Not a particularly good speech by Rand Paul at CPAC this year

The speech 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3sSgGU2LSQ&feature=youtu.be

The good bits :- 

We certainly do need to defend the Bill of Rights.
All of these recent measures need to be IMMEDIATELY reversed and the Bill of Rights needs to be restored.
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/obamas-civil-rights-violations.html

He did say we need to get the government out of the way and cut the size of the government and the massive number of pointless regulations that are harming businesses.

The indifferent bits :- 

In order for the economy to ever recover, disposable incomes of ordinary people need to start rising again. Rand's proposal of a 17% flat tax can be dramatically improved upon. Taxes on middle earners and below need to be cut FIRST and then lower taxes on the rich - the VERY rich don't pay much in taxes anyway - they have loopholes.

This is what is required to be done to turn things around.
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/the-government-is-being-incredibly.html

Rand did say it wasn't a Conservative thing to do to bail out the big banks.
But he should of gone further.

We need to start jailing the criminal senior bankers like Dimon and Blankfein - give them 30 years hard jail time each.
Lock up about 30 others too, including Paulson and Geithner.

Keep jailing criminal bankers until they stop committing crimes.

See how quickly that would start cleaning up Wall St.

Impose meaningful penalties on the big banks for their crimes - not a trivial slap wrist fine of 5 weeks of revenues.
Fine the big banks $200bn+ - it's easy to do.

The bad bits :-

Rand didn't mention the massive $1,219bn of military spending in 2012 or the mountains of Pentagon waste. They need to be MASSIVELY cut.

He sucked up to Israel again.

Rand didn't mention the over $1.3tn of annual Corporate Welfare that needs to be stopped.

He didn't say we need to break up the Corporate cartels that now operate in each major industry.
He didn't say we need to reinstate Glass Steagal straight away.

Rand didn't say :-

The erosion of the American economy in 2 words - jobs & wages.
The erosion of the American economy in 4 economic charts.
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/some-charts-on-jobs-and-wages.html

He also didn't say that with current policies government spending will be $6tn a year in 2023, the deficit will be over $3tn a year and the National Debt will be over $40tn or about 250% of GDP.

http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/cbo-projections-of-future-gdp-growth.html

Why didn't Rand use this as a prime example of government waste?
Why is the government continuing to waste $1.45tn on a pile of junk - the F35 plane?
Even John McCain has called it a total waste of taxpayer money.
http://ian56.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/what-hell-is-government-doing-wasting.html

Or the use of mercenaries instead of US troops that is costing over $100bn a year?

He didn't say that Paul Ryan's budget proposals are an absolute joke based on outright lies and would cause economic carnage in the USA if they were ever implemented.
http://ian56.blogspot.com/2013/03/paul-ryan-need-to-be-kicked-out-of-gop.html