virtual tie good enough only to relegate him to being ignored?” he asked. (Read more from rawstory.com)
Jon Stewart Defends Ron Paul & Exposes The Blatant Media Bias
Stop Coddling Warren Buffet
So, the left is positively drooling over Warren Buffett’s recent NY Times column Stop Coddling the Super-Rich in which he writes My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice..
Even if we killed everyone who earns over $250k and took all their money (something similar had been attempted in the Soviet Union), it would only pay for a few weeks of the 2011 budget. You can also apply a 100% tax on all fortune 500 companies, end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and still be no where close to affording our government. There’s a great illustration of this here.
There’s also the great reply Stop Coddling Warren Buffett from the Washington examiner:
As most of the media goes gaga over Billionaire Obama fundraiser Warren Buffett calling for tax hikes, (like he did in 2001, and 2004, and plenty of times in between), let’s remember a few things.
Buffett Profits from Taxes He Supports
Buffett regularly lobbies for higher estate taxes. He also has repeatedly bought up family businesses forced to sell because the heirs’ death-tax bill exceeded the business’s liquid assets. He owns life insurance companies that rely on the death tax in order to sell their estate-planning businesses.
Buffett Profits from Government Spending.
Buffett made about a billion dollars off of the Wall Street bailout by investing in Goldman Sachs on the assumption Uncle Sam would bail it out. He also is planning investments in ethanol giant ADM and government-contracting leviathan General Dynamics.
If your businesses’ revenue comes from the U.S. Treasury, of course you want more wealth.
Iowa Straw Poll Headline: “Michele Bachmann wins Ames Straw Poll, Tim Pawlenty gets third – Jonathan Martin”
Notice anyone missing?
Article here
Farmers Defend Right to Protect Themselves From Monsanto Patents
New York – August 11, 2011 – The 83 family farmers, small and family owned seed businesses, and agricultural organizations challenging Monsanto’s patents on genetically modified seed filed papers in federal court today defending their right to seek legal protection from the threat of being sued by Monsanto for patent infringement should they ever become contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically modified seed. The Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT) represents the plaintiffs in the suit, titled Organic Seed Growers & Trade Association (OSGATA), et al. v. Monsanto and pending in the Southern District of New York. Today’s filings respond to a motion filed by Monsanto in mid-July to have the case dismissed. In support of the plantiffs’ right to bring the case, 12 agricultural organizations also filed a friend-of-the-court amici brief.
“Rather than give a straight forward answer on whether they would sue our clients for patent infringement if they are ever contaminated by Monsanto’s transgenic seed, Monsanto has instead chosen to try to deny our clients the right to receive legal protection from the courts,” said Dan Ravicher, PUBPAT’s Executive Director. “Today’s filings include sworn statements by several of the plaintiffs themselves explaining to the court how the risk of contamination by transgenic seed is real and why they cannot trust Monsanto to not use an occurrence of contamination as a basis to accuse them of patent infringement.”
It is now virtually impossible for a U.S. farmer to grow crops of their choosing (corn, soybeans, canola, etc.) and remain GMO-free because of the numerous biological and human means by which seeds can spread. (Read more from osgata.org)
Ron Paul on Rating Agencies, Dollar Decline and Super Congress
Liberty Bumper Stickers!
Do you love America? Snitch on your neighbor.
The war on drugs: when the CIA uses the DEA to eliminate competition.
and many more:
Android Patent Trouble Worsens: Motorola Considers Collecting IP Royalties
from Stephan Kinsella: Techcrunch: Android Patent Trouble Worsens: Motorola Considers Collecting IP Royalties. (h/t Rob Wicks) Yet another patent threat (in addition to those from Apple and Microsoft and who knows who else) to Android. I sure love my iPhone but I’m feeling ickier and ickier using it, since part of its success and lack of competition is Apple’s use of patents, instead of superior products, prices, and service, to crush its competition.
Flash Mobs Looting in the U.S.
The Market for Security
UK Riots: Years of liberal dogma have spawned a generation of amoral, uneducated, welfare dependent, brutalised youngsters
Another great article on this topic here: www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10970/
A few weeks after the U.S. city of Detroit was ravaged by 1967 race riots in which 43 people died, I was shown around the wrecked areas by a black reporter named Joe Strickland.
He said: ‘Don’t you believe all that stuff people here are giving media folk about how sorry they are about what happened. When they talk to each other, they say: “It was a great fire, man!” ’
I am sure that is what many of the young rioters, black and white, who have burned and looted in England through the past few shocking nights think today.
It was fun. It made life interesting. It got people to notice them. As a girl looter told a BBC reporter, it showed ‘the rich’ and the police that ‘we can do what we like’.
If you live a normal life of absolute futility, which we can assume most of this week’s rioters do, excitement of any kind is welcome. The people who wrecked swathes of property, burned vehicles and terrorised communities have no moral compass to make them susceptible to guilt or shame.
Most have no jobs to go to or exams they might pass. They know no family role models, for most live in homes in which the father is unemployed, or from which he has decamped.
They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries.
They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong.
They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others.
Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.
A former London police chief spoke a few years ago about the ‘feral children’ on his patch — another way of describing the same reality.
. . . .
Every firm in the land knows that an East European — for instance — will, first, bother to turn up; second, work harder; and third, be better-educated than his or her British counterpart.Who do we blame for this state of affairs?
Ken Livingstone, contemptible as ever, declares the riots to be a result of the Government’s spending cuts. This recalls the remarks of the then leader of Lambeth Council, ‘Red Ted’ Knight, who said after the 1981 Brixton riots that the police in his borough ‘amounted to an army of occupation’.
But it will not do for a moment to claim the rioters’ behaviour reflects deprived circumstances or police persecution.
Of course it is true that few have jobs, learn anything useful at school, live in decent homes, eat meals at regular hours or feel loyalty to anything beyond their local gang.
This is not, however, because they are victims of mistreatment or neglect.
It is because it is fantastically hard to help such people, young or old, without imposing a measure of compulsion which modern society finds unacceptable. These kids are what they are because nobody makes them be anything different or better.
Rampage: We are told that youths roaming the streets are doing so because they are angry at unemployment, but a quick look at an apprenticeship website yields 2,228 vacancies in London
A key factor in delinquency is lack of effective sanctions to deter it. From an early stage, feral children discover that they can bully fellow pupils at school, shout abuse at people in the streets, urinate outside pubs, hurl litter from car windows, play car radios at deafening volumes, and, indeed, commit casual assaults with only a negligible prospect of facing rebuke, far less retribution.
. . . .
Anyone who reproaches a child, far less an adult, for discarding rubbish, making a racket, committing vandalism or driving unsociably will receive in return a torrent of obscenities, if not violence.
So who is to blame? The breakdown of families, the pernicious promotion of single motherhood as a desirable state, the decline of domestic life so that even shared meals are a rarity, have all contributed importantly to the condition of the young underclass.
The social engineering industry unites to claim that the conventional template of family life is no longer valid.
Protection: Asian shopkeepers stand outside their store in Hackney that was battered by the looters. This time, though, they’re ready to take them on
And what of the schools? I do not think they can be blamed for the creation of a grotesquely self-indulgent, non-judgmental culture.
This has ultimately been sanctioned by Parliament, which refuses to accept, for instance, that children are more likely to prosper with two parents than with one, and that the dependency culture is a tragedy for those who receive something for nothing.
The judiciary colludes with social services and infinitely ingenious lawyers to assert the primacy of the rights of the criminal and aggressor over those of law-abiding citizens, especially if a young offender is involved.
The police, in recent years, have developed a reputation for ignoring yobbery and bullying, or even for taking the yobs’ side against complainants.
‘The problem,’ said Bill Pitt, the former head of Manchester’s Nuisance Strategy Unit, ‘is that the law appears to be there to protect the rights of the perpetrator, and does not support the victim.’
Police regularly arrest householders who are deemed to have taken ‘disproportionate’ action to protect themselves and their property from burglars or intruders. The message goes out that criminals have little to fear from ‘the feds’.
Discussing the difficulties of imposing sanctions for misbehaviour or idleness at school, he described the case of a girl pupil he scolded for missing all her homework deadlines.
The youngster’s mother, a social worker, telephoned him and said: ‘Threatening to throw my daughter off the A-level course because she hasn’t done some work is tantamount to psychological abuse, and there is legislation which prevents these sorts of threats.
‘I believe you are trying to harm my child’s mental well-being, and may well take steps . . . if you are not careful.’
That story rings horribly true. It reflects a society in which teachers have been deprived of their traditional right to arbitrate pupils’ behaviour.