WindFish

Where have you been?

Good day.

If you fancy I have made a party for the CFC presidental election. Here it is if your intrested.

You should consider Imperium Offtopicu. There is a game that has a spare space that is like Victoria. It is Iron and Blood 4. Note that as of this present time Siberia is free for you or someone else to take. I strongly suggest that you come to play. Do consider this and other IOTs for great justice!

Fancy a chat with me? I am at http://soniot.chatango.com/ so come chat here!

At this point all I'm hearing is "Neener neener neener." Seriously, take the log out of your own eye.

He's not wasting public money though. The money is wasted whether its earmarked or not.

He doesn't lie, he tells us exactly what he's doing and why.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul453.html

That damage had already been done. Ron was merely giving the money back to taxpayers in his district instead of the government. This isn't inefficient.

I'm not commenting again unless and until you read Ron Paul's own words on this. If you want it I'll find it for you.

He's not practicing interventionism, interventionism's already there. All he's doing is putting the money in the hands of the free market rather than keeping it in government hands.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this issue. If you want to read Ron Paul's own rationale I can find it for you. But even if he's wrong here, its a tiny speck. I never claimed that Ron Paul was perfect. I'm on record for disagreeing with him on a few things. But he's the best politician in the United States, bar none.

(Well, ex-politician now.)

Assume you're a lasseiz fairist, or close to it, for a second.

You have taxpayer money. Giving it back is NOT an option.

Either you can give it directly to the free market, who can use it to expand the free market, or you can give it to the government.

Which are you going to choose?

I don't necessarily think you are wrong here. I'm kinda iffy on the issue, but ideally, I'd tend to agree with you that you should vote no no matter what. But you need to pull the log out of everyone else's eye before pulling the speck out of Ron Paul's. I never claimed Ron Paul was perfect. But look at everyone else in Congress.

For Ron Paul to not send any money back to his district while that district still pays taxes is arguably a form of theft from those who pay taxes from his district. I see what you're saying, you might even be correct, but frankly, not to ask for anything for your district when its just going to go to another district or the Federal government would be to fail to represent his district possibly. I know Ron would rather see tax rates drop.

That's not the way it works here, at least AFAIK that money just gets spent on some other form of waste.

If he actually voted for the budget you might have a point, but he doesn't. He always votes against it.

I'm not going to sit here and tell you that you don't have an argument that what he did was wrongg. Maybe it was. But earmarks do not take any money from private individuals for subsidies, they take money away from complete and total waste to give to subsidies.

How goes the hunt for more BTL members, comrade?

Earmarks are only a vote on how to distribute money already in the budget, not a vote to add money to the budget. Dr. Paul's reasoning was that if the money didn't go to earmarks, it would go not back to the general taxpayer, but to the Federal government. In other words, giving money back to shrimp farmers was better than giving it to the Federal government.

Lest it seem like I am going to defend Dr. Paul no matter what, I admittedly don't really like this kind of "Next bestism." Voting for earmarks is still, in essence, a support for their existance. Voting no is the more principled stance. Ron Paul does redeem himself by voting no on the entire budget, but really, if the budget is wrong, you should only be trying to cut it, not make spending more efficient. On the other hand, I think this is an acceptable sacrifice of "Principle" if indeed there is any. Its keeping money from the Feds, that's his point, and it allows him to maintain his seat. I can understand it.

You might be intrested in this space based IOT.

You might be intrested in this...

http://beyondthelampshade.chatango.com/ has been set up. :) Now we of BTL have our own offical chatango channel. Viva la BTL!

Hows you?

There are two IOTs that might intrest you to try them out: IOT X and the Universal Game. They both started but are also both still in the sign up stage and are in only the first turn.

Speaking of recruitment... who should we next recruit for BTL? Hobb would possible make a good figure.

Actually yeah I'm new to forums.