The Vegan Abolitionist Party (VAP): America’s Sixth Political Party

In a previous post on the five political parties I perceived in America, I mentioned my  belief that a sixth Party was necessary, and I will deal with that issue in this post.

The sadistic Murder of Cecil the Lion by the Criminal Walter Palmer has focused attention on the Abomination of Hunting in a way that has never occurred in all of Human history. Judging by the comments from the Women that I’ve read on social media concerning this Crime, I’d say Palmer, and his fellow trophy hunters who splash their perversions all over facebook, will probably need to continually look over their shoulders for the rest of their lives, and the men will have to wear steel cups 24/7.

But after all the name-calling, hand-wringing, and the ineffective Menendez CECIL Act, which excludes many large animals, as well as the dragging out of extradition proceedings against Palmer by the Obama Administration, it is clear that petitions and expressions of outrage, while they can have some slight effect on conditions, (i.e. Botswana’s trophy hunting ban and the various airlines which banned transport of murdered trophy animal), are far too feckless forms of protest to bring about the necessary Revolution in Animal Welfare. To really effect a complete abolition of hunting and other Crimes, something more potent is necessary.

That something, I believe, is the formation of an Animal Welfare political party in each of the major, so-called democratic, countries. These parties would press not just for one or two animal welfare reforms, but would seek a complete, holistic, cessation of all forms of animal torture and murder. However, each issue could be tackled separately, so that temporary failure on one issue would not halt progress on another.

In casting about for a name for this Party, I’ve tentatively monikered it the “Vegan Abolitionist Party” —- no, the goal is not to abolish Vegans. Rather, the party’s aim would be to abolish and outlaw the various Atrocities committed against animals by individuals in an incredibly brutal, callous, and indifferent society.

I like the term “Vegan Abolitionist” both because it quickly informs the hearer that this is a Party deeply interested in diet and health, while simultaneously it harkens back to the great Libertarian Abolitionists of the Anti-Slavery Movement, Men like William Lloyd Garrison, who campaigned for decades before their dream was realized, although they always pushed for its immediate realization.

Moreover, I see no reason why this “Vegan Abolitionist” political definition could not be affixed to the standard political tranches which divide the Western electorates. “Vegan Abolitionist Libertarian, Democrat, Republican, Liberal, Socialist, Communist, Anarchist, Labour or Tory,” could become the appellation of various wings of the Vegan Abolitionist Party, although that would be quite a mouthful to say each time a candidate introduced himself to a member of the public. Such fusion candidates would place the platform of the Vegan Abolitionist Party foremost as their primary message, but they could also append their specific, traditional, political ideologies if they chose.

And so, I urge those passionate about reforming the horrendous conditions that animals suffer in all over the world to create political parties based around Vegetarianism and the abolition of hunting, trapping, vivisection, and the abuse of performing animals.

And perhaps more importantly, I would urge people to run for office in Western “democracies” on the platform of Animal Welfare Reform. They needn’t form or belong to such a party; they could run as Independents or unaffiliated. They needn’t even actively campaign; just to have your name on the ballot, with the title of the Party, could be enough. But what is necessary is that people be given an alternative to the usual two meat-eating politicians, who are only fighting over how much they want to spend to subsidize factory farming, or fishing, or vivisection, or the medical costs due to meat-eating, all paid for by the taxpayers, including vegetarian taxpayers. Such candidates would make the public aware that there are a few rare Individuals among them who say, “Hell no!” to Animal Murder.

Let the mainstream politicians know that they won’t get your vote unless they deal effectively, and not just cosmetically as in the Menendez CECIL Act, with Animal Welfare issues. When constituencies grow to 10-20% on an issue, politicians become fawning toadies.

Therefore, let the Animal Welfare Revolution begin.

I hereby found “The Vegan Abolitionist Party” (VAP) of America.

-Paul Grad, Vegan Libertarian, 2014 Libertarian Party of Oregon Nominee for Governor

Lord Bertrand Russell vs. Barack Obama: Ban the Iranian Bomb

It is well over 50 years now since Lord Bertrand Russell became the leading Western figure in the battle to ban nuclear weapons, and avert a nuclear war between the Ruskies and America. One can still remember the command “drop!”, and how we’d scurry under our desks, hands clasped over our heads. It certainly was an effective defense if a nuclear missile landed on your school.

In those days it was the “Left” and the Peace Movement that was trying to prevent the proliferation of nuclear bombs, but it looks like nowadays President Obama is portraying anyone who wants to stop nuclear proliferation as a Right-wing warmonger, while simultaneously the Democratic Party Liberals urge a deal that will guarantee a nuclear weapon in the hands of religious zealots in about a decade.

So, in 2015, the Left is endorsing the exact same policies with which they once condemned Barry Goldwater, while they  attack anyone who is against nuclear proliferation as a Warmongering Rightist.

Somehow the Bertrand Russell position against nuclear proliferation is attacked by Liberal Democrats as being Reactionary, while they, the Progressive Liberals, are going to arm and fund one of the most stinkingly Fascist and Theocratic Regimes on Earth.

But Bertrand Russell wasn’t wrong, and in reality President Obama and his fellow Democratic Party Politician supporters are the Warmongering Fascists, for they are the ones trying to guarantee nuclear proliferation and a nuclear confrontation in the Middle East within a decade, by financing and arming brandishers of Genocide.

So those who want Humanity to survive, and those who do not want to arm and reward murderous, Totalitarian Fascists, say not only “Ban the Bomb!”, but “Ban the Iranian Bomb”.

Congress, Ban the Iranian Bomb!

-Paul Grad, Vegan Libertarian, Libertarian Party of Oregon Nominee for Governor 2014

America’s Five Political Parties, and the Need of a Sixth

Watching the amazing and beautiful disintegration of America’s major political parties, and experiencing the ecstatic shadenfreude of seeing major politicians being rhetorically ripped apart and sinking in the polls, it struck this writer that America now has five, distinct, political parties, and that, over the last month, alignments have changed drastically in the American Political Colosseum.

The first thing to occur was the Republican Party handing the election back to the Democrats by having Trump deliver his xenophobic and racist remarks, in my opinion, on Mexicans. You can only imagine the Furore, and the tsunami of justified abuse he would have received if he had substituted for “Mexicans” the words “Blacks, Jews, Asians, Muslims, American Indians, paraplegics”, etc. The other Republican politician’s tepid, feckless criticisms on this Outrage will have cost the Party the Latino vote, I’d guess, as well as a major tranche of voters who share the general repugnance with racism in America, one of the few healthy signs in this society.

But for the Democrats, as in a chess game where two supposed masters continually leave their pieces en pris, no sooner has a week of sure-victory for them gone by, when Obama hands the election right back to the Republicans with his Iran “deal”. Only this dope deal went sour for the Democrats, even if it passes Congress. The Democrats have permanently lost the Jewish-American vote, which was the margin for victory for Obama in the last two elections, the Bible-belt Evangelical vote, and any Independents who like the Republican’s drum-rolling on the military, or who fear terrorism. Add to this the rise of the lovable Socialist, Senator Sanders, who is so bright he comes out for a “deal” guaranteeing nuclear proliferation. He seems to have forgotten the words and the work of that great Civil Rights Libertarian Socialist (yes, there are such creatures), Lord Bertrand Russell, who fought so valiantly to “ban the bomb”.

Indeed, it is now President Obama vs. Lord Russell, and I’ll take the Genius any day.

So, within a fortnight,  the Republicans throw the medicine ball of electoral victory to the Democrats, and the Democrats throw it right back.

That said, we can now commence to discern five major parties in America. These being:

The Democrats-Conventional. The tired old wing of the Democratic Party, as tired as the bags on Ms. Rodham’s face. Her conventional politics, her aversion to debate and be cross-examined, and now her support of the horrendous Iran “deal”, have killed her chances for any national consensus of support. An old hag hazbin.

The Sanders Socialists. A new wave of the tired Old Left laps its putrid waters against the bonnie, bonnie banks of the Love Canal of American Politics. Outside of a few enclaves of Leftism on the West Coast, some of the University towns, and New York, there’s probably very few Leftists left in America who would be moved to tears by hearing the Internationale, or who chirp “Hail Moscow” as they down their Coors. One reason I ran as a pro-Free Marketeer was that I felt that was the core philosophy of America, and had been for a couple of hundred years, and any politician or reformer who wanted to get anything done would have to genuinely share that philosophy, which I do. And, currently, the only Party extant that is truly for the Radical Free-Market is the Libertarian Party, so I ran as a Libertarian with environmental and animal welfare planks appended to the standard Libertarian positions on economic issues.

Additionally, I’d bet dollars to drachmas that the Green Parties, like the Pacific Greens, will probably endorse Sanders. He shares their Socialist views, and perhaps some of their environmental concerns.

Sanders and his socialists will never go anywhere, until their philosophy of looting those who save and invest becomes dominant in America, which it might do when hyperinflation finally hits. Until then, their State-coercion schemes will only make conditions worse, and be laughed at outside of Portland, Seattle, and the SF Bay. But he should do well in Oregon.

Moving from the Democrats to the Republicans, we can now discern two, or even three, distinct parties forming.

First the Trump slap-in-the-face Party. While I find his attacks on Mexicans so repugnant that I could never vote for, endorse, or praise this candidate, I can see why perhaps 20% of the country would like him. The Establishment of both parties are so cowardly and fawning in their sycophantic courting of the public that one feel nausea when they appear on the screen, and Trump’s attacks exploit that discomfiture. I think Ron Paul’s analysis of his character, and his opinion that he was “dangerous”, were fairly accurate.

America’s fourth political Party is the Republican-Conventional Party. This consists of that sorry sad-sack bunch of losers we saw at the Republican “debate” the other night, excluding Trump.

‘Twere obvious from the respectful way they addressed the Nation, that not one of them had ever committed a sin; a sterling group. They’re as irrelevant as Ms. Rodham, but one of them might win, heaven forfend!

The fifth Party in America are the Libertarians, who used to garner 1-2% consistently, but have now scored 8-10% in some States. Their philosophy is based on minimal (or no) government whose sole function is the defense of “personal property rights including your body”, and on the protection of the Individual against Rogue Government (the Bill of Rights), while forbidding aggression against anyone else’s Property Rights. Having run as a Libertarian, read widely on the Philosophy, and being familiar with its major tenents, I can enthusiastically endorse it as the correct Political Philosophy for all mankind, at all times on Earth.

However, on a pragmatic level, I feel the Libertarian’s do not exploit the validity of their Philosophy to its fullness. For example, they seem much more concerned with some minor gun restrictions, like background checks, than they do with major thefts of their wealthy, like the income tax, estate tax, and compulsory social security deductions. I’m the only campaigning Libertarian I ever heard bring up the topic of Jury Duty Slavery, or its violation of the 14th Amendment. And I was rather put off by their failing, in many cases, to understand that second-hand tobacco smoke is a serious assault on our Individual Property Right in our Persons, or than noise pollution from non-survival activities, like boom boxes, is a similar assault. Pitbulls running off-leash in public is a reckless endangerment issue, like drunk driving, but that also didn’t seem to be important to them. And there seemed a great lack of Environmental concerns among many, as Mankind destroys Life on Earth, although about 40% of the Party voting in the Oregon party primary wanted a ban on GMO-crops, which usually indicates a high level of Environmental awareness. But West Coast Libertarians probably differ from the National norm.

So those are the Five Current Political Parties: The Democrats-Main, the Democrats-Socialist, The Republicans-Main, The Trump Republicans or 3rd Party, and the Libertarians. And, outside of these delineations, are also a massive number of “Independents” who could flock to any of these parties.

In my next post, I will give my views on the necessity of a new, major political party in America, and what it’s general platform should be.

-Paul Grad, Vegan Libertarian, 2014 Libertarian Party of Oregon Nominee for Governor

Defending Ron Paul: Paul Krugman Beats Up a Crotchety Old Man

When I see “helpless” oldsters being beaten up by young thugs, I just have to intervene, at least when it comes to the wicked streets of New York’s economic theory. Paul Krugman’s vicious attack on former U.S. Representative Ron Paul, published in the New York Times on July 25th 2015, goes so far overboard that one has to wonder why Krugman would go to such lengths right now.

Before dissecting his attacks, let me tell you why I think he descended to name-calling against the Doctor and his supporters at this specific time. The reason is that Krugman senses the Keynesian debt house of cards is about to collapse, perhaps through direct knowledge, but more probably subconsciously. The causes of Krugman’s discomfiture are the Greek Crisis, which has shown that EU classical Socialist Keynesianism and Corporatism has failed miserably, the bludgeoning of the Chinese stock market as its economy implodes from debt, and the Puerto Rico debt crisis, which is an exact replica of what will happen to certain U.S. States when their State Worker Pension fund obligations and Government-school budgets bankrupt them, all combined with a possible current topping of the Dow. The quarterly tech media reports were pretty dismal.

The public knows that, except for stock investors, government contractors, corporate farm-subsidy parasites, large real estate speculators, and government employees, everyone else in America is getting ripped off by government through inflation and manipulated bank interest rates of near-zero.

What is rather disgusting about these attacks on poor, old, cranky, crotchety, decrepit Dr. Paul (get that man a wheelchair!) are first that they are ageist, and later become racist, which is really amazing for someone who calls himself a Liberal. (His blog in the NYT is called “The Conscience of a Liberal”. Hard not to laugh.) Specifically, Krugman calls Paul an “old man”, then a “crotchety old man”. He says that Paul’s supporters are predominantly white men who made their money for themselves and don’t want to give it “to Those People”.

Now, it should be pointed out that Krugman was probably playing with the title of Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”, when he entitled his hit piece, “The Old Man and the CPI”, pandering to the Litterati who frequent the Times. But still, why refer to Paul’s age except to try to create a negative image? The Hemingway-allusion title might be catchy, so Krugman wasn’t against exploiting a little age discrimination by belittling the elderly if it grabbed him readers at the NYT.  Anything for a “blog bluck”.

However, when he calls Ron Paul a “crotchety old man” because of his economic views, and then compares him to Bernard Madoff, the swindler and a major Federal felony criminal, it seems like Krugman is going so far overboard that you have to question his soundness, and the only reason I can see him doing this is that his subconscious native instincts tell him the markets are about to collapse, or start a prolonged bear trend. This will show his whole Keynesian Theory as being rotten. Remember, Krugman and almost all Economics professors at U.S. Universities are Keynesians. They have a huge vested economic interest in having the theories they propound accepted as valid by the general public, or they would lose their prestige, their sinecures, and their huge salaries. They are very much like priests in an organized religion, who are raking it in from the pilgrims, year after year, and don’t want anyone to point out that they are worshiping a false god made of stone. And why attack a minor figure like Ron Paul so viciously, when his economic views are held by only a small percentage of usually contrarian investors? Ron Paul has such a miniscule influence on American economic thinking compared to Krugman that you have to wonder why Krugman has to break a butterfly on a wheel.

Krugman also tries to advance the idea that because some of Ron Paul’s predictions haven’t panned out in his view, that Paul’s Austrian Market gold standard principles are invalid. But that just may mean that Paul is a lousy prognosticator or market timer, although Paul’s views obviously have been correct, as I will later show.

While I agree with Dr. Paul’s Austrian Economic view almost entirely, I have thought for years now that he was (and is and will be) absolutely wrong on the dollar for the next few years. We recently saw the dollar index soar from 80 to 100 in less than a year.

I also thought that this strengthening dollar would bring the metals and other commodities back down drastically, wrecking those bogus socialist authoritarian economies like Australia, Canada, the EU, and the BRIC “miracle”. And that is precisely what is happening. So I disagreed with Paul on his predictions, but that didn’t invalidate his principles. Krugman also misleadingly attacks Paul’s goldbug view in combination with his Austrian Economics, as if they were necessarily connected. But there are many Libertarians, or Libertarian Republicans, who would agree with Paul on most issues, but would keep a Federal Reserve, like Milton Friedman, or George Phillies. There are even a few Austrians who think you could have a Federal Reserve with a fiat currency if that currency were strictly controlled as to the quantity issued. Others think the Fed could be run by a computer that would be completely objective. There are also those hard moneyists who feel money could be backed by some commodity or combination of commodities other than gold. So Ron Paul’s gold view isn’t universal among Austrian Economists although it may come close.

And Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner, in trying to belittle Dr. Paul’s economic views, doesn’t mention that he is belittling the exact same views as those of another Nobel Prize Winner, Friedrich Hayek, whose views were identical to Dr. Paul’s. Why is Krugman’s Nobel Prize more valid than Hayek’s?

However, not only does Krugman try to create a propaganda image of Dr. Paul with his “old crotchety cranky” adjectives, but he also attacks Ron Paul’s supporters as predominantly white men, and even “crotchety old cranky white men” who have made their own money. Now that is curious, because most of the people showing up at Paul’s rallies when he ran for President were young whites, who probably had very little in the bank, and a lot of people who wanted pot legalized (and it is and wouldn’t have been if Ron Paul hadn’t been more “Liberal” and outspoken on this issue than every Democrat and Republican in Congress for the last 27 years, except for Libertarian Republicans like roaring Dana Rohrabacher.) If so-called Liberals like John Kitzhaber, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama — Krugman’s men — had their way, they’d still be throwing our fellow Oregonians in cages for having a plant in their pocket.

Now let me say that I supported Ron Paul just because I had to grow up under Fascists like Democratic War Criminal Lyndon Napalmer Johnson and Republican War Criminal Richard Stinkhouse Nixon (who, you’ll recall, proposed a Guaranteed Annual Income through his Negative Income Tax — pure Leftwing Socialism).

Later, reading Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”, I realized that millions of young people of my generation were disemployed by the minimum wage law, making it almost impossible to find full time employment unless one aligned oneself with a large corporation. Youth was also impoverished by the entire maze of restrictions on the individual put in under the Roosevelt Raw Deal, like involuntary social security depredations on ones paycheck. In other words, I came to see that what ruined the lives of my generation, and those in front of us and behind us, was Keynesianism and collectivist government.. At that time I was not aware that minimum wage laws not only discriminated against the young, but also disproportionally against Black youths. Department of Labor statistics from the time of the first minimum wage law, and later increases, bear this out, for each time it was raised, the Black teenage unemployment rate soared much more than the White teenage unemployment rate. The minimum wage is a weapon against Blacks, youths, and other minority youths like Latinos and Asians. It is a weapon of the racists.

Krugman also claims that Ron Paul’s Austrian School supporters would never listen to Krugman’s theories anyway, but I began studying economics by reading Heilbroner and Thurow’s “The Economic Problem”, which is a famous Keynesian textbook. It’s because we know Keynesian theory and have seen it fail, and thought out its authoritarian implications, that we can so readily see the validity of Austrian Economics.

But let’s look at Krugman’s specific claims about Ron Paul defrauding investors a la Bernie Madoff. He claims Paul has made the same claims since 1981. True, but Paul  has explained many times that Austrian Economics, while it can explain what will happen, cannot predict when it will happen. Personally, I think Paul overestimated the extent of inflation that would occur by now, but not by much. When we saw Reagan deficit-spending like a drunken sailor, we figured massive inflation was just around the corner, but it took decades more to really show up, so that a pound of apples went from 29 cents to $2-3. And that was because under Reagan, the Federal Reserve was not so insane as to drive interest rates to near-zero as they have now done. It seems (and seemed) that people will use fiat currency willingly as long as interest rates are about 2-3% above inflation. Pay people 5-6% on savings, and have an inflation rate of 2-3%, and things will go along like that for years, but triple and more than triple the cost of food, gasoline, rents, by printing massive amounts of paper currency while suppressing free market interest rates, and you’ll have massive inflation in food, rents, medical costs, and chaos.

Krugman and Obama can put out their obviously bogus CPI figures, which exclude rent, and their blind followers will believe that inflation is 2%, but the rest of the middle class and working class knows that they have sustained a massive decrease in their wealth and the purchasing power of their labor during the Bush-Obama Keynesian years, and no propaganda from a well-paid professor in Bob Dylan’s “old folk’s home at the college” is going to convince those young poor whites and potheads that they’re all well-healed cranky crotchety old crackers, when they can’t get a minimum wage job unless they work for the major brain-deadening corporations. Krugman’s image-making propaganda is lying again here: Doctor Paul’s supporters were predominantly young, as can be verified by watching the videos of his 2008 and 2012 public campaign events.

So let’s finally look at the factual distortions and lies that Krugman puts forth. He claims that Ron Paul has been saying the same thing since 1981. True, but what if someone has listened to Paul’s advice and bought gold when gold was $254 during that period, or anytime during gold’s long rest between $360-400 during the early 1990’s? He could have sold that gold  later for $1923, over a 700% increase, while he would have been earning Krugman’s 1-3% in the bank during those days, and now would be earning less than 1% if he had stayed invested in fiat currency dollars. How long would it take you to make 800% at the rate of 1-2% bank interest? Krugman was so wrong, and Ron Paul so right on this issue, that Krugman’s attack smells of hysteria. Anyone looking at the financial history of the last 30 years can see that. In fact, Krugman actually writes, “You can point out that they would have done a much better job at investing if they had listened to the MIT gang.” An incredible statement in the light of recent economic history.

Krugman is a sad example of a high priest of the Keynesian Religion, seeing his stone god destroyed by Greece, China, Puerto Rico, and Detroit, who must lash out at the soothsayers of economic truth when the Keynesian Religion that pays him well is losing credibility. His caustic attacks on a  “old crotchety cranky  white Ron Paul” show that Krugman is losing his mental balance.

It’s obvious that Paul Krugman (German for “tankard man”) is no “Klug Man” (German for “clever man”). When the Keynesian wine goes in, wisdom goes out.

-Paul Grad, Vegan Libertarian

Senator Menendez’s CECIL Act Falls Far Short: A Sop to the Hunters

Senator Robert Menendez’s CECIL Act bill, which would ban the import of many hunting corpses into America, if the victim was listed on the Endangered Species Act of 1973 as being either endangered or threatened, — this Act falls far short of what is necessary to stop these rotten sadistic hunters from terrorizing, torturing, and murdering such noble animals as lions, giraffes, and elephants.

I suspect this Act was crafted by the Democrats to assuage public anger at the Palmer Atrocity, while still permitting the Walter Palmers of America to engage in their perverted, sadistic, immoral, and heinous murders of noble Animals. They and their fellow hunters of the Earth are the lowest Scum of Humanity.

This flawed Bill would still permit the murder of giraffes, rhinos, and Asian elephants, as well as many types of monkeys. Only the Rhodesian White Rhino is listed (North and South varieties), giraffes are not on the list at all, nor are Asian elephants (only African). So this means these verminous Miscreants can keep killing giraffes, rhinos, and Asian elephants, and get away with Murder.

Is Menendez, a U.S. Senator, so stupid that he forgot to include these? I doubt it. It was left as a legal loophole, a disgusting sop to the Hunter-Perverts of America to continue with their villainous murders of defenseless creatures.

Notice that Menendez says the bill is designed to “curb” trophy hunting, not eliminate it. When a Democrat or Republican says they want to “curb” an abuse, it means they want it to continue as long as the perpetrator can find a lawyer clever enough to argue the intentionally placed flaws in the bill. Then, a few years later, they can propose another bill that will “fix the loopholes” they intentionally left in the first bill.

In America, we didn’t “curb” slavery; we abolished it, though the Just Struggle took scores of years and lives. Let’s do the same for hunting.

Animal Defenders need to either tell Menendez and his fellow Democrat sponsors to include the words “and all rhinoceros, giraffes, hippopotamus, primates, and elephants.” Do you think these sharp Dem lawyers are so thick-witted that they just plain forgot to add these animals?

What we really need from a Responsible Legislator in Congress (you sure won’t hear it from Obama’s bully pulpit) is to propose a Bill banning all trophy hunting, and making the hunter liable to prosecution in the US, with a penalty of Life in Prison without Parole. A few convictions for what is not only the sadistic Crime of Animal Torture, but also an Environmental Crime against Humanity and Nature for destroying some of the last few remaining examples of creatures who have been on Earth for millions of years, — such severity in sentencing would soon halt these Murdering Vermin. These comparatively few Miscreants are destroying this legacy of Nature for all the coming generations of Children on the Earth, and for that Crime alone they deserve Capital Punishment, even though, as a Jeffersonian Libertarian, I must oppose it in Principle.

However, the Death Penalty is an appropriate punishment for War Crimes, and what they are doing is comparable to a War Crime.

Let’s make it a Federal Felony to murder any of these animals, anywhere on Earth, with a punishment of Life in the Federal Pen without parole. And then let’s jail any scofflaw Scumbag Hunter who violates that law. Let’s Avenge Cecil by Outlawing Hunting under Animal Cruelty Laws.

-Paul Grad, Vegan Libertarian, Libertarian Party of Oregon Nominee for Governor 2014