theodorelogan wrote:Perhaps. But if the guy wrote 100 articles for Paul, and 10 or 11 of these several hundred word articles had a racist sentence in them (while the focus of the article was on non-racial issues) then you might not disown the person. I don't know...sounds like a personal decision to me.

Personally, I wouldn't let anyone write in my name. I bet Paul doesn't anymore either haha.

Well, quite. Why a seasoned political campaigner needed to learn this in his 60s I don't quite know.

But (perhaps this is just me), one single incident would be enough for me to take a pretty good look at who my 'friend' was. But I'm fairly sensitive to racism, I guess.

In the kind of business I work in, no-one would ever let anything go out in their name (even though they may well delegate the drafting of it to others) without either checking it themselves or having a high degree of trust in the author. That trust would be broken with one single error (let alone deliberate act) which led to embarassment or risk. And if it was enough to get into a newspaper or on the news, then the degree of breach in trust would be all the greater.

By the way, the "focus" of the article that is most heavily quoted is all about racial issues. It's 8 pages about how the post-verdict King riots were basically terrorism, it mentions more than once that white taxpayers are paying for black welfare recipients (ignoring that there are white welfare recipients and black taxpayers), talks how black leaders are holding the country to ransom and brainwashing the masses of American blacks, has the parts about black crime, and how it's understandable that many white people should see blacks as dangerous due to the colour of their skin.

I mean, you have read it haven't you?

Perhaps, but the newsletters, and what he actually says and does are so incongruous with these 11 or so quotes (even in those "defenses" are pretty half-hearted) that I take him at his word.

I'm not sure I would take any politician's word for anything without a hefty dose of salt. Even St Ron of Paul.

Here is a report card that actually has something to do with civil rights. Out of all the current presidential candidates (including Obama) Paul comes out first (he came up second behind former candidate Gary Johnson.) And if you look at the positions they use, you'll see that, unlike the NAACP, this one measures what it claims to actually measure.

http://www.aclulibertywatch.org/

Huh?

I saw this one: http://www.aclulibertywatch.org/ALWCand ... rtCard.pdf

The more lit torches, the more pro-civil rights a candidate is, as I understand it

Johnson 25
Obama 22
Paul 20
Huntsman 12
Roemer 5
Gingrich 2
Perry 2
Romney 0
Santorum 0

Paul only beats Obama if you ignore the bit that's missing (or assume he gets 3 for it) - 'voter suppression'. Additionally, I think that Obama has been marked down for lack of action on his promises. Paul may be able to do all that he says he wants to, but looking at the Senate and House now (and what it's likely to be like in a year or three's time), I think he'd also have difficulty achieving them all.

But yes, he's doing much better than the current GOP competition. Indeed, with more torches than all of them combined, including Roemer.

As far as the war on drugs...people who use and sell drugs are not the only victims of the drug war. Ron Paul can't be the president and the governor of every state. He can only do what he can do.

So, would he as Prez be able to with a single pen-stroke have a greater impact than we saw at the end of Jim Crow? Or is his action limited by the fact that other States can do what they like?

I know that there are wider victims of the drug war. Did you know that there are wider victims of drugs?

But yes, I think we have some common ground here, albeit agreement to disagree.

danivon wrote:Personally, I wouldn't let anyone write in my name. I bet Paul doesn't anymore either haha.Well, quite. Why a seasoned political campaigner needed to learn this in his 60s

I will say that I spent three and half years working for a politician in his 60's. Nothing, and I mean nothing went out over his signature without the review. I was the Assistant District Director so technically, I was the 3rd or 4th highest ranked person on his staff. Even my stuff was reviewed.

I worked for a politician too, and there's no way he'd even consider letting anything go out without having read it. It's just simple common sense.

In case anyone missed it, there was a story in the WaPo last week on this:

But people close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

“It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product. . . . He would proof it,’’ said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company and a supporter of the Texas congressman’s.

...

A person involved in Paul’s businesses, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid criticizing a former employer, said Paul and his associates decided in the late 1980s to try to increase sales by making the newsletters more provocative. They discussed adding controversial material, including racial statements, to help the business, the person said.

“It was playing on a growing racial tension, economic tension, fear of government,’’ said the person, who supports Paul’s economic policies but is not backing him for president. “I’m not saying Ron believed this stuff. It was good copy. Ron Paul is a shrewd businessman.’’

...

It is unclear precisely how much money Paul made from his newsletters, but during the years he was publishing them, he reduced his debts and substantially increased his net worth, according to his congressional and presidential disclosure reports.

In 1984, he reported debt of up to $765,000, most of which was gone by 1995, when he reported a net worth of up to $3.3 million. Last year, he reported a net worth of up to $5.2 million.

The newsletters bore his name in large print and featured articles on topics ranging from investment advice to political commentary. Frequently written in first person, they contained personalized notes, such as holiday greetings from Paul and his wife, Carol.

...

Ed Crane, the longtime president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said he met Paul for lunch during this period and the two discussed direct-mail solicitations, which Paul was sending out to interest people in his newsletters. They agreed that “people who have extreme views” were more likely than others to respond.

Crane said Paul reported getting his best response when he used a mailing list from the now-defunct newspaper Spotlight, which was widely considered anti-Semitic and racist.

...

Rockwell was the main writer of the racial passages, according to two people with direct knowledge of the business and a third close to Paul’s presidential campaign. Rockwell, founder of a libertarian think tank in Alabama, did not respond to phone calls and e-mails requesting comment. In 2008, he denied in an interview with the New Republic that he was Paul’s ghostwriter.

Paul “had to walk a very fine line,’’ said Eric Dondero Rittberg, a former longtime Paul aide who says Paul allowed the controversial material in his newsletter as a way to make money. Dondero Rittberg said he witnessed Paul proofing, editing and signing off on his newsletters in the mid-1990s.

“The real big money came from some of that racially tinged stuff, but he also had to keep his libertarian supporters, and they weren’t at all comfortable with that,’’ he said.

So, umm, is this a case of he's not actually racist (or homophobic or anti-semitic) but he's prepared to pander to it if it pays of his debts?