Monday, October 28, 2013

Conspiracy Theory: Ron Paul Inc. Teams Up With the GOP Establishment

I have already raised concerns about Ron Paul's endorsement of Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia governor's race.  Things just got a lot worse on this front, an email, sources tell me using the Ron Paul Campaign For Liberty email list, just went out attacking the Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis:


Sarvis BREAKS with Libertarians


Robert Sarvis has recently broken with Libertarians on key issues*

Recent interviews with Chuck Todd andReason.com reveal:

Sarvis FAVORS higher taxes, including

  • higher gas taxes and
  • a new “miles-driven” tax and
  • opposing any tax cuts, including the Cuccinelli Tax Cut Plan 
     
Sarvis FAVORS expanding Obamacare 
  • Through massive Medicaid expansion in VA
  • Adding 400,000 new permanent enrollees to this social program
  • Price-tag to taxpayers: $3B per year.
 
Robert Sarvis:  “I’m not into the whole Austrian type, strongly libertarian economics, I like more mainstream economics and would have been happy to go elsewhere.”
 

* See http://jhpolitics.com/2013/10/virginia-ben-domenech-takes-sarvis-out-behind-the-woodshed/
Robert Sarvis:  self-described "moderate" (Oct 26 forum) 
SARVIS:  not very Libertarian at all

Cuccinelli is the only choice for Liberty-minded voters

That's why Robert Dean and other Libertarian leaders are backing Ken Cuccinelli for Governor Nov 5th 




Authorized by Russ Moulton.  Not authorized or paid for by any candidate or candidate's committee.
It should be noted that I was among the first that stated that Sarvis was not a pure libertarian. On October 15, I wrote:
A candidate in Virginia is running under the Libertarian Party ticket, Robert Sarvis. He is far from my ideal candidate. For example, he wants a "rational tax policy." But, there is no chance he is going to get elected. He will likely be forgotten after the election. But now, he is polling around 10%. That's probably why the "Ron Paul Inc" crew put additional pressure on Ron to endorse Cuccinelli. It's a tight raise and they need as many Sarvis supporters as possible to switch to Cuccinelli.
The principled thing, therefore, to do is vote against "Ron Paul Inc" and vote for Sarvis. He won't win. He won't do harm, but it will send a nice message to the Inc. crew that Ron Paul followers are not going to follow Ron when he moves away from principle.
The two front runners are Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe. They are both typical politicians. It won't matter which wins. A vote for Sarvis, though, will send an important message to Ron Paul, that libertarians aren't going to follow his endorsements when they suggest nothing but some kind of typical backroom party politics.

So there is no surprise here to EPJ readers, but it is interesting to note who sent out the anti-Sarvis email. It was sent out by Russ Moulton, who, get this, is a defense contractor! His firm is JRM Technologies. According to the JRM web site:

 JRM Technologies specializes in advanced sensor phenomenology modeling and simulation.  Our products and services are used by various government and industry customers throughout the Air Force, Navy, Army, DARPA, Defense Modeling and Simulation Office, and other agencies.


Says the JRM site:
JRM's Targeting Acquisition Agent™ predicts human target acquisition probability on-the-fly using GPU sensor image renderings of target and background.
The TAA accepts computer-image-generated sensor image input and ground truth (as provided by Asgard or a similar application) and produces search and target acquisition performance, including human probability of detection, recognition, identification and classification, as well as number of false alarms.

Moulton looks like the last guy that should be determining who is a libertarian, and just why is C4L allowing a defense contractor to use the list?

Political author David Franke put out an email to friends, which was obtained by EPJ, on the Moulton anti-Sarvis email:
Interesting.  Sarvis (Libertarian candidate for Governor) almost made it into the last debate, but didn’t cross the 10% threshold in recent polls.  But he’s still polling unusually strong for a libertarian in Virginia, and the Republicans are obviously worried that most of his support comes at the GOP’s expense, though I haven’t seen any polls confirming that.

This comes from the Ron Paul camp (Campaign for Liberty), and Ron Paul himself has endorsed Ken Cuccinelli.  I don’t have the resources or desire to fact-check this mailing, but it’s interesting to me that it is now a coalition of Virginia GOP Establishment and Ron Paul camp vs. Sarvis.  Since I love conspiracy theories, two of them come to mind: (1) The Ron Paul camp has an “agreement” with Cuccinelli regarding patronage, etc.; and/or (2) Democrats are siphoning money to Sarvis in hopes of splitting the natural support for Cuccinelli.  I haven’t seen any hard evidence of either conspiracy theory, but since when does that stop us from spreading them?  Both would “make sense.”

Of course, there’s always the pragmatic explanation that Cuccinelli is by far as conservative as you can be and hope to win statewide office in Virginia, and McCauliff is a Clintonite sleazebag and front for Hillary in 2016.  But the conspiracy theories are more fun.
To me, it looks like backroom politics that has nothing to do with the advancement of liberty. Sad news. Let's hope in the future Ron Paul stays far away from this type of endorsement.

13 comments:

  1. I think I'm gonna sit this one out, as I do every other election.

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    1. That's the best idea, Anonymous. One of the few freedoms remaining to us is the ability to withhold our consent. Give all these con artists the vote of no confidence they deserve--stay at home on election day.

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    2. You should at least show up and write in none of the above to say your voice is heard. Sitting it out doesn't accomplish anything.

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  2. I haven't voted since the 2008 primary, for Ron Paul of course, and volunteered on his behalf. I cancelled my registration after that. I just re-registered to vote for Cuccinelli a few weeks ago and this is the first I'm hearing about Ron Paul's endorsement, so that has no bearing on my vote. Cuccinelli the man has flaws, as they all do, but he has devoted a great deal of time and effort into freeing innocent people from jail. He is an intellectual ally and people need to ask themselves: if I'm thrown in a cage under the NDAA or some other totalitarian, police-state measure, who do I want in that position, if any of them? Well, I'd feel comfortable having Ken in there. It'd be one thing if it were your typical establishment Repuke (McDonnell or Bolling), but Ken is worth voting for, and it disappoints me to see the animosity towards him from libertarians/anarcho's/etc. It's also worth noting he has shunned the indoctrination/prison complex system and chooses to homeschool his children, was front and center in the fight against Obamacare and is taking a beating for his opposition to the global warming hoax. If somebody is voting for Sarvis because they truly believe in the guy, good for them! No vote on principle is wasted! But don't throw slime at Ken to support somebody simply because they have an "L" beside their name; it would be no better than blindly voting for every "D" or "R" as most people do.

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    1. I am someone who is voting for Sarvis because I do believe in him. There are a couple reasons Libertarians have a lot of animosity towards Cuccinelli right now. For starters, Sarvis was excluded from the debates at Cuccinelli's insistence - if you saw the debate on the 24th, McAuliffe made him look like a jerk on that topic. Also, Sarvis supporters have been getting flack from Republicans or Cuccinelli supports for months that we need to vote for Cuccinelli so McAuliffe won't win. I wish they would just focus on telling people why they should vote for Cuccinelli because he's a good guy versus scare tactics to pull votes away from someone else.

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    2. "I wish they would just focus on telling people why they should vote for Cuccinelli because he's a good guy versus scare tactics to pull votes away from someone else." Absolutely agreed!

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  3. More bla bla as usual from wenzel . Ron and Rand don't sit down all day and write irrelevant smearing article, they don't preach to the choir about how hard core libertarian they are. They know what they are doing and have already accomplished a lot and they will continue work hard on the field.

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    1. You claim to be for liberty but yet you attack Wenzel like a liberal does. I don't think it's out of line one bit by Wenzel or anyone in the libertarian movement to criticize someone which includes Ron when they appear to be deviating from the message of liberty.

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    2. Don't criticize my heroes. Be a sycophant to them like i am. I am not a libertarian. I am a member in a cult of personality who will attack anyone who dares criticize my heroes, even if they deserve it. Blah blah blah.
      Fake liberty lover. You love people. Not ideas. Not principles and not freedom.

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    3. Ron Paul INC, as you guys (deservedly) call it, is definitely flawed and has strayed from its original purpose.. from liberty to enriching Jesse Benton. But when they are right, they are right.. and Ron and Rand are right this time around.

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  4. Ron has the resume prove he is legit unlike you. A person who endorsed neocon Jennifer Rubin and begged her employer not to fire her is not quailed to judge whether someone is sold out or not.

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  5. > Ron Paul himself has endorsed Ken Cuccinelli.

    Ron and Ken can kiss my Virginian butt. I used to respect Ron, until now. I never respected Ken.

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    1. I not only did not respect Ken, but had a lot of animosity toward him as a shifty weasel. Then I did my research, talked to people in the know and realized he (and even more so, EW) are deserving of my vote.

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