Ron Paul Attention

If the number of telephone calls to my show today and website hits on my site tonight are an indicator of votes, then Ron Paul will be tallying up serious votes in the coming primaries. He has definitely tapped into a segment of the electorate who is fed up with excessive taxation and government interference.  Phil Maymin was a guest on the show today and we took calls asking people to explain why they support Ron Paul for president.

I am not persuaded that Ron Paul should be president because some of his ideas, taken to their logical conclusions, trouble me. For example, I believe that the environment is like national defense- we have to pool our resources and make some tough decisions because as individuals we simply cannot make enough of a difference to protect our habitat and our wildlife. I am less optimistic than many libertarians who rely on the free forces of the market to cure all our ills. This philosophy hasn’t gotten us anywhere in the media business for example, where the corporate consolidation and consolidation of various media in the hands of a few people have led us to the current sorry state of  radio and television, where creativity is crushed and few alternative viewpoints are treated with respect.

On the other hand, I am totally in agreement with the sensitivity of libertarians to my freedom of thought, of movement, of speech and assembly.  Privacy in particular is on their agenda, and resistance to the build-up of the third arm of the military-industrial complex, which is the military /security-surveillance/ industrial complex. (See Naomi Wolf’s The End of America on that subject).  And it certainly is a nice daydream to dream of a world without the IRS, but think of all the accountants that would be put out of business…   There are special interests everywhere.

To you Ron Paul advocates , I say, go out and vote and make people pay attention to your concerns.

If someone out there can find me a candidate who will put the environment and solar energy as first on his or her agenda, let me know.  Al Gore doesn’t seem to be running.   

Lightbulbs

NPR reported today that Pres Bush signed a law which requires cars to get 35 miles per gallon by 2022, and use a lot of biofuel to do it. That sounds like the good part, although I have questions about all those cornfields being used for ethanol.

The bad part is that NPR also reported that incandescent lights are going away as well. I don’t know the details yet. Once again, in Congress’s haste to legislate away all “bad” things, they have overdone it. I don’t know about you, but I like my incandescent light bulbs. They make me look and feel a lot better than those blue-light, cold fluorescents do. There are also many people who simply can’t live with fluorescents, which are known to bring about migraine headaches. I am aware that incandescents are not as energy-efficient as fluorescents. But instead of banning them altogether, why can’t the government provide incentives for other lighting, so that over time the marketplace will create alternatives that look good, feel good and burn less fuel?

It may be time to go to Home Depot and hoard before it’s too late.