tagged w/ Ron Paul
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During a stop in Elko, Nevada last week, presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) said that he opposes the federal ownership of any public lands. After stating that he wanted to disband the U.S. Department of Interior (which manages 500 million acres of surface land including nearly 400 national parks), he responded to a question about a travel management plan in a national forest by stating:
Paul: I want as much federal land to be turned over to the state as possible—the regulatory approach to tell people how to do and what to say. So I was essentially other than the other members of Congress from this state — I very early on opposed the dumping of nuclear waste in Nevada, so I want the state to make a decision—
Questioner: This plan pertains to using ATVs and things like that on federal land.
Paul: Well, I’d be opposed to that. I don’t want the federal government dictating to Nevada, period. I’d rather see the land owned and controlled by the states.
This is not the first time Paul has called for public lands to be turned over to states or private entities. In October he told the Western Republican Leadership Conference that public lands “should be returned to the states and then for the best parts sold off to private owners.”
The existence of public lands managed by the federal government is actually provided for in the Property Clause of the Constitution which states: “Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States, and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.”
Our federal public lands are important assets for many reasons. Interior Department lands alone provided $363 billion in economic activity in 2010, some of which goes to states and counties. Indeed federal lands in Nevada pumped $1 billion into the state’s economy in 2010.
Additionally, public lands are managed for the public good. They are owned by every single American, and are places we all can go to picnic, hike, fish, and get outside with our families. They also provide important benefits like clean air and clean water.
Perhaps most importantly, public lands are protected so they can be enjoyed for future generations. Just imagine what the Grand Canyon would have been like if mining interests and the Arizona Territory had had their way in 1903 and mined it rather than preserved it.
By Jessica Goad, Manager of Research and Outreach, Center for American Progress Action Fund.During a stop in Elko, Nevada last week, presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX)... more
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www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozemL3Oq21w
http://www.archive.org/details/LesVisibles-TheBigTicketItem
Heretic Productions presents "How Can so Many People be so Incredibly Blind? (The Big Ticket Item)
Download mp3 of this essay on politics and free speech
http://www.archive.org/download/LesVisibles-TheBigTicketItem/LesVisiblesBigTicketItem..mp3
You ask yourself, just how twisted, indifferent and malevolent can some people get before the universe begins to construct an international gallows franchise everywhere there needs to be one. Each day we see unknown wannabees and the usual suspects, vying and competing to see which of them can be registered and remembered as one of the greatest assholes of our time.
You’ve got Olympics scale competitors, like Janet Nazipolitano and Skull Chertoff. Even their own criminal associates have passed an inflexible law that these two are not allowed to breed. Of course, if you know more about them, you would realize that restriction is unnecessary. There are all kinds of rich people like Jane Harman, Jay Rockefeller, John Kerry, John McCain and others who weren’t satisfied to just spend their spouses or parent’s money and live high on the cannibal hog. They needed, through some terrible compulsion, to also be able to fuck with the lives of others for personal amusement. Why else would you go into public service if you already possessed the payoff for which people go into public service?
Of course there is the vanity of public exposure and personal importance and when you look and act like the serial killer version of Lyle Lovett or a poor man’s Hannibal Lector in Depends, then I guess Nature is telling you, you gotta do what you were designed to do, badly, or worse. There are a few who go into it just for the celebration of pure evil, like Joe Lieberman or Chuckie Schumer but they got those Satan does vaudeville genes.
Sometimes, I sit back and ask myself; where are and who are the good guys? Maybe Ron Paul is a good guy, maybe. We are damn well going to see whether he is now or not because he is in the catbird seat for where his caterwauling has led him. I guess I’d like him better if he didn’t sound like a perpetual member of the Vienna Boy’s Choir, which leads me to Dennis Kucinich, as a logical progression, I think. I begin to think the testosterone shortage is ubiquitous until I get a load of Jessie Ventura. He could be the real deal if he doesn’t turn into a TV personality to the extent he forgets what he came here for.
Alex Jones is not a good guy and neither is Noam Chomsky. I used to think that Chicago prosecutor might be good guy but apparently not. Back in the day, I thought Bill Clinton was a good guy, just to show you what a Holden Caulfield sort of callow youth I was. When he got chummy with George, (Hail Satan!), Bush Senior, I got the message. I mostly think Jimmy Carter is a good guy but everyone stops short of telling it like it is and most of you who read here and at the other fine emporiums of what’s actually going on, know what it’s all short of. I’m not obliquely referring to Kucinich here so, don’t think that. Get it? Never mind, cue Randy Newman.
Contwww.youtube.com/watch?v=ozemL3Oq21w... more
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Clint will wait a month or two before deciding, after all the "crap is done on t.v."Clint will wait a month or two before deciding, after all the "crap is done on... more
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I just seen a link on FB where Snoop Dogg posted a picture of Ron Paul so is he endorsing him idk you be the judge check the link Below RON PAUL 2012!!!!! FREEDOM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuKyN9oqTwcI just seen a link on FB where Snoop Dogg posted a picture of Ron Paul so is he... more
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Most people acknowledge, if only begrudgingly, that capitalism does produce considerable wealth and material well-being. But many feel torn between material prosperity on the one hand and living a moral life on the other. The self-interested pursuit of profit that is characteristic of a capitalistic system just doesn’t feel right to them.
http://youtu.be/ON5SxrCjbCUMost people acknowledge, if only begrudgingly, that capitalism does produce... more
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There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.
The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice, Hodson wrote in an email to LiveScience.
"Prejudice is extremely complex and multifaceted, making it critical that any factors contributing to bias are uncovered and understood," he said.
The findings combine three hot-button topics.
"They've pulled off the trifecta of controversial topics," said Brian Nosek, a social and cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the study. "When one selects intelligence, political ideology and racism and looks at any of the relationships between those three variables, it's bound to upset somebody."
Polling data and social and political science research do show that prejudice is more common in those who hold right-wing ideals that those of other political persuasions, Nosek told LiveScience. [7 Thoughts That Are Bad For You]
"The unique contribution here is trying to make some progress on the most challenging aspect of this," Nosek said, referring to the new study. "It's not that a relationship like that exists, but why it exists."
Brains and bias
Earlier studies have found links between low levels of education and higher levels of prejudice, Hodson said, so studying intelligence seemed a logical next step. The researchers turned to two studies of citizens in the United Kingdom, one that has followed babies since their births in March 1958, and another that did the same for babies born in April 1970. The children in the studies had their intelligence assessed at age 10 or 11; as adults ages 30 or 33, their levels of social conservatism and racism were measured. [Life's Extremes: Democrat vs. Republican]
In the first study, verbal and nonverbal intelligence was measured using tests that asked people to find similarities and differences between words, shapes and symbols. The second study measured cognitive abilities in four ways, including number recall, shape-drawing tasks, defining words and identifying patterns and similarities among words. Average IQ is set at 100.
Social conservatives were defined as people who agreed with a laundry list of statements such as "Family life suffers if mum is working full-time," and "Schools should teach children to obey authority." Attitudes toward other races were captured by measuring agreement with statements such as "I wouldn't mind working with people from other races." (These questions measured overt prejudiced attitudes, but most people, no matter how egalitarian, do hold unconscious racial biases; Hodson's work can't speak to this "underground" racism.)
As suspected, low intelligence in childhood corresponded with racism in adulthood. But the factor that explained the relationship between these two variables was political: When researchers included social conservatism in the analysis, those ideologies accounted for much of the link between brains and bias.
People with lower cognitive abilities also had less contact with people of other races.
"This finding is consistent with recent research demonstrating that intergroup contact is mentally challenging and cognitively draining, and consistent with findings that contact reduces prejudice," said Hodson, who along with his colleagues published these results online Jan. 5 in the journal Psychological Science.
A study of averages
Hodson was quick to note that the despite the link found between low intelligence and social conservatism, the researchers aren't implying that all liberals are brilliant and all conservatives stupid. The research is a study of averages over large groups, he said.
"There are multiple examples of very bright conservatives and not-so-bright liberals, and many examples of very principled conservatives and very intolerant liberals," Hodson said.
Nosek gave another example to illustrate the dangers of taking the findings too literally.
"We can say definitively men are taller than women on average," he said. "But you can't say if you take a random man and you take a random woman that the man is going to be taller. There's plenty of overlap."
Nonetheless, there is reason to believe that strict right-wing ideology might appeal to those who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.
"Socially conservative ideologies tend to offer structure and order," Hodson said, explaining why these beliefs might draw those with low intelligence. "Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice."
In another study, this one in the United States, Hodson and Busseri compared 254 people with the same amount of education but different levels of ability in abstract reasoning. They found that what applies to racism may also apply to homophobia. People who were poorer at abstract reasoning were more likely to exhibit prejudice against gays. As in the U.K. citizens, a lack of contact with gays and more acceptance of right-wing authoritarianism explained the link. [5 Myths About Gay People Debunked]
Simple viewpoints
Hodson and Busseri's explanation of their findings is reasonable, Nosek said, but it is correlational. That means the researchers didn't conclusively prove that the low intelligence caused the later prejudice. To do that, you'd have to somehow randomly assign otherwise identical people to be smart or dumb, liberal or conservative. Those sorts of studies obviously aren't possible.
The researchers controlled for factors such as education and socioeconomic status, making their case stronger, Nosek said. But there are other possible explanations that fit the data. For example, Nosek said, a study of left-wing liberals with stereotypically naïve views like "every kid is a genius in his or her own way," might find that people who hold these attitudes are also less bright. In other words, it might not be a particular ideology that is linked to stupidity, but extremist views in general.
"My speculation is that it's not as simple as their model presents it," Nosek said. "I think that lower cognitive capacity can lead to multiple simple ways to represent the world, and one of those can be embodied in a right-wing ideology where 'People I don't know are threats' and 'The world is a dangerous place'. ... Another simple way would be to just assume everybody is wonderful."
Prejudice is of particular interest because understanding the roots of racism and bias could help eliminate them, Hodson said. For example, he said, many anti-prejudice programs encourage participants to see things from another group's point of view. That mental exercise may be too taxing for people of low IQ.
"There may be cognitive limits in the ability to take the perspective of others, particularly foreigners," Hodson said. "Much of the present research literature suggests that our prejudices are primarily emotional in origin rather than cognitive. These two pieces of information suggest that it might be particularly fruitful for researchers to consider strategies to change feelings toward outgroups," rather than thoughts.There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may... more
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I am pretty sure I posted this last year, but it is well worth watching again. My friend who turned me on to this Video is an Agnostic. I was like Dude you would be the LAST person I would expect a Rod Parsley forward from.
He then went on to explain how Reverend Parsley breaks down the Federal Reserve in easy numbers and facts. Forget the guy is a Preacher and listen to the first 5 minutes. I guaranteed you will forward the Video to everyone you know!
The Powers that be KNOW as long as they can keep us arguing about BS like food stamps they can keep robbing us blind.I am pretty sure I posted this last year, but it is well worth watching again. My... more
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Ron Paul was a hot topic this week on the talk radio show hosted by prominent white supremacist Don Black and his son Derek. Mr. Black said he received Mr. Paul's controversial newsletters when they were first published about two decades ago and described how the publications were perceived by members of the white supremacist movement. Former KKK Grand Wizard and Louisiana Congressman David Duke also phoned in to explain why he's voting for Mr. Paul.
"Everybody, all of us back in the 80?s and 90?s, felt Ron Paul was, you know, unusual in that he had actually been a Congressman, that he was one of us and now, of course, that he has this broad demographic-broad base of support," Mr. Black said on his broadcast yesterday.
Mr. Black is a former Klansman and member of the American Nazi Party who founded the "white nationalist" website Stormfront in 1995. He donated to Mr. Paul in 2007 and has been photographed with the candidate. Mr. Paul has vocal supporters in Stormfront's online forum.
http://www.bilerico.com/2012/01/ron_paul_endorsed_by_former_kkk_leader.phpRon Paul was a hot topic this week on the talk radio show hosted by prominent white... more
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By David Edwards
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul doesn’t want to abolish the Department of Transportation, but he said on Tuesday that the agency really only needed “one guy and a computer.”
During a town hall event in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the Texas congressman made the case for “user fees” for national parks and the federal highway system.
“Ideally, you can come up with all sorts of schemes about private highways and all, but that’s not going to happen,” Paul explained. “But we do have a user fee with our gasoline tax. Trouble is, they take that money then they spend it on something else.”
“If you had a user fee for our highway, what you could do is have one person in the office. Oh, we got umpteen billions of dollars in gasoline tax and all they have to do is divide up the people in each state or, you know, the size of the state and send the money back.”
He added: “And you could do that with one guy and a computer. But instead, we have a Department of Transportation, probably has tens of thousands of people, you know, playing politics with it all.”
Paul has said that he wants to abolish at least five federal agencies, a list that does not include the Department of Transportation.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/01/17/ron-paul-dept-of-transportation-only-needs-one-guy-and-a-computer/
Watch this video from CNN, broadcast Jan. 17, 2012.
"Eeeesh!!! At his Age I am thinking Retirement???"By David Edwards
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Republican presidential candidate Ron... more
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KB723
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25 days ago
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https://rpnewsletter.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/1993-the-ron-paul-strategy-guide/
Racist newsletters dubunked...again.
Sure they were published under Ron Paul, but as you can see, the authorship is attributed to James B. Powell, allegedly.
At the time of the publication of the newsletters, Ron Paul was actually practicing medicine, as well as giving away free medical care to minorities (Google: "The Compassion of Dr. Ron Paul).https://rpnewsletter.wordpress.com/2012/01/01/1993-the-ron-paul-strategy-guide/... more
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“He co-chaired a committee with Barney Frank. I’m looking for the information. Here it is. Co chaired with Barney Frank in 2010 and he was he had to put a committee together of 14 different people. He and Barney Frank put a committee together. I believe it was eleven of them were directly George Soros people. Now, I look at Ron Paul and I say, “Well, wait a minute. How did Ron Paul miss the George Soros connection?” How did a guy who is, as this article that I read this morning said, you know, many people that support Ron Paul can find a conspiracy in a glass of water. How can you miss eleven out of fourteen people being directly connected to George Soros and having his defense plan, the George Soros defense plan being the thing that he says, yeah, we’re going to we’re going to have these guys look into the military of tomorrow. That doesn’t sound healthy.“
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFSHGhq19CM“He co-chaired a committee with Barney Frank. I’m looking for the... more
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The American Civil Liberties Union has issued "Liberty Watch 2012," its report card for presidential candidates on issues like surveillance, torture, gay rights and immigration. No one gets an A, including President Obama.
Obama, the only Democrat among the 10 candidates rated, got a perfect score - four "torches" - on only one issue, allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, for his backing of the December 2010 law that repealed "don't ask, don't tell."
But he received lower marks on immigration, abortion rights and "closing Guantanamo Bay and indefinite detention," where his one-torch rating was attributed to backtracking on a promise to shut the prison for suspected terrorists and his support for holding their trials in military commissions.
'Surveillance state'
The ACLU gave Obama a zero rating in the category of "ending a surveillance state," citing his support for renewing the search and surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act.
The ACLU has praised Obama for banning torture and closing secret CIA prisons, but says he has refused to hold government wrongdoers accountable. The organization has gone to court on behalf of alleged victims of illegal wiretapping and CIA abductions during the Bush administration, lawsuits that Obama's Justice Department says threaten state secrets.
The nonprofit civil liberties group is officially nonpartisan and does not endorse political candidates. Its report focuses on issues of government power and minority rights that attract little attention in most presidential elections.
GOP candidates
The survey gave low ratings to most of the Republican hopefuls, marks they might want to trumpet in Tuesday's Iowa caucuses to appeal to conservatives who consider the ACLU a fighting word. Three candidates - Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann - received zero torches in all seven categories.
Romney, the ACLU noted, has endorsed Arizona's "show us your papers" immigration law, called for doubling the size of Guantanamo, backed waterboarding of terrorism suspects and supported a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Santorum wants criminal prosecution of doctors who perform abortions, the survey said, and Bachmann has proposed amending the Constitution to eliminate citizenship rights for U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants.
Fellow Republicans Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry were given zeros on all issues but immigration, where both men's statements opposing wholesale deportations have angered hard-liners and have been seen as liabilities in the primary campaign.
Gingrich, the ACLU said, supports allowing youngsters brought to the United States by their parents to earn the right to citizenship by serving in the armed forces. The ACLU noted that Perry opposed a U.S.-Mexico border fence, said Arizona's immigration law "would not be the right direction for Texas," and signed a bill as governor in 2001 granting in-state tuition to illegal immigrants attending college.
Both candidates were given two torches on the issue, same as Obama. The president supports a path to citizenship for undocumented youths who enter the military or college, and he has challenged the Arizona law in court. But his administration increased deportations to record levels and expanded Secure Communities, which requires local authorities to forward arrestees' fingerprints to the federal government for immigration checks.
Highest ranking
The highest overall rating went to former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican-turned-Libertarian, who opposes the Patriot Act and - unlike Obama - supports the right of gays and lesbians to marry. Among the leading Republican candidates, libertarian-leaning Rep. Ron Paul also got a higher score than Obama despite low ratings in several categories.
The ACLU gave the Texas congressman high marks for opposing the Patriot Act and indefinite detention of suspected terrorists, condemning waterboarding and voting to repeal "don't ask, don't tell." But it criticized Paul's call for an end to "birthright citizenship" for children of illegal immigrants, his support of the law that denies federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples and his opposition to abortion.
Obama, endorsed by abortion-rights groups in 2008, was given three torches on "reproductive choice" by the ACLU, which cited his support for federal funding of Planned Parenthood and family-planning programs but also his bowing to Republican demands to ban funding for poor women's abortions in Washington, D.C., as part of legislation to prevent a government shutdown.
Obama also accepted restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion in the national health care law that passed in 2010.
Report card link
The survey can be viewed at www.aclulibertywatch.org/ALWCandidateReportCard.pdf.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/01/MNND1MJ7UO.DTL#ixzz1iQEHXZUT
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/01/MNND1MJ7UO.DTLThe American Civil Liberties Union has issued "Liberty Watch 2012," its... more
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According to a former aide, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has long been drawn toward conspiracy theories. Eric Dondero, who served Paul off and on from 1987 to 2003, wrote recently that the Texas Republican suspected that George W. Bush may have had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and that Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance about Pearl Harbor. Paul's writings and speeches spotlight a host of other plots, including the "war on Christmas."
But just because not all of Paul's theories are backed by good evidence doesn't mean none of them are.
In 1988, while running for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, he highlighted yet another conspiracy theory, and this one doesn't collapse under investigation: The CIA, Paul told a gathering of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, was involved in trafficking drugs as part of the Iran-Contra debacle.
Drug trafficking is "a gold mine for people who want to raise money in the underground government in order to finance projects that they can't get legitimately. It is very clear that the CIA has been very much involved with drug dealings," Paul said. "The CIA was very much involved in the Iran-Contra scandals. I'm not making up the stories; we saw it on television. They were hauling down weapons and drugs back. And the CIA and government officials were closing their eyes, fighting a war that was technically illegal."
Earlier this week, I looked into Paul's claim in the same speech that the war on drugs had racist origins and that the medical community played a role in lobbying for drug prohibitions. That charge was more or less accurate.
So is Paul's claim about the CIA and drug trafficking, a connection I explore in the book "This Is Your Country On Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America." (An excerpt of the chapter on the CIA appeared in The Root.) The following is drawn from my book.
Since at least the 1940s, the American government has organized and supported insurgent armies for the purpose of overthrowing some presumably hostile foreign regime. In Italy, the United States helped pit the Corsican and Sicilian mobs against the Fascists and then the Communists. In China, it aided Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang in its struggle against Mao Zedong's communist forces. In Afghanistan, it once backed the mujahedeen in their fight against the Soviet Union and today backs warlords in opposition to the mujahedeen.
All of these and other U.S.-supported groups profited, or still profit, heavily from the drug trade. One of the principal arguments made by the Drug Enforcement Administration in support of the global drug war is that the illegal drug trade funds violent, stateless organizations. The DEA refers specifically to al Qaeda and the Taliban, but the same method of fundraising has long been used by other violent, stateless actors whom the United States befriended.
AN 'UNCOMFORTABLE' STORY
Douglas Farah was in El Salvador when the San Jose Mercury News broke a major story in the summer of 1996: The Nicaraguan Contras, a confederation of paramilitary rebels sponsored by the CIA, had been funding some of their operations by exporting cocaine to the United States. One of their best customers was a man nicknamed "Freeway Rick" -- Ricky Donnell Ross, then a Southern California dealer who was running an operation the Los Angeles Times dubbed "the Wal-Mart of crack dealing."
"My first thought was, 'Holy shit!' because there'd been so many rumors in the region of this going on," said Farah 12 years later. He'd grown up in Latin America and covered it for 20 years for the Washington Post. "There had always been these stories floating around about [the Contras] and cocaine. I knew [Contra leader] Adolfo Calero and some of the other folks there, and they were all sleazebags. You wouldn't read the story and say, 'Oh my god, these guys would never do that.' It was more like, 'Oh, one more dirty thing they were doing.' So I took it seriously."
The same would not hold true of most of Farah's colleagues, either in the newspaper business in general or at the Post in particular. "If you're talking about our intelligence community tolerating -- if not promoting -- drugs to pay for black ops, it's rather an uncomfortable thing to do when you're an establishment paper like the Post," Farah told me. "If you were going to be directly rubbing up against the government, they wanted it more solid than it could probably ever be done."
In the mid to late 1980s, a number of reports had surfaced that connected the Contras to the cocaine trade. The first was by Associated Press scribes Brian Barger and Robert Parry, who published a story in December 1985 that began, "Nicaraguan rebels operating in northern Costa Rica have engaged in cocaine trafficking, in part to help finance their war against Nicaragua's leftist government, according to U.S. investigators and American volunteers who work with the rebels."
Only a few outlets followed Barger and Parry's lead, including the San Francisco Examiner and the lefty magazine In These Times, which both published similar stories in 1986, and CBS's "West 57th" TV series, which did a segment in 1987. A Nexis search of the year following Barger and Parry's revelation turned up a total of only four stories containing the terms "Contras" and "cocaine," one of them a denial of the accusation from a Contra spokesperson. Stories popped up here and there over the next decade, but many of them made only oblique reference to a couldn't-possibly-be-true conspiracy theory.
(more @ link)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/30/ron-paul-conspiracy-theory-cia-drug-traffickers_n_1176103.htmlAccording to a former aide, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has long been... more
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In a field in which all the candidates are weak in terms of protecting the environment, Ron Paul is unquestionably the worst. Here is his position (taken directly from his website):
"Eliminate the ineffective EPA. Polluters should answer directly to property owners in court for the damages they create – not to Washington."
OK, what’s wrong with this proposal? Here are a few things:
Why just property owners? Why not other people with health effects? Is there some reason why a tenant with asthma can’t sue, but a company with paint damage can go to court? Because property values matter, but not human health?
Who would be the defendants? If you live in a big city, how do you sue all of the polluters for damage? Do you sue everyone who has a car or truck for contributing to air pollution? How do you pay for the expert witnesses and legal fees?
Why only damages? If he truly believed in property rights, he’d allow injunctions to stop the harm from continuing.
How would courts handle the immense body of litigation? The pollution suits would be the world’s biggest class actions, with millions of plaintiffs, swarms of defendants, huge fees for expert witnesses, etc. Is that really what conservatives want?
We’ve already tried this approach, and it didn’t work. This is more or less where the law stood fifty years ago. We didn’t pass modern environmental laws because we loved regulation; we passed them because the old system led to massive air and water pollution.
This isn’t a policy proposal. It’s a libertarian fantasy. And a callous one at that.
Cross-posted from the environmental law and policy blog Legal Planet.
More at the linkIn a field in which all the candidates are weak in terms of protecting the... more
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Last night on PCW Politics is War on P-SPAN from the Imperial Bowl in Pittsfield, MA
Johnny Suave welcomed everyone to another edition of PCW Politics is War. He reviewed what went down Tuesday night at PCW Minnesota Mayhem:
Suave announced that Jesusland vs. Progressiveville, the novel featuring two wrestlers from Political Championship Wrestling (‘Extreme Pizza Delivery Girl’ Tessa Martin and Rah!), was released on Kindle earlier today.
MATCH #1
‘Extreme Pizza Delivery Girl’ Tessa Martin (I) w/Rah
vs.
‘American Girl‘ Sarah Mae Smith (R) w/Harley Davisson
BACKSTAGE
Mitt Romney held a ‘press availability’ (isn’t that a press conference?) get together in the back
Then Mrs. Miyagi, former manager of the PCW Champion Daniel-San, walked out with her new wrestler- HALITOSIS (I)!
MATCH #2
Halitosis (I)
vs.
Bob Nye- Foot Fetish Guy (I)
Backstage
Vince Giordano, Vice President of the New Jersey Education Association, spoke with Bernstein about his opposition to school vouchers.
MATCH #3
The California Teacher’s Union: Andy ‘The Foul Pole’ Golatta and Malibu Dusty (D)
vs.
The Jersey Boyz: Vinnie and Frankie (R) w/Chris Christie (R-NJ)
Both tag teams barely have enough time to get out of the ring before both A-Bomb and Tanaka come brawling down the ramp.Last night on PCW Politics is War on P-SPAN from the Imperial Bowl in Pittsfield, MA... more
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Something funny happened on Mitt Romney‘s way to the acceptance speech in Tampa this coming summer. People took a look at the man, his positions, his stances, his flip flops on the issues and said, “Meh… what’s that other guy’s name?”
“No, not the mean old man who wants to put orphans to work scrubbing toilets on the moon. The other one.
“No, you’re talking about that nice old crackpot who wants to end war and legalize drugs and sell off all government-owned land. I’m talking about that other guy. What’s his name again?
“Yeah. Santorum. Sure, he’s a wingnut. Of course, he wants to keep women barefoot and pregnant and in the kitchen whippin’ up a nice meatloaf for her man. But I’m a Republican. I want those things, too!”
http://deepbrainmedia.com/2012/02/08/santorum-surge-stains-romneys-cloak-of-inevitability/Something funny happened on Mitt Romney‘s way to the acceptance speech in Tampa... more
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Last night at PCW Minnesota Mayhem from the Williams Arena in Minneapolis, MN
‘The Massachusetts Redblood’ Mitt Romney (R-MA) entered the arena in high spirits along with his wrestler, Yamamoto Tanaka (R).
Who looked to stem the Romney tidal wave? Rick Santorum (R-PA) and his charge, The Right Rev. Randy Richardson- the former Triple R, that’s who.
MATCH #1
‘New Age Sensitive Guy’ Blaine Thomas-Taylor (D) of Politically Correct w/ Soccer Mom (D)
vs.
T-Roy (R) w/former head of the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure Karen Handel
Big Oil Promo
Big Oil (R) claims that the end of the world is here because… GAS PRICES WILL GO BACK OVER $4 A GALLON BY MEMORIAL DAY!
MATCH #2
Arizona Rough Justice: D.B. Ruff and Connor Justice (R) w/Sheriff Joe Arpaio
vs.
Occupy Wall Street: Nate and Shane (D) w/Adam
MAIN EVENT:
Minnesota Mayhem Match
K-Roy (R) w/Newt Gingrich (R-GA)
Magnum PO’d (R) w/Robbyn Masters and Ron Paul (R-TX)
Yamamoto Tanaka (R) w/’The Massachusetts Redblood’ Mitt Romney (R-MA)
Rick Santorum came out next. Romney got on the mic and wanted to know where his wrestler was.Last night at PCW Minnesota Mayhem from the Williams Arena in Minneapolis, MN... more
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I am strongly pro-choice. On this conviction, I differ from the candidate whom I am supporting for president in 2012, and whom I am suggesting liberals everywhere support.
Many of those liberals who most strongly disagree with the Blue Republicans -- former Obama supporters, Democrats and Independents, who support Ron Paul for president in 2012, revert to a single argument against him: that he is pro-life and this will have terrible consequences for the reproductive rights of women in the USA.
I've really not wanted to engage this as, on the one hand, it seems to be such an extraordinary (sometimes I think deliberate) misunderstanding of Paul's politics as to be not serious, and, on the other, abortion is such an emotive subject, I can't imagine any writer gaining more readers than he loses by writing about it.
But since this matters so much -- as this misunderstanding is now standing in the way of remaking our country -- I'm going to engage it this once, and damn the torpedoes.
On the abortion issue, Ron Paul is pro-life. He believes human life begins at conception. But his entire political, indeed philosophical, worldview, is pro-choice. He believes that he does not get to impose his views using the force of federal law on a nation that might disagree with him -- especially in areas in which the Constitution does not give him that authority.
In other words, were someone of Ron Paul's views to win the presidency, there would be no federal action to prevent you from having a safe abortion. He is on the record. For most pro-choicers, that should put the issue to rest -- but it doesn't, because as other progressives rightly point out, under a Paul presidency, some states could make abortions illegal.
That is indeed the "worst case." But any liberal should be able to see that this worst case, taken in its entirety is better than the present situation, for multiple reasons.
1) If you allow this issue to be legislated at the national level, then a Republican majority or president with a large neocon or religious-right base will be able to reverse that legislation to ban abortion nationwide. The only way to guarantee that safe abortions will always be available in the USA for more than one Congress or presidency is to push this issue to the states in the spirit of the Constitution. Then, even the possibility of a nationwide ban on abortion disappears.
2) It is easier to reverse bad policy at the state level than the federal level through public pressure.
3) There is nothing liberal or humane about requiring those who sincerely disagree with us on abortion to subsidize our practices -- just as there is nothing liberal or humane about those who like unnecessary wars to force us to pay for them. In particular, if we are concerned about the rights of women, we shouldn't be asking women who disagree with us to subsidize our views.
4) The very worst (and frankly, extremely unlikely) case under a Paul presidency is that a poor woman would have to cross a state line to get an abortion. However, this worst-case scenario comes with the benefit of the reinstitution of the Bill of Rights, the end of killing innocent people in foreign countries, the end of indefinite incarceration without trial of Americans, the end of bank bailouts, the end of spending money abroad that should be spent at home, the end of government agents listening into your private conversations, the end of government by corporate lobbyists, and so on and so on.
In other words, if you don't vote for Ron Paul because of the abortion issue, then you cannot claim to be a progressive or liberal in any sense. You are a single-issue voter, which means, I am afraid, that you don't care about everything else that is going on in your country that is destroying the lives of the very same women whose right to an abortion you wish to protect. That does not make you a progressive; it does not make you a feminist and it certainly does not make you a liberal.
But since I agree with you that America should be a country in which all women have access to safe abortions, I would also pledge to support a charity that would pay for poor women in Mississippi -- to use an example that was suggested to me in a radio interview -- to travel across state lines to get the safe abortion they require.
The point of course, is there is no charity that could stop the government from killing people in undeclared wars, or bailing out crony corporatists, or making laws that favors well-funded lobbies or, cause federal agencies to follow again the Bill of Rights.
Vote Obama in 2012 and you'll get your federally mandated right to an abortion -- and you'll lose (or more accurately, fail to get back) every other Constitutional right you are supposed have.
If I have to spell it out, under a Paul presidency, no woman would have to forego an abortion. Under the presidency of any other candidate, every woman has to forego the right to privacy, to due process before detention, to not participate financially in the killing of innocent people abroad, to not have her wealth transferred to rich guys who run banks and know other rich guys, to not have her conversations listened to by government authorities, and so on.
Do you see the asymmetry? Do you see how this is a matter of priorities?
I would like the USA to be the live-and-let-live country it was supposed to be.
Let us as liberals be true and consistent in our principles. The only way in which our pro-choice views directly impinge on others is by forcibly taking money from them to pay for things we want. We should no more need to use the monopoly of force of government in that way than should any religionist use it to prevent a gay couple from making a life-long commitment and calling it whatever they want, including "marriage." And if the religionists don't believe it's "a real marriage," let them call it whatever they want, too. And we can ignore them. And so on.
Paul's pro-life views are personal. The country needs to understand that a leader can hold a view fervently without having to impose it on the country as national policy.
Indeed, that is precisely what the Constitution requires him -- or her -- to do.I am strongly pro-choice. On this conviction, I differ from the candidate whom I am... more
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[Unless you are a political party hack, then you can stay home]
Caucuses are the smallest, most grassroots meetings of the political party system.
This is the year you must go to your caucus, regardless of your political party preference.
Based on the State of the Nation, it should be clear that the people that have been attending the past caucuses haven’t made the best decisions.
In Minnesota, your caucus date is Tuesday, February 7, 2012.
If you live in a different state, Click here to find your Caucus/Primary Date - 2012 Full Primary/Caucus Calendar http://bit.ly/ysETxM
For far too long now, we rank and file Americans have dutifully voted for the candidates of our respective political parties. WE THE PEOPLE have chosen and remained loyal to our respective political parties because we believed in our respective party’s platform and were persuaded by the promises of our political party candidates before each election.
To Continue Reading for free, Click here -> http://exm.nr/zSLzML
Finally,
Thank you, my fellow citizens, for taking your valuable time to read and reflect upon what is written here.
Please join with me in mutually pledging to each other and our fellow citizens our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to our mutual endeavors of restoring liberty and economic opportunity to WE THE PEOPLE as our Founding Fathers envisioned and intended. [Last sentence, US Declaration of Independence ( http://bit.ly/ruPE7z)]
This article is written with the same intentions as Thomas Paine http://ushistory.org/paine. I seek no leadership role. I seek only to help the American People find their own way using their own “Common Sense” http://amzn.to/kbRuar
TellMyPolitician http://goo.gl/1FWfz
Keep Fighting the Good Fight!
Those were my thoughts.
In Liberty,
Don Mashak
The Cynical Patriot
http://twitter.com/dmashak
http://www.facebook.com/don.mashak[Unless you are a political party hack, then you can stay home]
Caucuses are the... more
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Ron Paul supporter and Blue Republican leader Robin Koerner and The Young Turks political commentator Michael Shure debate whether progressives should support Ron Paul, and whether Ron Paul has any chance of being the Republican nominee
http://youtu.be/7v7T01-LUrwRon Paul supporter and Blue Republican leader Robin Koerner and The Young Turks... more
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