Candidates for President (mostly Ron Paul)

Of the current pool of candidates for presidential nominations, which one, Democrat, Republican, or otherwise do you think would make the best president, and why?

I used to be pretty apathetic about the entire affair until I did some research on Texas representative Ron Paul, who is running for the Republican nomination.

He's a libertarian and a strong constitutionalist who was one of the 7 Republicans that voted against the war in Iraq, and constantly harps on Congress's unwillingness to live up to the oath.

He's also got a flawless voting record:

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He has never voted to raise taxes.
He has never voted for an unbalanced budget.
He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership.
He has never voted to raise congressional pay.
He has never taken a government-paid junket.
He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.
He voted against the Patriot Act.
He voted against regulating the Internet.
He voted against the Iraq war.

(flawless of course, referring to his consistancy)

The key issues of his campaign are outlined here. Paul is for ending military adventurism, establishing a strong border and immigration reform, free trade (though he's often opposed "free trade agreements" such as the CAFTA), and scaling back the powers of the executive.

Paul is also notorious for his criticism of the Federal Reserve, and has campaigned for making the Reserve accountable to Congress, and to have its affairs open to the public. Paul describes his ideal system being a dual money system, with notes backed by gold and silver competing alongside fiat money.
(in reality this system makes fiat money practically worthless since it lacks backing and the use of gold as a base for currency makes its use for saving more profitable in the long term, but then this is exactly what Paul has described what such a system would cause)

There isn't a doubt in my mind that of all candidates for both parties, Ron Paul is the only man that should be president. I don't think this country can handle another statist asshole who lets congress get away with anything, abuses and expands executive powers, and fails to uphold the oath to protect the Constitution.

Here's some youtube videos and interviews:
Testifying on the Federal Reserve
On MSNBC's "Flying Under the Radar"
On Bill Maher
radio interview
On Fox News's "Because You Asked"

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The government doesn't have problems, the government is our problem. You might as well say that you don't solve cancer by removing it.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I couldn't edit the post last night because of a server hiccup, so before we get caught up in rhetoric, who is it exactly that you think would make the best president?

How ya doing, buddy?

Would you mind elaborating on that?

Also, there was an interesting article from Reason on John McCain's militarism. Basically the conclusion is that he's got an itchier trigger finger than Bush.

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from editor's note:

More disturbingly, the campaign finance “reform” that bears McCain’s name is a clear and present threat to free political expression, and the senator is unabashed about abridging the First Amendment. “I would rather have a clean government,” he recently told nationally syndicated radio host Don Imus, “than one…where ‘First Amendment rights’ are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice I’d rather have a clean government.” Far from the independent pol routinely celebrated by the mainstream media, Welch reveals, McCain is “an authoritarian maverick” with “a rigid sense of citizenship and a skeptical attitude toward individual choice” whose ideology has rarely been examined in depth by the journalists who love to quote him.

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I've also seen some arguments that Obama isn't really "black" because he's descended from African immigrants instead of African slaves, so he's not even guaranteed a "black vote."

I was speaking idiomatically.

Makes me feel better about Ron Paul.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

On the other hand, if Paul was elected president it would reflect a significant shift in public opinion. It's not like libertarianism would be a tremendous deal, but people would have to be seriously distrustful of the Federal government.

A congress that would consistantly override Paul's vetoes may not be able to sustain itself, and while the "political class" like Kennedy may be able to hold their seats the more liquid seats would be in danger of a shift.

I also don't think you've considered foreign policy much under Paul. While it's true that it's not so much in the hands of the presidency with interest groups, if we could go at least one presidential term without an act of military adventurism, I still think Paul is worth voting for.

FELIPE NO

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Besides, if Congress has to keep overriding presidential vetoes to get anything done, they'll take that message to their constituents.

That depends on what they're not getting done. If Paul continually vetoes worthless programs and unconstitutional legislation it'd be a hard sell to the people that would have likely voted Paul into office in the first place. Sure, you can marginalize people that are inclined to disagree with Paul, but we're assuming that he's been elected.

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What foreign policy? "Come home, America" is not a foreign policy

Yes, non-interventionism and free trade is a foreign policy.

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I said in my previous post that a Paul presidency would be at best a disappointment.

Every presidency this century has been a dissapointment. At least if Paul was President we'd have someone in office who would actually live up to the position.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Not really. Styphon is correct in that Libertarianism is a revolutionary ideology, but one that requires popular backing. "Getting Congress" wouldn't be a very libertarian thing to do, since using force to gain freedom has its own ethical problems (to libertarians).

I don't buy that a Ron Paul presidency would be a dissapointment to libertarians because he can't do everything he wants. No libertarian worth his salt would expect that a President Paul could live up to everything he'd like to, the point is that Paul is the superior alternative.

He's hardly the "perfect" candidate to begin with. The strong border policy is already a point of contention since a lot of libertarians want an open border.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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Observe the voters who voted for George W. Bush's re-election in 2004, and who either stayed home or voted for Democrats in 2006.

Didn't that voter disillusionment arise because people were dissatisfied with the current leadership? If that same leadership exists assuming Congress were to attempt to ride roughshod over a Paul presidency is it really going to be that easy? It'd depend in large part, I think, on how the Senate turns out after 2008.

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One can argue that this attitude of letting the rest of the world do as it pleased was ultimately counterproductive in that it contributed to the rise of militaristic expansion on the part of Germany, Italy, Japan, the Soviet Union and others.

On the other hand, our intervention in WW1 likely lead to the rise of the Nazis where the war may have ended in stalemate. The cause of the war is itself enough cause to avoid entangling alliances, and while allegiances may not be secret any longer, it's impossible to remain consistant in the third world and the end result causes more difficulties in the long-term.

While Pax Americana may provide immediate security for Western interests, it runs the risk of bankrupting the state as we overstretch the empire.

I would argue, though, that we should possess a strong navy in order to provide security for shipping lanes, and to act as a deterrent to overseas aggression concerning our trade partners. We did, after all, possess a strong navy in the interwar years despite the public disillusionment with the outside world.

I would argue that our geographic position is significant, as no country in the world is capable of the kind of force projection that we are, and while China is constructing its own Blue Water navy, it'd still have to compete with the USN and China itself is flimsier than it would have us believe. The Party constantly teeters on the edge attempting to end a popular revolt, and attempting to commit their own resources to threaten American interests would stretch them too far.

What can strike the United States over a long distance are ballistic missiles, yet we already possess the most significant nuclear deterrent on the planet.

As for the imports issue, America is most certainly self-sufficient in the sense that we can produce enough food to feed the country. While the standard of living may drop due to some foreign crisis, the danger of involving ourselves in a commitment we can't back out of is even more potentially damaging due to the loss of lives, materiel, and capital.

Assuming it was unimpeded, the market sustains itself, and in a situation where the global situation makes it harder to attain goods from abroad, market forces act to encourage self-sufficiency.

In the long-term, the most significant threat facing the United States is Islamism, but the ragheads can't just walk over here like they can into Europe. The inherent nature of Arab culture to cause infrastructure to atrophy, and their inability to maintain a powerful economy without oil money would keep a potential Caliphate from ever seriously threatening the United States.

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Not even allowing for the massive economic disruption that slashing the defense budget would cause,

Any disruption caused by a slashing of the defense budget would only be temporary, as the freed resources become allocated to more efficient uses. That is, of course, assuming that we're talking about the libertarian ideal where government is actually scaled back instead of a liberal ideal where the funds going into defence would be allocated to another inefficient government program.

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A U.S. withdrawal from East Asia, for instance, would remove the single biggest impediment to China finally retaking Taiwan (and, in the process, gaining control over the source of a significant percentage of the electronics we buy).

I agree, however there is no good reason to maintain a presence in Europe and South Korea. The maintenance of bases and personnel there act as a moneysink, as no European nation is under threat of communist invasion, and the South Koreans are more than capable of demolishing any North Korean aggression on their own.

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Considering that there's only been one presidency this century, this really saying too much.

100 years, you know what I mean.

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his, though, would compell his libertarian base to turn on him, like revolutionaries frequently do to apostates, and end with their disappointment.

Any libertarian who would lose faith in Paul for making compromises in order to further certain libertarian agendas is already likely to refuse to participate in our political institutions to begin with. Paul is certainly no Anarcho-Capitalist, and political libertarians are already consigned to the fact that they have to compromise in order to affect their agenda.

Realistically, I see Paul being more of an abject constitutionalist than an abject libertarian, which is good enough.

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Of course, in a below point you talk about trade being unimpeded, and that we should be prepared to use force to protect shipping lanes and trade. German disruption of trade via its submarine campaign would have in turn compelled military intervention anyway.

Possibly. However, the big thing, the sinking of the Lusitania was spurred on because arms were being shipped on a passenger liner.

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By entangling alliances, do you mean that, or do you mean alliances period, because they're not the same thing, and too many isolationists act as if they were.

Entangling, and I'm no isolationist.

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Further, the rise in international travel increases the risk of danger coming in undetected via that route. As much as we can all mock Homeland Security, terrorism is still a real danger, and a viable way to strike at the United States.

As it always shall be, which is probably why Paul is proposing secure borders. While Afghanistan put the hurt on Al Qaeda, it's become forgotten due to Iraq, which if anything has aided terrorism more than anything we've done in the past. Our borders have been notoriously porous, and there's nothing to suggest that any amount of interventionism has made us safer in regards to terrorist threats.

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As long as we need oil, and can't supply all that we need ourselves (which we haven't been able to do for a long time), we will not be economically self-sufficient and it will force us to invest resources (of one kind or another) in securing supplies of oil.

On the contrary, we've been capable of supplying ourselves with oil for quite a while. "Environmental" groups impede drilling in Alaska, we have shale oil to extract, and the recent discovery of a massive oil deposit in the Gulf about 138 miles off the coast of Louisiana. Oil would certainly be more expensive because of fuel demands, but that then makes alternatives such as electric batteries viable as fuel for automobiles. There may still be a demand for diesel, but with cheap energy provided through nuclear power (assuming we followed this through properly) that could also be replaced with biodiesel.

When fuel demands are removed, the billions of barrels of oil that we have both in reserve, and unextracted can be focused on meeting the demands for synthetic products such as plastics. At some point when oil begins to become uneconomic for even that, then drives to produce synthetic oil for industrial purposes becomes economical.

We're perfectly capable of being energy independent, and oil independent. The only problem are special and corporate interests.

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These three are the giants of the American aerospace industry, and all are dependent on Defense Department contracts for the majority of their revenue. Any major cut in defense spending would hurt companies like them immensely, forcing them to layoff thousands of their employees.

Who aren't chronically unemployed. Layed off workers have expertise and experience that is marketable in other fields, this scenario of massive economic disruption would be more of a headache than the cause of a massive recession.

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It would also result in the effective end of the American aerospace industry.

Or, companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup could merge and pool their resources in order to remain competitive in the commercial market.

As for Northrup Grumman's toy boats, the loss of revenue from aerospace contracts would effect their shipbuilding if such affairs aren't cost-effective to begin with, which is practically impossible since they are payed through government contract.

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As both Europe and South Korea are major trading partners of the United States, it could be argued that it is in our interests to make sure of their security.

Which we don't need to do. Both regions are perfectly capable of defending themselves. South Korea is also a significant trade partner with China. Whatever amount they have to fear, it is very little, yet even in the case of Chinese aggression a war with South Korea would be far too costly.

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Why do you hurt Silent Cal's feelings?

He knows what he did. Just look at him. He knows.

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This may also be why Paul isn't even bothering with them this time.

He hasn't bothered with them since 1988 when he ran on the Libertarian ticket for president.

I think we're both making a mistake assuming that Libertarians make up a large part of Paul's base to begin with. What does his constituency in Texas look like?

How ya doing, buddy?

You sort of live out in the middle of the desert, buddy. Weren't you saying similar things about New Orleans?

Local economies are going to be impacted, sure, but people move on and get over it. It's also not as if any kind of military budget cut couldn't be prepared for.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Any amount of work experience is somewhat marketable, and working in the Defense industry is going to look good on any resume. When an industry fails people have to re-tool themselves to work in another industry, it happens all the time, and the market isn't lacking for wont of labor. If that means that they have to accept lower pay in another field, well that's the way the cookie crumbles, and there's no particular reason that I or consumers in general should care about DOD workers when things like this happen all the time in the private sector.

Business should never be a charity, businesses should exist to achieve maximum efficiency in order to deliver the product or service most wanted by the marketplace in the best possible manner. Most people that get laid-off should be so lucky to get a heads-up like the workers in a hypothetical defense budget cut.

Also, I couldn't give a flying fuck what happens to Tucson. There's no good reason my tax dollars can be funnelled out into the desert for some feel-good bullshit that basically amounts to a waste of taxpayer wealth. Towns die and cities die. People have legs, they get over it.

Edit: Ultimately what I find hardest to swallow is that these jobs somehow deserve to exist more than others. The money spent by defense workers is only a small funnelling back of what is on the whole lost to the economy, and if much of that financing isn't from taxes, then the situation is even worse.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Nobody starts a war to end a recession. Wars damage economies far more than recessions could ever hope to do, and the same principle applies to capital markets. The stock market takes a dive? Really? You honestly expect me to believe that the amount of capital investment from Defense workers and those that service them is enough to send the markets spinning off into a capital crisis? There are far more investors outside of that sphere, with far more capital.

So, basically what you're saying is that Eisenhower was right. Our economy is being held hostage by a military/industrial complex and you don't want to get us out of it because you're afraid of unemployment.

Do you have any understanding of the amount of job creation all of that capital moving in the private sector will create?

You're also not being particularly realistic here. Any amount of budget cuts for the DOD are going to be gradual so that the injection of unemployed into the economy isn't more than it can bear. It's not as if anybody (particularly Ron Paul) is seriously proposing that we liquidate the DOD overnight and leave millions unemployed all at once. It's a gradual change.

And yes, I couldn't give a fuck about any of the cities that rely on defense spending. They're relying on taxpayer money that nobody has consented for their use. It would be far more efficient and beneficial for everybody if that money was being put to the most efficient consumer-driven use, and that people moved to where the money should be naturally.

I know plenty of the places that rely on the DOD. We've got a town here in southern Oklahoma located right next to an airforce base. It'd certainly be destroyed if there was a base closure, but that town, like so many others, is just a small part of this state, and its people and capital can easily be absorbed by cities like OKC and Tulsa that have commercial industries.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Forced industrialization and the production of war materials doesn't actually help the economy, though. The government also attempted to ration consumables due to scarcities brought on by the war effort, so the end result encouraged massive saving which caused the boom in consumtion following the war.

When a tank blows up you've lost all of the money and labour put into that tank. When a man blows up you've lost all of his potential labour and the wealth he could have created. While the survivors may benefit presuming that a war doesn't destroy the infrastructure (as was the case for us in both world wars), on the net the war effort causes a loss to the economy in terms of men, capital, and materiel. Any amount of industrialization is essentially "busy work" and doesn't reflect any real creation of wealth. It's the same reason the GDP is an unreliable measure of the economy because it measures all transactions instead of production.

The other problem with wars is that they destroy sound money, and generate severe debt and inflation. WW1 devalued gold in the United States, and Roosevelt finished it off by confiscating all of it in the 30's. When government prints money, the inflation of the money supply causes a general inflation of prices, and it's this newly printed money combined with the sale of bonds that finances wars. The problem with this is that the newly printed money is considered legal tender for the current value, so while those at the front receive the full benefit of the dollar (industrialists, bankers, etc.,) over the course of years the general prices will rise to reflect the overabundance of money, while in the meantime real assets were purchased and produced by those immediately receiving the new money. This is what causes "boom" and "bust" cycles, and from a commercial standpoint, the 2nd World War was a 4 year-long bust.

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Well, not taxing the unemployed helps no one.

duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Who do you think pay taxes?

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The people who have jobs outside defense would likely store their extra take-home pay (due to the failing economy) or buy goods which still would be made in China, since the CEO's of major corporations don't give a fuck if GI Joe has a job or not.

And while those goods may be made in China, they reflect capital gains for the company which owns, sells, and distributes them, causing manufacturing to increase on the Chinese end, and service to increase on ours. Those capital gains are then re-invested into either businesses, or the market, which cause job creations on the net.

Imports are payed for with exports, and while the chief export of the United States may be the dollar, it's more beneficial for foreign holders of the dollar to re-invest them in American assets.

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People consented for the taxpayer use of defense spending through elections.

Which is wrong. People do not consent to what their tax dollars are used for by virtue of taxation. Taxation is a forced extraction, and one through which no consent is offered. Funding isn't just distributed by elected officials, either, and funding decisions may be made without any real input from a constituency.

People do not have any real say in how their tax dollars are used. You're also ignoring the people who do not participate in elections, of which we have a massive amount.

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But, while getting rid of defense spending may be ideal, it is also lunacy.

You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. The economic impact will be serious, but on the whole (in the long run) this country and its economy would be better for it.

FELIPE NO

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All the money that was paid to the workers who worked on the tank goes back into the economy. If those people don't have good jobs, then they don't have good money to spend.

I'd argue, though, that the amount of wealth lost on the production of the tank is far more than what was being payed to the worker in the first place. Wealth that could've been used to produce a product that yielded actual utility to consumers.

This also doesn't account for modern weapons, such as ballistic missiles (consumables). Tomahawks cost half a million dollars. If somebody actually owned the Tomahawk instead of it being merely possessed by the military, the incentive to use it is drastically decreased. The reason we have wars by and large is because politicians only have to excercise temporary control over military assets.

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It's not wrong. If people didn't want to be taxed, they could vote for people who would stop taxing them. If they wanted their taxes to go to different programs, they could elect different people to handle the budget. It's a fairly simple concept.

And what then when the people they vote for don't win? Or if the people they've elected to represent them are out-voted in a legislature and can't enact the agenda of their constituencies?

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You're talking about making an omelet by burning the house down

BS. When the amount of capital stolen for use in Defense spending is instead used in commerce there'll be more houses.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by BlueMikey

So, are all these threads you make just sour grapes because you're in the minority?

I mean, now what are you saying, that we shouldn't use a Democratic parliamentary system because the guys you like aren't agreed with by enough people to be involved?

Well, in regards to Libertarians specifically the laws in this country are already slanted against any third-party involvement. Calling our government parliamentary is laughable.

Nevermind either that in any given election there's always a minority, sometimes barely so (and in some cases there are minority governments).

You're also not considering the quality of candidates in any given election. Participants may be encouraged to vote for one candidate who will do things they don't like because they consider the other candidate to be even worse. You can make a flimsy claim that in this case they consent to all the bad policies because they elected the particular official, but that's sort of like saying it's ok to let yourself be raped so that people don't take your children.

There is no real factor of consent on the voter and taxpayer level in regards to how taxes are distributed.

Consider also, "secret programs." How can taxpayers consent to initiatives they don't know about?

Jam it back in, in the dark.