The greatest nation on earth? That is your bias speaking. We have the most debt, the most wars, the biggest deficit, nowhere near the best education, nowhere near par in health care services. In most terms, we are lacking far behind other nations.
One more thing is that Paul is a constitutionalists. States have the right to regulate things like environmental protection. The anti-federalists like Paul advocate a moral local approach that would give the people more say. There is also a proprerty rights issue with pollution in that polluting someone else's property is like throwing garbage on it. The current system picks and chooses who is connected enough to pollute and who isn't. It should be locals who decide this - not a group of lawyers from DC.
It's not "every many for himself". Right now we have "man vs corporation" and we would all be better off in competitive environments rather than heavily-regulated top-down-controlled bureaucracies. It's a dumb idea to give a room of government employees full control over the environment because the odds of them abusing their authority are far higher than the odds they will do any good.
I understand wealth distribution differently, the 1% control the wealth because they are writing all the laws to protect themselves at the rest of the nation's expense. If we had a more organic system of government where states had to collaborate instead of the federal government using force, the markets would be more stable and individual voices would have more so.
I agree that Citizen's united is a scam and you'd need to work to get 2/3 state legislators to amend the constitution. The corrupt supreme court has sold out the country to foreign corporations. Think about it - there is no open disclosure for campaign funding. Any Chinese can open a US corporation, pump in billions and win the election without anyone knowing.
Unfortunately though, unless the individual's civil rights such as due process, right to trial by jury, etc are restored, regulators and other government agencies have backdoor to implement any law any way they see fit. This is setting a very bad precedent.
The government is not elite or wise enough to make every decision in every market nor are they smart enough to protect a consumer. They can't even pass a budget. I don't want those people in charge of everything I eat, my medicine, my health, my business, the air I breathe, etc. I'm not sure when the notion of the government being their brother's keeper begun but it's illogical and the more laws and regulations they push, the more powerful they get and the weaker you become.
