I’m sure many of you saw this, but if not, please read and then debunk in the comment section. This is a new low for journalism.
They hate him so much. They’d kill him if they could.
I read it quickly, and the hysterical prose sure seems disportionate. That said, it’s great the Ron once publicly disassociated himself from the Reagan administration. I can sort of understand why his ad people would try to reassociate himself when he is trying from the GOP nomination. Actually, I don’t see a real contradiction here. Reagan said nice things about Ron. That’s true. That’s all the ad says.
Yes, one could just imagine the venom dripping from the author’s pen as he wrote this hysterical piece. Perhaps the more negative popularity they give Paul, the more they will feed the very beast they oppose. And it’ll serve the statist hacks right.
Dear god, the hatred of such a man. This goes to show that he is the only candidate for change. People fear change. Therefore, the candidate who advocates true change, is the one that is hated the most.
I don’t know what the exact figures are as to how much it takes to maintain our various state programs. But Ron Paul is a politician and shocking as it may be to hear they do have a tendency of twisting the facts or even gasp lying to back up their positions.
My reddit comments on it. Mainly it’s bizarre that anyone pretends to be upset with his writings on the NAFTA Superhighway, as the situation is:
- Ron Paul says that X should not ever exist.
- Factcheck.org says that X does not and will not ever exist.
What negative #3 can we infer from this?
Generally speaking, yes, that’s true. I have not found that to be the case with RP.
The crap about the NAFTA Super highway is just that – crap! I live in Texas and since Texas is the front lines for this stuff I know a little about it. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) is working fervishly to get the public to either forget that there is a Trans-Texas Corridor (the first leg of the NAFTA Super Highway) or that it is really a GOOD thing for Texas! I call bullshit on that! They say it doesn’t exisit, then why do I have over 1,000 pages of CLASSIFIED proposals from Centra-Zachry to TxDOT on how they would build the damn thing with pictures and charts and all those good things included? Why is TxDOT holding “town hall meetings” with rural Texans getting their input into a project that apparently doesn’t exisit and why did the Texas Legislature put a moratorium on a project that doesn’t exisit?
Yeah…he’s a kook! There’s not Trans-Texas Corridor or NAFTA Super Highway! My ass!
I had never heard anything about this until I read that attack on Ron, and now I have spent exactly 4 mins googling, which means I know more than I did but still next to nothing, I’ll say something anyway.
it seems like this effort to expose and stop what is called the Nafta Superhighway is a campaign mostly fueled by nationalists and protectionists, while the advocates of managed trade are dissembling and denying even as they combine public and private resources to hammer out some new corporate welfare boondoggle. In other words, it seems much like the Nafta debate: nationalists versus regional mercantilists and corporatists. It’s too bad that real free traders – meaning libertarians – are largely left out of such debates. It was also true with Nafta and the WTO. Our side just didn’t get much of a hearing. So it has always been I suppose.
In other words, Ron is probably, most certainly, right to be against all this stuff, which seems to involve tax dollars and seems to be designed to secure a regional trade cartel. On the other hand, he seems to have unwittingly pick up the phrases and the arguments of the protectionists here – though he is not one of them. The libertarian case against this needs to make a number of different points – just as in the WTO case and the nafta case.
That’s because the libertarians don’t really bring anything to the debate. The mercantilists and corporatists will agree with you lock, stock and barrel on the benefits of international trade and, if you pin down Joe Xenophobe Six Pack long enough in front of his Chinese-built plasma TV, he’ll admit it too. The opposition to the NAFTA superhighway is at bottom an issue of culture and identity, and libertarians won’t touch that with a ten-foot pole.
Well, I can tell that here in Texas, where the first leg of this highway is being built, it has nothing to do with culture and identity. Let me give you a brief education about the Trans-Texas Corridor – the start of the NAFTA Highway.
1: The Corridor will cost an estimated $180 billion, though it will probably cost much more than that.
2: The Corridor is a public-private partnership between the State of Texas and several large construction firms, the leading one is Centra from Spain (which the King of Spain owns a good portion of) and Zachry, a local firm in San Antonio.
3: The Corridor will be built with “private” money. A Libertarian Dream!
4: Except that “private” money will be raised by allowing these companies to turn existing already paid for and already built roads and freeways into toll ways. The State will get a portion of the 15 cents per mile and these private companies will get a portion of it.
5: The Corridor will be 12 football fields wide – about a quarter of a mile – and will include lanes for cars, trucks, railway freight lines, a high speed rail line, and a place for water, electric, and natural gas transfer.
6: The Corridor will consume 584,000 acres of prime Texas farm and ranch land, much of which is going to be taken through eminent domain. In reality the Corridor will take nearly 1 million acres of land.
7: There will be no overpasses or underpasses, feeder roads or exits. Any farmer whose land is cut in half will have to travel to the nearest big city in order to get to the other side of his property. That means he may have to drive fifty miles just to get to the other side of his land! Small towns and communities along the Corridors path will dry up and die. Any restaurants, hotels or gas stations along the Corridor will be along the Corridor. You won’t be able to exit the Corridor until you get to San Antonio, Austin, Waco, Houston, Fort Worth or Dallas and you’ll pay 15 cents per mile to drive on this road (in addition to the taxes you pay on your gas, car registration, property taxes, etc.).
8: Because of non-compete clauses in the legislation any road that is traveling to the same destination as the TTC – rather any FREE road – cannot be maintained. That means that NO county, city or State funding can go to maintain that road if it competes with the Corridor.
The Corridor is about property rights and nothing more. Yes, a quarter mile scar across this beautiful country will also affect the culture as farmers are driven from their land and forced into big cities. The main reason we fight it so hard is because of property rights. A lot of city folks who aren’t going to have land stolen from them are fighting it because they are going to pay for it. Every major road and highway they drive on is going to cost them extra because they are all going to be toll roads.
I’m against it and you should be too. These is not a free market solution to the traffic problems in Texas, trade between nations or anything else. This is Big Government and Big Business getting together to rape the little man. I think there is word for that…oh yeah! FASCISM!
Well that’s a knockout blow right there. I suppose if they want the libertarians can add their arguments for a developer buying up the linear feet of road needed to better move laborers and tangerines from Central America to Omaha but … seems kind of pointless.