It seems, the political candidates having the most common sense, and who would better serve the people while in office have the lowest support from the American voters – especially Republicans. Ron Paul is a good example.

Ron Paul is a medical doctor. He served in the military as a flight surgeon for the National Guard from 1965 to 1968. Currently, he is a Republican Congressman representing the state of Texas. Politically, he can be described as a conservative, constitutionalist and libertarian. As a matter of fact, he ran for president in 1988 as a libertarian candidate, while still holding his Republican status. Admittedly, some of his views are extreme and contrary to the Republican mainstream of thinking. But he does make sense defending the original intent of the constitution:

As a conservative, he voted against expansion, colonization and the occupation in Iraq. He is the only presidential candidate who voted against Bush’s Iraq War resolution in 2002. He was opposed to the Patriot Act, which used the pretense of homeland security to destroy our fundamental rights of personal privacy, eliminated the need for habeas corpus, and allowed us to torture so-called prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva convention. However, he did support using force in Afghanistan against the terrorists who were responsible for 9/11, citing the fact that the terrorists were in Afghanistan, not Iraq.

He was opposed to the federal governments “war on drugs” campaign. The United States, along with other countries, wanted to eliminate or reduce the illegal drug manufacturing trade. His arguments against the campaign was that it was cost prohibitive and wouldn’t work. Let’s see if he was right.

The government reported the drug control cost for 2005 was about $12 billion. But in separate reports: the cost of incarcerating offenders was $30 billion, $9 billion was spent on police protection and $11 billion went to individual states for federal correction agencies. Yes, Ron Paul was right. For the 40 or 50 billions of dollars we spend on the “drug war” each year, we still have a higher percentage rate of illegal drug users than we did when we started.

Paul, the constitutionalist, has been a longtime activist opposed to the federal income tax. He claims the politicians are wasting our money with unnecessary government spending. And he is absolutely right about that.

He’s in favor of abolishing the federal reserve, claiming our financial crises originates with the federal reserve banks. He says the reserve prints too much worthless paper money that devaluates the dollar and leaves Americans with less of what he calls “hard money” – which is real money. On that issue he is right. Case in point, the recent mortgage crisis caused by greedy and unscrupulous banks. Ron Paul preaches the mantra of our founding fathers concerning unscrupulous banks and the federal reserve. As an example: He supports quotes from Thomas Jefferson’s warning about usury bankers. “If the American people ever allow the banks to control the issuance of currency…the banks and corporations will deprive the people of all property, until their children wake up homeless.” Which has happened today because of banks loaning money on property using sub-prime loans to bait hard working American families into debt. Jefferson insisted that “the issuing power of money should be taken from banks and restored to congress and the people to whom it belongs.” He believed “banking institutions having the issuing power of money are more dangerous to liberty than standing armies.”

Wearing the hat of a libertarian, Paul wants the United States to withdraw from the United Nations. And because of this view, some have labeled him an isolationist. But is he an isolationist and does he have a good argument for withdrawal?

In 2007, the United Nations passed a $4.2 billion budget for two years operating expenses. Almost 25 percent is paid by the American taxpayers. But what do we get for that 25 percent? On one side, we can funnel payoff-money, otherwise known as foreign aid, to foreign leaders without the approval of the American people. In return we get support for our war resolutions.

On the other side, we sometimes have world leaders dictating to us what we can and can’t do. This creates foreign entanglements and threatens our sovereignty. Even George Washington warned us of “foreign entanglements” in his farewell address. So, Ron Paul can properly be labeled a conservative, libertarian and a constitutionalist. But so can our founding fathers John Adams, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.

In this modern day of politics, Ron Paul has something else in common with Adams, Washington and Jefferson. Because of his views he will never be elected president and if they ran for public office today, neither would they.

By David Farside
E-mail: farsidian2001@yahoo.com
Website: www.thefarsidechronicles.com

The Iowa Caucus pushed former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee to the top of the list of Republican presidential hopefuls. The Baptist preacher defeated the temple Mormon, Mitt Romney, by a wide margin, receiving 34 percent of the delegates’ support vs. 24 percent received by Romney. Romney spent millions in Iowa, only to be defeated by the right wing Christian conservatives left over from the glory days of Bush.

To his credit, during his 10 years as governor, Huckabee demonstrated some liberal tendencies. He argued for and implemented school improvements and approved a bill providing health insurance for the children of the working poor, which is more than I can say for George Bush.

To his discredit, his record shows he was investigated 20 times as Governor and Lt. Governor of Arkansas by the Arkansas Ethics Commission. In anticipation of questions about his ethics violations, Huckabee set up what he called the “truth squad.” The squad was to divert attention away from his ethics convictions and present his own biased version of the complaints before the press found out the truth.

According to an Associated Press report released in November 2007, the truth squad said the only finding of the ethics committee against Huckabee was overruled by a state court. But that’s not true, and is just another Republican lie.

The commission actually investigated 16 of the 20 complaints filed against Huckabee and found five violations. The only conviction that was overruled by the court was his acceptance of a $500 canoe he received from Coca-Cola. He and his wife were also accused of receiving cash they didn’t initially report.

Huckabee was investigated for diverting $150,000 of in-kind contributions and cash to his “gospel fest” which was, in fact, a Republican rally for his campaign. You would think as a Baptist minister he would have known better. Well, maybe not.

Huckabee was under fire from the public early on after he was elected Governor of Arkansas. He was only in office for two months when he shocked everyone in the state by announcing his intention of freeing Wayne Dumond, a convicted rapist. He said he had “serious questions as to the legitimacy of his guilt.”

Dumond was convicted by a jury for raping a distant cousin of President Clinton. You have to wonder what that pardon was really all about. Huckabee later acknowledged he met with Dumond’s wife while he was Lt. Governor of the state and met with her again two months after he was elected governor. Hmm! I wonder if he smokes any of those Clinton cigars?

Evidently, friends of the Clinton clan got their revenge. Dumond was castrated while awaiting trial by unknown masked men. Two years after he was pardoned by our want-to-be president, Dumond was convicted of murdering a woman in Missouri.

Huckabee has a typical Republican tendency of speaking half truths. He says he is tough on taxes and pointed to his $100 million tax cut in 1997. But, he supported a fuel tax increase in 1999. He said the tax was approved by 80 percent of the Arkansas voters – another lie.

The question on the ballot in 1999 asked the voters whether the state should take on a $41 billion debt for a highway program, including cost for interest and lawyers fees; not how it would be financed. Two months later, Huckabee decided to raise the fuel tax to pay for the bond, over the will of the majority. He also increased property taxes by changing the tax system. Does that sound familiar?

Huckabee, while governor of Arkansas, had a somewhat liberal approach to the immigration problem. He fought for legislation that would grant an in-state tuition program and state funded scholarships to the children of illegal immigrants. He was also in favor of giving undocumented immigrants voting rights, access to state services and employment. Referring to other Christian legislators who didn’t agree with him he said, “I drink a different kind of Jesus juice than they do.”

Now that he is running for presidency, he wants to send all of the undocumented workers back where they came from and build walls on our border to protect us from the same people he wanted to give free education, state services, and state jobs to. What a hypocrite.

The list on Huckabee goes on and on. It does seem that he has no respect for ethics laws prescribed for public officials, is confused on his own immigration stance and will probably appoint judges in favor of giving convicted criminals freedom – that is, if they are visited by their wives.

I’m sure as president, like Bush, he will continue to use his hand of political deceit to cover his religious eye of perspicuity and will expect us all to drink from the Republican chalice of “Jesus Juice.”

(The contents of this column may not be redistributed or reprinted without the written permission of the author, David Farside)

© 2008 David Farside. All rights reserved.