Thursday, May 24, 2012

In Profile: The Kid with His Very Own Million Dollar Liberty Super PAC

By Greg Giroux

John Ramsey became old enough to buy a Carlsberg nine months ago. The 21-year-old college student from east Texas isn’t old enough to serve in Congress. His intellectual role model, U.S. Texas Representative Ron Paul, has been in Congress 22 years -- longer than Ramsey has been alive.

Yet, Ramsey is leaving a mark on U.S. politics that may outlast his political mentor and presidential candidate, Paul. The college senior spent $1.3 million of his own money to create a super-political action committee, Liberty for All Super PAC, that backs candidates who endorse what Ramsey calls “freedom philosophy.” The dogma includes policies championed by Paul, such as supporting free-market economics, protecting civil liberties, slashing government spending and opposing most U.S. military action.
Ramsey’s super-PAC passed its first test on May 22. It spent more than $561,000 on television and radio ads to help Tom Massie, a Kentucky engineer, defeat two experienced politicians in a House Republican primary election. Ramsey’s super-PAC spent more than any of the candidates.

“This is the first step. We’re looking to spread our message,” Ramsey, who’d shed his afternoon blue-jeans for a gray suit, told about 20 people in their teens and 20s who gathered for a victory party at one of the PAC’s headquarters in Bellevue, Kentucky.
Hunting and Fishing.

Towering over the other attendees at 6-feet, 7-inches, the one-time, daily tennis player still finds time for matches -- as well as hunting and fishing -- between his political project, investments and studies.

Ramsey attends Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, where he’s several courses shy from a double-major in business economics and finance.

He enjoys studying central banking systems, including the European Central Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve, which, like Paul, he says should be audited. Among his favorite authors is Frederic Bastiat, a French economist who promoted free markets as a source of “economic harmony” in the early half of the 1800s.

His interest in economics and finance comes from his grandfather, Justin Robert Howard, a banker who died on Thanksgiving 2010 and left a fortune to his survivors, including Ramsey and his two older siblings.

Read the rest here.

4 comments:

  1. They almost lost me at "DOGMA", but it turned out to be a very good piece. I mean VERY good. They got all the good stuff in there.
    They even call RP "Grandfatherly" rather than "Spawn of the Devil". Baby steps, people.

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  2. Too bad about dissipating his inherited wealth through pointless political campaign spending. You could intellectually armor a generation of future Ron Paul's donating 1.3m to the Mises institute.

    Or start a business, make more money, then use that. Opportunity cost of political spending. Is that why we're in this mess? Freedom lovers haven't spent enough on political campaigns?

    Cme on now...

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    1. OK, fair enough....but....
      What'll be left by the time that future generation is grown?

      I say TARGETED spending by freedom lovers IS a big deal.

      I pissed away lots of money on the Libertarian Party and they nominate Barr?? So THAT'S the paradigm you're criticizing? OK fine. You're right.

      But NOW we've got a kid (and many others) acting as "talent scouts" seeking out liberty minded candidates in ANY party and ANY venue.

      Seems to me, that's a pretty powerful force.

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    2. We need to educate the youth. The adults are already too entrenched and disillusioned. We also need to return emphasis on entrepreneurship and collaboration to improve ourselves through the market.

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