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Originally posted by Hopeful Rolling Waves

Are you being serious when you say 'if'?

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It would be even worse if our fucked up voting system gets some psycho in power...

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Originally posted by Zachmozach


...the banks control the money and so they have the wealth and the power which is why our nations in debt! Who do you think that 2 trillion or whatever it is a year in interest goes to?

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As for Kucinich. Ya he wants to ban guns. Ghandi didn't need a gun and neither do you. The world would be far better if humans quit making them and the knowledge to do so was lost. Is it realistic? No and it wasn't realistic for african americans to rebel against racism and sharecropping and segregation but they did and they were crushed but eventually they made huge strides years later.

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NAACP President: Ron Paul Is Not A Racist
Linder says Paul being smeared because he is a threat to the establishment
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Sunday, January 13, 2008



Austin NAACP President Nelson Linder, who has known Ron Paul for 20 years, unequivocally dismissed charges that the Congressman was a racist in light of recent smear attempts, and said the reason for him being attacked was that he was a threat to the establishment.

Linder joined Alex Jones for two segments on his KLBJ Sunday show this evening, during which he commented on the controversy created by media hit pieces that attempted to tarnish Paul as a racist by making him culpable for decades old newsletter articles written by other people.

"Knowing Ron Paul's intent, I think he is trying to improve this country but I think also, when you talk about the Constitution and you constantly criticize the federal government versus state I think a lot of folks are going to misconstrue that....so I think it's very easy for folks who want to to take his position out of context and that's what I'm hearing," said Linder.

"Knowing Ron Paul and having talked to him, I think he's a very fair guy I just think that a lot of folks do not understand the Libertarian platform," he added.

Asked directly if Ron Paul was a racist, Linder responded "No I don't," adding that he had heard Ron Paul speak out about police repression of black communities and mandatory minimum sentences on many occasions.

Dr. Paul has also publicly praised Martin Luther King as his hero on many occasions spanning back 20 years.

"I've read Ron Paul's whole philosophy, I also understand what he's saying from a political standpoint and why people are attacking him," said Linder.

"If you scare the folks that have the money, they're going to attack you and they're going to take it out of context," he added.

"What he's saying is really really threatening the powers that be and that's what they fear," concluded the NAACP President.

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Originally posted by dan p.

they're not a credible source, but you'd like verification, you can find the documents elsewhere, too.

they are not written by ron paul personally, no. his name is attached to the publication, though. they're from newsletter that he allows to bear his name. and of course he denies it. why wouldn't he? it makes him look bad. i wouldn't expect him, or anyone, to fess up to saying those things or allowing them to be said in his name. the fact that he didn't remove his name from them immediately indicates that something isn't right,

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Ok so writing a book and serving on a committee makes you a scholar at best it still doesn't make you qualified. Look at the other people like Guilianni who have written books and served in foreign affairs but does that make him a scholar, maybe but an expert. No. Also Austrian economics is IMO full of shit! If they want to talk about money they should probably look first at their weak unsatisfactory definition of what money is.

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Firstly my whole point is that gold itself is a fiat money! Yes gold is a fiat money because just like cotton or anything else because of a collective hallucination we value gold. Gold's only real value comes from the fact that we value it just like paper money. Thus it has it's basis in law and not nature. Austrian economics doesn't define money in that way at all. Thus they can not form any sort of correct monetary theories because they reject the actual nature of money. It's such a primitive view of money that so many people have just accepted including the economists as they are like men of the cloth protecting their beliefs when it comes to this.

Now with gold and silver, you know the only reason these things were still around when the constitution was written was because in order for europe to keep their economy afloat they had to continually increase their gold supply. So whether it was Constantine working people to death in the silver mines of europe or spain working the natives to death in the america's it had a huge toll on society. Also Rome's fiat money system brought was around for 500 years with great success and it wasn't until they began minting gold and silver coins in around 200 BC that they completely screwed up their economy. Because of the gold/silver ratio which was much different in the east which meant that people were sucking the silver right out of Rome.

The problems with most fiat money systems to date is that people have a commodity view of money and we allow production of said money to be placed in private hands. Since gold itself is fiat money then you can not bag on a fiat money system when you propose one yourself. Go to the AMI and check out some of the articles there though on the success of fiat money systems and collapse of gold standard money systems if you're interested because it's far too long of an argument to make here.

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fiat money
–noun paper currency made legal tender by a fiat of the government, but not based on or convertible into coin.

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fiat money
n. Legal tender, especially paper currency, authorized by a government but not based on or convertible into gold or silver.

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fiat money

noun
money that the government declares to be legal tender although it cannot be converted into standard specie

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Fiat Money

Money that a government has declared to be legal tender, despite the fact that it has no intrinsic value and is not backed by reserves.

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Yes all that stuff is happening now but going to the gold standard would completely back us into a corner. A gold standard means we have to back our currency in gold. We can't do that! That's because there isn't enough gold! So if we did the dollar would have to become devalued. My 5 years scenario was at best. So ya if China dumped our money then we're screwed now or with a gold standard. However the gold standard would force that on us. We could recover from that.

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Oh well you must have missed that Kucinich is running for president. Ron Paul is far from the only one talking about it. There may be very few in congress but there are plenty of scholars talking about it. The thing is I agree with Ron Paul on a lot of Monetary issues and about that current state of our monetary issues. However I don't agree with him at all that the fix is in any way to go to a gold standard. Why replace a fiat money system for another fiat money system which has even more problems than the first?

http://www.monetary.org/video/kucinich/quick_broadband.html

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Originally posted by dan p.

you absolutely should defend him if you support him. as for don black and racism, excerpts from newsletters he has published in his name:

http://www.tnr.com/downloads/October1990.pdf

just read the highlighted part.

http://www.tnr.com/downloads/december1990.pdf

calls martin luther king jr., a bunch of horrific things and suggests that some of the fruits of his work were evil.

http://www.tnr.com/downloads/November1990.pdf

praising david duke, towards the bottom of the first page.

http://www.tnr.com/downloads/January91.pdf

"martin luther king was a world class philanderer who beat up his paramours." some other interesting stuff. a couple other articles also say similar things about king.

http://www.tnr.com/downloads/June1990.pdf

"I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." nice.

guy in the middle is don black. you don't have to believe me. go research him, if you like. i don't know who the guy on the right is, but i'd also be hesitant to pose in a picture with a guy who dresses like that.

yes, ron paul does know a lot about economy. you'll find most people who do, though, would call commodity backing a bad idea. and yes, the founding fathers did not want fiat currency, instead that had gold/silver standard. but you know something? that was over two hundred fucking years ago. the general consensus seems be that things are a lot different than they were two hundred years ago, on a very fundamental level.

that's something else i don't get about ron paul supporters. they all seems to believe that the founders of this country were right in all they said and did. they weren't.

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Stephen Glass scandal
In 1998, features writer Stephen Glass was revealed in a Forbes magazine investigation to have fabricated a story called "Hack Heaven". A TNR investigation found that most of Glass' stories had used or been based on fabricated information. The story of Glass's fall and TNR editor Chuck Lane's handling of the scandal was dramatized in a 2003 film Shattered Glass, based on a 1998 article in Vanity Fair.[18]


Ruth Shalit plagiarism
In 1995, writer Ruth Shalit was fired for repeated incidents of plagiarism and an excess of factual errors in her articles.[19]


Lee Siegel
Long-time contributor, critic, and senior editor Lee Siegel had maintained a blog on the TNR site dedicated primarily to art and culture until an investigation revealed that he had collaborated in posting comments to his own blog under an alias aggressively praising Siegel, attacking his critics and claiming not to be Lee Siegel when challenged by an anonymous detractor on his blog.[20][21] The blog was removed from the website and Siegel was suspended from writing for the print magazine;[22] he resumed writing for TNR in April, 2007. Siegel was also controversial for his coinage "blogofascists" which he applied to "the entire political blogosphere", though with an emphasis on leftwing or center-left bloggers such as Daily Kos and Atrios.[23]


Spencer Ackerman
In 2006, associate editor Spencer Ackerman was fired by Foer. Describing it as a "painful" decision, Foer attributed the firing to Ackerman's "insubordination": disparaging the magazine on his personal blog,[24] saying that he would “skullfuck” a terrorist's corpse at an editorial meeting if that was required to "establish his anti-terrorist bona fides" and sending Foer an e-mail where he said—in what according to Ackerman was intended to be a joke—he would “make a niche in your skull” with a baseball bat. Ackerman, by contrast, argued that the dismissal was due to “irreconcilable ideological differences.” He believed that his leftward drift as a result of the Iraq War and the actions of the Bush administration was not appreciated by the senior editorial staff.[25] Within 24 hours of being fired by The New Republic, Ackerman was hired as a senior correspondent for a rival magazine, The American Prospect.


Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy
Main article: Scott Thomas Beauchamp controversy
In July 2007, after The New Republic published an article by an American soldier in Iraq titled "Shock Troops," allegations of inadequate fact-checking were leveled against the magazine. Critics alleged that the piece contained inconsistent details indicative of fabrication. The identity of the anonymous soldier, Scott Thomas Beauchamp, was revealed. Beauchamp was married to Elspeth Reeve, one of the magazine’s three fact-checkers. As a result of the controversy, the New Republic and the United States Army launched investigations, reaching different conclusions.[26][27][28]

As of December 1, 2007, an article titled "The Fog of War" and bearing the byline of Franklin Foer, postdate December 10, 2007, has been available for professional critique. In the article, Foer writes that the magazine can no longer stand behind the stories written by Beachamp.[29][30]

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Originally posted by pants_happy



he's written books and has been on committees dealing with monetary policy for decades, and that's somehow a weak argument? because he's not some damn theorycrafting scholar he's weak? being a scholar in no way implies that your opinion is automatically good for the economy. if you want a scholar, then fine. appeal to ludwig von misses and the ludwig von misses institute if you're looking for a scholar, because that's the school of economics that paul ascribes to (hey, one of ron paul's hero's is a jew, imagine that!). misses taught economics for 60 years, (if you want to appeal to authority, there ya go), over 25 more than your expert. should i then consider zarlenga weak? no, both have their strengths, but both theorycraft in the end.

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yes, thanks for pointing out that gold is a shiny rock. guess what? paper is made out of cotton and other fibers: renewable resources. dull renewable resources. does that make it seem worth less when i call it dull? gold is a rare rescource in comparison to others: aka supply and demand. what's the supply of cotten compared to the supply of gold? also, yes, nixon did print too much money, and that's why we had debasement of currency. add to that our giant inflation, and our buying power plummetted. debasement of currency is rampant today. is that the fault of the gold standard? no, we're not on it. also, lets look at history and fiat currencies. here's the short list of fiat currencies since the romans first began the practice that have ended in devaluation and eventual collapse of the currency and the economy: the denarius, colonial notes, the continental dollar, livres, assignats, francs, the peso, the turkish lira, and many, many others. fiat currencies have been shown to be about as sure a road to economic collapse as you can get.

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you know what? china has threated to dump our dollar on the market as is. what do you think will happen to our dollar then? it would ruin us, literally. also, the dollar is artifically inflated by countries being required to have dollars on hand to buy and sell oil. as far as returning to the gold standard devaluing our currency, that's already happening at a rapid pace, so whether it would actually happen or not is a moot point. i've noticed that a lot of your points against the gold standard are things that are happening right now as we speak, and we're not on the gold standard, but are using fiat currency.

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sound monetary policy? i haven't heard anyone other than ron paul talk about that in years. does that even exist anymore? you wouldn't think it by the way the fed cranks out dollars. i think one thing that you and i can agree on is that in the end it comes down to sound monetary policy and the effects of hyper-inflation. ron paul stresses sound monetary policy and fiscal responsibility to keep that policy sound. fiat wouldn't be so bad if people wouldn't keep fucking up supply and demand of that type of currency, but unfortunately, there is a long history of it.

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Originally posted by Zachmozach

Assuming many mexicans move across the border as has happened and we assumed for a mind exercise that the stereotype of them liking to wear gold on everything including rims and etc., then gold is going to be less available.

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Originally posted by Zachmozach

Personally I find the argument weak that ron paul is somehow qualified in economics just because he was appointed to serve on some committee. That in no way makes him a scholar in economics or anything.

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I think everyone who wants a gold standard should read The Lost Science of Money (recommended by Fluffy cause Kucinich recommended it to Tim who I believe loved it if I recall correctly). The gold standard is as worthless as gold itself. It's a shiny fucking rock! Big deal! Ya most of the world values it and that's its only value is a collective hallucination. You know why the US left the gold standard? Mind you the federal reserve had been around quite some time. Nixon had to devalue our currency against gold because we had printed too much money to back that in gold and spent it in foreign wars. So finally he floated the currency to stop from having to devalue it again. However even without that the economy simply can't be represented in bullion. Look at history for christ's sake.

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Bringing back the gold standard would be great for like maybe 5 years after which our depleted gold supply would be well known and after china buying it's way out of the dollar and dumping them on the market the dollar would be ridiculously devalued. Assuming many mexicans move across the border as has happened and we assumed for a mind exercise that the stereotype of them liking to wear gold on everything including rims and etc., then gold is going to be less available. Thus simply more people wanting to wear more gold could mean our economy taking a hit. Besides just to get into it we would devalue our money and it would be bad if you have paid attention to eastern asia and what's happened to the countries that had to devalue their currency in the 90's.

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Instead of a gold standard what the people should be calling for is sound monetary policy in which we stick to good equations which follow metrics which say how much actual wealth is in our economy and release the correct amount of dollars to cover that with inflation as part of the process because it's a good thing! I'm not talking about crazy hyper inflation a la the Nazi's but I'm talking about healthy inflation which is the publics only way to fight the banking industry. It's the only way getting loans and buying money becomes tenable. Buy a house and you better sure as hell hope for inflation especially at todays prices. Anyway, read the lost science of money and tell me that the gold standard sounds like a good idea.

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Originally posted by dan p.


i guess i just plain old don't like ron paul. first of all, gold standard, or commodity backed, whatever he's calling it, is a terrible idea. wanting that back takes a special kind of crazy. secondly he has ties to don black. don black is an white nationalist, and he also is a former grand wizard of the kkk. he runs stormfront, too, which is some kind of white supremacist website. why ron paul associates with such a man is beyond me, let alone take campaign donations from him, is beyond me. more importantly, why does don black support ron paul.

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Paul serves on three Congressional committees. He serves on the Committee on International Relations, the Committee on Financial Services, and the Joint Economic Committee.
Each of the House committees are divided into subcommittees. Rep. Paul serves on several subcommittees.

On the Financial Services committee, he serves as vice-chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee. He is also a member of the Domestic Monetary Policy, Technology, and Economic Growth subcommittee.

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For some current examples, Barack Obama has the support of the Nation of Islam’s virulently racist Louis Farrakhan and is a member of Chicago’s Trinity United Church of Christ, an organization that if it’s not racist sure speaks and acts like it is. Fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton is the leading recipient of donations from our country’s blood-soaked weapons makers and gets massive donations from lobbyists used as intermediaries for Pakistan’s repulsive dictator, Pervez Musharraf im Multan.

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abstention by a nation from interference in the affairs of other nations or in those of its own political subdivisions.

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a policy of nonparticipation in international economic and political relations

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Originally posted by Hopeful Rolling Waves

Too late.

Taxes, if allocated and distributed PROPERLY, are a necessary part of any functioning society. They make sense.

I can see why MOST wouldn't want their money to go towards murder, I certainly don't. But DO something to invoke change. Hold meetings, raise awareness.

Holing yourself up with guns in a compound, that's counter-productive and generally wasteful and paranoid.

Learn from the past, don't relive it. Otherwise, Einstein thinks your crazy, and I tend to agree with him..

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Originally posted by dan p.

no, i got the sarcasm, that didn't bother me. the reason i called the opposition to the income tax a meme, or a thing, i forget which, is because that's exactly what it is. it's an issue that a relatively small group of basically libertarians harp on and no one else ever talks about. this is not because everyone is passive and just accepts whatever the government tells them. it's not because they're ignorant. it's because the issue has already been discussed to death on a political philosophy standpoint point in a billion places and found wanting. it has also been brought to court and shot down.

i know it's not a flavor of the month. it's a fixation that a group of people with a very specific political viewpoint have and can't let go of, and likely never will.

edit: if nothing else, the fact that people who oppose the income tax run to the defense of, and hail as a hero, a man who's great idea is to shack up in his house and hunker down for a siege with whatever the us government feels like throwing at him. spoiler alert: ed brown won't win. he's making libertarians and the income tax thing look crazy. i cannot stress that enough. he's making libertarians look crazy.

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Originally posted by pants_happy

[quote]income tax "thing" over with? i guess i didn't get that memo.

allright, i just sent out the notice to my millions of subscribers: "No more income tax "thing" guys, and lets give up that free speech "thing" too while we're at it. Please, for everyone's sake, it is much easier on us all if everyone would just lay down and die."

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Originally posted by dan p.

wow, are you guys still doing the income tax thing? i thought that particular meme was over with.

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Originally posted by Ranting Thespian
I'd never vote for him either, I am just saying that he's not like all other republicans that make me want to bash my head into a wall rather than try and fucking talk to them.

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Originally posted by dan p.

wow, are you guys still doing the income tax thing? i thought that particular meme was over with.

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Originally posted by pants_happy

mccain is as slick as any politican. i won't try to stop you from liking mccain, but i'll just say that he'll never get my vote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI

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