The Ron Paul newsletters
I haven’t paid a whole lot of attention to this story because frankly, I’ve never thought Ron Paul had a chance of winning the nomination to begin with. And the newsletter story certainly won’t be enhancing those chances.
But I will say that it appears that on this matter Paul is either (a) negligent, or (b) lying. Perhaps even both.
How could he not know what was a recurrent theme in his own newsletters, missives that he personally promoted and lauded several times during the 90s?
But in Ron Paul’s case, we’re to believe that ghostwriters and collaborators just go off on their own personal bugaboos, pursuing their own hateful agendas, before singing your name at the bottom of an article.
And then they keep doing it, and doing it, and doing it some more; and then they do it some more; and some more, and more. And you never notice, because you don’t even bother to read the headlines of your own first-person magazine.
Maybe Paul should give a speech about racism, the way Obama did after the Reverend Wright revelations. Of course, there are big differences between Obama’s situation then and Paul’s now. One is that the press was in Obama’s corner, and eager to let him off the hook. Another is that Reverend Wright’s racist speeches were against white people rather than black—the former is the semi-acceptable racism in PC-land, the latter not.
But more importantly, Obama was at worst a mere spectator and disciple of Wright’s, not the originator of the remarks. They were preached from the pulpit and also published under Wright’s name in the bulletins of the church in which Obama was a long-term member. Obama’s denial of any knowledge of them seemed (and still seems) highly umplausible; but still, it is considerably more credible than Paul’s disclaimers of work published under his own name.
Do stop with your ambiguation, Neo. Obama’s “Highly implausible” is “Considerably more credible than….”?? A lie is a lie. They are both liars. Paul is quite unworthy of being a candidate for the nomination. He is the Right’s equivalent of Al Sharpton. Obama is, as I’ve said before, a profound sociopath. In his 2nd term, increasingly unavoidable thanks to Paul and the other lightweights on the GOP side, he will become the American Lenin.
Don Carlos: My statements were not meant to be the least bit ambiguous. Nor do I think they were the least bit ambiguous. They were meant to point out that we should not defend Paul’s extremely-likely-lie if we couldn’t defend Obama’s very-very-likely-lie. I am defending neither.
Something that is highly implausible is almost certainly a lie. Something even more implausible than that has an even higher probability of being a lie. The first was Obama’s statement of denial of knowledge about Wright. The second is Paul’s statement of denial of knowledge about his own newsletters.
I try to choose my words extremely carefully. Unless I am 100% sure something is a lie I don’t call it one for certain. But when something is almost certainly a lie (which is true of both Obama’s disclaimer and Paul’s) I think it should be regarded as one. And in both cases, I do.
Here’s what I expect is the closest-to-the-truth scenario:
Paul had a mailing list and some ideas he wanted to publish. He did not have the time, or perhaps the interest, to fill a newsletter regularly. So he hired help, and let it go mostly hands-off, as long as the material he wrote made it in there. It’s not that he was negligent, but that it wasn’t that important.
Why is it so hard to believe that someone who was busy running his own primary business (a medical practice) would have only an intermittent knowledge of what was parallel to a hobby business? Of course when they were doing a solicitation, Paul would paint the newsletter in glowing, laudatory terms.
The first-person style and signature at the bottom are clearly a style of publication. Maybe nobody remembers the days of zines and tiny newsletters? This was a common format. And if anyone does remember the age of zines, you must agree that the notion Paul made any significant money from these photocopied paste-ups is ludicrous.
The management of the newsletters has trivial relevance to Paul’s ability to run the Executive branch. If we want insight into his management capacity, look at his main and enduring principal business, his medical practice.
The content of the newsletters also has trivial relevance. For all the objectionable content, can we find anything else that Paul has done to support the silly claims that he’s a racist who hates Jews? The man has been in the public eye for decades, unafraid to profess very unpopular and marginal views. Is it really credible to suggest that the one thing he wouldn’t say out loud was how much he hated subgroup X? Racists are notoriously unable to keep their views hidden.
He has been asked dozens, perhaps hundreds of times, about various snippets from various letters. I find all the attacks willing to smear together Paul’s responses to paint the ugliest possible picture. If you have the integrity to actually look at each instance, you may find that Paul has answered each separate charge in a consistent way. The attacks make a logical error by inferring a general from a specific.
The Paul newsletters are a silly issue holding fascination for unserious people. It strikes me an obvious parallel to what happened to Cain.
foxmarks: did you read Ace’s post that I linked to? If you haven’t, I suggest you do so. The newsletters were hardly trivial; here’s an excerpt from Ace’s post:
First off, this is hardly “new” news. It’s actually been called attention to multiple times in the last 5-6 years, that Paul’s newsletter is run by Lew Rockwell and others, who tend towards the loonie side of libertarianism, as well as being somewhat racist (at the least).
As a personal experience, I recall an exchange of e-mails after the beginning of the Iraq war (ca. 2004/5) how he was utterly certain — despite lacking the least kind of evidence — that the reports from Iraq which did not particularly reject our presence there by the Iraqi peoples, could not possibly be accurate, and were warped by the fact that these polls were generally taken by people protected by armed guards, which meant that the pollees were intimidated and only gave the response that was wanted. Now, this might be true, but he had no evidence to prove or even suggest that. It was simply a foregone conclusion as far as he was concerned that the Iraqis ALL wanted us out of Dodge…
As long as Rockwell stays in his arena of technical expertise — economics — he’s fairly competent. Once you let him get into general politics, though, you can expect absurdities to crop up.
Oh Bloody Hell: I refer you to Ace’s post on the subject.
I have the greatest respect for you, Neo. But to term Paul’s denials as considerably more credible than Obama’s denials is surely a tad much. I give you back your words: Obama’s (patently absurd) denials are considerably more credible than Paul’s?
You are not speaking to, nor writing to, a box of jurors selected for their ignorance, as is too often the case. Your words are directed to your readers, who truly appreciate your efforts, but who are, many of us, your peers in credentials, experience, and voracious reading.
With a grave sense of political foreboding, I wish us all a Happy New Year.
The larger and busier your organisation the less you know what is going on
average people have noconcept of this
they wrongly assume that the captain would know if an insurection was to occur but it’s not possible
it’s even less possible when u trust managers and publicity people and can’t review most of what’s going on
later it becomes very easy to point and pick things that the head never knew about or it was too late to do anything about without making it worse
or general lack and common ignorance allows us all to be seem smart in the same stupid way!!!
But that doesn’t mean we are smart or right
it just means there are many ignorant people sharing the same blindness patting each other for the same myopic interpretation
since when did bilief systems constitute empiricle knowledge
you just reinvented the basis for kangaroo court
didn’t u just write about a women who swallowed a pen and due to all the know it all genius idiots, lived with it in her belly and her truthful statements ignored?
Your now ready to sit judgement in a soviet court as your ignorance has been precisely honed to a fine edge including a self blindness that is astounding
the less u know the more u pretend to know
and the more illogical your logic the more u seem to win
as long as your with other illogical ignorants
did u even try to lookup any actual principals of management?
Laziness is the handmaiden of ignorance- artfldgr
Who needs knowledge and expertise when common ignorance is better? Or should I say collective ignorance?
A CEO or leader does not manage
they provide direction vision etc
the details of mplimentation are often outside their ability
it’s pretty simple to understand if your not thinking like the birds on “the View” pontificating eruditely
Do you think that you could lead over 10 people and know what they all do? Meybe
how about 100? 1000?
When do you have time between flying from place to place writing speeches, talking about your vision, and edit all text of subordinates and double check their managers?
Recently an Amish girl from the family Yoder was shot and killed as she road her horse cart home. Turns out a man cleaning his gun and too lazy to remove the bullet fired it off and it travelled a mile and hit her by accident
life itself is implausible given our ideas of it
despite reasearchers putting an I beam with a load on it and a fire underneath eventually showing that it bends without huge temps many believe otherwise more implausible things as to 9/11 building collapse
how’s that working?
How about the Australian couple whose child was taken by a dingo and was not believed?
At one time grems where implausible and blood letting cutting edge medical practice
another time a man raised by comunists, surrounded by them all his life, sought them out, whose uncle helped overthrow a state to communism, and a load of other things was believed and still is considered not a communist, and so was elected
where was that great implausibility meter then?
After all it sure looks like an easy election will be lost so that such could finish the fundemental transformation
Sorry, Art, this can never be true:
because
1. you can’t clean a gun with the action closed
2. you can’t shoot a gun with the action open
and
3. you can’t clean a gun with a cartridge in the chamber
4. you can’t shoot a gun without a cartridge in the chamber
A person can be shot by a gun that’s being aimed, played with, twirled, shown off, played catch with, grasped under a pillow during a dream, picked up, or dropped.
Not by a gun that’s being cleaned. Unless you mean removing fingermarks with a rag and a little Pledge or gun oil. That can be done to a gun that’s loaded, cocked, and locked. But that’s not what’s meant by cleaning.
Usually the cleaning-his-gun theme is trotted out when nobody wants to say suicide or criminally negligent homicidebut I guess it works for Amish girls too.
The plAusibility of Obama not knowing what wright said is very high if you stop believing that he sat in the pews listening
how many times has he done that as potus?
There is a reason why mexico won’t let a foreigner start a church
a church with an odious pastor facilitates privacy in public
it allows money transfers and meetings without records
it chases away the snoops too turned off to hang around and watch
if Obama was making revolutionary plans in the basement with others and collectivly organizing
then he would not hear what was upstairs deligated to someone else
this whole method of seeking truth puts ignorance and stood up front over knowledge and experience as now you have to convince the dumb to see what they can’t or wont compute!!!
Churches from the underground railroad and even in soviet places serve other purposes than what’s said for consumption
it drives me batty to watch three stooges logic in action
I can’t conceive of it or figure it out and I can’t even think any point is a lie and so the stooges win every argument (not)
Nola
you can shoot the bullet into the air rather than remove it then clean the gun with the shooting being considered part of the process which is what the moron did
it’s like conception
it depends on whether the process starts when you get the rifle off the wall or when you actually have it empty.
In your mind cleaning starts with the firearm properly empty
in lazy peoples minds cleaning starts when they get the idea to clean and start getting things ready
the larger point was that he thought it was implausible that his shooting the gun to remove the cartridge would cause any harm!!!!
So the implausible idea led to an actual act in which the outcome was as implausible given the space involved and randomness
I have known more than one rural person whose firearm needed repair and were too lazy to do so and that firing it was their workaround
notice I use the word moron!
Artfldgr:
I’ve been writing here about probabilities and suppositions, not certainties, as to whether Obama and Paul were lying (Obama about whether he knew of Wright’s offensive remarks, and Paul about whether he knew of the offensive remarks in his own newsletters).
That’s why I have tried to make it clear that I don’t know for sure, although I think it’s likely that they each lied (in fact, Don Carlos took issue with me for what he called my “ambiguation,” and my hesitation to call either of them liars outright).
And of course I realize that something highly implausible can be true; that’s why I wrote, “Unless I am 100% sure something is a lie I don’t call it one for certain.” But I reserve the right to have an opinion about what is highly likely to be a lie based on the best information I can gather about something. And that’s what I’ve tried to do here.
As far as Paul’s newsletters go, that information includes what I gleaned from Ace’s post, which I quoted at great length in the comments section here. In his post, Ace points out a few things that helped me conclude that Paul is most likely lying when he says he had not known the content of the newsletters published under his name by his group RP&A.
For example: for most of the years the offending newsletters were being published, Paul was doing two things: being a doctor, and publishing the newsletters as the president of Ron Paul & Associates, which seems to have been formed for that purpose. The newsletters in question were not lengthy, either. They were quite short, and published under Paul’s own name. Because of their brevity it would have been relatively easy for him to have regularly familiarized himself with what was in them, and if he had done so he would have become aware of their offensive content because it was not a rarity but was instead rather frequent.
Reason magazine, which has studied the newsletters (I have not), wrote that they contained especially offensive content during the years between Paul’s run for president on the Libertarian ticket (1988) and his return to Congress in 1996. During these years he was busy, but does not appear to have been so very busy that he had no time to read short newsletters published under his own name. He was not serving in public office at the time; he was a doctor. Also, the entity he formed that published the newsletters (and of which he was president), Ron Paul & Associates, was not especially large. This was the situation during those years:
Not an unwieldy size nor such a vast empire at all. Why would this organization have been so difficult to manage or to monitor that he had no time to even take a look at the product it created and skim its rather short contents now and again? He was not stretched so very thin, and although the writing of the newsletters may indeed have been delegated to others (writing them would have taken a fair amount of time), there would be little excuse for him not familiarizing himself with their content on a fairly regular basis. Also, they appear to have made him a lot of money, so they would seem rather important. even as compared to his other work.
Do you really think it credible that he didn’t even read them or familiarize himself with their general content, year after year after year, as he now claims? I do not, although I don’t think it impossible that he failed to do so.
Disbelieving him is hardly tantamount to finding him guilty in a kangaroo court. I certainly would not convict Paul, or anyone else, in a court of law without hearing further testimony and further evidence than I’ve found so far. But we are not in a court of law. I render opinions here about a host of things based on a lesser standard of proof than I would were I actually in a court of law. If I didn’t do so, I would be unable to render opinions at all.
Person B’s opinion about person A’s veracity when person A is making claims about what was in his/her mind at a certain time must nearly always be based on imperfect knowledge on the part of person B. We cannot read minds. The only way to come to an opinion about whether or not Ron Paul has been lying when he claims no prior knowledge of the content of his own newsletters is to decide whether his story of ignorance is generally credible or not (as I’ve tried to do here), because it cannot be definitively proved or disproved—unless one were to somehow come into possession of something like a smoking gun, for example a secret recording of Paul talking about the newsletters’ offending content back in the 80s-90s when they were first written and published. I wouldn’t recommend sitting on a hot stove waiting for that to happen.
As for Obama’s veracity concerning Rev. Wright’s offending sermons and whether or not Obama heard them—I haven’t felt the need to list all the possible lies Obama may have told about this. My point is that Obama most likely lied about it. I suppose that his lies either could have been about (a) whether he heard them; or (b) whether he attended the large number of services he said he did; or maybe even (c) both. (And, come to think of it, it’s also possible that Obama attended most of the services and yet slept through them and didn’t hear any of the sermons, and is therefore telling the truth about both (a) and (b). I didn’t feel the need to list that possibility either.)
We could go on and on this way, couldn’t we, listing all the possibilities? But that’s not the way communication usually goes. There are always things left unsaid, and always things that can be misunderstood and/or misinterpreted. So I’ll leave it at that.
To all of you pontificating about the guy cleaning the gun:
All of the news stories I’ve seen about this incident have stated that the gun in question was a muzzle loading black powder rifle. In other words – no cartridges. The only way to empty a muzzle loader other than firing it is to use a bullet-puller which is not a quick-and-easy operation. So firing the rifle in order to empty it is common. Now, why the moron fired it into the air rather than into the ground is another question altogether.
Whoops, Neo. Plz excuse my erroneous phrasing @1:18am, which I just re-read. Early in, I wrote “Paul”, meant “Obama”.
Based on a preponderance of the evidence, they are equals in lying. Not a good omen.
Neo:
Part of the problem is believing what Ace posts. Truth is not their top priority. The $1M/year assertions, for example, need some evidence. And not just that blogger A posted that blogger B said he saw that blogger C knew that Paul sold $1M. Show me the financials. Or at least sketch out a P&L. To think that a tiny newsletter aimed at the tiny libertarian audience would sell that well, much less show that much profit is incredible.
Guessing $100/year for sub, we’re talking about 10,000 subscribers. That would put his newsletter at the top of that ecosystem. And if it were so grandly successful, why is it so hard to find copies now?
How much do we all think Neo makes from this blog? $1M/year? Her readership is greater, and her costs are lower.
I don’t find persuasive the argument that the tone of the headlines is proof that Paul was involved or even aware. It was a sideline, a vehicle to express. The next issue was due for mailing and there were pages to fill. What do you do? You fill them, maybe with some submitted material that gets people fired up.
It is important to remember my point about sloppy generalizing. Paul does not say he never had any knowledge of any content. Go back through the challenges on each snippet, some he knew, some he did not. Sometimes he called for context, sometimes he disavowed.
The absence of any corroborating evidence in Paul’s long public life suggest that Ace is once again inventing a narrative. As many times as the idea is repeated by many mouths, it doesn’t get more true.
It’s just like Cain was a womanizer for only three years at the NRA? Based on the word of a total of two people of dubious credibility? Suspending disbelief is for the movies, not for politics.
I acknowledge that some of this stuff looks bad, is bad, and is worth looking into. But all y’all have to acknowledge that Paul has taken responsibility and put it all into perspective. The whole proposition is a ludicrous sideshow. Beat Paul down about his policy proposals. Show me where his views are wrong, or where some others are superior.
And if all y’all get so easily wrapped around the axle on this stuff, wait until we all get the blogosphere version of Mormonism.
foxmarks: If you look at my comment here, you’ll see that I don’t just rely on Ace for my information. (Although actually, in the past, I’ve found Ace to be fairly reliable about his information). Follow the links there.
The figures on the newsletters are from tax statements, obtained by Reason, if memory serves me (I don’t have time right now to look it all up again).
Funny stuff about how much I make on this blog. It’s actually a pittance; this is a labor of love mostly (I realize you were probably joking, but still I thought I’d clear that up!). Ron Paul always, I would imagine, had a much greater following and readership than I do. His group RP&A also put out not just one newsletter but several (not necessarily all at once, but in some years they all were published).
I cannot imagine a person putting out a rather short newsletter, year after year, and not reading it fairly regularly. It just is not credible. And if I’m wrong about that, and he never looked at it, that is just another reason to reject him as a candidate.
But in every post I’ve written about Paul and the newsletters (and I think there have been only two), I’ve taken pains to say it’s not the reason I reject him. To list all his positions that are too extreme for me would be a long list; let’s just say we disagree strongly on a lot of things, especially foreign policy but many other things as well.
By the way, I don’t think Paul’s a racist. I just think he’s most likely lying about his lack of knowledge of the newsletters’ content.
And no, I haven’t spent hours and hours and hours checking out everything Paul ever said about them, starting in the 90s when he apparently was first questioned about them. I have relied on summaries such as this, to take just one example of many, which describes how Paul’s story about whether or not he read the newsletters and was familiar with what was in them has morphed over time.
Neo:
Thanks, please understand that I drift between responding to specific points made here and reacting to stuff I see in “the cloud”. I know most regulars here can well argue against Paul’s policies. I seem to have become the neo-neocon gadfly-in-residence.
I have taken extra time to follow as many links as I can, and see where they lead. They have led in circles. The summary you cite in your last paragraph is one I had not seen, but I have seen the stuff it links to. It is an example of the generalizing that I complained about. Which quotes, in which letters is Paul confirming or disavowing in which interview? I doubt he has disavowed any of the “sound money” stuff, but it would be easy to make a case that he has as part of the general disavowance. I am comfortable laying some guilt on lousy reporting as part of the mix.
When I watched in particular the recent CNN/Borger interview, Paul was correct. She was badgering him with the same questions he answered yesterday, last week, last year. It calls to mind Martha Stewart or police interrogation. Ask someone the same thing enough times and once in while they might not say it exactly the same. That’s now become evidence of lying. Rephrase the same essential question, get the same essential answer, but still be guilty of perjury. I say “nonsense”.
I just followed my own admonition and tried to find the evidence of newsletter income. All I get are references to Reason and one Reason column that provides numbers with no sources. My napkin P&L strongly suggests that there had to be more than the newsletters to generate such income. And how does an 8-page letter require a staff of 11 to produce? Was Paul earning speaking fees? Was his staff working on other consulting and writing under the aegis of RP&A? Did RP&A sell books or merchandise about investments and survivalism? If somebody has the tax returns, show them. It frustrates me that nobody appears to even ask such questions.
The thinking changes if we find RP&A was a broader business, with newsletters being but one vehicle. It may be that the letters were a sideline to his sideline business.
Boy, this place always has thinking persons comments
a constant food for thought source
(and I am not a spambot 🙂 )