WASHINGTON, April 3, 2013 ― President Obama’s recent decision to take a five percent pay cut to show solidarity with furloughed workers is a nice gesture, but it is a token sacrifice compared to the suffering the average American faces on a daily basis. In 2011, Republican candidate Ron Paul made a far more magnanimous offer when he promised that if elected as president, he would only accept $39,336 in compensation ― what he termed the “average income of Americans.”

Both President Obama and members of Congress should follow Ron Paul’s example in these times of fiscal peril and economic suffering. While the average American grapples with inflation-buoyed energy and food prices as well as a dizzying array of government compliance expenses, the average member of Congress makes between $174,000 to as much as $223,500 per year and is generously reimbursed for expenditures made in conducting the affairs of their office. The President of the United States makes some $400,000 in salary yet lives completely at taxpayer expense, surrounded by aides and staffers who provide for his every need and whim 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

With the pay and perks that accompany Federal office, it is impossible for Washington D.C. to represent a nation that is growing poorer and poorer with each day. Washington delights in the best of the best while Main Street constantly revises its standard of living to lower and lower levels. If our elected officials are serious about the rich “paying their fair share” the first place they should start is by shrinking their salaries to less than $40,000 a year.

There are some who will take great offense to this suggestion, claiming in response that both the President and the members of Congress have important jobs and should be compensated according to their responsibility. My response to that is, look at America’s private sector. Outside of government, Americans are compensated based on their market value and how much they produce for a company. With few exceptions, most Americans produce vastly more than they are actually paid and are grossly undervalued with respect to their actual educational or skill worth.

When we look at elected officials, the calculus of getting paid six digits to be pampered by staffers and ghost supported by expert intellectuals just doesn’t add up. Unlike private employees, anyone who has either served in elected office or been a staffer to one will tell you that the “hard work” and heavy lifting is all done by the support team outside of public view, not by the elected official themselves.

Don’t believe me? Go to your congressional delegation’s next town hall meeting and ask them a technical question within the scope of their committee’s authority. Let’s say for example they voted “yes” on this year’s $633 billion dollar defense bill. Ask them to explain to you on the spot the difference between the tribes in Afghanistan and which ones we actively support with taxpayer dollars. What do you think they will say?

Or here’s another one: Ask them to explain to you in detail the capabilities of the Ohio-class nuclear submarine our tax dollars are supposedly going to “modernize” compared to the Chinese Type 094 submarine. Think they can do it? Chances are they’ll be frantically gesturing for their staff to pass them “the BlackBerry” for help, yet they are being paid more than most international experts and making dangerous policies without having all of the intelligence at their hands.

Former president George W. Bush spoke accurately when he said “I’m the decider and I decide what is best” ― elected officials have the privilege of making unreasonable legislative or executive demands of both their staffers and the average American and all they do is “decide” what others must do for them. The only “stress” involved with being an elected official is the stress of having to face a hostile media and the stress of figuring out how to be re-elected.

Private Americans on the other hand face the stress of living up to their spouse and children’s expectations with lower salaries, the stress of being fired because there is a non-stop stream of younger people who can do their job better, the stress of the economy dying, the stress of their savings being destroyed and the stress of not having an army of staffers to handle their lives on their behalf.

Unlike our elected officials, the average citizen doesn’t get to stop in the middle of the day, invite a friend to the office and ask some staffer to whip up turkey chili for free. The average American doesn’t get to start their first day of work at a new job with a luncheon that includes dainty food packed with more calorie decadence than two full days of an average person’s diet.

The average American doesn’t get to send their children to school surrounded by wiry, cardio’d-out federal agents and an entire air force of surveillance aircraft and supersonic F-22 Raptor interceptors on tap. The average American is a persecuted, impoverished and desperate individual who just wants to be happy ― if only for a brief moment ― before they die.

Think about the gap that exists between America’s political class and her working class. Thomas Paine in his political treatise Common Sense wisely used the example of the Bible’s warning of 1 Samuel 8:11-12 to show what effect a bureaucracy has on a nation:

“He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants. He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants. Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use. He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves. When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day.”

Isn’t it amazing that America is crying out for relief from the sequester, relief from the unemployment, relief from the rising costs, relief from the wars, relief from everything that is going wrong ― even as the once inferior BRICs nations prepare to surpass us ― and our elected kings in Congress and the Oval Office are still unwilling to cut their royal portion?

Ron Paul showed great wisdom and leadership by example in his offer to slash his salary to match that of the average American. That’s the heart of a servant and a volunteer, not the heart of a tyrant. And to those who would shout, “But our elected government wouldn’t be able to afford the modern cost of rent or living in D.C. making only $39,000 a year” I say this: That’s exactly the point.

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Dr. Ron Paul may be retired from politics, but he is still providing his respected insight into the chaos known as Washington politics. In his latest Texas Straight Talk on Monday, the three-time presidential candidate and bestselling author stated that the budget debate between President Barack Obama and the Republican leadership is nothing but a “sideshow.”

Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building

By Ron Paul — (March 17, 2013)

Federal spending once again dominated the debate in Washington last week, as House Republicans and Senate Democrats began work on their ten-year budget plans. Contrary to claims, neither party’s budget reduces spending. While the Republican plan increases spending a little less than the Democrat plan, it would still spend $5 trillion in 2023, an almost two trillion dollar increase over this year’s budget.

Of course, these projections of future budgets are meaningless, as a current Congress cannot bind a future one. Therefore, the projected spending for next year is the only part of the budget with any significance. So is there a great gulf between the two parties’ budgets for next year? No. For fiscal year 2014, the Democrat budget proposes spending $3.7 trillion, while the “radical” Republican budget spends $3.5 trillion!

While the two parties bicker over minor differences in spending, the stock market, which many in Washington predicted would crash unless the parties reached a “grand bargain” on taxes and spending, seems unaffected by the various manufactured budget crises. Unfortunately, the market’s indifference to Washington spending games is based on the fallacy that the deficit does not matter as long as the Federal Reserve is willing to monetize the federal debt.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is certainly doing all he can to facilitate deficit spending. The Federal Reserve’s desire to monetize the federal debt is a main reason for the aggressive program of buying federal debt via the continuous quantitative easing. Under Chairman Bernanke, the Federal Reserve is pumping as much as $85 billion a month into the American economy. This out-of-control monetary policy is largely conducted behind closed doors, yet it has much more effect on the do day-to-day lives of Americans than Congress’s phony budget debates. The Federal Reserve’s polices erode the value of the dollar, causing prices to rise, which in turn diminishes people’s standard of living. This inflation tax may be the most hideous tax of all because it is both hidden and regressive.

Of course, the Federal Reserve can only keep this up for so long before doing serious damage to the economy. The Austrian school of economics teaches that the Federal Reserve is responsible for the boom-and-bust cycles that plague modern economies. The Federal Reserve’s aggressive money pumping runs the risk of creating hyperinflation — especially once banks stop hoarding their reserves and began flooding the economy with Fed-created fiat currency.

Even though the economic crisis of 2008 proved the Austrians correct, there are still too many in D.C. and on Wall Street who believe the Keynesian fallacy that government and the Federal Reserve can spend-and-inflate our way to prosperity. But, as is the case with the narcotics addict, the longer the Federal Reserve enables Congress’s habit of deficit spending, the more painful will be the withdrawal when Congress is finally forced to kick the habit.

The role of the Federal Reserve in facilitating deficit spending by the US—and even foreign governments—means it is a mistake to segregate monetary and fiscal policy. Our nation will never get its fiscal house in order until we reform monetary policy. The first step is letting the American people know the real facts about the Federal Reserve’s actions.

The debate over the federal budget and even the battle over the Federal Reserve are ultimately arguments over symptoms rather than the cause. The root of the fiscal crisis is the belief that the federal government is qualified to manage the economy, provide for the people’s needs, and spread democracy throughout the world through either by foreign aid or by force of arms. Neither party in Washington questions the welfare-warfare state.

Until Congress begins debating questions such as whether or not we really need thousands of military facilities around the world, whether or not we should shut down the Education Department and return control to local communities and parents, and whether we should allow young people to completely op-out of the entitlement programs, the so-called debates in Washington, D.C. will continue to amount to nothing but sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Maybe in hindsight it was inevitable: Ron Paul has been banned from Washington, DC! (The personalized license plate that bears his name, that is.) 

A Freedom of Information Act request from GovernmentAttic.org, has yielded a hilariously infuriating 68-page list of vanity plates banned by Washington, DC’s DMV. In the list you’ll find everything from sexual innuendos (including nearly 2000 variations of the number “69″) to calls for “LSSGOVT” and, of course, countless references to marijuana, from the obvious (POTHEAD) to the clever (POTOMAC). 

But this time the Nanny of the Month comes to us from Watertown, New York, where the city council has banned roommates from residential neighborhoods (which would include everyone from unmarried couples to domestic partners and soldiers sharing a home). 

Seems that a local woman named Deborah Cavallario wasn’t keen on her neighbor living with his fiance and two friends, so she persuaded three out of five council members to zone away un-related roommates. (She insists it wasn’t a “dirtbag” move.)

And you thought you got to say who stays under your roof! That rumble you hear is the sound of a thousand lawyers heading to this Empire State town. 

1 minute, 45 seconds.

“Nanny of the Month” is written and produced by Ted Balaker (follow him on Twitter @tedbalaker and submit nanny noms). Research by Matt Edwards. Opening animation by Meredith Bragg.

To watch previous “Nanny of the Month” episodes, go here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2DD00E99B83A258A

End The Fed By Ron Paul

Washington, DC --(Ammoland.com)- In the post-meltdown world, it is irresponsible, ineffective, and ultimately useless to have a serious economic debate without considering and challenging the role of the Federal Reserve.

Most people think of the Fed as an indispensable institution without which the country’s economy could not properly function.

But in END THE FED, Ron Paul draws on American history, economics, and fascinating stories from his own long political life to argue that the Fed is both corrupt and unconstitutional.

It is inflating currency today at nearly a Weimar or Zimbabwe level, a practice that threatens to put us into an inflationary depression where $100 bills are worthless.

What most people don’t realize is that the Fed — created by the Morgans and Rockefellers at a private club off the coast of Georgia — is actually working against their own personal interests.

Congressman Paul’s urgent appeal to all citizens and officials tells us where we went wrong and what we need to do fix America’s economic policy for future generations.

Get your copy here: http://tiny.cc/3q27sw

Biography
Ron Paul, an eleven-term congressman from Texas, is the leading advocate of freedom in our nation’s capital. He has devoted his political career to the defense of individual liberty, sound money, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. Judge Andrew Napolitano calls him “the Thomas Jefferson of our day.” After serving as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s, Dr. Paul moved to Texas to begin a civilian medical practice, delivering over four thousand babies in his career as an obstetrician. He served in Congress from 1976 to 1984, and again from 1996 to the present. He and Carol Paul, his wife of fifty-one years, have five children, eighteen grandchildren, and one great-grandchild.Ron Paul, the New York Post once wrote, is a politician who “cannot be bought by special interests.” “There are few people in public life who, through thick and thin, rain or shine, stick to their principles,” added a congressional colleague. “Ron Paul is one of those few.”