Ron Paul and the Welfare State

‘Meet the Press’ transcript for Dec. 23, 2007

MR. RUSSERT:  When I looked at your record, you talked about big government and how opposed you are to it, but you seem to have a different attitude about your own congressional district.  For example, "Congress decided to send billions of dollars to victims of Hurricane Katrina.  Guess how Ron Paul voted.  `Is bailing out people" that choose--"that chose to live on the coastline a proper function of the federal government?' he asks." And you said no.  And yet, this:  "Paul's current district, which includes Galveston and reaches into" the "Brazoria County, draws a substantial amount of federal flood insurance payments." For your own congressional district.  This is the Houston Chronicle:  "Representative Ron Paul has long crusaded against a big central government.  But he also" "represented a congressional district that's consistently among the top in Texas in its reliance on dollars from Washington.  In the first nine months of the federal government's" fiscal "2006 fiscal year," "it received more than $4 billion." And they report, The Wall Street Journal, 65 earmark-targeted projects, $400 million that you have put into congressional bills for your district, which leads us to the Congressional Quarterly.  "The Earmark Dossier of `Dr. No.' There isn't much that" Ron--Dr. "Ron Paul thinks the federal government should do. Apparently, though, earmarks" for his district "are OK.  Paul is the sponsor of no fewer than 10 earmarks in the water resources bill," all benefiting his district.  The Gulf Intercoastal Waterway:  $32 million.  The sunken ship you want to be moved from Freeport Harbor.  The Bayou Navigation Channel.  They talk about $8 million for shrimp fishermen.
REP. PAUL:  You, you know...

MR. RUSSERT:  Why, why would you load up...

REP. PAUL:  You got it completely wrong.  I've never voted for an earmark in my life.

MR. RUSSERT:  No, but you put them in the bill.

REP. PAUL:  I put it in because I represent people who are asking for some of their money back.  But it doesn't cut any spending to vote against an earmark. And the Congress has the responsibility to spend the money.  Why leave the money in the executive branch and let them spend the money?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22342301/ns/meet_the_press/t/meet-press-transcript-dec/

Michael Uhl: The Strange Jeremiads of Chris Hedges

Apocalypse Now?

The Strange Jeremiads of Chris Hedges

By MICHAEL UHL

"The thoughts and words above, whether quoted or paraphrased, are representative of Hedges blend of mysticism and muddled thinking, sprinkled with flashes of erudition and much poetic elegance. Some of his millennial comparisons and historical readings – the simile linking Obama to Herod – elsewhere equating the U.S. political system to Egypt under Mubarak – are downright bizarre. But I'm really stuck on that startling revelation that hope's potency rests upon futile, useless, irrelevant and incomprehensible acts of rebellion. Really? Does that mean failure will make better people of us? This strikes me as stuff for the sectarian pulpit, not the public forum." 

http://www.counterpunch.org/uhl06102011.html

Ron Paul on Foreign Policy

REP. RON PAUL: Not quite. You know, I served five years in the military. I’ve had a little experience. I’ve spent a little bit of time over in the Pakistan-Afghanistan area, as well as in Iran. But I wouldn’t wait for my generals. I’m the commander-in-chief. I make the decisions. I tell the generals what to do. And I’d bring them home as quickly as possible. And I would get them out of Iraq, as well. And I wouldn’t start a war in Libya. I’d quit bombing Yemen. And I’d quit bombing Pakistan. I’d start taking care of people here at home, because we could save hundreds of billions of dollars. Our national security is not enhanced by our presence over there. We have no purpose there. We should learn the lessons of history. And the longer we’re there, the worse things are, and the more danger we’re in, as well, because our presence there is not making friends, let me tell you.

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/14/first_major_republican_presidential_debate_focuses

Andrew Levine: Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby?

Andrew Levine: Who's Afraid of the Israel Lobby?

"It is important to remember that, from the time of the French Revolution, right-wing politics and anti-Semitism have enjoyed a close and symbiotic relationship. It is important to remember too that modern Zionism emerged in reaction to an up-tick in European anti-Semitism – to the Dreyfus Affair and to pogroms in the east -- and therefore that before the movement became immersed in identity politics or (later still) took on a theological coloration, anti-Semites and Zionists implicitly agreed that assimilation was impossible or undesirable and therefore that Jews would do well to have a country of their own. On the Jewish side, the further idea that this solution to the Jewish Question implies the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine soon followed."

Gainful Unemployment and the Decline of Predatory Colleges For Profit, For Shame

 By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO 

"Increasingly we are seeing the emergence of an entire generation of students that are shackled with unsustainable debt in an economy that is providing few well-paying or secure jobs."

http://www.counterpunch.com/dimaggio06032011.html

Arundhati Roy on Violence

"Can the hungry go on a hunger strike? Non-violence is a piece of theatre. You need an audience. What can you do when you have no audience? People have the right to resist annihilation."

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jun/05/arundhati-roy-keep-destabilised-danger

Is the Dramatic Increase in Baby Deaths in the US a Result of Fukushima Fallout?

By JANETTE D. SHERMAN, MD
and JOSEPH MANGANO
http://www.counterpunch.org/sherman06102011.html

"The recent CDC Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicates that eight cities in the northwest U.S. (Boise ID, Seattle WA, Portland OR, plus the northern California cities of Santa Cruz, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, and Berkeley) reported the following data on deaths among those younger than one year of age:

4 weeks ending March 19, 2011 - 37 deaths (avg. 9.25 per week)
10 weeks ending May 28, 2011 - 125 deaths (avg.12.50 per week)

This amounts to an increase of 35% (the total for the entire U.S. rose about 2.3%), and is statistically significant."

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1826/three-powerfully-wrong_and-wrongly-powerful_americ

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/1826/three-powerfully-wrong_and-wrongly-powerful_americ
It is impossible to speak of interests in the absence of collective identities. One can describe the interests of a group, or identify one’s interest as a member of a collective, but the idea that individuals (let alone states) have interests that exist outside of these categories of belonging just doesn’t hold up. Speaking of “US interests” masks this fact with what sounds like a commonsensical idea: we have to look after our interests first. But in whose interest—precisely—does the government of the United States pursue a given policy? The “average” citizen (as if there is such a thing)? Congressional lobbyists? The contractors who directly profit from our relations with foreign regimes? Rather than viewing this as a polemical bête noir, this is a question that we should be asking regularly, as part of the practice of engaged citizenship.

Nye on the components of world power

Has Economic Power Replaced Military Might?

Wednesday 8 June 2011

by: Joseph S. Nye, Project Syndicate

Political observers have long debated whether economic or military power is more fundamental.  The Marxist tradition casts economics as the underlying structure of power, and political institutions as a mere superstructure, an assumption shared by nineteenth-century liberals who believed that growing interdependence in trade and finance would make war obsolete.

http://www.truth-out.org/has-economic-power-replaced-military-might/1307539510

Obama Hides Meeting with Top Bahraini Leader—And Mutes Criticism of Ongoing Crackdown

SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON:

"Bahrain is a partner, and a very important one to the United States, and we are supportive of a national dialogue and the kinds of important work that the Crown Prince has been doing in his nation, and we look forward to it continuing."

http://www.democracynow.org/2011/6/9/obama_hides_meeting_with_top_bahraini

http://www.thenation.com/blog/161180/ollanta-humalas-win-peru-joins-latin-americas-left-turn

http://www.thenation.com/blog/161180/ollanta-humalas-win-peru-joins-latin-americas-left-turn