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What I’ve Been Up To Lately
- Remember kids, Twitter Torah experiment at 2:30PM EST: Collaborative discussion on Parshat Balak. Get in on it at #balak. 7 hrs ago
- RT @spagnoloacht Video of my Creative Commons Salon presentation on the Jewish Digital Narratives platform http://blip.tv/file/2305108/ 11 hrs ago
- Yes Men pull out of Jerusalem Film Fest http://su.pr/1uJUsU 12 hrs ago
- More updates...
Ron Paul Fall-out
I initially pitched a Ron Paul story to JTA well over a month ago. After I got the go-ahead from managing editor Ami Eden, I began calling Paul’s campaign regularly trying to land an interview. In the course of three weeks, I spoke twice with his Deputy Communications Director (who took down all my info and promised me a callback), and sent two emails and left three voice mail messages for his Senior Communications Director. By the day that was supposed to have been my deadline, I had still yet to receive a callback or an email back, and to this day still have not received a response from Paul’s campaign.
Two weeks ago, on the day I discovered that Paul’s campaign intended to keep neo-Nazi leader Don Black’s campaign contribution, I composed an entry here on my personal blog expressing my dismay at the fact that Paul was unapologetically taking money from Nazis, but that he wasn’t returning my phone calls. A week later, my post was syndicated by the web ‘zine Jewcy.com.
The day after my post originally appeared here on Orthodox Anarchist, I started to get busy with another project (namely the UJC General Assembly) and had Ami reassign the story to another writer hoping she’d have better luck than I.
This past Thursday evening, over a month after I had initiated contact with Paul’s campaign, and well after my post on OA had started getting traction on Digg and in the Paul-friendly blogosphere, she finally received a response from Paul’s campaign–a fact I became aware of the next day. Ie., I wrote my post two weeks ago and learned this past weekend, just before leaving for the GA in Nashville, that JTA had finally established meaningful contact with Paul’s campaign.
Last night, the second I heard that her story went live on JTA’s site, I posted an update to my original blog post, contacted Jewcy’s editors, and dashed off quick emails to every blogger who I saw had picked up the story. Because I was knee-deep in the GA — I spoke Monday in front of a crowd of 3,500 — and I didn’t think the post would have gotten the attention it did, I didn’t think it was that pressing to mention Paul’s statement to JTA immediately. This was an oversight on my part and I apologize for not mentioning it sooner.
I did not intend to willfully misrepresent Congressman Paul, nor his campaign, but when you take money from Nazis and don’t return phone calls to a Jewish newswire for over a month, you might sympathize as to why I drew the conclusions I did.
Oh, and Mr. Sullivan — don’t think that keeping Nazi-huggers out of public office is only a matter of Jewish interest:
[Update] Andrew Sullivan is full of it.
[Update] Kampeas retracts; Yglesias forces Sullivan to backpedal, clear my name.
I can’t decide whether the Paulist are naive, uninformed or dishonest. For instance Jarad claims Paul has been “saying the same message for over 30 years.” Really? I worked for Paul in his last presidential campaign. This Ron Paul is not saying the same thing.
Back then he said he would abolish the INS and make immigration easier. Now he says he will beef up the INS, supports the Wall on the border and has voted to limit immigration. Back then he was against earmarks now he uses them himself. Back then he was in favor of separation of church and state and now he says the idea itself is a myth and doesn’t apply to the states.
Paul was always opposed to abortion but in his last run for president he didn’t mention it. That was when he was pretending to be a libertarian. Now he campaigns heavily on the issue trying to appeal to the anti-choice crowd. He says in one breath it ought to be a state issue not federal. But he also votes for federal restrictions on late term abortions and introduces legislation to define life as beginning at conception in the Constitution (you can’t make it more federal than that).
In his previous campaign he said the welfare state had to be cut. Now he promises to keep the welfare state while performing a miracle of ending the income tax. You can have your cake and eat it too. The welfare state makes up 57% of the budget. The income tax is 45% of the budget (and there is a massive deficit to boot). Even if you ended all spending on non-welfare oriented projects (such a highways, the entire military budget, all federal parks, etc) you still wouldn’t have enough money to keep the welfare state untouched and abolish the income tax.
And people need to look closer at Paul’s close relationship with Lew Rockwell and the Mises Institute (don’t hold Mises responsible for the name, he was dead). Rockwell and co., are close to white supremacists and published them on Rockwell’s website. They also work closely with anti-Semite Joe Sobran who spoke at Holocaust Denial conferences. And the Mises people have held seminars with white supremacists from the League of the South. The article from the Ron Paul newsletter that got such negative publicity as being racists, which Paul blamed on an unnamed staffer, was actually written by Lew Rockwell. That unnamed staffer is one of Paul’s closest friends and allies and they work closely together to this day. The staffer didn’t go away. He is now a major Paul adviser and friend. Rockwell is also the guy who penned a column that was published endorsing police beatings of “suspects” saying it would be a good thing if the cops beat up more people in the back of paddy wagons on the way to jail.
I would also urge more attention be paid to things like Paul’s banking conspiracy theories and his associations with the radical right John Birch Society. Paul is bad news on several levels and his cult following is oblivious to the evidence.