Posted on 08/28/2010 1:55:44 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Ron Paul has some surprising news for the Tea Party:
You’re being taken for a ride.
At least this is what many libertarians like Ron Paul believe when they see someone like Glenn Beck or Sarah Palin trying to lead the Tea Party at the “restoring honor” rally this weekend. In fact, Ron Paul believes, if you’re looking for real freedom, you should really go back to the core of the constitution and the bill of rights, which Beck and Palin do not fully endorse when you really look at their beliefs. Whether it be Palin’s support for starting more wars or Beck’s beliefs on paying the private Federal Reserve MORE interest on our money by means of a VAT tax.
Ron Paul believes in neither of the above.
Here was Ron Paul’s message to the Tea Party via The New York Times just the other day:
“As many frustrated Americans who have joined the Tea Party realize, we cannot stand against big government at home while supporting it abroad. We cannot talk about fiscal responsibility while spending trillions on occupying and bullying the rest of the world. We cannot talk about the budget deficit and spiraling domestic spending without looking at the costs of maintaining an American empire of more than 700 military bases in more than 120 foreign countries. We cannot pat ourselves on the back for cutting a few thousand dollars from a nature preserve or an inner-city swimming pool at home while turning a blind eye to a Pentagon budget that nearly equals those of the rest of the world combined.”
While the Tea Party will be out supporting Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin this weekend, you wonder how many of them will be in full support of more wars and paying more interest to a group of untouchable and unauditable private bankers otherwise known as the FED? This is precisely what Ron Paul is asking the American public to consider when looking at the Tea Party leaders and see if they really stand for what they believe in.
Ron Paul believes the Tea Party is not about “left” or “right” like a lot of political pundits make it out to be. It’s about the constitution, and limited government.
Ron Paul’s position on the federal income tax is to get rid of it entirely and replace it with nothing.
When you have a position like that - get rid of the federal income tax entirely - you really need to make major cuts everywhere.
His vision is of a much much smaller federal government.
Ron Paul’s position on the income tax, to get rid of it is a good one but tax revenues have to be generated and must be free from corrupt tax gaming that has plagued taxpayers for decades.
I heard Ron Paul say he would replace ‘it’ meaning tax revenues with nothing and it spoke volumes to the dark smelly place where the man had stuck his mind.
If he had said ‘replace the Income Tax Code with nothing’, then he would make sense. But then he would have to follow with what means of taxation would be used to fund the military, the various branches of federal government such as the courts. Certain things need to be funded and certain things don’t. The problem is the American people can’t connect the dots between taxation and what is funded, and the 16th Amendment income tax can hit them everywhere they breathe, including Obamacare which is now being defended as a tax program held Constitutional under the 16th Amendment.
If Ron Paul had said ‘Repeal the 16th Amendment’, then he would have made even better sense. But that is the problem with Ron Paul, he says a lot of things that hang in the air and sound almost good, but don’t quite add up to much.
The means of generating tax revenues must be transparent and voted on each year.
The FairTax does these things while at the same time ensuring each and every American is never taxed for the necessities of life.
The FairTax also repatriates $20 trillion dollars that have fled America because of its tax insanity.
Every single aspect of the FairTax was researched, analyzed, debated, contrasted against history and positioned to align taxation in America with what the Founders intended. It is the single most brilliant piece of political legislation of the last 100 years. Nothing comes close.
The reason that Ron Paul doesn’t embrace the FairTax is because it was thought of by someone else. It’s not his baby.
Ron Paul likes to make a name for himself by saying and proposing things that no one else of recent history has had a mind to say or propose. He fancies himself as a Founder. But he lays no concrete plans to realize his view of America. That’s why he can’t get traction among the electorate, he sounds good but there’s no there there.
I dunno. Maybe not enough people want massive tax cuts, massive spending cuts, a much much smaller federal government.
That’s what you’d get with Ron Paul. That’s what I want, but maybe not enough people want that. Very possibly nowhere near enough people want much much smaller government.
RON PAUL EARMARKS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2009
Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science:
• $250,000 for Galveston Economic Development Partnership, for Galveston Center for Business and Technology Development to help spin off private investment at National Lab of the University of Texas Medical Branch • $500,000 for City of Bay City for NuBlac Rehab Center (youth rehabilitation)
Subcommittee on Defense:
• $3.5 million for study of health risks of exposure to vanadium
Subcommittee on Military Construction:
• $2 million for City of Bay City for NuBlac Rehab Center (serving minority veterans)
Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development:
• $41.073 million for Army Corps of Engineers to deepen and widen Texas City Channel • $21.6 million for Army Corps of Engineers to dredge and reconfigure jetties at mouth of Colorado River • $7.02 million for Army Corps of Engineers to dredge Freeport Harbor • $16.021 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Galveston Harbor • $1 million for Army Corps of Engineers for construction at Cedar Bayou • $3.297 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Texas City Channel • $200,000 for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Cedar Bayou • $13.038 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Matagorda Ship Channel • $42.018 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Gulf Intercoastal Waterway • $3.026 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain channel to Victoria • $600,000 for Army Corps of Engineers for feasibility study for Sabine Pass to Galveston Bay • $400,000 for Army Corps of Engineers for feasibility study for Feeport Harbor • $100,000 for Army Corps of Engineers for feasibility study for Lower Guadalupe River Basin • $400,000 for Army Corps of Engineers for preliminary engineering and design study at Freeport Harbor. • $21.7 million for Army Corps of Engineers for construction at Houston Galveston Navigation Channel • $2.165 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Trinity River • $6.979 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Wallisville Lake • $1.3 million for Army Corps of Engineers to study flooding around Colorado River • $11 million for Army Corps of Engineers for construction at Wharton and Onion Creek • $3.026 million for Army Corps of Engineers for Chocolate Bayou • $533,000 for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain channel to Port Bolivar • $41.623 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Houston Ship Channel • $1.01 million for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Double Bayou • $3 million for Army Corps of Engineers for construction at Clear Creek • $500,000 for Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Port Palacios • $100,000 for Army Corps of Engineers to study sand placement near Brazoria County shoreline
Subcommittee on Interior and the Environment:
• $5 million for Fort Bend County for City of Kendleton water and sewer improvements
Subcommittee on Homeland Security:
• $10 million for Coast Guard to improve Galveston Rail Causeway • $8.8 million for FEMA for drainage at Cove Harbor in Aransas County • $2.2 million for FEMA to reconfigure and stabilize Capano Causeway Pier • $500,000 for FEMA for Aransas County drainage master plan • $35 million for FEMA for drainage in Friendswood • $10 million for FEMA for drainage project for Friendswood/Clear Creek • $10 million for FEMA for drainage project for Friendswood/Clear Creek • $5 million for FEMA to recycle household hazardous waste in Friendswood
Subcommittee on Transportation:
• $1.96 million to replace buses in and around Victoria • $2 million to renovate transit maintenance facility in Galveston • $5 million to reconfigure Texas Clipper training ship • $25,000 to install security cameras at Fox Run Apartments in Victoria • $2 million to beautify Galveston Seawall and support Transit Access Program in Galveston • $3.6 million to construct inter-modal transit facility in Victoria • $3.5 million for analysis of commuter rail alternatives in Galveston • $10.3 million for City of Bay City for NuBlac Youth/Community Center • $2.2 million for City of Bay City for improvements to electrical wiring in low and moderate income housing
Subcommittee on Labor, HHS, Education:
• $90,000 for Victoria Chamber of Commerce for business/career-related education for youth • $248,942 for UTMB for employee wellness program for small businesses • $1.748 million for University of Houston-Victoria for DNA testing and genetic diagnostic lab • $300,000 for Bay City MEHOP for fund reinstatement of mobile unit • $200,000 for Bay City MEHOP to recruit nurse practitioner • $1.92 million for UTMB to study muscle mass loss in aging vs. microgravity (NASA related) at International Space Station National Lab • $750,000 for Houston Memorial Hermann HealthCare system for Life Flight operations center • $26 million for Washington, D.C. "Reading is Fundamental" program • $10 million for Boston, Mass., "Reach Out and Read" national center
Plenty of people want it.
It’s just that the federal government is like having an 800 pound obese teenager sitting in your home taking over your life.
And Dr. Paul is saying the obese teen needs to lose weight.
Gee thanks Ron! Would never have thought of that without ya!
The Left doesn’t go after the Ron Pauls of the world because they’re useful idiots.
Ron Paul says we are “bullying” the world. With that singularly stupid statement, iterated constantly by hard leftists, proves he belongs on the ash heap of history.
People know though, that if the income tax is abolished, things that they like, like 700 military bases all over the world, will have to be closed. They want less government in the abstract, but when it comes to serious, concrete, cuts people will be less willing to make those cuts.
What Dr. Paul is saying is not that the obese teen needs to lose weight, Dr. Paul is saying that the obese teen needs to stop eating so much. The obese teen will need to feel hungry a lot.
“Needs to lose weight” and “You may never eat a twinkie ever again” are entirely different things.
The media knows this. And the Republicans know this. There is plenty that most would want to cut. But every specific thing that is cut has someone out there who wants that thing not to be cut. And when Republicans cut that thing that a person wants, that person very likely could be less inclined to vote for a Republican.
These military bases are very very expensive. Ron Paul knows this and knows that many of these bases would have to be closed in order to abolish the income tax. Most freepers would like to abolish the income tax. But most freepers also do not want to close any military bases.
The media is trying to pin the Republicans down on specifics. Trying to get them to say what exact cuts they would make. Because the people who would be “hurt” by the cuts would be more likely to vote for the Democrats, at least in theory. Most Republicans want to avoid saying which cuts because they know what has happened in the past.
Ron Paul has been pretty specific about what cuts he would make. Get rid of the Dept. of Education for one, and that’s a simple one, that many Republicans used to agree with, and may agree with today. In the 2007/8 Presidential debates, and during the campaign, he made it pretty clear that he was not in the same ballpark as the other candidates in terms of how much government he wanted to cut. He wanted to make massive cuts, and most of the other candidates didn’t really want to make cuts at all.
And then all that good Ron Paul stuff got buried by the middle east stuff, a whole bunch of antiwar Dems got on board, and Ron Paul became known to most people as the antiwar Republican instead of the “massive cuts in government” Republican.
He’s got a fair share of supporters now who don’t care as much about cutting government as being antiwar, and at least with Republicans here, antiwar is less popular than abolish the income tax.
Did he vote for those bills?
And don’t give me bs like “oh, but he knew the bills would pass, so it’s really the same thing as voting for the bills himself.”
He didn’t vote for that spending. Since the other Reps decided to take money from his constituents, he worked to make sure that they got as much of their money back as he could.
But he voted not to spend the money in the first place.
If everyone voted like Ron Paul, that money would not have been spent.
(rubbing eyes) Beck supports a VAT tax??
I call horse manure.
NOBODY is that much of a pathetic sack of sh##.
Getting rid of the Department of Education is supported by conservatives but it is not going to accomplish much in the way of paring down government expenditures.
Most of the government spending is in entitlements and military. About 20% of the budget goes to the military but 9% of that 20% is borrowed. Historically, Americans have always had a government that spends about 20% of its tax revenue on military without significant borrowing. I view that as a good and necessary thing.
Military bases are not so expensive. What is expensive is the procurement of new weapon systems and the maintenance of operating military systems and assets. But then historically Americans have always been willing to pay taxes to have those assets.
Reagan’s 600 ship Navy has already been pared down and GHW Bush pared the military down a lot just before it was decimated by Clinton. Bush the Terrible restored morale but did not launch a Reagan-like expansion.
The military is not the problem, overseas bases are cheap and defense assets are vital. GITMO was a huge savings for detaining terrorists for otherwise the budget for their legal fees alone on the mainland would have rivaled the budgets of some expensive defense procurement programs.
No, the problem with spending is not so much the military as it is entitlements, all the regulation that follows the entitlements and the government union contracts.
For example, just to comply with Medicare regulations, hospitals have to spend a fortune on responding to never ending federal government audits. Audits are good but if there were no Medicare like in the early 60s, then there would be no reason for the federal governmet to be involved, and hence no federal expenditures needed to regulate the medical industry other than interstate commerce law.
Government unions are under fire now as people are waking up to the facts of their large benefits and salaries at taxpayer expense. The federal government unions also show very small improvements in productivity as contrasted with their private sector counterparts.
As for the analogy of the federal government as an obese 800 lb. teenager sitting in our house controlling our life, your remark that Paul’s prescription for the teen to never eat a Twinkie again, this remark misses the point. Whether you tell the Obese teen to not eat so much or lose weight amounts to the same thing. You say these are entirely different things, no they are not. Regardless, you missed the point.
Ron Paul has not done anything or proposed anything concrete that others have not already seen or voiced. IOW Ron Paul is nothing new except for articulating and reminding Americans in an appealing way just what the Founders intended us to have in the way of a federal government. In this sense, Ron Paul was an original Tea Party voice. But his prescriptions fall flat or they are nonexistent. Often his observations are nothing more than “We’re sick and we’d better do something about it.” But he never gets to the ‘what’ is supposed to be done other than cut the twinkies out of the teen’s diet.
That obese 800 lb. teen can stop eating Twinkies and go on a starvation diet, get down to 600 lbs. and then flip out by having a high glycemic 16th Amendment cake with some Federal Reserve frosting and then surge back to 800 lbs. in no time flat.
What is needed is to repeal the 16th, take back money control from the Fed and enact the FairTax. The FairTax will have the analogous effect of getting the obese teen on the scale at a routine interval to see how much weight they have lost and then inquire as to how much they have been eating. Under the FairTax it will be the American taxpayer that observes the teen getting on the scale and if they don’t like the results, they can alter the obese teen’s diet to effect change. As it is now, Americans are not even allowed to see the results of the obese teen’s weigh-in but they can feel the results as the obese teen continues to eat them out of house and home, reaches into their pocket books and takes the cash and credit card etc.
Paw, you been Relegated!
It was a beautiful event.
I do agree with much of what you’re saying.
I do think, though, that Ron Paul has been plenty specific about the cuts to be made. He too, of course, wants to end the Fed, as you seem to. End the Fed, and audit the Fed, and audit the Gold, are among Ron Paul’s signature issues. I could do a google search and find various specifics about what agencies he’d want to do away with, etc if you want.
You’ve said that Ron Paul is “nothing new”. That’s partially right on the money. Back in the day, Ron Paul would’ve been considered a typical conservative. Back in the day, Ron Paul’s positions were fairly standard, mainstream positions. A lot of politicians back then were saying things that Ron Paul is saying now.
But, today, Ron Paul is the only one saying these things. Refreshingly Retro, to use the Pepsi Throwback slogan.
Good and I agree that Ron Paul is a throwback to a more conservative America.
Take another look at the FairTax code in H.R. 25. I think you may realize it is the perfect mechanism for Americans to measure just how big the US federal government is.
There’s an awful lot of disinformation on the FairTax mostly put out and supported by the DC criminal class that runs the Tax Lobby gaming industry.
Study the excellent FAQ on it here:
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq
Whatever we do, we should not allow demagogues like Beck to frame our political agenda.
Hey, just because Ron Paul has to work with Democrats and RINOs who vote to spend does not mean that Ron Paul is voting for spending. He votes no, and he often loses.
The “conservatives” you like vote yes. Government grew during Bush. Republicans, but not Ron Paul, voted to grow the Government.
Ron Paul votes for limited government.
Often, other Republicans, even “conservative” ones, vote
for things that are not authorized by the Constitution.
Ron Paul is a traditional old-school Conservative Republican.
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Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
True Conservative Republicans have always supported Ron Paul.
Bush Grew Government. Ron Paul voted against growing Government.
No doubt that antiwar types did get on board. They are small in number and loud in voice and they do push Ron Paul to talk about things that conservatives don’t like, like how war means higher taxes. Some “conservatives” would rather have higher taxes than less war. So be it.
But the majority of Ron Pauls support is not the antiwar types.
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