Craig Paul Roberts' Election Priorities

[don]

An Opportunity Gone to Waste
How Libertarian Dogmatists Are Sabotaging Ron Paul’s Campaign

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

If Ron Paul’s libertarian handlers and support base could escape their ideology, Ron Paul could be much better positioned to win the Republican nomination.

Here are some suggestions.

Ron Paul should be making the point that Social Security and Medicare are threatened by multi-trillion dollar wars that are funded by debt, by bailouts of a deregulated banking system, and by money creation to keep the banks afloat. Libertarians support deregulation, but their position has always been that deregulated industries must not be bailed out with public subsidies, much less subsidies that are so extensive that they threaten government solvency and the value of the currency.

Instead of hitting hard on the serious threat to Social Security and Medicare posed by Obama and Republican candidates for the nomination, all of whom serve Wall Street, the military/security complex, and the Israel Lobby, Ron Paul has been positioned both by his supporters and his opponents as the danger to Social Security and Medicare. This is an amazing strategic mistake by the Ron Paul campaign.

The mistake is somewhat understandable. Ron Paul’s supporters are mainly among the young. The importance to them of Social Security and Medicare will not register for many years, but for the vast majority of the population Social Security and Medicare are essential for survival. A candidate who is positioned as the destroyer of what scant economic protection the American elderly have is not positioned to win an election for president.

Many libertarians regard Social Security and Medicare as welfare handouts and as Ponzi schemes, when in fact these programs are a form of private property. People pay for these programs all their working lives, just as they pay premiums for private medical policies and make their deposits into private pension plans. Libertarians are great defenders of private property, so why don’t they defend the elderly’s private property rights in Social Security and Medicare benefits? Social Security and Medicare are contracts that government made with citizens. These contracts are as valid and enforceable as any other contracts. If Social Security and Medicare are in dire trouble, why is the government wasting trillions of dollars in behalf of private armaments industries, a neocon ideology, and Israel’s territorial ambitions? Why isn’t this question the most important issue in the campaign?

Instead, in a decade that has seen two massive stock market crashes and an amazing amount of financial fraud, libertarians prattle on about privatizing Social Security and about how much larger the retirement pensions would be. They speak about delaying the Social Security retirement age to 70 without any thought to what a person does who is retired by his employer at 65. People who suggest making Social Security and Medicare off limits until people reach 70 need to have a look at the cost of private medical plans for older people. A group plan with Blue Cross Blue Shield Florida for a 64-year old woman has a $18,000 premium, large deductibles per medical issue, and a 20 per cent co-pay. Even a person with private insurance faces potentially ruinous health care expenses.

Libertarians will not wait to think before they inform me that private savings are funded but Social Security and Medicare are not. They are incorrect on both accounts.

Social Security and Medicare are funded with a payroll tax. It is true that the government has stolen the funds, spent them, and left non-marketable IOU’s in their place. But in our deregulated casino financial system with street registration of “securities,” the same thing happens to private holdings. Where is the money that individuals had in MF Global? What happened to people’s savings invested with Madoff? What happened to Enron’s investors? Can AIG make good on its promises to pay the benefits that people have purchased? Can banks whose balance sheets are loaded with subprime derivatives make good on their depositors’ accounts? US government debt is a component of many private pension plans. How secure are the values of Treasury bonds?

The notion that free unregulated markets are totally trustworthy is the enormous mistake that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan made, for which American and European peoples continue to pay. Libertarians endorse this fantastic mistake to the hilt.

This is not meant to be an attack on libertarians. Rather, it is an explanation of some of their mistakes. There is much to admire about libertarians. They believe in civil liberty, that is, in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. They understand that government cannot substitute for the market. I know a lot about libertarians. I was associated with them for years, serving for several years as Distinguished Scholar at the Cato Institute until I was run off for independent thinking.

Libertarians are sectarian, and their tolerance does not extend beyond their ideology.

The biggest mistake that libertarians make is the way they view government and private sectors. Government is the root of all evil, and the private sector is the source of all good. Libertarians have never figured out that people are the same whether in the government or in the private sector. They will abuse their power regardless of where they perch. That is why government needs to be tied down by the Constitution and the private sector by regulation. Yes, regulation can go too far. Certainly, deregulation has gone too far.

The ongoing financial crisis from deregulation and ongoing jobs crisis from offshoring constitute empirical evidence that the belief is false that an unfettered private sector is the source of all good.

Some readers misunderstood the point of my previous column, “America’s Last Chance.” I am endorsing the U.S. Constitution and making the point that Ron Paul is the only candidate for president in either party who is committed to resurrecting the Constitution. Without the Constitution we cease to be American citizens and become subjects of a tyrannical police state. My complaint is that the only candidate who could bring back the Constitution cannot be elected because of the inflexibility and sectarianism of his base. Possibly there are more worthy third party candidates, but they have no prospect of visibility. Ron Paul is visible, and the opportunity is going to waste.

I hope readers will spare me their comments about how important their various single issues are. There are many important things. The question is: what is the over-riding important thing?

Civil Liberty, essentially the accountability of government to law that serves to protect the innocent, is the historic achievement of the English over many centuries from its beginnings with the foundation for common law established by Alfred the Great in the 9th century through Magna Carta in the 13th century to the Glorious Revolution in the 17th century. If this human achievement is lost, it is unlikely to be resurrected. If the Constitution that Bush and Obama have murdered stays in its grave one more presidential term, no one will be able to re-establish the Constitution’s authority.

And please, no prattle from libertarians about “natural rights.” The only rights we have
are rights achieved by centuries of human struggle that we have the wits and strength to retain.

And no prattle from left-wingers who denounce the Constitution for not protecting slaves and native Indians. The Constitution did not establish universal justice. The Constitution protected the people covered by it. Over time rights were extended. During the past decade the Constitution lost its power. Today rights depend on the subjective opinion of the executive branch. This is tyranny. We should be unified in our opposition to tyranny.

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS was an editor of the Wall Street Journal and an Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/...auls-campaign/

[c1ue]

Re: Craig Paul Roberts' Election Priorities

Excellent points, though PCR doesn't address the elephant in the room: the economy.

RP's biggest weakness for me is the lack of any coherent strategy for pulling the US out of its present economic hole.

[oddlots]

Re: Craig Paul Roberts' Election Priorities

The notion that free unregulated markets are totally trustworthy is the enormous mistake that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan made, for which American and European peoples continue to pay. Libertarians endorse this fantastic mistake to the hilt.

As I've said before, a horrible choice: either a politician who understands civil liberties but completely misses the fact that de-regulated finance is a doomsday device or one of the others that appreciates neither. Ugh.

If I were an American I'd just concentrate on the Get Money Out campaign, but PCR makes a good argument.

[don]

Re: Craig Paul Roberts' Election Priorities

PCR elaborates on how Paul could win:

In the Soviet Union common criminals were punished less harshly and received better treatment than political prisoners. A person who had committed a violent crime had more rights than someone who expressed criticism of the government and could be portrayed as having acted against the government. We now have the same situation in the US.

In a recent case the Supreme Court overturned the sentence of a drug dealer who was convicted on the basis of a warrantless 28-day search by having a GPS device affixed to his car. In other words, a common criminal still has privacy rights under the Constitution, but not US citizens who are suspected of vague and nebulous “terrorist support.”

Both Republicans and Democrats have demonstrated disregard for the civil liberty protections guaranteed by the US Constitution. Among the visible candidates for president, only Ron Paul has respect for the Constitution. As it is now possible for the executive branch to take away the life and liberty of a US citizen without due process of law, the Constitution is for all practical purposes lost. Tyranny looms, and Ron Paul is the only candidate who stands against tyranny.

This is why I have written that Ron Paul is our last chance and encouraged his libertarian handlers to be flexible enough for the electorate to elect Ron Paul. I agree that Ron Paul, if elected president, would be hamstrung by the Establishment, but the other candidates offer no hope whatsoever.

What is at stake is not libertarianism, but the US Constitution. Unfortunately, not many libertarians see that. Neither do many progressives. If truth be known, Americans are too divided and in opposition to one another to be able to unite against tyranny.

In previous columns I explained how Ron Paul could appeal to low income Americans, to elderly Americans, and to those Americans concerned about illegal immigration. I suggested that Ron Paul endorse Ron Unz’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $12 per hour as a way of turning the jobs taken by illegal immigrants into a more livable income for Americans. I suggested that Ron Paul should acknowledge that people who have paid a payroll tax all their working lives have private property rights to Social Security and Medicare benefits.

A number of libertarians replied, as I knew they would from my long years of association with them, with their standard dogmatism that the minimum wage causes unemployment and that Social Security and Medicare are government programs not private property. They were blind to Ron Unz’s point that low wages cause unemployment among Americans who are unable to live on the wages, and, thus, cause an inflow of illegal immigrants who take the low wage jobs.

I don’t need to repeat my suggestions as the columns are available on my web site. I will, however, point out that the fact that Medicare and Social Security are intergenerational transfers does not mean that they are not private property. Consider your homeowner’s policy. If your neighbor’s home burns down or a person’s home in a distant location, the insurance company draws on the pool of funds created by policy holders’ premiums in order to compensate the person who lost his home. The damaged homeowner is not simply compensated from his own paid-in premiums. If more homeowners are elderly than young, it is an intergenerational transfer when a young homeowner’s home burns down.

Like Medicare, private health insurance is a transfer payment as premiums from the healthy support the care of the sick. Private medical insurance could also be an intergenerational transfer. Premium are adjusted for age, but generally speaking, the young are more healthy than the old.

For Ron Paul to further broaden his base, he also needs to add to my previous suggestions his endorsement of regulation to protect the environment and to protect private savers from fraud and irresponsible debt leverage by private financial institutions.

Libertarians claim that the best way to protect the environment is to have it privately owned. If streams, oceans, and underground aquifers were privately owned, the owners could sue polluters such as the oil companies, the mining companies, agri-business, etc. Thus, private property would protect the environment. Whether this would work or not, we are a long way from such private ownership, and many private economic activities are destroying common environmental resources.

The list is endless. The World Wildlife Fund reports that Asia Pulp & Paper is destroying the last remaining Sumatran tigers by clear cutting the tigers’ last remaining refuge in order to produce toilet paper marketed in the US under the Paseo and LIVI brand names. “Feel the Power! Buy our product and flush a tiger and a rain forest!”

The National Defense Resource Council reports that under an Obama regime and state of Utah plan, massive coal mining will be permitted adjacent to Bryce Canyon National Park. Three hundred heavy diesel trucks per day will travel down the scenic two-lane highway to supply China with dirty coal.

The Obama regime has granted Shell Oil tentative approval to begin drilling off the coast of the Arctic Refuge, the main on-shore birthing ground for polar bears.

Defenders of Wildlife reports that Shell Oil is pushing to open Bristol Bay to oil drilling, despite the danger to fisheries and wildlife and despite the fact that the long-term value of the renewable fisheries far exceeds the short-term value of nonrenewable fossil fuel extraction in the area.

In the Powder River Basin in Montana, coal companies are mobilizing to destroy the water resources and ranchers in the eastern part of the state.

All of these are current hot ticket items with progressives, environmentalists, and ranchers. Obama is vulnerable. He has put the tar sands pipeline on hold, but many believe he will approve the environmentally destructive project once he is re-elected.

Air, water, wildlife, and fish in the sea are not private property and have no protectors. They are being destroyed by the lack of regulation. Moreover, private property has not protected forests from being clearcut or soil from being depleted of its natural nutrients. The chemical farming with which agri-business has replaced natural farming has polluted America’s aquifers, streams, lakes, rivers, and the Gulf of Mexico, which has extensive dead areas from chemical fertilizer run-off.

As Herman Daly and other environmental economists have made clear, the world is running out of sinks into which to dump its wastes. The external costs of unregulated activity are mounting. Once a threshold is crossed, the environment is ruined. The drive to maximize short-run profits is a great source of ruin. The external costs associated with maximizing short-run profits can exceed the value of the private output.

A candidate committed to saving the Constitution, environment, private savings, protecting the security of the elderly, opposing war, and boosting the incomes of the worst off, which has the added benefit of reducing illegal immigration, is a candidate without equal in the presidential election.

We will not have such a candidate, because libertarian sectarian dogmatism will prevent it. Libertarians will be pure to the end and take the Constitution and the rest of us down with them.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/

[DSpencer]

Re: Craig Paul Roberts' Election Priorities

Excellent points, though PCR doesn't address the elephant in the room: the economy.

RP's biggest weakness for me is the lack of any coherent strategy for pulling the US out of its present economic hole.

His strategy is: to stop sucking the life out of the economy through excessive taxation and regulation. To stop taking huge chunks of our GDP and blowing it up in the middle east. To stop paying people to grope 8 year olds in the airport. To stop giving our money to banks and "green" companies that will soon be bankrupt. To enforce current laws against the fraud that undermines confidence in the economy instead of dreaming up redundant or unnecessary ones that also won't be enforced.

What sort of plan do you have that is better than this?

The government can't pull the economy out of its hole anymore than your brakes can pull your car down the street.

[oddlots]

Re: Craig Paul Roberts' Election Priorities

His strategy is: to stop sucking the life out of the economy through excessive taxation and regulation. To stop taking huge chunks of our GDP and blowing it up in the middle east. To stop paying people to grope 8 year olds in the airport. To stop giving our money to banks and "green" companies that will soon be bankrupt. To enforce current laws against the fraud that undermines confidence in the economy instead of dreaming up redundant or unnecessary ones that also won't be enforced.

What sort of plan do you have that is better than this?

The government can't pull the economy out of its hole anymore than your brakes can pull your car down the street.

I'm a Canuck so feel free to dismiss as I don't have a stake except indirectly but somehow I've got to say this:

This popular American belief that government is useless is to me the epitome of a belief without any upside, at least for the majority and especially the vast majority that cannot, by definition, be enriched by it . I swear it is:

- an invitation to loot the public purse in every conceivable way
- an invitation to treat government positions as a springboard to the looter's private club
- a cover for those representing private interests to add charges to the provision of formerly free (and therefore supportive of real entrepreneurial activities) facilities like infrastructure and, simultaneously, to enrich themselves at others' expense while making the economy that much weaker and the average citizen that much more vulnerable, desperate and pliable
- surrenders the provision of education to one's children and workforce to private, short term interests that surely are unsuited to the responsibility
- makes it impossible, at this late stage of the process, to even formulate any opposition against the forces that, say, allowed US jobs to be off-shored en masse

I've been watching this, mystified for most of my adult life.

America is surrounded by countries that don't suffer from this odd affliction, that have far better quality of life as far as I can see, but somehow are just not ideologically visible. The IMF and OECD's reports this year named Canada as the best place to do business in the world. In other words the socialists are outperforming America's rugged individuals precisely at the business level. And why? Because we somehow side-stepped this mad-house ideological blind alley that insists that anything that government does is doomed to failure and decay. Our educational results are among the world's top 5. All publicly funded. The overhead to business is massively reduced by publicly funded health care, a mirror image of the reduced expenditure as a % of GDP which is a key metric.

When Raz* disses PBS for putting out liberal propaganda with his tax dollars I hear this same thing. Frontline, just as an example, produces the best documentaries anywhere. One might quible with individual shows but I have been watching it for a decade or more and the record is astonishingly good. And I actually grew up watching Firing Line with William F. Buckley with my dad every week, then debating it to the extreme boredom of the rest of the family (Fun!) How is it that it is not a treasured institution like the BBC? Why is it impossible to recognise a good national institution as just that? West Point get's a pass but PBS doesn't? In fact the American Military is the most trusted institution from the polls I've seen, but every other "not-for-profit" is a dead weight?

How is it that profit seeking is the only thing that's allowed - conceptually at least - to allow people to gain unassailable respect? I don't mean practically, but in ideological terms. In our everyday life I swear this isn't borne out for a day. I've been managing people for about 20 years. By and large I'm surprised how little money has to with incentives. My sense is that people are looking for respect, job satisfaction and a sense of common purpose and hope for advancement as a reward for good work. (I'm not in banking.)

I just really think that the private good / public baaaad is just a hopeless constraint in a very challenging 2012 environment. The fact that Ron Paul is still proclaiming it in this form in completely bald terms - with success, ugh - after living through the outrageous results of "market deregulation" is enormously depressing

* hey Raz, no disrespect, just an example.

[c1ue]

Re: Craig Paul Roberts' Election Priorities

His strategy is: to stop sucking the life out of the economy through excessive taxation and regulation. To stop taking huge chunks of our GDP and blowing it up in the middle east. To stop paying people to grope 8 year olds in the airport. To stop giving our money to banks and "green" companies that will soon be bankrupt. To enforce current laws against the fraud that undermines confidence in the economy instead of dreaming up redundant or unnecessary ones that also won't be enforced.

What sort of plan do you have that is better than this?

The government can't pull the economy out of its hole anymore than your brakes can pull your car down the street.

While I agree that foreign conflicts like Afghanistan and Iraq hurt the US bottom line, the actual bottom line is that some of those conflicts are necessary to preserve the US dollar as a reserve currency and the petrodollar standard, as well as US primacy in international affairs.

Ending these conflicts, even disregarding the impacts on the above, isn't going to fix the economy and arguably would hurt it significantly. Bringing to troops home isn't going to reverse the outsourcing trend, nor will it reverse multinational corporation's tax games, nor will it improve unemployment. If anything the return of all those soldiers, the ending of all those fat supply contracts, etc will definitely have a negative overall economic impact while having a smaller positive federal budget impact.

My solution would be to put together a plan for some level of writedown of existing bad debts; to rein in the TBTF banks into the subservient role they should be in; to re-empower the regulatory agencies which need it like the FBI and SEC, and to rein in the regulatory agencies which do not like the EPA.

I'd also look hard at ways to push the US regulatory and tax systems to account for the actual overall cost/benefit for foreign vs. US jobs, as well as strongly push for energy and infrastructure development.

Your previously expressed libertarian views naturally lead you to think that the 'free market' will accomplish all of the above and that it is the government that is to blame; I strongly disagree.

The government is to blame only in the sense that it has abrogated its fiduciary duty to the American people in favor of the few.

This is a fixable situation.

So long as RP has nothing more to offer than bringing the troops home and the Constitution, he will never have any traction with the vast majority of Americans who care primarily about their livelihoods.

[flintlock]

Re: Craig Paul Roberts' Election Priorities

Excellent points, though PCR doesn't address the elephant in the room: the economy.

RP's biggest weakness for me is the lack of any coherent strategy for pulling the US out of its present economic hole.

Couldn't the same be said of all the candidates? I've watched two Republican debates and the only real "issue" brought up in either was illegal immigration. After that they all devolved into name calling and rehashing events that happened 20 years ago.

Can anyone tell me Romney's strategy? Besides get elected I mean. Newt wants to go to the moon, big deal. This is all they can come up with?

[c1ue]

Re: Craig Paul Roberts' Election Priorities

Can anyone tell me Romney's strategy? Besides get elected I mean. Newt wants to go to the moon, big deal. This is all they can come up with?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politi...l6J_story.html

NORTH LAS VEGAS, Nev. — The far-reaching economic plan that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney put forward on Tuesday relies heavily on the premise that reviving the economy depends on getting the government out of the way of corporations.

Romney’s prescription for the country’s ailing economy includes overhauling federal tax, regulatory, trade and energy policies. His is a collection of business-friendly ideas that fit neatly within the mainstream of the Republican Party, with a few innovative proposals sprinkled throughout, namely tougher stances on China and labor unions.

“The right answer for America is not to grow government or to believe that government can create jobs. It is instead to create the conditions that allow the private sector and entrepreneurs to create jobs and to grow our economy. Growth is the answer, not government,” Romney said as he released the plan, called “Believe in America.”

That may be a questionable concept at a time when businesses are seeing record profits but have not put them into the kind of hiring and investment that could start a national economic recovery. At the same time, though, polls show that voters are losing faith in the Obama administration and its embrace of government as a solution to many of the country’s problems.

So in many ways, the terms of engagement between the president and Romney, as well as the rest of the Republican field, are set. “The politics of contrast are pretty simple here,” conservative economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin said.

Channeling the management consultant he used to be, Romney presented the outlines of a 59-point plan, published in a 160-page book. His aides boasted that it is the most specific proposal any presidential candidate has offered.
Romney spoke without a prepared text under a banner that read, “Day One, Job One,” inside a sweltering North Las Vegas truck warehouse. He laid out 10 actions he said he would take on his first day in the Oval Office that would create more certainty for businesses.

They include five measures that would: lower the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 35 percent; implement free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea; expand domestic energy exploration; consolidate worker retraining programs and turn them over to the states; and cut non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent. (President Obama supports those three trade agreements, although he has been accused of dithering to satisfy the demands of organized labor.)

If elected, the former Massachusetts governor said he would issue five executive orders on Inauguration Day. They would roll back Obama’s health-care overhaul; eliminate Obama-era regulations; issue new oil-drilling permits; reverse a number of policies that favor organized labor; and sanction China for currency manipulation.

“I’ll clamp down on the cheaters, and China’s the worst example of that,” Romney said. “We can’t have a trade war. But we can’t have a trade surrender, either.”

He said he would cut the size of the federal workforce by 10 percent through attrition, possibly by hiring only one employee for every two who leave.

We might not agree with it or like it, but Romney does have a plan.

[DSpencer]

Re: Craig Paul Roberts' Election Priorities

I'm a Canuck so feel free to dismiss as I don't have a stake except indirectly but somehow I've got to say this:

This popular American belief that government is useless...

That's not my belief. I believe that the government is very useful for certain roles. I don't believe that running/directing/controlling the economy is one of those roles.

- an invitation to loot the public purse in every conceivable way - Not sure what is meant by the public purse.
- an invitation to treat government positions as a springboard to the looter's private club - This happens precisely because government has too much power in inappropriate areas so that government positions are an extension of private companies. In a country where government doesn't pick winners and losers, there's no reason for companies to buy and plant people in gov. positions.
- a cover for those representing private interests to add charges to the provision of formerly free (and therefore supportive of real entrepreneurial activities) facilities like infrastructure and, simultaneously, to enrich themselves at others' expense while making the economy that much weaker and the average citizen that much more vulnerable, desperate and pliable - Really? Free? Nothing is free. Infrastructure is a broad term, but I would happily live in a country where highways and sewers were provided by government. This is a low priority issue for me anyway.
- surrenders the provision of education to one's children and workforce to private, short term interests that surely are unsuited to the responsibility - The US has private schools. They are not particularly impressive. The US has private schools. Guess where our President sends his daughters to school?
- makes it impossible, at this late stage of the process, to even formulate any opposition against the forces that, say, allowed US jobs to be off-shored en masse

America is surrounded by countries that don't suffer from this odd affliction, that have far better quality of life as far as I can see, but somehow are just not ideologically visible. The IMF and OECD's reports this year named Canada as the best place to do business in the world. In other words the socialists are outperforming America's rugged individuals precisely at the business level. And why? Because we somehow side-stepped this mad-house ideological blind alley that insists that anything that government does is doomed to failure and decay. Our educational results are among the world's top 5. All publicly funded. The overhead to business is massively reduced by publicly funded health care, a mirror image of the reduced expenditure as a % of GDP which is a key metric.

Rugged individuals? Go to an American Walmart for a more typical stereotype. For the most part, our free market is gone and so are many of our rugged individualists.

Our health care system is terribly flawed. Calling it free market would be an obvious lie. My opinion is that it's more due to a failure/corruption of government than a lack of government intervention. The healthcare (in particular insurance, although I'm biased) industry has bought its government influence just like every major and profitable industry.

All that being said, I've seen first-hand your Canadian citizens come to my American hospital because the services they want are either unavailable or have excessive waiting times.

I just really think that the private good / public baaaad is just a hopeless constraint in a very challenging 2012 environment. The fact that Ron Paul is still proclaiming it in this form in completely bald terms - with success, ugh - after living through the outrageous results of "market deregulation" is enormously depressing

Our markets are rigged, not deregulated.

Think of the government's role in the economy like its role in your sex/marital life. Do you want the government to protect you from rape? Of course. Do you want them to determine your partner? I sure don't.

And you could argue: but just look at all the problems created by letting people make their own choices!

I just happen to value my freedom enough to take that chance. I know it's not perfect, but c'est la vie.