A new episode of Five Minutes Five Issues posted on Saturday. You can listen to it, and read a transcript, below. You can also find previous episodes of the show at Stitcher, iTunes, YouTube, and SoundCloud.
Listen to the new episode here:
Read a transcript of the new episode, including links to further information regarding the topics discussed, here:
The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity welcomes you to Five Minutes Five Issues.
Starting in five four three two one.
Hello, I am Adam Dick, a Ron Paul Institute senior fellow.
Let’s start.
Issue one.
As I mentioned in last week’s episode of Five Minutes Five Issues, there has been much exaggeration in media pronouncements of the numbers of mass murders and school shootings in America.
Still, parents and students are concerned about possible dangers at schools, including related to mass murders. However, they do not all want the same actions taken in response to the possible dangers.
Some want armed police or guards on patrol, security cameras all around, and searches of people and their property. Others want to allow, encourage, or require that some school employees are armed. Some want students, especially college students, to be allowed to carry weapons, including guns, to defend themselves and others. Some want schools to adopt policies designed to direct people away from taking violent actions. And others want to terminate security measures they see as already too oppressive, doing away with locked doors, ID checks, school guards and police, and more.
Talking about these different perspectives in an interview last week at KFAR radio in Fairbanks, Alaska, I concluded that they provide more reason why government should be removed from the schooling business.
The approach to security, just like the approach to students’ math or English education, should not be one-size-fits-all. And approaches relying on routinely surveilling and searching students should never be employed by government.
Issue two.
On Friday, United States Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced yet more North Korea sanctions.
The same day, President Donald Trump said the following:
If the sanctions don’t work, we’ll have to go phase two. Phase two may be a very rough thing, maybe very, very unfortunate for the world. But hopefully the sanctions will work.
That sounds like a threat of Korean War II.
Issue three.
Tom Angell wrote Wednesday at Marijuana Moment regarding Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX). Through his chairmanship of the United States House of Representatives Rules Committee that can prevent amendments from being considered on the House floor, Angell views Sessions as largely responsible for the House not having any marijuana amendment floor votes since 2016.
It should also be noted that other House and Senate leaders share responsibility for blocking Congress from ever debating and voting on actual bills that would roll back the war on marijuana.
So what does Sessions say about marijuana? Angell notes that Sessions claimed Tuesday that “marijuana, on average, is 300 times more powerful” than it was when Sessions graduated from high school in 1973. That comment is preposterous. Who back then would have bothered using such weak marijuana?
Issue four.
Answering a question at a joint Friday White House press conference with the Australia prime minister, President Donald Trump said this regarding the US presence in Syria:
We’re there for one reason. We’re there to get ISIS and get rid of ISIS and go home. We’re not there for any other reason. And we’ve largely accomplished our goal.
Maybe Trump should have a talk with his secretary of state who last month declared in a Hoover Institution speech that the US military is in Syria not just to fight ISIS. It is also, he said, in Syria for additional reasons including to fight al-Qaeda, to create conditions that encourage the return of refugees, to reduce Iranian influence in Syria, and to ensure the replacement of the Syria government.
Issue five.
Last week, Ron Paul spoke in Mexico. While there, Paul was given a Liberland passport in “recognition of his lifetime achievements for liberty.” In case you have not heard, Liberland is described on its website as a nation proclaimed in April of 2015 and composed of about seven square kilometers of land between Croatia and Serbia that no nation had claimed. It is no surprise that people behind Liberland would like Paul; the Liberland motto is “to live and let live.”
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That’s a wrap.
Transcripts of Five Minutes Five Issues episodes, including links to related information, are at the Ron Paul Institute blog.
Five four three two one.
