Eric Cantor (R-VA) is Proud to Stand Up for Conservative Values Like Corruption. Be a Patriot Tell Congress to Impeach Eric Cantor (R-VA)

Eric Cantor (R-VA) is Proud to Stand Up for Conservative Values Like Corruption. Be a Patriot Tell Congress to Impeach Eric Cantor (R-VA)

During his State of the Union address, President Obama said “send me a bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress; I will sign it tomorrow. Let’s limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact.” The remark stemmed from a 60 Minutes investigation showing that House Financial Services Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-AL) profited from information he received in private briefings during the economic crisis of 2008.

The Senate, in a rare display of bipartisanship, opened debate on an insider trading ban by a vote of 93-2. However, the bill has since become bogged down under a sea of unrelated amendments.

Over in the House, meanwhile, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) — who reportedly blocked Bachus from bringing up a ban on congressional insider trading in committee — wants to expand the legislation to include bans on other sorts of transactions, such as land deals. UCLA Law Prof. Stephen Bainbridge notes that this is likely an attempt by Cantor to kill the bill by making it so overly broad that no one will vote for it:

    [Cantor's] now trying to extend the STOCK Act “so it includes land deals and other types of transactions and not just stock trades.” Classic taking a good idea too far. The problem is insider trading in stocks, not insider trading in land deals. Cantor obviously hopes that including a vast array of economic activity within the bill, exposing members of Congress to disclosure obligations and other restrictions, as well as increasing their liability exposure, will make the bill sufficiently unpopular so as to prevent its passage.

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act has picked up 273 co-sponsors, after languishing for months with nearly no interest.

Like many conservatives Cantor thinks he is clever and real Americans are idiots. He might be partially right. Cantor campaigned on doing the right and moral things for the USA. So far all he has done is block economic progress to make President Obama look bad and to keep Washington in the hands of special interests. Maybe Cantor is delusional, imagining himself Rush Limbaugh's hand maiden.

How anti-tax zealots fail to see the connection between reasonable taxes and the overall health of society

How anti-tax zealots fail to see the connection between reasonable taxes and the overall health of society

TAXES and regulation will occupy center stage in the presidential contest.

One debate, for example, will focus on whether tax cuts for the wealthiest families should expire as scheduled at year-end — an issue that could gain traction now that Mitt Romney, the possible Republican nominee, has disclosed that he and his wife paid an effective federal rate of just 13.9 percent on their huge 2010 income. And on the regulation side, there will be attempts to repeal rules like the recently adopted Environmental Protection Agency standards that limit highly toxic mercury emissions.

Surveys indicate that most voters now favor higher taxes on the rich. But many wealthy people are determined to hang on to their tax cuts, and because recent changes in campaign finance law have greatly increased their political leverage, they may prevail. If so, however, it could prove a hollow victory.

Beyond some point, there seems to be little gain in satisfaction from bolstering your private spending. When mansions grow to 15,000 square feet from 10,000, for instance, the primary effect is merely to raise the bar that defines an adequate home among the superwealthy.

By contrast, higher spending on many forms of public consumption would produce clear gains in satisfaction for the wealthy. It’s reasonable to assume, for example, that driving on well-maintained roads is safer and less stressful than driving on pothole-ridden ones.

But that raises an obvious question: If wealthy taxpayers would be happier to drive slightly less expensive vehicles on better roads, why are so many of them vehemently opposed to the higher taxes needed for improved infrastructure?

One possible explanation is that they suffer from a simple cognitive illusion when they think about how higher taxes would affect them.

If you pay higher taxes, you obviously have less money to spend on what you want. So the prospect of a tax increase naturally inclines people to think that they’ll be less able to satisfy their desires.

But once incomes rise beyond a modest absolute threshold, many of the things that people want are what economists call positional goods. These may be things that are inherently in short supply, like gorgeous waterfront property; or things whose value depends heavily on context, like precious stones or sure-footed sports cars. Because positional goods are in short supply, they go to the highest bidders. The tendency to overlook that fact distorts how people think about the effects of higher taxes.

The cognitive illusion occurs because most financial setbacks that people experience in life stem from events that affect them alone. They may suffer health emergencies, for instance, or problems at work. Marriages may fail, jewelry may be stolen, and floods may damage homes. In each case, the effect is to limit the ability to bid for positional goods.

Because an overwhelming majority of financial setbacks occur for such idiosyncratic reasons, it’s natural to think that the income decline from higher taxes would have similar effects. But a tax increase is different. It affects all participants in the bidding for positional goods. And because it leaves everyone with less to spend, it has essentially no effect on the outcomes of those contests. The same paintings and the same marina slips end up in the same hands as before.

Context shapes demand not just for the wealthy, but also for consumers further down the income scale. As Adam Smith observed more than two centuries ago, for example, a linen shirt is not, strictly speaking, a necessity of life. The wealthiest ancient Greeks, for example, lived satisfying lives without any linen at all. But Smith noted that in 18th-century Scotland, even the lowliest laborer couldn’t appear in public without shame unless he owned a linen shirt, “the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty, which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct.”

If what people feel they need depends on what others spend, the same cognitive illusion that affects wealthy Americans’ attitudes toward taxes creates a more general bias against government. Opponents of workplace safety regulation, for example, often denounce the lower wages made necessary by its cost. For families already struggling to make ends meet, that objection resonates.

But safety regulation requires an across-the-board decline in wages, which is much less painful than one that occurs in isolation. Once absolute incomes exceed a certain threshold, lower wages are easily tolerated when they don’t entail relative disadvantage. Additional safety, bought collectively, entails a less onerous sacrifice than it does when an individual buys it for himself.

The tax and regulatory issues in the coming election are clearly important. Millions of workers will retire over the next two decades, so spending cuts alone can’t eliminate deficits. We need additional revenue, too. And as population density increases, we can’t prevent dangerous environmental spillovers without intelligent regulation.

It would be one thing if lobbying against taxes and regulation brought wealthy Americans a world more to their liking. But if their goal is to buy a home with a more spectacular view, for example, they will be disappointed. There are only so many such homes to go around, and they’ll be bought by the very same people as before, since everyone will be bidding more.

So when the anti-tax wealthy make campaign contributions, they are buying only the deeper potholes and dirtier air that inevitably result when tax revenue is low. (reprinted here for educational purposes)

** People that hate taxes generally have an anti-American agenda. 1. They want a free ride( anti-tax conservatives like Grover Norquist for instance, formerly a far left socialist is a leech on society 2. They want all the infrastructure taxes pay for but do not want to pay their sahre. 3. They say if you want to pay higher taxes go ahead. Though they will continue to use what other tax payers paid for. 4. Right-wing conservative Republicans do not see the connection betwen paying for things like basic science resrch, their own health and the economic opportunites created by that research. 5. Low taxes equals poor education. No society in the history of the world has maintained its technological or economic edge by letting its public primary education and university system fall behind other nations. Another reason to say without doubt that anti-taxers are anti-America.

Is it 2012 or 1968. You Can Hardly Tell By The Conservative Republican Candidates and Their Race Baiting

Is it 2012 or 1968. You Can Hardly Tell By The Conservative Republican Candidates and Their Race Baiting

It’s commonplace to note that Newt Gingrich’s dog-whistle appellation that Barack Obama is the “food stamp president” is both racist and politically cynical. But the stereotyping of black government dependency also serves the strategic end of discrediting the entire social safety net, which most Americans of all races depend on. Black people are subtly demonized, but whites and blacks alike will suffer.

Gingrich persists because it’s a dependable applause line, and because his political fortunes keep rising. Compare that to September, when Mitt Romney attacked then-candidate Rick Perry for calling Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.” Perry backtracked, insisting that he only wanted to bolster the program and ensure its solvency. But in his 2010 book “Fed Up,” Perry made his opposition to Social Security clear, calling it “a crumbling monument to the failure of the New Deal.” Scrapping entitlements is a core tenet of contemporary fiscal conservatism, but most of the time politicians only get away with attacking the most vulnerable ones: Medicaid, food stamps and welfare cash assistance, which are means-tested and thus associated with the black (read: undeserving) poor, although whites make up a far greater share of food stamp recipients. Government welfare programs with Teflon political defenses — Medicare and Social Security — are nearly universal entitlements and thus associated with “regular” (read: white) Americans.

“Ending welfare as we know it,” as Bill Clinton and congressional Republicans did in 1996, is one thing. “Ending Medicare,” Republicans were last year reminded, is something else altogether. “Keep your government hands off my Medicare,” declared a 2009 Tea Party town hall attendee who today might very well be an ardent supporter of Gingrich’s assault on food stamps. It is a political lesson that free-market fundamentalists have to relearn with some frequency. It was only 2005,  after all, when President George W. Bush launched his ill-fated proposal to privatize Social Security — a setback he later called his greatest failure.

Yet as more government programs of any sort are framed as pernicious, laissez-faire ideologues are again emboldened to get rid of everything.

As recently as November 2009, the New York Times reported that stigma around food stamps had faded; the program received strong bipartisan support as millions of newly impoverished Americans reached out for food assistance. But temporarily cautious politicians had only stashed the old playbook on the top shelf, and the revival of welfare queen demagoguery made for quick political results. Nationwide, state legislatures are moving to impose drug testing of welfare, and even unemployment insurance, recipients.

“If you go apply for a job today, you are generally going to be drug-tested,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott said in October 2010. “The people that are working are paying the taxes for people on welfare. Shouldn’t the welfare people be held to the same standard?”

And and then came the push for cuts. Few noticed in April  2011 when House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., proposed cutting $127 billion from the food stamp program. The same went for the proposed dismantling of Medicaid, the healthcare entitlement for the nation’s poorest, which would be transformed into a block grant to the states with no coverage requirements.  Everyone was focused on Ryan’s audacious proposal to privatize Medicare, and conservative pundits were eager to sink the popular entitlement under the banner of pragmatic fiscal seriousness. “The Ryan budget,” David Brooks wrote at the time, “will put all future arguments in the proper context: The current welfare state is simply unsustainable and anybody who is serious, on left or right, has to have a new vision of the social contract.”

Republicans quickly backtracked. But the effort to dismantle the “poor black people” entitlements continues unabated. In Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Corbett this month announced that people under 60 with more than $2,000 in savings or other assets — cars and homes generally excluded, savings very much included — will be barred from receiving food stamps. The move elicited widespread criticism from anti-hunger advocates but little concerted political resistance. Corbett’s administration also cut 88,000 Pennsylvania children from Medicaid.

But politicians have more trouble getting away with criticism of less stigmatized benefits. Corbett suggested on the campaign trail that “The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment, people are just going to sit there.” Democrats pounced and he rushed to issue a clarification, though a  conservative think tank eagerly backed up his original position.

Unemployment benefits, however, are on the political cusp: Once somewhat invincible like Social Security and Medicare, some states have made cuts amid the campaign of stigmatization.  In South Carolina, state-funded jobless benefits were reduced from 26 to 20 weeks. Republican state Sen. Kevin Bryant blogged, “I’m disappointed that we have a significant segment of our society leeching [off] the system.” Arkansas, Missouri, Michigan and Florida have also reduced benefits. Yet it was just two months ago that Republicans suffered their greatest embarrassment of 2011 after nearly blocking the extension of unemployment benefits.

Welfare was “reformed” in 1996 because politicians, and many white Americans, were convinced  the program’s beneficiaries weren’t meritorious. Indeed, the entire history of  the American safety net is one of programs losing popularity as they are associated with poor black people. Initially blacks were largely excluded from New Deal welfare. It was when the War on Poverty broke down racial barriers that white public opinion turned against it. “Increasingly associated with Black mothers already stereotyped as lazy, irresponsible, and overly fertile,” writes Northwestern School of Law’s Dorothy Roberts, “it became increasingly burdened with behavior modification, work requirements, and reduced effective benefit levels.”

The same was true for public housing, which once received broad-based support. But in the 1950s, whites moved to segregated suburbs and blacks were left behind, and the projects became unpopular and underfunded. Housing benefits for upper-income Americans, like the mortgage interest rate deduction, are not, to be sure, subject to such negative stereotypes, and neither are the billions in federal and state dollars that have been spent on highways and federally subsidized mortgages for disproportionately white homeowners.

Or take public schools. If all of our children, black and white, rich and poor, were in one big system, that system would get ample support. But since many poorer students of color are segregated into separate, unequal and low-performing districts, policy solutions like charters and an obsession over standardized testing that would never pass muster in a wealthy district are advocated as pragmatic solutions.

Count yourself lucky that rich people still (for the meantime) breathe the same air as everyone else.

Rick Santorum has declared, “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” (He now says that he said “blah” people.) On Social Security, Santorum is making what appears to be a safe argument for reform: cutting rich people out of the program. Right now, Social Security belongs to everyone. Cutting rich people out is the first step to making it a program for the poor. Making something a program for the poor — see food stamps, Medicaid and welfare — is the first step toward eliminating it. While crazy Newt Gingrich talks about black people and food stamps, Mitt Romney (whom Brooks, of course, calls “serious”) resurrects a big idea: privatize  Medicare. That, of course, is why conservatives so fear single-payer universal healthcare: They know that once we got it, we would never let them take it away.

If some whites reap some cold comfort from Gingrich’s performance, the racial hostility on display comes at a much higher cost to the American people as a whole. We have long since traded the possibility of a decent society for fear and resentment. So watch out for the next attack on “the food stamp president.” The entitlement they end might be your own.


*Conservatives keep saying - in the middle of the second worse recession in our history, of which they caused - that since markets are perfect all Americans have to do is get off their lazy arses and get a job, we don't need a safety net with programs like Medicare and unemployment insurance. In other words do not believe what you see, do not believe reality, believe what conservative propagandists tell you to believe.

Modern Conservatism Has Become So Anti-American They Would Not Elect Founding Fathers

Modern Conservatism Has Become So Anti-American They Would Not Elect Founding Fathers

To hear the Religious Right tell it, men like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were 18th-century versions of Jerry Falwell in powdered wigs and stockings. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Unlike many of today’s candidates, the founders didn’t find it necessary to constantly wear religion on their sleeves. They considered faith a private affair. Contrast them to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (who says he wouldn’t vote for an atheist for president because non-believers lack the proper moral grounding to guide the American ship of state), Texas Gov. Rick Perry (who hosted a prayer rally and issued an infamous ad accusing President Barack Obama of waging a “war on religion”) and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum (whose uber-Catholicism leads him to oppose not just abortion but birth control).

There was a time when Americans voted for candidates who were skeptical of core concepts of Christianity like the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus and the virgin birth. The question is, could any of them get elected today? The sad answer is probably not.

Here are five founding fathers whose views on religion would most likely doom them to defeat today:

1. George Washington. The father of our country was nominally an Anglican but seemed more at home with Deism. The language of the Deists sounds odd to today’s ears because it’s a theological system of thought that has fallen out of favor. Desists believed in God but didn’t necessarily see him as active in human affairs. The god of the Deists was a god of first cause. He set things in motion and then stepped back.

Washington often employed Deistic terms. His god was a “supreme architect” of the universe. Washington saw religion as necessary for good moral behavior but didn’t necessarily accept all Christian dogma. He seemed to have a special gripe against communion and would usually leave services before it was offered.

Washington was widely tolerant of other beliefs. He is the author of one of the great classics of religious liberty – the letter to Touro Synagogue (1790). In this letter, Washington assured America’s Jews that they would enjoy complete religious liberty in America; not mere toleration in an officially “Christian” nation. He outlines a vision of a multi-faith society where all are free.

“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation,” wrote Washington. “All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.”

Stories of Washington’s deep religiosity, such as tales of him praying in the snow at Valley Forge, can be ignored. They are pious legends invented after his death.

2. John Adams. The man who followed Washington in office was a Unitarian, although he was raised a Congregationalist and never officially left that church. Adams rejected belief in the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, core concepts of Christian dogma. In his personal writings, Adams makes it clear that he considered some Christian dogma to be incomprehensible.

In February 1756, Adams wrote in his diary about a discussion he had had with a man named Major Greene. Greene was a devout Christian who sought to persuade Adams to adopt conservative Christian views. The two argued over the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity. Questioned on the matter of Jesus’ divinity, Greene fell back on an old standby: some matters of theology are too complex and mysterious for we puny humans to understand.

Adams was not impressed. In his diary he wrote, “Thus mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity.”

As president, Adams signed the famous Treaty of Tripoli, which boldly stated, “[T]he government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion….”

3. Thomas Jefferson. It’s almost impossible to define Jefferson’s subtle religious views in a few words. As he once put it, “I am a sect by myself, as far as I know.” But one thing is clear: His skepticism of traditional Christianity is well established. Our third president did not believe in the Trinity, the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, the resurrection, original sin and other core Christian doctrines. He was hostile to many conservative Christian clerics, whom he believed had perverted the teachings of that faith.

Jefferson once famously observed to Adams, “And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

Although not an orthodox Christian, Jefferson admired Jesus as a moral teacher. In one of his most unusual acts, Jefferson edited the New Testament, cutting away the stories of miracles and divinity and leaving behind a very human Jesus, whose teachings Jefferson found “sublime.” This “Jefferson Bible” is a remarkable document – and it would ensure his political defeat today. (Imagine the TV commercials the Religious Right would run: Thomas Jefferson hates Jesus! He mutilates Bibles!)

Jefferson was confident that a coolly rational form of religion would take root in the fertile intellectual soil of America. He once predicted that just about everyone would become Unitarian. (Despite his many talents, the man was no prophet.)

Jefferson took political stands that would infuriate today’s Religious Right and ensure that they would work to defeat him. He refused to issue proclamations calling for days of prayer and fasting, saying that such religious duties were no part of the chief executive’s job. His assertion that the First Amendment erects a “wall of separation between church and state” still rankles the Religious Right today.

4. James Madison. Jefferson’s close ally would be similarly unelectable today. Madison is perhaps the most enigmatic of all the founders when it comes to religion. To this day, scholars still debate his religious views.

Nominally Anglican, Madison, some of his biographers believe, was really a Deist. He went through a period of enthusiasm for Christianity as a young man, but this seems to have faded. Unlike many of today’s politicians, who eagerly wear religion on their sleeves and brag about the ways their faith will guide their policy decisions, Madison was notoriously reluctant to talk publicly about his religious beliefs.

Madison was perhaps the strictest church-state separationist among the founders, taking stands that make the ACLU look like a bunch of pikers. He opposed government-paid chaplains in Congress and in the military. As president, Madison rejected a proposed census because it involved counting people by profession. For the government to count the clergy, Madison said, would violate the First Amendment.

Madison, who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, also opposed government-issued prayer proclamations. He issued a few during the War of 1812 at the insistence of Congress but later concluded that his actions had been unconstitutional. As president, he vetoed legislation granting federal land to a church and a plan to have a church in Washington care for the poor through a largely symbolic charter. In both cases, he cited the First Amendment.

One can hear the commercials now: "James Madison is an anti-religious fanatic. He even opposes prayer proclamations during time of war."

5. Thomas Paine. Paine never held elective office, but he played an important role as a pamphleteer whose stirring words helped rally Americans to independence. Washington ordered that Paine’s pamphlet “The American Crisis” be read aloud to the Continental Army as a morale booster on Dec. 23, 1776. “Common Sense” was similarly popular with the people. These seminal documents were crucial to winning over the public to the side of independence.

So Paine’s a hero, right? He was also a radical Deist whose later work, The Age of Reason, still infuriates fundamentalists. In the tome, Paine attacked institutionalized religion and all of the major tenets of Christianity. He rejected prophecies and miracles and called on readers to embrace reason. The Bible, Paine asserted, can in no way be infallible. He called the god of the Old Testament “wicked” and the entire Bible “the pretended word of God.” (There go the Red States!)

What can we learn from this? Americans have the right to reject candidates for any reason, including their religious beliefs. But they ought to think twice before tossing someone aside just because he or she is skeptical of orthodox Christianity. After all, that description includes some of our nation’s greatest leaders.

Modern conservatives running for office under the name Republican, are a joke and affront to individual liberty. Modern conservatism hails the rights of corporations - legally compelling us all to think of them as people - talk about Stalinistic reality being foisted on the public. Modern conservatives say the are pro freedom yet would have the nation live under 15th century pr-Enlightenment fundamentalism that is antithetical to liberty. Conservatives should be honest and confess to the American public that they are the right-wing authoritatrian party who are against reason, science, indivual rights, freedom of the press ( again like Stalin, Hitler or Mao), hate women, do not think non-whites are fully American, and are war mongers who get sadistic pleasure from sending Americans off to die for lies.

Ron Paul is as American as Pie. If You Like Toxic Right-Wing Conservative Pie

Ron Paul(R-TX) is as American as Pie. If You Like Toxic Right-Wing Conservative Pie

Bucking the turbulent highs and lows [1] felt by his competition, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) [2], the libertarian's favorite in the GOP presidential field, continues his slow and steady rise [3]. The final poll before Iowa's caucuses on Tuesday, released by the Des Moines Register [4] on Saturday, showed Paul with 22 percent of support, just two percentage points behind front-runner Mitt Romney. Paul's extensive field operation [5] in Iowa and loyal supporters [6] have set him up for a strong showing on Tuesday—a surprise victory even—that could rattle the fight for the nomination. There's just one problem Paul can't shake off [7]: his newsletters.

Published as far back as the late 1970s, under various mastheads [8] bearing Paul's name (Ron Paul Political Report, Ron Paul’s Freedom Report, the Ron Paul Survival Report), the newsletters are, at times, virulently racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, and conspiratorial [9]. They dogged Paul's 2008 campaign and threaten to do the same this time around, especially if the Texas congressman wins in Iowa. Paul and his staff's scattershot responses to questions about the newsletters haven't helped. Paul defended [10] the newsletters in 1996, then said [11] he didn't write them in 2001. A campaign spokesman said in 2008 that Paul didn't write "most of the incendiary stuff," and last month, Paul personally disavowed them while pleading ignorance. "I never read that stuff; I was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written," he told CNN [12]. However, the newsletters, many of which The New Republic has published [13] on its website after reporting extensively on them in 2008, variously list Paul as "editor" or "editor and publisher."

Here are 10 of the most extreme statements found in Paul's newsletters [emphasis added]:

1) How to Gun Down an "Urban Youth"

From the Ron Paul Political Report, October 1992 [14] (PDF), under the subtitle "Blast 'Em?":

    "If you live in a major city, you've probably heard about the newest threat to your life and limb, and your family: carjacking.

    "It's the hip-hop thing to do among the urban youth who play unsuspecting whites like pianos. The youth simply walk up to a car they like, pull a gun, tell the family to get out, steal their jewelry and wallets, and take the car to wreck. Such actions have ballooned in recent months.

    […]

    "What can you do? More and more Americans are carrying a gun in the car. An ex-cop I know advises that if you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example.)"

2) Malicious Gays Spreading AIDS

From the Ron Paul Survival Report, September 1994 [15] (PDF):

    "At the recent world AIDS conference in Japan, researchers admitted what I have long told you: there is no prospect of a cure or vaccine for AIDS. For one thing, the virus keeps mutating. A drug that might work today won't work tomorrow. Researchers also admitted that they had been lying about the incidence of heterosexual AIDS to increase funding for homosexual programs.

    "Those who don't commit sodomy, who don't get a blood transfusion, and who don't swap needles, are virtually assured of not getting AIDS unless they are deliberately infected by a malicious gay."

3) The Government Created AIDS

From the Ron Paul Political Report, January 1988 [16] (PDF), under the sub-title "AIDS: Something Else We Can Thank Government For?":

    "Dr. [William C.] Douglass believes that AIDS is a deliberately engineered hybrid of these two animal viruses cultured in human tissue, and he blames World Health Organization experimentation at Ft. Detrick, Maryland.

    […]

    "'I have always said,' notes Dr. Douglass [in Health Freedom News, an "anti-government medicine" publication], 'and our forefathers told us this, that the greatest threat to the people is always government. Not foreign governments, but our own government.'"

4) Renaming New York City "Rapetown," "Zooville," or "Welfaria"

From the Ron Paul Political Report, October 1990 [17] (PDF):

    "A mob of black demonstrators, led by the 'Rev.' Al Sharpton, occupied and closed the Statue of Liberty recently, demanding that New York be renamed Martin Luther King City 'to reclaim it for our people.'

    "Hmmm. I hate to agree with the Rev. Al, but maybe a name change is in order. Welfaria? Zooville? Rapetown? Dirtburg? Lazyopolis?

    "But Al, the Statue of Liberty? Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house."

5) Israeli Mossad Behind 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

From the Ron Paul Survival Report, April 1993 [18] (PDF):

    "It was only a few days after the World Trade Center bombing before Mohammed A. Salameh was arrested. Is he guilty? Who knows? Some people think this a frameup by anti-Arab interests. Recall that shortly after the Kennedy assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended and accusations were made. We're still sorting that one out. From my point of view, it's hard to believe the perpetrators could be as stupid as the authorities maintain.

    We now know what one homemade bomb can do to a large city—one billion dollars of damage. Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little. The cities have become centers of violence, whether through the daily and routine terrorism of crime, political bomb terrorism, or the terrorism of mob behavior as in Los Angeles."

6) Welfare Checks Ended the 1992 Los Angeles Riots

From the Ron Paul Political Newsletter, June 1992 [19] (PDF):

    "Order was only restored in LA when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began…What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided."

7) Nearly All Black Men in DC Are "Semi-Criminal or Entirely Criminal"

From a 1992 [20] newsletter:

    "[O]pinion polls consistently show only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action."

    […]

     "Given the inefficiencies of what DC laughingly calls the 'criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal...[W]e are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, [but] it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."

8) Even Music Triggers "Black Rage"

From the Ron Paul Political Report, July 1992 [21] (PDF):

    "The liberals want to keep white America from taking action against black crime and welfare…Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems."

9) "Race War," "Federal-Homosexual Cover-up on AIDS," the "Israeli Lobby"

From Ron Paul newsletter solicitation, 1993 [22] (PDF), in which Paul describes his political newsletter:

    "I've been told not to talk, but these stooges don't scare me. Threats or no threats, I've laid bare the coming race war in our big cities. The federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS (my thinking as a physician helps me see through this one.) The Bohemian Grove—perverted, pagan playground of the powerful. Skull & Bones: the demonic fraternity that includes George Bush and leftist Senator John Kerry, Congress's Mr. New Money. The Israeli lobby, which plays Congress like a cheap harmonica. And the Soviet-style 'smartcard' the Justice Department has in mind for you."

10) Attack of the AK-47-Wielding IRS Agents

From Ron Paul newsletter solicitation, 1993 [22] (PDF):

    "Next year, or next month, the New Money could wipe you out—destroy everything you've worked for and saved for—and leave your family destitute.

    "It could happen any time. And I don't mind telling you I'm scared. For myself, for my family, for my friends, for my country.

    "We've seen a lot of financial tyrannies from Washington in this century. This one could take the cake. And popping out of the cake, with a big Surprise!, will be an IRS agent with an AK-47."

Source URL: http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/01/ron-paul-newsletter-iowa-caucus-republican

Links:
[1] http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2011/10/horse_race_politics_an_animation_of_the_2012_republican_campaign.html
[2] http://motherjones.com/politics/2007/12/apostles-ron-paul
[3] http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2012/president/us/republican_presidential_nomination-1452.html
[4] http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/12/31/romney-leads-paul-in-new-des-moines-register-iowa-poll-santorum-surging/
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/17/us/politics/ron-pauls-ground-game-gives-him-an-edge.html?pagewanted=all
[6] http://www.esquire.com/features/ron-paul-profile-0511
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/28/opinion/mr-pauls-discredited-campaign.html
[8] http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/angry-white-man
[9] http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/23/us-usa-campaign-paul-plots-idUSTRE7BM03320111223
[10] http://www.criticalreactor.com/ronpaul/newsletters/1996_Dallas_Morning_News.html
[11] http://caucuses.desmoinesregister.com/2011/12/22/ron-pauls-story-changes-on-racial-comments/
[12] http://www.theblaze.com/stories/is-ron-paul-changing-his-story-on-what-he-knew-about-those-newsletters/
[13] http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/98883/ron-paul-incendiary-newsletters-exclusive
[14] http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_Oct92_p2.pdf
[15] http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/September1994.pdf
[16] http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/January1988.pdf
[17] http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_Oct90_p4.pdf
[18] http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/April1993_0.pdf
[19] http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_June92_p6.pdf
[20] http://www.historycommons.org/entity.jsp?entity=linda_thompson_1&printerfriendly=true
[21] http://www.tnr.com/sites/default/files/PR_July92_p3.pdf
[22] http://link.reuters.com/vud75s