Jenny Woo’s Interview With Republican Congressman Ron Paul

Gambling911.com Senior Correspondent Jenny Woo had an opportunity to sit down and speak with Republican Texas Congressman Ron Paul.  Dr. Paul - he doesn't just kiss babies as a politician, he's also delivered over 4000 babies as a physician specialized in obstetrics and gynecology.

How appropriate on this Election Day as Ron Paul campaigned for the US Presidency until the bitter end, even amassing double digit percentages (including Pennsylvania) in some of the later Republican primaries.  We are also reminded that Dr. Paul beat John McCain in a few of the earlier primaries. 

Strong internet grassroots support was indicated by the popularity of his name in search queries and the number of his campaign's YouTube subscriptions. His book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, became a bestseller immediately upon release and went on to be #1 on the New York Times nonfiction best sellers list.

Ron Paul is also fully supportive of legislation that would legalize online gambling.  In fact, he co-sponsored a bill with Democratic House Financial Services Committee chairman, Barney Frank, that looked to repeal the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act passed as part of an attachment to an unrelated Port Security bill.

"He's a libertarian and he's actually one of the honest ones who really want to help low income people and when it comes to interfering with peoples freedoms," Barney Frank told Jenny Woo in an interview this week.  "Ron and I worked together on legalizing marijuana and on opposing some restrictions on free speech.  I refer to him as being a very good ally; he's a very non-hypercritical conservative."

Congressman Paul opened up about the Barney Franks co-sponsored bill (H.R. 2046), the bailout and the economy.  He also talked about "Campaign for Liberty".  Check out the site and be heard at
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/

JENNY:  You co-sponsored a bill with Democratic Congressman Barney Frank that would look to abolish the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act (UIGEA), what¹s going on with that bill?  And do you plan to continue supporting efforts to have online gambling legalized?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  It¹s been waylaid.  The elections have come up and we didn't win that vote in the committee.  But I think Chairman Frank still is interested in doing something.  I don't know exactly what he's done in the last few weeks but I am sure not a whole lot due to the financial crisis in the campaign going on.  So whether he has a plan up his sleeve for the continuing resolution that he might slip something in - I do not know.  But on the surface I hear nothing going on because there's not a lot of activity going on in Washington right now.

JENNY:  You are not necessarily a fan of gambling, why is this issue so important to you? 

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  I'm a fan of allowing people to enjoy themselves and I enjoy myself when I know people can make their own choices with what they want to do with their life and money.  So no, I don't personally get impel.

Mine is a philosophic position but I think it's a sound position.  I think it's something that you can defend as being a strict constitutionalist and I just don't see government being the moralist deciding how we spend our time whether is good or bad.  I have a strong belief that the individual gets to make that choice so the fact that I don't gamble doesn't really influence me in my positions on this issue.

JENNY:  The Republican party insisted on having as part of their platform online gambling prohibition yet you are one of the most conservative in the party and are among the industry's biggest allies.  What would you say to those who claim that the Republican Party is bad for online gambling?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  No, I have to say the evidence is there.  They worked hard to stop it, but I'm sure there are quite a few Democrats that have to support that position as well or have supported that position.  Once again, I see it in the context of the overall philosophy of government and that is that too many people whether it's the Democrats are willing to get involved for economic reasons too often.   Republicans and Conservatives get involved too often for trying to improve people's behavior.  So I think they're both at fault depending on exactly which issue it is.

JENNY:  How do you feel of Kentucky's decision to take domain names away from online gaming operators?  Should this decision be made at the state level?  Should it even be made at the federal level?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  I don't know this issue in detail ­ But generally I have a lot more difficultly coming down and saying  "the state can't do that" unless I have a way of justifying it at the federal level because I want most of our problems be solved at the state level.  There's hardly ever that we do anything at the national level that doesn't involve everything that the state does; but who is a strictly a pure "state issue",  I'm less likely to be involved in dealing with it at the federal level.

JENNY:  Every industry including our own is worried over the future of our economy.  You have said months ago we already entered a recession?  Why has the "R" word not been officially declared in this country yet?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  It's amazing how people feel in everything that's going on and we still have no recession.  Even today they had a report on the GDP and it was down just in a small amount;  it wasn't down nearly as what was anticipated.  I think the numbers are all fudged and I think government's deceived us.  If they talk about inflation, they always say that inflation is much less then it really is; they deny us certain numbers, like how fast the money supply is growing.  So there's a lot of deception going on.

But I think when this first came up during the presidential debates it was early on, in a debate in Michigan, and I said at the time "I believe that people, we were in a recession", some people were probably in a depression because they were already losing their homes.  Certain sections of the country were really hurting.  But the government always paints things to be much better.  The markets interestingly enough, even if people in the market know they are false, they make the assumption, "well the report is going to have a such and such affect".  They sort of feed into it and say, "the CPI (Consumer Price Index) only went up 1 point, it's not going up so bad".  So everybody is going to react and it's a mob psychology even though some people know that it¹s not true.  That's only temporary, ultimately everybody finds out what¹s going on.  You can't hide from the market place forever.  Yet the government would try to do that to us and try to deceive us as long as they can. 

JENNY:  You were dead set against the government bailout of Wall Street.  What are the other alternatives?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  Just getting out of the way and allowing the market to work.  If people are too much in debt, they shouldn't have.  The best thing to do is allow these bankruptcies to occur and the good assets getting into the hands of those who are stronger financially.  Today the whole principle is backwards.  What we need are prices to come down so that people can afford a house.  The prices got too high.  We're trying to artificially keep the prices high and we're constantly rewriting the contract.  In the Constitution, it says that the Federal Government can't interfere with contracts.  Yet when these contracts were being written on housing mortgages, there were so many rules and regulations along with the Federal Reserve easy money system that a lot of mistakes were being made. 

Now when there's a crisis, the government comes in and says  "oh we're going to bail you out" and prop up all the people who benefited by going in the debt and making bad decisions and borrowing against their mortgages and putting their money in consumption.  All this pain and suffering, the burden falls on
those who did the job right.  Good investors are now being responsible to bail out the bad investors, whether those are business people or even those who got mortgages that shouldn't have. 

To me it's a very immoral thing to do.  It's especially bad economics because as long as you keep prices artificially high, the bad investment of debt does not get liquidated; so it prolongs the agony.  This is what they did in Japan and Japan peaked their stock market in 1989 and it's still one fifth of what it was.  We are doing the same thing now and it's somewhat similar of what we did in the depression.  Instead of having a quick, sharp depression or recession, we're going to prolong this and I don't see that we're going to reverse courses here in the near future.

JENNY:  You're an economist and you've been incredibly accurate with your predictions over the years. I'm not sure if there is anyone more qualified regarding the economy than yourself.    Have any of the candidates including Bob Barr sought your advisement in regard to the economy?  Would you work
with the new President in this regard if called upon?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  Anybody who would ask me a serious question or would want me to seriously participate in a discussion on what we ought to do, I would welcome the opportunity.  Seems like that is one of the benefits that has come out of the campaign in that I do get more calls from the financial markets and more of the business stations.  I am participating a lot more.  Anybody who cared to discuss something with me, I would be delighted.

JENNY:  Do you regret leaving the campaign?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  Well, the campaign was over.  It ended when the primary's ended and there was really no other choice in the matter.  In some ways, I don' think I've ever quit the campaign.  The campaign now is called "Campaign for Liberty" and I think that's what I've been doing from the first day I ever ran for Congress.  I was always campaigning for the same issue.  Sometimes I'm in office, sometimes I'm out of office, sometime I'm a candidate.  Now it's just I'll be having an official organization called "Campaign for Liberty". 

I don't see this as completely different.  It's just a different vehicle and we did get a lot of support and energized people going into campaign in the primaries.  That to me was delightful  because the young people especially got interested into the monetary issue.  They were also very favorable toward the thing we talked about earlier and that is that people making their own choices in what they want to do with their lives and their money; that they're allowed to take their own risk, yet they assume responsibility for themselves and they can't go to the government to ask for a bail out or be taken care of.  Now, the college kids I talked to loved that message, which means that I think they would be very open to our arguments that the internet shouldn't be messed around with, whether it has to do with First Amendment Rights or Personal Liberty Rights on how we spend our money and how we entertain ourselves.

JENNY:  I have spoken to so many people who say they are going to write your name on the ballot when they vote.  Is this something you recommend or will the vote not count?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  In states where you're not recognized as a write in candidate, I don¹t think they'll bother to count them.  Some states might.  I don't think it's all that productive.  I don't go out and send out an email saying, "don¹t do it". (Haha) If they want to do, do your own thing.

Some states, there's a couple that ended up with my name on the ballots.  I guess I have to admit, I'm a little bit curious of how many votes might we get.  So given an endorsement where they push me into deciding which candidate I would favor the most, I'd pick Chuck Baldwin ( http://www.baldwin08.com/ )
because he was such a strong campaigner for me in the primary and he's been very good on the Constitution.

JENNY:  You have refused to endorse John McCain and it doesn't appear you'll be voting for Senator Obama either.  You've asked voters to go with one of the independent candidates.  Is there any particular candidate you would rather see in office?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  Well I did pick Chuck Baldwin.  But what I do in my own mind is I like to add up all those people including the people who are sick of it all in one vote.  I think we are the majority.  You take the people who think it's not worth while voting; you take all the Progressive's and Liberal's who are sick of the Democrats; you take the Libertarians and Conservatives who are sick of the Republicans and want to vote Libertarian or Constitutional Party; I think we have a large majority.  I did have a press conference in Washington trying to bring those four groups together and they agreed on four issues.  I thought it was great that both Liberals and Conservatives came together on getting out of the war and coming home, balancing our budgets, personal liberty, and looking at our financial system and federal reserves.  Those are the kind of things that I am encouraged by.
 

JENNY:  What should we expect in the near future from "Campaign for Liberty"  ( http://www.campaignforliberty.com/ )?

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  Hopefully it keeps growing.  We have well over a hundred thousand members now.  We're still in the organization stage with both political organization as well as educational activities.  We spent a lot of time this summer preparing for our big rally in Minneapolis, which we consider a very nice success.  We want to continue.  We have a lot of individuals who spontaneously (not because of our organization) got on ballots, state ballots, local ballots, and running for congress.  Hopefully we have some successors there that we can talk about.  We have an organization that will try to be organized in every precinct in the country for the purpose of promoting these views and trying to change the system within. 

JENNY:  Thank you Congressman Paul and we'll keep track with what's going on with "Campaign for Liberty".

CONGRESSMAN PAUL:  Good talking to you and thank you.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/

Jenny Woo, Gambling911.com Senior Correspondent