Texas Congressman Ron Paul left the House of Representatives at the end of 1984 deeply in debt, owing $765,000 to various creditors, some of whom threatened to take him to court.
His ill-fated and unsuccessful run for the Senate in 1984 didn’t help his precarious financial situation. He needed to make money and make it fast.
So with the help of his former chief of staff, Lew Rockwell, Paul hit upon a quick money-making scheme: A series of racially-provocative newsletters published under his name.
Paul wrote the economic themes of the newsletters, capitalizing on fear of government, hatred of the Internal Revenue Service and investment in commodities. Rockwell wrote the more provocative parts with racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic overtones.
In 10 years, the $100 a year subscription newsletters not only wiped out the Texas doctor’s staggering debts, but left him with a net worth of $3.3 million. That net worth would continue to grow.
How did he do it? By targeting the newsletters to racists, anti-Semitics and others who were willing to pay to read such material. He once bragged to Ed Crane, president of the CATO institute that he sold the most subscriptions by using the mailing list of The Spotlight, a now-defunct white supremacist newspaper that openly advocated racism and claimed the Holocaust never happened.
And while Paul now claims he never saw the racially-charged material, more former insiders from the newsletter publishing company have come forward to say he was closely-involved not only in the decision to go the provocative route but read and personally approved the content.
Ranae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company, and still a supporter, told The Washington Post:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/node/42810
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