Ron Paul

opus

So you're saying taxation should be "voluntary"? You might as well just abolish government completely, since all government services will be left to the market anyways.
If people are unequal, and thus inequality is "natural", then you're advocating then that one should "leave the poor to be poor" and "leave the rich to be rich"?

See, your argument is predicated on the assumption that the market reflects people, that is, people are paid exactly what they are "worth". However, this is simply not the case, because you're saying then that a CEO is "worth" 600x more than a wage-labourer than say, years ago when it was simply just 60x. In fact, there is a nasty tautology that develops where the logic becomes that the CEO is paid a lot of money because he is rich (since he is worth more).

Even Adam Smith knew that large inequalities will be a bad thing for society, and criticized "materialistic excesses".
It's not an issue of "I think this" and "you think that", because gender, race, and class are real and have real effects that are empirically measured. How else can you explain women making 70% of what men make, when given the same job, qualifications, and abilities? Just because your fantasy economic modelling don't see this doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
So essentially in two paragraphs you say that race and gender do not matter, there are other factors beyond this. The most elementary of sociological articles can easily refute your claim that there is just "something other" that is causing this oppression and not admitting that there is blatant discrimination in the world because it doesn't follow your neoclassical model of economic outcomes.
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conten...00005/art00002
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conten...00005/art00006
http://www.ingentaconnect.com/conten...00001/art00001
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi...467-9620.00277
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=002...3E2.0.CO%3B2-U
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/rec...accno=ED397148
But according to you, "nah, race and gender don't matter, it's just the individual and it's unexplainable factors like culture that bogs them down." Sociologists are just making stuff up. They're full of fluff.
Thank you for the ad hominems Mr economist major, but sociology is as empirical as economics and hardly needs "evidence" that you feel that they "can't find".
Well, I guess taxation doesn't exist, universal education is a failure, and government doesn't do anything but waste money. I'm sure the founding fathers said that. After all, they say things that both liberals and conservatives use that "support their argument".
You somehow unabashedly think market fundamentalism will solve the problems of the world.

ShawnD

So you didn't even watch the video where he specifically said that it was due to being in the middle east.

DrClapeyron

That's just wrong. Reagan never gave up on the hostages in Iran. In fact, the increase in DoD spending involved increased sales of weapons to the Middle East (Sauds in particular), sent troops to Lebanon, intelligence to Saddam Hussein and support of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan. The cold war was all about the Middle East, of which Reagan is credited for having a huge hand in winning for the Americans.

ShawnD

Reagan is very often quoted on this. Here is what he wrote in his autobiography, word for word:


As much as I hate Reagan, I have to give him credit when he can admit possible mistakes.

DrClapeyron

Of course neutrality may have worked in Lebanon. There were half a dozen guerilla groups operating in Lebanon. The US chose a side, was bombed and moved off shore where the guerillas could no longer attack. It wasn't as though Lebanon was crucial to US foreign policy. What exactly is Lebanon's staple export/commodity/product? Location

Ron Paul believes the US has no business in the middle east and therefore must leave. Insane, because the entire penninsula is dependant on the US for its protection against people like Saddam, Ahmadinajad and al-Quida.

ice109

he's never going to win

ShawnD

The Iran-Iraq war went on for 8 years, and the US did nothing to protect either country. The US was helping to fuel the war by selling/giving weapons to Iraq, then it was later discovered in the Iran-Contra scandal that the US was also selling weapons to the Iranians. That's not protection. That's war mongering. If you want to know why Arabs hate the US so much, a review of the 1980's would be a good start.

DrClapeyron

Neither Iran nor Iraq are part of the Arabian peninsula. The US has the moral right to send troops to the middle east to protect its allies.

ShawnD

You're right about defending allies being a top priority, but the blowback theory isn't about defending allies. It's about state sponsored terrorism that some US politicians openly talk about on live TV. Of course they don't call it terrorism; they prefer the term "Nation Building" which roughly translates as the process of replacing a country's government with one that you like more. Such examples include the 1953 coup d'etat in Iran where CIA and British intelligence overthrew a democratically elected government in order to put the Shah back in power. Then in 1979 he was overthrown, Ayatollah Khomeini came to power, and American diplomats were taken hostage. But I'm sure that was just a coincidence and it had absolutely nothing to do with government terrorism that happened in 1953. It makes me wonder if Carter or Reagan tried that same "they hate our freedom" line.

The worst part of this is that there is a disconnect between the people and their government. Nobody goes to the polling station with the mentality of "I think I'll vote for terrorism this time", but politicians end up doing that. Then when retaliation happens 5, 10, 20 years later and innocent people like those in the WTC or on the USS Cole are killed, those same politicians throw up their hands and act like they have no idea why this happened. Sure I was yelling at the dog and hitting it with a stick, but why did he bite me??

Ivan Seeking

Don't you mean that we are motivated to protect our oil interests?

DrClapeyron

Ivan Seeking, I meant that the US is motivated to protect its cash-futures market, to be blunt about the matter.

ShawnD, recall what happen to Mosadegh after the 1953 election. The ayatollahs absolutely feared him and supported the CIA/British overthrow of Mosadegh. Call it coincidence, but the ayatollahs actually prefered the Shah.

ShawnD

Wiki says ayatollahs supported his ideas and only left him when he asked for an extension of his emergency powers. Article: Mohammed Mossedegh. The backstory for this quote is that he was assigned as prime minister after the parliament elected him as the leader. He was assigned by the shah who is equivalent to something like a king in a monarchy or president in a republic (president and prime minister are not the same thing).


He had support from at least one Ayatollah as well as some other religious scholars because they liked his idea of nationalizing Iran's oil. They stopped supporting him when he asked that his emergency powers be extended by one year. Removing Mossadegh meant that he was no longer in charge (they would like this), but it also meant a reversal of nationalized oil (they would not like this).

mheslep

No. Paul clearly opposes US foreign involvement, esp. Iraq. He's hardly clear about the causes of the 9/11 attack, he's dancing on the head of a pin.
~11:17
In the debate he says generically 'attacked' due to policies, is ambiguous whether or not he's means 9/11 or in Iraq; taken with the rest of the video and his own writing posted on the House site, he's contradictory at best. All the more reason why one has to be careful about what's attributed to him.

As an aside, the fun part is the >12000 Paul You Tube comments! For which, this is well earned.

ShawnD

Youtube comments are hilarious. That's half the reason for going there.

I'm refering to the actual debate itself at roughly 6:00 in the video.

Moderator: You don't think that changed with the 9/11 attacks?
Ron: What changed?
Moderator: Noninterventionlist policies
Ron: No, nonintervention was a major contributing factor. Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the middle east... I think Reagan was right, we don't understand the irrationality of middle eastern politics, so right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what we would do if someone else did it to us.
Moderator: Are you suggesting we invited the 9/11 attacks, sir?
Ron: I'm saying we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it. They are delighted we're over there because Osama Bin Ladin has said "I am glad you're over here on our sand because we can target you so much easier." We've already since that time killed 3400 of our men and I don't think it was necessary.

Americans themselves did nothing to cause this, as the guy at 11 minutes is trying to get him say, but the government certainly does deserve some of the blame, and Ron Paul says just that at 6 minutes.

mheslep

Excuse me while I shift the topic to something like ... the title of this thread, R. Paul. On the subject of avoiding foreign wars with admittedly hostile powers, Paul has cited as an example that the US[West] managed to contain the Soviet Union while avoiding a hot war; I suppose that would also go for China under Mao[1]. If I read Paul correctly, he contends the US should do likewise with todays bad actors. Fair enough. It must be seen however that the USSR containment was done by fighting a cold war through some nasty proxies in S. America, Iran as posted here, the M. East, etc., which Paul again criticizes, saying they cause 'blowback' among other things. I'd agree some of these cold war actions were ill advised / foolish in some cases. I'd also say its unavoidable to have blunders like that in a war, cold or hot.

Now, my summary take on Paul is he:
-Opposes direct military action in Iraq, Sudan, etc and points to containment strategies instead (probably while people rot - Sudan),
-Opposes involvement with proxies required to execute containment,
and all the while says hes not an isolationist. I'm still waiting for a Presidential foreign policy plan he supports in one sentence without criticizing it in the next.

[1] Not that I'd grant this is a given 'good' as Uncle Joe killed/imprisoned 20 million and Mao 10's of millions, but ok, the argument for containment is it's better than blowing up the whole world.

Evo

Ron Paul is all for protecting oil companies, he voted NO on this bill.

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/.../~c110ErkbdS::

1/18/07 Vote 40: H R 6: This bill would repeal tax cuts to oil companies and mandate that they pay a fee to remove oil from the Gulf of Mexico. It would also fund renewable energy programs. The act would repeal a tax break that oil and gas firms received in 2004. That break effectively lowered their corporate tax rates. It would also bar oil companies from bidding on new federal leases unless they pay a fee or renegotiate improperly drafted leases from the late ‘90s. Those leases did not require royalty payments on Gulf of Mexico oil production. Oil firms would pay a “conservation fee” for oil taken from the gulf.

Additionally, the bill would set aside an estimated $13 billion to $15 billion in revenues over a five-year period for tax breaks relating to renewable energy sources

The House passed the bill on Jan. 18, 2007, with a vote of 264-163. All House Democrats except one favored the bill. They were joined by 36 Republicans. The Senate must debate the bill.

Ivan Seeking

Just because he didn't support this bill that doesn't mean that he is protecting the oil companies. It might be worth seeing why he didn't support it. What's more, Ron Paul's money is coming from a fantastically successful internet campaign, so we know that he's not in the pockets of oil companies. Hopefully Russert will ask about some of these issues next Sunday on MTP.