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The 2016 election wasthe gift that keeps on giving for the Libertarian Party. The Libertarian Party ofIowa (LPIA) will soon officially be given major party status, allowinglibertarians to be on the ballot in future state elections, and greater exposure for its candidates.

We plan to have a record number of candidates in 2018, said LPIA Chair Keith Laube in an interview for IVN. There were a record 25 Libertarian candidates on the ballot in Iowain 2016.We have been building a base of Libertarian registered voters in Iowa since 2008, the first year Iowa voters could register as a Libertarian.Our plan istoreach out to voters to continue increasing the number of registered Libertarians in Iowa.

Iowa state law allows political parties to gain status when 2 percent of the vote is earned by the partys presidential candidate. Gov. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate in 2016, received a little over 3 percent in the state about the same percentage he got at the national level.

We plan to have a record number of candidates in 2018.

American elections have always been dominated by the two-party system at every institutional level of elections and the political landscape. The plight of third parties to get on the ballot has been a long struggle. Ballot access is easy for Democrats and Republicans, but that isnt the case for Libertarians or other third party candidates.

And while the Libertarian Party has garnered ballot access and party status in several states after 2016,Laube says obstacles remain to keeping the LPs party status.

Per Iowa code, to maintain party status in Iowa a party must receive at least 2% of the vote for the top of the ticket. So in 2018, our governor candidate must receive at least 2% of the vote, he explained. We met with state officials and have been conversing back and forth with them as we go through the transition in party status. The state officials have been very professional and good to work with.

Laube added:

We need to continue to educate voters thatLibertarian candidates are very capable of serving at the State and Federal level. Libertarian views attractqualified candidates who run for office because they want positivechange to occur in Iowa.Libertarian candidates are often independent thinkers whodo not want to be draggedalong with the partisan political baggage that comes with the two older parties.

And theremay be no greatertime to be a libertarian. The Libertarian Party has gained popularity amongst voters as more people break off from the Democratic and Republican parties in dissatisfaction. Supporters of the Libertarian party share a common belief that the government should be less involved in peoples lives, in the household and with their wallets.

As such, libertarians tend to be viewed as fiscally conservative and socially open or liberal or tolerant. Such a stance on government and domestic and foreign policy is making the party more attractive to many voters because such an approach looks outside the current political establishment for solutions.

I believe Libertarian candidatesin 2018 will rely on the majority of the population who want tohave their individual liberties restored and who desire a more accountable,Laube said. As a major party,2018will be the first year our candidateswill beable to participate in the Primary Election. Candidates will know they are on the ballot in early June rather than late August. This will create stronger campaigns and allow voters to learn about our candidates andissues earlier in the election cycle. Having more candidates talk aboutissuesearlier in the election cycle isa positive forIowans.

Iowas secretary of state will make LPIAs party status official on March 1.

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Iowa Libertarian Party to Have Major Party Status in 2018 Elections - IVN News

There has been a lot of talk lately about free college. Being a Libertarian I initially scoffed at the idea. Then, as I normally do, I started to wonder if there was any idea that could improve the current college business model to attain most of the same perks that free college would be able to attain.

It would be nice if money were off the table when it came to choosing where to attend college. It would be nice if my income, or my familys income or social status, was not a factor. It would be nice if students were accepted solely based on their merit and potential, disregarding all other factors. To me, this is a principle that makes me want to find a solution as a Libertarian. I believe that I have done just that.

What if we had a business model that could remove the need for tuition, while making a college more profitable? What if colleges viewed students as investments and it was in their best interest to provide them with competitive degrees and to help them find employment quickly upon graduation? What if a college based its profitability off of the profitability of its alumni? What if colleges understood the needs of the market and focused its degrees on these areas to not only meet the needs of the market, but also to maximize alumni income? What if students that could not complete their program, and had to drop out, could walk away debt-free? What if the answer to all these questions is yes? Well, it is.

I have developed a business model that requires no upfront tuition to be paid by students. Instead, students agree that upon graduation, they will pay 12% of their income to the college for the next 12 years. With this basic agreement, the colleges profitability is not interlaced with the profitability of the student upon graduation. The college will want the student to find a high paying job quickly, and could offer services to help the student in this manner, and since the student is bound by this contract for 12 years, it is in the colleges interest to help its alumni for this entire time. The college wants to produce graduates that will earn a higher wage to maximize their profits.

In order to accomplish this, the college will focus degree programs on areas where there is a need in the market. Colleges would shift away from degree programs that earn little money and have little need in the market. Colleges would offer degree programs that would best fit the skill-set of the student and help the individual to be as successful as they can. The college now cares about counseling and motivating students to not drop out. The college now cares about each class within the degree program because it is in their interest to be as efficient as possible. Each class would be taking up vital space in a streamlined degree program designed to provide the best skill and knowledge to students to help them be as successful as possible.

Now the college would start to earn a reputation for itself and its alumni because of its better degrees. The market would constantly change and the degree programs would change in order to keep up, because that would be in the best interest of the college. This business model would remove the government from being loan officers, remove the need for grants for education, remove the debt that students face for decades, and create a contract between the college and its alumni that would be a mutually-profitable partnership.

In order to move this business model away from the theory and to test its validity, I took a look at the University of Colorado. During the Fiscal Year 2015-16 the University of Colorados revenue by tuition was $872.3 million, with a student headcount enrollment of 63,202 and awarded 14,479 degrees. If each of these graduates started out earning an average of $40,000 a year and received a 3% increase each year either through changing jobs or regular pay raises, once the 12 year span of alumni was full, the University of Colorado would be bringing in over $986 million dollars, an increase in revenue of over 13%. The average student would end up paying back $68,121 without any interest. These same 4 year degrees currently cost close to $120,000 with in-state tuition. If the average earnings of the alumni are $50,000 a year, the colleges income can increase to $1.2 billion, which would be an increase of over 41%. Understanding this, one can see why the colleges would focus on finding the best possible opportunities for its alumni.

I can hear you asking how does the university make more money while the student pays less? Its simple; we have removed the middle-man, the government. By doing so, we have removed compounding interest and all payments start off based on the graduates current income. If the college has graduates that are earning less than their peers, it is in everyones interest for the college to assist the graduate to find a higher paying job.

Students that attend college, but fail to graduate, owe nothing. This prevents the current problem of student debt without a degree. The student can always return later and complete their degree, or transfer to another college. Transferring credits would have the same effect as the college owning stock in the transfer student. The 12% that the student would pay upon graduation would be split based on their credits among the two colleges. There are sure to be challenges to this business model, but they could be overcome with creativity and resources.

The biggest challenge will be in the initial years until the college attains a full 12 year span of alumni that are paying their 12% payments. This could be overcome by using a hybrid of the tuition system with the 1212 program, or colleges with a large endowment might use some of it to attain this model. Harvard currently has the largest endowment in the world, just over $36 billion. It could be the first university to implement this business model as a social experiment.

There are solutions to these challenges, and these solutions lead us to a better business model when it comes to education costs in America.

* Jeffrey Smith served in the Army for 13 years, currently working as a Senior Operations Specialist and Analyst for a not-for-profit that proctors the clinical skills exam for medical students and has a masters degree in business administration from Excelsior College. Jeff is a long time Libertarian looking for opportunities to bring the Libertarian platform to everyday people.

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A Libertarian Look at Free College - Being Libertarian - Being Libertarian

Richard Spencer the alt right leader who vowed were not going awayafter Donald Trump won the presidency, was caught leadinga Nazi salute for Trumpand who got punched in the face at his heros inauguration was evicted from the 10th annual International Students for Liberty Conference after trying to crash itsparty.

Spencer, a self-declared white nationalist who believes the U.S. is losing its white identity, had no business attending a gathering of libertarian students, and conference organizers had every right to eject him, Robby Soave wrote in Reason Magazine. Indeed, their decision to do so was a valid exercise of libertarian principles in action.

Soave described how Spencer set himself up in the bar of the hotel in Washington D.C. where the event was being held and attempted to host an unscheduled and unwanted conversation about his despicable views. He was eventually confronted by libertarian punditJeffrey Tucker, who confronted Spencer and made clear to the alt-right provocateur that he did not belong at ISFLC. Some shouting ensued, and hotel staff intervened. Shortly thereafter, Spencer left.

In characteristic libertarian fashion, Soave pointed out that the Marriott Wardman hotel is private property, and should enjoy the absolute right to evict irksome and unwelcome guests from its premises.

Spencer has naturally availed himself of the opportunity to troll libertarians on his Twitter account. Some of his tweets are included below, although for spatial reasons we have not included all of them.

When you accept the reality of race it's hard to be a libertarian. Liberty isn't consistent with equality. Grow up and pick one. #ISFLC17

— Richard ? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) February 19, 2017

You can't be pro-science libertarians if you don't understand human evolution gave us races. #ISFLC17

— Richard ? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) February 19, 2017

On the biggest issue of our times -- immigration & White replacement -- libertarianism has failed us. #ISFLC17

— Richard ? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) February 19, 2017

How do libertarians intend to practice muh freedom if so few of them have kids? They're inviting their conquerors with a smile. #ISFLC17

— Richard ? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) February 19, 2017

The thing that scares the libertarians is that we were once them but wound up #altright. #ISFLC17

— Richard ? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) February 19, 2017

White millennials voted for Trump & support Le Pen. Libertarianism is over because it ignores white replacement. #ISFLC17

— Richard ? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) February 19, 2017

You can have your well fed right & it's boring conferences, Jeffrey Tucker. I'll red pill a generation just by showing up. #ISFLC17

— Richard ? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) February 19, 2017

Why does Jeffrey Tucker support deporting me from #ISFLC17 & not illegal immigrants or violent Muslims from America?

— Richard ? Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) February 19, 2017

Attempts to disrupt the conference, both from the far left and far right, were not entirely unexpected, but the appearance of Mr. Spencer and alt-right activists at the hotel demonstrated the alt-rights hostility to the ideas of liberty and freedom, said Students for Liberty CEO Wolf von Laer in a statement. Although we support freedom of speech and thought, we did not invite Mr. Spencer. We reject his hateful message and we wholeheartedly oppose his obsolete ideology.

See the article here:
Richard Spencer attempted to crash a Libertarian conference and was shown the door An error occurred. - Salon

Breitbart.comWhat do you do when you're Matt Schlapp, the guy heading up the American Conservative Union, which runs the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (emphasis added), and it turns our your biggest draw to this year's event defends pedophilia? Well, first you disinvite him and then you bluster your way through an excrutiatingly painful few minutes on Morning Joe before trying to pawn Milo Yiannopoulos off as a libertarian:

"He doesn't call himself conservative. He calls himself more of a libertarian.... Some libertarians would deny that he's a libertarian."

On that much, we agree. Most libertarians I know wouldn't claim Milo as one of our own. You know who else says Milo isn't a libertarian? Well, Milo himself, it turns out:

"Libertarians are children. Libertarians are people who have given up looking for an answer. This whole 'everybody do what they want' is code for 'leave me to do what I want.' It's selfish and childish. It's an admission that you have given up trying to work out what a good society would look like, how the world should be ordered and instead just retreated back into selfishness. That's why they're so obsessed with weed, Bitcoin, and hacking."

Read more about that here and here.

Milo's critique of libertarianism is not so strong, is it? As it happens, the policy work being done by folks at Reason Foundation (the nonprofit that publishes this website) is revolutionizing K-12 education, public-sector pensions, transportation infrastructure, and more. Same goes for ideological compadres at the Cato Institute and elsewhere. To the extent that there's a principled opposition to really dumb military interventions, runaway spending, and conservative-approved idiocies such as a border wall and trade protectionism, well, it's not conservatives pushing it. And none of that is to deny one bit that drug policy, criminal justice reform, crypto-currencies, and forced transparency of government overreach are in any way about "selfishness."

What does it say about the modern conservative movement that CPAC was so desperate to get Milo on its stage in the first place? Nothing good. He's outrageous (not really "dangerous" in any meaningful sense of the word) and he is fully capable of bringing out the worst elements of the idiot-progressive left. But does he have anything to say when he's actually allowed to speak? Derp, not really. Schlapp can say that ACU wants to teach the controversy and all that, but the fact of the matter is that as an intellectual force and a serious place for discussion about policy, CPAC has been more watered-down than the beer at Delta House for a very long time. It's a good sign that someone with the last name Paul won five of the last seven presidential straw polls, but conservatives and Republicans have almost completely squandered their power and influence throughout the 21st century. When George W. Bush and the GOP ran the federal government, they busted the budget in a way that would embarrass drunken sailors the world over. When Obama was in power, they did virtually nothing to demand actual budgets or restrain executive power, and they're still pretending that they are really...just...about...ready...to...reveal an alternative health-insurance plan. They nominated and elected Donald Trump for president and it's surprising that CPAC invited/disinvited a flyweight trash talker to their big shindig? It's almost as if they didn't kick out the gays a couple of years ago or that Newt Gingrich doesn't show up every year and talk about the need for flag-burning amendments and English-only laws.

It's never easy for a movement founded on the cry of standing athwart history, yelling Stop to move forward, but this is simply ridiculous.

Here's Matt Schlapp on Morning Joe:

See the article here:
CPAC Organizer Tries To Pawn Off Milo Yiannopoulos as "Libertarian" - Reason (blog)

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By: Elias J. Atienza

Young Americans for Liberty, a political organization with roots in the Ron Paul liberty movement, has 900 chapters nationwide established on college campuses.

Appearing on Fox Businesss Varney and Co. YAL president Cliff Maloney Jr. announced that the organizationhad 900 chapters along with updates on YALs nationwide Fight for Free Speech campaign on college campuses.

Maloney Jr. discussed free speech zones and unconstitutional speech codes which he claimed the left is using to shut down libertarian and conservative ideas. For example, several YAL members were arrested for handing out pocket constitutions on a college campus in Michigan.

YAL has its roots in both conservatism and libertarianism, with platform positions like reducing the federal debt, protecting constitutional rights such as the 4th Amendment, and promoting a realistic foreign policy.

Disclaimer: I am a member of Young Americans for Liberty and a leader in my colleges chapter.

4th amendmentCliff Maloney Jr.Fight for Free Speech campaignfree speechliberty movementron paulyoung americans for liberty

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Libertarian Organization Has 900 College Chapters Nationwide - The Libertarian Republic