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Revolving Around Ron Paul

WASHINGTON — Oftentimes in narratives, the victories of great heroes arise from their deaths. Aeneas. Jesus. John Henry. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. Have the rumors of Ron Paul’s demise also been exaggerated?

*****

“Though victory in the conventional political sense is not available in the presidential race, many victories have been achieved due to your hard work and enthusiasm,” Ron Paul calmly says in a March 6 YouTube “Message to Supporters.”

As always, Ron Paul speaks with words carefully measured. Unusually, he reads from a teleprompter or off-screen cue cards, rather than from paper notes. During this farewell address – as it is dubbed by the mainstream media – he wears a burgundy tie against a light-blue shirt. His left hand covers his right, which does not move from the brown wood desktop that matches the small chest-of-drawers drawers behind and to his left, and the bookcase behind and to his right.

A gold wristwatch peers out from beneath his left shirt cuff. A gold lamp with black shade rests on the brown drawers. The bookcase is modestly stocked with two matching sets of volumes. A viny plant, stretching greenly toward his left shoulder, complements the persimmon, or rust-colored, wall.

The recording of the message could have taken place in Ron Paul’s office in Washington, D.C., his home in Lake Jackson, a cave in Waziristan – anywhere, really. The production is not important.

Of real consequence is the consumption of Ron Paul’s words throughout the country by those who listen, and act upon what they hear.

*****

“Elections are short-term efforts. Revolutions are long-term projects…We’re still in the early stages of brings about the changes that this Revolution is all about…Counting on the remnant of true believers in a society that is slipping into chaos is not possible. A cadre of hardcore believers is the key to success. The total numbers and percentages are less important.”

Phoenix is home to sand, sprinkler systems and state Sen. Karen Johnson. Its Ron Paul Meetup Group has 672 members, making it the ninth-largest in the country.

Phoenix Meetup members received an e-mail from Johnson on March 3, alerting them that the state legislature would meet the next day to discuss her bill titled “Opposing a North American Union,” a plank of Ron Paul’s platform.

Johnson asked them to e-mail their state House representatives to request that they support the bill. On March 11, the bill failed by a vote of 25 to 34.

A barrage of phone calls ensued.

On March 12, a representative, who had originally voted no, asked for a reconsideration of the bill.

“Wow! You guys are fabulous! The reports we’ve gotten from the House of Representatives are that the phones have been going K-U-H-R-A-Z-Y-!!!” Johnson wrote to the Meetup group on March 13, this time asking the members to please stop calling the representatives, who had already relented.

On March 18, the bill passed 37 to 22, and is now pending in the Senate.

On March 20, the Phoenix Meetup received an e-mail from the pro-gun organization Arizona Citizens Defense League, asking them to urge their state Senators to pass a bill that would allow adults to carry concealed weapons on school grounds.

*****

“Also supporting the right candidates and getting credible individuals to become candidates for office at all levels of government is crucial.”

On Wednesday, March 5, Marcus Rivchin receives a phone call. He talks for awhile, hangs up and begins to type:

“Hey guys, This one has been handed to us on a platter of sorts. The San Diego GOP called me and asked me if we can come up with a Republican (a Ron Paul Republican) to run against Bob Filner…”

Approximately 1,016 San Diego Meetup members (the fourth-largest Ron Paul group in the country) learn in an instant that one of them has a chance to run for U.S. Congress with the blessing of local Republicans. A long-shot candidacy, for sure, against an entrenched Democratic incumbent in a gerrymandered district, but with better odds than Ron Paul had to win the presidency.

First, they need to recruit a candidate from within their ranks. Then, they must obtain 40 signatures supporting the candidate in order to appear on the primary ballot. And they have two days to do it.

Almost immediately, two members volunteer for duty. They hold a tête-à-tête, and one candidate emerges. His name is Dan Felzer. He is a mortgage broker turned to politics by Ron Paul. He started a blog in January, and posts there once per month.

His first post is the most interesting. He writes about the beginnings of the European banks, starting in 1773 with German goldsmith Mayer Amschel Bauer (later named Rothschild).

Felzer writes that Rothschild (nee Bauer) colluded with 12 other wealthy individuals to begin what he called the “New Revolutionary Movement.”

“His grand plan was to get them to agree to pool their resources so they could ultimately finance and control the wealth, natural resources and manpower of the entire world,” he says.

According to Felzer, Rothschild’s initial 14-point plan has developed into today’s central banking system. The banks intend to control the world’s assets, including media outlets, and will intentionally trigger an economic holocaust that will sweep across the globe.

“Panic and financial depressions would ultimately result in World Government, a new order of one world government,” Felzer writes.

Felzer faces an opponent in the GOP primary for California Congressional District 51, named David Lee Joy, “a business owner and executive,” as he is identified in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Because he faces a Republican opponent, the San Diego GOP has not endorsed Felzer. Neither has Ron Paul.

Nor has Ron Paul endorsed San Diego Meetup group organizer Mike Benoit, who (if you refer to the Union-Tribune article) is one of “a crowded field of candidates” vying for the CD-52 seat vacated by former presidential candidate Duncan Hunter, a Republican. Benoit is running as a Libertarian. He vowed in a March 20 e-mail to walk door-to-door in the district, “six to seven days a week until the election in November.” He asked fellow Meetup members for their help campaigning Saturday, March 22, followed, perhaps, by brunch.

Nor has he endorsed Pam Farley, a member of the Austin Meetup (size: 1,291; rank: 2). Pam is running for the board of the Anderson Mill Municipal Utility District, which lies just northwest of the Meetup group’s North Austin office. Pam has allied herself with a fellow Ron Paul supporter and an independent, Steve Robert Nelson and Elizabeth Elleson. (At this time, it is unclear which is which.) Together, the three hope to unseat three MUD incumbents and gain a majority of the five-person board.

For now, Ron Paul is officially backing only two candidates: Murray Sabrin of New Jersey for the U.S. Senate and Jim Forsythe of New Hampshire for the House of Representatives.

However, many more are running beneath an unsanctioned banner of Ron Paul. Major candidates can be found here, here and here. And innumerable individuals inspired by Ron Paul’s run are filling up the slots at the bottom of ballots across the country.

*****

“The presidential campaign will soon wind down. But we do still encourage all efforts to gain the maximum number of votes and delegates in all the remaining primaries and to continue the caucus process that is ongoing in the other states by loyal volunteers.”

On Saturday, March 15, Missourians convened in caucuses throughout the state. Ron Paul Republicans were in attendance.

Jackson County includes Kansas City — a place former Nebraska Sen. Kenneth Wherry, in 1943, said Shanghai could be just like someday, with American assistance.

Bunk Farrington is chair of the Jackson County GOP. He was not prepared for the appearance of 135 rowdy Ron Paul Republicans (including a couple of leprechauns, apparently adhering to the Roman Catholics’ observation of St. Patrick’s Day).

The Revolutionaries refused to compromise with the regular Republicans, who responded by walking out on the caucus. “Farrington set his gavel down, left the podium and the auditorium along with the diminishing group of seventy Republicans regulars,” an attendee writes. The Ron Paul Republicans, well-versed in Robert’s Rules of Orders, took over the meeting and chose delegates and resolutions to their liking.

According to Monday newspaper reports, the Revolutionaries “commandeered gatherings in the city of St. Louis, St. Louis County, Kansas City and Springfield,” in addition to “at least a half dozen rural counties.” (A 17-year-old delegate testifies to similar circumstances in Minnesota.)

The Ron Paul-controlled caucuses passed resolutions for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan and Iraq, opposing the Patriot Act and ending wiretaps without warrants. One resolution calls for repealing the Missouri GOP’s “winner-take-all” primary system, which would release presidential delegates from the obligation to vote for John McCain.

Estimates are that one-third of Missouri’s state delegates now belong to Ron Paul. They will meet later this spring at congressional district and state conventions to determine the state party platform.

*****

“I will continue to make every effort to visit any state where the enthusiasm for liberty exists. The campaign for freedom will continue in this new phase.”

Ron Paul tells Newsweek’s website that the trouncing of his opponent in Congressional District 14 has revitalized him, much like brake use charges a hybrid’s battery.

He is touring Pennsylvania in anticipation of its April 22 primary. He says he can’t bear to “just quit” when he still has so much support in the state and elsewhere. Ron Paul won’t endorse John McCain; indeed, he prefers Ralph Nader over his fellow Republican. (Ron Paul has expressed his admiration for Nader’s sense of principle in the past.)

*****

“Let me give you an update on the proposed rally in D.C. I still like the idea of a national rally to demonstrate our strength and enthusiasm…The presidential campaign will not be the organizer of any one event. If others are able to put it together in a dignified manner (and there are many quite capable of doing this), I will encourage it, and if practical, attend. I don’t mind playing a key role in the Revolution, but it has to be more than a Ron Paul Revolution. I have always claimed this whole effort was much bigger than one individual. It looks to me like June 21 would be a good date for an event in D.C.

The town of Asheville is cradled in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains. It is the birthplace and burial ground of novelist Thomas Wolfe, and the home of “Granny Warrior” Linda Hunnicutt.

Hunnicutt travels the country in support of Ron Paul in an RV painted like the American flag. Revolutionaries fund her journeys through donations to a PayPal account on the Granny Warriors website.

Hunnicutt was one of approximately 250,000 viewers of Ron Paul’s YouTube message. She has accepted the responsibility for organizing the national “Freedom Rally” in Washington, deeming April 15th, Tax Day, a more appropriate date for the event than Ron Paul’s suggested June 21, the summer solstice.

Ron Paul and wife Carol have agreed to speak at the rally, which will take place on the west lawn of the nation’s Capitol. Also appearing will be American Indian activist Russell Means, subject for Andy Warhol, a star of Last of the Mohicans and former opponent to Ron Paul for the 1988 Libertarian Party presidential nomination.

*****

“We live in dangerous and exciting times, and with world events changing rapidly, our efforts are all that much more important…As bad as it may seem and overwhelming the burden appears, today’s events should be seen as a tremendous opportunity to change the government for the good. Let us all stick together in this great cause of liberty and show the love that we all share for liberty and the Constitution. Thank you for joining in.”

 **Note: posted Sunday night, light copy-edit and change of title on Monday at 11:15 a.m.**

Fourth Paulist Paper Coming This Weekend

Expect the next Paulist Paper to be posted this weekend.

I apologize for the one-week delay. This was due to Spring Break. The normal biweekly publishing schedule (once every two weeks) will resume thereafter.

Thanks for your patience.

Reading Ron Paul

WASHINGTON — Original editions of Ron Paul’s monthly newsletters are nearly impossible to find. Still, the text survives, recorded on microfilm by some poor devil of a sub-sub-librarian in Wisconsin to be passed around to various media publications looking to slander the Lake Jackson congressman with his own words.

Traveling via U.S. Postal Service (an organization whose abolition is called for in the newsletters), the films reach the East Coast, where they are transported by hand on the Metro, through the metal detectors, up the elevator to the third floor and down the hall to the right into the Washingtoniana room of the District of Columbia’s main public library, named after Martin Luther King Jr. (an individual who’s the target of vicious attacks in the newsletters.)

The old but not yet obsolescent machine warms and whirrs as the film is fed to it, under glass, and its light projects images of the past on its screen, like the children’s toy that transforms darkened bedroom ceilings into the night sky.

The newsletter’s twin incarnations — the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report — persist as transparent copies of ghost-written copies. And they’ve haunted Ron Paul since 1996, when opponent Charles Morris (a Democrat nicknamed “Lefty”) first alerted the Houston Chronicle’s political reporter to racist passages therein.

*****

Newly battle-hardened from a bitterly personal primary campaign conducted by incumbent Greg Laughlin — who had been enticed from the Democrats to the GOP by Newt Gingrich, both George Bushes, Phil Gramm (who defeated Ron Paul in the Senate Primary of ’84) and Tom DeLay (who took over Ron Paul’s seat when he ran for the Senate) — Ron Paul shrugged off the allegations and secured a victory over Morris by less than five percentage points.

During the dozen years between then and now, that Chronicle reporter abandoned political writing for his sanity’s sake, ascending to the rank of national editor. Just a few months ago, he was notified of the expendability of his position from the great and powerful Hearst Corporation, which had decided to “slim down” its newspaper operations.

For his own sake, he became political reporter once more, just has he had been in ’96, when Ron Paul broke a 12-year sojourn to return to the Capitol.

Ron Paul’s still in Congress, as are members of that ’96 freshman class Kay Granger, Silvestre Reyes, Pete Sessions and Ruben Hinojosa.

*****

There’s a printer hooked up to each microfilm reader in the MLK library, and one groans intermittently as it churns out rudimentary duplications of the original publication, at 15-cents per page. Roughly 30 dollars worth of documents — doppelgangers, in a sense — fill the output tray, every one containing text that Ron Paul would prefer not to exist.

His spokesman claims his boss had no involvement with the editorial content of the newsletters from ’88 to ’95, during his second stint as a physician, and when the inflammatory passages were written.

Ron Paul says he’s sorry, but he won’t reveal who wrote the newsletters. This is consistent with his distaste for “finking” (as it’s termed in the December 1988 issue of the Political Report).

What mysteries do the newsletter mastheads dispel? It was published out of 1120 NASA Boulevard (now called NASA Road One), Suite 104, in a 77,215-square-foot office building, slightly wider than it is tall, white, striped vertically with black glass windows like prison bars.

The former home of Ron Paul & Associates is caddy-corner to the Johnson Space Center, the funding of which Paul now says is necessary (but in the newsletter, wasteful and unconstitutional). The Fresh Chef sandwich shop now occupies Suite 104.

In 1991, the newsletter’s base of operations moved around the corner, to 18333 Egret Bay Boulevard, Suite 265. (Egret Bay Blvd. is also known as Farm-to-Market Road 270.) The 106,320-square-foot Atrium Crest building, as it’s called, is also white, and has five rows of horizontal dark-gray glass windows the reflect the sun, the sky and the clouds.

In 1994, the newsletter’s headquarters disappeared from the map and into a P.O. Box in Lake Jackson, the 27,000-person hometown of the Green Tree, Pennsylvania-born congressman. Tejano singer Selena was born in Lake Jackson.

*****

During the last half of 1988 (the year of Ron Paul’s run for president as a Libertarian), the editor of the newsletter is listed as Lew Rockwell, a longtime friend of Ron Paul and founder of the libertarian Ludwig von Mises Institute.

For a few months in 1988, the publisher is Nadia Hayes, former chief aide to Ron Paul who got caught near Election Day embezzling funds from the Paul campaign.

By 1989, the only person whose name is on the newsletter is that of subscription manager Jean McIver, who is now the Texas Field Coordinator for Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign. In 1991, around the time of the move to Atrium Crest, Renae Hathway becomes subscription manager. Hathway is not an official in Paul’s present campaign.

*****

So who wrote the articles? Reason magazine believes it is Rockwell. Reason could be right: former Ron Paul chief of staff Eric Dondero claims here that Rockwell and his underlings wrote 60 percent of the newsletter, with Ron Paul contributing 40 percent in the form of scribblings on yellow legal pad paper.

But who is Eric Dondero? What’s the deal with him? Posters on Internet message boards characterize him as a disgruntled former staffer who was fired for things varying from general slovenliness, to trying to sway Ron Paul’s antiwar stance, to writing the offensive articles. Several simply call him a liar.

Eric Dondero, or Eric Rittberg (he goes by both names) isn’t the archetype of consistency. He claims here that Rockwell wrote 80 percent of the newsletter. That is more than 60.

But no signs point in the direction opposite of Rockwell, and some damning ones implicate him. Examine the farewell issue of the Survival Report in December 1996, after the victory over Lefty Morris: “my old friend Lew Rockwell, was my chief of staff in the House, and he’s worked with me for 12 years on this newsletter.”

*****

But the actual author is of little consequence to the constituents of the Fourteenth Congressional District, the battlefield for Ron Paul’s toughest challenge since his deposing of Laughlin.

His opponent, Friendswood Mayor Pro Tem Chris Peden, has the backing of the Houston GOP establishment and endorsements from the district’s two major newspapers, the Galveston County Daily News and the Victoria Advocate, the two oldest newspapers in the state of Texas. The importance of these entities to the race is debatable, since the district doesn’t creep into Houston, and the last instance in which the newspapers endorsed Ron Paul is lost somewhere in the mists of time.

The printer screams in alarm because the printing card (preloaded with money) has been left in its slot for too long. Other patrons scowl as their individual reveries are shattered. The freshly inked sheets are taken from the printer tray and thrown into a plastic bag for later perusal. The captured passages will find their way into the newspaper pages in the coming days.

*****

While Ron Paul was away on the presidential trail like Odysseus at Troy, while he was fostering the growth of his revolutionaries throughout the country, on the Internet and especially in Austin, Texas, things have been happening in his district. (Ironically, in the May 1995 issue wherein he announced his intentions to return to Congress, he counted it a strength that his district “does not include the liberals of Austin.” How things change!)

In downtown Victoria, his ideological nemesis Bill Clinton delivered a stump speech on the behalf of his spouse, while standing in the bed of a white pickup truck (a gimmick he would repeat in several other towns on his Texas tour). At least one woman rushed through the crowd to embrace the ex-President, to the chagrin of the Secret Service.

Bill Clinton also touched down in Galveston to address a crowd of similar size, telling folks his wife would make the country as good a place as it was when he was in charge.

Ignoring Victoria, the Barack Obama campaign blew through Galveston twice — once in the person of John Kerry, and the candidate’s wife Michelle Obama two days later.

For all their bluster, do you think the Clintons or Kerry, or the spouse of Obama, really care at all about Galveston or Victoria? Do they know that Galveston used to be the crown jewel of Texas until hurricanes humbled it like Indianola? That Victoria is 13 years older than Chicago, and draws its name from the first President of Mexico, who in turn took his from “La Virgen Morena,” whose apparition still draws thousands upon thousands to Tepeyac hill to gaze upon the tilma left by Juan Diego?

Do you think those Democrats dined at any of the Landry’s Restaurants on the Galveston seawall? Or sampled enchiladas in Victoria from Siesta Restaurant, tamales from Ventura’s or the pico from Pico De Gallo? Or any item at all from Victoria’s four Whataburgers or four Sonics?

What do you think passed through the minds of the venerable trio but hopes of scrounging a few dollars or voters, relief that they don’t live there and longings to leave?

But the crowds, they are swept by the immediacy of attention, by the sensation of belonging to something important, and some even go to the polls at the rate of tithing. The waves of early voting are rocking all incumbents, and even destabilize the ground beneath Ron Paul’s feet.

*****

From his vantage point in South Carolina — 1,100 miles northeast of Victoria — the editor of the Southern Political Report writes that Ron Paul is vulnerable and might lose his Congressional seat. From their headquarters in Los Angeles — 1,596 miles west-northwest of Galveston — Pajamas Media reports that Chris Peden’s internal polls place him 11 points ahead of Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is in trouble, Pajamas says, and he can’t bail himself out with money from his presidential quest unless he drops out.

*****

But what the congressional committee can do — and did do — is rent the donor list from the presidential campaign. Since Feb. 3, Ron Paul’s congressional campaign raised $1.2 million. Chris Peden, by comparison, has raised less than $250,000 total ($130,000 in loans to himself, and $18,000 from people with the last name of Peden).

The last press release from the Chris Peden campaign is from Dec. 28, when he filed to run. And Ron Paul’s spokespeople say polls of their own have Ron Paul ahead by more than 30 points

******

But why? Why would Ron Paul risk his position to make an impossible bid for the White House? What drives this man who gave up his medical practice in 1996, who is more comfortable speaking to a dozen in person than a TV audience of 12 million, who is more comfortable still delivering speeches on an empty House floor to be entered into the Congressional Record?

Ambition? Power? Wealth?

Look again to the newsletters, to that issue from Dec. 1988 that contains his condemnation of “finking,” as well as a story correlating the rising popularity of steroids to the over-attentiveness of a protectionist government.

Under the headline, “Reflections on My Presidential Campaign,” Paul, or some anonymous specter, writes:

“Why did I do it? And why do I plan to stay involved in political action? For one reason and one reason only: to promote the principles of a free society. If these principles are important, political office or wealth cannot be the measure of success.”

And so, even from the darkest regions of Ron Paul’s past, something ineffable, indelible, (to most) unintelligible, gleams.