Rep. Ron Paul, a leading candidate for president, published a series of monthly newsletters in the 1980s and 1990s, according to a Weekly Standard piece by James Kirchick. He repeats some of information he revealed in a 2008 New Republic piece.
What were the newsletters sent out by Ron Paul?
They went under a variety of names since first published in 1978, two years after Paul was elected to Congress, including "Ron Paul's Freedom Report," "Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report." Most of the newsletters were published by a company Paul founded called "Ron Paul and Associates" in 1985 during a hiatus of his congressional career. According to an article in Reason, a tax document from 1993 indicates that the organization had an income of $940 thousand, mainly from sale of the newsletter.
What was published in the various newsletters?
The newsletters did not have a byline but invoked Paul's name a considerable amount and were written in the first person. The newsletters contained commentary on issues of the day that are presumed to be from Paul's perspective.
Kirchick has found some of the material in the Paul newsletters to have racially charged contents. In a commentary on the 1992 Los Angeles riots, for example, a "Special Issue on Racial Terrorism" claimed that order was only restored when "blacks lined up for their welfare checks." Another issue accused Martin Luther King Jr. of seducing underage boys and girls and of beating up his paramours. Yet another issue recounted a story, not backed up by evidence, that suggested that gangs of teenage black girls were roaming the streets of New York and deliberately injecting white women with HIV infected syringes.
Other issues posited the theory that the Israeli Mossad might have been behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center and that HIV sufferers should be barred from eating in restaurants as AIDS could be transmitted via saliva. Some of the Paul newsletters also praised right-wing militias.
Who wrote the Paul newsletters?
Since there was not a byline, this is something of a mystery. Paul has denied being the author of some of the more off putting articles, according to the Reason article. Reason suggests that the pieces were authored by former Paul associate Llewellyn Rockwell Jr., an accusation he has denied. It seems to have been a part of a strategy to create something called "Paleolibertarianism" to combined free market principles with a decidedly racist ideology more typical of David Duke than Milton Friedman.
What is the bottom line?
Despite the fact that Paul denies being the author of his own newsletters or even having knowledge of some of the more scandalous material published in them, they remain a ticking time bomb in his candidacy.
Texas resident Mark Whittington writes about state issues for the Yahoo! Contributor Network.
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