Libertarians for Ron Paul » 2008 » April
“Few policies have done more to destroy community and opportunity for minorities than eminent domain. Some 3 to 4 million Americans, most of them ethnic minorities, have been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of urban renewal takings since World War II.”
“The fact is that eminent-domain abuse is a crucial constitutional rights issue. On Tuesday, the Alabama Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will hold a public forum at Birmingham’s historic Sixteenth Street Baptist church to address ongoing property seizures in the state. The church was not only a center of early civil rights action, but also, tragically, where four schoolgirls lost their lives in a bombing in 1963.”
David Beito & Ilya Somin look at this vital issue in the Kansas City Star http://www.kansascity.com/273/story/594562.html
Steve Chapman @ Reason Magazine wonders if there is a strategy to Hillary Clinton’s lies http://reason.com/news/show/126203.html
“Ron Paul owns the future,” influential evangelical Doug Wead concluded in an early April post on his personal blog. Wead makes an unlikely Paul enthusiast: his religious background might seem a better fit for Mike Huckabee. And his personal history—as an adviser to both Presidents Bush—might have inclined him toward the triumphant establishment candidate, John McCain. But in Ron Paul and the movement that championed him, Wead saw something remarkable: “His is a campaign of ideas. … His army was left unchallenged on the battlefield. Now their ideas have taken root and they will grow.”
Yes, they will—they have already begun to. The Ron Paul “revolution,” as it is known to its adherents, has made deep inroads into an area where Republicans are otherwise weak: energizing and mobilizing young people. Already, Paul has inspired other Republicans, mostly young themselves, to campaign for Congress on his antiwar, fiscally conservative platform. A new youth movement is also coming into being as Students for Ron Paul reconfigures into a permanent libertarian-conservative activist organization, Young Americans for Liberty. And these are just the first manifestations of the revolution’s second act, as youth gains political experience.
Campaign insider Daniel McCarthy talks about the future of the coalition that Ron Paul has inspired
The Las Vegas Sun reports that:
“Rep. Ron Paul, a Republican with a libertarian’s heart, followed his second-place finish in Nevada’s January presidential caucus by out-organizing the state’s Republican establishment. In the process, the Paulites embarrassed the campaign of Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president.”
“They seemed to make up more than half of the 1,300 or so state delegates to the convention. They won a key procedural vote on the rules, and their boisterous presence created significant delays, causing the convention chairman, Bob Beers, a state senator from Las Vegas, to recess the convention without selecting delegates to the national convention. The state convention is to resume at a later date.”
Full story http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/apr/27/ron-paul-campaign-dominates-convention/
“Taxes were on the forefront of many Americans’ minds this week as they scrambled to meet the April 15th deadline to file their returns. Tax policy in this country hurts taxpayers twice – once when they pay taxes, and then when the government spends the money. Americans are sick and tired of the financial burden and the endless forms to fill out. To add insult to injury, after collecting this money the government does some very detrimental things to the economy.”
Congressman Ron Paul looks at the burden of government http://www.freeliberal.com/archives/003313.html
Yahoo reports it here http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20080423/cm_thenation/45314454
Congressman Ron Paul received 16% of the vote, more than 127,000 votes in Pennsylvania. This is more votes than any Libertarian candidate has received for office in Pennsylvania, and shows that the desire for freedom is not completely absent in the Northeast. Congratulations Dr Paul!
The Pennsylvania primary victory has briefly kept Hillary Clinton’s campaign alive, but David Boaz at the Cato Institute warns us: “Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton operates with reckless disregard for individual freedom and the limited government that protects and sustains it.”
“In her latest salvo, she dismisses the great promises of the Declaration of Independence, the founding principles of the United States, as rhetorical flourishes, mere garnishes on the real stuff of life. “We can talk all we want about freedom and opportunity, about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but what does all that mean to a mother or father who can’t take a sick child to the doctor?” she asked.”
Full critique @ http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2007/09/18/hillary-hates-freedom/
“Whereas the old style of socialism elected no more than a handful of mayors and congressmen, Washington has now embraced a new variety that could not be more different in its class consciousness and privileged sponsorship.”
“I am talking, of course, about the collectivization of financial risk being promulgated by the Federal Reserve Board and the U.S. Treasury Department and applauded in pin-striped precincts from Park Avenue to Pacific Heights. Described as Wall Street Socialism by the gauche and more precisely identified as the “socialization of risk” by sophisticates, the new fashion leaves the profits of finance in private hands as of yore. It is only the “risk” — of collapsed currencies, flawed speculation, busted hedge funds or the greedy misjudgments of large banks or brokerage firms — that is quietly taken up by government entities and all too often shifted to taxpayers who do not understand the pompous phraseology but know full well that Washington will never bail out their hardware store or the widget plant where their son works.”
Kevin Phillips looks at Big Government helping Big Business - at taxpayers expense in the New Socialist Era
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-phillips/why-wall-street-socialism_b_96772.html
Rep. Ron Paul has joined with Rep. Barney Frank to introduce a bill in Congress that would strip the federal government of its authority to arrest responsible adult cannabis consumers. The measure, H.R. 5843, known as an “Act to Remove Federal Penalties for Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults,” is the first federal decriminalization legislation introduced in 24 years.
More complete info @ http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7581
“The war in Iraq has become “a major debacle” and the outcome “is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.”
“The report released by the National Defense University raises fresh doubts about President Bush ’s projections of a U.S. victory in Iraq just a week after Bush announced that he was suspending U.S. troop reductions.”
Source article http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20080418/wl_mcclatchy/2913186_1