Tag Archives: Ron Paul

RON PAUL – takes a step towards auditing the Fed

Posted on by at 4:35 pm

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) won a rare legislative victory on Wednesday when the House passed his legislation allowing for a full audit of the Federal Reserve, including an audit of the Fed’s monetary policy decisions.

On Tuesday, Paul rejected charges that requiring a deeper audit of the Fed’s monetary policy decisions would open up the Fed to political pressure to make certain decisions preferred by Congress. He said the Fed has already shown itself to be politicized by bailing out some financial institutions, but not others.

“It’s very political when you have a Federal Reserve that can bail out one company and not another company,” Paul said. “That’s pretty political.”

Having a look inside the Fed is long overdue and Paul’s observation that the Fed is already deeply politicized is hard to argue with.

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Romney “wins” in Virginia

Posted on by at 8:45 pm

From Andrew Sullivan:

For me, the fact that Romney cannot win 60 percent in a two-man race against Ron Paul in Virginia is about as damning a result for an alleged front-runner as you can get. But he’ll get a big delegate haul. That’s the story line from tonight.  In Walter Kirn’s words:

Again tonight the ‘narrative’ will be: Romney wins. But not by enough. And with the wrong people. It’s not over yet!

Ron Paul profile

Posted on by at 7:28 am

Ksalefa Sanneh, writing in The New Yorker, has a good profile of Ron Paul. I could get behind Paul, if he would drop the gold standard stuff, and a few other points.

Excerpt:

He is an invigorating speaker, unflappable and good-humored despite the severity of his message, which is that a wide range of institutions and policies must be abolished if liberty is to survive. His toughest verdicts emerge as astonished squeaks, and he keeps cynicism at bay by affecting mild political amnesia: every day, in every speech, he is surprised anew at what is happening around him. In Bangor, Paul called for a moratorium on “illegal” airport searches and for the dissolution of the Department of Education (along with the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Department of the Interior); he called for the repeal of the Patriot Act and the repatriation of American troops stationed overseas; he called for an immediate end to bailouts and an eventual end to the federal income tax; he called for a trillion-dollar cut to the federal budget. Most pressing of all, he called for the eradication of the Federal Reserve, the rejection of paper money, and a return to the gold standard—in his view, most economic threats can be traced, often directly, to the government’s insistence on devaluing the currency by creating more of it. He asked, “What’s wrong with the idea of taking away the power, from a secret group of individuals, to print money at will”—and before he could say more he was overtaken by the sound of his supporters, who were not just cheering but also chuckling at the insanity of our monetary system. When he finished speaking, Paul posed for a hundred and ninety-seven photographs with supporters; a volunteer uploaded the images onto the Internet. As he left the stage, a local chapter of Youth for Ron Paul serenaded him with “God Bless America.” He listened appreciatively, posed for one last photograph, and then shuffled out, to the sound of a familiar chant: “President! Paul! President! Paul!”

Political quote of the day

Posted on by at 6:25 am

How did American conservatism end up so detached from, indeed at odds with, facts and rationality? For it was not always thus. After all, that health reform Mr. Romney wants us to forget followed a blueprint originally laid out at the Heritage Foundation!

My short answer is that the long-running con game of economic conservatives and the wealthy supporters they serve finally went bad. For decades the G.O.P. has won elections by appealing to social and racial divisions, only to turn after each victory to deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy — a process that reached its epitome when George W. Bush won re-election by posing as America’s defender against gay married terrorists, then announced that he had a mandate to privatize Social Security.

Over time, however, this strategy created a base that really believed in all the hokum — and now the party elite has lost control.

– Paul Krugman, reflecting on the dismal slate of republican candidates for president.

Political quote of the day 2

Posted on by at 8:49 am

… what endears Gingrich to the 75 percent [of republican primary voters not supporting Mitt Romney] is the one big thing that matters: He is the only candidate who has been the leader of an actual Republican revolution, even if it went down in flames within a year. He walked the walk beyond even Ron Paul’s dreams, shutting down the entire federal government. And he has talked the talk as well, with a grandiosity beyond the wildest imagination of anti-Obama tea-partyers waving DON’T TREAD ON ME signs. Back in his 1994–95 heyday, Gingrich positioned himself as the leader of “a rising populist majority” taking down the last defenders of “the old order.” He saw his mission as to advance “the cause of freedom,” and he portrayed a government shutdown as nothing less than “the heart of the revolution.” In 2012, such Newtonian rhetoric from the “Contract With America” era could be dusted off and recycled with only minor updating (e.g., more anti-Obama slurs like his claim that the president exhibits “Kenyan anti-colonial behavior”).

The animosity of the Republican elites only empowers Gingrich, much as it did Palin and Cain; the Old Guard is the right enemy (along with Democrats and the news media) to have. The contrast that Mitt draws between himself and Newt also plays into Gingrich’s hands. “I’m not a bomb thrower, figuratively or literally,” Romney is fond of saying; he instead offers “sobriety” (figuratively and literally, as it happens). That’s a loser in the 75 percent marketplace, where bomb throwers, at least figurative ones, are the rage. If these are “crazy and extraordinary times,” wrote Jonah Goldberg, one conservative pundit who did not shut the door on Newt, “then perhaps they call for a crazy, extraordinary—very high-risk, very high-reward—figure like Mr. Gingrich.”

– Frank Rich

Political quote of the day

Posted on by at 10:18 am

Well, like I said, everybody has the same rights as everybody else, so homosexuals in the military isn’t a problem. It’s only if they’re doing things they shouldn’t be, if they’re disruptive. But there’s … men and women getting into trouble with each other too. And there’s a lot more heterosexuals in the military, so logically they’re causing more trouble than gays. So yes, you just have the same rules for everybody and treat them all the same.

– Ron Paul in an interview with the Iowa State Daily. (via The Daily Dish)

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Why does the media ignore Ron Paul

Posted on by at 11:44 am

Ron Paul came within less than percentage point of beating Michele Bachmann in last weekend’s Iowa straw poll. Yet there was virtually no reporting on this. Why not? At least he is anti-war and pro-civil liberties and because of those positions, I think he is at least as electable as Bachmann.

Jon Stewart has a serious interview of Ron Paul:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Ron Paul
www.thedailyshow.com
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And Stewart also takes on the media silence about Paul’s performance in the Iowa straw poll:

Ron Paul on Wikileaks

Posted on by at 5:34 pm

This is one of the times that Ron Paul is correct.

In a free society we’re supposed to know the truth. In a society where truth becomes treason, then we’re in big trouble. And now, people who are revealing the truth are getting into trouble for it.

This whole notion that Assange, who’s an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason. I mean, aren’t they jumping to a wild conclusion? This is media, isn’t it? I mean, why don’t we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?

Ron Paul on the mosque “controversy”

Posted on by at 7:31 am
Ron Paul taking questions in Manchester, NH
Image via Wikipedia

Ron Paul has his quirks. But his focus on fundamental rights and continued questioning about the necessity of the two wars in which we are mired deserves respect. Now he weighs in on the mosque controversy with clarity. I full agree with all of this.

The debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque.

Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be “sensitive” requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from “ground zero.”

Just think of what might (not) have happened if the whole issue had been ignored and the national debate stuck with war, peace, and prosperity. There certainly would have been a lot less emotionalism on both sides. The fact that so much attention has been given the mosque debate, raises the question of just why and driven by whom?

In my opinion it has come from the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia and are compelled to constantly justify it.

They never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars. A select quote from soldiers from in Afghanistan and Iraq expressing concern over the mosque is pure propaganda and an affront to their bravery and sacrifice.

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