Waking Up to Economic Realities

by Ron Paul

Last week the financial markets were roiled by Standard & Poor’s announcement that they will change their outlook on the fiscal health of the United States over the next two years from “stable” to “negative.” The administration decried this decision as political. However, it seems the only political thing about this decision is the fact that it took so long. The Washington Post recently reported that the White House and the Treasury Department put tremendous pressure on S&P not to do this. However, if S&P made its ratings based on political pressures rather than economic reality, it would cease to have any relevance to the business community. Even if S&P delayed its announcement that U.S. government bond market would be downgraded, at some point it would become obvious that the finances of this country are out of control and our leadership is out of touch. All credibility would be lost if S&P simply continued to assign U.S. debt a AAA rating.


S&P noted in its announcement that negotiations among leaders in Washington to address deficit concerns did not sound promising, and expressed skepticism that politicians could agree to any viable budget compromise. Of course this has been obvious for years but in the midst of the current debate over raising the debt limit it is perhaps the wake-up call that Washington needs.



For decades politicians and government officials have been able to maintain their denial about our real financial situation, patching the system together by passing emergency and supplemental funding bills, issuing more debt, and allowing the Federal Reserve and foreign creditors to paper over deficits with more monetary expansion. I’ve said many times the real day of reckoning comes when fiscal and monetary tricks no longer work and there are no buyers for our debt.


Even the most conservative budget that has been proposed by Republican leadership requires raising the debt ceiling by an additional $9 trillion by 2021. This demonstrates absolutely that no one in power right now has any real intention of addressing our spending problems or paying down the debt. They simply expect to continue to borrow and run up more debt forever, without limit. Yet they always imagine our dollar will have value no matter how many we print. This expectation is foolish and naïve. I guarantee that those buying our debt are not foolish and naïve enough to go along with this charade forever.


The S&P announcement may just be the harbinger of economic realities acting as a restraint on government expansion. Government is not anxious to cap its own growth, in spite of misnomers like “debt limit” or “deficit reduction.” Government will continue to grow like a cancer, sapping our country of its wealth and freedom until the laws of economics no longer can be ignored.

Social Security Is Not 'Insurance'

by Ron Paul



Congressman Ron Paul

 Perhaps the biggest media story of 2010 was the influence of Tea Party voters on the congressional landscape. The new congress comes to Capitol Hill with a mandate to end profligate spending and restore fiscal sanity, we are told. But when the House and Senate convene in January, the newly elected members will face tremendous pressure to maintain spending levels for entitlement programs. Even the most modest proposals to trim Social Security or Medicare spending will be met with howls of indignation and threats of voter revolt. Legislators who propose any kind of means testing or increased retirement ages can expect angry visits from senior citizen lobbyists ready to fund a candidate back home who supports the status quo.


But millions of Americans now realize that the status quo is an illusion that will not last even another 10 or 20 years. The federal government cannot continue to spend a trillion dollars more than it collects in revenue each year, because we are running out of creditors. Fiscal reality is setting in, and the consequences may be grim even if Congress finds the courage to take decisive action now.


Courage begins with a commitment to see things as they are, rather than how we wish they were. When it comes to Social Security, we must understand that the system does not represent an old age pension, an “insurance” program, or even a forced savings program. It simply represents an enormous transfer payment, with younger workers paying taxes to fund benefits. There is no Social Security trust fund, and you don’t have an “account.” Whether you win or lose the Social Security lottery is a function of when you happened to be born and how long you live to collect benefits. Of course young people today have every reason to believe they will never collect those benefits.

Distorting the Tax Policy Debate

Letting You Keep Your Own Money
That is hardly a government subsidy.

by Ron Paul

George Orwell warned us about the use of “meaningless words” in politics, words that are endlessly repeated by sloganeering politicians until they have no meaning at all. Meaningless words certainly were on display during last week’s congressional debate over the latest tax bill.


Over and over again we heard trite, empty phrases like “tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%,” “tax giveaways,” “tax earmarks,” and “borrowing money to give to millionaires.” Time and time again the same falsehoods were presented as fact, and reported as such by a credulous media.

But all of these clichés about taxes are based on the presumption that government has a right to all of your income, and so government “gives” you something when it allows you to keep a portion of that income. To this mindset, tax cuts represent a “cost” to government. After all, they argue, money that really ought to go to the most noble of purposes – wealth redistribution via taxation – is being kept by greedy people and corporations who just don’t want to pay their fair share.


Far too many Americans truly believe that tax cuts represent a government giveaway, indistinguishable from an outright subsidy or entitlement payment. To combat this mindset, we need to be clear with our language.

Audit the Fed in 2011

by Ron Paul



Ron Paul

 Since the announcement last week that I will chair the congressional subcommittee that oversees the Federal Reserve, the media response has been overwhelming. The groundswell of opposition to Fed actions among ordinary citizens is reflected not only in the rhetoric coming out of Capitol Hill, but also in the tremendous interest shown by the financial press. The demand for transparency is growing, whether the political and financial establishment likes it or not. The Fed is losing its vaunted status as an institution that somehow is above politics and public scrutiny. Fed transparency will be the cornerstone of my efforts as subcommittee chairman.


Thanks to public pressure earlier this year, Congress did pass legislation that requires the Fed to disclose some information about its bailout of select industries and companies following the 2008 financial crisis. So two weeks ago the Fed released data concerning more than $3 trillion of assistance it offered to banks through its bailout facilities. After reviewing this data, however, we are left with many more questions about the Fed's “lending.”

In the “Term Securities Lending Facility,” the Fed was supposed to have loaned against AAA-rated securities – yet over half of the collateral put up by banks to obtain loans had no listed credit rating. Should we assume that the Fed accepted absolute junk-rated securities as collateral for loans? Presumably these securities were so bad that they wouldn’t even publicize their credit rating. So why should our central bank, backed up by your taxes, accept such collateral?


On another note, of the $1.25 trillion purchased under the Fed’s “Mortgage-Backed Securities Purchase Program,” only $877 billion in purchases have been publicized. What happened to the remaining $400 billion?


These kinds of limited disclosures by the Fed only underscore the need for a full and complete audit of the Fed’s financial books. This audit should be done by an independent third party, in the same manner that public companies are audited. The Fed should make public its balance sheet, income statement, and perhaps most importantly its cash flow statement. It also should publicize the notes explaining those financial statements.


We seem to forget sometimes that Congress created the Fed – it is a government-created banking monopoly, and its top decision-makers are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. If the Fed does not perform satisfactorily in the eyes of these politicians and their constituents, the Chairman and Governors may not be re-nominated.


In theory, Congress could even repeal the Federal Reserve Act altogether since it has the authority to do so. Obviously Congress is within its authority to audit an organization it created by statute, and it is time to assume that responsibility.

With 320 Members of Congress cosponsoring my legislation to fully audit the Fed in the 111th Congress, my hope is that we can build on our broad bipartisan coalition in 2011 and continue the push for greater Fed transparency going forward.

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas

Ron Paul's Questions for Ben Bernanke

by Gary North

I have good news and bad news for Ben Bernanke.


First, the good news.



Gary North

 I AM OUT OF THE OFFICIAL LOOP

I am no longer Dr. Paul's research assistant. If I were, I would be working at least half of my time on compiling questions for Dr. Paul to ask Dr. Bernanke.

I would be actively cultivating leakers from inside all 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks (private), as well as staffers working for the Board of Governors (government). There is always some disgruntled employee ready to open locked closets. I would be encouraging every one to become the equivalent of Bradley Manning. "Purloined documents R us!"

Thirty-four years ago, I held that position. Dr. Paul was then the Congressman with the least amount of seniority in Congress. His term came to an end only eight months after it began. He was elected to fill an interim position, due to a resignation, and he lost by 268 votes out of about 180,000 in November. He came back two years later, but by then, I was off to greener pastures.

In those days, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve System was Arthur Burns. He had been inflating like mad, trying to pull the economy out of Nixon's 1970–71 recession, then Ford's recession in 1975. Gold bottomed in the summer of 1976 at $105. It would never again get anywhere near that price.


Dr. Paul was already becoming Dr. No – voting no on most spending bills. He opposed the extension of funding of the International Monetary Fund. I wrote the dissenting paper on my first full day on the job – a Saturday. Back then, staffers could come into the Capitol office buildings without police checkpoints of any kind, at any hour. Those were the good old days.

Dr. Paul was not in a position to give much trouble to Dr. Burns. A year before, the head of the House Banking Committee had been Wright Patman, an anti-FED Congressman from east Texas. He had been giving the FED trouble for 25 years. It was Patman who, along with fellow Greenbacker Jerry Voorhis, got the law changed in the early 1940s to force the FED to return to the Treasury all money above expenses. That was the greatest single victory Congress ever had in dealing with the FED. But Patman had been ousted in a coup by younger Democrats in 1975. They revolted against the old seniority system in the aftermath of Watergate. The new chairman, Henry Reuss [ROYCE], was pro-FED. There was no way that there would be any confrontations allowed under Reuss.


Ben Bernanke was 23 years old.

That was then. This is now. That's the bad news for Dr. Bernanke.

"QUESTIONS! WE'VE GOT QUESTIONS!"

Read the rest at Lew Rockwell

Ron Paul Appointed Chairman of Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee

Ron Paul

Congressman Ron Paul has been appointed to head the Domestic Monetary Policy Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee in the 112th Congress. The subcommittee has jurisdiction over monetary policy, currency, commodity prices, and matters related to the Federal Reserve Bank generally.


Congressman Spencer Bachus, incoming Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, announced Paul’s appointment today:


“Congressman Paul has been a leading voice in Congress on the topics of monetary policy and the Federal Reserve,” Bachus stated. “His commitment to sound money and free-market principles will serve him well as Chairman of the subcommittee.”


“I’m very pleased and excited about being named Chairman of the subcommittee,” Paul stated. “I first ran for Congress in the 1970s because I was concerned about inflation and the dollar. I believed then – as I do now – that unchecked monetary expansion posed great risks for the American economy and our standard of living. In the decades since, we have seen how expansion of the money supply by the Federal Reserve has eroded the value of our dollar. We also have seen how the Federal Reserve, in concert with Congress, has enabled the Treasury to incur almost unbelievable amounts of debt.”

Paul is well known as the author of comprehensive legislation to audit the Federal Reserve Bank, with the goal of providing both taxpayers and world financial markets with full transparency of U.S. central bank actions.

As chairman, Paul expects to hold regular hearings with Federal Reserve Bank officials, including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. He also plans to solicit testimony from prominent economists concerning both monetary policy generally and Fed actions in particular.

Lying Is Not Patriotic

by Ron Paul

WikiLeaks’ release of classified information has generated a lot of attention world-wide in the past few weeks.


The hysterical reaction makes one wonder if this is not an example of killing the messenger for the bad news.

Despite what is claimed, information so far released, though classified, has caused no known harm to any individual, but it has caused plenty of embarrassment to our government. Losing a grip on our empire is not welcomed by the neo-conservatives in charge.

There is now more information confirming that Saudi Arabia is a principle supporter and financier of Al Qaeda and this should set off alarm bells since we guarantee its Sharia-run government.

This emphasizes even more the fact that no Al Qaeda existed in Iraq before 9/11, and yet we went to war against Iraq based on the lie that it did.


It has been charged, by self-proclaimed experts, that Julian Assange, the internet publisher of this information, has committed a heinous crime deserving prosecution for treason and execution or even assassination.


But should we not at least ask how the U.S. government can charge an Australian citizen with treason for publishing U.S. secret information, that he did not steal?

And if WikiLeaks is to be prosecuted for publishing classified documents, why shouldn’t the Washington Post, New York Times, and others that have also published these documents be prosecuted? Actually, some in Congress are threatening this as well.

The New York Times, as a result of a Supreme Court ruling, was not found guilty in 1971 for the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg never served a day in prison for his role in obtaining these secret documents.

The Pentagon Papers were also inserted into the Congressional Record by Senator Mike Gravel with no charges being made of breaking any National Security laws.


Yet the release of this classified information was considered illegal by many, and those who lied us into the Vietnam War and argued for its prolongation were outraged. But the truth gained from the Pentagon Papers revealed that lies were told about the Gulf of Tonkin attack which perpetuated a sad and tragic episode in our history.

Just as with the Vietnam War, the Iraq War was based on lies. We were never threatened by Weapons of Mass Destruction or Al Qaeda in Iraq, though the attack on Iraq was based on this false information.

Questions to consider:

1. Do the American people deserve to know the truth regarding the ongoing war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
2. Could a larger question be: how can an Army Private gain access to so much secret material?
3. Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not our government’s failure to protect classified information?
4. Are we getting our money’s worth from the $80 billion per year we spend on our intelligence agencies?
5. Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths; lying us into war, or WikiLeaks’ revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
6. If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information, that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the First Amendment and the independence of the internet?
7. Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
8. Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in the time of a declared war – which is treason – and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death, and corruption?
9. Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it’s wrong?

Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised: “Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.”

Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.



Thoughts from Ron Paul

"When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads." 

Ron Paul, M.D., Republican congressman from Texas and Libertarian Party candidate for President in 1988

Don't Start Another Korean War

by Ron Paul

Before the US House of Representatives, November 30, 2010, on the resolution condemning North Korea

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this saber-rattling resolution that unnecessarily escalates tensions between North and South Korea and may in fact put U.S. troops stationed in the area at risk. This resolution portrays the recent hostilities between the two Koreas as "an unprovoked military attack'' by North Korea, which is untrue. We know that South Korea was conducting live fire military exercises in the vicinity of disputed territory and that this action, taken with U.S. military support and participation, likely led to the exchange of gunfire between the two sides.


As the resolution states, the "USS George Washington Carrier Strike Group is conducting exercises with Republic of Korea naval forces in the waters west of the Korean Peninsula.'' Let us for a moment imagine the Chinese military holding joint exercises with Venezuela off the Texas coast. Might that be viewed as provocative by the United States? This is not to excuse or endorse the actions of the North Korean military, which are certainly regrettable, but it is important to accurately portray the events.


This resolution is long on inaccuracies and hyperbole but it avoids the real issue, which is why, more than fifty years after the end of the Korean war, the American taxpayer is still forced to pay for the U.S. military to defend a modern and wealthy South Korea. The continued presence of the U.S. military as a "tripwire'' to deter North Korea is ineffective and dangerous. It is designed to deter renewed hostilities by placing American lives between the two factions. As we have seen recently, South Korean leaders, emboldened by the U.S. protection, seek to provoke North Korean reaction rather than to work for a way to finally end the conflict. The U.S. presence only serves to prolong the conflict, further drain our empty treasury, and place our military at risk. I encourage my colleagues to reject this jingoistic resolution and instead use our Constitutionally-granted authority to finally end the U.S. military presence in and defense of South Korea.

Are Air Travelers Criminal Suspects?

by Ron Paul

Congressman Ron Paul (R)

The growing revolt against invasive TSA practices is encouraging to Americans who are fed up with federal government encroachment in their lives. In the case of air travelers, this encroachment is quite literally physical. But a deep-seated libertarian impulse still exists within the American people, and opposition to the new TSA full body scanner and groping searches is gathering momentum.

I introduced legislation last week that is based on a very simple principle: federal agents should be subject to the same laws as ordinary citizens. If you would face criminal prosecution or a lawsuit for groping someone, exposing them to unwelcome radiation, causing them emotional distress, or violating indecency laws, then TSA agents should similarly face sanctions for their actions.

This principle goes beyond TSA agents, however. As commentator Lew Rockwell recently noted, the bill “enshrines the key lesson of the freedom philosophy: the government is not above the moral law. If it is wrong for you and me, it is wrong for people in government suits… That is true of TSA crimes too.” The revolt against TSA also serves as a refreshing reminder that we should not give in to government alarmism or be afraid to question government policies.

On More Stimulus Spending

By Ron Paul

Faced with continuing economic decline and an impending election, the administration, predictably, is entertaining the idea of another stimulus package. To explain why the last one didn't work, adherents to the Keynesian economic philosophy are claiming that they actually did work -- it just looks like they didn't because we don’t realize how much worse off we would be right now without trillions of dollars of public spending. The last administration bought into Keynesianism just as much as this one does, unfortunately. Until we have leaders who understand that debt is not the way to prosperity, there will be no stopping runaway government spending.

While it is nice to hear about business tax breaks, the positive results of these tax cuts will be dwarfed by its negative effects. First of all, $200 billion or so in temporary tax cuts and credits to businesses are nothing compared to the $3.8 trillion in tax hikes that will hit the economy like a ton of bricks on January 1, 2011 if the Bush tax cuts are not extended by Congress.

Ron Paul, former LP Presidential candidate, supports property rights of Islamic cultural Center supporters

posted by Mark Hinkle on Aug 23, 2010

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20014453-503544.html 

Libertarian Congressman Ron Paul is breaking with many of his fellow Republicans - among them his son Rand - to support the creation of the planned Islamic cultural center near the former site of the World Trade Center that has come to be known as the "ground zero mosque."  

In a statement decrying "demagogy" around the issue, the former Republican presidential candidate wrote late last week that "the debate should have provided the conservative defenders of property rights with a perfect example of how the right to own property also protects the 1st Amendment rights of assembly and religion by supporting the building of the mosque." 

 "Instead, we hear lip service given to the property rights position while demanding that the need to be 'sensitive' requires an all-out assault on the building of a mosque, several blocks from 'ground zero,'" Paul continues.   

 He goes on to argue that "the neo-conservatives who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia...never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill conceived preventative wars."

The Lunatic Left Is Getting Desperate

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo


The Huffington Post recently (March 18) sunk to a new low by publishing an attack on“Ron Paul and the Tea Parties: States’ Rights and the 17th Amendment” by one Leonard Zeskind, a “former” Stalinist rabble-rouser. According to Laird Wilcox, author of The Watchdogs, a book about contemporary political movements, Zeskind began his communistic career of agitprop in the ’70s as a “front man” for the “Sojourner Truth Organization” whose stated objective was “to motivate the working classes to make a revolution.” The Organization quoted its role model, Josef Stalin, who insisted on the need for “iron discipline” in agitating for a communist revolution in America.


According to Wilcox, Zeskind has written favorably about “the value of a grass roots school of communism” that would teach people how to “destroy the marketplace.” He wrote this in a journal called “Urgent Tasks,” a phrase popularized by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. The Kansas City City Magazine once called Zeskind “elusive, paranoid, near hysterical.” His forte, according to the Wilcox Collection, appears to be “ritual defamation” of his perceived political opponents, i.e., “to call people names in the hope of defaming, discrediting, stigmatizing or neutralizing them.”


An example of the Zeskind/Huffington “ritual defamation” strategy is his statements in The Huffington Post that: 1) Someone writing for an obscure publication called “The American Free Press” noted recently that “the Tea Parties were actually born during the presidential campaign of Rep. Ron Paul of Texas”; 2) Several decades ago, someone who wrote in “The American Free Press” was revealed to be a Holocaust Denier; 3) Therefore, the Tea Parties (and Ron Paul’s supporters) must be hotbeds of Holocaust Denial.


Zeskind works himself into a hysterical frenzy over the fact that the “Tea Party Movement” has been talking about repealing the Seventeenth Amendment, which he says would be the equivalent of denying women the right to vote, or abolishing the constitutional principle of equal justice under the law. I’m not making this up. He really is that hysterical. And he calls Ron Paul an “extremist”! Apparently, Ariana Huffington believes Zeskind is a qualified expert on constitutionalism.


Why are the Huffingtonians upset about mere talk of repealing the Seventeenth Amendment? Because the Amendment, which mandated the popular election of U.S. Senators (as opposed to the original system of appointment by state legislators) allows a small cabal of wealthy and influential people to dominate governmental decision-making. Getting elected to the U.S. Senate requires the raising of millions of dollars for television advertising and other elements of modern campaigning, so that senators have long been in the pockets of their major donors from all over the country, and the world, as opposed to the folks back home. Zeskind says this system is “democratic,” but in reality it is the opposite. Reverting back to the original system that was created by the founders would allow the “riff-raff” known as the citizens of the sovereign states to exert more influence over their own government. Historically, this system was an important brake on the growth of the central government. This is why the Lunatic Left is increasingly hysterical over the talk about repealing the Seventeenth Amendment as well as nullification, and especially secession.


The Rationale for State Legislators To Appoint U.S. Senators


Professor Ralph Rossum of Claremont McKenna College explains the rationale for the original system of appointing U.S. Senators in his book, Federalism, the Supreme Court, and the Seventeenth Amendment. The founding fathers intended that state legislatures would appoint senators and then instruct them on how to vote in Congress. This was to safeguard against the corruption of senators by special interests. “The ability of state legislatures to instruct senators was mentioned frequently during the Constitutional Convention and the state ratifying conventions and was always assumed to exist,” writes Rossum.


At the New York ratifying convention John Jay, co-author of The Federalist Papers, said “The Senate is to be composed of men appointed by the state legislatures…. I presume they will also instruct them, that there will be a constant correspondence between the senators and the state executives.” At the Massachusetts ratifying convention Fisher Ames referred to U.S. senators as “ambassadors of the states.” James Madison wrote in Federalist #45 that because of this system the U.S. Senate “would be disinclined to invade the rights of the individual States, or the prerogatives of their governments.” This was an important element of the whole system of states’ rights or federalism that was created by the founders (not by John C. Calhoun, as Zeskind and myriad neocons falsely claim). As Madison wrote in Federalist #62, the system gave “to state governments such an agency in the formation of the federal government as must secure the authority of the former.” It helped establish the fact that the citizens of the states were sovereign and the masters, not the servants, of their own government.


The legislative appointment of U.S. senators was responsible for the most famous declarations of the states’ rights philosophy of the founders, the nullification philosophy as expressed in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolves of 1798, authored by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison respectively (not by Calhoun, as Zeskind and others falsely claim). These Resolves were used as part of the Kentucky and Virginia legislatures’ instructions to their senators to vote to repeal the odious Sedition Act, which effectively prohibited free political speech. The origins of nullification do not lie in attempts to protect slavery or Jim Crow laws, as Zeskind once again falsely claims. Jim Crow laws existed throughout the Northern states for many decades before they were imposed on the South by the Republican Party’s military occupation authorities during Reconstruction.


John Quincy Adams resigned from the Senate in 1809 because he disagreed with the Massachusetts state legislature’s instructions to him to oppose President James Madison’s trade embargo. Senator David Stone of North Carolina resigned in 1814 after his state legislature disapproved of his collaboration with the New England Federalists on several legislative issues. Senator Peleg Sprague of Maine resigned in 1835 after opposing his state legislatures’instructions to oppose the rechartering of the Second Bank of the United States. When the U.S. Senate censured President Andrew Jackson for having vetoed the rechartering of the Bank, seven U.S. Senators resigned rather than carry out their state legislatures’ instructions to vote to have Jackson’s censure expunged. One of them was Senator John Tyler of Virginia, who would become President of the United States in 1841.


In other words, the original system of state legislative appointment of U.S. Senators did exactly what it was designed to do: limit the tyrannical proclivities of the central government. As Professor Todd Zywicki of George Mason University Law School has written, “the Senate played an active role in preserving the sovereignty and independent sphere of action of state governments” in the pre-Seventeenth Amendment era prior to 1913. “Rather than delegating lawmaking authority to Washington, state legislators insisted on keeping authority close to home…. As a result, the long-term size of the federal government remained fairly stable and relatively small during the pre-Seventeenth-Amendment era”(emphasis added). (See Todd J. Zywicki, “Beyond the Shell and Husk of History: The History of the Seventeenth Amendment and its Implications for Current Reform Proposals,” Cleveland State Law Review, vol. 45, 1997).


You know the Lunatic Left is whistling past the graveyard when they resort to the “might-makes-right” argument against nullification and repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment. Echoing the views expressed by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia several weeks ago, Zeskind concludes his paranoid tirade by saying that the “vision of state sovereignty and secession were settled by the Civil War….” But nothing is ever “settled” permanently in politics, no matter how many citizens the U.S. government might murder (some 350,000 in the case of the “Civil War”) in order to prove itself “right.”

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln;Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His latest book isHamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today.

Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

Ron Paul in 1988

Healthcare Is a Good, Not a Right

by Ron Paul

Political philosopher Richard Weaver famously and correctly stated that ideas have consequences. Take for example ideas about rights versus goods. Natural law states that people have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A good is something you work for and earn. It might be a need, like food, but more “goods” seem to be becoming “rights” in our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to things like education, employment, housing or healthcare. But if we look a little further into the consequences, we can see that the workings of the community and economy are thrown wildly off balance when people accept those ideas.

First of all, other people must pay for things like healthcare. Those people have bills to pay and families to support, just as you do. If there is a “right” to healthcare, you must force the providers of those goods, or others, to serve you.

Obviously, if healthcare providers were suddenly considered outright slaves to healthcare consumers, our medical schools would quickly empty. As the government continues to convince us that healthcare is a right instead of a good, it also very generously agrees to step in as middleman. Politicians can be very good at making it sound as if healthcare will be free for everybody. Nothing could be further from the truth. The administration doesn’t want you to think too much about how hospitals will be funded, or how you will somehow get something for nothing in the healthcare arena. We are asked to just trust the politicians. Somehow it will all work out.

Universal Healthcare never quite works out the way the people are led to believe before implementing it. Citizens in countries with nationalized healthcare never would have accepted this system had they known upfront about the rationing of care and the long lines.

As bureaucrats take over medicine, costs go up and quality goes down because doctors spend more and more of their time on paperwork and less time helping patients. As costs skyrocket, as they always do when inefficient bureaucrats take the reins, government will need to confiscate more and more money from an already foundering economy to somehow pay the bills. As we have seen many times, the more money and power that government has, the more power it will abuse. The frightening aspect of all this is that cutting costs, which they will inevitably do, could very well mean denying vital services. And since participation will be mandatory, no legal alternatives will be available.

The government will be paying the bills, forcing doctors and hospitals to dance more and more to the government’s tune. Having to subject our health to this bureaucratic insanity and mismanagement is possibly the biggest danger we face. The great irony is that in turning the good of healthcare into a right, your life and liberty are put in jeopardy.

Instead of further removing healthcare from the market, we should return to a true free market in healthcare, one that empowers individuals, not bureaucrats, with control of healthcare dollars. My bill HR 1495 the Comprehensive Healthcare Reform Act provides tax credits and medical savings accounts designed to do just that.

Wisdom from Ron Paul

"When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans. "

Ron Paul

Wisdom from Ron Paul

"I am absolutely opposed to a national ID card. This is a total contradiction of what a free society is all about. The purpose of government is to protect the secrecy and the privacy of all individuals, not the secrecy of government. We don't need a national ID card. "

Ron Paul

Wisdom from Ron Paul

"Everyone assumes America must play the leading role in crafting some settlement or compromise between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But Jefferson, Madison, and Washington explicitly warned against involving ourselves in foreign conflicts. "

Ron Paul

Wisdom from Ron Paul

"Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers."

"

Ron Paul

Freedom Watch 6/17 Part 4