I'm still voting for him.

Wow.

I read about this earlier today, and am quite happy to see the video. How awesomely fantastic that he was able to say this on CNN, live. And typical of the GOP.

Who's afraid of Ron Paul?? The government and government aspirants (if the choices were not already made before election began). The incredible NEWS blackout of Ron Paul that has occurred, and now this, kind of proves the point.

I have to wonder why Ron Paul remains in the Republican party.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
I have to wonder why Ron Paul remains in the Republican party.


Because the republican party was the small government party. It has been hijacked and in all the ways that matter, only one of the 2 parties have a real chance to get elected. With that said, he is trying to start a cultural revolution. I would say the only areas were I find myself in conflict with im are on the areas of natinal defence. And when I think about it, I don't think anyone will be invading any time soon, so if I was going to find fault with someone, that is the fualt I would want to find.

Tomorrow's headline: Ron Paul arrested by St. Paul police for conspiring to incite riot.

'Small government' is such an arbitrary and meaningless term. It's pure corporate propaganda, and it's disturbing that traditional media has been able to put this frame into our brains and mouths. .

Notice that the biggest pork, corruption and waste comes from the same people who hawk this 'small government' canard - the Bush administration. They don't seem to mind giving away billions upon billions of our tax dollars to their own corporate cronies, but when we need more teachers or a better healthcare system, they bitch and moan about 'big government', and we buy into it.

Have you ever heard these people proclaim the need for 'small corporations'? Never, because 'large' corporate tyranny is the whole point of making government small; Taking power from the people and giving it to nameless, faceless entities with no accountability, oversight or responsibility to the public.

Our citizen elected government isn't an Orange Mocha Frapachino, so enough with the small, medium and large bullshit. The correct size of government should be whatever allows it to function at its most efficient and most effective. No more. No less. Logic is your friend.

>> ^cdominus:
I'm still voting for him.


Me too.

>> ^PoweredBySoy:
>> ^cdominus:
I'm still voting for him.

Me too.


me three.

Did you notice it said Fmr. Presidential Candidate? He hasn't backed down, and as far as I know, he's still running?

^McCain is the Republican nominee.

Didn't we get ourselves into this situation in the first place by voting for Nader instead of the practical choice of voting for Gore? Would you have rather had Gore for the last 8 years than Bush?

Yeah, without instant runoff voting you're throwing away your vote with a vote for Ron Paul. No, it's not really going to make a strong statement. Yes, it will screw the country by putting someone like Bush in office.

Give your money to Ron Paul if you support him. That worked. He got a fair amount of his message out this election, nothing to be ashamed of.

I personally think that Ron Paul is a bit of a Christian extremist with economic policy based in the stone age (literally basing an economy on the rate of mineral collection) and I would never vote for him.

>> ^chilaxe:
Didn't we get ourselves into this situation in the first place by voting for Nader instead of the practical choice of voting for Gore? Would you have rather had Gore for the last 8 years than Bush?


That's why we should encourage conservatives to vote Barr/Paul.

...and cane people who vote for McKinney/Nader.

The Republicans haven't been a "small government" party since... well... Hoover?

Every Republican in my lifetime has done nothing but inflate the size of government to epic proportions. All the while braying "small government, small government".

>> ^laura:
>> ^PoweredBySoy:
>> ^cdominus:
I'm still voting for him.

Me too.

me three.


that makes it four.

>> ^rychan:
I personally think that Ron Paul is a bit of a Christian extremist with economic policy based in the stone age (literally basing an economy on the rate of mineral collection) and I would never vote for him.


You should read up on economics. Heres a start:

Henry Hazlitt "Economics in one Lesson"
Milton Friedman "Free to Choose"
Adam Smith "Wealth of Nations"
Ludwig von Mises "Human Action: A Treatise on Economics"

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
'Small government' is such an arbitrary and meaningless term. It's pure corporate propaganda, and it's disturbing that traditional media has been able to put this frame into our brains and mouths.

"The size of government spending is one measure of govern-
ment's role. Major wars aside, government spending from 1800
to 1929 did not exceed about 12 percent of the national income.
Two-thirds of that was spent by state and local governments,
mostly for schools and roads. As late as 1928, federal govern-
ment spending amounted to about 3 percent of the national in-
come."
-Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize recipient

We had a small government. It's what helped us become the most powerful country in the world. We no longer have a small government. Now our economy is ranked #2 and about to be #3. The two are intimately related.

>> ^imstellar28:
We had a small government. It's what helped us become the most powerful country in the world. We no longer have a small government. Now our economy is ranked #2 and about to be #3. The two are intimately related.


Actually, quite a few historians would argue that American preeminence started after WWII and FDR's New Deal, and that the dismantlement of it during my lifetime has created our current downfall.

I'd argue it too, but I know I'm not gonna change your mind. Just filing my objection to the record.

>> ^imstellar28: You should read up on economics. Heres a start:
Henry Hazlitt "Economics in one Lesson"
Milton Friedman "Free to Choose"
Adam Smith "Wealth of Nations"
Ludwig von Mises "Human Action: A Treatise on Economics"


Wow, presumptuous, patronizing, and evasive at the same time. You stay classy.

When Ron Paul says he wants small government he means it as in he would love to slash spending by billions and close down/minimise large money guzzling governmental departments. This is what republicans were meant to stand for.

> but when we need more teachers or a better healthcare system, they bitch and moan about 'big government', and we buy into it.

well, don't be stupid enough to buy into it...
The reason you find this need to beg the government for more teachers and bad health care is because you put it into the hands of a small group of incompetent people who have no incentives to make it better.

^whereas the pharmaceutical industry is a group of competent and honest people with incentives to make people healthy? how about that health insurance industry? they have your health as their number one priority?

jesus i have no idea why people want to privatise EVERYTHING. We live together in a community. A little bit of "commun"ism is natural. Otherwise you are talking about walking around with a concealed loaded weapon all day, paying corporations to fix your gunshot wounds. Instant utopia, eh?

I mean private TV companies are so competent and efficient, right? Let's do for our health what we did for our TV networks!! wohooo!

"Notice that the biggest pork, corruption and waste comes from the same people who hawk this 'small government' canard - the Bush administration."

The finger-pointing here is a reaction to the obvious, and this by design of those who place men where they want them on the chess board-The coop to take over the reigns of the United States began years ago-Got moving, the current phase, way back when the Feds were given free-reign with the monetary system-Fast-forward to now, and we are all marching in lock-step to the Corporate machine-This is not about repub/dem, liberal/conservative, it's about how to make the common man from both sides jump through hoops....

You will see more money leaving your pockets with Obama, but this time, you'll all feel so much better, that the same money going to th same ppeople, is used for quote/unquote, "Better things like fluffier clouds and cleaner, more happy air to breathe.....Look for YOU the consumer, to be fist-fucked into thinking that yer car, yer daily habits, are the problem with environment-NOT the corporate belching machines or by-products.......

With NetRunner on his statement above, started after WW2, and by design, has continued and still continues to this day-The people who pull the strings in government, could give a fuck about anything but getting bigger and more powerful.....Nations are but speedbumps, the U.S. simply happens to be a bit bigger challenge, what with all the educated folk here......They can change, and have changed that too, with enough public education, television, and dilution of the population with folks who can't read (even their own language), and whose level of expertise with regard to livelihood for the most part amounts to manual labor.....AS does the burgeoning workforce of the, "Born in America" in the last couple of generations.......

Seeee the slave class
Beeee the slave class
Embrace you birthright!!!!

I like that Ron Paul is always very hesitant to bullshit people. 'What can I say, they obviously don't want me here'.

The Obama campaign doesn't outright bullshit people, but they have taken things the McCain folks say a bit out of context more than once, and it saddens me. Right now they're saying that Palin's comment, obviously directed at Obama, about how a community organizer is like being a Mayor 'except a mayor actually makes decisions' was a shot at all American's who perform community service and organizing...

blaaah

>> ^MINK:
^whereas the pharmaceutical industry is a group of competent and honest people with incentives to make people healthy? how about that health insurance industry? they have your health as their number one priority?


They don't have to be competent and honest, they simply have to be put in an environment in which their desires to collude with government-specific powers are disabled. Neo-con socialists and democratic socialists alike (this includes you) vote for people who want to subsidize, charge income taxes, and inflate, but tell me: how does a company bribe a politician for a special subsidy when subsidies are illegal? How does a company bribe a politician for a special tax credit if income taxes don't exist? A libertarian like Ron Paul knows the powers were idealist in nature and can't but be abused, so he's going to remove them entirely. That's exactly how you solve the problem. It isn't by talking tough with one hand and taking a lobbyist's payout on the other like every other candidate. And it isn't Nader's solution to get ANOTHER government agency to oversee this bullshit which will invariably degenerate into another bloodsucking corrupt agency after his well-meaning sponsors die off and are replaced by the order of the day.

And regarding health quality, the average lifespan of a white American male has gone from 50 in 1900 to almost 80 today. That's pretty good considering we eat like crap. You want to cite socialist nations which are dependent on imports developed by capitalist sources? How about the horror stories where people are waiting months for a scan to reveal a tumor before it's too late? Or how about the true cases of people who had tumors, but the government hospitals refused to operate on them because they didn't believe their chances of surviving were good enough to justify the cost of operating? At which point they paid for private care and lived.

The two things you're missing are these: companies are out to make a sustainable profit. Government is supposed to make sure they're not infringing on rights, and to provide courts for recourse in the event that they do. In that environment, the only way to make a profit and keep it is to give customers what they want. Do you want bullshit drugs that make you sick? No. So how could a company profit from ruining your life? With the internet and informational publications as easy to obtain as ever, they can't.

If you research some more, you'll find that the HMO act and Medicare are some of the most fiscally irresponsible and collusive enablements out there. Those, the central bank, and inflation enabled by not restricting the government to non-inflatable money are THE reasons private health care costs (and gas, and groceries, and well... everything) are becoming increasingly unaffordable. These are all socialist policies doomed to failure and that's exactly what you're getting. And your solution is more government? You're NUTS. You're barking up the completely wrong tree.

>> ^MINK:
^jesus i have no idea why people want to privatise EVERYTHING. We live together in a community. A little bit of "commun"ism is natural. Otherwise you are talking about walking around with a concealed loaded weapon all day, paying corporations to fix your gunshot wounds. Instant utopia, eh?


Communism/socialism is defined as what percentage of your labor is owned "communally" via its populist government rather than its earner. If you own someone else's labor, why work harder than the next guy? Where's the disincentive to being the lazy, unproductive one in the group when you're gauranteed the same share? Where's the incentive to work and think harder than anyone and innovate new things to get a bigger share? What happens when the government dictates unproductive positions in society, like who the artists and athletes are? These are the crushing oversight that causes every socialist big government economy to degenerate into equal misery and financial collapse.

>> ^MINK:
^I mean private TV companies are so competent and efficient, right? Let's do for our health what we did for our TV networks!! wohooo!


Besides the fact that airwaves are heavily regulated by government already, you want the content itself to be owned entirely by the government because private owners have a political bias one way or the other? Guess what happens when the government owns it. All channels = one side. I must be dreaming you said that and got rated up by the idealist socialist smeg-for-brains on this site. You don't understand the inherent costs of the best system (capitalism), you're just blinded by the false promise of a benevolent dictator who will come in and sweep away the scapegoats, and in the process you and people like you will lead us to bankruptcy and fascism.

>> ^NetRunner:
>> Actually, quite a few historians would argue that American preeminence started after WWII and FDR's New Deal, and that the dismantlement of it during my lifetime has created our current downfall.
I'd argue it too, but I know I'm not gonna change your mind. Just filing my objection to the record.


Only if you're an idiot with no understanding of history. As the socialist central bank artificially sat on the inflow of gold from abroad, causing a sharp 30% contraction succeeding their inflation of the 20s (doing pretty much the opposite of what they were created for), socialist protectionism sent tariffs on imports to the moon just a year after the market crash of 1929. Other countries retaliated by raising their tariffs on American exports and forming greater partnerships with each other. It was too fast of a shift for existing industry to handle. A recession would then become the longest and most unnecessary depression in recorded history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoot-Hawley_Tariff_Act

FDR followed with unprecedented socialist intervention, absolving the banks, confiscating gold, flooding productive farmland to create nationalized energy, taxing the living shit out of individuals and companies to pay government workers who were essentially paid to dig holes and fill them up again to lower unemployment. Tax rates reached their highest in American history at 95% for the highest brackets. Anyone who had any substantial sums of money left closed shop at these tax rates, as there was no point in hiring workers and risking business losses for such after-tax return. These two policies essentially prevented a recovery until after the war some twenty years later when the fucker, after four terms, finally DIED.

Social Security, yes, the unsustainable ponzi scheme that haunts us today was part of the New Deal as well. The taxrate on wages was 2% when it began. They've ballooned to 12% and show no signs of stopping. Current workers are taxed to instantly transfer that money to congress, who pay retirees and then spend the excess on itself by buying treasury bonds (IOUs of with a nominal rate of return that is supposed to compensate for inflation but doesn't after they changed the measurements in the 90s to understate it). Rinse and repeat. With old people made dependent on a previous generation paying in in real time, suggesting it be privatized has proved political suicide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh-NqdmEDq4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS2fI2p9iVs

^what BansheeX said.

NetRunner:
My sources, among others, are excerpts from the best selling author Milton Friedman, the 1976 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, and hailed "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it". In "Free to Choose" he writes:

"The combination of economic and political freedom produced a golden age in both Great Britain and the United States in the nineteenth century. The United States prospered even more than Britain. It started with a clean slate: fewer vestiges of class and status; fewer government restraints; a more fertile field for energy, drive, and innovation; and an empty continent to conquer"
"During most of the period of rapid agricultural expansion in the United States the government played a negligible role. Land was made available—but it was land that had been unproductive before."
"...few other government restrictions impeded free trade at home or abroad. Until after World War I immigration was almost completely free (there were restrictions on immigration from the Orient). They came by the millions, and by the millions they were absorbed. They prospered because they were left to their own devices."
"Almost every charitable or public service organization, from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals The Power of the Market to the YMCA and YWCA, from the Indian Rights Association to the Salvation Army, dates from that period. Voluntary cooperation is no less effective in organizing charitable activity than inorganizing production for profit. The charitable activity was matched by a burst of cultural activity—art museums, opera houses, symphonies, museums, public libraries arose in big cities and frontier towns alike."
"Perhaps even more surprising to us today, people were free to travel all over Europe and much of the rest of the world without a passport and without repeated customs inspection. They were free to emigrate and in much of the world, particularly the United States, free to enter and become residents and citizens."


And before you say these ideas no longer apply today...take a look at the economy of Hong Kong, home to 7 million people in 426 square miles.

>> ^rychan:
Yeah, without instant runoff voting you're throwing away your vote with a vote for Ron Paul. No, it's not really going to make a strong statement. Yes, it will screw the country by putting someone like Bush in office.

What screws the country is when people don't vote for a candidate that reflects their personal beliefs, they vote for the "lesser of two evils" or "who they think will win". Obama and McCain are contrary to everything I believe about economics, personal liberty, ethics, and the role of government. I would be doing democracy a disservice if I cast my allegiance with either of them.

>> ^imstellar28:
^what BansheeX said.
NetRunner:
My sources, among others, are excerpts from the best selling author Milton Friedman, the 1976 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics, and hailed "the most influential economist of the second half of the 20th century…possibly of all of it".



And that's your problem right there.

Most economists are the most selfish, greedy motherfuckers on this planet.


"Robert H. Frank, Thomas Gilovich, and Dennis T. Regan, "Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation?" Its conclusions: Economics grad students are more likely to free ride than the general public. Economists are less generous than other academics in charitable giving. Economics undergrads are more likely to defect in prisoner's dilemma problems. Students are less likely to return found money after studying economics but not after studying another subject like astronomy. No wonder they call it "the dismal science.""



So nyeh!

^volumptuous:
And that's your problem right there. Most economists are the most selfish, greedy motherfuckers on this planet.


I really don't have any way to refute prejudice, other than to point it out.