Another gem from Ron Paul

[tombldr]

What If?

www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2005/cr012605.htm

[Moses]

This is an excellent example of our conundrum. Ringingly articulate about the failure of American political parties to adhere to founding principles as well as to bring down America by adhering to a foreign interventionist ideology, Paul fingers the wrong bogeyman, just as he rightly accuses the Bush Administration (and their collaborators in the Democratic Party) of doing re: the "terrorist" threat:

We don’t understand the difference between a vague threat of terrorism and the danger of a guerilla war. One prompts us to expand and nationalize domestic law enforcement while limiting the freedoms of all Americans. The other deals with understanding terrorists like bin Laden, who declared war against us in 1998.  Not understanding the difference makes it virtually impossible to deal with the real threats.

His characterization of the threat to liberty is "big government", and the old framework of leaving things to the private sector. This is a false paradigm, and we are in need of a new one.

He touts as solutions to the airline security problem airlines providing security for passengers, including picking and choosing who they will allow to fly. In other words, he would be happy w/ corporate tyranny. "Big Government" is in fact currently fostering corporate tyranny through the selective deregulation that he has presumably supported, while increasing regulations that govern individual freedoms. His party has been deliberately decreasing citizen power to bring about accountability of corporate entities, while increasing penalties on the individual (bankruptcy laws, etc).

He would throw us all at the mercy of private corporations, who should, he says, be allowed to discriminate any way they please. I wonder if he would feel this way if the majority of Corporations decided to, say, hire all asians? Nonetheless, this is his position:

Private firms-- long denied the right-- should have a right to discriminate.  Fine restaurants, for example, can require that shoes and shirts be worn for service in their establishments. The logic of this remaining property right should permit more sensible security checks at airports. The airlines should be responsible for the safety of their property, and liable for it as well. This is not only the responsibility of the airlines, but it is a civil right that has long been denied them and other private companies.

This is not an idea that has its genesis in the founding principles of America, but in the heinous, unChristian and unAmerican practices of the slaveholding states.

We need new political paradigms.

[Moses]

Corporate freedom advocated by Paul results in slavery for the individual to the norms imposed by Corporate class:

By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The owner of a Michigan company who forced his employees to either quit smoking or quit their jobs said on Wednesday he also wants to tell fat workers to lose weight or else.

A ban on tobacco use -- whether at home or at the workplace -- led four employees to quit their jobs last week at Okemos, Michigan-based Weyco Inc., which handles insurance claims.

The workers refused to take a mandatory urine test demanded of Weyco's 200 employees by founder and sole owner Howard Weyers, a demand that he said was perfectly legal.

"If you don't want to take the test, you can leave," Weyers told Reuters. "I'm not controlling their lives; they have a choice whether they want to work here."

Next on the firing line: overweight workers.

"We have to work on eating habits and getting people to exercise. But if you're obese, you're (legally) protected," Weyers said.

He has brought in an eating disorder therapist to speak to workers, provided eating coaches, created a point system for employees to earn health-related $100 bonuses and plans to offer $45 vouchers for health club memberships.

The 71-year-old Weyers, who said he has never smoked and pronounced himself in good shape thanks to daily runs, said employees' health as well as saving money on the company's own insurance claims led him to first bar smokers from being hired in 2003.

Last year, he banned smoking during office hours, then demanded smokers pay a monthly $50 "assessment," and finally instituted mandatory testing.

Twenty workers quit the habit.

Weyers tells clients to quit whining about health care costs and to "set some expectations; demand some things."

Job placement specialist John Challenger said Weyco's moves could set a precedent for larger companies -- if it survives potential legal challenges.

"Certainly it raises an interesting boundary issue: rising health care costs and society's aversion to smoking versus privacy and freedom rights of an individual," Challenger said.

So far no legal challenges have been made to Weyco's policies.

[tombldr]

I'm not saying Paul's perfect ideologically. But he's one of just a half dozen or so congressperps with a fiercely independent voice and not shy about voicing dissent over such sacred cows as 911 and the evils of the Federal Reserve.

Paul on 911 and the rejecting the national ID card

Ron Paul: "Paper Money and Tyranny"
www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2003/cr090503.htm

[Moses]

What puzzles me is that some of his ideas aren't mainstream, and that they are embedded only in this old frame of "state's rights" and "big government".

I wish he would do a re-think on how to maintain constitutional protections for individual liberty v. the state. Because we now have two enemies that have joined together-- the state and special interests, leaving individuals & citizens at the mercy corporate power and the power of flexplayers, and we need the state to intervene to regulate these powers, and put things back in balance.

One might regard our foreign policy as simply an extension of corporate power, if one looks at the fact that the political parties are simply representing their funders (Israeli interests) and not their constituencies.

If Paul would rethink this, it would be extremely helpful to our democracy.