Posted By: Watchman
Date: Sunday, 11-Dec-2011 11:15:17

Long before he discovered Friedrich Hayek and other free-market economists, Ron Paul got a lesson in sound money from his oldest brother, Bill.

It was the height of World War II, and the Paul boys were laying aside quarters from their Pittsburgh Press routes and pooling pennies earned from pulling dirty milk bottles off the line at the family dairy to buy war bonds. One day, Ronnie suggested what was, in retrospect, a rather Keynesian solution: "Why doesn't the government just PRINT this money?"

"Well," Bill responded, "then the money wouldn't have any value."

Bill was 10. Ron was about 7.

Washington bureaucrats, Paul says now, "would like it to be complicated, and that we have to accept this complex monetary system of the Federal Reserve. But it's no more complicated than two little kids talking ..."

It's not complicated, he insists. These are the themes he has been addressing, consistently, since he entered politics in 1974, over the course of 12 terms in Congress, through his third bid for the White House: Free markets are good. The Federal Reserve is evil. The gold standard should be restored. Government is the cause, not the cure, of the nation's troubles.

"If it tries to make us virtuous and it tries to make us better people and fairer people and make us more generous and make sure that nobody's richer than the other person, redistribute your wealth, the ONLY way they can do that is the undermining of our personal liberties," Paul told a raucous crowd of several hundred supporters during a recent "Restore Liberty Rally" at the Greenville Convention Center.

"And that isn't the purpose of government. The purpose of government is exactly the opposite. The purpose of government is to protect our liberties."

At 76, this former obstetrician has seven years on the oldest man ever to take office as president, Ronald Reagan. But where Reagan was the genial conservative, Paul is an evangelical libertarian – a prophet who preaches that the United States is flat broke, foundering under the too-great weight of a bloated bureaucracy and its imperial – albeit generally well-intentioned – foreign interventionism.

This is a man who would eliminate five of the 15 cabinet-level departments (Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development, and Interior – he has no problem reciting them all); recall American troops from all foreign lands, not just war zones; repeal the 16th Amendment, which created the federal income tax; reduce his own presidential salary from $400,000 to $39,336 – the median salary of an American worker.

These are not the planks of a mainstream candidate's platform. But Paul rolls along, attracting a hard-core following and collecting millions in contributions.

How does he do it?

Perhaps it is not so complicated: He applies the lessons learned in a life that stretches back to the Depression.

___

Paul's grandfather, Casper, fled the economic wreckage of post-World War I Germany and went to work in the Pittsburgh steel mills at age 14. Ron Paul grew up on stories about rampant inflation and the dangers of paper currency.

"I remember my grandmother wanting to hang onto some property my dad thought she should sell," he says. "And she said, `No. The money might go bad.'"

Casper eventually saved up enough to buy some land outside the city. He started a small vegetable and chicken farm, then opened a dairy, which his sons eventually took over and relocated to nearby Carnegie. Ron Paul's first job was making sure no dirty bottles made it to the filling crates. He was paid a penny per bottle; when they were old enough, the Paul boys – all five of whom shared one bedroom – took over the summer milk routes to give the drivers some time off.

His brother Jerry says Ronnie was no goodie two-shoes. In fact, he was kicked out of school – twice. The first time was for allegedly bribing a grade school chum "two bits" to throw a baseball through a window. The second was for bringing firecrackers to Dormont High – and that time he ratted on himself.

"He couldn't stand the principals who were dictatorial," Jerry says. "He would call them fascists."

Still, he was elected president of the student council at Dormont and won the school's service award three years running. But he really excelled at track. His junior year, Paul placed first in the state in the 220-yard dash, second in the 440 and third in the 100. Pennsylvania State University offered him a full athletic scholarship.

When he tore the cartilage in his right knee playing touch football that summer, Penn State was still willing to take a chance on him. But Paul decided he couldn't accept in good conscience. "I was not confident I could meet the standards of honoring that scholarship," he says.

Instead, he chose Gettysburg College, a small Lutheran school near the famous battlefield. Paul paid his own way, using money earned from his job running the local student coffee shop, The Bullet Hole, and washing dishes at the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity house. In his senior year, he married Carolyn Wells, who had first noticed him when a friend pointed out the lanky upperclassman running around the track at Dormont.

Paul went on to attend Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. During his second year of residency in Detroit, Paul got a letter from the Selective Service. He could be drafted into the Army as a "buck private," or join as a physician and receive an officer's commission.

"I volunteered immediately," he says, chuckling.

Paul served two years in the Air Force as a flight surgeon and three more in the Air National Guard. While he did not see any action, he says he's seen enough of war's aftermath to convince him "the way we go to war so often is the reason that we have difficulty getting out of war.

"My firm belief is that the founders were absolutely correct in going to war very, very cautiously, very, very rarely," he told the Greenville crowd. "And NOT by one individual deciding."

During his residency, Paul found time for some light reading: "The Road to Serfdom" by the free-market economist Friedrich Hayek. It was an epiphany. In short order, he devoured the works of Ayn Rand and Ludwig von Mises, the dean of Austrian school of laissez-faire economics.

Paul had been stationed at Kelly Air Force Base in San Antonio. When his service was up in 1968, he stayed on in Texas, eventually taking over the practice of the only obstetrician-gynecologist in tiny Lake Jackson, south of Houston. It was a busy office; often, Paul would deliver four babies in a single night, and in the course of his career, he estimates he brought more than 4,000 babies into the world.

There was minor shock in the office when Paul informed the staff they would no longer participate in the federal Medicaid or Medicare programs.

"People will pay as they can," scrub nurse Donna White, who later married her boss's youngest brother, recalls the doctor saying. "And if they can't, that's fine."

One family, she says, paid him in fresh-caught shrimp.

___

Paul can remember the date when he decided to enter politics. It was Aug. 15, 1971, the day President Richard Nixon decoupled the U.S. dollar from the nation's gold reserves.

"After that day, all money would be political money rather than money of real value," he told a writer from Texas Monthly. "I was astounded."

Paul lost his first congressional race in 1974 but won a special election two years later to fill the incumbent's unexpired term. Several months later, he lost the general election to Democrat Robert Gammage by fewer than 300 votes.

Paul defeated Gammage in 1978 and won back-to-back re-elections. His pledge to "never vote for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution" earned him a nickname: Dr. No.

He refused to vote for any tax increase or any budget that was not balanced, and eschewed most "pork barrel" projects for his district. He even voted against awarding Congressional Gold Medals to Mother Teresa, Nancy and Ronald Reagan, and civil rights icon Rosa Parks – though he suggested his colleagues "each put in 100 bucks" to pay for the $30,000 cost of a medal for Parks.

He has refused to enroll in the House pension program, saying it would be "hypocritical and immoral" to accept a benefit unavailable to the taxpayers who fund it. He also discouraged his five children – including the future Kentucky U.S. senator and tea party darling Rand Paul – from applying for government-backed student loans.

In 1981, Dr. No teamed up with "Senator No" (North Carolina's Jesse Helms) to pass legislation that formed the 17-member Gold Commission, which was to study "the role of gold in the monetary system." Appointed by Reagan, Paul argued for a gold coin – "without a dollar denomination" – as legal tender.

"I wanted people to think of money as weight," he wrote.

In 1984, Paul ran for the U.S. Senate. When that bid failed, he returned full time to his medical practice.

Four years later, Paul won the Libertarian Party's presidential nomination. He placed third in the election, with less than 1 percent of the popular vote, but he now had a national base.

In 1997, Paul retired from medicine and returned to Congress; he's been there ever since. In 2008, he made his second run for president, this time as a Republican. He raised almost $35 million, including more than $6 million on Dec. 16, 2007, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

Still, in the end, it was projected that he had amassed just 42 delegates.

The 2008 race also brought Paul's closest brush with scandal. A controversy arose over statements in his monthly newsletters – "if you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be"; Martin Luther King Jr. was a "pro-Communist philanderer"; "Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities."

Paul denied writing the offending passages – they were, he said, the work of ghostwriters, though he acknowledged that he bore "some moral responsibility" for them. And he said he was not a detractor of King's – the civil rights leader was a champion of individual rights and one of his heroes.

___

Now trotting sprightly along on two artificial knees, the high school sprinter has proved to be a steady long-distance runner. He placed a close second in the August Iowa straw poll, though he polls in single digits in most states.

The former fringe candidate is tapping into some mainstream anger. During a news conference at the Greenville airport, Paul – looking, as always, slightly rumpled in his workaday suit and sensible shoes – laughs when asked if throwing thousands of federal employees out of work in the current down economy is a good idea.

"Let `em go to work at McDonald's," he says, his brown eyes twinkling impishly beneath untamed eyebrows. "They should have a REAL job. Bureaucrats don't create wealth. They interfere with wealth production."

Downtown at the convention center, hundreds queue up for vinegary "eastern-style" barbecue, hush puppies, cole slaw and foam cups of sweet iced tea. One man sports a hat with a "REPEAL ObamaCare" button, while another wears a T-shirt cataloguing the supposed evils of fluoridated drinking water.

Paul's campaign takes pride in portraying him as a kind of Beltway Cassandra, ignored and marginalized by the "mainstream media." At the end of the food table sits a pile of business cards announcing Paul's latest "moneybomb" (the Oct. 19 drive raised more than $2.75 million) and daring news outlets to "BLACK THIS OUT!"

When the candidate arrives, the cheering crowd leaps to its feet. He then launches into a 33-minute, no-notes speech covering everything from 19th-century French economist Frederic Bastiat to the right to consume raw milk.

He speaks repeatedly of our "recession/depression" and says the "No. 1 cause" of the current financial crisis was the Federal Reserve.

"THEY are the ones who are responsible for so much suffering," he says, his already high-pitched voice rising to a near squeak. The Fed, he declares, is a "counterfeiter."

The crowd chants the title of one of Paul's books: "End the Fed! End the Fed!"

By speech's end, Todd Bennett, 45, of nearby Farmville, is sweating and hoarse.

"He's not the most charismatic man, by any stretch," says Bennett, a hospital supply courier and father of 10-year-old twin boys. "He's not got the greatest delivery by any stretch. But the words he says lights a fire in my soul. I'm ready to run through a brick wall for him."

Paul inspires that kind of devotion. But there are many naysayers, even among those who know him best. Jerry Paul, a retired Presbyterian minister and registered Democrat, says his brother "does not appreciate the depth" of human sinfulness and selfishness. He goes as far as to call Ron Paul's philosophy "kind of naive." Life is complicated, he suggests.

"Freedom, to me, really comes with responsibility ... to work together with others in the political realm, to work on behalf of the governed," he says. "That we're going to have a safety net ... Who else is going to do that, other than our political structure?"

The candidate freely acknowledges that the free market "is not perfect." But he says it adjusts for its mistakes.

"I think the people who assume that a few people in Washington, the bureaucrats and the politicians, know what's best for us, and we can trust them, that's being REALLY naive," he says.

link: http://refreshingnews9.blogspot.com/2011/12/ron-paul-proposes-interesting-salary.html

Topic started on 31-8-2011 by vincenz32

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread747380/pg1

Guys, I am a long time lurking member. And I wish this was more of a tight knit small forum because my honesty and warm character could be verified by you. Other than me telling you: Guys, I am not a shill, I am an honest person, and I have no reason to post here, other than to show my excitement this morning. The reason I dont post threads here that often is because I am a knowledge gatherer and have no reason to post on something that I have no information on until today that is.

Well today, I just stumbled on some crazy information from a retired Brigadier General in the Air Force of 33 years. I will only give a location in the Blan edited viscinity, and he is the owner of a Blank edited in the blank edited area now. I have been buddies with him for almost 10 years now because we subcontract with each other for jobs all the time. The craziest thing is I really never knew his military background and I never knew he had a knowledge in this conspiracy type stuff. I also dont like people to look at me like I am loony, so I stray away from speaking to people about GLP/ATS type issues unless I can get a feel that they are of interest or have there own experience in the matter.

So, we are working on a job this morning in the NYC area at my store, discussing plans about 20 minutes ago (yes you can tell I am excited) and I mention the Earthquakes from last week being on almost the same latitude line from Colorado to Virginia. Instead of him saying: “Wow , did you feel the shaking ? That was scary!”

The guy says “Yup, this world is changing very fast, many people have no idea what to expect in the coming years”.

I immediately thought, that was a strange way to talk about the shaking sensations of last week. So, I continued in a small convo with him and for the first time ever he admitted to me about flying planes for the air force and retiring as a 1 Star Brigadier General in the US Air Force for 33 years. He even mentioned working at Wright Patterson and traveling to Nellis and Edwards AFB on numerous occasions. He used to fly C140B Cargo Planes as a young officer and eventually moved up the ladder to command and flag level ranks. I was thoroughly impressed with his repetoire so of course I had to inquire about the UFO topic and inside information. He laughed and said dont get me started. “I have NO insider information, only what I have seen and heard from my other brass buddies” Lingo for officer general staff friends over the years.–

A few things he stated:

-During his time at both Wright Patterson and Area 51 region as a COL and Brigadier General level he admitted to having TOP SECRET CLEARANCE as well as a need to know clearance into certain areas as what he called it. Basically everyone had TS clearance, and the way he said it worked was if you were supposed to be in certain areas, your superior gave you the clearance on an as needed and need to know level. There were no terms for this, just access, etc. He said that he never saw anything out of this world so to speak, but he did state that he saw hangers “LARGER THAN LIFE” over there that were heavily guarded, and he “even as a general was never allowed over or even close to them”. FOr his entire 33 years all of his AF buddies always had stories and talked about Area 51 and WP AFB as having these incredibly large hangers, and also underground facilities to the size that people could never comprehend. He said some of the facilities underground were so large that it seemed entire cities or populations could live a fully sustained 100 year life down in them. But again, he only knew about them, was never allowed in.

-He also claimed in these secret hangers that we always guarded and locked, they (him and his officer buddies) always speculated that something extra special was locked away in there, as in advanced technology. But the Air Force personnel were never allowed even close. They speculated something not of this world.

-He did admit to me that he has seen something to the effect of the Aurora test flight and admitted that there were various leaks out west u.s. with hypersonic mach levels being recorded on standard air tower radar and achieved on normal day and nights unknown for the area, these were indeed current working order aurora like craft. He didnt go into any details, he didnt even tell me the name of the craft (but he witnessed various test flights) but he did say they do have “Aurora Like” Hypersonic/some other advanced tech Aircraft that can enter space, cruise around, than return and land on earth as easy as a 747 takes you from Tokyo to LA. But he did so, that was the only current advanced technology he was aware of, and ALLOWED TO SEE. He also admitted that almost all the brass generals and most Colonels in the air force that took the full flight officer career path is/was aware of the aurora like hypersonic/space flight fighters that we have and most wont tell you anything like my friend just did for fear of gov reprisal. But the main thing he said is, this technology is something that is hidden for the public but not really out of this world, and it is not really a big deal in the air force ranks, they consider just another weapon in there arsenal. He told me like it was no big deal. The real big deal is what he told me next. The hangers in A51 and WP AFB is where all the hooplah always was throughout his career.

-These are the big spills I got out of him. He said the crazy thing is, you talk to the president of the US and you talk to the top brass (4 star generals) in the air force and ask them about UFO’s and they will tell you the same thing my buddy is telling me. He admitted that even he is scared at what he saw. These hangers aren’t controlled by the U.S. Government, I couldn’t really understand what he meant, but he said these hangers, even though they are way within U.S. property and grounds, and these programs that none of the Air Force brass were allowed access to were all black budget, covert, external groups not related AT ALL to the U.S. Government or Military. He even said the hangers were guarded by men with security like camouflage on with no insignia, no rank, no affiliation with the air force. This always created tough questions and story talk amongst him and his brass buddies after work and at the bar, even to this day. He could only surmise to me today, that his entire military career as he witnessed these people doing what they are doing and the hangers, underground bases, and black programs they protect were some (dont laugh at what he said in this quote) Men in black, completely hidden black budget program that was ultimately commissioned somehow and someway by the U.S. government, and somehow funded by black budget funds, but completely seperate from the U.S. government as an entity. Meaning, whatever happened to this group, our government was not responsible. Kind of like ultra clandestine CIA operations, or delta force operations where the U.S. takes no responsibility but he went into further detail stating this was even crazier than that. These people didn’t even have any names and basically didn’t exists, at all. He said he would be surprised if they even used there real names when speaking to non group officials. These guys did not exist. Not even to himself, a one star general in the AF, or his 4 star commanding generals of the AF.

-My final question to him was the moon, mars, and secret space programs. He admitted to me that there was more than just Apollo 18, 19, 20, but the Russians have had men on the moon, and we have been there back and forth more times than you can even imagine. He also stated we have bases on the moon with 100% certainty and honesty like I have never seen him speak to me before. He said this with a more assertive character. He also said the one thing that really stood out in my mind, because this guy is a hard working businessman, who never ever gets into conversations like this with me, he said I am going to tell you a little something that you may already know. “Pretty soon the world will be able to commercially travel to mars and the moons of mars, we can and have already done it.

And when commercial space flight brings us to Phobos, people are in for a HUGE surprise when they find this. As a matter of fact, there is an obelisk man made structure on one of the moons of mars Phobos, and something that no one has told you about that is the Russians, Chinese, and Americans created that in a collaborative mission. That is something that I have never told any civilian before, as a matter of fact I have never had this convo with any civilian other than my family before. “So to answer your question, yes we have been doing a lot of things behind the scenes in space, don’t listen to Obama and the news about our lack of space travel, and our closing of our ONLY space station **with a laugh**, but more importantly it is compartmentalized and I only heard stories from other officers about the really classified stuff, and I experienced only some of it with my own eyes.

The Ultrasonic and Gravity Type Projects, giant hangers, huge bases underground, the unmarked security black projects group all over the globe guarding black projects with what seems like unlimited funds and total autonomy without presidential or gov authorization, and I have seen a lot of joint nasa/usaf operations documents regarding moon projects, mars projects, and space travel, ie: hidden space program during my career, everything that is in regards to national defense, I had my hands and eyes in at my command 1 star flag level position.” “But, unfortunately I cannot sit here and tell you I have seen aliens, and I have proof, because even a retired 1 star general like myself has never had any access to that type of information. I can tell you with 120% certainty that I have seen planes in triangle and full circular shapes lift all the ground using gravity propulsion and I have seen planes speed in excess of Mach 14 and still make maneuvers at that speed, but I cannot tell you I have seen a little green man.” There are a lot of things the government doesn’t want you to know, and I was and still am a part of that cover-up, and I know you will probably go running to all your friends involved and tell them what I said to you, but the fact of the matter is, if you don’t use my name I wont be held accountable, and most people wont ever believe you anyway. Hehe –laughter erupts from him.”

So, guys, I swear on my life that everything I have told you about my encounter with my long time business associate was truth, and I did not fabricate anything. Most of the things I have stated can be found on google or in wikipedia anyway. But this thread, what this thread means to me is it finally gave me my own REAL personal tangible evidence that this stuff really exists, and we have ET type technology hidden. I always needed some form of proof from someone in the know. And today fellas and ladies, I just go it. Again, you can choose to believe me or not, I only wish there was a way for me to prove my character worthiness. I prob wont ever make a post like this ever again in my life because I wont have such an amazing reason to post a thread like this.

Cheers fellas.