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Keith MacIntyre has made the cut to stand as an official candidate in the provincial election.

He has surpassed the required number of signatures required ahead of the Oct. 2 deadline with Elections BC for candidates.

MacIntyre is running as a candidate for the BC Libertarian Party, and he is calling on those who dont want to support the larger parties to support him.

We have an opportunity this election to show Victoria that we dont feel heard. If you dont like politics, if you dont vote because its a waste of time, if you feel disheartened by the state of politics, vote Libertarian.

MacIntyre has experience running a tech company for 17 years as owner of Big Bear Software and has seen firsthand the waste in government procurement federally and provincially in the defense, medical and provincial ministries.

The signatures were gathered from citizens across the Penticton riding, including in Peachland, Summerland, and Naramata. It was in conversations with people that MacIntyre came to the decision to run for MLA.

I was inspired by the conversations I had in the riding with people who feel frustrated and angry at the state of politics in B.C., MacIntyre said in a release. Many are frustrated that this election has been called, including myself.

The partys platforms will be announced in the upcoming weeks, with one core principle being the support of peoples personal freedoms.

To report a typo, email: editor@pentictonwesternnews.com.

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Keith MacIntyre recognized as official Libertarian candidate for Penticton - Pentiction Western News

The Libertarian candidate for governor of Indiana had 24 percent support in an early September poll of likely voters and is about to give the sitting Republican governor, Eric Holcomb, a run for his money.

But who is he?

Donald Rainwater, age 56, is a software engineer and IT project manager from Hamilton County, north of Indianapolis. He served eight years in the U.S. Navy and has a wife and grown children. Thats his basic biography.

As with most Libertarians, things get a bit more interesting when they begin to talk.

If we believe in the intent of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States or the constitution of the state of Indiana, then we have to make a decision, Rainwater told InsideSources. Are we going to be a nation of laws, are we going to be a nation of limited government based on constitutional constructs, or are we just not? And I choose to follow the Constitution.

Rainwater was nominated by the state Libertarian Party in March, just weeks before Gov. Holcomb issued a stay-at-home order closing what he deemed non-essential businesses. Opponents of Holcombs actions, many of them Republicans, have rallied around Rainwater in opposition to what they believe is the governors overreach.

I can tell you that I would not have mandated people staying at home, Rainwater said. I would not have mandated shutting businesses down, or creating classes of essential and nonessential, and some businesses are more essential than others so some can stay open and operate normally while others have to operate curbside.

As in many other states, only so-called essential businesses were allowed to remain open in the spring and early summer, which shut down thousands of independently-owned local stores, while national chain stores like Wal-Mart and Target stayed open.

I would not have shut churches down period, and I personally find it offensive that any government official would ever tell churches, Sorry, you cant have in-person services and you cant practice communion unless you do it the way we specify, says Rainwater, I believe that not only violates the First Amendment of the federal Constitution, but I believe it violates the state constitution as well.

And Rainwater says he would not have required masks, in contrast with Holcomb who just extended the statewide mask mandate and recently said masks are a fact of life right now.

I would never mandate masks, Rainwater said, because every time somebody says, Well, we need to follow the science, Well, can you please show me the science? Dont just tell me that youve looked at it, so youre going to tell me what to do. I dont think thats the society were supposed to be living in.

On Sunday, Rainwater addressed a crowd of anti-mask protesters outside the governors mansion in Indianapolis, while state police stood silent and watching from inside the locked gates.

He says what got him up off the couch a few years ago was tax hikes in a state that was supposed to have a small-government, low-tax mentality.

The one that really bugged him was the $2-per-pack cigarette tax, and the plan to use the revenue for road repairs.

I couldnt help but think to myself, Well, you cant do both. Because if people stop smoking, you wont be raising revenue for road repair, because they wont be buying the cigarettes. And if you raise revenue for road repair with an additional cigarette tax, people wont be stopping smoking. So you cant say youre trying to do those two things with this tax. Youre just lying to me, he says.

And the more I looked at the way that things were presented, and the way that the government explained what they were doing or planning to do, the more frustrated I became with the lack of transparency, the diametrically opposed explanations as to why things were being done, and just the general, almost obvious disdain that state government was showing for the citizens of the state Indiana. And the more I looked, the madder I got, the madder I got, the more I wanted to be involved.

And Rainwater doesnt just want no new taxes. He says if elected governor, hell work to scrap the state income tax (personal, not corporate), and also the property tax.

I believe that with the economic crisis that were faced with today, where small-business owners were given a much more difficult burden to bear by the governor than corporations were, this would help them recover. You can never eliminate what was done to them. You cant go back and erase it, Rainwater said. But giving people the knowledge that theyre not going to have to pay individual income tax to the state, I believe that that allows people in todays economic crisis the peace of mind of knowing, I can go out and generate income to pay my bills, take care of my family and I dont have to worry about, Am I gonna have to file taxes on this money?

I believe that were supposed to be able to, as Reagan put it, self-rule, Rainwater said. And if we cant self-rule, how can any of us rule everybody else?

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The Libertarian Who Could Win the Indiana Governor's Race - InsideSources

Sweden is to the 21st-century right what the Soviet Union was to the 20th-century left. Conservatives have transformed it into a Tory Disneyland where every dream comes true. On the shores of the Baltic lies a country that has no need to curtail civil liberties and wreck the economy to curb Covid-19. I have a dream, a fantasy, sang Abba. To help me through reality. For much of the right, that fantasy is called Sweden.

Let the leader of the Conservative backbenchers stand for the Tory press and innumerable ideologues inside and outside Westminster. Sir Graham Brady ruined a perfectly good argument that parliament must have the power to scrutinise Johnsons emergency decrees by announcing that there was no emergency. We could look to a country that merely had a ban on gatherings of more than 50, restrictions on visiting care homes, a shift to table-only service in bars and see that Sweden today is in a better place than the United Kingdom. Or as the Sun explained on Thursday as Boris Johnson met Anders Tegnell, the Swedish public health mastermind, a do-little strategy has spared Sweden a second wave of Covid-19 infections.

Its not true that Sweden offers an escape from the public health catastrophe. I only wish it did. But, and this is when conservative commentators, politicians and conspiracy theorists look away, Sweden offers an escape from the social catastrophe now engulfing us.

You never hear the Telegraph or the Mail say that we need Swedish levels of sickness benefit to ensure that carriers stay at home and quarantine. Or Swedish levels of housing benefit to ensure that they arent evicted from those same homes. The knights of the suburbs do not insist that the hundreds of thousands who will be thrown on the dole in the coming months need Swedish levels of unemployment benefit and an interventionist Scandinavian state to retrain them.

Covid-19 is exposing the lack of social solidarity in Britain. For a moment when the virus hit we stood together. We locked down voluntarily and applauded the NHS. Millions of people, and not only Conservative voters, were prepared to overlook the dismal truth that we had a comedy prime minister who was tragically unequipped to lead a country in a crisis. The symbolic moment of disintegration historians will remember was Johnsons refusal to sack Dominic Cummings when he broke the rules everyone else believed they had a patriotic duty to obey. But all around us there have been hundreds of thousands of quiet disintegrations as lives were lost and families were forced to beg at food banks. Soon, millions of lives will disintegrate as government support is slashed.

You have to be over 40 to understand the peculiar evil of mass unemployment. I was one of the unemployed of the Thatcher years and learned that behind the jargon about social capital and scarring is a concept that is easier to grasp: your confidence is shot to pieces. The longer you are out of work, the more insecure you become and the harder it becomes for you to convince anyone to employ you. A job can move faster than the comfortable imagine possible from something you cant get to something you cant do. Benefits are a commitment to social solidarity because they are not just protections against hunger, homelessness and want, but because they reflect a societys willingness to work with you as you struggle to hold yourself together.

Take two people: one living in Malm, the other in Manchester. When a Swede loses his or her job they are entitled to up to 80% of their previous salary for the first 200 days of inactivity up to 910 krona (78) a day for the first 100 days dropping to 70% (to a maximum of 760 krona a day) for the next 100 days. Danes who are members of unemployment insurance funds can claim up to 90%. As importantly, Sweden is the best place in the world to lose your job because employers pay a levy to job security councils whose coaches seek you out and match your skills and ambitions with the market.

Rishi Sunak says there is no point in subsidising many of the pre-Covid-19 jobs in the high street and hospitality because they are not coming back. But, like the Tories of the 1980s, he is not offering retraining to prepare the unemployed for the jobs of the future. Once again, unemployment is the responsibility of the unemployed, even though its a stretch to see how they are responsible for a virus jumping species in Wuhan.

As for keeping 80% or indeed 90% of their income, the Resolution Foundation pointed out that under Sunaks plans a single adult homeowner earning 20,000 a year who loses their job also loses more than 70% of their net income. Worse is to come. At the start of the pandemic, Sunak increased tax credits and universal credit by 20 a week (1,040 a year). As things stand, he is preparing to risk mass suffering by withdrawing the rise at the end of March.

The fantasy land of Sweden where sickness never comes is a fairytale. By not locking down in the spring, Sweden had a more protracted outbreak with far more deaths per capita than its neighbours. Admittedly, its death rate was not as bad as Britains. But then no European country had a death rate as bad as Britains because no other European country put the village idiot in charge. Nor did the mastermind Tegnell save the Swedish economy. Spending fell by nearly as much in Sweden, which did not lock down, as in Denmark, which did. As for the claim that Sweden would avoid a second wave, Swedish health officials are now proposing local lockdowns of a type we know too well. Sweden may not have been spared the storm but it has lessons on how to shelter society until the storm passes. However deeply it claims to love Scandinavia, the Conservative party is the last organisation on Earth willing to learn from it.

Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist

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Welcome to libertarian Covid fantasy land thats Sweden to you and me - The Guardian

A small business owner in the South Okanagan has thrown his hat into B.C.s provincial election ring.

This week, Keith MacIntyre was named as the BC Libertarian Party candidate for the Penticton electoral district.

The owner and CEO of Big Bear Software, MacIntyre is the third candidate in the riding.

Dan Ashton of the BC Liberals has held the seat since 2013, with the NDP announcing Summerland mayor Toni Boot as their candidate on Sept. 16.

In a press release, MacIntyre says hes lived in Penticton for the past 10 years, and that hes also the president of the Okanagan School of the Arts.

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He says hes been disillusioned with partisan politics for a long time and believes that the current state of democracy, polarized politics and perpetuating bureaucracy is damaging to Canadians.

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The polarization between the two so-called wings is getting worse, said MacIntyre, and we have lost the ability to have meaningful debates with each other without being accused of being right or left wing.

MacIntyre says hes in the process of gathering signatures to file nomination papers with Elections BC.

He says he has the 75 required signatures but is seeking more, adding he will file on Monday.

2020 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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B.C. Election: Small business owner to run for BC Libertarian Party in Penticton riding - Global News

The official ballot for the upcoming General Election on Nov. 3 reads: For United States Representative, you may vote for one or leave it blank. __ Dusty Johnson - Republican Party. __ Randy Uriah Luallin - Libertarian Party.

Luck of the draw lists incumbent Johnson first on the ballot and Luallin next for the two-year term.

Luallin, a Hot Spring resident, began a 10-day tour of South Dakota East River on Sept. 30. After talking with voters in Pierre, he and his wife, Rajni, headed to Gettysburg. My wife and I are traveling in a little camper across South Dakota, said Luallin. They also had their large dog Kiowa.

I was approached at the Libertarian convention in Pierre (June 2019 in Rapid City), and said I would run. It seemed like a huge task, actually an important task said Luallin. Ive been distraught concerning the division in this country - a very dysfunctional duality. My main objective is to bring it back together.:

Luallin has run for local political offices in the past; one being for county commissioner in Boulder County, Louisville, Colorado. He has run for a mayorship. He said he has lived in South Dakota pushing six years, and has run for Fall River County Commissioner. I have experience running for office, said Luallin.

He believes running as a Libertarian is an advantage. We have reached the point where we have ballot access, and that was a hard road. People are becoming disillusioned with the current establishment, said Luallin. I can walk with both camps - Democrat and Republican - because I share a lot of the same things. That will allow me to work for solutions instead of our all-too-common gridlock.

He illustrated two of his top running points. Almost my entire life - and Im 62 - weve been engaged in armed conflict of some type. That has to come to an end. We have wasted our youth in foreign conflicts, and achieved almost nothing. Our military strength should be for defensive purposes, said Luallin. I am a veteran - Army infantry. We have a fine military; it should not be used to ingratiate interest groups or whomever.

There is a tremendous need to remove the government intrusion into our lives, homes, businesses, and our pocketbooks. True liberty, true freedom, requires we are the best judge of what deals with us. As long as we are not hurting someone else or damaging property, we should be left alone, said Luallin. Business goes under the same concept: we need to reduce legislation that ingratiates certain businesses or interest groups and subsidises the picking of winners and losers. There should be an equal playing field in the free market.

Dusty has tremendous energy, and he is young, acknowledged Luallin. At the same time, he tends to react. As in: not fully reading legislation before voting for it. He has a 50% record of voting with the Constitution. I will be 100%, said Luallin.

Other than a soldier, Ive been a mason for 35 years. I am supposedly retired, but they never let you really retire because everybody has a small job for you; so I say that Im retired, said Luallin.

Dusty Johnson, currently a Mitchell resident, has been the incumbent since Jan. 2019. He just turned 44, and his wife is Jacquelyn.

Certainly, growing up in Pierre helped with me originally becoming interested in politics and public office, said Dusty Johsnon. I was inspired by our leaders. A working class family, we benefited from government programs. The proper role of government is to build independence rather than dependence.

Johnsons background includes being on the three-person South Dakota Public Utilities Commissioner from 2005 to 2011. He was then chief of staff to Governor Dennis Daugaard until 2014. Until he was elected to the U.S. Congress, he was the vice president of Vantage Point Solutions in Mitchell.

I have respect for the Libertarian Party, said Johnson. They interject ideas into government, and the voters really win. I am a Republican because we work toward a limited government. There is a role of government to lead, but too often people look to the government to solve problems that should be out-of-government. Society works best when balancing families, business and government.

One of Luallins strengths is he loves the country and has energetic optimism. Hes willing to put himself out there. Hes a heck of a good guy, said Johnson. The voters can determine for themselves any of his weaknesses. They dont need me to lead them to where to drink that water.

When running an election campaign, I have learned that voters want to know what you have done. I think some people believe you really cant get anything accomplished in Washington. I have gotten four major bills of mine out of the House. I am the top Republican on the Agriculture subcommittee, and I have been the whip to such things as Mexico/America agreements.

I feel good about my work to benefit cattle and farming and rural concerns. Few legislators in Washington work for these issues, said Johnson.

The General Election is Nov. 3. The deadline to register to vote or to change a voters information, is Oct. 19. Early voting - sometimes referred to as absentee ballots - is already available.

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Luallin and Johnson speak out for S.D.'s U.S. House of Representatives seat - The Capital Journal