Whenever Congress is in session, our freedoms are not safe.Evo said:12/5/07 Vote 1132: H R 2517 </congress/110/house/1/votes/1132/>: Protecting Our Children Comes First Act No
12/5/07 Vote 1131: H R 3791 </congress/110/house/1/votes/1131/>: Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act No
11/15/07 Vote 1109: H RES 825 </congress/110/house/1/votes/1109/>: Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3915, Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act No
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When children are the issue, adults need to step up and take responsibility.Mk said:The logic in the argument "Ron Paul voted NO on Securing Adolescents From Exploitation Online." Why do you think that the Act was titled that? Would somebody want to be held accountable for wanting adolescents to be available for exploitation? That act had many implications. Ron Paul does not want to protect our children. Ron Paul does not want to protect them from predators and exploitation. Ron Paul is a man who says that we should have less laws and smaller government. The majority of laws and acts passed should not be laws that protect people from their own stupidity.
But leaving the children without legal recourse is insane.Gokul43201 said:Paul might argue that the adults that need to step up are the children's parents, not the friendly neighborhood politician. It's essentially meaningless to argue to merits of a particular bill without knowing a lot more about the details.
Evo said:His voting record speaks for itself. He's a sandwich short of a picnic.
Just google "Ron Paul Insane" or Ron Paul Nut", you'll get a good feel for what he is.
Evo said:His voting record speaks for itself. He's a sandwich short of a picnic.
Just google "Ron Paul Insane" or Ron Paul Nut", you'll get a good feel for what he is.
Only when he's a nut.Ivan Seeking said:It's a sad day when a Constitutionalist is considered a nut. It just shows how far we've sunk. People like Paul may be the only hope left for this country.
Evo said:Only when he's a nut.
I have, believe me, and I see someone that is delusional. How do you understand the positon of a crackpot? I'm going with Obama, he seems the most rational.Ivan Seeking said:I haven't seen you once even try to understand his position.
Evo said:I have, believe me, and I see someone that is delusional. How do you understand the positon of a crackpot? I'm going with Obama, he seems the most rational.
Evo said:I have, believe me, and I see someone that is delusional. How do you understand the positon of a crackpot? I'm going with Obama, he seems the most rational.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/09/19/dems-dirty-donors-a-rog_n_65011.htmlAntoin RezkoThe crime: Chicago-area businessman and longtime Barack Obama friend was charged in 2006 with money laundering, extortion, and fraud. Obama also arranged a sweetheart real estate deal with Rezko which the candidate acknowledged appeared improper, although it was fully legal.
The donations: $12,500 to the Obama for Illinois and Obama for Congress campaigns, reaching back to 1999, according to FEC records. His 'homemaker' wife Rita also donated $1500. In all, the Chicago Sun Times reported in June, the Obama campaign has returned about $37,000 donated by Rezko and individuals connected to him. But the Sun Times also reported that Rezko and his associates had donated as much as $168,000 over the breadth of Obama's political career. In the meantime, Rezko also hedged his bets as any good businessman might: he wrote the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign a $4,000 check in 2003.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/judicial-watch-announces-list-washington-s-ten-most-wanted-corrupt-politicians-20078. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL): A “Dishonorable Mention” last year, Senator Obama moves onto the “ten most wanted” list in 2007. In 2006, it was discovered that Obama was involved in a suspicious real estate deal with an indicted political fundraiser, Antoin “Tony” Rezko. In 2007, more reports surfaced of deeper and suspicious business and political connections It was reported that just two months after he joined the Senate, Obama purchased $50,000 worth of stock in speculative companies whose major investors were his biggest campaign contributors. One of the companies was a biotech concern that benefited from legislation Obama pushed just two weeks after the senator purchased $5,000 of the company’s shares. Obama was also nabbed conducting campaign business in his Senate office, a violation of federal law.
:uhh:Still, his (Ron Paul's) libertarian presidency would, among other things, allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, boost the use of coal, and embrace nuclear power. Moreover, it wouldn't do diddly about global warming, because, Paul reasons, "we're not going to be very good at regulating the weather."
I called Paul up on the campaign trail in Iowa to get the skinny on how the environment figures into his small-government agenda.
What makes you the strongest candidate on energy and the environment?
On energy, I would say that the reliance on the government to devise a policy is a fallacy. I would advocate that the free market take care of that. The government shouldn't be directing research and development, because they are bound and determined to always misdirect money to political cronies. The government ends up subsidizing things like the corn industry to develop ethanol, and it turns out that it's not economically feasible. So my answer to energy is to let the market work. Let supply and demand make the decision. Let prices make the decision. That is completely different than the bureaucratic and cronyism approach.
On environment, governments don't have a good reputation for doing a good job protecting the environment. If you look at the extreme of socialism or communism, they were very poor environmentalists. Private property owners have a much better record of taking care of the environment. If you look at the common ownership of the lands in the West, they're much more poorly treated than those that are privately owned. In a free-market system, nobody is permitted to pollute their neighbor's private property—water, air, or land. It is very strict.
But there are realms of the environment that, by definition, can't be owned, right? How would you divide the sky or the sea into private parcels?
The air can certainly be identified. If you have a mill next door to me, you don't have a right to pollute my air—that can be properly defined by property rights. Water: If you're on a river you certainly can define it, if you're on a lake you certainly can define it. Even oceans can be defined by international agreements. You can be very strict with it. If it is air that crosses a boundary between Canada and the United States, you would have to have two governments come together, voluntarily solving these problems.
Can you elaborate on when government intervention is and isn't appropriate?Certainly. Anytime there's injury to another person, another person's land, or another person's environment, there's [legal] recourse with the government.
What do you see as the role of the Environmental Protection Agency?
You wouldn't need it. Environmental protection in the U.S. should function according to the same premise as "prior restraint" in a newspaper. Newspapers can't print anything that's a lie. There has to be recourse. But you don't invite the government into review every single thing that the print media does with the assumption they might do something wrong. The EPA assumes you might do something wrong; it's a bureaucratic, intrusive approach and it favors those who have political connections.
Would you dissolve the EPA?
It's not high on my agenda. I'm trying to stop the war and bring back a sound economy and solve the financial crises and balance the budget.
Is it appropriate for the government to regulate toxic or dangerous materials, like lead in children's toys?
If a toy company is doing something dangerous, they're liable and they should be held responsible. The government should hold them responsible, but not be the inspector. The government can't inspect every single toy that comes into the country.
So you see it as the legal system that brings about environmental protection?Right. Some of this stuff can be handled locally with a government. I was raised in the city of Pittsburgh. It was the filthiest city in the country, because it was a steel town. You couldn't even see the sun on a sunny day. Then it was cleaned up—not by the EPA; by local authorities that said you don't have a right to pollute—and it's a beautiful city. You don't need this huge bureaucracy that's remote from the problem. Pittsburgh dealt with it in a local fashion, and it worked out quite well.
What if you're part of a community that's getting dumped on, but you don't have the time or the money to sue the offending polluter?
Imagine that everyone living in one suburb, rather than using regular trash service, was taking their household trash to the next town over and simply tossing it in the yards of those living in the nearby town. Is there any question that legal mechanisms are in place to remedy this action? In principle, your concerns are no different, except that for a good number of years legislatures and courts have failed to enforce the property rights of those being dumped on with respect to certain forms of pollution. This form of government failure has persisted since the Industrial Revolution, when, in the name of so-called progress, certain forms of pollution were legally tolerated or ignored to benefit some popular regional employer or politically popular entity.
When all forms of physical trespass, be that smoke, particulate matter, etc., are legally recognized for what they are—a physical trespass upon the property and rights of another—concerns about difficulty in suing the offending party will be largely diminished. When any such cases are known to be slam-dunk wins for the person whose property is being polluted, those doing the polluting will no longer persist in doing so. Against a backdrop of property rights actually enforced, contingency and class-action cases are additional legal mechanisms that resolve this concern.
You mentioned that you don't support subsidies for the development of energy technologies. If all subsidies were removed from the energy sector, what do you think would happen to alternative-energy industries like solar, wind, and ethanol?
Whoever can offer the best product at the best price, that's what people will use. They just have to do this without damaging the environment.
If we're running out of hydrocarbon, the price will go up. If we had a crisis tomorrow [that cut our oil supply in half], people would drive half as much—something would happen immediately. Somebody would come up with alternative fuels rather quickly. Today, the government decides and they misdirect the investment to their friends in the corn industry or the food industry. Think how many taxpayer dollars have been spent on corn [for ethanol], and there's nobody now really defending that as an efficient way to create biodiesel fuel or ethanol. The money is spent for political reasons and not for economic reasons. It's the worst way in the world to try to develop an alternative fuel.
But often the cheapest energy sources, which the market would naturally select for, are also the most environmentally harmful. How would you address this?
Your question is based on a false premise and a false definition of "market" that is quite understandable under the current legal framework. A true market system would internalize the costs of pollution on the producer. In other words, the "cheapest energy sources," as you call them, are only cheap because currently the costs of the environmental harm you identify are not being included or internalized, as economists would say, into the cheap energy sources.
To the extent property rights are strictly enforced against those who would pollute the land or air of another, the costs of any environmental harm associated with an energy source would be imposed upon the producer of that energy source, and, in so doing, the cheap sources that pollute are not so cheap anymore.
What's your take on global warming? Is it a serious problem and one that's human-caused?
I think some of it is related to human activities, but I don't think there's a conclusion yet. There's a lot of evidence on both sides of that argument. If you study the history, we've had a lot of climate changes. We've had hot spells and cold spells. They come and go. If there are weather changes, we're not going to be very good at regulating the weather.
To assume we have to close down everything in this country and in the world because there's a fear that we're going to have this global warming and that we're going to be swallowed up by the oceans, I think that's extreme. I don't buy into that. Yet I think it's a worthy discussion.
So you don't consider climate change a major problem threatening civilization?
No. [Laughs.] I think war and financial crises and big governments marching into our homes and elimination of habeas corpus—those are immediate threats. We're about to lose our whole country and whole republic! If we can be declared an enemy combatant and put away without a trial, then that's going to affect a lot of us a lot sooner than the temperature going up.
What, if anything, do you think the government should do about global warming?They should enforce the principles of private property so that we don't emit poisons and contribute to it.
And, if other countries are doing it, we should do our best to try to talk them out of doing what might be harmful. We can't use our army to go to China and dictate to China about the pollution that they may be contributing. You can only use persuasion.
You have voiced strong opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. Can you see supporting a different kind of international treaty to address global warming?
It would all depend. I think negotiation and talk and persuasion are worthwhile, but treaties that have law-enforcement agencies that force certain countries to do things-I don't think that would work.
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russ_watters said:I think people hear what they want to hear and ignore the rest, Mk. With Ron Paul, some of what he says sorta sounds like it might make sense in some twisted way. People latch onto it because it sounds unique and possibly intelligent. It's not intelligent. It's insane.
And I do find tremendous irony in the types of people who support him. Ivan, you are one of the biggest environmentalists on this forum - how could you possibly support his environmental protection ideas?
Heck, can you guys even explain in practical terms how his environmental policy could be implimented? Is it even a policy or just an unique and possibly intelligent sounding idea?
Mk said:Evo, You make me feel like because I agree with much of what Ron Paul says, I'm insane.
Adults # CongressEvo said:When children are the issue, adults need to step up and take responsibility.
DrClapeyron said:What if Ron Paul had to speak to a foreign head of state? I can't see it happening. He is a very insular man who can make the most out of what he is given but he is not giving himself much to work with. When your appeal stops at 25 year old, xbox playing, 7th year seniors. He is dogging it but I believe he perfectly well understands.
He doesn't sit well with the the entitlement crowd. I don't know his position on social security but would someone mind an abbreviated version of Ron Paul's social security reform plan?
Gokul43201 said:It's easy to misunderstand Paul. For instance, in 2002, he proposed a bill to allow Congress to declare war on Iraq (months before Bush did it). Someone reading that will likely get the impression that Paul supprts the Iraq war. Quite the contrary. Paul opposes the Iraq war, but also wants any war resolution to have to be passed by Congress (not just endorsed by them), which is why he proposed the bill. He said at the time that he would himself have voted against his bill, but at least it would be Congress that makes the decision.
He doesn't have an environmental policy. He'll claim he does, but he really doesn't.Heck, can you guys even explain in practical terms how his environmental policy could be implimented? Is it even a policy or just an unique and possibly intelligent sounding idea?
CaptainQuasar said:Uh, I just found something allegedly about Ron Paul that looks really disturbing. Can anyone explain this as being false somehow?
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol16/issue9/pols.paul.side.html
CaptainQuasar said:Uh, I just found something allegedly about Ron Paul that looks really disturbing. Can anyone explain this as being false somehow?
http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/vol16/issue9/pols.paul.side.html
“Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans only as members of groups and never as individuals. Racists believe that all individual who share superficial physical characteristics are alike; as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called “diversity” actually perpetuate racism. Their intense focus on race is inherently racist, because it views individuals only as members of racial groups.”
DeadWolfe said:All his ideas are set forth in a sensible way to make the nation more like the way he wants it to be.
DeadWolfe said:No, sounds like anybody running for office.
falc39 said:The seemingly racist quotes were debunked already, about 10 years ago.
CaptainQuasar said:Whoa, whoa, whoa. Those quotes aren't "seemingly" racist, they are very actually racist. The thing you linked to doesn't say that they aren't racist statements, it claims that they were made by someone other than Ron Paul who Ron Paul had authorized to speak for him, but that the person went and made statements Ron Paul deeply disagreed with, but they got published in the Ron Paul Survival Report anyways.
It seems pretty dodgy to claim that things he repeatedly published in the Ron Paul Survival Report aren't his real views, his real views are what he's been saying on campaign trails, and any apparent conflict is insubstantial. I also read elsewhere on the net that the full text of only a few issues of Ron Paul Survival Report is available online and that although he still has copies of all the issues he's refusing to release them. If that's true this is very slimy and not very open or full-disclosure at all, it's practically spin doctoring through censorship.
And along those spin-doctoreque lines by the way, your use of the term "debunked" here is pretty deceptively pejorative, as if we're talking about a rumor instead of something that was published in Ron Paul's name with his authorization. The best light this can be put in is that he repeatedly signed off on something that was published in his name without really reading it, or that he allows his name to be placed on things he has no involvement whatsoever in. Either of those charges look rather incompetent for a member of Congress and a presidential candidate and that's after accepting his dodging misdirection in answering the issue, much less considering that he may very well actually hold racist and misogynist views (allowing that stuff to be published even if he really believes it would still be incompetent.)