Another Reason Why Ron Paul Is Not The Answer

The Washington Post has a report that exposes the Ron Paul campaign's questionable financial practices.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) has built a national following largely by preaching an isolationist foreign policy. Stick with your own kind, says the maverick presidential candidate.

And that's more or less what he has been doing over the past few months, putting relatives in a slew of key positions and paying them a total of $169,063, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

Paul's granddaughter Valori Pyeatt helps organize fundraising receptions and has been paid $17,157. Another granddaughter, Laura Paul ($2,724), handles orders for Ron Paul merchandise. Grandson Matthew Pyeatt ($3,251) manages Paul's MySpace profile. Daughter Peggy Paul ($2,224) helps with campaign logistics. The candidate's sons Randall and Robert and his daughter Joy Paul LeBlanc have all been paid for campaign travel and for appearing as surrogates at political events.

Who keeps track of all these finances? Paul's brother and daughter, naturally, who have been paid a combined $62,740 to handle the campaign's accounting.

Campaign aides said they discussed the possibility that involving so many family members could create the impression that nepotism was driving hiring decisions, but ultimately they saw no problem with the practice.

"You always think about those kinds of things," said Jesse Benton, Paul's spokesman and, it just so happens, the fiance of one of the candidate's granddaughters (he has been paid $54,573). "But his family is very important to him. There is something important about having a family element involved in a campaign. Having people around you that you can unconditionally trust."

The practice of Ron Paul being generious to friends and family has precident as pointed out by Doug Mataconis of Below the Beltway.

While the practice itself is perfectly legal, it does raise questions about how much of the campaign is being used to provide jobs for family members and it’s remarkably similar to the way the company that published those controversial newsletters back in the 80’s was run:

Mataconis goes on cite the following from a Reason Magazine article about the racist newsletters:

Besides Ron Paul and Lew Rockwell, the officers of Ron Paul & Associates included Paul’s wife Carol, Paul’s daughter Lori Pyeatt, Paul staffer Penny Langford-Freeman, and longtime campaign manager Mark Elam (who has managed every Paul congressional campaign since 1996 and is currently the Texas coordinator for the presidential run), according to tax records from 1993 and 2001. Langford-Freeman did not respond to interview requests as of press time. Elam, president of M&M Graphics and Advertising, confirmed to reason that his company printed the newsletters, but said that the texts reached him as finished products.

In light of the apparent nepotism of the Ron Paul campaign, the racist newsletters, the isolationist foreign policy, trade protectionism, the conspiracy mongering, tolerance for pork barrel spending, demonization of critics, and the obession with the Federal Reserve; it's clear that Ron Paul will not be the solution to what ails the Republican Party, the conservative movement, or even the country as a whole. In fact you can make the arguement, in light of today's report, that the whole purpose to the Ron Paul campaign was for Paul to use his half-baked ideas get as much of those Federal Reserve Notes he hates so much in his pocket and bank accounts, much like a cult leader.

Now whether or not Ron Paul's followers can be harnessed into a productive force for conservatism remains to be seen.....

Full disclosure: Doug Mataconis and I are co-bloggers at The Liberty Papers, a classical liberal group blog.