Re: POLITICS: Ron

[Guest guest]

Chris-

Ron didn't say " Lincoln didn't try hard enough to persuade the

south to sell the slaves to the north. " He said that Lincoln should

have offered but didn't. That's either a mistake or a lie; there's no

other alternative. On the question of whether Lincoln tried hard

enough to pursue a peaceful strategy, I don't know. It's very likely

that he didn't try as hard as he could have, though it's also worth

noting that the south shot first. But that's not the issue. My point

was and remains that it's a sad comment on the state of our democracy,

and especially on the state of our press, that a candidate said

something that is demonstrably and profoundly incorrect and nobody

called him on it. Lest you think I'm singling out Ron , I

complain about the press all the time; this particular issue just came

up here because there's been lots of debate over Ron , and his

comment about Lincoln not offering to buy the slaves was mentioned.

-

> > It's a sad comment on the state of our democracy -- and especially

> the

> > state of our press -- that nobody seems to know or point out that

> > Lincoln in fact DID offer to buy all the slaves, and the south

> refused.

>

> I am aware of that, and it isn't clear to me at all from the 10

> seconds or so they talked about it on Meet the Press that RP either

> didn't know that or counted on others not to.

>

> I do not find it a compelling argument at all really. If they

> rejected the offer once, does that nevertheless justify burning entire

> towns to the ground full of people, the vast majority of whom did not

> own slaves? Does it justify killing all the slaves who fought in the

> confederacy? Does it justify killing 600,000 people, most of whom did

> not own slaves?

>

> So, the question becomes, did Lincoln and others at the time fight

> hard enough to pursue a peaceful strategy? Had they exhausted all

> options?

>

> That's not something to take lightly.

[Guest guest]

> Gene-

>

>> I do appreciate (in general) attempts by people to break

>> through the veil of propaganda that exists in this country – in this

>> case

>> about one of our great ‘heroes’.

>

> I agree, and I wasn't objecting on substantive grounds to any of

> 's points about Lincoln except as they specifically related to

> (a) the fact that he offered to buy the slaves from the south and the

> south refused, and ( the fact that Ron either mistakenly or

> mendaciously suggested that he didn't.

Right - I commented that I didn't disagree with your logic about context.

>

>> About ‘contemporary standards’ - I think that there is a tendency to

>> both

>> assign them too much weight, and to minimize the degree to which

>> alternative

>> ideas were available and popular. If ‘honest Abe’ was unable to

>> assimilate

>> the ideas of the abolitioniists, the phrase ‘all men are created

>> equal’, and

>> other notions that have been available to people for quite some time

>> before

>> his era, then that is to his detriment. That he was so articulate, and

>> downright nasty in his assessment of black people is further reason to

>> condemn him. If we play the contemporary standards game, we might

>> say that

>> if he lived today, he’d just be more circumspect in his statements –

>> but the

>> real Abe Lincoln was nothing like the one we learn about in

>> ‘school’, and he

>> was a quite despicable racist, even considering the standards of his

>> day.

>> The phrase ‘net positive’ is an empty one in this context...you can

>> assess

>> his life however you want – that doesn’t affect whether his views

>> were quite

>> hateful.

>

> I don't think it's empty or pointless to consider whether anyone or

> anything at a given time was a net positive.

Right - again, I was referring to context. Whether a person or an event was

a net positive is a totally different discussion than whether a person

should be judged harshly for various positions that he had. In fact, a

person that we might overwhelmingly judge to be evil, or an event which had

nothing to do with justice, etc, ,at the time, might have a net positive

effect. One can look at it as an application of 'the end doesn't justify the

means'. Putting it another way, if we are to judge that lincoln's presidency

was a net positive as far as the lives of African Americans, it certainly

wasn't do to how he felt about them, or what he really wanted to have

happen.

> The Revolutionary War

> was, I think, unquestionably a net positive, for example, and yet it

> failed to accord slaves freedom or women the right to vote. It was

> imperfect, but on balance it was nonetheless dramatically

> progressive. Lincoln and the Civil War are much more complicated, but

> I didn't venture to suggest whether he was a net positive or a net

> negative; I don't actually know the answer to that, though I don't

> think emancipation would have been an easy or peaceful process no

> matter what, and I doubt secession would have worked out well for

> anyone. Also, I stand by my point about contemporary standards; I

> judge Ron by current standards, not by historical ones. The fact

> that Lincoln was a racist in no way bears on Ron 's character or

> candidacy. The fact that Jefferson wanted to deport all blacks must

> be weighed in any measurement of Jefferson, but it too in no

> way bears on any current politician's candidacy, and despite his

> racism, I think it's clear that on balance, Jefferson was a profoundly

> positive and progressive force.

>

> Also, I learned at least a little in school about Lincoln's racism,

> and I was certainly taught that the emancipation proclamation was

> strictly a strategic move to prevent Britain from entering the war on

> the side of the south.

You learned this in public school?!

>

> -

[Guest guest]

>

> It is not medicaid and medicare that inflate the cost of Medical

Care.. It regular for profit insurance that does that.

Why is it not " for profit " ANYTHING?

for-profit drugs, for-profit hospitals, for-profit doctors, for-profit

hundreds of little items in a hospital stay (hankies, pitcher, gown).

And then people who purchase said things without a single thought to

cost-benefit ratio.

Connie

[Guest guest]

> > Also, I learned at least a little in school about Lincoln's

racism,

> > and I was certainly taught that the emancipation proclamation was

> > strictly a strategic move to prevent Britain from entering the

war on

> > the side of the south.

>

> You learned this in public school?!

I learned it in public school, too, in ILLINOIS.

As to exhausting the possibilities and not trying hard enough - seems

to me the whole country had given up on talking about it, not having

found a solution after how many decades? Lincoln and the north were

basically saying, you don't get to disengage, period. Can't leave the

room.

To allow war and open up big decisions to the executive branch as war

acts - you get to take the consequences of that, meaning it will be

decided by a guaranteed flawed individual.

Connie

[Guest guest]

Gene-

> > Also, I learned at least a little in school about Lincoln's racism,

> > and I was certainly taught that the emancipation proclamation was

> > strictly a strategic move to prevent Britain from entering the war

> on

> > the side of the south.

>

> You learned this in public school?!

Yes, in CT.

-

[Guest guest]

> murdered tens of thousands of southern

> *********civilians******* - men, women, and children

Where do you get your casualty figures for this? Tens of thousands of

murdered civilians, in Georgia in the 1860s?

The Confederate president, , had previously urged Georgians to

poison their own wells and burn their own fields but they didn't do

it.

It was a time for presidents approving criminal war acts it seems.

Not that that excuses it. Both those policies would be grounds for

prosecution nowadays.

Connie

[Guest guest]

,

> Ron didn't say " Lincoln didn't try hard enough to persuade the

> south to sell the slaves to the north. " He said that Lincoln should

> have offered but didn't.

No he didn't. He never ever said that. The only thing he said about

Lincoln was that he shouldn't have gone to war, and did so in order to

rearrange the nature of the Republic:

When Russert said we'd still have slavery, he said of course not,

because every other major nation got rid of slavery peacefully, so we

should have been able to do so to. He said that we should have bought

the slaves and freed them like the British did, but he didn't say

anything about Lincoln not making such an offer.

> That's either a mistake or a lie; there's no

> other alternative.

It is either a mistake or a lie that he said Lincoln did not make an

offer. Knowing you, I am fully 100% confident this was a mistake.

> On the question of whether Lincoln tried hard

> enough to pursue a peaceful strategy, I don't know. It's very likely

> that he didn't try as hard as he could have, though it's also worth

> noting that the south shot first.

Oh come on. At northern troops stationed in their territory. That's

obviously different than southern troops attacking nothern land.

> But that's not the issue. My point

> was and remains that it's a sad comment on the state of our democracy,

> and especially on the state of our press, that a candidate said

> something that is demonstrably and profoundly incorrect and nobody

> called him on it.

Because he didn't.

> Lest you think I'm singling out Ron , I

> complain about the press all the time; this particular issue just came

> up here because there's been lots of debate over Ron , and his

> comment about Lincoln not offering to buy the slaves was mentioned.

I know but in this case the criticism is invalid because he didn't say

anything factually incorrect.

Chris

[Guest guest]

If anyone's interested, here's Ron from last night's debate:

Looking for an Excuse for a War with Iran

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS7Idj9uaOY

Coming Recession: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shLX-2ligGc

9/11 Truthers/Lost our Way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-lxZmrqLxU

Middle East Peace -- Arming Both Sides:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmRHPA8idcU

Arming Our Enemies and McCain's 100 Years War:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaQSV0G5Hos

More on Middle East Peace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2H7DhDflYM

Borrowing $10 billion from China to prop up military dictatorship in

Pakistan to help promote " democracy " in Iraq:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8TkmE5t1Pk

Also, CNN did a total hatchet job last night on the issue that came

out about racist articles with no authors' names attached in a news

report that was published under his name 60 miles from his office

under another editor. It summarized the Wolf Blitzer interview on the

subject horribly. Wolf Blitzer's interview was very fair. Here is

the full story from yesterday morning, including both the clip that

played last night and the interview, wherein Ron

repudiates all of the racist comments, says that everything he's ever

said and done in his life also repudiates them, and talks about the

racist prosecution of the war on drugs:

Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7FwULXnM_E

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvzsiESqVss

Chris

[Guest guest]

LIBERIA [liberty] was carved out of Africa and

set up by the United States for the expressed purpose

of ex-American slaves. Think it was President Monroe.

(Capital of Liberia was named after him, Monrovia).

Most of the government officials have American names

(and ties to the American establishment)

The fact remains that Lincoln, et al, choose war (violence) as an

instrument, rather than proceeding on alternatives. My point

was that there were real serious alternatives. I am not a

proponent of any one alternative, but a proponent of solving

problems through other means than violence. Ron , again

as I understood, said Lincoln chose violence over alternatives

and ending the discussions of any other avenue known or unknown.

Your point of ignorance of history is well taken. But history is

written by the victors, not the vanquished. Humanity does not l

earn from history. Humanity is achieved through forward thinking

leadership.

Peace

Ed Kasper LAc. & family

www.HappyHerbalist.com

................................................

Re: POLITICS: Ron

Posted by: " " slethnobotanist@... slethnobotanist

Thu Jan 10, 2008 11:20 pm (PST)

> It's a sad comment on the state of our democracy -- and especially the

> state of our press -- that nobody seems to know or point out that

> Lincoln in fact DID offer to buy all the slaves, and the south refused.

>

> -

Unfortunately, things were a little more complicated than that. The

group known as the Radical Republicans put a fire under Lincoln's butt

to really get after the South, and threatened to do in his

administration if he did not. The emancipation efforts by Lincoln were

considered a war measure, a way to destabilize and bring down the

South. Lincoln didn't much care about freeing the slaves.

The problem with Lincoln's attempts at compensated emancipation is

that he always coupled it with conscription for Southern slaves during

the war (i.e. slavery to the federal gov't) and deportation to Haiti,

Africa or South America otherwise, including Black Americans who were

already free. He thought America was suitable for only one race, the

superior white race. For all the talk of Ron 's bigotry, we have

Lincoln indisputably in his own words showing himself to be a bigot

***throughout*** his life.

Of course he made no friends among abolitionist or black folk with

this attitude. Frederick s, famous former slave and a member of

the Radical Republicans said this about Lincoln's political gyrations

regarding emancipation and deportation:

" Illogical and unfair as Mr. Lincoln's statements are, they are

nevertheless quite in keeping with his whole course from the beginning

of his administration up to this day, and confirm the painful

conviction that though elected as an antislavery man by Republican and

Abolition voters, Mr. Lincoln is quite a genuine representative of

American prejudice and Negro hatred and far more concerned for the

preservation of slavery, and the favor of the Border Slave States,

than for any sentiment of magnanimity or principle of justice and

humanity. "

Lerone Jr, African American scholar and historian, a

thoroughgoing liberal (i.e no friend of the confederate South), and

author of _Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream_, says

this about King Lincoln (I say " King Lincoln " because when it comes to

the violation of civil liberties, the current administration has

nothing on Abraham Lincoln):

" What Lincoln proposed officially and publicly was that the United

States government buy the slaves and deport them to Africa or South

America. This was not a passing whim. In five major policy

declarations, including two State of the Union addresses and the

preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the sixteenth president of the

United States publicly and officially called for the deportation of

blacks. On countless other occasions, in conferences with cronies,

Democratic and Republican leaders, and high government officials, he

called for colonization of blacks or aggressively promoted

colonization by private and official acts. "

And the intro to his book says this:

" [Lerone 's] basic idea of the book is simple: Everything you

think you know about Lincoln and race is wrong. Every schoolchild, for

example, knows the story of " the great emancipator " who freed Negroes

with a stroke of the pen out of the goodness of his heart. The real

Lincoln...was a conservative politician who said repeatedly that he

believed in white supremacy. Not only that: He opposed the basic

principle of the Emancipation Proclamation until his death and was

literally forced - Count Adam Gurowski said he was literally whipped -

" into the glory of having issued the Emancipation Proclamation, " which

Lincoln drafted in such a way that it did not in and of itself free a

single slave. "

As notes, the political slickness of the Emancipation

Proclamation is that Lincoln applied it only to slaves in the states

controlled be the Confederacy, who obviously would ignore it, and

didn't apply it to the states where he could have granted slaves

immediate freedom.

I have lots of quotes from Lincoln himself in my response to in

our " Limbaugh versus Lincoln " exchange that you can find here:

http://onibasu.com/archives/nn/72859.html

But one final quote will suffice from the lips of the " Great Emancipator:

" Make Negroes politically and socially our equals? My own feelings

will not admit of this. I will say that I am not nor ever have been in

favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality

of the white and black races, that I am not nor have ever been in

favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to

hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say in

addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white

and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races

living together on terms of social and political equality. And in as

much as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must

be the position of superior and inferior. And I, as much as any other

man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white

race. "

Finally, just because emancipation compensation was initially

rejected, didn't mean 650,000 people from both the North and South had

to die. And it certainly did not justify Sherman's March to the Sea

where he murdered tens of thousands of southern

*********civilians******* - men, women, and children, in one of the

most atrocious acts of criminality, with Lincoln's full support, in

American history.

England ended their slave trade peacefully in just six years. But

Wilberforce, a member of the British Parliament and a devout

Evangelical Christian, spent over 40 years of his life trying to

abolish the English Slave trade. And when Parliament finally took

notice, six years later it was done, three days before Wilberforce

died.

In March of last year, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the

abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire, the film _Amazing

Grace_ was released detailing the story of Wilberforce and the

Anglican Priest and former slave trader who was a great influence on

his life, Newton. He was the author of one of the most famous

hymns of all time, " Faith's Review and Expectation " which today we

know as " Amazing Grace "

--

" The individual who can do something that the world wants will, in the

end, make his way regardless of race. "

- Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)

[Guest guest]

Chris-

Just for the heck of it, I decided to watch these debate clips.

> Looking for an Excuse for a War with Iran

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BS7Idj9uaOY

Of course his response here is excellent and worthy of praise. No

surprise there.

> Coming Recession: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shLX-2ligGc

This is more of a mixed bag. I agree with his general theory that

artificially depressing interest rates creates an unsustainable boom

which then must eventually go bust, but the question (however

unintentionally) was broader than that. Federal involvement in the

economy isn't and doesn't have to be limited to administering the

economic equivalent of caffeine or cocaine -- short-term stimulants

that come with long-term costs. Investment in research,

infrastructure and the like -- the sort of economic policy I favor --

is more like building's one's health through consumption of nutrient-

dense foods. Maybe there's a place and a time for caffeine sometimes,

particularly with a sick patient (though of course the sicker the

patient, the more damage the caffeine can do and the more caution must

be exercised) and maybe there's not, but the anti-tax/propertarian

platform Ron is running on leaves no room for the kind of genuine

investment in productivity I'm talking about.

It's also unfortunate that while he seems to genuinely care about the

purchasing power of the dollar, the security of the middle class, and

the general Latinization of the country, he actually supports policies

which will further this Latinization. (Latinization is the term for

policies which tend to reshape our economies to resemble those of

Latin American countries, in which the vast majority of people have

very, very low wages, there's tremendous economic polarization between

the haves and the have-nots, civil rights as a consequence are

trampled on or don't even exist, and so on. It doesn't actually have

anything to do with ethnicity, though the perception that it does is

unfortunate and is a good reason people should have picked another

term.) True, he opposes illegal immigration, and illegal immigration

is used to put a downward pressure on wages in this country, but he

also favors unrestricted free trade, which pits American workers

against workers who are paid pennies because they live and work in

countries with no worker safety rules, no environmental regulations

and so on, and thus cannot but lower wages and standards of living as

well as safety levels and environmental quality here at home, and he

favors abolishing the minimum wage.

Kucinich, by contrast, and too to a somewhat lesser but

nonetheless very significant extent, supports fair trade, which ties

openness in trade to worker conditions and environmental regulations

in other countries. This not only protects our own economy and our

own workers (considerations that most politicians simply don't give a

damn about) but it directly addresses global warming and pollution by

preventing the off-shoring and hiding-in-other-countries of pollution

and greenhouse gas emissions that current trade policies directly and

profoundly contribute to and which Ron 's trade policies would, if

anything, arguably accelerate!

> 9/11 Truthers/Lost our Way: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-lxZmrqLxU

Nothing wrong here, but it doesn't strike me as being particularly

significant except inasmuch as it serves as an example of the

marginalization of the Ron campaign by the media, which is more

than matched by the marginalization of the campaign, which

consistently polls far above Ron 's and yet gets even less

favorable media treatment.

> Middle East Peace -- Arming Both Sides:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmRHPA8idcU

I agree completely with everything he says here as far as it goes, but

he completely neglects the elephant in the room: we're only involved

in the middle east because of oil, and the fastest and best way to get

us out of there would be to invest in alternative energy technology so

we can stop importing so much of it. Between war, global warming and

the economy, alternative energy -- which could be realized best and

fastest with wise and significant federal investment -- is one of the

most important issues of our time, and yet Ron would leave it to

the market to develop. Markets, however, are extremely short-term

beasts and do a very poor job of addressing long-term problems.

> Arming Our Enemies and McCain's 100 Years War:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaQSV0G5Hos

100% agreed, though again, oil and alternative energy are central to

this issue along with the general issue of militarism and foreign

involvement.

> More on Middle East Peace: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2H7DhDflYM

It's always pleasant to see a candidate acknowledge that we actually

send lots more money to other nations in the area than we do to Israel

instead of falling into the usual paranoid antisemitic rhetoric about

how we're a client state of the jews, and of course I certainly agree

that we shouldn't be spending fortunes arming all these different

countries.

I don't agree that we should terminate all foreign aid and just let

other people rot, though.

> Borrowing $10 billion from China to prop up military dictatorship in

> Pakistan to help promote " democracy " in Iraq:

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8TkmE5t1Pk

In one sense this is a very reasonable response -- particularly the

part about borrowing from China to pay for our military adventurism,

which is an abomination on top of an abomination -- but in other, it's

grossly disingenuous, or at the very least deluded. The Republican

party has been about all the things he deplores in this statement for

a long time; to pretend it's not is to ignore all recent history.

> Also, CNN did a total hatchet job last night on the issue that came

> out about racist articles with no authors' names attached in a news

> report that was published under his name 60 miles from his office

> under another editor. It summarized the Wolf Blitzer interview on the

> subject horribly. Wolf Blitzer's interview was very fair. Here is

> the full story from yesterday morning, including both the clip that

> played last night and the interview, wherein Ron

> repudiates all of the racist comments, says that everything he's ever

> said and done in his life also repudiates them, and talks about the

> racist prosecution of the war on drugs:

>

> Part I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7FwULXnM_E

> Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AvzsiESqVss

OK, I'm not clear -- are you saying that this story you posted is the

hatchet job? Because it seemed to give Ron more than enough

opportunity to respond.

At any rate, let's just say for the sake of argument that Ron

never wrote any of the blatantly racist statements in his

newsletters. There are still some issues that need to be addressed.

First, he states that he has no idea who wrote them. He also states

that the issue has come up before in the course of various election

and reelection campaigns. I find it somewhat hard to believe that he

never ever looked into who actually did write those statements on any

of those past occasions when the issue came up, but if he genuinely

didn't, isn't that irresponsible of him?

Second, he compares himself to a publisher who might not know about

everything that gets published by his company, but I don't think this

is an entirely fair or valid analogy. First, many publishers do in

fact know a lot about what goes on in their publications; Rupert

Murdoch is a great example of such a publisher. And second, unlike a

large corporate publisher which might conceivably put out a wide

variety of disparate publications (though again Rupert Murdoch is a

great counter-example of a publisher exerting profound editorial

control right from the very top) Ron only put out relatively few

newsletters, and they BORE HIS NAME, clearly conveying a sense of

editorial control and endorsement. I bet Mercola doesn't personally

write everything that goes out under his banner, but I'm also sure

that everything he does bears his stamp of approval.

Third, even if Ron took a much more hands-off approach than

either Rupert Murdoch or Dr. Mercola or any of a variety of other

publishers take, the content of his newsletters still is indicative of

the kind of people he surrounds himself with. This is completely

different from the absurd request of the moderator in the 9/11 debate

clip you posted above to ask some of his supporters to stop promoting

9/11 conspiracy theories. These authors are people Ron attracted

to his cause and then hired and worked with. That's a profound

distinction.

Fourth, he states that his repeated reelection demonstrates that

voters have vetted him on the issue and not only don't believe he

wrote the statements but believe he doesn't deserve electoral censure

for publishing them, but he is after all a representative from Texas,

and while I don't know anything about his particular district, Texas

does tend to be more racist than many other parts of the country, so

racist newsletters (and even the belief on the part of some voters

that he personally did in fact write those statements) might be much

less of a liability there than in many other parts of the country.

And fifth, he suggests that because the issue has already been dealt

with, it's only being raised to torpedo him. In actual fact, while it

may or may not have been dealt with in his district in Texas, it's

being addressed on the national stage now in part because many voters

in the nation are getting their first real exposure to him. Of course

his opponents want to raise the issue; that's the nature of political

campaigns. But if it had truly already been dealt with on the

national stage, they wouldn't get very far in trying to raise it.

-

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

> Just for the heck of it, I decided to watch these debate clips.

Cool. Your responses are fair and balanced -- no admiration respect

to Fox intended.

[snip]

> Investment in research,

> infrastructure and the like -- the sort of economic policy I favor --

> is more like building's one's health through consumption of nutrient-

> dense foods. Maybe there's a place and a time for caffeine sometimes,

> particularly with a sick patient (though of course the sicker the

> patient, the more damage the caffeine can do and the more caution must

> be exercised) and maybe there's not, but the anti-tax/propertarian

> platform Ron is running on leaves no room for the kind of genuine

> investment in productivity I'm talking about.

As far as I know there is little evidence that investment in research

or infrastructure is necessary to prevent the fluctuations of the

business cycle. I think most of the economic programs of the New Deal

greatly prolonged the Depression. My first exposure to this idea was

in a book called _Taking Sides_ that offered opposing essays on topics

in American History that accompanied the primary textbook of a US

HIstory class I took in college, and compared our recovery to

Britain's, which was much quicker with a pro-business approach.

However, I was most impressed with Murray Rothbard's book on it, which

is available online for free although is quite a long read and is

sometimes technical and rather torturous in its analysis of monetary

policy:

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf

Now, the question of whether investment in infrastructure and research

makes society better is a different one. But I don't think it has

much to do with avoiding the pitfalls of the business cycle.

It's also worth noting that the vast majority of our " infrastructure "

spending goes to the military-industrial complex and corporate

welfare. If you had the choice between no infrastructure spending,

and having most of it go to these places (say, in a Ron vs.

Hillary Clinton election), would you really choose the latter instead

of the former?

[snip]

> True, he opposes illegal immigration, and illegal immigration

> is used to put a downward pressure on wages in this country, but he

> also favors unrestricted free trade, which pits American workers

> against workers who are paid pennies because they live and work in

> countries with no worker safety rules, no environmental regulations

> and so on, and thus cannot but lower wages and standards of living as

> well as safety levels and environmental quality here at home, and he

> favors abolishing the minimum wage.

> Kucinich, by contrast, and too to a somewhat lesser but

> nonetheless very significant extent, supports fair trade, which ties

> openness in trade to worker conditions and environmental regulations

> in other countries.

His position on trade is a lot closer to Kucinich's than ' is,

as far as I know, unless Kucinich is wrong that he is the only

Democrat that would pull us out of WTO, NAFTA, IMF and World Bank.

Ron 's position on these institutions is identical to that of

Kucinich, and his position on free trade is almost identiical to Ralph

Nader's -- at least, on the point that a true free trade treaty would

be only one page long, not 500. He and Nader both agree that these

treaties are corporate-managed trade for the benefit of big

corporations.

So no, I don't think this contrast really exists. The " race to the

bottom " effect is at best a hypothesis, and its strongest evidence is

the fact that real wages have stagnated in the neoliberal period (1971

to present), however this period is the identical period to the one in

which we've gone off the gold exchange standard. And it is clear if

you look at the consumer price index across the century that it shows

a " hockeystick " graph where prices remained nearly constant until 1971

and shot through the roof from 1971-present, so the mechanism of

inflation is the most clearly supported mechanism to explain the

stagnation in real wages.

Also, the ability of NAFTA and WTO to overrule American sovereignty

and overturn our own environmental laws is the biggest environmental

reason to oppose them, and RP opposes this on the grounds of national

sovereignty, just like the environmentalists do, so again, his

position is almost identical.

Finally, voted for the PATRIOT Act, and Kucinich voted

*against* Ron 's amendment to the Farm Bill prohibitiing funds

from being appropriated to NAIS.

So, since RP is indentical to Kucinich on the immediate issues of

NAFTA, WTO, World Bank, and IMF, but is so obviously better than

on civil liberties and obviously better than Kucinich on the

issue of farming, I would say RP is the best candidate.

[snip]

> I agree completely with everything he says here as far as it goes, but

> he completely neglects the elephant in the room: we're only involved

> in the middle east because of oil, and the fastest and best way to get

> us out of there would be to invest in alternative energy technology so

> we can stop importing so much of it.

He is against subsidies to the oil industry and in favor of tax

credits for alternative fuel R & D:

=======

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_#Environmental_prote\

ction

He has voted against federal subsidies for the oil and gas industry,

saying that without government subsidies to the oil and gas

industries, alternative fuels would be more competitive with oil and

gas and would come to market on a competitive basis sooner.

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/environment/

I am a co-sponsor of legislation designed to encourage the development

of alternative and sustainable energy. H.R. 550 extends the investment

tax credit to solar energy property and qualified fuel cell property,

and H.R. 1772 provides tax credits for the installation of wind energy

property.

=================

>Between war, global warming and

> the economy, alternative energy -- which could be realized best and

> fastest with wise and significant federal investment -- is one of the

> most important issues of our time, and yet Ron would leave it to

> the market to develop. Markets, however, are extremely short-term

> beasts and do a very poor job of addressing long-term problems.

Don't forget the importance of opposing corn subsidies and the

anti-grass-farming policies of the government to global warming, if

CFA is correct that topsoil formation is a major part of the solution:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/masterjohn3.html

> I don't agree that we should terminate all foreign aid and just let

> other people rot, though.

[snip]

Is that what would happen? I think Ron thinks that we should

abandon foreign aid not because we should let other people rot, but

because it does more harm than good.

Indeed, foreign development aid largely goes through the IMF and the

World Bank, and these have created massive debts that foreign

governments owe, and required them to institute " structural adjustment

programs " that have turned their economies from self-sustainable

economies into export economies, where many people starve because they

are producing coffee for exports, for example, instead of food to feed

themselves.

Meanwhile, there is plenty of international charity. The Red Cross

would do a great job if American planes were not " accidentally "

bombing their food storage houses with flat roofs and giant red

crosses on them, repeatedly, as they did in Afghanistan. My church is

involved in the International Orthodox Christian Charities which does

all kinds of foreign aid work and has won awards for being the

international charity with the lowest overhead. If more money went

through IOCC, for example, instead of through government programs with

absolutely massive overhead, more foreign aid would get to the people

that need it. There are, of course, lots of other private charitable

institutions, and charitable giving does go up when taxes go down.

> > Borrowing $10 billion from China to prop up military dictatorship in

> > Pakistan to help promote " democracy " in Iraq:

> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8TkmE5t1Pk

>

> In one sense this is a very reasonable response -- particularly the

> part about borrowing from China to pay for our military adventurism,

> which is an abomination on top of an abomination -- but in other, it's

> grossly disingenuous, or at the very least deluded. The Republican

> party has been about all the things he deplores in this statement for

> a long time; to pretend it's not is to ignore all recent history.

Sure, but it has gone back and forth, and the Democrats are just as

involved. But as he points out, Republicans have won on anti-war

platforms, Eisenhower was famous for his warnings about the

military-industrial complex, etc. It makes sense for him to try to

forge the parties identiy with the good things in its past and thus

move it in the right direction in the future.

> OK, I'm not clear -- are you saying that this story you posted is the

> hatchet job? Because it seemed to give Ron more than enough

> opportunity to respond.

No, that story was very, very fair. The version that CNN played last

night was a hatchet job, because it reduced the interview to the

absolute least defense of him, and did not even include his

repudiation of the racist comments.

[snip]

I agree with most of your statements about the mishandling of the

racist comments. I think he totally mishandled this at one point or

another.

> And fifth, he suggests that because the issue has already been dealt

> with, it's only being raised to torpedo him. In actual fact, while it

> may or may not have been dealt with in his district in Texas, it's

> being addressed on the national stage now in part because many voters

> in the nation are getting their first real exposure to him. Of course

> his opponents want to raise the issue; that's the nature of political

> campaigns. But if it had truly already been dealt with on the

> national stage, they wouldn't get very far in trying to raise it.

I read that the New York Times had done a story on this a long time

ago, and they concluded that the authorship was not likely to be Ron

's based on sylistic and other authorship analysis with known

statements of him. I haven't seen the NYT article so I can't verify

that, but it's possible this has been dealt with at a national level.

In any case, he also stated that it probably should be ironed out and

he thanks Wolf for bringing it up after he made the statements you

just cited.

I agree he hasn't handled this as well as I would like, but I think

that the abridged version of the story CNN played last night was

unfair. They played the entire background clip that was contained in

the video I linked to, but they gave hardly any of 's response,

except that he didn't know who wrote them and was a victim of a

political witchhunt -- i.e., they selected the absolute worst 10

seconds of his 5-minute or so interview and played that alone.

Chris

[Guest guest]

wrote:

> > Also, I learned at least a little in school about Lincoln's

racism,

> > and I was certainly taught that the emancipation proclamation was

> > strictly a strategic move to prevent Britain from entering the

war on

> > the side of the south.

>

> You learned this in public school?!

>I learned it in public school, too, in ILLINOIS.

Lincoln ordered the largest mass hanging in U.S. history in MN, 38 Santee Sioux

Indian men.

http://www.unitednativeamerica.com/hanging.html

Wanita

________________________________________________________________________________\

____

Looking for last minute shopping deals?

Find them fast with Search.

http://tools.search./newsearch/category.php?category=shopping

[Guest guest]

,

> Markets, however, are extremely short-term

> beasts and do a very poor job of addressing long-term problems.

This is one point I forgot to address.

I disagree that markets are shortsighted. " Markets, " of course, just

means individual people or collective business enterprises engaging in

voluntary contract and exchange. So to say that " markets " are

extremely short-term beasts just means that the people participating

in them are extremely short-term beasts. And if that's the case, then

governments would have to be extremely short-term beasts too, because

they're also run by people.

The perfect example proving that markets are not inherently

short-sighted is the private retirement account market. People

voluntarily invest in accounts that are managed for the purpose of

providing an income 30, 40, 50 or 60 years down the line.

The whole essence of capitalism is that it rewards those who form

*capital.* And the formation of capital -- whether it be knowledge

acquired through research, the transformation of unproductive metals

into productive machinery, or the use of a cow to produce milk instead

of veal meat -- is that one abstains from present consumption of

wealth in order to direct that wealth into making a greater amouint of

wealth that cannot be consumed until the future.

Since capitalism distributes a greater amount of wealth to those who

invest wealth as capital rather than consume it, it not only

encourages investment instead of consumption but also puts a greater

amount of wealth into the hands of people who will invest it instead

of people who will consume it. These are all long-term,

future-oriented tasks.

Now, plenty of companies do short-sighted things. BUT. Those

companies in a MARKET-based system would fail. Flop. Kaboom. Kaput.

Gone. But in our system, we have the government bail them out. What

does that do? It encourages short-sightedness!

After all, why properly assess the long-term future and act on it when

you know you can make a quick buck now, then when you screw everyone

over you can just get bailed out?

The other interference in markets is the Federal Reserve inflationary

system. Under a Rothbardian libertarian system, money is attached to

a hard commodity (not necessarily gold, but could be gold) and

fractional reserve banking is illegal and prosecuted as fraud. Under

this system, the interest rate signals to investors the

time-preference of the population. That is, the degree to which

people prefer to consume more now, or to withold consumption now and

consume more in the future. These allows investors to invest in the

appropriate short-term, medium-term, or long-term projects and

appropriately judge their profitability.

Under the current system, new money is injected into circulation and

this gives the false signal that time-preferences are increased --

i.e. that people are witholding from present consumption in order to

consume in the future. Capital is then misdirected into the wrong

projects that appear will be profitable over the course of their

investment but aren't.

An example would be a housing bubble, where the interest rate

indicates that it is wise to invest in building many houses. Then,

five years later, you have tons of houses on the market that no one is

willing to buy, unless the price deflates to a point where all the

people who invested in building them will lose money on them. Gee,

when does that ever happen.

So, truly free markets are not short-sighted. But, inflationary

markets are very wrong-sighted, and government bailouts penalize those

who see the long-term and reward those who are recklessly

short-sighted, thus encouraging reckless short-sightedness.

The intersection of Kucinich and is getting rid of corporate

welfare. I think that is sufficient.

Chris

[Guest guest]

Chris-

> Cool. Your responses are fair and balanced -- no admiration respect

> to Fox intended.

Well, not to be pompous or offensive, but what did you expect, that

I'd be UNfair?

> As far as I know there is little evidence that investment in research

> or infrastructure is necessary to prevent the fluctuations of the

> business cycle.

I never said it would. At question, I thought, is what if anything

Ron would do to grow the economy, and though I think it was

intended as a short-term stimulus question, I believe it also

technically encompassed the whole larger issue.

> I think most of the economic programs of the New Deal

> greatly prolonged the Depression. My first exposure to this idea was

> in a book called _Taking Sides_ that offered opposing essays on topics

> in American History that accompanied the primary textbook of a US

> HIstory class I took in college, and compared our recovery to

> Britain's, which was much quicker with a pro-business approach.

Britain's situation at the time was different enough that I don't

think any attempt at apples-to-apples comparison is meaningful at all.

> However, I was most impressed with Murray Rothbard's book on it, which

> is available online for free although is quite a long read and is

> sometimes technical and rather torturous in its analysis of monetary

> policy:

>

> http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf

Thanks for the link, but it's unlikely I'll have the time to read it.

> Now, the question of whether investment in infrastructure and research

> makes society better is a different one. But I don't think it has

> much to do with avoiding the pitfalls of the business cycle.

I didn't say anything about the business cycle; I was talking about

fundamental long-term growth. And to be clear, I think that

investment in infrastructure and research makes society better and

also contributes over the long term to growth and prosperity.

> It's also worth noting that the vast majority of our " infrastructure "

> spending goes to the military-industrial complex and corporate

> welfare. If you had the choice between no infrastructure spending,

> and having most of it go to these places (say, in a Ron vs.

> Hillary Clinton election), would you really choose the latter instead

> of the former?

Would I kill the patient to save him, you mean? Because while that

sounds like an inflammatory way to put it, that's what you're asking,

IMO. Clinton is a terrible candidate and I certainly won't vote for

her in the primary (and I'd have to think long and hard about voting

for her in the general election, and it would depend on the polls and

on her opponent) but unlike all Republicans including Ron she at

least has a plan to support scientific research in a meaningful way.

I admit that the hypothetical choice of destroying all government

investment in research versus supporting ongoing over-investment in

the military-industrial complex and the war machine is a dreadful

choice to have to make, but I think I'd rather seek to influence a

Democratic administration on matters of war than just give up on

science entirely.

That said, this is a hypothetical question with no real chance of

turning real. It looks to me like Ron doesn't effectively have

much more of a chance of getting nominated than Dennis Kucinich. He's

only polling at 4% nationally, after all, and the press is against him.

> > True, he opposes illegal immigration, and illegal immigration

> > is used to put a downward pressure on wages in this country, but he

> > also favors unrestricted free trade, which pits American workers

> > against workers who are paid pennies because they live and work in

> > countries with no worker safety rules, no environmental regulations

> > and so on, and thus cannot but lower wages and standards of living

> as

> > well as safety levels and environmental quality here at home, and he

> > favors abolishing the minimum wage.

>

> > Kucinich, by contrast, and too to a somewhat lesser but

> > nonetheless very significant extent, supports fair trade, which ties

> > openness in trade to worker conditions and environmental regulations

> > in other countries.

>

> His position on trade is a lot closer to Kucinich's than ' is,

> as far as I know, unless Kucinich is wrong that he is the only

> Democrat that would pull us out of WTO, NAFTA, IMF and World Bank.

> Ron 's position on these institutions is identical to that of

> Kucinich, and his position on free trade is almost identiical to Ralph

> Nader's -- at least, on the point that a true free trade treaty would

> be only one page long, not 500. He and Nader both agree that these

> treaties are corporate-managed trade for the benefit of big

> corporations.

Yes, Kucinich would pull us out of a number of international monetary

institutions and agreements, but that's where the similarity to Ron

's position on international trade ends. There's a deep and

fundamental difference between fair trade and unrestricted free trade,

and I firmly support fair trade for both moral and environmental

reasons. (It's significant, BTW, that many defenders of free trade

argue that it's a moral imperative to raise the living standards of

foreign workers at the expense of American workers and the American

economy. Personally, I think it's a moral imperative of Americans to

work for America, albeit without of course committing war crimes and

the like against people of other nations.)

> So no, I don't think this contrast really exists. The " race to the

> bottom " effect is at best a hypothesis, and its strongest evidence is

> the fact that real wages have stagnated in the neoliberal period (1971

> to present), however this period is the identical period to the one in

> which we've gone off the gold exchange standard. And it is clear if

> you look at the consumer price index across the century that it shows

> a " hockeystick " graph where prices remained nearly constant until 1971

> and shot through the roof from 1971-present, so the mechanism of

> inflation is the most clearly supported mechanism to explain the

> stagnation in real wages.

Are you truly not aware of outsourcing and offshoring? Of the

transition of manufacturing from this country to others? And of their

effects on our economy? It's not a hypothesis except in the strict

scientific sense of the word. I don't even know where to begin in

responding to a staggeringly counterfactual assertion like this.

> Also, the ability of NAFTA and WTO to overrule American sovereignty

> and overturn our own environmental laws is the biggest environmental

> reason to oppose them, and RP opposes this on the grounds of national

> sovereignty, just like the environmentalists do, so again, his

> position is almost identical.

Environmentalists don't necessarily oppose such agreements and

institutions on national sovereignty grounds, though some of them do

in part; environmental grounds are their primary reasons, unlike Ron

's, which AFAIK are exclusively sovereignty-based and have nothing

to do with the environment.

> Finally, voted for the PATRIOT Act, and Kucinich voted

> *against* Ron 's amendment to the Farm Bill prohibitiing funds

> from being appropriated to NAIS.

No candidate is perfect, and ' vote for the PATRIOT Act is

definitely one of the most damning black marks against him. This is

one of the reasons I'm not relentlessly agitating for despite

feeling that he's the best/least-bad of the mainstream candidates.

Are you truly suggesting that you agree with everything Ron says

and stands for?

> So, since RP is indentical to Kucinich on the immediate issues of

> NAFTA, WTO, World Bank, and IMF, but is so obviously better than

> on civil liberties and obviously better than Kucinich on the

> issue of farming, I would say RP is the best candidate.

Uh, no, you're completely discounting the issue of fair trade. If you

don't support fair trade, fine, say so, but it's a massive

distinction. Absolutely gigantic.

> He is against subsidies to the oil industry and in favor of tax

> credits for alternative fuel R & D:

Tax credits are a grossly insufficient means of investing in

fundamental research.

Are tax credits going to fund high-energy physics? Are tax credits

going to fund climate research? Are tax credits going to fund basic

research into just about ANYTHING that doesn't have short-term

economic potential?

>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_#Environmental_prote\

ction

The problem with the propertarian approach to environmental protection

is threefold: it's a grossly inefficient after-the-fact mechanism, it

ignores the tragedy of the commons, and it fails to deal with

contributory causes to problems. All sorts of pollutants raise the

incidence of various diseases and conditions in populations; unlike a

theft or a murder, they often cannot be definitively said to have

caused a given instance of harm to an individual.

> He has voted against federal subsidies for the oil and gas industry,

> saying that without government subsidies to the oil and gas

> industries, alternative fuels would be more competitive with oil and

> gas and would come to market on a competitive basis sooner.

This is true, but grossly insufficient.

> Don't forget the importance of opposing corn subsidies and the

> anti-grass-farming policies of the government to global warming, if

> CFA is correct that topsoil formation is a major part of the solution:

I'm not. But IMO Ron would just accelerate the movement of

pollution (and topsoil destruction) to China and other countries, thus

reducing the effectiveness of anything we do here in the US.

> Is that what would happen? I think Ron thinks that we should

> abandon foreign aid not because we should let other people rot, but

> because it does more harm than good.

No, my understanding of his position is that levying taxes for foreign

aids violates propertarian philosophy and engages us in foreign

entanglements he'd strongly prefer to avoid. To the degree I've seen

him talking about foreign aid causing problems it's been about

military aid and propping up repressive governments, which I certainly

agree we should stop.

> Indeed, foreign development aid largely goes through the IMF and the

> World Bank, and these have created massive debts that foreign

> governments owe, and required them to institute " structural adjustment

> programs " that have turned their economies from self-sustainable

> economies into export economies, where many people starve because they

> are producing coffee for exports, for example, instead of food to feed

> themselves.

Yes, because current policy isn't true aid and isn't reflective of

policies I'd support. That doesn't mean that what I want and what Ron

seeks are the same thing, even if they overlap in a couple areas.

> There are, of course, lots of other private charitable

> institutions, and charitable giving does go up when taxes go down.

Are there any reliable estimates of the total volume of charitable

giving over time, particularly as correlated with tax rates?

Of course it's also important to account for " charitable giving " which

is actually corporate welfare unto itself, like the Gates Foundation.

> > In one sense this is a very reasonable response -- particularly the

> > part about borrowing from China to pay for our military adventurism,

> > which is an abomination on top of an abomination -- but in other,

> it's

> > grossly disingenuous, or at the very least deluded. The Republican

> > party has been about all the things he deplores in this statement

> for

> > a long time; to pretend it's not is to ignore all recent history.

>

> Sure, but it has gone back and forth, and the Democrats are just as

> involved.

Yes, but the question was about electability, and I don't think

there's any doubt that the Democratic electorate is vastly more

opposed to the war (and warmongering generally) than the Republican

electorate. As an anti-war Republican, Ron has a hard row to hoe

in the primaries.

> But as he points out, Republicans have won on anti-war

> platforms, Eisenhower was famous for his warnings about the

> military-industrial complex, etc.

Eisenhower offered that warning at the end of his administration, and

it's now mainly remembered and cited by Democrats. Republicans, by

contrast, often dismiss it, and I've heard plenty of them say that he

was a great president but by the end, when he said that, he was

getting senile. (I kid you not.)

> I agree with most of your statements about the mishandling of the

> racist comments. I think he totally mishandled this at one point or

> another.

But my point is that he didn't merely mishandle the issue of the

statements when it was brought up; the entire matter from start to

finish positively reeks of mishandling -- and that's the most generous

interpretation possible. He attracted these people to his cause. He

hired them. He published what they said, under his banner and under

his name. He didn't investigate the issue when it was raised. He

refuses to investigate the issue now. He doesn't explain how it could

have happened. It's not merely a matter of an isolated incident in

the past that he mishandled at the time.

> I read that the New York Times had done a story on this a long time

> ago, and they concluded that the authorship was not likely to be Ron

> 's based on sylistic and other authorship analysis with known

> statements of him. I haven't seen the NYT article so I can't verify

> that, but it's possible this has been dealt with at a national level.

Even assuming that the NYT article discussed the whole thing

extensively, that didn't expose the issue to the vast majority of the

current electorate, and the issue wouldn't be getting any traction if

everyone in the electorate had already been exposed to the issue and

had decided it was all OK. In fact, a large part of the reason it

continues to be dredged up is that Ron mishandled it in the past

and continues to mishandle it to this day. If back then he'd

investigated the matter, come clean about how the statements came to

be issued under his name, fired the people responsible, and reformed

his editorial process, none of this could have been used against him,

but to this day he denies that most of those steps would have been

necessary or appropriate.

> In any case, he also stated that it probably should be ironed out and

> he thanks Wolf for bringing it up after he made the statements you

> just cited.

True, but he also objected to the idea that he should even find out

who wrote what!

> I agree he hasn't handled this as well as I would like, but I think

> that the abridged version of the story CNN played last night was

> unfair. They played the entire background clip that was contained in

> the video I linked to, but they gave hardly any of 's response,

> except that he didn't know who wrote them and was a victim of a

> political witchhunt -- i.e., they selected the absolute worst 10

> seconds of his 5-minute or so interview and played that alone.

Look, you're not going to find me saying that the media is treating

Ron well. Even though he's in favor of ending basically all

regulation and thus in many ways ultimately enhancing corporate power,

he's also in favor of shutting off the government teat which

corporations currently suckle on, and so many of the large

corporations of today are inevitably going to be opposed to him,

because there's no guarantee that under his system, THEIR power would

persist. All corporate power would be reshaped and there'd be a

massive reshuffling of the corporate landscape, and corporations are

nothing if not opposed to change except when it's strictly and

entirely on their terms.

-

[Guest guest]

,

> > Unfortunately, things were a little more complicated than that.

>

> Life is generally too complicated to be reduced to one or two

> sentences without losing some nuance, subtlety and detail. Nothing

> you say, however -- not a single, solitary word, not even a letter --

> contradicts the basic truth and accuracy of my statement that Lincoln

> offered to buy all the slaves and the south refused.

I understand what you are saying and on one level sure you are right.

All by itself with no context whatsoever the words are formally true.

But you didn't employ them that way.

As employed it does not communicate the basic truth or accuracy that

you say it does. Context gives statements meaning, and without the

proper context they can often become grossly inaccurate. You used that

statement as a bromide against the press, our state of democracy, and

Ron , and as a stand alone comment used in that way (without any

qualifiers) it is ***grossly*** inaccurate.

> You might have

> had something of a point if the offer had come with such grossly

> unacceptable strings attached (perhaps the requirement that all slave

> owners sell their slaves and then shoot themselves in the head, or

> spend twenty years in prison doing hard labor, for example) but that

> simply wasn't the case.

It did come with attachments, and everyone, even Lincoln's friends,

knew it. It was offered as a purely hollow political gesture that no

one would be happy with, and got the reception that everyone expected.

Emancipation was considered a part of the War Powers act by Lincoln

and was being used for military purposes. The South believed,

accurately, that Lincoln was simply trying to destabilize them,

especially when he had already called for a violent uprising to

accompany the freedom of the slaves, something even Northerners, black

and white, (and Europeans) thought this was monstrous.

His Northern cronies didn't trust what he would do once the slaves

were free. In fact we **know** that he wanted the newly freed southern

slaves impressed into the Federal army. He had that in the final form

of the Emancipation Proclamation. And over and over again Lincoln said

he wanted free and freed blacks ***deported***. He even went so far as

to ask Congress to support a constitutional amendment on the

colonization of Black Americans.

These are known political ***actions*** that he attempted to institute

throughout his political career.

So one can attempt to hide behind logic and de-contextualize the

statement and say, " well hubba hubba boys, he did offer to buy the

Southern slaves, so there! " but that is as much an abuse of logic as

you try to charge me with. If you had used the statement in a context

different than what you did, your objection might have some merit, but

the context in which you offered it, and the implication of how you

used it, is wrong. His offer was not designed to buy peace for

anybody, but the way you used it suggests otherwise.

> > The

> > group known as the Radical Republicans put a fire under Lincoln's butt

> > to really get after the South, and threatened to do in his

> > administration if he did not. The emancipation efforts by Lincoln were

> > considered a war measure, a way to destabilize and bring down the

> > South. Lincoln didn't much care about freeing the slaves.

>

> This is utterly non-responsive and completely irrelevant. It has

> nothing whatsoever to do with the questions of whether Lincoln did in

> fact offer to buy the slaves and whether the south refused. His

> motivations are not at issue; his actions are.

If I suggest an action which is not designed to do what it appears to

do, or is hollow on the face of it knowing in advance that I am likely

to get a non-response, then yes my motives are an issue, politically

speaking. In this case it means Lincoln's attempt to buy the slaves is

****not at all**** the way you are attempting to portray it, i.e.

Lincoln did offer a peaceful means out of this problem, and the press

and our democracy and Ron be damned for not noting or suggesting

otherwise.

> > The problem with Lincoln's attempts at compensated emancipation is

> > that he always coupled it with conscription for Southern slaves during

> > the war (i.e. slavery to the federal gov't) and deportation to Haiti,

> > Africa or South America otherwise, including Black Americans who were

> > already free. He thought America was suitable for only one race, the

> > superior white race. For all the talk of Ron 's bigotry, we have

> > Lincoln indisputably in his own words showing himself to be a bigot

> > ***throughout*** his life.

>

> Yes, many more people were bigots back then than are now; society

> evolves, often for the better.

> Jefferson too, as I recall, thought

> that blacks should be sent back to Africa. Does that mean that

> Jefferson wasn't a net-positive force and that we should all despise

> him now? I don't think so.

Lincoln's blatant out and out bigotry informed what he did

politically. His support of the fugitive slave act, his advocacy of

white supremacy, his seeming lack of care that continually annoyed the

Radical Republicans both white and black to the point of threatening

his administration, his ****absolutely gutless**** Emancipation

Proclamation, which didn't free a SINGLE SOUL, ad infinitum ad

nauseum. Now it did keep France and England out of the war *and* kept

the Senate from revolting against him, but it did absolutely nothing

to free the slaves.

As far as Jefferson versus Lincoln, didn't you just tell me above that

motivations mean nothing and actions mean everything? " His motivations

are not at issue; his actions are.- Idol " So tell me what

political ****actions**** Jefferson did that comes close to

snuffing out the lives of 650,000 Americans, slave and free, black and

white, soldiers ****and**** civilians?

Lincoln had alternatives. He chose to do otherwise, and no hollow

piece of a not-going-anywhere-do-nothing political offer is going to

cover his political arse in doing so.

> Nor are past attitudes and mores relevant

> to the candidacy of a contemporary politician; contemporary

> politicians must of course be judged by contemporary standards. And

> once again, all of this is utterly non-responsive and completely

> irrelevant. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the questions of

> whether Lincoln did in fact offer to buy the slaves and whether the

> south refused. Do you really think slave owners refused to sell their

> slaves because they preferred to have to deal with freed slaves living

> in their neighborhoods instead of sending them elsewhere? The very

> idea is absurd beyond belief.

No not at all, and Lincoln knew that as well, which was a part of his

political calculation leading to violence. Lincoln simply refused to

engage on any other level, partly because he didn't much care about

slavery, and partly because he wanted to crush the South for reasons

that had nothing to do with slavery.

" Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States

that by the accession of a Republican administration their property

[is] to be endangered.... I have no purpose, directly or indirectly to

interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States where

it exists.... I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no

inclination to do so. "

Abraham Lincoln - 1861 inaugural address,

> > Of course he made no friends among abolitionist or black folk with

> > this attitude. Frederick s, famous former slave and a member of

> > the Radical Republicans said this about Lincoln's political gyrations

> > regarding emancipation and deportation:

> >

> > " Illogical and unfair as Mr. Lincoln's statements are, they are

> > nevertheless quite in keeping with his whole course from the beginning

> > of his administration up to this day, and confirm the painful

> > conviction that though elected as an antislavery man by Republican and

> > Abolition voters, Mr. Lincoln is quite a genuine representative of

> > American prejudice and Negro hatred and far more concerned for the

> > preservation of slavery, and the favor of the Border Slave States,

> > than for any sentiment of magnanimity or principle of justice and

> > humanity. "

> >

> > Lerone Jr, African American scholar and historian, a

> > thoroughgoing liberal (i.e no friend of the confederate South), and

> > author of _Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream_, says

> > this about King Lincoln (I say " King Lincoln " because when it comes to

> > the violation of civil liberties, the current administration has

> > nothing on Abraham Lincoln):

> >

> > " What Lincoln proposed officially and publicly was that the United

> > States government buy the slaves and deport them to Africa or South

> > America. This was not a passing whim. In five major policy

> > declarations, including two State of the Union addresses and the

> > preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, the sixteenth president of the

> > United States publicly and officially called for the deportation of

> > blacks. On countless other occasions, in conferences with cronies,

> > Democratic and Republican leaders, and high government officials, he

> > called for colonization of blacks or aggressively promoted

> > colonization by private and official acts. "

> >

<snip>

> >

> > As notes, the political slickness of the Emancipation

> > Proclamation is that Lincoln applied it only to slaves in the states

> > controlled be the Confederacy, who obviously would ignore it, and

> > didn't apply it to the states where he could have granted slaves

> > immediate freedom.

> >

<snip>

>

> Did I offer a comprehensive defense of Lincoln's character? Indeed,

> did I offer ANY defense of Lincoln's character?

Not in this thread, although you did suggest we shouldn't despise him,

presumably for what he did and not what he actually believed, although

how you are separating the two is beyond me.

The quotes I didn't snip out above refer to what Lincoln did and tried to do.

Nonetheless none of the above was offered as a soliloquy on King

Lincoln, but rather showing the integration of his personal beliefs

and political actions. In other words, his public proposals were

simply a reflection of his personal beliefs. Even when forced to do

something which violated his racist beliefs in order to maintain

power, he found a political way to maneuver around it.

" And I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior

position assigned to the white

race. "

As Frederick s noted above, he spent his entire political

career attempting to do just that.

> No. I simply stated

> that he offered to buy the slaves from the south and the south

> refused. That is a documented fact, and this entire line of response

> from you is a diversion and a straw man. It is utterly non-responsive

> and completely irrelevant. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the

> questions of whether Lincoln did in fact offer to buy the slaves and

> whether the south refused. His attitudes towards blacks and racial

> equality are not at issue; his offer to buy the slaves and the south's

> refusal to sell them all are.

Already covered this line of argumentation above.

> > Finally, just because emancipation compensation was initially

> > rejected, didn't mean 650,000 people from both the North and South had

> > to die. And it certainly did not justify Sherman's March to the Sea

> > where he murdered tens of thousands of southern

> > *********civilians******* - men, women, and children, in one of the

> > most atrocious acts of criminality, with Lincoln's full support, in

> > American history.

>

> Once again, how is this relevant? Did I defend the civil war? Did I

> say it was necessary? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't, but that's an

> entirely different conversation.

Yes it is, and one by which someone's true anti-war stripes can be

measured. As an irrelevant aside :-) Lincoln shut down 300

***northern*** newspapers who disagreed with him on the war. He

censored the telegraphs. He censored the mails (since newspaper were

often mailed in that day). He didn't hesitate to send in his

Republican thugs...excuse me...soldiers to smash the printing presses

of said papers.

> What I actually said is that the

> assertion that the war was avoidable specifically because Lincoln

> could have offered to buy all the slaves and didn't is false, because

> Lincoln did in fact offer to buy all the slaves and the south

> refused.

Yes, but your use of that statement is misleading. Did Lincoln offer

to buy the slaves as a way to avoid war? NO! If he had done so, then

yes you would be absolutely on target. But he did not.

By the way, I don't recall in the Russert interview the conversation

going along in the manner you seem to be portraying it. I don't have

time to look at it again but are you sure Ron spoke the way you

are suggesting?

> This is a fact. All the rest is irrelevant. (Not that I

> mean to suggest that you're anything but welcome to broach these

> topics; I'm only pointing out that your attempt to rebut my statement

> is an utter and complete failure.)

Naw, not at all.

> > England ended their slave trade peacefully in just six years. But

> > Wilberforce, a member of the British Parliament and a devout

> > Evangelical Christian, spent over 40 years of his life trying to

> > abolish the English Slave trade. And when Parliament finally took

> > notice, six years later it was done, three days before Wilberforce

> > died.

>

> This too isn't relevant to the questions of whether Lincoln did in

> fact offer to buy all the slaves and whether the south did in fact

> refuse, the answers to both of which being well-documented yeses.

>

> More generally, though, it's also a very poor analogy, because England

> had long since banned slavery inside its own borders, and Wilberforce

> was fighting to stop the OFFSHORE TRADE in slaves. Obviously that's

> much more likely to be a peaceful effort with a peaceful resolution

> than the attempt to take away slaves from people who personally own

> and use them.

Aside from the fact that British Merchants did participate in the

slave trade, despite the ban of slavery per se within England's

borders (though not the empire), and Wilberforce's action did affect

people who personally owned slaves, whether or not they did so on

English soil, it is still a poor argument. Why? Because the initial

ban was accomplished peacefully as well.

Nowhere in our hemisphere did any nation resort to violence to end

slavery except King Lincoln and his cronies.

> > In March of last year, in honor of the 200th anniversary of the

> > abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire, the film _Amazing

> > Grace_ was released detailing the story of Wilberforce and the

> > Anglican Priest and former slave trader who was a great influence on

> > his life, Newton. He was the author of one of the most famous

> > hymns of all time, " Faith's Review and Expectation " which today we

> > know as " Amazing Grace "

>

> And good for Wilberforce -- he was obviously a good man who did a good

> thing -- but neither he nor Apted's film have anything

> whatsoever to do with the point under discussion.

They do with the point I was making relative to yours, that there were

alternatives available other than the hollow offer that King Lincoln

made, and which King Lincoln refused to pursue, and rather chose

violence instead. To borrow a word that you used in describing Ron

's politics, Lincoln's attitudes and actions were " execrable. "

It is not that Lincoln didn't understand gradualism, a very strong

point of Ron 's campaign by the way, since he spoke of it

constantly in reference to emancipated compensation and deportation,

but rather that if he couldn't get it his way, he didn't want it at

all.

By the way, anyone who wants to see the trailer of the film can find

it here:

--

" The individual who can do something that the world wants will, in the

end, make his way regardless of race. "

- Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)

[Guest guest]

,

> Also, I learned at least a little in school about Lincoln's racism,

> and I was certainly taught that the emancipation proclamation was

> strictly a strategic move to prevent Britain from entering the war on

> the side of the south.

Unusual however, and King Lincoln for most folks is a hero of mythic

proportions, and few know little if anything about the reality behind

the myth.

--

" The individual who can do something that the world wants will, in the

end, make his way regardless of race. "

- Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)

[Guest guest]

--- Idol wrote:

> > Also, I learned at least a little in school about Lincoln's racism,

> > and I was certainly taught that the emancipation proclamation was

> > strictly a strategic move to prevent Britain from entering the war on

> > the side of the south.

>

--- <slethnobotanist@...> wrote:

> Unusual however, and King Lincoln for most folks is a hero of mythic

> proportions, and few know little if anything about the reality behind

> the myth.

Learn something new every day on this list

I'm one of the many who have never heard about Lincoln's dark side.

Thanks for the info.

[Guest guest]

I graduated high school in 1996 and the version of American History we are

taught is a fairy tale and does include Lincoln as a hero. I did a lot of

reading on the side so I understood things better but it wasn't until I was

an adult and dug deeper that I started to learn some truths and still, all

this about Lincoln makes so much sense but is a total surprise! I can't

wait to get my hand on some books.

Dawn

Re: Re: POLITICS: Ron

,

> Also, I learned at least a little in school about Lincoln's racism,

> and I was certainly taught that the emancipation proclamation was

> strictly a strategic move to prevent Britain from entering the war on

> the side of the south.

Unusual however, and King Lincoln for most folks is a hero of mythic

proportions, and few know little if anything about the reality behind

the myth.

--

" The individual who can do something that the world wants will, in the

end, make his way regardless of race. "

- Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)

[Guest guest]

> this about Lincoln makes so much sense but is a total surprise! I

can't

> wait to get my hand on some books.

>

> Dawn

As long as we are in the era... another great reality history is

Forever Free by Foner and Brown, on Reconstruction. Ever notice the

whole reconstruction era is glossed over, like " those bad white

carpetbaggers and angry uneducated ex-slaves got in power briefly and

were chased out. " ?

Looking beyond ruling-class-white sources, come to find out, part of

it was educated blacks and white progressives starting things like

universal education (unknown in the South), follow-through on govmint

promises like 40 acres and a mule, and other modern or egalitarian

concepts. Forecasting by 100 years our " civil rights era " in 1956+.

Too much too soon and it got crushed.

A really cool book.

Connie

[Guest guest]

Thank you! It sounds fascinating. I do remember that part was glossed over

as well. I'll be sure to check that out!

Dawn

From:

[mailto: ] On Behalf Of cbrown2008

Sent: Friday, January 11, 2008 11:18 PM

Subject: Re: POLITICS: Ron

> this about Lincoln makes so much sense but is a total surprise! I

can't

> wait to get my hand on some books.

>

> Dawn

As long as we are in the era... another great reality history is

Forever Free by Foner and Brown, on Reconstruction. Ever notice the

whole reconstruction era is glossed over, like " those bad white

carpetbaggers and angry uneducated ex-slaves got in power briefly and

were chased out. " ?

Looking beyond ruling-class-white sources, come to find out, part of

it was educated blacks and white progressives starting things like

universal education (unknown in the South), follow-through on govmint

promises like 40 acres and a mule, and other modern or egalitarian

concepts. Forecasting by 100 years our " civil rights era " in 1956+.

Too much too soon and it got crushed.

A really cool book.

Connie

[Guest guest]

All oil is now sold on the World Market. Even IF the U.S. had enough oil and

refineries for the entire US domestic demand the price would still be just

as high and just as volatile - driven by world (not US) prices. The price

of oil from Texas, Alaska, Okalahoma, Indiana, New Jersey, California,

Louisiana Gulf, sells for the same price as the Oil from South America or

the Middle East. If you drill more oil wells - WE - do not get cheaper oil.

Even IF Americans cut their use by 50% and the rest of the world increased

their demand the price to Americans to heat their homes would be the same.

Venezuela and Saudi oil profits go back to reduce the cost of oil to their

people, while American oil companies get tax breaks.

Bush I in the First Gulf War cried out that the if Iraq took over Kuwait,

Iraq would then control 30% of the world's oil supply and how dangerous a

madman could demand $40-$50 a barrel. Japan (at the time) argued it would

still be cheaper than going to war) now the price is $100 a barrel. At that

time Sec. of State Dick Cheney on Meet the Press (?) exclaimed that cheap

oil was not in the best " American " interest. His argument was that oil (or

any community) had to be sold at a price where there is sufficient profit to

fuel the companies growth. " America " does not want cheap oil. Cheap oil will

be inflationary, allow too much foreign competition, and cut the profit

line.

It is not Americans (the people) that control the supply/demand/delivery of

oil and hence the economy of most countries, just a Chosen Few.

The " tinkle Down " theory is acceptable for most people as long as their is a

visible " carrot " out in front of them to chase. The belief that " they " could

become filthy rich. Its just like the lottery. A few really big winners -

millions of real losers, and bake sales for schools.

Ron IMO, is arguing for a total change of the establishment to change

the system. Failing this essential change, the only choice left for people

(versus corporations) would be what Dennis Kucinich's is heralding.

Bush-Clinton-Bush (Clinton) have been exceptional rewarding for Corporate

America INC. Cheap labor, low taxes, elimination of government regulations,

The next phrase is to reduce the " entitlement " programs.

Peace

Ed Kasper LAc. & family

www.HappyHerbalist.com

......................................................

But even this elephant is somewhat misleading. With oil now well

above $50/barrel, oil companies finally have the incentive to develop

the Canadian tar sands - and this is the largest current source of US

oil, not the Middle East.

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

> Well, not to be pompous or offensive, but what did you expect, that

> I'd be UNfair?

I didn't mean to suggest fairness was contrary to expectation, but I

did think your comments were especially fair compared to a number of

other comments you've made that have included mischaracterization of

RP's views.

> > As far as I know there is little evidence that investment in research

> > or infrastructure is necessary to prevent the fluctuations of the

> > business cycle.

> I never said it would. At question, I thought, is what if anything

> Ron would do to grow the economy, and though I think it was

> intended as a short-term stimulus question, I believe it also

> technically encompassed the whole larger issue.

I think the most reasonable interpretation within the context asked

(the coming recession) was vis-a-vis the business cycle. I recognize

though that RP and you significantly differ here.

> > I think most of the economic programs of the New Deal

> > greatly prolonged the Depression. My first exposure to this idea was

> > in a book called _Taking Sides_ that offered opposing essays on topics

> > in American History that accompanied the primary textbook of a US

> > HIstory class I took in college, and compared our recovery to

> > Britain's, which was much quicker with a pro-business approach.

> Britain's situation at the time was different enough that I don't

> think any attempt at apples-to-apples comparison is meaningful at all.

It is better than a mere before-and-after comparison, which is what I

had formerly limited my thought on it too, so it opened up some

second-thinking of things.

> > However, I was most impressed with Murray Rothbard's book on it, which

> > is available online for free although is quite a long read and is

> > sometimes technical and rather torturous in its analysis of monetary

> > policy:

> > http://www.mises.org/rothbard/agd.pdf

> Thanks for the link, but it's unlikely I'll have the time to read it.

It requires time and motivation to stick with it. I wouldn't expect

anyone to read it but thought I'd give the reference anyway.

[snip]

> > It's also worth noting that the vast majority of our " infrastructure "

> > spending goes to the military-industrial complex and corporate

> > welfare. If you had the choice between no infrastructure spending,

> > and having most of it go to these places (say, in a Ron vs.

> > Hillary Clinton election), would you really choose the latter instead

> > of the former?

> Would I kill the patient to save him, you mean? Because while that

> sounds like an inflammatory way to put it, that's what you're asking,

> IMO. Clinton is a terrible candidate and I certainly won't vote for

> her in the primary (and I'd have to think long and hard about voting

> for her in the general election, and it would depend on the polls and

> on her opponent) but unlike all Republicans including Ron she at

> least has a plan to support scientific research in a meaningful way.

> I admit that the hypothetical choice of destroying all government

> investment in research versus supporting ongoing over-investment in

> the military-industrial complex and the war machine is a dreadful

> choice to have to make, but I think I'd rather seek to influence a

> Democratic administration on matters of war than just give up on

> science entirely.

I guess that is a values issue. Clinton, a Democrat, presided over

the Iraqi sanction policy, which led to the deaths of hundreds of

thousands of children under 5, and he supported scientific research.

That seems like a no-brainer to me. I would go without the lipid

hypothesis in order to go without the mass murder of children.

> That said, this is a hypothetical question with no real chance of

> turning real. It looks to me like Ron doesn't effectively have

> much more of a chance of getting nominated than Dennis Kucinich. He's

> only polling at 4% nationally, after all, and the press is against him.

Ron has a highly energized and large fundraising and activism

base, and Dennis Kucinich apparently does not. I don't think Ron

's chance is good, but I think it's better than that of Kucinich

and I think it exists. It is also possible, as stated, that Ron

would run as an independent.

> Yes, Kucinich would pull us out of a number of international monetary

> institutions and agreements, but that's where the similarity to Ron

> 's position on international trade ends.

Dennis Kucinich's page has an " executive summary coming soon " but at

the moment all it says about this issue is the following:

===========

http://www.dennis4president.com/go/issues/saving-capitalism/

As President, Dennis Kucinich will end America's participation in

NAFTA and WTO. Huge multi-national corporations ship American jobs

overseas, turn a blind eye to human rights abuses and hide behind

their lobbyists in Washington. REad more about Dennis' plan to

instill ethics, accountability and fairness in global trade and big

business.

===========

He links to this video, where he says under his administration, trade

would be billateral:

Now, sure, a Kucinich administration would make bilateral trade

agreements and would control tarrifs differently than a

administration, but this amounts to temporary fluctuations in policy

within the same framework. Moreover, the Senate has authority over

treaties and tariffs, so neither administration could single-handedly

impose one or the other view of trade. The difference between

Kucinich/ and the other candidates is one of fundamental framework

rather than policies within that framework.

Moreover, I suspect that Kucinich's well intentioned attempts to

manage trade by labor standards and so on would likely amount to

favoring some industries at the expense of others. For example

imported cheap steel would probably help expand the domestic concrete

industry and hurt the domestic steel industry; tarrifs on it would

help the latter and hurt the former.

> There's a deep and

> fundamental difference between fair trade and unrestricted free trade,

> and I firmly support fair trade for both moral and environmental

> reasons.

I generally buy fair trade products and I think there is a huge market

for this which could be expanded. I'm not sure I'd want an

international bureacracy trying to manage fair trade. And I think

that people in other parts of the globe making coffee exports would

benefit a LOT more from higher-priced fair trade coffee than from the

American government putting the higher price on their coffee with a

tariff.

> (It's significant, BTW, that many defenders of free trade

> argue that it's a moral imperative to raise the living standards of

> foreign workers at the expense of American workers and the American

> economy. Personally, I think it's a moral imperative of Americans to

> work for America, albeit without of course committing war crimes and

> the like against people of other nations.)

Unfortunately, I think Americans to some extent have a moral

responsibility to make sure coffee growers get enough money to make a

decent living becuase American corporations and government have

essentially forced these people into export economies and made them

dependent on us for their livelihood.

> > So no, I don't think this contrast really exists. The " race to the

> > bottom " effect is at best a hypothesis, and its strongest evidence is

> > the fact that real wages have stagnated in the neoliberal period (1971

> > to present), however this period is the identical period to the one in

> > which we've gone off the gold exchange standard. And it is clear if

> > you look at the consumer price index across the century that it shows

> > a " hockeystick " graph where prices remained nearly constant until 1971

> > and shot through the roof from 1971-present, so the mechanism of

> > inflation is the most clearly supported mechanism to explain the

> > stagnation in real wages.

> Are you truly not aware of outsourcing and offshoring? Of the

> transition of manufacturing from this country to others? And of their

> effects on our economy? It's not a hypothesis except in the strict

> scientific sense of the word. I don't even know where to begin in

> responding to a staggeringly counterfactual assertion like this.

It is a fact that economic restructuring is going on and that

manufacturing jobs are fleeing, but it is an unproven hypothesis that

the declining real wages in this country and subsequent declining

living standardss are the result of the race to the bottom effect.

Under classical economics, 's law of comparative advnatage

would dictate that American workers would benefit from the lower

prices of imports. However, under the Federal Reserve's inflationary

system, the foreign exchange value of the dollar declines and this

decreases its purchasing power of imported goods. Thus, the effect of

inflation is exaggerated under a free international trade system

because of the increasing dependency on imports, but the effect is

still fundamentally an effect of inflation per se, not of imports per

se.

So, we have two things that happened at the same time in the early

1970s -- we moved into the " neoliberal " period of unfettered

international free trade and we went off the gold standard. If you

look at the consumer price index, it shows a hockey stick where in

1971 (when we went off the gold exchange standard) all the sudden it

goes from moving up at a snail's pace to shooting through the roof.

This supports the inflationary mechanism of declining real wages.

> > Also, the ability of NAFTA and WTO to overrule American sovereignty

> > and overturn our own environmental laws is the biggest environmental

> > reason to oppose them, and RP opposes this on the grounds of national

> > sovereignty, just like the environmentalists do, so again, his

> > position is almost identical.

> Environmentalists don't necessarily oppose such agreements and

> institutions on national sovereignty grounds, though some of them do

> in part; environmental grounds are their primary reasons, unlike Ron

> 's, which AFAIK are exclusively sovereignty-based and have nothing

> to do with the environment.

True but the effect vis-a-vis the international agreements is

essentially the same. The difference is what environmental policies

RP would enact or not enact at home rather than a trade issue.

> > Finally, voted for the PATRIOT Act, and Kucinich voted

> > *against* Ron 's amendment to the Farm Bill prohibitiing funds

> > from being appropriated to NAIS.

> No candidate is perfect, and ' vote for the PATRIOT Act is

> definitely one of the most damning black marks against him. This is

> one of the reasons I'm not relentlessly agitating for despite

> feeling that he's the best/least-bad of the mainstream candidates.

> Are you truly suggesting that you agree with everything Ron says

> and stands for?

I agree with him on most issues, I wouldn't say all, but I find the

increasing military/ police state to be an immediately pressing issue.

I seriously think we are gravitating toward a third world economy and

a fascist government, and I find this an emergency to resolve.

> > So, since RP is indentical to Kucinich on the immediate issues of

> > NAFTA, WTO, World Bank, and IMF, but is so obviously better than

> > on civil liberties and obviously better than Kucinich on the

> > issue of farming, I would say RP is the best candidate.

> Uh, no, you're completely discounting the issue of fair trade. If you

> don't support fair trade, fine, say so, but it's a massive

> distinction. Absolutely gigantic.

As stated, I think Kucinich and are closer on the issue of trade

than either are to the other candidates despite this distinction.

> > He is against subsidies to the oil industry and in favor of tax

> > credits for alternative fuel R & D:

> Tax credits are a grossly insufficient means of investing in

> fundamental research.

> Are tax credits going to fund high-energy physics? Are tax credits

> going to fund climate research? Are tax credits going to fund basic

> research into just about ANYTHING that doesn't have short-term

> economic potential?

The tax credits themselves aren't, but private investment funds would

be greater than tax credits because companies would expect to profit

from them in the future. I have no idea if it is sufficient

> The problem with the propertarian approach to environmental protection

> is threefold: it's a grossly inefficient after-the-fact mechanism, it

> ignores the tragedy of the commons, and it fails to deal with

> contributory causes to problems. All sorts of pollutants raise the

> incidence of various diseases and conditions in populations; unlike a

> theft or a murder, they often cannot be definitively said to have

> caused a given instance of harm to an individual.

I agree that that it has shortcomings, and that RP does not adequately

address environmental issues. However, I also regard his anti-NAIS

stance as an environmental issue, and his anti-bailout stance as a

*huge* environmental issue.

Part of the reason the courts don't effectively deal with

environmental issues is that companies get bailed out or simply don't

pay their fines with no legal action taken against them.

[snip]

> > Don't forget the importance of opposing corn subsidies and the

> > anti-grass-farming policies of the government to global warming, if

> > CFA is correct that topsoil formation is a major part of the solution:

> I'm not. But IMO Ron would just accelerate the movement of

> pollution (and topsoil destruction) to China and other countries, thus

> reducing the effectiveness of anything we do here in the US.

Why would topsoil destruction in China be accelerated by a Administration?

> > Is that what would happen? I think Ron thinks that we should

> > abandon foreign aid not because we should let other people rot, but

> > because it does more harm than good.

> No, my understanding of his position is that levying taxes for foreign

> aids violates propertarian philosophy and engages us in foreign

> entanglements he'd strongly prefer to avoid.

Have you read much of his writings or listened to his talks? I think

his " propertarian " philosophy is largely rooted in the utilitarian

idea that it works and benefits everyone. I have never ever heard him

say anything like " well, if the poor can't eat on their own, why

should we feed them? " Nor have I ever heard him utter any of the Ayn

Randian type " value of selfishness " philosophy. But I have heard him

say that there would be a lot less poor people in a free market, and

we'd be able to more easily help the few that are there with private

charity, so that if you want to be truly compassionate, you need to

understand how free markets work and advocate them.

Here is his statement in his own words on foreign aid:

===========

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul327.html

Why is foreign aid so bad? Isn't it our obligation to help those less

fortunate? What is not mentioned by proponents of foreign aid is that

it very seldom gets to those who need it most. Foreign aid is the

transfer of US dollars from the treasury of the United States to the

governments of foreign countries. It is money that goes to help

foreign elites, who in turn spend much of it on contracts with US

corporations. This means US tax dollars ultimately go to

well-connected US corporations operating overseas.

Foreign aid distorts foreign economies and props up bad governments.

It breeds resentment among citizens of foreign countries, who see the

United States as keeping oppressive governments in power. Also, it is

important to remember that forced charity is not charity at all. While

I believe strongly in the moral value of helping the less fortunate,

charity must come voluntarily from the heart, not under threat from

the IRS.

=============

> To the degree I've seen

> him talking about foreign aid causing problems it's been about

> military aid and propping up repressive governments, which I certainly

> agree we should stop.

Economic aid quite often has results along those lines.

> Yes, because current policy isn't true aid and isn't reflective of

> policies I'd support. That doesn't mean that what I want and what Ron

> seeks are the same thing, even if they overlap in a couple areas.

But it is clearly a net positive on this front to stop foreign aid

rather than to prop up military dictatorships and to restructure

self-sustainable economies into export-driven economies with high

unemployment, insufficient wages and slums.

Besides which, consider the humanitarian effect that free trading with

Iraq would have had for the hundreds of thousands of children under 5

who died because of the embargo. No foreign aid needed because free

trade would avert the entire catastrophe.

> > There are, of course, lots of other private charitable

> > institutions, and charitable giving does go up when taxes go down.

> Are there any reliable estimates of the total volume of charitable

> giving over time, particularly as correlated with tax rates?

I've seen figures indicating it increases, but I don't know how the

total volume compares.

> Of course it's also important to account for " charitable giving " which

> is actually corporate welfare unto itself, like the Gates Foundation.

I don't think it counts as corporate welfare if it's giving itself its

own money, but I see your point about calculating total charity. In

an attempt to compare charity with government aid, we'd have to adjust

for the amount of dollars that actually reach the people and the

effect it has in both cases.

> Yes, but the question was about electability, and I don't think

> there's any doubt that the Democratic electorate is vastly more

> opposed to the war (and warmongering generally) than the Republican

> electorate. As an anti-war Republican, Ron has a hard row to hoe

> in the primaries.

Actually, I think the " electability " issue inherently applies to the

general election, and Cameron actually started to say " general

election " and quickly changed it, probably recognizing that RP would

make the point that an anti-war Republican would have more

electability in the general election. But the point that a primary

voter needs to consider about electability is whether that candidate,

if nominated, can beat the one from the other party.

> > But as he points out, Republicans have won on anti-war

> > platforms, Eisenhower was famous for his warnings about the

> > military-industrial complex, etc.

> Eisenhower offered that warning at the end of his administration, and

> it's now mainly remembered and cited by Democrats. Republicans, by

> contrast, often dismiss it, and I've heard plenty of them say that he

> was a great president but by the end, when he said that, he was

> getting senile. (I kid you not.)

Ok. Have any Democrats seriously taken on the military-industrial complex?

> > I agree with most of your statements about the mishandling of the

> > racist comments. I think he totally mishandled this at one point or

> > another.

>

> But my point is that he didn't merely mishandle the issue of the

> statements when it was brought up; the entire matter from start to

> finish positively reeks of mishandling -- and that's the most generous

> interpretation possible. He attracted these people to his cause. He

> hired them. He published what they said, under his banner and under

> his name. He didn't investigate the issue when it was raised. He

> refuses to investigate the issue now. He doesn't explain how it could

> have happened. It's not merely a matter of an isolated incident in

> the past that he mishandled at the time.

We don't know that he directly hired the author, do we?

> Even assuming that the NYT article discussed the whole thing

> extensively, that didn't expose the issue to the vast majority of the

> current electorate, and the issue wouldn't be getting any traction if

> everyone in the electorate had already been exposed to the issue and

> had decided it was all OK. In fact, a large part of the reason it

> continues to be dredged up is that Ron mishandled it in the past

> and continues to mishandle it to this day. If back then he'd

> investigated the matter, come clean about how the statements came to

> be issued under his name, fired the people responsible, and reformed

> his editorial process, none of this could have been used against him,

> but to this day he denies that most of those steps would have been

> necessary or appropriate.

Good points.

> > In any case, he also stated that it probably should be ironed out and

> > he thanks Wolf for bringing it up after he made the statements you

> > just cited.

> True, but he also objected to the idea that he should even find out

> who wrote what!

True.

> > I agree he hasn't handled this as well as I would like, but I think

> > that the abridged version of the story CNN played last night was

> > unfair. They played the entire background clip that was contained in

> > the video I linked to, but they gave hardly any of 's response,

> > except that he didn't know who wrote them and was a victim of a

> > political witchhunt -- i.e., they selected the absolute worst 10

> > seconds of his 5-minute or so interview and played that alone.

> Look, you're not going to find me saying that the media is treating

> Ron well. Even though he's in favor of ending basically all

> regulation and thus in many ways ultimately enhancing corporate power,

> he's also in favor of shutting off the government teat which

> corporations currently suckle on, and so many of the large

> corporations of today are inevitably going to be opposed to him,

> because there's no guarantee that under his system, THEIR power would

> persist. All corporate power would be reshaped and there'd be a

> massive reshuffling of the corporate landscape, and corporations are

> nothing if not opposed to change except when it's strictly and

> entirely on their terms.

I think it would decrease corporate power in general, like

Friedman of the New York Times suggests:

===========

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/06/3645/

" The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.

Mc's cannot flourish without McDonnell . And the hidden

fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to

flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. "

=========

Imagine what wealth distribution might look like if the purchasing

power of the dollar went up and up instead of down and down while

international bankers didn't get first dibs on new dollars. Or how we

might be able to empower local economies if the governemnt's war on

grass-farming and raw milk get shut down and the WAPF movement

continues to expand, etc.

Chris

[Guest guest]

On 1/11/08, <slethnobotanist@...> wrote:

> > Also, I learned at least a little in school about Lincoln's racism,

> > and I was certainly taught that the emancipation proclamation was

> > strictly a strategic move to prevent Britain from entering the war on

> > the side of the south.

> Unusual however, and King Lincoln for most folks is a hero of mythic

> proportions, and few know little if anything about the reality behind

> the myth.

I learnt that Abraham Lincoln was so honest that he once traveled

miles on foot to return a penny to someone, that the civil war was

fought to end slavery, and that the Empancipation Proclamation freed

the slaves. I didn't encounter any views counter to this until I was

introduced to Zinn's _A People's History of the United States_ at a

center for homeschoolers I attended after leaving public school.

Granted, I left at the beginning of tenth grade, so it is possible I

would have been exposed to a more critical view after that point.

Chris

[Guest guest]

On 1/12/08, Happy Herbalist <eddy@...> wrote:

> All oil is now sold on the World Market. Even IF the U.S. had enough oil and

> refineries for the entire US domestic demand the price would still be just

> as high and just as volatile - driven by world (not US) prices. The price

> of oil from Texas, Alaska, Okalahoma, Indiana, New Jersey, California,

> Louisiana Gulf, sells for the same price as the Oil from South America or

> the Middle East. If you drill more oil wells - WE - do not get cheaper oil.

> Even IF Americans cut their use by 50% and the rest of the world increased

> their demand the price to Americans to heat their homes would be the same.

> Venezuela and Saudi oil profits go back to reduce the cost of oil to their

> people, while American oil companies get tax breaks.

As pointed out in the January 4 Wall Street Journal article, " Oil and

the dollar, " if we were on the gold standard, oil would currently be

trading at under $30 a barrel instead of $99 a barrel. The price of

oil has stayed the same in gold for 7 or 8 years, but has increased

only in paper money -- 200% in euros and 350% in dollars. The price

of oil in a hard commodity like gold has not been very volatile. The

price of oil is volatile because it is being measured in money whose

value is volatile and declining rapidly.

> Bush I in the First Gulf War cried out that the if Iraq took over Kuwait,

> Iraq would then control 30% of the world's oil supply and how dangerous a

> madman could demand $40-$50 a barrel. Japan (at the time) argued it would

> still be cheaper than going to war) now the price is $100 a barrel.

Ironic, since deficit spending on wars is one of the reasons for the

declining value of the dollar.

Chris

[Guest guest]

,

> More generally, though, it's also a very poor analogy, because England

> had long since banned slavery inside its own borders, and Wilberforce

> was fighting to stop the OFFSHORE TRADE in slaves. Obviously that's

> much more likely to be a peaceful effort with a peaceful resolution

> than the attempt to take away slaves from people who personally own

> and use them.

As I noted earlier this argument fails because the original banning of

slaves in England, which took away slaves from people who personally

owned and used them in England, was done peacefully as well.

But what I failed to point out is that we don't even need to look at

other countries for examples of peaceful resolutions to the issue of

slavery, we can just as well look at our own.

Slavery in the North was ended ****without bloodshed****. Maine,

Massachusetts, and the state of New York (where slavery existed for

over 200 years) came out against slavery in the early 19th century as

an inefficient institution. It took them over a half century to get

rid of it in toto, but in the 1850's, just a few years before

Lincoln's war, slavery was ended peaceably.

--

" The individual who can do something that the world wants will, in the

end, make his way regardless of race. "

- Booker T. Washington (1856–1915)