Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Tea Party’s Pick: Michele Bachmann or Ron Paul?

No one can deny the nascent phenomenon of the liberty movement in America. It is riding a populist wave against government-insider deals that are making the rich richer and the poor poorer and sacrificing individual liberty in the process.

An interesting mix of Republicans and Democrats are involved in this uprising, blurring old labels like conservative and liberal, but the real showdown is happening in the race for the GOP nomination.

While all the candidates now pay homage to the movement, the real question is this: Who can best ride this wave? Michele Bachmann, a one-term congresswoman from Minnesota? Or Ron Paul, a 12-term congressman from Texas?

Here are the pertinent points. Bachmann is a new face and is polling well, at least for now. Her best chance — indeed, her only chance — is in Iowa. A win there and she can conceivably pick up delegates in the South as well.

Her critics describe her as a less cerebral version of Sarah Palin. Yep, your eyes are not deceiving you, and that means that with each success the media scrutiny or vetting will increase.

The real concern about Bachmann is her timing. Is she serious about running for president after only two years in Congress? Moreover, activists in the liberty movement decry her record. As a legislator in Minnesota she allegedly proposed $60 million in earmarks.

In Congress, in 2007, she appropriated $3.7 million in federal pork. She is a poor poster girl for freedom from big government. A report shows Bachmann’s counseling clinic got $30,000 in state and federal subsidies. A family farm received a $260,000 federal farm subsidy.

And here is the big one: In 2008 she voted for Nancy Pelosi’s stimulus bill.

Ron Paul, by contrast, is not only the father of the modern liberty movement — the man who made it fashionable to believe in the constitution again — but he has been consistent over a lifetime and seemingly incorruptible.

By comparison, Bachmann looks almost opportunistic. As a tax attorney she allegedly went after a taxpayer earning less than $10,000 a year — and at a time when Timothy Geithner, Obama’s Treasury Secretary, wasn’t paying HIS taxes.

In contrast, Ron Paul has been the champion of the little guy, arguing for years, for example, against government taxing of waitresses’ tips.

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Fed set to buy $300B more Treasuries

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — QE2 is just about done. But the Federal Reserve will still be buying massive amounts of long-term Treasuries.

In fact, the Fed’s purchases over the next year will likely be at least $300 billion. That’s half the size of QE2 — even if QE3 never takes place.

Think of it as QE2.5.

While the Fed’s efforts to pump about $600 billion of new cash into the economy over the last eight months comes to an end this week, the program, known as quantitative easing or QE2 for short, was not the only way the central bank was an active buyer of Treasuries.

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Monday, June 27, 2011

Bummer of a Recovery

By STEPHEN MOORE

When a new Bloomberg poll finds that 44% of Americans feel that the economy is “worse than when Obama was inaugurated” (versus only 34% who say it is “better”), you know the economic recovery is pretty anemic. Now the Joint Economic Committee has chronicled how weak it is compared to others since World War II.

In a report entitled “Unchartered Depths,” the Committee finds that “employment is now 5.0% below what it was at the start of the recession, 38 months ago. This compares to an average rise in employment of 3.7% over the same period in prior post-WWII recessions.”

On economic growth, real GDP has risen 0.8% over the 13 quarters since the recession began, compared to an average increase of 9.9% in past recoveries. From the beginning of the recession to April 2011, real personal income has grown just .9% compared to 9.4% for the same period in previous post 1960 recessions.

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Ron Paul’s Anti-Fed Message Drives 2012 White House Bid Gaining Respect

When Ron Paul announced four years ago that he was running for president, the congressman from Texas had a tough time attracting attention.

Paul, known for his anti-government views, opposition to the Iraq, Afghan and Libyan conflicts and drive to get rid of the Federal Reserve, stayed in Washington to declare his candidacy for the 2008 Republican nomination on C-Span, the cable television station devoted to government proceedings. His entry earned a one-sentence mention near the end of a Washington Post political story, and little notice elsewhere.

Last month, his venue for announcing another presidential bid was an appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” — a program with more than 4.5 million viewers. He spoke from a rally in New Hampshire, where hundreds of backers drawn to Paul’s message of shrinking government and limiting its reach cheered the 75-year-old great-grandfather.

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Strange Definitions of War and Peace

by Ron Paul

Last week I joined six Republican and three Democrat colleagues to file a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its illegal war against Libya. Now that more than 90 days have passed since the president began bombing Libya, no one can seriously claim that the administration has complied with the clear requirements of the 1973 War Powers Resolution.

In a remarkable act of chutzpah, the administration sent to Congress its response to the growing concern over its abuse of war powers. Its argument, in a nutshell, is that the War Powers Resolution is not relevant because US armed forces are not actually engaged in hostilities because Libya is so militarily weak it cannot fight back! This explanation would be laughable if not so horrific. The administration wants us to believe that there is no real violence because the victim cannot fight back? Imagine if this standard was applied to criminal law in the United States! I am sure Libyans on the receiving end of US and NATO bombs feel hostilities are quite definitely taking place.

We must recall the origins of these attacks on Libya. The Obama administration made no claim that Libyan leader Gaddafi was killing his civilian population. Rather, the claim was that Libya might begin killing its civilians in the future. One need not defend Gaddafi’s regime — and I most certainly do not — to object to this flimsy and dangerous rationale for violating the sovereignty of another country. Imagine a scenario where the UN approves military action against the United States as a preventative humanitarian measure over US enforcement of its immigration laws, for example!

Now in Libya we see the possible use of depleted uranium shells, we see infrastructure destroyed, we see universities bombed, we see all the “collateral damage.” Yet, this is a “humanitarian intervention”?

In our lawsuit against the administration, among other critical issues we are demanding that the courts provide relief and protection to the country from the administration’s policy that a president may commit the United States to a war under the authority of the United Nations and NATO without authorization from Congress, and that previously appropriated funds by Congress may be used for an unconstitutional and unauthorized war in Libya or other countries. These are fundamental Constitutional issues and I expect the judicial branch to treat our challenge with the same level of gravity as we do in the legislative branch.

Remember, we were told that this attack would last “days, not weeks” and we are already three months and likely nearly a billion dollars into it. As the bombings obviously target Gaddafi’s houses, even killing some of his family members, we can see that the real goal is regime change rather than protection of civilians. Do we know much about the rebels whose side we have taken in what is, in fact, a civil war?

Although it is a bit late, I am pleased to see that congressional leadership has started to listen to our constituents, who are solidly against this war on Libya. I commend Speaker Boehner’s expressions of dissatisfaction with the administration over this war and I sincerely hope he will use the full constitutional authority granted to the legislative branch to bring into check an administration clearly out of control.

Polls show that the American people increasingly favor a truly conservative foreign policy: one that rejects the leftist, utopian doctrines of nation building and preemptive war, and one that is NOT funded by debt. Forcing the Obama administration to obey the clear letter of the law is one step towards restoring a traditional, patriotic foreign policy that serves American interests.

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