Resources

“Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us... Suicide terrorism is not a supply-limited phenomenon where there are just a few hundred around the world willing to do it because they are religious fanatics. It is a demand-driven phenomenon.”

“Suicide terrorist groups are [not] religious cults isolated from the rest of their society, ... Rather, suicide terrorist organizations often command broad social support within the national communities from which they recruit, because they are seen as pursuing legitimate nationalist goals, especially liberation from foreign occupation.”

“From Lebanon to Israel, to Sri Lanka, to Kashmir, to Chechnya -- every suicide terrorist campaign since 1980 had as its main goal to establish or maintain self-determination for territory that the terrorists prize. Religion is rarely the root cause although religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organizations to serve the broader strategic objective.”

[edit] Paul Wolfowitz interview for Vanity Fair:

"There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed--but it's huge--is that by complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things."

[edit] Ari Melber, from The Nation:

"Likewise, today's GOP candidates support Bush on Iraq, even though 35% of Republicans do not. It's the same dynamic on the constitution -- Republicans get to choose between Romney's plans to "Double Gitmo" or Giuliani's paranoid neo-fascism. Ron Paul offers better choices."

[edit] Pat Robertson, on his endorsement of pro-choice, anti-gun Rudy:

"To me, the overriding issue before the American people is the defense of our population from the blood lust of Islamic terrorists." Please keep in mind that statistically Americans are far more threatened by consuming too much cheese or being involved in a fatal automobile accident...

[edit] NJ lifetime Superior Court Justice Napolitano

[edit] From his latest book A Nation of Sheep

"There is little we can do about this but warn our fellow Americans of Liberty lost. At this writing, sixteen politicians are competing nationally to replace President Bush. There are eight Democrats and eight Republicans. With the exception of Representative Ron Paul -- in terms of fidelity to the Constitution -- it does not matter which one of them wins. Except for Congressman Paul, they all love power for its own sake, believe that big government should redistribute wealth, regard the Constitution as a quaint obstacle, and would enforce or disregard laws as they saw fit. All this without regard to our history, our values, or our natural rights..."

[edit] Interview with Reason Magazine, mainly about the USA PATRIOT Act, 11/15/07

"How many people has the DOJ convicted in a jury trial for terrorism based on evidence obtained from the Patriot Act? Zero. They’ve gotten people to plead guilty, to fold, and convicted many on drug trafficking, white slavery, prostitution, gambling, and political corruption, but haven’t gotten a single [terror] case where they presented evidence in a public court before a judge and jury and the jury found a defendant guilty under evidence obtained under Patriot Act."

"The most sinful aspect of its passage was how members of the House were not permitted to read it. It was posted on the House Intranet for 15 min [before the vote] and it’s 315 pages long. I read it twice, and it took me 20 hours each time. And you need in front of you not just it, but lots of other statutes, the full U.S. criminal code, to process it. It does lots of amending of other statutes, so you need to reread [those] statues to figure out what government has done by amending that statute...A congressman [was] in the audience. He and I socialized a bit, and he said, “Judge, I’m a little ill at ease. I didn’t know until hearing you tonight that the Patriot Act permitted self-written search warrants and criminalized speech about receiving them, and I voted for it twice.” And I said—knowing how he was going to answer—I asked, “Didn’t you read it? You voted on it.” No, he didn’t have time, he only read the summary. And he didn’t remember the summary talking about self-written search warrants and criminalized speech. He told me many of his colleagues were in the same situation. I said, “WRONG—all your colleagues are in the same situation! No one in the House except maybe leadership read the Patriot Act you voted on!” It’s abominable for the government to tamper with our basic liberties—but it’s inconceivable that they would do so without any debate. "

"The supposed tradeoff when it comes to civil liberties isn’t really there. Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago Law School spent five years reading every judicial opinion in the history of the United States on freedom of speech. Of all the cases of people prosecuted and convicted of violating some law that regulated speech, his conclusion is there is not one, not one single instance in all American history, where America’s security was adversely affected because of too much free speech. When government says it is keeping you safer by criminalizing speech, it’s a canard. They are making their own job easier by criminalizing speech because they have less dissent to confront."

"The president had said he believes in natural rights. Unfortunately when he signs these bills that take away our rights, he reveals he either doesn’t know what he’s doing or he doesn’t really believe in natural rights. The Patriot Act is not only unconstitutional, it’s unnatural, since it purports to take away that which naturally belongs to us."

"So many of my Fox colleagues, whom I love working with, have such trust and faith in the heart and head of President Bush. But look at the calendar: He’ll be Mr. Bush in 14 months, and unless it’s Ron Paul, God knows what his successor will do with the powers Congress had purported to give him. And I say “purported” because they don’t have the right to actually do all the extraconstitutional things they’ve done."

[edit] General Patraeus before the Senate Armed Services committee

Warner: “Does that make America safer?”

Petraeus: “Sir, I-I don’t know, actually. I have not sat down and sorted out in my own mind, uh-what I have focused on and been riveted on is how to accomplish the mission of the Multi-National Force Iraq.”

[edit] John Stossel, on the government's ability to stop global warming

"As coercive monopolies that spend other people's money taken by force, governments are uniquely unqualified to solve problems. They are riddled by ignorance, perverse incentives, incompetence and self-serving."

[edit] Rumsfeld on Saddam Connection to Al-Qaeda

Asked to describe the connection between the Iraqi leader and the al-Qaeda terror network at an appearance on October 5, 2004 at the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld first refused to answer, then said: "To my knowledge, I have not seen any strong, hard evidence that links the two."

[edit] Carol Paul, from The American Dream

"So the American Dream came true for a boy who delivered newspapers, a teen-ager who mowed lawns, delivered milk, delivered furniture, delivered laundry, and delivered mail, and for a man who then delivered babies. Now that dream continues with a man who is trying to deliver the message that freedom works and that patriotism must not grow weak in the hearts of all Americans. And liberty reigns to help us hang on to our Republic for which the Founders gave their last measure of devotion."

[edit] Statistics/Facts/Etc

[edit] Iraq and War

3,878 American soldiers have died and 28,451 have been wounded thus far - 11/28/07. Breakdown of Iraq War Deaths
The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars could end up costing $2.4 trillion - $8,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.
When Veteran's care is factored in, it could be $3.5 trillion - $11,000 per American - $44,000 for a family of four.
Hillary/Obama's plan for Iraq would not remove the troops until 2013 - in other words, it is the absolute last item on their Presidential agenda, if at all. Even in such scenarios, they dismiss a complete withdrawal, claiming the need to leave troops there to fight terrorism.
Ron Paul would make removing the troops his first agenda item, hoping to complete it within 1 - 2 months.
2007, while not having yet ended, is already the deadliest year for American soldiers, having lost more in this year than in 2003, which contained all of the "major combat operations". On May 1, 2003, President Bush declared "Mission Accomplished".
An Opinion Research Business (ORB) survey conducted August 12-19, 2007 estimated 1,220,580 violent deaths due to the Iraq War (range of 733,158 to 1,446,063). Out of a national sample of 1,499 Iraqi adults, 22% had one or more members of their household killed due to the Iraq War (poll accuracy +/-2.4%).
A March 2007 survey of more than 2,000 Iraqis commissioned by the BBC and three other news organizations found that 51% of the population consider attacks on coalition forces "acceptable," up from 17% in 2004 and 35% in 2006. Also:
- 64% described their family's economic situation as being somewhat or very bad, up from 30% in 2005.
- 88% described the availability of electricity as being either somewhat or very bad, up from 65% in 2004.
- 69% described the availability of clean water as somewhat or very bad, up from 48% in 2004.
- 88% described the availability of fuel for cooking and driving as being somewhat or very bad.
- 58% described reconstruction efforts in the area in which they live as either somewhat or very ineffective, and 9% described them as being totally nonexistent.
There are more than 3.9 million refugees of Iraq, almost 16% of the population.
Roughly 40% of Iraq's middle class is believed to have fled, the U.N. said.

[edit] Taxes

If the year 2000's congressional budget were introduced next year, we'd have a balanced budget without collecting a single cent in income taxes.
Reagan cut taxes from 70% to 28% on the top income bracket (while cutting taxes for all), yet income tax revenue rose from $347 billion in 1981 to $549 billion in 1989, proving that cutting tax rates does not necessarily mean cutting tax revenue. They, can, however, create greater economic productivity; as evidenced by an average 1% increase in annual GDP growth, compared to his predecessors and followers.
10 myths about tax cuts, a la GWB
31 Q's and A's about the IRS

[edit] Debt

Interest payments on the national debt amount to 17% of the budget or 40% of collected income taxes.
After adjusting for inflation, we see we have not had budget deficits this large since World War II - [1]
In 1980, the debt per person was about $4,000. Today, it is $25,000. Nearly all of this debt was accumulated under Reagan, G. H. Bush, and G. W. Bush. While these men are usually heralded for keeping taxes low (Although H. Bush increased taxes), this debt must be paid by future taxes. It is foolish to blame a future president, Republican or Democrat, for taxation, when it is required to pay off the debt that these men allowed to accumulate.
Clinton never paid down a dime on the debt. He never had a true budget surplus, as no tax money was returned to the tax-payers nor used to pay off the national debt. In fact, after supplemental spending, the federal government still had to borrow money to afford its spending every year under Clinton.
If every American donated half of their annual income to pay off the national debt next year (which would cripple the economy and leave people homeless and starving), it still wouldn't pay it off completely.
Our total governmental debt today is close to 40% of our annual GDP.
In 1980, the interest charge on the debt was $100 billion. This year it is $430 billion.
According to Congressional Budget Office, we will not be able to afford future promised entitlements, which are estimated at $60 trillion (without double digit economic growth for the next 50 years). http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdoc.cfm?index=3521&type=0

[edit] Spending

Spending has increased 40% over G. W. Bush's presidency, including the global war on terror, the two wars, the department of homeland security, no child left behind, the medicare prescription drug benefits, and expansions in nearly all aspects of the federal government.
Spending has remained around 20 percent of GDP for the past half-century. However, the coming retirement of the baby boomers will increase Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid spending by a combined 10.5 percent of GDP. Assuming that this causes large budget deficits and increased net spending on interest, federal spending could surge to 38 percent of GDP and possibly much higher.

[edit] Monetary Policy

All the people diversifying out of dollars are suddenly our 'enemies' - Saudi Arabia is the next 'enemy'.

[edit] Logical Fallacies

[edit] Higher tax rates guarantee higher government revenue

The government cannot collect tax money from behavior that doesn't exist. Taxing labor, investments, consumption, and savings progressively provides a disincentive to work harder, risk more money, spend more, and save. Raising rates achieves the same effect of disincentives, but applies them to current economic levels. While short-term revenue may increase, workers, investors, spenders, and savers will scale back their economic behavior, hurting economic growth. Economic growth increases the tax base, which means more revenue without increasing rates. There are no guarantees that tax rate changes will produce more or less government revenue, once Americans adjust their productivity to their new level of reward.

This is seen in savings with the sliding value of the dollar. America has slowly assumed a currently negative savings rate. Conversely, capital gains taxes were recently reduced by 5% and tax revenue from capital gains actually doubled, as the income off capital gains more than doubled (although it is probably unsound to attribute that much growth to a 5% tax rate change). Income taxes were lowered, and while the tax revenue still isn't quite what it was at the higher rate, the tax base has largely increased, along with economic growth.

Ron Paul has a great grasp of these concepts. This is why he doesn't support the current income tax system, a consumption tax, a flat tax, or the Federal Reserve's policy of expanding monetary supply (the "inflation tax"). These different taxes simply shift the tax burden onto different classes of people. His policy to reduce the tax burden itself, which lets all Americans fully enjoy the benefits of earning, spending, saving, and investing more money.

[edit] The pump-priming or broken window fallacy

Increasing government spending into the economy does not help the economy, because the money spent ultimately comes from the economy. The most common example of this is military-keynesianism. This system promotes heavy deficit defense spending. The money can come from borrowing, but many governments tend to simply print new money or devalue old money (same difference). Supposedly, through the trickle-down effect where the government's payees spend into the economy, and those recipients consequently spend, the economy is boosted. Yet, borrowing must be repaid, and devaluation serves as a regressive tax. It is simply boosting one sect of the economy at the expense of another, or the current generation at the expense of the future.

I believe this is called the pump-priming fallacy, because it insinuates that the government can begin a period of economic prosperity. By "pumping" money into the economy, they prime the economy, which can then work through its own mechanisms. It assumes that the government's cost (the cost requirements of "priming the pump") is non-existent. Obviously, this isn't true, because this would imply socialism and corporatism have shown themselves to be consistently more productive than capitalism. The cost must be taken from somewhere. Taxes cannot work here, because taxes are levied on productive economic actions. If the economy is already bad, the government revenue required cannot be raised. Borrowing works for this purpose; however, when the debt is finally paid off (raised through taxing economic productivity), we find we are back to where we started, often with a worse economy. Also, why is government borrowing and spending able to "prime" the economy, while individuals' or businesses' borrowing cannot?

The broken window version is simply racketeering. It says that if some party went around and smashed windows, then the economy would be better off because people would have to buy new windows, forcing money to circulate through the economy (trickling down/up/around from the window repairmen). It neglects what people would otherwise do with their money, which they would have preferred to paying for a new window, suggesting that their unpredictable usage is nearly always more economical to them personally, resulting in greater amounts of trade, a stronger economy, and a happier society.

[edit] They hate us because we're rich/free

According to the Amazon.com editorial review of Robert Pape's Dying to Win: "One of the world’s foremost authorities on the subject, Professor Pape has created the first comprehensive database of every suicide terrorist attack in the world from 1980 until today. With striking clarity and precision, Professor Pape uses this unprecedented research to debunk widely held misconceptions about the nature of suicide terrorism and provide a new lens that makes sense of the threat we face.

FACT: Suicide terrorism is not primarily a product of Islamic fundamentalism.
FACT: The world’s leading practitioners of suicide terrorism are the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka–a secular, Marxist-Leninist group drawn from Hindu families.
FACT: Ninety-five percent of suicide terrorist attacks occur as part of coherent campaigns organized by large militant organizations with significant public support.
FACT: Every suicide terrorist campaign has had a clear goal that is secular and political: to compel a modern democracy to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland.
FACT: Al-Qaeda fits the above pattern. Although Saudi Arabia is not under American military occupation per se, one major objective of al-Qaeda is the expulsion of U.S. troops from the Persian Gulf region, and as a result there have been repeated attacks by terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden against American troops in Saudi Arabia and the region as a whole.
FACT: Despite their rhetoric, democracies–including the United States–have routinely made concessions to suicide terrorists. Suicide terrorism is on the rise because terrorists have learned that it’s effective.

With data from more than 460 such attackers–including the names of 333–we now know that these individuals are not mainly poor, desperate criminals or uneducated religious fanatics but are often well-educated, middle-class political activists."

[edit] Wealth is a Zero Sum Game

This view contends that every economic exchange benefits one party at the expense of the other. This view denies that human labor, physical and intellectual, can create desirable products that have more value than the time and other costs that went into their production. If this were true, free trade would be non-existent. Wealth would never increase. There would be no economic growth. Specialization of labor wouldn't better society in any way. No new products would see daylight. There would be no markets. The only means for a particular party to gain wealth would be to forcibly seize it from others.

There are clear philosophies as to why this view is undertaken. While our system of money creates a clear uncertainty of the actual value of the money, some monetary theory of value is itself is the necessary factor for this fallacy. In other words, prices relate to how valuable or desirable an individual considers a good. When things are viewed in dollar (or other currency) terms, they are given an objective number ($4.32...), whereas the happiness goods and services create is only predictable measurable on an individual basis. Thus, while monetary profit is seen as a clear gain (being an objective number), utility from goods is simply dismissed from the equation, allowing the notion that the person who traded money for goods was taken advantage of.

We must remember that all wealth comes from human labor, which has a cost, or negative wealth, of time and difficulty. A business making profit can only produce something by offering wages for human labor that laborers find acceptable (their paycheck affords them goods that provide them happiness which is greater than the toils of their labor). Thus, businesses must estimate labor costs according a monetary theory of value that is acceptable to laborers. This estimation and coordination is labor in itself. In this sense, profit loses its normally assumed objectivity. The business owner must evaluate whether the profit was worth his costs, in capital (needed to be invested in machinery and laborers), his own labor, and risks. Simply turning a profit does not guarantee an increase in happiness or wealth for a business owner. This is quite clear when a business fails to turn a profit - the result is always viewed as negative, not equal.

Individuals have their own cost for the type of labor they perform. Some people love their jobs, while others might detest the same work. Some people are more skilled for a job, requiring less time and difficulty to perform it. As such, specialization of labor minimizes its negative costs. Similarly, goods have different values to different people. Auctions clearly show this. Some particular good may be worth only $4.32 to one person, but worth $50.32 to someone else. Trade is beneficial because it allows a laborer to receive an amount money that he believes is worth more than his labor, while the buyer receives a good he believes is more valuable than the amount of money it cost.

Whereas auctions rely on individual pricing, mass production and marketing relies on blanket pricing - a particular good is made available to anyone at $4.32, rather than trying to determine the optimal price per individual on par with their particular desirability of the good. This is done simply because it is more economical to determine a price that maximizes profit in general for mass sales. Performing auctions for every individual buyer would increase costs in a fashion that produces less profit. The relation of an amount of money to the individual's estimate of a product's value remains, however. If the good was only worth $3.50 to an individual, they simply wouldn't buy it. In practice, they don't. No product sells completely universally (unless mandated through government force) because individuals purposefully avoid exchanges that result in negative wealth. Those who do buy it do so because they believe the good provides > $4.32's worth of happiness to them.

For perspective, an individual trades his labor (which consumes his time and creates some displeasure) for a wage that he values at least or more than his time or suffering. Here, the individual profits. When he spends the money, he receives something that would cost far more in labor time and suffering to produce by himself. If this is universally false, there would be no economic market or specialization of labor; everyone would be completely self-reliant. If the good doesn't provide the individual happiness worth one's time and labor to self-produce, he simply doesn't produce it. Similarly, if a good's market cost is not worth the labor to earn that cost, the individual simply doesn't buy it. The fact that history has tended to favor specialization of labor, where the labor costs are minimized according to skills and resulting goods are freely traded shows that free trade is a positive sum game of wealth.

For example, it may cost one man what he considers $12.32's worth of time and labor to produce a baseball bat, while costing another man $50.32 to produce a similar quality bat. The opposite is true for making chairs. The value of a bat or a chair to each man could be considered equal at $30.32. Thus, it is not worthwhile for the chair-maker to produce a bat or the bat-maker to produce a chair - the labor costs outweigh the estimated value of the product. Yet, if the chair-maker and bat-maker each make one of their products, then trade, each has spent only $12.32 in labor, yet received $30.32 in value after trading a bat for a chair. The beauty of free trade is that EVERY exchange is predicted to be a positive sum of wealth for both parties. In cases where this turns out incorrect, producers are often swift to return the exchange or provide service to make it a positive.

The only time free trade can consistently remain a negative outcome for a particular party is through monopolization of essential resources, which essentially creates slave labor - a condition of 'work or die'. This is bastardization of free trade, where one part of the market works on voluntary exchange, while another part (securing resources for monopoly) thrives on force. Of course, what leftists fail to realize is that monopolies have never been a product of free markets, as they traditionally rely on force, either criminal or of government.

[edit] Description of Nation of Sheep by NJ Superior Court Judge Napolitano

In this explosive new book, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, Fox News Channel's Senior Judicial Analyst, holds a straightforward "conversation" with the American voter in which he asks questions and gives answers that no one else will:

Why do our taxes continue to rise, government services stay worse than ever, and we just pay the taxes and re-elect those who raised them?
Why do people in government never acknowledge a mistake and why do we accept that?
Why does the government continue to regulate private behavior?
Why do both Republicans and Democrats bring about bigger and more expensive government?
What ever happened to our individual inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that are guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence, yet ignored by the governments elected to protect them?
Why does Congress keep telling the States what to do?
Why does every public office holder swear allegiance to the Constitution, yet very few follow it?
Why are we afraid of the governments we have hired to protect our freedoms?

[edit] The Right to Privacy

[edit] Napolitano at the Future of Freedom Foundation

[edit] Address by Mayor Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson - 10/27/07

Retrieved from "http://nola.ronpaulpresshub.com/index.php/Resources"

Resources

From Nola Wiki

Contents

[edit] Websites/Information

[edit] Ron Paul's official campaign website

[edit] Stay current with Daily Ron Paul News:

[edit] RP Library: Ideas from the man with the plan

[edit] Real-time campaign donation statistics:

[edit] Libertarian Economics:

[edit] good analysis of who's making the budget deficits:

[edit] Wikipedia

[edit] Materials (Fliers, Cards, Handouts, Signs, DVD's, etc)

[edit] Internet Videos

[edit] Interviews

[edit] Quotes

[edit] Robert Pape, Author of Dying to Win