Politics The Marginalization of Ron Paul (or How Media Plays Favorites)

If you need to undergo chemotherapy to kill cancer in your body, you're going to kill healthy blood cells along with the harmful ones. It's a painful process but necessary if you're going to rid yourself of the cancer.
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Ron Paul respectfully disagrees.

 

Apparently, facts are optional for Dr. Paul as well

 

http://www.ronpaul2012.com/2011/10/17/ron-paul-announces-ambitious-‘plan-to-restore-america’/

Here is his plan.

Some of the things in there are good, some need to be transferred in a civilized way to public investors, other things should be dealt with at a state or local level. And a lot of the government agencies have gotten too big and we need to figure out a way to fix the problems with deficits.

But, I don't understand how he is claiming to reduce costs by not having an estate tax? The tax could generate quite a bit of revenue from the deceased successful people who don't need it anymore. And the Bush tax cuts could easily go away to get money flowing back and forth in the economy again. I'll go for eliminating capital gains and dividends when they agree not to allow losses to be written off...

His whole "Revenue" section on page 4 is all funny math.

Page 6, you see the 0's…the money being spent is going toward something. what will happen if the DOE doesn't have any R&D money, the Interior Dept doesn't have enough to run the national parks (that bring in more money from tourists to the local and state economy), etc..

Medicaid, Food Stamps, Child Nutrition and SCHIP…more details are needed before he can just 'freeze' the levels at 50% of their current funding. How is this going to work? Death panels? Bread & rice?

Page 11, why can't he get the DOD down to below Clinton levels? He is going to bring back the troops and I would assume we wouldn't need nearly as many. If we are going to pull out troops from other foreign bases, he should be able to cut it down to 50% in the first year, and 20% of current spending by year 4.

One glaring omission is the DEA. He wants to legalize some drugs, but what effect that will have is unknown. However, there could be a lot of cost savings and tax revenue here.
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...erica-Plan-DEA

It is a good start, and should be required by anyone running for President. But, he needs to go into more detail about why he thinks the loss of thousands of government jobs will mean that there will be money in the economy for the average American to find a private sector job.

 

Eddie:

Derwood:

Any plan Rand has would have to be self-serving, by default.

"Other" people don't fit into the every man for himself Libertarian model.

 

Women
Those with disabilities
Gays/Lesbians

Pretty much everyone but a small group of young, straight, anti-government white men

 

I'll go the analogy route again. A nation is like a traditional household, the government is the father and the citizens and private interest groups are the mother and children. When the household is broke and in debt, it may be necessary for the mother and the children to put their material demands on hold for a bit while father figures out how to get the budget balanced.

If the father doesn't get things straightened out then the utilities get shut off, there's not enough for food and eventually they get evicted. So everyone just has to tighten their belts while things get back on track.

Now, I know that the bulk of the 99% isn't used to tightening their belts and roughing it during tough times because most of them have never been faced with tough times, at least not 'dust bowl, great depression' tough times. No, the 99% would rather kick and scream at their father for not getting their new Nike Air Jordans. But it's time to put the Jordans on hold while pops figures out how to make this nation thrive again. I can tough it out, can you?

So, the same people who founded this once great nation.

 

At least Ron Paul has a plan. Which is more than the other candidates.

If Obama took the Ron Paul cuts and spending freezes seriously (reduce the size of military, end drug war, etc.), while raising the taxes and bringing back the estate tax, we would be on our way to solving the fiscal problems in government.

 

Exactly. But the likelihood is, Americans are gonna stick Obama back in office for another 4 years of Hope and Change.
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No, I'm just pointing out who the folks were that got shit done around here.

 

Paul wants to end the wars and bring our troops home. I think that oughta cut down on military expenses considerably. And Paul doesn't say these things to get elected like some politicians do *cough * obama *cough*. Paul knows he has a slim chance of getting elected, so he has no reason to tickle our ears with a bunch of lies and bullshit.

 

It's all about distraction.
And every circus needs a monkey.
I'm talking about Rand.

 

So the mother and kids put their material demands on hold? The mother has no say in your analogy? Is she supposed to be subservient to the master of the house and remain quietly in the kitchen ? That does fit with Paul's 19th century approach to govt.

Material demands? Like food and affordable health care (if the family is low income), the mother's right to privacy (to chose), pay equity for the mother (if the husband lets her out of the kitchen)....

 

No. I never implied any sort of forced submission.

Well, I used the example of Air Jordans to mean anything that we can live without, albeit not always comfortably, in order to get our household back into healthy economic shape.

 

Right. Putting aside the the fact that the analogy is baseless, you simply suggested that the father figures out how to balance the budget...giving the mother, who probably knows more about household expenses, no role whatsoever. The mother, in her wisdom, would know that finding more income (increase taxes) and not just cutting expenses, is a better solution.

Right and I used examples of real programs that Paul would freeze or eliminate, adversely impacting millions of families.

 

Well, yes. Having to rough it for a length of time while the country gets healthy again means being adversely affected. I feel like posting the JFK quote "ask not what your country can do for you..." But like I said earlier, Americans just cringe at the idea of being uncomfortable or adversely affected. We're a bunch creampuffs that have to be medicated just to make it through our miserable lives. Americans are afraid of pain, afraid of everything. "oh, you mean I might have to make some sort of uncomfortable sacrifice for my country?" "oh hell no, I might miss American Idol."