Thread: Ron Paul on the Issues

Video: Jon Stewart Mocks the GOP Debate

Thursday February 23, 2012

Indecision 2012 - Three Men and a White-Haired Man-Baby

At the Arizona GOP debate, Rick Santorum explains the decision-

Indecision 2012 - Three Men and a White-Haired Man-Baby - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart - 02/23/12 - Video Clip | Comedy Central

Ron Paul - Friend of Israel

Submitted by Steve Dickson on Fri, 02/24/2012 - 12:19

In an unstable Middle East, Israel is the one anchor of stability. In a region of shifting alliances, Israel is America’s unwavering ally. Israel has always been pro-American. Israel will always be pro-American. My friends, you don’t have to -- you don’t need to do nation-building in Israel. We’re already built. You don’t need to export democracy to Israel. We’ve already got it. And you don’t need to send American troops to Israel. We defend ourselves.

- Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, speech to the US Congress, May 24th, 2011

Of all the objections to Ron Paul, perhaps the most prevalent one is in regards to Israel. This can become a very complicated subject, and it is often made that way to confuse and mislead. Arguably, the focus should be on three key things:

Israel's right to exist.

Israel's right to self govern.

Stop helping Israel's enemies.

On June 7th, 1981, Israel performed a daring raid (Operation Opera) on the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Osirak. I won't go into all the details here, since there are books written about it, but this much is clear: the world condemned Israel. The UN Security Council (unanimous, Security Resolution 487), the US State Department, pretty much everyone - except Ron Paul. He publicly broke with President Reagan, most allied leaders including Margaret Thatcher, and our own government in praising Israel's right to exit and determine their own course. Ron Paul believes in Israel's right to exist.

The government of the United States has continuously and repeatedly tried to tell Israel how to conduct itself with her own people and her neighbors. Our government has called for a division of Jerusalem, and return to 1967 borders, the end of construction in "captured" lands - and we have no right to do this. Much of the land Israel "occupies" it captured when attacked by other nations. They have held it as a security measure. Regardless of whether you think this is the right thing to do or not, it is between Israel, her people, and her neighbors. Ron Paul believes in Israel's right to self govern.

Foreign Aid is a part of the federal budget that most conservatives have wanted to end for a long, long time. Most of us would like to end the United Nations as well. After all, making the world "safe for democracy" was a goal of Woodrow Wilson, and it has carried forward with every Progressive/Liberal ever since. Crazily, many in the GOP now support Foreign Aid (which I should remind you is paid with borrowed money) because Israel gets some of that money.

Well, here's some facts, from the 2012 Statistical Abstract of the Census Bureau: in 2010 we gave Israel $2,692 million ($2.692 Billion) in grants and credits. Ron Paul opposes that - but he also opposes: $802 million for Jordan, $119 million for Lebanon, $48 million for Yemen, $687 million for West Bank/Gaza Regional, $2942 million for Iraq, $10,862 million for Afghanistan, $1216 million for Egypt, $1528 million for Pakistan, $46 million for Turkey - I'll stop there but those are countries that are at a minimum not friends with Israel, and the total for them is $18,250 million ($18.25 Billion). I have not included our "contribution" to the UN, but that certainly doesn't help Israel, nor have I included other countries in Central Asia, other African countries, and organizations (NGO's) not friendly to Israel. You tell me - is Israel better off with us giving her $2.692 Billion and giving her enemies $18.25 Billion, or would Israel be better off if we stopped all foreign aid? Ron Paul wants to stop helping Israel's enemies.

There are many people who have a vested interest in American Empire. It may be a financial interest, or a religious interest, or a political interest - but it is not in the interest of the American people. As a nation, we are going broke while we try to police the world, defending countries that are fully capable of defending themselves, and giving money to countries that don't need our help as well as our enemies. It is time to bring sanity back to the Republican Party, in the tradition of Robert Taft, Dwight Eisenhower, and the Founding Fathers. I leave you with the famous quote from Thomas Jefferson's First Inaugural Address (March 4th, 1801):

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none

Ron Paul - Friend of Israel | Ron Paul 2012 | Peace . Gold . Liberty

Veterans for Ron Paul DC March Feb 20 2012 - YouTube



Feb 23, 2012Veterans for Ron Paul March on the White House, Washington DC, February 20th, 2012.

MARCH ON THE WHITE HOUSE 2-20-2012 OUT FRONT OF THE WHITE HOUSE - YouTube

Ron Paul quietly amassing an army of delegates while GOP frontrunners spar

Paul Harris in New York
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 February 2012 15.59 EST

Ron Paul shakes hands with some of his young supporters at Twin Falls Senior High School in Idaho. Photograph: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP

While the Republican nomination race is focused on the ongoing battle between frontrunners Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, the Ron Paul campaign is waging an under-the-radar "delegate strategy" that could make the libertarian-leaning Texan the surprise kingmaker of the race.

In states that have already voted via a caucus system – rather than a straight primary ballot – Ron Paul supporters are conducting an intensively organised ground effort aimed at securing as many convention delegate slots as possible, often in numbers that far outweigh the number of actual votes that Paul got in the ballot.

If successful, it means Paul's campaign could arrive at the August Tampa convention at the head of an army of delegates far larger than the proportion of votes that it won during the nomination contest.

It could also increase the chances of a contested convention – where no candidate has enough delegates to declare the winner – as well as give Paul much greater ability to inject his beliefs into the Republicans' 2012 policy platform.

The strategy is based on the fact the GOP race is in fact a "delegate contest" despite an overwhelming focus by the media and most campaigns on "winning" individual states by coming top of the popular vote. But in reality, each state, weighted proportionally by population, sends a number of delegates to Tampa where a nominee is then chosen.
A total of 2,286 delegates are sent to Tampa and so a candidate must secure the support of 1,144 of them in order to win the nomination.

However, a bewilderingly complex set of rules, often varying from state to state, exists to actually assign these delegates. Ron Paul's campaign is seeking to work that system in order to maximise its delegate count.

So far signs are that the campaign is being so successful at its strategy that it may be able to "win" delegate counts in states where it did not win the popular vote.

"They will be able to perform well enough that in some states where they came in third or fourth in the straw poll, they will come in first or second in terms of the delegate totals. I am fairly confident in making that bet," said Professor Josh Putnam, a political scientist at Davidson College who runs the Frontloading HQ blog dedicated to tracking the delegate fight.

How the strategy works

The strategy works because of the varying ways each state assigns the delegates that get sent to Tampa. Some states hold a "winner takes all" primary that will assign all its delegates to the candidate who tops the vote.

Others assign delegates proportionally according to the vote, splitting the delegates roughly according to the results and ensuring each major candidate gets some delegates.
But it is in the caucus states that the Ron Paul campaign is focused. There the method of assigning delegates is complex and lasts a long time. In caucus states that have voted so far like Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota and Maine, the process of assigning delegates in support of each candidate has barely begun.

That process begins on caucus night when each precinct votes and then chooses delegates to send to a county convention to be held later in the year. Those county conventions will then choose a smaller number of delegates to send to a state convention or conventions held in each state's congressional districts.

Those state and district level conventions are the bodies that actually finally choose which delegates to send to the Tampa national convention.

However, at the start of the process – the precinct level meetings held on caucus day – the delegates selected to go to the later county conventions are frequently under no obligation to declare which candidate they are supporting or to support the "winner" of the day's actual voting.

Ron Paul's campaign strategy is to get enough of his precinct-level supporters to volunteer to become delegates to the county conventions so that they outnumber other campaigns. "Their strategy is to gobble up as many of these slots as they can," said Putnam.

Then, if you manage to stack the beginning of the process with Ron Paul delegates, as the system moves through the county conventions and the district and state-wide conventions the chances of Ron Paul-supporting delegates emerging at the end and being chosen to go to Tampa is greatly increased.

The entire strategy is helped by the fact that Paul's supporters are seen as far more organised and dedicated than other campaigns.

Is it successful?

It is currently impossible to say. No caucus state that has already voted has yet held any county conventions at which an idea of the number of Ron Paul-supporting delegates chosen at the precinct level may emerge. Those first indications should come in March.

However, the Ron Paul campaign itself, which is at pains to point out their strategy is entirely within the rules, has released information from Colorado that shows how they hope it could be playing out.

In one precinct in Larimer County there were 13 delegate slots available. Santorum had won the precinct's vote by 23 votes to Paul's 13, with five votes going to Romney. But Paul supporters took all the delegate slots.

In a Delta County precinct all five delegate slots went to Paul supporters though he came behind Santorum and Romney in the popular vote. In a Pueblo County precinct Paul supporters got the two delegate slots available despite the fact Paul finished fourth in the precinct's vote with just two actual votes.

Those examples are likely cherry-picked by the Paul campaign as best case scenarios. But Colorado party officials are – officially, at least – sanguine about what is going on as it obeys the party rules. "We are just here to play out the process. Whatever happens happens," executive director of the Colorado GOP Chuck Poplstein told the Guardian.
But Poplstein did say a successful delegate strategy was not easy to pull off. "It is difficult for any campaign. You have to be very well organised and in all of the counties. It is not an easy process. You have to have a very good ground game," he said.

But that might not be too much of a problem. The Ron Paul campaign is highly organised and focused. "We are also seeing the same trends in Minnesota, Nevada and Iowa, and in Missouri as well," the campaign said in its statement on the precinct performances in Colorado.

A recent report by the Washington Post from a caucus in Portland, Maine, revealed a dedicated activist organisation complete with pre-printed lists of which delegates should be voted for at the precinct level. That is likely true across all the caucus states.

"They do tend to be very organised and very enthusiastic for Ron Paul," said Professor Tim Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa.

What impact could it have?

The fact is that Paul's delegate strategy would have little impact in a normal Republican race. The system is set up with enough winner-take-all and primary states to ensure that Paul's strategy has no chance whatsoever of picking up enough delegates via this method to actually win the nomination himself.

But it all changes when the Republican race becomes protracted and closely fought. If Santorum, Romney and Newt Gingrich all stay in the race beyond Super Tuesday and start to amass their own large piles of delegates, then reaching the vital 1,144 delegates needed to win starts to become more difficult.

If that scenario plays out – something most experts see as possible but unlikely – then Paul's delegate total becomes crucial. He could become a kingmaker, agreeing to throw his hefty delegate total behind one candidate who could then claim victory.

As a candidate with a very clearly defined agenda – on foreign policy, the role of government and fiscal issues, especially the Federal Reserve – Paul could demand a high policy price for that support.

However, even if a nominee emerges prior to the convention, Paul's delegates will still be important. If he amasses a loyal and large delegate total he will able to secure a high-profile, possibly primetime, speaking slot.

He will also be more able to get his agenda into the party's official policy platform. Given Paul's stance on issues like American foreign policy and the wars in Afghanistan, that could upset the party elite and the nominee.

Modern conventions are supposed to be highly organised, tightly controlled displays of party unity. At the very least a successful Paul delegate strategy could shatter that prospect.

Ron Paul quietly amassing an army of delegates while GOP frontrunners spar | World news | guardian.co.uk

Will the GOP Ever Understand the Importance of Millennial Voters?

Submitted by Dave P. on Fri, 02/24/2012 - 08:01Ron Paul 2012

Here is an interesting analysis that compares, among other things, Obama's ground game before his win and The Ron Paul revolution. Are we on track and will the Grand Ol' Party ever get it? Or will the Grand Old Party become just "the old party."



YOU BETTER WAKE UP AMERICA OR PLAN ON LOOSING IT ALL

RINOS Sold Out The Second Amendment Again

Submitted by emalvini on Fri, 02/24/2012 - 12:58
Ron Paul 2012

Lone Star Watchdog
February 24, 2012

A Message Alert from Gun Owners of America

Last week, we alerted you to a radical anti-gun nominee President Obama named to the federal bench, Jesse Furman.

To no one’s surprise, Furman is cut from the same judicial cloth as other Obama nominees such as Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

For instance, in an article published a number of years ago—but from which Furman has not distanced himself—he writes that: “Probably the best explanation for the amount of violent crime in the United States is its fascination with guns.”

GOA members flooded the Senate with emails, and many Senators voted against Furman. But Majority Leader Harry Reid kept every single Democrat in lock-step with the Obama agenda, and Furman was confirmed to a lifetime appointment to the bench on a vote of 62-34.

Republicans Jon Kyl and John McCain (AZ), Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander (TN), Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe (ME), Jeff Sessions (AL), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Scott Brown (MA), and Lindsey Graham (SC) joined all Democrats in voting for Furman.

This vote serves to highlight the difficulty in protecting the courts from anti-Second Amendment nominees who come before the Congress. Obama will continue to nominate far left gun grabbers, and Harry Reid will be his go-to guy for confirmation votes.

And if Obama wins a second term, his agenda will become only more brazen. That’s why a top goal of GOA in 2012 is to help elect as many truly pro-gun friends as we can to the U.S. Senate.

It is crucial that Harry Reid does not retain the gavel next year. But it is not enough to just elect members of the opposing party. We need to elect strong candidates who understand the Constitution and who will not bow to pressure from the White House—whoever the occupant may be—or from the leadership of either party in the Congress.

http://www.infowars.com/rinos-sold-out-the-second-amendment-...

RINOS Sold Out The Second Amendment Again | Ron Paul 2012 | Peace . Gold . Liberty

Federal Aid Pushes Up College Tuition Rates (Drudge) - Where Have I Heard That Before?

Submitted by BetweenUnemployment on Fri, 02/24/2012 - 14:12Ron Paul 2012

...Oh, yeah, from Ron Paul.

http://www.smartmoney.com/spend/family-money/why-college-aid...

Federal Aid Pushes Up College Tuition Rates (Drudge) - Where Have I Heard That Before? | Ron Paul 2012 | Peace . Gold . Liberty

FEBRUARY 24, 2012, 9:26 A.M. ET

Why College Aid Makes College More Expensive

Hough: New research shows how federal spending on higher education can backfire.

By JACK HOUGH

Federal aid for students has increased 164% over the past decade, adjusted for inflation, according to the College Board. Yet three-quarters of Americans and even a majority of college presidents see college as unaffordable for most, and that sentiment has been steadily spreading, the Pew Research Center reports.

Two new studies offer clues on why. One measures the degree to which some colleges reduce their own aid in response to increased federal aid. The other suggests federal aid is helping to push college costs higher.

Recipients of federal Pell Grants have, by definition, limited means to pay for college, so they are likely to qualify for grants and price breaks given out by schools, too. But schools view a student's sources of federal aid before deciding how much to give on their own, rather than the other way around. The result is a crowding out effect, where some schools give less as the government gives more.

Lesley Turner, a PhD candidate at Columbia University, looked at data on aid from 1996 to 2008 and calculated that, on average, schools increased Pell Grant recipients' prices by $17 in response to every $100 of Pell Grant aid. More selective nonprofit schools' response was largest and these schools raised prices by $66 for every $100 of Pell Grant aid.

Aid from schools over the past decade has increased about half as fast as federal aid, according to the College Board.

Perhaps worse for students than a crowding out effect is the Bennett Effect, named for William Bennett, who 25 years ago as Secretary of Education wrote for the New York Times, "Increases in financial aid in recent years have enabled colleges and universities blithely to raise their tuitions."

If subsidies puff up buying power and shift prices higher, as economics courses teach, could federal aid for college help create an affordability problem? After all, the federal government began spending more on college aid with the Higher Education Act of 1965 and the full funding of Pell Grants in 1975. Since 1979, tuition and fees have tripled after adjusting for inflation. That's much faster than the increase for real estate and teacher pay.

There have been mixed findings on the Bennett Effect in recent decades, with some studies finding a dollar-for-dollar relationship and others, none at all. Determining why college costs are rising is a difficult task, after all. Stephanie Riegg Cellini of George Washington University and Claudia Golden of Harvard take a new approach, focusing on for-profit schools. Some of these are eligible to participate in so-called Title IV aid programs (named for a portion of the aforementioned Act) and some not.

After adjusting for differences among schools, the authors find that Title IV-eligible schools charge tuition that is 75% higher than the others. That's roughly equal to the amount of the aid received by students at these schools.

Studies like these suggest that if one goal of government is to make college affordable, aid should become more thoughtful instead of merely more plentiful. And the total cost of federal spending on college isn't fully known. That's because spending on loans dwarfs that on grants. Student loans recently eclipsed credit card debt.

With credit cards, borrowers pay high interest rates to make up for their lack of collateral. Many many student loans have subsidized rates; others have low rates based on the assumption that a college education is a good financial risk for lenders.

If costs outpace the ability of graduates to find jobs with good pay, and repayment rates on these loans slide, taxpayers could end up feeling the crunch.

Why College Aid Makes College More Expensive - SmartMoney.com