Rand Paul's Plan to Capture the Urban Primitive Vote

You have to hand it to Rand Paul, who heads the Al Sharpton wing of the Republican Party, he has one thing figured out. If you are going to go after the Urban Primitive vote, you need to give the impression that you want to stop them from getting thrown in jail.

Rand told Politico that the Republican presidential candidate in 2016 could capture one-third or more of the African-American vote by pushing criminal-justice reform, school choice and economic empowerment.

But, there is simply too muchneed for tinkering by government in Rand's positions, rather than real solutions. He is a beltarian wet dream.

What does Rand mean by criminal-justice reform? According to a Rand Paul press release, along with a bunch of gibberish centering on expungement of youth criminal records, he is calling for (sit down libertarians before you read this)

[Lifting a] ban on SNAP and TANF benefits for low-level drug offenders: The REDEEM Act restores access to benefits for those who have served their time for use, possession, and distribution crimes provided their offense was rationally related to a substance abuse disorder and they have enrolled in a treatment program.

Got that? There is no call for real reform from Rand. There is, for example, no call for ending the criminalization of possession and distribution of ALL drugs. He is tinkering and abusing the term "criminal-justice reform," and at the same time paying off the Urban Primitive crowd with SNAP and TANF money.

It's the same thing with his school choice plan. It's not about returning education to the private sector. He is simply calling for a new structure for government money to be funneled into the education sector. That is, he continues to be supportive of government involvement in education:

 I propose that we allow school charters, school choice, vouchers, competition...My kids went to great public schools. I went to great public schools. The president's kids go to great private schools. There are a lot of choices out there. I want to make it where all American get the option of choosing the best schools for their kids.

Note to Rand: You never end up with competition when government is paying the bill and therefore, by necessity, setting the rules.

As for Rand's economic empowerment zones, it calls for a lot of tax cuts, but who actually needs tax cuts in the zones?  Does he seriously think that Urban Primitives pay taxes?

There is nothing wrong with tax cuts, but when tax cuts are limited to certain geographic areas, they distort the natural flow of urban development. Just who is Rand to say what types of development should occur in an area? Gentrification is taking care of this on its own, without any help from Rand.

There is no need, as Rand proposes, to increase "Section 179 of the tax code [that] allows businesses to deduct 100 percent of the purchase price for qualifying equipment and other goods."

Qualifying equipment? Other goods? This is simply  more opportunities for beltarian technocratic masturbation.

Further, Rand's skeleton plan, if ever put before Congress would have so many attachments and clauses that it would for certain come out of Congress in such a manner that the zones would be more appropriately called Pork Zones.

When it comes to reducing taxes and government regulations, I am all for it. But singling out a zone, with all types of rules surrounding these zones, is signalling that government needs to play a detailed role in economic development, when the real answer should be the shrinking of government across the board, cuts in taxes across the board, and the removal of government regulations across the board.

Bottom line: "Libertarian" Rand Paul is a very useful tool of the establishment because whether it is criminal justice reform,. education or land development, the establishment can count on Rand to talk in libertarian terms, but deliver proposals that always keep the coercive rule of the crony state in charge. And that will always keep the urban primitive sector primitive.

-RW