A catchy anthem for small government

You're Gonna Pay by Wilson Getchell. I like the part where Harry Reid points a pistol at six sperm and says "Give me all your money."

When, where and how to testify at Maryland redistricting hearings

These hearings cover both congressional districts and Maryland state legislative districts. Dates and locations for the twelve hearings:

1. Sat Jul 23, 11 a.m. Hancock High School (auditorium), 289 W. Main St., Hancock, Washington County
2. Sat, Jul 23, 2 pm, Hood College (Rosenstock Hall-Hodson Auditorium), 401 Rosemont Ave., Frederick
3. Mon Jul 25, 7 pm, Prince George’s CC (Largo Student Center-Rennie Forum), 301 Largo Road, Largo, Prince George’s Co.
4. Wed Augt 10, 7 pm, Universities at Shady Grove (Building #1 Auditorium), 9630 Gudelsky Drive, Rockville, Montgomery Co.
5. Fri Aug 12, 7 pm, Morgan State U, Student Ctr (Calvin & Tina Tyler Ballroom #4), 1700 East Cold Spring Lane, Balt City
6. Wed Aug 24, 7 pm, College of Southern Maryland (Ctr for Bus and Industry, Room BI-113), 8730 Mitchell Road, La Plata, Charles Co.
7. Sat Aug 27 11 am, Harford CC (Amoss Ctr), 200 Thomas Run Rd, Bel Air, Harford Co.
8. Sat Aug 27, 2 pm, Towson University (Stephens Hall Theater), 8000 York Road, Towson, Baltimore County
9. Tue, Aug 30, 4 pm, Anne Arundel County (Location to be announced)
10. Tue Aug 30, 7 pm, Howard County (Location to be announced)
11. Sat Sep 10, 12:30 pm, Salisbury University, 1101 Camden Avenue, Salisbury, Wicomico County
12. Sat Sep 10, 4 pm, Chesapeake College (Todd Performing Arts Center), Routes 50 and 213, Wye Mills, Talbot County

Rules on how to testify:

Public hearings will start at the designated time and end following the last testimony of registered persons. More specific details about the hearings will be updated as soon as information becomes available at http://planning.maryland.gov/Redistricting. Guidelines for the public hearings and third-party plan submissions are also posted at the web site.

Advance sign-in for the public hearings is required (by e-mail only) and must be received by 12:00 noon the day prior to the public hearing. People interested in speaking can sign up electronically in advance at planning.maryland.gov/Redistricting. Click on the “bell icon” for the Governor’s Redistricting Advisory Committee & Public Hearings and then click for the link for the hearing at which you want to speak. Any e-mails requesting advanced sign-in received after 12:00 noon the day prior to the hearing will not be included on the speaking roster. After that time, sign-in sheets will be available at the public hearing location.

Testifiers are also requested to provide electronic written comments to the committee by 12:00 noon the day before the hearing. Comments should be sent by e-mail as a PDF attachment to Redistricting2011@mdp.state.md.us. A hard copy will also be accepted at the hearing from people who testify who did not submit an electronic copy.

5 ways to deflect public anger and demonstrate accountability

For any BCPS board member, admininstrator or task force member who is feeling under siege lately, here are some tips from a very perceptive guy*:

How to deflect anger and demonstrate accountability

1. [Create] a video record
2. Let the voters speak first.
3. Vote NO on additional compensation.
4. Zero tolerance for ethical lapses.
5. "Say what you mean and mean what you say."

The list is excellent. And it's remarkable that BCPS leaders and the politicians who oversee them have failed to do any of these things adequately in recent years.

*Frank Luntz. The list comes from page 125 of his recent book What Americans Really Want . . . Really: The Truth About Our Hopes Dreams and Fears.

"Goldfish" gets honorable mention. . .

in PowerLine's $100,000 prize for best dramatization of the national debt:

"Top 10 things consumers should know about air conditioning"

If you're having A/C trouble during the current heat wave, ASHRAE has a good list that can help you figure things out:

1. How an air conditioner works

2. What a "ton" of cooling is

3. What goes wrong

4. What those filters do

5. Maintain the system

6. Ducts matter -- a lot

7. How to increase energy efficiency

8. Lighten your load

9. Ventilate

10. It's not the heat, it's the humidity

Congressional redistricting is shaking things up in California

The tremors are happening in Mickey Kaus's back yard and he likes the feeling:

I thought one of the points of passing an anti-gerrymandering law was to shake things up. Well, it looks like things are being shaken. Politicians will have to explain themselves afresh–and actually worry about losing.

California has a long way to go to fix the dysfunction caused by gerrymandering, but they seem to be making pretty good progress.

I hope this kind of thing happens in Maryland this year too.

UPDATE: background music from Carole King:

More good advice ...

... about blogging and writing, nicely compiled by Ricardo Bueno.

via Glenn

Typography and minimalist web design

Good stuff from Kurt Edelbrock, via Glenn.

I think I need to take some of his advice.

[Post removed]

[This post was removed by the author.]

Meta skepticism = skepticism about skepticism

Here's a website all about getting skeptical about global warming skepticism.

Cool!

via Skeptoid via Muck & Mystery

Steven Hayward: It's time to "serve the check"

Hayward gives the conservative case for raising income taxes. Here's a longer quote:

if you want to limit government spending, instead of starving the beast, serve the check.

Makes sense to me. And if you're concerned about putting too much burden on low income folks, then reduce some regressive taxes at the same time, such as the payroll/FICA taxes.

Gov. O'Malley finally announces congressional redistricting panel . . . on the 4th of July

O'Malley's choice of a verrrrrry slow news day for the announcement speaks volumes. Voters should expect some serious gerrymandering to come out of this group. The official name of the panel: the Governor's Redistricting Advisory Committee (GRAC).

It consists of:

1. Jeanne Hitchcock (Chair) - O'Malley's Secretary of Appointments
2. Mike Busch - Speaker of the Maryland House of Delegates (D-30, Anne Arundel County)
   
3. James J. King, former state delegate (R-33A, Anne Arundel County)
   
4. Thomas V. "Mike" Miller, Jr; Maryland Senate President (D-27, Calvert & Prince Georges Counties)
5. Richard Stewart, owner of of Montgomery Mechanical Services, Inc. (Hmm: Google can't seem to find a website for Stewart's company. Perhaps he is a well-connected insider who doesn't need to advertise?)

Here at BaltoNorth, we look forward to following the activities of this panel closely.

UPDATE: A new Sun article has more details and bio information.

The Governor's Redistricting Advisory Committee meets tomorrow [Wed July 6] in Annapolis to set a series of public hearings. [The committee] is charged with recommending a redistricting plan to the governor, who then must seek approval from the state legislature.

The General Assembly is expected to call a special session in mid-October to approve the governor's Congressional map, in time for the 2012 presidential election; state legislative districts will take shape early next year.

More on James King:

Small business owner who employs more than 100 Maryland residents. Recently named Business Owner of the Year by the West County Chamber of Commerce and in 2008, named Taxpayers Advocate of the Year by the Maryland Taxpayers Association.

More on Richard Stewart:

A member of the Mechanical Contractors Association of America, Mr. Stewart also has held positions as a board member, director and past president of the Mechanical Contractors Association of Metropolitan Washington. Member of the Maryland Stadium Authority since July 2007.

UPDATE 2: Pamela Wood at HometownAnnapolis.com says the special session of the Maryland General Assembly will start on October 17, 2011.

UPDATE 3: The WaPo yawns.

UPDATE 4: Here are two graphic reminders of how bad the gerrymandering problem is in Maryland:

Economist Michael Spence looks beyond his field of expertise and gets an insight on growth in the developing world

Spence:

When I started studying growth in the developing world, I thought the subject was mainly about economics. I no longer believe that.

Spence is a very accomplished fellow. The quote is from Spence's new book The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World. In his interview of Spence, Peter Robinson asks about the quote (at 5:25) and draws this response (at 5:40):

Complicated high speed dynamics in the economics sphere turns out to be only a piece of the puzzle and what I really believe now is that the critical things are the governance. The interaction of economics and politics. The policy-making process. The wisdom with which it is conducted. The intent to help all the citizens in the country as opposed to grab as much as you can for yourself. When I go across the developing world and ask myself what's the largest single explanation for the huge diversity of economic performance [from country to country], it falls in this territory.

This strikes me as one of those "obvious" things that no one ever pointed out before.

The great secular faith of our age: "education is the key to economic growth"

Most politicians keep repeating it, so the idea must still resonate with lots of voters. But it's not true.

via Tim Black, from his interview with professor Alison Wolf, author of Does Education Matter?

Science is just a distraction from Al Gore's biggest climate failure, policy

Walter Russell Mead on Al Gore's failure, part 2:

[The] entire green policy vision was so poorly conceived, so carelessly constructed, so unbalanced and so rife with contradictions that it could only thrive among activists and enthusiasts. Once the political power of the climate movement, aided by an indulgent and largely unquestioning press, had pushed the climate agenda into the realm of serious politics, failure was inevitable. …

… the global climate movement has become the kind of embarrassment intellectuals like to ignore.

[The aim of Gore and his movement was] to stampede the populace into embracing one of the most dubious and unworkable policy prescriptions ever presented to the public eye. . . .

To argue with these people about science is to miss the core point. Even if the science is exactly as Mr. Gore claims, his policies are still useless…

… The policy makers and the heads of state who only two years ago were ready to follow Gore up the mountain have softly and quietly tuned him out.

[UPDATE: Gary Jones has a related item on Mead here. The post also points to Quandrant Online, which claims that "renewables are not green." Well, duh! Gary has another good post that points to an AGW climate science skeptic with separate messages for friends on both the Left and the Right.]

The failure of Al Gore and "why the global green movement has tanked"

Part I from Walter Russell Mead

objects of great value (Nobel prizes, Oscars) turn dull and leaden at [Al Gore's] touch. . . .

[his recent essay in Rolling Stone] illuminates his shortcomings more than his strengths and makes crystal clear that if global climate policy is going to change, then Al Gore must get out of the way. . . .

[Gore] speaks, he writes, he speaks again, and the [climate change] movement lies on the ground, crippled and inert.

A fawning establishment press spares the former vice president the vitriol and schadenfreude it pours over the preachers and priests whose personal conduct compromised the core tenets of their mission; Gore is not mocked as others have been. This gentle treatment hurts both Gore and the greens; he does not know just how disabling, how crippling the gap between conduct and message truly is. The greens do not know that his presence as the visible head of the movement helps ensure its political failure. . . .

I am not one of those who thinks him a hypocrite; I think rather that he shares an illusion common amongst the narcissistic glitterati of our time: that politically fashionable virtue cancels private vice. . . .

If Al Gore really wants to understand why the global green movement has tanked, he should start by taking a long hard look in the mirror.

Dr. Helen on the Thomas Ball case: "The war against men and boys continues"

Helen Smith, writing at Pajamas Media:

when a woman burns her husband to death in his sleep, it’s seen as a major wake-up call regarding violence against women, and is immortalized in . . . The Burning Bed.

But somehow, when a man like Thomas Ball burns himself up, it is not seen as a wake-up call for how men are treated unjustly by the court system. Instead, some “compassionate souls” see his death as yet another wake-up call regarding the needs of women. . . .

Ball’s death — and the reaction to it — should serve as a wake-up call to how men and boys are being treated in a society that devalues their very existence. Males commit suicide at much higher rates than women and no one cares; they are treated unfairly by courts and no one bats an eye. . . . So they . . . start setting themselves on fire to get some attention to their cause and, once again, the media and society react with: “So what?”

Well done, Dr. Helen.

The "Weiner Test"

William Jacobson invents and applies it.

"David Carr" and "low-sloping foreheads": forever linked?

[UPDATE: If you ever lived in Missouri or Kansas, please join the Sloping Foreheads Facebook group and get started mocking David Carr.]

Before this weekend, I had never hear of David Carr. Then I saw the video of him on Bill Maher's show, uttering the most condescending arrogant slur on Middle-America that I've ever heard.

Is this David Carr's 15 minutes? Will he have a one-line obtuary that ends with "low sloping foreheads?"

Bloggers, let's make it so.

Every time you write his name, add these words: "the guy who said 'low-sloping foreheads.' "

Maybe soon we can write it this way: "the former NY Times reporter who said 'low-sloping foreheads.' " David Carr should be fired. Pinch Sulzberger, are you listening?

California may soon reap the benefits of redistricting reform

Ben Pershing, the In Session columnist at the Post, wrote an excellent article today. The effects of gerrymandering have been severe and pernicious in many places, but especially in California

In addition to having the nation’s largest economy and population, California boasts some of the most exquisitely gerrymandered maps in the land. At both the federal and the state levels, the same lawmakers have been reelected cycle after cycle in districts drawn with the goal of protecting incumbents, regardless of party.

In 2010, voters got fed up and passed a ballot initiative — Proposition 20 — to take control of congressional redistricting away from the state legislature and hand it to an unelected commission. That body has now presented its first draft of a congressional map that sent shock waves through the state, drawing several members out of their current districts and into potential fights with other lawmakers.

“That’s what the people wanted,” said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.). “They wanted a redistricting that ignored the protection of incumbents.”

The people of Maryland are no different. They want the same thing. We have two of the worst gerrymandered congressional districts in the country. If the politicians who control redistricting here don't listen and fix those districts this year, they risk getting punished at the ballot box.

Particularly at the state legislative level, many residents blame gerrymandering for much of the dysfunction in Sacramento. Republicans hail from primarily conservative districts, Democrats represent mostly liberal districts, and no one has much incentive to compromise.

I wish more reporters and more citizens would connect the dots this way.

Gerrymandering is one of the key root causes of the hubris and dysfunction that we see in Congress today. Do you think Anthony Weiner would have sex-tweeted so brazenly if he had been in a balanced district with strong Republican opposition breathing down his neck?

Me neither.

Thank you Ben! Please keep following this story.

My dad failed a Rorschach test, but he turned out pretty well

I was thinking about my father when I woke up today. He wasn't a talker or a storyteller, so to understand him you had to watch what he did and listen carefully when he happened to say something.

When he talked, his tone didn't vary much. It was the words that mattered. He knew what they meant and used them precisely. (He spoke to a doctor once about getting some back pain while lying "prone." The doc, realizing that many people use the word incorrectly, said "So you were on your back?" Dad, mildly irritated, responded, "If I had meant that I would have said supine.")

After meeting someone he liked, Dad would often report back that the person was "cheerful."

He was a cheerful person himself -- I don't recall ever seeing him get really angry -- but since he wasn't expressive, many didn't understand how cheerful he was.

His yardstick in life was doing "useful" things.

By that measure he was wildly successful. In fact, he never really stopped. He was a perpetual motion useful-thing-doer. I didn't really consider this until one of my sister's boyfriends pointed it out. He wouldn't sit still for TV except one show, "Monty Python's Flying Circus."

In spite of all his output, many people didn't really "get" that he was doing so many useful things. He never bragged. My uncle used to say that when Dad described his role in a successful project, you had to multiply by four, or maybe ten.

In fact, many people who didn't know him well thought him incapable of doing useful things.

He participated in a psychological study for many decades. Every few years he would fill out a questionnaire and at longer intervals get interviewed by psychiatrists. When Dad was in his early twenties, they described him this way:

• Rorschach responses are "rather inferior."
  
• Has a "fundamental lack of ability to establish rapport with his fellow man."
• Apparently does not have any creativity and would "work better under direction."
• It's a good thing that he's going into research "in view of how little he could offer to teaching."

Funny thing, he went into teaching and did it for 40 or 50 years. By most accounts he was pretty good at it. His publication list is long and impressive, as is the roster of PhD chemists that he advised.

When dad was in his sixties or seventies, the folks running the study suddenly discovered this about him: "few men in the study met the criteria for successful aging with as close to a perfect score."

So, that was my dad.

In his honor on Father's Day today I have two goals. Be cheerful and do something useful.

' Spreading the wealth' Obama-style: a progress report

During the campaign, candidate Obama said "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Ken Lawton points out that things aren't going according to plan: the flow is (unexpectedly!) going in the opposite direction from what Obama intended:

'Misery Index' Up 62 % Since Obama Took Office while Pelosi’s wealth grows by 62 %.

Eerily symmetrical. The people lose and Pelosi wins.

This is not spreading wealth from rich to poor; it's funneling wealth from the the poor to a tiny subset of the rich: the political elite. Someone tell Joe the Plumber! [Warning: strong language from Penn & Teller, NSFW.]

Three-time losers: public employee unions just lost in the Wisconsin Supreme Court

Glenn Reynolds sums things up:

So to be clear: They lost in the legislature. They lost in a judicial special election, where union organization should have been decisive. And they lost in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. And in the meantime, they made themselves look like thugs — and, worse, not very scary ones, really, just kind of nasty and pathetic ones — even going so far as to disrupt an award ceremony for Special Olympics kids. So: Losers. If they can’t win in Wisconsin, where can they win?

Senators Ben Cardin and Barbara Mikulski vote to continue ethanol subsidies that hurt the environment, raise food prices and warp energy policy

Here are their votes yesterday on Tom Coburn's amendment #436 to Senate bill S782, The Economic Development Revitalization Act of 2011.

Cardin and Mikulski talk the talk about cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay -- without accomplishing much -- but don't seem to care about the enormous nitrogen/nutrient damage that subsidized corn crops in the Midwest do to the Gulf of Mexico.

Not to mention the economic damage -- read harm to the poor -- caused by ethanol subsidies, including rising food prices.

A World Bank policy research working paper concluded that food prices have risen by 35 to 40 percent between 2002–2008, of which 70 to 75 percent is atributable to to biofuels [like corn-based ethanol].

Are we addicted to oil?

The Munchkin Wrangler thinks that's the wrong question:

You know what I can’t stand to hear about anymore? That we Americans are addicted to oil. It’s a smarmy term that tries to couch an economic and environmental argument in pathological terms.
. . .
It does nobody any good to try and debate economic and logistical necessities while using terminology to imply people who disagree with your view are mentally ill.

I think he's right.

Via Glenn.

After a week or so of so many people dumping on Sarah Palin for her version of Paul Revere's ride...

I ran across this book in the store the other day: History's Greatest Lies, by William Weir. Here's a bit from page 126:

[Revere] warned [the British who had captured him] that the country was rising, and if they continued on they would be dead men. As they rode on, the officers heard the rattle of drums, the clanging of church bells, the booms of signal guns, and the glow of beacon fires. These alarming noises and sights came from their front and their rear. More guns, more bells, and more drums. The British grew nervous. Finally, they released Revere…

Palin recounted her version in a goofy, stilted manner. But the gist of what she said is almost exactly what's in this paragraph.

I didn't vote for Palin, partly because she couldn't handle softball questions from Katie Couric. She has her strengths and weaknesses and may be ignorant in some areas, but she's not stupid. If you take it from a multiple intelligences perspective, I'd say she normal in some areas and way above average in others.

There's something seriously wrong with the people who ridicule her so viciously and seem to hate her.

FWIW, Weir's book gets 4 stars on Amazon and mixed reviews.

Ingrich-gay's campaign implodes

Well, good. First Ump-tray and Uckabee-hay. Now NG is toast. Most of the unserious candidates are pretty much done now.

Newt has good ideas from time to time, but I don't think he'd make a good president.

Jerry Pournelle's assessment of American schools seems to fit BCPS very nicely

From Jerry's blog, Chaos Manor:

The American school system is a bad parody of an optimum allocation of resources, and nearly everyone knows it, but we always talk as if it were not so.

When I first read the last bit, I could see Dr. Hairston clearly in my mind, mouthing the word accolades.

I'm sorry Congressman Ruppersberger, but your credit application has been turned down

Dear Dutch,

Thank you for [Congress's] interest in the American Public Trust's Gold Card credit program. Rest assured your application has been given thorough and careful consideration by the American people.

After reviewing the information provided in your application as well as your credit report, we regret to say that we are unable to extend you further credit at this time. The reasons for our decision are as follows:

(1) Inadequate income.Our records indicate that your annual income for the 2011 taxable year was $2,170,000,000,000. You have requested a credit limit of $17,000,000,000,000. These figures exceed the American Public's debt-to-income guidelines for credit issuance.

(2) Excessive spending. The receipts you provided indicate your annual expenditures for the 2011 fiscal year total $3,820,000,000,000, or $1,650,000,000,000 more than your total income for the year. The American Public prefers that its members of Congress maintain a positive or neutral rather than a negative cash flow.

[To continue reading this piece at Reason.com by A. Barton Hinkle click here.]

Means-testing for Medicare and the underground economy

One problem with Mickey Kaus's proposals for means-testing: the more you do means-testing, the more you see people shifting to the underground economy.

I think the underground economy is growing rapidly in the U.S.

Everything you ever wanted to know about degree-days

My dad was into degree-days for some reason, so I've known about the concept since I was a kid. Here's an explanation from the folks at BizEE, and a tool that lets you calculate degree-day numbers for many locations and time periods using data from Weather Underground.

News flash! Instapundit discovers "variety is the spice of life" !!!!

Here's his scoop.

Huckabee not running for president in 2012

Glad to hear it. I never liked Huckabee much.

He was running for PR and ratings, much the way Ump-Tray, Alin-Pay and Ingrich-Gay still are.

A big government guy, he has a smarmy affect and talks too much about his faith. I don't much care what religious beliefs politicians hold as long as they don't go on and on about them.



Also, guitar-playing politicians have a tendency toward narcissism.

"Back off the beaches . . . It's time to learn to live with the shoreline, not on it."

Orrin Pilkey of Duke University says it well:

Sooner or later our society must back off the beaches as concerns increase about beach quality and as preservation of major coastal cities becomes a higher priority. The first step will be to discourage beachfront urban renewal. That would mean moving or demolishing threatened buildings, prohibiting the rebuilding (and certainly the super-sizing) of destroyed buildings, and ending further subsidy of beachfront development, including tax-supported beach nourishment and federal flood insurance. It's time to learn to live with the shoreline, not on it.

Other things Pilkey doesn't like, US Army Corps of Engeering policies and seawalls.

Twenty-five years ago, when I began speaking and writing about seawalls and how they destroy beaches, I was shocked at the tenor of the response to this idea both from professional engineers and from developers and politicians. The attacks on me were often quite personal, and letters damning me were written to my university president and to the papers. As a scientist, I was unaccustomed to such personal attacks.

Environmental models as "useless arithmetic"

Here's another book I'd like to read: Useless arithmetic: Why environmental scientists can't predict the future. Great title*.

The authors sound like a cool pair:

Noted coastal geologist Orrin Pilkey and environmental scientist Linda Pilkey-Jarvis show that the quantitative mathematical models policy makers and government administrators use to form environmental policies are seriously flawed. Based on unrealistic and sometimes false assumptions, these models often yield answers that support unwise policies. . . .

The authors demonstrate how many modelers have been reckless, employing fudge factors to assure "correct" answers and caring little if their models actually worked.

I stumbled on the book after reading of Pilkey in a John Stossel piece on federally-subsidized flood insurance. Stossel says Pilkey "has been one of the most persistent critics of the government's [flood insurance] policies."


*It sounds like one of Gary Jones's headlines at Muck & Mystery

The election must be near! Barack "Drill baby drill" Obama copies another page from the GOP playbook

He wants more oil drilling in Alaska now. And announces it at the quietest part of the news cycle.

Run Mitch Daniels, run !!

Ann Althouse suggests that his marital history might be a feature rather than a bug.

Under Daniels's leadership, Indiana recently jumped ten spots to #6 in the state rankings of business friendliness. He came across very well in a recent interview with Peter Robinson.

Maryland sinks in business-friendliness rankings to 14th worst

Maryland dropped from 33rd to 37th in business friendliness in 2011, according to the latest rankings published by Chief Executive magazine.

Judging from these numbers and the ones below, maybe Governor O'Malley should be asking Scott Walker and Mitch Daniels for advice.

Some highlights:

• Texas #1 (for seventh straight year)
  
• Biggest gainers: Wisconsin (+17) and Indiana (+10)

And lowlights:

• #50 was California (for seventh straight year)
  
• Biggest losers: Alaska (-10) and West Virginia (-8)

Maryland and adjacent states:

#7 Virginia (-3)
#16 Delaware (-4)
#37 Maryland (-4)
#39 Pennsylvania (-7)
#42 West Virginia (-8)

Bob Zubrin's formula for elimination of gerrymandering

He suggests a mathematical formula for measuring the compactness of voting districts:

take the square of the perimeter of any [district], and divide it by the [districts’s] area, you arrive at a number, which can be called its irregularity.

Of course, you'd need a way of simplifying boundaries along meandering coastlines. But that's very doable.

Paul Rahe on two other Pauls being considered for president in 2012

Rahe prefers people with gubernatorial or other executive experience. But Paul Ryan is one congressman he'd consider.

Rahe points out the biggest problem with Ron Paul :

[Ron Paul's] stance with regard to American foreign policy is utopian and dangerous. If left to its own devices, the larger world will tend towards anarchy. Throughout human history, in the absence of hegemony, piracy is the norm. Spontaneous disorder is the dominant propensity, not spontaneous order.

Well said.

I like some of Ron Paul's ideas, but he's not the right guy.