0 thoughts on “Ron Paul: Stop Runaway Federal Spending!

  1. Ron Paul is the last hope for a peaceful resolution of the problems plaguing this country. I see more and more each day the mainstream “media” (more like elitist propaganda) doing everything their power (more like desperation) to make Ron Paul disappear. This isn’t the year 2008, the eyes of the people have been opened to a harsh view of reality. Mark my words, if Ron Paul is not made the Republican candidate, or not elected President, there is going to be civil unrest and revolution not seen since the birth of this once great nation!

  2. There is never any money for helping people in the United States, but there is plenty of money to waste on things like this:

    $360M lost to insurgents, criminals in Afghanistan

    August 16, 2011 — WASHINGTON (AP) — After examining hundreds of combat support and reconstruction contracts in Afghanistan, the U.S military estimates $360 million in U.S. tax dollars has ended up in the hands of people the American-led coalition has spent nearly a decade battling: the Taliban, criminals, and power brokers with ties to both.

    The losses underscore the challenges the U.S. and its international partners face in overcoming corruption in Afghanistan. A central part of the Obama administration’s strategy has been to award U.S.-financed contracts to Afghan businesses to help improve quality of life and stoke the country’s economy.

    But until a special task force assembled by Gen. David Petraeus began its investigation last year, the coalition had little visibility into the connections many Afghan companies and their vast network of subcontractors had with insurgents and criminals — groups military officials call “malign actors.”

    In a murky process known as “reverse money laundering,” payments from the U.S. pass through companies hired by the military for transportation, construction, power projects, fuel and other services to businesses and individuals with ties to the insurgency or criminal networks, according to interviews and task force documents obtained by the AP.

    “Funds begin as clean monies,” according to one document, then “either through direct payments or through the flow of funds in the subcontractor network, the monies become tainted.” The conclusions by Task Force 2010 represent the most definitive assessment of how U.S. military spending and aid to Afghanistan has been diverted to the enemy or stolen. Only a small percentage of the $360 million has been garnered by the Taliban and insurgent groups, said a senior U.S. military official in Kabul. The bulk of the money was lost to profiteering, bribery and extortion by criminals and power brokers, said the official, who declined to provide a specific breakdown.

    The official requested anonymity to discuss the task force’s ongoing investigation into the movement of U.S. contract money in Afghanistan. The documents obtained by AP were prepared earlier this year and provide an overview of the task force’s work.

    Overall, the $360 million represents a fraction of the $31 billion in active U.S. contracts that the task force reviewed. But insurgents rely on crude weaponry and require little money to operate. And the illicit gains buttress what the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based think tank, referred to in a June report as a “nexus between criminal enterprises, insurgent networks and corrupt political elites” in Afghanistan.

    More than half the losses flowed through a large transportation contract called Host Nation Trucking, the official said. Eight companies served as prime contractors and hired a web of nearly three dozen subcontractors for vehicles and convoy security to ship huge amounts of food, water, fuel and ammunition to American troops stationed at bases across Afghanistan.

    The Defense Department announced Monday that it had selected 20 separate contractors for a new transportation contract potentially worth $983.5 million to replace Host Nation Trucking. Officials said the new arrangement will reduce the reliance on subcontractors and diminish the risk of money being lost. Under the new National Afghan Trucking Services contract, the military will be able to choose from a deeper pool of companies competing against one another to offer the best price to move supplies. The new arrangement also gives the U.S. more flexibility in determining whether security is needed for supply convoys and who should provide it, according to a description of the contract.

    The Pentagon did not provide the names of the 20 companies picked due to worries that larger contractors who weren’t selected might try and coerce them into a takeover, the senior defense official said. None of the eight prime contractors affiliated with the Host Nation Trucking contract are part of the new arrangement, the official added.

    HEB International Logistics of Dubai, a Host Nation Trucking prime contractor, “made payments directly to malign actors,” one of the task force documents reads. In 2009 and 2010, an HEB subcontractor identified in the document only as “Rohullah” received $1.7 million in payments. A congressional report issued last year said Rohullah — whose name is spelled Ruhallah in that report — is a warlord who controlled the convoy security business along the highway between Kabul and Kandahar, the two largest cities in Afghanistan.

    Half a dozen attempts to reach officials at HEB’s offices in Dubai by telephone were unsuccessful due to calls being transferred and lines going dead. It is also the holy month of Ramadan when many employees work shortened days and offices close early.

    The congressional report said Rohullah’s hundreds of heavily armed guards operated a protection racket, charging contractors moving U.S. military supplies along the highway as much as $1,500 a vehicle. Failure to pay virtually guaranteed a convoy of being attacked by Rohullah’s forces, said the report, “Warlord Inc.” Rohullah’s guards regularly fought with the Taliban, but investigators believe Rohullah moved money to the Taliban when it was in his interest to do so.

    Both Rohullah and the security company he was affiliated with, Watan Risk Management, denied ever making payments to the insurgents, according to the report. But in December, the U.S. placed Watan in “proposed debarment status,” which prevented it from signing new contracts or renewing existing contracts. Watan challenged the decision in federal court. Two weeks ago, Watan and U.S. officials signed an agreement that states the company may not bid on any mobile security contracts for the next three years. The ban does not affect other companies controlled by Watan’s owners.

    The task force also said contractors engaged in profiteering by forming dummy companies. A task force document shows three tiers of subcontractors below Guzar Mirbacha Kot Transportation, an Afghan-owned trucking company known as GMT. Four of the subcontractors appear on the first and second tiers, collecting $14.2 million in payments.

    Basir Mujahid, a GMT representative in Kabul, said top company officials were in Dubai and could not be reached for immediate comment. Power brokers — a term widely used in Afghanistan — refer to Afghans who leverage their political and business connections to advance their own interests.

    Another task force document details the case of a power broker who owned a private security company and was known to supply weapons to the Taliban. The power broker, who is not named in the document, received payments from a contractor doing business with the U.S. Over more than two years, the power broker funneled $8.5 million to the owners of an unlicensed money exchange service used by insurgents, according to the document.

    Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., former chairman of the House oversight panel that investigated the wayward payments, said that the U.S. must stop the diversion of taxpayer dollars to the enemy. “When war becomes good business for the insurgents, it is all the more difficult to convince them to lay down their arms,” Tierney said.

    U.S. authorities in Afghanistan are screening contractors more carefully to be sure they can handle the work and also are trustworthy, the senior military official said. Authorities also are being more aggressive in barring companies if they violate contract terms or are found to be involved in illicit activities. Since the task force was created last year, the number of debarred Afghan, U.S. and international companies and individuals associated with contracting in Afghanistan has more than doubled — from 31 to 78, the official said.

    Petraeus, who recently relinquished command in Afghanistan to become CIA director, told his commanders in a September 2010 memo to keep close watch over contracting dollars and “know those with whom we are contracting.” Failing to do so could “unintentionally fuel corruption, finance insurgent organizations, strengthen criminal patronage networks, and undermine our efforts in Afghanistan,” he wrote.

    Tierney, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform national security subcommittee, said the new trucking contract announced Monday is a welcome step. But he said he is still worried the military still lacks sufficient visibility and accountability over payments. The subcommittee has scheduled a hearing next month to examine the contract and the risks of outsourcing security in a combat zone.

    __ Riechmann reported from Kabul.

  3. The fact is our laws have been changed to recognize corporations as persons/human beings. These non-human entities enjoy not only a right as a citizen but also enjoy all of the privileges and immunities granted to corporations through the unconstitutional Uniform Commercial Code.
    In short, the Uniform Commercial Code gives the corporate entity the right to violate the rights of the human entity without consequence.

  4. Thomas Jefferson made many good points, these are just a few:

    “The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.”

    “Was the government to prescribe to us our medicine and diet, our bodies would be in such keeping as our souls are now.”

    “I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

    “Laws that forbid the carrying of arms…disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” (Quoting Cesare Beccaria)

    “The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it.”

    “The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free, neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.”

    “No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.”

    “To take from one because it is thought that his own industry and that of his father’s has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association—the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.”

    “I think myself that we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” (Back then!)

    “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”

    “I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.”

    “What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance?”

    “The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all.”

    “The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.”

    “When wrongs are pressed because it is believed they will be borne, resistance becomes morality.”

    “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

    “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty…. And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

    “Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law,” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”

    “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

    “I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

    “I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.”

    “To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

    “In a government bottomed on the will of all, the…liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all.”

    “The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

    “Most bad government has grown out of too much government.”

    “Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.”

    “The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”

    “A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor and bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

    “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?”

    “A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”

    “The right of self-government does not comprehend the government of others.”

    “An elective despotism was not the government we fought for.”

    “History, in general, only informs us what bad government is.”

    “If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”

    “The man who reads nothing at all is better than educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers.”

  5. Raymond Sammarco,
    Thanks for posting these quotes from Jefferson. One in particular articulates what has happened:

    “The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”

    The Charlatan in Chief has been referred to as a “constitutional scholar”. I have actually been told by supposedly “intelligent” and “educated” people that he is therefore to be viewed as having credibility on the subject. He is clearly of the belief that it is “flawed” having verifiably said so on several occasions.

    To refer to anything created by humankind as “flawed”is to make an inherently irresponsible and totally subjective statement. To make this statement about our constitution demands justification. Pray tell us, oh Great One, what “flaws” you refer to and precisely how you propose to correct them?

    If McCain had actually been running for office instead of playing the part given him in the play written to put this imposter in office he would have asked this question as question number one in the first debate.

    It is frightening how many people were fooled by this fraudulent dog and pony show. More frightening is that many continue to be.

    Here is a link to an interesting and informative article:

    http://illinoisconservative.wordpress.com/2009/05/16/obamas-flawed-constitution-2/

    1. Great article! I think that quote is exactly what has happened to our nation:

      “Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

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