Archive for the ‘Libertarian’ Category

Where Do Libertarians Fall in Trump’s America? (New Reason Podcast) – Reason (blog)

Donald Trump's executive order on immigration and refugees is anathema to Reason's core libertarian beliefsas is his proposed tariff, border wall, and a slew of other anti-globalist policiesbut he's also talking about deregulating industry, and has nominated (or is considering nominating) several pro-freedom cabinet members. So where do libertarians fall in Trump's America?

"The future of politics is going to be more oriented around a purely issue-by-issue consideration of things," says Reason's Editor at Large Matt Welch. "You're going to have a lot of temporary coalitions." On the other hand, "we also seem to be seeing the rise of a permanent anti-Trump coalition," notes Reason magazine Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward, "and at some point the true Trump oppositionists will consider any kind of coalition building with Trump to be evidence of non-trustworthiness."

In our latest podcast, Nick Gillespie chats with Mangu-Ward and Welch about refugees, "rage exhaustion," tribalism, and how Trump is making us more like Western Europe.

Click below to listen to that conversationor subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.

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Where Do Libertarians Fall in Trump's America? (New Reason Podcast) - Reason (blog)

County Libertarian Party to hold caucus Feb. 4 – River Towns

There is no RSVP or cost required to attend the event. A $25 membership is available if you wish to join your local party.

From 9-10:30 a.m., the party chairman, Robert Burke, will present materials gathered from a January 2017 symposium he attended on breakthrough treatments for addiction and mental illness currently banned by the U.S. government's war on drugs.

The event is meant to be an outreach and educational event to share alternative options to the current system of addiction and mental illness treatment.

No treatment recommendations or solicitations will be made.

The public is welcome to attend just this segment, if desired.

A break will be taken after the presentation and the party will reconvene at 11 a.m. to conduct the annual business meeting.

During the business meeting, the party will be electing officers and discussion the upcoming Libertarian Party of Wisconsin State Convention scheduled April 21-23 in Tomahawk and planning 2017-18 activities.

For more information, call Robert Burke at 715-441-0287, or email Robert.Burke@Baldwin-telecom.net.

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County Libertarian Party to hold caucus Feb. 4 - River Towns

Libertarian Candidates Expose Themselves as Anti-Trump …

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Weld defended Hillary Clinton on her private email scandal and playedattack dog on Donald Trump.

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Johnson seemed sleepy, but he answered a question at length about THC amounts in marijuana and another from a young man asking about legalized prostitution. Johnson onlylightly and perfunctorily criticized Clinton, instead focusing most of his low-energy attacks on Trump. He also revealed a personal gluten allergy and said that he himself would not patronize the services of prostitutes.

These two marginal politicians are clearly enjoying the spotlight that the pro-Clinton media arefinally giving them in their effort to stop Trump. (Something tells me the folks at CNN have not secretly been reading Reason magazine all these years.)

The Johnson-Weld team seems to think that libertarianism is mostly about admitting as many immigrants to the United States as possible. This is a far cry from Ron Pauls pro-borders libertarian movement of a few years ago. The libertarian movement has shifted to the progressive globalist Left.

Bill Weld has called Clinton by and large a good secretary of state, and Johnson has called her a wonderful public servant.

When Johnson criticizes Clinton, he often goes after her for big government spending in a bald-faced attempt to sound conservative and to peel off Trumps support with the #NeverTrump crowd.

A top Clinton-supporting official at the libertarian Niskanen Center think tank (which advocates for more Syrian refugee settlement in America) spelled out the strategy in no uncertain terms: the Libertarians need to adopt a Right-sounding platform so they can take some of Trumps support and prop up Clinton.

Did you notice that the mainstream networks began touting a Clinton lead in a new 3-Way Poll.

But what about Jill Stein? Will CNN give Green Party candidate Jill Stein the same primetime platform?

Libertarian insiders, by their own admission, went into their convention in Orlando with one modest goal: to nominate Gary Johnson against various insurgent challengers, including Gonzo software recluse John McAfee, and then to get fivepercent of the popular vote in November to get the party on future state ballots. This could be the year, the insiders said. The fivepercent year!

Everyone who gets paid by the Kochs says so, longtime Libertarian insider Tim Cavanaugh quipped when the Johnson-Weld ticket was taking shape.

See, Gary Johnson does not just have a weed habit. He also has a Koch problem. As Breitbart News first reported, the Kochs secret Beltway bank pulled out of the race as soon as it became clear Trump was going to be the nominee, but they left the door open to supporting Clinton.

Indeed, a source within the Johnson campaign wanted people to think that Johnsonhad a Koch connection, leaking to the Daily Caller that tens of millions were heading Johnsonsway. They were not hiding it. The Libertarian party chairman begged like a dog for Koch money in a press conference in Orlando.

The Libertarians are finally showing their hand: theyre globalist Clintonites.

This is what happens when Koch-funded activists straight out of liberal arts college join Koch-funded Washington advocacy groups that throw happy hours aimed at Conservatariansbecause Libertarian Koch-funded people are totally friendly to the tea party!

The Kochs run the tea party, dont they? Thats certainly how the Kochs made it seem in the mainstream media after they started funding, funding, funding things attached to what was once a leaderless tea party revolution in this country that aimed to disrupt the power of the elites.

And then when the chips are down and Hillary Clinton goes for the White House, the Kochs roll over. And William Weld defends Clintonon the emails.

Congratulations, Libertarian movement. You guys finally went Left enough on immigration to make it onto CNN in primetime!

Maybe Don Lemon will come to the next happy hour. Just tell him not to bring gluten.

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Libertarian Candidates Expose Themselves as Anti-Trump ...

Is ‘Little House on the Prairie’ a children’s classic or a libertarian … – The Boston Globe

Almanzo and Laura Ingalls Wilder in DeSmet, S.D.

By M. J. Andersen Globe Correspondent January 29, 2017

One winter maybe a dozen years ago, my aunt brought back some pineapples from Hawaii. One was intended for my parents, who lived in a small town an hour from her home in Brookings, S.D. But how to deliver it?

A few phone calls established that a couple from my parents town planned to attend a basketball game in Brookings and were willing transport the pineapple back home. My aunt delivered it to them in the stands, and later that night, my parents were awakened by a thud, then the sound of their front door closing. The next morning, a pineapple stood on their kitchen counter.

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Brookings is a short drive from DeSmet, S.D., which proudly advertises itself as the onetime home of Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the popular Little House on the Prairie series. Born 150 years ago on Feb. 7, Wilder would have recognized the neighborly impulse that carried a pineapple 60 miles across frozen fields.

Based on her familys late-19th-century homesteading experiences, Wilders eight childrens books are stocked with examples of neighbor helping neighbor. A woman nurses the fictionalized Ingalls family through a severe illness; Pa Ingalls helps some passing cattle drivers move their herd; a bachelor acquaintance offers nails to aid construction of the familys cabin.

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Facing down blizzards, fires, wolves, and Indian war parties, the Ingallses came to symbolize American self-reliance. But if the lend-a-hand tradition remains alive in the rural Midwest, the ideal of self-sufficiency has taken a beating.

Thats partly because the subsistence farming of Wilders era has been replaced by large mechanized operations. In addition, an extensive subsidy system has developed to protect farmers from unpredictable weather and gyrating prices.

Still independent in spirit, the farmers I know frequently say they would prefer to take their chances on the free market. Some wryly describe their occupation as farming the government. In South Dakota, resentment of government handouts has always run deep.

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If this heartland backlash sounds familiar, it should. The resourceful pioneer family of Wilders books has become the ur-myth among libertarians everywhere. They claim that ever since the New Deal, politics have corrupted this virtuous American fable.

New scholarship on Wilder tracks how her books may have been deliberately engineered to fuel the limited-government movement. In a just published work, Libertarianism on the Prairie, Christine Woodside fleshes out earlier arguments that Wilders only child, Rose Wilder Lane, edited the Little House series to reflect her own political leanings.

Lane was an established writer who served as editor and agent on the books, though for years she kept her role largely hidden. She had grown up humiliated by the poverty on her parents farm, and left home at an early age. Making her way to San Francisco, she found work as a journalist, married, and divorced. She traveled abroad and sampled life in New York before rejoining her parents in 1928, on what turned into a years-long stay.

Despite their fruitful collaboration on the books, the mother-daughter relationship was often tense. Lanes private writings complain of a lack of maternal love.

As the Depression unfolded, her politics turned sharply rightward. Along with Ayn Rand and Isabel Patterson, she is considered one of the founding mothers of libertarianism. In letters, Rand and Lane quarreled over the desirability of neighbor helping neighbor. Rand thought mutual aid was for weaklings. Lane regarded community support as positive.

Lanes views fully flowered in her 1943 tract, The Discovery of Freedom: Mans Struggle Against Authority, which became a staple of the libertarian movement. She used royalties from the Little House books to support a Freedom School, established in the 1950s near Colorado Springs. Among those attending were Charles and David Koch. At her death, in 1968, Lane directed future royalties to her protege, Roger Lea MacBride the Libertarian Party candidate for president in 1976.

Lanes libertarian proclamations may help explain why the Little House books have been enlisted repeatedly in the conservative cause. Meghan Clyne argued in the conservative publication National Affairs that Wilder is a role model whose books illustrate the worth of self-reliance. She called for building a historical-appreciation movement around them, to counter what she sees as a growing dependence on government.

But while the Little House vision of the past may appeal to libertarians, the reality of pioneer life muddies the picture. Like so many settlers, the Ingalls family obtained free land under the 1862 Homestead Act. Their failed attempts at farming kept them moving from place to place.

Moreover, Wilders seeming indifference to the expulsion of Native Americans from the land can inspire a distinct chill. The cabin memorialized in Little House on the Prairie was erected illegally on land set aside for the Osage tribe. The Ingallses were eventually forced to abandon it.

While some have tried to claim the books as conservative propaganda, others have seen a subtler process at work. A 2008 book by Anita Clair Fellman, Little House, Long Shadow: Laura Ingalls Wilders Impact on American Culture, suggests that the books subconsciously influence Americans to be more receptive to conservative principles, such as resisting federal regulation.

As a loving family that overcame tremendous odds to survive in the wilderness, the Ingallses are not just quintessential American heroes. They are the epitome of American longing possibly the perfect poster family for todays values voters. No surprise, then, that Ronald Reagan reportedly called the 1970s TV series based on the Little House books his favorite show.

A century and a half after Laura Ingallss birth, South Dakota children are still schooled in the genuinely grim hardships of early settlement days. But, unlike in my childhood, they also learn about the cruel losses dealt to native tribes.

Although Wilders books continue to enchant, most readers realize that theres no going back to the frontier. Many also realize that self-reliance, however desirable, may be a stretch. Global economic forces can defeat the most determined self-made individual, as the 2008 financial crisis painfully illustrated.

Rose Wilder Lane clung to her libertarian views to the end, taking her self-sufficient stance on a few acres in Danbury, Conn., and scheming to avoid taxation. Her feelings of deprivation growing up may have driven her politics. But they may also have been the vital sauce that brought a cherished set of childrens classics to life. Somehow, they merged with her mothers stories, leaving a small house that continues to loom large in the American imagination.

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Is 'Little House on the Prairie' a children's classic or a libertarian ... - The Boston Globe

President Obama’s Poor Job Growth – Being Libertarian (blog)

Barack Obamas presidency has ended and many have praised his ability to turn around the economy from its Great Recession. According to Wikipedia Obamas so-called recovery supposedly created 11.4 million jobs in total. However, many conservatives and libertarians point out that the labor force participation rate has reached an all-time low. While this is true, as an economist, and libertarian, I advocate further research on why such participation rates have decreased, rather than including everyone exiting the workforce as part of the economic problem itself.

Ive already addressed that Obama had a job growth of 1.7 million Jobs in August. However, Ive further updated my methodology and way of recording such increases and decreases of job growths under a president, and this would truly reflect real job growth under a president. The changes of methodology that Ive employed are:

Now that its January, we can finalize the actual job growth of Obama. However, as a note, we do not include January this year as under Obama, as weve included January 2009 as part of Obamas job growth. January 2017 will be applied to President Trumps record. A difference of 19 days will most likely not yield a huge difference of job growth. This also helps us simplify the calculations of job growth from January 1st to December 31st as Bureau of Labor statistics do not give individual days of job growth within those months as it is not feasible, thus to do a calculation based on year start of January 20th towards January the 19th is not possible.

If we look at how to calculate the non-participant rate, we find that the two reasons which we can exclude people from what we call the true non-participant rate is people which have declared ill/disabled, and retired. Other items, such as home responsibilities, going to school, and other reasons will be included in our calculations to show changes in the true non-participant rates, rather than using the full participant rates.

This BLS article shows those reasons in 2004, and in 2014. However, changes were not recorded, and it only recorded reasons specified within those two particular years, therefore I have created a change in percentages per year when calculating the difference of reasons from 2004 to 2014. Below are the reasons on why Ive included home responsibilities, going to school, and other reasons into my calculations.

After taking into consideration why people are not participating in the labor force, we can look at the changes of reason over time in this table.

From these variables, we can derive the formula:

True non-participation rate= Recorded Non-Participation rate population less Ill/Disabled Population Less Retired Population.

With this, a table of the True Non-Participation rate on 1st of January and 31st of December of each year is provided from 2009 to 2016. January will have the effective percentage breakdown of the previous year (2009 January will have 2008 reasons, so for example, 18.01% of non-participants would have reported as ill/disabled) while December will have an in-year percentage breakdown of reasons.

After calculating the TNPR, we now have an actual reflection of those who have dropped out of the labor force due to discouragement of job opportunities. Thus, we have a more accurate way of calculating job growth by observing it from a year by year perspective rather than observing it from the beginning of a presidency to it end.

The year by year metric also disputes the claim of job growth of 11.4 million, as the job growth total is now revised to 7.526 million (Changes in Employment plus Changes in Workforce). However, we also measured those who had truly dropped out of the labor force for potential reasons of discouragement, and thus the net result is 3.055 million jobs (73.20% less than claimed).

Some might assert that 3.055 million jobs had actually come into existence, which is better than nothing. However, if we measure what categories of jobs had grown, this table shows this below:

The majority of jobs had resulted in servicing sectors such as food services, healthcare services, and retail jobs. A majority of these jobs barely contribute towards actual capital accumulation, which leads towards a scenario of capital consumption. Essentially, 54.40% of jobs have extremely small contributions towards capital accumulation. No clear indicators on what administration or professional services had been formed, thus we cannot accept it as jobs generating capital accumulation.

Furthermore, a majority of jobs have originated in the healthcare sector, most of which occurred in 2014 (1.995 million), indicating that when major provisions of the ACA took place, demand for medical healthcare products/services rose. However, because an increase of healthcare costs is recorded, this increase of medical sector individuals could not cover the actual increase of demand, as the United States currently suffers from an artificially created restriction of supply, and an artificially subsidized amount of demand.

In conclusion:

Obamas job growth record is statistically disappointing, and created deleterious effects on Americas recovering economy.

Photo: White House

This post was written by Baland Rabayah.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

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President Obama's Poor Job Growth - Being Libertarian (blog)