By Adam Dick Ron Paul, whose forty-plus years in the political arena include a run for president as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988, received at the party’s national convention last weekend a Hall of Liberty award for his achievement in advancing the libertarian movement. Paul, who was unable to attend the convention, did appear in the convention hall via a video address in which Paul both expressed his deep appreciation for the award and offered some advice to the people assembled. Paul’s advice includes that they strive to be principled instead of wishy-washy. Early in his message, Paul declares optimism for the libertarian message spreading this year. Paul explains: It’s an exciting year, right now, for libertarianism to come alive and offer up a solution to the mess we are in. The country’s in a mess. We are in a bankruptcy. The things that we have tried for many, many years — the Progressive Era has ended, and the only answers as far as I am concerned can be found in libertarian ideas. The basic principle, of course, is that of the rejection of the initiation of force — the nonaggression principle. Dr. Paul continues that he is “absolutely convinced the message of libertarianism, the message of liberty, is the answer to the problems that we have, which means the state is the enemy of liberty.” Regarding what libertarians taking political action should do, Paul mentions his own principled actions in the US House of Representatives and in campaigns as examples before advising that “the message has to be as pure as possible.” Paul then proceeds immediately to warn of the practical consequences of following a course in which libertarian principles are abandoned. Says Paul: If we become wishy-washy in our votes and sound like just modified Republicans, I don’t think we can get as many votes and do as well because the message is very, very powerful. It’s an American message.… It’s more popular than ever because of the failure of the system that we have. Watch Paul’s complete speech here:
By Chris Rossini
The mainstream media is marching lockstep in reporting the Trump University court cases. According to HuffPo, Trump University used: "deceptive, high-pressure recruiting, efforts to exploit pain and shame, bait-and-switch tactics, escalating high prices, low quality." Whether or not it's true is immaterial to the following discussion. But don't the allegations sound like every single presidential election campaign? Here's the kicker, when presidential candidates do these things, it's totally legal and acceptable! Here's Dana Milbank of The Washington Post writes of Trump's presidential campaign: Donald Trump makes more guarantees than a used-car salesman. I guarantee you.
The major difference between Trump University tactics and presidential candidate tactics is that politicians get off scot-free.
They all do it! They say whatever they want, or whatever they think will work to get the votes. There's no accountability once the votes are counted. You can't go up to the new President and say, "But you promised in your speech in Ohio that...." Forget it! The President doesn't know who you are, doesn't know who specifically voted for him, and has no legal obligation to do anything that was said to get your vote. This is the hamster wheel that Americans have been running on. From one election to another, getting sucker-punched by campaign rhetoric. Every 4-8 years, disgust boils over, and it's once again time to throw the current President out. Presidential elections are, of course, much more nefarious than anything Trump University could pull (if the allegations are true). After all, the customers of Trump University did ultimately have the choice not to buy. And they alone suffered the consequences of their decision to buy. With presidential candidates, however, everyone is stuck. There's no option of not having one of the scam-meisters rule over us. Everyone is forced to be ruled by the candidate that talked their way to the most votes. Everyone suffers the consequences. You could vote or not vote. It doesn't matter. Everyone goes down with the ship. Interestingly enough, this process gets tons of fanfare. Some people refer to this selection process as a "sacred right"! Lots of pomp and circumstance. Go figure. The West is selling gold and the East is buying. What does that mean? Western "experts" are confused, but legendary investor and Austrian school analyst Jim Grant knows what is on the horizon -- and why gold is essential.
By Simon Black All governments make absurd claims. But North Korea definitely wins the award for the most comical. Kim Jong-Il, North Korea’s “Dear Leader” from 1997 through 2011, had some priceless gems, including:
You can see the movie here. His son and current ruler, Kim Jong-Un, has also made a number of bold claims, including that he invented the cure for HIV, SARS, MERS, and Ebola. And according to his research, North Korea is apparently the second happiest country in the world after China. These claims are all obviously fictional and completely incredulous. And yet, somehow the US government seems to believe at least one of them. You see, Kim Jong-Un also claims to be a genius hacker, and that his people are genius hackers too. It almost seems like a headline ripped from the Onion. The reality, of course, is that there’s almost no Internet in North Korea and the population has more experience with land mines than land lines.
And yet while we can all agree that the Kims’ other claims are preposterous, for some reason the US government believes the hacker threat to be real. Now every major hack that occurs is automatically blamed on the North Koreans. Recently one of the biggest bank heists in history transpired after the SWIFT messaging system was hacked, and $81 million was stolen from the central bank of Bangladesh’s US dollar account at the New York Federal Reserve. The finger was immediately pointed at North Korea. So now western governments, including the United States and the UK, have sprung into action to defend the financial system against North Korean hackers. Work has already begun on more obtuse banking regulations and procedures that will force you to jump through bizarre hoops in order to prove that you’re not a nefarious North Korean hacker. This is so typical. Years ago they made people afraid of men in caves ‘who hate us for our freedom’. Then they proceeded to dismantle many of those freedoms in order to protect us. It’s the same cycle, only they’ve created a new enemy for us to fear: the North Korean hacker. And now, in order to protect us from the new boogeyman of the week, they have to create new rules and dismantle more financial freedom. All of this nonsense is based on the supposed technological prowess of North Korea. Yet just a few days ago North Korea had a failed missile launch attempt that was so screwed up it was almost comical. This, after four other failed missile attempts last month. Oh yeah, and these guys are such network security experts that an 18-year old kid from Scotland was able to hack North Korean servers in just minutes. How’d he do it? By correctly guessing the server login information—username: “admin”, and password: “password”. Yes, you read that correctly. This crack squad of North Korean hackers used “password” as their server password. So we’re supposed to believe that these are the guys that hacked $81 million out of the Federal Reserve system? Either they’re completely making this stuff up to justify taking away more of our freedoms, or government incompetence truly has reached an all-time low. Both ways, a healthy bit of skepticism is in order. Reprinted with permission from Sovereign Man.
By Ron Paul
Now that Donald Trump has virtually secured the Republican Party nomination, we're starting to get some backpedalling. Apparently, Trump wasn't really serious about the tariffs, or about banning Muslims from our country. Supposedly, it was "just a suggestion". All told, we really don't know what Trump is serious about. I discuss on CNBC below: |
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