The Ron Paul blimp, and the emergence of the decentralized campaign
Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul have pooled their personal money to launch the blimp pictured above. It bears the copy “Who is Ron Paul? Google Ron Paul.” As with the record-breaking $4.3 million fundraising effort on November 5th, the blimp is not affiliated with the campaign.
Paul’s uniquely decentralized campaign has advantages in avoiding draconian campaign finance laws that limit campaign contributions. Last month, a Ron Paul supporter spent $85,000 of his own money to buy a full-page ad in USA Today, and over $250,000 has been donated to buy “shares” of blimp flying time.
Another supporter-driven “moneybomb” fundraising effort is planned for December 16th, the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party of 1773 in which Boston residents dumped tea into the Boston harbor to protest excessive taxation. This fundraising drive is expected to raise even more money than the one on November 5th, easily pushing Paul’s 4th quarter fundraising total over his $12 million goal (only $570,000 to go, as of this writing). Although the amount of money raised by other candidates won’t be known until they file their FEC papers at the end of the year, it’s quite possible that Ron Paul could trump all Republican candidates in terms of money raised.
Ron Paul’s campaign is also the first to track in real time its campaign donations. Amazing idea.
Nice flag in the photo!
The Ron Paul Revolution is a happening thing!
http://www.aChangeIsGonnaCome.info
This for the first time in a long time makes me feel proud to be an American! WE THE PEOPLE, need this man to get our great country back! I love this country too much to give it up that easy. Thank GOD for the the people who set the blimp project up. We need to donate this sunday the 16th of december to make sure we do our part to get this great American elected! Go Ron Paul, we are all behind you!!
The Ron Paul blimp, and the emergence of the decentralized campaignPaul’s uniquely decentralized campaign has advantages in avoiding draconian campaign finance laws that limit campaign contributions. Last month, a Ron Paul supporter spent $85,000 of his own money to buy a full-page ad in USA Today, and over
To all those who hated the Blimp idea, you were wrong. More media coverage today than any other day. On Monday, they will be scraping their jaws from the pavement after Sunday’s mega fundraising event.
That would definitely give them some extra advertising
The photo is very good.
It is a happening thing with the Ron Paul Revolution
At first I was ambivalent about Ron Paul and found him rather innocuous. But upon more investigation, I find his campaign intellectually repugnant. November 5th has to do with the thwarting of a Catholic terrorist plot to blow up British parliament because some disagreed with England’s embracing Protestantism. I don’t understand how November 5th has been hijacked by Ron Paul’s campaign as some symbol of neo-libertarian triumph, but it is obviously piggy-backing on that ham film ‘V for Vendetta’ which, apart from being the worst film ever, got an interesting sliver of history so wrong, wrong, wrong. I sense yet another McCampaign.
this is such a cool picture, that blimp costs a ton to run and it must be the “spammers” funding that as well lol. Great stuff.
Cool photo!
Sarah, the November 5th donation drive was unofficial. Neither endorsed nor controlled by the campaign. Yeah, it was a little strange associating the event with Guy Fawkes Day, but it had more to do with the anti-fascism pro-liberty message of the movie (which I actually enjoyed). Still, you shouldn’t judge the campaign by its supporters, judge it by the message: individual liberty, limited government restricted by the Constitution, and non-intervention in the affairs of other nations.
That’s fair enough, but I think merely looking at the message of the campaign leads one to overlook the terribly flawed ideals/policies that underlie it. To name a few: lower taxes, withdrawal from the UN, and supporting doctor-insurance company collusion to “drive down medical care,” and jumping on the fear-mongering (“socialist” this and “socialist” that) directed towards undermining any form of government-funded healthcare.
Taxes have historically made a government more accountable to its citizens because if people are paying into something, they naturally demand more of it. More tyrannical governments spring from states in which the government is funded largely by means other than taxes (like -gasp- companies that thrive in the free market!). Clearly Ron Paul doesn’t busy himself reading history books, or perhaps more relevantly, acknowledging political academia that has chronicled and observed the taxes/freedom parity in developed democracies.
Withdrawing from the UN sounds nice, especially if it means a modest assertion of America’s autonomy in the short-term, but America cannot afford to burn bridges when our position as the world’s superpower is crumbling.
I could go into more detail, and into the other positions of his that I find equally misinformed and sadly naive, but I’m afraid it would take pages.
Furthermore, if accepting campaign donations from white supremacists is revolutionary and a step in the right direction, I think I will be content to vote for someone with a more traditional campaign.
You demand more of them because they’re taking power and capital from you, by threat of force. But unless they’re doing exactly the things you would have wanted to accomplish with your money (and doing so more efficiently than you could do it yourself), you’re getting robbed of your rights and your property for nothing. There comes a point when you don’t want more accountability, you want more control over your life. I think we’re way past that point. I pay nearly half my income to the government. People in higher income classes pay an even higher percent (more than half). Part of the problem is that people don’t realize how much they’re paying because it’s gone before they get a paycheck. Heck, most people look forward to tax day as the day they get some of their money back from the government that siphoned too much money from their pre-paycheck income.
Tyrannical governments spring up when power is shifted from individuals (protection of personal liberty) to the government or the military (protection of the state or “the people”). In democracies or representative republics, the people have to will this loss. That is usually accomplished through fear-mongering: racial fears, economic fears, terrorism fears, etc. The fears are either directly created, or blown way out of proportion. People look to their government to save them, and write them a blank check (both in terms of money and a shift of power). Most recently, we saw that happen in America after 9/11. Now we have Americans justifying and even praising things like torture, suspension of habeas corpus, pre-emptive war, warrantless spying with little or no oversight, etc.
Ron Paul isn’t against the United Nations per-se. He’s against the United Nations binding us, or acting as a lawful organization that can justify our going to war. For instance, kicking Saddam’s armies out of Kuwait under the UN banner.
Were his supporters determining his positions, that might matter. They aren’t, so it doesn’t. Ron Paul’s campaign can keep the money and spend it on promoting a message of liberty, non-intervention and non-aggression — or he could give it back to the donor who might very well use the money to promote a message of hatred, fear and violence.
I think the corollary point I was making is that IS the way the donor wants to spend his money promoting hatred, fear, and violence. There’s something about Ron Paul’s policies that appeals to white supremacists, and I’d be very dubious about supporting a candidate who is supported by someone of that ilk.
It seems like business is still getting hit hard. Is anybody seeing an upswing in their respective niches? Health reform seems like a mess. I generate long term care insurance leads and annuity leads for the insurance industry, but volume has been terrible in the last two months. I am afraid the worst is yet to come, but maybe it is just my attitude.