Ron Paul on the Evil Fed, the IRS, and Saving the Buck: Business Week
"November 29, 2007, 6:09PM EST
At 72, Ron Paul is a Web phenomenon. His campaign says that some 80% of the $17 million raised in the past four quarters—including about $4.3 million in one October day—has come from online supporters. And according to a mid-November poll, the Republican Presidential hopeful is gaining ground in New Hampshire, though he's still in single digits. Like maverick candidates such as Howard Dean in 2004 and Ross Perot in 1992, Paul seems to connect with voters hungry for unvarnished positions. Paul, an obstetrician and 10-term congressman from the Texas Gulf Coast, voted against the war in Iraq and wants the troops home fast, but it's his economic ideas that are the most radical: He detests the Fed and would abolish the IRS. Paul was about to climb on a plane for a campaign trip to South Carolina when I caught up with him.
MARIA BARTIROMO
As President, how would you strengthen the economy?
RON PAUL
The most important thing is to get control of the budget, because the more we spend and the higher the deficit, the more we have to tax and borrow and inflate the currency—literally create new credit to buy Treasury bills. We need to restore confidence in the dollar before [its decline] gets out of control. The easiest place to cut spending is overseas because it's doing so much harm to us, undermining our national defense and ruining our budget. I would start saving hundreds of billions of dollars by giving up on defending the American empire. I'd start bringing our troops home, not only from the Middle East but from Korea, Japan, and Europe, and save enough money to slash the deficit. We can actually pay down the national debt and still take care of people here at home. That would restore a lot of confidence.
What is the most important change you would make?
Aim for the federal government to immediately live within its means, to take the pressure off the Fed to create money.
And that means what?
Means no more inflation. If the Fed doesn't create money out of thin air—and they do it mostly to accommodate the deficits—that would restore the soundness of the dollar and give us our purchasing power back.
But as President, you're supposed to be independent from the Fed. You would encourage the Fed to stop printing money?
You know this idea that we can create a secret bank and they manage things and rarely tell us—or Congress or the Executive Branch—what they're really doing, there's a problem there. I can't even go to a monetary policy board meeting of the Federal Reserve, and I'm on the Banking Committee of the U.S. Congress. I want open government, and certainly the Fed ought to be open. But it's an institution that really shouldn't exist. [Its financing] allows Big Government to get bigger without being responsible. And that's why we have runaway spending for both warfare and welfare.
Hasn't the Fed been effective in providing liquidity in the current credit crisis?
You're right, but it's sort of like a drug addict. The drug addict demands more or he's going to have convulsions. The economy would have a convulsion if the Fed didn't inject more credit. But if you continue to do that, the problem gets worse. You can't solve the problem of monetary inflation with monetary inflation. These circumstances have all been created by our government and the Fed.
How was the recent crisis caused by our government?
It was astounding that you could get a mortgage at 4%, and this was all due to the Fed creating money and artificially lowering rates, which gets people to do the wrong thing. Builders do the wrong thing, and people borrow money and buy houses they can't afford.
How would you change tax policy?
Ideally, get rid of the income tax. In the meantime, I'd give huge tax credits to anybody who wanted to take care of their own medical care. I'd give tax credits for all educational benefits. I'd get the government out of managing education and medicine. And do it by changing the tax code. I have a bill right now that is very popular, especially for people who are trying to work their way through college or who are having a tough time making ends meet, and that is to exempt all taxes on tips. People who have a first job or a second job waiting on tables and doing other things, they're harassed by government rules and regulations, and sometimes they have to pay higher taxes than the tips they actually receive. I'd move next to saying no taxes on anybody who's trying to get through college. Why do we tax them, make it hard for them, then give them grants? It doesn't make any sense.
Who are your economic advisers?
I don't have any. I read Austrian economics, which I've been doing for 30 years. So my advisers have been [von] Mises and Hayek and Sennholz.
Do you consider yourself a friend or a foe of Wall Street?
If they believe in freedom, free markets, and sound money, they'll love me. But if they like creating credit out of thin air, they'll see me as a threat. I was one of three people who voted against Sarbanes-Oxley because I thought it was detrimental to Wall Street. I'd repeal it.
You want to take the troops out of Iraq, but what about Iran? What do we do if other nations turn hostile?
I'd treat them something like what we did with the Soviets. I was called to military duty [as a U.S. Air Force flight surgeon] in the '60s when they were in Cuba, and they had 40,000 nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, and we didn't have to fight them. We didn't have to invade their country. But to deal with terrorism, we can't solve the problem if we don't understand why they [attack us]. And they don't come because we're free and prosperous. They don't go after Switzerland and Sweden and Canada. They come after us because we've occupied their land, and instead of reversing our foreign policy after 9/11, we made it worse by invading two more countries and then threatening a third. Why wouldn't they be angry at us? It would be absolutely bizarre if they weren't. We've been meddling over there for more than 50 years. We overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran in 1953; we were Saddam Hussein's ally and encouraged him to invade Iran. If I was an Iranian, I'd be annoyed myself, you know. So we need to change our policy, and I think we would reduce the danger.
You have vehement new supporters. What's driving the sudden interest in your candidacy?
I think they're sick and tired of what they're getting. They've lost all trust and faith in the government. They believe in the American Dream, and they're getting a nightmare. And they're rallying behind the program I've been working on for 30 years—defending the Constitution, limited government, free markets, sound money, and self-reliance; believing people can take care of themselves better than government can. The nanny state doesn't work, the police state doesn't work, and neither does the warfare. And they know it.
Maria Bartiromo is the anchor of CNBC's Closing Bell.
Ron Paul Slams Global Warming "Fearmongering"
"by Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Thursday, December 6, 2007
Congressman Ron Paul, who many would argue has remained somewhat neutral on the issue of global warming thus far, slammed alarmist predictions of the earth's decline as "fearmongering" and encouraged contrarian thinking on the issue during an interview with popular Internet TV broadcast G4.
"People think that Greenland's going to be gone in 20 years - I don't buy into that," Paul told host Layla Kayleigh.
Asked if he bought into "the ice glaciers melting," Paul responded, "They can find just as many places where the ice is building up - in Greenland, in certain parts of Greenland, in Antarctica." Watch the video.
Indeed, research conducted using the European Space Agency's satellites in November 2005 concluded that Greenland's interior ice sheets are thickening at a rate of six centimetres each year.
The Congressman said that his advice was to "listen to scientists on both sides" and that people who uniformly make up their minds that something is a certain way are often proven wrong.
"Right now there needs to be a little contrarian thinking about the fearmongering that is going on with global warming like it's the end of the earth," said Paul, responding strongly when challenged by Kayleigh, who used to work for Al Gore's TV network.
Though the Congressman has previously said he advocates efforts to reduce carbon emissions, he is keen to point out the fact that the Kyoto treaty is meaningless because it does not apply to the world's biggest generator of carbon emissions, China, and the knock-on effects have only been to cause U.s. corporations to outsource more jobs overseas.Printed from: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2007/120607_slams_fearmongering.htm
"Madame Speaker, I regret that I was unavoidably out of town on October 23, 2007, when a vote was taken on HR 1955, the Violent Radicalization & Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act. Had I been able to vote, I would have voted against this misguided and dangerous piece of legislation. This legislation focuses the weight of the
I would like to note that this legislation was brought to the floor for a vote under suspension of regular order. These so-called “suspension” bills are meant to be non-controversial, thereby negating the need for the more complete and open debate allowed under regular order. It is difficult for me to believe that none of my colleagues in Congress view HR 1955, with its troubling civil liberties implications, as “non-controversial.”
There are many causes for concern in HR 1955. The legislation specifically singles out the Internet for “facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process” in the
This seems to be an unwise and dangerous solution in search of a real problem. Previous acts of ideologically-motivated violence, though rare, have been resolved successfully using law enforcement techniques, existing laws against violence, and our court system. Even if there were a surge of “violent radicalization” -- a claim for which there is no evidence -- there is no reason to believe that our criminal justice system is so flawed and weak as to be incapable of trying and punishing those who perpetrate violent acts.
This legislation will set up a new government bureaucracy to monitor and further study the as-yet undemonstrated pressing problem of homegrown terrorism and radicalization. It will no doubt prove to be another bureaucracy that artificially inflates problems so as to guarantee its future existence and funding. But it may do so at great further expense to our civil liberties. What disturbs me most about this legislation is that it leaves the door wide open for the broadest definition of what constitutes “radicalization.” Could otherwise non-violent anti-tax, antiwar, or anti-abortion groups fall under the watchful eye of this new government commission? Assurances otherwise in this legislation are unconvincing.
In addition, this legislation will create a Department of Homeland Security-established university-based body to further study radicalization and to “contribute to the establishment of training, written materials, information, analytical assistance and professional resources to aid in combating violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism.” I wonder whether this is really a legitimate role for institutes of higher learning in a free society.
May God Bless Ron Paul and his campaign of freedom and liberty!
