Ron Paul

[Drew]

the FACTS!!!! (http://www.ronpaulfacts.com/)

[dilvie]

I'd vote for him.

[Killy]

Xenophobia ftw!

[A.D]

According to his signs he's EVOL!

[Miss Mustang]

HAHAHAHAH thats awesome

[T.Beck]

Ok this page is really funny. I love Ron Paul, I donated to his campaign and will again. He is the smartest canidate, the only voice of reason, and the U.S.'s hope to restore freedom and keep peace. He really has started a Revolution and one that I hope and pray will take him to the white house. You'd think the country would learn electing 2 Presidents with the same last name is a really bad idea, yet it looks like it may happen yet again.

www.ronpaul2008.com

[dilvie]

Wow. Sounds like a fanboy Ron Paul cult is developing.

I don't agree with all his policies. But I support him.

I would vote for him because the country is currently shifted much too far in the opposite direction, and I think he has a real chance of restoring a bit of balance.

Remember, the presidential seat is powerful, but temporary. With republican, democratic, and special interest forces all crying for bigger, more controlling government, we need a strong counterpoint in Washington.

[Blacksunshine]

I find myself getting to the point that I dont want a president....at all. They all suck.


How do we fix the problems we are in in every direction? i have no idea...but neither do they.

[A.D]

Am I the only one that had the hardest time figuring out what his
"Ron Paul
REVOLUTION"
posters were getting at?
Perhaps my knowledge of evol intent got in the way?

[T.Beck]

You think the country has become too progressive? Because last time I checked Ron Paul stands on the FAR right. Sure hes against the Iraq war, and against going into Iran. But he opposed stopping the genocide in Rwanda.

He is the uber-capitalist promoting the idea of a complete free market where our lives would be dictated even more by corporations with no government interference. So in the world of Ron Paul corporations would have more rights than the citizen. Road construction, trains, education, health care should all be placed in the hands of the private sector. Forget about universal health care, Ron Paul would even get rid of any government financial support for health care.

I say corporations would have more rights than citizens because while corporations would be given unrestricted rights to operate, Ron Paul opposes a womens right to choose, gay marriage, or an immigrants child who was born in the United States from being a citizen (which is their explicit right according to the Constitution).

Is this DJ Rize from the other board, you sure talk the same? You are a dumbass and don't understand economics or politics. The free market does everything better than the government can, I don't understand why people like you can't see this. Let me just give one example, telecommunications used to be state run, when my father was growing up you paid a lot of money for one phone line for you and all your neighbors, he said he could hear his old lady neighbor listening in to him and his girlfriends conversations, and it had to be shared with like 5 houses. They put it in the hands of the free market and now we have all these companies competing for our business, the advances in telecommunications technology soared, and we have all these cell phones and texts, video messaging, VOIP, etc etc. you get the point, oh and its for less money than when the government ran it. Now with telecom, we still are behind countries like S. Korea where one pays $20 a month for 100 Mbps Broadband, where as here in Utah I pay $50/mo from Qwest for their very fastest wireless broadband that does "up to 7 Mbps" and this is due to FCC regulations, which have inhibited the advancement of technology here.

The Free market takes care of virtually everything better than the government can, they have the profit motive to do it, they want to make a better profit and because of competition we get better products and lower prices than with a governement monopoly. Shipping is another good example, we added FedEX, UPS, DHL and the like, gave the good old USPS some competition and now we can get overnight shipping for not that much. When it was a government monopoly like first class mail still is, overnight shipping was unheard of.

Right now, corporations have more power than under a complete capitalist system because they get corporate welfare, which Ron Paul strongly opposes, corporations hate him because of this. Corporations get corporate welfare, and then give money to elected officials campaigns so that they will do what they want, and give them more welfare.

People all over the U.S. are realizing the logic in this concept of freedom, unfortunately you are not. As far as "a womans right to choose goes" the role of government is to protect those that cannot protect itself, which is an unborn child, this child has no say. Really abortion should be something each state decides, under the federalism we are supposed to have.

Meahwhile the government robs me and my employer 15% for a failed false retirement system, a bunch more for an unconstitutional direct income tax which is really paying interest to bankers on an unneccesary national debt, medicare, medicade, blah blah blah, all these failed programs that have made people enslaved to them. Thats what politicians do, they pass laws that rob people, and make others dependant, who will thus re elect them.

I suggest you pull your head out of your socialist ass and study basic economics, history, and political theory.

[Killy]

You are using the telecommunications industry to promote laissez faire? Of all the industries to use you chose that?!? You might as well throw in Standard Oil in there too. Read a history book some time. It can be quite educational.

Also, if you wouldn't mind please show me how the free market would remedy the Keynesian liquidity trap. Oh wait, that's right. The Keynesian liquidity trap argues quite well against the effectiveness of a completely free market.

While Milton Friedman had some very interesting ideas you can't ignore the arguments made against laissez faire made by Keynes and Pigou.

[T.Beck]

I think Friedman, Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, and Rand(though not an economist a great philosopher), Trump your Keynesian economic bullcrap. I have an open mind though, I'll read more. If you promise to do the same on my side. By the way this is open to all of you on this board, read the economists works that both of us mention and tell us what argument is more sound and logical.

[Killy]

I think Friedman, Hayek, Mises, Rothbard, and Rand(though not an economist a great philosopher), Trump your Keynesian economic bullcrap. I have an open mind though, I'll read more. If you promise to do the same on my side. By the way this is open to all of you on this board, read the economists works that both of us mention and tell us what argument is more sound and logical.
All of those people from the Austrian school of economic thought were making arguments against Socialism, not Keynesian economics. While there are some things that cross over Keynes was not a socialist at all. He argued quite heavily for capitalism, but at the same time pointed out the failings of a purely free market. Mises himself even said going by extreme (as in opposite ends of a spectrum) terminology is stupid.

[Miss Mustang]

You think the country has become too progressive? Because last time I checked Ron Paul stands on the FAR right. Did you even look at the actual website?

[T.Beck]

in my lil wikipedia search of keynes it talked about how him and Hayek were like enemies and Hayek said how Keynes had totally lost his ways, kinda sounds like they had a friendly rivalry or something. Anyway, I'll admit I am no economist, but to me it seems that government intervention is mild socialism, Roosevelt lead the U.S. down the path of entitlment programs and interventionism and it has put us in a shitty hole of a socialism of sort. I forget his name but I read that the former head of the socialist party in the U.S. said the party dissolved(though it really does still exist) because there was no longer a need for it, Republicans and democrats adopted socialist policy.

Like I said, I need to study up more on Keynes, I do like the Austrian school of economics though.

[Killy]

I'm no economist either, but I had to take a masters level econ theory class in college. I needed the credit to graduate, and it was the only econ class offered my last semester. My head almost exploded in that class. After reading a lot of their theories one of the things I took away was that societies cannot run with the extremes of any economic theory. All sides have arguments against the other, and more often than not they tend to give similar arguments for certain things. There have even been economists who attempted to create their own towns based purely on either capitalism or socialism and they all failed. Things tend to work better when there is a middle ground. Ethics should play a big part in economics also.

[T.Beck]

Thats cool, the one problem with college courses is that often times rather than getting an objective reality you get a biased slant of the professor. I remember my American government class back my freshman year, thought at the time I was a poli sci major most the class could care less about politics and were in there for GE credits. ANyway, our teacher was a really good teacher and very knowledgeable and very persuasive. It cracked me up how he could have the entire class one day thinking that the rich people were evil oppressors of the poor and we need the governement to balance things, and the next class he'd have the whole class convinced that they are Libertarian and the state is bad. It was funny/scary to me how easily my class would be suaded. Other than a couple of us(myself) that had already studied these things and had our own opinions.

Another example, my friend had a "literature of politics" class or something, he said he loved it and the professor was way smart, my friend asked him about Ayn Rand and the teacher blew her off as her theories won't uphold. My friend then read Atlas Shrugged and its one of his favorite books ever and he said to him makes the most logical sense of anything he read in that class and he is mad his teacher just blew her off as not imprtant to read.

Anyway, Ron Paul is still by far the best canidate and even though we wants a Gold standard and near lasseiz fair, he won't get it due to checks and balances, which is why we need to elect him because we will get at least a big jump in the right direction, he'll have to compromise with congress though.

[T.Beck]

Labor Unions and government intervention are ruining Europes economy. I thinkt he whole time and ahlf thing for over 40 hours though I enjoy it, is dumb and unnessesarry, in S. Korea they work a 6 day work week, and I think Japan too, and they have thriving economies and are overtaking the market on things some EU countries used to have a strong hold on, due to the EU and their Labor Unions and their lazyness.

Any economist knows minimum wage is a joke too, it hurts the laborer and the consumer and messes with the supply and demand curves. People should get paid whatever they are willing to work for. Sure in some countries they have sweatshops and people working 12 hour days for low wages compared to U.S. standards, but if they will work for that, then they should. And what you are forgetting is that these multinational corporation sweatshops are paying TRIPLE the wages that people in these countries could earn working for a local company, or farming.

My older brother has his Masters in international economics from Columbia University and now works for the Foreign Service in the embassy in Bangkok Thailand. He did a masters paper on China's economy and told me how the "sweatshops" there have helped the people there soooo much and that they make way more money and work in better conditions than before the big companies went there. Meanwhile it makes prodcuts for us get cheaper to buy, helping the poor people here.

Meanwhile you have France where they pass so many socialist policies to "protect the worker" that it has become impossible to fire someone, thus it has become virtually impossible to get hired. French are racist to muslims(I can cite an interesting study on that) so Muslims are stuck unemployed living in poverty on the socialist dole, or working temp jobs with no benefits. Why? thanks to labor unions meant to help the worker. I understand why the muslims in France rebelled and rioted and burned all those cars a few years back, they have not been integrated into society and socialism has kept them stuck in Poverty.

Oh and in NYC we have teachers that are getting paid 60K a yr tax dollars to be bussed to a rubber room and sit around all day because they are not allowd to be around kids because of abuse, being dangerous etc. but thanks to the Labor union contract they can't be fired. Labor Unions and government intervention in the economy hurts the worker, the economy and everyone, except for the bueracrats that profit off of it.

It is in a companies best interest to pay their employees well and treat them well, otherwise they will lose their human resources.

[Killy]

Lose human resources? There are over 6 billion people on Earth and it is rapidly increasing. Many of them like you mentioned are more than happy to work for cheaper than anyone in the US. So what happens? Outsourcing. If there are millions upon millions of people who are just as qualified if not more than their American counterparts, yet are willing to work for pennies on the dollar then it is cost effective to outsource the jobs to them. How does that help our citizens? It helps the corporations as they aren't spending as much, but the only people who benefit from that are the owners. Also, it isn't always in the companies best interest to pay employees well. They just need to pay them enough to not lose money. If they lose the employee then they just pick up one of the millions that are clamoring for a job. BTW Japan's economy sucks. They are a perfect example of the liquidity trap. I wish I still had my final paper from my econ theory class as I illustrated how the lack of intervention on the banking system in Japan contributed to their current liquidity trap. And they are trying very hard to get rid of 6 day work days due to the social costs of working that much. That is great your brother is doing so well, but by the sound of it he is just towing the Republican party line on economics. Just because sweat shops have increased quality of life for some people doesn't mean they have a desireable quality of life. Quit leaving out ethics when you think about economics. It is easy to do so when you look at just the math, but people tend to forget that those numbers represent actual people who are trying to survive. I would rather humanity have better lives then adhere to what is essentially Economic Natural Selection.

[T.Beck]

No time for a long thought out response, but this thread is refreshing. I wish more people on this board participated in threads like this and actually cared and had ideas and opinions about these things. I'll give you a better response soon.

[suckafish]

i like donuts.

[Amber]

It's going to take more than a former Chuck Norris joke writer to get me to vote for someone.

[Hyver]

The whole libertarian philosophy frustrates me just a little bit. On the one hand I agree that the government should get out of peoples personal lives as far as freedoms of speech, rights to marry, right to own weapons or whatever. On the other hand, I feel the only morally justifiable socio-economic policy is one in which there is a reasonable minimum standard of living within society. I also feel that the only orginazation big enough and with an incentive to provide that is a government.

Which brings me to another point. There are certain investments which are extremely beneficial for us as a nation, however they are of a nature such that private industry will not make them. For instance, take the history of space flight in the US. For every dollar the government has invested in aerospace technology they have recieved 7 back, however the task of puting a man on the moon in the 60's was far greater than any single investor or corporation would have been up to. Very large problems which require funding and longterm investment without any guarentee of returns for the investor are sometimes necessary, and in a free market these problems will not be solved without government intervention.

[T.Beck]

The whole libertarian philosophy frustrates me just a little bit. On the one hand I agree that the government should get out of peoples personal lives as far as freedoms of speech, rights to marry, right to own weapons or whatever. On the other hand, I feel the only morally justifiable socio-economic policy is one in which there is a reasonable minimum standard of living within society. I also feel that the only orginazation big enough and with an incentive to provide that is a government.

Which brings me to another point. There are certain investments which are extremely beneficial for us as a nation, however they are of a nature such that private industry will not make them. For instance, take the history of space flight in the US. For every dollar the government has invested in aerospace technology they have recieved 7 back, however the task of puting a man on the moon in the 60's was far greater than any single investor or corporation would have been up to. Very large problems which require funding and longterm investment without any guarentee of returns for the investor are sometimes necessary, and in a free market these problems will not be solved without government intervention.

Which is where a happy medium is key. I agree there are some things that the government should do and invest in. Your space example is a good example if you can back up that $ made, I'd like to see a source for that. ALso in medical research I am ok with goverment grants for such, only to a minimal extent though. I read an article about how getting grants works and how research often is actually stifled because of the process and how grants are given to those fields of research the government wants. For example there isn't enough ample research on medical marijauna to suffice the government to allow it but at the same time they refuse to fund and allow the necessary research to be done.

This is why Ron Paul is the perfect canidate. He is a happy medium, he is not nearly as extreme as anarcho libertarians, and understands that you can't just abolish all these govermnent entitlement programs that people are dependant upon. Rather he sees there need be a transitional period. I agree, my :2cents:

[Hyver]

I don't know how accurate the 7$ figure is. I heard it from Richard C Hogland on an interview on an NPR show a year or two ago. I don't know where he got it, but it came to mind as I was typing.

[Amber]

I find myself getting to the point that I dont want a president....at all. They all suck.


How do we fix the problems we are in in every direction? i have no idea...but neither do they.


I think that smaller Government is the answer.

[T.Beck]

I think that smaller Government is the answer.

Quoted for TRUTH! See Amber, we agree with each other, I am hurt that you for some odd reason seem to think I am judgemental.

[Amber]

Quoted for TRUTH! See Amber, we agree with each other, I am hurt that you for some odd reason seem to think I am judgemental.


No I think that you are judgemental about people's personal lives. I don't think that you or the government should tell people not to get married, have abortions, or any other slew of things.

[T.Beck]

No I think that you are judgemental about people's personal lives. I don't think that you or the government should tell people not to get married, have abortions, or any other slew of things.

Neither do I, we agree with that. Without going into exact detail on my opinions(which on those particular issues I am not entirely even decided yet and open to discussion) on abortion or who and who cannot get married, essentially I agree, its not the governments business nor mine, which is my stance and the libertarian stance. Why you assumed I thought otherwise is judgmental on your part. If you look at the scores on the political compass test I scored a lot more liberal as far as government staying out of peoples personal lives than you did, at like -3.8 or something.

[Bhairava]

What this country needs is a strong socialist party! hmmm maybe i'll start one. and there is nothing at all special about Ron Paul he is just another capitalist pig! infact there is nothing really special about any of the candidates running in 2008! but it dont matter cause by then this country will be in throws of war thanks to the current powers that be and bush will remain in office! and T.Beck your liberal free market campaigns is just straight up capitalist propoganda! you act like socialism is a such a bad thing, why? because it would help those unable to help themselves. most socialist countrys have social freedoms, probably more then the U.S. even. and if its political freedom your fighting for we lost that along time ago its called electorial voteing you should look it up. just about every candidate is exactly the same they just word there stuff differently. I dont care what anyone says Socialism is the way to go. and T. Beck please dont compare socialism to communism they are not the same. when you do that it just makes you look like you dont know what your talking about!

[T.Beck]

Socialism is watered down communism, thats what it is. I have studied both, read the authors of both, and seen how both have miserably Failed. Sweeden is the only exception as a succesfull socialist country and it actually is working quite well there last I checked. Bhairava, you should move to Sweeden, you'd proly like it there.

I am glad you see that almost all the candidates are the same, this is rather true, not entirely though. Ron Paul, is much different. Gravel and Kuccinich are different too. You should like Kuccinich, he is essentially socialist. There used to be a strong socialist party here but it has almost fizzled away because the republicans and dems have adopted socialist policy.

[Mizz Nici]

I am hurt that you for some odd reason seem to think I am judgemental.

Hmmm could it be due to comments like this one?
Is this DJ Rize from the other board, you sure talk the same? You are a dumbass and don't understand economics or politics.

Possibly ;)