Posted on 09/13/2007 9:02:42 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Last week the Republicans had another debate, this one on FOX News. Not much has changed in the last few months; Rudy Giuliani is still in the lead in the polls and Fred Thompson is still in second despite the fact he didn't announce his intentions to run until a few days ago. What has changed, and changed for the worse, is the surging popularity of a Texas Congressman by the name of Ron Paul. I've been running into normal, intelligent people who support Paul, and it really scares me.
The reason Paul is as popular as he is has to do largely with his sudden support from Democrats and I have to admit, when I didn't know much about him I thought he sounded like a good candidate. He wants to end the Iraq war, have tighter borders, lower taxes and decrease spending, what's not to like? The problem doesn't lie with his policies and ideas, but rather his execution of said policies. How to end the war in Iraq: immediate pullout not only from Iraq, but from the whole of the Middle East. Never mind the slaughter that will occur with our exit. Paul, by the way, denies that this will happen, as the people saying it will are the same that said it would be an easy win. It was a mistake and we never should have been there.
He has more than one unworkable policy. Who else here wants to abolish the FDA? Dr. Paul is your man. His case against the FDA is that they take taxpayer money and are supposed to regulate the food and drugs coming into the country and those produced here, but there are still cases that get by them. Obviously, he claims, we would be better off with no Federal regulation. Corporations should police themselves. Paul is a big fan of the free market and wants to see an end of just about every federal agency that does anything useful or helpful. DEA? Gone. Medicare/Medicaid? History. IRS? The government has no right to take your money.
Paul is such a fan of the free market and letting businesses do whatever they want that during a recent session of Congress he was the one dissenting vote when Congress decided to stop giving tax money to corporations profiting from the genocide in Sudan. It seems pretty cut and dry, companies are making money off of a genocide. Why would you give them money to keep doing that? Paul's answer: We shouldn't tie the hands of corporations by limiting their business dealings. That pretty much covers foreign policy for Paul.
Paul doesn't like the federal tax system and actually signed a document circulated by the National Libertarian Organization a few years ago affirming this belief. Lower taxes is one of the tried and true methods of getting people to vote for you. The problem with Paul saying he'll get lower taxes is that it's not entirely true. Yes, your income will be less taxed, but Paul wants to raise the sales tax to 23 percent at the least. Have fun being poor, because you won't be able to afford anything under Paul's administration. What would be really interesting is seeing how much price gouging we would see with no regulatory bodies, but I'd rather not think about it.
More interesting is Paul's absolute belief in the free market. He wants to see an end of public service agencies and governmental controls. Private post offices, for example, would be bought up by companies and if you're not served by the same post office as say, the people sending you bills, you might never get the bill. Or you might incur a fee when you get the bill. Imagine all roads in the country being up for sale: Paul sees a future where this has happened and thousands of toll booths are being constructed across the country.
We wouldn't have a nutcase presidential candidate without him being a racist, not these days anyways. Paul luckily fits that bill. He's made his case against the African American community known very well, starting with this comment back in 1992, "If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be." Later he would say the age to be prosecuted as an adult should be lowered to 13 because "black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such." It's no wonder White Supremacist Website and forum Stormfront.org has come out in support of Paul, as has former Ku Klux Klan member and politician David Duke.
Here's a list of things Paul wants to end because they have had failures in the past, or he sees them as useless: CIA, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, FDA, IRS, Medicare, FBI, DEA, UN, NATO, NAFTA and CAFTA. That's the short list. This is my biggest problem with Ron Paul. He offers no constructive thoughts, only destructive ones. He doesn't think a single thing can be made to work if it failed even once. Bad intelligence? Cut it out completely, don't try to reform it.
Overall, Paul has no workable ideas. He wants to return to a gold standard, which would destroy the US economy. He wants to cut nearly every government department and build a giant wall (not a fence) on our border with Mexico. I honestly don't understand how people can think he would make a good president.
Yet another line on your statist resume. I'd be curious where our Constitution says that the federal government has the right to dictate to the States what their curriculum will be.
It's means no IRS.
It means no DHS.
It means no DOE (either of them)
It means no BATF.
It means no HHS.
It means no Social Security.
It means no NASA.
It means no BOIA.
It means no Federal welfare of any kind.
It means no "affirmative action".
It means no Federal Unemployment Insurance.
It means no OSHA.
It means no EPA.
It means no Endangered Species Act.
I could go on, but suffice it to say "Constitutional governance" means a Federal budget of approximately 1/3 what it is today.
Like the other poster said, about 80% of Freepers would wet their pants and vote for a Dem before they'd vote for someone who would slash 'their' favorite program.
L
Now does that mean we throw the baby out with the bath water.
No.
Do you think that 50 states all acting on their own can keep a uniform standard. This is needed, students leave their home states to attend college. Other countries maintain a standard for their citizens and in the 21st we compete in an open and free market against these other nations
Think of the mixed bag of standards that would result.
I am not saying the standard now is great, but a smaller leaner department or agency with just a few employees can react better to educational change and the changes needed. While the new agency forms, the standards can be reviewed and refined, improved radically over where we are now.
Without this there is no real way to know that a student from Mississippi can compete against the same from Maryland. Employers will not really know what they are getting.
There is some good in having a national standard.
Much of the AMA's power comes from its government support and lobby. Take that away, and it becomes a trade association for doctors, i.e., what it was intended for.
SATs. Accreditation groups. We have these things already.
I prefer that method and the risks for each state that go with it compared to a national bureaucratic solution that ultimately enforces what a select few think...basically at the point of a gun.
The truly constitional method produced the best education system in the world. Over time, it would do so again, because there would be competition and an incentive to establish a standard that is truly "the best", as opposed to basically catering to the lowest common denominator to make sure "social equity" is enforced by those who have no real interest in it other than how it can garner votes for them by appealing to the base mentality of feeding at the public largess trough.
Let the states do so...and then my money goes to the state that opens their education most up to the free market so that people who are truly looking to gain parents choice for schooling are thus incented to produce the best education possible based on what that state sets forth as their standard.
And whatever else he may be, Bush is no fool.
As much as I loathe Giuliani, he had the right idea of how to handle those racist, anti-semitic, terrorist supporting enemies of America the Saudis.
The only thing he didn't do which I would have done was wipe that check of theirs across a pigs ass before returning it to them.
L
I am a statist now because I know it is important in the TWENTY FIRST CENTURY to set and maintain a uniform standard in secondary and higher education.
We are, in a technologically advanced and complex world, way past the one room school house as a solution.
Show me where having one group of our citizens remain educationally behind the rest is supported in the constitution, much less by the founders...
Where is it written that it is a good thing to no longer be competitive in the 21st century world.
Please wake up and realize it is not 1900 anymore...
Or don't, it is basically irrelevant to those of us living in the real world
When you kid wants Harvard and Harvard says, hey, the grades are good but his curriculum is not up to snuff, so sorry...
You end up with a lag time. I live in Mississippi, I don’t want to wait the 5 years or more it would take for them to correct issues. That’s the time a kid spends in high school at least.
You may say well move. Ok, you displace families over eduction, something that can be fixed with standards. You think the people will go for that.
I am not saying keep the DOE, but we have to have something in place.
There are much broader issues at stake here than your hatred for the federal government.
****************
No, President Bush is no fool. I don't consider him a liar, either.
We may disagree with him about some of the things he has done, but out of respect for the man and the office, I'll not do it here. In my humble opinion, he's a good man, who was handed one of the worst situations in our nation's history. History will judge him, kindly, I hope.
There is no uniform standard for most things in higher education and the standards are extremely weak for private schools. US private schools and universities are the best in the world. The government curriculum controlled secondary schools are among the worst in the developed world.
The only standard that you want is the standard of failure. Congratulations. It has been achieved.
Show me where having one group of our citizens remain educationally behind the rest is supported in the constitution, much less by the founders...
You worked in education, right? Have you even read the Constitution? Do you know anything about the history of the US during the 18th century? This is an amazingly absurd statement. I don't even know where to start to help correct your gross conceptual error (to put it lightly).
Where is it written that it is a good thing to no longer be competitive in the 21st century world.
Basically the same place that says why our lightly regulated private schools and universities are the best in the world. You still continue to believe that regulation makes you competitive. I would suggest you take a microeconomics class and learn how the free market actually works (after you read the Constitution for the first time). If you want to continue saying how regulating the free market will make us more competitive, you might want to voice your concerns at DU or DailyKos where nobody will object.
After you read the Constitution, get back to me on where the right to create a federal curriculum standard that can be forced on the States is located.
Statists (and I'm not calling you one) often argue that "things are different now". FWIW, my children have been educated at home. I have two graduates, both in college, and both kicking butt and financing their own educations to boot. One is in his third year at a very upscale university, and several departments are recruiting him actively.
Seeing as how you too live in his mentally ill world, what could I possible add to this discussion that you would accept? If you cannot see the truth on your own, then there’s little that anyone can do to help you to recover from your dementia.
This is from the ACICS site
Within the higher education community, accrediting agencies, state regulatory agencies, and the U. S. Department of Education are all involved in institutional oversight. As already described, accrediting agencies are responsible for determining educational quality. State regulatory agencies are responsible for granting the legal authority for institutions to operate in their states and for consumer protection matters. The U.S. Department of Education is responsible for determining the eligibility of institutions to participate in federal assistance programs and for enforcement of the regulations governing the administration of federal student assistance programs. In addition, the U.S. Department of Education, using Congressionally mandated criteria, recognizes accrediting agencies to ensure that these agencies are, for the purposes of the Higher Education Act, "reliable authorities regarding the quality of education or training offered by the institutions or programs they accredit."
If we can get a national private institute that everyone agrees to I would be pleased with that as well. But we have to have something to fill that void.
It is widely recognized that a solid and well grounded educational structure is in the national interest. Anything else in this day and age is foolish at best.
The DOE is currently failing at that i a variety of ways. It needs major revision or replacing, I will grant that in a heart beat, but reckless solutions create bigger problems.
Who pays for the failures in a mixed bag of Policies?
Last year the Feds had to come bail out a failing district in Mississippi. If they were not there to enforce something, who is going to pay for that failure when those kids hit the world. I guess we could have taken the senior class straight to jail to cut out the middle man.
Here's a link to Article 3, Section 8 of the US Constitution.
I'll send $1,000 to the charity of your choice of you can find "set and maintain a uniform standard in secondary and higher education" as an enumerated Federal responsibility in there anywhere.
Take your time....I'll wait a bit.
L
These people live in a Utopia of their own creation. They do not have the intelligence to think rationally about these issues - it’s no wonder they are so enamored with Ron Paul. Birds of a feather and all.
Ok so you want to pay for everyone to go to private school now...
And I am a socialist or statist or whatever?
There are uniform standards, the DOE site is eaten up with them. Way too many of them.
Is it working? Not very well anymore, but that does not mean we just chunk everyone to the four winds.
As far as the rest of your crap, it is the same I have heard before from your ilk. “Go over to KOS” “Statist’ “You need to read the Constitution”
We are so blessed to have experts like you and your friends here to guide us poor foolish souls.
It is a puzzle that such great minds seem to lurk in the shadows, their party (libertarian) never breaking out, their favorite son, Ron Paul not placing well in the real world.
So I will again borrow a quote from Jim Robinson when he addressed one of the esteemed Paulinati the other day;
“Up yours”
Obviously this would go without hardly being missed.
In addition, the U.S. Department of Education, using Congressionally mandated criteria, recognizes accrediting agencies to ensure that these agencies are, for the purposes of the Higher Education Act, "reliable authorities regarding the quality of education or training offered by the institutions or programs they accredit."
ACICS will still be there, right? Everybody knows about them, even if DOE goes away.
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