Toxic Breeze

Some progressives had made the mistake of seeing Ron Paul as a breath of fresh air in large part because of his stand on the occupation of Iraq. A look at his record in congress shows that he is anything but a breath of fresh air but a toxic breeze. David Neiwert has Paul's record in congress and Paul may be a different kind of wingnut but he is a dangerous wingnut never the less. Go check out David's post for the details but here is a brief summary of Ron Paul's contributions to policy.

• As pro-life as one can get - he has introduced bills that would prohibit spending tax dollars on not just abortion but birth control as well.
• He would repeal significant portions of antitrust law, including the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and others.
• He would limit or try to repeal various environmental protection laws and regulations, including the Clean Air Act, the Soil and Water Conservation Act, and the use of devices that protect the "bycatch" of sea life.
• He would end U.S. participation in the United Nations. Failing that he would prohibit or severely curtail appropriations for U.S. payments to the U.N. or its affiliated agencies. Please note that isolationism is not the same as anti-imperialism.
• He wants to dramatically reduce the tax obligations of people who make inordinately high incomes and who inherit large fortunes they did not earn. Specifically, this includes attempts to repeal the estate tax, and to apply one tax rate to all income levels.

There is much more - head over to David's post for the entire toxic brew.

Update
Glenn Greenwald takes the Neiwart post to task, unfairly I think. He mentions that tere may be some problems with the flag burning issue which I didn't even cover above and he may be right. But he fails to mention some of the worst of Paul's policy views.

Update II
Atrios has some interesting observations:

I find the Ron Paul candidacy interesting, but that has nothing to do with support. It's interesting because I don't quite understand it. It's interesting because he highlights the unacknowledged-by-the-Villagers fact that anti-war sentiment has long since spread from dirty fucking hippies like me into other parts of the population. It's interesting because despite having significant fundraising and some early poll (New Hampshire) showing, his candidacy is largely ignored by the Village. It's interesting because Ron Paul is crazy but Norman Podhoretz and Rudy Giuliani are very serious (that is, there are certain types of crazy that the Village loves and certain kinds of crazy they marginalize).