Today we begin rating the Presidential candidates with our rating for Barack Obama. The Paul-O-Meter will give us a total score on 20 criteria. The closer a candidate gets to 100 points the more that candidate is like Ron Paul. For each criteria we will give the score and a short justification for that score. Read the results for Barack Obama below.
Ron Paul was interviewed via phone on FOX Business News yesterday. He spoke about capitalism, monetary policy, oil prices, foreign policy, Iran, income taxes, and our costly interventions overseas. Yes, he fit a lot into 5 minutes.
The IMF has informed Ben Bernanke that “the board has ruled that a so-called Financial Sector Assessment Program is to be carried out in the US.” This brings up an interesting dilemma for Ron Paul supporters who monitor the Fed and liken it to an unconstitutional cabal. We are against the IMF and federal style regulation over markets at all levels, yet we painfully yearn for more transparency from the Federal Reserve. If we aren’t yearning for more transparency from the Fed we are advocating abolishing it outright.
So the question is then, do we support the IMF investigating the hated Federal Reserve because it conveniently supports our anti-Fed sentiments? Or are we truly and purely against the IMF and it’s authority to perform such investigations?
In the opinion of David Hirst in Australian’s “The Age”, such IMF interventions are long overdue for America. After all many other IMF countries have had to go through the same investigations. Hirst calls it a “blow to American exceptionism.”
[The] IMF intervention (my expression) is a humiliation for the US, the real significance may be that this is another blow to American exceptionism.
While the examination is far reaching, and deeply intrusive, Canada, Britain, Italy, indeed two-thirds of IMF members, have participated in the program. The new President will soon discover the age of US exceptionism is over.
Meanwhile the US markets have entered bear territory, the economy has done likewise and we are at the beginning of a long and tortuous process before rebuilding can even commence.
The entire article by Hirst is well worth reading although his argument seems to be for demanding fairness from the IMF rather than whether performing such “investigations” should be done in the first place.
Who needs a Ron Paul endorsement when you have the Paul-O-Meter?
Everyone knows the perfection of Ron Paul. He is already a living legend. All future candidates are damaged goods simply because they are not Ron Paul. There is only one Ron Paul. So to see how other candidates measure up to his perfection we are introducing the “Paul-O-Meter”.
The Paul-O-Meter ranks candidates on a scale from 0 to 100 depending on how closely they are in agreement with Ron Paul on chosen criteria. Since no candidate can possibly equal Ron Paul, the highest score on the Paul-O-Meter attainable for candidates other than Ron Paul is 99. To simplify the ranking, each candidate will be graded from 1 to 5 on each of the 20 criteria. The 20 criteria are listed below, along with a short description for each.
Here is some rhetoric from the past, as in before today. Who said it?
The currently favored instrument of collectivization is the Welfare State. The collectivists have not abandoned their ultimate goal– to subordinate the individual to the State– but their strategy has changed. They have learned that Socialism can be achieved through Welfarism quite as well as through Nationalization. They understand that private property can be confiscated as effectively by taxation as by expropriating it. They understand that the individual can be put at the mercy of the State– not only by making the State his employer– but by divesting him of the means to provide for his personal needs and by giving the State the responsibility of caring for those needs from cradle to grave. Moreover, they have discovered– and here is the critical point– that Welfarism is much more compatible with the political processes of a democratic society. Nationalization ran into popular opposition, but the collectivists feel sure the Welfare State can be erected by the simple expedient of buying votes with promises of “free” hospitalization, “free” retirement pay and so on….
I do not welcome this shift of strategy. Socialism-through-Welfarism poses a far greater danger to freedom than Socialism-through-Nationalization precisely because it is more difficult to combat. The evils of Nationalization are self-evident and immediate. Those of Welfarism are veiled and tend to be postponed.
Walter E. Williams has been one of my favorite columnists over the years. Anytime I open up one of his columns I salivate for the contents. His latest column is another good one. This article finds Williams, as usual, effectively arguing against government intervention in our lives. Here is an excerpt.
Right now Congress tells each American how much should be set aside out of his weekly paycheck for retirement. How can they have the information to know what’s the best use for the $70, or so, taken from you and put into Social Security? Might you benefit more by saving that money to start a business, purchase tutoring lessons for your children, or putting it in a private retirement plan? Unlike congressional control of traffic signals and supermarkets, the effects of Social Security aren’t apparent because we don’t have the information about what people would have been able to accomplish if they were able to keep more of their earnings.
You might argue that saving for retirement is important, but so is saving for a home or your children’s education. Would you want Congress to force us to put money aside for a home or our children’s education?
Ron Paul appeared for over 10 minutes for two segments on the Glenn Beck TV show tonight. The show had a replacement host who interestingly allowed Paul to answer his questions fully and completely, but also asked him a form of the dreaded 9-11 truth question. Ignoring that one question I think it was a pretty good appearance. The now requisite ask Ron Paul about Bob Barr and ask Bob Barr about Ron Paul interview dance was done as well. It is in two parts.
Now that Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign is over it is time for reflection. What were the expectations? Were those expectations met? What was accomplished? What will happen in the future?
I started writing about Ron Paul online in April of 2007. This writing was purely accidental. I had just started blogging on my personal site. I ended up almost writing exclusively about Ron Paul. That was not my intent, but Ron Paul had a gravitational pull on my mind that I could not resist. Luckily it was an attraction that I did not want to resist. Watching his “In The Name Of Patriotism (Who Are The Patriots?)” speech online almost brought me to tears in a “proud to be an American” sort of way. It was not his oratorical style that did it, but rather the substance of his words. Little did I know at the time that would become the underlying theme of his campaign: Substance over surface.
Ron Paul’s own expectations were most likely equivalent to my own at that time. We live in a country where the superficial is awarded and the substantive is ignored. Paul’s lack of smooth talking used car salesman media appeal was one of my reasons for believing his campaign was dead on arrival at the time. The other reason was that his penchant for plain spoken brutal truth would alienate many voters immediately. Ron Paul has recently said that when beginning his campaign he had no idea that there were so many believers in the Constitution. I felt the same way then, but today, like him, I stand corrected.
This is a great article showing a comparison of Ron Paul and Bob Barr on the issues over at Third Party Watch. It clearly shows that since Bob Barr’s transformation to libertarianism he and Ron Paul are twins on the major issues of the day.
Non-interventionism
Ron Paul: “Non-interventionism is not isolationism. Non-intervention simply means America does not interfere militarily, financially, or covertly in the internal affairs of other nations. It does not we that we isolate ourselves; on the contrary, our founders advocated open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations.” – source
Bob Barr: “Our National Defense policy must renew a commitment to non-intervention. We are not the world’s police force and our long, yet recently tarnished, tradition of respecting the sovereignty of other nations is necessary, not from only a moral standpoint, but to regain the respect of the world as a principled and peaceful nation.” – source
Iraq
Ron Paul: “The sooner we withdraw the better. The invasion and continued US occupation has strengthened both Iran and Al-Qaeda in the region. Continuing down the road of a failed policy will only cost more money we do not have and more lives that should not be sacrificed. Interventionism has produced one disaster after another. It is time we return to a non-interventionist foreign policy that emphasizes peaceful trade and travel and no entangling alliances. We can begin by withdrawing from Iraq immediately.” – source
Bob Barr: “I believe the occupation of Iraq—where we have a presence in a foreign country that effectively manages that country and provides the fundamental basis on which that country and government exists and operates—is not something that is sound policy and is not consistent with the historical norms of a national defense policy. So I think that we need to—and I would as president—begin immediately and significantly drawing down our military and economic presence in Iraq for two reasons: One, because it is not in our interest to nation-build or to occupy foreign lands and, secondly, if we would ever wish to have the Iraqi government take responsibility for its own affairs, we necessarily have to remove the security blanket that right now makes it very easy for them not to do so. In other words, they are never going to assume responsibility for their own affairs as long as we are there propping them up.” – source
Taxes and spending
Ron Paul: “A pure consumption tax like the Fair Tax would be better than the current system only if we truly did away with the income tax by repealing the 16th amendment. Otherwise, we could end up with both the income tax and a national sales tax. A consumption tax also provides more transparency and less complexity. But the real issue is total spending by government, not tax reform.” – source
Bob Barr: “Cutting spending would allow America to implement real tax reform. Our goal should be to reduce both the tax burden on Americans and the intrusion in their lives resulting from IRS enforcement of the income tax. One of the best approaches would be to adopt some form of a consumption tax, like a national sales tax, replacing the Internal Revenue Service and all federal income taxes as well as payroll taxes.
“It is not enough to eliminate the income tax. We also must repeal the 16th amendment, which authorizes Congress to levy an income tax. Without doing so, there would be an ever-present danger that a future Congress would attempt to bring back the income tax on top of the Fair Tax or any other alternative to the income tax. ” – source
Federal Reserve
Ron Paul: “The greatest threat facing America today is not terrorism, or foreign economic competition, or illegal immigration. The greatest threat facing America today is the disastrous fiscal policies of our own government, marked by shameless deficit spending and Federal Reserve currency devaluation. It is this one-two punch—Congress spending more than it can tax or borrow, and the Fed printing money to make up the difference—that threatens to impoverish us by further destroying the value of our dollars.” – source
Bob Barr: “If I could wave a magic wand and the Federal Reserve Bank would disappear tomorrow, I would do so. It’s a group of unelected governors that are not answerable to or accountable to the people of this country and yet they wield considerable influence over the economy by basically setting rates at which banks and other financial institutions can loan money. And they have built up, you know, huge reserves themselves that they can then dole out as they’re doing – as they did recently with Bear Stearns to prop up as failing, what they see as failing investment houses, for example.” – source
[This is the first article in a new financial oriented weekly column here at Liberty Maven by Alex Drummond entitled "The Free Investor". We will be adding a new section of the site dedicated to this column soon. Alex explains the idea behind the column in this first installment. It will be published each Friday.Please consider participating with comments, ideas, and/or questions for Alex in the comments area. Thank You.]
First and foremost, I would like to thank Marc and Liberty Maven for the fantastic opportunity to write here at Liberty Maven. To begin, I will make the first disclosure of many to come: I am not a financial advisor. None of my suggestions are firm recommendations of securities or properties to be purchased; I encourage each and every investor to do their due diligence in investing by thoroughly researching every asset before purchasing or divesting.
That being said, I will give you some background information about myself. I am currently a student at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois. I am the president of the Teenage Republicans group, as well as the founder and president of IMSA Entrepreneurial Engineering Club. Over the past 4-5 years, I have studied the financial world with intense concentration, and have begun to advise my family as to financial purchases in the past year or so.
As for the focus of this segment, there are two main components upon which I will construct this series. First, and foremost, is my personal belief that there is a dependable, long-term growth strategy available for each investor. This growth is primarily available to those employing buy-and-hold strategies in market index funds. I am not a fan of individual investors dabbling in options or penny stocks. The commission fees are atrocious for many small investors, and over the long run, rarely deliver the type of return that a proper retirement necessitates. I will expand on this in future installments.
Liberty Maven
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