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Sen. Rand PaulRand PaulSenate rejects ObamaCare repeal, replacement amendment Overnight Healthcare: Senate votes to begin ObamaCare repeal debate | McCain returns to vote | GOP floats scaled-down healthcare bill Overnight Regulation: House votes to repeal forced arbitration rule | Dems look to ban controversial pesticide | House panel wants to hear from tech CEOs on net neutrality MORE (R-Ky.) said early Tuesday that "conservatives are getting squat" from GOP leaders in negotiations to overhaul the nation's healthcare system.

"There's no promise of a clean repeal vote," he said on "Fox & Friends. "If they're not even going to talk with conservatives, if we're going to be excluded from the process, conservatives don't need to participate in this pork fest."

Conservatives are getting squat in this bill. -@RandPaul slams Senate GOP health care bill as a 'pork fest' pic.twitter.com/qyuOkNYCEQ

Paul also said there's "probably nobody in Congress more for repealing and replacing all of ObamaCare" than he is.

Icampaigned on it but what theyre putting forward isnt repeal and it becomes a huge insurance bailout," he said.

.@RandPaul: I want the clean repeal of ObamaCare. Conservatives have offered to negotiate but have gotten zip from leadership. pic.twitter.com/F3n0cUMpjR

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The Senate Republicans' effort to repeal and replace Obamacare faces a key hurdle on Tuesday.

Leadershipplans to try to proceedto the House-passed healthcare bill, paving the way for action in the upper chamber.

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Rand Paul: Conservatives are getting 'squat' from Senate leadership - The Hill

Three years ago when he was starting to run for president, Sen. Rand Paul spoke with then-California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris about his proposals to reduce the rates at which convicted criminals commit new crimes and return to jail. Now that theyre both in the Senate, Paul and Harris are teaming up on another criminal-justice idea they know is popular back home and believe can find bipartisan support: providing aid to people who cant afford bail.

It literally is about do you have cash sitting at home that you can afford to write the check to get out versus you dont, youre barely making ends meet every month, said Harris (D-Calif.).

But bills co-written by Democrats and Republicans barely move past the first round of headlines and news conferences these days even if they are backed by an unlikely pair. Just ask Paul (R-Ky.), who earned attention in 2014 for partnering with Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to try changing the nations sentencing laws and drug-control policies. The combination of a short, mop-topped ophthalmologist from rural Kentucky and the tall, bald former big-city mayor was too good to be ignored. Their plans went nowhere.

And yet, Paul is trying again.

He and Harris argue that the requirement that defendants provide some cash to get bail and earn their release keeps hundreds of thousands of defendants behind bars awaiting trial on minor charges because they cannot afford to get out. They call it one of the most inequitable aspects of the criminal-justice system.

I think theres a majority there might even be 60 votes for some of these things on criminal-justice reform, Paul said in a joint interview with Harris on Tuesday. We have to push forward.

Harris agreed.

A lot of what were talking about is disparities in terms of how Americans are treated in the criminal-justice system because of their wealth or not, she said. Poor people, working people are treated differently, particularly on this issue of bail.

Paul and Harriss Pretrial Integrity and Safety Act is a modest proposal that would set aside $10million in federal grant money to begin encouraging more states to drop or curtail cash bail systems and consider other factors when sorting out whether a defendant should be kept behind bars before trial.

Nationwide, roughly 47percent offelony defendants with bonds remain jailed before their cases are heard, because they cannot make bail. Harriss office said the problem affects more than 450,000 people nationwide.

But a growing number of large jurisdictions are changing their policies to ease prison populations and to account for a defendants financial situation.For years, Washington, D.C., has released suspects awaiting trialwithout requiring them to leave behind any money, on a promise that they will return to court and meet conditions such as checking in with a pretrial officer or submit to drug tests.

And last week, Chicago became the largest city in the nation to allow judges to consider whether people do not have enough money to pay for their release, an important victory for bail-overhaul advocates. Under the new rules, judges can no longer set bail so high that defendants cannot afford to pay for their release. The decision followed a Chicago Tribune investigation that found as many as 300 prisoners sat in the Cook County Jail because they could not pay $100 to post bail.

Its not just about race its about poverty, Paul said, noting that support for overhauling the criminal-justice system cuts across states, parties and ideologies.

In Kentucky, state lawmakers are debating whether to expand a felony expungement law that would allow people convicted of minor drug offenses to clear their records after 10 years. That comes after the Republican governor signed a bill last year that allows people convicted of nonviolent felonies to apply to expunge their records if they stay out of trouble for five years and pay a $500 fee.

Paul said he supports such bills because you cant work if you have this glaring criminal record out there that prevents you from finding work.

Three years ago this summer, as buzz about a potential presidential campaign hit a fever pitch, Paul traveled to Guatemala to perform free eye surgeries for hundreds of impoverished people. The stage-managed political voyage helped reveal a rarely seen side of the senator and helped stoke speculation ahead of an ultimately unsuccessful 2016 presidential campaign.

Harris, just seven months into her first Senate term, is already enduring speculation about her political future. In recent weeks, she has met with top-dollar Democratic donors who backed Hillary Clintons presidential campaign and as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee has earned plaudits from progressives and national exposure for her aggressive questioning of Trump administration officials during nationally televised hearings.

In their only joint interview to tout their new bill, Paul indirectly encouraged Harris to explore a presidential bid but did not endorse her. After all, he has not ruled another presidential campaign some day.

I think on the Democrat side theres a huge opening for lots and lots of people to rise up to be that person, Paul said.

Harris dismissed speculation about the presidency but did not deny an interest. Asked why she thinks people are talking about her as a presidential candidate, she said, I think people like to gossip.

She added, I came to D.C. hoping to have impact on real human beings and their lives, and sharing with this incredible body of people these smart, powerful people the views and the voices of folks that might not otherwise be seen or heard.

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Why are Rand Paul and Kamala Harris teaming up on a bill? - The ... - Washington Post

Republican SenatorRand Paul slammedAttorney General Jeff Sessions support for civil asset forfeiture during a Tuesday interview, calling the practice offensive.

Fox News host Steve Doocy askedthe senator from Kentucky about his thoughts on President Donald Trumps recent criticisms of Sessions, particularly on Sessions recusal from the Russian probe and his apparent unwillingness to investigateHillary Clintons emails.

I understand both sides, Paul responded, before stating, I have my own concerns with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

I am very much offendedby the fact that he is now promoting a policy of going after poor peoples property, taking it without a conviction, he said. This is called civil asset forfeiture.

Civil asset forfeiture allows law enforcement officers to takeassets away from peopleif those assets are suspected of being used in a crime. In order to get their property back, owners must prove that their goods were not used for criminal activity.

As Paul explains in the interview, law enforcement officers may be incentivized to improperly seize assets because those assets can then be used to fund police office expenses.

In our country you should be innocent until proven guilty and your property shouldnt be taken without a court trial, Paul argued. The fact that Attorney General Sessions is going all-in on this really is offensive to a lot of us who have been trying to reform this situation.

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Rand Paul 'Offended' By Sessions' Support For Civil Asset Forfeiture [VIDEO] - The Daily Caller

July 25 at 5:37 PM

Again, the establishment political parties have used their influence with the bar association to reduce participation in the electoral process, this time in Virginia.The Posts July 22 Metro article Libertarian candidate not invited to debate reported that the Virginia Bar Association found a reason to exclude the Libertarian gubernatorial candidate from debating the Democratic and Republican candidates. Any thoughtful person knows the real reason for making this decision: There are only downsides to the major-party candidates having to debate a person who will clearly demonstrate that they do not and cannot have much to offer the voters.

Given the recent presidential race between major candidates with extremely high unfavorable ratings, I would think the Virginia Bar Association would be interested in supporting all reasonable opportunities to provide alternative information and candidates to the Virginia (and in three years, the national) electorate.

David Griggs, Columbia

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The real reason the Libertarian gubernatorial candidate was shut out of a debate - Washington Post

The history of Koch-style libertarian economics is steeped in racism.

The intellectual theorists of white race privilege recognized that such head-on confrontations wouldnt protect the old Jim Crow order for long. The problem was democracy itself: American opinion was turning against Southern racism.

Democracy often comes down to honest math. After the 1965 passage of the federal Voting Rights Act, 20th century America seemed to be on a path toward the democratic ideal of one person, one vote. Yet the 21st century has seen enormous reversals of this hard-won progress. Not only have two oligarchic GOP presidents been elected without the popular vote, but crude efforts to suppress ballot access at all levels have become commonplace.

What set the machinery of formal democracy lurching backward so dramatically? InDemocracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Rights Stealth Plan for America, Nancy MacLean traces the origins to the backlash against Brownv. Board of Education. White supremacists vowed massive resistance, with Virginias Prince Edward County going so far as to shutter its entire public school system for several years.

But the intellectual theorists of white race privilege recognized that such head-on confrontations wouldnt protect the old Jim Crow order for long. The problem was democracy itself: American opinion was turning against Southern racism.

Thats where the intellectual antihero of MacLeans book, James Buchanan, comes in. A Tennessee-born free-market fundamentalist who chaired the economics department at the University of Virginia (UVA), Buchanan launched a new center of political economy at the school in 1956 to break the powerful grip [of ] collectivist ideology.

In 1959, the fire-breathing libertarian theorists at UVA thrust themselves into the heart of Virginias desegregation battle by proposing a now-familiar libertarian ploy: privatization of the states public schools. The proposal elevated racial discrimination into a neutral-sounding quest for economic efficiency. The market would see to inequalities via the logic of parent choice; it was simply a matter of letting the chips fall where they may.

This was unalloyed bullshit, of course. Given the generations-old imbalance of wealth and power between the races, any laissez-faire approach to compliance with Brown would inevitably reinforce racial inequalities. The state assembly eventually voted down the radical plan, but as MacLean notes, the underlying logic has since burrowed into nearly every facet of our madly privatizing public lifefrom the Flint water crisis to the attacks on Wisconsins public unionsin a stealth bid to reverse-engineer all of America, at both the state and local level, back to the political economy and oligarchic governance of midcentury Virginia, minus the segregation.

A major force behind this transformation was the libertarian true believer, oil baron and megafunder Charles Koch. When Buchanan launched another hard-right institute at George Mason University, then a backwater suburban commuter school, in 1982, Kochs largesse helped bulk it up into a conservative intellectual bulwark. Buchanan and his Mason cohorts minted a new generation of ideological foot soldiers who led the libertarian Right in a steady antidemocratic and oligarchic drift.

After Buchanan had a falling out with Koch in 1998, the hack libertarian economist Tyler Cowen kept hammering away at the Buchananite gospel from his perch atop George Masons Koch-funded Mercatus Institute. The freest countriesin the laissez-faire sensehave not generally been democratic, Cowen wrote in a 2000 essay, citing as exemplars of freedom Augusto Pinochets Chile (whose plutocratic constitution was essentially ghostwritten by Buchanan), Singapore and Hong Kong. The hard truth, therefore, is that if American political institutions render market-oriented reforms too difficult to achieve, then perhaps these institutions should be changed.

For starters, Cowen suggests, the weakening of the checks and balances in the U.S. constitutional order would increase the chance of a very good out-come. What constitutes a very good outcome? Nothing less than a wholesale rewriting of the social contract, with worthy individuals elevating themselves up the social ladder and the less fortunate consigned to shantytowns. Get ready, he counsels.

As well we should. One way would be to use MacLeans excellent expos to help mobilize an energized small-D democratic electorate. Its long past time to smite the libertarian Right with a kind of math that cant be bought.

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The White-Supremacist Roots of America's Libertarian Right - In These Times