The Present in Plain Text

Ron Paul Radio?

Ron Paul Radio will launch on August 6th and will be broadcast on GCN Live (http://www.gcnlive.com/) Monday-Friday from 3-4 PST, 5-6 CST, 6-7 EST.

This will be a live internet radio call in show to serve as a media outlet for campaign announcements and news, a vehicle for the organization of Ron Paul support, so that the American public, who will have a hard time finding him in mainstream media, will get a chance to decide for themselves if Paul's ideas speak to them.

Ron Paul Radio is an independent effort of individual supporters of the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign.

http://www.gcnlive.com/listenlive.htm

Paul encourages the curious to call the show at 1-866-582-9933

Read the entire article at MonstersandCritics.com here.

Hat tip to the LRC blog for finding this one.

Ta,

Damn Lew Rockwell.com Damn them all to Hell!!!

This post at the LRC blog made me howl in both delight and nostalgia, b/c something terribly similar happened to me:

"You’re turning me into a ^&%$#(*& libertarian," writes Don Brunel on his blog.

"I really must complain about the changes in both my psyche and my thinking being wrought only because I have been spending more time these days on your website. Reading its authors. Weighing their arguments. Trying, usually unsuccessfully, to refute their logic.

[snippage]

..."Please, Mr. Rockwell, stop producing such thought-provoking columns and putting them on line for staid senior citizens like myself to find. If you are capable of changing the thought patterns of somebody nearing seventy, only consider how much damage you can do to the thinking of, say, an impressionable college student or twenty-something. The thought is frightening."

... or thirty-somethings who still acted like they were 20-somethings.  One day you discover anarcho-capitalism, the next day you are one. 

It's a terrible thing to wake up one morning and realize that you're a hypocrite.  And not just a hypocrite, but an arrogant, self-righteous hypocrite, who sneakily knew all along that there was something terribly wrong with the way he viewed things and that maybe, just maybe all the bad things that kept happening to you were *gasp* your fault. 

That's what becoming a libertarian did to/for me.  Humbling really.  Humbling, but necessary.  I owe Lew Rockwell and the other denizens there a lot.  It looks like maybe one of these days Don Brunel will too.  And, if you want to know why the Ron Paul Revolution is gaining steam, you can look no further than the paragraphs quoted above.  For once you take the red pill and jack out of wonderland, you are left only with yourself and the knowledge of what you have to do next.

Ta,

Self-Promotion

My latest piece runs today in The American and criticizes state and local lawmakers in Maryland for using tax dollars to subsidize the "private" construction of a new ballpark in Southern Maryland.

Not only are local taxpayers in Charles County being fleeced to the tune of $8.5 million in order to pay for one-third of the construction, but the county is also financing Maryland Baseball LLC's one-third share of the cost with public bonds.

When I spoke yesterday with David Eicholtz, acting director of fiscal services for Charles County, he explained that the "deal" Maryland Baseball struck with the county is that it will pay on this loan from the county at an interest rate commensurate with that of a private lender, meaning that the county will be able to pay off the bond at a lower (taxpayer-subsidized) rate and accumulate a "contingency account" with the difference. This will ostensibly be used by the county to pay down its portion of the bond.

It might sound as if this is an attempt to save taxpayers money, but the plain truth is that the only way for the county to truly save money is NOT to engage in these "public-private" partnerships to begin with. If Maryland Baseball wants to build a ballpark to attract a minor league franchise to the area, it should be expected to finance the costs privately, the same way you or I would if we wanted to build a house or buy a new car.

Amazingly, Charles County taxpayers are already on the hook for one-third of the construction cost, the state of Maryland has already allocated $4.7 million (and this amount is almost sure to rise), and Maryland Baseball doesn't even have to procure private funding for its share! So who takes the hit if this little venture folds? If you said "the taxpayers," go to the head of the class! It's virtually a guarantee that the Charles County commissioners would expect the state (i.e. all Maryland taxpayers) to bail them out if their plans flop.

I'm starting to think I should get into the business of building baseball stadiums. After all, it appears there's little risk involved these days from a private sector perspective.

Are We Criminalizing Childhood?

Two Oregon boys are scheduled to go on trial Aug. 20 to face charges of sexual abuse for slapping the butts of female classmates.

The two boys tore down the hall of Patton Middle School after lunch, swatting the bottoms of girls as they ran -- what some kids later said was a common form of greeting.

But bottom-slapping is against policy in McMinnville Public Schools. So a teacher's aide sent the gawky seventh-graders to the office, where the vice principal and a police officer stationed at the school soon interrogated them.

After hours of interviews with students the day of the February incident, the officer read the boys their Miranda rights and hauled them off in handcuffs to juvenile jail, where they spent the next five days.

Now, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face the prospect of 10 years in juvenile detention and a lifetime on the sex offender registry in a case that poses a fundamental question: When is horseplay a crime?

Bradley Berry, the McMinnville district attorney, said his office "aggressively" pursues sex crimes that involve children. "These cases are devastating to children," he said. "They are life-altering cases."

Mashburn's and Cornelison's behavior admittedly was inappropriate, but the McMinnville D.A. is charging them as if they'd dragged girls into a bathroom stall and felt them up or asked them to perform sexual favors. In short, intent matters, and from what I've read so far there's virtually nothing to suggest these boys engaged in anything other than childish antics (it should also be noted that some girls apparently were in on these stunts, as well).

If anyone deserves to be on trial here, it's Bradley Berry, who initially charged Mashburn and Cornelison with felony sexual abuse (as if the boys had actually raped the girls). The boys' defense attorneys have rightly filed prosecutorial misconduct charges with the court, alleging that Berry unfairly selected Mashburn and Cornelison for prosecution and added charges when the boys refused to plea bargain.

When Berry states that his office "aggressively" pursues sex crimes that involve children, one has to believe he's referring to laws that were written primarily to protect children from predatory adults, not from other children. This certainly isn't to say these laws can't apply to children who commit crimes against their peers in proportion to those committed by adults, but one would be hard pressed to argue this is the case here. And one would think a district attorney, of all people, should know the difference.

Self-Promotion

My latest piece runs today at LewRockwell.com. It discusses Ron Paul's popularity among the grassroots, the media indifference toward him, and the idea that he might just have something to do with the apparent voter apathy toward the mainstream Republican contenders.

UPDATE: CORRECTION: Several readers have written to inform me that I am mistaken in stating that Ron Paul raised more money than John McCain from April to June. They are correct. In actuality, McCain technically raised more money than Paul during this time frame, but Paul is in a better financial position due to his lack of debt. I regret the error.

I Know Who 'None of the Above' Is

The latest AP-Ipsos poll found that the leading Republican presidential candidate is "none of the above."

More Republicans have become apathetic about their options over the past month.

A hefty 23 percent can't or won't say which candidate they would back, a jump from the 14 percent who took a pass in June.

Maybe this is just optimism on my part, but I'm going to guess that "none of the above" is actually a guy by the name of Ron Paul. Paul has been the victim of a widespread media blackout, mostly due to his unpopular views among the intelligentsia on decreasing the scope of the federal government. After all, how well are you expected to poll when even pollsters in your home state won't put your name on most ballots? This, however, does not mean that Paul's campaign isn't gaining momentum nationwide.

Clearly it's irrational to assume that Paul is drawing all the votes of those who choose "other" or "none of the above," as many truly may be undecided. Still, Ron Paul actually is in a better financial position than John McCain, whose campaign admittedly is tanking fast and hard, but that nevertheless means Paul is beginning to build ever-important name recognition. What's more, Paul is blowing away his Republican counterparts in the polls of people who have actually heard him speak.

What does all this mean? Perhaps very little, as we're still well over a year away from the 2008 elections and polling is essentially meaningless at this point. But one thing the "Ronvolution" supporters can count on is this: Top-tier Republican candidates are going to fade into the night as the election nears -- voters will have a full year to listen to Giuliani, Romney, Thompson, and McCain flip-flop and make asses of themselves for months to come, while Ron Paul will quietly gather steam among the grassroots and remain consistent in an anti-Iraq war message the vast majority of the population already supports.

I seriously believe Ron Paul has revitalized hope in many Americans who are sick and tired of government, and in people like yours truly who had already decided they were done voting in presidential elections. It's only a matter of time before the mainstream media will be forced to acknowledge Paul's incremental victories, and once that happens, we'll no longer wonder who "none of the above" really is.

Helping this Guy Help Ron Paul

On the heels of Trevor's post from yesterday, I came across this YouTube by one of the more popular Ron Paul supporters that made me go, "Hmm..."

This man is a recent convert to the complete philosophy of liberty and property. I've bulled my way through many an argument with socialists and can tell you from first-hand experience that, for the most part, he's absolutely right. Winning a rhetorical argument usually accomplishes less than nothing.  More often than not all it does is provoke the natural flight or fight response in the other person and they become hardened against your position simply out of sheer 'contrariness.'

My advice for the next 8 months is leave the rhetoric to the printed page.... blogging, message boards, what have you.  If you have to get this out of your system, and believe me it's as instructive to work through a lot of the issues that come up via rhetorical debate, don't do so with someone you're trying to convince to vote for Dr. Paul.  Just be polite, show your enthusiasm, plant a few seeds and move on.

Lastly, Jive asks for a recommended reading list.  For one, I would start with Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty.  As a follow-up, I'd suggest The Lord of the Rings, book or film, because as a metaphor, no work I've come across better expresses the potential for functional anarchism than that. 

Ta,

The Scourge of Empire (Or, Perhaps, Mea Culpa?)

Anthony Gregory has quite possibly written the best article -- speech, actually -- I've ever read. This essay highlights the many inherent contradictions among the arguments for America's wars and the results they've effected, and quite clearly identifies the problem in Iraq as that of empire.

Gregory notes that more than 70 percent of Americans are sick of the war in Iraq. Though there is much about this current conflict to lament, he identifies this fact as something to celebrate, for if it causes folks on the right to adopt a greater appreciation for civil liberties and those on the left to question the effectiveness of big government -- in essence, if it awakens the populace to the importance of libertarianism -- then much future good could come from our latest wars.

This article strikes a particular chord with me as someone who once struggled with the moral implications of going to war in Iraq -- I'm ashamed to admit that at one point I even wrote in its support -- but who ultimately grew to oppose it, along with other government programs and agencies I may have tacitly supported in the past.

There's a lingering sense of shame and embarrassment that accompanies a realization that you were once wrong about something, whatever it happens to be. At least that's the case with me. My primary goal in writing has always been to keep a running account of my stance on particular political issues and to be able to gauge my learning in the process. It's always nice to be able to go back and read your old ideas if your arguments are vindicated by reality after you've written them down; it's not so fun to go back and realize you were wrong, especially when you realize you might now vehemently disagree with the position you initially took.

Anyhow, maybe this is my mea culpa for writings and opinions I no longer agree with, or maybe it's just time to admit to myself that it's OK to change your views, especially if they evolved in earlier days as a result of naivete and misplaced trust in politicians. Suffice it to say, I've come a long way in the past several years upon understanding the inimitable importance of property rights and civil liberties, not to mention the government's addiction to doing its level best to erode them.

For years, I have been haunted by the belief that I should always know what I'm talking about. Clearly, that is subjective to a point and even more absurd on its face -- there is, after all, a reason we value education so highly. Certainly no one knows everything the moment he or she pops out of the womb, but that can be of little consolation once you realize so many people seem to have "gotten it" before you did.

Today, my goal in writing is to remain a consistent advocate of life, liberty, and property. At the very least, I suspect my relatively new awakening to the importance of strict libertarian principles will account for just that.

Rudy Giuliani Wants to Arrest Medical Marijuana Patients

From a Marijuana Policy Project press release:

The last time former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) was in the Granite State, he told a medical marijuana activist, "I believe there are a lot of alternatives people have other than using marijuana." During his stop in New Hampshire this week, Mayor Giuliani made it clear that he would continue the DEA's raids on the sick and dying.

Yeah, Rudy, there are alternatives to marijuana. Some people choose them. Some people choose marijuana.

What a dick.

Anyone Want to Take This Guy's Bet on Ron Paul?

On Sunday, Dr. Ron Paul was interviewed by George Stephanopolous, you know him, that former (and incompetent) White House Chief of Staff which makes him a perfect mouth-piece for the welfare/warfare state via their conduit at ABCNews. 

The smarmy, glib, and rude manner in which he treats Ron Paul is enough to make you just want to shove his pancake makeup can down his friggin' throat. 

It's one of those great moments where someone of decency and politeness is literally flabbergasted at the rudeness of this shameless whore when he challenges Georgie to bet every cent in his pocket against his victory.  Me?  I'm not much of a betting man, but I'm surely placing one here by increasing Dr. Paul's campaign coffers.  You know, the one that currently has more money than John McCain, and would have more if Mitt Romney hadn't loaned himself $8 million. 

Every day, this thing grows in new, strange, spontaneous ways.  Paul's campaign is a reflection of the Stand Alone Complex that is the idea of liberty.   He's as flabbergasted by the amount of support he has as he was by the sheer audacity of George Stephanopolous in the video linked above.  He's tapping into the huge dissatisfaction with the direction our government is moving while the society is moving in a completely different direction. 

People's freedom, in terms of their ability to acquire the goods and services they want when they want them at the prices they want them, is increasing as the world becomes smaller, metaphorically, while our government and those that lobby it for their profit continue to get in our way.  Every time we order a book online, watch a video on YouTube, read an article at the Wikipedia, or get into a flame war on a message board we are expressing our individuality which weakens the argument, viscerally, with a direct bio-feedback mechanism, for top-down central planning in the same way that the public school system conditioned many of us to set-aside our personal desires every time the bell rang signifying that class was over.

Well, we all know, intellectually, that socialism is dead.  It's been dead since 1990 and the uprising in Moscow.  It's death throes aren't pretty, sadly, but it is in decline, no matter how much money George Stephanopolous wants to put towards it.

Ta,