RON PAUL did an excellent job at the debates on Saturday night YET...

Yes, I appreciate Ron Paul, especially on constitutional issues!

However, Ron Paul's von Mises Institute economic theories are, IMO, bunk. Why exit the WTO and then unilaterally eliminate all tariffs and other trade barriers? It makes no sense here on the USA ground of America First! - even if it seems to present some kind of utopian vision from the ivory towers of the von Mises Institute.

So, who do I support for president? Buddy Roemer.

Check out this video --

"Goldman friggin' Sachs" - Gov. Buddy Roemer on MSNBC's Morning Joe

Buddy is running for the GOP nomination in New Hampshire. He's been both a congressman and a governor (Louisiana). As governor, he took on special interests like public employee unions. He's also been a very successful head of a small independent bank (assets about $1B), which never accepted bail-out funds because it never became insolvent.

It's bad enough that media talking-heads lock out Ron Paul, but the RNC plus the medis and all the other usual suspects go out of their way to lock Buddy out of even getting tp say a single word in the sham debates!

Here's what the pols and insiders don't like about Buddy. He refuses to take corporate, union or PAC money, and he will not accept more than $100 from any one person!

Ron Paul worries the SOBs. Buddy scares the crap out of them! Buddy's the only one who is truly free to lead.

Buudy Roemer for President!

Ron Paul is the only GOP candidate substantially different from the current U.S. President.

Many (possibly rightfully) question Ron Paul's chance at winning the Republican nomination, much less the general election, but pushing Roemer is downright silly.  I doubt 1% of the population has even heard of Buddy Roemer ( I know I hadn't ), much less would consider voting for him as president.

At least for me, Ron Paul is just about the perfect candidate, execept for his age.  He has a very long track record of principled consistency and integrity.  He's a medical doctor that has delivered 4,000 babies and served as a Captain in the Air Force.  Can anyone even imagine a sex scandel involving Ron Paul, or finding out that sold his influence for personal gain?  It would be too out of character.

Roemer's Website lists the following false claims about Ron Paul.

1. Ron Paul has no business experience.  My understanding is he was a family practice obstetrician before running for congress.  It says Roemer has substantial private sector experience and can speak authentically about fixing the economy.  I guess Ron Paul can't speak authentically about fixing the economy?
2. Ron Paul would not repeal Obama care.  I don't know what Roemer is smoking here but it must be some good stuff to be so wrong.
3. Ron Paul would not eliminate corruption in DC and reform campaign finance laws.  Once again must be some good stuff he's smoking...
4. Ron Paul does not have "Integrity and Independence" because of of PAC money.  This one makes me laugh.

If Ron Paul becomes president and is able to end drug prohibition, at least Roemer will be able to continue his access to high quality narcotics .

I am not saying that Roemer is a bad candidate, only that he is no Ron Paul.  He might even be worth a look as a third party candidate if he is running against Gingrich and Obama because there is no way I will vote for one of them.

And I would also add Edwin Viera Jr., as top financial constitutional monetary advisor to Ron Paul's staff.

Two announcements of the opening of our local Ron Paul campaign headquarters, to include a bit of video including me and my family in the first link:

http://www.kfxa.tv/shared/newsroom/top_stories/videos/kfxa_vid_9170.shtml

http://www.dailyiowan.com/2011/12/13/Metro/26394.html

And, an endorsement of Ron Paul from the University of Iowa paper:

http://www.dailyiowan.com/2011/12/12/Opinions/26348.html

Super Job Doc!

No_Fiat asks "Is Roemer for or against the Federal Reserve System?" in the context of "the cancerous results which ensue from the fiat system."

Here's report from Times-Picayune staff (at nola.com), dated November 26 --

Former Gov. Buddy Roemer was in Washington last week, live-tweeting the latest Republican presidential debate to which he wasn't invited, delivering an open letter to Congress chastising the deficit-reduction supercommittee for failing to agree on a budget deal and offering his own four-point plan, and paying a low-key visit to the scruffy Occupy D.C. encampment in McPherson Square a few blocks from the White House.

Without any fanfare, Roemer spoke with whomever he encountered, including Amanda "Hopper" Rickard, a 28-year-old singer-songwriter from Chantilly, Va., who had joined the D.C. encampment the day before, and told Roemer that the Federal Reserve should stop printing more money and called for election of members of the Federal Reserve board. Roemer said he worried that would enable big-money candidates to effectively buy a seat.

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2011/11/buddy_roemer_takes_low-buzz_pr.html

I hope No_Fiat and others get the point. The corrupt Fed system is perpetuated by the Congress/POTUS/SCOTUS-for-sale system. Buddy is opposed to that, and he supports extensive reform of the banking/monetary system. (He says Dodd-Frank was "too little, too late.")

Buddy founded and developed a bank in New Orleans that never accepted any bail-out money because it never became insolvent, even though it never foreclosed on a single residential property (loans were restructured) during the 2008 financial collapse. Buddy explains "that's what banks are supposed to do." (Obviously, his bank did not make stupid loans in the first place.)

No_Fiat also mentions that Edwin Viera, Jr., has been named "top financial constitutional monetary advisor to Ron Paul's staff." Certainly, Viera is cut out for that job and vice versa.

I think that No_Fiat, Viera and Paul differ from Buddy in that they tend to approach finance and politics from an ideological or theoretical standpoint, whereas Buddy approaches ideology and theory from the viewpoint of someone who has spent a lifetime in the practical world -- the last twenty years as an independent banker and before that as a member of Congress and as Governor or Louisiana.

Paul too has spent his life in the practical world, but he has decided on an ideology originating in a more academic setting. For better or worse, Buddy hasn't really settled on any ideology -- so that's unsatisfying to No_Fiat and probably to others. My philosophy is old-fashiioned conservatism, which means no ideology -- that's very different from ideological neo-con or paleo-con conservatism. That doesn't make me right and No_Fiat wrong, just different. approaches.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg? The fiat or the Fed? Political corruption or monetary corruption? I'm sure that's a good question, but meanwhile we have gnarly everyday reality to deal with.

Buddy Roemer, like Ron Paul, has chosen to confront the monster in the current political-economic context. Paul and Roemer attack the monster from different sides, but it's the same monster. It would be silly to suppose that Roemer and Paul, being on different sides of the monster, are therefore attacking each other!
 
 

Believe me I did not go googling for some obsure quotes.  I don't care enough about Buddy to do that.

Straight off Buddy's site under Issues -> See how the Presidential Candidates Compare

Who is misrepresenting whos positions, me or Buddy?

As long as Dr. Paul leads in Iowa (or near the front) these questions are going to start to pop up. He has come out several times saying he wouldn't support The Civil Rights bill. He says it's because of property rights, but from my point of view it's to important not to have voted yes on it.

He needs to be asked the question directly about the newsletter published in his name, and explain who the authors were. He needs to explain why things with such racist tones were published in his name, whether or not he was the author.

They were published. His name was on the title. If they weren't his views, then why didn't he come out against them in plain language?

I think you are all giving unjustifiable capacity for any President to fix an unfixable predicament myself.......

Mike

BTW: Thanks also to radishcake for publishing excellent remarks by Ron Paul (2002) titled 'What Really Divides Us'. I have always thought that the charges of racism against Ron Paul were bogus.

Back to goes211 --

The chart from Buddy's website is very helpful to understanding differences between the two candidates! There's a problem in that you have to read the footnotes for more detail. Those are available by clicking on the live link to

http://www.scribd.com/doc/73226294/2012-Presidential-Candidate-Comparison-Chart

Even without going to the footnotes, there's an obvious difference between headings and actual criteria in Buddy's chart, so taking the heading and objecting because of how you interpret it ... that won't work to advance understanding between us. As is clear from the title of the webpage and the chart, the headings -- one, two or three words each -- are intended to indicate issues, not to state criteria. The criteria, however, are not difficult to read and understand -- one short sentence each! Hence, the criterion for marking each box YES or NO is given in the one sentence under each heading. A YES under a candidate indicates agreement on a specific issue, whereas a NO indicates a difference between that candidate and Buddy on that issue.

So, here's how I see the four points originally raised by g0es211 --

1. "REPEAL OBAMACARE" doesn't equate to "Would the candidate repeal Obamacare?" The chart is to indicate how candidates compare with Buddy on the issues, so YES means agreeing with Buddy on the one-sentence criterion stated. For example, the YES under Romney indicates that Romney would agree with Buddy about pre-existing conditions, whereas the NO under Ron Paul indicates disagreement on that. Of course, both Roemer and Paul would repeal Medicare, but Paul's repeal proposal and Buddy's are not the same. Ron Paul's proposal would allow insurers to reject people based on pre-existing claims and arguably would do away with reserve requirements in an unregulated system, whereas Buddy says that he "will repeal Obamacare in favor of an affordable system that doesn't reject pre-existing conditions." (Buddy also wants to see the 1945 law, intended as a stop-gap due to a Supreme Court ruling -- that changed stare decesis that exempted insurance from regulation and anti-trust law -- to be repealed.) There's a difference, and you probably favor Ron Paul on this issue, but that doesn't mean that Buddy ever made a statement that Ron Paul would NOT repeal Obamacare.

There's so much not to like in Obamacare. The Act may even be repealed on constitutional grounds, at least in part, before the November election.

Here's what the footnote explains about the difference between Roemer and Paul on medical insurance --

"Paul’s plan to simply let the private market regulate healthcare is out of touch with mainstream, independent-minded voters."

I would add to this that we see how well self-regulation works (NOT) in the MF Global debacle. But Ron Paul has his view of these issues, and it would be great, IMO, to have Buddy in the debates so that these real issues could be debated -- rather than the non-issues that seem to be getting all the after-debate media coverage.

2. "ANTI-CORRUPTION" Here the criterion is whether the candidate would reform campaign finance laws. Well, the simple truth is that Paul and Roemer are opposed on this issue -- Paul is opposed to campaign finance laws of any kind. Once again, Paul goes idealistically to self-regulation as the answer. I think that is an ideological response disconnected from reality. In any event, all Buddy is asking of Paul is to place a limit on the size of contributions that he will accept (the figure to be up to Paul) and/or refuse to accept PAC money. Buddy also wants candidates to fully disclose, so everyone would know who is behind their campaign. Buddy already voluntarily does all that. By contrast, Paul helped to defeat the DISLOSE Act.

Here again, we see a real difference between Paul and Roemer, and it would be great to see Roemer in the debates so that this real issue could be discussed. Then the people could decide.

3. "INTEGRITY AND INDEPENDENCE" Here the meaning is clear -- "Refuse all PAC and SuperPAC money to be Free to Lead" Buddy does that -- Paul won't consider it. You (goes211) are certain of Paul's integrity and independence because .... ???

Since Paul accepts money without limitation and opposes transparency, can you expect everyone else in the country to vote for Paul based on your opinion that Paul is absolutely incorruptible and his integrity and independence cannot be questioned? Buddy makes it easy. He reports all contributions with names every few days. It's all on the record. He accepts no corporate, union or PAC money. He's opposed to the Congress/POTUS/SCOTUS-for-sale system. Ron Paul accepts the corruption as a fact of life that cannot be changed, in favor of a down-the-road pie-in-the-sky world where integrity magically has been restored through the absence of any regulation.

4. "EXPERIENCED" and "BUSINESS EXPERIENCE" First, under "EXPERIENCED", Buddy asks if any candidate can compare on the criterion of having BOTH legislative (Congress) and executive (Governor of a state) experience? Paul doesn't have that experience, nor do any of the others. About "BUSINESS EXPERIENCE," I don't think that the average person would consider being in private practice as a physician to amount to the "substantial private sector business" experience that Buddy undoubtedly has.

I really think that if you will do more than glance over the chart in order to extract out-of-context points with which to accuse Buddy of lying about Paul, you'll see that there are no lies. Rather, the chart points to areas of disagreement among the candidates versus Buddy. There are, after all, substantial areas of disagreement that can be discovered by studying the chart and the footnotes. I am not denying that!

Please note that there are three areas where Buddy fully approves of Paul -- "REDUCED SPENDING", "REDUCED REGULATIONS", and, "MAIN STREET, NOT WALL STREET" (rejection of the TBTF bank bail-outs).

You can also see that on Roemer's two main issues of "Anti-Corruption" and "Tough on China" Roemer finds not only Paul, but all the other candidates lacking.

In the case of Ron Paul, I'm not saying that Paul is lacking in ethics, I'm saying that he is lacking in a stand against corruption in Washington. It would be more accurate, reading Paul's statements on this issue, to say that Paul practically supports money corruption of the Congress than that he opposes it.

Similarly, I'm not saying that Paul is outright on the payroll of the People's Republic of China (although it's clear that many members of Congress are). I'm saying that he expresses no interest in opposing the neo-mercantilist agenda of China and no appreciation for the security implications of penetration by China into the commercial and trade infrastructure on which the existence of the USA depends. Paul actually helped to defeat the DISCLOSE Act which would have given us a means to determine if he is taking huge campaign contributions from Chinese corporations or through PACs, or not. We simply do not know.

It comes down to this: Ron Paul is an ideological idealist. That's great for true believers like goes211. But I am a skeptic.

I suppose, if the country gets behind Paul and elects him president, okay, I'm willing to go along and try it even though I have doubts that it can end other than tragically. Of course, most here at CM are certain that we are rapidly approaching a tragic ending anyway. One thing I'm sure of is that without enthusiastic and full support of Ron Paul's goals by the public, his policies would likely get us nowhere unless it would be, objectively, occupation by a foreign power.

I'm surprised that so many differences of opinion are coming to light here. There are differences of opinion, but there are also areas of agreement. If we could get Buddy into the debates, we might really be able to make some progress toward real and effective change in this country. Meanwhile, it's important that at least Ron Paul is in the debates and that people are considering his views.

FINAL BTW: Damnthematrix is probably right that we "are all giving unjustifiable capacity for any President to fix an unfixable predicament." But remember, it ain't over 'til it's over!

My thinking is that if there's any hope for the national politic, it's going to come by way of the Constitution, so I continue to act as though we had a people and government loyal to the Constitution. Maybe that's a fantasy, but how would we ever know if we don't stick with our guns? Of course, I'm aware that there are differences of opinion about the Constitution and whether or if it should be amended on various counts. Still, a major issue to me about any candidate is whether they understand and support the Constitution. I rate Ron Paul high in that regard. I rate Buddy okay on the Constitution, although it isn't something he discusses a lot. I also think probably all the others (Republicans) may be okay on that account, including Romney who understands the constitutional authorization for state medical care system (in Massachusetts) under the 10th Amendment without projecting that to the Federal level (as many ignorantly do). The problem that I have seen is that President Obama, (who taught constitutional law?) is blind to the question raised by Justice Thomas, namely what is the scope of the 10th Amendment in light of all the Supreme Court decisions that ignore it? In other words, if the Commerce Clause has no limits, what is left of the 10th Amendment? One great thing about Ron Paul getting into the debates and into the limelight is that people are getting an education in the Constitution as a result. I still support Buddy. I'm with him on the issues, especially on exposing the corruption in politics. But there are points to appreciate with Ron Paul, and his emphasis on the Constitution is the greatest of those.

Rihter,

I share your concerns, to a degree. I've attached an article from Reason magazine which discusses past publications under Dr. Paul's name which concern me, also. I agree with the conclusions in the article that Dr. Paul should have (and still should) address these concerns more directly than he (apparently) has.

That said, I'm not particularly worried about this issue for several reasons. First, I've met Dr. Paul twice now, and heard him speak in person more than a half dozen times, and I'm always impressed by his honesty and sincerity. Second, among the many (thousands by now) of Ron Paul supporters I have met, I have found none that expressed racist or misogynistic sentiments. I have heard some anti-Muslim comments on occasion, but those have been quite few. The crowds Ron Paul manages to draw are quite diverse, even in overwhelmingly white Iowa. The overall attitude is live and let live among almost all I have met. Thirdly, even if Dr. Paul harbored some racist sentiment (which I personally don't believe), I don't think there is really much likelihood that he could or would have an adverse impact in this regard.

I might be wrong, of course (ask my wife, she will confirm that I sometimes am wrong), but I don't believe that Ron Paul is a racist or would worsen racist sentiment in this country if he were to become President. Still, I wish he would be more forthcoming about these past newsletters:

http://reason.com/archives/2008/01/16/who-wrote-ron-pauls-newsletter