Monthly Archives: July 2023

"Prspera is the first time in human history that a group of people has said there's a way to deliver governing services, privatized for profit in a completely free market way," says Joel Bomgar, a Mississippi state representative and president of Prspera Inc., the company that's building a privately run charter city on the Honduran island of Roatn called Prspera Village.

In Honduras, about half of the population lives in extreme poverty, and gross domestic product per capita is 25 times higher than in the United States. And yet the country has abundant natural resources and is close to major shipping lanes.

The problem is governance: Nobody wants to invest in Honduras because the country has a long history of political instability, expropriating private land, and legal agreements that aren't particularly binding. Honduras is ranked 154th out of 190 countries in contract enforcement on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index and 133rd overall in ease of doing business.

Narco gangs once made Honduras the murder capital of the world, and though crime has dropped in the last 12 years, life there is still extremely dangerous in comparison to the U.S., which is one reason so many Hondurans make the risky journey to immigrate. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has reported more than 73,000 encounters with Hondurans at the U.S.-Mexico border so far this year.

Recently, the country's politics have been especially turbulent: A president was ousted by the military in 2009, and another was extradited to the U.S. for drug trafficking.

The nation recently elected its first democratic socialist president, Xiomara Castro, who has called for a "refounding." She wants to rewrite the constitution to recognize that "the capitalist system doesn't work for the majority" of people. She's calling for electricity to become a "public goodand a human right" and is laying the groundwork for the outright nationalization of the entire energy sector. And she's spending billions on cash transfers.

"Every millimeter of the [Honduran] homeland that [capitalists] took over on behalf of the sacrosanct free marketwas watered with the blood of the native people," said Castro, who ran on abolishing the very law that authorized Prspera and similar zones in Honduras, in a September 2022 speech to the United Nations. "My government has embarked upon a process of national rebirth and is bringing profound change."

Meanwhile, a group of foreign investors has embarked on its own "refounding" of sorts. They've started a radical experiment in private governance, which they hope will become a model for how to create prosperity in poor countries all over the world.

"The concept of free private cities and charter cities, specifically what Prspera is trying to do, is the most transformative project in the world," says Bomgar. "There's not a big financial hub in Central America. There's not a sort of Singapore of Central America right now. And so that's what we're trying to create."

On the island of Roatn, a tourist hub with a land mass similar to Hong Kong, a group of libertarian entrepreneurs, including Bomgar, are trying to build a country within a country that's free of the dysfunction that hobbles the national government. And they're starting with a clean slate.

Prspera is based on the principle of true voluntarism, they say: All who live and work there have opted into the rules that govern the land, and they can change their minds and opt out at any time.

The first location being developed as part of this privately run charter city is called Prspera Village, but the project's co-founder and CEO, Erick Brimen, says that the particular plot of land doesn't matter as much as the rules governing it.

"Prspera is not a location. Prspera is a platform that delivers governance as a service in partnership with host governments that create a legal framework that allows that public-private partnership to emerge," says Brimen.

In 2017, the company began acquiring its first 58 acres, which at the time was mostly an undeveloped jungle. Today, Prspera Village is occupied by an office building, a schoolhouse, a factory for prefabricated building materials that's under construction, and a shared workspace for remote office workers. A 14-story luxury condo tower is also nearly complete. Development is happening here at a pace unheard of in a country where it can take years and several well-placed bribes to obtain a permit to put up a building of that size.

Prspera has so much autonomy thanks to a 2013 law authorizing Zones for Economic Development and Employment, or ZEDEs.

ZEDEs don't merely have favorable business and labor regulations, like China's Shenzhen. They make their own laws and regulations. Prspera created its own zoning code and levies its own taxes. Only the country's criminal laws still apply.

To become a full-time resident of Prspera, you just fill out an online application and pay a $1,300 fee, though Honduran nationals get an 80 percent discount. In lieu of a court system, they have access to the PrsperaArbitration Center to resolve any civil disputes, or they can opt for a different arbiter.

Companies can select their own regulation from a menu of options. Like Japan's biotech regulation? Use that. Singapore's banking laws? Use those. Or mix and match.

Depending on what industry they're in, some companies can opt out of regulation altogether, though at a cost.

"Then you're under common law legal liabilities, which can be very harsh. So you do have an incentive to be under regulation, and you need to have liability insurance that covers you," says Niklas Anzinger, who runs Infinita VC, a venture capital fund based in Prspera.

"So this way you have insurance [companies] looking at what you're doing in your regulation and like, 'Yeah, this [regulatory scheme] has been done multiple times before [in] multiple jurisdictions, it's cheap. And this one, ah, that's quite new, right? It's not been really tested. So there's gonna be a higher premium because we have to pay experts to assess the risk of what you're doing.' So, this way you have an open process to improve and develop and find the right kind of regulations for different businesses."

When Reason visited, Anzinger was hosting a seminar for companies that operate or are interested in operating here, including a biotech firm, which found it easier to run gene therapy trials at Prspera than in the U.S.

But President Castro has vowed to repeal the ZEDE law, calling it "criminal" legislation and an attempt to "steal our sovereignty."

Brimen says that even if a repeal vote is ratified by the Honduran congress, Prspera is protected by international treaties, and the government will risk paying damages of over $10 billion if it violates them. Brimen says he expects the Honduran government to back down.

"It's not just the cash cost to us [that will stop them]. It's the message that the Honduran government is appropriating a U.S. investment," says Brimen."So, on the one hand, you have this very bad outcome, and on the other, which I think they're starting to realize, begrudgingly to some extent, you have not [only] $10 billion [in damages] but a multiple of that in upside benefits in not just direct investment but of jobs, positive externalitieswhat would you do?"

Fernando Garcia, a former economic Minister whom Castro appointed as presidential commissioner against the ZEDEs, says what Brimen and his company are trying to pull off in Honduras is outrageous.

"It is as if I came to the United States with $500 million or $1 billion and asked for a constitutional amendment to buy Central Park in New York, to create a state within a state," says Garcia, speaking in Spanish.

He says that President Castro is defending the Honduran constitution and its national sovereignty by dismantling the ZEDE law because zones like Prspera "will later become free states, independent of her [political] process" if she doesn't act now. Brimen says ZEDEs are far from a threat to political sovereignty.

"It's the opposite. It's an exercise of sovereignty" says Brimen. "One has to more fully understand what sovereignty is to begin with. Sovereignty is about self-determination. And the power to be self-determined properly rests upon the people, not upon some institution that rules them."

Jorge Colindres is the technical secretary of Prspera ZEDE,* roughly the equivalent of its mayor. He says that his experience running a law firm in Honduras has made him acutely aware of the ways in which corruption and weak rule of law have crippled the country, which is why he became involved with the project early on.

"I've seen corruption at almost every government or institution. I've seen it at the municipalities, I've seen it with the prosecutor and the judges, at the environmental agency, at the health care agencies, essentially all over," says Colindres. "And on top of that, you have people demanding bribes and payments. It's horrible."

Colindres says that because Prspera must work to attract and keep investors and citizens, it's incentivized to eliminate corruption from its governance. Bomgar says this competitive structure will make all the difference.

"Unlike other governments, we don't have a monopoly of the use of force and coercion," says Bomgar. "So we live by the principles of nonaggression, self-ownership, and the rule of law and property rights. And unique to Prspera is the right to join but also the right to exit."

Voice matters here at Prsperaresidents will be allowed to elect five of the nine members of the city council once the population surpasses 10,000but political power mostly derives from exit, or voting with your feet. Colindres says that, for example, in a 10-story building, floor seven could be in Prspera, floor six in the general free zone regime of Honduras, and the remaining floors governed by the national regime.

"The basis of the legitimacy of government is consent of the people," says Colindres. "We do have consent of 100 percent of our residents, and that's where our powers stem from."

This opt-in arrangement has allowed Prspera to expand from five acres to 58, and then, during the height of the pandemic, the project expanded to more than 1,000 acres of a nearby resort and villa called Pristine Bay. The hotel at the center of that development remains outside Prspera's jurisdiction, and individual homeowners in the villas will be able to opt in or out.

Another major problem that many South and Central American countries have faced is runaway inflation. In the '90s, Honduras' inflation peaked at around 34 percent; it currently stands at about 9 percent. Prspera will have its own financial overseer who will make sure businesses have selected an applicable regulation standard for themselves, and Prspera is home to a bitcoin cafe and education center devoted to promoting the use of the cryptocurrency on Roatn.

"We provide educational support, technical support setting up [point-of-sale bitcoin infrastructure]," says Dusan Matuska, who runs the Roatn Bitcoin Center and says more than 50 merchants currently accept bitcoin on the island. "I think Prspera's main payment infrastructure will be bitcoin over time."

Prspera is primarily a governance model, so its territory doesn't have to be contiguous. We took a ferry ride to the mainland city of La Ceiba to visit another large territory that's participating in the project.

Though everything about Prspera has been voluntary to date, it's no wonder that Hondurans are worried about foreign businessmen violating their national sovereignty. La Ceiba happens to also be a key battlefield in a successful 1911 coup backed by the American business magnate Sam Zemurray, who would later become the president of the United Fruit Company. Concerned that the president was hostile to his expansion plans, Zemurray used his wealth and influence to bring about regime change in a foreign country.

We drove along an unpaved road once partly occupied by railroad tracks that used to carry banana harvests to the port.The land was eventually abandoned and now is part of Prspera, which hopes to develop it into a major manufacturing hub.

Eric Paz manages the site, which is currently occupied by a tiny office building, a rundown schoolhouse, and several single-room homes lacking electricity and running water.

"Historically, this has been a community that has had a great lack of opportunities to develop, to be able to study, to be able to have access to health care, to be able to have access to decent work or to decent housing," says Paz.

Paz says Prspera has letters of interest from three companies eyeing the sitea medical supplies manufacturer, a maker of prefabricated housing materials, and an aeroponic farmer.

"Prspera is an opportunity for the region, and I could dare to say that it is an opportunity for the country, because we are trying to do something different," says Paz.

The ZEDE law made it through Congress on the grounds that it would attract investment and bring new opportunities. Garcia says that it hasn't made good on that promise because Prspera said it would generate 10,000 jobs by December 2021 but has only reported 1,000 to the government.

But Colindres says that it's absurd for the Castro regime, which has hamstrung special economic zones and imposed economically destructive policies after several years of COVID pandemic stagnation, to criticize the rate of job growth within the ZEDEs.

"Frankly, the Honduran population, they're not happy with this new socialist government," says Colindres. "In their first year, they butchered over 100,00 jobs and left tens of thousands of people without a formal job. While we are seeing an economic and democratic deterioration at the national level, here in Prspera, we're still creating jobs."

Back on the island of Roatn, some of those jobs have gone to locals from the island, like a carpenter who repurposes excess construction material to make furniture. Or Virginia Cecilia-Mann, Prspera's head cook, who lives in the neighboring village of Crawfish Rock.

"Until Prspera came here, there are moms that never had a job in their life," says Cecilia-Mann. "They don't have the educational level. Or maybe they don't speak the language that they need or just maybe other things, like they have kids at home and there's no one to watch them so they can't get a job that offers mother hours. All of those things, Prspera is offering to them."

Cecilia-Mann also spearheaded the creation of Prspera's on-site school, which teaches local kids using Khan Academy virtual learning. Victor Andino, who lives with his family in a house on the beach that directly abuts Prspera, sends his kids to the school.

"Nobody [else] is going to give you a teacher, who teaches English for free," says Andino. "I don't know much English. I can learn from my boy."

Andino is an electrician, and his wife works maintaining Prspera's many plants.

The company fills many of the location's administrative, security, and construction jobs with workers from the mainland. A mason from the mainland told us that work dried up during the pandemic and that outside of Prspera new construction projects tend to get held up by red tape.

"The permitting process is really slow," he said, speaking in Spanish. "You have to make bribes."

At a fork in the road at the top of a hill leading down into Prspera Village is a small convenience store where construction workers congregate at the end of the work day.

The owner, Lorena Webster, has lived here for 36 years. She's suspicious of her new neighbors.

"[Prspera's leadership] used to come and eat with us and talk with us and talk about the development that they [would] bring in [a] project to benefit the community in the future," says Webster. "So then we [were] always, well, happy because, at last, the place is going to grow, you know?"

Webster says members of the community changed their minds when they found out that the ZEDE law allows companies like Prspera to partner with the government to expropriate their land.

"Never again will the stereotype of a banana republic wear heavy upon us," said Castro in her U.N. speech. She regularly compares ZEDEs like Prspera to the United Fruit Company, which took advantage of politically weak Central American countries to boost its profits in banana cultivation.

Forty-three years after financing a coup in Honduras, United Fruit CEO Sam Zemurray helped orchestrate covert CIA operations in neighboring Guatemala, which led to the removal of another president he considered hostile to his company's business interests.

This legacy of corrupt governments colluding with powerful private landowners has left many locals wary of the ZEDEs.

"Maybe [at] the beginning it will benefit us because they may give us jobs. But in the future, the laws give them the privilege to take our land," she says, though she told Reasonthat nobody from Prspera has ever threatened to take her home or even offered to buy it.

"They say 'No, we won't [take your land.]' But does that guarantee that they won't? No," she says.

In the adjacent fishing village of Crawfish Rock, a store owner expressed the same fears.

"We live here. We [were] born here, we [were raised] here, and this is what we have," she says. She believes Prspera plans to take all of Crawfish Rock but toldReasonthey haven't done anything yet to make life worse in her village.

"They haven't bothered us, not at all," she says.

Though Prospera prohibits expropriation in its charter, the ZEDE law does permit the zones to partner with the government to take private lands for public infrastructure development.

Brimen says that Prspera's charter prohibits expropriation and that anyone who attempted to do so on behalf of the organization could be held personally liable. He says he's long supported a reform to the ZEDE law that would make the practice illegal.

"Prspera specifically cannot receive expropriated land into its jurisdiction, period. End of story. It's in our charter, it's in our bylaws, and, if we did, the people involved are personally liable," says Brimen. "I'm against expropriation as a matter of principle."

Brimen is originally from Venezuela, where socialist President Hugo Chvez became notorious for expropriating land and businesses, which eviscerated the economy.

"I think [seeing Venezuela's collapse under socialism] was a very visceral experience of what otherwise would've been read in a book and not understood firsthand," says Brimen.

Brimen says that when he enrolled in college, he wanted to study economic development and poverty to figure out why some countries get rich while others, like Venezuela, stay poor despite having abundant natural resources.

"I thought that what I wanted to do in my life was somehow eradicate poverty," says Brimen. "Yet I realized that I was asking the wrong question. It's not about how you end poverty but rather how you catalyze prosperity."

He says that when he studied the problem from this new perspective that the answer became obvious.

"I was unavoidably led to the empirical evidence that shows that in order for there to be maximized human prosperity, you need freedom. You need economic freedom," says Brimen. "And so the invention of Prspera is mostly around the business model, the public-private partnership approach to deploying an economic system with rule of law that is proven throughout history to unleash human potential."

Will this ambitious experiment catalyze prosperity in Honduras? Can a properly designed private government thrive and avoid the corrupt and violent fates of the 20th-century banana republics?

A lot is riding on Prspera's success or failure: the future of ZEDEs in Honduras, the promise or folly of separating governance and state. It's a bold test of the limits of the proposition that the private sector does everything better and that the profit motive is less corrupting than political processes for obtaining state power.

Brimen and his team say they'll deliver on the promise of creating a bastion of freedom and prosperity, just as long as the national government holds up its end of the deal.

"My vision for the next one to five years is you come back and see as big a leap it was to go from nothing to 1,000 acres," says Bomgar. "Perhaps not in just sort of geographic size but in vertical developmentbuilding the city toward the sky."

Brimen says that growth and investment are accelerating and that their biggest obstacle in the near term isn't economic or physical but political.

"The main wild card is how the Honduran government chooses to proceed," says Brimen.

*CORRECTION: The video version of this story originally identified Jorge Colindres as the "technical secretary of Prospera Inc." He is the technical secretary of Prospera ZEDE, which is a different legal entity.

Photos: TEDxJackson/Flickr/Creative Commons; TEDxJackson/Flickr/Creative Commons; Everett Collection/Newscom; Everett Collection/Newscom; Inti Oncon/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; Camilo Freedman/SOPA Images/Si/Newscom; Inti Oncon/dpa/picture-alliance/Newscom; Simon Liu/Flickr/Creative Commons; Seth Sidney Berry/SOPA Images//Newscom; Seth Sidney Berry/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Milo Espinoza/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Milo Espinoza/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Gustavo Amador/EFE/Newscom; Milo Espinoza/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Humberto Espinoza/EFE/Newscom; Seth Sidney Berry/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom; Seth Sidney Berry / SOPA Images//Newscom; Album/Oronoz/Newscom; Gustavo Amador/EFE/Newscom; /Flickr/Creative Commons; /Flickr/Creative Commons; Seth Sidney Berry/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom

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Building the World's First Private Libertarian City - Reason

Over 100 candidates of La Libertad Avanza (LLA) filed a presentation assuring they werent asked for money to run, after presidential hopeful and LLA coalition leader Javier Milei was accused of selling candidacies for his party.

A document signed by 120 candidates was presented before the National Electoral prosecutors office on Tuesday. Ramiro Gonzlez, the prosecutor in charge, started an investigation against LLA last week following the claims.

We were never asked for any money in hopes of being proposed for a candidacy, the document reads. The candidates also rejected the false accusations Milei and his party are facing, saying everything is being orchestrated by spurious interests.

Last week, the prosecutor cited the seriousness of these claims as a reason to open a preliminary investigation and determine whether electoral law had been broken. The first step of the investigation was to call in those making the accusations, including businessman and politician Juan Carlos Blumberg, liberal political leader and former LLA member Carlos Maslatn, and former LLA activist Mila Zurbriggen, among others.

Blumberg accused the coalitions political organizers Carlos Kikuchi, Sebastin Pareja, and Javiers sister, Karina Milei, of selling places on the ballots. There are people who paid US$50,000 for a counselor position, Blumberg said in an interview with La Red radio station.

Pareja was the first one on the list of people who signed the document dismissing the accusations.

Former LLA ally Maslatn testified on Friday. Blumberg sent a letter to the prosecutor expressing his total willingness to assist with the investigation. Meanwhile, Zurbriggen and former Milei ally Rebeca Fleitas, who is currently a Buenos Aires city LLA law-maker, testified this Tuesday.

Zurbriggen said that she learned about the candidacies being for sale through third parties and that she fears for her safety, according to sources from the investigation cited by Tlam.

Around six months ago, Zurbriggen had told Tlam that candidacies were being sold for sexual favors.

Fleitas, on the other hand, said her issues were not with LLA, but another party. According to Fleitas, they wanted to choose her legislative advisors after she won a seat at the BA city Legislature following the 2021 elections, the same sources said.

In response to the backlash he is facing, Milei sent a letter to Attorney General Eduardo Casal saying Gonzalez investigation is an illegitimate intrusion in the electoral process.

Milei said that the only purpose of the prosecutors preliminary investigation is to undermine the public image of the party and himself, and asked Casal to investigate if Gonzlez started the inquiry following a request by other parties or candidates.

He also asked Casal to determine whether the investigation was launched with the only purpose of confusing voters, undermining the democratic process and harming his image towards the elections. Last week, Milei had said that Blumbergs allegations are the product of spite, since he was rejected as a candidate for Buenos Aires province governor and that all candidates for La Libertad Avanza have to self-finance their campaigns.

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Libertarian candidates say they were not asked for money to run - Buenos Aires Herald

I recently posted how a passage from David Schmidtzs Living Together: Inventing Moral Science reminded me of a line from a decades old essay written by Theodore Dalrymple. But that was far from the only time a passage in his book triggered a long dormant memory. In another case, David Schmidtz outlines an idea for evaluating politics I learned many years ago from my father.

My dad held a wide spectrum of views over his life. He described himself in his younger years as a ponytailed hippie definitely not a persona that made one popular in those days in Texas. By the time I was becoming aware of and interested in politics, he had shifted towards being largely Republican in his political orientations, with some libertarian leanings thrown in for good measure. Those leanings led him to cast his vote for the Libertarian candidate in the 2016 and 2020 elections he couldnt accept the idea of voting for Trump, whom he saw as antithetical to everything conservatives and Republicans should support. But the lesson Im referring to came up in a discussion we had in the early 2000s.

In those days, the PATRIOT Act was being hotly debated. Like so many issues, supporting or opposing it seemed to sort very neatly into party lines. One day, I asked my dad what he thought about the PATRIOT Act. The standard response from most Republicans in those days was to offer their support for it after all, it was passed under a Republican administration, and in response to a massive terrorist attack. It also seemed to line up with standard Republican points about the importance of a strong defense against foreign threats. But that was not the response I got. Instead, he told me that he opposed the PATRIOT Act and when I asked why, he told me because it failed what he called the Hillary test.

What was this test? Simple. He just asked himself if he would be okay with the federal government wielding the kind of powers granted to it by the PATRIOT Act if that government had Hillary Clinton as its chief executive. And he didnt like the idea of that so he didnt support the PATRIOT Act. After all, there is no guarantee that the government will always be headed by trustworthy people with good values. Government shouldnt have the level of power that would best enable good work to be done by wise and trustworthy public servants government should only have as much power as you would be comfortable being held by someone who is your worst political nightmare. Because, one day, someone that nightmarish will actually get elected, and they will gladly pick up any of the tools made available to them.

Republicans should ask themselves whats the most power they would want the government to wield, if that government was headed by people like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And Democrats should ask themselves how much power they would want the government to wield if that government was headed by people like Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, or Donald Trump. (Insert your own personal political boogeyman as needed.) Odds are, you wouldnt want the government in those hands to wield too much power and if your response to this conundrum is to say the government should wield greater powers anyway and just make sure only good people get elected to wield it, youre playing a very dangerous game that history shows you cannot win.

David Schmidtz makes this same point in his book, charging much of what passes as ideal theory in political science as asking fundamentally the wrong question. As Schmidtz put it:

Officials not only enforce rules, but also interpret, amend, and so forth. Smith saw this and perceived a further chronically tragic reality: this power to oversee markets is what crony capitalists are buying and selling.

Smiths observation changes everything. Imagine concentrated power in the hands of the worst ruler you can remember. Now, assume what you know to be true: concentrated power has a history of falling into hands like that. As a preliminary, then, when theorizing about what is politically ideal, we can ask two questions. (1) Ideally, how much power would be wielded by people like that? or (2) Ideally, how much power would be wielded by ideal rulers?

Which of these two versions of ideal theory is a real question? Can political philosophy answer the one that truly needs answering?

Why isnt it trying?

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David Schmidtz and My Dad on Asking the Right Questions - Econlib

INDIANAPOLISA seventh candidate for Indiana governor was announced this week, as former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill attempts to put his past groping controversy behind him in his quest to regain public office.

Former Indiana Attorney General Curtis Hill.

Hoosiers are hungry for a proven conservative leader with the courage to stand up for the traditional values upon which our Republic was built, Hill said in a press release.

Hill was accused by four women of drunkenly groping them in 2018 and had his law license suspended in the lead-up to the 2020 Republican state primary, resulting in delegates selecting current AG Todd Rokita over Hill.

He has denied the accusations, publishing a statement back in 2018 that said, The allegations against me, which continue to change, are vicious and false. At no time did I ever grab or touch anyone inappropriately.

Two years later, after the suspension was handed down, a Hill press release said, I accept with humility and respect the Indiana Supreme Courts ruling of a 30-day suspension of my license with automatic reinstatement.

Hill returned to the political scene last year, running in the primary to be the Republican nominee to fill the U.S. House of Representatives seat that was open after Rep. Jackie Walorski died in a car crash in August 2022. Rudy Yakym won the primary and the general election.

Hill will continue to attempt a political comeback by joining the increasingly crowded field of candidates for governor.

Our campaign will emphasize a positive vision for Indiana, restoring faith in our institutions, protecting our children, investing in our law enforcement, prioritizing the rebuilding of our economy and placing the needs of Hoosiers above the manipulation of Washington, D.C., Hills statement said.

During his time as attorney general, Hill criticized Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears for saying he wouldnt prosecute people for possessing an ounce or less of marijuana and testified in front of the Indiana General Assembly against a bill allowing cities to create needle exchange programs without approval from the state.

He also partnered with faith-based organization Indianapolis Ten Point Coalition in an attempt to reduce crime. The coalition does peace walks to build relationships with the community and has members who work as liaisons to get information about crimes from community members to the police.

And in 2017, Hill wrote an opinion article for The Statehouse File criticizing NFL players kneeling, saying, Rather than kneeling in silence, they should choose to stand as men of character and courage and tackle black-on-black violence.

Hill joins three other Republicans, two Democrats and a Libertarian in the race to succeed Gov. Eric Holcomb, who is term limited from serving a third consecutive time.

U.S. Sen. Mike Braun, Republican, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2018 after spending three years in the Indiana House of Representatives.

Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch, Republican, went from being a state representative to state auditor to her current position, lieutenant governor under Holcomb.

Eric Doden, Republican,has never held public office but was president of the Indiana Economic Development Corporation under Gov. Mike Pence for two years.

Jennifer McCormick, Democrat, served as superintendent of public instruction under Holcomb but has since switched party allegiance.

Bob Kern, Democrat, is a perennial candidate who, since 2012, has appeared in primaries for the U.S. House, Indiana House, Indiana Senate and, most recently, Indianapolis mayor.

Donald Rainwater, Libertarian, is most known for his 2020 governor run in which he received 11.4% of the vote.

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Indiana governor's race grows more crowded with addition of ... - The Statehouse File

The so-called Consumer Choice Center, a libertarian pressure group, has advocated against green regulations in the EU without being registered as a lobby group, DeSmog can reveal.

The US-based organisation which has links to a network of fossil-fuel-funded think tanks and advocacy groups has opposed climate-friendly measures in Europe such as the phase-out of petrol cars and green farming reforms despite being removed from the lobby register over a year ago.

It appears that Consumer Choice Center's activity puts it in breach of EU transparency rules, which require lobbyists to declare their activities on the EU Transparency Register.

"Anyone who seeks to influence policymaking, or decision making of EU institutions should be on the register," said Green MEP Daniel Freund. "It makes no difference whether that's a meeting, an email, an op-ed, or a giant billboard in front of the European Parliament."

MEPs need to know "who they're dealing with," Freund added.

However, the rules are not legally-binding, and organisations in breach face minimal sanctions. According to transparency campaigners, this allows groups like Consumer Choice Center to "try and influence the Brussels bubble without respecting transparency".

Consumer Choice Center, based in Washington DC, styles itself as a consumer advocacy group that "represents consumers in over 100 countries across the globe". However, on its website, which lists 62 staff members, the group says that it has previously been funded by the energy, chemical, and airlines industries and does not publish its current sources of finance.

The group spent 250,000 on EU lobbying in 2020 and employed 16 lobbyists.

Vicky Cann from LobbyFacts said it was "absolutely fundamental" for organisations to publish their funding sources. "We need to understand why an organisation is advocating certain positions," she said.

DeSmog understands that the group was removed from the EU's lobby register in May 2022 following a quality check by the secretariat aimed at detecting potential inaccuracies, errors or omissions in the register. The group's removal from the register also followed the introduction of new lobbying rules requiring more transparency over funding sources, which were brought in last March.

Freund said that it was important for policymakers to interact with lobbyists in "any healthy democracy", but that "wherever there could be an influence of money on politics, the bare minimum is to make it transparent and give voters the possibility to hold decision makers accountable."

Consumer Choice Center was established in 2017 by the libertarian advocacy group Students for Liberty, which is funded by the Koch oil network.

Students for Liberty has received almost $1m [910,000] in funding since 2009 from the philanthropic organisations of Charles Koch, who co-owns Koch Industries one of the largest privately-held companies in the US which trades heavily in oil and gas. Organisations connected to Koch Industries have directed at least $100m to climate science denial groups since 1997.

Between 2017 and 2019 while Consumer Choice Center was part of the group Students for Liberty also received donations of over $100,000 from the Atlas Network, an alliance of libertarian think tanks that has received funding from Koch foundations and fossil fuel firms. Members of the Atlas Network have campaigned against legislation to limit greenhouse gas emissions and have questioned the presence and severity of human-caused climate change.

Students for Liberty also received a one-off donation of $10,000 from the Cato Institute, a US-based libertarian think tank that has received millions in funding from Koch sources and has downplayed the severity of global warming. Consumer Choice Center was part of US-based Students for Liberty until 2020.

Fellows and employees of the Consumer Choice Center also have professional links to programmes run by Koch-funded groups, the Cato Institute and the Atlas Network, while over half of those listed on the organisation's website have been involved in Students for Liberty.

Consumer Choice Center fellow Maria Chaplia completed a Charles Koch market-based management programme, while the group's US affairs analyst Elizabeth Hicks completed a Koch associate programme at the Charles Koch Institute.

Research manager Emil Panzaru and Latam policy fellow Antonella Marty both completed internships at the Cato Institute, while Marty is also associate director of the Center for Latin America at the Atlas Network.

The Center has paid for adverts on Facebook in recent months lobbying against EU plans to ban petrol and diesel cars, and against the strengthening of chemical regulations.

It has written almost 50 articles on EU policy issues since it was removed from the lobby register, as well as hosting a "cross-party and cross-committee" group in the European Parliament attended by more than 30 MEPs.

The Consumer Choice Center has suggested that Europe should "shelve all their climate ambitions [and] refine more oil" in light of the war in Ukraine and warned that EU plans to become carbon neutral by 2050 would have disastrous economic consequences.

Under new lobbying rules introduced last March, non-commercial entities like Consumer Choice Center have to declare their sources of funding on the EU Transparency Register if they amount to over 10 percent of an organisation's budget and exceed 10,000.

Consumer Choice Center did not update its funding sources before its removal from the register in May 2022. DeSmog did not receive a response to questions about whether Consumer Choice Center's removal from the register related to the introduction of the new rules.

The group does not publish information about its current funders. However, its website states that it has previously "received funding from multiple industries such as energy, fast-moving consumer goods, airlines, manufacturing, digital, healthcare, chemicals, banking, cryptocurrencies, and fin-tech". It says that its "support comes from corporations, individuals, and foundations" and that it has a "tiered membership model" on offer.

Lisa Graves of True North which has spent decades researching the Koch network said she was not surprised that Consumer Choice Center has attempted to brand itself as a consumer rights organisation despite its ties to industry.

"Groups take on names to try to convey that they stand with consumers, but they promote a narrow agenda that is at odds with what most people want: policies that protect the rights and interests of ordinary people to safe products and safe practices that don't harm our environment or our lives," she said.

The tactic of 'astroturfing' of groups adopting a consumer-rights image while being funded by commercial entities is commonplace among those with ties to the Koch network.

Consumer Choice Center says on its website that, "We strictly maintain editorial independence and do not give our funders any influence on editorial decisions."

Consumer Choice Center has been a vocal opponent of green legislation in the EU.

Prior to its removal from the EU Transparency Register, the group published policy briefings that opposed plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2035. It also criticised targets to reduce chemical pesticides and fertiliser use and increase organic farming.

Its campaigns have also seemingly sought to turn public opinion against net zero pollution reduction targets.

In late 2020, Consumer Choice Center paid for a Facebook advert to over one million people, which claimed that EU plans to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 would raise energy costs by 20 percent, lead to a GDP decline, and result in 500,000 job losses. The warnings were repeated in an article from the group in 2023.

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Cann, of the transparency watchdog LobbyFacts, accused the group of an "anti-science position". She questioned its claim to be a consumer advocacy group given its adoption of an "industry-friendly framing".

The policies advocated by Consumer Choice Center "are not solutions that citizens will benefit from or really want", she said.

Since the group was removed from the EU lobby register in May 2022, it has continued to publicly lobby against green regulations.

In April 2023, the group sponsored an advert on Facebook about the EU's plans to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel-vehicles, stating that "Europe is favouring one type of technology over the other by banning gas-powered vehicles, when in essence the choice should be up to consumers."

The same month, it sponsored Facebook adverts opposing EU plans to strengthen chemical regulations, warning, "Don't let your favourite beauty products go away".

Since May 2022, Consumer Choice Center staff members have also written almost 50 articles (equivalent to nearly one piece per week) for media outlets on EU issues, covering subjects from pesticides reduction targets to regulations of genetically-engineered seeds.

The majority of these articles were published in EU outlets, including influential Brussels media such as the Brussels Times, and the Parliament Magazine.

Their articles include multiple warnings that the "entire agricultural sector" is in danger from green farming reforms policies that are facing pushback across the EU after a fierce industry-led lobbying campaign. Consumer Choice Center claims to have been featured in the media on more than 5,000 occasions during its history.

MEP Freund said that media outlets should ensure "organisations that don't play by the rules don't get a platform," while Graves of True North said that Consumer Choice Center's lack of transparency was a major concern. "Ordinary people and reporters can only get glimpses of how they're spending money to influence and distort public interest," she said.

Campaigners agreed that the activities of Consumer Choice Center appear to violate EU transparency rules.

Under the EU's guidelines, any "interest representatives" that attempt to influence policy, legislation or the decision making process should declare their activities, lobby spending, and registered lobbyists.

In April 2021, the European Parliament strengthened its transparency guidance to include "indirect lobbying activities".

However, campaigners say that the apparent breach shows the need to further reform EU transparency rules.

Transparency guidelines in the EU are not legally-binding. While clear guidance is provided for lobby groups, compliance is essentially voluntary, and organisations face limited sanctions for failing to comply.

In theory, MEPs should only meet with lobby groups that have been properly registered, but advocacy groups say this rule is regularly breached.

"Consumer Choice Center is proof that without a legally-binding lobby register, you will always have organisations that try and influence the Brussels bubble without respecting transparency norms," said Cann from Lobbyfacts.

"Existing rules are not enforced," Freund added. EU rules are relatively strong compared to international norms, he said, "but if they're not applied, if they're not enforced, the best rules in the world don't help us. At the moment, the institutions self-police: MEPs check on MEPs; commissioners check on commissioners... We need an independent oversight body."

Consumer Choice Center also appears to be breaking EU rules which state that organisations cannot use the logos of EU institutions "without their express permission". Consumer Choice Center displays the European Parliament's logo on its website, on a page about its MEP network on innovation. It did not answer questions about whether it had been given authorisation to do so.

The European Commission declined to comment.

See the rest here:

Revealed: The EU lobbying of the so-called 'Consumer Choice Center' - EUobserver

(The Conversation) - Americans are used to having a lot of choices. What to wear today? What to eat? What to read? Yet in so many elections when picking a president, state governor, or mayor we seem to have only two choices: Vote for the Democrat or the Republican. Why does the United States have a two-party political system?

As apolitical scientistwho studiespoliticalparties particularly theLibertarianParty I can tell you there are other options.

Why do we have a two-party system?

Political scientists like me have a simple explanation for the United States two-party system:Duvergerslaw, named after French political scientist Maurice Duverger. It states that only two major parties will emerge whenever elections follow a set of rules known as single-winner plurality voting.

Single-winnermeans only one candidate can win a given election. Plurality voting means whoever gets the most votes wins. Under this system, a party is most likely to win if it runs (or nominates) only one candidate rather than allowing party supporters to split their votes among multiple candidates.

Many voters who prefer an independent or minor-party candidate might decide that it would be more practical to choose among the major-party candidates who have better odds of winning the election. Thus, even when more than two candidates appear on a ballot, voters often believe that they only have two choices: the Republican or Democrat.

Think of it this way: Suppose a teacher threw a class party and agreed to order whatever food the students wanted. There are just two rules: The teacher will order only one food item for the whole class (single-winner), and whichever food gets the most votes wins (plurality vote). Rather than 10 pizza lovers splitting their vote with six for cheese and four for pepperoni leaving seven ice cream fans to scoop up the victory they can unite behind one pizza flavor and win.

The same logic explains why the U.S. has a two-party system. When there can be only one winner, and the winner is whoever gets the most votes, people with similar but not identical preferences have good reason to find common ground and work together or else theyll lose. They must try to build a coalition of voters that is bigger than any other. In turn, that groups opponents will try to counter by enlarging their own coalition.

Thus, the rules for voting dictate that we end up with two large parties competing to be big enough to win the next election. While other options exist, many voters decide to pick between the only two that can win.

It doesnt have to be Republican vs. Democrat

While a Democrat or Republican wins most elections in the United States, that doesnt mean voters can only have two choices. Consider these three points.

First, theU.S. Constitutiondoes not allow for only two political parties. In fact, the Constitution says nothing at all about parties. Many of theFoundingFatherswere skeptical of such factions, fearing that they would divide the American people and serve the interests of ambitious politicians. Yet many of those same visionaries soon helped to form thefirst political parties, after realizing the importance of coordinating with like-minded people to win elections and advance a common policy agenda. With afewbriefexceptions, the United States has had a two-party system ever since.

Second, plenty of candidates run for office every year as something other than a Republican or Democrat. These includeindependentswho are not affiliated with any party orminor-partynominees for instance, from the Libertarian or Green Party. Its just that these candidatestypically do not garner many votesandrarelywinan election.

Take the nations third-largest political party, the Libertarian Party. Asmy researchshows, Libertarians generally agree with the Republican Party on economic issues and the Democratic Party on social issues. This makes the Libertarian Party appealing to some voters who consider themselvesfiscally conservative and socially liberal.

Third, in states such as California that have atop-two primarysystem, elections sometimes come down to two candidates from the same party. This process begins with an open primary in which voters may choose among multiple candidates from various parties at the same time. The top two vote-getters go on to the general election months later even if they are bothDemocratsorRepublicans.

Other states, such asMaineandAlaska, useranked-choice voting. This systemallows voters to rank all candidates Democratic, Republican, independent, or minor party from their favorite to least favorite on the same ballot. The winner is whichever candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, either at first or aftereliminating the last-place finisher and reallocatingthat candidates voters to their second-choice candidates.

So voters often do have more options than simply Democrat vs. Republican. The problem is that people feel as if only one party or the other has a chance to win and cast their votes accordingly. It all comes down to the rules for running elections. If you want more choices, youll have to change those rules.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here:https://theconversation.com/why-do-voters-have-to-pick-a-republican-or-a-democrat-in-the-us-203830.

Here is the original post:

Why do voters have to pick a Republican or a Democrat in the US? - kinyradio.com