Human Action is a political action committee (a super-PAC specifically) set up to raise money for candidates that support an Austrian School economic philosophy. It filed papers with the Federal Election Commission in December 2012, and supports the campaigns of Senator Rand Paul and the judge and former Fox News Channel host Andrew Napolitano.
In the United States and Canada, a political action committee (PAC) is a 527 organization that pools campaign contributions from members and donates those funds to campaigns for or against candidates, ballot initiatives, or legislation. The legal term PAC has been created in pursuit of campaign finance reform in the United States. This term is quite specific to all activities of campaign finance in the United States. Democracies of other countries use different terms for the units of campaign spending or spending on political competition. At the U.S. federal level, an organization becomes a PAC when it receives or spends more than $1,000 for the purpose of influencing a federal election, and registers with the Federal Election Commission, according to the Federal Election Campaign Act as amended by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. At the state level, an organization becomes a PAC according to the state's election laws.
The Austrian School is a heterodox school of economic thought that is based on methodological individualism—the concept that social phenomena result from the motivations and actions of individuals.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) is an independent regulatory agency whose purpose is to enforce campaign finance law in United States federal elections. Created in 1974 through amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act, the commission describes its duties as "to disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections."
Anthony Astolfi, the organisation's co-founder, has said they intend to support a campaign for Senator Paul to run for president. [1] Astolfi has previously worked on the presidential campaign for Ron Paul in 2008, as well as the Senate campaign of Todd Akin and House campaign of Markwayne Mullin in 2012. [2]
Ronald Ernest Paul is an American author, physician, and retired politician who served as the U.S. Representative for Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1976 to 1977 and again from 1979 to 1985, and for Texas's 14th congressional district from 1997 to 2013. On three occasions, he sought the presidency of the United States: as the Libertarian Party nominee in 1988 and as a candidate in the Republican primaries of 2008 and 2012. Paul is a critic of the federal government's fiscal policies, especially the existence of the Federal Reserve and the tax policy, as well as the military–industrial complex, and the War on Drugs. He has also been a vocal critic of mass surveillance policies such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the NSA surveillance programs. He was the first chairman of the conservative PAC Citizens for a Sound Economy and has been characterized as the "intellectual godfather" of the Tea Party movement.
William Todd Akin is an American politician and businessman who is a former U.S. Representative for Missouri's 2nd congressional district, serving from 2001 to 2013. He is a member of the Republican Party.
Markwayne Mullin is an American politician, businessman, and former professional mixed martial arts fighter who has been the United States representative for Oklahoma's 2nd congressional district since 2013. He owns several businesses, which he took over at twenty, when his father became ill. Mullin, a member of the Republican Party, was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2012 elections, succeeding Democratic representative Dan Boren.
The name is a reference to the book Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. [3]
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics is a work by the Austrian economist and philosopher Ludwig von Mises. Widely considered Mises' magnum opus, it presents the case for laissez-faire capitalism based on praxeology, or rational investigation of human decision-making. It rejects positivism within economics. It defends an a priori epistemology and underpins praxeology with a foundation of methodological individualism and speculative laws of apodictic certainty. Mises argues that the free-market economy not only outdistances any government-planned system, but ultimately serves as the foundation of civilization itself.
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises was an Austrian School economist, historian, and sociologist. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of classical liberalism. He is best known for his work on praxeology, a study of human choice and action.
