Ben Jacobs : “Ron Paul’s campaign may have undertaken the most passive-aggressive political maneuver in modern political history. While he isn’t dropping out of the GOP primary — or ‘suspending his campaign’ in the current parlance — he announced Monday he ‘will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted.’ He will still try to win delegates through the state convention process.” “This may seem like an oxymoronic concept; after all, how can one win delegates without winning votes? But the strategy will allow Paul to continue justifying his often raucous efforts to pack state conventions to win delegates for the Republican convention in Tampa.” Politico reports the Paul campaign estimates the Texas congressman will go to the GOP convention with “several hundred” of his own bound delegates, plus “several hundred more” delegates that are bound to Romney but support Paul.
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Paul’s Sneaky Convention Strategy
Tweet Energy independence is ours! That is, were our government not the very thing actively preventing us from achieving it so that it can keep with the transnational progressivist plan to use junk-science environmentalism as the justification for global wealth redistribution and, if things go well, an end to the silly, jingoistic framework of nation states and sovereignty. But I digress: The Green River Formation, a largely vacant area of mostly federal land that covers the territory where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world’s proven reserves combined, an auditor from the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Thursday. The GAO testimony said that the federal government was in “a unique position to influence the development of oil shale” because the Green River deposits were mostly beneath federal land. It also noted that developing the oil would have an environmental impact and pose “socioeconomic challenges,” that included bringing “a sizable influx of workers who along with their families put additional stress on local infrastructure” and “making planning for growth difficult for local governments.” “The Green River Formation–an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming–contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale,”Anu K. Mittal, the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment said in written testimony submitted to the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment. “USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions,” Mittal testified. “The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered,” Mittal told the subcommittee. “At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.” None of which matters to an ideological political movement that has embraced an anti-foundationalist philosophical stance (freeing them up to adopt a guilt-free, ends-justify-the-means intellectual framework) and that considers the “masses” a kind of perambulatory pollutant that needs to be managed, their very noxious exhalation is a poison to the earth itself meant for the enjoyment of the ruling class, who deserve exclusive vacation spots and rolling unspoiled vineyards for their pet Mexicans to work in. Because controlling the masses is hard work — and deserves to be rewarded. Which in time perhaps the ungrateful herd will be made to understand. If things go well, that is. FORWARD!
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“GAO: Recoverable Oil in Colorado, Utah, Wyoming ‘About Equal to Entire World’s Proven Oil Reserves’”
Ron Paul has said to the Washington Times that he will not compete in primaries of any of the states that haven’t voted yet . There’s no official announcement from Paul himself (at the time of this) at his site, so I don’t know what to think of this. Ron Paul certainly isn’t lacking from campaign money as he raises tons of money. So this comes as a bit of a surprise to me. Lets hope Romney is smart enough to sit down with Dr. Paul and listen to some of his ideas for policy (domestically.) Ron Paul hasn’t dropped out of the race though, technically he’s still in the race unlike Santorum and Gingrich who suspended their campaigns. He still is telling his supporters to vote for him in the remaining primaries.
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Ron Paul stops campaigning – but doesn’t officially suspend
Jeffrey Toobin has an excellent look at how Chief Justice John Roberts orchestrated the Citizens United decision to effectively remove campaign finance limits. “It was once liberals who were associated with using the courts to overturn the work of the democratically elected branches of government, but the current Court has matched contempt for Congress with a disdain for many of the Court’s own precedents. When the Court announced its final ruling on Citizens United, on January 21, 2010, the vote was five to four and the majority opinion was written by Anthony Kennedy. Above all, though, the result represented a triumph for Chief Justice [John] Roberts… As American politics assumes its new form in the post-Citizens United era, the credit or the blame goes mostly to him.” “By the customary vote of five-to-four, with an opinion by Roberts, the Court declared the system unconstitutional… The Roberts Court, it appears, will guarantee moneyed interests the freedom to raise and spend any amount, from any source, at any time, in order to win elections.”
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How the Supreme Court Deregulated Campaigns
Bloomberg notes that veteran politicians say 31-year-old Joseph Kennedy III (D), running for Congress in Massachusetts, “is the real deal. He draws comparisons to the young Jack Kennedy, and especially to Ted Kennedy in his first race for the Senate in 1962: Both were a little beyond their 30th birthdays, and it was their first bid for office after serving stints as county prosecutors.” “An even more relevant analogy, longtime politicians say, is that Joseph Kennedy is a natural, as were his illustrious great- uncles.” Said former Sen. Chris Dodd: “I have been around politics for a long time and only occasionally you meet someone with special skills and ability and genuine warmth. I don’t care what his name is; that’s Joe.”
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The Next Kennedy