Daily Archives: January 7, 2021

If youve routinely endorsed conservative policies and candidates, but now find that rightwingers have become chauvinistic, fiscally irresponsible and intolerant, consider the libertarian alternative.

If youve previously embraced liberal policies and candidates, but now find that leftwingers have pushed identity politics and socialist bromides, consider the libertarian alternative.

Libertarians have praised President Trump for progress in the Middle East, success against ISIS, reduced troop levels abroad, lower taxes, less regulation, and the confirmation of judges who appreciate individual rights and limited government. On the other hand, we have criticized Trump when he derides our intelligence agencies, cozies up to dictators, alienates our allies, and exacerbates global tensions. Weve also been troubled by his xenophobic immigration policies, protectionist trade barriers, punitive drug policy, excessive focus on the culture wars, and exploding federal spending.

Libertarians will support PresidentElect Bidens plans for criminal justice reform, immigration liberalization, civil rights, social permissiveness, revitalizing American diplomacy, reducing our military commitments, and nonproliferation. On the other hand, we will vigorously oppose higher taxes, more regulations, affirmative action, Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, expanded welfare, free college, ballooning entitlements, ahigher minimum wage, and judges who think the Constitution is amalleable document that courts can exploit as an alternative to legislation.

In essence, libertarianism is the political philosophy of personal and economic freedom. We believe that capitalism is the most efficient and morally defensible means of allocating scarce economic resources. Philosophically, we subscribe, as did Thomas Jefferson, to the idea of unobstructed liberty within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. Governments role is to secure those rights, applying sufficient coercive power but no more than the minimum necessary to attain that objective.

Put somewhat differently, we should be free to live our lives as we choose, as long as we dont interfere with other people who wish to do the same. Of course, individuals can never be completely selfsufficient. Thats why we sometimes need rules, enforced by government, to make peaceful cooperation possible. The risk, however, is that rules too extensive will produce asystem of special favors that extracts largesse for the politically connected at the expense of the rest of us. By contrast, libertarianism relies on spontaneous ordering minimizing the role of acommanding power that might preempt freely chosen actions.

Libertarians are not opposed to reasonable safety regulations, selective gun controls, or sensible restrictions in other areas. Moreover, we recognize that markets are not perfect. But neither is government. The relevant standard against which to compare our current framework is not autopian world in which justice is ubiquitous and all inequities have been systemically purged. Instead, we have to look at the current environment versus one in which regulations would be more pervasive meaning that some problems might be solved, but other problems would no doubt multiply.

Among those other problems: disincentives to innovate, favors to special interests, increased cost, reduced growth, governmentconferred monopolies, anticompetitive barriers to entry, restricted consumer choices, higher prices, overlapping and confusing laws, abuses of public power, and excessive resources devoted to politicking and lobbying.

How, then, can someone who views the left as excessively collectivist and the right as excessively authoritarian join with libertarians in advancing socially liberal and fiscally conservative goals? One way is to vote for candidates who come closest to promoting proliberty policies. Given the current political mix, those candidates will not be pristine libertarians. But its not necessary to agree with libertarianism acrosstheboard in order to move public policy in the right direction.

Second, alibertarian movement might be buttressed by supporting legislation and other political actions that foster personal autonomy and limited government. Such support policyspecific rather than candidatespecific could be in the form of lobbying, communications with government officials, letters to the editor, or donations to likeminded organizations.

Finally, theres the outside prospect of forming aviable third party. Two obvious hurdles complicate that approach. First, campaign contributions are presently limited to $2,800 per candidate per election. Effectively, that precludes all thirdparty candidates except those who can selffund. Second, 48 of the 50 states award presidential electors on awinnertakeall basis. Only Maine and Nebraska assign electors, in part, district by district. Consequently, candidates who have no chance of winning astatewide popular vote will not be able to garner any electoral votes.

Regrettably, therefore, fashioning an undiluted libertarian alternative will take time and effort. But incremental progress toward favorable public policy is practicable, opportune, and indisputably worthwhile. Lets get the ball rolling.

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The Libertarian Alternative | Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute

The New York State Libertarian and Green parties are calling foul for the change of rules for third parties running candidates in New York state.

Cody Anderson, the chair of the Libertarian Party in the state of New York, said his party, along with the New York Green Party, had filed a preliminary injunction in a federal lawsuit to have the State Board of Election cease implementing changes to Election Law passed in Part ZZZ in U.S. District Court Southern District of New York.

If we lose, and I dont think we will, but if we lose, it will be nearly impossible to get back on the ballot, Anderson said.

The changes

In 2018, the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Independence Party and the SAM Party all receivedmore than50,000 votes each for their candidates in the governors race. Before Part ZZZ, this secured each of them a party line in the 2022 election.

However, the rules have now been changed, according to Duane Whitmer, a former-candidate on the Libertarian line. And he said thats not fair, or even legal.

Under the new rules, the ballot access that these parties earned through 2022 was removed, Whitmer said. In 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the thresholds were changed, and these parties needed to reach a higher threshold in 2020 in order to maintain ballot access.

That higher threshold was 171,000 votes for their presidential candidate, about 2% of the votes cast in New York for the nationwide election, said Whitmer.

Part ZZZ stipulated that instead of securing 50,000 votes for each partys candidates for governor and thereby becoming a recognized political party for four years with a ballot line, that time was sliced in half to two years and included the race for president. Candidates nominated by third parties in both the presidential election and the gubernatorial election must gather 130,000 votes or 2% of the vote in New York whichever was higher to keep their parties on the ballot line.

This knocked down all four of the third parties mentioned to square one petitioning to get on the ballot that they'd won the right to be on already.

What now?

"We had had ballot status originally in 1996," said Gloria Mattera, co-chair for the New York Green Party. "We had really kept building the party with petitions of tens of thousands of signatures. We ran local candidates, myself included several times. ... We'd maintained ballot status for three gubernatorial cycles.... We're working hard to overturn this unfair law."

If the parties loses the lawsuit, Libertarians and Greens will have to collect 45,000 signatures, up from 15,000, to run a candidate for governor.

If they win the lawsuit, the party will only need petitions from about 5% of registered Libertarians or Greens in New York.

We can lie down and take it after fighting for ballot access (for years), Anderson said. Or we can stand up and fight it. Fight it all the way to the Supreme Court if necessary.

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Libertarian and Green parties cry foul over ballot change - Niagara Gazette

A cynical power play by two tired old parties.

Thats what leaders of the states two largest third-parties are calling a provision slipped into the state budget that seeks to make it harder for third-party platforms to make it on the state and national ballots.

The Libertarian Party and Green Party filed a motion in federal court Tuesday for a preliminary injunction against the provision.

The provision, Part ZZZ, is the rider to the New York State budget, passed in April under cover of the pandemic, that increased vote and petitioning thresholds required for minor parties in New York state to obtain and maintain automatic ballot access, party leaders say.

In the motion, the parties asked the court to grant a motion for a preliminary injunction directing Defendants not to apply the new voter and petitioning thresholds from Part ZZZ and continue to apply the previous party definition.

This preliminary injunction is about protecting the Constitutional rights of the Green and Libertarian Parties, but more than that we intend to protect the rights of all New Yorkers to democratic choice in our elections, said Gloria Mattera, New York co-chair of the Green Party. The move by Governor Cuomo and the Legislature in the budget was clearly done to eliminate those choices and to do so as rapidly as possible. We reject their cynical power play.

The budget provision changes how minor parties achieve ballot status.

Currently, minor parties need 50,000 votes for their candidates for governor, a mark that will allow the parties to qualify for the ballot every four years.

The Green and Libertarian parties have both established the right to be on the ballot, based on the previous rules.

The new rules would require minor parties get 130,000 votes, or two percent, of votes cast to remain on the ballot. The provision also requires qualifications to happen every two years, instead of every four.

The provision came from Jay Jacobs, chairman of the state Democratic Party. He initially called for the required votes to be set at 250,000.

Jacobs, in an article in The New York Times, said the change was aimed at reducing voter confusion and rooting out corruption.

The Green and Libertarian parties filed a lawsuit in July in the Southern District of New York that claims the new provision alleges infringement upon First and Fourteenth Amendment rights to organize, identify, and vote for minor parties under the United States Constitution, and that the new voter and petitioning requirements are therefore unconstitutional.

The suit has yet to be heard, prompting the parties to seek an injunction.

The Libertarian Party has been the fastest-growing third-party in the country and leaders say the new rules will damage its status.

We maintain that the unconstitutional actions of the governor and legislature have caused irreparable harm to the Libertarian and Green Parties, as well as to other minor parties in New York State, said Cody Anderson, chair of the Libertarian Party of New York. Rather than allowing the governor to use the state Board of Elections as a tool to punish his political enemies and consolidate his power, we have asked the courts to recognize the violation of our 1st and 14th Amendment rights, to enjoin the Board of Elections to cease implementation of Part ZZZ, and to allow us to continue offering voters principled alternatives to the two tired old parties.

Locally, Chase Tkach, chair of the Libertarian Party of Orleans County, said she, too, is appalled at the efforts to block third parties.

The actions taken by the Board of Elections are meant to suppress voters, said Tkach, who in 2019 received more than 12 percent of the vote for a seat on the county legislature. Im confident we will win.

Read more here:

Libertarian, Green parties file injunction in lawsuit aimed at state efforts to quell third parties - The Daily News Online

Flown by many protesters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the Gadsden flag has a design that is simple and graphic: a coiled rattlesnake on a yellow field with the text Dont Tread On Me. But that simple design hides some important complexities, both historically and today, as it appears in rallies demanding President Donald Trump be allowed to remain in office.

The flag originated well before the American Revolution, and in recent years it has been used by the tea party movement and, at times, members of the militia movement. But it has also been used to represent the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. mens national soccer team and a Major League Soccer franchise.

As a scholar of graphic design, I find flags interesting as symbols as they take on deeper meanings for those who display them. Often, people use a flag not because of what is explicitly displayed, but because of what the person believes it represents though that meaning can change through time, and with ones perspective, as has happened with the Gadsden flag.

The flags origin isnt entirely clear. It seems to begin with a simple illustration accompanying an essay by Benjamin Franklin in 1754, 20 years before American independence. The image, possibly drawn by Franklin himself, portrays the American Colonies as parts of a divided snake, simply stating Join, or Die. The essay it accompanied addressed the major current issue for British colonists in North America: the threat of the French and their Native American allies.

Later, as the American Revolution took shape, the image took on a new meaning. Colonists hoisted various flags, including ones depicting rattlesnakes, a distinctly American creature believed to strike only in self-defense. The flag commonly known as the First Navy Jack had 13 red and white stripes, and possibly a timber rattlesnake with 13 rattles, above the words Dont Tread On Me.

In 1775, as the American Revolution began, South Carolina politician Christopher Gadsden expanded on Franklins idea, and possibly the red-and-white flag as well, when he created the yellow flag with a coiled rattler and the same phrase: Dont Tread On Me.

For most of U.S. history, this flag was all but forgotten, though it had some cachet in libertarian circles.

The First Navy Jack version resurfaced in 1976 on U.S. Navy ships to celebrate the nations bicentennial, and again after 9/11, though today that flag is reserved for the longest active-status warship. Its use remained largely apolitical.

In 2006 the slogan and the coiled snake saw some commercial use by Nike and the Philadelphia Union, a Major League Soccer team.

Around the same time, though, the flag took on a new political meaning: The tea party, a hard-line Republican anti-tax movement, began using it. The implication was that the U.S. government had become the oppressor threatening the liberties of its own citizens.

Perhaps as a result of the tea party movement, several state governments around the country offer a Gadsden flag license plate design. At least some of those plates charge additional fees for the special plate, sending proceeds to nonprofit organizations.

The Gadsden flag has appeared at other political protests, too, such as those opposing restrictions on gun ownership and objecting to rules imposed in 2020 to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Most recently the flag has been flown and displayed at some post-election protests, including events where demonstrators called for officials to stop counting votes and both inside and outside the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., during the counting of the electoral votes on Wednesday.

Because it is commonly flown alongside Trump 2020 flags and the Confederate battle flag, some may now see the Gadsden flag as a symbol of intolerance and hate or even racism. If so, its original meaning is then forever lost, but one theme remains.

At its core, the flag is a simple warning but to whom, and from whom, has clearly changed. Gone is the original intent to unite the states to fight an outside oppressor. Instead, for those who fly it today, the government is the oppressor.

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Yellow Gadsden flag, prominent in Capitol takeover, carries a long and shifting history - The Conversation US

Syracuse, N.Y. About 17,000 Onondaga County voters have a decision to make by Feb. 14, according to letters that went out in recent days:

They can keep their current enrollment status in the Green, Independence, Libertarian or Serve America Movement party. That means they can still vote in 2021, but only in the general election, not in primaries, elections officials say.

Or, these minor party members can chose to enroll in one of the four remaining parties on New Yorks ballot: Democratic, Republican, Conservative or Working Families.

Lastly, the voters can also choose to become a non-enrolled voter another category that means theyre not enrolled in any party and limits voting to general elections.

The options come after four of the six minor political parties in New York failed to get enough votes in 2020 to automatically qualify for a ballot spot this year.

In past years, the minor parties had to get 50,000 votes during a gubernatorial race to remain on the ballot.

But a change last year made securing that spot harder for the smaller political parties.

Now, minor parties must get 2% of the vote in a presidential or gubernatorial year. That threshold set last November was about 173,000 votes, according to the states certified election results.

These four parties fell well short of that in the Nov. 3 election in New York.

Statewide, just 60,234 Libertarians voted for Jo Jorgensen. Another 22,587 Independence members voted for Brock Pierce. The SAM party didnt run a presidential candidate.

And Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins, of Syracuse, got 32,753 votes in New York.

The ballot change doesnt mean the parties are going away.

Also, no voter registered in these parties will lose their ability to vote, Elections Commissioners Dustin Czarny and Michele Sardo said.

If they choose not to make a change, they will still be registered and the county will continue to track their current party status, Sardo said.

That could be important if the parties re-qualify for ballot status in 2022, the next gubernatorial race.

But going forward, these voters wont be allowed to vote in primaries in the other four parties, Sardo and Czarny said.

To be eligible to vote in 2021 primaries, the deadline to change your registration is Feb. 14.

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17,000 Onondaga County voters have a decision to make: Should I enroll in another party? - syracuse.com