The Crossed Pond

Like you even need to ask.

Bless Public Policy Polling for continuing to poll head-to-head Obama-GOP matchups for the 2012 election that include Ron Paul. They allow us to discover things such as this:

Polling close to Obama are Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney. The President leads Huckabee 46-44 and Romney 45-42. They both do a good job of consolidating the GOP vote and holding a solid advantage with independents.

Doing less well are Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Ron Paul. Obama has a 47-39 advantage over Gingrich, a 50-41 against Palin, and 46-36 edge matched against Paul.

One thing that’s very interesting about these numbers is that Ron Paul is the most popular out of the whole group with independents. They see him favorably by a 35/25 margin. The only other White House hopeful on positive ground with them is Romney at a +2 spread and they’re very negative on the rest: -5 for Huckabee, -16 for Gingrich and Palin, and -17 for Obama. All five of the possible GOP contenders lead Obama with independents, but Paul does so by the widest margin at 46-28.

Kick ass.

If you’re reading it on this blog, you’ve probably figured it out already…

Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., Ron Paul, R-Texas, Joseph Cao, R-La., and Charles Djou, R-Hawaii, were the only Republicans to vote in favor of scrapping the law.

I am delighted…and bewildered. Dr. Paul was unambiguously pro-DADT on the campaign trail in 2008, and we at this blog went round and round trying to square that stance with the rest of his principles (see the comments thread here).

There is not a clue on his website as to what prompted this vote; my best guess is that he will attempt to explain this in terms of a desire to overturn the Congressional mandate of DADT, thereby leaving the military free to set its own rules.

Or maybe…dare I hope…he had the same trouble squaring this with his principles that the rest of us did, and changed his mind.

History is going to judge the Republicans who voted in favor of this very much the way it judges those who broke the filibuster on the Civil Rights Act. I think particular congratulations have to go out to Cao on this; it will be a brutally tough sell in his constituency, and it’s not like he’s going to have the easiest road to reelection in any case.

Informed speculation at RCP regarding the next two Presidential cycles:

As for Ron Paul’s candidacy, my source pointed out that according to every public and private indication, he doesn’t want to run another presidential race. The congressman told Reason magazine that he remains “firmly undecided” about another go-round, with good reason. He is not a young man. He is seen by too many people as a dangerous radical. A sub-par performance in 2012 could damage the Paul brand and make it harder for his son to make a run at it.

The possibility that Ron Paul seems to be playing with, my source argued, goes like this: Put up a candidate for the next Republican primary who credibly carry the banner, and then hand off his new political machine to his son for a run in 2016. Former two-term New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson has been making the rounds at many Campaign for Liberty events, and could make a credible candidate, provided he doesn’t begin every speech by talking about pot.

A politician more dedicated to viability of the message than to his own ambition? It’s hard to imagine such a thing in American politics.

Speculation regarding the 2016 cycle is massively overblown, particularly given that the candidate in question has every chance to lose his Senate campaign. But I’m immensely encouraged by this scenario for 2012. Johnson is a wonderful evolutionary step for the movement; it ceases to be seen as a cult of personality, and it makes permanent the presence of libertarianism at the highest levels of Republican politics. It also etches in stone Ron Paul’s legacy and ensures that the memory of his campaign will not be tarnished the way, for instance, Perot’s has been. Let it be done!

For blasting them on their CPAC and SLRC coverage as it pertained to Dr. Paul.

Writing for the site, Jeremy Lott admits we’re in the midst of “A Ron Paul Moment“.

So, Rasmussen polled 1000 people on Ron Paul, perhaps on a lark or perhaps on a commission. They included a Barack Obama – Ron Paul head-to-head. The result is awesome.

2. In thinking about the 2012 Presidential election suppose you had a choice between Republican Ron Paul and Democrat Barack Obama. If the election were held today, would you vote for Republican Ron Paul or Democrat Barack Obama?

41% Paul
42% Obama
11% Some other candidate
6% Not sure

As cool as that is to see, it’s surely mostly the result of discontent with Obama and probably could have been replicated with just a generic R – although, of course, Paul is not a generic R. But also of interest is the opinion of 1000 registered voters about Paul’s role in the party. Among those who had an opinion (55%):

3. Is Ron Paul a divisive force in the Republican Party, or is he representative of a new direction for the party?

21% He is a divisive force in the Republican party
34% He is representative of a new direction for the party

Favorables:

1. Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of Ron Paul?

10% Very favorable
29% Somewhat favorable
18% Somewhat unfavorable
12% Very unfavorable
32% Not sure

What’s interesting about that is that one would expect most Paulites would fall in the “very favorable” category. My guess is the other 29% are Paul-sympathizers, which tracks roughly with my own expectations (that a good portion of the politically informed have a respect for Ron Paul and sympathize with him), but cuts directly across the beltway cw (he is a madman well on the fringe that only a slim number of crazed internet libertarians like). And when specifically asked about his role in the party (although I don’t like the wording of the question), significantly more people see him as a positive force in conservatism than a negative one.

And that roughly 40-30 favorability rating is, frankly, a representative spread of a generally popular mainstream figure, and hardly the sort of numbers one would see for somebody viewed as a fringe lunatic (where it would be a minority strongly favorable, a much larger portion unfavorable, and a much larger “not sure” figure). The robustness of the “somewhat”s here is fascinating.

And even more bizarre, what’s keeping Paul down in the head-to-head? It’s not independents—he actually beats Obama with independents, almost 2 to 1 (!). It’s not Democrats—Paul actually depresses their partisan support of Obama in that matchup to a very respectable 79%. It’s Republicans. Only 66% would support Paul running against Obama.

The headline out of New Orleans (first google news result): Mitt Romney Beats Sarah Palin in Republican Straw Poll.

The lede:

The Republican establishment favourite, Mitt Romney, secured a surprise victory over the American right’s grassroots choice Sarah Palin at the weekend in an early test of who will challenge Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential race.

Romney, the multi-millionaire businessman and former Massachusetts governor, won 24% (439 votes) to Palin’s 18% (330 votes) among delegates at the Southern Republican leadership conference, a traditional showcase for presidential hopefuls.

Huh. So I wonder what happened to Ron Paul?

Paragraph 10:

The fragility of Romney’s win in New Orleans is highlighted by the fact that he won only one vote more than Ron Paul, who is seen in Washington as a marginal figure.

So…the results are Mitt Romney 439 votes, Ron Paul 438 votes, Sarah Palin 330 votes, Newt Gingrich 330 votes. Tim Pawlenty, Gary Johnson, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, Mike Pence, all failed to rate more than a dozen or so each (sadly, Johnson placed dead last, with but a 1).

I wonder what Tom Bevan thinks (CPAC Reax)?

A final note: the sense that Paul supporters flooded the vote will lead other Republican presidential water-testers to easily discount the results. A straw poll that will be conducted at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference this April in New Orleans will be taken much more seriously among those involved with and eagerly watching the presidential sweepstakes.

I realize we haven’t put up a Ronslaught post in like 12 hours. Sorry Adam! Here’s one!

Brian Doherty, who has been following Ron Paul for almost as long as Rojas, has what I think is the most reasonable take on the CPAC thing, and the one with the most perspective. Bonus: he is saying everything we are saying, including linking the same things we’re linking. Anyway, I think it’s a take worth reading for opponents and supporters alike, though it doesn’t really come to any conclusions (something Reason has been doing a lot of lately, but I digress). Still, the sense of almost numb shock at seeing a guy who was at one time a totally obscure curiosity possibly ushering in a normalization of really hardcore libertarian ideals is worth reading, and is something I and I know Rojas can relate to.

I predicted last September that Ron Paul could well be playing a Goldwater in 1960 role—the first stirrings of a strongly anti-government coalition whose electoral effectiveness won’t become manifest for a while—and the CPAC victory is an encouraging sign in that direction. The usual caveats apply about the unknowability of the future, and the generally predictable pusillanimity when it comes to liberty of both the voters and politicians who have tended to decide the Republican Party’s direction.

Still, it does feel like something is happening, and we don’t know what it is, do we Dr. Paul? I’ve been following Ron Paul’s career since 1988, when my buddies in the University of Florida College Libertarians brought him—then the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidate—to our campus to speak. He drew 100 or so people, copped a front page story in the college paper, and fed into my and my comrade’s youthful sense of a subterranean liveliness in ideas and politics that it was still possible to dredge, at least for a moment, to the surface. Swaying masses in that libertarian direction seemed…well, I suppose it was the goal, but in the same sense that interstellar travel might be seen as the “goal” of reading and thinking about science fiction. Libertarian Party politics seemed at best an entertaining vehicle toward the semi-actualization of some wild, hopeful imaginings.

Sorry for the Ronslaught of late, but this was good.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

One thing I didn’t realize: this year, 54% of CPAC attendees were between the ages of 18-25, which everyone keeps mentioning, mostly in the context of it proving the vote was worthless.

Last year, 57% of CPAC attendees were between 18-25, and Mitt Romney won, and I can’t recall anybody ever mentioning that.

When gay conservative groups established a bold presence at CPAC, and when they came under fire from the usual bigots, guess whose supporters rallied to their defense?

Like you didn’t already know.

The Paul-inspired groups were responsible for one of the pivotal moments of the three-day conference. On Friday, Students for Liberty president Alexander McCobin used his speech in the rapid-fire “Two-Minute Activist” line-up to “commend CPAC for inviting GOProud,” a gay Republican group. That got a rise out of Ryan Sobra, an anti-gay activist who followed McCobin and condemned the conference for inviting the group. When he was booed, Sobra confusingly attacked Jeff Frazee — the head of Young Americans for Liberty. But he was onto something — it was the presence of Paul fans, who had crowded into the room for his upcoming speech, that meant Sobra would get more boos than cheers.

“I was thanking my lucky stars that the Ron Paul fans were there,” said Jimmy LaSalva, the executive director of GOProud, in a Saturday interview with TWI. “The Campaign for Liberty deserves a lot of credit for setting that tone.”

The more I read about CPAC, the more I think that the straw poll was only the tip of the iceberg. The performance of the young Paulites was simply sensational at every level–and their insistance on full respect for gay attendees is particularly inspiring. This has been way too long in coming, and there is clearly still a lot of work to be done. But for the first time, there seems to be a meaningful insurgency within party ranks on the issue.

I have never been prouder to be part of this movement.

Glenn Greenwald–as authentic a civil libertarian as you’ll find–points out that the Republican record of governance is incompatible with the small-government preferences of the Tea Party movement, and wonders why on earth Paulites in particular would consider an alliance of convenience with the neoconservative Republican establishment.

Two responses.

1. Greenwald makes the same mistake as a large portion of the media in considering the Tea Party movement as an ideological monolith. Of course, he makes the mistake in a different way; while the mainstream media sees them all as Palinites (and I suppose that from the ideological starting point of the media, everyone on the right might seem to be), Greenwald sees the movement as overwhelmingly Paulite. I only wish that were true. Ironically, it’s been observers on the right who’ve painted the most accurate picture of the internal divergences in the movement. Perhaps this is a function of the right-wing media having actually attempted to understand the story they’re reporting on instead of using it as a target for mockery. Which leads us to:

2. Greenwald forgets that, from its inception, the Tea Party movement has been the target of widespread mockery and resentment on the left. Its members have been accused of fanatacism and racism at every turn. To the extent that any effort has been made to understand the concerns of the Tea Partiers, it has been made by Republicans.

The truth be told, I strongly sympathize with Greenwald’s criticism; I’ve been outspoken in these pages about the need for the Tea Party (particularly the Paulite segment) to remain independent in their outlook and avoid being coopted by one party or the other. In point of fact I think that’s a necessary strategy for libertarians generally at this stage. But there isn’t much point in wondering why the Tea Party movement leans the way it does. As badly as Ron Paul and his sympathizers have been treated by the Republican mainstream–and at times they have been treated very, very badly indeed–it doesn’t hold a candle to the way the entire Tea Party movement has been ridiculed by the Obama faction and their media enablers.

No, most Tea Partiers don’t have an awful lot in common with the Republican establishment. No, they shouldn’t be signing up as that party’s footsoldiers. But the movement’s partisan lean didn’t drop into existence out of a clear blue sky, and civil libertarians like Greenwald ought to reflect upon its causes rather that gaze bewildered at its effects.

First, The Corner, because I was most interested in seeing the partisan Republican take.

Aside from two VERY noticeable dissenters (John Derbyshire and David Freddoso), National Review has not, shall we say, been on board the Ronslaught. They invested themselves even more than most partisan organizations into the 2002-2006 neoconservative narrative, so Paul was seen as, at best, a lunatic, and at worst, a traitor not in the party sense, but in the American one.

So it’s nice to see the top post at The Corner about Ron’s victory in the CPAC straw poll giving the good doctor a tip of the hat and a healthy dose of respect (they’re also perhaps less inclined to dismiss CPAC straw polls, as they trumpeted Romney’s heavily).

I’ll quote it in full. From Robert Costa:

There may have been some boos, but Paul was by far one of the more popular speakers at CPAC this year. “End the Fed!” was one of most-heard chants and his “Campaign for Liberty” group was everywhere. Heck, a lot of the time, it seemed like they, not the American Conservative Union, was CPAC’s host. Even Ann Coulter, who drew a huge crowd herself, felt compelled to give a shout out to Paul-mania, saying she agreed with everything he stands for outside of foreign policy — a statement met with cheers.

Paul supporters were the most visible and vocal throughout CPAC — waving posters, signs, and passing out pamphlets. Unlike the 2012 wannabes, Paul doesn’t play coy: He has a manifesto and wants to broadcast it. Period. No worries about the media spin or whether the speech gets headlines (see Pawlenty, Tiger doctrine). And, instead of the usual anti-Obama talk, Paul framed a hefty chunk of his CPAC address upon a critique of Woodrow Wilson. And the crowd dug it.

Some older CPAC attendees don’t seem to care much for the Texas congressman, sure, but many young activists seem to regard him as a hero of sorts. When he talks about the debt, like he did on Friday, calling it a “monster” that will “eat up” our future, it was with a passion that you can’t fake in politics. He also didn’t mind challenging many of the room’s security hawks on foreign policy. “There is nothing wrong with being a conservative and having a conservative belief in foreign policy where we have a strong national defense and don’t go to war so carelessly,” Paul said. That line was met with a lot of silence, some nods, but, based on my conservations with activists afterward, strong respect from many for not simply pandering.

As Paul strolled through the lobby on Friday, slightly hunched and rail thin, cell phones galore lit up the Marriott Wardman Park. Students, a huge CPAC contingent, flocked. That should have been a sign to anyone looking to predict the straw poll. While Paul mingled with his acolytes, the big guns — Pawlenty, Romney — were often shrouded by aides or mingling backstage. Believe me: CPAC folks noticed. And now, thanks to the straw poll, for a moment, Paul’s opening line from his address is true: His “revolution is alive and well,” at least this weekend.

More below the jump.

(more…)

Steve Forbes reviews “End the Fed” for his editorial section in Forbes.

End the Fed–by Ron Paul (Grand Central Publishing, $21.99). When it comes to money, the mainstream media like to portray Congressman Ron Paul (R–Texas) as a gadfly. Let Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke enjoy his Time-ly accolades, because history will judge that Paul had it right when it came to the Fed and its often misbegotten monetary policies.

Paul has aroused the fear and ire of the Federal Reserve with his bill calling for the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed. This tenacious Congressman makes the point that independence should not be confused with a lack of accountability. One doesn’t have to agree with Paul’s ultimate conclusion that the Fed should be done away with to realize that this powerful institution is a kingdom unto itself. The Fed can bring about depressions (many historians agree with Milton Friedman’s belief that the Fed was the chief cause of the Great Depression), horrific periods of inflation, as it caused in the 1970s, as well as the current economic crisis, which the Fed fueled with its excessive easing of monetary policy several years ago. Without the excess liquidity, the housing bubble could never have happened. Yet Congress exercises no oversight of the Fed. In fact, no one outside the Fed has the right to examine to whom it lends money or the agreements it makes with other central banks around the world.

Paul makes the argument that we don’t need the Fed at all, that particularly in this high-tech era we can allow–and efficiently function with–competing currencies. Strange? The U.S. did exactly that for most of its existence, up until the Fed was created in 1913. Needless to say, that part of Paul’s thesis is highly controversial. But what shouldn’t be controversial is his belief that gold should be the ultimate anchor for money. Politicians always end up trashing paper money. Paul correctly hammers home the point that the Federal Reserve’s repeated attempts to smooth business cycles and create perpetual prosperity have backfired badly and destructively. As for the Fed’s ability to manage money, Paul simply notes that since the Fed’s inception the dollar has lost more than 95% of its value.

For those of us who got on the Paul bus early, when Paul was either flatly ignored or roundly derided as a dismissible lunatic, I find this little review rather remarkable.

So declares the LA Times.

I haven’t used the tag in awhile, but it’s starting to seem appropriate again, as The Independent does a feature on Dr. Paul for their UK audience. The lede is sort of priceless.

Pull US troops out of Afghanistan. Leave Iran alone. Legalise drugs. Get the government out of people’s private lives. Say no to the bailout of Wall Street fat cats. As a menu of policy prescriptions, you might think that this all puts Ron Paul on the Soviet wing of the Democratic party. But you’d be wrong.

Despite that cheekiness (and the headline “Every man for himself!”), the article is a pretty good/fair one.

Amidst all the babble about “tea parties” and “astroturfing,” it is easy to miss the central fact of the matter: we are currently witnessing the greatest surge of direct citizen activism in the recent history of American politics. Whoever may be winning the ground wars, it is clear that apathy is taking it on the chin.

And it’s worth remembering that it all started two years ago today, when a group of about 35,000 people, self-organized and willing to vote with their wallets, defied the media and the political establishment.

For one brief moment, we proved that a small group of determined people could, through concerted action, seize the reins of the national conversation.

Happy anniversary.

A quick search reveals that Senator Graham’s anti-Paul sentiments are not new:

The straw poll at the Value Voters conference should give some indication about the Nuge Factor that is rattling some traditional Republicans. Nugent was the star of the show in some of the Texas “tea party” rallies on April 15. Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator from South Carolina, was sent almost to seizures when a purely conservative crowd started chanting “Ron Paul, Ron Paul, Ron Paul … ” to the tune of “USA, USA, USA … ” during one of his speeches. Paul is not a Republican, Graham shouted back at the group.

There are a couple of things that we ought to note about this.

1. Sen. Graham is clearly picking a fight here. You will not find Ron Paul on record claiming that Lindsay Graham is not a Republican. Indeed, you will not find Ron Paul conducting purges of any kind. Paul was very consistent during the campaign advocating the inclusion of what he called “Robert Taft Republicans” in the party debate; at no point did he assert that other ideological factions be silenced or expelled. The advocacy of running RINOs out of the party is Graham’s, not Paul’s–which is what makes his comments yesterday so hypocritical and repugnant.

2. Graham is an experienced enough political operator that we can assume he is picking the fight for a reason. Indeed, it is not hard to see how a South Carolina politician would profit–at least in terms of his own constituents–by attempting to pivot off of another politician who opposes overseas military operations. As Graham is under fire for diverging from party orthodoxy on issues such as the Supreme Court and cap and trade, is it perfectly sensible of him to try to deflect anger towards another target. Hence, it is important that Paul’s supporters not rise to the bait. There’s no need to become the caricatures that Graham wants South Carolinians to see Paulites as.

So, Senator Lindsay Graham finds himself facing down a group of angry tea-party style Republican activists, who accuse him of being a “Republican In Name Only.” And he responds thus:

One attendee of the event asked the senator, “when are you going to announce that you are switching parties?” The question drew loud applause from the crowd. Graham defended himself, and denounced the influence of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) on the Republican party:

GRAHAM: I’m going to grow this party, I’m not going to let it get [inaudible], I’m not going to let it be hijacked by Ron Paul. [...] I’m going to find people in Maine, Delaware, Illinois, other places–

AUDIENCE: Move there!

GRAHAM: That can win as Republicans, and I’m going to go up, and we’re going to move this party, and this country forward, and if you don’t like it, you can leave.

The brazenness of it is astounding, really.

Ron Paul stood up on stage after stage and took on his entire party’s establishment. He and his followers caught nothing but savage hell from the party regulars for eighteen solid campaign months. He garnered no meaningful endorsements and was shut out of the party convention after finishing third in the primaries. And then he faced a House primary challenge which was supported by many of the same Republicans he’d been fighting against.

And now that the same sort of Republican Purity Crusade is being launched against better-connected Republican figures, who is to blame? Who is the establishment figure whose ideological policing is stripping the party bare and crippling outreach to new constituencies? Why, it’s RON PAUL, of course. His followers are ruining the party by their hegemonic control of its ideology.

I do.

A beautiful post by Nate Silver on how the future of the Republican party is beginning to shape up. I can’t say I’m totally on-board with his definitions, the presumptions of which strike me as a little condescending. But still. He notes four big elements of Obama’s first 100 days.

1. Concerns over “Big Government” are now the #1 stated priority of Republican voters (versus, say, cultural issues, or national security). (actually, Nate’s is a bit of an ancillary point to that, but it’s true as well, and more direct).
2. The GOP budget alternatives have all been, if opaque, than severely limiting in terms of the scope of government.
3. Gay marriage is an issue Republican insiders are starting to cringe away from.
4. No other cultural issues appear ready to takes it place.

Anyway, his conclusion:

Maybe you see a pattern there and maybe you don’t. But of the roughly four different pathways the Republicans could take in the post-Obama universe — toward Ron Paulesque libertarianism, toward Sarah Palinesque cultural populism, toward Mike Huckabeesque big-government conservatism, or toward Olympia Snowesque moderation/ good-governmentism — the libertarian side would seem to have had the best go of things in the First 100 Days.

He has really nothing but his own impressions to back that up with, but those impressions match my own (and I’d even add a fifth different pathway—American Greatness conservatism / muscularity in foreign policy, running the gambit from John McCain (on the good end) to Dick Cheney (on the other one).)

Massively premature 2012 Presidential race prediction: Ron Paul gets a speaking slot at the Republican national convention.

When Ron Paul and Barney Frank get together to write a bill, you know it’s going to be good:

Sponsored by Reps. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the bill would allow U.S. farmers to grow industrial, non-psychoactive hemp, which manufacturers use for everything from soap to shoes to car upholstery. Current law allows hemp to be imported, but not cultivated domestically.

Introducing the bill on the House floor yesterday, Paul said that prohibition is a mistake, particularly in a difficult economy.

“It is unfortunate that the Federal Government has stood in the way of American farmers, including many who are struggling to make ends meet, competing in the global industrial hemp market. Indeed, the founders of our Nation, some of whom grew hemp, would surely find that Federal restrictions on farmers growing a safe and profitable crop on their own land are inconsistent with the constitutional guarantee of a limited, restrained Federal Government.”

Aside from Paul and Frank, nine other House lawmakers have signed on their support, seven Democrats and two Republicans.

As fond as I am of Ron Paul, I often express skepticism about certain specific views he espouses. I am no fan of the gold standard, for instance. I have also been skeptical of Paul’s conspiracy-theorizing about the Federal Reserve. His expressions on the subject have always struck me as reminiscent of late-19th century populist blather about shadowy bankers’ cabals.

As it happens, though, the present financial crisis is drawing more attention to the specific actions of the Fed, and the lack of regulatory supervision thereof. It is, of course, all well and good for us to argue back and forth about Congressional spending of vast sums of bailout money. But what good does it do to reject the bailout at a legislative level if an unregulated government body is spending (or creating) even MORE money? Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone:

The reason the number has dropped to nothing is that the Fed had simply stopped using relatively transparent devices like repurchase agreements to pump its money into the hands of private companies. By early 2009, a whole series of new government operations had been invented to inject cash into the economy, most all of them completely secretive and with names you’ve never heard of. There is the Term Auction Facility, the Term Securities Lending Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility and a monster called the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (boasting the chat-room horror-show acronym ABCPMMMFLF). For good measure, there’s also something called a Money Market Investor Funding Facility, plus three facilities called Maiden Lane I, II and III to aid bailout recipients like Bear Stearns and AIG.

While the rest of America, and most of Congress, have been bugging out about the $700 billion bailout program called TARP, all of these newly created organisms in the Federal Reserve zoo have quietly been pumping not billions but trillions of dollars into the hands of private companies (at least $3 trillion so far in loans, with as much as $5.7 trillion more in guarantees of private investments). Although this technically isn’t taxpayer money, it still affects taxpayers directly, because the activities of the Fed impact the economy as a whole. And this new, secretive activity by the Fed completely eclipses the TARP program in terms of its influence on the economy.

No one knows who’s getting that money or exactly how much of it is disappearing through these new holes in the hull of America’s credit rating. Moreover, no one can really be sure if these new institutions are even temporary at all — or whether they are being set up as permanent, state-aided crutches to Wall Street, designed to systematically suck bad investments off the ledgers of irresponsible lenders.

“They’re supposed to be temporary,” says Paul-Martin Foss, an aide to Rep. Ron Paul. “But we keep getting notices every six months or so that they’re being renewed. They just sort of quietly announce it.”

None other than disgraced senator Ted Stevens was the poor sap who made the unpleasant discovery that if Congress didn’t like the Fed handing trillions of dollars to banks without any oversight, Congress could apparently go fuck itself — or so said the law. When Stevens asked the GAO about what authority Congress has to monitor the Fed, he got back a letter citing an obscure statute that nobody had ever heard of before: the Accounting and Auditing Act of 1950. The relevant section, 31 USC 714(b), dictated that congressional audits of the Federal Reserve may not include “deliberations, decisions and actions on monetary policy matters.” The exemption, as Foss notes, “basically includes everything.” According to the law, in other words, the Fed simply cannot be audited by Congress. Or by anyone else, for that matter.

Maybe the looting of the treasury is necessary for the economic salvation of the republic. The point is at least arguable. But even if so, isn’t it best that it be done by accountable elected officials?

Ron’s got a scene in Sacha Baron Cohen’s next movie, sounds like.

Some of the left-libertarian crowd might take Paul’s conduct as evidence of homophobia. Maybe. But I think people ought to be given a pass on saying “he’s a queer!” and running from the room when a guy drops his pants and tries to mount you.

A February report for Missouri Law Enforcement titled “The Modern Militia Movement” was released, and includes this gem:

The Feb. 20 report called “The Modern Militia Movement” mentions such red flags as political bumper stickers for third-party candidates, such as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, who ran for president last year; talk of conspiracy theories, such as the plan for a superhighway linking Canada to Mexico; and possession of subversive literature.

Well crap.

You ever meet anybody with a Rudy Giuliani bumper sticker on their car? Now those motherfuckers are crazy…

I am putting this post up as a placeholder until the YouTube comes online. Just caught the tail end. All I can tell you was that the final discussion was on Stephen Baldwin (aka The Dumb and a Little Wetbrained Right-Winger Baldwin) and Ron Paul’s respective experiences with marijuana.

Ha. Ron Paul = awesome.

Paraphrase: “I voted against every appropriation bill ever put in front of me, so you can’t say I’ve ever voted for an earmark. But the point is, I’d rather we had more earmarks rather than things like TARP, where you have no idea where it’s going. And besides, if I can give my district any of its money back, I will; that’s the same reason I vote for every tax cut put in front of me, no matter how ridiculous.”

Sort of convoluted, and clearly he’s trying to have it both ways, but pretty funny anyway.

Last week, Michael Steele was on D.L. Hughley’s show and ended up creating for himself a crisis of leadership in the Republican party.

This week, Ron Paul goes on the show and gets his ass kissed.

+1 Ron Paul

Adding: the most prominent black talk show host in America just told Ron Paul that he convinced him on the Civil war.

+2.

Wait for it…

WASHINGTON (Feb. 28) — Conservative activists on Saturday named former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney the winner of a poll for best 2012 GOP presidential candidate.

The poll marked the third consecutive year Romney came out on top.

No suprise there. The Republicans are royalists, and tend to nominate whosever turn it is. Still…waaaaait for it…

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal placed second in the annual poll, conducted at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Romney received 20 percent of the vote and Jindal got 14 percent.

Reasonable, given the de facto Limbaugh endorsement. And waaaaaaaaaaait for it…

Close behind were Texas Rep. Ron Paul and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who each received 13 percent of the vote.

OK. Yes, I understand, the Paulites had a chance to rally at CPAC. But…thirteen percent??? And a tie with Palin in a poll of her core constituency? I damn well GUARANTEE you that the CfL rally did not involve thirteen percent of the attendees.

And all of this, mind you, after Dr. Paul has formally ruled out a run.

I did not expect this. Not at all. Strange things are afoot in the GOP.

Apparently there’s a site that lets users submit their own Obama-esque posters. One of the entries is a retouch of a photograph our friend Clay took in a dispatch I posted here (no idea what happened to the code in that post).

Paul was on Morning Joe today, and they threw apparantly everyone they had in the studio at him in the course of 10 minutes. Clearly, the answer that we can’t necessarily solve the current financial crisis isn’t one anybody wants to hear.