(Tell us how you really feel about Rand Paul)Free the gas companies, free the world

[applegrove]

Free the gas companies, free the world

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2014/03/rand-pauls-foreign-policy

"SNIP..........................


RAND PAUL has a plan to punish Vladimir Putin for invading Crimea. Mr Paul, the libertarian senator from Kentucky who won the straw poll at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference to be the next Republican presidential candidate, lays out his plan in an op-ed in Time. Nobody on the political spectrum is calling for a military response, and as America's most prominent opponent of intervention abroad, Mr Paul doesn't do so either. Rather, he wants to "lift restrictions on new oil and gas development in order to ensure a steady energy supply at home and so we can supply Europe with oil if it is interrupted from Ukraine." He also calls for America to do a number of things (imposing economic sanctions, ending participation in the upcoming G-8 summit) which Barack Obama is already doing, though Mr Paul neglects to mention this. He recommends that America suspend loans and aid to Ukraine, lest they be used to pay the country's debts to Russia. Finally, he calls for reinstating the cancelled project to build American missile-defence emplacements in Poland and the Czech Republic, but promises to "make sure the Europeans pay for it."

........................

Building the Keystone XL pipeline, meanwhile, has exactly nothing to do with Ukraine. I say this as someone who, despite all the environmental concerns, thinks the pipeline probably ought to be built. (It's safer than moving the oil by rail; the tar-sands oil it transports shouldn't be extracted at all, but stopping the pipeline won't stop the oil; the real fight is for broad climate-change legislation. This is too complicated an issue to deal with here.) Europe is not terribly dependent on Russian oil, which is already a thoroughly globalised commodity that is much cheaper to ship than gas. If approved, Keystone XL will not be finished for years, and when it is, its entire effect will be to slightly decrease the global price of oil. New oil-reserve discoveries have the same effect. Approving the pipeline will do no more to deter Mr Putin from interfering in Ukraine than last month's announcement by Total that it will invest in new drilling in South Africa.

The idea that America can defeat Russian irredentism in Eastern Europe by deregulating its own energy industries is frankly ridiculous. Deregulation can make airline tickets cheaper. It cannot stop the Russian army. Energy-industry deregulation has become part of the standard Republican line on Crimea largely because of the relentless self-congratulatory process by which political actors cement their followers' ideological convictions. Leaders apply such flattery like a soothing unguent, assuring their backers that the things they already believe in would have solved every imaginable problem in advance, if only the foolish opposition had gone along. This helps fuse ideological blocs into coherent, hard-to-dent juggernauts.

But such claims have the opposite effect on anyone who doesn't belong to the ideological base. Deregulating the fossil-fuels industry can be expected, broadly speaking, to benefit oil and gas companies and to hurt the environment. Liberals already suspect that people who argue for deregulation are doing so mostly as a favour to their preferred business interests. When Republican politicians make transparently absurd arguments for deregulation, it confirms the scepticism of anyone who isn't already on their side. It's all the more offensive when the issue at hand is Russian nationalist expansion, which deploys a similar sort of cynical ideological play-acting in the interests of Russia's energy companies. Even many young libertarians in Mr Paul's own base may be inclined to view the conflict in Ukraine as a matter of Russians whipping up nationalist sentiment for the benefit of Gazprom, while Americans whip up nationalist sentiment for the benefit of ExxonMobil. If Mr Paul wants to convince the rest of America that his economic libertarian vision is sincere and coherent, rather than a shell for the advancement of favoured business interests, he ought to stay away from absurd arguments that reinforce those suspicions.



........................SNIP"

[delrem]

1. Ayn Rand was a feral beast of a person,

and through her writings she begat Rand Paul as a second-generation son.
One can imagine that something pure came of the process.

Nevertheless, Rand Paul looks more like a whack-a-mole head than a serious contender for anything more advanced than being representative of Kentucky. Poor, sad, Kentucky.

[applegrove]

2. I worry many will not see him for what he is.

[delrem]

4. Many won't, but they won't be any more than the usual "many"...

The rest will be analysing him, like they analyse politicians and the political situation in general.
Your OP sure put the key points on the line, though.

[applegrove]

8. I worry about low information voters who will buy Rand Paul's take on race

and making drugs legal. Those people probably don't usually vote but might be lured by all his appeals.

[delrem]

9. The fact that the fucker is a Senator in the US Gov't proves that your worry is smack on target.

The man ought not be in power.

[baldguy]

3. Ed Snowden's idea of an honest politician.

As if RW grifting can be construed as "honest".

[delrem]

5. Do you think I should be able to say "oh fuck off" on DU, and not be banned?

Do you think my question is any more relevant than your gratuitous jab at Edward Snowden?

[baldguy]

6. We can't discuss the type of people Rand Paul attracts in a thread about Rand Paul?

[delrem]

7. But I didn't suggest that, baldguy.

I asked a question that you avoided.

[baldguy]

10. No, you're just trying to dodge responsibility for what you posted.

Just because you pretend it's not offensive doesn't make it any less so.

[delrem]

11. wtf?

you're right through the looking glass, baldguy.
I won't be discussing matters with you in future.
g'day.

[Jamaal510]

12. What Jamaal510 thinks about Rand Paul:

He is a(n)...
-weirdo
-extremist
-opportunist
-demagogue
-expert at spreading misinformation
-hypocrite
-false defender of human rights

And that is what I think about the curly-haired Senator from Kentucky.