Posted on 12/22/2011 11:16:31 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Mitt Romney can breathe a sigh of relief, because Andrew Kaczynksi has shifted his attention to Ron Paul this week. Andrew dug up a 1995 interview with C-SPAN, a year before running for Congress after a decade out of office. Paul tells C-SPAN that he was ready after the long hiatus to return to Washington, but that’s not the big catch in this clip. Starting at 1:45, Ron Paul explains that his private sector efforts are keeping him too busy — and starts plugging his newsletters:
[1:10] So, I was always very active in both politics and my profession. When I came back, I resumed my medical practice, and I’ve been doing that ever since, but I’ve also stayed active in education. Long term, I don’t think political action is worth very much if you don’t have education, and so I’ve continued with my economic education foundation, Free Foundation, which I started in 1976. So that’s been very active. Actually, in the last several years, we’ve been doing some video work, in an educational manner. We did 14 different 30-minute programs on video.
But along with that, I also put out a political type of business investment newsletter that sort of covered all these areas. And it covered a lot about what was going on in Washington, and financial events, and especially some of the monetary events. Since I had been especially interested in monetary policy, had been on the banking committee, and still very interested in, in that subject, that this newsletter dealt with it. This had to do with the value of the dollar, the pros and cons of the gold standard, and of course the disadvantages of all the high taxes and spending that our government seems to continue to do.
For a man who now says that he didn’t pay any attention to the newsletters published under his own name for years, he certainly seems to be pretty conversant with its contents in 1995. Remember that the newsletters didn’t become a political liability for Paul until 1996, in the middle of his election campaign against Lefty Morris, who first raised the issue. This interview is also not far removed from the appearance of the racist passages and kooky conspiracy theories in the newsletters, such as this in 1992:
Paul, writing in his independent political newsletter in 1992, reported about unspecified surveys of blacks.”Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action,”Paul wrote.
Paul continued that politically sensible blacks are outnumbered “as decent people.” Citing reports that 85 percent of all black men in the District of Columbia are arrested, Paul wrote:
“Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,’ I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal,” Paul said.
Paul also wrote that although “we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.” …
He added, “We don’t think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.”
Today, of course, Paul insists that he never bothered to review the newsletters before publication and rarely read them at all, much different than his 1995 promotion of the newsletters as his primary vehicle for political engagement and, er, education. It explains why in 1996 Paul neither denied authorship of the passages nor familiarity with the thrust of his publications when he was interviewed by the Dallas Morning News, and quoted by Reason Magazine in 2008:
Dr. Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. He said they should be read and quoted in their entirety to avoid misrepresentation. [...]
In the interview, he did not deny he made the statement about the swiftness of black men.
“If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them,” Dr. Paul said.
I wonder what’s in the videos? Besides end-of-days investment planning, that is.
Update: USA Today’s Jackie Kucinich also reports today that Paul’s story has changed over the years:
In 1996, Paul told TheDallas Morning News that his comment about black men in Washington came while writing about a 1992 study by the National Center on Incarceration and Alternatives, a criminal justice think tank in Virginia.
Paul cited the study and wrote: “Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the criminal justice system, I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”
“These aren’t my figures,” Paul told the Morning News. “That is the assumption you can gather from the report.”
Nor did Paul dispute in 1996 his 1992 newsletter statement that said,”If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet of foot they can be.”
Now, Paul says he had nothing to do with the contents of the newsletters published in his name.
“Why don’t you go back and look at what I said yesterday on CNN and what I’ve said for 20-something years, 22 years ago?” Paul said on CNN Wednesday. “I didn’t write them. I disavow them. That’s it.” Paul then removed his microphone and abruptly ended the interview.
There goes the black vote! /s
Young Ron Paul? Well, I guess it’s all relative... : )
RE: There goes the black vote! /s
As if he ever had them...
He is even more politically incorrect than Bill Maher or Harry Reid.
“Paul, writing in his independent political newsletter in 1992, reported about unspecified surveys of blacks.”Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action,”Paul wrote.”
Ron Paul has been proven to be a racist pig and needs to get out of the race for the GOP nomination.
RE: Young Ron Paul? Well, I guess it’s all relative... : )
Let’s put it this way, he was still in his 50’s and his hair wasn’t that gray then...
Yeah but you are not supposed to say it.
I can’t disagree with anything highlighted in bold.
When I clicked on the link a pop-up box came up warning that it may contain a virus and asked if I wanted it blocked or to continue. I blocked it.
You mean that’s it? Well, the exact percentage could be argued, but the fact is that the great majority of blacks endorse leftist, corrupt politicians. Furthermore, they are seldom well informed.
So, I don’t think that to observe that fact is racist. It stems from historical causes, and doesn’t claim that race explains such bad thing. After all, all sorts of people support Obama. Big mistakes can be made by otherwise intelligent people!
I don’t understand all of it, as for example why the Blacks switched from mainly Republican to Democratic long before Democrats abandoned segregation. It seems that Blacks, being in the lower part of the economic spectrum, simply adopted dependency as an attitude, and like many people of lower economic status, they learned to look to the government to solve their problems. It doesn’t really make sense for them to do that, but they did. Another factor is that Blacks have been assiduously worked on by the media and by leftists, and largely ignored by traditional Republicans.
I know that Republicans will often avoid campaigning in Black neighborhoods, because they figure it will just bring out the Black vote. So, the only politicians the Blacks meet and see are the ones trying to bring them out to vote, and those are the leftists.
If one is looking for dubious statements from Ron Paul, what he said in the last big debate is far worse: that basically we have no enemies in the world, and that we just run around starting fights and wars wherever we go. He is outdoing Joe Biden in his ignorance of international affairs.
I admire much of Ron Paul’s economic position, but he is not politically adept; and his views of national security are idiotic and dangerous.
RE: only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action”
Well, since blacks vote 95% for Democrats, he may have a point on this one...
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I’m not defending some of the more extreme statements made by Ron Paul, but stating something that has statistical support is NOT racist.
We throw the word “racist” about so casually that it has lost its real meaning.
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