Mediaboss Marketing

Being Libertarian (satire)

Mosul: First Chemical Attack Injures 12 Being Libertarian (satire) Twelve citizens were injured in what has been reported to be the first chemical weapons attack on Mosul in the battle between Iraqi forces and the Islamic State. Thousands of citizens fled the city after Iraqi forces pushed north around the time of the ... and more »

See original here:
Mosul: First Chemical Attack Injures 12 - Being Libertarian (satire)

LISTEN TO TLRS LATEST PODCAST:

By Kody Fairfield

After realizing his chances to be President were over, Zoltan Istvan ofthe Transhumanist Party, has decided to take his platform and run for another elected office, and under a different political party.

Istvan didnt have much of a chance at being president, but that didnt stop him from campaigning as the Transhumanist Partys candidateto promote his pro-technology and science positions. Now, hes setting his sights a bit lower, and with a different party. Istvan announced this morning that he plans to run for governor of California in 2018 under the Libertarian Party, explainsEngadet.com.

In aNewsweekarticle Istvan wrote, We need leadership that is willing to use radical science, technology, and innovationwhat California is famous forto benefit us all. We need someone with the nerve to risk the tremendous possibilities to save the environment through bioengineering, to end cancer by seeking a vaccine or a gene-editing solution for it, to embrace startups that will take California from the worlds 7th largest economy to maybe even the largest economybigger than the rest of America altogether.

Engadet mentions that Istvan told the publication that he notonly identifies as libertarian, but that he also saw the benefit of working with a more established political party, instead of starting one from the ground up. The Transhumanist even mentioned to the website that should he run for President again, he would do as a Libertarian.

The most important thing I learned from my presidential campaign is that this is a team sport, Istvan said in an email to Engadet. Without the proper managers, volunteers, spokespeople, and supporters, its really impossible to make a dent in an election. Thats part of the reason I joined the Libertarian Party for my governor run. They have tens of thousands of active supporters in California alone, so my election begins with real resources and infrastructure to draw upon. Thats a large difference from my Presidential campaign, where we essentially were shoe-stringing it the whole time.

According to the article fromEngadet, Istvan has considered running for a lesser office, but has describe the competition for those lower seats a being much more fierce. Explaining that he sees an opening with disgruntled members of the two major parties, especially againstGavin Newsome, the rumored front-runner for the Democrats.

Istvan also toldEngadet that he seems a dire need for a pro-science candidate like himself, citing what he called PresidentTrumpsdisdain forfor science.

This idea that we should drop environmental science, or be cautious on genetic engineering, or focus on the revitalization of nuclear weaponry is something I disagree with, he said. I believe we should bet the farm on various radical technologies: artificial intelligence, gene therapies, 3D printed organs, driverless cars, drones, robots, stem cell tech, exoskeleton tech, virtual reality, brain wave neural prosthetics, to name a few. This is the way to grow an economywith much creative innovation, what California is famous for.

It should be noted that Istvans jump to the Libertarian Party does not guarantee him the Partys nomination for governor. He would have to face off versus any other primary challengers prior to taking that role. At this point, his comments are a mere statement of intent to seek the nomination, rather than his title.

Democratsgavin newsomeGovernor of Californialibertarian partyRepublicansscienceTranshumanist PartyZoltan Istvn

Excerpt from:
Transhumanist Wants to Run for California Governor Under ... - The Libertarian Republic

A Swarthmore Libertarian whos launched a campaign against U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., is holding a town hall on Sunday, March 12, to talk about the impact of legal force on addicts.

Dale Kerns is an estimator for an electrical contractor. He also serves on the board of Goodwill of Delaware and Delaware County and is seeking the Libertarian nomination to run against Casey next year.

At 11 a.m. on March 12, he will host a town hall at the Clarion Philadelphia Airport at 76 Industrial Highway in Essington.

Speakers at the event include Christopher Dreisbach, CEO of Blueprints for Addiction Recovery and Christopher Baston, a U.S. Air Force veterans and contributor on WPHL radio.

Advertisement

The Kerns campaign said the event was motivated by his own recent loss of a relative to drug addiction and is meant to show the negative impact that the criminalization of addiction had on families and homes.

Two Republicans have already announced theyre in the race as well: Andrew Shecktor, a Berwick borough councilman who ran successfully last year as a delegate for Donald Trump to the Republican National Convention, and state Rep. Rick Saccone of suburban Pittsburgh.

View post:
Swarthmore Libertarian running against Casey to hold town hall - The Delaware County Daily Times

Hundreds of students shouted down Libertarian author and political scientist Charles Murray during a lecture Thursday at Vermonts Middlebury College, forcing him to move to a private room and stream the lecture online.

Mr. Murray, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was interrupted immediately after taking the podium at the McCullough Student Centers Wilson Hall, according to video posted by The Middlebury Campus student weekly.

Once he started to speak, dozens of students stood up and turned their backs to him, holding signs and asking others to join. They then read a script in unison condemning Mr. Murrays supposed hate speech and started chanting Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away.

Mr. Murray stood silently at the podium for 18 minutes until organizers approached him.

The college ultimately decided to cancel the lecture and moved Mr. Murray to a private room where he could stream the talk live, The Middlebury Campus reported.

Mr. Murray is most famously known for writing the 1994 book The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, and is deemed a white nationalist by the liberal nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center.

He was set Thursday to discuss his 2012 book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, which students argued normalizes white supremacy and white nationalism.

More than 450 Middlebury alumni signed a letter published Wednesday condemning the schools decision to allow Mr. Murray on campus.

The student group that invited the author, the American Enterprise Institution Club, said the invite was not necessarily an endorsement of his beliefs.

I really think his work Coming Apart is incredibly important in understanding the forces at play that brought the movement together, and as a Republican, I dont understand this movement enough, club president Phil Hoxie told a local NBC News affiliate.

Bill Burger, the vice president of communication at the school, said he was disappointed by the protesting students behavior Thursday.

We respect the right for students to express themselves and to protest, and we acknowledge that at the opening remarks for the event, but its clear that a group of students were committed to disrupting the event, and to an extreme degree theyve done that, he told NBC. Fortunately, weve been able to preserve what he says again, the important thing in our community is that there is an opportunity for people to speak and to be heard and listen and to challenge.

Middlebury officials told Inside Higher Ed that as Mr. Murray was trying to leave campus, protesters swarmed the vehicle and jumped on it, trying to prevent him from leaving.

Mr. Murraysaid on Twitter Friday that he was physically assaulted by the out-of-control mob.

Report from the front: The Middlebury administration was exemplary. The students were seriously scary, he tweeted.

Read more:
Libertarian author Charles Murray shouted down by Middlebury College students - Washington Times

Horse-racing monitors at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, where bettors can wager on races. The gambling industry hopes the Trump administration will be open to expanding wagering to sports betting.(Photo: Kevin Wexler/The Record)

The Competitive Enterprises Institute, known asalibertarian think, has published an eight-page paper on what it considers a foolish federal policy on sports betting in the U.S.

The group describes itself as "a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing theprinciples of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty."

Here is my summary of some of the key passages:

For those not fully up to speed on how we got here, it's explained thusly:

The Origin of the Sports Gambling Ban.By the late 1980s, at least 13 states had considered proposals to legalize sports gambling, most in the hope that legalizing and taxing the activity would fill increasingly large budget deficits. That so worried gambling opponentssuch as lawmakers and sports league officials who feared gambling would compromise the integrity of sporting eventsthat Congress passed the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act of 1992 (PASPA). Once enacted, PASPA prohibited states that did not already allow sports betting from licensing, promoting, or authorizing the activity. In effect, PASPA blocked all states, save for Nevada, from legalizing and regulating bets on the outcome of individual sports contests.

"The proposal, sponsored by Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), was championed by the commissioners of the four major sports leagues, who testified that such a law was necessary to prevent a cloud of suspicion over athletes and games and to avoid sending a regrettable message to our young people. Congress justified intervening in what had traditionally been viewed as a matter for state regulation by declaring sports gambling a national problem. The harms it inflicts are felt beyond the borders of those states that sanction it. The moral erosion it produces cannot be limited geographically. Without federal legislation, sports gambling is likely to spread on a piecemeal basis and ultimately develop an irreversible momentum.

This is a segment on "game integrity with a reference to a very famous case:

"In many ways, sports betting lines operate like financial markets. For example, when international open market trading is done in commodities, attempts at manipulation become much easier to detect because anomalies will be noticed and analyzed quickly. The same holds for sports betting. Betting lines do not shift much. An extreme fluctuation, which might occur if large amounts of money was suddenly being bet on a longshot underdog, would set off alarm bells......

"This is exactly what happened during the Black Sox scandal, when several members of the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series. It was the strange, sudden shift in betting odds that first alerted sportswriters and others that something fishy was going on. Bookmakers originally had the Sox as 7-5 favorites, with rumors that the odds might go as high as 2-1 by the time of the game, but a sudden swing in betting in New Yorkan unusually large amount of money being bet on the underdog Cincinnati Redsput the odds at even money by Game 1. The odds shift occurred, it turned out, because gangsters had bribed several members of the heavily favored White Sox to throw the Series. Rumors about a fix were rampant well before the Series first pitch.

The Black Sox went on to become the most infamous sports betting scandal in history. As a result, nearly 100 years later, gambling remains virtually the only unpardonable sin for an active player, coach, or manager in any sport. Players who have used performance-enhancing drugs or have been found guilty of criminal acts ranging from assault to illegal dog fighting have returned to the field. Gambling on games, on the other hand, almost always results in lifetime bans for athletes and officials. This is a formidable disincentive for players to be involved with gamblers or game fixing. Yet, few remember today that it was the bookmakers those taking bets on the gam e who first caught the scent of something fishy going on with the World Series."

The volume of new tax revenue also is addressed:

"If this economic activity were brought into the daylight, it would mean millions of dollars for cash-strapped states. In New Jersey, for example, illegal sportsbook makers prosecuted in the late 1990s had an annual volume of around$200 million. Global gaming research firm GamblingCompliance projects that a fully developed legal American marketwhere bets are placed at casinos, online, and at retail bookmaking shopswould produce $12.4 billion in annual revenue, five times bigger than the U.K.s sports betting market and 11 times bigger than Italys. All of which would be subject to tax. Tapping into this new source of revenue would not even require new laws for most states, as the federal government already requires people to report earnings from gambling and even allows them to write off gambling losses up to the amount that allows them to offset their winnings."

The paper concludes by saying that "the law must treat consumers like adults."

Read or Share this story: http://northjersy.news/2lIryJK

Read more:
Libertarian think tank makes case for legal sports betting - NorthJersey.com