The purity of Ron Paul has ruined my opinion of politicians. Frank Wolf, the current incumbent in Virginia’s 10th congressional district is a perfect example. The man has been in office for 28 years. If we could plot his conservative voting record on a graph over those 28 years it would look like this:
Yet for some strange reason many conservative minded voters in his district (my district) think he walks in the shoes of Ronald Reagan. The simple truth is that many voters in this district just aren’t paying attention. A perfect example appeared today in the editorial section of the Great Falls Connection newspaper.
Today, I heard a news report on the radio regarding the South Carolina boy who was deterred from building several bombs to blow up his high school. The report started with the words, “The police stopped another Columbine…” Later in the story it was revealed that the true reason the attack was thwarted was because the parents of the boy called police after intercepting delivery of 10 pounds of ammonium nitrate that their son ordered.
I was angered over the story leading to the belief that the police actually had something to do with stopping the attack, when in fact, it was the parents who were responsible. My anti nanny state sensitivities took over and I shouted, “It was the parents! Not the police! This is what is wrong with this country!” It is true that if all parents were like these observant ones in South Carolina America would be a better and safer place. Perhaps, I need to lighten up a little.
Apparently, this claim was only made on the radio report I heard because the AP story about the event does no such thing.
Ron Paul supporters really need to realize that it isn’t all about Ron Paul. Sure there is mass disappointment that Ron Paul will not be the Republican nominee for President. There was genuine pain and sadness as each state held their primaries and caucuses and Ron Paul kept receiving under 10% of the vote with a few exceptions. Reality has set in and the reality is Ron Paul will not ever be President of the United States.
This does not mean the message of liberty has lost, it only means it has taken a punch to the gut. It is impossible to strike a fatal blow to liberty when there still exists a mass of citizens willing to fight back. It is true that some of those fanatical supporters of Ron Paul’s campaign have left. Perhaps being perpetual bandwagon jumpers is in their psychological makeup. If so, they can probably be found supporting Obama now.
The US economy is going up in flames. If Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has his way the solution is to pump in more gasoline. Free market capitalism is being tortured and the federal regulators are holding all of the killing devices. Now they want more.
Yesterday Treasury Secretary Paulson unveiled a plan that would give the Federal Reserve the power to regulate every aspect of the US economy. They would have authority over the entire banking sector as well as the entire securities industry. Once again the well meaning do-gooders approach the problem by creating more problems and bureaucracy. An interesting question is then… will this make the Federal Reserve an actual government agency? It seems it will. Currently it is technically a private organization, more aptly a cabal.
This proposal is reminiscent of the knee jerk reaction of the Bush administration in creating the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11. Instead of actually streamlining and cutting waste we combine wasteful departments to create a new leviathan of waste. I wonder what catchy title this new expanded Federal Reserve organization will have? I have a suggestion, the “Department of the American Economic Apocalypse”. I can’t wait to see what the meaning will be of each color in the new “Economic Threat Advisory System” (reference). Oh no! The economic threat level is in the Red! Sell your stocks now!
It will be interesting to see the gamut of opinion bouncing around regarding these new proposals. It already seems some Democrats in Congress are somehow of the opinion it doesn’t do enough. There is only one word for that: scary. These new regulatory suggestions will have to be approved by Congress and it is likely that they will. After all there is nothing worse than being viewed as a “do nothing” legislator. From my perspective, in this day in age, there is nothing better.
I anxiously await the reaction to this from Ron Paul. He will no doubt echo some of the words above. On this I sincerely hope that he isn’t the lone voice of dissent. It will also be interesting to see the reaction from presumptive GOP nominee John McCain. He’s been attacked from the left about his “do nothing” approach to the economy. Of course that is just politics. He would certainly do something. The only question is would he approve of this? I guess we’ll have answers to these questions soon enough.
Ron Paul is like the smart kid in the class the teacher no longer likes to call upon to give answers because he’s right most of the time. In the case of solving the Social Security problem Ron Paul has a solution that both Democrats and Republicans could love. If only they’d pay attention to the man.
Yesterday, the trustees for Social Security and Medicare released a report saying that both will be completely depleted by 2041 and 2019 respectively. The “oxy-moronic” thing about this is that these programs are deemed “trust funds” in the first place. There’s certainly no trust in a fund that is slated to eventually be wiped out.
Throughout his campaign Ron Paul has repeatedly outlined a solution to the problem that gives both the Democrats and Republicans reason to smile. Paul proposes to utilize some of the massive amounts of money saved by switching to a non-intervention foreign policy to help those people currently dependent until the programs can be phased out over a long period of time. He would let the younger people immediately opt out of the program. The approach is a sensible and gradual approach.
Last night the US House of Representatives met in secrecy to debate the FISA (warrant-less wiretapping) bill. Did we elect our representatives to meet behind closed doors to discuss legislation that affects just about every single American? I didn’t. There is no reason for doing this. If Ron Paul had 434 like-minded friends in the House this never would have happened.
The House passed a $3 trillion budget plan, that dramatically increases domestic programs and allows the Bush tax cuts to expire in 2010. Writing “$3 trillion” doesn’t really give one the enormity of the number. Let’s rewrite that more properly: $3,000,000,000,000.00. My oh my government, what big pockets you have. If I put $3,000,000,000,000.00 in my Etrade savings account that currently yields about 4% interest, that would earn me about $10,000,000,000.00 or $10 billion per month. If Ron Paul had 434 like-minded friends in the House this never would have happened.
Two years ago the House voted to extend the Patriot Act, even making some of the civil liberty stealing provisions permanent. If Ron Paul had 434 like-minded friends in the House this never would have happened.
Last year the House passed the “Violent Radicalization And Homegrown Terrorist Prevention Act” which attempts to legislate thought crimes. Orwell was prophetic. If Ron Paul had 434 like-minded friends in the House this never would have happened.
I think you get my point. If we want true liberty we are going to have to take it. We need to elect as many liberty minded candidates to Congress. Find out who is running in your district. If a candidate demonstrates he believes in the Constitution and the rule of law, vote for him. If there is no such candidate think about running for Congress yourself.
Ron Paul doesn’t really need 434 like minded friends, he just needs about 15-20. Once that happens the rest may start to come around.
The debate regarding the FISA, eavesdropping, warrant-less wiretapping, telco immunity bill being thrown back and forth between Bush and the House has grown into a substantial partisan political battle. Aren’t we all sick and tired of this kind of thing? Both the President and the House were elected and swore to uphold the Constitution when the took office, so help them God.
If they actually believed in that oath the debate would have been over long ago. In fact the debate may never have occurred in the first place. The language in the law relies on subjective reasoning (if there is such a thing) to determine if the monitoring being done is capturing purely domestic conversations or not.
It would be easy for the Feds to spy on domestic communications and then later say, “Well we were reasonably sure at least one of the communicators was foreign. Oops sorry. I guess that wasn’t true. We’ll try better next time.” According to the law this argument is a winner. Once again we are being asked to sacrifice our liberty and the rule of law in the name of security.
The federal government is acting like an abusive step-father embroiled in a nasty custody battle over our civil liberties. They treat us like children because we act like children. We need to stand up and demand that our rights not be taken away. Until we do that we are just handing over the keys to the government so they can drive us off the next cliff.
Of course, when they do we’ll be required to wear a seatbelt by federal law. The talk has grown tiresome. Instead of debating about whether or not to grant immunity to the telco’s, the debate should be about whether the law should have been penned in the first place. After all our Constitution is the “supreme law of the land” right?
Here is Ron Paul doing his job on the House of Representatives floor yesterday. He talks about the economy, foreign policy, ear marks, and the role of government. It’s extremely satisfying to see someone do their job so well, upholding their oath of office properly. Sure, we Ron Paul supporters have heard it all before from him, but there’s something sweeter about seeing him do it directly in front of his colleagues: those that need to hear it the most.
Liberty Maven
