RON PAUL RALLY IN ELKO, NEVADA

By Lisa J. Wolf, Correspondent

February 3, 2012

 

Holding signs and balloons, some 400+ people waited in anticipation for presidential candidate Congressman Dr. Ron Paul to arrive for a rally February 2, 2012 at the Elko Indian Colony Gym at 4:30 p.m.

 

Campaign volunteer Norma Viergutz said she supports Dr. Paul because of his “stand on the debt and how much debt we’re in as a country.” Another Elkoan, ‘Paula’ supports Paul “because he believes like I do. He’s for the Constitution. He wants to limit the power of the government. He’s for the American people. He’s just a good candidate.”

Elko County Commissioner Warren Russell said, “I made my mind up to vote for him for the caucus,” Saturday, February 4th, “because he’s a real person.” Russell said, “Santorum’s a pretty real person, too,” but the Commissioner doesn’t trust Gingrich’s morals and feels Romney’s “taking positions to get votes.” Russell believes “in no abortion” and feels Romney was supporting abortion in Massachusetts without parental consent and finds Romney “hard to believe.” Russell said, “Finding out he has all these accounts in the Cayman Islands, now that’s another issue.” Russell expects when the general election comes he’d vote “against Obama and probably vote for Romney” if he’s the Republican nominee “unless something happens I can’t anticipate.”

 

When Ron Paul entered the gymnasium he was met with cheering and applause. Paul thanked everyone “for coming out,” introduced his wife, Carol, and noted, “We have an election coming up real soon. What are we going to do? Win!” Paul said of Nevadans, “You actually believe in Liberty. A lot of people talk about it, but they don’t really believe in it.” Paul said, “We actually believe in something that is worth fighting for.”

 

Paul said the country “is in a mess and it’s very easy to blame the current Administration, the current owners, but we have slid into this mess over many, many decades.” While it’s difficult “to blame any one individual,” Paul blamed “the philosophy of Big Government that has proven to be a failure, and that’s what we have to challenge.”

 

Paul critiqued the 16th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1909, and ratified in 1913, which established Congress's right to impose a Federal income tax, saying, “I’m old-fashioned: I believe you ought to be able to keep all the fruits of your labors.”

 

Paul said 100 years ago, “They laid plans for expanding the government in a very deceitful manner,” using “a more seductive way to pay the bills when people don’t want to pay the taxes and they don’t want to lend money” by introducing “a very deeply flawed system of money” and “the notion we should have a central bank, which we never should have done and which we do not need in order to have a prosperous economy in this country.”

 

Paul noted a reason “the Revolution was fought and the Constitution was written: to give us sound money. Only gold and silver is supposed to be currency. It is not to be paper. As a matter of fact there is a prohibition in the Constitution that says you cannot remit bills of credit: you can’t print money and give bills of credit. That means only gold and silver can be legal tender. It’s still on the books. But in Washington, have you ever noticed, on occasion they just ignore the Constitution?” Laughter and applause came from the audience.

 

Paul called for “members of Congress who deeply understand and are devoted to their oath of office, as well as the President, devoted to the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States. In this last 100 years, there’s been a systematic attack on our liberties. For a long while we could get away with it. We sacrificed liberties here and there, pretended that we could transfer wealth and we could take care of the world; but eventually what happens on a country that overextends itself: it goes broke; and this is what has happened. Four years ago it was announced in the marketplace that we are now broke and we can’t pay our bills; and the only way we survive right now is just running up debt and printing the money.”

 

Paul said, “We got away with it when we had wealth to consume; but no longer: the jobs aren’t there, the production isn’t there. The prosperity we have today is based on debt and that is the reason why it’s come to an end; that is the reason not only is the United States in the midst of a financial crisis; that is the reason the world is in the midst of a financial crisis. This cannot be solved by continuing to do all of the things that gave us our crisis: too much spending, too much borrowing, too much regulation, too much printing press money, too much undermining our liberties.” Paul asked, “Why don’t we try something different? Why don’t we try obeying the Constitution and reduce spending?”

 

Paul said his proposal to reduce spending in the first year is “not pretending we’re going to cut spending; or pretending we’ll cut spending in the out-years. I think it’s very necessary and proper and would be a stimulus to the economy to cut the government spending by $1 trillion.”

 

Paul acknowledged people “are nervous about that” and ask “’how’s that going to happen? Isn’t it the government that stimulates?’ No. The government interferes; it distracts. Where do they get the money? They have to take it from you or print the money; and you know destroy the value of your savings and destroy the value of the dollar. So, if you take a trillion dollars away from the government and give it back to the people, it causes prosperity.” Paul added, “We don’t want them to stop spending, but we want you to be in charge of the spending of the money.”

 

Paul said in his 30 years in politics, “I’ve met a few bureaucrats and I’ve met a few politicians” and assured the crowd “they don’t know how to spend your money.” While Paul acknowledged “some people will mess up and misspend their money and misuse their personal liberties,” he cautioned, “if you defer to the government and think they should tell you how you should run your life and how you should spend your money,” then “we’re not going to get over this.” Paul argued, “In a free society it should be the people’s decision on how they run their life and how they spend their money.”

 

Paul noted the Nation’s second President John Adams and the Nation’s Founders worried “whether or not we would maintain a free society because they recognized rather clearly that a free society doesn’t exist if people don’t assume responsibility for themselves, as well as society being moral; and that is part of our problem: we have slipped away from that.” Paul related that Adams warned “we would sacrifice the republican form of government and end up with a pure democracy where the majority dictates what rights are and how other people should live, and how other people should spend their money.”

 

Paul said, “This is where we are today: we have the dictatorship of the majority which means all they have to do is band together, the special interests band together, and pick on the people who are the producers” which “has undermined us. And now the production is down; the wealth has been consumed.”

 

Paul said Adams predicted the country would then “become very wasteful” and “would also exhaust itself and then the society would literally murder itself.” Paul called on those assembled to consider “what’s happening today; when you think of the crisis that we just got into 4 years ago: instead of looking at the fallacies of the monetary policy and the welfare state and the endless wars that we’ve been fighting overseas; instead of saying these policies are wrong, they just keep doing the same thing over again.”

 

Paul asked, “What have we done to the middle class? We’re destroying the middle class. In a free society with sound money and good market economies the middle class grows. We had the biggest and the wealthiest middle class in the history of the world but not today” as “the middle class is shrinking and it’s poor.” Paul instructed, “When you destroy the currency and you get to be a pure democracy, and you overspend, the wealth is transferred from the middle class to a select few.” 

 

Paul said, “To add insult to injury who got the bail-outs? They said, ‘Well, this is a real mess we got into and we’ve got to save us from a depression.’ So they said, ‘We’ve got to bail out the banks and the big corporations’; and it is true: they were on the verge of a depression; but they should have had the depression; you shouldn’t have gotten the depression.” Again there was applause.

 

“So economically-speaking we’re self destructing, we’re murdering ourselves because we’re destroying the value of our currency; we’re destroying the incentive to produce; we’re chasing our businesses overseas.”

 

Paul called 9/11 "a real eye opener” from which “the conclusions weren’t necessarily the right conclusion” drawn “because what has happened since then? Our personal liberties have been under attack.” Paul noted, “We worry about somebody maybe coming here and taking away our liberties and invading our country, but that is not going to happen” as “we have the strongest most powerful military in the history of the world. Nobody’s going to touch us militarily.” Rather, Paul was concerned by the swift introduction of the Patriot Act justified “because they said ‘we have to watch ourselves and you have to sacrifice your freedoms to be safe.’ You don’t have to sacrifice your freedoms to be safe. You never have to.”

 

Paul voted against the Patriot Act and believes it and the TSA [Transportation Security Administration] should be repealed. He questioned, “How is that we get x-rays from head to toe and probed from head to toe and all over and taking our clothes off whether you’re in a wheelchair and 94 years old. ‘Oh well, we have to treat everybody equally. You all look like suspects; you all look like you’re going to blow up somebody so you have to give up your liberties.’ But it doesn’t work that way: no one is safer because of what they do to us at the airports.” Paul said, “I think we’re in for a big problem” and added “a lot of people are sick and tired of giving up their privacy and that’s what the Patriot Act did: it took away your right to privacy.”

 

Paul pointed out the 4th Amendment ensured “they couldn’t come into our houses; couldn’t look at our papers and send the military after us; and they had to have proper search warrant; but today they don’t” since 9/11.

 

Paul then considered “this ill-advised war on drugs” which he called “an excuse to break into our houses,” with authorities often breaking “into the wrong houses because they suspect that somebody might be doing something in there that ‘we don’t like.’”

 

Paul related “just this week” the case of an unarmed woman in her house with “two or three little kids” and “no man in the house” whose front door was sawed down. “She didn’t know what to do” as the FBI came in “and slammed her on the floor. She had a little child screaming for her mother in the other room and for over an hour she was lying on the floor and they said, ‘Don’t move or you’ll be in big trouble’ and later “they came back and apologized.” Paul asked, “How can you apologize for that type of abuse?”

 

Paul related, “The President said there’s a lot of bad people. We have to make everybody safe” and that “there are Americans who are very dangerous and we have trouble catching them and trying them” as a justification for a new policy meaning “an American citizen can be assassinated without charges and without a conviction.” Noting the President signed the NDAA [National Defense Authorization Act] New Year’s Day, Paul said to the crowd, “Happy New Year. It said that the President can instruct the military to arrest any American citizen without any charges” and that citizens “can be denied an attorney and held indefinitely even in a foreign prison.” The crowd booed.

 

“Now that is over the top.” Paul said, “To live in a free society we have to be aware of that” and “be willing to stop it because there is no danger that great. Remember, we take an oath of office to defend against all enemies foreign and domestic.” Paul reiterated, “Foreign enemies are not going to invade us; but I’m fearful of our domestic enemies who don’t care about our personal liberties and our conditions here at home and we must protect from that type of threat as well.” Again, Paul met with applause and a chant of “President Paul, President Paul, President Paul!”

 

Paul turned his attention to the “baseline budgeting deal in Washington” which plans “to increase the budget at a steady rate over the next 10 years.” Paul joked, “The Soviets only had 5 year plans; we have 10 year plans for the budget” at “about ten trillion dollars over the next years, automatic increases.” Paul noted Congress turned “to this Super Committee, who’s made a super mess of everything, and they couldn’t come up with anything and so the automatic cuts came up” which say “we will cut a trillion dollars over these proposed increases. Well, you know that’s one hundred billion dollars a year. That used to be big money but that’s not big money anymore. So, guess what? Our national debt goes up a hundred million dollars every month” and “that’s why I want to cut a trillion dollars out of the budget in one year.” Again, there was applause.

 

Paul called for unity among “Independents, Democrats, Republicans, everybody” and said “the easiest place to cut” would be “the overseas welfare funding that we’re spending around the world.” Paul said to “do that we have to change our foreign policy,” and called for “a foreign policy of non-intervention and never go to war unless there’s a declared war.”

 

“In the last 10 years the national debt went up $4 trillion” because of “non-declared” wars against those who at one time “were our friends then they became our enemies.” Paul said, “The biggest decision now in the news on foreign policy: ‘should we or shouldn’t we talk to the Taliban?’” Paul pointed out, “The Taliban used to be our allies when we were fighting the Soviets when they were in Afghanistan. Can you imagine what brought down the Soviets? They went into Afghanistan and they had a war there and they finally went bankrupt. You’d think we’d have learned something from that.”

 

Paul thinks, “The wars should end and we should bring our troops home as quickly as possible” and “change the economic policy, cut the spending and also” implement “a sound monetary system,” calling for a “gold currency. We should live within the laws. We should be concerned about our civil liberties. That’s not new and strange. I’m not inventing this. That’s what made America great.”

 

Paul said he used to say, “Don’t spend that money and borrow money. The next generation is going to have to pay for it. Guess what? We are the next generation” and “are now paying our bills” because the country “is being forced to live within its means,” which he called “an opportunity to advance the cause of liberty” by looking “at our Constitution” to “restore how a free society works. What is wrong with arguing the notion that freedom means you have the right to find your own personal religious and intellectual life and your habits as you see fit and your economic life as well? That’s what liberty means. That should bring us all together” not “divide us because everyone should want their own personal liberty.”

 

Paul said, “We want individual liberty. We want to be left alone. We’d like to run our own life as we choose as long as nobody is injured or don’t injure other people or harm other people.” Paul called on people “to recognize that your neighbors and your friends and everybody else in the country have the right to do what they want with their own lives,” pointing out that to have a free society “you have to assume responsibility for everything that you do.”

 

Paul also called on Americans to “quit lying to ourselves” and “deceiv[ing] ourselves in hope that we do this and things will get better. But even the terminology has changed about lying to ourselves. You know they call torture ‘enhanced interrogation technique’ and it’s no longer torture. They don’t like to use the term ‘war.’ They call it ‘kinetic military connection.’ We need to quit that nonsense. We need to just be honest with ourselves and know where we stand. If we did what we should do, there would be an adjustment period but it would be short. What we’re doing today is prolonging the agony. It’s already taken 3 or 4 years to prove what they’re doing now is wrong but they’re not willing to change. That is the message we have to send them.”

 

Paul said, “We need to be ready for the change and the change means we want our liberty back; we want the rule of law back; we want a strong national defense and we want to have everybody to mind their own business.” With that Paul concluded and took questions as chants of ‘President Paul’ resounded.

 

Asked about gold mining taxes, Paul said, “The federal government has already gotten way too much” and Paul reiterated his opposition to income tax. Paul noted wryly that “the Department of the Interior owns the land instead of the people of Nevada owning the land,” to applause.

 

Regarding education, Paul said the “cause of the cost of education going up is the federal government devaluing your currency. When I was in college, just a couple of years ago, my tuition was about $350 a semester and I had two side jobs that I earned my room and board. The board was $9 a month and the food was $45 a month; but everybody had a job and the money was worth something.”

 

Paul called it “common sense” that “when you print a lot of money,” the money “loses its value and prices go up, but all prices don’t go up together and salaries don’t go up together” meaning “some people suffer more than others. So, if you put money in the stock market you get a NASDAQ bubble; if you put money into housing you get a housing bubble; if you pump money into medicine, medical care prices go up more than anything else. If you pump money as the federal government has for all these years, guess what? The quality of education won’t necessarily go up but the cost will.”

 

Paul added, “Students are graduating from college” and “because of the system and this debt-financing, the students owe more money than all the credit cards: a trillion dollars. And this is the consequence of the monetary policy and the way government entices people.” Paul said, “There is no authority for the federal government to be involved in any form of education,” rather he called for public education to “be a state function. Believe me if you had the government gone the cost of education would be a lot less and you would be able to get a job.” Again, there was applause.

 

Turning to health care, Paul said he does “not consider health care a right. We all should have equal rights but they’re individual rights, not group rights. I don’t like hyphenated rights, but they’re individual” and “everybody should have equal justice in the courts.” Paul added, “If you had a right to medical care then” it “would be based on enforcement not on rights.” Rights are “life and liberty” and health care is in the category of “a service, in the category of food. You don’t have a right to food and yet people do believe.” Paul said, “This is what’s wrong with the entitlement system. People have been taught now for decades, and this has to be reversed. If you believe that entitlements are rights you say, ‘Well, I’m entitled to food stamps, I have a right to food; I have a right to medical care; I have a right to free education.” Paul said, “We have to change the whole notion that entitlements are rights because it is based on theft and also this whole principle can be applied to overseas dealings. Nobody overseas has a right to your money. If you want to give money to somebody overseas for various causes you can give money to people; but I don’t have a right to tax you.”

 

Regarding the 2nd Amendment, Paul said, “The Founders thought that was the ultimate protection against the tyranny of the government” and added, “I don’t believe we have a 2nd Amendment so the early Americans could shoot rabbits.” Paul said, “I think the 2nd Amendment is an amendment that should bring us all together” and thinks “the large majority of the American people right now understand the 2nd Amendment very clearly.”

 

PAUL’S 5-PART PLAN TO RESTORE NEVADA

 

Paul, in a mailing sent out Friday, February 3rd, outlined his 5-part ‘Plan to Restore Nevada’ which would:

 

“Restore Nevada’s Job Market through tax and savings reform, repealing job-destroying laws and regulations, enacting a National Right to Work law, and reining in the Federal Reserve;”

“Restore the Housing Market through tax credits and deductions, ending the government’s distortion of housing prices, and making it easier for people to save for a new home and businesses to save to develop new commercial properties and to create new jobs;”

“Restore Tipped-Worker Wages by making tips tax free;”

 

“Restore a Common-Sense Visa System by streamlining the process and maximizing efficiency, and increase tourism and travel by working to abolish the out-of-control TSA;”

“Give Nevada Back to Nevadans by eliminating the unconstitutional Department of the Interior and dramatically reducing the federal government's land holdings, allowing Nevadans to decide for themselves how best to use their land without having to seek permission from federal bureaucrats.”