How Ron Differs
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What does Ron Paul offer America, that nobody else even wants to talk about?
Contents |
[edit] CHARACTER
[edit] Honesty and Loyalty towards the people, not himself, big business, or foreign interests
- Has never broken a campaign promise in 10 terms of office
- Ignores lobby interests, expempting himself from such perks
- Has never flip-flopped
- Refused medicare and medicaid payments as a Doctor, instead working for free or discounted rates
- Did not allow his children to take federal student loans at tax-payers' expense.
- Never panders to a specific audience or says something he doesn't believe because the public wants to hear it
- does not vote for Congressional pay raises
- does not participate in the Congressional pension program
- returns money from his office to the Treasury EVERY year
- has NEVER voted for a tax increase
- has NEVER voted for an unbalanced budget**
[edit] WISDOM
[edit] Iraq War, Foreign Policy, 9/11, and Counter-Terrorism
Dr. Paul believes in a non-interventionist foreign policy, meaning that the United States has no business influencing the political systems of foreign nations. This includes creating alliances committing military or financial support, using the CIA to secretly plan revolutions, or going to war when there is no significant security threat from foreign nations.
In Congress, Dr. Paul voted against the authorization of the Iraq War, all its funding, and 1998 Iraq Liberation Act. He consistently votes against all foreign aid, nation-building, and policing the world. He does, however, believe in a strong national defense, requiring solid intelligence gathering and military strength. He simply believes that such strength should only be used when the Congress believes that there is a national security threat and declares war or there is an imminent danger to America.
[edit] If we had followed Dr. Paul's advice:
- We would not have overthrown Iran's democratic government through our CIA in operation AJAX in 1953, which resulted in Iranian anti-American sentiments, manifested in our installed puppet dictator, the Shah, who was thrown out of power in 1979. This led to the Iranian hostage crisis and the rise of Iran's radical Islamic rule, which is largely to blame for the poor relations between our nations today.
- We would not have supported Saddam Hussein's rise to power through our CIA, nor would we have given him WMD's to fight the Iranians in the Iraq/Iran war of the 1980's, which caused further Iranian resentment, drove oil prices through the roof, and radicalized Saddam's military aggressiveness, which led to his invasion of Kuwait.
- We would not have had to have been involved in a Persian Gulf War, mainly performed at the request of Saudi Arabia. Thus, there would have been no need to station troops on Saudi Arabian holy land, impose sanctions or conduct bombing campaigns on Iraq from 1993 - 2001, which were the 3 main motivating factors of 9/11.
- We would not have created a scenario where we claim to defend Israel by giving them billions of dollars in foreign aid, then give 3 times as much money to their hated Arab neighbors. We would not need to give any American-earned money to Israel, which was another motivating factor of 9/11
- We would not be sending billions of dollars to Pakistan's military dictator, General Musharref, who overthrew a democratic government. We would not support Egypt, who has had the same "President" since 1981, nor would we support the Saudi Arabian Monarchy. Support for such puppet regimes with poor human rights records, similar to the Iranian Shah, was yet another motivating factor for 9/11.
- We would not be setting the stage for another Gulf of Tonkin incident, which started the Vietnam War on false information. There is little reason for our Navy to be antagonistically close to Iran. Despite the latest National Intelligence Estimate which says that Iran has no plans to make a nuclear weapon, the Bush Administration still seems to advocate starting another needless war in the Middle East.
- We would have ended the Cold War even sooner, by allowing the Soviet Union to bankrupt itself by maintaining a militant, interventionist foreign policy. The Soviet system did not collapse from military defeat, and we can see the economic toll that neo-colonialism is having on our nation's economic conditions.
- We would not have allowed our troops in Afgahnistan to shift focus on the Taliban and nation-building. Rather, we would have hunted down those responsible for 9/11, Osama bin Laden and other leadership of Al Qaeda.
- Al Qaeda would not be stronger than they were before 9/11, as they are now, due to increasing anti-American sentiment from our continually escalating presense in the region. Dr. Paul is the only Presidential candidate who acknowledges 23 years of evidence that suicide terrorism is almost entirely a response to foreign military occupation by democracies, a pattern which transcends religious and cultural lines, as shown by the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka and the IRA of Ireland.
- We would not still have over 150,000 troops stationed in Germany, Korea, and Japan, despite over 50 years of peace.
- We would not have troops stationed in over 130 foreign nations.
- We would not have over 600 foreign military bases.
- We would not have a foreign policy that is costing close to $1 trillion dollars per year.
[edit] True free markets and fiscal responsibility
Dr. Paul believes that the most compassionate economic systems are the ones that grant individual financial freedom and responsibility, as they are the ones that consistently deliver the highest quality goods and services at the lowest price (or largest availability). As such, he is adamantly opposed to government control of the economy, especially our monetary system. He continually fights excessive taxation and regulation, as well as our growing tendencies toward financial fascism (corporatism) and socialism.
[edit] Dr. Paul believes:
We should transition off the Federal Reserve Bank, which is a merger of big business and big government. It is essentially no different than a no-limit credit card: if the government needs more money to spend, or if a big business needs to be bailed out, the Federal Reserve Bank simply creates the money. The newly created money's value comes from the diminished purchasing power of existing money. This is equivalent to a tax on your savings, and the amount of currency in circulation doubles roughly every decade. This hurts retirees and the poor the most, but also wipes out the middle class, forcing them to invest in big business rather than saving and starting their own business.
A transitional period is not able to occur overnight; however, it is fairly simple: allow competing currencies, such as gold and silver. Several of these existed and performed quite well in recent history, but they were attacked and shut down by the federal government, often without legal precedent and based on vaguely-worded laws. There are only 2 steps needed to change this. First, get rid of any sales tax on gold and silver, allowing them to exchange with fiat paper dollars without an additional cost. Second, declare gold and silver a legal tender, allowing contracts and debts to be paid with such, removing federal government claims that recent quasi-currency products based upon gold and silver are actually counterfeit.
We should have a 0% income tax. By reducing government expenditures to the late 90's levels, we would not require an income tax, which is approximately 40% of the government's revenue. If people were able to simply keep what they earned, there would be a lot less problems in America; as people wouldn't feel they needed to go to Washington DC to fight over the tax loot. This is the best means to eliminate government waste and corruption, while stimulating the economy.
We should allow young people to opt out of social security payments. Contrary to popular belief, there is no social security trust fund. Every year, payroll taxes for social security are spent as part of the general fund, which is how Bill Clinton claimed he acheived a balanced budget. If businesses were doing what the federal government is doing, their managers would be going to jail. Thus, Dr. Paul suggests this is what the government should limit itself to doing: investigating fraud surrounding retirement funds, not deceptively promising to provide them, which can only be done at someone else's expense.
Returning to a financially responsible system without leaving people who have paid into social security their whole lives will be tough and requires a sound transition. This is why Dr. Paul believes we need to save money in our foreign policy by ending overseas spending to cover the shortfall here at home as young individuals are allowed to choose to privately plan their retirement.
The only happy customers of our health care system are the corporations, not the doctors or patients, who see lower wages and higher costs, respectively. Government has resorted to fascist-style corporatism to provide health care, which is obviously failing. We can reverse this trend by ending the non-sensical regulations that created this corporate system, such as the federal government's creation of HMO's and PPO's and mandates that employers provide them. We can stop requiring medical licenses for simple tasks that nurses or pharmacists can easily and safely perform. We can make medical expenditures tax deductible for individuals, rather than make employer payments into corporate care tax-deductible.
Most importantly, we need to allow individuals to opt out of medicare and medicaid. Government-paid care became larger than all privately paid care when these programs were enacted; and since that time, there has been no method to prevent costs from rising exponentially. Today, we are seeing the ill effects of such trends, as many working Americans simply cannot afford health care. The costs are rising faster than in almost every other industry, especially faster than most Americans' wages.
Socializing medicine will have similar effects, only pushed into other industries. Rather than not be able to afford health care, Americans won't be able to afford housing or energy. If the solution is more socialization, why has nearly every socialist country's economy become relatively stagnant or even collapsed? A socialist solution denies that the problem has come about directly from government intervention, not a lack thereof.
We must balance the budget, and the sooner we do so the better. We currently pay close to 1/3 of our budget in interest on our national debt. While we borrow more than we pay back, concealing the ill-effects, they will someday come to roost, when our economy is hurting, and no one wants to lend us money. In the end, borrowed money must be paid back by taxes. Allowing unbalanced budgets today simply means the government will be taxing your children tomorrow without providing any service in return.
Should we continue our ways and eventually default on our debt, foreign governments may attempt to invade our country, overthrow it, and force our citizens into tax slavery to pay it off. Consider that most of our borrowed money comes from the Chinese. Would we want our children to become part of the oftenly-grimly-described Chinese labor force?
We must end our reliance on "free trade agreements," which are little more than concessions to globalist organizations to manage international trade, nearly always favoring big business. Truly FREE trade agreements shouldn't be complicated, 1,000+ page economic treaties, full of conditions and ruled by an unelected, foreign body. Rather, it should simply mean mutual adjustments of excise and import tarriffs coordinated by our elected government officials. "Free trade agreements" jeapordize our national sovereignty for the promotion of elitist globalization at the expense of hard-working average Americans.
Illegal immigration is an economic problem. While we seek to be compassionate towards those of all walks of life, federal mandates upon local communities to provide services such as education and medical care for free only trigger more desire for foreigners to enter our country illegally, which creates spiralling economic pressure on our communities. Eventually, something has to give, and it is usually increased prices for paying customers, including local governments' tax rates. Thus, we subsidize illegal immigration. We shouldn't be surprised to get more of it, especially when proposed solutions are offering amnesty. Not only does the situation hurt our economic conditions, but it creates an industry to secretly move bodies accross the border, preventing us from identifying security threats at the place they are most needed. The only way we can deal with such problems is to cut off any and all benefits to illegals.
We must end corporatist/socialist controls, such as those of the Departments of Education, Energy, and Agriculture. These departments have shown no fundamental benefits, while escalating in costs. While education and energy have created basic regional monopolies, preventing truly unquestionable comparisons, agriculture is the easiest to compare, as government subsidies only pay-out for a few forms of crops; yet the prices for such increase at a higher rate than non-subsidized crops. When you consider that farmers on average make more than the average American, and that the average farmer only receives only $900 a year from federal subsidies, you may wonder why these programs still exist, especially when people such as Ted Turner and David Rockefeller receive 6-digit checks anually for NOT farming their land...all paid for by your tax dollars.
We must be wary of unnecessary regulatory responses to public economic follies such as Enron and Worldcom's criminal practices. The Sarbannes-Oxley legislation that was immediately passed in the wake of those busts did far more to hurt American business than to ensure it stayed on the correct track. The amount of paperwork now required to be filed by corporations is enough to fill a fulltime job, which forces many businesses to stay private, unable to compete with already established big business, wish allows prices to rise. Indeed, the cost requirements created private stock markets with minimum $100,000 investments, only serving to further a widening income gap.
With such severe amounts of regulatory information being fed into the federal government, one would be very curious to know if the information is even checked and thus how beneficial it is. Given that there are 20,000+ pages of regulations on American business, there is no doubt that regulatory standards can be overly vague or overly inclusive, thus selectively applied to serve the politically connected rather than the people at large.
Consider the FDA, which requires a 10-year testing period on new drugs. Even completely safe drugs cannot survive a decade of non-profitability, yet some drugs offered by the few large pharmaceutical companies make it through without a problem, then are proven to be unsafe once they reach the market. Thus, over-regulation often offers no public benefit, while seeking to serve the politically connected or largest businesses.
We should be wary of the connections between government policy and business profit. It is no small coincidence that Dick Cheney served as Secretary of Defense for Bush Sr., then became Halliburton's CEO, and then became Vice President, just as it is no coincidence that Halliburton was awarded no-bid contracts directly before the Iraq War was escalated. Much of the foreign aid given to Arab nations comes in the form of weapons produced by US companies. Similarly, Paul Wolfowitz moved from the Bush Administration directly to the Presidency of the World Bank. Former senators and congressmen often become lobbyists. The result is always the same: government policies are directed not by national security or public welfare aims, but at spending your tax dollars on the politically connected, often in completely wasteful projects, such as the "bridge to nowhere".
The two largest corporatist ventures are the military-industrial complex and the health-industrial complex. They are fueled by a false perpetual crisis that government cannot solve, such as the war on drugs, foreign wars on 3rd world nations, the war on poverty, the war on terror, etc. Despite spending hundreds of billions anually on such problems every year, there seems to be no indication that we are winning them. Some policies actually seem to make the problems worse. Yet, select people are making lots of money from them.
The most blatent example is the manufacture of nuclear weapons. It seems outright implausible that there would ever be a situation where we needed over 30,000 nuclear weapons. Yet the threat of the "red menace" was perpetually repeated, so we didn't realize it was an easy way to make a few companies quite rich. For all we know, the nukes don't even work, but even if they did, does it serve any public benefit? Consider that only 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons estimate casualties in the range of World War II, with catostrophic climate altering effects lasting for years. Considering we have bombs many magnitudes larger than Hiroshima, we have over 3,000 times enough bomb power to kill nearly all life on the planet.
