Category Archives: Ron Paul

Ron Paul 5:06 p.m. ET March 13, 2017

Ron Paul(Photo: Brendan Smialowski, AFP/Getty Images)

Its deeply troubling that so many in the news media and in both political parties attack the efforts of whistle-blowers and those who publish their revelations. These individuals risk it all, not for their own wealth and glory, but to inform us of what is being done to us and in our name.

Their releases are both heroic and pro-American.

We are told that the government must be allowed to operate in secret in order to keep us safe, but how much security do we really have if we allow the government to deprive us of our liberty?

What have we learned from whistle-blowers Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning or WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others? We now know that our government views the Fourth Amendment as a mere suggestion, rather than a constraint on its actions.

Our consumer products have been turned into listening devices that the government can turn on and off at will. Those who ruled East Germany could only fantasize about such technology and its potential for controlling anyone who disagrees with the government.

What WikiLeaks reveals: Our view

Revelations last week that our televisions may actually be watching us? Has the CIA been reading George Orwells 1984 as an instruction manual?

If we are to be a free society, we must demand the right to know about government malfeasance. We must reject the anti-American notion that the government has the right to know everything about us, but that we have no right to know anything about the government. We cannot entrust our life, liberty and happiness to an unelected shadow government that operates in secret and is accountable to no one.

History teaches of the horrors that result when a people are willing to sacrifice their liberty for the false promises of government-provided security. Totalitarianisms of the left and right have thrived in such an environment.

Whistle-blowers are the truth-seekers, and we must demand the truth. Who does not want to know the truth? Sadly, in an empire of lies, the truth has become treason.

Ron Paul, a former Republican congressman from Texas and Libertarian Party presidential candidate, is host of the Ron Paul Liberty Report.

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Ron Paul: Whistle-blowers are heroic, patriotic - USA TODAY

Former US congressman Dr. Ron Paul took no prisoners in an exclusive interview with RT America, following Senator John McCain's charge that his son, Senator Rand Paul, was working for Vladimir Putin and the US ambassador to the UN saying, Never trust Russia.

We cannot trust Russia. We should never trust Russia, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley told NBC News on Thursday. Its a sentiment widely held in Washington, DC, as just a day earlier, Senator McCain (R-Arizona) accused his own colleague Senator Paul (R-Kentucky) of being an agent of the Kremlin, just because he objected to adding Montenegro to NATO.

Dr. Ron Paul knows first-hand what a character assassination such as the one his senator son faced feels like as McCain has blasted Dr. Pauls foreign policy of nonintervention as appeasement to the enemies of the US.

But in an interview with RT Americas Ashley Banks, the elder Paul makes the case that more is at stake than typical political squabbling when this kind of anti-Russian rhetoric is used so flippantly.

Asked whether Ambassador Haleys comments undermined global security and US-Russia relations, Paul told RT, Well I don't know about that, but I know it's going to cause mixed feelings here in this country because Trump was elected with the position he took that he wanted better relationships with Russia.

It's not a good way to start things off, Paul said of Haleys words. I don't think it's the end of a relationship with Russia or anything like that, but it seems like either she's inexperienced or has a completely different position than Trump, or Trump has modified his position.

Paul, 81, also called her statementnot a very smart thing to say.

More importantly, the former Texas congressman stressed, is the US policy in Syria, where more US troops may be deployed in the near future. Paul noted that there has been US and Russian cooperation against Islamic State, but that hed like to see the US back off and allow those people in Syria to deal with their own problems.

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Moving onto McCain, Paul dismissed the strategy of name-calling or demagoguery.

As a libertarian, I'm a strong advocate of talking to people and treating people decently, so that to me is not a wise thing to do.

[McCain] struck me as being a bit irrational, Paul said of the six-term 80-year-old senator.

His goal is building up NATO, Paul explained, adding that his motion in favor of expanding the treaty was based on the unfounded fear that all of a sudden the Russian tanks were gonna go into Montenegro, which makes no sense.

As a non-interventionist, I don't even like NATO, Paul said.

Paul went on to criticize US involvement in the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, or coup, as well as its increase of so many troops and bases near the Russian border as well as stationing missiles between North Korea and South Korea.

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'Not a very smart thing to say': Ron Paul hits McCain & US envoy to UN over anti-Russian comments - RT

NEW PRESIDENT IS BEING DRAWN INTO A QUAGMIRE

Last week President Donald Trump significantly escalated the US military presence in Syria, sending some 400 Marines to the ISIS-controlled Raqqa, and several dozen Army Rangers to the contested area around Manbij. According to press reports he will also station some 2,500 more U.S. troops in Kuwait to be used as he wishes in Iraq and Syria.

Not only is it illegal under international law to send troops into another country without permission, it is also against U.S. law for President Trump to take the country to war without a declaration. But not only is Trumps first big war illegal: it is doomed to failure because it makes no sense.

President Trump says the purpose of the escalation is to defeat ISIS in Raqqa, its headquarters in Syria. However the Syrian Army with its allies Russia and Iran are already close to defeating ISIS in Syria. Why must the U.S. military be sent in when the Syrian army is already winning? Does Trump wish to occupy eastern Syria and put a Washington-backed rebel government in charge? Has anyone told President Trump what that would to cost in dollars and lives including American lives? How would this U.S.-backed rebel government respond to the approach of a Syrian army backed up by the Russian military?

Is Trump planning on handing eastern Syria over to the Kurds, who have been doing much of the fighting in the area? How does he think NATO-ally Turkey would take a de facto Kurdistan carved out of Syria with its eyes on Kurdish-inhabited southern Turkey?

And besides, by what rights would Washington carve up Syria or any other country?

Or is Trump going to give up on the U.S. policy of regime change and hand conquered eastern Syria back to Bashar al-Assad? If that is the case, why waste American lives and money if the Syrians and their allies are already doing the job? Candidate Trump even said he was perfectly happy with Russia and Syria getting rid of ISIS. If U.S. policy is shifting toward accepting an Assad victory, it could be achieved by ending arms supplies to the rebels and getting out of the way.

It does not appear that President Trump or his advisors have thought through what happens next if the U.S. military takes possession of Raqqa, Syria. What is the endgame? Maybe the neocons told him it would be a cakewalk as they promised before the 2003 Iraq invasion.

Part of the problem is that President Trumps advisors believe the myth that the U.S. surge in Iraq and Afghanistan was a great success and repeating it would being the victory that eluded Obama with his reliance of drones and proxy military forces. A big show of US military force on the ground like the 100,000 sent to Afghanistan by Obama in 2009 is what is needed in Syria, these experts argue. Rarely is it asked that if the surge worked so well why are Afghanistan and Iraq still a disaster?

President Trumps escalation in Syria is doomed to failure. He is being drawn into a quagmire by the neocons that will destroy scores of lives, cost us a fortune, and may well ruin his presidency. He must de-escalate immediately before it is too late.

Ron Paulis a former U.S. Congressman from Texas and the leader of the pro-liberty, pro-free market movement in the United States. His weekly column reprinted with permission can be foundhere.

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Ron Paul: Why Donald Trump's Syria Surge Will Fail - FITSNews

In an interview with the Washington Examiner two months into President Trump's administration, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) reflected on the president's ascent to America's highest office, offering fresh insights from his vantage point as a libertarian-leaning representative smack in the heart of Trump country.

To explain 2016, Massie looks to previous cycles. Rand Paul's upset victory in the 2010, Ron Paul's enthusiastic following in the 2012 presidential race, and his own win in the 2012 congressional primary all looked, at first glance, like a libertarian wave.

"I went to Iowa twice and came back with [Ron Paul]. I was with him at every event for the last three days in Iowa," Massie said. "From what I observed, not just in Iowa but also in Kentucky, up close with individuals, was that the people that voted for me in Kentucky, and the people who had voted for Rand Paul in Iowa several years before, were now voting for Trump. In fact, the people that voted for Rand in a primary in Kentucky were preferring Trump."

"All this time," Massie explained, "I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they weren't voting for libertarian ideas they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race. And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along."

Massie's observation that libertarian-minded voters, those who devoted passionate support to Sen. Paul and his father in previous cycles, are likely more attracted to "crazy" personalities than candidates with ideological purity bears important implications for the future of that movement. Do those voters, more than anything, crave change agents over philosophical disciples?

Massie sees Trump as more of a populist than a libertarian conservative, but noted important similarities between both camps. "There are some places where populism overlaps with libertarianism and contradicts the establishment here in D.C.," Massie said. "For instance, less proclivity to go to war, less appetite for having 20 or 30,000 troops in any one country to subsidize their defense."

"I see overlap there," he concluded.

Massie chalks Trump's success in the general election up to his pledge to shake up Washington, saying, "He had the change mantle and Hillary didn't."

Massie recalled an encounter he had with one of Trump's most powerful primary opponents during the election, reflecting, "I remember I ran into Jeb Bush in a hotel lobby in Iowa. He was just there, no staff and we started talking.

Also from the Washington Examiner

Two months after his nomination, a confirmation hearing hasn't even been announced.

03/17/17 12:01 AM

Bush, Massie said, "was adamant that Trump wasn't a real Republican."

"Ironic," the congressman noted, "because that was in my circle of hardcore supporters that's the charge leveled at the Bushes."

It's worth noting that Americans generally tend to be less devoted to ideological teams than we realize, as I outlined Tuesday in this analysis of Bernie Sanders' appeal to Trump voters. Populism transcends party lines for a reason.

Emily Jashinsky is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.

Also from the Washington Examiner

The White House's budget gets the federal government to focus on what it can do better than anyone else.

03/17/17 12:01 AM

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Rep. Massie's theory: Voters who voted for libertarians and then ... - Washington Examiner

Ron Paul visited the Arizona state Senate Committee on Finance on Wed. March 8, 2017 to testify in support of what he called a "very important" honest money bill, HB2014.

"If you want to have liberty and limit the size of government, you have to have honest money," said Paul.

The proposed legislation would treat gold and silver as they should be under the Constitution - that is, as money. In doing so, the state would no longer tax "capital gains" on the exchange of federal reserve notes for gold/silver and vice versa.

"We ought not to tax money - and that's a good idea. It makes no sense to tax money," said Paul.

Passage into law would remove a major roadblock in the way of gold and silver being used by everyday people. As Paul noted, the legislation would be "legalizing competition in a constitutional fashion."

The bill had previously passed the state House and after Paul's testimony, passed the Senate committee by a 4-3- vote. It will now need to pass the Senate rules committee and the full Senate before heading to the Governor's desk.

Similar legislation is up for consideration in 2017 in Maine, Idaho, Alabama, Texas, and elsewhere.

Thank you to the Arizona chapters of both the Campaign for Liberty and Tenth Amendment Center for all their work.

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Ron Paul: Testimony in Support of Arizona Honest Money Bill, HB2014 - SilverSeek.com

PHOENIX Invoking claims of illegally printed paper money, the use of gold in the Bible and even foreign entanglements, former Congressman Ron Paul urged Arizona lawmakers Wednesday to let coin collectors and investors escape the states capital gains tax.

Paul, a three-time presidential hopeful, told members of the Senate Finance Committee its not fair or even legal from his perspective for the government to take its share when someone who bought a coin at $300 later sells it for $1,200.

He said the value of the coin really remains the same. Its the value of that paper money money he contends is fraud thats gone down.

Pauls testimony helped buttress similar claims by Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, who already has ushered the tax break in HB 2014 through the House. The result was the Senate panel giving its OK on a 4-3 party-line vote and sending it to the full Senate.

But the real hurdle remains Republican Gov. Doug Ducey who vetoed similar measures in 2015 and again last year saying he feared the unintended consequences of such a change in tax law.

That isnt a unique concern. In 2013, Republican Jan Brewer also used her veto stamp.

This would result in lost revenue to the state, while giving businesses that buy and sell collectible coins or currency originally authorized by Congress an unfair advantage, she wrote at the time.

That was exactly the complaint made Wednesday by Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson, in urging colleagues to kill the measure.

He said the legislation would make sense if a $20 gold piece sold for $20 in what most people recognize as legal currency. But what it sells for, Farley said, is based on a combination of the amount of precious metal, the condition of the coin and the demand for what might be a rare coin.

So to give someone a capital gains tax break on the money they make from selling that coin seems like just simply a tax giveaway that other people would be paying for because were going to need to get enough money to pay for our roads and schools anyway, Farley said.

Why does the government need the money is the big question, Paul said. Anyway, he said, if the government needs money it should tax people more honestly than by making them pay capital gains for their efforts to protect themselves against inflation.

Farley, for his part, said the flaw in the arguments by supporters of the legislation is that somehow the type of investment decision should govern its tax liability.

Theres a lot of places people can decide to invest their money as a hedge against inflation, he said.

You can invest it in stocks, you can invest it in real estate, your house, a lot of other things, Farley continued. That also goes up in value over time and that represents, at least in some part, inflation.

The difference here, Farley said, is that people pay capital gains taxes taxed when they sell a stock or any other investment for a profit; this bill creates a special exemption for gold and silver coins.

So to me thats picking winners and losers, he told the former Texas congressman.

I understand your point, Paul responded. But the important point is stocks are not money and gold and silver is money.

And that goes to his contention that theres no legal basis for all this paper money out there.

Congress is allowed to coin money, Paul said. They dont have the authority to print money.

One thing the panel did not consider is what would be the cost to the state of such an exemption.

No one was able to provide a figure of the tax implications of such an exemption.

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Ron Paul to AZ lawmakers: End capital gains tax on gold coins - Arizona Daily Star

KJZZ

GOP Favorite Ron Paul Stumps For Dumping Gold-Coin Tax In AZ KJZZ A proposal to exempt U.S. gold coins from Arizona's capital-gains taxes got a boost from a GOP favorite. Former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday on behalf of House Bill 2014. and more »

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GOP Favorite Ron Paul Stumps For Dumping Gold-Coin Tax In AZ - KJZZ

History shows that, if individuals have the freedom to choose what to use as money, they will likely opt for gold or silver.

Of course, modern politicians and their Keynesian enablers despise the gold or silver standard. This is because linking a currency to a precious metal limits the ability of central banks to finance the growth of the welfare-warfare state via the inflation tax. This forces politicians to finance big government much more with direct means of taxation.

Despite the hostility toward gold from modern politicians, gold played a role in U.S. monetary policy for 60 years after the creation of the Federal Reserve. Then, in 1971, as concerns over the U.S. governments increasing deficits led many foreign governments to convert their holdings of U.S. dollars to gold, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window, creating Americas first purely fiat currency.

Americas 46-year experiment in fiat currency has gone exactly as followers of the Austrian school predicted: a continuing decline in the dollars purchasing power accompanied by a decline in the standard of living of middle- and working-class Americans, a series of Fed-created booms followed by increasingly severe busts, and an explosive growth in government spending.

Federal Reserve policies are also behind much of the increase in income inequality.

Since the 2008 Fed-created economic meltdown, more Americans have become aware of the Federal Reserves responsibility for Americas economic problems.

This growing anti-Fed sentiment is one of the key factors behind the liberty movements growth, and represents the most serious challenge to the Feds legitimacy in its history. This movement has made Audit the Fed into a major national issue that is now closer than ever to being signed into law.

Audit the Fed is not the only focus of the growing anti-Fed movement. For example, the Arizona Senate Finance and Rules committees is considering legislation officially defining gold, silver and other precious metals as legal tender.

The bill, HB 2014, also exempts transactions in precious metals from state capital gains taxes, thus ensuring that people are not punished by the taxman for rejecting Federal Reserve notes in favor of gold or silver.

Since inflation increases the value of precious metals, these taxes give the government one more way to profit from the Federal Reserves currency debasement.

HB 2014 is a very important and timely piece of legislation. The Federal Reserves failure to reignite the economy with record-low interest rates since the last crash is a sign that we may soon see the dollars collapse. It is therefore imperative that the law protect peoples right to use alternatives to what may soon be virtually worthless Federal Reserve notes.

Passage of HB 2014 would also send a message to Congress and President Donald Trumps administration that the anti-Fed movement is growing in influence.

Thus, passage of this bill will not just strengthen movements in other states to pass similar legislation; it will also help build support for the Audit the Fed bill and legislation repealing federal legal tender laws.

I was in Phoenix this week to help rally support for HB 2014, speaking on behalf of the bill before the Arizona Senate Finance Committee and at a rally at the state capitol. I hope every supporter of sound money in Arizona joins me to show their support for ending the Feds money monopoly.

Ron Paul is a retired congressman, former presidential candidate, and founder and chairman of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity. Click here to contact him, follow him on Twitter: @RonPaul, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.

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Ron Paul: Arizona Challenges the Fed's Money Monopoly - Noozhawk

Ron Paul visited the Arizona state Senate Committee on Finance on Wed. March 8, 2017 to testify in support of what he considers a very important honest money bill, HB2014.

If you want to have liberty and limit the size of government, you have to have honest money, said Paul.

WATCH IT:

The proposed legislation would treat gold and silver as they should be under the Constitution that is, as money. In doing so, the state would no longer tax capital gains on the exchange of federal reserve notes for gold/silver and vice versa.

We ought not to tax money and thats a good idea. It makes no sense to tax money, said Paul.

Passage into law would remove a major roadblock in the way of gold and silver being used by everyday people. As Paul noted, the legislation would be legalizing competition in a constitutional fashion.

The bill had previously passed the state House and after Pauls testimony, passed the Senate committee by a 4-3 vote. It will now need to pass the Senate rules committee and the full Senate before heading to the Governors desk.

Similar legislation is up for consideration in 2017 in Maine, Idaho, Alabama, Texas, and elsewhere.

Thank you to the Arizona chapters of both the Campaign for Liberty and Tenth Amendment Center for all their work.

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Tenth Amendment Center Blog | Ron Paul: Testimony in Support of ... - Tenth Amendment Center (blog)

This weeksexplosive release of information from WikiLeaks regarding the Central Intelligence Agencys (CIA) cavalier use of surveillance techniques are still being unraveled. The release, referred to as Year Zero, has so far shownthat the intelligence agency exploited vulnerabilities in consumer products without notifying the manufacturer, putting the privacy of millions of customers at risk.

In its release, WikiLeaks asserted:

The CIA had created, in effect, its own NSA with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.

Now that the surveillance industrial complex has reared its ugly head, who could have had the clairvoyance to seethiscoming?

For one, Ron Paul did 30 years ago! Thats right, nearly three decades ago then-U.S. Rep. Paul warned of the dangers of Americas ever-widening surveillance practices:

Not to be outdone by his own prescience, Paul also remarked on the lack of congressional oversight exercised on the CIA, even going so far as to say the CIA should be abolished altogether:

Today we live in an era where the average consumer has little confidencethathis/her right to privacy is being respected by an increasingly unaccountable surveillance apparatus.Maybe more people should have listened to Ron Paul.

Photo Credit: Stuart Whitmore / shutterstock.com

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America Needs Ron Paul Back - IVN News