By Ben Cohen: A note to our readers, I will be discussing the double dip recession in the UK on the RT network at 4pm ET with Abby Martin, so please tune in if you have time. I wrote a piece yesterday about the crisis, arguing that the austerity measures passed by the Conservative government are not working, proving that it is impossible to cut your way out of recession.

As the election looms, I think this argument is going to become more and more prominent, and will probably be the focus of the debate between Obama and Romney. Each candidate offers a different approach to the economy, and choosing the right one will be crucial to the economic future of the US. In short, Romney wants to cut, and Obama wants to spend. We’ve seen the results of cutting in Europe (double dip recessions, extreme unemployment, and bleak projections for future growth), while the US economy continues to grow after the injection of stimulus money into the economy.

I’m consistently amazed that politicians continue to argue that cutting spending is the way forward despite the very visible evidence that is not. I watched the debate last night between Ron Paul and Paul Krugman and found it fascinating to see Paul regurgitate his fanatical belief in free markets regardless of facts on the ground. Krugman did his best to point out the madness of Paul’s beliefs, but there was little point as Paul refused to acknowledge government could do anything positive in the economy.

Paul’s points are often difficult to argue with as much of his analysis is correct – the US monetary system is deeply corrupt and unsustainable in the long run, and much of this has to do with the reliance on debt as a motivator for growth. The Federal reserve has been complicit in funding bubbles, jacking up inflation, and encouraging unsustainable levels of debt – all acts Paul believes are fraudulent and illegal.

“Inflation is theft,” argued Paul. “You’re stealing value from people who save money. Why should people get 1 percent for their money for savings in the banks get it for practically free? Why did the Federal Reserve bail out the rich and not give the money to the mortgage holders?”

While Paul makes some salient points, his solutions are flat out crazy. Dismantling the entire monetary system when it was responsible for building much of the nation’s wealth would be utterly suicidal – a fact that Paul never wants to acknowledge.

“You can’t leave the government out of monetary policy,” Krugman told Paul. “If you think that you can avoid that, you’re living in a world that was 150 years ago….We have an economy in which money is not just green pieces of paper with faces of dead presidents on them. Money is a part of the financial system that includes a variety of assets — we’re not quite sure where the line between money and non-money is. It’s a continuum.”

Krugman also pointed out that even Milton Friedman argued that the Fed was responsible for the Great Depression in the 1920′s as it didn’t print enough money:

“It’s really telling that in America right now, Milton Friedman would count as being on the far left in monetary policy”

Milton Friedman: A Lefty? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Paul stuck to his guns arguing that the only way to create a stable economy for the future would be to radically undermine the powers of the Federal Reserve and ensure government had as little to do with monetary policy as possible.

“The point is, the Fed does either too much or too little and they can’t do it,” said Paul. “They don’t have a good record – they’ve ruined 98 percent of the value of the currency since 1913.”

While Paul may be technically right, since 1913 the United States has also become the greatest economic power in human history.

Obviously, it’s doing something right.

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By Kim Barker: He may be in last place when it comes to delegates, but when it comes to filing expense reports with the FEC, Ron Paul beats

Ron Paul, Transparency Fanatic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

everyone.

His campaign’s hyper-vigilance is notable, verging on fanatical.

Every bank fee, every 22 cents at a FedEx, every $1 toll on the Florida turnpike, every $5.09 pit stop at any Starbucks anywhere, every doughnut from Dunkin’ Donuts and Dough Nutz — it’s all right there, itemized in the Paul campaign’s copious expenditure reports. In 160 instances so far, the campaign has reported purchases costing a single dollar or less.

Last week, ProPublica examined the spending of the five presidential candidates and the major super PACs, identifying their 200 top payees.  But as part of digging into the more than $306 million spent through February, it was impossible to avoid the other end of the spectrum: The small bucks, if you will.

The Paul campaign tracks every cent like no other, which Paul campaign officials say is deliberate.

“We take the trust our donors place in us very seriously and are deeply committed to transparency and accuracy in our reporting,” wrote Paul’s campaign manager, Jesse Benton, in an email response to ProPublica.

Deeply, indeed.

Under Federal Election Commission rules, campaigns only have to disclose expenditures of more than $200 per election cycle to an individual or a vendor. And, for most campaigns, that’s mostly how it works. Sure, there’s the odd $1 rental car expense for Mitt Romney’s campaign, a few $5 bank fees for Newt Gingrich, and the inexplicable one-cent expense reported by Rick Santorum to the Stoney Creek Inn in Johnston, Iowa. But generally, they don’t sweat the small stuff.

By and large, neither does President Barack Obama’s campaign, which explains on its reports that it specifies travel reimbursements totaling over $500 to any individual and payments to vendors that exceed $200 for the election cycle, but otherwise doesn’t itemize.

That just won’t do for the Paul campaign. A similar thoroughness seems to extend to one of the super PACs supporting him, Endorse Liberty. Super PACs, like other outside spending groups, are supposed to file reports of independent expenditures2014TV ads or phone calls or direct mail on behalf of or against a candidate2014within a day or two, depending on the time in the election cycle. But Endorse Liberty files all expense within 48 hours, including the $71.92 spent at Captain George’s Seafood Restaurant on Feb. 13 and the 8 cents paid to Google for online advertising on Feb. 27.

Paul’s expenditures show what it’s like to run for president and life on the trail.  It’s a journey through gas stations and fast-food joints in towns like Romeoville, Ill., Sugar Land, Texas, and Correctionville, Iowa. There’s a kind of poetry to the purchases, which range from the austere ($59.50 for meals at the Puritan Backroom), to the whimsical ($28.43 for a meal at The Peddler’s Daughter) to the downright depressing ($26.72 for catering from Little Caesars pizza in Colorado on New Year’s Day).

Like Paul himself, the campaign staffers often seem to value thrift. On Oct. 18, for instance, someone spent $1.09 for office equipment at the Dollar Tree in Baton Rouge. Eight days later, someone else spent $1 at a Salvation Army on Sheep Davis Road in New Hampshire for event supplies.

Staffers often ate cheap, spending $1.39 for a meal at the Circle K in El Dorado, Kan., on Sept. 27, $1.27 at the Kwik Star in Charles City, Iowa, on Dec. 9, and 99 cents at the Conoco in Moses Lake, Wash., on Feb. 20. Well, maybe they weren’t meals.

“We actually don’t have any food here,” said Chris Chase, the manager of that Conoco, who didn’t recall anyone from the Paul campaign and actually had never heard of the Paul campaign. “We’ve got some candies. Suckers are under $1. We’ve got some protein bars for 99 cents, some Planters peanuts for 59 cents.”

There were a few splurges: For example, the $26,690.01 listed for staying at the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno, Nev.

Though exhaustive, the Paul campaign’s record of purchases sometimes left us wanting to know even more. How is it possible to stop 119 times at the same Kum & Go gas station in Ankeny, Iowa? And what office supply was possibly downloaded for $1.07 on iTunes on Nov. 25?

We asked, but the campaign offered no response. Sadly, we may never know. (Update: Thanks to Twitter, we can report that the Kum & Go is less than a half-mile from Paul’s Iowa headquarters.)
This story was orginally co-published on ProPublica and Yahoo! News.

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The best money can buy

By Ben Cohen: Michael Scherer has a great article in Time Magazine on how much each of the Republican candidates spent vs. how many votes they have received in the primaries thus far. The breakdown:

How much has the entire Romney campaign spent per vote received? $17.14, which is a lot more than the $2.54 that Santorum spent, or the $9.05 that Gingrich has spent, and topped only by the $31.55 that Paul spent.

What do these numbers tell us? Both a lot and a little. We can say convincingly that Santorum has been overperforming, compared with the field, while Romney has been underperforming. If Romney were a corporation, it would hire a Bain consultant to come in and figure out how to reduce its cost per vote.

It is interesting that the two candidates most obsessed with the efficiencies of the market are essentially the least efficient when it comes to dollars spent vs. performance. Romney and Paul have failed the ‘ideas’ market and have been bailing themselves out in order to compete. Scherer suggests Romney hire a consultant to improve performance. I’ll take it a step further – he should fire himself.

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By Ray McGovern: When CNN interviews a U.S. Army corporal preparing for his third deployment to Afghanistan, should TV viewers be permitted to hear him out on a front-burner issue like Iran’s alleged threat to Israel? For those who might think so, watch what happens when 28-year-old Cpl. Jesse Thorsen touches a neuralgic nerve by suggesting that Israel can take care of itself.

It’s impossible to say exactly what happened to the remote feed that suddenly got lost in transmission back to CNN Central, but the minute-long video is truly worth a thousand words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7yTCPDgDgo&NR=1&feature=endscreen

The interview, which dates back to Jan. 3 when the Iowa caucuses were the evening’s big news, is at least symbolic of how our Fawning Corporate Media treats dissident voices that clash with the prevailing pro-war-on-Iran bias. I missed the segment when it aired, but I think it still merits comment today as war clouds thicken, again.

In the aborted one-minute segment, Cpl. Thorsen is interviewed by CNN’s Dana Bash, who presumably picked him out for the live interview because he had a large tattoo on his neck about never forgetting 9/11. The tattoo – plus two tours in Afghanistan behind him (and yet another in front of him) – may have suggested to Bash and her CNN producers that Thorsen was unlikely to say anything to muddle or muffle the new drumbeat for war.

Based on Thorsen’s military appearance alone, the typical CNN viewer could almost settle back in an easy chair and anticipate some stirring patriotic bathos about America standing tall – and the interview ending with the obligatory “thank you for your service,” which any right-thinking journalist utters to show that he or she is part of Team America.

But Bash got more than she bargained for when Thorsen turned out to be a well-informed and articulate young man who began endorsing Ron Paul’s non-interventionist views on U.S. foreign policy, i.e. that the United States should go to war only when absolutely necessary to defend its vital national interests and shouldn’t be picking a fight with Iran on behalf of Israel.

Such comments, of course, are almost literally heretical at places like CNN, which accepts unquestioningly the idea of “American exceptionalism” and abides by the neoconservative dogma that U.S. and Israeli security interests are one and the same.

That’s why CNN and the rest of the FCM typically dismiss Ron Paul’s views on foreign policy as dangerously “isolationist,” if not laughably loony. “Can you believe it? He doesn’t want to station American troops all around the world! He doesn’t believe in preemptive wars to disarm our enemies of weapons that they may not have now but might someday in the future have the capability of building! Ha! Ha! What a nut!”

The FCM’s dismissal of Paul’s foreign-policy views was a key reason why comedian Jon Stewart once compared Paul to “the 13^th floor” of a hotel, the level that often doesn’t exist because customers consider the number unlucky. So, when the FCM would lavish attention on other Republican candidates, who finished both above and below Paul in some poll or in early balloting, the pundits would pass over Paul as if he didn’t exist.

Going ‘Off-Script’

So, what happened when Cpl. Thorsen veered “off script” – so to speak – and began reprising Ron Paulish views on the appropriate use of soldiers like himself? Well, CNN suddenly lost the feed. As Thorsen disappeared from the screen, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer explained, “Sorry, we just lost our tech connection, unfortunately.”

It’s true that connections can be lost for any number of reasons – and I can’t say for sure that some alert CNN producer hit the “kill” switch as one might if Cpl. Thorsen had begun cursing uncontrollably – but Blitzer and other CNN honchos didn’t seem very eager to resume the interview, just as they generally don’t book anti-war activists who disagree with the imperial orthodoxy.

You might remember, for instance, how CNN, like the other networks, stocked its pre-Iraq War “debates” with hawkish retired generals and admirals who would face only the mildest and most respectful questioning from Blitzer or some other anchor. In the rare moment when some war skeptic got on the air, he or she was treated with disdain, if not outright hostility, all the better for the network to demonstrate its “patriotism.”

Some cable networks devoted more time to American restaurants that were renaming French fries into “Freedom fries” than to the millions of people who took to the streets to protest the looming invasion of Iraq. After all, what could those “activists” know about Iraq hiding all those stockpiles of WMDs?

But why mention the case of Cpl. Thorsen now? Because this one-minute video-that-is-better-than-a-thousand-words could come in handy as at least a symbolic reminder of the bias at CNN and other parts of the FCM when it comes to allowing a full and fair discussion about going to war against some “designated enemy.”

This reality is bound to assume increased importance next week when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu touches down in Washington to press his case for a preemptive war against Iran’s nuclear program – which has yet to produce a single nuclear bomb (and Iranian leaders say they don’t intend to build one) – while Israel has an undeclared nuclear arsenal of an estimated 200 to 300 bombs.

Just for fun, keep track of how many times Netanyahu and other war advocates get to weigh in on the unacceptable danger of an Iranian nuclear weapon “capability” compared to how many times they are asked why Israel has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and why it won’t let inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency into Israeli secret bases to examine Israel’s actual nuclear weapons.

The FCM’s latest drumming for war is likely to reach a crescendo during the first days of March, with Netanyahu crashing the cymbals loudly and the propaganda orchestra swelling in a martial symphony designed to stir the American people into another standing ovation for another preemptive war.

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Savior in inner-city Washington. He spent a total of 30 years as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst, and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

This article was originally published on ConsortiumNews.com

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If you add up all the things that Ron Paul believes are unconstitutional, there would literally be no reason to have a government at all:

Why on earth this man is viewed as being a serious candidate is anyone's guess, but then looking at the rest of the GOP field, it isn't that far fetched. I'm still with Andrew Sullivan on his assertion that Paul's ideological consistency and honesty makes him the best candidate to face Obama – but that's purely from an intellectual point of view. I'd probably rather Newt Gingrich got in over Paul in terms of winning the actual Presidency. At least he believes in some sort of government, even if it were completely rigged to benefit oil companies and Wall St. If Ron Paul became President of the United States and enacted 25% of his proposals, the country would fall apart over night.

Paul might be ideologically consistent and honest, but he is also completely nuts.

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Paul Krugman on the down side of Ron Paul's ideological consistency:

Unfortunately, Mr. Paul has maintained his consistency by ignoring reality, clinging to his ideology even as the facts have demonstrated that ideology’s wrongness. And, even more unfortunately, Paulist ideology now dominates a Republican Party that used to know better.

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In a nutshell:

I suspect every other Republican would launch a war against Iran. Paul wouldn't. That alone makes a vote for him worthwhile.

Sullivan's overall argument is of course, far more nuanced, and it's difficult to disagree with him on many points – particularly the one regarding the honesty of debate we would see between Obama and Paul:

I believe an Obama-Paul campaign would do us all a service. We would have a principled advocate for a radically reduced role for government, and a principled advocate for a more activist role. If Republicans want a real debate about government and its role, they have no better spokesman. He is the intellectual of the field, not Gingrich.

Sullivan is not endorsing Paul for President, just as the GOP nominee. I'm sure he'll stick with Obama as he regards him as fellow conservative (in the British mold, not the American), but his call to elevate Paul to mainstream status is an interesting one.

Sullivan, like most sane observers, is so exasperated by the current crop of Republican candidates that he is willing to endorse a slightly loopy, unelectable but un-corrupt 76 year old. Sadly, his argument makes a lot of sense, a testament to just how dire Right wing politics in America has become.

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