New YouTube video exposing the media bias towards Ron Paul. Thank you to all those who have helped spread my videos.
Monthly Archives: September 2011
The IMF Ironically Wants a Bailout
Originally posted at FreedomWorks.org.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a fundamentally flawed institution that currently serves as an international bailout fund. The global bureaucracy has spent decades bailing out reckless foreign countries and banks, of which most recently are Greece, Ireland and Portugal. But now reports are circulating that the IMF needs a bailout of their own.
IMF head Christine Lagarde recently signaled that the Fund is running low on bailout money. According to the Telegraph, “the IMF has warned that its $384 bn war chest designed as an emergency bail-out fund is inadequate to deliver the scale of the support required by trouble states.” While no specific details have been released yet, hold on your wallets. As Cato Institute scholar Dan Mitchellcautions, the IMF “presumably will demand more handouts from member nations – with the United States on the hook for providing the biggest share.”
Many people do not realize that U.S. taxpayers actually pay the largest share of the IMF’s bills. The American mainstream media—with the exception of former IMF head Dominique Strauss-Kahn sex scandal coverage—has largely ignored the IMF. But as Cato Institute scholar Doug Bandow writes, “if the IMF was only spending other people’s money, then the U.S. might remain an amused bystander. But as the largest single contributor (16.67 percent, to be exact) to the Fund, American taxpayers are on the hook for a share of that organization’s lending, which ran more than $90 billion last year.” Americans would be wise to pay closer attention to what the IMF has done with our money.
Americans taxpayers should not be forced to bail out the IMF. Nor should they be forced to subsidize foreign banks and spendthrift governments. As economist Henry Hazlitt wrote, “the real solution is to dismantle the International Monetary Fund system.” The IMF is an unconstitutional international bureaucracy that has harmed taxpayers, threatened our national sovereignty and has propped up dangerous economic policies.
The Constitution certainly does not grant the federal government the authority to join international institutions such as the IMF. The international bureaucracy undermines our national sovereignty since our elected congressional representatives cannot even vote on these foreign bailouts. Unfortunately, the only American man with the power to veto IMF bailouts is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Can Tim Geithner please be fired already?
All of the IMF loans and bailouts have inflamed what economists call moral hazard. The IMF has held out of the prospect of a bailout which has encouraged banks and governments to make more risky decisions. As Professor Philipp Bagus says, “risky countries, and, more importantly, their creditors, view the guarantee of bailouts as an insurance policy. Investors are less cautious about investing in developing economies as the IMF has implicitly guaranteed to cover their losses in the event of a financial calamity.”
The IMF should not get one more cent from U.S. taxpayers. We’d be better off if the United States would immediately withdraw from the international bailout fund which does not serve a legitimate purpose.
Dear Ron Paul Bashers: Name Calling is Juvenile
Thank you Wes Messamore for posting this on the Humble Libertarian. Here: http://www.humblelibertarian.com/2011/09/dear-ron-paul-bashers-name-calling-is.html
The name calling towards Ron Paul and his supporters must end. I constantly see tweets in my timeline from self-declared conservatives and Tea Partiers who call him a “crazy uncle” or an “anti-Semite.” Enough with the ad hominem attacks. It reminds me of liberals who falsely accuse the Tea Party Movement of being racist. Why then are some Tea Partiers calling Ron Paul and his supporters “anti-Semitic” with no substance to back it up? Does the GOP want the youth vote or not? Stop trying to alienate us.
Of course, this is a two-way street. Ron Paul supporters should also be respectful and civil at all times. If you know me, you’ll know that I am a very non-confrontational person. I actually get made fun of for being overly polite. But while I was just walking around CPAC with a Ron Paul button on this year, I got some rude comments and dirty looks from strangers. Some older man said this condescending remark to me, “aw, you like Ron Paul. That’s cute. You are still young so you’ll grow out of it eventually. Don’t worry.”
Young people are finally passionate about limited government, free markets and individual responsibility. We’re gravitating towards the Republican Party for once and this is how we are treated? I know plently of young former Democrats who learned about free market economics and now vote Republican because of Dr. Paul. The GOP ought to be welcoming them with open arms instead of calling us a bunch of “loons.”
I am not responsible for the bad actions of a few. I admit that some Ron Paul supporters can be over the top and give a bad name to the rest of us. But that’s not the majority of us. I’ve found it impossible to have a civil political debate with most of the Paul bashers. They prefer to call him a “nutjob” rather than listening to what I have to say. But what the heck do I know, I’m just a “Paulbot.”
Below is a great article–from a guy who doesn’t support Ron Paul– about the lack of respect that Ron Paul supporters get. My favorite quote, “we stand to gain nothing as a movement by destroying Ron Paul personally and marginalizing his supporters.”
UPDATE: I merely tweeted out “Dear Ron Paul Bashers: Name Calling is Juvenile http://bit.ly/pN1Lk6 #tcot #tlot” And here’s the first two responses that I received, “Paulites have been calling everybody not Ron Paul all kinds of names for a long time. Goose, gander” and “I’m sorry but your Ron Paul supporters are cultist in nature. I said one thing about Ron Paul and was cussed out by several!” Both commentators are self-identified conservatives and it looks like they would rather judge people as members of a group rather than individuals. Isn’t that the kind of attitude the Tea Party has been rallying against?
A Tea Party Conservative’s Defense of Ron Paul…and His Supporters
By Russ Paladino, originally posted at AmericanThinker.com.
I want to state at the outset that this essay is not intended to be an endorsement of Ron Paul. While I respect and admire many of his positions and his fidelity to the Constitution, I have strong misgivings about some of his stances on national security. If you could hear the debates between myself and my 20-year-old son, a passionate Ron Paul supporter, you would readily accept the sincerity of my disclaimer.
That said, as the political season has heated up, I’ve been surprised at the tone of the discourse as it relates to Ron Paul. In fact, I can hardly believe what I’m seeing and hearing from my fellow Tea Partiers and conservatives. My assumption that conservatives are more thoughtful and logical than my emotion-driven liberal friends has taken a bit of a hit.
Of course, honest debate is imperative in a presidential campaign, but name-calling is counterproductive. Most confounding is how quickly the debate on Ron Paul has degenerated from a discussion of alternative ideas to name-calling (“crazy old fool”) and distortion (“he’s a Jew-hater”). These represent the very same type of attacks that conservatives rail against when they’re directed toward conservatives themselves and people we admire like Sarah Palin, George W. Bush, Michele Bachmann, Ronald Reagan, etc.
Conservatives have forever endured unfair characterizations and false charges. This happens solely because our ideological opponents seek to marginalize and invalidate us. When did it become acceptable for conservatives to direct that same type of thoughtless vitriol toward their own? I will admit that I was prone to many similar assumptions about Ron Paul as my peers harbor. Only after my son began sending me excerpts from Paul’s books and website did I understand his ideology in greater detail.
I still disagree with a good many of his views, but I have come to realize that Ron Paul is most definitely a patriot. I believe that many of his PR problems stem from an inability to express his ideas effectively in a sound-bite world. He appears impatient and unwilling to suffer fools who do not share his level of understanding of the Constitution and the Founders’ intent. An effective executive must exhibit great skill in communicating ideas and building consensus. This, in my opinion, is not one of Ron Paul’s strong suits.
But what conservatives in general need to understand and appreciate is that Ron Paul’s message about small government, individual freedom, free markets, and the Constitution is connecting with the younger generation in ways that the Tea Party has not been able to imitate. Admittedly, passion can sometimes manifest in obnoxious ways. Some of Ron Paul’s supporters can be over the top, but so can some Tea Partiers. The majority of his base is young, and I’d argue that youthful exuberance is at the core of this in-your-face activism. Yes, it’s obnoxious on the one hand, but it’s exciting and hopeful on the other! That the next generation could be turned on by these ideas is what I call true “Hope and Change.”
What I fear more than a Ron Paul presidency is the possibility that his supporters will become disillusioned and alienated by conservatives who are hell-bent on destroying the man personally, rather than debating his ideas thoughtfully. It is imperative that Paul’s young followers feel as though their voices can be heard and our debate can be civil. We stand to gain nothing as a movement by destroying Ron Paul personally and marginalizing his supporters. Our country is crying out for a new generation of leaders to grab the baton and restore constitutionalism after decades of destructive policies by corrupt politicians.
With regard to Ron Paul and his supporters, I appeal to my conservative brethren to raise the level of debate and avoid the urge to use the same unfair tactics that our adversaries employ. We will need Ron Paul and his constituency to get behind another conservative in the race, in the probable event that he doesn’t win the GOP nomination. The majority of our viewpoints are in agreement. We can debate the rest and in the meantime work together toward restoring our Constitution, economic health, individual liberty and our superpower status…together, one step at a time.
Thank you Reason!
I just wanted to thank Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch for posting my video on Reason magazine’s website.
Here: http://reason.com/blog/2011/09/20/are-all-libertarians-socially
And here: http://reason.com/blog/2011/09/20/good-news-tuesday-dont-ask-don
Just to be clear, I like both Reason and the Mises Institute. Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch wrote a thought-provoking book, the Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What’s Wrong With America, that you should check out even if you have minor disagreements on how they define libertarianism. They are both awesome libertarians in my book.
Update: Thank you to David Gordon for also posting my video on LewRockwell.com. Here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/95235.html. He also responded to an email that I sent him which was very kind.
Another update: Lew Rockwell posted one of my videos “Audit then End the Fed.” Here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/politicaltheatre/2011/09/ron-paul-is-right-audit-the-fed-then-end-it/ Thank you Lew Rockwell for spreading my video.
Are All Libertarians Socially Liberal? No Way.
My new video:
Libertarians are not required to be socially liberal. I actually consider myself to be pretty socially conservative. Libertarianism is all about “defining the permissible use of force.” It has nothing to do with social values in my opinion. Reason seemed to say that the spread of gay marriage, interracial couples, rock music, porn are signs we are becoming more libertarian. It’s good that there are no government bans but the spread of these things seems irrelevant to libertarianism.
Abolishing the Department of Education is the Right Thing to Do
Originally posted at FreedomWorks.org.
Eliminating the Department of Education used to be a standard Republican talking point. In 1980, Ronald Reagan ran on abolishing the federal department soon after Jimmy Carter created it. The 1996 GOP platform read, “the Federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education, end federal meddling in our schools, and promote family choice at all levels of learning.”
The Republican Party has since lost its way. George W. Bush championed the No Child Left Behind law—also known as the No Federal Bureaucrat Left Behind law—which has massively expanded the federal government’s role in education. With a few notable exceptions such as Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul, modern day Republicans have backed away from gutting the Department of Education. It has become more common for Republicans to promise that they will eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” in government programs without giving any specifics.
Republicans need to return to their small government roots. We just can’t solve our budget problems and restore liberty by simply tinkering around the edges. Instead of pledging to “fix” unconstitutional government programs—we need more elected representatives willing to scrap entire departments. Today’s GOP should channel Mr. Conservative himself Barry Goldwater who declared that “I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient…my aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.”
The Department of Education deserves to be on the chopping block. Our children’s education is too important to be left up to a federal centralized bureaucracy. Jimmy Carter created the Department of Education as a political payoff to the teachers’ unions for their 1976 endorsement. We should judge all governmental agencies by their results rather than their intentions. Like virtually every federal department, the Department of Education has only made things worse.
The Department of Education is blatantly unconstitutional, like so much that the federal government does. The truth is that the federal government only has about thirty enumerated powers delegated to it in the Constitution. Education is not specifically listed in the document, which means that the authority over education should be left up to the states and the people. We cannot afford to waste anymore taxpayer dollars on failed national schemes.
Federal agencies always cost more than initially predicted. The Department of Education’s 2011 budget is nearly six times greater than its original budget. It has increased from $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars) in 1980 to $77.8 billion in 2011. The federal government throwing more money at education has done virtually nothing to improve educational outcomes. Student test scores in math, reading and science have remained flat or declined over the past four decades. The chart below from the Cato Institute shows how increased federal spending has not had a positive effect on educational achievement:
The federal government meddling in education has been a failure to say the least. A group of federal bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. cannot possibly design a curriculum that meets the unique needs of millions of school children across the nation. We need to restore control over education to the local level where teachers and parents are put back in charge. Make no mistake; eliminating the Department of Education is a pro-education position.
More of today’s Republicans need to grow spines and renew the call to abolish the Department of Education. It’s unconstitutional, a waste of taxpayer dollars and has been detrimental to the quality of education in America.
Rick Perry’s Big Government Vaccine Mandate
I originally wrote this for another website so I toned it down some. I actually think I’m being too nice to slick Rick.
In the Tea Party Express sponsored presidential debate earlier this week, Texas Governor Rick Perry came under fire for an executive order he issued which mandated the Gardasil HPV vaccine for all six-grade girls in the state. Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul made strong cases against the government health care mandate stating that it was a violation of parental rights and liberty.
Rick Perry admitted that his executive order was a mistake and he “would have done it differently.” He added, “I would have gone to the legislature, worked with them.” The vaccine mandate, however, was rejected by the conservative Texas legislature who eventually overturned the executive order. Rick Perry is correct to denounce his executive order but he has yet to reject the actual policy to my knowledge. As Rick Santorum said, “he believes that what he did was right. He thinks he went about it the wrong way.”
Both the health care policy and the way he bypassed approval from the legislature are wrong. It is immoral for government to force an individual to get a potentially dangerous vaccine that goes against their beliefs. According to Perry’s executive order, any six-grade girl who did not receive the Gardasil HPV vaccine was not allowed to enter her public school classroom. Unlike many communicable diseases such as measles, preteens are just not at risk of the sexually transmitted HPV in their six grade classrooms.
The decision on whether to get vaccinated for HPV should be left between the girl, her parents and doctor. Rick Perry claims that his executive order allowed parents to opt-out by filling out an affidavit objecting to the vaccine for religious or philosophical reasons. But as blogger Michelle Malkin correctly contends, “requiring parents to seek the government’s permission to keep an untested drug out of their kids’ veins is a plain usurpation of their authority.”
Rick Perry still alleges that his health care mandate had good intentions. He told New Hampshire voters that he just “hates cancer.” Everyone hates cancer but true limited government conservatives aren’t supposed to love government mandates. Remember what Nobel-Prize winning economist Milton Friedman said, “whenever we depart from voluntary cooperation and try to do good by using force, the bad moral value of force triumphs over good intentions.”
The Texas Governor has a disturbingly close relationship with Gardasil’s maker Merck & Co. Merck’s PAC has donated almost $30,000 to Perry’s campaigns since 2000. Reports show that the giant pharmaceutical company donated $5,000 to his campaign on the same day that Merck held a meeting to discuss the vaccine with Perry’s staff in 2006. Rick Perry’s former chief of staff Mike Toomey now happens to be a top lobbyist for Merck. One of Rick Perry’s biggest donors is the Republican Governors Association (RGA) who gave him at least $4 million over the past five years. Merck has given the RGA more than $380,000 since 2006.
The Big Pharma company Merck would have cashed in big time if Perry’s executive order was not overturned. The Examiner columnist Timothy Carney writes that, “Perry’s action as governor suggest that for him, ‘pro-business’ means corporatism.” He goes on to further say that, “Perry is pro-Merck, pro-Boeing, pro-Mesa, pro-Texas Instruments, pro-Convergen, and pro-dozens of businesses that donate to his campaigns and hire his aides as lobbyists.”
Unlike Mitt Romney who has not condemned RomneyCare one bit, Rick Perry has at least partially apologized for his health care mandate mistake. He claims that, “the fact of the matter is I didn’t do my research well enough to understand that we needed to have a substantial conversation with our citizenry…I will tell you that I made a mistake by not going to the legislature first.” In my eyes, Rick Perry has still not acknowledged a problem with mandating the HPV vaccine just the way he bypassed the legislature to do it.
He should take it a step further and denounce all big government health care mandates. Americans would be wise to take a closer look at Perry to see if his limited government rhetoric actually matches his record.
Fox News/Google Debate Question: Do you Support Allowing Young People to Opt Out of Social Security?
Please go to: http://yt-debates.appspot.com/question/5414130 to vote for my question to be asked during the debate. The Fox News/Google Debate is on September 22. Thank you!
Social Security is a Mandatory Ponzi Scheme
Originally posted at FreedomWorks.org.
Rick Perry made headlines for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” in last night’s presidential debate. Mitt Romney and statist media sources predictably attacked this position claiming that the insolvent program is A-Okay. To be fair, Rick Perry isn’t the only Republican candidate with the courage to speak truth to fiction about Social Security. Ron Paul has likely been calling the entitlement program a Ponzi scheme long before I was even born. It’s suddenly become popular to call Social Security out for what it really is: a compulsory Ponzi scheme.
Social Security is the definition of a Ponzi scheme with a few notable differences. Charles Ponzi started a money making scam that would later be known as a Ponzi scheme back in 1916. He persuaded people to allow him to invest their money but he never made one investment. He simply transferred money from his later investors to his earlier investors. The unsustainable system inevitably collapsed. Charles Ponzi was then convicted of fraud and spent years behind bars.
Social Security has many similarities to a Ponzi scheme but it’s even worse. The main difference is that Ponzi schemes are voluntary and Social Security is mandatory. Everyone is forced to pay Social Security payroll taxes whether they want to be part of the system or not. Just like Charles Ponzi’s fraudulent scheme, money from “later investors” or young workers is transferred to “earlier investors” or retirees.
Ponzi schemes are always great for earlier investors but rip off those who invest later on. The number of retirees is growing far faster than the number of new workers. The ratio of workers to retirees has grown from 42 to 1 in 1940 to just 3.3 to 1 today. Social Security is facing more than $20 trillion in unfunded future liabilities. Young people actually believe that they have a better chance of seeing UFOs than a Social Security check made out to them when they retire.
Some people especially those on the left wrongly call us “cruel.” But think about it: how cruel is it to force a young person who believes they will get nothing in return into a system? Why should young workers who are just starting out in their careers be forced to pay for the Social Security benefits of elderly millionaires and billionaires? Seniors are much wealthier than young people on average.
Individuals should be free to opt-out of Social Security if they wish. People could then stay in the insolvent Social Security system or invest on their own. If Social Security is so “great”, why is it mandatory? Private sector retirement plans can provide safer plans with higher benefits than Social Security. Unlike Social Security, the assets in the private retirement plans can be rolled over to a surviving spouse or other family member. We need more retirement choices instead of being forced into a terribly mismanaged government monopoly.
The Venn diagram above made by The Examiner’s Tim Carney shows the difference between Ponzi schemes and Social Security. Bernie Madoff, who was responsible for the largest Ponzi schemes in history, was sentenced to 150 years in prison back in 2009. But the federal government’s Social Security scheme is somehow mandatory. Politicians who criticize Social Security are indeed considered pariahs. Think Progress says that it is “nuts” to even compare Ponzi schemes and Social Security.
The Social Security scam disproportionally hurts the working class and African Americans. Tim Carney says that, “given that black men have a lower life expectancy, they get shortchanged on the benefits end.” The life expectancy for an African American male is just 69.7 years—versus 75.5 years for white men. The Social Security retirement age is 65. This means that close to half of African Americans males will die before every receiving a dime of Social Security benefits despite paying into the system all of their working life. How is that for cruel?
Social Security is a compulsory Ponzi scheme. As Cato Institute scholar Roger Pilon says, “a private company that ran such a scheme would be prosecuted in less than a New York minute.” Social Security is a hopelessly bad deal for today’s worker. Americans should be allowed to invest in their retirement as they see fit—not be forced into a mandatory Ponzi scheme against their will. We need more presidential candidates with the guts to propose allowing individuals to opt-out of Social Security.
Audit then End the Fed
My newest video on why we need a true (not phony!) audit of the Fed. It’s just the first step to ending the Fed.
