by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright April 12, 2015
All Rights Reserved.

              Announcing her 2016 bid for president today in a two-minute video clip, 67-year-old former First Lady, U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton endured instant hazing from the GOP.  Calling Hillary’s “out-of-touch policies, her dereliction of duty and her belief that she is above the law,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) took off the gloves, pulling no punches with Hillary’s announcement.  What he’s referring to as her “out-of-touch policies” were contained in a two-minute video showing struggling middle class voters from all walks of life trying to make ends meet.  Paul calls Hillary out-of-touch for backing government entitlements, something he says is contributing to the country’s demise.   “Hillary represents the worst of the Washington Machine,” says a newly minted GOP spot due air in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, all early voting primary or caucus states.

             Paul’s policies are so radical, so out-of-the-mainstream, he calls for an end to the Internal Revenue Service, end to the Federal Reserve and an end to all government bailouts that enabled the nation’s biggest banks and U.S. auto industry to survive the worst financial collapse and recession under the last Republican President George W. Bush.  Paul’s the first to condemn Hillary on her “dereliction of duty” when it came to preventing the terrorist attack on a remote U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya but gave Bush and Cheney a free pass after Sept. 11.  Paul acts like Hillary, while Secretary of State, was responsible for embassy security in distant parts of the globe, especially anarchy-torn Libya after the fall of Muammar al-Gaddafi Aug. 23, 2011.  Paul likes to point fingers but takes no responsibility for the multiple incidents of plagiarism in his books, articles and speeches raised by the New York Times.

             When Paul talks of liberty he’s talking about ending government health care, including Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid, letting vulnerable citizens fend for themselves.  Paul, an opthamologist, fashions himself, like his father former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), as a student of Austrian economics, blaming all economic woes on central banking.  Paul opposes the common sense economics of John Maynard Keynes, the father of Keynesian economics adopted by Harvard’s John Kenneth Galbraith, who believed that Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal of massive government infrastructure spending pulled the U.S. out of the Great Depression.  Paul believes exactly the opposite.  That the only proper role of the U.S. government is one of national defense.  Unlike Hillary, whose approach to economics is aligned with Galbraith, Paul believes that government spending leads to debt and currency devaluation.

             Calling Hillary’s approach to the economy, “The arrogance of power, corruption and cover-up, conflicts of interest and failed leadership with tragic consequences—the Washington Machine is destroying the American Dream,” Paul looms tall tales about what happened under the last GOP administration of former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.  Two costly foreign wars and runaway real estate market fueled by sub-prime lending, led to the financial collapse of 2007—called, by former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan, the worst economic collapse since Financial Panic of 1913, prompting the creation of the Federal Reserve Board.  Paul opposed bipartisan bailout of the financial and auto industries, urging former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to them all go broke.  Paul would have let federally insured depositors loose all their savings.

             Paul’s attachment to his father’s misguided brand of Austrian economics leads to very different economic results.  Paul believes the U.S. started going downhill economically when the late President Richard Nixon took the U.S. government off the gold standard Aug. 15, 1971.  Since then, Paul, like other Austrian economists, thinks the U.S. has a fiat currency.  He doesn’t follow the conventional Bretton Woods system that allows foreign currencies to float to determine their value based on Gross Domestic Product.  Paul thinks the Federal Reserve has destroyed the value of the U.S. dollar, despite its strong performance under President Barack Obama against all foreign currencies.  Paul’s conclusions create economic policies that oppose government spending on anything other than national defense.  Under Paul, the federal government would shed more good-paying, middle class government jobs.

             Whatever attacks against Hillary come from Paul, they’re carefully orchestrated by Reince Priebus and the Republican National Committee. While Paul’s only the second GOP candidate after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) to announce for president, he most closely mirrors the Tea Party-leaning RNC.  “We must do better that the Obama-Clinton foreign policy that has damaged relationship with our allies and emboldened our enemies,” said former Florida Gov. and expected GOP candidate Jeb Bush.  Jeb doesn’t acknowledge the utter chaos created in the Middle East by the Iraq War, where toppling Saddam Hussein April 10, 2003 unleashed the floodgates of Islamic terrorism on the region. Bush insists that only a conservative can return the country to prosperity.  Bush knows his brother’s “conservative” economic policies led to the biggest economic and stock market crash since the Great Depression.

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