Paul's position on trade with China is fixed now.

Paul seeks to avoid obligatory agreements that remain in force after their national interest value has ceased, and that includes free trade agreements. The reasoning I offer is almost identical to his own words, quoted here: http://ontheissues.org/2012/Ron_Paul_Free_Trade.htm#15 I'm not sure how his intention to change diplomatic policy in the future alters his position on the issue as it exists now.

Your best match is on the right.

For every issue you've marked with a position, the difference between the candidate's position and yours is calculated. If the candidate's data is missing, the difference is 3.4. These differences are summed, and the candidates are sorted by those sums. The smallest sum (ie, the least difference) is the best match.

In math terms, they are sorted by ∑ |U - C| with missing Candidate data treated as C = U + 3.4

That sounds like a great website! I know how to do it and would love to spend my time doing that, but it's far more work than what I'm doing now. I don't think I could maintain that site and get the things done that pay my bills at the same time.

If there is a rating, the differences between the Match values and the candidate's values are summed. If there is no rating, the difference is assumed to be more than 3 units but less than 4.

I found that simply skipping the missing data tended to push candidates with a lot of missing data to the extremes, so one exact match and a lot of missing data would result in a better match than a lot of exact matches and one near match. Giving missing data a value corrected for that.

Done. Go see it: http://psudo.us/sho/GOP.html

Good catch! It is fixed now.

Your closest match, yes. It sorts all of the candidates by the criteria you chose, best matches to the right and worse matches to the left.

Yes. I intend to update it at least twice a month all the way up to Election Day, November 6th.

In the upper-left corner of the page, just under where it says to ask me questions on Formspring, it says
Scale: 1(total opposition) to 5(total support)

I wasn't planning to. Does it need updating?

In short, "from the internet."

Most of it comes from the website OnTheIssues.org which goes a lot by how people have actually voted as much as by what they say. I like that. However, they haven't shifted into Election 2012 Mode yet, so they're not up-to-the-second accurate on every politician's stated views.

When I last updated the chart, some candidates had little or no information on OnTheIssues.org, so they have links by their names of webpages that were the best source of issue positions I could find at the time. They look like a little blue X by the candidate's name.

If I find a source anywhere else on the internet, the score they get is marked with a little blue X, a link to where I got the information.

If different sources give different impressions of the candidate's position, I mark it with a blue ~ (called a tilde) and write a short paragraph explaining why I gave them the score I did. Your question tells me I need to make a lot more of those paragraphs.

If there is any specific score you think I got wrong, ask me about it specifically. It's a lot easier for me to answer and, if I'm wrong, correct the chart from that than from "Why are you wrong?" in a general sense.

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In case someone reading this doesn't know, my Issue Comparison chart is here: http://psudo.us/sho/GOP.html

I'm gonna try to, yes.

A month ago I would have said "No, I'm too busy paying the bills," but there's been growing interest in it lately. Which has surprised me greatly. I didn't know I had anyone's attention.

He's not. I've become convinced that Obama will inevitably win, which has rendered the Republican nomination moot to my mind. If some huge scandal cracks Obama's certain reelection (like, say, if Republicans successfully revoke Obamacare, or the economy soars to new lows), but barring that he just has too much going for him -- Obamacare's passage, OBL killed, US troops out of Iraq, blame for the budget mess landing on Congress, etc.

You're right, "the right thing" is very hard to precisely define. There's a whole field of philosophy devoted to it (called normative ethics), and centuries of scholarly studies have produced no perfect answers (my personal favorite? negative natural rights). I only meant that governments should be extremely cautious before banning anything that could plausibly be the right thing to do to prevent pitting the rule of law against righteousness. That doesn't require everyone to agree what "the right thing" is.

Though societies should be on guard against these failings, that doesn't mean they can't make any laws at all for fear of making a bad law. Making the right thing illegal is the most destructive kind of mistake a government can make, but it is possible for a society to endure these mistakes for quite a while. Racial segregation laws are a clear example of banning the right thing to do, yet neither this shameful moral failing nor the unrest that ended it destroyed the United States. That we can endure as a society while carrying around this kind of systematic conflict is a warning to stand against institutional corruption, but should not evoke fear that the whole society will somehow cease to be.

Also, you'd still need laws and elections because knowing right and doing right are not the same thing. Everyone knows it's wrong to steal, but every grocery store in America has empty wrappers and grape stems hidden around because people ate them without paying. Not everyone who knows the right thing to do always does it.

Freedom to do the right thing is the most important.

Whether government helps or not can be debated, whether or not amoral or morally wrong behavior deserves moral protection, and centralized economic planning are all debatable to some degree, but individual freedom to choose the right must be held sacrosanct.

A tax cut is government taking less from you. A tax credit is government taking your money and then giving some of it back. Also, tax cuts affect the percentage of your money that goes to government, but tax credits are typically specific dollar amounts.

Most people like so-called "progressive taxation" when richer folks pay a large percent of their income than poorer folks; not just more total dollars, but more cents per dollar, too. The idea is poor folks need most of their money for necessities like food and clothes and housing, whereas richer folks don't feel the pinch of taxation quite so dearly. Holding strictly to that principle, tax rates are a better system than tax credits. If you want to help poor, this thinking says to make the bottom tax rate a negative number. That way, people are paid to work rather than just paid generally.

Most people don't hold to that principle so strictly, though. Giving the poor an extra $1,000 per child per year (as the Child Tax Credit does) is generally considered a pretty reasonable way for the government to help ensure children are fed and clothed even though it doesn't strictly follow the "progressive taxation" model.

Just to confuse matters, it's mostly self-described progressives who hold loosely to the "progressive taxation" principle, while moderates and moderate conservatives hold strictly to it. When people oppose progressive taxation generally (such as flat taxes, the Fair Tax, or Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan), they tend to be libertarians or radical right-wingers. Personally, I choose progressive taxation, a negative income tax rate on the lowest tax bracket, and very few tax credits.

It depends what you mean by "depression." The total economy (GDP) was depressed from fall of 2008 until fall of 2009, but it's been growing ever since. By that reasoning, the depression is over. Unemployment raised during that same era and lasted months longer, but it's been shrinking for a few years as well.

But some people reason that the depression isn't over because these economic factors haven't returned to their pre-depression levels yet. This is especially true of unemployment, which is very high compared to normal. That's certainly true, but that's not the definition of "depression" that economists usually use.

Ron Paul supports free trade, but opposes free trade agreements. He believes that accepting treaties that force the US to maintain free trade undermines US sovereignty. You can hear it from his own mouth here: http://youtube.com/v/yg1TrpQHWOQ

My issue comparison of Republican Candidates can be seen here:
http://psudo.us/sho/GOP.html

The US government borrows a LOT of money, and has a fantastic record of paying it back. All three major organizations that measure credit ratings for massive corporations and countries all give the USA their top rating, AAA. They're also all claiming they will drop that rating down a notch if the US government doesn't cover their financial obligations. Don't imagine that's a small thing. The world runs on US dollars more than any other currency. If we lose our perfect credit rating fair-weather allies like OPEC and China might switch to Euros, which would be financially devastating to the international reputation and financial security of the USA. Literally the only way to prevent the credit downgrade is if they raise the debt ceiling before the USA breaks it's golden fiscal word, just like the Democrats have been saying.

So why the opposition by the Republicans? The only reason our debt has reached the ceiling at all is because of our massive budget deficits, which has averaged over $1 trillion a year for five years now. As long as the deficit grows so much more quickly than the economy, the government inherently gains greater and greater control over our financial lives. Also, Republicans typically believe (as do I) that the individual choice part of the economy grows a lot faster than the government controlled part, so fighting for spending cuts is fighting for economic growth -- an important topic when unemployment is as high as it is. Some Republicans genuinely think the limit shouldn't be raised at all -- and they are wrong -- but I like to think most Republicans are just doing all they can to cut spending as part of the compromise. Of the factions with any popular support that one's my favorite, though I wouldn't oppose a modest tax increase as well.

The Commerce Department focuses on the national economy (minimizing unemployment, maximizing growth, ensuring sustainable development, etc), whereas the Treasury Department focuses on the government's finances (tax collection, deficit and debt tracking, etc). Commerce has 47,000 employees and a budget of $7.5 billion, whereas the Treasury employs 120,000 people and has an annual budget of $20 billion.

Originally the country did not have two separate departments. The first Treasury Secretary and the father of American capitalism, Alexander Hamilton, organized and ran a powerful Treasury Department with a lot more in common with other nations' Finance Ministries. His elaborate planning united plentiful revenue from tariffs, a regulated system of speculative investment named after his home on Wall Street, and infrastructure and planning for rapid economic growth and industrialization. His indifferent attitude toward national debt (so long as it was funded by tax revenue) and the incredible complexity of his plans (his programs were some of the first thousand-page bills proposed to Congress) spawned criticism from folks who didn't "get it" or thought he was plotting to bankrupt the country, and some imagined his Treasury Department had more power than even President Washington. Modern historians generally respect him, and his face appears on the $10 bill in recognition of his contribution to the American system of finance.

The Commerce Department was separated from the Treasury in the early 20th century to help regulate the new phenomenon of big corporations ("Trusts") and promote competition by smaller businesses. Some feared these massive companies, many of which had sweeping monopolies, were becoming powerful enough that only the US Federal Government was large enough to defy them. The Department of Labor was separated from Commerce a decade later, as the federal government began to recognize the contrast between labor and management demonstrated by the rise of early unions.

Sure, you could argue that combining the two departments would remove some redundancies, save a little money, and help recreate that close tie between economic prosperity and budgetary success that Hamilton personified. As much as I respect Hamilton, I see economic prosperity and the federal budget as competing and often contradictory goals that deserve separate advocates in the Presidential Cabinet. Let the elected President hear both sides and decide rather than giving that power to an appointed department head.