Media: Ron Paul delegate strategy is perfectly legitimate

Here's a good article on the subject:

http://community.middlebury.edu/~harris/caucus.html

 

How would a corporation take over without the legitimacy and limited liability that such entities receive from government? Corporations, especially mega corporations, thrive in an environment of great political power because they benefit from the regulatory power and rent-seeking. Without government, a corporation is only a group of people who get together to own a company and have no political power at all.

People do tend to favor the winners of popularity contests to be their rulers. It's like they never left high school.

 

Above all else, I believe in balance. I don't want the government to have all the power and to wield it oppressively, but I also believe that the lack of a sufficiently strong government is just as bad, for different reasons. I don't support aggressive government intrusion, like the recent case of bake sales being banned in Massachusetts. That's too far, that's out of balance. I don't need the government to structure day-to-day lives, but I do believe there has to a common set of rules, and that those rules need to be standard across the country. Not every rule, nor do I want to strip the states of all their power, but there are some things that are better if they are uniform, like educational standards, or health care standards. I think a government that invests back into the society they govern is also the best way, not one that just stands to the side and lets stuff happen. Freedom is just like anything else in this world, too much of it and things get out of whack. I'm not talking basic freedoms here, like the right to not be arrested for crimes you didn't commit, or to a trail by jury, or to practice whatever religion you want. There are 300 million people in this country, and the idea that we can manage that without a strong unifying entity like the federal government doesn't seem connected to reality to me. I think of it as a parent and child relationship, though not in the sense that the federal government is the nanny who knows best. Rather, in a household with lots of children, you need a firm but fair discipline structure, you can't just let each child do whatever they want, there are limits that need be there to ensure that everything is running somewhat properly together. Imagine a house full of teenagers without any parents.

I'm not sure, that's very much a situational thing that has to be considered based on the details of each situation.

Ron Paul wants to eliminate much of the federal government oversight and control. He wants that power to instead be in the state's hands, so in effect, he's getting rid of the rules, because there's nothing that's saying the states have to replace those rules within their own set of laws. He wants to get rid of one bloated federal government, and replace it with 50 strong state government's. That's not going to work, not today. There has to be a balance between them, and a unifying factor that holds it all together. He wants to destroy that, and I see that as a bigger threat than electing the same politician's we've been electing for the past few decades.

 

Really? Getting rid of 5 departments is "much of the federal government oversight and control"??

Wrong again...he is not getting rid of the Federal Government...he is reducing the size of it, which it should be...

Please....show me your link to Ron Paul saying that he is eliminating the Federal government and letting the states just handle things on their own...

 

ok, i read the article twice and didn't see where it said the whole point of a caucus is to give the grassroots a voice over the big money guys

it does say:

But we know that a caucus count is not the same as the party voting process, which will be coming along later. It has no binding value and may not be important in the course of the national elections.

One might wonder why it has been retained in l7 states of the Union , as the focus of much political attention while forgotten in others through the nation. The best explanation seems to be first the thread of past history, and then some usefulness as a dry-run or sort of peep-show for something more important coming down the road. Winning or losing in a caucus is no sure sign of winning or losing in the Party elections…

that's right, ron paul is not getting rid of the federal government because he won't ever be president

but let's say that hypothetically he was president, congress would turn him into a lame duck

he got no consensus in several decades of serving in congress, i'm pretty sure he wouldn't find much accord from congress as president, either

in the video at 1:27

bret baier: "and you can get it through a divided congress?"

ron paul: "well, ugh umm…"

[video=youtube;ahjtqBisrLI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahjtqBisrLI[/video]

 

Who says he will stop there? Eliminating vital departments that regulate everything from the environment to education is a major step, not just some reshuffling.

Yes you are correct, I worded that in such a way that it did look like I meant the entire federal government. That was my mistake, and not what I meant to write, and you were right to call me on it.

Let me clarify what I meant.

He wants to do some major downsizing to what he sees as a bloated federal government, only to replace it with 50 bloated state governments.

 

Balance is completely subjective. To me, a proper balance is a tiny government that provides for defense and appoints a constable in each jurisdiction that ensures that private courts and private police are adequate to the job. 300 million people don't need to be "managed." The state would not have a monopoly on the legal use of force.

I don't view people to be like teenagers and government to be like the parents. If anythings, it politicians who are popularity contest winners who act much like teenagers who get to rule the household. They use whatever power is available to take what they want and share with their friends, and make their parents work even harder for it.

I'd also point out that anything government "invests back into" society must first be taken from someone else.

The problem with healthcare and education standards, or anything else in terms of standards is that a) central planners cannot know the needs and wants of everyone, b) politicians are always going to listen to and sell favors to the most organized special interests and craft those standards to meet the needs of special interests and c) enforce those standards even when others want to set higher standards. To give an example, you can look up Creekstone, a large, US based meat packer. Creekstone, in response to concerns over mad cow disease, went to a great deal of expense to set up their own testing labs and create new protocols for testing that would do better than the USDA "standards." Well, the USDA ruled they couldn't do that, as it's "standards", they said, were enough. More likely, other meatpackers did not want the "unfair" competition nor the expense of meeting the competition so they petitioned the USDA to pull Creekstone back to the average. Anyway, Creekstone sued, won, and then lost in the appeals court. "We owe the USDA a considerable degree of deference," wrote a judge in the case.

That's the problem with government standards. They are usually substandard, and special interests will use the levers of government power to pull their competitors into line or create standards intended to prevent new competition from entering the market. So, to me, any attempt by government to set standards for private industry, or for education or how people should eat or obtain their healthcare or anything else other than how government should operate is out of balance.

I just set an objective standard. It's wrong to initiate aggression against peaceful people. If it's ok to do it to achieve one goal, how can you possibly argue, objectively, that it's wrong to achieve a goal that someone else desires?

No. Some states will not set standards and rule your choices with those standards. Other states will. The benefit to such a system is that, rather than having one larged, bloated, central entity that rules over 300 million people, we have a variety of testing grounds out of which the good and bad of different policies can be evaluated and changed and adopted or dropped by other states.

That was the intent of the Constitution. It makes that quite clear in the 10th amendment. "Strong" does not mean bloated, it just means having more powers, which may or may not be used or delegated, than the Federal government.

Now, you may not agree that's a good thing, but to suggest that makes him like a teenager who doesn't want rules is just ridiculous ad hominem. It suggests that you are desperate to find an argument and can't come up with one. Reasonable people can disagree on what the scope of government should be, but you insist that anyone who disagrees with your view of the scope of it is being unreasonable.

And many of us see it is as a huge benefit, the shrinking of the leviathan central state.

 

He answered the question. That and every President at one time or another deals with a divided congress. Obama managed to get through Obamacare now didnt he...

 

That's a strawman and totally unsupportable from anything Ron Paul has said. He doesn't say anything about what the size of each state government should be as that's not his area of concern. He's concerned with federal government that is limited to its Constitutional scope. I'm guessing that if he were in a state legislature or running for governor, he'd call for the state government to be limited to its own constitutional scope.

 

A careful reading of it would have shown that a) the colonists were ruled over largely by the "big money" corporations and that b) the colonists used the secret caucuses to vote on proposed changes to colonial structure that they would then present uniformly to parliament.

This caucus process was kept after the Revolution as it was seen as desirable to the democratic process, much like the primary process was seen as desirable to the democratic process.

Do you believe that the "binding value" of a process signifies the worth of that process? If so, that would be leaving a great deal of political wrangling out of the picture. But hey, you are welcome to go start your own "Dujac" party where you tell everyone else what to do and preach against the blasphemy and sin against infallible government committed by heretics like Ron Paul.

 

I'd be just fine with him overturning decades of liberty destroying executive orders and obstructing Congress from further eroding liberties. 4 or 8 years of non-growth for the Federal government would still be like a breath of fresh air.

But, that's heresy. I should probably be shot.

 

i read it carefully several times

colonial britain isn't comparable to the current federal government

and the article doesn't even mention 'corporation' or 'money' at all

just admit you made this up:

 

Who says he will go any further...there is absolutely no proof out there he will close down more than the 5 he has mentioned. It's people like you that spread misinformation such as "turning everything over to the states".

That is not his purpose. He has said...on numerous occasions...that he is for reducing the size of the government. That does not equal handing the majority over to the state. Even if he were to close down more than the 5 mentioned...it is the way it should be.

I also love how people say (I'm not saying you did) that he would return us to the 18th century. People like that are absolute idiots. Of course he knows that...the main difference is he would take an 18th century idea THAT WORKED and modernize for current times...that is the difference (as he has already made clear with his idea of returning to a gold standard...take the idea...modernize it...and make it work)

 

They're not, because that's largely the type of government we had in the days before mass transit and mass communication and multinational corporations, and the last real period of time in which it even marginally worked. We are not going to progress the nation by taking a step two centuries into the past, which is a very to-the-point way of summing up Ron Paul's platform as a whole.

The gold standard is silly. Money is money, and it's only worth something because people decide it's worth something. If people decide gold is worthless, and crap sandwiches are what have real value, gold will be worthless and you'll buy your food and beer with crap sandwiches. There is nothing about gold, or anything other than maybe air and water, that makes something intrinsically valuable. Yet another tip-of-the-hat to the economies and practices of 200 years ago.

The underlined part of your quote is exactly why I won't vote for him. I basically said who's to say he'll stop there, you disagreed, and then said you'd support him if he went further anyway, which I'd bet real money that he would. What Ron Paul speaks of is a relative unknown. I'll gamble with my money sometimes, but I would never vote for a gamble with the entire country, just to try and set back time to an era that is gone forever.

 

From the article:

If you don't know the history of how the colonies were set up, then I think it's time you did some research. Not everyone was a Pilgrim or Puritan who came over to escape religion. And, even then, many of those Puritans came over as proprietors and had semi-feudal powers over the lands they controlled and towns they founded.

 

Please...re-read my last paragraph carefully...

 

i know the history and colonial britain isn't comparable to the current federal government

 

That was never the case made when the origination of the term "caucus" was brought up. What does it matter if two are comparable?

 

you must be confused, i haven't questioned what the origination of the term 'caucus' was

 

I fully read the last paragraph, and responded to it specifically in my reply.

 

Then why do you keep saying things like "taking a step two centuries into the past" or "set back time to an era that is gone forever"....is it "taking a step" back to take an idea from the past that worked and (pay attention here) modernize it to work in our current time? No...it's not. Things like this happen on a daily basis...

 

otherwise known as rational ingenuity

precisely, but the dollar is easier to dismiss than gold... people are going to believe that gold is valuable even when they lose faith in the dollar, which they will, at the rate it's being counterfeited and given away to foreign banks to be recycled into campaign contributions for the two leading candidates.

it doesn't have to be gold though, you could keep 'fiat currency', but you're going to have to do a lot better at encouraging the 'fiat' (faith) of 'fiat currency'. the gold standard is simply an idea to save the economy from the failures of the government. it's not perfect, but it's an idea, and if you don't like it, you should probably give some backing to the alternatives, such as fiscally conservative principles. cutting spending and ...well...cutting more spending

 

if you really took an objective view on this subject matter you'd know

this is just propaganda from fat cats selling gold at inflated prices

what a joke, the dollar is the most widely accepted, dependable national currency there is

blame congress for the national debt, they're the only ones that can incur debt for the federal government

 

As China, Russia, Japan, Iran, Brazil, India, all move to conduct trade outside of SWIFT.

The only joke is your belief that that the dollar's acceptability is static.

 

it's obvious to me that you have no clue what my belief is

the fact of the matter is that gold salesmen have been casting aspersions on the dollar since its inception, in order to try to destabilize it and sell gold at ever higher prices

ron paul is a player in this scam, as his constant railing against the dollar, old newsletters and videos from the 1980's make clear