jimnyc
01-01-2012, 10:24 AM
Hilarious reading about the kook running for the republican nomination!
We’ve given his statements little attention until now. But here we look at some of his more outlandish claims:
Paul claims that a secret conspiracy composed of the Security and Prosperity Partnership and a cabal of foreign companies is behind plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway as the first step toward creating a North American Union. But the NAFTA Superhighway that Paul describes is a myth, and the groups supposedly behind the plans are neither secret nor nefarious.
Paul says that the U.S. spends $1 trillion per year to maintain a foreign empire and suggests that we could save that amount by cutting foreign spending. Paul gets that figure by including a lot of domestic programs that he isn’t planning to cut, like the U.S. Border Patrol and interest payments on the debt.
Paul has run television ads touting an endorsement from Ronald Reagan, but he fails to mention that, in 1988, Paul wanted "to totally disassociate" himself from the Reagan administration.
According to Paul, a secret organization run by unaccountable government figures is in league with foreign corporations who are all bent on usurping American sovereignty. That’s not from the script for a new X-Files movie. (Or not that we know of.) It’s the gist of Paul’s description of a supposed "NAFTA Superhighway." Paul describes (http://www.ronpaul2008.com/articles/701/the-nafta-superhighway/) it on his Web site as "a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside." And that’s not all. According to Paul, the ultimate plan is to form a North American Union with a single currency and unlimited travel within its borders, all headed up by "an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments" that together form the shadowy "quasi-government organization called the ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,’ or SPP." The problem with Paul’s claim is that there are no plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway. Or a North American Union, for that matter. And while the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America does exist, it’s just a boring bureaucracy.
In debates, Paul has claimed the U.S. spends a trillion dollars on a "foreign operation" each year to maintain an "empire"
One should be suspicious of this number right away. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects (http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/89xx/doc8917/01-23-2008_BudgetOutlook.pdf) total spending for the current fiscal year to be about $2.9 trillion. President Bush’s proposed fiscal 2009 budget would top $3 trillion for the first time. In fiscal 2008, a total of almost $1.8 trillion goes to mandatory spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security and to interest on the debt. That leaves just under $1.1 trillion in total discretionary spending, of which $572 billion goes to defense spending. Even if we called the entire defense budget an overseas cost of maintaining an empire – and then kicked in the entire $50.6 billion budget (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/state.html) for the State Department and international programs – Paul is still $378 billion short. When we asked the Paul campaign for some documentation for the $1 trillion claim, it directed us to an opinion piece by a fellow at the libertarian-leaning Independent Institute. The article (http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1941) argues that in 2006, the U.S. actually spent just under $1 trillion on defense. To arrive at that figure, the study included a number of items that one might generally not think of as defense spending, including the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, one-third of the funding for the FBI and half of NASA’s funding. The numbers also include medical and retirement pay for veterans and a large portion of interest on the debt.
So it turns out that what Paul says is a trillion dollars for a "foreign operation" includes a lot of things that seem pretty domestic to us. For example:
The entire U.S. Border Patrol
Every military base in the United States and all the 1.4 million full-time military personnel (not just those serving overseas)
Background checks for new immigrants
Inspections of incoming cargo
All airport security programs
The issuing of U.S. passports
The FBI’s counter-terrorism unit
92 percent of the interest payments on the national debt
Obviously Paul isn’t advocating defaulting on U.S. Savings Bonds or doing away with border security, or even closing all U.S. embassies overseas. But that makes it all the more misleading for him to suggest that cutting out this "foreign operation" could save $1 trillion per year.
In a recent television ad titled "The Only One," Paul claims to be the only candidate never to vote for a tax increase, pass an unbalanced budget or support wasteful government spending. The ad closes with the narrator saying, "We need to keep him fighting for our country." The words are attributed to Ronald Reagan. Paul uses a longer version of the quotation on his Web page:
From Ron Paul Web site: “Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first.” – Ronald Reagan
Paul’s embrace of Reagan’s legacy represents a significant change of heart. Actually, it’s the second time that Paul has changed his mind about Reagan. After endorsing Reagan for president in 1976 and again in 1980, Paul became disenchanted, leaving the Republican party in 1987. The following year, he told the Los Angeles Times:
Paul (May 10, 1988): The American people have never reached this point of disgust with politicians before. I want to totally disassociate myself from the Reagan Administration.
Paul’s disaffection started early in Reagan’s presidency. "Ronald Reagan has given us a deficit 10 times greater than what we had with the Democrats," Paul told the Christian Science Monitor in 1987. "It didn’t take more than a month after 1981, to realize there would be no changes."
Sometime between 1988 (during Paul’s run for the presidency on the Libertarian Party ticket) and 1996 (when Paul, running as a Republican once more, successfully ousted an incumbent House member in a GOP primary), Paul once again embraced Reagan’s legacy. The New York Times reported (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03E5DE1039F93BA35757C0A9609582 60&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1) then that Paul had used the longer version of the Reagan quote in a videotape sent to 30,000 households. According to the Times, Reagan’s former attorney general, Edwin Meese III, flew to Texas "to insist that Mr. Reagan had offered no recent endorsements."
We were unable to document Reagan’s endorsement of Paul. When we asked the Paul campaign for documentation, a spokesperson told us that the campaign was "a little more focused on positive things." The Paul campaign did not provide the Times with a date for the quotation in 1996, either.
All the sources are at the bottom of the article. This was from the 2008 campaign, but still valid and shows the thinking of the kook running.
http://factcheck.org/2008/02/wrong-paul/
We’ve given his statements little attention until now. But here we look at some of his more outlandish claims:
Paul claims that a secret conspiracy composed of the Security and Prosperity Partnership and a cabal of foreign companies is behind plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway as the first step toward creating a North American Union. But the NAFTA Superhighway that Paul describes is a myth, and the groups supposedly behind the plans are neither secret nor nefarious.
Paul says that the U.S. spends $1 trillion per year to maintain a foreign empire and suggests that we could save that amount by cutting foreign spending. Paul gets that figure by including a lot of domestic programs that he isn’t planning to cut, like the U.S. Border Patrol and interest payments on the debt.
Paul has run television ads touting an endorsement from Ronald Reagan, but he fails to mention that, in 1988, Paul wanted "to totally disassociate" himself from the Reagan administration.
According to Paul, a secret organization run by unaccountable government figures is in league with foreign corporations who are all bent on usurping American sovereignty. That’s not from the script for a new X-Files movie. (Or not that we know of.) It’s the gist of Paul’s description of a supposed "NAFTA Superhighway." Paul describes (http://www.ronpaul2008.com/articles/701/the-nafta-superhighway/) it on his Web site as "a ten-lane colossus the width of several football fields, with freight and rail lines, fiber-optic cable lines, and oil and natural gas pipelines running alongside." And that’s not all. According to Paul, the ultimate plan is to form a North American Union with a single currency and unlimited travel within its borders, all headed up by "an unholy alliance of foreign consortiums and officials from several governments" that together form the shadowy "quasi-government organization called the ‘Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,’ or SPP." The problem with Paul’s claim is that there are no plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway. Or a North American Union, for that matter. And while the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America does exist, it’s just a boring bureaucracy.
In debates, Paul has claimed the U.S. spends a trillion dollars on a "foreign operation" each year to maintain an "empire"
One should be suspicious of this number right away. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects (http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/89xx/doc8917/01-23-2008_BudgetOutlook.pdf) total spending for the current fiscal year to be about $2.9 trillion. President Bush’s proposed fiscal 2009 budget would top $3 trillion for the first time. In fiscal 2008, a total of almost $1.8 trillion goes to mandatory spending on programs like Medicare and Social Security and to interest on the debt. That leaves just under $1.1 trillion in total discretionary spending, of which $572 billion goes to defense spending. Even if we called the entire defense budget an overseas cost of maintaining an empire – and then kicked in the entire $50.6 billion budget (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/state.html) for the State Department and international programs – Paul is still $378 billion short. When we asked the Paul campaign for some documentation for the $1 trillion claim, it directed us to an opinion piece by a fellow at the libertarian-leaning Independent Institute. The article (http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1941) argues that in 2006, the U.S. actually spent just under $1 trillion on defense. To arrive at that figure, the study included a number of items that one might generally not think of as defense spending, including the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, one-third of the funding for the FBI and half of NASA’s funding. The numbers also include medical and retirement pay for veterans and a large portion of interest on the debt.
So it turns out that what Paul says is a trillion dollars for a "foreign operation" includes a lot of things that seem pretty domestic to us. For example:
The entire U.S. Border Patrol
Every military base in the United States and all the 1.4 million full-time military personnel (not just those serving overseas)
Background checks for new immigrants
Inspections of incoming cargo
All airport security programs
The issuing of U.S. passports
The FBI’s counter-terrorism unit
92 percent of the interest payments on the national debt
Obviously Paul isn’t advocating defaulting on U.S. Savings Bonds or doing away with border security, or even closing all U.S. embassies overseas. But that makes it all the more misleading for him to suggest that cutting out this "foreign operation" could save $1 trillion per year.
In a recent television ad titled "The Only One," Paul claims to be the only candidate never to vote for a tax increase, pass an unbalanced budget or support wasteful government spending. The ad closes with the narrator saying, "We need to keep him fighting for our country." The words are attributed to Ronald Reagan. Paul uses a longer version of the quotation on his Web page:
From Ron Paul Web site: “Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first.” – Ronald Reagan
Paul’s embrace of Reagan’s legacy represents a significant change of heart. Actually, it’s the second time that Paul has changed his mind about Reagan. After endorsing Reagan for president in 1976 and again in 1980, Paul became disenchanted, leaving the Republican party in 1987. The following year, he told the Los Angeles Times:
Paul (May 10, 1988): The American people have never reached this point of disgust with politicians before. I want to totally disassociate myself from the Reagan Administration.
Paul’s disaffection started early in Reagan’s presidency. "Ronald Reagan has given us a deficit 10 times greater than what we had with the Democrats," Paul told the Christian Science Monitor in 1987. "It didn’t take more than a month after 1981, to realize there would be no changes."
Sometime between 1988 (during Paul’s run for the presidency on the Libertarian Party ticket) and 1996 (when Paul, running as a Republican once more, successfully ousted an incumbent House member in a GOP primary), Paul once again embraced Reagan’s legacy. The New York Times reported (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F03E5DE1039F93BA35757C0A9609582 60&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1) then that Paul had used the longer version of the Reagan quote in a videotape sent to 30,000 households. According to the Times, Reagan’s former attorney general, Edwin Meese III, flew to Texas "to insist that Mr. Reagan had offered no recent endorsements."
We were unable to document Reagan’s endorsement of Paul. When we asked the Paul campaign for documentation, a spokesperson told us that the campaign was "a little more focused on positive things." The Paul campaign did not provide the Times with a date for the quotation in 1996, either.
All the sources are at the bottom of the article. This was from the 2008 campaign, but still valid and shows the thinking of the kook running.
http://factcheck.org/2008/02/wrong-paul/