Mani
09-18-2007, 11:23 PM
I asked if anyone wanted to ask Dr. Paul a question, since I was going to meet him before the Value Voters debate.
I got there a little late to the VIP event so I didn't ask Ron Paul all these questions directly.
How could I be late to a $500/person VIP event to meet Dr. Paul???
Well, I was out the night before from 11PM - 5AM painting the town Ron in anticipation for his arrival.
I slept for a few hours, took care of some things, then headed over to the VIP function (about 45 minutes from my house).
I had some BIG banners left over and I really didn't want to see them wasting away in my van on this special day, so I saw some fencing on a real busy street in downtown Fort Lauderdale, just blocks from the debate site, and I COULD NOT RESIST.
I put up a couple big "RON PAUL PRESIDENT 2008" Red/White/Blue banners, and a couple of smaller Revolution posters next to them. Another person from the meetup group spotted me and drove over and helped me out.
Now I was pretty sweaty in the 90 degree weather and finally headed over to the debate area (which was 3-4 blocks from the VIP place). When I walked out of the parking garage I saw some beautiful palm trees with just enough space for giant Ron Paul banners.
This is the parking garage that probably 90% of the 2000+ crowd would use. How could I resist NOT putting up GIANT Ron Paul banners in front of the place nearly EVERY debate attendee would walk by?
So two of us decide to hang up more huge banners and another supporter from out of town shows up to help.
The banners look awesome! Only thing is, I'm completely late for the VIP and a sweaty mess.
I head to my car change my clothes and head to the VIP a bit late. When I walked into the restaurant I was still sweating and needed about 4 glasses of water before I cooled down. I didn't want to be all sweaty while talking to Dr. Paul and especially since the room he was in was packed with 50 people.
By the time I was more composed and met Dr. Paul, he had to go soon, and there was still people who wanted to take pictures with him.
I decided I didn't want to monopolize his time when people just want to take pictures, so I asked if I could speak to someone from the campaign regarding questions I had from the ronpaulforums.com site.
They told me to grab Jessie B. (Benton?) who is the spokesperson for Ron Paul. I felt that was good enough, if he's a spokesperson for Ron Paul and he works for the campaign, he should be quite familiar with Ron Paul's beliefs and philosophy.
Here's the questions I asked, and his responses, I didn't get to ask every question from that Question thread, but Jessie was very polite and took every question seriously.
Here it is, this is paraphrased from my memory 24 hours ago (and little sleep) I didn't write anything down so sorry if the answers are not as detailed as you like.
1) I've heard he doesn't want to try running on a third-party ballot, but would he go independent? Has he thought about it? Is it completely out of the question, or would he maybe consider it? I've never heard any firm responses to this, and I am somewhat curious.
No. He tried this in 1988 and it's not practical. Also it would cost $100M+ to get on the ballot, he would be spending all his time just getting his name on the ballot and doesn’t have that kind of money.
2) Ask him if knows of the "Comprehensive Annual Financial Report" of the USA. and the Leo Wanta trillions that is the result of Reagan that is due to the USA treasury. Paul is so concerned with economics, I have never seen him talk of these things
Not familiar with that. (The person who asked this question I asked them to provide details in case he wasn't familiar with it....Oh well, I tried.)
3) ask him what his priorities are in regard to corporate welfare. particularly farm subsidies... a young man can't even afford
a piece of ground these days 'cuz the corporations and
big farms buy it all up and then feed at the gov't teet. and they want to build 3 nuclear plants in his (my) congressional district. this is an area that should have learned the lessons of corporate America.
He’s against corporate welfare and farm subsidies. His district is an agricultural one but he still succeeded in his district, he said he was able to do so by going DOOR TO DOOR and talking to people one on one and making them understand the issues with these subsidies. He's been successful in his own district dealing with this issue.
4) i'd ask him why the Illegal Immigration issue hasn't become a cornerstone issue of his campaign...
(I didn't ask it in those words...) He said it was an important issue, then I just followed up with what are the 3 top issues in the Ron Paul campaign, he replied:
1) Iraq war
2) IRS
3) Civil Liberties (not sure if it was in that exact order, but I think it was).
5) My sister lives in NJ and has a 12 year old son who is autistic and relies on federal funding to help pay for his different expenses. In the case of people with special needs/disabilities, if Dr. Paul wants to eliminate federal programs as it is unconstitutional, where will this money come from? ...
I highlighted the areas in bold and kind of showed him the question and paraphrased, what about people who need these assistance programs?
He feels if we cut out our spending overseas with our nation building, embassies, war in Iraq we could save so much money and put that money into some of these entitlement programs. He doesn’t believe in turning off a switch, but slowly drifting away from them and having young people opt out of programs. There’s no off switch, but there wouldn’t need to be, by changing how much we spend overseas, these programs will be funded and slowly ween people (especially young people) off them.
5) First he's for securing the borders, next he's not interested in a fence or "guns" on the border (per today's speech at Johns Hopkins.)...
He doesn’t feel a free country with liberty ideals should have a big fence with guns, that’s not his philosophy, however at this time it seems like a necessity. His long term plan is to remove the incentives to come here illegally and remove the welfare state and free handouts, that will got much further in getting the problem to fade away longterm, but as a short term solution he supports building the fence.
6) Dr. Paul, have you picked your VP yet?
--No but the campaign staff likes someone (argh, I wrote it down, it was someone from South Carolina I think. One of Dr. Paul’s friends, it seems like he aligns himself with Paul a lot).
7) Dr. Paul, what is your stand on tobacco taxes?
He’s not a fan of taxes, and feels the way we handle taxes on tobacco is perverse. While congress wants to get rid of it, they still love the revenue it generates (I can’t remember all the details on this one, sorry). The summary is the government plays this perverse game of wanting people to quit but also gobbling up as much tax revenue as they can from it.
He did say Dr. Paul doesn’t like smoking at all, and discourages or asks people on his staff to try and quit.
8) Dr. Paul, what other Texas Congressmen or Senators do you consider true Republicans, so we would know in TX for whom to vote in 2010 for Congress or Senate?
--He mentioned 1-2 names of people. He said some people vote with Dr. Paul on some things while others do not, so there’s not an exact person who votes the same exact way, there are a couple people that vote on some things the same. (I’ll look for that, I wrote it down somewhere and put it in the thread later).
Jessie was a very nice guy and the rest of the staff seemed real nice. Dr. Paul was very polite and sociable.
Some other interesting things happened in the evening before, during, and after the debate, but I'll talk about them tomorrow because it's 1:30AM and I still haven't caught up on my sleep!
I got there a little late to the VIP event so I didn't ask Ron Paul all these questions directly.
How could I be late to a $500/person VIP event to meet Dr. Paul???
Well, I was out the night before from 11PM - 5AM painting the town Ron in anticipation for his arrival.
I slept for a few hours, took care of some things, then headed over to the VIP function (about 45 minutes from my house).
I had some BIG banners left over and I really didn't want to see them wasting away in my van on this special day, so I saw some fencing on a real busy street in downtown Fort Lauderdale, just blocks from the debate site, and I COULD NOT RESIST.
I put up a couple big "RON PAUL PRESIDENT 2008" Red/White/Blue banners, and a couple of smaller Revolution posters next to them. Another person from the meetup group spotted me and drove over and helped me out.
Now I was pretty sweaty in the 90 degree weather and finally headed over to the debate area (which was 3-4 blocks from the VIP place). When I walked out of the parking garage I saw some beautiful palm trees with just enough space for giant Ron Paul banners.
This is the parking garage that probably 90% of the 2000+ crowd would use. How could I resist NOT putting up GIANT Ron Paul banners in front of the place nearly EVERY debate attendee would walk by?
So two of us decide to hang up more huge banners and another supporter from out of town shows up to help.
The banners look awesome! Only thing is, I'm completely late for the VIP and a sweaty mess.
I head to my car change my clothes and head to the VIP a bit late. When I walked into the restaurant I was still sweating and needed about 4 glasses of water before I cooled down. I didn't want to be all sweaty while talking to Dr. Paul and especially since the room he was in was packed with 50 people.
By the time I was more composed and met Dr. Paul, he had to go soon, and there was still people who wanted to take pictures with him.
I decided I didn't want to monopolize his time when people just want to take pictures, so I asked if I could speak to someone from the campaign regarding questions I had from the ronpaulforums.com site.
They told me to grab Jessie B. (Benton?) who is the spokesperson for Ron Paul. I felt that was good enough, if he's a spokesperson for Ron Paul and he works for the campaign, he should be quite familiar with Ron Paul's beliefs and philosophy.
Here's the questions I asked, and his responses, I didn't get to ask every question from that Question thread, but Jessie was very polite and took every question seriously.
Here it is, this is paraphrased from my memory 24 hours ago (and little sleep) I didn't write anything down so sorry if the answers are not as detailed as you like.
1) I've heard he doesn't want to try running on a third-party ballot, but would he go independent? Has he thought about it? Is it completely out of the question, or would he maybe consider it? I've never heard any firm responses to this, and I am somewhat curious.
No. He tried this in 1988 and it's not practical. Also it would cost $100M+ to get on the ballot, he would be spending all his time just getting his name on the ballot and doesn’t have that kind of money.
2) Ask him if knows of the "Comprehensive Annual Financial Report" of the USA. and the Leo Wanta trillions that is the result of Reagan that is due to the USA treasury. Paul is so concerned with economics, I have never seen him talk of these things
Not familiar with that. (The person who asked this question I asked them to provide details in case he wasn't familiar with it....Oh well, I tried.)
3) ask him what his priorities are in regard to corporate welfare. particularly farm subsidies... a young man can't even afford
a piece of ground these days 'cuz the corporations and
big farms buy it all up and then feed at the gov't teet. and they want to build 3 nuclear plants in his (my) congressional district. this is an area that should have learned the lessons of corporate America.
He’s against corporate welfare and farm subsidies. His district is an agricultural one but he still succeeded in his district, he said he was able to do so by going DOOR TO DOOR and talking to people one on one and making them understand the issues with these subsidies. He's been successful in his own district dealing with this issue.
4) i'd ask him why the Illegal Immigration issue hasn't become a cornerstone issue of his campaign...
(I didn't ask it in those words...) He said it was an important issue, then I just followed up with what are the 3 top issues in the Ron Paul campaign, he replied:
1) Iraq war
2) IRS
3) Civil Liberties (not sure if it was in that exact order, but I think it was).
5) My sister lives in NJ and has a 12 year old son who is autistic and relies on federal funding to help pay for his different expenses. In the case of people with special needs/disabilities, if Dr. Paul wants to eliminate federal programs as it is unconstitutional, where will this money come from? ...
I highlighted the areas in bold and kind of showed him the question and paraphrased, what about people who need these assistance programs?
He feels if we cut out our spending overseas with our nation building, embassies, war in Iraq we could save so much money and put that money into some of these entitlement programs. He doesn’t believe in turning off a switch, but slowly drifting away from them and having young people opt out of programs. There’s no off switch, but there wouldn’t need to be, by changing how much we spend overseas, these programs will be funded and slowly ween people (especially young people) off them.
5) First he's for securing the borders, next he's not interested in a fence or "guns" on the border (per today's speech at Johns Hopkins.)...
He doesn’t feel a free country with liberty ideals should have a big fence with guns, that’s not his philosophy, however at this time it seems like a necessity. His long term plan is to remove the incentives to come here illegally and remove the welfare state and free handouts, that will got much further in getting the problem to fade away longterm, but as a short term solution he supports building the fence.
6) Dr. Paul, have you picked your VP yet?
--No but the campaign staff likes someone (argh, I wrote it down, it was someone from South Carolina I think. One of Dr. Paul’s friends, it seems like he aligns himself with Paul a lot).
7) Dr. Paul, what is your stand on tobacco taxes?
He’s not a fan of taxes, and feels the way we handle taxes on tobacco is perverse. While congress wants to get rid of it, they still love the revenue it generates (I can’t remember all the details on this one, sorry). The summary is the government plays this perverse game of wanting people to quit but also gobbling up as much tax revenue as they can from it.
He did say Dr. Paul doesn’t like smoking at all, and discourages or asks people on his staff to try and quit.
8) Dr. Paul, what other Texas Congressmen or Senators do you consider true Republicans, so we would know in TX for whom to vote in 2010 for Congress or Senate?
--He mentioned 1-2 names of people. He said some people vote with Dr. Paul on some things while others do not, so there’s not an exact person who votes the same exact way, there are a couple people that vote on some things the same. (I’ll look for that, I wrote it down somewhere and put it in the thread later).
Jessie was a very nice guy and the rest of the staff seemed real nice. Dr. Paul was very polite and sociable.
Some other interesting things happened in the evening before, during, and after the debate, but I'll talk about them tomorrow because it's 1:30AM and I still haven't caught up on my sleep!