A Gentleman’s view.

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile,state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan wasnever afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended upadding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to choose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendancy.

Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET: David Dean Smith’s attorney, Richard E. Zambon of Grand Rapids, tells msnbc.com that he plans on “exploring all options” in defending Smith, saying specifically that “I am concerned about his mental health.”

Zambon said he hadn’t yet seen all of the police and medical records in the case and couldn’t talk about specifics, but he said the law under which Smith was charged is a “relatively new statute with not many cases having interpreted” it, meaning few court precedents have been established.

Original post: A Michigan man has been charged with felony sex offenses after he told police he was HIV-positive and had set out to intentionally infect as many people as he could, police said. Health officials have issued an alert warning that “possibly hundreds of people have been exposed to HIV.”

The man, identified as David Dean Smith, 51, of Comstock Park, north of Grand Rapids, was arraigned Wednesday on a second count of “AIDS-sexual penetration with an uninformed partner” after police said they had identified a second possible victim.

Smith was initially charged with one count after he went to Grand Rapids police last week and said he had intentionally had unprotected sex with as many people as he could over the last three years, according to police.

According to documents on file with Grand Rapids 61st District Court, Smith claimed to have had sex with “thousands” of partners, intending to kill them by infecting them with HIV. Some of those people are from outside the Grand Rapids area, including people Smith met over the Internet, he told police, according to documents.

Smith faces separate preliminary hearings on the two charges on Jan. 4 and Jan. 9. He remains in the Kent County Jail in lieu of $100,000 bond. Smith’s attorney did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

The Kent County Health Department issued an alert Tuesday warning that “hundreds of people may have been exposed to HIV,” urging potential victims to come forward and encouraging everyone who may have concerns to be tested for HIV.

Vitals: AIDS discovery could put virus on the run, bioethicist says

One of the two possible victims police say they have found so far said in an interview with NBC station WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids that she was diagnosed with HIV in October 2008.

The woman, whom authorities and NBC News are not identifying, said she knew immediately that it was Smith — whom she said she met through an ad on the Yahoo! Personals website — who had infected her. She called him “a predator” and “a sociopath.”

The woman said Smith sent her a text message letting her know that he was going to surrender to police. The message read: “Turning myself into the law, my life is over. Take care. Always love you.”

“It’s something he should have done years ago,” she said. “He shouldn’t get a pat on the head for what he did.”

Smith said at his arraignment Wednesday that he has been undergoing counseling. Court documents show that Smith was admitted to Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services recently because he was “suicidal” and had tried to kill himself at least once.

The records say the hospital determined that Smith is “sexually aroused by causing pain to females.”

A Facebook page with Smith’s name, address and pictures says he graduated from Harry Hill High School in Lansing in 1978 and studied at the University of Phoenix, a for-profit online institution. It shows that he has worked in telecommunications for several companies.

Posts to the account stopped on Nov. 30. Before then, the account owner posted some messages that could possibly be interpreted as alluding to his situation.

“Someone special to me asked me a question about scandulous people, this was my thought,” he wrote on Nov. 5. “Let me know what ya think. When you are young you believe people will love you like you want and keep an eye out for those scandulous people…as you get older you realize most everyone is scandulous so you dont trust anyone but keep an eye out for the special ones that truley care.”

A day earlier, this message appeared:

“I pray for blessings to all I know, for forgiveness for my shortcommings to them and that they may no peace. And last, that I love them all as much as I can.”

Vitals: Double whammy of setbacks cripple war on AIDS

The woman who spoke to WOOD said she had no doubt that there are many other victims. She said Smith told her that he had had sex with as many as 3,000 people, including men as well as women.

“He hits drifters,” she said in the interview. “He hits people who are young. He hits young women, and from what I understand, he hits men, too. Those are his targets.”

Dani Carlson and Leon Hendrix of NBC station WOOD of Grand Rapids, Mich., contributed to this report.

Justin “Filthy Liberal Scum” Rosario

Meritorious Achievement In The Crazy

Selection: Herman Cain
Runner-Up: Rick Perry

How crazy was the GOP primary field this year? Thank you for asking. Any award for crazy begins as Michele Bachmann’s to lose. She’s earned that right. Yet, she doesn’t even make my top two this year despite getting so worked up about gay people that an eight year-old had to set her straight. If you are getting publicly owned by eight year-olds, maybe being Leader of the Free World isn’t your thing. So, yes, Bachmann is all-time crazy, but this wasn’t her year. Herman Cain wins this one in a walk.

Herman Cain arrived on the scene out of nowhere sporting a great moustache, terrific hats, aterrifying smile, and a promise to join our individual slices into a delicious American pie. Unless you were Muslim, in which case he had his eye on you. What he didn’t have was the qualifications to be President, but why you want to get all elitist about everything, bro? In Cain’s definitive debate moment, he announced that “America has got to learn to take a joke,” and then proceeded to become that joke. In his short, spectacular rise and fall, we learned that every kiss began with Cain, and ended with multiple sexual harassment accusations. We watched him get agonizingly lost ciphering out what we were doing in Libya. Finally, we were witness to the most unintentionally weird campaign commercial ever. All the while, Cain promoted his 9-9-9 economic plan by endlessly repeating it like the Subway $5 dollar foot-long song, despite the bipartisan consensus it was awful for the economy. To watch Mitt Romney looking at Herman Cain during the debates, was to gaze upon the face of a man who had been given a great gift and knew it. In the end, Cain left in a blaze of crazy, blasting I Am Americaone final time and quoting the Pokemon song. Not gonna lie. I wept like John Boehner listening to Adele.

Rick Perry was a strong runner-up here. In retrospect, we should have anticipated Perry might be crazy. There were incredibly obvious clues. The watershed moment for Perry, of course, was being unable to count to three in public, something people seem to want in their leader and kindergarten-aged children. In the end, Perry was more sad than crazy, but there weretantalizing glimpses of insanity we will always treasure. Out of ideas, he was reduced to asking for votes because he was in your same church, a strategy that earned him most disliked YouTube video of the year.
Best Election Gaffe

Selection: Mitt Romney
Runner-Up: Tim Pawlenty

If you could take the essence of what is objectionable about you as a candidate, distill it into three words, and give it to your opponent in an anvil locket to tie around your neck, would you do it? Mitt Romney did! In August, the the Occupy movement was about to go nationwide, highlighting the struggles of the 99%. In the media, income inequality was finally making its way into the public consciousness. People were beginning to notice the pace of recovery from the recession was not equal: corporate profits were on the rise but personal income was not. This is precisely the issue President Obama and the Democrats wanted to run on in 2012, one which resonates deeply based on traditional party alignments. At exactly this moment, the normally unflappable Mitt Romney made an unforced error by defining himself exactly as his opponents wanted with these three words: “Corporations are people.” Democrats were raising millions to put these words in his mouth, and in an instant Romney inserted them himself. This was a tactical gaffe, not just a humorous one. The Obama 2012 campaign will be all about defining the opponent, and the likely nominee Romney did it for them in his own sure to be repeated words. Add to that, his own pictures and Obama 2012 has a head start on defining Romney as it wants voters to see him.

Tim Pawlenty earns runner-up here for an embarrassing case of premature ejectulation. He asked out the voters, got them all super-horny with racy campaign porn, then backed down
and dropped out.

Most Outrageous Fib Issued By A Politician

Selection: Newt Gingrich
Runner-Up: Jon Kyl

Newt Gingrich has a secret. It is the Master Lie which unlocks the doors to the foul and musty Chamber of Lies that is his campaign. The secret is: He isn’t really all that interested in being President! If he wins, he won’t mind. He will be insufferable, of course. I could never be certain he wouldn’t leave us for a younger democracy like Canada. Mainly, though, he just wants to shovel enough fuel in the fame-status-money engine to power a first-class ride for the rest of his life trip with Callista.

How did it come to this? At first, I thought I had fallen asleep in a Hot Tub Time Machine set for the 90’s. Billy Crystal was announced as Oscars host. Madonna was named to perform at Super Bowl halftime. And, Newt Gingrich was leading the GOP. If Newt Gingrich is the answer, the only valid question has to be “What was worse about the late 90’s than Creed’s ‘Higher?’” It couldn’t be real. But, it was, and this time around Newt’s lies were brand new and even bolder than before. For starters, everyone in a position to know laughed out loud at the idea Newt was a “historian” for Freddie Mac, instead of what he actually was: a greedy mindless Roomba, sucking up every possible dollar on the table and bumping around to look for more. He did the same with ethanol clients, health care clients, and … everyone. Think I’m being partisan? I am, but when it comes to Newt’s worthiness in the fib category, I would here like to quote conservative columnist Timothy Carney: ” When Newt Gingrich says he never lobbied, he’s not telling the truth.”

Once you understand the Gingrich Master Lie, everything else makes sense: campaign staff resignations, yelling at reporters during debate, unwillingness to attack opponents. Newt doesn’t care. He’s just banking fame.

I’ll leave the final word on Gingrich to the late Christopher Hitchens, who said:

“He has a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull in his office. He has a Tyrannosaurus Rex skull in his skull”

Jon Kyl takes runner-up here in a glorious burst of utter disregard for the consequences of his behavior worthy of the honey badger for his “not intended to be a factual statement” statement. Like the crazy, nastyass honey badger, Jon Kyl just don’t care about the truth.

Outstanding Achievement In Corruption-Based Chutzpah

Selection: William Boyland, Jr.
Runner-Up: Rod Blagojevich

This is the sleeper award category of the year. I wasn’t very familiar with the William Boyland, Jr. story, but it’s now my favorite. You really need to take a few minutes and just let the facts of this case soak in to appreciate how perfectly “corruption-based chutzpah” encapsulates what Broyland did. Consider his case in a nutshell:
On November 10, Boyland was acquitted of federal charges involving $175,000 in bribes.
On December 1, Boyland was arrested and later indicted on charges of soliciting $250,000 in bribes from undercover FBI agents to pay for his earlier trial. The feds say they have Boyland on tape soliciting bribes from undercover FBI agents pretending to be businessmen.

Those are balls large enough to inseminate the planet. Those are balls big enough to create a worldwide teabag eclipse. Those are big ‘uns.

Rod Blagojevich is runner-up here, but it’s a distant second, more of a lifetime achievement award for finally being parachuted into prison.

Best Scandal — Sex and Generalized Carnality

Selection: Anthony Weiner
Runner-Up: Chris Lee

“I have the weirdest boner,” Donald Glover famously said on Community, but with all due respect that distinction goes to Anthony Weiner for 2012. You know the story. You don’t need to be told what happened. There aren’t any more Anthony Weiner jokes to make. They are all used up like our oil and ozone. I’m not going to throw one last dong joke on the faintly flickering fire of this scandal. His last name is Weiner. You get it. Still, he clearly wins. So, out of respect to you, I will classy up this selection with a few haikus directly from me to Anthony Weiner, and that will be that. Dear Anthony:

Life gives us lessons
“When online, keep your pants on”
Is one to follow

Everyone loves sex
You just got too weird with it
Also, stop lying

People you yell at
Will show no mercy to you
Come junk-tweeting time

Instead of Twitter
Surf to Talking Points Memo
Again, pants on please

Do not tweet your junk
Just make lame jokes and whatnot
Like @pourmecoffee

I prefer to think of the runner-up selection of Chris Lee not as an insult, but a compliment for staying buff in middle-age and getting the hell out of the public eye immediately when the scandal broke. Well done, my shirtless friend.

Best Scandal — Local Venue

Selection: Jack & Leslie Johnson
Runner-Up: Chris Myers

When I read about Jack and Leslie Johnson for the first time, I couldn’t help but think of Henry Hill’s last day as a wise guy in Goodfellas. Things got weird. When the FBI came to execute a search warrant at the Prince George’s County executive’s home, Jack Johnson was on the phone telling his wife to flush the $100,000 check down the toilet, and hide the money in her bra. “I have it in my bra,” she told him in perhaps the least sexy example of phone sex in recent memory. They found $79,600 “in unspecified bills” in her unmentionables. The FBI got all of this on tape (“Yes, flush that.”), which made for some difficult ‘splaining to do for both him andher.

There were a lot of excellent local candidate scandals, but when you’ve got cash, checks, bra, and toilets — all on tape, well that’s the stuff.

Chris Myers gets runner-up here for his Rentboy.com scandal. He resigned, saying it was “time to pass the baton, and allow others to take the reins,” which sounds to me like even more sexytime, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Best Scandal — General Interest

Selection: Jon Corzine
Runner-Up: Anthony Weiner

This was the toughest pick. It was difficult not to go with Anthony Weiner. But, ironically, Weiner’s scandal involved a dong but was not nearly as seminal as Corzine’s. Despite my partisan leanings, Corzine’s re-enactment of the failings that led to the 2008 financial crisis best represents what ails us. Here is a man supposedly fighting “income inequality and Wall Street pay” caught exemplifying it. Corzine ran MF Global into the ground, and lost 1.2 billion in customer funds. He was the kind of Democrat who was supposed to bring balance to Wall Street, not leave it in darkness.

Corzine pretended to be the financial industry’s designated driver, but was all the while throwing back shots and getting blackout drunk on debt. MF Global’s leverage was 40 to 1, “remarkably 2008-ish” as Joe Nocera of the times put it. To make matters worse, Corzine’s behavior allows conservative publications like Commentary to publish articles like, “Corzine: Poster Chilld For Liberal Hypocrisy.”

After the crash of 2008, instead of leading the charge to make meaningful changes in outrageous Wall Street practices, he led the charge right back to it, dragging the reputation of the Democratic party along with him.

Corzine is the winner because he embodies both the problem, and the difficulty in finding a solution. He paid lip service to reforming the excesses of power while enjoying and extending it for himself. It’s worth railing against these people even — maybe even especially — when they are of your own party, particularly when the issue is finally framed for serious action.

Runner-Up: Point of Personal Privilege

I am going OFF THE GRID for the runner-up to the last category, and choosing ANYONE WHO TOOK DONALD TRUMP SERIOUSLY. This was truly one of the low points of our shared media and political year. Donald Trump is a buffoonish clown who was shown the utmost respect by a parade of media and political leaders in a deeply shameful display of unseriousness.

@pourmecoffee

Race

“A Special Issue on Racial Terrorism” analyzes the Los Angeles riots of 1992: “Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. … What if the checks had never arrived? No doubt the blacks would have fully privatized the welfare state through continued looting. But they were paid off and the violence subsided.”

The November 1990 issue of the Political Report had kind words for David Duke.

This December 1990 newsletter describes Martin Luther King Jr. as “a world-class adulterer” who “seduced underage girls and boys” and “replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration.”

A February 1991 newsletter attacks “The X-Rated Martin Luther King.”

An October 1990 edition of the Political Report ridicules black activists, led by Al Sharpton, for demonstrating at the Statue of Liberty in favor of renaming New York City after Martin Luther King. The newsletter suggests that  “Welfaria,”  “Zooville,” “Rapetown,” “Dirtburg,”and “Lazyopolis ” would be better alternatives—and says,  “Next time, hold that demonstration at a food stamp bureau or a crack house.”

A May 1990 issue of the Ron Paul Political Report cites Jared Taylor, who six months later would go onto found the eugenicist and white supremacist periodical American Renaissance. 

The January 1993 issue of the Survival Report worries about America’s “disappearing white majority.”

The July 1992 Ron Paul Political Report declares, “Jury verdicts, basketball games, and even music are enough to set off black rage, it seems,” and defends David Duke. The author of the newsletter—presumably Paul—writes, “My youngest son is starting his fourth year in medical school. He tells me there would be no way to persuade his fellow students of the case for economic liberty.”

A March 1993 Survival Report describes Bill Clinton’s supposedly “illegitimate children, black and white: ‘woods colts’ in backwoods slang.”

Gays

The December 1989 Ron Paul Political Report contains entries on a “new form of racial terrorism,” cites former Congressman Bill Dannemeyer’s claim that “the average homosexual has 1,000 or more partners in a lifetime,” and quotes Lew Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in the third person.

In January 1990, the Ron Paul Political Report cites “a well-known libertarian editor” who “told me: ‘The ACT-UP slogan on stickers plastered all over Manhattan is ‘Silence=Death.’ But shouldn’t it be Sodomy = Death’?”

The September 1994 issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report states that “those who don’t commit sodomy, who don’t get blood a transfusion, and who don’t swap needles, are virtually assured of not getting AIDS unless they are deliberately infected by a malicious gay.”

The June 1990 issue of the Political Report says: “I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.”

A January 1994 edition of the Survival Report states that “gays in San Francisco do not obey the dictates of good sense,” adding: “[T]hese men don’t really see a reason to live past their fifties. They are not married, they have no children, and their lives are centered on new sexual partners.” Also, “they enjoy the attention and pity that comes with being sick.”

Survivalism and Militias

The January 1995 issue of the Survival Report—released just three months before the Oklahoma City bombing—cites an anti-government militia’s advice to other militias, including, “Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

The October 1992 issue of the Political Report paraphrases an “ex-cop” who offers this strategy for protecting against “urban youth”: “If you have to use a gun on a youth, you should leave the scene immediately, disposing of the wiped off gun as soon as possible. Such a gun cannot, of course, be registered to you, but one bought privately (through the classifieds, for example).”

Conspiracies

This 1978 newsletter says the Trilateral Commission is “no longer known only by those who are knowledgeable about international conspiracies, but is routinely mentioned in the daily news.”

Middle East

A 1989 newsletter compares Salman Rushdie to Ernst Zundel, a Canadian Holocaust-denier.

Anti-Government Paranoia/Conspiracy Theories/Survivalism

A fundraising letter from Paul’s 1984 Senate campaign in which Paul complains about the “minions of Kissinger and Rockefeller” and “the big New York banks, and their pals in Texas” who “want me silenced.”

The January 1988 Ron Paul Political Report approvingly cites Dr. William C. Douglass, who “believes that AIDS is a deliberately engineered hybrid” developed at a World Health Organization experiment conducted at Ft. Detrick. Douglass has long been a fringe medical guru, and today claims that “smoking can help you live longer!!!”

The November 1989 Ron Paul Political Report reports on the Bohemian Grove and Ronald Reagan’s “old Trilateralist agenda item of four-year terms for Congressmen.”

This 1993 Ron Paul Strategy Guide entitled, “How to Protect Yourself from Urban Violence,” is a special supplement to the Ron Paul Survival Report.

In the April 1993 Ron Paul Survival Report, the author—writing in the first person—states, “Whether [the 1993 World Trade Center bombing] was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little.” The newsletters also warns readers to “do your very best to keep your family away from inner cities. If you can’t, have a haven remote from the metropolitan areas.”

The May 1995 issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report warns of “The Trilateralist Alan Greenspan” and its author writes, “Now that my five children are grown and educated, I’ve listened to the many supporters who’ve urged me to return to office. I can now give up my medical practice, and dedicate every fiber of my being to saving our country.” The newsletter also contains an advertisement for the Ron Paul congressional exploratory committee.

The September 1995 issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report asks about “Black Helicopters?”

The June 1996 issue of the Ron Paul Survival Report refers to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms officers as “Jackbooted Thugs.”

Jews

The November 1992 Ron Paul Survival Report defends chess champion and Holocaust-denier Bobby Fischer, saying that “the brilliant Fischer, who has all the makings of an American hero, is very politically incorrect on Jewish questions, for which he will never be forgiven, even though he is a Jew. Thus we are not supposed to herald him as the world’s greatest chess player.”

Pat Buchanan

In January 1992, Paul writes about his consideration of a presidential bid which he dashed after Pat Buchanan expressed his intention to run. Paul wrote of “the essential compatibility between [Buchanan’s] ideas and mine” and “agreed to serve as the chairman of his economic advisory committee.”

A 1992 issue of the Rothbard-Rockwell-Report tells of Paul’s decision to defer to Pat Buchanan in the 1992 Republican presidential primary.

Newsletter Authorship

The masthead of March 1987 Ron Paul Investment Letter lists “the Hon. Ron Paul” as “Editor and Publisher” and “Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.” as one of several contributing editors.

An undated personal solicitation letter—signed by Paul—asking the recipient to subscribe to his newsletter in anticipation of (presumably) the 1988 Libertarian Party Presidential nominating convention.

The April 1988 Ron Paul Investment Letter lists Paul as Editor.

The May 1988 Ron Paul Investment Letter lists Lew Rockwell as Editor. It also advertises books by the far-right conspiracy theorist Gary Allen, who was a contributing editor to the Ron Paul Investment Letter.