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Trump’s Promised ‘New Foreign Policy’ Must Abandon Regime Change for Iran – Article by Ron Paul

Trump’s Promised ‘New Foreign Policy’ Must Abandon Regime Change for Iran – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance HatRon Paul
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President-elect Donald Trump told a Cincinnati audience in early December 2016 that he intends to make some big changes in US foreign policy. During his “thank you” tour in the midwest, Trump had this to say:

We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past. We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments. …In our dealings with other countries we will seek shared interests wherever possible…”

If this is really to be President Trump’s foreign policy, it would be a welcome change from the destructive path pursued by the two previous administrations. Such a foreign policy would go a long way toward making us safer and more prosperous, as we would greatly reduce the possibility of a “blowback” attack from abroad, and we would save untold billions with a foreign policy of restraint.

However as we know with politicians, there is often a huge gap between pronouncements before entering office and actions once in office. Who can forget President George W. Bush’s foreign-policy promises as a candidate 16 years ago? As a candidate he said:

I am not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world saying ‘this is the way it’s got to be.’ … If we’re an arrogant nation they will resent us, if we’re a humble nation but strong they’ll welcome us.

Unfortunately as soon as he took office, George W. Bush pursued a completely different foreign policy, attacking countries like Iraq at the urging of the neocons he placed in positions of power in his White House and State Department.

Some people say that “personnel is policy,” and that much can be predicted about Trump’s foreign policy by the people he has appointed to serve his Administration. That is where we might have reason to be worried. Take Iran, for example. While Trump says he wants the US to stop overthrowing governments, on the issue of Iran both the candidate and his recent appointees have taken a very different view.

Trump’s pick for National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, has said the following about Iran: “I believe that Iran represents a clear and present danger to the region, and eventually to the world…” and, “…regime change in Tehran is the best way to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program.”

Trump’s CIA choice, Mike Pompeo, has said of President Obama’s Iran deal, “The Iranian regime is intent on the destruction of our country. Why the President does not understand is unfathomable.”

And Trump’s selection for Defense Secretary, General James Mattis, was even more aggressive, saying, “The Iranian regime in my mind is the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East. …Iran is not an enemy of ISIS. They have a lot to gain from the turmoil in the region that ISIS creates.”

Donald Trump’s words in Cincinnati don’t seem to match up with the views of the people that he’s assigning to high places. At least when it comes to Iran.

While I hope we can take President Trump at his word when it comes to foreign policy, I also think we should hold him to his word – especially his encouraging words in early December. Will the incoming president have the ability to rein in his more bellicose cabinet members and their underlings? We can be sure about one thing: if Trump allows the neocons to capture the State Department, keeping his foreign-policy promises is going to be a lot more difficult.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

The Constitution in the Donald Trump Era – Press Release by Tenth Amendment Center

The Constitution in the Donald Trump Era – Press Release by Tenth Amendment Center

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The New Renaissance HatTenth Amendment Center
November 11, 2016
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Contact: Mike Maharrey
Communications Director
O: 213.935.0553
media@tenthamendmentcenter.com
www.tenthamendmentcenter.com
***

The election of Donald Trump has changed the political dynamics in Washington D.C., but it will not fundamentally change our work at the Tenth Amendment Center. We will continue to aggressively fight unconstitutional federal actions with the same vigor we have over the last eight years.

The Tenth Amendment Center was founded in 2006 in opposition to Bush war and surveillance policies. The organization has also worked to support states nullifying federal programs like marijuana prohibition and the Bush-era real ID act.

“Constitutionalists should retch at the mere thought of John Bolton being anywhere near 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,” Tenth Amendment Center founder and executive director Michael Boldin said in response to hearing Trump is considering the Bush-policy architect for Secretary of State.

Tenth Amendment Center Executive Director Michael Boldin and Communications Director Mike Maharrey are always available to provide quotes from a constitutional perspective on Trump policy.

Give us a call.

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The Tenth Amendment Center, based in Los Angeles, seeks to limit federal power through action in the states and education.

How Not To Waste Your Vote: A Mathematical Analysis – Article by Stephen Weese

How Not To Waste Your Vote: A Mathematical Analysis – Article by Stephen Weese

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The New Renaissance HatStephen Weese
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During this especially contested election, a lot of people are talking about people “wasting” or “throwing away” votes. However, many people who say this do not have a complete grasp of the full mathematical picture – or worse, they are only mentioning the part that supports their position. First let’s define what a “wasted” vote is.

Mathematical Definition of Wasted Votes

A wasted vote is a vote that provides no determination or effect on the final outcome of the election. According to Wikipedia: “Wasted votes are votes cast for losing candidates or votes cast for winning candidates in excess of the number required for victory. For example, in the UK general election of 2005, 52% of votes were cast for losing candidates and 18% were excess votes – a total of 70% wasted votes.”

There are two kinds of wasted votes that mathematically have no effect on the final election:

  1. Votes cast for candidates who did not win
  2. Excess votes cast for winning candidates

Clearly, neither of these kinds of votes statistically affect the election. However, many arguments only mention the first type without mentioning the second. Mathematically and logically, both categories are ineffectual votes.

First Past the Post

The value of your vote is what you give it. Should you spend it on a candidate you don’t believe in?The United States, along with several other nations, uses the First Past the Post (FPTP) or “winner take all” election. This method is defined as “the candidate who receives more votes than any other candidate wins.”

This is one of the reasons that many people mention wasted votes – our system creates that result. Sociologically speaking, the FPTP system tends to favor a two-party system. The French sociologist Maurice Duverger created “Duverger’s Law” which says just that.

The Electoral College

For U.S. Presidential elections, a state-by-state system is used called the Electoral College. Each state gets a proportional amount of electoral votes which are then used to find a majority for president. Interestingly, what happens in each separate state is a smaller FPTP election, followed by a counting of electoral votes.

The Electoral College is slightly different from a pure FPTP system because it requires an actual number threshold (currently 270 electoral votes) for a candidate to win instead of a simple majority of the votes.

We can sum things up as follows:

  1. States hold “winner take all” FPTP elections for electoral votes
  2. Electoral votes are counted
  3. The winner must have 270 electoral votes
  4. If there is no candidate that reaches it, the House of Representatives chooses the president

These distinctions are important, because they can change the math and the concept of the “wasted” vote phenomenon.

Wasted Votes in Presidential Elections

The general concept that is proposed by many is that you must always vote for a Republican or a Democrat because you must stop the worst candidate from winning. In a sense, you are voting a negative vote – against someone – rather than for a candidate of your choice. However, this actually depends on the scenario of the vote. Let’s look at some examples.

Bush vs. Gore: 2000

People voting out of fear of the worst candidate is a self-perpetuating cycle. Let’s examine a common example used in this discussion.

Following the extremely close 2000 U.S. presidential election, some supporters of Democratic candidate Al Gore believe that one reason he lost the election to Republican George W. Bush is because a portion of the electorate (2.7%) voted for Ralph Nader of the Green Party, and exit polls indicated that more of these voters would have preferred Gore (45%) to Bush (27%), with the rest not voting in Nader’s absence.

The argument for this case is even more pronounced because the election was ultimately decided on the basis of the election results in Florida where Bush prevailed over Gore by a margin of only 537 votes (0.009%), which was far exceeded by the number of votes, 97,488 (0.293%), that Nader received. (Wikipedia)

At first, this may look like a clear example of the need to vote for a major party. However, let’s break this situation down mathematically. In every single state election, Bush or Gore won. There were millions of mathematically wasted votes in this election of both types.

In California, Gore won by 1,293,774 votes. Mathematically speaking, there were over one million wasted votes for Gore in this state alone. None of these excess votes could have helped Gore, since he had already mathematically won the state. The California votes didn’t matter in Florida. In fact, the votes in Florida have much more relevance than any other state.

Conclusions: Sometimes a vote for a major party winner is wasted anyway. Sometimes everything will come down to one state. However, there is no way to predict in advance which votes will be this important. If the parties knew that Florida would have been the deal breaker, then they would have acted differently. However, we simply don’t know the future well enough to predict that.

We do know that battleground states are generally more important than “safe” states for each candidate, but it is hard to know exactly which state might matter. (There are plenty of scenarios you can research online about possibly electoral outcomes, I encourage you to do so.) This leads us into our next example.

Clinton vs. Trump 2016

Let’s do some math about the state of California and our current presidential election. The average RCP poll has Hillary Clinton ahead by 22.2 percent. The registered voters in California add up to 17.7 million. Not all of them will vote, but we can use the 2012 presidential election as a predictor, where 13.2 million people voted.

Out of those 13.2 million, according to current predictions, 52.6% will vote for Clinton. However, Clinton only needs about 31% to beat Trump. The other 21% of excess votes for Clinton will be wasted. This means that approximately 3 million votes for Clinton in California will be wasted. Now, this is only a mathematical model, but we have several reasons to believe in it.

  1. California has a history of being a heavily Democratic state
  2. Polls usually swing within a single digit margin of error
  3. 21% is quite a large margin of leeway

Even if the polling changes significantly, we are still looking at millions of wasted Clinton votes in California.

Now let’s throw Jill Stein into the math. As part of the Green Party, she is to the left politically of Hillary, so we will assume that votes for her will be taken from Clinton’s pool. (Though this isn’t always a true assumption, as we will see later.) Right now she is polling at around 4%, but we could even give her 5%. If you take away 5% from Hillary’s margin of 22.2%, that leaves a huge margin of 17.2%: still millions of votes. The takeaway from this: you can safely vote for Jill Stein in California without fear of changing the state election results. Therefore, it will not affect the national vote either.

Since we have the Electoral College, your votes will have no influence beyond the state to change other vote counts. Those who prefer Jill Stein can with a clear conscience vote for her, since it will make no difference mathematically. Later we will look at the ethics of voting as it relates to this math.

Mathematical Importance of a Single Vote

There are a few theories on voting power calculations; we will look at two of them here. John F. Banzhaf III created a probabilistic system for determining individual voting power in a block voting system, such as the Electoral College. According to his calculations, because of differences in each state, it gives different voters different amounts of “voting power.”

A computer science researcher at UNC ran the Banzhaf power numbers for the 1990 U.S. Presidential election and determined that the state of California had the voters with the highest power index: 3.3. This index is measured as a multiple of the weakest voting state, which was Montana (1.0 voting power).

A newer method of measuring voting power was created by a research team from Columbia University using a more empirical (based on existing data) and less randomized model. They concluded that the smaller states had more mathematical voting power due to the fact that they received 2 votes minimum as a starting point. This model tends to generate smaller multipliers for voting power but more accurately matches empirical data from past elections.

Using these power ratings as a guide, we can estimate an estimated maximum voting power for each vote. We will be making some assumptions for this calculation.

  1. The minimum voting power multiplier is 1
  2. The highest multiplier from both models will be used as a maximum

Starting numbers

In the United States there are currently 218,959,000 eligible voters with 146,311,000 actual registered voters. In the 2012 Presidential election, 126,144,000 people actually voted. This is our voting pool.

Each vote, legally speaking, has the same weight. So if we start from that assumption, taking into account a probable amount of voters (126 million), the power of your vote is:

1
_____

126 million

This is: 0.0000000079 or 0.00000079%. That is the weight of your vote mathematically. Now we can multiply it by the highest power index to show the highest potential of your vote. Our California historical data from 1990 shows a 3.3 index, but to be conservative we will raise it to 4. So now the power is: 0.00000317%

Using probabilistic equations and analysis, this is the result. This is how powerful your vote is in the U.S. Presidential election is if you end up in the most heavily weighted state.

Addressing Weighted Vote Fallacies

As we have seen, many people argue that we should not “waste” votes, yet many millions of votes for the winner are wasted every year. It is difficult to predict whether a vote will end up in either wasted category. We’ve also seen past and possible scenarios where voting third party or major party can have no influence on the final election.

Fallacy 1: Treating Single Voters as One Block

A false assumption that people make about voting is treating a single vote as a block. For instance, let’s use our current election again as an example.

Someone insists that if you do not vote for Hillary, then you are helping Trump to be elected. (The reverse of this can also apply here.) You claim that you wish to vote for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate. You’re then told that the current national poll with all parties shows that Johnson is polling at 7%, which is less than the difference between Clinton (39%) and Trump (40%). Therefore, you must vote for Clinton to make up that difference.

There are several problems with this proposal. It does not take each state into consideration. It assumes all Gary Johnson supporters have Clinton as their second choice. And it treats your single vote as the entire 7%.

As we have seen, the current picture in California shows that Clinton has a huge margin. If this voter lived in California, a vote for Gary Johnson would not help Trump and also would not hurt Hillary, even if the entire 7% voted for Johnson. Anyone who says it is your duty to vote negative in this scenario does not know the math of this state.

This also assumes that all Johnson votes would choose Hillary as the second choice, but given that Libertarians take some platform elements from both the Left and the Right, this assumption would be highly unlikely. The same would go for Trump.

When people look at the 7% and tell you that you must vote a certain way, it is assuming you will somehow influence the entire 7%. However, we have seen that you are just one voter, and that your voting power is a very tiny number by itself. You cannot be entirely responsible for a candidate winning or losing with your single vote. In theory, it’s mathematically possible for one vote to decide an election, but given there are an exponential number of possible scenarios with millions of voters (imagine raising a few million to an exponent), it’s astronomically unlikely, especially if you live in a non-battleground state.

It’s also astronomically unlikely that all 7% (8,820,000 people) would vote for who they polled for. Even if you gave each voter a 99% chance of voting for who they polled for, the chance that all of them would vote the way they polled is (0.99) to the power of 8,820,000, which is less than 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001%

Individuals are not entire blocks of voters, and it’s problematic to treat them as such.

Fallacy 2: Third Party Votes Have No Value

If enough people vote their conscience and vote for what they believe in, things can change.On the surface, this might appear to be true. A third party candidate for President has never won an election. We also have Duverger’s law that states our FPTP favors two party systems. However, it is mathematically possible for a third party to win, and there are also other measurable gains for voting for a third party.

Part of this fallacy is the “winner take all” perspective. In other words, if you don’t win the presidency, you’ve wasted your time.

However, there are many benefits of voting third party, even for president. It makes a political statement to the majority parties. It helps local politicians of that party in elections. It can help change platforms to include third-party elements. And it provides recognition for the party among voters as a viable alternative.

Third party candidates can and have won local and state elections in the past. This is a fact.

In 1968, George Wallace ran as a third party option for President. He received nine million votes and 45 electoral votes. Though he did not expect to win the popular vote, one of his aims was to force the House of Representatives to choose the President by denying either candidate the 270 electoral votes needed to win – and he nearly succeeded. Since our system is not a true First Past the Post, but a hybrid, this kind of situation is possible. In fact, calculations have been done showing that Gary Johnson could in fact force that situation this year. It is very unlikely, but it is possible.

Regardless of his loss, the impact of the Wallace campaign was substantial. He was able to affect the dialogue and events of that election significantly. (This is meant in no way as an endorsement of George Wallace’s political positions.) If his supporters had mostly voted for a majority party, his impact would have been less significant.

In most scenarios given by the “wasted” vote crowd, all of the votes that are considered are ones from the current voting electorate. Yet we have seen from figures previously mentioned that over 50 million eligible voters are not registered. Even among registered voters, almost 20 million didn’t vote in the last election. These potential votes are never placed into the scenario.

The simple truth is, there are millions of uninterested voters out there, yet candidates are not inspiring them to vote. If candidate X or Y were truly worthy of votes, would not some of these voters decide to register? And another question, would it be easier to get a third party voter to choose a majority candidate, or a non-voter? These are not mathematical questions, but they are logical. The fact is, with this many votes at stake, if these non-voters could be encouraged to register, they would undoubtedly change the election as they make up one-third of total eligible voters.

Ethics and Math

It has been demonstrated that the potential individual power of a vote is mathematically very small. It also has been shown that wasted votes can be cast for the winner of an election as well as the losers, as well as demonstrating that it is sometimes hard to predict exactly which vote will be wasted. Given this information, where do we derive the value of a vote?

It’s hard to get it purely from the math or practicality. In fact, it would seem our single vote is of very little import at all. Therefore, we must find meaning and value for our votes outside of the math.

Certainly, the Founders never envisioned an endless cycle of US citizens voting for the “lesser of two evils.”Certainly, the Founders never envisioned an endless cycle of United States citizens voting for the “lesser of two evils,” as the argument is often presented. The idea was for free and open elections where the people’s voice would be heard. It was simple: the candidate who best represented your interests earned your vote.

Your vote is, therefore, an expression of yourself and your beliefs. Your vote has power as a statement. People voting out of fear of the worst candidate is a self-perpetuating cycle. If no one ever has the courage to vote outside of the two main parties, it will never be broken. However, if enough people vote and it shows in the total election count, it will give cause for us to reconsider and embolden even more to vote outside of the two parties.

Yes, our current electoral system has some serious mathematical flaws. It simply does not encourage people to vote for their conscience – but we have seen that things are not as bad as we would be led to believe by some. The true value of a vote is in the people.

The Value of Your Vote

The value of your vote is what you give it. Should you spend it on a candidate you don’t believe in? Should it be an exercise in fear? It’s up to you. It is my hope that these mathematical calculations will bring you freedom from the idea that only majority party votes matter. A vote is a statement, a vote is personal, a vote is an expression of your citizenship in this country. If enough people vote their conscience and vote for what they believe in, things can change.

If you are already a staunch supporter of a major party, then you should vote that way. This paper is not against the major parties at all – but rather against the concept that votes somehow “belong” to only Democrats or Republicans. Votes belong to the voter. There has never been a more important time to vote your conscience.

Stephen_WeeseStephen Weese

Stephen Weese has an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from George Mason University, and a Masters in Computer Information Technology from Regis University. Stephen teaches college Math and Computer courses. He is also a speaker, a film and voice actor, and a nutrition coach.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

America’s Aristocracy of Privilege and Power – Article by Daniel J. Bier

America’s Aristocracy of Privilege and Power – Article by Daniel J. Bier

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The New Renaissance Hat
Daniel J. Bier
March 26, 2015
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Bush, Kennedy, Romney, Clinton, and, yes, even Paul — is it just a coincidence that the same names keep appearing on the ballots each election cycle? Are these families just innately talented legislators, naturally “born to rule”?

No, says economist Seth Stephens-Davidowitz. America’s lame political dynasties are the result of a political system rife with nepotism.

There is a very real chance that the presidential election in 2016 will pit Jeb Bush against Hillary Clinton.… Whether or not you like one of the candidates, it just doesn’t feel right, in part because a second Bush-Clinton election makes a mockery of our self-identification as a democratic meritocracy.…

In our era a son of a president was roughly 1.4 million times more likely to become president than his supposed peers.… The presidency is obviously a small sample. But the same calculations can be done for other political positions. Take governors.

Because it is difficult to be sure that you have counted all the sons of governors, let’s assume that governors reproduce at average rates. This would mean there were about 250 baby boomer males born to governors. Five of them became governors themselves, about one in 50. This is 6,000 times the rate of the average American. The same methodology suggests that sons of senators had an 8,500 times higher chance of becoming a senator than an average American male boomer.

But there’s nepotism everywhere, and most parents want their children to follow in their footsteps. Is politics remarkable?

Is this electoral edge unusual? Successful parents, whatever their occupation, pass on their genes and plenty of other stuff to their kids. Do different fields have similar familial patterns?

In just about every field I looked at, having a successful parent makes you way more likely to be a big success, but the advantage is much smaller than it is at the top of politics….

Think about the N.B.A. further. The skills necessary to be a basketball player, especially height, are highly hereditary. But the N.B.A. is a meritocracy, with your performance easy to evaluate. If you do not play well, you will be cut, even if the team is the New York Knicks and your name is Patrick Ewing Jr. Father-son correlation in the N.B.A. is only one-eleventh as high as it is in the Senate.

Presidents, superstar athletes, Nobel Prize-winning scientists, and other leaders in their field are outliers in the distribution. “Regression to the mean” is a statistical principle that describes the tendency of variables to return to the average over time. In the case of hereditary athletic talents, we should expect that Michael Jordan’s sons will be pretty average basketball players and will probably not end up dominating the NBA.

But in politics, we don’t see this: “The Bush family’s dominance would be the basketball equivalent of Michael Jordan being the father of LeBron James and Kevin Durant — and of Michael Jordan’s father being Walt Frazier.”

In other words, the odds that the best person to run your government (assuming such a thing exists) just so happened to live in the same house as the previous senator, governor, or president are stupendously bad.

He notes that politics isn’t the only sphere where irrational favoritism for close relations shows up in the data: CEOs tend to give birth to CEOs at an improbable rate, too, and we know that heredity isn’t a foolproof guide to succession in business, either. Economists have shown that family businesses that favor succession to blood relatives tend to perform worse after the transition.

The difference is that in business, the cost of the decision falls on those who make it. In politics, we all pay.

Stephens-Davidowitz concludes, “The data shows conclusively that we have a nepotism problem. So now the question is: Why does the modern United States tolerate this level of privilege for political name brands?”

Indeed. How could this be? It can’t be nepotism in the same way that family businesses tap relations to run the company — it’s the voters who decide who wins the next election. So how could equalitarian democracy, the great leveller, the system that tells elementary students “you too could grow up to be senator or president,” recreate dynastic political succession?

Well, the answer is that the promise is partially true: technically, any citizen can become a senator — Sen. Elizabeth Warren, he points out, is the daughter of a janitor — but you’re just 8,500 times more likely to get there if your mom or dad was too. And, in part, it could be that intelligence (or low cunning) is heritable and makes politicians’ kids better at the game. But that doesn’t explain the continued popularity of a figure like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the dull luminary of the anti-vaccine and “jail climate deniers” movements, who has clearly regressed to mean with a vengeance.

A better answer is that America’s dynasties reveal something fundamental about politics: we do not have a meritocracy because democracy is not a good way to select rulers (even if it is, as is so often said, the least worst way). Surveys show conclusively that the electorate is wildly ill-informed about both the candidates and the issues, as well as aggressively irrational about a host of important economic, political, scientific, legal, and simply factual issues. Controlled studies show that voters select candidates for patently absurd reasons, like their height, weight, attractiveness, and timbre of voice. And, in answer to Stephens-Davidowitz’ last question, more than anything else, name recognition matters.

What makes politics so futile is not that the national electorate improbably keeps landing on the same few families, decade after decade. Rather, it’s that the voters keep supporting the same dumb policies.

We don’t need a rule to prevent political power from passed down through families. The rules that govern what people can do with elected office matter far more than who sits there. We need, as comedian Penn Jillette once said, to give politicians so little power that it doesn’t matter who they are — rather than so much power that it doesn’t matter who they are.

Daniel Bier is the executive editor of The Skeptical Libertarian. He writes on issues relating to science, skepticism, and economic freedom, focusing on the role of evolution in social and economic development.

This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education.

After a Twelve-Year Mistake in Iraq, We Must Just March Home – Article by Ron Paul

After a Twelve-Year Mistake in Iraq, We Must Just March Home – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
March 23, 2015
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Twelve years ago last week, the US launched its invasion of Iraq, an act the late General William Odom predicted would turn out to be “the greatest strategic disaster in US history.”

Before the attack I was accused of exaggerating the potential costs of the war when I warned that it could end up costing as much as $100 billion. One trillion dollars later, with not one but two “mission accomplished” moments, we are still not done intervening in Iraq.

President Obama last year ordered the US military back into Iraq for the third time. It seems the Iraq “surge” and the Sunni “Awakening,” for which General David Petraeus had been given much credit, were not as successful as was claimed at the time. From the sectarian violence unleashed by the US invasion of Iraq emerged al-Qaeda and then its more radical spin-off, ISIS. So Obama sent the US military back.

We recently gained even more evidence that the initial war was sold on lies and fabrications. The CIA finally declassified much of its 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was the chief document used by the Bush Administration to justify the US attack. According to the Estimate, the US Intelligence Community concluded that:

‘[W]e are unable to determine whether [biological weapons] agent research has resumed…’ And: ‘the information we have on Iraqi nuclear personnel does not appear consistent with a coherent effort to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program.’

But even as the US Intelligence Community had reached this conclusion, President Bush told the American people that Iraq, “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons” and “the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.”

Likewise, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s “bulletproof” evidence that Saddam Hussein had ties with al-Qaeda was contradicted by the National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that there was no operational tie between Hussein’s government and al-Qaeda.

Even National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s famous statement that the aluminum tubes that Iraq was purchasing “are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs,” and “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” was based on evidence she must have known at the time was false. According to the NIE, the Energy Department had already concluded that the tubes were “consistent with applications to rocket motors” and “this is the more likely end use.”

It is hard to believe that in a society supposedly governed by the rule of law, US leaders can escape any penalty for using blatantly false information – that they had to know at the time was false – to launch a pre-emptive attack on a country that posed no threat to the United States. The fact that they got away with it simply makes it all the easier for Washington’s interventionists to try the same tricks again. They already did with Libya and Syria. It is likely they are also doing the same with claims of a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine.

Last week President Obama correctly blamed the current chaos in Iraq on the Bush Administration’s decision to invade. He said, “… ISIL is a direct outgrowth of al Qaeda in Iraq that grew out of our invasion. Which is an example of unintended consequences. Which is why we should generally aim before we shoot.”

However, if the US intervention in Iraq created the “unintended consequences” of ISIS and al-Qaeda, how is it that more US intervention can solve the problem?

A war based on lies cannot be fixed by launching another war. We must just march home. And stay home.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Nixon’s Vindication – Article by Ron Paul

Nixon’s Vindication – Article by Ron Paul

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Ron Paul
September 8, 2014
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Forty years ago many Americans celebrated the demise of the imperial presidency with the resignation of Richard Nixon. Today it is clear they celebrated too soon. Nixon’s view of presidential powers, summed up in his infamous statement that, “when the president does it that means it is not illegal,” is embraced by the majority of the political class. In fact, the last two presidents have abused their power in ways that would have made Nixon blush.

For example, Nixon’s abuse of the Internal Revenue Service to persecute his political opponents was the subject of one of the articles of impeachment passed by the US House of Representatives. As bad as Nixon’s abuse of the IRS was, he was hardly the first president to use the IRS this way, and the present administration seems to be continuing this tradition. The targeting of Tea Party groups has received the most attention, but it is not the only instance of the IRS harassing President Barack Obama’s political opponents. For example, the IRS has demanded that one of my organizations, Campaign for Liberty, hand over information regarding its major donors.

Nixon’s abuse of federal power to spy on his “enemies” was abhorrent, but Nixon’s abuses of civil liberties pale in comparison to those of his successors. Today literally anyone in the world can be spied on, indefinitely detained, or placed on a presidential “kill list” based on nothing more than a presidential order. For all his faults, Nixon never tried to claim the power to unilaterally order anyone in the world detained or killed.

Many today act as apologists for the imperial presidency. One reason for this is that many politicians place partisan concerns above loyalty to the Constitution. Thus, they openly defend, and even celebrate, executive branch power grabs when made by a president of their own party.

Another reason is the bipartisan consensus in support of the warfare state. Many politicians and intellectuals in both parties support an imperial presidency because they recognize that the Founders’ vision of a limited executive branch is incompatible with an aggressive foreign policy. When Republicans are in power “neoconservatives” take the lead, while when Democrats are in power “humanitarian interventionists” take the lead. Regardless of party or ideological label, they share the same goal — to protect the executive branch from being constrained by the constitutional requirement that the president seek congressional approval before waging war.

The strength of the bipartisan consensus that the president should have limitless discretion in committing troops to war is illustrated by the failure of an attempt to add an article dealing with Nixon’s “secret bombing” of Cambodia to the articles of impeachment. Even at the low point of support for the imperial presidency, Congress still refused to rein in the president’s war-making powers.

The failure to include the Cambodia invasion in the articles of impeachment may well be the main reason Watergate had little to do with reining in the imperial presidency. Because the imperial presidency is rooted in the war power, attempts to rein in the imperial presidency that do not work to restore Congress’ constitutional authority to declare war are doomed to fail.

Repealing Nixon’s legacy requires building a new bipartisan coalition in favor of peace and civil liberties, rejecting what writer Gene Healy calls “the cult of the presidency,” and placing loyalty to the Constitution above partisanship. An important step must be restoring congressional supremacy in matters of war and peace.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Commonly Misunderstood Concepts: Health Care (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Commonly Misunderstood Concepts: Health Care (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
Originally Published October 12, 2009
as Part of Issue CCXI of The Rational Argumentator
Republished July 24, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CCXI of The Rational Argumentator on October 12, 2009, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.
~ G. Stolyarov II, July 24, 2014
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It is an odd society indeed where such a seemingly simple idea as health care is so severely misunderstood. Health care, as the constituents of the term suggest, is simply caring for one’s health, where health – of course – is the physical integrity and unobstructed functioning of one’s body. A healthy person is one whose body is not breaking down, one who is not in constant pain, one who is going to live for a long time unless some unforeseen external peril – such as an accident or an assault – violates the integrity of one’s body from without.

In a society where there exists advanced scientific medical knowledge, it is possible to benefit one’s health by consulting with certain individuals who specialize in aspects of this knowledge. These individuals are also useful in detecting diseases or other malfunctions that are not obvious to the intelligent layman, and they also do a commendable job in researching cures for diseases that have hitherto been without remedy. Most doctors are to be praised for the excellent work they do, and I am confident that any doctor worthy of his M.D. degree would strongly concur with the fundamental understanding of health care that I posit here.

Most people will recognize that doctors play an important and sometimes necessary role in the provision of health care. What many people today fail to recognize, however, is that doctors are never a sufficient part of genuinely effective health care. Doctors can indeed often detect signs of illness and recommend remedies, but to expect a doctor to perform all of your health care for you is just like expecting a teacher to perform all of your education for you. Doctors and teachers can both help and can even at times make the difference between success and failure, but without your participation and your vigilance, failure is inevitable.

What are other crucial components of health care? They are not esoteric, and they do not require specialized knowledge. They include eating in moderation, exercising regularly, avoiding harmful substances, practicing at most monogamy, keeping one’s surroundings clean, and avoiding risks to life and limb as much as possible. There are also numerous over-the-counter medications and first aid practices, that, if used intelligently, can enable individuals to recover from many minor and even some major perils. These habits are not just little frills added on to the body of health care; they are that body, and without them, one will be quite dead quite soon – but not before racking up absurd amounts of medical expenses. I will note that in the 20th century, human life expectancy in the West surged from the mid-to-late forties to the late seventies. Although medical advances were phenomenal during that time, the vast majority of the increase can be attributed to improvements in overall cleanliness of infrastructure and healthier habits. With the advent of sanitation, regular dental hygiene, automatic washers and dryers, and efficient household cleaning supplies, a lot of infectious diseases that formerly wiped out millions were kept at bay – mostly not by doctors, but by ordinary laypersons living their lives in a superior manner to that of their ancestors. New technologies motivated new behaviors, and these everyday behaviors are our first and so far our best line of defense against disease and decay.

Of course, some people who lead their lives in the most health-conscious manner possible can still be afflicted by catastrophic diseases for reasons that are none of their fault. As far as medical science is aware, many cancers do not appear to be caused by any active human behavior; indeed, some are an unfortunate product of poor genes. And, of course, there is the ultimate killer – senescence – which afflicts all humans, given the current level of medical technology. It is imperative that these perils be eradicated as soon as possible, and the best doctors, scientists, and media advocates are needed to enable a victory over what can justly be called the greatest threats to humans everywhere. I will add that it is a matter of justice that a person who suffers from a disease which he did not cause receive prompt, efficacious, and affordable care. But the vital question – and the question many people today neglect to consider – is how this just state of affairs can possibly come about.

Reality only works in certain ways, in accord with immutable natural laws. Wishing for a good outcome will not make it so, and even acting toward that outcome will only work if the right actions are undertaken. Any reasonable, moral person will agree that it is preferable for all reasonable, moral people to be healthy rather than not. What many people fail to recognize is that any process of improvement takes time, and that surrogate measures that attempt to bring about the improvement instantaneously are not only illusory but can also be severely counterproductive.

As a case in point, I bring forth the oft-encountered contemporary confusion of health care with health insurance. Too many people today believe that it is not taking care of oneself and visiting doctors when necessary that constitutes good health care, but rather the presence ofhealth insurance, which – at least in theory – promises to pay for some of the medical attention one receives from doctors. These individuals see statistics stating that millions do not have health insurance, and they mistakenly assume that these individuals do not have adequate health care. But it is entirely possible for a person to have healthy habits and – especially if this person is young – to not require extensive or expensive medical attention. It is also possible for a person to be sufficiently wealthy to afford to pay for the doctors he wishes to visit. Moreover, it is possible for a person to rely on the charity of doctors in providing any medically necessary attention – as was the case for centuries before health insurance came about, when most doctors would treat all patients but would charge them differential rates based on their ability to pay. In effect, with these traditional doctors, the rich voluntarily subsidized the poor on a largely free market, in a manner beyond the wildest dreams of the advocates of socialized medicine today.

Of course, the presence of health insurance cannot avert the need to seek the attentions of doctors. Indeed, a well-known concept in insurance, moral hazard, suggests that in some cases, an insured individual may actually be more likely to fall victim to a peril than an uninsured individual, because the insured individual is shielded from some of the financial consequences of the loss. Insurance can make life easier for some people in some cases, and it can also be a good safeguard for catastrophes, but it is neither necessary nor sufficient for proper health care. Indeed, the manner in which health insurance has developed in the United States is one of the contributing factors to the astronomically increasing prices of specialized medical care. Health insurance in the U. S. is not provided on a largely free market like most forms of property insurance. Instead, it is mostly tied to one’s employment by virtue of the market-distorting tax breaks that employers receive for providing health insurance. One does not need to worry about what happens with one’s car insurance if one loses a job, but losing one’s job can severely damage one in the realm of health insurance.

Since employers began to receive favorable treatment from the federal government for providing health insurance in the 1940s, the health insurance snowball has continued to embroil more people in a crisis of increasing proportions. The people who got the subsidized insurance had an incentive to spend more money than they usually would on doctors – often an outcome of hypochondria rather than of a reasonable concern for health. As demand for medical services rose, so did the cost, and so the people who did not have insurance – especially the elderly and unemployed – found it more difficult to afford even basic services. The federal government’s solution? Medicare and Medicaid, which put the elderly and unemployed in the same position to spend more freely that the previously insured had. This, of course, further increased the demand for and price of specialized medical services. With the recent vast expansion of Medicare under the Bush administration, it is no surprise that prices have further skyrocketed.

Now, because so many people have subsidized health insurance, it has become extremely difficult to afford medical care for catastrophic situations without it. This is not a necessary component of health care in a quasi-advanced society; it is a creation of bad policies that incrementally expanded the scope of the present crisis. An even worse policy is on the horizon; it is not socialized healthcare yet, but in some respects it may even be worse. The Obama administration and its supporters in Congress threaten to require everyone to purchase health insurance and to eliminate the aspect that makes it insurance – selection and pricing on the basis of the risks posed by the insureds. Forcing people to purchase health insurance and prohibiting discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions are the same as making the healthy subsidize the ill and charging everyone roughly the same general rates. With this kind of incentive system in place, it is only logical to assume that many people who otherwise would have lived spectacularly would begin to demand medically unnecessary attention simply to be net beneficiaries of the system where everyone ostensibly subsidizes everyone else. This cannot continue indefinitely, as resources are finite, and the inevitable recourse by the government will be the rationing of medical services – a political selection of who lives and who dies. This scenario – so common in many countries in the West today, including Britain and Canada – is the opposite of genuine health care. Indeed, denying care to an individual who could afford it and placing that individual on a waiting list on which he dies is nothing short of murder.

Only a massive shift in public opinion and government policy can extricate us from the entanglement of health care with health insurance and return us to the direct relationship between patients and doctors, as well as the optimal amount of motivation for each individual to care for his own health. Until then, stay healthy and try to make sure that you do not need the care that gets rationed – if you can.

Read other articles in The Rational Argumentator’s Issue CCXI.

Haven’t We Already Done Enough Damage in Iraq? – Article by Ron Paul

Haven’t We Already Done Enough Damage in Iraq? – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
June 16, 2014
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In 2006, I invited the late General Bill Odom to address my Thursday Congressional luncheon group. Gen. Odom, a former NSA director, called the Iraq war “the greatest strategic disaster in American history,” and told the surprised audience that he could not understand why Congress had not impeached the president for pushing this disaster on the United States. History continues to prove the General’s assessment absolutely correct.In September, 2002, arguing against a US attack on Iraq, I said the following on the House Floor:

No credible evidence has been produced that Iraq has or is close to having nuclear weapons. No evidence exists to show that Iraq harbors al Qaeda terrorists. Quite to the contrary, experts on this region recognize Hussein as an enemy of the al Qaeda and a foe to Islamic fundamentalism.

Unfortunately, Congress did not listen.

As we know, last week the second largest city in Iraq, Mosul, fell to the al-Qaeda allied Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Last week an al-Qaeda that had not been in Iraq before our 2003 invasion threatened to move on the capitol, Baghdad, after it easily over-ran tens of thousands of Iraqi military troops.

The same foreign policy “experts” who lied us into the Iraq war are now telling us we must re-invade Iraq to deal with the disaster caused by their invasion! They cannot admit they were wrong about the invasion being a “cakewalk” that would pay for itself, so they want to blame last week’s events on the 2011 US withdrawal from Iraq. But the trouble started with the 2003 invasion itself, not the 2011 troop withdrawal. Anyone who understands cause and effect should understand this.

The Obama administration has said no option except for ground troops is off the table to help the Iraqi government in this crisis. We should not forget, however, that the administration does not consider Special Forces or the CIA to be “boots on the ground.” So we may well see Americans fighting in Iraq again.

It is also likely that the administration will begin shipping more weapons and other military equipment to the Iraqi army, in the hopes that they might be able to address the ISIS invasion themselves. After years of US training, costing as much as $20 billion, it is unlikely the Iraqi army is up to the task. Judging from the performance of the Iraqi military as the ISIS attacked, much of that money was wasted or stolen.

A big US government weapons transfer to Iraq will no doubt be favored by the US military-industrial complex, which stands to profit further from the Iraq meltdown. This move will also be favored by those in Washington who realize how politically unpopular a third US invasion of Iraq would be at home, but who want to “do something” in the face of the crisis. Shipping weapons may be an action short of war, but it usually leads to war. And as we have already seen in Iraq and Syria, very often these weapons fall into the hands of the al-Qaeda we are supposed to be fighting!

Because of the federal government’s foolish policy of foreign interventionism, the US is faced with two equally stupid choices: either pour in resources to prop up an Iraqi government that is a close ally with Iran, or throw our support in with al-Qaida in Iraq (as we have done in Syria). I say we must follow a third choice: ally with the American people and spend not one more dollar or one more life attempting to re-make the Middle East. Haven’t we have already done enough damage?

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

How to Make a Dictator: The Latest Bizarre Rationale for Bombing Another Country – Article by Michael Nolan

How to Make a Dictator: The Latest Bizarre Rationale for Bombing Another Country – Article by Michael Nolan

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The New Renaissance Hat
Michael Nolan
September 12, 2013
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I usually look forward to getting my copy of The Economist in the mail each week. For one thing, it draws me away from looking at various screens—at least for a few minutes each day. For another, it has a really good Science & Technology section, and some funny subhead and caption writers.

The best thing, though, is that it causes less damage when hurled against the wall than if I pulled that with my iPad. That thought occurred to me when I read the official Economist rationale for the United States to bomb the tabbouleh out of Bashar al-Assad.

Frankly, I can’t make much sense of it. But man, oh man, do they like unrestrained executive power.

“The hope is that Congress will for once put principle before partisanship and support the president,” it says. Rousing stuff—I mean, principle is one of my favorite things to put before partisanship!

It’s the “principle” that’s the problem here, though. For one thing, it’s not clear that whoever wrote this thing has any beyond the following:

  • A President should be free to make war whenever he damn well pleases.
  • America has to impose its will. Just as a general thing.
  • Once you make a threat, you have to carry through on it. (Someone’s gotta pay for the Prez’s political mistakes.)
  • America’s founders did some inspirational stuff, and the Prez needs to bomb whenever anyone disrespects it.

What could possibly go wrong?

What’s more, the writer here thinks all of us need a good pick-me-up after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and that blowing up a few parts of Syria is just the thing.

It’s curious how impatient the writer is with President Obama’s insistence on going to Congress for a rubber stamp. In fact, the entire article can be read as a love letter to executive authority. Check this out: “Whether Syria was a vital American interest before this attack was debatable, but not after Mr Assad’s direct challenge to Mr Obama’s authority,” it says.

Or this: “The executive needs to be agile and quick when dealing with the world. The president sometimes needs to take hard and unpopular decisions. Mr Obama insists that his choice to consult the legislature does not curtail that freedom.”

Heaven forbid the President’s authority or freedom face any restrictions.

It gets even more mind-boggling. Later on in the same issue, a writer notes that Obama, by opposing the Iraq war (and not being totally on board, way back then, with Dick Cheney’s version of the War on Terror), won a Nobel Prize “without trying.” It’s a funny line. It makes me wonder, though, if a magazine can somehow have an aneurysm from time to time.

It’s not that I want all the writers in a magazine to agree with one another—that’s not journalism, that’s a party newsletter. But the same publication put the headline “Liberty’s Lost Decade” on the cover a couple weeks ago. Inside, they catalogued the endless abuses of the U.S. government since it, you know, lied its way to Baghdad.

So they should be well acquainted with the effects of unlimited power, especially during wartime. Why, then, turn around and advocate for war because otherwise the allegedly most powerful office in the world might face limits to its power? Makes me think the editorial meetings go something like this.

The main argument I hear elsewhere in support of bombing Syria boils down to Bashar al-Assad being too much of a bastard not to be bombed. The videos of the victims of his sarin attacks are gruesome. It’s inhumane not to want to strike, right?

But this line of thinking is so absurd it’s difficult to know where to begin. When they started raining down on Baghdad, the bombs were a bunch of duds, failing to deliver either shock or awe. Now, if they rain down on Damascus, they’re delivering … what, encouragement? A “hang in there, champ” to everyone stuck in the middle of the civil war? Admittedly, I don’t keep up on military kit, but I thought when they called them “smart bombs,” it meant they went to the right place, not that their hearts were already there. The Economist’s editorial writer at least has the decency to spare us this line.

Instead, we get some good old-fashioned Cold War realpolitik, talking about Obama going to Congress to “dip Republican hands in the blood,” and then saying this: “The international arena is inherently anarchic. Only laws and treaties that are enforced impose any order. By being the world’s policeman, America can shape the rules according to its own interests and tastes.”

That’s no more appealing, but far more honest. It’s a shame it has to come muddled with talk of “America’s values,” let alone the line, “Mr. Obama is not about to invade,” right in the middle of talk about the need to strike quickly now so another dictator knows how much of a bastard he can be before he loses a palace or two. Apparently, the air strike is meant to be purely symbolic (tell that to the folks killed as collateral damage; not everyone the air strikes kill is going to be a bad guy). But somehow it’s also meant to make, say, Kim Jong-Un let his hair down and start clearing out his gulags.

I confess, I’m just taking shots in the dark at this point, because the more I reread this thing, the less sense it makes. They mention the damage done to America’s brand by Dubya’s imperial overreach. Then they prescribe what could charitably be described as “Imperial Extension.” Because we have a “good” excuse, and we’re the world’s policeman. Because of the international interests of our rulers. Because the Constitution. And Western values. And America, and stuff.

Your guess is as good as mine.

There might have been a time when a country might, periodically, not have been at war. Even this country has taken the occasional breather. If that’s ever to become possible again, choosing not to make war certainly must be one of the prerequisites. But apparently not only is that option not on the table, but the nation also needs a commander-in-chief who’ll at least shoot off a few tomahawks whenever something unpleasant enough is happening somewhere. Pausing to speak to other members of the ruling class—let alone the people in whose names the bombing would allegedly be done—just gets in the way of that. Apparently, the world needs an American president who will brook no opposition to war-making.

That doesn’t sound like a way to bring down a dictator. It sounds like swapping one in Syria for a series of them closer to home.

Michael Nolan is the managing editor of The Freeman. 

This article was originally published by The Foundation for Economic Education.
“Common Core” Nationalizes and Dumbs Down Public School Curriculum – Article by Ron Paul

“Common Core” Nationalizes and Dumbs Down Public School Curriculum – Article by Ron Paul

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The New Renaissance Hat
Ron Paul
June 1, 2013
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In addition to shredding civil liberties, launching a utopian global war for democracy, and going on a spending spree that would make LBJ blush, the so-called “conservative” Bush administration dramatically increased federal control over education via the “No Child Left Behind” act. During my time in Congress I heard nothing but complaints about this law from teachers, administrators, and, most importantly, students and parents. Most of the complaints concerned No Child Left Behind’s testing requirements, which encouraged educators to “teach to the test.”

Sadly, but not surprisingly, instead of improving education by repealing No Child Left Behind’s testing and other mandates, the Obama administration is increasing national control over schools via the “Common Core” initiative. Common Core is a new curriculum developed by a panel of so-called education experts. The administration is trying to turn Common Core into a national curriculum by offering states increased federal education funding if they impose Common Core’s curriculum on their public schools. This is yet another example of the government using money stolen from the people to bribe states into obeying federal dictates.

Critics of Common Core say it “dumbs down” education by replacing traditional English literature with “informational texts”. So students will read such inspiring materials as studies by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the EPA’s “Recommended Levels of Insulation,” and “Invasive Plant Inventory” by California’s Invasive Plant Council. It is doubtful that reading federal reports will teach students the habits of critical thinking and skepticism of government that the Founders considered essential to maintaining a free republic.

Like Obamacare, Common Core (now dubbed “ObamaCore” by some) has sparked a backlash in the states, leading some to propose legislation forbidding state participation in the scheme. I hope these efforts lead to states not just opting out of Common Core, but out of No Child Left Behind and all other federal education programs as well.

Parents can also effectively “opt out” of programs like Common Core by seeking alternatives to government education. It is no coincidence that, as federal control over education increases, the quality of public education has declined and more parents have chosen to homeschool.

To support these parents, I have established my own homeschool curriculum. Unlike Common Core, we do not dumb down any of our offerings. Instead, the goal is to provide students with a rigorous education in history, math, English, foreign languages, and other core subjects necessary to a well-rounded education. Unlike the top-down model of nationalized education, the homeschool curriculum is deigned to encourage maximum input from parents and students. While the curriculum will reflect my belief, and interest, in Austrian economics, libertarian political theory, and the history of the struggle against centralized coercive power, the curriculum is being carefully designed to not show bias toward any one religion. I hope all parents of any faith—or no religious belief at all—will feel comfortable using the curriculum.

I believe it is important for those of us concerned with education and liberty to fight our battles locally. We must oppose further encroachment on the autonomy of local public schools and work to roll-back existing interference, while encouraging and supporting the growth of homeschooling and other alternative education movements. The key to restoring quality education is to replace the bureaucratic control of education with a free market in education. Parents should have the freedom to select the type of education that best suits their child’s unique needs.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission.