You'd think that a politician who has been sounding the alarm about the relationship between Washington and Wall Street for a few decades would get a pass on this, but....
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Police arrested more than a dozen Occupy protesters Thursday in Iowa who are targeting Democrats and Republicans just days before the state's closely watched lead-off presidential caucuses.
Five protesters were arrested outside the Iowa campaign headquarters of presidential contender Ron Paul in Ankeny before the group moved on to the Iowa Democratic Party headquarters in Des Moines, where 12 more were taken into custody. All were ticketed for trespassing and released. The protests are part of an Occupy the Caucuses effort launched this week in Des Moines that has attracted activists from around the country. Many of them have promised to interrupt campaign activities, and organizers promised more confrontations on Friday with campaign offices of Republican presidential hopefuls.
Here, according to Patrick at Popehat, are the reasons the Occupy Kiddies could've been upset with Ron Paul's platform:
Abolish the Federal Reserve Bank – oops, already on the platform
End federal payouts to banks - oops, already on the platform
End federal payouts to large corporations that aren’t banks - oops, already on the platform
End foreign aid to Israel (and for that matter every other country) - oops, already on the platform
End the war in Afghanistan - oops, already on the platform
Withdraw American troops from Kuwait, South Korea, and Germany - oops, already on the platform
Abolish the Transportation Security Administration, along with a number of other federal departments and agencies - oops, already on the platform
End the War on Terror - oops, already on the platform
End the War on Drugs - oops, already on the platform
Establish a National Drum Circle on top of Mount Rushmore – not on the Ron Paul platform
Popehat. You really should read these guys every day.
Later on in the AP article, someone claims that Paul got occupied because of his opposition to the EPA.
Well, there is no bigger friend to Big Business than the EPA.
Here's one of the Popehat commenters on Paul's rationale for shutting down that gaggle of unelected Warmist kickback artists:
....the problem with the EPA is that its unclear as to how much of their protections are actually effective. You see quite frequently how well connected companies get extensions and exceptions to rules where smaller companies are held to very strict or even non-existent standards. I used to work for a soil and water testing facility, and it seemed a very random process that the agency had for going after businesses, a gas station with a minor leak could be fined heavily within a month, but an industrial facility would be far out of safety ranges for the better part of two years and not get much more than a strongly worded letter. The agency standards seemed very divorced from any reasonable threat assessment.
The concept of a federal agency, which has power at its sole discretion to shut down, fine, or harass any business without judicial oversight is pretty glaring constitutional issue. In many cases the day in court doesn’t come until after the damage has been done and the victim has lost their business and in some cases much more.
None of this is saying that environmental protections are unnecessary, just that the EPA as vehicle for fairly enforcing the laws (which themselves are pretty obtusely written, but that’s a separate issue) has been very bad at it. The fact that many of it’s powers are unconstitutional is Ron Paul’s primary concern with the agency.
Industry Week has a piece in their online edition by Dr. Ken Mayland, an economist who covers manufacturing and business trends.
Here are Dr. Mayland's "Eight Steps For Revitalizing The U.S. Economy". I've been ranting about seven of these for years, and I don't even have a Doctorate in Economics. Or a Masters. Or a Bachelors. I do, however, work in the shipping and logistics industry, and that qualifies me to comment on these things.
1. Kill the 2010 health care reform bill.
Well, duh, of course. Nobody knows who exactly wrote it. Nobody knows what it is supposed to accomplish. It's too long for anyone to know what is in it. A lot of people who lobbied for it have now been exempted from it. But everyone fears it.
2. Do a "reverse course" on developing domestic energy and ease access and permitting for all forms of energy production.
Yeah. Drill, Baby, Drill. The Green Energy Scam is slowly being exposed. Within a year and a half, it'll be dead as a doornail. Drill, Baby, Drill. Now.
3. Eliminate the minimum wage. Mayland said: "Economists have long know that politicians cannot legislate the productivity of a worker. If you raise the minimum wage above the basic productivity of the worker, the worker will be fired or not hired." Mayland said since the minimum wage was last raised, the biggest increase in unemployment has been among teenagers -- "exactly where you would expect a minimum-wage increase to hurt."
The minimum wage is zero. The higher you set an artificial price floor for unskilled workers, the more of them you condemn to earning the true minimum wage - zero.
4. Repeal the Frank-Dodd financial reform law and Sarbanes-Oxley, which he said put U.S. businesses at a disadvantage compared to businesses in other countries.
I know absolutely nothing about this. Some might say that this shortcoming has never prevented any of my other rants, but there you have it. I know nothing about SarbOx. But this guy does.
5. Rein in EPA and the National Labor Relations Board.
Or we could continue to allow the NLRB to tell businesses where they can and can't operate. Pick one.
6. Pass free-trade agreements with Panama, Columbia and South Korea.
This is great as long as it is Free Trade and not Managed Trade. Any Free Trade Agreement that's 900 pages long is automatically suspect.
7. Pare back overly generous unemployment benefits from the current 99 weeks. Mayland cited a scholarly study that if unemployment benefits were 26 weeks, the unemployment rate would be 2% to 2.5% lower.
Yep, and it wouldn't be pretty. But combine #3 and #7, and you would rapidly approach full employment. Companies would accomplish more with less. But it wouldn't be fair ! So we're going to continue to borrow from our fetuses !
8. Trash the tax code and install a flat tax. Mayland said once the appropriate tax rate was determined, taxpayers could fill out their tax return "on a postcard."
Go here for a picture of the Hong Kong tax postcard.
There you have it. If Obama and Congress knew that they were going to be propped against a wall and shot if the economy didn't improve within one year, they would implement all of Ken Mayland's Libertarian-ish suggestions tomorrow morning. Hit the labels below if you want to read earlier rants on any of these topics.
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man" - George Bernard Shaw
Mother Jones magazine recently took Ron Paul to task for being too extreme. (As if there's a painless and moderate way to get out from under a 14 trillion dollar debt.)
Here are Dr. Paul's beliefs that made Mother Jones run for the smelling salts, along with additional commentary on my part.
1. Eviscerate Entitlements: Believes that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are unconstitutional, and has compared the failure of federal courts to strike them down to the courts' failure to abolish slavery in the 19th century.
People of good will can indeed argue that the constitution's General Welfare clause gives Congress enough wiggle room to collect their party money via Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid contributions. And all of those funds will be out of money by the time I retire. The constitutionality of those programs is irrelevant. Our government will never, ever use the money responsibly, and the contributions to those funds went to other programs ages ago. This one is irrelevant, and the sooner I'm allowed to put my own money into my own retirement fund, the better off I'll be. The sooner you can do the same for yourself, the better off you'll be. It takes a lot of humility to admit that I have no idea what is best for you. I wish that our Washington Lords and Masters felt the same way. This one is a moot point.
2. Lay Off Half His Cabinet: Wants to abolish half of all federal agencies, including the departments of Energy, Education, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, and Labor.
Ok, let's beat hook the winch and the chain hoist up to this dead horse and drag it out of the bushes for another beating.
Since its founding, the Department of Education has almost doubled education expenses and test scores haven't budged.
Since its founding (to decrease our dependence on foreign oil) the Department of Energy has spent billions and our foreign oil purchase percentage is within 1% of where they started.
The Department of Agriculture gives subsidies to some of the wealthiest people in the nation. They also support ethanol subsidies. For this alone, their building should be nuked.
If the Department of Commerce were to cease their endless quotas, tariffs, protectionism, kickbacks and allotments and let us have a more frictionless economy, we just might be able to get out of this recession. But no. They've got to do something. Why does anyone need an 800 page Free Trade Agreement? Why not just say "Fort Worth can trade freely with Dallas". "Oklahoma can trade freely with Florida". And last but not least, "You can trade freely with Canada". We wouldn't need to take in so much in import duties if we didn't have to support these unnecessary a-holes. I occasionally have to get things done via companies that are afflicted with Teamster's Union members. Screw the Department of Labor, and all that they stand for. If your boss promised you X, but didn't give it to you, take him to court. If your boss had faulty equipment that took off one of your fingers, take her to court and sue her until she glows. It's that simple.
If we could get the CIA on a shorter leash, we wouldn't need a Department Of Homeland Security. If we could get our troops out of Germany, Korea, Japan, and the Middle East, and bring 'em back to the house, we wouldn't need a Department Of Homeland Security. We could cut troop levels in half, and still not be able to see the beach because of all the troops defending our borders. Ok, imagine you won $100 million in the lottery, and you wanted to give it away to good, helpful institutions. Make your list of your top 20. Did you include the Department Of Health And Human Services? Good. Nobody else would either, including Ron Paul, or whoever wrote this tripe for Mother Jones.
3. Enable State Extremism: Would let states set their own policies on abortion, gay marriage, prayer in school, and most other issues.
It's called States' Rights. If a state wants to legalize gay marriage, abortion, etc., the state should be allowed to do so. Gays and lesbians could be married in those states. Women wanting an abortion could travel to those states. Before long, those states would have an advantage that others did not. The alternative is having the heavy hand of Washington oversee everything, with a one-size-fits-all policy.
4. Protect Sexual Predators' Privacy: Voted against requiring operators of wi-fi networks who discover the transmission of child porn and other forms online sex predation to report it to the government.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including "obscene" cartoons and drawings--or face fines of up to $300,000.
That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user's account be retained for subsequent police inspection.
Most wi-fi providers have other things to do. I don't want to spy on my neighbors. I can also promise you that my definition of "obscene" doesn't match yours. And then there's the 4th Amendment:
5. Rescind the Bin Laden Raid: Instead of authorizing the Navy Seals to take him out, President Paul would have sought Pakistan's cooperation to arrest him.
Would that have worked? Who knows. But our potential Paki enemies would be a lot less pissed if we had given Dr. Paul's method a try. How would you feel if a group of VietNamese invaded D.C. with a helicopter raid and took out Henry Kissinger?
6. Simplify the Census: The questions posed by the Census Bureau's annual American Community Survey, which collects demographics data such as age, race, and income, are "both ludicrous and insulting," Paul says.
True. The race questions are often used to reenforce tribalism. They don't need to know anything but your name and address.
7. Let the Oldest Profession Be: Paul wants to legalize prostitution at the federal level.
I believe you can find other instances where he says its a States' Rights issue. There's something funny about these people....
....enforcing a ban on whoring.
8. Legalize All Drugs: Including cocaine and heroin.
Yes !! And if we do, are you going to suddenly start doing coke and heroin? I'm not. I hope you don't. But it'll end almost all of our problems on the Texas/Mexico border, they way the end of alcohol prohibition ended our problems on the Canadian border in the 1920's. Which monopolies do you want to preserve for the Drug Lords of Mexico and Afghanistan?
9. Keep Monopolies Intact: Opposes federal antitrust legislation, calling it "much more harmful than helpful." Thinks that monopolies can be controlled by protecting "the concept of the voluntary contract."
Yep. Can anyone name a true monopoly that has existed without help from Uncle Sugar?
10. Lay Off Ben Bernanke: Would abolish the Federal Reserve and revert to use of currencies that are backed by hard assets such as gold.
And speaking of monopolies that answer to no one, here's what The Fed has done to our money supply. Folks, prices aren't going up because of weather, China, India, famine, or Global Warming/Cooling/Climate Disruption. Dollars are less scarce. Therefore it takes more of them to swap for something else.
11. Stop Policing the Environment: Believes that climate change is no big deal and the Environmental Protection Agency is unnecessary. Most environmental problems can be addressed by enforcing private-property rights. Paul also thinks that interstate issues such as air pollution are best dealt with through compacts between states.
Yep. The EPA is a jobs program.
12. Not Do Anything, but Still...: Would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it was a "massive violation of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of a free society."
This is true. I discriminate. You discriminate. There are some people that I won't allow into my house or my truck. There are others that I welcome. A business has the right to do this also. But if you don't allow people in because they're black, gay, coneheaded, hispanic, or green, I'm not going to shop at your business. Lots of other people will follow suit. The market works, and is more efficient that setting up a feast for lawyers.
13. Let Markets Care for the Disabled: "The ADA should have never been passed," Paul says. The treatment of the handicapped should be determined by the free market.
Has the percentage of handicapped people in the workplace gone up or down since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act? Google it. (Hint: It's gone down. Government regulations screw up the best intentions, without fail.)
14. First, Do Harm: Wants to end birthright citizenship. Believes that emergency rooms should have the right to turn away illegal immigrants.
It's called "Birth Tourism". It's a huge problem as long as we have a welfare state. Have your kid on this side of the border, and your kid is an American. End the welfare state, and its no problem. Go here to join the Facebook group called "Ron Paul Supporters For Open Borders".
15. Diss Mother Teresa: Voted against giving her the Congressional Gold Medal. Has argued that the medal, which costs $30,000, is too expensive.
When time permits, read "The Missionary Position", Christopher Hitchens' devastating attack on the life and works of Mother Teresa. The expense is the least of the problems.
************************
Those are Ron Paul's positions that scare the bejeebers out of Mother Jones magazine. What's funny is that getting out of our current mess is going to require people who make Ron Paul look moderate. Hope this helped ! Have a good Memorial Day !!!
I'm playing guitar and singing with Mike Coyne and Big Daddy John Spivey at the Rahr Brewery in Fort Worth tonight at 6:30.
It's a fund-raiser for TRIP, the Trinity River Improvement Partnership. You also get to see a documentary called Up A Creek, detailing the history of the Trinity River and the dangers of the current Trinity River development plan. TRIP was set up as an alternative to the billion-dollar Trinity River Vision boondoggle set up by and for JD and his mama, Kay Granger. I'm sure that I'll be posting more about this group as I learn more about it. Hell, the Granger outfit has already doubled the size of the original budget. (It's now up to something like 900 million.)
I'm going to be doing some Buffet tunes, some Jerry Jeff Walker, and a few originals. Spivey will be singing an original composition called "Mama Tried". (Guess who that one is about !!)
Here's the lyrics to one of the songs I'll be doing. There was an old guy named James Cook who worked on my father's farm, and about three times a year he'd tell me about a little dog that helped his family get through the Great Depression. I wrote this in honor of Mr. Cook, and his dog, and to get in a slam at Franklin Roosevelt.
It's called "The Dog That Knew".
"Back in the Great Depression, I made fifty cents a day,
Just digging ditches, picking cotton, or whatever else would pay.
Had a house full of kids, and couldn't keep 'em fed,
Every night we'd go to sleep, afraid we'd wake up dead.
Well, one day here's this little dog like I have not seen since,
As if God had crossed a beagle with some kind of barbed wire fence,
And that little dog did something that I've never seen before,
He went and caught a rabbit, and then laid it at my door.
Well, Daisy took that rabbit and she threw it in a pot,
Then we sat down at the table, thanked the Lord for what we got,
We thanked the Lord for sunshine and them children in the yard,
And we thanked God for little dogs that knew that times were hard.
Had that dog for seven years and Lord, he fed us well.
That dog could bring a rabbit back straight from the gates of hell,
You see those rabbits ran like lightning up and down that river bank,
Sometimes they ran through gulleys that could scare a Sherman tank.
And Mr. Roosevelt he said "It's only fear itself",
Well I bet Mr. Roosevelt had groceries on his shelf.
They said it was a brand New Deal, that's all that some folks had.
We had us a little dog that knew that times were bad.
Well, Daisy took that rabbit and she threw it in a pot,
Then we sat down at the table, thanked the Lord for what we got,
We thanked the Lord for sunshine and them children in the yard,
And we thanked God for little dogs that knew that times were hard.
It's been forty years, I guess, since I first heard it said,
About that old man's dog and how it kept his family fed -
You see, my back yard's full of dachshunds, those useless weiner dogs;
Never caught a rabbit, and Lord they eat like hogs.
Sometimes I'll take 'em huntin', and Lordy what a sight,
There's a man whose little dogs are scared that rabbits bite.
So if y'all see me looking like I don't eat enough,
It's because my little dogs don't know that times are tough.
So y'all bring me a rabbit, and I'll throw it in a pot,
I'll sit down at the table, and thank the Lord for what I've got.
I'll thank the Lord for sunshine and those dachshunds in the yard,
But I'll wish I had some little dogs that knew that times are hard.
Environmental policy is not driven by tree-hugging activists, earnest liberal bloggers, or ecologically minded citizens. Instead, it flows from the lobbyists and executives of well-connected multinational corporations and built-for-subsidy startups that see profit in the loan guarantees, handouts, mandates, and tax credits Congress creates in the name of saving the planet.
K Street is the epicenter of this green-industrial complex, and ground zero might be the firm founded by Democratic revolving-door earmark lobbyist Steve McBee.
McBee, a former top staffer for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and powerful House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., reportedly wrote key provisions in the stimulus bill to open the spigot of green corporate welfare. Also, he has hired up the Capitol Hill staff at the center of big environmental legislative pushes like cap and trade.
Exploring corporate lobbyists' central role in Obama's "green energy" push provides us two important lessons. First, it reveals as hypocritical the Democratic attack that opponents of cap and trade and other green policies are simply shills for big business.
Second, it ought to heighten our skepticism that these "green" policies are really crafted with an eye to helping the environment -- they are more likely skewed toward the bottom line of lobbied-up Big Business.
McBee's clients include SolarCity and the Green Tech Action Fund as well as electric-car maker Better Place Inc., waste-to-power company Ze-gen, and solar-power developer BrightSource Energy. But the big guys -- Boeing, JP Morgan, and Google -- also hire McBee to lobby for green-energy subsidies.
Electric car company Tesla signed on with McBee days after Obama's election, and soon won a $465 million loan guarantee to aid in building a new all-electric car.
With McBee's former boss being a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, McBee Strategic used to be an earmark factory. After Obama's election, though, McBee pivoted to green energy and saw revenues soar in 2009.
"I attribute it to the bets we've made on clean energy and energy," he told Roll Call.
Late last year McBee hired Kathleen Frangione, described by Politico as "Sen. John Kerry's top climate staffer." You see the play: advance green legislation, then lobby for the companies trying to make money off that legislation.
Hit the link up top to read the whole thing. The pictures of the Room Cleaner (a space heater with a feather duster taped to it) and the gasoline powered alarm clock, both of which were approved as "Energy Stars" by regulators, came from here.
This video pulls no punches.
They're calling Robert Redford a hypocrite.
I prefer the term "Whited Sepulchre" myself.
None of us is perfect.
"For all have sinned, and fallen short of the glory of __this___." (Romans 3:23)
But in this case, unh...well....let's just say that Redford's actions make Al Gore's seem almost primitive. And green. And eco-friendly.
I hate to see this. "The Sting", "Butch Cassidy", "Out Of Africa", "JEREMIAH FREAKIN' JOHNSON", "The Way We Were" (please don't tell anybody) and "The Great Gatsby" (please don't tell anybody) are some of my favorites.
Oh well.
The U.S. Government's current fixation on the color green is about collecting taxes and shakedown money from manufacturers and truckers. It's about funneling graft and pork "investments" to supporters who are willing to pretend to invent green, renewable, sustainable Perpetual Motion machines.
Yeah, we don't need to hurt other people. All the rest is noise.
I started wearing reading glasses about two years ago, and now I can't read anything without them.
Tonight I started a new book, and trying to be a good, environmentally-conscious citizen, I turned off every light in the house except one reading lamp.
I couldn't see the freakin' book.
I knew that just a few months ago I could read with only that one lamp for illumination.
Then I found the culprit. My eyesight is getting worse, but there was another factor. The lamp now had a CFL bulb.
These things might be great at saving energy, but they aren't worth crap at producing light. I've never seen one that was fit to read by.
I had to turn on the overhead fan lights to compensate, which I think defeats the purpose.
These CFL's are like the water-conserving toilets with the smaller tanks that Congress mandated a couple of decades ago. You know, the ones that you have to flush two or three times to take care of bidness?
The incandescent light bulb, one of the most venerable inventions of its era but deemed too inefficient for our own, will be phased off the U.S. market beginning in 2012 under the new energy law just approved by Congress. Although this will reduce electricity costs and minimize new bulb purchases in every household in America, you may be feeling in the dark about the loss of your old, relatively reliable source of light.
They got that right.
Can you imagine the uproar there would have been if Congress had tried this 40 years ago? The hardware stores would have instantly sold out of pitchforks.
And then there's the mercury issue. These things, like the familiar long flourescent lights, contain some mercury.
Here's the EPA on how to dispose of the soon to be mandatory CFL bulbs:
1. Open a window and leave the room (restrict access) for at least 15 minutes.
2. Remove all materials you can without using a vacuum cleaner. Wear disposable rubber gloves, if available (do not use your bare hands). Carefully scoop up the fragments and powder with stiff paper or cardboard. Wipe the area clean with a damp paper towel or disposable wet wipe. Sticky tape (such as duct tape) can be used to pick up small pieces and powder.
3. Place all cleanup materials in a plastic bag and seal it. If your state permits you to put used or broken CFLs in the garbage, seal the CFL in two plastic bags and put into the outside trash (if no other disposal or recycling options are available). Wash your hands after disposing of the bag.
4. The first time you vacuum the area where the bulb was broken, remove the vacuum bag once done cleaning the area (or empty and wipe the canister) and put the bag and/or vacuum debris, as well as the cleaning materials, in two sealed plastic bags in the outdoor trash or protected outdoor location for normal disposal.
Actually, that info is now out of date. Most communities now want you to put the bulbs into a disposal pouch and take it to a recycling center, or use a special compact bulb recycling pail.
When you've finished doing that, calculate how much energy you've consumed driving to the recycling center, as opposed to the energy consumed by chunking your old incandescent bulbs into the trash.
Here's a video on one possible way to recycle your old CFL bulbs. I know that everyone in America is going to do this instead of throwing them into the trash. You are going to do this, aren't you?
You might be asking yourself....Why are we having to go through all of this?
Well, General Electric lobbied for the ban of the old bulbs, and they donate to more campaigns than you do. Here's The Washington Examiner:
“Government did us in,” says Dwayne Madigan, whose job will terminate when General Electric closes its factory next July. Madigan makes a product that will soon be illegal to sell in the U.S. - a regular incandescent bulb. Two years ago, his employer, GE, lobbied in favor of the law that will outlaw the bulbs. Madigan’s colleagues, waiting for their evening shift to begin, all know that GE is replacing the incandescents for now with compact fluorescents bulbs, which GE manufactures in China.
Lordy, that's cold.
People should be able to manufacture whatever they want to, wherever they want to, as long as it doesn't harm someone else. But lobbying for a ban on your old product line so you can have a succesful launch of the new stuff? That's cold.
This guy is suggesting that we all mail some busted CFL's to our Congressman on September 30th.
The current bunch of Congressmen would probably hire 30 union members, 5 environmental impact experts, and half the D.C. police force to supervise the cleanup.
So let's not mail our dead CFL's anywhere.
Let's re-name them.
Those inadequate, squishy, little light bulbs reminded me of something. Or someone. I couldn't figure it out for the longest time. And then it hit me....
MYFOXNY.COM - The AMC Empire 25 movie theater complex in the Times Square area shut its doors Tuesday night to deal with a bed bug problem.
AMC said it has been testing and treating its theaters after getting complaints from some patrons about bed beg bites.
The company said it inspected the Empire 25 Tuesday and found bed bugs in an auditorium that had previously tested negative.
Here's an email sent out to the CNN employees working in the Time Warner Center:
August 13, 2010
To: TBS, Inc. Employees
From: TBS, Inc. Human Resources
The Time Warner Center Facilities Department advises that bed bugs have been detected in Time Warner Center. This determination was made after testing was conducted on several floors of the building. In response, Time Warner Facilities is working with pest control providers to address the issue in an environmentally safe manner, and during non-working hours...
There's only one effective, efficient way to get rid of bedbugs. That would be DDT. Our government banned DDT in 1972.
"To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT... In little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million human deaths, due to malaria, that otherwise would have been inevitable."
- National Academy of Sciences
I'm sure that our government knows best. But in the meantime, if you see Wolf Blitzer scratching his privates on camera, you now know the reason why. CNN can't spray their building with DDT, which, if used properly, is ok to drink in small quantities. (There used to be a cocktail called the Mickey Slim - Gin & a pinch of DDT.) If you see Larry King scratching his privates on camera, it's because he has grown old and forgetful after all those years of throwing softballs to Democrats. If you see Anderson Cooper touching himself on camera, it's because he thinks there's nothing like the feel of Anderson Cooper. If Candy Crowley starts scratching herself on camera.....aww....never mind. I'm not going there. Sorry for the digression. I'm really enjoying the idea of The Castro News Network having a bed bug breakout. I apologize. Here are the folks from Reason magazine on the DDT scare campaign:
Can we find a volunteer to sneak bed bugs into the EPA headquarters?
Within 48 hours, Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate Rand Paul has managed to 1) attack the now-venerated 1964 Civil Rights Act, and 2) defend the now-villainous British Petroleum Company.
Well, maybe he'll be more subtle in the future.
Here's one of the transcripts of what Paul did and didn't say, according to The Wall Street Journal:
"What I've always said is, I'm opposed to institutional racism, and I would have--if I was alive at the time, I think--had the courage to march with Martin Luther King to overturn institutional racism, and I see no place in our society for institutional racism," he said in response to a first question about the act.
"You would have marched with Martin Luther King but voted with Barry Goldwater?" asked an interviewer.
"I think it's confusing in a lot of cases in what's actually in the Civil Rights Case (sic)," Paul replied. "A lot of things that were actually in the bill I'm actually in favor of. I'm in favor of--everything with regards to ending institutional racism. So I think there's a lot to be desired in the Civil Rights--and indeed the truth is, I haven't read all through it, because it was passed 40 years ago and hadn't been a real pressing issue on the campaign on whether I'm going to vote for the Civil Rights Act."
Here's his take on the public vs. private property portions of the act:
Paul explained that he backed the portion of the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public places and institutions, but that he thinks private businesses should be permitted to discriminate by race.
"I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I'm all in favor of that," he said. "I don't like the idea of telling private business owners. . . ."
And then, in another interview:
Interviewer: But under your philosophy, it would be OK for Dr. King not to be served at the counter at Woolworths?
Paul: I would not go to that Woolworths, and I would stand up in my community and say that it is abhorrent, um, but, the hard part--and this is the hard part about believing in freedom--is, if you believe in the First Amendment, for example--you have too, for example, most good defenders of the First Amendment will believe in abhorrent groups standing up and saying awful things. . . . It's the same way with other behaviors. In a free society, we will tolerate boorish people, who have abhorrent behavior.
Paul has said elsewhere that his preference for ending segregation would be through boycotts, shaming, and other forms of peer pressure.
What Rand Paul should have said, of course, is that he loves, no, he actually adores the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its entirety, including the punctuation, and that he sleeps with a copy of it under his pillow.
That is the only sensible answer for a politician to give.
The distinction between "government" and "private" property is lost on most voters.
Private property owners are free to say "No shoes, no shirt, no service". Others have signs up that state that they reserve the right to refuse service for any reason.
If it is your castle, you really should be able to refuse entry to anyone you want to refuse: left-handers, Okies, blacks, whites, Palin supporters, or people who think To Kill A Mockingbird is overrated.
And the left-handers, Okies, blacks, whites, Palinites, and Harper Lee fans should be free to boycott your ass and encourage all their friends to do the same.
As far as the effectiveness of the CRA of '64 goes, my public school classes at A.W. James Elementary school in Drew, Mississippi, were de facto segregated until 1969.
My doctor's office in Merigold, Mississippi, had segregated waiting rooms (hello, Westerfields !) until the Doctor retired sometime in the mid-1970's.
What changed everything? Simple economics. Boycotts. Shaming. The same remedies that Paul (foolishly, but truthfully) proposed in his interviews (as if he could go back in time to '64, and vote as a two-year-old senator). People generally don't move to places that discriminate unfairly just for the hell of it. And they eventually stop shopping there.
What would have worked better for Paul would be to ignore the Bill's attacks on property rights and say "I support the goals of the Act, if not some of the wording. I especially support the provisions that ended the Democrat party's vile segregationist practices. When this bill came to Congress, there were Democrat politicians standing in the front doors of public schools and universities. Racist, Yellow-Dog Democrats were setting attack dogs loose on citizens who merely wanted to use public transportation that their taxes paid for."
Then remind the country that when the Act came up for a vote in '64, three-fourths of the "nay" votes in the House Of Representatives came from Democrats.
Remind the country that 80% of the "nay" votes in the Senate came from Democrats, and that those voting "nay" included Al Gore's Daddy, plus a former Ku Klux Klan Community Organizer named Robert Byrd, who, last I checked, is still a Democrat Senator representing the subsidy hawgs of West Virginia.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you don’t want to get rid of the EPA?
PAUL: No, the thing is is that drilling right now and the problem we’re having now is in international waters and I think there needs to be regulation of that and always has been regulation. What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, you know, “I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP.” I think that sounds really un-American in his criticism of business. I’ve heard nothing from BP about not paying for the spill. And I think it’s part of this sort of blame game society in the sense that it’s always got to be someone’s fault. Instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen. I mean, we had a mining accident that was very tragic and I’ve met a lot of these miners and their families. They’re very brave people to do a dangerous job. But then we come in and it’s always someone’s fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So, you believe that the regulation of BP was adequate?
PAUL: I don’t know exactly what the regulation of BP is. I think there’s hundreds of pages of regulation of drilling in the ocean and I think most of that’s justified. I think we’ll have to figure out from this accident, is there anything that could have beend one to prevent it? What can we do in the future to make sure that it doesn’t happen again? So, I think we use logic. We use objective facts. And yeah, we try to go forward. Nobody wants this to happen. I love the beautiful beaches down in the panhandle of Florida and nobody wants to see oil washing up on those white sand beaches.
All of that sound plenty vague to me, but if you pull the "shit happens" quotes out of context, and ignore the point he's trying to make about our Nutcase-In-Chief trying to demagogue the issue, you won't hear anything except a defense of BP.
I would still trust Rand Paul to protect the beaches of Kentucky.
As an officer in the Libertarian Party, I can't endorse any non-Libertarians, but I can give some advice.
Someone in Paul's campaign needs to go to the Louisville, Kentucky, Border's or Barnes & Noble, and get Dr. Paul a copy of Saul Alinsky's Rules For Radicals.
Then Dr. Paul needs to go to that Trappist Monastery in Kentucky, the one where Thomas Merton lived, and spend two weeks there, studying Alinsky's book, the playbook that the Statists have used since the day it was published.
When Paul leaves the monastery, he will perfectly understand what has just happened to his campaign. He will understand how to avoid those situations in the future. He will understand that the public cannot understand nuance or ambiguity. He will understand that whoever controls the narratives about the past will control the narratives about the future.
And maybe he'll never play into his opponents' hands again. He'll use every interview, every position statement, and every editorial to attack, attack, attack, even if the attack has nothing to do with the topic at hand. That's how the game is played.
