Ron Paul Retires.... What does this mean for you US economy?

[JulieW]

Thank you everyone for making me look even more closely at the libertarian hero for our time Mr Paul.

So would Ron Paul have voted to prevent a State from legislating for blacks at the back of the bus - if it's what the people in the State wanted?

Did Ron Paul lobby to get his constituents a slice of that big bloated Federal pie at budget time?

Is it 'civil disobedience' to ignore laws that you don't agree with?

Two of Ron Paul's foundations are skirting the edge of, and perhaps crossing, the line between issue advocacy and political campaigning and may be breaking federal tax and campaign finance laws.

The non-profits, all part of millionaire Paul's political empire, pays his campaign aides, organizes political volunteers and promotes his often unorthodox ideas, the Associated Press is reporting.

An AP "enterprise" story by Ryan J. Foley, published Saturday coincides with Capitol Hill Blue findings that raise serious questions about how Paul uses money donated to both his campaigns and his various causes.

By diverting funds into his foundations, Paul is able to avoid disclosure on how the funds are spent and evidence suggests he is illegally using non-profit foundations for political activity.

"It sounds like a way to maintain a permanent campaign, Melanie Sloan, executive director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the AP. "These groups were never supposed to be political organizations."

But Paul has a long history of diverting funds from contributors. After his previous two failed Presidential campaigns, he moved millions of unspent campaign funds into non-profit groups like his Campaign for Liberty and evaded disclosure laws that would apply to use of campaign funds.

After his 2008 bid for the GOP Presidential campaign failed, Paul created the Campaign for Liberty with leftover millions and then used his campaign mailing list to solicit even more money.

Then he put longtime campaign aides to work for the foundations, including another new non-profit called Young Americans for Liberty, aimed at high school and college students.

Both non-profits were formed under federal law governing non-profits as "social welfare organizations," which means they are not supposed to engage in political action or promote candidates.

Yet both immediately began sponsoring activities of the political tea party movement, including hosting conferences, training political activists and promoting at least two candidates Ron Paul and Rand Paul, his son.

In addition to the diverted campaign funds used to start Campaign for Liberty, Paul raised another $13 million with direct mail and on-line fundraising activities.

Other candidates use advocacy groups to promote themselves and their ideas. President Barack Obama has his "Organizing for America" political action group and GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney formed a political action committee (PAC) to donation to candidates and pay his campaign expenses.

But PACs are regulated by the Federal Election Commission, which requires detailed disclosure of expenditures.

Nonprofits like Paul's Campaign for Liberty evade disclosure by operating under the loose, and more secretive rules governing foundations. Even though federal law prohibits political activity by such groups, Paul's Campaign for Liberty calls itself a "lobbying group" for such issues as "individual liberty" and "constitutional government" as well as political candidate Ron Paul.

Paul not only uses the foundations to pay his closest aides and even family members. Campaign for Liberty president John Tate received $338,000 in salary from the non-profit in 2009 and 2010. He now serves as Paul's campaign chairman.

Paul's daughter, Lori Pyeatt, received $34,000 in 2010 as a part-time secretary and treasurer for Campaign for Liberty.

Both foundations also worked to elect Paul's son, Rand, to the U.S. Senate from Kentucky in 2010.

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/42586

btw:
Wikepedia
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...." and Article VI specifies that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Nice that Mr Paul included these sentiments in his Bill.

A Gallup poll in December 2010 found that four in 10 Americans believe God created humans in their present form some 10,000 years ago.

Scientific evidence shows that humans evolved from ape-like ancestors over a period of roughly six million years.

In 1968 that the US Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional, based on the separation of church and state, to ban the teaching of evolution.
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/po...opens-door-to-teaching-creationism-in-schools

So is Ron Paul for or against the States legislating on religious grounds?

 

[Yippe-Ki-Ya]

Ron Paul is a rascist?

Not trying to troll - but look harder.

From the above link:

Starting in 1984, Ron Paul published a series of related newsletters, called the Ron Paul Political Report, Ron Paul Freedom Report, Ron Paul Survival Report, etc. He had over 100,000 subscribers at one point and is said to have made over a million dollars a year. (Subscriptions cost $100 a year for a magazine usually 8 pages long.)

........ One article said Martin Luther King Jr. "seduced underage girls and boys" and "replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration." Another offers this strategy against "urban youth":

"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)."

and
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/angry-white-man

Paul's campaign wants to depict its candidate as a nave, absentee overseer, with minimal knowledge of what his underlings were doing on his behalf. This portrayal might be more believable if extremist views had cropped up in the newsletters only sporadically--or if the newsletters had just been published for a short time. But it is difficult to imagine how Paul could allow material consistently saturated in racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy-mongering to be printed under his name for so long if he did not share these views. In that respect, whether or not Paul personally wrote the most offensive passages is almost beside the point. If he disagreed with what was being written under his name, you would think that at some point--over the course of decades--he would have done something about it.

What's more, Paul's connections to extremism go beyond the newsletters. He has given extensive interviews to the magazine of the John Birch Society, and has frequently been a guest of Alex Jones, a radio host and perhaps the most famous conspiracy theorist in America. Jones--whose recent documentary, Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement, details the plans of George Pataki, David Rockefeller, and Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, among others, to exterminate most of humanity and develop themselves into "superhuman" computer hybrids able to "travel throughout the cosmos"--estimates that Paul has appeared on his radio program about 40 times over the past twelve years.

Then there is Gary North, who has worked on Paul's congressional staff. North is a central figure in Christian Reconstructionism, which advocates the implementation of Biblical law in modern society. Christian Reconstructionists share common ground with libertarians, since both groups dislike the central government. North has advocated the execution of women who have abortions and people who curse their parents. In a 1986 book, North argued for stoning as a form of capital punishment--because "the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost." North is perhaps best known for Gary North's Remnant Review, a "Christian and pro free-market" newsletter. In a 1983 letter Paul wrote on behalf of an organization called the Committee to Stop the Bail-Out of Multinational Banks (known by the acronym CSBOMB), he bragged, "Perhaps you already read in Gary North's Remnant Review about my exposes of government abuse.

Maybe he reformed around the time he joined the Republican Party and three cheers that he brought the Fed and a number of other issues to the notice of the public from his lectern. I applaud Alex Jones and a variety of other 'commentators' both leftist, rightist and plain loopy that I come across in my internet travels for similarly bringing matters to our attention. Even loopy Ann Barnhardt and the old pencil pusher Lindsay Williams.

Maybe Paul is a nice old man who disavows his previous activities, but the maxim that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely applies to all leaders -even the ones talking about liberty and justice for all.

So that's that. I don't think much of him or others of his ilk. Some of you do. Fine that's politics.

-1

 

[Silverlicious]

Ummm, does it really matter who get's elected? They're all puppets.

 

[Tacrezod]

Amongst all the reams of internet opinion, I managet to get to the end of this....

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/131829.html

Remember that time Ron Paul used the Golden Rule to explain his foreign policy? Conservatives booed him for that. So who can be surprised that conservatives, including Rand Paul, have been falling all over themselves to condemn Ron Paul for quoting Jesus -in correct context, by the way - to note that the violence wrought by over a decade of nonstop war in America leads to tragedy on the home front?

Every neocon pundit and middle-American red-blooded conservative took a few minutes out from running around shrieking "boo-yah" and polishing his dually F-250 to be outraged that someone dared suggest that a government employee wasn't a holy relic.

The Daily Caller was the first to the show, posting Paul's twitter post without comment and allowing the comment box to quickly fill with outraged Republicans who were dismayed that anyone would not endorse every action of every single taxpayer-funded soldier who ever drew a bead on some dirt-poor 12-year-old child-soldier 10,000 miles away. Others soon piled on.