Archive for the ‘Libertarian’ Category

Nick Offerman gets philosophical on Mother Nature in new book: ‘Were all the same batch of molecules’ – USA TODAY

Amy Poehler teases 'Duncanville''s mini 'Parks and Rec' reunion

The season two premiere of Fox's Duncanville" will feature a mini 'Parks and Rec' reunion with Nick Offerman, Adam Scott, Aubrey Plaza and Retta all voicing characters. The animated comedy follows a spectacularly average teenage boy named Duncan and his family. Poehler, an executive producer, voices both Duncan and his mother. (May 20)

AP

Nick Offerman is not Ron Swanson.

Anyone with lingering confusion about the differences between Swanson, the fictional mans man and staunch libertarian on NBC's Parks and Recreation, and Offerman, the mans man and bleeding-heart liberal actor who played him, will have their misguided notions of the real-life man quickly dispelled in the pages of his new book, Where the Deer and the Antelope Play: The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside"(Dutton, out Tuesday).

The book is an amiable ramble outdoors,with Offerman sharing his assorted experiences in the wild and his musings on nature, land use, labor, agriculture and community. He takes readers on the hikingtrails of Glacier National Park, where he gets into scrapes with two of his best buds, Wilco songwriter Jeff Tweedy and author George Saunders. He walksthe verdant pastures of an English sheep farm with shepherd James Rebanks. And he visits the sprawling RV parks of the American Southwest, where he camped in an Airstream with wife Megan Mullally during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Offerman, 51,is generous with hilarious anecdotes, including a choice discursion about how both he and his wife ended up kissing Rob Lowe during their careers ("Now that I think about it, given some slight allowances for time and space, you could technically say that RoLo, Megan, and myself had a threesome").

But when he's not being funny,Offerman, who is also a professional woodworker and cohosts NBC's crafts competition show "Making It" withAmy Poehler,is quite serious, waxingphilosophical about Mother Nature and our relationship with it, and how he thinks we can live better in it.

Offerman spoke to USA TODAY about his new book and his optimism for, and hope in, humanity.

Question: You make a compelling case forpeople to learn to make and build things with their own handsand to do their own labor.Can coddled city folk learn to do these things even if theyve been taught not to all their lives?

Nick Offerman: Theres been this renaissance of creativity and artisanryin my lifetime where people are becoming reinvigorated by how things are made. I like to think that we as a society are waking up to the fact that corporate-made goods, and especially corporate-made food, are not the best for us or our planet. Across the board, you see it everywhere: people are learning to grow food, raise rotationally grazed livestock andgrass-fed pasture-raised eggs, but also clothing, beer, spirits, barbecue, woodworking, blacksmithing. You name it, people are reteaching ourselves the old ways of doing things because theres a purity to them.

Q: What do you think has kept people from being more self-sufficient?

Offerman: People everywhere can now live comfortably without ever owning a socket set, because the consumer paradigm has made it available:Theres an app for everything. If you need somebody to come over and change your lightbulbs, you can do itwith a touch of a button. And that nefariously plays on human nature. I as much as the next monkey am like, Oh, I can either climb this ladder and do it myself or I can press a button and have it done for me? Of course Im going to choose the button. Its having the wherewithal to say, Hang on guys, I happen to know that button is dangerous.

Q: You write about the gratification you feel changing a tire, and it made me want to change my next flat. My dad taught me how when I got my first car, but I've always defaulted calling AAA.

Offerman: It makes perfect sense. Among other things, you get dirty changing a tire. And weve been taught we should aspire to a life where we never get dirty because its beneath us. Thats part of what weve been sold, that you deserve to put your feet up and take it easy, so put down your broom and buy a vacuum cleaner. Getting your hands dirty is for laborers and peasants. You should aspire to be a hip-hop star and relax on your yacht while other people are getting their handsdirty. Luckily, I grew up in a family of people who still get their hands dirty, and I grew up understanding that not only is that not beneath me, thats a super power.

Q. The pandemic seems to have a lot of people rethinking the way they live. Do you think there's an opportunity here for meaningful, lasting change?

Offerman: Ultimately, it needs to reflect back on the way we vote. If were going to reshape our economy, it's going to beby the labor class standing up and saying, Wait a second, my life has so much more value than you are giving it in this low-wage job. And people often take umbrage with me and they say, Well sure, you can say that because you are paid very well to do what you do, but I felt the same way when I was a carpenter and when I was alaborer for many years before I started doing well as an actor.

Through no wisdom of my own, but through the love and perspicacity of my family, I understood the value and the recompense of doing hard work out of affection for my loved ones and for those around me. And then it bleeds into affection for our ecosystem. The older I get, the more I read, the more I understand its all the same. Were all in the same family. The bluebirds Im looking at out the window right now if I treat them with disrespect, thats eventually going to come back and bite somebody with the butterfly effect. Weve got to understand were all the same batch of molecules.

Q: Are you optimistic?

Offerman: Im always hopeful in humanity. … In my lifetime, weve come a long way. Same-sex marriage has become a yawn of a subject, and we were going to war over it 20, 30 years ago. The ever-increasing, alarming signals of climate change, more and more, I think humanity has the capacity to wake up and say, OK, I guess wed better do something about this. The same way that nowadays we say, Can you believe we used to smoke in restaurants? The fact that there was a smoking section in airplanes? Its like having a smoking section within your Prius. So thats laughable and crazy now, and my optimistic hope is (that) before long, well similarly be saying, Can you believe that everyone used to have a household SUV?

Q: Throughout your book, wherever you happen to be in the wild, you pause to reflect on the indigenous tribes that used to live there. Is that something you think about often?

Offerman: Its something Ive come around to. … I had a wonderful moment some years ago, my wifes band was playing at the Sydney Opera House. There was an announcement before the show started that said, Lets just take a moment to recognize that this theater is built on the land of this aboriginal tribe and this peninsula was a traditional place of performance and festival. So lets take a moment of silence and respect for those tribes we displaced, but lets not forget that thats how we came to be here tonight.

And I just thought, boy, thats a big deal, to simply cop to culpability. Thats all Im asking for. Nobody should be self-righteous. Were all just farting, (defecating) eating mammals. The beautiful thing is, were doing our best to create beautiful sandwiches and works of literature and symphonic compositions and also governments and schools and municipalities and bridges. Well never be done. Were always going to continue to do it in a way thats better for us and better for Mother Nature if we hope to survive.

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Nick Offerman gets philosophical on Mother Nature in new book: 'Were all the same batch of molecules' - USA TODAY

Happy Birthday Peter Thiel: And For The New Currency PayPal – Dazeinfo

Being recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leaderis not easy.And neither was it building thenew currency as admitted byPeter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal. Managing funds right from $700 million as president of Clarium to $2 billion as a managing partner of FoundersFund, Peters adrenaline has always come from informal innovation-focused startups and mentoring them. He is also known for being the first outside investor in Facebook, Inc. Presently, he presently is aninvestor and co-founder of successful investment and hedge funds management firms like Clarium Capital Management, Valar Ventures,Mithril Capital Management, and FoundersFund. Peter sold PayPal to eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002.

On his 54th birthday, we bring a few interesting yet less known facts about Peter Thiel.

Name: Peter Andreas ThielDate of Birth: 11th October 1967Net Worth: $3.7 Billion (As of October 2021)

Bullish about Silicon Valley being the torch-bearer of American success for years to come, Peter cares less for the education than the impact to the society,the startup founders can bring about through their offering. Branded as a contrarian who likes bashing brands and companies, he does see monopolies likeGoogle driving success more than incremental improvement in building technology companies like Microsoft.

Peter is also pretty biased in the companies he has invested (e.g. Space X, Lyft, Facebook) in and always shoots down the competition stating the reasons why they would not succeed. To mosts dismay, it sounds pretty true, considering the practices of the companies he corners. Even Twitters growth, he had commented, is nowhere close to its potential.

On the other hand, Peter Thiel is an evangelist of innovation in both science and technology (including, health sciences and engineering, which he calls working with atoms).

Classifyingthe Dot com bubble of the 1990s to be the most hard-hitting burst among the many bubbles and bursts over the years worldwide,he seesfour prime reasons causing this:1. Lenders showing complaisance;2. Borrowers being greedy and wanting to make the most of free money available;3. Political scenarios that have failed to prempt and prevent these bursts and recessions;4. The lack of path-breaking innovation and settling down for justminor incremental achievements in both science and technology.

These Less known facts about Peter Thiel will bring you to know this sharp worded visionary even better:

1. The first time he used Twitter was on the stage of TechCrunch Disrupt 2014 in San Francisco, USA.

2. In his book Zero to One he communicates everything he learnt about Tech and Business and that he had taught at Stanford in 2012.

3. If Thiel was not an entrepreneur, he would probably be a teacher, he admitted. He loves to mentor and guide and thus his alternate profession choice.

4. Peter was contesting to be a clerk on the Supreme Court ranks after his degree in Law from Stanford. In retrospect, he was happy he was not among the two selected of the eight he was among interviewing for the post.

5. Though he favors people learning and teaching as a profession, he is pretty skeptical about what falls under education today, classifying it as an incredible abstraction, obscuring a lot of things that we do, and being very unclear on how valuable what is being taught is, in many cases. He has been known to encourage college kids to drop out and become entrepreneurs, even funding their Zero to One ideas and projects by creating the Thiel Fellowship, which will award 20 people under 20 years of age, $100,000, in order to inspire them to quit college and create their own ventures.

6. Peter sees extreme traits (he has quoted some other founders of Paypal had built bombs in their college) in founders being a big giveaway of their entrepreneurial instincts, however, clarifies that mere craziness is not a virtue, and a balance between being crazy and doing business is the key attribute to success. Competing, according to him, is not the way to succeed in entrepreneurship.

7. His view sounds pragmatic yet is controversial on founders quitting the companies they founded, quoting it as the loss of faith in their own product that leads to their disassociating with it.

8. Having a confident stance about technology and entrepreneurship, though against the norm, is certainly a trait much respected, as much it is condemned. And his viewpoints become even more prominent when it comes to the political scenario. Be it about his remarks in the Libertarian Cato Unbound blog, where Peter states that he no longer believed that freedom and democracy are compatible or when he accounted vast increase in welfare beneficiaries liable to render the notion of capitalist democracy into an oxymoron.

9. The first biography of Peter Thiel titled The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valleys Pursuit of Power by Max Chafkin was released on September 21, 2021.

10.Peter Thiel ranked #16 on theForbes Midas List: Top Tech Investors 2021 and #273 on Forbes 400 2021 the definitive ranking of the wealthiest Americans.

11. Peter Thiel is the worlds #574 richest person, with a net worth of $4.9 billion, according to Forbes Billionaire 2021 list.

With all the zeal and enthusiasm, Peter Thiel is nothing less than an idol for many who like libertarianideologies, and his philosophy of being profit-oriented surely should go well with investors too. The believer in long-term he is, we wish his experiments with anti-aging reap him huge dividends and keep his intention to inspire many more path-breaking innovators coming.

Happy Birthday, Peter Thiel! We wish you a lasting lifetime of fiery passion to pass on to the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

The post is a part of aBday Serieswhere we celebrate the birthday of renowned personalities from Tech Industry, very frequently. The series includes Entrepreneurs, C-level Executives, innovators, or renewed leaders who moved the industry with their exponential skill set and vision. The intend is to highlight the persons achievements and touch base the little-known, but interesting, part of his life. You can see the list of all earlier celebrated tech personalities, includingMark Zuckerberg, Marrisa Mayor, Sean Parker, Andy Rubin, Julian Assange,Sir Richard Branson, SergeyBrin byfollowing this linkorsubscribe to your daily newsletter.

To make it more exciting, we suggest you make use of the comment section if you are among the ones celebrating theirbirthday with todays featured personality.

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Happy Birthday Peter Thiel: And For The New Currency PayPal - Dazeinfo

Voter rolls looking bluer ahead of off-year election – FOX31 Denver

DENVER (KDVR) Colorado is getting bluer, even if it is a purplish blue.

Colorado has three statewide measures on the ballot for an November 2021 election: a fiscal accountability amendment, a tax increase for marijuana sellers and a property tax cut. The Colorado Secretary of State will begin mailing ballots to voters on Oct. 8 ahead of election day.

The ballot initiatives could test the states growing conservative/liberal divide. Two of the measures Proposition 119 and Proposition 120 have been sponsored and promoted by Michael Fields, executive director of conservative Colorado Rising Action.

Fields is also a political analyst for FOX31.

The measures lean into Republican goals. While Colorado is a relatively low tax state, its voter rolls have gotten more and more Democratic, even as the state adds mainly unaffiliated voters.

Since last September, the state has gained far more Democratic voters than Republican ones. There are now 29,227 more registered active voters in the state than in September 10 times the 3,117 Republican voters the state gained in the same time period.

Gains to the relatively minor Libertarian Party outnumbered Republican voter gains by more than 1,000.

Still, by far the biggest party gains happened with unaffiliated voters. Colorado has 189,280 more independents now than it had in September 2020.

Purple though they might be in name, records show those voters are more blue than red.

Unaffiliated voters are allowed to list a party preference on their registration if they choose. Not all do, but far more of those who do prefer one party prefer the Democratic Party.

Of unaffiliated voters, 59% swing blue. Republican-leaning unaffiliated voters are only half as many, making up 31% of the party preference whole.

Largely, this follows population trends. As Colorado has exploded with in-migrants from other states, its Front Range counties have gotten less Republican as theyve gotten more populous.

The map above charts the difference between the number of Democrats and Republicans gained in each county since last September 2020. Deeper-colored states gained more of that party than the other.

The counties that gained more Democrats than Republicans in the highest amount were almost entirely in the Front Range. Arapahoe and Jefferson counties, in particular, added 10,000 more Democrats than Republicans.

Most counties outside the Denver metro, though, got redder, but not by the same margin that metro counties got bluer.

Mesa and Weld counties got the largest amount of Republicans over Democrats. Even combined though, they only gained 1,000 more red than blue voters.

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Voter rolls looking bluer ahead of off-year election - FOX31 Denver

Column: Considerations on the California recall effort and its potential consequences – The Herald-Times

Paul Hager| Guest columnist

This guest column was submitted byPaul Hager of Bloomington.

Following the dramatics of the California recall from afar, I found myself terribly conflicted. As some people may know, Im an occasional libertarian politician from Bloomington, but those who know me best are aware that I view many aspects of nations and governments from a systems perspective. This perspective gives rise to my conflict, one that could be called a matter of heart versus mind.

The USA was founded, ultimately, as a federal republic. A republic is a representative democracy, not a democracy like ancient Athens where citizens had direct control of the government. History demonstrates that the Athenian system was unstable, and our founders rejected it. The chief advantage of representatives in a republican system is that they are ideally separated from transient passions and able to render a judgment based upon facts, facts then weighed on the basis of moral, legal, and such other considerations as may affect the commonweal. One of the greatest exponents of this view was a British member of Parliament during the Revolutionary War named Edmund Burke. Burke supported the arguments of the colonists legally and logically, generally presenting their case. This was his job and doing it risked making his constituents quite unhappy, which it in fact did.

I have never spoken to a little-l libertarian over the years who didnt know something about Burke or, lacking that knowledge, couldnt easily explain the qualities of a good representative. Telling unpleasant truths and making people angry is, from time to time, a representatives job. Political philosophy aside, there is a practical consideration: What if, after every decision a representative makes that angers people, there is a legal mechanism allowing the majority to remove this person from office? This sounds a lot like the dangerous sort of democracy that the Founders concluded was a very bad idea. Aside from that, most humans (even politicians) understand rewards and punishments. If representatives are being promiscuously removed after unpopular decisions, the only ones that are elected will be those who cater to their constituents and dont do their job.

Im a libertarian and a Burkean. I therefore must oppose the very idea of a recall. Let me put it to readers at this point, even if you havent thought about these points before given this history, doesnt the idea of a recall seem at least a little un-American?

But heres the thing. Larry Elder is a great guy and, best of all, he is, like me, a little-l libertarian. Initially, even though I knew he wasnt likely to win, I allowed myself to imagine him winning and how much that could benefit California and the country. But, what if, miracle of miracles, he did win? Edmund Burke immediately appeared before my minds eye. This was for me, an agnostic, as close as Im likely to come to committing a mortal sin and having some divine spirit reproach me for it.

I have a great deal of respect for Elder and think he has the makings of a great representative. But not that way. Please, sir. Reread your Burke and run in the next regular election.

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Column: Considerations on the California recall effort and its potential consequences - The Herald-Times

Voter information guide for special election to fill Alcee Hastings’ seat – WPTV.com

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. The first of several deadlines in a special election to fill the congressional seat left vacant by the death of U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., is soon approaching.

Monday marks the deadline for those Palm Beach County or Broward County residents living in Florida's 20th Congressional District to change their party affiliations before the Nov. 2 primary election.

Hastings, who served in the House since 1993, died of pancreatic cancer in April. He was 84.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis set the primary and general election dates for Nov. 2 and Jan. 11, leaving the constituents of this mostly Democratic district without representation in Washington for months.

Am I eligible to vote in the special election?

The short answer is, most likely, yes, provided you meet a few basic requirements and assuming you reside within Florida's 20th Congressional District.

In order to register to vote, you must:

What do I need when I go to vote?

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the special and general elections. Any voters waiting in line at 7 p.m. will have the opportunity to cast a ballot.

In order to vote, you must provide a Florida driver's license, identification card, U.S. passport or some other form of photo identification with signature.

Where is Florida's 20th Congressional District?

The district includes portions of Palm Beach and Broward counties. That includes parts of Loxahatchee, Royal Palm Beach, West Palm Beach and Lake Park in Palm Beach County and parts of Fort Lauderdale, Miramar and Pompano Beach in Broward County.

Who are the candidates?

A total 11 Democrats and two Republicans -- plus one Libertarian and three independents, one of whom is a write-in candidate -- are seeking to occupy the seat.

Here are the candidates, in alphabetical order by party:

DemocratsSheila Cherfilus-McCormick: CEO of Trinity Health Care ServicesElvin Dowling: West Palm Beach native, former aide and longtime mentee of HastingsBobby DuBose: minority leader in Florida House, representing portions of Broward CountyOmari Hardy: Florida House District 88, former Lake Worth Beach commissionerDale Holness: Broward County commissioner, former mayor once endorsed by HastingsPhil Jackson: retired U.S. Navy chief petty officerEmmanuel Morel: former president of Democratic Progressive Caucus of Palm Beach CountyBarbara Sharief: Broward County commissioner, previously served as first Black mayorImran Siddiqui: doctor of internal medicine in Broward CountyPriscilla Taylor: former state legislator, Palm Beach County commissioner and mayorPerry Thurston: Florida Senate District 33, representing portions of Broward County

RepublicansJason Mariner: former drug addict and convict, CEO of AdSkinzGreg Musselwhite: welding inspector who lost to Hastings in 2020 general election

LibertarianMike ter Maat: Hallandale Beach police officer since 2010

IndependentsJim FlynnLeonard SerratoreShelley Fain (write-in)

What is the difference between a primary and general election?

Florida is a closed-primary state, which means that only voters registered within a political party may vote in that party's primary election, unless a universal primary contest occurs. A universal primary contest is when all candidates for an office have the same party affiliation and the winner will have no opposition in the general election.

That is not the case in this special election, so voters won't be able to cast their ballots for a candidate in another party. For example, a Republican voter can't vote for a Democratic candidate during the primary election and vice versa.

Important Dates

WPTV

Monday, Oct. 4: Deadline to register for primary election or change party affiliationMonday, Dec. 13: Deadline to register for general electionSaturday, Oct. 23: 5 p.m. deadline to request vote-by-mail ballotTuesday, Nov. 2: 7 p.m. deadline to return vote-by-mail ballotTuesday, Nov. 2: District 20 primary electionTuesday, Jan. 11: District 20 general election

Early Voting Dates

Saturday, Oct. 23-Sunday, Oct. 31: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. (primary election)Saturday, Jan. 1-Sunday, Jan. 9: 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. (general election)

Early Voting Locations

WPTV

Palm Beach County Library, Belle Glade Branch725 NW Fourth St.Belle Glade 33430

Palm Beach County Library, Main Library3650 Summit Blvd.West Palm Beach 33406

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, West County Branch Office2976 State Road 15, Second FloorBelle Glade 33430

Palm Beach State College, Loxahatchee Groves Campus15845 Southern Blvd.Loxahatchee Groves 33470

Wells Recreation & Community Center2409 Ave. H W.Riviera Beach 33404

Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections

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Voter information guide for special election to fill Alcee Hastings' seat - WPTV.com