Behold, the Ron Paul future!

I was watcing the Twilight Zone the other day, and one episode entitled The Rip Van Winkle Caper caught my eye. It's about a band of gold thieves who steal a million dollars in gold bricks, only to end up fighting amongst themselves over them. Wait until you see the ending.

New Ron Paul Interview with Counterpunch

Some highlights:

ALI: What would be your plan to get out if you were elected President?

PAUL: I’d just come home as soon as the military could get them out. Whether it was 2 or 3 months, as long as they could get them out safely. And I’d announce to the world our policy is changing, the Navy would be backed off from the Iranian shores and that we’d be willing to talk to people. I think the dollar would go up and oil would do down and they’d probably start talking to each other. You know, they’re talking to each other right now. If we weren’t over there, Israel would probably be talking to the modern Arabs, the Arab League would be involved, even with the civil strife in Lebanon, they would talk to each other, and I think they would do it more so if we were out of there. So, I think sooner we leave the better.

Hey Ron, I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but you did not fucking answer the question. The guy asked for your exit strategy. Which would imply some to show that you were willing to put a minimal amount of thought into considering the basic challenges associated with the problem, and how you would go about overcoming them in the most efficient way possible. You didn't do that. All you said was, "I intend to do it in the fastest way possible, and I believe sunshine will spill out of my butt afterwards."

Holy shit, it's like talking to a five year old. "I think sooner we leave the better"? That's your answer? I'm surprised that you didn't just respond with "very carefully," or "to get to the other side." Both answers would have been equally as effective. Although I suppose that "very carefully" would imply some degree of caution at the expense of speed, which I guess is not what Ron Paul is about.

The big mistake is blaming capitalism. This is what we did in the Depression. They blamed the capitalism gold standard for the Depression, and it was absolutely wrong.

Sure they are, Ron. Just like the people who support evolution. I would trust a vagina doctor over an economist or a historian any day of the week.

PAUL: I didn’t say racism doesn’t exist, but if you’re a true libertarian, you see people as individuals and you don’t even know what group they bond to. I think the instrument that causes so much of this is sort of a subtle thing by the media, and it annoys me to no end. Because every time they analyze campaigns or elections, before or immediately after elections, they immediately go out and say, well, they never say, “How did the individuals vote?” they say, “What did the Muslims do? What did the Jews do? What did the women do? How did they vote?” And everyone is put in a category endlessly. So, we’re conditioned to think we’re not important because we’re an individual, but only because we belong to a group and that was the point of mine making that statement. If people are truly racist, they see people in groups, because if you’re a true libertarian, you don’t see that. Now, there might be some libertarians that drift off, but I think they lose their libertarian credentials if they’re able to do that.

Way to take the Stephen Colbert defense, Ron. After all, you would never generalize voters based on racial demographics, would you? BTW, what were you saying when Wolf Blitzer asked you about the newsletter accusations several months ago? I completely forgot.

Oh, right. That. Well, there you have it folks. Ron Paul does not fall under his own definition of libertarian.

ALI: What’s the future of your “Revolution?” Where do you think it’s going to go?

PAUL: Well, it seems there’s a lot of momentum and a lot of interest and the book is doing well. And I’m going to continue to try my best to keep the momentum going to help people stay energized, give them information, promote education, give people a chance to get involved in politics, run for Office, and all those things that will change the country. So, we have a lot to do here. And, soon, because the total Primary will be ending pretty soon.

So basically, the revolution will continue in more for-profit book sales and more failed runs for office, which I'm sure will bring up the level of annoying to even greater heights. Great.

The High Cost of Gold

One of more important Paultard campaigns this past year was their call to return to the gold standard. Oh sure, there were always a few would scoff and insist that Ron Paul wasn't really advocating for a "gold standard," but their clarification on the matter usually amounted to saying that "Monster Island isn't actually an island -- it's actually a Peninsula!" Well, maybe so, but it wasn't the "island" part that concerned me.

Now, we could go over the fact that the gold standard doesn't actually solve any of the problems that Paultards claim that it will, or the fact that the current system grants us with economic flexibility. Instead, I'm going to target one of Ron Paul's more naive claims, his insistence that "there will always be enough gold so long as no one interferes with the free market mechanism." Apparently, Ron Paul believes that the invisible hand can create gold from thin air, so long as the market is there to demand it, like villagers in "Black & White" who pray to the player for grain. Unfortunately, Ron Paul neglects one critical fact: Gold mining is expensive. Not just in raw dollars, but also in terms of the human and environmental toll.

The Paultards look at a hunk of gold, and all they see is a glittering rock. They don't really put much thought in how it got there, like a person who loves eating meat, but who doesn't want to know the conditions that the animal was raised in. A recent article from Spiegel online reports the some of following hard truths associated with their beloved metal:

• Mining enough gold for just one wedding ring produces about 20 tons worth of waste.
• There are no proper environmental standards, nor do miners consider the rights of local restaurants. For example, in Guatamala, mines have been set up in areas which the residents consider sacred.
• Goldmines use an estimated 182,000 tons of cyanide a year, effectively destroying the land. Further, the toxic waste poisons the ground water and rivers, and in Indonesia, it is dumped directly into the Ocean. In fact, these substances are so toxic that we are still dealing with the effects of waste products left behind by the Ancient Roman Empire.
• Mining operations tend to only employ a few people, and local residents rarely see the benefits to their economy.

Meanwhile, in Mozambique, the high price on gold has encouraged a hefty rise of slave labor, prostitution, and disease. Drinkable water is also becoming scarce as a result of pollution. The temperatures reach below freezing levels at night, causing workers to freeze to death. And all this for a few grams of gold dust, scattered throughout the Earth.

The problems in the gold industry combines two things that makes libertarianism what it is: A love for gold, and a hatred of regulation. The problem is bad enough right now, when gold is primarily used for the sake of technology and jewelry. But what happens if we increase the demand for gold even further, by forcing people to exchange in gold currencies for all transactions in general? Returning to the gold standard under a libertarian system would cause the price to skyrocket even further, causing people to harvest as much gold as possible for as little cost as possible, environmental and social concerns be damned.

This is also the main reason why Ron Paul's solution of returning to the gold standard to end the oil crisis doesn't work. He's not actually increasing the supply of oil at all, he's simply matching one hard to extract finite resource to another hard to extract finite resource, in the hopes that two wrongs can make a right. It's sort of like having a diet plan that hopes to bring a 500 pound man to average body mass, not by asking him to lose weight, but by forcing everyone else to become fatter.

Paultards Reject Free Market, Demand Government Intervention

h/t to Wonkette for this:
So the Paultards will defend laissez-faire when it comes to the freedom to discriminate against minorities solely for being minorities, or when a business pollutes the local land, air, and water table with toxic carcinogens. In other words, things that cause actual harm to actual people. But when a business decides to to put Ron Paul's books at the back of the store? Well, now you've gone too far, big business, and you deserve to see our lawyers! Keep in mind... this is the same group that doesn't believe that Rosa Parks deserves a gold medal, because she didn't want to sit in the back of the bus.

Paultards will often defend free market offenses by relying on free market solution, which usually amounts to "let's let the problem work itself out." Ironically, there actually is a free market solution in this case. See, what they don't realize is that most publishers actually pay to have their books placed in a prominent position, it's part of how a book store earns its money. Ron Paul apparently didn't pay up like his competitors did.

Wonkette: Ron Paul Freedom Tax Rally Saves Economy!

Courtesy of Wonkette: "Here are Ron Paul's supporters, still leading the Ron Paul rEVOLution, on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol yesterday at a rally, gazing longingly at George Washington's aluminum-tipped erect penis in the distance. Did you know that Ron Paul will also have a famous obelisk-cum-penis when he is president, again? More pictures of his concubines dancing the dance of Freedom, after the jump!"

Man, don't you love it when public school teenage hypocrites feel like lecturing the rest of the nation on the taxes that they've never actually had to pay themselves? It also seems as though the Paultards are the last group of people on Earth who still seem to dine on "Wonder Bread." Seriously, people still eat Wonder Bread? It sort of captures them pretty well. The Ron Paul crowd would prefer to live in the past. Others have actually lived through it.

The best comment on that thread comes courtesy of SayItWithWookies: "Oh, this is so sad -- in a Norman Bates 'My mommy's not dead' sorta way. It's the tard without the Paul." Pretty much says it all.

Ron Paul Launches New Ad On Immigration

Some of you may remember Ron Paul's previous ads on immigration, bragging that he would end birthright citizenship and deny student visas to "terrorist nations." Those were a form of subtle racism. Recently, Ron Paul has decided to go a different route on the matter in order to win back his base: Blatant racism. The following comes courtesy of Wonkette:
Note the caption at the bottom, "Authorized and paid for by Ron Paul 2008 Prsidential Campaign Committee." For everyone insisting that Ron Paul can't be a racist because we would have seen evidence of it, I give you Exhibit A, and Ron Paul's attempt to turn the above photo into the public image for all immigrants in general. And seriously, "No social security for you?" You're going to invoke a Seinfeld character known as the Soup Nazi in order to justify your racism? Brilliant move.

In addition to playing on the fear of Ron Paul's Aryan supporters, the ad also misses the point. Right now, illegal immigrants are putting money into social security that they will never collect on. The end result is a net benefit for social security. And according to FactCheck.org, "But nobody's proposing paying benefits to illegals, not until and unless they become US citizens or are granted legal status."

Ron Paul is either being dishonest, or he's once again being incompetent. Which is it?

FactCheck.org finally gets around to Ron Paul

After months of putting Ron Paul on the back burner, FactCheck.org finally treats him like they would any other candidate. From their article:

We've given his statements little attention until now. But here we look at some of his more outlandish claims:

• Paul claims that a secret conspiracy composed of the Security and Prosperity Partnership and a cabal of foreign companies is behind plans to build a NAFTA Superhighway as the first step toward creating a North American Union. But the NAFTA Superhighway that Paul describes is a myth, and the groups supposedly behind the plans are neither secret nor nefarious.
• Paul says that the U.S. spends $1 trillion per year to maintain a foreign empire and suggests that we could save that amount by cutting foreign spending. Paul gets that figure by including a lot of domestic programs that he isn't planning to cut, like the U.S. Border Patrol and interest payments on the debt.
• Paul has run television ads touting an endorsement from Ronald Reagan, but he fails to mention that, in 1988, Paul wanted "to totally disassociate" himself from the Reagan administration.

Have fun reading.

Shocking news! Ron Paul predicts hyperinflation in near future!

From the Congressional Record:

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me to appear before your subcommittee this morning to discuss the feasibility of establishing a gold standard.

As you know, I have introduced, and other members have cosponsored, H.R. 7874, which is a comprehensive bill to place the United States on a full gold coin standard within two years of the date of its passage.

I believe such a standard to be not only desirable and feasible, but absolutely necessary if we aim to avoid the very real possibility of hyperinflation in the near future, and economic collapse.

Absolutely shocking and completely frightening. If Ron Paul predicts hyperinflation in the near future, then dammit, it must be true. Even more shocking is when the speech was given: February 23, 1981. That means that we're 27 years overdue, and that the hyperinflation that Ron Paul predicted in the near future is even nearer.

BTW, what about the rest of the article? Here's a basic summary of what Ron Paul has to say:

• Myth #1: There isn't enough gold. False. There will always be enough gold, as long as we put our faith in the invisible hand to provide it.
• Myth #2: A gold standard would enable Russia and South Africa to hold us hostage. False. There's a rumor that Russia already sold a lot of gold to Saudi Arabia, so we would actually be held hostage by the Middle East. Also, the only reason why gold is considered valuable is because of fear and panic, so if we return to the gold standard, than the fear and panic would end and gold wouldn't be valuable anymore and Russia wouldn't be in a favorable position, even though the value of gold was the very reason I advocate a return to the gold standard in the first place.
  
• Myth #3: Gold causes depressions. False. Actual statement: "Were we to establish a gold standard, we would have to pursue a course that would not result in deflation and would not cause a depression. We would redeem at the market price for a period of one year the greenbacks we have printed, and then cease redemption, allowing the gold coins we have put into circulation to function as our money of account. If we proceed to a gold standard in an orderly fashion, such as I have proposed in my bill H.R. 7874, then there will be no depression. A gold standard cannot be achieved if we do not end our budget deficits as well. The standard must be accompanied by tax cuts, an end to the printing of paper money, and a significant reduction of federal regulations if we expect a restoration of a sound economy. Unless we are committed to all these things, even the establishment of 100 percent gold coin standard cannot stop our descent into economic chaos." Dear readers, feel free to cite this excerpt the next time you hear Ron Paul insist that he is only advocating for "competing currencies.
  
• Myth #4: Gold causes inflation. False. It's almost as bad as the people who criticize Michael Bay for being too intellectual for audiences.
• Myth #5: Gold would be speculative. False. After all, how could the invisible hand ever lead to economic instability?
  

Quick Links

For people who want more content, here are some links to other blogs you might be interested in:

• Paul Can Run But He Can't Hide: "The Paul campaign said in a prepared statement that Gray was not forthcoming about his background. But way back in August, Gray posted a notice on a prominent white nationalist blog announcing his involvement in the campaign. Moreover, this blog, along with others, exposed Randy Gray's activities before January 17 (that's when I first reported it). The Paul campaign, in releasing the statement, claims that they only learned about this over the past few days. This is a lie, since they took down the photograph of Paul and Gray as soon as vigilant bloggers exposed Paul's association with Gray."
• Stunning Ignorance: "Good grief. First, Paul isn't about defending the Constitution at all. He is a states rights conservative who confuses the Constitution with the Articles of Confederation. Worse, a lot of his philosophy is squarely in the neo-confederate camp." (Thanks to Andrew Austin).
• Ron Paul is an Ignoramus Part II: "Ron Paul could not be more wrong in his economic arguments. He blames government intervention and the Federal Reserve for economic problems. He says monetary policies are the cause of the business cycle. When was the Federal Reserve created? How interventionist was the federal government prior to that moment? Why do we have government intervention in the first place?" (Thanks to Andrew Austin).
• More independent research on Ron Paul's vote against MLK Day, and his criticism against Phil Gramm for not doing the same. (Thanks to Andrew Austin).
• A Dimension of the Hegemony of Whiteness: "Paul is thus useful to the elite and this is why the media is playing along with the charade. To be sure, the corporate media pushes him back down when he starts to get a little too popular. Capitalists discovered in in the first half of the twentieth century that when you go all the way with right-wing authoritarian types, the results leave a lot to be desired. Thus it's better to have the ideas injected into the public and manipulate them that way rather than have the countermovement actually come to power." (Thanks to Andrew Austin).
• Ron Paul Forums: "Why can't Ron Paul do what the other CFR does? Why can't we run 5 Ron Paul Republicans, so we can max out our donations to each of them...then let them all drop out one by one and endorse Ron Paul?" (Thanks to the Ron Paul Tumblelog)
• DailyPaul.com attempts to steal a page from Bioshock. (Thanks to the Ron Paul Tumblelog)
• Ron Paul Campaign removes Vox Day Endorsement from website. (Thanks to Sultan Knish).
• Top Ron Paul Supporter Defends Slavery (Thanks to Sultan Knish)
  

If there are any other blogs I should know about, post a link.

Paultards Continue to Deface Our Currency

Someone posted this to Ebay:

You are bidding on a piece of '08 Election History. This is a genuine 10 dollar bill with a stamp that says "RON PAUL FOR PRESIDENT" on each side of the Bill.

Hey Paultards, stop pulling this shit. You're not winning any converts by vandalizing the monetary supply, sorry.

Defeated Paultards Turn to Steve Buscemi for Inspiration

Whenever libertarians talk to me about taxes and charity, I always think back to the opening scene from Reservoir Dogs, when Steve Buscemi tries to explain why he doesn't tip the waitress. Steve tries to take a principled stand on how he doesn't tip because society says he has to, but what it really boils down to is this: Steve Buscemi is a cheap bastard, who doesn't like to give his money to other people. At one point, one of the characters points out that the waitresses has to pay taxes on the tips, and Steve Buscemi answers back with, "Show me a paper that says the government shouldn't do that, I'll sign it. I'll vote for it. But what I won't do is play ball."

Ladies and gentleman, I now present you with the latest Paultard strategy to win votes after their humiliating defeat in New Hampshire, No Taxes on Tips. After watching all of their other efforts fail, this is what they're hoping that it will all come down to. Because yeah, Ron Paul might be crazy. He might be incompetent, he might be racist, he might deny evolution and attract the crazy vote. On the other hand, Ron Paul will make it so that you can stiff your waitress, completely guilt free. So I think it's worth it.

In an unsurprising turn of events, the Paultards are once again proving themselves to be sore losers. Some blogs have expressed disbelief over the fact that Ron Paul's performance in New Hampshire could be worse than his performance in Iowa, and are now crying foul. It turns out that New Hampshire had over twice the turnout that Iowa did, and it's a lot harder to spam elections when other people actually show up.

Ron Paul confused on inflation, gas prices

REP. PAUL: I'll be glad to answer that question because it's something I talk about all the time and it's a very important question. The Wall Street Journal yesterday had a very good chart that explains this. If you look at the price of oil in the last 10 years, if you look at it in terms of dollars, it went up 350 percent. If you look at it in Euros, it went up about 200 percent. If you look at it in the price of gold, it stayed flat. It's the inflation, it's the printing of money, it's the destruction of the value of the dollar.

This is a follow-up to yesterday's post, where Ron Paul managed misdiagnose American health care costs by blaming inflation. This time, Ron Paul manages to misdiagnose the oil crisis, by failing back on his old talking point.

If the issue was inflation, then the sudden increase to oil prices would have been the result of an sudden increase to to our checkbooks, which simply hasn't happened. No, the real problem is basic supply and demand. There isn't enough oil out there for everyone, which means that prices will have to rise in order to separate the people who can afford it from the people who can't. It's a natural, free market response that Ron Paul of all people should be aware of.

Ron Paul attempts to prove his point by citing price increases in other nations, but he ignores a few things: The fact that these nations have different supply/demand structures, the fact that these nations already had much higher gas prices to begin with due to taxes, and the fact that these nations aren't on the gold standard either. Further, his statements on the gold standard ignores the fact that gold would be just as scarce as oil. While the same amount of gold currency might purchase the same amount of oil, it's not like you would have a steady supply of gold currency as income, because there simply wouldn't be enough of it to go around.

Ron Paul is capitalizing on the fact that there is a lot of negative sentiment regarding oil prices, and he's attempting to blame it on his favorite scapegoat. Unfortunately, it's like watching Pat Robertson trying to blame Hurricane Katrina on Ellen Degeneres, or other comparisons that I wouldn't be able to make without invoking the wrath of Godwin. The only real solution is to either radically increase the supply of oil, which seems unlikely, or to significantly reduce demand, which would require increased mileage standards and alternative energies.

As a final note, I suggest everyone read Megan McArdle's blog post from last December, which covers the same subject: "Ron Paul's supporters see the might of his common sense slashing through the doubletalk of the financial solons. I see a really, really smart economist responding to Ron Paul the same way you react to Cousin Mildred when she corners you after Christmas dinner to complain about the flouridation of the water supply."

Ron Paul confused on inflation, healthcare

REP. PAUL: There is an inflationary factor. We can't afford it. We do have good medical care, but the costs are so high now that our people in this country are actually going to India and getting their heart surgery done. They pay the plane ticket, the hospital, and the hotel and they get it for half price. So it's inflation.

But if you don't understand how inflation comes, we can't solve this problem. It comes from deficit financing with this war-mongering foreign policy we have.

(8:20 in)

In the past, Ron Paul has shown that he fundamentally doesn't understand the basic nature of inflation. But in the New Hampshire debate, Ron Paul reveals that he doesn't even understand his own arguments. Ron Paul usually rallies against inflation because of the fact that it has caused the value of fiat currency to decline, especially compared to the fiat currency in other nations. The Paultards will take this argument and run with it, insisting that the US dollar is "monopoly monopoly" that will soon become worthless.

So how does this argument against inflation apply to his example regarding India? It doesn't. The person who flies to India for a surgery isn't paying for the surgery in backed currency gold bullion. He isn't getting a job in Indian tech support to earn Indian backed currency until he has enough money for an Indian surgery. No, the person is taking the American dollars that he earned from his American job, and spending that money in a different nation. The money is adjusted for inflation, and it's adjusted for the currency exchange.

The fact that his money goes twice as far in India compared to how far it does in America isn't a sign that our dollar is weak. Quite the contrary. It's a sign that our dollar is relatively strong. Now, perhaps Ron Paul could try argue that while our dollar may be strong compared to India, it isn't as strong as it should be, and so the difference should be even greater. But that's not the argument that he was trying to make.

Ron Paul is making the argument that if people in India can perform surgeries for half as much money, then so should we. And maybe we should. But this isn't a problem with a problem with inflation. Remember, Cuba is another nation where surgery is much cheaper than in the US, and yet I doubt that Ron Paul would ask us to model our monetary system after Cuba. Ron Paul may be a doctor, but he's a doctor who likes to misdiagnose our economy based on his own personal biases, rather then finding the actual problems.

Jake Young: I'm convinced. The gold standard is a bad idea.

Jake Young from science blogs, who had previously endorsed Ron Paul and his return to the gold standard despite Ron Paul's denial of evolution and his "flagrant disregard for evidence and fact," has recently changed his mind after reading a post by Megan McArdle. It appears that more people are starting to learn, when confronted with facts and deep analysis, Ron Paul is a bad idea. From her article:

However, over the last fifty years, economists have settled on some very broad areas of consensus. The first is, as famous libertarian monetary economist Milton Friedman wrote, "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon". When the supply of money outstrips the demand, prices rise. And this is by no means limited to fiat currencies; see the great Spanish inflation of the 16th & 17th centuries, thanks to the steady influx of gold from the New World. Or check out the price of basic commodities in mining towns during the Gold Rush, when all anyone had was gold.

The second is that a little bit of inflation is okay--possibly even beneficial, since it helps the economy to overcome the problem of sticky wages when the relative value of labour has fallen. But a lot of inflation is very, very bad. Exhibit A is Zimbabwe; Exhibits B-∞ are every other economy that has had inflation near or above the double-digit mark; the higher the inflation, the worse the economy did. The feeling that the currency will experience an unpredictable amount of inflation dampens the willingness of the citizens to save and invest, which is why so many third-world loans are denominated in dollars.

The third is that deflation is also bad, and at the lower percentage values, often even worse than inflation. This surprises/offends/meets with the frank disbelief of many "sound money" types, who think that, barring local shortage, in an ideal world everything ought to cost the same or less than it did when Grandpa was a boy. (These sorts of opinions are cemented further by the fact that Grandpa, who is often the source of them, is usually living on a fixed income, and therefore feels that he would make out better in a deflationary economy.) The problem is, deflation does rather devastating things to anyone who has debt, since they now have to repay what they borrowed in more expensive dollars. Deflation means that, thanks to the abovementioned sticky wages, the economy has to deal with demand shocks by lowering output. Deflation can result in what's known as a liquidity trap, a concept pioneered by liberal economist John Maynard Keynes and best elucidated by liberal economist Paul Krugman back before he left economics writing to focus on his hatred of George W. Bush. Deflation is what made the Great Depression so memorable. Deflation is so bad that almost everyone agrees that moderate inflation, in the range of 1-2%, is better than risking even a small amount of deflation.

It's a good read that I would recommend for anyone who's looking for a rebuttal to the gold standard argument. Many people will try to argue that Ron Paul isn't looking for a true return to the gold standard, but simply some form of "sound currency." However, as long as there are no safe guards outlined against deflation, then the end result is still the same, and the same criticisms will apply.

White People Love Ron Paul

The Ron Paul supporters keep droning on and on about Ron Paul's donations, and how those donations come from "regular people." But which people in particular are donating to his campaign? Jason Rosenbaum of The Seminal does the work in a piece entitled, "Ron Paul Means Change, But Who Benefits?" Jason provides an analysis of Ron Paul's economic policy, then breaks down Ron Paul's donors by geography. As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words.

This latest revelation only rubs more salt in the wound when you look at one of Ron Paul's next upcoming fund raisers, "Free At Last, 2008." An event where Ron Paul supporters plan to honor Martin Luther King by donating money to Ron Paul.

Washington Post does Fact Checking on Ron Paul's IRS Policy

One of the main reasons that people support Ron Paul is because of his promises to cut taxes. "We could completely eliminate that IRS," they promise, "We just need to go back to 2000 spending levels." A bold claim. An appealing claim. But is it true? Michael Dobbs of the Washington Post does the fact checking, and gives Four Pinocchios for Ron Paul:

This seemed too good to be true, and it was. Without the revenues from individual income tax, the federal budget would shrink to the size it was in the early 1990s, not the year 2000. The discretionary share of the federal budget--the money the government spends on defense, the federal bureaucracy, the environment, education, and health--would dwindle to zero. All remaining federal revenues would be earmarked for mandatory entitlement spending such as social security--which Paul has said he would not touch--and interest on debt.

Remember, kids, there's no such thing as a free lunch.