Reality Check: No Bound Delegates?

Forget the Nomination: The Ron Paul Revolution Is Taking Over the GOP

by W.E. Messamore

What little commentary we’ve seen from the media on Ron Paul’s silent coup presently underway in the Republican Party has focused mostly on its implications for the 2012 Republican Primary and whether Paul can hold back Romney’s delegate count just long enough to ensure a brokered convention, which is the only feasible scenario in which Paul could emerge as the party’s nominee.

But perhaps more important and far-reaching in its implications for the future of national politics in the US, is not Ron Paul’s delegate count, but the fact that his supporters are successfully taking over the Republican Party district by district, county by county, state by state. That the fiercely independent Republican congressman from Texas might still have a tiny chance at winning his party’s nomination, while interesting, is less important than what he will most certainly have succeeded at doing: Ron Paul has built a political machine.

Judging by recent events in state and local GOP conventions across the country, it may not be at all presumptuous for Ron Paul’s supporters to call their burgeoning movement a revolution.

Read the rest of the article HERE!

Education: Whose Responsibility?

What is education?  What should it accomplish?  What role do parents play in the education of their children?  What role should the government play in education?  All these questions and more were addressed in my interview with Phil Routszong, host of “Milk the Crisis” Radio!

Click HERE to listen!

 

End the TSA

The Real Costs of War

by Dr. Ron Paul

To listen to this broadcast by Ron Paul, click HERE!

This month Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki announced the addition of some 1,900 mental health nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to its existing workforce of 20,590 mental health staff in attempt to get a handle on the epidemic of suicides among combat veterans. Unfortunately, when presidents misuse our military on an unprecedented scale – and Congress lets them get away with it – the resulting stress causes military suicides to increase dramatically, both among active duty and retired service members. In fact, military deaths from suicide far outnumber combat deaths. According to an article in the Air Force Times this month, suicides among airmen are up 40 percent over last year.

Considering the multiple deployments service members are forced to endure as the war in Afghanistan stretches into its second decade, these figures are sadly unsurprising.

Ironically, the same VA Secretary Eric Shinseki was forced to retire from the Army by President Bush for daring to suggest that an invasion and occupation of Iraq would not be the cakewalk that neoconservatives promised. Then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, who is not a military veteran, claimed that General Shinseki was “wildly off the mark” for suggesting that several hundred thousand soldiers would be required to secure post-invasion Iraq. Now we see who was right on the costs of war.

In addition to the hidden human costs of our seemingly endless wars are the economic costs. In 2008, Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. Stiglitz illustrates that taking into account the total costs of the war, including replacing military equipment and caring for thousands of wounded veterans for the rest of their lives, the Iraq war will cost us orders of magnitude greater than the 50 billion dollars promised by the White House before the invasion. Add all the costs of Afghanistan into the mix, wrote Stiglitz, and the bill tops $7 trillion.

Is it any wonder why our infrastructure at home crumbles, healthcare is more expensive and harder to come by, and unemployment together with inflation continue their steady rise? Imagine the productive power of that seven trillion dollars in our private sector. What could it have done were it in private hands; what may have been discovered, what diseases might have been cured, what might have been built, how many productive jobs created?

With the bills coming due for our decade of reckless military action, the cuts rarely come from the well-connected military industrial complex with their lobbyists and powerful political allies. In President Obama’s 2013 budget, troop strength is to be cut significantly while enormously expensive and largely superfluous weapons systems emerge essentially unscathed. As defense analyst Winslow Wheeler wrote this month, costs of the “next generation” fighter, the F-35, will increase by another $289 million. This despite the fact that the fighter is badly designed and already outdated, a “virtual flying piano” writes Wheeler.

The military contractors building monstrosities like the F-35 are politically connected and thus protected. Unfortunately, returning military veterans are less so. In the same 2013 budget, the White House proposes to increase medical and pharmaceutical costs paid by veterans while reducing their cost of living increases. And how many years of increasingly alarming mental illness and suicide statistics has it taken for the modest increase in resources to be made available?

Those who predicted the real costs of our decade of global military conquest were ridiculed, scoffed at, and fired. History has now shown us that much of what they warned was correct. America is clearly less secure after a decade of unnecessary wars. It is more vulnerable and closer to economic collapse. Its military is nearly broken from years of abuse. Will we come back to our senses?

The Extinction of Private Property: On Marx, Democrats, & Republicans

“In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” – Karl Marx

Every year local governments determine a budget, tax percentages, send out their own property appraisers, determine the value of your own property, and bill you for the money you “owe” them.  If you do not pay the amount they designated, as determined by a government appraiser, for a budget they determined, you can lose “your property.”

Every year, governments determine automobile tax values and mail out a bill for you to pay.  Separate from the tags, license, registration, and inspection fees, the vehicle tax is assessed simply because you have the car.  Separate from a car payment and initial purchase tax, the vehicle tax is ongoing regardless of whether the car is paid for.  If you do not pay the amount designated by the government, you can lose “your car.”

Every year, both state and federal governments require a reporting of all that you earned throughout the year.  Having established both the tax rates and all acceptable exemptions and allowances themselves, you are required to pay roughly one-third (in many cases, much more) of your income to the government.  Separate from property and car taxes, the income tax comes right off the top of your paycheck.  If you do not pay the amount they designated, you can lose “your income” and, coming soon, perhaps your passport.

Ah, the American Dream – to own a home and a car, to have a happy family and successful career, and even the prospect of retirement!  Maybe not.  In reality, the problem in America is not that so many cannot afford to own their own homes or cars; it is that the government has made it impossible to own homes or cars.  No one can.  Government taxation of private property guarantees its abolition in the truest sense.  If the government, whether local, state, or federal, has the power to confiscate private property for lack of payment to them, private property does not exist.

Essentially, every American is reduced to renting property from the government, with no hope of ever owning it themselves.  The Constitution proceeds on the assumption of private property:

• 3^rd Amendment – “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”
• 4^th Amendment – “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
• 5^th Amendment – “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

All three of the above Amendments proceed on the foundation of private property ownership.  Private property is protected against intrusion by the military, by law enforcement, and even by government seizure.  Why?  Because it does not belong to the government, but to the citizen; to the “Owner.”

In a free society, property and property rights are protected, as granted in the Constitution.  In tyranny, however, the rights of citizens and their property are subjugated to the whims of government.

Karl Marx, the father of Communism, enumerated the goals for Communist takeover in a nation.  He lists ten steps in his infamous Manifesto, the first three being:

1. “Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.”
2. “A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.”
3. “Abolition of all right of inheritance.”

Strangely, most Americans simply bicker about Democrats and Republicans, Left vs. Right, Conservative vs. Liberal, failing to realize what should be obvious by now: it is the State vs. the People.  Our rights – private property high among them – are not being destroyed by Democrats or Republicans, but by Democrats and Republicans.

What Has Happened to America?