Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The Rasmussen Poll finds that Romney noses out Obama 46%-45%. I'm trying to figure out whether that's good or bad. Rasmussen also finds that in a national generic congressional poll the Republicans are leading by 46% to 36%. The difference is volatile, though; last week it was less than half that.
The numbers may result from Obama's unpopular health care law. Rasmussen finds that 53% of the public favor its repeal. If 53% favor repeal and 45% favor Obama, either almost all the 9% undecided presidential voters favor repeal, or some Obama supporters do. That makes sense because we're talking about American voters. It would be interesting to know whether a few percent both favor Obama and favor repeal of Obamacare. Also, the public is skeptical of Obama's economic program. Rasmussen finds that only 49% of Americans say that their home is worth more than when they bought it, and only 27% think that the country is headed in the right direction.
All of this raises the specter of a double-breasted Republican victory: Republican control of congress and the presidency. On the one hand, that may have the effect of repeal of the health care law. Also, it would slow the environmental initiatives of the Obama administration: the attacks on energy development, the local initiatives like Smart Growth and LEED, and the concomitant attacks on home rule and democracy. Unfortunately, the Republicans have backed erosion of home rule and land rights too, but to a lesser degree. It is not clear that government will shrink under double-breasted GOP control; rather, the Republicans have previously consolidated Democratic expansions of state power and big government. If they do, in fact, repeal Obamacare, it will be a first.
At the same time, the Republicans have been good at causing inflation, expanding military spending, and government tyranny. All of this goes goes back to the Progressive era, with the establishment of the Fed (under Democrat Wilson, who was elected with the aid of Republican Roosevelt), the FBI, and the Palmer Raids. (Incidentally, if you haven't seen Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar starring Leonardo DiCaprio, I recommend it.)
The Bush administration accented the problems with Republican government: crony capitalism, pork barrel waste, and monetary expansion. In other words, the problems with electing Republicans are about the same as the problems with electing Democrats. The difference is that the Republicans bloat government to subsidize Republican special interests while the Democrats bloat government to subsidize Democratic special interests. Both subsidize Wall Street.
I am in favor of a third party, either the Libertarian Party or a new party if Ron Paul chooses to establish one. Governor Gary Johnson would be a first-rate candidate on the Libertarian ticket. He is more moderate and more competent than either Obama or Romney. Unlike Romney, who is a crony capitalist who has made his living through connections and monetary expansion, Johnson built a real business from scratch. He did not expand government in New Mexico; he fought a Democratic legislature to restrain government. In America, now, a third party candidate like Johnson is a more moderate choice than either a Democrat or a Republican.
The numbers may result from Obama's unpopular health care law. Rasmussen finds that 53% of the public favor its repeal. If 53% favor repeal and 45% favor Obama, either almost all the 9% undecided presidential voters favor repeal, or some Obama supporters do. That makes sense because we're talking about American voters. It would be interesting to know whether a few percent both favor Obama and favor repeal of Obamacare. Also, the public is skeptical of Obama's economic program. Rasmussen finds that only 49% of Americans say that their home is worth more than when they bought it, and only 27% think that the country is headed in the right direction.
All of this raises the specter of a double-breasted Republican victory: Republican control of congress and the presidency. On the one hand, that may have the effect of repeal of the health care law. Also, it would slow the environmental initiatives of the Obama administration: the attacks on energy development, the local initiatives like Smart Growth and LEED, and the concomitant attacks on home rule and democracy. Unfortunately, the Republicans have backed erosion of home rule and land rights too, but to a lesser degree. It is not clear that government will shrink under double-breasted GOP control; rather, the Republicans have previously consolidated Democratic expansions of state power and big government. If they do, in fact, repeal Obamacare, it will be a first.
At the same time, the Republicans have been good at causing inflation, expanding military spending, and government tyranny. All of this goes goes back to the Progressive era, with the establishment of the Fed (under Democrat Wilson, who was elected with the aid of Republican Roosevelt), the FBI, and the Palmer Raids. (Incidentally, if you haven't seen Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar starring Leonardo DiCaprio, I recommend it.)
The Bush administration accented the problems with Republican government: crony capitalism, pork barrel waste, and monetary expansion. In other words, the problems with electing Republicans are about the same as the problems with electing Democrats. The difference is that the Republicans bloat government to subsidize Republican special interests while the Democrats bloat government to subsidize Democratic special interests. Both subsidize Wall Street.
I am in favor of a third party, either the Libertarian Party or a new party if Ron Paul chooses to establish one. Governor Gary Johnson would be a first-rate candidate on the Libertarian ticket. He is more moderate and more competent than either Obama or Romney. Unlike Romney, who is a crony capitalist who has made his living through connections and monetary expansion, Johnson built a real business from scratch. He did not expand government in New Mexico; he fought a Democratic legislature to restrain government. In America, now, a third party candidate like Johnson is a more moderate choice than either a Democrat or a Republican.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Fox and other pro-Wall Street, socialist sources have spread the lie that Ron Paul can't win. In fact, according to the Rasmussen poll, for months Ron Paul was the ONLY Republican out-polling Obama. This continues to be the case. Today, Rasmussen announces that Ron Paul out-polls Obama 44% to 43%, while Obama and Romney are tied at 45%. The Rasmussen poll just sent this e-mail to its list:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13 (see trends).
Twenty-nine percent (29%) believe the country is generally heading in the right direction.
In a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup, President Obama and Mitt Romney are tied at 45%. Matchup results are updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Texas Congressman Ron Paul holds a one-point edge over the president, 44% to 43%. See tracking history for the Republican candidates.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Thursday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as president. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove, giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13 (see trends).
Twenty-nine percent (29%) believe the country is generally heading in the right direction.
In a hypothetical Election 2012 matchup, President Obama and Mitt Romney are tied at 45%. Matchup results are updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Texas Congressman Ron Paul holds a one-point edge over the president, 44% to 43%. See tracking history for the Republican candidates.
My op-ed "Corey Robin's Reactionary Mind and the Historicity of Mass Murder" appears in this week's edition of David Horowitz's Frontpagemag.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
2012 marks the centennial of Theodore Roosevelt's third-party presidential race. Roosevelt, the Republican founder of big-government Progressivism, believed that a socialist state should govern business. A century later, Barack Obama is in the midst actualizing Roosevelt's vision. A century ago William Howard Taft opposed Roosevelt's socialism and favored anti-trust suits to limit monopoly. To fight Taft, Roosevelt ran on the Progressive Party ticket, enabling Woodrow Wilson to win and to establish big government policies that included the federal income tax, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Federal Trade Commission, and the precursor to the United Nations: the League of Nations.
In 2012 Ron Paul needs to establish a new, libertarian party that will hamstring today's Roosevelts: the socialist Democratic Party and the fascist Republican Party. Unless Paul establishes a new party, democracy will continue to diminish; your standard of living will continue to stagnate; the United States' power will continue to decline; your personal freedom will continue to contract. Totalitarian laws like the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act will continue to multiply, and they will restrict your freedom to an ever-tighter radius. Environmental regulation will deprive you of your home. America's corrupt, crony-socialist state will subsidize banks and big businesses--while your own wealth diminishes. This will be done with the exuberant support of the American media, from Democratic to Republican, from socialist to fascist, from Paul Krugman to Rush Limbaugh. The only way out of the crisis is the moderate one: Ron Paul, limited government, and the gold standard. The alternative is the paper money system that Karl Marx, Joe Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Adolph Hitler, Maurice Hinchey, and Ben Bernanke advocate.
Election Fraud Has Ended American Democracy
Progressivism is ambivalent about democracy. On the one hand, the Progressives claimed to enhance democracy through the direct election of senators, the referendum, and the recall. But some Progressives advocated Jim Crow, and others favored exaltation of experts in the Federal Reserve Bank and the Federal Trade Commission. Experts and journalists would, in the opinions of Walter Lippmann and John Dewey, replace or manage public opinion. Monetary issues, once the subject of vigorous public debate, were removed from public discourse; Americans docilely accepted that experts' dictatorial edicts about monetary policy were consistent with their freedom. They are not. The experts have served as Wall Street's stooges.
Following Progressives like Lippmann and Dewey, Fox, The New York Times, and MS-NBC have eviscerated public choice by distorting facts. For example, in a series of recent Rasmussen public opinion polls Ron Paul was found to be the only major Republican candidate to out-poll Barack Obama in a general election. At the same time, propagandists like Rush Limbaugh repeatedly claim that Ron Paul can't win. The Republican media bias against Paul was seen in the camera's editing out Paul during the presidential debates. The networks cut segments where Paul spoke. In describing vote counts, newspapers listed Paul last even when he won; moreover, they did not mention elections which Paul won, such as the Virgin Islands primary. As a result, Paul polls only 10 percent among GOP primary voters.
The death-knell to Rush Limbaugh's and Fox's credibility has been their unwillingness to discuss election fraud in Maine and Iowa. It is one thing that Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Hannity, and the rest of the Wall Street-controlled media (NBC, MSNBC, CBS, and ABC) lack journalistic standards and do not cover Paul's candidacy accurately. It is another that Limbaugh panders to a Republican Party that routinely engages in election fraud.
When Lincoln Eagle publisher Mike Marnell asked me to write about election fraud, I was skeptical. Like many born in another era, I still have faith in American institutions. I remained unconvinced when I read the Ron Paul and Alex Jones websites' accusations of election fraud against Ron Paul. It may be true that turnouts to Ron Paul events are many times greater than turnouts to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich events--even as Paul wins 10 percent of the primary vote. For example, 8,500 people came to hear Paul at Cal Berkeley; 6,000 came to see him at UCLA; 6,200 came to hear him at Cal State, Chico. These young, dynamic audiences form a nucleus for a potentially revolutionary force. The Founding Fathers did not have a larger or more dynamic nucleus than this. But that is not evidence that elections have been rigged, for a vibrant, vocal minority may be a minority still. This is especially so because GOP primary voters do not reflect mainstream opinion. Whereas the Rasmussen poll has repeatedly found that Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate able to defeat Barack Obama in November, it also finds that only 10 percent of Republican primary voters support Paul.
As I read about election fraud, though, I learned that a University of Chicago-based research center called the Argonne National Laboratory has publicly demonstrated that today's election machines sold by firms like Premier (Diebold) and Dominion (Sequoia) are easily gamed. Argonne Laboratories' Vulnerability Assessment Team found that a hacker who inserts alien electronic devices (at a cost of $10 to $26) into a computerized machine can readily engage in man-in-the-middle attacks. The Vulnerability Assessment Team says that voting machines are frequently stored for weeks at a time in schools, libraries, and other unsecured locations.
Even the level of sophistication that Argonne Laboratories describes hasn't been necessary for the GOP to butcher election processes. Several election observers' Websites, including www.bradblog.com and Bev Harris's blackboxvoting.com, have uncovered substantive proof of voter fraud in both the Maine and Iowa caucuses. These websites' methods do not, however, contemplate electronic vote manipulation of the type that Argonne says is easily accomplished. In one instance, a Ron Paul supporter in Iowa found an apparent typographical error that caused the Iowa caucus to mistakenly go to Romney over Santorum. When this one error was uncovered, the GOP was forced to reverse the results and hand the win to Santorum. In Maine, the distortions were egregious. Although Ron Paul lost in Maine by 194 votes, the Maine GOP did not count Washington County, which had 6,876 registered voters, according to Ms. Harris. In other words, there is little reason to believe that the Maine Republican primary was valid. American democracy, RIP.
In effect, there is a combination of factors that lead to questions about the GOP's ethics in conducting this year's primaries. First, there is Fox's and Limbaugh's unfair and unbalanced coverage that reflects the needs of its owner, Rupert Murdoch, and Wall Street. Second, there is overt voter fraud that was uncovered in Maine and Iowa, and may exist in every state (if it was uncovered in two states, might it not exist without being uncovered elsewhere?) Third, there is the susceptibility of voter machines to manipulation--a problem that has not been addressed here in Ulster County or anywhere else. The GOP certainly has not addressed the problem. After all, the new systems were the GOP's idea in the first place.
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