The profreedom and antiwar movement lost one of its most dedicated champions this past weekend. Jon Basil Utley was born in the Soviet Union in 1934. His Britishborn mother, Freda, had gone there as aprocommunist intellectual and writer. But after his father was spirited away to one of Stalins gulags (where he was executed in 1938), Freda fled with young Jon and became an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union, including in several bestselling books. They eventually emigrated to the United Stateswhere Freda hosted meetings of prominent anticommunists in their home. That is where Jon met many leading intellectuals and activists of the Cold War era, connections that lasted alifetime. He became an accomplished writer in his own right, as well as asuccessful businessman. He traveled extensively.

Jon was anearly ubiquitous presence at DC gatheringsand globally. He attended many events at Cato, as well as Grover Norquists Wednesday meetings at Americans for Tax Reform. He supported Reason magazine and the Reason Foundation, and many other libertarian causes. And he was proud to be associated with The American Conservative magazine, where he served on the board of directors, and as publisher.

Whenever Iencountered Jon at one of these meetings, he would always greet me with awarm toothy smile and afirm handshake. He made me feel so welcomed at these gatherings but he did the same for everyone else as well, as though he appreciated every single person in attendance.

But his warmth and affection for those around him concealed adeep and abiding hatred of Americas wars, and arelated sadness at his fellow Americans apparent disinterest in the suffering these wars caused for innocent men, women, and children all around the world. In meetings, he would often ask questions, or make comments, in his soft, almost lyrical, voice. Most of the time, his remarks conveyed his skepticism of these wars, even as he knew that many of those around him (mostly conservatives, but also some libertarians) wished desperately that he would just sit down and shut up. But that just wasnt his style.

Jon was apeacemaker within the oftenfractious liberty movement, too. His sadness about Americas wars was perhaps only exceeded by his disappointment that his friends in the antiwar movement were fighting with one another. He was anatural bridgebuilder with avery wide circle of acquaintancesand always on the lookout to make introductions and build alliances.

Last year, when it presented Jon alifetime achievement award, The American Conservative prepared afitting tribute video. Iknow and respect many of the people who offered their reflections on why Jon was worthy of such an award. TACs Executive Editor Kelly Beaucar Vlahos called him one of the bravest people that Iknow in Washington. To Ambassador C. Boyden Gray, Jon was one of the most gentle, generous men Ive ever met. My friend John Henry declared, simply, Jon is America.

This was particularly true in the post9/11 era, when conservatives, in particular, really didnt want to hear one of their own questioning the wisdom of George W. Bushs various foreign warsespecially the war in Iraq. Jon would be the only person to stand up and say the Iraq war made no sense, John Henry recalled, when everybody else was saluting, [and chanting] USA! USA!

The Heritage Foundations Lee Edwards counted Jons willingness to stand up for the truth as he sees it, regardless of what others say as his greatest achievement.

All of the wise men of the conservative movement, Edwards explained, believed that the United States should be waging war in Iraq. They would listen as Jon would question why. Then hed sit down. Afew moments of awkward silence typically ensued before the meeting moved onto the next topic.

But, after the luncheon was over, Edwards continued, people would come up to him and say Jon, keep saying that. Keep asking those questionsI havent got enough guts to do it, but you have.

Edwards noted that when the weapons of mass destruction werent found in Iraq, and most Americans came to realize that the war had been aterrible mistake, Jon didnt go around saying I was right. Itold you so and that, too, was to his great credit. Edwards congratulated Utley for speaking up when others were timid.

Jon was alongtime generous donor to the Cato Institute, and for that we are all grateful. But his influence ran much deeper that that. He was awarm and wonderful friend, and an inspiration to those of us who followed in his footsteps.

During this period of COVID-19, when all public gatherings have been postponed or canceled, we have more urgent things to attend to. But, when things return to normal, and Ifor the first time attend one of those meetings where Iwould have expected to see Jons kind smile and reassuring presence, Ifear that that is when the true depths of this loss will really be felt.

Rest in peace, my friend. Your legacy lives on.

Excerpt from:

In Remembrance of Jon Basil Utley (1934-2020) | Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute

READING the comments sections ofTCWand the wider conservative media, it is evident that a war within a war is raging, as proponents of freedom from authoritarian government do battle with proponents of self-sacrifice in the national interest. Yet both are fundamental conservative principles, for conservatives value the interests of both the individual and the community. Matters are immeasurably complicated because such are the unknowns that any calculation of costs and benefits medical, economic, political, psychological is impossible.

I have argued for the lockdown, but I fully recognise that powerful arguments can be marshalled on the other side. As Trump has said, the cure may wreak more damage than the disease.

What, I wonder, would the late Sir Roger Scruton have made of it all? Scruton always veered more to the communal than the libertarian strain of conservatism. For him, the essence of conservatism was family and community, not the market. But at the same time, there was no braver or more principled opponent of communism, of the totalitarian state, or proponent of the importance of private property and of the rights of individuals to enjoy lifes pleasures.

The key to Scrutons conservatism, I think, lies in Burke, Hegel and F H Bradley. For Burke, wisdom lay not in one mans private stock of reason, but in the the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages. For Hegel, the individual is ultimately a social being. We owe an absolute obligation to the state and its institutions because the existence of civil society is conditional on the existence of a state. And for Bradley, it is only because man is first a social being that he can realise himself as an individual. We have found ourselves, writes Bradley, when we have found our station and its duties, our function as an organ in the social organism.

Libertarians and individualists might be shocked at these sentiments and they are easy to misconstrue; but they were second nature to Scruton. He particularly admired Bradleys essayMy Station and its Duties, from which the above quote is taken, and often referred to it. His early essayHegel as a Conservative Thinkerbowled me over when I stumbled across it more than twenty years ago. The subtly woven arguments are beyond my ability to summarise, but consider the import of this sentence from the final paragraph:

An understanding of the human being as a social artefact shows inequality to be natural, power to be good, and constraint to be a necessary ingredient in the only freedom we can value.

Libertarian advocates of the minimal state will heartily disagree and warn of the path to totalitarianism. But for Scruton, the guarantee of our liberties, of the liberties we might truly value,wasthe state. Not a totalitarian state, to be sure, but a state to which we owed profound obligations.

It may be that those obligations have never been greater than they are now.

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The duties we owe to the state - The Conservative Woman

The coronavirus relief checks are coming. Businesses are closing, increasingly by state mandate; unemployment claims are spiking; and as many as eight in 10 American workers live paycheck-to-paycheck, while half can't cover an unexpected $400 expense. Republicans and Democrats alike in Washington agree on the necessity of cash aid distributed directly to the public, something in the range of $1,000 per adult and $500 per child.

The major point left to be settled is means testing: Should the payments be scaled down or phased out entirely for those in higher income brackets? Perhaps the expected response from libertarians like me and fiscal conservatives more broadly is support for upfront means testing or some other barrier (requiring people to request the money, for example, or subjecting it to 2020 income taxes) to reduce the overall expenditure. Perhaps it's my cynical expectation of perpetual federal insolvency talking, but I think that would be a mistake. The scale of our national debt is already so monstrous that penny-pinching pandemic relief aid will accomplish nothing good.

So if we're doing checks, it should be simple and democratic, with minimal bureaucracy and maximum opportunity for local redistribution.

There are several reasons why this is a good idea, none of which require affection for big government. First is the issue of speed. Means testing or requiring applications of any kind takes time. But the growing portion of those eight in 10 workers living paycheck-to-paycheck don't have time. Some live in municipalities, like New York City, where evictions and/or utilities cutoffs have been suspended, but not all. And even if their housing is temporarily safe and transport costs near zero, even the most Spartan quarantiners still have bills to pay.

Second is the reality that however much shutdowns may be the least worst option in many places the state is the party responsible for these losses of income. Eminent domain is a reasonable analogy here, and when your property is taken via eminent domain, you must be compensated. (The Fifth Amendment requires that "private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.") That compensation doesn't scale down for those with higher incomes, and rightly so.

Equally compelling, to my mind, is the real risk that means testing will prove destructively inaccurate. The preferred method seems to be checking income levels from 2018 tax returns but surely it's obvious that many people who were comfortable a year and a half ago are now on the brink of disaster?

I'm thinking of my friend who co-owns a local coffee shop, now shuttered indefinitely; or my friend the substitute teacher, who lost work when Minnesota closed all public schools through at least the end of the month; or my friend who works in mental health care in a hospital which could furlough her to make more room for COVID-19 patients. Whatever their 2018 tax returns said, that doesn't reflect their present reality. Here's a classic libertarian line: This isn't a call Washington will be able to make accurately. The feds aren't as smart as they think they are.

Finally, on a more hopeful note, simply sending checks to everyone allows those who don't need the extra money to give it to those who do. If "I still have a secure job" when a check shows up, tweeted Cato Institute scholar Scott Lincicome, "I'll blow it all on local restaurant gift cards and THEN donate all of those to my church." I hope to do something similar, and others will too. Thus permitting "citizens to make millions of separate and decentralized judgments about the needs in their communities will ... make the aid more effective overall," argued National Review writer and former columnist at The Week Michael Brendan Dougherty.

This is perhaps the most famous insight of libertarian economist F.A. Hayek (who, incidentally, supported a universal basic income, which these checks are on a temporary scale): No central authority can possibly collect all the local knowledge needed to plan a national economy. Indeed, "practically every individual has some advantage over all others because he possesses unique information of which beneficial use might be made," Hayek wrote in a 1945 contribution to The American Economic Review, "but of which use can be made only if the decisions depending on it are left to him or are made with his active cooperation."

The state does not know better than you or me about who in our communities is in sudden need. When and we all know there is no "if" here Washington borrows, loans, and spends enormous sums of money attempting to offset the economic distress the response to coronavirus has wrought, distributing responsibility for how that money is spent will make better use of local knowledge than any national means testing program can. The simpler and more democratic the relief spending, the more real good it will be able to do.

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The small-government case for giving everyone a big check - The Week

East Peoria (WEEK) -- The Libertarian Party wants you to know they have 15 candidates running for president this year.

Ahead of next week's primary, the party is having a debate at the East Peoria Embassy Suites Friday night at 8 PM.

Local organizer Steve Suess says the party is focused on a few fronts, including anti-intervention policy, tax reform, civil liberties, and minimizing government involvement.

He's asking voters to give his party a chance.

"People won't give money to a Libertarian candidate or won't vote for a Libertarian candidate because they can't win but at the same time we're not gonna break that cycle of not winning if people don't vote and donate and volunteer for campaigns I would encourage people to do research and make the decision they feel most comfortable about in the ballot box," shares Suess.

Despite many cancellations from coronavirus concerns, Suess says they still plan to go on with the event.

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Libertarian Party reminds people they have 15 candidates running for president - week.com

It's almost never a good idea to use a public health crisis to score points against your political opponentsand if you're going to do it, you really ought to try to describe the situation accurately.

Actually, that second part applies even when there's no public health crisis.

It has, however, become fashionable for certain elements of the Very Online Left to use the ongoing coronavirus outbreak as evidence that libertarians either don't actually exist or that we quickly abandon our principles in the face of a pandemic. This recent outbreak of libertarian bashingwhich makes only slightly more sense than the claims made by some on the right that libertarians are secretly running everything in Washington, D.C. and plotting to get your kids addicted to pornseems to have started with a pithy tweet from Atlantic writer Derek Thompson on March 3. But it's become a ubiquitous online "take" since Sunday afternoon, when Bloomberg opinion writer Noah Smith logged on.

The take may have achieved its final format least let's hope sowith The Atlantic's publication on Tuesday of an 800-word piece from staff writer Peter Nicholas carrying the headline (sigh) "There Are No Libertarians in a Pandemic."

Lazy? Yes. Inaccurate? Yes.

Nicholas' article opens with a scene from CPACthat's the Conservative Political Action Conference, by the wayand proceeds to detail all the ways in which the Trump administration has botched the federal response to the new coronavirus, called COVID-19. You know, the same Trump administration that is just full to the brim with libertarians. The same administration that is raising barriers to free trade, making it more difficult for people to move to America, giving bail-outs to politically favored industries, considering more bailouts to more politically favored industries, trying to regulate free speech online, suing newspapers in an attempt to curb the First Amendment, and launching missiles into foreign countries without congressional authorization. That administration? That's the libertarian one?

Nicholas tries to get away with this nonsense by setting up a false equivalency. Trump is campaigning against socialism, you see, and libertarians also dislike socialismso therefore the Trump administration must be libertarian. Right? Therefore, when Trump starts talking like a socialist himselfby promising coronavirus bailouts and the repurposing of disaster recovery funds to cover people who come down with COVID-19it is proof positive that the libertarian world has abandoned its commitment to smaller government. Voila!

Perhaps The Atlantic's editorial staff has self-quarantined from its dutieshow else to explain how an otherwise thoughtful publication could allow a headline that confuses libertarianism with anything that the Trump administration is doing? For that matter, maybe Smith and Thompson believe that an army of strawmen are an effective defense against COVID-19. I hope it works out for them.

As a libertarian in a pandemic, let me first assure you that we do in fact still exist.

And, in fact, it is the free marketand, to a lesser extent, its defenderswho will help you survive the new coronavirus. All those groceries you're stocking up on in advance of the expected collapse of civilization? They didn't end up on grocery store shelves because government officials ordered it to happen or because someone was feeling particularly generous today. That gallon jug of hand sanitizer delivered to your front door less than 48 hours after you ordered it online? It didn't show up because Trump tweeted it into existence or because the surgeon general is driving a delivery truck around the country.

Bottled water? Face masks? They're available because someone is turning a profit by making and selling them. The first latex gloves were invented in the 1880s but the disposable variety that are so useful right now have "only been available since 1964, as innovated by the private company Ansell, founded by Eric Ansell in Melbourne, Australia. Thank you international trade," notes Jeffrey Tucker, editorial director of the American Institute for Economic Research.

Sure, one consequence of the success of private enterprise in reshaping the world is an interconnected planet that allows for something like COVID-19 to spread more rapidly than would have been possible in the past. But modern technology has also allowed doctors, private enterprises, and (yes) governments to respond more quickly than ever before.

It also means that you'll have access to nearly every piece of film, television, and music ever recorded by human beings if you have to self-quarantine for a week or two. It means that humans have the ability to live far healthier lives than they did in 1918, when a global flu pandemic killed 50 million people. The people who live through the current coronavirus outbreak because of stronger immune systems made possible by steady diets won't show up on any list of statistics after the coronavirus has passed, but capitalism is at least partially to thank for their survival.

In short, if you had to pick any time in human history to live through a global pandemic, you'd be incredibly foolish not to pick the current time. And the reason you'd pick this moment in history probably has less to do with who is running the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the World Health Organization, and more to do with the technological and medical advances made possible by free enterprise.

"What is the mighty contribution of government these days?" asks Tucker. "To order quarantines but not to tell you whether you can step outside, how you will get groceries, how long it will last, who you can invite in, and when it will all end. Don't try to call the authorities. They have better and bigger things to worry about than your sorry plight that is causing you sleepless nights and endless worry. Thank goodness for digital technology that allows you to communicate with friends and family."

Yeah, there are libertarians in a pandemic. We're the ones willing to acknowledge how much more all of this would suck if the market didn't exist.

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Yes, There Are Libertarians in Pandemics - Reason

Man, it seems like only a few days ago that the smart set was writing off small-government types (again!) in articles with such snarky headlines as "There Are No Libertarians in a Pandemic."

By now it might be more correct to believe there are only libertarians in a pandemic, including officials who are suddenly willing and able to waive all sorts of ostensibly important rules and procedures in the name of helping people out.

How else to explain the decision by the much-loathed and irrelevant-to-safety Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to allow family-sized jugs of hand sanitizer onto planes? The TSA isn't going full Milton Friedmanit's reminding visitors to its website "that all other liquids, gels and aerosols brought to a checkpoint continue to be allowed at the limit of 3.4 ounces or 100 milliliters carried in a one quart-size bag." But it's a start.

Something similar is going on in Massachusetts, a state well-known for high levels of regulation, including of the medical sector. Expecting a crush in medical care needs due the coronavirus, Gov. Charlie Baker has seen the light and agreed to streamline the Bay State's recognition of "nurses and other medical professionals" who are registered in other parts of the United States, something that 34 states do on a regular basis.

As Walter Olson of the Cato Institute observes,

That's agood idea, which should help get medical professionals to where they are most needed, and it is one of many good ideas that should be kept on as policy after the pandemic emergency passes. After Superstorm Sandy in 2012, by contrast, when stormravaged oceanside homeowners badly needed skilled labor to restore their premises to usable condition, local laws in places like Long Island forbade them to bring in skilled electricians even from other counties of New York, let along other states.

And over at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), bureaucrats have suddenly decided to approve overnight a coronavirus test that its former chief, Scott Gottlieb, has described as a "fairly routine technology."

The Roche test is 10 times faster than the process currently being used, but the FDA didn't approve it until this past Fridayand then only for this particular emergency. But even with that delay and that limited application, this is a welcome shift.

As Reason's Ronald Bailey has noted, the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention "stymied private and academic development of diagnostic tests that might have provided an early warning and a head start on controlling the epidemic that is now spreading across the country."

You can probably see where I'm going with this: If the policies and decisions above are worth tossing out in an emergency, maybe they ought to be sidelined during normal times too.

Situations like the 9/11 attacks and the coronavirus outbreak often open the door to naked power grabs whose terrible consequences that stick around long after the events that inspired them (looking at you, TSA!). Governments rarely return power once they've amassed it. But if you listen carefully, you can hear them telling us what stuff they realize can be safely tossed. When the infection rates come down and the theaters and schools and everything else get back to normal, it may be tempting just to go back to the way we were. Resist the temptation: A lot of the rules we put up with every day are worth reevaluating, and not only during an emergency.

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Tired: There Are No Libertarians in a Pandemic. Wired: There Are Only Libertarians in a Pandemic. - Reason

Speaking to reporters at the White House yesterday, Trump said he wants to shore up businesses and aid people whose finances have been hit. Were going to be working with a lot of companies so they dont get penalized for something thats not their fault, he said. Worried about the slumping travel industry, the White House is now considering tax deferrals for airlines and cruise lines. The administration has been weighing whether to use funds from a disaster program to pay for treatment of uninsured people who have become infected, The Wall Street Journal reported. And Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, said the administration might dust off a Korean Warera law called the Defense Production Act to ensure rapid manufacturing of medical supplies in the private sector.

Thats not free-market capitalism, says Jean Cohen, a political-theory professor at Columbia University, referring to the measures the White House has contemplated as the virus spreads. You can choose the term: Its regulated capitalism, or its the interventionist state, or its democratic socialism. If you want to serve the public good instead of private profit making, you need government to come in and make sure thats done.

Whatever the term, the Trump administrations handling of the outbreak amounts to government activism in the face of a national crisis. Its nothing new and, as may well prove the case this time around, its often necessary. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously called on American industry to outproduce the Axis powers during World War II, retooling whole sectors to meet ambitious manufacturing goals for tanks and planes. George W. Bush, a Republican, sunk hundreds of billions of dollars into a bailout program meant to keep the banking industry afloat after the 2008 financial crisis. I decided that the only way to preserve the free market in the long run was to intervene in the short run, Bush wrote in his 2010 book, Decision Points.

Read: The strongest evidence yet that America is botching coronavirus testing

In Trumps case, he may try to have it both ways: using socialism as a convenient campaign slogan, while battling the coronavirus with extraordinary measures comparable to what other modern presidents have done to beat back a crisis. Critics have panned his methods so far. As infections spread, hes kept up his golf outings and fundraising schedule, while downplaying a virus that could have reached his outstretched hand: At CPAC, he greeted Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, who was in contact with the infected participant.

Trumpworld would like the 2020 general election to be a referendum on socialism; the Democrats want it to be a referendum on Trump. We will have it out, Kudlow said at CPAC. President Trump is more than prepared to show the world why what he called the American model of free enterprise will whip socialism every time.

Trump, though, is no doctrinaire economic conservative. His political brand is rooted in personality and celebrity, and hes bent on capturing a second term. If he decides that the quickest path to quashing the coronavirus is activist, interventionist government, free-market doctrine is unlikely to get in his way. If theres some dissonance in his reelection message and his practices, hell live with it.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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There Are No Libertarians in an Epidemic - The Atlantic

ALBION To describe Chase Tkach is a daunting task, much like the one she faced when running as a third-party candidate for a seat on Orleans County Legislature last fall.

Shes a grade-school dropout. A third-year college student. A mother. A rebel. A politician. Founder and Head of the Orleans Libertarian Party.

Oh, and she happens to make her living in the always-thriving sex industry, both as a for-hire dominatrix and a porn star.

She also happens to be a friendly, articulate young woman with a passion for politics and change and who wont back down when challenged.

To say Chase Tkach is shaking things up in the rural, vastly conservative Orleans County is an understatement.

Shes quite a character, said Tony DOrazio, vice chairman of the State Libertarian Party. Were a party full of characters. We have people who are very professional and then we have people like Chase. She is very much not a farmer but she has been able to go in and get things done.

The main thing, for Libertarians, is that Tkach was able to establish a presence in Orleans.

We tried to get that going for years and she came in and got it done, DOrazio said.

Tkach is just 24 and has been living in Orleans County for six years.

She was born in Brockport and moved to Florida at the age of 2.

She dropped out of school in Orlando after seventh grade, got her GED and moved back to New York when she became pregnant at 18.

I have family here I havent seen in years and I wanted to reconnect with them, she said. And I didnt want to raise my child in Florida. I was in Miami and it was really bad. I didnt want my child growing up in that atmosphere.

Tkach lived in Medina, renting an apartment, and at age 20 bought a house in Carlton.

Politics came easy as her family was always talking politics.

At first, I was a registered Republican because thats what I thought my family was, Tkach said. I never heard of Libertarian. I called my dad one day and said its funny that you say youre a Republican but half of your values are not Republican values. He said Im not a Republican. Im whats called a Libertarian. I had no idea!

I started getting really into it and said this is the best thing ever. This is completely me.

She began searching for other like-minded people and found them in Monroe County, which has the largest number of members of any Libertarian chapter in the state.

She met with DOrazio and told me she wanted to form a chapter in Orleans.

First, she got elected to the state committee and two years later, in September, officially formed the Orleans chapter, of which she is chairperson.

In the meantime, she ran for an at-large seat on the county Legislature, challenging incumbent Republican Don Allport.

It started with me going to a legislature meeting and my opponent was talking about how marijuana was dangerous and should be kept illegal, she said. I said youre wrong for keeping it from people who need it. So I want to take his spot because he shouldnt be there.

With that, Tkach throws her head back and laughs, which she does often.

She is personable, intelligent and easy to talk to, something that helped her grab more than 700 votes in a losing effort against Allport. That was the most third-party votes of any candidate last year or any other year for that matter.

The Libertarian message self responsibility, personal freedom and minimum government resonates with people, especially in rural counties.

Orleans, oddly enough, had the highest number of people, percentage wise, in the state who voted for Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Larry Sharpe in 2018.

Still, Tkach, heavily tattooed and pierced, did create quite a stir when she ran against Allport.

I did, she laughs. I do that a lot. Thats how I get my way in. Hey! I look this way. Come talk to me and then Im like Im educated. Lets talk about politics.

The status quo, the leaders of the Republican and Democrat parties, didnt want anything to do with me.

It didnt bother Tkach one bit.

Ive never looked at people in higher positions than me, I never put them above me, she said. It never worried or bothered me. Im like, I feel like I know more than you and Im going to go ahead and do this and take my shot and keep going until I win. If Im that confident in what I know, I dont feel like they can stop me.

Tkach certainly exudes confidence. It helps that she could not care less about what people think of her lifestyle.

I dont hide anything from anybody. Ive always been that way. Im not scared of what people think about me. The more that I see people being themselves, it makes me more comfortable being myself. I feel like I want to do that for other people who are struggling to be open about who they are.

She freely talks about her work as a porn actress (using the name Molly Smash) and dominatrix, something that obviously takes people aback.

She met with the sheriff and District Attorney Joseph Cardone as a kind of pre-emptive strike.

I informed them that this is what I do, she said. I have contracts and Im doing this legally. Everything I do is consensual and I told them I dont want to worry out but just let you know that this is what Im doing. I want to be normalized, not stigmatized. Sometimes when youre open and honest about it, that goes a long way. They were both very understanding people.

She also is open and honest and forceful in beliefs that all drugs should be legalized and, just as important, that sex work should be legalized. She is a protector of rights, especially when it comes to the Second Amendment. That, too, resonates with people in rural counties.

If I had it my way, you would be able to buy guns out of a vending machine, she said, half joking. I want to decriminalize all drugs, not just marijuana. Let the police focus on murder and rape and leave it alone. Theres only so much I can do to convince them, but there is proof and evidence that decriminalization works. Same thing for sex workers. Its a victimless crime. Consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want, as long as no one gets hurt.

Criminalizing drugs and sex work makes it more dangerous, she said.

She does her homework and speaks as if she knows what shes talking about. Because, she does.

Ive met her a few times and we agree on a lot of issues, such as the Second Amendment and we disagree om some issues, which is fine, said Orleans County Sheriff Christopher Bourke, who also was on the campaign trail last year. Shes very intelligent and a kind person.

Tkach did make some friends while campaigning, one being Fred Miller, who serves as the minority leader for the Legislature.

I had a long conversation with her once and found her quite interesting and refreshing, Miller said. The biggest thing is, with young people especially, people make judgements, especially in the political field. I think its refreshing for any young person to be interested in politics. I wish more young people would get involved. Its difficult for them. Ive learned that in my time with the legislature that so much happens during the day and people dont have the time.

I give her credit. Many people sit back and criticize and dont have the guts to do something about it. She does, and thats refreshing.

Tkach wont be going away, she promises. She is in her third year as a political science major at Brockport College. She plans on seeking a position on the planning board in Carlton, where she lives with her boyfriend and two children, 2 and 5, and is spending this year campaigning for Duane Whitmer, the Libertarian candidate for the 27th Congressional District.

She also plans on running again for the county at-large seat in two years.

More than anything, I want to change the culture of this place, she said. This place is dying. Its run to the ground. Taxes are too high. Im a homeowner and taxes are outrageous. There are simple things we can do. Let people beautify their homes without worrying their taxes will go up. We need to get more people to move here.

Ive met a lot of friends around here, redneck friends and urban friends and were all here for the same reason: We value privacy. Keep the government out of our lives. We value your privacy and we dont always have to agree on the same thing. We can drastically disagree. But we dont need the government forcing my values onto yours. Thats what makes Libertarians so unique, is that there are so many opinions. We dont want everybody looking the same, talking the same or thinking the same.

Her goal? Ditch the two-party system.

Its not fair, she said. Get out of this two-party duopoly and move on from that. Its 2020! We dont have time for this anymore.

Your time is coming. Eventually, you are going to get tired of this and Im still going to be running. I want to do this because I want to see a change in my life, my familys and everyone around here. Im serious about what Im doing and Im sticking to it.

The fork ratings are based primarily on food quality and preparation, with service and atmosphere factored into the final decision. Reviews are based on one unsolicited, unannounced visit to the restaurant.

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Seeking change and acceptance: Sex worker and political candidate riles things up in Orleans and beyond - The Daily News Online

SEABROOK - A citizens petition opposing "sanctuary cities" passed by more than 1,200 votes across four towns Tuesday, though the article created a rift between its author and the Libertarian Party.

School officials were perplexed when Libertarian state Rep. Max Abramson of Seabrook put the non-binding petition on the Winnacunnet Cooperative School District ballot for Tuesday's Town Meeting. The article asked voters to agree that no school district nor town official shall establish Sanctuary Cities policies that prevent immigration laws from being enforced.

Abramson said he put the article on the school ballot to get the question in front of voters in multiple towns rather than one. It passed in Hampton, North Hampton, Seabrook and Hampton Falls by a cumulative vote of 3,519 to 2,306. It passed 1,716 to 1,187 in Hampton, 454 to 295 in Hampton Falls, 588 to 443 in North Hampton and 761 to 381 in Seabrook.

"It shows overwhelming opposition to sanctuary cities and finally allowed the public to have their say on it," said Abramson, who added before the vote that immigration affects voters "more than probably any other single one policy issue."

Abramson previously cosponsored legislation banning sanctuary cities statewide. The bill was killed last year, but he said he plans to file or support similar legislation in the future.

The petition drew praise from conservatives like Hampton Selectman Regina Barnes, who recently announced her run for state Senate as a Republican this year. It also drew criticism from members of the Libertarian Party, whose platform embraces open borders. Abramson switched to being Libertarian after being elected as a Republican in 2018, and he announced last year he was running for the Libertarian presidential nomination.

Brian Shields, chair of the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire, said party members felt convinced Abramson's beliefs did not align enough with the party platform. The recent petition regarding sanctuary cities, he said, was viewed as further confirmation.

"Max Abramson deserves to be censured by the state party for his continued opposition to the platform and principles of the Libertarian Party," read a letter to the editor from Darryl Perry, former chair of the Libertarian Party in New Hampshire (LPNH). Shields said Perry also directly requested LPNH take such action, and they were considering it when Abramson decided to withdraw from the party.

"My reason is simple: the abusiveness and bullying that I've seen from some activists, trolls and Antifa thugs who now claim to speak for all Libertarians has reached a point where we cannot recruit and keep people in the LP," Abramson wrote in a post on Facebook about his departure.

"He claims we were too mean," Shields said. Abramson's censure, he said, could have entailed the party separating itself from Abramson's actions, as well as calling for the removal of his membership or candidacy.

Shields said Abramson's petition violated the "freedom of movement," a core belief for the Libertarian Party, and supported statewide prohibitions on local action - enacting sanctuary city policies. He said that also went against the party's beliefs.

"He left the party while we were in the middle of a vote for it," Shields said. "If he had stayed, we most likely would have censured him."

Shields said Abramson is currently listed as a Democrat on the New Hampshire secretary of state's online voter lookup page, though Abramson said that was only the case because he wanted to vote for Tulsi Gabbard in the New Hampshire Primary.

The New Hampshire General Court website still listed Abramson as Libertarian this week, but Abramson said he currently has no party affiliation. He had been running a campaign for the Libertarian presidential nomination, and he said he is now encouraging people to vote for him as an independent.

"I'm a man without a party," Abramson said, "but still just vote with my district as a legislator."

Read more from the original source:

Petition to ban sanctuary cities approved on Winnacunnet school ballot - Seacoastonline.com

Szka and TechFreedom, which receives funding from at least one tech giant, Google, have been relentless allies of Silicon Valley, particularly as it has faced calls for increased regulation in Washington in recent years. The group has opposed efforts to create more stringent rules for privacy and online speech, among other issues.

But Szka has also been a frequent critic of the president, delivering at times scathing rebukes of his actions on social media.

The planned shake-up comes just four days after Szka prompted a firestorm of criticism online by suggesting that the president succumbing to the virus would be fitting.

Serious question: could there possibly [sic] any greater poetic justice in the universe than for Trump to die of the #CPACvirus? Szka tweeted late Monday.

Recent reports that an attendee at the Conservative Political Action Conference was later diagnosed with Covid-19 sparked fears that the president may have been exposed to the virus. Reps. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) had contact with the president as well before entering self-quarantine due to possible exposure.

The Szka tweet immediately drew condemnations online, racking up hundreds of negative replies within minutes and some calls for his resignation. Szka later deleted the tweet, and has since issued an apology.

Earlier this week, I sent a thoughtless tweet making an inappropriate comment about the President that I deeply regret, he tweeted Thursday. I was wrong to tweet it and deleted it. Again, I apologize.

See more here:

Tech think tank chief to step down after Trump death tweet - POLITICO

In the midst of the current crisis over the coronavirus pandemic, we often face decisions about the extent to which weas ordinary citizens and voters with little or no scientific expertiseshould defer to the views of scientists. Back in 2015, I wrote an in-depth post assessing this question (see here for non-paywall version), based in part on my academic work on political ignorance. I reprint it here in is entirely in the hopes it might be useful to at least some readers in these difficult times.

The post contains a number of nuances and qualifications. But the bottom line is that we should indeed defer to scientists on technical issues within their expertise, especially if there seems to be a cross-ideological consensus among the relevant experts. That most definitely applies to the epidemiological aspects of coronavirus (rate of spread, death rate, how it's more dangerous than the common flu, etc.).

On the other hand, there are issues of policy and morality that cannot be resolved by scientific/technical expertise alone and/or that require the expertise of economists and other social scientists as much or more than "hard scientists." Those issues likely include a number of the policy questions surrounding how best to respond to the pandemic. "Hard" science is an essential component of those decisions, but not the only component.

I would add that these precepts are especially difficult to followbut also especially importantwhen the expert scientific consensus goes against our ideological priors. In the 2015 post, I noted one such example where I try to practice what I preach (global warming). Coronavirus is another. It would be ideologically convenient for me, as a libertarian, if this pandemic were no more dangerous than the flu. That conclusion would significantly weaken the case for using massive government intervention to address the crisis. But I nonetheless believe it unwarranted to challenge the broad expert consensus that says coronavirus is indeed much more dangerous than either the flu or various other recent epidemics.

What follows is the 2015 post reprinted in full:

A recent Pew Research Center study shows that scientists and the general public disagree on a wide range of science-related public policy issues. For example, the survey finds that 87 percent of scientists, but only 37 percent of the general public believe that it is safe to eat genetically modified foods; 68 percent of scientists believe it is safe to eat food treated with pesticides, compared to only 28 percent of the public. Relative to the public, scientists are much more supportive of nuclear power and the use of animals in scientific research, and much less supportive of offshore drilling. Also, some 87 percent of scientists believe that climate change is mostly due to human activity, a view shared by only 50 percent of the public.

I. The Case for Deferring to Scientists.

This raises the question of whether voters should defer to majority scientific opinion on these issues. Given my research on political ignorance, it is tempting for me to conclude that the answer is almost always "yes." The majority of the public is often ignorant about basic facts about government and politics, and their scientific knowledge is also far from impressive. You don't have to believe that scientists are always right about scientific issues to conclude that they are on average more likely to be right than generally ignorant voters are. To the extent that this is true, an electorate that defers to majority scientific opinion on these issues would make fewer mistakes than one that does not, even though neither would be completely error free.

The above reasoning has some merit. But it is important to avoid conflating two different kinds of "scientific" issues. Some of the questions addressed in the Pew survey are almost purely technical questions. For example, the issue of whether GMO foods or foods treated with pesticides are safe, or the issue of whether human activity is the main cause of climate change. On these sorts of technical matters, scientists are indeed likely to know much more than most ordinary people, and there is a good case for deferring to them. But some seemingly scientific policy issues actually include major nontechnical components on which scientists are not likely to have specialized knowledge.

II. The Limits of Scientific Expertise.

Some of the questions raised in the Pew study are actually mixed questions of scientific facts and moral values. For example, the issue of whether animals should be used in scientific research partly depends on the scientific benefits of using thema question on which scientists have special expertise. But it also depends on the moral status of the animals in question, and whether it is ethically permissible to inflict certain types of harm on them. On that latter issue, scientists have no special knowledge. If there is a group of experts that does, it is likely to be moral philosophers and political theorists; and these groups areon average more sympathetic to animal rights arguments than the general public is.

Other issues on the survey raise questions of political economy rather than pure science. For example, many more scientists (82 percent) than ordinary people (59 percent) believe that growing population will be a "major" problem in the future. Whether it will be or not depends largely on whether the possible costs of population growth (e.g.environmental externalities) will outweigh the benefits, such as increased innovation and a greater division of labor. On these latter questions, economists are likely to be more expert than natural scientists are, and economists tend to be much more skeptical of Malthusian arguments than either natural scientists or the general population. They like to point out that Malthusian predictions have proven wrong for some two hundred years, which does not prove that they will always be wrong, but does suggest reason for imposing a high burden of proof on them.

Even on issues when scientists really are expert, there is occasionally a case for discounting their views based on ideological bias, or narrow self-interest. For example, if we find that scientists are in favor of increased government subsidies for science, their position could be based purely on disinterested expertise; but it could also be special interest pleading.

But it would be a mistake to dismiss all or most expert opinion on such grounds. Many of the issues on which experts and the public diverge have little direct connection to the self-interest of the former. Large lay-expert disagreements persist even in studies that control for self-interest and ideology, as Bryan Caplan did in his work comparing the views of economists and lay people on economic issues, and we have in our joint work comparing the views of laypeople and political scientists on political influence (coauthored with Eric Crampton and Wayne Grove).

In the case of the Pew survey, it is striking that scientists endorse what are usually considered "right wing" positions on nuclear power, GMO foods, and pesticides, even though scientists are generally much more left-wing in their political views than the average voter is. The scientists could be wrong about these issues. But if so it's not because of ideological bias.

Cynics will argue that I'm only advocating deferring to scientists when they happen to agree with my own libertarian views. Not so. There is indeed congruence between my views and those of the scientists on GMOs and pesticides. On the other hand, it would be very convenient for me and other libertarians if global warming were not a serious problem or were not caused by human activity. One of the standard libertarian arguments against government intervention is that the problem people want the government to solve doesn't really exist in the first place. Nonetheless, I am sufficiently impressed by the majority view of scientists on this question that I think libertarians should avoid the temptation to ignore or dismiss it. Recognizing that the scientists are likely right about the nature of the problem does not mean that they are also right about possible solutions (which will often depend on considerations of ethics and political economy on which scientists are not very expert). But it is still an important issue on which scientists are likely to know much more than laypeople. Unless and until the scientific consensus shifts, libertarians who are not themselves scientific experts should defer to the majority scientific view on the extent and causes of global warming.

In sum, it makes good sense to defer to the views of experts on areas that are actually within their expertise. But not on questions that may seem related, but actually are distinct. Telling the difference isn't always easy. Here, as elsewhere, being a responsible, well-informed voter turns out to be a lot harder than we might think.

Finally, I should note that I recognize that many people believe that voters have an absolute right to make decisions based on ignorance, regardless of whether deference to scientists or some other strategy could enable them to make better-informed choices. I disagree with that view of the ethics of voting for reasons outlined here and here.

Read more:

When Should Lay Voters Defer to the Views of Scientists? - Reason

As the markets have plummeted over global fears surrounding the fallout from the new coronavirus, political pundits have taken up the call: Find some meaning in the coronavirus outbreak and response. And where there is a demand for speculative opinion, there's never a shortage of supply. Thus we've seen the coronavirus, which originated in Wuhan, China, be blamed on President Donald Trump. We've seen government-managed response, which has varied widely in terms of success by country, touted as a final rebuttal of libertarian precepts. We've seen the coronavirus' economic impact cited as a rationale for breaking global supply chains and pursuing industrial autarky instead.

None of these takeaways are particularly compelling. The Trump administration's response has been about as strong as prior federal attempts to deal with public epidemics, ranging from SARS to swine flu. While Trump himself hasn't exactly projected a sense of calming administrative competence, those around him, ranging from Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams, are fully capable of performing as needed. Libertarianism does not suggest that collective action ought to be out of bounds in the case of public emergencies with serious externalities -- few libertarians oppose police departments or proper environmental regulations, for example -- and the record of government competence has been, at best, rather mixed. The solution to vulnerable supply chains running through authoritarian countries is, first, for Western countries to consider security threats when formulating trade policy, and second, for companies to harden their supply chains by diversifying those chains even further.

So, what are the real lessons to be learned from the coronavirus?

First, we should favor governments that are transparent in their distribution of information. China has been celebrated for its extraordinary crackdown on public life, which has brought transmissions down dramatically. But if it were not for China's propagandistic efforts to quash news about the coronavirus in the first place, the epidemic probably would not have become a pandemic.

Second, we must stop humoring anti-scientific rumormongering about issues like vaccines. The curbing of the coronavirus will be reliant on the development of a vaccine, and Americans should understand that vaccines work, and that misinformation about vaccinations should generally be rejected.

Third, we should remember that crises exacerbate underlying issues; they rarely create them. Economic volatility in the aftermath of the coronavirus has merely exposed the underlying weaknesses of the Chinese and European economies; those systemic problems won't be solved through Band-Aid solutions. The public health issues with homelessness will likely be exposed dramatically in the United States; they won't go away when the coronavirus ends. The coronavirus should underscore the necessity for action in the absence of crisis.

Finally, we should remember that charity and local community support matter. Large-scale government response will never be as efficient or as personal as local response. Care for our neighbors. Care for our families. Implement personal behavior that lowers risk. And then wait for more information. Perhaps that's the best lesson from all of this: Jumping to conclusions based on lack of information is a serious mistake.

Ben Shapiro is a nationally syndicated columnist whose work regularly appears in the Herald.

As a public service, we've opened this article to everyone regardless of subscription status.

See more here:

Ben Shapiro: What coronavirus should teach us - Grand Forks Herald

Here is a list of all the candidates for federal, state and local office who filed for office by Fridays deadline. (Incumbents are denoted with an asterisk.)

Congressional District 1 (Las Vegas)

Kamau Bakari, Independent American Party

Joyce Bentley, Republican

Josh Elliott, Republican

Eddie MrLasVegas Hamilton, Republican

Citlaly Larios-Elias, Republican

Joseph Maridon, no political party

Allen Rheinhart, Democrat

Robert Van Strawder Jr., Libertarian

Anthony Thomas, Jr., Democrat

Dina Titus, Democrat*

Congressional District 2 (Reno, Northern Nevada)

Patricia Ackerman, Democrat

Mark Amodei, Republican*

Joel Paul Beck, Republican

Ed Cohen, Democrat

Richard Dunn III, no political party

Janine Hansen, Independent American Party

Reynaldo Hernandez, Democrat

Clint Koble, Democrat

Ian Luetkehans, Democrat

Steve Pragmatic Schiffman, Democrat

Rick Shepherd, Democrat

Congressional District 3 (Las Vegas, Henderson)

Ed S. Bridges II, Independent American Party

Steve Brown, Libertarian

Gary Crispin, no political party

Susie Lee, Democrat*

Brian Nadell, Republican

Corwin Cory Newberry, Republican

Mindy Robinson, Republican

Dan Big Dan Rodimer, Republican

Dan Schwartz, Republican

Dennis Sullivan, Democrat

Tiffany Ann Watson, Democrat

Victor R. Willert, Republican

Congressional District 4 (North Las Vegas, Nye, Lincoln, White Pine counties)

Rosalie Bingham, Republican

Leo Blundo, Republican

George Brucato, Democrat

Christopher Kendall Colley, Democrat

Steffanie Gabrielle DAyr, Democrat

Jennifer Eason, Democrat

Jonathan Royce Esteban, Libertarian

Steven Horsford, Democrat*

Gregory Kempton, Democrat

Jim Marchant, Republican

Charles Navarro, Republican

Sam Peters, Republican

Randi Reed, Republican

Barry Rubinson, Independent American Party

Lisa Song Sutton, Republican

Rebecca Wood, Republican

Senate District 1 (North Las Vegas)

Patricia Pat Spearman, Democrat*

Senate District 3 (Las Vegas)

Chris Brooks, Democrat*

Senate District 4 (North Las Vegas, Las Vegas)

Esper M. Hickman, Republican

Dina Neal, Democrat

Senate District 5 (Henderson)

Carrie Buck, Republican

Tim Hagan, Libertarian

Joshua Heers, Republican

Kristee Watson, Democrat

Senate District 6 (Las Vegas)

April Becker, Republican

Nicole Jeanette Cannizzaro, Democrat*

Senate District 7 (Las Vegas)

Richard Carrillo, Democrat

Roberta Lange, Democrat

Ellen Spiegel, Democrat

Senate District 11 (Las Vegas)

Joshua Dowden, Republican

Dallas Harris, Democrat*

Edgar Galindo Miron Galindo, Republican

Senate District 15 (Reno)

Catana L. Barnes, no political party

Heidi Seevers Gansert, Republican*

Wendy Jauregui-Jackins, Democrat

Kristie A. Strejc, Democrat

Senate District 18 (Las Vegas)

Liz Becker, Democrat

Ronald Ron Bilodeau, Democrat

Scott T. Hammond, Republican*

Senate District 19 (Elko, Eureka, White Pine, Nye, Lincoln and rural Clark counties)

Pete Goicoechea, Republican*

Tiffany Seeback, Independent American Party

Assembly District 1 (North Las Vegas)

Daniele Monroe-Moreno, Democrat*

Assembly District 2 (Las Vegas)

Heidi Kasama, Republican

Garrett LeDuff, no political party

Eva Littman, Democrat

Taylor McArthur, Republican

Christian Morehead, Republican

Radhika RPK Kunnel, Democrat

Erik Sexton, Republican

Jennie Sherwood, Democrat

View original post here:

Candidates who filed for office in Nevada - Las Vegas Review-Journal

It is by now beyond any question that President Trump has bungled the response to the novel coronavirus pandemic about as badly as one could possibly imagine. Senegal, a country with a per-capita GDP of about $3,500, is conducting mass tests for the virus and getting results within 4 hours, while the tiny handful of Americans who can even access tests have to wait days or even weeks. On Friday, a single Chinese oligarch announced he was donating to America on the order of 30 times more test kits than there had been tests conducted across the entire United States since the start of the outbreak up to that point.

It has been clear since 1980 that under Republican rule, the federal government decays. But under Trump, it has gotten full-blown administrative gangrene. Compared to what is needed to combat the crisis, Trump has done basically nothing. Meanwhile, he and his allies in conservative media have pushed an avalanche of misinformation that will only accelerate the spread of the disease. This is what the conservative movement has become: a gigantic public health hazard for America and the world.

There are two main ways in which conservatives have dissolved the bones of American government. The first is ideological. For decades, Republicans have been pushing a libertarian economic vision that can be summarized as "Government Bad." By this view, the government is a largely-pointless hindrance to private enterprise, and basically all regulations and social welfare programs should be done away with. (Prisons and the military can stay, of course.)

But there are many, many things, like public health emergencies, in which private businesses simply cannot handle things on their own. Nothing but the federal government can carry out the rapid and extensive actions needed to coordinate a response to a galloping nationwide viral pandemic, and the federal government is by far best able to finance one. As The New Republic's Alex Pareene writes, the right-wing extremists in the Trump administration have reacted with a sort of slack-jawed disbelief at the private sector completely failing to rise to the coronavirus challenge.

Second and more importantly, there is the conservative propaganda machine. The American right-wing media is without question the most unhinged, hysterical, irresponsible, and conspiracy-addled major press complex in the world. The right-wing media in the U.K. and Australia come close (probably because of shared language and ownership), but nobody beats Fox News in their combination of wide reach and utterly shameless propaganda.

On the one hand, Fox News, The Federalist, Rush Limbaugh, and so on are akin to the state media in a communist dictatorship. The movement is never wrong, Republican politicians are always right, and their political enemies are loathsome traitors who hate freedom, puppies, and apple pie. News that reflects badly on Trump is either made up or the product of a dastardly foreign or left-wing conspiracy. Aging white people across the country have turned their brains to pudding watching Sean Hannity yell insane racist nonsense at them night after night.

But on the other, a dominant faction of Republican politicians, including President Trump, are themselves melt-brained propaganda addicts. This is not how dictatorships usually work. In communist China, the top political leadership sets the party line coming out of the agitprop press, rather than the other way around. Leaders are influenced by party ideology, of course, but they still have wide latitude to change course like when the initial line that the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan was in hand turned out to be drastically mistaken, the Chinese Communist Party turned on a dime and started mass quarantines and lockdowns.

Trump, by contrast, has been loyally watching and live-tweeting Fox News while the epidemic spreads like wildfire, and doing almost nothing to stop it. The line coming from that network and the rest of conservative media is largely that the coronavirus is either fake, a foreign bioweapon, or a Democratic Party/mainstream media conspiracy to undermine the GOP. Rush Limbaugh said the virus was just the "common cold" that was being "weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump." Hannity suggested it might be entirely a fraud. (To be fair, Tucker Carlson and Michael Savage have tried to raise the alarm, but they are outliers.)

In another alarming public address Friday, Trump insisted he and his cronies were doing an "incredible job," despite the ongoing failure to test remotely adequately or pass anything to deal with the developing economic crisis. (He did however boast that America has many large companies.)

The remarkable thing about the denial-and-downplay strategy is that conservative Americans, being disproportionately elderly, are also disproportionately at risk from novel coronavirus. Limbaugh himself is 69 years old and has lung cancer. It could be that, given how utterly incompetent Trump is, furious spinning is the only strategy available.

But there is another important part of the story: conservative media is run by horrible monsters who constantly grift their own viewers and listeners. Whipping up foaming hysteria about liberals is a great opportunity to trick elderly retirees out of a piece of their retirement savings, it turns out. Even as the coronavirus scythe blade descends towards thousands of nursing and retirement homes where Fox News is on every minute of the day, these disgusting scum are using it to hawk garbage investment guides and quack snake oil cures.

First, the conservative movement dissolved the brains of its membership, then those people ended up in charge and dissolved the American government. Now that destruction is going to create quite possibly the worst outbreak of coronavirus in the entire world. Perhaps if the conservative movement suffers thousands of casualties among its own ranks it will finally try some introspection. But I would bet they'll just blame Barack Obama instead.

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The rest is here:

The conservative movement is a public health hazard - The Week

Senators are skipping a planned one-week recess to try to finish two legislative items: A surveillance bill and passage of the House coronavirus legislation.

The Senate had been expected to be out of town this week, instead senators are set to return on Monday afternoon. The House is out after a middle-of-the-night vote early Saturday on the coronavirus package negotiated between House Speaker Nancy PelosiNancy PelosiThe Hill's Morning Report - Biden commits to female VP; CDC says no events of 50+ people for 8 weeks This week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns Teetering economy sparks talk of second stimulus package MORE (D-Calif.) and Treasury Secretary Steven MnuchinSteven Terner MnuchinThis week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns Teetering economy sparks talk of second stimulus package Fauci says coronavirus response may look like 'overreaction' but could prevent worst-case scenario MORE.

The bill includes provisions that bolster unemployment insurance and guarantee that all Americans can get free diagnostic testing for the coronavirus. It also creates a national paid sick leave program through this year requiring employers with fewer than 500 workers as well as government employers would have to provide two weeks of paid sick leave.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnellAddison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellThe Hill's Morning Report - Biden commits to female VP; CDC says no events of 50+ people for 8 weeks This week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns McConnell: Discussions underway on additional coronavirus bills MORE (R-Ky.) predicted that a bipartisan majority of the chamber would want to move swiftly to pass a second coronavirus package, after Congress passed an initial $8.3 billion earlier this month.

Senators will need to carefully review the version just passed by the House. But I believe the vast majority of Senators in both parties will agree we should act swiftly to secure relief for American workers, families, and small businesses, he said in a statement shortly after the House vote.

Minority Leader Charles SchumerCharles (Chuck) Ellis SchumerWatchdog raises concerns over Trump energy regulator Fear factor: Press and politicians should help pause the panic Democratic Senators introduce bill to provide free coronavirus testing MORE (D-N.Y.) quickly urged for the Senate to take up the House bill as passed.

First, Leader McConnell with the crisis we have, as the death today in New York shows, Leader McConnell should never have skipped town should never have let the Senate recess. We should have passed this bill late last night just as the House did. Fortunately, we are coming back Monday and Leader McConnell and our friends on the Republican side should pass the bill as is. It has broad support, got the support of a majority of Democrats and Republicans in the House, Schumer said during a press conference in New York.

But the bill is facing several snags that could slow its path to President TrumpDonald John TrumpThe Hill's Morning Report - Biden commits to female VP; CDC says no events of 50+ people for 8 weeks This week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns Juan Williams: Trump must be held to account over coronavirus MOREs desk.

First, the House is expected to have to clear technical changes to the coronavirus package. That is expected to take place this week by unanimous consent.

Secondly, the Senate is currently debating a surveillance bill, which is expected to get an initial procedural vote on Monday night. McConnell would need the consent of every senator to move from that bill to the coronavirus package, or to skip over other procedural hurdles and clear the House-passed coronavirus quickly.

Sen. Josh HawleyJoshua (Josh) David HawleyThis week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns Bill to protect children online ensnared in encryption fight Hillicon Valley: Facebook, Twitter dismantle Russian interference campaign targeting African Americans | YouTube to allow ads on coronavirus videos | Trump signs law banning federal funds for Huawei equipment MORE (R-Mo.) urged his colleagues to let the coronavirus package pass on Monday, which would take cooperation from all 100 senators.

FISA needs to be carefully reviewed. That takes time. That can wait. The emergency response to #coronavirus should be the first order of business in the Senate tomorrow. There is no reason for this to take days & days, he tweeted.

But there are already calls from some senators to make changes to the House passed bill, or scrap it altogether.

Sen. Ron JohnsonRonald (Ron) Harold JohnsonThis week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns McConnell: Discussions underway on additional coronavirus bills GOP senator announces intention to subpoena firm tied to Burisma MORE (R-Wis.) signaled his opposition to the House bill over concerns that that the paid sick leave provision would harm small businesses.

I hope the Senate will approach this with a level head and pass a bill that does more good than harm or, if it wont, pass nothing at all. The president and states already have adequate authority and funding to address the current situation, he said in a statement.

Sen. Marco RubioMarco Antonio RubioThis week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns McConnell: Discussions underway on additional coronavirus bills Coronavirus spending will come amid huge deficits MORE (R-Fla.) added in a tweet that he was hoping to include additional small business protections into the House-passed bill. Any changes by the Senate would bounce the bill back to the House, which is out of town for the week.

The potential hold ups for the legislation comes as the spread of the coronavirus is upending day-to-day life on Capitol Hill.

A second Capitol Hill staffer, this time in the Rep. David SchweikertDavid SchweikertCarper staffer tests positive in Delaware The Hill's Morning Report - Biden commits to female VP; CDC says no events of 50+ people for 8 weeks This week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns MOREs office, was confirmed to have tested positive for the coronavirus. The news sparked another round of congressional office closures, with several lawmakers already announcing that their staffs are working remotely.

This week will also mark the first full work week after new restrictions were placed on access to the Capitol. In addition to the temporary shuttering of tours, access to the Capitol or the congressional office buildings is now limited to members, staff, press and visitors on official business, with a cap on group size.

The extra measures on Capitol Hill comes as Washington, D.C. also placed new restrictions over the weekend and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidance including recommending canceling any events with more than 50 people for the next eight weeks.

This recommendation does not apply to the day to day operation of organizations such as schools, institutes of higher learning or businesses, the guidance adds.

Capitol Hill staff have tried to ramp up efforts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, including encouraging offices to practice social distancing and an uptick in hand sanitizer machines.

But lawmakers are still keeping close quarters with both staff, reporters and each other, underscoring the heightened risk in the Capitol. Of particular concern is the advanced age of many lawmakers.

Sen. Dick DurbinRichard (Dick) Joseph DurbinThis week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns Coronavirus takes toll on Capitol Hill Senate votes to reverse DeVos student loan rule MORE (D-Ill.) urged the Senate to pass both of its outstanding legislative agenda items by unanimous consent an event that would only require two senatorsone to preside over the chamber and one to make the request.

Given the fact that we can and should pass the Coronavirus package, and any subsequent recommended bipartisan fixes to it, by UC immediately, your decision to call us back to Washington this week is unnecessary and puts many innocent people at risk, the No. 2 Senate Democrat said.

Demanding that those Senators not currently in self quarantine take unnecessary flights exposing themselves and others; requiring our staffs to return to the Capitol and then have all of us return to our families makes no sense in light of the Presidents emergency declaration, he continued.

Surveillance

First on deck for the Senates agenda is Houses legislation to reauthorize a handful of provisions under the USA Freedom Act and make some reforms to the surveillance court.

The Senates debate comes after privacy hawks were able to throw up procedural roadblocks to passing the bill quickly last week, forcing the authorities to lapse on Sunday night.

The bill, which passed the House with bipartisan support last week, extends two USA Freedom Act provisions related to roving wiretaps, allowing law enforcement to follow an individual across devices, and lone wolf terrorists -- people who might be inspired by, but not directly linked to, a terrorist organization.

The bill would end a controversial call records program but reforms and reauthorizes other parts of Section 215, which allows the government to request tangible things relevant to a national security investigation.

But opponents argue it does not go far enough to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA, Court.

The court, which has been a target of both progressives and libertarian-minded Republicans for years, has come under increased scrutiny in the wake of Justice Department inspector general Michael Horowitzs finding of 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions in the warrant applications related to Trump campaign associate Carter Page.

Sen. Mike LeeMichael (Mike) Shumway LeeThis week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns Trump, privacy hawks upend surveillance brawl The Hill's Morning Report Coronavirus tests a partisan Washington MORE (R-Utah) tried to get a 45-day extension of the USA Freedom provisions along with a guarantee of amendment votes on the House-passed bill but Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard BurrRichard Mauze BurrThis week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns Trump, privacy hawks upend surveillance brawl Senate standoff means surveillance programs to lapse MORE (R-N.C.) blocked his request.

McConnell warned late last week that if opponents forced a lapse it would only be temporary, predicting the House bill will eventually pass the Senate.

Lee and Sen. Rand PaulRandal (Rand) Howard PaulThis week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns Trump, privacy hawks upend surveillance brawl The Hill's Morning Report Coronavirus tests a partisan Washington MORE (R-Ky.) are trying to get Trump to oppose the House bill and veto it if it reaches his desk in its current form. Trump railed repeatedly against the Obama-era FBI and Justice Department arguing that they spied on his campaign.

Trump has largely stayed tight lipped about the House bill, except acknowledging that some have urged him to veto it.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthyKevin Owen McCarthyThis week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns Sunday shows preview: Lawmakers gear up for another week fighting the coronavirus, seek to curb fallout Trump touts coronavirus response bill: 'Good teamwork' MORE (R-Calif.) told reporters on Friday night that Trump told him he would support the bill. A top strategist for Paul quickly replied to the news on Twitter with thats funny. Thats not what I heard.

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This week: Senate balances surveillance fight with growing coronavirus concerns | TheHill - The Hill

The failures of socialism have been chronicled many places, fromSocialismby Ludwig von Mises in 1922 toSocialism: The Failed Idea That Never Diesby Kristian Niemietz just last year. Perhaps the most contemporary failure, outside the continuing tragedies of North Korea and Cuba, is the sad example of Hugo Chavezs 21st century socialism in Venezuela, which turned out to be all too similar to 20th century socialism.

But right now we may be witnessing yet another failure of socialism: the sudden collapse of the presidential campaign of selfproclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders.

Just two weeks ago there wasfullscaleSanderspanic. Coming off his neardefeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016, Sanders seemed to be on aroll, building toward astronger effort in 2020. After the senators success in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, he jumped into the lead in national polls. The moderate Democratic candidates seemed on the ropes. Bernie was dubbed thefrontrunnerfor the Democratic nomination and was leading President Trump ingeneral election polls.

Sanders started to get more attention. Debates over democratic socialism heated up. Sanders went on national television to defend hispraise of Fidel Castro. Democratic party leaders despaired. And then the voters started paying attention. Sanders lost big in South Carolina, as expected. Not so expectedly, he lost 10 of 14 primaries on Super Tuesday. Then just last night his campaign suffered probably fatal blows, especially in Missouri and Michigan. In Missouri, astate where Clinton had barely edged past him in 2016, he lost to Joe Biden by 60 to 35 percent. And in Michigan, where his upset of Clinton in 2016 had propelled his campaign, voters preferred Biden by 53 to 36 percent.

It looks like voters, even Democratic primary voters, arent as enamored of socialism as we had feared. In Michigan he carried voters 18 to 29. But his claims that he could win the presidency by generating ahuge turnout of young voters have not panned out. Youth turnout has been lower throughout the primaries than it was in 2016. Sanders loses AfricanAmerican voters and older voters heavily. He did worse with the white working class than he did in 2016. He lost both collegeeducated whites and noncollege whites.

Weve worried alot about the rise of illiberal populism on both right and left, in the United States and around the world. Ideas we thought were dead protectionism, ethnic nationalism, antiSemitism, and socialism are back. But Im breathing alittle easier today. It seems that theres less enthusiasm for the socialist version of illiberalism than Ifeared.

These results suggest that much of the Sanders 2016 vote was an antiClinton vote. Hillary Clinton had thesecondhighest unfavorable ratingfor any presidential candidate polled by Gallup since 1956, second only to Donald Trump. Perhaps it should have been no surprise that an alternative candidate could come so close to denying her the nomination. But in every state up through Super Tuesday, Sanders got asmaller percentageof the vote in 2020 than he did in 2016, including his home state of Vermont.

To be sure, Joe Biden is nobodys idea of alibertarian oraclassical liberal. In rejecting socialism, Democratic voters arent embracing free markets. Bidenis abiggovernment progressivein the mainstream of the Democratic Party, and both his long record in public office and his current positions include agreat many things for libertarians to oppose. But hes no revolutionary socialist, and for many voters he seems to represent an opportunity to return to normalcy and stability.

Looking forward we may wonder whether Joe Biden will maintain favorability ratings better than those of Clinton. Right now hes well ahead of Trump inpolls about honesty, which was aweak point for Clinton. But the election is still eight months away.

This article by David Boaz first appeared at CATO.

Image:U.S. Democratic presidential candidate SenatorBernieSandersaddresses a news conference in Burlington, Vermont, U.S. March 11, 2020. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

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The Sanders Campaign: Another Failure of Socialism? - The National Interest

Richard Spencer. Robert Rotellas foundation gave Spencers National Policy Institute $12,500 over three years. Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

At first glance, Robert Rotella appears to be a typical libertarian donor. Through the foundation named in his honor, the Bellevue, Washingtonbased founder of Rotella Capital Management has donated millions to libertarian and conservative organizations like the Cato Institute, the Reason Foundation, and Turning Point USA. One of his particular favorites is the Institute for Justice. Since 2010, he has donated nearly a quarter of a million dollars to the group, and through it, he has helped set up a Supreme Court battle with dramatic implications for public schools. Justices heard Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue on Wednesday: the Institute for Justice had brought the case against the state of Montana in order to force it to include religious schools in its tax-credit scholarship program. The case has implications not just for the First Amendment but for teachers unions, who view it as yet another attempt to take precious resources away from public schools.

Rotellas financial support for libertarian causes is enough to make him a consequential figure, but theres another reason to know his name: A closer look at the financial records of the Robert P. Rotella Foundation, which he manages alongside his sister, Rosemarie, reveals that he isnt just interested in right-to-work laws or free enterprise. Hes also a significant funder of white nationalism.

Of the $5.8 million the foundation has donated to various causes since 2002, roughly $105,000 has gone to organizations like the National Policy Institute, or NPI, which is led by neo-Nazi Richard Spencer. A comprehensive review of the foundations available 990 reports indicates that its financial support for white nationalism began in 2014 and continued through 2018. Though $105,000 is not an exceptionally large sum of money, white nationalist organizations are small, and it doesnt take much money to keep them afloat. Annual recurring donations are kind of where its at for these guys because they all have financial limits, imposed by federal law, on how large the donations can be, explained David Neiwert, the author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump.

A guy like Spencer, for instance, doesnt need a single sugar daddy to give him money, Neiwert added. Basically, the National Policy Institute is Spencer, and he just needs an annual salary. Five thousand dollars is basically 5 percent of that annual income for him. He just needs another 20 of those donations and hes done for the year. Thats actually not that hard to get, because there are a lot of people out there who are willing to keep that chunk rolling in for him every year.

Rotella was one of those people. His foundation gave $2,500 to NPI in 2014, then doubled the sum in 2015. It handed off another $5,000 chunk to the group in 2016. Donations to other white nationalist groups follow a similar pattern. Between 2013 and 2017, his foundation donated $10,000 every year, or $40,000 total, to the Charles Martel Society, a white nationalist organization that publishes The Occidental Quarterly, a pseudo-academic journal that focuses on race science. Members of the journals advisory board include Virginia Abernethy, a Vanderbilt University professor emerita who describes herself as an ethnic separatist, and Tom Suni, a writer whom the Southern Poverty Law Center calls an intellectual voice for white nationalists and who once complained that the media pathologized White Western peoples into endless atonement. Until 2018, the RPRFs donations composed roughly 13 to 18 percent of the Charles Martel Societys donation income, depending on the year.

Rotellas foundation also funded the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR. That group, founded by the late anti-immigration eugenicist John Tanton, has received $17,500 from Rotella since 2015. FAIR calls for sweeping restrictions on legal immigration based on stereotypes about the criminal tendencies of nonwhites; the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated it a hate group. During the same period, Rotella gave another $35,000 to the New Century Foundation, publisher of the digital outlet American Renaissance. The website advocates for white separatism, eugenics, and strict immigration restrictions.

Rick McNeely, a spokesperson for the Rotella family, told New York in December that the Charles Martel Society and the National Policy Institute had misrepresented their work to the foundation. In retrospect, the original goals of why someone would give a donation, in the spirit of diversity and giving other people voices, that certainly wouldnt have been something [the Rotellas] would do if there had been better disclosure. Or if they had a crystal ball, McNeely said.

Unfortunately, none of us can tell the future or hidden agendas or what might happen, he added. However, the goals and characteristics of the Charles Martel Society are not hidden knowledge. The Southern Poverty Law Center helped publicize the societys role as a leading purveyor of academic racism in 2010, years before the Rotella Foundation started funding the group. The society has been around since 2001, meaning it had 13 years to establish its white nationalist raison dtre before it received any Rotella money. FAIR has existed since 1979; NPI, since 2005. Richard Spencer, no stranger to the limelight, had already begun leading NPI by the time it started receiving Rotella money. The intentions of these organizations were clear enough to many.

McNeely said he was unaware that the RPRF had also funded American Renaissance, nor could he explain how the Charles Martel Society and NPI became familiar with a relatively minor foundation in the first place. Public information offers scant additional insight into Rotella or the substance of his views. He has no social-media presence. His official biography on the Rotella Capital Management website says he earned degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Temple University before founding his company in 1995. He eventually relocated from Chicago to Bellevue, where the company is now based. An amateur photographer, he opened the Rotella Gallery in Bellevue, and his biography on its website says he is originally from Niagara Falls, New York.

Despite Rotellas relatively low profile, his donation history offers a rare glimpse into the way the alt-rightis funded. Information about its major donors tends to be scarce. The RPRF is only the second funder of Spencers organization whose identity has become known; the other is multimillionaire William Regnery II, who founded the Charles Martel Society and also helped found NPI.

Rotellas other charitable causes are not so obviously linked to partisan issues. In addition to funding environmental groups like Conservation International and the Pollinator Partnership, the RPRF donated thousands to obscure groups that tout research efforts into UFOs, anti-vaccination, and the apparently fictitious Morgellons disease. The foundation has donated $5,000 to the Exopolitics Institute, which offers a certification program in extraterrestrial affairs, and $25,000 to the Farsight Institute, which claims its team of psychic remote viewers has confirmed that aliens built the Pyramids. But Neiwert says this grouping of interests, while strange, isnt completely unusual. White nationalism runs on conspiracies, he explained.

The psychics of the Farsight Institute probably have little impact on daily affairs, but other Rotella beneficiaries achieve more tangible results. The Southern Poverty Law Center reported in November that before Stephen Miller joined President Trumps speechwriting team, he regularly shared links to American Renaissance stories with Breitbart staffers to influence their coverage. Julie Kirchner, who resigned as the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ombudsman in October, had previously led FAIR for nearly a decade. She wasnt the only FAIR employee in the Trump administration, either. John Zadrozny and Ian Smith both worked for FAIR in different capacities before joining the Department of Homeland Security under Trump; both have since left the administration.

The Rotella Foundations giving will soon cease: McNeely said it will dissolve this year. The family lacked the manpower to do it correctly, he explained. But the foundation has already accomplished a great deal during its 18 years in existence including funding a legal case that could lead to a radical reinterpretation of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court will rule on Espinoza later this year, and, given the conservative makeup of the court, the Rotella-funded Institute for Justice is likely to win. That worries unions like the American Federation of Teachers, which opposes the use of public funds for religious schools. Robert Rotella and his support for far-right causes is exhibit A in the disturbing story of how money has infiltrated and corrupted our political system, Randi Weingarten, the president of AFT, told New York.

As a backer of Richard Spencer, Rotella represents a clear and present danger to the tolerance and diversity underpinning American democracy and its well past time his influence is exposed and interrogated,Weingarten added.

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This Obscure Foundation Helped Fund The Alt-Right - New York Magazine

LAKE VIEW, N.Y. (WIVB) The Libertarian Party has picked Duane Whitmer, an accountant from Lake View, to appear on their line in the special election to fill Chris Collins former seat in Congress. The partys leaders met Sunday night to make their nomination official.

Whitmer, 32, will face Democratic Grand Island Town Supervisor Nate McMurray and Republican State Senator Chris Jacobs.

This campaign isnt just trying to win the seat, Whitmer said. Its also leading an educational reform saying were here. Were fighting. Were the Libertarian Party. This is what were about.

The 27th Congressional District in New York has been without representation since October 1st, the day Collins resigned the seat. It was the same day he pleaded guilty to insider trading charges.

Whitmer says he supports restructuring the nations tax plan to benefit the middle class. Hes also pro 2nd Amendment.

I dont believe D.C. or Albany should be regulating your life, he said.

The special election will take place on April 28th.

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Whitmer nominated to appear on Libertarian line for 27th district special election - WIVB.com - News 4

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For climate skeptics, its hard to compete with the youthful appeal of global phenomenon Greta Thunberg. But one U.S. think tank hopes its found an answer: the anti-Greta.

Naomi Seibt is a 19-year-old German who, like Greta, is blond, eloquent and European. But Naomi denounces climate alarmism, calls climate consciousness a despicably anti-human ideology, and has even deployed Gretas now famous How dare you? line to take on the mainstream German media.

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Shes a fantastic voice for free markets and for climate realism, said James Taylor, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute, an influential libertarian think tank in suburban Chicago that has the ear of the Trump administration.

In December, Heartland headlined Naomi at its forum at the UN climate conference in Madrid, where Taylor described her as the star of the show. Last month, Heartland hired Naomi as the young face of its campaign to question the scientific consensus that human activity is causing dangerous global warming.

Naomi Seibt vs. Greta Thunberg: whom should we trust? asked Heartland in a digital video. Later this week, Naomi is set to make her American debut at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, a high-profile annual gathering just outside Washington of right-leaning activists.

If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Heartlands tactics amount to an acknowledgment that Greta has touched a nerve, especially among teens and young adults. Since launching her protest two years ago outside the Swedish parliament at age 15, Greta has sparked youth protests across the globe and in 2019 was named Time magazines Person of the Year, the youngest to ever win the honor.

The teenager has called on the nations of the world to cut their total carbon output by at least half over the next decade, saying that if they dont, then there will be horrible consequences.

I want you to panic, she told attendees at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.

Naomi, for her part, argues that these predictions of dire consequences are exaggerated. In a video posted on Heartlands website, she gazes into the camera and says, I dont want you to panic. I want you to think.

Graham Brookie directs the Digital Forensic Research Lab, an arm of the nonprofit Atlantic Council that works to identify and expose disinformation. While the campaign is not outright disinformation, Brookie said in an email, it does bear resemblance to a model we use called the 4ds dismiss the message, distort the facts, distract the audience, and express dismay at the whole thing.

Brookie added: The tactic is intended to create an equivalency in spokespeople and message. In this case, it is a false equivalency between a message based in climate science that went viral organically and a message based in climate skepticism trying to catch up using paid promotion.

Naomi said her political activism was sparked a few years ago when she began asking questions in school about Germanys liberal immigration policies. She said the backlash from teachers and other students hardened her skepticism about mainstream German thinking. More recently, she said that watching young people joining weekly Fridays For Future protests inspired by Greta helped spur her opposition to climate change activism.

I get chills when I see those young people, especially at Fridays for Future. They are screaming and shouting and theyre generally terrified, she said in an interview. They dont want the world to end.

Naomi said she does not dispute that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the planet, but she argues that many scientists and activists have overstated their impact.

I dont want to get people to stop believing in man-made climate change, not at all, she said. Are manmade CO2 emissions having that much impact on the climate? I think thats ridiculous to believe.

Naomi argues that other factors, such as solar energy, play a role though the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth has actually declined since the 1970s, according to federal measurements. A slew of peer-reviewed reports, from scientific bodies in the U.S. and elsewhere, have concluded that greenhouse gas emissions are the dominant cause of warming since the mid-20th century, producing a range of devastating effects from massive marine die-offs in South America to severe wildfires in Australia and sinking ground in the Arctic.

In addition to climate change, Naomi echoes far-right skepticism about feminism and immigration. The German media have described her as sympathetic to the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD), the biggest opposition party in parliament, whose leaders have spoken of fighting an invasion of foreigners. Naomi says she is not a member of AfD she describes herself as libertarian but acknowledges speaking at a recent AfD event.

Her path to Heartland began in November with a speech at EIKE, a Munich think tank whose vice president is a prominent AfD politician. By then, Naomi was already active on YouTube, producing videos on topics ranging from migration to feminism to climate change. In the audience was Heartlands Taylor. He said he immediately recognized her potential and approached her about working with Heartland.

Founded in 1984 and funded largely by anonymous donors, Heartland has increasingly focused on climate change over the past decade. Its staff and researchers enjoy ready access to the Trump administration, and one of its senior fellows, William Happer, served as a senior director on the White House National Security Council between September 2018 and 2019.

An emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University, Happer has repeatedly argued that carbon emissions should be viewed as beneficial to society not a pollutant that drives global warming. During his time with the Trump administration, he sought to enlist Heartlands help in promoting his ideas and objected to a U.S. intelligence officials finding that climate impacts could be possibly catastrophic, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

Why would an American think tank want to get involved in German politics? Because it worries that Berlins strong stance on reducing greenhouse-gas emissions could be contagious, according to a recent investigation aired on German television.

For two decades, Germany has been a leader in pressing other nations to curb carbon output and shift to renewable energy. Though it is falling short of its ambitious goals, Germany has pledged to cut its greenhouse gas emissions this year by 40 percent compared to 1990 and by up to 95 percent by mid-century.

In December, during the Madrid climate conference, two undercover staffers from the nonprofit investigative newsroom CORRECTIV approached Taylor and claimed to work for a wealthy donor from the auto industry who wanted to give Heartland a half-million euros. Taylor took the bait, and followed up with a three-page proposal outlining a campaign to push back against German efforts to regulate emissions.

These restrictive environmental programs are largely unnecessary, says the document, a copy of which was obtained by The Post. Worse, other nations including the United States and European Union nations are increasingly being influenced by unwise German policy.

The proposal described Naomi as the star of a Climate Reality Forum organized by Heartland during the Madrid talks. With over 100,000 people viewing her talk on climate realism, the proposal said, Naomi was well-positioned to fight German climate policies.

Funding for our Germany Environmental Issues project will enable Heartland to provide Naomi with the equipment and the sources she needs to present a series of effective videos calling attention to the negative impacts of overreaching environmental regulations, the proposal says.

CORRECTIV aired its report on Heartland earlier this month on German TV. Taylor dismissed the report, saying, Heck, I would have spoken with them if they told us who they were, and the answers would have been pretty much the same.

The report included secretly filmed footage of Naomi, who struck back with her own video response. Invoking Greta, she said, To the media, I have a few last words: How dare you?"

Despite echoes of Gretas style, Naomi has objected to the comparison.

The reason I dont like the term anti-Greta is that it suggests I myself am an indoctrinated puppet, I guess, for the other side, she says in one video. Asked if she meant that as a criticism of Greta, Naomi says: That sounds kind of mean, actually. She added: I dont want to shame her in any way.

Taylor said the tendency to associate Naomi with Greta is kind of natural and benefits Heartlands message.

To the extent that Naomi is pretty much the same, just with a different perspective, yeah, I think that its good that people will look at the two as similar in many ways, he said.

Still, Naomi has a long climb to reach the level of global attention lavished on Greta. While Greta measures her social media following in the millions, Naomi counts slightly under 50,000 YouTube subscribers.

Through her spokespeople, Greta declined to comment.

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The anti-Greta: A conservative think tank takes on the global phenomenon - msnNOW

Its no secret Americans are divided. Liberals pit themselves against conservatives, often bitterly. There are even factions amongst those camps. Leftists, led by the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, are seeking to dominate the more moderate elements of the Democratic Party. The fusion of libertarians and conservatives, absent the unifying threat of communism and the Cold War, is fraying.

In such a fractious environment, perhaps we should turn to our first president, who warned us of the dangers of political parties and in whom a public spirit reigned almost before there was any public to be spirited about. What would he have to say about the libertarian-conservative debate?

Following the Revolutionary War, America was economically weak. So George Washington took measures to ensure financial growth. He championed the Potomac River project to established a network of roads and tributaries that connected separate parts of the country. This would allow citizens to travel and trade with one another, improving the lives of everyday Americans and securing the promise of prosperity to millions yet unborn. This was an end worthy of the attention of Americas father.

Washington also saw prosperity as a means. It can satisfy material needs while creating the conditions for a nation and a people to act justly. Mothers would not be forced to steal for themselves and their children to survive. A wealthy country need not renege on debts to its allies. Prosperity makes that possible.

Yet beyond such advantages, Washington saw prosperity as necessary for the accomplishment of his greatest task: the establishment of an American national character.

The Potomac River project was essential because it would bring the States on the Atlantic in close connexion with those forming to the westward, by a short and easy transportation. Without this, Washington could easily conceive that Americans would have different views, separate interests and other connexions.

At a time many people thought of themselves as citizens of a particular state, rather than a nation, free trade and travel would promote cultural education and unity. It would bring Americans together for those simple and everyday exchanges that combat prejudice and encourage reciprocal goodwill.

Furthermore, Washington was not only establishing commerce but a marketplace of ideas. If individuals could travel for trade, they could also gather to deliberate. Citizens across states lines could converse and come to a consensus. This would ensure that all Americans, regardless of locality, were dedicated to a shared set of principles.

Washington did not promote prosperity so that atomistic individuals could each pursue their own desires. He did it for the sake of unity, so citizens would be willing to make those concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity, and in some instances, to sacrifice their individual advantages to the interest of the Community. He championed improvements in infrastructure for economic growth but also as a mechanism for forming a common culture and commitment to republican ideas.

Put another way, Washingtons views of the interplay between prosperity and American national character mirrors the relationship of the body and the soul. The body is not what is most essential for the human person. A soldier does not lose his character with the loss of his arm.

Still, what happens to the body has the potential to affect the soul. It is difficult for someone suffering from a debilitating disease to maintain his or her spiritedness. Washington promoted prosperity in order to provide for the body politic. But he did so for the sake of the American soul.

So was Washington a libertarian or a conservative? He would certainly agree that economic prosperity is desirable in and of itself. This opinion is shared by libertarians and conservatives alike but is more essential to the libertarian platform.

However, Washington was seeking to establish communities and not mere markets. And he gave supremacy to the former. In Washingtons mind, what elevates prosperity in importance is its usefulness as a means, not just its goodness as an end. He would not have advocated policies that treat economic growth as if it is the only goal without a view to how those policies affect communities and character.

This is an approach we could learn from today. Washingtons nuanced understanding of prosperity could form the basis of a new fusionism between libertarians and conservatives. That alliance is especially tenuous amongst millennials and members of Gen Z whose views of coalition-building are not framed by the urgency of the Cold War. The commonality amongst libertarians and conservatives, millennials and baby boomers, is the American national character Washington bequeathed to all.

Brenda M. Hafera is the director of International and Continuing Education Programs at The Fund for American Studies.

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How George Washington Can Revive Fusionism On The Right - The Federalist