The GW College Republicans will be hosting former Congressman and Presidential candidate, Dr. Ron Paul, for a speaking and Q&A engagement. Dr. Paul will be reflecting on his 30 years of experience on Capitol Hill, and speaking on the future of American liberties and fiscal policy. Monday, March 4, 2013 at the GW Lisner Auditorium. Doors open at 6:30pm.
by Ron Paul
Despite what the media and politicians would have us believe, the United States did not collapse last Friday when the package of spending reductions known as “sequestration” went into effect. The financial markets hardly blinked, as they have come to be more skeptical about these periodic government-hyped “crises.”
What had been portrayed as a drastic reduction in government spending was merely a decrease in the projected rate of increase in government spending over the next decade. Under sequestration, government spending increases by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years rather than $2.5 trillion without it.
So we are speeding toward collapse at only 100 miles per hour instead of 110 miles per hour.
Some in Congress are using the panic over sequestration to justify another surrender of legislative authority to the executive branch. These members want to “pass the buck” on prioritizing federal programs by giving the president, cabinet officials, and high-level bureaucrats authority to set spending priorities. However, it is Congress’s job to set priorities in federal spending.
The drafters of the Constitution give the legislature the authority over spending because they recognized it was a threat to liberty to allow this power to be concentrated in the executive branch. Congress’s willingness to cede more authority to the executive should be opposed by everyone who values liberty and limited government.
Some of the loudest objections to sequestration have come from the champions of the military-industrial complex. Yet under sequestration defense spending will still increase by 18 percent over 10 years as opposed to 20 percent without sequestration.
There are claims that the military will face a one-time real reduction back to 2007 levels of spending, before beginning to climb again next year. That remains to be seen. However, few claimed at the time that 2007 levels of military spending, occurring as they did during the huge post 9/11 build-up, were inadequate.
But despite the fact that the US spends more on military than the rest of the world combined, we are told that even this modest, short-term reduction would be, in the words of outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, “shameful” and “irresponsible.” A return to 1980’s levels of military spending in real dollars – a time of significant military build-up – is considered outrageous even though the US faces no Soviet Union or equivalent threat.
In fact, the entire $1.2 trillion dollars that the sequester is supposed to save could be realized by cutting one unneeded, wasteful boondoggle: the $1.5 trillion F-35 fighter program. The F-35, billed as the next generation all-purpose military fighter and bomber, has been an unmitigated disaster. Its performances in recent tests have been so bad that the Pentagon has been forced to dumb-down the criteria. It is overweight, overpriced, and unwieldy. It is also an anachronism: we no longer face the real prospect of air-to-air combat in this era of 4th generation warfare. The World War II mid-air dogfight era is long over.
As defense analyst Winslow Wheeler wrote last year:
“It’s time for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, the U.S. military services, and Congress to face the facts: The F-35 is an unaffordable mediocrity, and the program will not be fixed by any combination of hardware tweaks or cost-control projects. There is only one thing to do with the F-35: Junk it.”
We should not look for cancellation of the F-35 program any time soon, however. The military industrial complex understands the political necessity of spreading its military Keynesianism as widely across Congressional districts as possible.
That is why F-35 manufacturer Lockheed-Martin can boast on its website that “the F-35 provides 127,000 direct and indirect jobs in 47 states and Puerto Rico.” What is unfortunately not understood is that these 127,000 workers would be far better utilized producing needed goods and services rather than treated as a jobs program disguised as national defense.
Despite the alarm over cuts that are not real cuts, it is clear that the US government is not serious at all about changing its ways. In a recent tour of the Middle East, newly-confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the US would be sending another $60 million to the rebels seeking to overthrow the Syrian government – in the midst of the sequester “crisis”!
Despite the rhetoric, there appears no intention on the part of the government to take our fiscal crisis seriously or abandon the idea that we should run the rest of the world.
by Ron Paul
When John Kerry was confirmed as Secretary of State last week his first promise was to bring “new ideas” to the job. Particularly, he promised a new approach to the two-year long civil war in Syria. He immediately set out on a “listening tour” of Europe and the Middle East, presumably to help formulate those new ideas.
So what was Kerry’s big “new idea” on Syria? Drag the United States further into the conflict by promising to send the rebels an additional $60 million in aid. Only among the Washington foreign policy establishment could a promise to redouble efforts on an old idea be repackaged as a “new idea.” New ideas, old ideas, new approaches, improved approaches – they always seem to be the same thing: calls for more US intervention in conflicts thousands of miles away that have nothing to do with us.
The Kerry plan is to overtly provide more medical and food aid to armed insurgents seeking to overthrow the Syrian government. In directly assisting rebels with material that will help them fight more effectively, the US is signaling its new role as an open participant in the conflict. Can US weapons and troops be too far behind? The administration hopes that none of the aid it provides to US-backed rebels falls into the hands of other groups like the radical Islamist al-Nusra Front, which the US has designated a terrorist group. Yet according to press reports there is little separation on the ground between the various groups. It seems unreasonable to believe that assistance provided to one group will not wind up in the hands of another group.
Both Iraq and Libya have turned out to be far more radical and dangerous after their “liberation” that was supposed to usher in governments friendly to the United States. Does it make any sense to believe that Syria will be any different?
Kerry’s new ideas are actually old ideas, and they have over and over been proven to be bad ideas. Just as President Obama has shown that his foreign policy is more aggressive and warmongering than that of his predecessor, the new more “moderate” secretary of state shows us that he has every intention of furthering the notion that diplomacy flows from the barrel of a gun. Our interventionist foreign policy is bankrupting the country and turning the world against us. It must come to an end.
Melissa Lee: If you want honest talk about what Washington needs to do to get its fiscal house in order, there is no better person to talk to than our next guest, the always outspoken and insightful former Congressman, Ron Paul joins us now on the phone. Dr. Paul, it’s great to have you back on Money in Motion.
Ron Paul: Thank you, it’s nice to be with you.
Melissa Lee: We are market watchers, and this is what the market is telling us: the S&P 500 and the DOW were marching up towards new highs, and the U.S. dollar is also getting stronger. At the end of the day, could this sequester actually be a good thing for the U.S. economy?
Ron Paul: Well, if they really had some cuts in there, it would be a good thing, but there aren’t any cuts, so I wouldn’t give that any credit. But income is going down, it was a bad month in January, and it had to do with the fact that taxes went up. But the President is laying the groundwork for saying that if there’s any problem within the next year, it’s all because of the sequester. But the whole thing is, the sequester isn’t there, it’s just a fear tactic in order to raise taxes, that’s what they’re doing. If there’s a crisis, believe me, the Congress will spend the money. If it’s a financial or a war crisis, they’ll spend the money and there’ll be no hesitation. The Fed spends 85 billion dollars a month, and they’re questioning this whole thing about this nickel and dime. The proposed increase in spending in the next 10 years is 2.5 trillion dollars, and if the sequester goes through, they’re only going to spend 2.4 trillion dollars in additional funds, it means nothing.
Continue reading “Ron Paul: Sequester Is Just A Fear Tactic”
Lew Rockwell: Good morning. This is the Lew Rockwell Show, and what an honor it is to have Dr. Ron Paul as our guest this morning. What can we say about Ron Paul, he’s the leader of freedom not only in the United States, but also all over the world. Millions of young people, and some of us older-than-young people, look to him for clarity and truth in all kinds of areas involving economics, war and peace, the role of government, the economy, what the Fed is doing, and just a 101 different areas. But, Ron, I wanted to start off today to talk about some frustration. If we listen to the media, which impresses me as sort of a Soviet-like media because of the way they repeat this kind of stuff about why the world might come to an end if there’s a cut in the projected spending increases for the government.
Ron Paul: Yes, there have been statistics out, and nobody seems to agree on them. But I think on the principle, those of us who want honesty realize that there are no cuts. And this whole idea that there’s going to be a slash in the budget is nothing more than a farce. One side wants to increase the budget over the next ten years by 2.5 trillion dollars, the other side wants to increase it by 2.4 trillion dollars. So it’s a hundred billion dollars cut over ten years, and they’re hysterical over the whole thing. This frenzy is built with the media and the demagoguing by everybody who wants to spend. And you know darn well that the so-called conservatives on the Republican side won’t cut one penny out of the military. It’s just amazing how far this can go. But I think in one way you might look for more sanity in the marketplace. Not that that’s the final test, but the markets aren’t hysterical about this. On the short run, the markets are still saying the end of the world is not coming, and it’s a non-event. In the long term, the endless spending is a big event, I understand that. But as far as the end of the week comes, it’s not like everything is going to be slashed. I’m just amazed at how gullible the people are, but hopefully we’ll get to a lot more than we have over the years, and that’s where I am optimistic that more people are opening up their eyes and their ears.
Alex Jones: He’s only got about 15 minutes with us. Former Congressman and bestselling author, Ron Paul, joins us. I wanted to get him on because he’s been writing and speaking and posting articles at www.campaignforliberty.org. It’s breaking down, the bubble is really getting big, the QE is unlimited. There’s a global currency crisis, with what very authors of the currency crisis posing as our saviors, and just last week, there were more proposals by the G20 for a Bank of The World SDR (that’s global government), to back it all up. Dr. Ron Paul, thank you for coming on, sir.
Ron Paul: Thank you, it’s good to be with you.
Alex Jones: Can you give us the latest on your analysis on what’s happening with the economy and this big event you’ve been talking about for the last few years? How close are we right now, how serious is this currency war?
Ron Paul: I think, in many ways, we’re in the middle of it. I think the evidence to the general public is still not there, and there has not been a panic. But the people in Washington, and even our central bankers don’t face up to the real truth of the matter, and that is we’re totally bankrupt. And yet, just printing more money and running up more debt seems to settle the market, they don’t dump their stocks, they don’t dump their bonds. But we’re in the middle of some unwinding, I think this is so much different than anything we’ve gone through since World War II, and especially since 1971 with the breakdown of the Bretton-Woods Agreement. But, one of these days, we’ll wake up some morning and realize that the whole world has given up on the system, just as we woke up one day and the world and especially the Soviets gave up on the Soviet Union. Because the monetary system and the economic system that we have is not viable, it can’t work, and you can’t solve the problem of debt with more debt. And when that particular day will come? I don’t think anybody knows the exact day, but we’re certainly getting very close to it.
Continue reading “Ron Paul: The People Are Not Going to Give Up their Guns”
by Ron Paul
While I oppose most gun control proposals, there is one group of Americans I do believe should be disarmed: federal agents. The use of force by federal agents to enforce unjust and unconstitutional laws is one of the major, albeit overlooked, threats to liberty. Too often Americans are victimized by government force simply for engaging in commercial transactions disproved of by Congress and the federal bureaucracy.
For example, the offices of Rawesome Foods in Venice, California, have been repeatedly raided by armed federal and state agents, and Rawesome’s founder, 65-year old James Stewart, has been imprisoned. What heinous crime justified this action? Rawesome sold unpasteurized (raw) milk and cheese to willing customers – in a state where raw milk is legal! You cannot even drink milk from a cow without a federal permit!
This is hardly the only case of federal agents using force against those who would dare meet consumer demand for raw milk. In 2011 armed agents of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) raided the business of Pennsylvanian Amish farmer Dan Allgyer. Federal agents wasted a whole year and who knows how many millions of our tax dollars posing as customers in order to stop Allgyer from selling his raw milk to willing customers.
The use of force against individuals making choices not approved of by the political elite does not just stop with raw milk. The Natural News website has documented numerous accounts of federal persecution, including armed raids, of health food stores and alternative medical practitioners.
Federal bureaucrats are also using force to crack down on the makers of gold coins for fear that people may use these coins as an alternative to the Federal Reserve’s fiat currency. Bernard von NotHaus, the founder of Liberty Dollars, is currently awaiting sentencing on federal counterfeiting charges — even though Mr. von NotHaus took steps to ensure his coins where not used as “legal tender.”
Yet, the federal government was so concerned over the possibility that Mr. von NotHaus’s customers might use his coins in regular day-to-day commerce they actually labeled Mr. von NotHaus a “terrorist.”
These type of police state tactics used against, among others, raw milk producers, alternative health providers, and gold coin dealers is justified by the paternalistic attitude common in Washington, D.C. A member of Congress actually once told me that, “The people need these types of laws because they do not know what is good for them.” This mindset fuels the growth of the nanny state and inevitably leads to what C.S. Lewis said may be the worst form of tyranny “…a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims.”
All Americans, even if they do not believe it is a wise choice to drink raw milk or use gold coins, should be concerned about the use of force to limit our choices. This is because there is no limiting principle to the idea that the government force is justified if used “for our own good.” Today it is those who sell raw milk who are being victimized by government force, tomorrow it could be those who sell soda pop or Styrofoam cups. Therefore, all Americans should speak out against these injustices.
Ron Paul is writing a new book on education. In “New School Manifesto: A Libertarian Look at American Education“, which will be released on September 17, the retired Congressman expresses his strong support for home schooling and free market principles applied to education.
From the book description:
Dr. Ron Paul’s latest book, NEW SCHOOL MANIFESTO, will delve deeply into one of the most important issues facing us today: the state of education in America. The vast majority of Americans agree that our education system is broken and that action needs to be taken. This book will be a focused guide to Dr. Paul’s position, which centers on a strong support for home schooling and free market principles applied to education. He makes the case for individual freedoms as they pertain to educating our children, and nimbly dissects the most pressing issues that need to be addressed from the libertarian point of view.
Ron will also quickly discuss the history of education in this country, along with what has gone wrong, and how we can think about the facts differently. His devoted followers have been waiting for a book on this topic, as nobody yet has really captured education from a Libertarian perspective.
Ron Paul’s beliefs are always controversial, and even if you disagree with his principles, his arguments will make you think. Ron Paul’s ideas and his urgent appeal to all citizens and officials will tell us what we need to do fix America’s education system for future generations.
Pre-order New School Manifesto: A Libertarian Look at American Education now!
Official release date: September 17, 2013
by Ron Paul
Last week, Senators threatened to put a “hold” on the nomination of John Brennan to be CIA director over his refusal to answer questions about the use of drones to kill Americans on US soil. That the president’s nominee to head the agency that has used drones to kill perhaps thousands overseas could not deny their possible use at home should be shocking. How did we get to this point?
The Obama administration has rapidly expanded the use of drones overseas, as they appear a way to expand US military action without the political risk of American boots on the ground. In fact they are one of the main reasons a recent Gallup survey of Pakistan, where most US drone strikes take place, found that 92% disapprove of U.S. leadership. This is the lowest approval rate Pakistan citizens have ever given to the United States. And it is directly related to US drone strikes. The risk of blowback increases all the time. However the false propaganda about the success of our drone program overseas leads officials to believe that drones should also be used over US soil as well.
In attempt to ease criticism of the use of drones against Americans, some in Congress propose more oversight, as if that should make us feel any better. In last week’s hearings, CIA nominee Brennan suggested that he was open to a Congressional proposal to set up a secret court to oversee the president’s program to kill Americans by drone. Should we cheer that a court selected by government officials will meet in secret to oversee the president’s secret decisions on killing Americans without charge or trial? Has the Constitution been so eroded that we accept such a horrific and terrifying prospect?
While touting the success of its overseas drone program, the US administration refuses to even admit publicly that the CIA has an overseas drone program. In response to a recent ACLU Freedom of Information request regarding the existence of the CIA’s drone program, the Department of Justice responded, “”the very fact of the existence or nonexistence of such documents is itself classified.” How is that for government transparency?
Recently, Federal Aviation Administration official, Jim Williams, stated that no armed drones would presently be permitted in US airspace. But what good are the promises of government officials when the Constitution, and especially the Fourth Amendment, has been gutted? More than1,400 applications to use drones in US airspace have been approved, including for police, universities, and at least seven federal agencies. Do we want to live in a society where the government is constantly watching us from above? The East Germans and Soviets could only dream of such technology in the days of their dictatorship. We might ask ourselves how long before “extraordinary” circumstances will lead to a decision to arm those drones over US territory.
The US government justified its attack on Saddam Hussein in Iraq and against Gaddafi in Libya, and elsewhere, with claims that these despots were killing their own citizens without trial or due process. It is true that extra-juridical killing is the opposite of justice in a free society.
As Judge Andrew Napolitano wrote last week about the president’s assassination program, “When [the president] kills without due process, he disobeys the laws he has sworn to uphold, no matter who agrees with him. When we talk about killing as if it were golf, we debase ourselves. And when the government kills and we put our heads in the sand, woe to us when there is no place to hide.”
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