Rand Paul, in another OOPS, D'OH! (gotcha, wink ;) moment, on mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia and the coal industry. Watch Paul prove why libertarians are useful corporate tools.
I don’t think anybody's going to be missing a hill or two here and there.
And some people like having the flat land. Some of it apparently has become quite valuable when it's become flattened. And I think they do a good job at reclaiming the land, and you know, adding back in topsoil, bringing in help. So the bottom line is, it's not just me pandering to coal. It's me believing in private property.
CrooksandLiars.com
Bold and italics text added by the diarist
Rand Paul is an intellectual high priced escort for his Big Business donors. He's not JUST pandering for coal. He'll pander for any special interest who wants to get lucky and have one more Senate vote in their pockets.
Video, transcript and more below the fold
If they bought the property, they own the property, they can do with that property, as long as they don't pollute someone else's property. And I don't think they want to. If they dump something in the river that goes to the next property, your local judges here will stop them. But I don't think they're doing that. I think what they're doing is what they can do with property they own, and doesn't appear to me to be something the federal government should be getting involved with.
CrooksandLiars.com
Bold and italics text added by the diarist
"I believe in private property". As in, giving more rights to property than the people (consumers, workers, people who have to live next to a mile wide coal mine) who are affected by another persons property, property like a Big Coal Company, like, say Massey Energy. Property equals money, money equals speech, speech is a right, so property has rights too, and if a Big Business wants something, Rand Paul will help them get it, because he isn't JUST pandering for coal, he panders for LOTS of Special Interests.
The argument that local judges will stop pollution is bullshit too, and Rand knows it. This is the intellectual dishonesty on ful display. On one hand Rand says "people like" flat, destroyed, uninhabitable property with no value after the coal company has sucked the resources out of the ground, on the other hand he says if you harm someone else's property local judges will fix it. Local judges. From coal country. Yeah, like that happens all the time! And if people like exploding mountains, why would they complain to the local judges? No answer.
Corporate personhood gives property the power to extra rights. When once people were considered property to be controlled by other men, now we have the rights of another man's property through Corporate Pesonhood to be more powerful than people who can not afford the amount of free speech that post Citizens United corporations are entitled to. Property can afford more rights than people who are less valuable than the property they are opposed to, and the class with the most property believes in the rights that their property entitles them to, don't they? And what a surprise, Conservatives and Libertarians alike, like Rand Paul, may not claim to be just pandering to Big Business, but they sure as hell are making the Corporations right to property = extra rights for them, and they happen to be best friends, Corporations and Conservatives. Hmmm, very interesting. No wonder Conservatives often equate equality with socialism and welfare.
Of course, 99% of Conservatives are plebians like I am, poor and taken advantage of. For some reason they insist that helping the rich guy means they'll get a trickle down crumb or two any day now, and helping poor people like them means Hitler has returned from the grave.
No wonder Conservatives consistantly argue and vote against their own interests. With snake oil salesmen like Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck and Rand Paul marching the conservative body politic off the cliff of into the arms of jobless bankruptcy, it should be no surprise.
The eternal outrage of the factless mind.
David Neiwert at CrooksandLiars.com, who unearthed this interview from December of last year, points out perfectly how unfettered free market Libertarians are perfect tools for the Corporate Monopolies.
You see, this is how the real world works: wealthy interests manipulate policy at the state and federal level, and likewise manipulate the law and the courts in their favor, all while the interests of ordinary people are bulldozed. And it's all done under the supposed "principles" of libertarianism -- which really are just convenient way for corporate interests to run amok without regard to the consequences for any of their fellow citizens.
One has to suspect that Rand Paul actually is perfectly aware of this -- and just doesn't care. He has his precious "principles" to run on. He calls them "libertarian". We call him a corporate tool.
CrooksandLiars.com
Not just a Corporate tool, Rand Paul will be a certain vote in the pocket for a number of special interests, not to say the least of his anti civil rights views. Rand Paul is a step back towards 1951, not forwards towards 2011.
The stupid has to stop from Rand Paul. He has used all of his FAILS with me, and I don't have enough OOPSES left to waste on this idiot. I hope Kentucky doesn't waste their votes on this idiot, either.
It's not JUST a double facepalm, Rand. You are twice the idiot anyone expected you could be.
We CAN NOT let this loon into the Senate!
If you can, give a bit to Jack Conway, Rand Paul's Democratic Opponent for the Senate. If you love the 14th Amendment and the Constitution the way it is you should fight like hell to elect Jack Conway and keep Rand Paul out of the Senate.
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Crossposted at The Progressive Electorate.com