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Dec. 3, 2024 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
27:36
Hey DOGE! End The NED!

In a recent American Conservative article. Kelley Vlahos makes a very strong case for putting the National Endowment for Democracy on the DOGE chopping block. The quasi non-government organization (generously funded by the US government) is the Deep State's "regime change" machine. It harms, not helps, the US reputation overseas. Also today...100 percent tariffs on BRICS countries?

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National Endowment for Democracy 00:14:03
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Daniel McAdams, our co-host.
Daniel, good to see you this morning.
Good morning, Dr. Paul.
How are you this morning?
Doing well, doing well.
We still have a couple little things that we want to clean up.
I know the election has occurred, and people are changing their tune, and the TV stations are realigning themselves.
Some of the real lefty stations want to be friends with Trump now.
I don't know how well that's going to work.
I mean, why would you want to now be friends with Hitler?
That's what they called them the whole time.
Exactly.
So, anyway, the problems there are a big government.
They've been along, they've been around even before this election, this past election, has been around for a long time.
It's the nature of mankind.
But there's been better periods of times in history that we should concentrate on and get hints on what happened.
You know, maybe in ancient times, maybe the Greeks and the Russians knew something about it.
But I think our founders knew something about it.
But right now, I think it's a mixed bag.
It's on the wane.
There's in public, especially, you know, with this current administration that's leaving, it's a real mess and it's really negative.
But I'm not that negative because I think it's an awakening too, and they are just beginning to get their voice.
So that's what's going on, the rear arrangement.
Who's going to control the DOJ and who's going to get most of the information out?
Right now, there's a tremendous contest of getting information out.
But anyway, we want to talk a little bit about an article that we found fascinating, and that has to do with some, we want to pass on some modest advice.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Most advice to the Department of Government Efficiency.
You know, they've sort of invited me to say a word or two.
Absolutely.
We now, you and I have talked about it.
We think it would be a real achievement.
We've been working on this for a few years, haven't we?
We didn't achieve it back in the 80s.
We didn't get rid of anything, but we called attention to it.
So here it is dealing with the National Endowment for Democracy.
And our suggestion is very simple.
Get rid of it.
We don't need it.
And, you know, I've been quoted as saying, but these are radical quotes.
I can't imagine them putting out on public, getting rid of the CIA and the FBI.
I mean, that's radical stuff.
But more people are starting to think that way.
So I think that this is going to be very important.
And we're just suggesting to the Department of Government Efficiency, just get rid of it.
This is one thing.
And I think we read a few people whose opinion who's worked on this said, you know, there's a couple benefits from American people.
Sometimes if you take some programs, somebody has to be on the receiving end and really hurt.
In this case, their argument was nobody gets hurt and we get helped.
But there's a lot of that stuff going on in our foreign policy that I could argue the same case.
But anyway, we'll send this along, and I hope they take it seriously.
And actually, we can't get frustrated.
They're not even in office yet.
So we'll just keep encouraging them to look.
But there's going to be a lot of things looking.
But I think the real concerns are the people who think, how am I going to protect what I have?
Are they going to eliminate me?
But we'll participate in the best way we can.
Yeah, go ahead and put up that first clip because this is an article written by our good friend Kelly Vlajos.
We've known her for a long time.
And it's in the American Conservative magazine.
It's been out for a couple days, and it's a very, very, very good article, as are all her articles.
Doge's best first target, the National Endowment for Democracy.
She makes a great case, which we'll go into.
But you're right, Dr. Paul.
This is really low-hanging fruit.
Now, the history of the National Endowment for Democracy is kind of a sad one in a way, because these are the, remember when the left all migrated to Reagan in the 80s, you know, they became the neocons who pushed Reagan to be more aggressive.
They were the ones who were furious when Reagan went to Reykjavik.
They didn't want him talking to Gorbachev.
They didn't want any kind of a deal to end the Cold War or to tone down the nuclear weapons against each other.
They were furious.
And so, this is the one thing that they demanded: set up a National Endowment for Democracy and we can spread democracy through the world.
And of course, in the context of the Cold War, it sounded good.
We will get rid of those godless communists by democratizing everything.
Well, in practice, as with everything the neocons get their hands on, it turned to dirt, or something worse than dirt.
I won't even say the word.
So, anyway, it spends a ton of money.
We're going to clip a ton of money each year.
Now, it's not DOD-level money, but what they do with that money is so harmful, it may even be worse.
Now, this is what Kelly writes: the new Department of Government Efficiency should seriously consider the National Endowment Democracy for its high-priority list of federal cost-cutting measures in 2025.
It's not only a sinkhole of American taxpayer dollars, over a billion in appropriations, but its mission to promote freedom over the world has decades for decades translated into countless cases of counterproductive meddling that puts truly organic movements at risk and it foments regime change.
So, that's actually the interesting part of the National Endowment for Democracy.
Not only does it not help American interests, it actually hurts American interest overseas.
We spend so much money to actually hurt American interest overseas.
You know, and this to me they can't show any places where they have been successful.
Yeah, you know, they claim that at times, and their goals are wonderful, wonderful.
We're going to do this, but we can't even sit here and list all the failures they've had.
Yeah, and well, they would probably consider them successes because the more they mess up, the better they think they've done.
But so, here's what Kelly writes: as well: if Elon and Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, if you want to put it the next one up, are really serious about this.
Now, this is a quote that she makes from Braco Merkitich from Jakob Jakamin.
If Musk and Ramaswamy are really serious about the idea of taking a hatchet to government spending, they should do so by starting with the programs that are most detrimental, as I just said.
And so, what is the origin of NED?
The National Endowment for Democracy?
Let's look at the next one.
Now, this is Alan Weinstein.
He's a former president of NED.
This was the whole point.
This is what the neocons wanted.
Alan Weinstein, former president of NED, told the Washington Post columnist Dave Ignatius in 1991: A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.
The biggest difference is that when such actions are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero.
Openness is its own protection.
It's other words to say hiding in plain sight.
Just do it out in the open, and then you won't have, you know, remember like what happened with Radio Free Europe when it was exposed as a CIA front, it exploded.
It was a huge scandal.
You can take that down now, a huge scandal.
So, just do it in the open.
That's the argument.
It's a form of conditioning.
In the past, if it's secret and then they open up and let the people know about it, they're conditioned to say, oh, that's okay then, you know.
And that's a wise statement to point that out.
And that's how so much, I think, happens.
You know, there was a time in this country where we wanted to develop the welfare warfare state.
And oh my goodness, we can't do that.
We're against all that.
But all of a sudden, it's acceptable.
And in spite of the sincere efforts going on right now for cutting back with the new committee, it's ingrained.
So much of that spending is ingrained.
So we'll wait and see because we wish them well.
But I still think, you know, that military-industrial complex is big.
Tough.
And they can't control everything.
Yes, yes, we can threaten and do this and react, but it's going to be really tough to do the cutting and blasting of the enemies without something breaking out.
Of course, we've been worrying about Ukraine.
It's just chronic.
It's bad.
I mean, when you start looking at the record and all the statistics, it's horrible.
Because I even sort of knock off the sleep a little bit.
How many people are dying over there?
I mean, it's qualifying for one of those worst world wars at the rate they're going.
Yeah.
And you can bet that they're working in Georgia right now where they're trying to do a color revolution, a regime change.
They did it in 02 or 03 in Georgia with the Rose Revolution.
So that's what they do.
The other thing that's really terrible about the National Endowment for Democracy is they corrupt the local economy.
So they come in with big American dollars and they hire off a lot of the talented people.
They want to go to work for these fancy NGOs.
They get a higher salary.
They get the prestige of working for Western NGOs because that's what NED does.
It takes money and it gives it to NGOs that favor U.S. policy or neocon policy overseas.
So you bring in the best and brightest to do the U.S. bidding, or the bidding of the neocons, I should say, overseas, and you lose newspapers, you lose media, you lose all sorts of things that would be better used in the economy.
But to Kelly's credit, she dug up a great old quote, if we can put up the next clip.
And I'm really glad she found this because in these days of, oh my gosh, the Russians are meddling in our elections, the Chinese are meddling in our elections, this is what Ron Paul said in 2003.
I think it was in a statement in the congressional record.
The NED injects soft money into the domestic elections of foreign countries in favor of one party or the other.
Imagine what a couple of hundred thousand dollars would do to assist a politician or political party in a relatively poor country abroad.
And you said, you continue, it is particularly Orwellian to call U.S. manipulation of foreign elections promoting democracy.
How would Americans feel that the Chinese arrive with millions of dollars to support certain candidates deemed friendly to China?
Would this be viewed as a democratic Democratic development.
I endorse this message.
Yeah, exactly.
It's okay when we do it.
Right.
What we're talking here and talking about, and you've described it, it's really the process of managing an empire in modern days.
You know, we have the empire, but I bet you couldn't get 10% of the people in this country who say, that's the real problem.
We think we can run the world.
And a lot of people would say, yes, but that is good, because we're for democracy and we're for helping people and we're for peace and that's why we have a strong military and on and on.
So they rationalize it, but it's really a modern-day, sophisticated empire that they're managing and anything that breathes or lends itself to empire.
To me that means at whose expense it's like?
At the expense of the liberty of the people who have to pay, and usually there's a lot of people on both sides who have to pay.
Yeah yeah, exactly.
Well, if you want to talk about how is NED doing things right now that HARM America, put up that bonus clip, if you will.
This is in still in Kelly's article and this is such an important point and it's uh, i'll try to.
I'll try to summarize it but um, so she uses the word effective.
Probably the most effective net actions in recent time were in helping tip the political balance in favor of western Approved governments in Ukraine, and now she has great links.
Because here's the other thing, dr Paul Ned used to list all of their grants so you could track where the money's going.
They stopped doing that.
They don't want you, they have no transparency, but she was able to dig up the grants showing exactly how they affected the Orange Revolution that was in the early 2000s in uh in Ukraine, through the Maiden Revolution and the Post-Russia invasion.
So, um she, you can track all the money.
You can see exactly.
Because this the entire Ukraine from from 2003 until now.
That is an NED operation.
It's brought us to the brink of World War III.
It has not achieved any of its goals.
It's turned Ukraine, as you point out, into a mass graveyard.
That is all the NED is doing.
That's reason enough alone just to say scrap it.
It's not serving our interests.
To me, the amazing thing is our credit and our system and the dollar, you know, tolerates this abuse, but with the other other parts of the world doing so poorly themselves.
You know, we still, with force and intimidation, we maintain this stature, but it is.
It is a.
It is amazing how long this goes on and how much money is spent and how many lives are lost with a foreign policy.
And and yet the people well, the people, I would say you can't say they're sound asleep, a lot of them are hurting and they're starting to complain.
And you, you know, you see, during this holiday season, you see a lot of these ads and it looks like everybody is just thriving, but if you look at some of the numbers, there's a lot of people who aren't shopping yeah, and they have a great deal of trouble.
And I think well, they sure still have a lot of money to go to the football games, but it's conceivably that some of them probably borrowed money to go to watch some of that Entertainment.
Absolutely.
Well, let's hope they take this on board.
Tariffs and Income Tax Concerns 00:09:00
This should be an easy one to cut.
Just cut this out.
So the second one we want to talk a little bit about is a comment that President-elect Trump put up on his Truth Social.
And the BBC now, if you go to the next clip, the BBC gives you a sense of what he's saying.
Trump threatens 100% tariff on BRICS nations if they try to replace the dollar.
What are your thoughts on these 100% tariffs, Dr. Paul?
Well, you could probably guess.
I don't think you love them.
Well, tariffs are taxes, and the victims of a tariff will be the people.
But to me, I start with civil liberties.
If you work hard and you earn money, just theoretically say, well, there's no income tax.
You earn $100 and you put it in your bank and you spend it like you want and it's your money.
Well, what if somebody comes along and they say, well, they spend their money and they spend about 20% of it looking for deals overseas because the product is better than what we make and because the price is better.
And they say, well, you have to be patriotic.
No, no, you have to, in a free society, you have to look after yourself and your family.
And the marketplace is supposed to be the place to do this.
And of course, the founders were very, very emphatic.
And even the economists at that time accepted generally, if goods don't cross borders, it's more likely that troops and war will occur.
But the tariffs are not a benefit.
And yet they can single out, yes, we have to stop these cars from coming in.
They're underselling and we have to protect somebody.
But I remember one time observing, and I'm not a car person, where I was listening to two cars and one was making more noise than the other, and one was the smoothest.
And I said, what's the difference?
They said, that's a foreign car, and this was in maybe the 70s or something.
And there was a crying for tariffs and keep it out.
But that's the incentive.
I mean, you can't say, well, we're not doing well, help us along.
They have to satisfy the customer.
Otherwise, they're not understanding what the market is all about.
So the tariff, the tariff generally, I think, is dangerous, it's bad, it's negative.
But I'll stick to my argument.
It's against civil liberties because it's your money.
And in time of war, if there's a declared war, maybe you can do something like that.
But this is not natural just to try to improve the condition of businesses that want special privileges and protection.
It's called protectionism, too.
That's not a society that would come out of a free system.
And we still have people recognize this because when you compare our freedoms and the history of our country, we're still pretty good shape.
But many of us who are concerned see the direction because especially during these last four years and through the COVID epidemics and the people got upset and they've changed administration.
So we have to see.
But I think it's a serious mistake to badger people because I think if you have competitors, why do you have to badger on punishment?
Why don't you compete with them?
So often I think the demand for tariffs means that for some reason they're not competing as well as they should.
Well, what would you say to people who said, well, before we had the income tax, we paid for our government with tariffs, you know, in the Constitution.
Well, I would still say, what are you spending it on?
We don't need it.
I don't think the founders ever, they didn't give us an income tax.
And they did play around with some tariffs, but not at the scheme of being protective tariffs, protect this industry and not this other interest.
That's a lot of manipulation.
But I guess if there was a 1% tariff and no income tax, somebody might twist my arm and say, that sounds like a loop.
But that's not going to happen.
Across the board, it's not going to happen.
Well, here's what Trump actually said.
And I might read the whole thing, but I'll just give you a flavor of what he said.
If you can put that next one on.
He said, the idea that the BRICS countries are trying to move away from the dollar while we stand by and watch is over.
We require a commitment from these countries that they will neither create a new BRICS currency nor back any other currency to replace the mighty U.S. dollar.
Or they will face 100% tariffs and should expect to say goodbye to selling to the wonderful U.S. economy.
They can go find another sucker.
You know, a couple of things that I had in my mind on the foreign policy perspective is that ironically, it's U.S. foreign policy that's forcing these countries to look for alternative currencies.
It's the overuse of sanctions, saying you can't use the dollar.
And in fact, I think it was Putin who said, I'm not trying to avoid using the dollar.
I want to use the dollar.
You won't let me use the dollar.
And so using these sanctions, forcing countries away from the dollar, forcing them to create sort of new synergies together outside the dollar that we won't let them use.
And then we say, well, why don't you start using the dollar?
Well, you won't let us.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
See, I think the market will take care of this.
If our dollar gets too weak and there needs to be a change, somebody is just going to move in.
In the midst of crisis, that happens, when war divides the country and the nations up, quickly they find something else.
So I don't think you're going to need an organization building an artificial and then somebody threatening you don't do that.
I think that when the market gives up on the dollar, there's going to be another currency that will be used.
Matter of fact, and that's the way it's worked because nobody knows what it's going to be at the moment.
Somebody might say, well, we think crypto is going to do it.
And of course, we want to keep it legal, and maybe it will.
I don't like it when the government wants to control crypto.
And the same way, gold is, see, I think one of the best things that's happened with the gold thing was the re-legalization of gold in the 70s after not being legal since 1933.
And there's other things that could be that.
But it's not going to be a day where the BRICS can come along and say, well, tomorrow, all we're going to use for trade is the ABC company.
See, the pound just faded and became less and less important.
But the pound continued to exist, but it's not a central currency.
It's not a reserve currency.
So I think the markets will make the determination.
I don't think the market's quite ready for this.
But markets can shift because I think people who are concerned are looking at the fundamentals.
And the fundamentals are, and that is why they've come along with this new committee to watch spending.
Because people know now, well, this looks like we might have to do something about it.
You know, the amount of debt is $36 trillion.
And I was astounded at the debt just student loans are.
That is unbelievable.
So I think people are looking at that and say it will not continue to last.
And just think now, you know, we don't have any money.
People are doing poorly in this country.
They could use it.
And we keep sending money at the last minute.
What's Biden doing?
Sending millions of more dollars.
To Ukraine.
To Ukraine.
And people say, you know, something big is coming.
But that doesn't mean, you know, BRICS, I don't worry about it about them because if they're not strong enough, they're not going to do it.
They already once in a while will use oil trade in oil.
Why would we want to think that we should control that?
That's a sign that we think our dollar is getting weak.
Why is the dollar getting weak?
Because we police the world and we run up deficits and that might be the problem, not the fact that these other countries are aggressively coming to get us, you know, and punish us, but up for free trade and sound money.
It seems to me, I'm not an expert, it seems to me if you put 100% tariff on them, they're definitely not going to use the dollar.
They're going to find somewhere else to trade.
So you can shoot yourself in the head.
Encouraging Dollar Usage 00:03:57
They're going to do something.
So we'll see what happens.
But it can be dangerous, you know.
Trump's heart is maybe in the right place.
But the way to encourage people to continue using the dollar is to make it easier to use the dollar.
Get rid of all the sanctions on everyone and let everyone use the dollar.
And then it'll sink or fall on its own mirror.
And see, I like competition.
I've introduced bills for competition in currencies.
That's also the reason that people who like crypto likes what I have been doing to make competition in a currency.
But that doesn't mean that I want the government.
See, I think the government's moved in too much on crypto.
And they want to regulate it.
And, of course, what they do in the Depression, they made gold illegal.
I want freedom to prevail.
And I think the people, even though there's going to be a lot of mistakes, the mistakes are going to be suffered by the people who make the mistakes.
But when you have a Federal Reserve System making mistakes, you create monstrous type of economies that the people finally have to buckle under.
Yeah.
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Over to you, Dr. Paul.
Very good.
You know, we've talked a bit today and other days about the Department of Government Efficiency.
And I'm all in favor of the goal of this department.
But it's going to be a challenge because everybody has an axe to grind and everybody has their hand in it some way or another.
So there's going to be a lot of resistance.
But the effort to do something is growing because people are realizing how dangerous it is to run up these deficits.
And there's room.
I mean, you don't have to close down, say, the whole Department of Defense and get rid of every single thing.
You don't do that.
But even a notion of moving in one direction, you know, is not going to be well received.
So it is a big task.
So the Department of Government Efficiency needs a lot of encouragement.
People have to realize that if the real cuts are made, some people are going to say, why are you cutting this?
And that is why I hesitate to say, this will take about a year and we're going to have it cleaned up.
But I encourage the effort because the effort is sincere and people are recognizing that debt is bad and it's part of the problem is that debt is monetized by the Federal Reserve.
And it brings attention to the real culprit is that if you didn't have a Federal Reserve monetizing debt, we wouldn't be facing this crisis because the government wouldn't have any money.
But this is a gimmick they devised, you know, all the way back many, many decades ago, 1913, and they've been doing it ever since.
The Federal Reserve's Gimmick 00:00:22
But it's running out of steam and they just can't print money forever and never care how much money is being spent.
Because if we want to live in a free country where civil liberties are protected, we have to realize the influence of not only our foreign policy getting overly involved, but also the monetary policy, which is very much involved in everything that we do.
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