The Long Crisis

Posts Tagged ‘Ron Paul’

The mission of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is to protect the nation’s transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce. Unfortunately, especially at airports, increasingly the TSA causes great inconvenience and discomfort to travelers.

In this video a worker for Ron Paul has attended a Ron Paul rally in Saint Louis, Missouri. At the rally about $4,700 in books, T-Shirts, and brochures were sold and the well dressed young man was carrying the cash back to headquarters. The cash was in his carry on bag.

In a search of the bag by TSA personnel the cash was discovered. The Ron Paul worker was taken to a windowless interrogation room and asked a series of questions as to where the cash came from and what he was going to do with it. His response was a simple question that went unanswered. He asked only if by law he was required to answer questions about carrying a fairly small amount of cash.

Lucky for us technology allows us to hear for ourselves the tone of the TSA questioning. The young man was carrying a cell phone that also serves as a recorder. So he secretly recorded almost 25 minutes of the unpleasant interrogation.

Watch the video. It is a disturbing account of what America has degraded to. Of course, all in the name of protection. Now we are at risk of being detained and held as a terrorist if we carry a few thousand dollars in cash through an airport.

An even worse incident involving TSA happened to a good friend as he was trying to return to Atlanta from a business trip to Seattle. My friend is a health nut of sorts. He carried a herbal supplement with him and had causally tossed it into his carry on bag. Big mistake.

When TSA found the white powder (the supplement is intended to be mixed with fruit juice) they went nuts. Rather than give the power any kind of test at the airport my friend was handcuffed and turned over to DEA. The DEA had him locked up over night. He was booked on narcotics possession charges. I am not making this up.

After a night in jail he was taken to court the next afternoon. Fortunately, by the time his case came before the judge a lab report had been completed and handed to the judge. Guess what? The lab report identified the substance as a herbal supplement.

So my friend was released from police custody and escorted outside the courtroom. He was released at some unknown place to him far from the airport. As it was too late to book a flight that evening he had to take a taxi and find a hotel room near the airport. The next morning he was able to take a taxi to the airport, locate his luggage, and pay the airline $150 for a ticket change. All in all with taxi fares, a hotel room , extra meals, and a ticket change fee that little bottle of white powder and TSA inspection cost my friend an extra $300 and the loss of two days time.

And get this. No apologies were offered by TSA, DEA, the Seattle Police Department, the airline, or anyone else.

The moral to these two stories. America has changed. With the heavy hand of government, surveillance and intrusions by authorities everywhere America is now much closer to being a fascist state than a democracy.

Some advice. When traveling by air leave your herbal supplements at home and carry a minimum amount of cash. If stopped be calm and as quite as possible. Remember that at the airport you are in the hands of TSA idiots and that anything can happen in the name of freedom and bureaucratic guidelines. If you support Ron Paul you had better keep that fact to yourself. Ron Paul supporters have been singled out as possible terrorist operatives. Do not carry Ron Paul bumper stickers or literature with you when you travel.

If you are detained for carrying a few thousand dollars in cash be prepared to answer a lot of questions that by law you do not have to answer. Of course, by not answering you may be transported to an undisclosed location in Afghanistan. You have been warned. This is the new America.

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Rep Ron Paul of Texas is the only Congressman in Washington, D.C. that understands complex issues and who has the intelligence and guts to speak out about them.

In the following essay Dr. Paul brings home how ridiculous the American foreign policy position is in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in about 160 other countries around the world.
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Imagine by Rep Ron Paul

Imagine for a moment that somewhere in the middle of Texas there was a large foreign military base, say Chinese or Russian. Imagine that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of “keeping us safe” or “promoting democracy” or “protecting their strategic interests.”

Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up check points on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence.

Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers’ attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. Imagine if most of the citizens of the foreign land also wanted these troops to return home. Imagine if they elected a leader who promised to bring them home and put an end to this horror.

Imagine if that leader changed his mind once he took office.

The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas. We would not stand for it here, but we have had a globe straddling empire and a very intrusive foreign policy for decades that incites a lot of hatred and resentment towards us.

According to our own CIA, our meddling in the Middle East was the prime motivation for the horrific attacks on 9/11. But instead of re-evaluating our foreign policy, we have simply escalated it. We had a right to go after those responsible for 9/11, to be sure, but why do so many Americans feel as if we have a right to a military presence in some 160 countries when we wouldn’t stand for even one foreign base on our soil, for any reason? These are not embassies, mind you, these are military installations. The new administration is not materially changing anything about this. Shuffling troops around and playing with semantics does not accomplish the goals of the American people, who simply want our men and women to come home. 50,000 troops left behind in Iraq is not conducive to peace any more than 50,000 Russian soldiers would be in the United States.

Shutting down military bases and ceasing to deal with other nations with threats and violence is not isolationism. It is the opposite. Opening ourselves up to friendship, honest trade and diplomacy is the foreign policy of peace and prosperity. It is the only foreign policy that will not bankrupt us in short order, as our current actions most definitely will. I share the disappointment of the American people in the foreign policy rhetoric coming from the administration. The sad thing is, our foreign policy WILL change eventually, as Rome’s did, when all budgetary and monetary tricks to fund it are exhausted.
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Whew! No wonder the US is facing a long crisis. Even though we are broke we still think we are empowered to control the world. So far President Obama seems to be just another in a long line of American Empire President advocates and Congress, with only one exception, truly sucks. We are all freaking doomed.

For more of Rep Paul’s essays visit his website.

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The one man in Washington who understands and knows that trying to reinflate economic bubbles and to sustain the unsustainable will fail is Ron Paul. When Rep. Paul says that we are at the end of an era and a new system of finance must be created he is right on the money. Alas, he is talking to a room full of politicians and government bureaucrats so he might as well be taking to a barnyard full of jackasses. And in a way Ron Paul is.

We are in deep, deep trouble. With the entire developed financial world coming apart due largely to taking on too much debt and by making horrible make believe investments in derivatives most countries, large and small, are in deep do-do. In unison, like the UK and the USA, they are adding massive amounts of debt to their balance sheets and calling it economic stimulus. Creating massive amounts of new debt to solve a problem of having too much debt is not going to cut it. The Long Crisis will continue.

Governments are still encouraging their citizens to go out and go shopping on credit to support consumer economies already deathly ill due to too much debt carried by consumers, businesses, and all levels of government. Rather than encourage people to work hard and save, thereby creating capital that could be used to build productive enterprises, the citizens of the world are being asked to spend, spend, spend.

The outlook is not pleasant. No one, except for perhaps Ron Paul and a handful of followers, are willing to experience a little pain now in order to avoid a lot of pain later. Please keep on talking Rep. Paul, even though I fear no one in Washington, D.C. is listening. You have one of the few voices of reason in a city of zombies.

If trillions keep being added to the US debt burden unthinkable events of just a few years ago may become realities. The US may find it very difficult to borrow the money it needs at anywhere near reasonable rates or even experience a default of US treasury obligations.

Oh yes, one more thing, congressman Paul. Tell your thick headed associates that they had better be a bit more kind to the Chinese government. It is not wise to anger one of your biggest creditors.

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