1. He wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act. That’s the 1964 law that made segregation illegal and outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. Paul claims it infringes on people’s freedom. If a restaurant or hotel wants to ban African-Americans, he believes they should be allowed to. As he put it in a speech to Congress: “the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty.”
2. He’s also against the Americans With Disabilities Act. That’s the 1990 bill passed by the first President Bush, which followed up the Civil Rights Act by making it illegal to discriminate against someone because of a disability. Paul wants it gone, too.
3. He is against public health care. You know how you think Americans are crazy because they can’t do any better on universal health care than the watered down bill Obama got through? Well, President Ron Paul would do much, much worse. He thinks that in an entirely private system, poor people would have all of their needs taken care of by charitable doctors who would be willing to work for free. Ron Paul, by the way, is a medical doctor.
4. He wants to dissolve the public education system. He promises to eliminate the Department of Education entirely and leave the question of whether to offer any public education at all up to local governments. He calls public education “socialist” (which we actually agree with, but he, unlike us, doesn’t think that’s a good thing) and says, “I preach home schooling and private schooling.” According to an interview, “The Department of Education has given us No Child Left Behind, massive unfunded mandates, indoctrination, and in some cases, forced medication of our children with psychotropic drugs. We should get rid of all of that…”
5. He thinks global warming is a hoax. In his words, it’s “the greatest hoax, I think, that’s been around in many, many years — if not hundreds of years”. But that’s just the tip of the crazyberg. Ron Paul winning the presidency would be a disaster for the environment. He wants to completely disband the Environmental Protection Agency, abolish environmental regulation, and lift, it seems, just about all the restrictions on drilling for oil. Including in National Parks.
6. He doesn’t believe in evolution. When asked about it in 2007, he was pretty clear: “I think it’s a theory. The theory of evolution. And I don’t accept it as a theory.”
7. He’s against federal safety standards. So that means no federal testing to make sure the products you’re sold won’t kill you. Or that, say, the airplane you’re on won’t fall out of the sky. In fact, he’s in favour of completely disbanding the Federal Aviation Authority, which does stuff like hire air traffic controllers to make sure planes don’t collide in the air. He has argued against the Food and Drug Administration, which makes sure pharmaceuticals are safe to take. (“People weren’t dying from bad drugs before we had the FDA,” he has said, “I mean, it just didn’t happen.”) And forget Ralph Nader’s successful crusade to enforce the wearing of seat belts. Ron Paul is ideologically opposed to the federal government making sure cars even have seat belts. “I mean, do we need the federal government to tell us whether we buy a safe car?”
8. He is radically pro-life. And vehemently opposed to a woman’s right to choose. He signed the “personhood pledge” making the rounds on the current campaign, suggesting that abortion should be legally considered to be the same thing as murder.
9. He wants to do away with all foreign aid. Paul’s isolationism sounds good to liberals when he’s talking about his refusal to invade other nations. But the United States government, under President Paul, would send no funds to the developing world to help combat AIDS or famines or natural disasters or anything else.
10. He would pull out of the United Nations. He openly claims the United Nations is part of a plot to create one world government. “If we continue down the UN path, America as we know it will cease to exist.” And not only does he want to withdraw the U.S. from membership, he wants to evict the United Nations from their headquarters in New York.
11. He’s against the minimum wage. Instead of making sure that people are paid at least a minimum amount for their work, he believes companies should be allowed to pay whatever ever they like, with the law of supply and demand determining just how little. Lower wages, he argues, would actually help poor people by creating more jobs.
12. He is a gun nut. Our eyebrows are already raised by anyone who claims that having firearms is a “God-given right”, like Ron Paul does. But he doesn’t stop there. He wants to repeal the legislation that requires a background check when you buy a new gun — you know, to make sure you’re not, say, a fugitive from justice, a violent offender, or currently stalking someone. Back when there actually was a ban an assault weapons, he was, of course, against the ban. And now that there isn’t, he wants to make sure Obama doesn’t get the chance to bring a new one in.
13. He believes we’re waging a war against Christmas. In his words, he claims that “the elitist, secular Left” are waging an “ongoing war against religion” to “transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity.” And as if that wasn’t crazy enough, he adds, “Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.”
14. He wants to get rid of income tax. He is against taxation in general, of course, which most liberals would disagree pretty strongly with. Especially when it comes to the income tax. It’s generally recognized as the most direct way to make sure that poor folk don’t have to give up more of their earnings than rich folk do. But Paul wants to get rid of it entirely.
15. He voted to build a fence along the border with Mexico. In fact, he’s pretty radical when it comes to the whole question of undocumented immigration. He has backed off on the fence issue (because, he says, it might be used to keep Americans in) but he has also argued that Emergency Room doctors shouldn’t have to treat immigrants without documentation. And that he wants to end birthright citizenship, which says you’re an American citizen if you were born in America, whether or not your parents were citizens themselves.
16. He’s against the Occupational Health and Safety Act. That’s the law that gives Americans the right to a safe workplace, and makes sure an employer doesn’t force employees to work in a dangerous or unhealthy environment. That, Paul figures, is unconstitutional. It limits the employer’s freedom to put workers in harm’s way.
17. He wants to U.S. to seize control of the Panama Canal. Paul’s isolationism doesn’t seem to apply to the Panama Canal. The United States signed a treaty back in the 1970s gradually ceding control of the canal to the government of Panama. But Paul wants to overturn that. Because if the U.S doesn’t seize control of it, he claims some hostile regime might seize control of it instead.
18. He thinks interstate highways are unconstitutional. You’re probably getting the impression by now that Ron Paul thinks that pretty much everything the federal government does is unconstitutional. That’s because Ron Paul thinks that pretty much everything the federal government does is unconstitutional. He has even argued against interstate highways, saying Eisenhower knew he was bending the law when he built them. Paul figures they’re a violation of states’ rights.
19. He seems pretty homophobic to us. Paul actually gets a lot of credit for being the one Republican candidate who isn’t homophobic, mostly because he says that the federal government has no business telling people what to do in their private lives and he’s come out against a constitutional ban against same-sex marriage. But it’s really not that clear where he stands. His reason for being against the ban is that he believes marriage laws should be left up to individual states or to the church. When some states began to pass laws legalizing same-sex marriage, he fought to make sure other states wouldn’t have to recognize those marriages as legal. He’s also for don’t-ask-don’t-tell and has voted to de-fund any organization which “presents male or female homosexuality as an acceptable alternative life style or which suggest that it can be an acceptable life style”. As for his own personal attitude toward the gay community? Well, an ex-staffer who defended Paul against charges of homophobia did so by claiming he only knew of two times Paul did something homophobic: the time he swatted away a gay man’s hand rather than have to shake it, and the time he refused to go to the washroom at the same time as a gay guy.
20. And he seems pretty racist too. Paul has been haunted by accusations of racism pretty much the whole campaign long. And with good reason. He used to publish newsletters, under his own name, which said unbelievably racist things. Things like, “I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.” And, “If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.” For years, he refused opportunities to distance himself from those comments and those newsletters. Now, finally, he has, saying that they were written by other people, without his knowledge, and that he doesn’t share those views. But that’s not the only thing that makes us worried. More recently, he complained about the Transportation Security Administration hiring visible minorities to do airport screenings. Again, in his own words: “We quadrupled the TSA, you know, and hired more people who look more suspicious to me than most Americans who are getting checked… Most of them are, well, you know, they just don’t look very American to me.”
“In a crowd of 50-70 people, the majority were liberal. According to the organizers, only about four or five people were Ron Paul supporters. Imagine the surprise of the organizers and the poets when they read this headline, ’Ron Paul Inspires Poetry,’ in which the writer, Gil Kaufman selectively interviews only the Paul supporters and even goes so far as to misrepresent the poetry. In one poem by Christopher Clauss, which Kaufman describes as being pro-Paul, he quotes this line, ‘We need a cranky old president who keeps his money in a mattress.’”
It’s plausible enough that Paul didn’t write the newsletters he published, and that he doesn’t agree with all of the opinions expressed therein, and that he was lying in 1996 (when he endorsed the opinions contained therein) and not in 2001 (when he first claimed ignorance). That’s the case Weigel and Julian Sanchez made, anyway.
But even setting all of that aside, there’s another element to the story.
[…]
Paul’s newsletters weren’t just a form of political expression or “educational” (as he bragged in a 1995 C-Span interview)—they were a highly lucrative endeavor. In 1993 alone, Paul’s publishing company brought in a million dollars. The newsletter was published for decades, which suggests that Paul stood to make a lot of money from it. Paul has attempted to laugh that charge away, but that’s a lot different than refuting it. And from the pitch letter sent out under Paul’s name, his was a hard sell, perfectly calibrated to cash in on fears. “[B]ad times offer the greatest profit opportunities,” he writes. The government’s plans will “chill your blood.” “Help me help you survive.” “The holocaust of the underground economy.” “You may not have much time left.” By imparting this information, Paul claimed he might be placing his life at risk: ”I’ve been told not to talk, but these stooges don’t scare me.” The letter concludes with these stirring words: ”There’s no time to waste. The new money may not come until next year. Or it may be imposed tomorrow. You should subscribe today.”
If the Ron Paul Survival Report wasn’t a sincere expression of the congressman’s views, it was nonetheless a scheme to profit by stirring up the worst fears of a small group of the population. Which is why as long as Paul continues to duck and weave rather than address the very real questions posed by his newsletters, the controversy will not go away.
(via anarcho-queer)
BEST BURN EVER.
On Wednesday’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” Jon Huntsman hit back at Ron Paul regarding the anti-Huntsman tweet Paul sent out during the Iowa Caucuses.
“We found your one Iowa voter, he’s in Linn precinct 5 you might want to call him and say thanks,” read the tweet in question. It was deleted shortly after it was sent out and then put back up.
Paul was on the program before the segment with Huntsman and blamed the tweet on his staff. “That was done through staff. It was supposed to be good humor. And, I mean, I just didn’t think that was a big deal…. I was in the midst of a rally or speech when that was going on…. It was supposed to be something, you know, a little high-spirited, a little funny,” he told Morgan.
When Morgan asked for Huntsman’s response later on, the former governor of Utah took a dig at Paul and those racist newsletters he published throughout the 80s and 90s. “You’d think he would have learned the perils of ghost-written subject matter by now.”
Now that’s funny.
Huntsman went on to explain he actually found the tweet from Paul humorous. “I actually found it to be pretty humorous. … You’ve got to have a little bit of levity and humor in this business or you’ll go crazy,” he said.
BURN
Cory Robin, “Ron Paul has two problems…” (via zeitvox)
Also read this,
Even people, no, especially people who focus on Paul’s position on the drug war should think about the perils of his federalism. There are 2 million people in prison in this country. At most 10 percent of them are in federal prisons; the rest are in state and local prisons. If Paul ended the drug war, maybe 1/2 of those in federal prison would be released. Definitely a step, but it has to be weighed against his radical embrace of whatever it is that states and local governments do.
Paul is a distinctively American type of libertarian: one that doesn’t have a critique of the state so much as a critique of the federal government. That’s a very different kettle of fish. I think libertarianism is problematic enough—in that it ignores the whole realm of social domination (or thinks that realm is entirely dependent upon or a function of the existence of the state or thinks that it can be remedied by the persuasive and individual actions of a few good souls)—but a states-rights-based libertarianism is a social disaster.
So that’s his problem.
Our problem—and again by “our” I mean a left that’s social democratic (or welfare state liberal or economically progressive or whatever the hell you want to call it) and anti-imperial—is that we don’t really have a vigorous national spokesperson for the issues of war and peace, an end to empire, a challenge to Israel, and so forth, that Paul has in fact been articulating. The source of Paul’s positions on these issues are not the same as ours (again more reason not to give him our support). But he is talking about these issues, often in surprisingly blunt and challenging terms. Would that we had someone on our side who could make the case against an American empire, or American supremacy, in such a pungent way.
Great read.
(via thenoobyorker)
(via thenoobyorker)
Noam Chomsky On Ron Paul
Questioner: Hello Mr. Chomsky. I’m assuming you know who Ron Paul is. And I’m also assuming you have a general idea about his positions. Here my summary of Mr. Paul’s positions:Noam Chomsky: No.- He values property rights, and contracts between people (defended by law enforcement and courts).
Noam Chomsky: Under all circumstances? Suppose someone facing starvation accepts a contract with General Electric that requires him to work 12 hours a day locked into a factory with no health-safety regulations, no security, no benefits, etc. And the person accepts it because the alternative is that his children will starve. Fortunately, that form of savagery was overcome by democratic politics long ago. Should all of those victories for poor and working people be dismantled, as we enter into a period of private tyranny (with contracts defended by law enforcement)? Not my cup of tea.
- He wants to take away the unfair advantage corporations have (via the dismantling of big government)
Noam Chomsky: “Dismantling of big government” sounds like a nice phrase. What does it mean? Does it mean that corporations go out of existence, because there will no longer be any guarantee of limited liability? Does it mean that all health, safety, workers rights, etc., go out the window because they were instituted by public pressures implemented through government, the only component of the governing system that is at least to some extent accountable to the public (corporations are unaccountable, apart from generally weak regulatory apparatus)? Does it mean that the economy should collapse, because basic R&D is typically publicly funded? like what we’re now using, computers and the internet? Should we eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental regulation? Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window? Quite a few questions arise.
- He defends workers right to organize (so long as owners have the right to argue against it).
Noam Chomsky: Rights that are enforced by state police power, as you’ve already mentioned.
There are huge differences between workers and owners. Owners can fire and intimidate workers, not conversely. just for starters. Putting them on a par is effectively supporting the rule of owners over workers, with the support of state power itself largely under owner control, given concentration of resources.
- He proposes staying out of the foreign affairs of other nations (unless his home is directly attacked, and must respond to defend it).
Noam Chomsky: He is proposing a form of ultra-nationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the UN, rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example), etc. Apart from being next to meaningless, the idea is morally unacceptable, in my view.
I really can’t find differences between your positions and his.
Noam Chomsky: There’s a lot more. Take Social Security. If he means what he says literally, then widows, orphans, the disabled who didn’t themselves pay into Social Security should not benefit (or of course those awful illegal aliens). His claims about SS being “broken” are just false. He also wants to dismantle it, by undermining the social bonds on which it is based, the real meaning of offering younger workers other options, instead of having them pay for those who are retired, on the basis of a communal decision based on the principle that we should have concern for others in need. He wants people to be able to run around freely with assault rifles, on the basis of a distorted reading of the Second Amendment (and while we’re at it, why not abolish the whole raft of constitutional provisions and amendments, since they were all enacted in ways he opposes?).
So I have these questions:
1) Can you please tell me the differences between your schools of Libertarianism?
Noam Chomsky: There are a few similarities here and there, but his form of libertarianism would be a nightmare, in my opinion, on the dubious assumption that it could even survive for more than a brief period without imploding.
2) Can you please tell me what role private property and ownership have in your school of Libertarianism?
Noam Chomsky: That would have to be worked out by free communities, and of course it is impossible to respond to what I would prefer in abstraction from circumstances, which make a great deal of difference, obviously.
3) Would you support Ron Paul, if he was the Republican presidential candidate, and Hilary Clinton was his Democratic opponent?
1. Ron Paul does not value equal rights for minorities. Ron Paul has sponsored legislation that would repeal affirmative action, keep the IRS from investigating private schools who may have used race as a factor in denying entrance, thus losing their tax exempt status, would limit the scope of Brown versus Board of Education, and would deny citizenship for those born in the US if their parents are not citizens. Here are links to these bills: H.R.3863, H.R.5909, H.J.RES.46, andH.J.RES.42.
2. Ron Paul would deny women control of their bodies and reproductive rights.Ron Paul makes it very clear that one of his aims is to repeal Roe v. Wade. He has also co sponsored 4 separate bills to “To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.” This, of course, goes against current medical and scientific information as well as our existing laws and precedents. Please see these links: H.R.2597 and H.R.392
3. Ron Paul would be disastrous for the working class. He supports abolishing the Federal minimum wage, has twice introduced legislation to repeal OSHA, or the Occupational Safety and Health Act and would deal devastating blows to Social Security including repealing the act that makes it mandatory for employees of nonprofits, to make “coverage completely optional for both present and future workers”, and would “freeze benefit levels”. He has also twice sponsored legislation seeking to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and the Copeland Act which among other things provide that contractors for the federal government must provide the prevailing wage and prohibits corporate “kick backs.” Here are the related legislative links: H.R.2030, H.R.4604, H.R.736, and H.R.2720
4. Ron Paul’s tax plan is unfair to lower earners and would greatly benefit those with the highest incomes.He has repeatedly submitted amendments to the tax code that would get rid of the estate and gift taxes, tax all earners at 10%, disallow income tax credits to individuals who are not corporations, repeal the elderly tax credit, child care credit, earned income credit, and other common credits for working class citizens. Please see this link for more information: H.R.05484 Summary
5. Ron Paul’s policies would cause irreparable damage to our already strained environment.Among other travesties he supports off shore drilling, building more oil refineries, mining on federal lands, no taxes on the production of fuel, and would stop conservation efforts that could be a “Federal obstacle” to building and maintaining refineries. He has also sought to amend the Clean Air Act, repeal the Soil and Water Conservation Act of 1977, and to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to “restrict the jurisdiction of the United States over the discharge of dredged or fill material to discharges into waters”. To see for yourself the possible extent of the damage to the environment that would happen under a Paul administration please follow these links: H.R.2504,H.R.7079, H.R.7245, H.R.2415, H.R.393, H.R.4639, H.R.5293, and H.R.6936
6. A Ron Paul administration would continue to proliferate the negative image of the US among other nations. Ron Paul supports withdrawing the US from the UN, when that has not happened he has fought to at least have the US withdrawn from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. He has introduced legislation to keep the US from giving any funds to the UN. He also submitted that the US funds should not be used in any UN peacekeeping mission or any UN program at all. He has sponsored a bill calling for us to “terminate all participation by the United States in the United Nations, and to remove all privileges, exemptions, and immunities of the United Nations.”Ron Paul twice supported stopping the destruction of intercontinental ballistic missile silos in the United States. He also would continue with Bush’s plan of ignoring international laws by maintaining an insistence that the International Criminal Court does not apply to the US, despite President Clinton’s signature on the original treaty. The International Criminal Court is used for, among other things, prosecution of war crimes. Please see the following links: H.R.3891,H.AMDT.191, H.AMDT.190, H.R.3769, H.R.1665, H.CON.RES.23, and H.R.1154
7. Ron Paul discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation and would not provide equal rights and protections to glbt citizens. This is an issue that Paul sort of dances around. He has been praised for stating that the federal government should not regulate who a person marries. This has been construed by some to mean that he is somewhat open to the idea of same sex marriage, he is not. Paul was an original co sponsor of the Marriage Protection Act in the House in 2004. Among other things this discriminatory piece of legislation placed a prohibition on the recognition of a same sex marriage across state borders. He said in 2004 that if he was in the Texas legislature he would not allow judges to come up with “new definitions” of marriage. Paul is a very religious conservative and though he is careful with his words his record shows that he is not a supporter of same sex marriage. In 1980 he introduced a particularly bigoted bill entitled “A bill to strengthen the American family and promote the virtues of family life.” or H.R.7955 A direct quote from the legislation “Prohibits the expenditure of Federal funds to any organization which presents male or female homosexuality as an acceptable alternative life style or which suggest that it can be an acceptable life style.” shows that he is unequivocally opposed to lifestyles other than heterosexual.
8. Ron Paul has an unnatural obsession with guns. One of Paul’s loudest gripes is that the second amendment of the constitution is being eroded. In fact, he believes that September 11 would not have happened if that wasn’t true. He advocates for there to be no restrictions on personal ownership of semi-automatic weaponry or large capacity ammunition feeding devices, would repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act (because we all know our schools are just missing more guns), wants guns to be allowed in our National Parks, and repeal the Gun Control Act of 1968. Now, I’m pretty damn certain that when the Constitution was written our founding fathers never intended for people to be walking around the streets with AK47′s and “large capacity ammunition feeding devices.” (That just sounds scary.) Throughout the years our Constitution has been amended and is indeed a living document needing changes to stay relevant in our society. Paul has no problem changing the Constitution when it fits his needs, such as no longer allowing those born in the US to be citizens if their parents are not. On the gun issue though he is no holds barred. I know he’s from Texas but really, common sense tells us that the amendments he is seeking to repeal have their place. In fact, the gun control act was put into place after the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy. Please view the following links: H.R.2424, H.R.1897, H.R.1096,H.R.407, H.R.1147, and H.R.3892.
9. Ron Paul would butcher our already sad educational system. The fact is that Ron Paul wants to privatize everything and that includes education. Where we run into problems is that it has been shown (think our current health care system) that this doesn’t work so well in practice. Ron Paul has introduced legislation that would keep the Federal Government “from planning, developing, implementing, or administering any national teacher test or method of certification and from withholding funds from States or local educational agencies that fail to adopt a specific method of teacher certification.” In a separate piece of legislation he seeks to “prohibit the payment of Federal Education assistance in States which require the licensing or certification of private schools or private school teachers.” So basically the federal government can’t regulate teaching credentials and if states opt to require them for private schools they get no aid. That sounds like a marvelous idea teachers with no certification teaching in private schools that are allowed to discriminate on the basis of race. He is certainly moving forward with these proposals!Remember his “bill to strengthen the American family and promote the virtues of family life.” or H.R.7955? Guess what? He basically advocates for segregation in schools once again. It “Forbids any court of the United States from requiring the attendance at a particular school of any student because of race, color, creed, or sex.” Without thinking about this statement it doesn’t sound bad at all. But remember, when desegregating schools that this is done by having children go to different schools, often after a court decision as in Brown Vs. Board of Education. If this were a bill that passed, schools would no longer be compelled to comply and the schools would go back to segregation based on their locations. Ron Paul is really starting to look like a pretty bigoted guy don’t you think?
10. Ron Paul is opposed to the separation of church and state. This reason is probably behind every other thing that I disagree with in regards to Paul’s positions. Ron Paul is among those who believes that there is a war on religion, he stated “Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view.” (( Koyaanisqatsi Blog: Wrong Paul Why I Do Not Want Ron Paul to be My President )) Though he talks a good talk, at times, Ron Paul can’t get away from his far right, conservative views. He would support “alternative views” to evolution taught in public schools (i.e. Intelligent Design.) We’ve already taken a look at his “bill to strengthen the American family and promote the virtues of family life.” or H.R.7955Besides hating the gays he takes a very religious stance on many other things. He is attempting to force his beliefs on the rest of America, exactly what he would do as president.
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/11/04/10-reasons-not-to-vote-for-paul/
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
-Matthew 6:21
Ron Paul has an investment portfolio that’s worth anywhere between $2.44 million and $5.46 million, and the Wall Street Journal has taken a closer look at his holdings. Paul’s investments wildly diverge from the typical portfolio: Sixty-four percent of his investments are in gold and silver-mining stocks, and he holds no bonds and almost no business stock funds.
That’s not a surprise for the nation’s most prominent goldbug. But it’s also an extremely risky strategy in the current economy, where gold, silver and precious metals have dropped precipitously in the last few months of 2011. Here’s what one Connecticut investment manager told the Journal about Paul’s portfolio:
Mr. Bernstein says he has never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe. “This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds,” he says. There are many possible doomsday scenarios for the U.S. economy and financial markets, explains Mr. Bernstein, and Rep. Paul’s portfolio protects against only one of them: unexpected inflation accompanied by a collapse in the value of the dollar.