Category Archives: Libertarian

WASHINGTON The Supreme Court ruling in the Environmental Protection Agency case on Thursday was a substantial victory for libertarian-minded conservatives who have worked for decades to curtail or dismantle modern-style government regulation of the economy.

In striking down an E.P.A. plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, the court issued a decision whose implications go beyond hobbling the governments ability to fight climate change. Many other types of regulations might now be harder to defend.

The ruling widens an opening to attack a government structure that, in the 20th century, became the way American society imposes rules on businesses: Agencies set up by Congress come up with the specific methods of ensuring that the air and water are clean, that food, drugs, vehicles and consumer products are safe, and that financial firms follow the rules.

Such regulations may benefit the public as a whole, but can also cut into the profits of corporations and affect other narrow interests. For decades, wealthy conservatives have been funding a long-game effort to hobble that system, often referred to as the administrative state.

This is an intentional fight on the administrative state that is the same fight that goes back to the New Deal, and even before it to the progressive era were just seeing its replaying and its resurfacing, said Gillian Metzger, a Columbia University professor who wrote a Harvard Law Review article called 1930s Redux: The Administrative State Under Siege.

When the United States was younger and the economy was simple, it generally took an act of Congress to impose a new, legally binding rule addressing a problem involving industry. But as complexity arose the Industrial Revolution, banking crises, telecommunications and broadcast technology, and much more this system began to fail.

Congress came to recognize that it lacked the knowledge, time and nimbleness to set myriad, intricate technical standards across a broad and expanding range of issues. So it created specialized regulatory agencies to study and address various types of problems.

While there were earlier examples, many of the agencies Congress established were part of President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal program. Wealthy business owners loathed the limits. But with mass unemployment causing suffering, the political power of elite business interests was at an ebb.

The Eisenhower-style Republicans who returned to power in the 1950s largely accepted the existence of the administrative state. Over time, however, a new backlash began to emerge from the business community, especially in reaction to the consumer safety and environmental movements of the 1960s. Critics argued that government functionaries who were not accountable to voters were issuing regulations whose costs outweighed their benefits.

In 1971, a lawyer who had represented the tobacco industry named Lewis F. Powell Jr. whom President Richard M. Nixon would soon put on the Supreme Court wrote a confidential memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled Attack on American Free Enterprise System. It is seen as an early call to action by corporate America and its ideological allies.

Mr. Powell acknowledged that the needs and complexities of a vast urban society require types of regulation and control that were quite unnecessary in earlier times. But he declared that the United States had moved very far indeed toward some aspects of state socialism and that business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late.

His memo set out a blueprint to fund a movement to turn public opinion against regulation by equating economic freedom for business with individual freedom. In line with that vision, wealthy elites financed a program to build political influence, including steering funding to organizations that develop and promote conservative policies like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

In 1980, the billionaire David H. Koch ran a quixotic campaign as the Libertarian Partys nominee for vice president on a platform that included abolishing the range of agencies whose regulations protect the environment and ensure that food, drugs and consumer products are safe.

His ticket failed to win many votes. But with his brother Charles G. Koch, he would become a major funder of like-minded conservative causes and candidates and built a campaign funding network that pushed the Republican Party further in a direction it had already started to move with the election in 1980 of President Ronald Reagan.

The Reagan Revolution included appointing officials to run agencies with a tacit mission of suppressing new regulations and scaling back existing ones like Anne Gorsuch Burford, the mother of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, whom critics accused of trying to gut the E.P.A. when she ran it.

In parallel, the conservative legal movement, whose origins also trace back to the 1970s and spread with the growth of the Federalist Society in the 1980s, has focused its long game as much on a deregulatory agenda as on higher-profile goals like ending abortion rights.

That movement has now largely taken control of the federal judiciary after President Donald J. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices. The chief architect of Mr. Trumps judicial appointments, Donald F. McGahn II, the first Trump White House counsel and a Federalist Society stalwart, made skepticism about the administrative state a key criterion in picking judges.

Adherents of the movement have revived old theories and developed new ones aimed at curbing the administrative state.

To give (usually Republican) presidents more power to push deregulatory agendas in the face of bureaucratic resistance, they have put forward the unitary executive theory under which it ought to be unconstitutional for Congress to give agencies independence from the White Houses political control even though the Supreme Court upheld that arrangement in 1935.

A 2020 ruling by the five Republican appointees then on the Supreme Court was a step toward that goal. They struck down a provision of the law Congress enacted to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that had protected its head from being fired by a president without a good cause, like misconduct.

And to invalidate regulations even when (usually Democratic) presidents support them, movement conservatives have argued for narrowly interpreting the power Congress has given or may give to agencies.

Some of those theories have to do with how to interpret statutes. The E.P.A. ruling, for example, entrenched and strengthened a doctrine that courts should strike down regulations that raise major questions if Congress was not explicit enough in authorizing such actions.

In certain extraordinary cases, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote, the court needed something more than a merely plausible textual basis to convince it that an agency has the legal ability to issue specific regulations. The agency, he wrote, instead must point to clear congressional authorization for the power it claims.

The strict version of that doctrine signaled by the ruling will give businesses a powerful weapon with which to attack other regulations.

The ruling was foreshadowed by short, unsigned rulings last year in which the court blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions moratorium on evictions to prevent overcrowding during the coronavirus pandemic, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations requirement that large employers get workers vaccinated or provide testing.

But both of those decisions involved tangential exercises of authority by agencies trying to address the pandemic emergency: The C.D.C., a public health agency, was getting into housing policy, and OSHA, a workplace safety agency, was getting into public health policy.

The ruling on Thursday involved the E.P.A.s primary mission: to curb pollution of harmful substances, which the court previously ruled included carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, the text of the Clean Air Act empowers the agency to devise the best system of emission reduction. Even so, the majority ruled that the agency lacked authorization for its Clean Power Plan.

In dissent, one of the courts three remaining Democratic appointees, Justice Elena Kagan who once wrote a scholarly treatise about the administrative state accused the majority of having discarded the conservative principle of interpreting laws based closely on their text to serve its anti-administrative state agenda.

The current court is textualist only when being so suits it, she wrote. When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the major questions doctrine magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards. Today, one of those broader goals makes itself clear: Prevent agencies from doing important work, even though that is what Congress directed.

Conservatives have also developed other legal theories for attacking the administrative state.

They have argued, for example, that the Supreme Court should end so-called Chevron deference, named for the case that established it. Under that doctrine, judges defer to agencies interpretations of the authority that Congress gave them in situations where the text of a law is ambiguous and the agencys interpretation is reasonable.

Conservatives have also argued for a more robust version of the so-called nondelegation doctrine, under which the Constitution can bar Congress from giving regulatory power to agencies at all even if lawmakers unambiguously sought to do so.

Chief Justice Robertss majority opinion, in keeping with his preference for incremental approaches to major issues, left those other theories and arguments for another day. But a concurring opinion by Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., discussed the nondelegation doctrine with apparent relish.

While we all agree that administrative agencies have important roles to play in a modern nation, surely none of us wishes to abandon our Republics promise that the people and their representatives should have a meaningful say in the laws that govern them, Justice Gorsuch wrote.

In theory, undercutting the administrative state does not necessarily subtract from the governments ability to act when a new problem or a better way of solving an old one arises. Rather, it shifts some of the power and responsibility from the agencies to Congress.

For example, lawmakers could theoretically enact a law explicitly declaring that the E.P.A.s power to curb air pollution under the Clean Air Act includes regulating carbon dioxide pollution from power plants in the way the agency had proposed. Congress could even pass a law directly requiring the detailed system for reducing emissions.

As a matter of political reality, however, agencies issuing of new rules based on old laws is often the only way the government remains capable of acting.

Congress is increasingly polarized and dysfunctional, sometimes too paralyzed to pass even basic spending bills to keep the government operating. And the ideology of the contemporary Republican Party, combined with the Senates filibuster rule, which allows a minority of senators to block votes on substantive legislation, means that it is unlikely that Congress will enact new laws expanding regulations.

The prospect that the Republican-appointed supermajority on the court may be just getting started in assaulting the administrative state over the coming years is alarming those who say the United States needs regulations to have a civilized society.

If you dont have regulations, then the only people who will benefit will be those who, with no rules, will make more money, said Marietta Robinson, a former Obama appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission who teaches about administrative agencies at George Washington Universitys law school. But it will be to the great detriment to the rest of us.

Continued here:

E.P.A. Ruling Is Milestone in Long Pushback to Regulation of Business - The New York Times

The US right often appeals to liberty freedom from the state as a justification for its policies. But it also seems to oppose liberty in many key political issues, particularly when it comes to the private domain of sexual relations. This seeming contradiction flummoxes liberals how can the right both defend and attack individual liberty? But there is no contradiction. The right simply has a different conception of liberty, one that, contrary to that of liberals, isnt universal but applies only to a select few, the real citizens, argues Toby Buckle.

Liberals imagine that the US far-right is incoherent on the question of freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth; it has at its heart a vision of freedom that is ancient, coherent, and compelling.

From the perspective of mainstream American liberalism, conservative invocations of freedom seem caught in a mad confusion between its libertarian and authoritarian impulses: The right identifies itself with individual freedom, particularly freedom from the state, and yet will reliably cheer on the worst excesses of state violence from police. The family, it proclaims, is a private domain, yet a central part of its rhetoric is the demonization of those in non-heterosexual relationships. These demonised groups are claimed to be a sexual threat to children, one that requires state intervention to address, yet the right also pushes to make (heterosexual) child marriages more legally permissible. Mandatory masking was rejected as a disgraceful violation of bodily autonomy by the same people who are currently rejoicing that states can now force women to carry pregnancies under pain of criminal sanction. The contradictions seem obvious.

While morally grotesque, the values underlying these positions are not incoherent, rather they are simply not coherent with liberal values. Specifically, they are not compatible with the liberal value of universality the requirement laws and norms apply equally to all persons. Because this value is so ingrained in liberalism, the assertion of other, older, values appears to us as a contradiction, but its not. For the most part, the American right does not believe in liberal universality and, to be fair, it has never really pretended to.

Theres no discrepancy to be resolved in demanding libertarian protections for yourself and defending police violence against Black men if you think that law enforcement should enforce different standards on different groups. This view, while still obfuscated to some degree, is more or less explicit in much of what the right says: when the government enforced lockdown laws it was said that it was wrong to treat small business owners like criminals. The same protest was made by, and on behalf on, those arrested after the Capitol riots on January 6 that they were being treated like criminals.

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Supremacist liberty can be defined as follows: freedom consists in the group or groups within a state who constitute the true citizenry being unconstrained both in their own lives, and in their domination of the groups who are not.

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To the liberal it may seem puzzling to say we should not treat as criminals people who are, objectively, criminals. To the right however (as with freedom) the word simply means something different: criminal is not a person who commits a crime, but a category of person thats defined by other features. The purpose of the law is to protect the (innately good) true citizens and repress (innately bad) criminals.

These terms are heavily racialized, especially in the US. Criminal is coded as Back, small business owner as white. They also convey a much more visceral fear than is commonly understood. In his account of dehumanisation the philosopher David Livingstone Smith argues that it renders the other not just inferior, or even dangerous, but monstrous. Dehumanised persons are seen as representing both a physical and a metaphysical threat, an affront to both our safety and the natural order of things. Past ages might have used terms like demonic to express this, today criminal has a similar function.

At this point we run into challenges in naming the core values that animate this ideology. To call them far-right adds little and understates their spread and acceptance. To use which I have previously the ideological label of fascist risks derailing the conversation into extended historical comparisons. Taking an intersectional approach, and labelling it by vectors of oppression, results in inelegant formulations like cishetro racist capitalist patriarchy. Authoritarian can be misleading we conventionally place it at the other end of an ideological to freedom, and US conservatism is centrally (and sincerely) about freedom. Finally, hierarchy is better, but is possibly too general.

One of the core values animating the seemingly contradictory policy preferences of the right is a specific conception of freedom. One that can be defined, and distinguished from other conceptions, such as a republican conception, or a true libertarian conception. At the risk of adding one more piece of jargon to the conversation I propose that we can usefully term this supremacist liberty.

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Whereas a republican freedom demands that there is never someone with arbitrary power above you, supremacist freedom asks that there is always someone (and not just anyone) below you, subject to your power.

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Supremacist liberty can be defined as follows: freedom consists in the group or groups within a state who constitute the true citizenry being unconstrained both in their own lives, and in their domination of the groups who are not.

From this perspective, the rights claims that anti-racism, or feminism, are existential threats to its adherents way of life are not hyperbole or hysteria, but an obvious statement of social fact. The domination that social justice opposes is ineliminable from its vision of a free society. Whereas a republican freedom demands that there is never someone with arbitrary power above you, supremacist freedom asks that there is always someone (and not just anyone) below you, subject to your power.

It is this conception of freedom that Obamas election was seen to be taking from people. It was an example of the wrong kind of person ending up with power over true citizens, an inversion of the natural order of things. This is what was behind Trumps questioning of Obamas citizenship he was not, as they clearly saw, a true citizen. When he eventually became president, there was a spate of his supporters hurling racist abuse at service workers and declaring Trump is president now. It is this vision of freedom they were reclaiming.

Those advocating for supremacist freedom will often employ libertarian language claiming that what theyre against is state intervention. This is contingently adjacent to the concepts core, but isnt contradictory as such its a useful rhetoric for asserting the appropriate norms that should govern the superior group. Unlike liberalism however, or a true libertarianism, these norms are either implicitly or explicitly bounded (we should get the government off the back of hardworking citizens, or real Americans).

One might wonder how such a conception of freedom is to be achieved in a legal system premised on universality (equal treatment under the law, and so on). A little reflection however shows just how easily it already is actualised under nominal universality. For example, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favour of the right of citizens to conceal carry handguns. Nothing in the ruling limited it to certain groups. However America is also a country in which the Police Officer who killed Philando Castile, a 32 year old black man, after being told he (legally) had a concealed weapon, was acquitted of all charges. As political theorist Jacob T. Levy recently tweeted, this obviously isnt a universal right to concealed carry:

Instead, its a recipe for asymmetrically adding a lot more armed white people in public places, including some who will feel that much more emboldened to harass and confront people they consider suspicious.

Hence, while the law is nominally universal, the social reality is one of supremacist freedom. It is expected, indeed demanded, that law enforcement, and other instruments of state power, will distinguish between groups in this way.

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While the pro-life movement is certainly steeped in misogyny, the contours between the superior and inferior groups here are best understood not as man vs woman, but Christian vs non-Christian.

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With this conceptual sketch in mind it should be reasonably straightforward to disentangle the seeming contradictions of the rights account of bodily autonomy. Mandatory face mask policies applied to true citizens, a clear violation of supremacist freedom. To add insult to injury, they were usually applied universally. Hence real Americans were being treated like criminals (the reader should by now be able to do the appropriate decoding). More generally, COVID restrictions were at their most burdensome for a group that is at the centre of the true citizen ideal small business owners. To the supremacist this was a gross violation of a just natural order. It was hardly surprising then, that their resistance was so fierce.

The end of a constitutional right to bodily autonomy (in the form of abortion access) that occurred last week, conversely, is seen as the true citizens asserting themselves against the illegitimate, dangerous parts of society. While the pro-life movement is certainly steeped in misogyny, the contours between the superior and inferior groups here are best understood not as man vs woman, but Christian vs non-Christian. White evangelical Christianity is thoroughly fused with the Trump-right at this moment, and it openly desires supremacy over the political realm and all other section of society.

Compelling pregnancy and childbirth through state violence is a mechanism for maintaining domination over those who fall outside of the true Christian citizenry. The Christian right has long set itself against a society it sees as promiscuous, debauched, and sexually immoral. Forced pregnancy, as they keep telling us, creates earthy consequences for sexual sin.

As with the necessity of repressing criminals, there is both a satisfaction in the domination (people love putting women in their place), and a need for protection against a perceived threat. In this case an overtly supernatural one. Remember that conservative Christians do not see the US as a pluralist society of many groups; but as islands of believers who will go to heaven, surrounded by a sea of sinners who will go to hell. Given the belief in eternal torment, not as metaphor but concreate fact, it becomes quite rational to seek and use state power to save people from it.

While implicit and explicit appeals to supremacist liberty are becoming more mainstream, the conception itself is nothing new. The contours defining the superior group have changed over time, but something like it has existed as long as the concept of freedom has. It was, after all, invented in the slave societies of ancient Greece and Rome and championed by slaveholders. In the modern world its most famous and consequential evocations the American constitution and Declaration of Independence where likewise the work of men who owned slaves (and in the latters case, a man who enslaved his own children).

This seems like a contradiction to many, but, again, it is only a contradiction when viewed from within liberalism. A classic definition of a free person is someone who is not a slave. There is nothing about this that implies that a free person may not own slaves or rules out a view that his freedom will be enhanced by his doing so. After all, freedom is about choice, being self-directed, having control over things - your body, your mind, your property. Hence, having control of other human beings (according to this conception) makes you more free.

Far from being a relic of the dark but remote past, something like this idea is alive and well today. Supremacist freedom is attractive and compelling for reasons that the modern mind struggles to articulate, but the ancients and early moderns understood perfectly well on their own terms: We like the idea of getting special treatment. We enjoy punishing others, or seeing them punished. Our sense of self-worth is enhanced by knowing others are inferior to us.

And once you add in the belief that there are real demons out there, supremacist freedom doesnt just feel good, it becomes necessary. We the small business owners, the Christians, the hardworking, the straight, the White, the sexually pure, the real Americans require the freedom to deal with them the lazy, the gay, the trans, the criminals, the promiscuous, the sexually immoral, the immigrants, the illegals, the aliens, the traitors before they destroy us all.

There is much more to say on this topic having coined a term to describe a conception of freedom I should trace a history of it, anticipate and answer objections, consider its relation to other political concepts, give my own moral evaluation of it, and so on.

For now though, let me just close with this:

I have tried to give an account of supremacist liberty more or less on its own terms, not because I think it is a worthwhile conception, but because I think its worth understanding, given that its animating a large part of the American right. It is not, of course, the only conception of liberty. Liberty will always have competing conceptions, and it is worth our time and energy to ensure the better ones become ascendant. A great deal depends on it.

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Supremacy, Liberty and the Right | Toby Buckle - IAI

By Bennett Brinkman NonDoc.com

In addition to the Republican race for state superintendent of public instruction, three other primary elections for statewide office are heading to GOP runoffs Aug. 23. In the races for a Corporation Commission seat, commissioner of labor and state treasurer, no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote.

All results posted by the Oklahoma State Election Board online are unofficial until they are certified by the board.

Two of the three races are for open seats, but the third has seen term-limited Rep. Sean Roberts (R-Hominy) push incumbent Commissioner of Labor Leslie Osborn into the runoff. Osborn received 47.82 percent of the vote, while Roberts (R-Hominy) gained 38.27 of the vote. (Keith Swinton finished third, with 13.91 percent of the vote.)

The winner between Osborn and Roberts will face Democrat Jack Henderson and Libertarian Will Daugherty in November.

Osborn has been the commissioner of labor since 2018. Before that, she represented House District 47 in Canadian and Grady counties. Roberts is the current representative for state House District 36 and has been endorsed by Gov. Kevin Stitt. He made headlines when he filed his campaign under the name Sean The Patriot Roberts. The state election board later struck The Patriot monicker from the ballot.

In the battle for an open seat on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, Sen. Kim David (R-Porter) finished in the lead Tuesday, with 41.07 percent of the Republican primary vote. For the Aug. 23 runoff, she will face second-place finisher Todd Thomsen, who brought in 25.99 percent of Tuesdays vote.

Finishing in third was Justin Hornback, a welder who works in the oil and gas industry. He brought in 20.35 percent of the vote. Harold Spradling finished fourth with 12.59 percent support.

The winner of the runoff between David and Thomsen will face Democrat Warigia Bowman and Independent Don Underwood in the general election on Nov. 8.

David is the current senator representing District 18 in the Oklahoma Legislature. She is term-limited for that seat. During her time in the Senate, she became the first female majority floor leader.

Thomsen formerly represented House District 25 from 2006 to 2018, and he is a former Oklahoma Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader. He was a football player at the University of Oklahoma and played on the national championship team in 1985, according to his website.

On June 7, NonDoc and News 9 hosted a Republican primary debate among candidates for the open Corporation Commission seat, which is being vacated by Dana Murphy owing to term limits.

In the race for state treasurer, Rep. Todd Russ (R-Cordell) took 48.5 percent of the Republican primary vote and will face former Sen. Clark Jolley, who garnered 33.87 percent of the vote, in the Aug. 23 runoff.

David Hooten, who recently resigned from his position as Oklahoma County Clerk amid allegations of sexual harassment, finished third with 17.62 percent of the vote.

The runoff winner will face Democrat Charles de Coune and Libertarian Greg Sadler in November.

Russ is the current representative from House District 55, which sits in western Oklahoma. According to his website, Russ has more than 30 years of banking experience in various parts of the state and was president and CEO of Washita State Bank.

Jolley is a former state Senator for District 41, which includes Edmond and northern Oklahoma City. He also formerly served as the state secretary of finance and chairman of the Oklahoma Tax Commission.

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Treasurer, labor and corporation commissioner elections head to GOP runoffs Daily Ardmoreite - Daily Ardmoreite

Tuesdays event was hosted by the states Democratic Party and included Libertarian candidates as well.

FISHERS, Ind About 100 voters turned out at a Fishers library Tuesday night to hear from candidates for state and federal office in the upcoming election.

If the forum was any indication of the issues voters will be thinking about when they head to the polls in November, you can expect abortion, gun violence and safety, and the economy to be top of mind.

Im so glad to be in Hamilton County, you guys are doing a lot of things right here, Jeannine Lee Lake, the Democratic candidate for Indianas 5th Congressional District, told those gathered.

Tuesdays town hall was hosted by the states Democratic Party and included Libertarian candidates as well.

Our politicians should not act as physicians, James Sceniak, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, running against Republican incumbent Todd Young.

Organizers of the town hall said they extended invitations to GOP candidates as well, but none took part.

The first issue candidates were asked about was abortion.

Im sure there are other issues, but for me right now, personally and professionally, thats a big deal, said Bryrony Homan, a mother of four who is also an OB/GYN. It will totally change the way I practice.

Homan said she came to the forum looking for some guidance.

Were just really trying to figure out how we can practice and what can we do, she said.

Im a woman, Im a veteran, Im former law enforcement," said Amy Ewing.

She said she had questions about the safety of her kids at school.

"I have three daughters. Im somebody who knows all about firearms, being a veteran and former law enforcement. Id like to hear their thoughts on what they believe for firearms and mass shootings that are happening in schools, she said.

Ewing was also concerned about issues of equity.

As a Black woman, with Black children and mixed-race children, what can we do in our community where our children can feel safe? When you look around and you dont see people that look like you, it matters, Ewing said.

You always hear that guns come from Indiana and if they do, why? And lets stop it, said George Mather from Noblesville.

He said gun violence is one of his top concerns and the main reason he came to hear what the candidates had to say about that issue.

In this political environment, I think we all need to be involved with our candidates and know what they stand for, Mather said.

Indiana Democrats say voters will have plenty of time to find out before November. They plan to host another town hall June 30 in Zionsville, with several more planned for the months ahead.

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Abortion rights top of mind at candidate town hall in Fishers - WTHR

A libertarian political advocacy group is partnering with gas stations across the country to offer discount fuel.

WYOMING, Mich. For just a few hours, some motorists in West Michigan got to capitalize on gasoline priced at $2.38 a gallon.

A privately-owned Citgo gas station in Wyoming partnered up with Americans for Prosperity-Michigan, which is a libertarian political advocacy group.

From 10 a.m. to noon Thursday, the gas station offered up discounted gas on a first-come-first-serve basis. Hundreds of cars lined up for their chance to fill up.

The group chose $2.38 a gallon because that's what they say was the national average price of gas on the day that President Joe Biden took office.

Rep. Peter Meijer stopped by Thursday morning to take part in the event.

This short event mirrored similar discount gas events across the country to highlight the increasing costs of energy. According to AAA, the average price of gas for Americans sits around $4.86 per gallon.

Make it easy to keep up to date with more stories like this.Download the 13 ON YOUR SIDE app now.

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Wyoming gas station temporarily offered gas for $2.38 a gallon to shine light on inflation - WZZM13.com

Commentary

When the author of The Coming Collapse of China, Gordon Chang, predicted the imminent demise of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) rule two decades ago, he argued that regimes collapse when people are no longer afraid and think theyre no longer alone.

Changs forecast has yet to materialize. The state that Mao Zedong built is still in business. But two facts are worth noting.

First, it took the Soviet Union 74 years to implode and disappear, and a year before it happened, few analysts saw it coming. At this moment, the CCPs reign of terror in Beijing is just 73 years old. In Chinas extensive history, seven or eight decades is a mere flash in the pan.

Second, Maos CCP is wildly out of step with the Chinese philosophies that long dominated the countrys intellectual and cultural climate, namely, Taoism and Confucianism. If Changs prediction eventually proves true, we will someday assess the regime of Mao and his ideological successors as a deadly aberration in Chinese political and ethical thought.

The late Austrian School economist, historian, and political theorist, Murray Rothbard, identified the founder of Taoism, Lao-tzu, as the first libertarian intellectual.

Rothbard wrote:

For Lao-tzu the individual and his happiness was the key unit and goal of society. If social institutions hampered the individuals flowering and his happiness, then those institutions should be reduced or abolished altogether. To the individualist Lao-tzu, government, with its laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox, was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and more to be feared than fierce tigers.

After referring to the common experience of mankind with government, Lao-tzu came to this incisive conclusion: The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished. The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

Confucius was a 6th century B.C. contemporary of Lao-tzu and even more influential over the centuries. For challenging elitist authoritarianism, he was revolutionary in his day. He spoke of the Mandate of Heaven, the notion that rulers must exercise power lightly and justly or Heaven would see to it that the people overthrew them. Confucius defended the right of rebellion against tyrants, whereas Mao and his successors brook no dissent and crushed resistance with calculating brutality.

Mao believed that all power flows from the barrel of a guneffectively an exaltation of force and a might makes right perspective. By contrast, both Taoism and Confucianism emphasize harmony and mutual respect. The founders of those ancient but enduring philosophies would be horrified to know that a Chinese leader starved and slaughtered 65 million of his countrymen to impose a system cooked up by a degenerate German scribbler named Karl Marx.

Maos bloody Cultural Revolution of the 1960s tried to cement his virulent Marxism as the sole ideology of China. His objective was to eliminate the Four Olds of custom, culture, habit, and ideas. Lao-tzu and Confucius never called for the violent imposition of their ideas to the exclusion of others.

Traditional Chinese philosophers like Lao-tzu and Confucius were culture-makers. Mao was the ultimate cultural nihilist, an enemy of culture itself. Whereas true culture spontaneously bubbles up among people as they interact, the artificial social arrangements that Mao sought to create in cultures place were top-down, narcissistic, and savage. It represented one maniacs delusions far more than it reflected consensus or pluralistic institutions.

Even though leaders after Mao drifted from the most extreme and doctrinaire of Maoist ideas and practices, they all staunchly rallied (and still rally) around the one-party, authoritarian state as the locus of wisdom. They tolerate no threat to their monopoly on power.

As he enters the second decade of his tenure, the current CCP leader, Xi Jinping, is ratcheting up oppression as he forms his own cult of personality. He heads an evil autocracy that persecutes minorities, arrogates total power to itself, and suppresses those who dare challenge its barbarity.

The teachings of Lao-tzu and Confucius aimed to achieve humane conditions and a virtuous people. The self-serving propaganda of the CCP is in a completely different league, aimed at maintaining power at seemingly any cost.

Of all the important Chinese philosophers, my personal favorite is Mencius. Born two centuries after Confucius, he is regarded by scholars as nearly the equal of Confucius in his influence.

It is, in fact, through the more prolific Mencius that we understand Confucius himself. Mencius interpreted Confucius and took the elders teachings to their logical conclusionsto what lovers of liberty today identify as an ancient version of 19th century classical liberalism.

Writing at Libertarianism.org in 2020, Paul Meany explained that Mencius believed individual growth was a very personal thing. It is far better to encourage it than to compel it:

Similarly to Confucius, Mencius believed that the government existed to cultivate a virtuous citizenry. This at first sounds like a recipe for an overbearing authoritarian regime of paternalism, and yet Mencius beliefs do not remotely resemble those of a totalitarian. Mencius did not agree with heavy-handed, top-down approaches.

Mencius, writes Meany, held economic views that Adam Smith defended some 2,000 years later. The Chinese philosopher argued against government monopolies and price-fixing. He defended free trade and opposed warfare as a means to national prosperity.

He expected government officials to act with fairness, justice, and integrity:

Mencius held those in power to strict standards. Like Confucius, Mencius believed leaders ought to be of the highest ethical character, given that their example would filter down to the rest of the population. If leaders did not practice ethical conduct, they could corrupt an entire society. If leaders did not keep clean moral characters or failed to fulfill their duties, it was morally permissible for them to be removed from office and replaced, by force if necessary.

The followers of Taoist and Confucian thought rarely succeeded in securing the kind of minimal and benevolent state they wrote about. Governments are experts at thwarting, at least temporarily, the goals of those who wish to put the state in its proper place. But no Chinese scholar worth his salt would argue that Chinese culture hasnt been profoundly shaped over the centuries by these two philosophies.

Moreover, there can be little doubt that if Lao-tzu, Confucius, or Mencius could pronounce judgment on todays Chinese regime, they would express profound contempt. The CCP has surely lost any mandate from Heaven if it ever had one.

The day the CCP dies is the day when from beyond the grave, great-thinking men like Lao-tzu, Confucius, and Mencius will smile in unqualified approval.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Lawrence Reed writes a weekly op-ed for El American. He is president emeritus of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in Atlanta, Georgia; and is the author of Real Heroes: Inspiring True Stories of Courage, Character, and Conviction and the best-seller Was Jesus a Socialist?

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China's Great Philosophers Would Despise What Mao and the CCP Created - The Epoch Times

Last summer, Motherboard's Matthew Cassel visited a group of libertarians and crypto enthusiasts who are trying to create their own micronation called Liberland on disputed land sitting between Croatia and Serbia.

As Yugoslavia splintered in the early 1990s, various countries rose from the former territory but a tiny island on the Danube River fell into dispute between Serbia and Croatia. In 2015, Vit Jedlicka, a Czech citizen, planted a flag on the island and declared it a new country, Liberland, with Jedlicka at its helm as president. He and other libertarians have pinned their hopes on the micronation despite Liberland being unrecognized by any country and inaccessible to any of the people eager to become citizens because Croatian border police arrest anyone who tries to step foot on the island.

Cassel visited the Liberlanders during Floating Man, a multi-day festival celebrating the unrealized dream of making a libertarian nation run on Bitcoin and the blockchain. When asked who Liberlanders were and what they had in common, Jedlicka told VICE: "People that believe in freedom and want to start somethingthey're kind of fed up with existing systems, they understand that it's easier to actually start new things than to fix anything in the existing political system.

At Floating Man, individuals and citizens are free to talk about whatever they like. VICE heard presentations ranging from discussions of crypto-anarchism and darknet markets to how we dont really have diseases and opera performances.

Motherboard talked with Zuzana Uchnarova, a Bitcoin miner who dreams of becoming an ambassador of Liberland, who explained that "for you, [Liberland] is just a dream but for me it's real. I know we want to change the world and I know we want to change something."

Vit Jetlika, President of Liberland, ferries a boatload of festival attendees to visit the uninhabited island after his house boat broke down and nearly sank. Photo: Jake Kruty (IG: @jakedog___)

Uchnarova added that she thought Liberland could be a new Dubai, or home to a fantastical space program.

"We would like to build a new Dubai here, maybe more than Dubai," she said. "Maybe we will build something that will transfer us to orbit directly. My dream is to have a hotel in orbit and everything will be paid for by bitcoins."

Founded and backed by individuals who made early fortunes in cryptocurrency, Liberland and its denizens have a dream of integrating it into every facet of life. Jedlicka wants financial transactions to exist on the blockchain, but also the countrys Congress, Senate, justice system, and voting system.

In Liberland, taxes will give you merits that can be used for voting. The more taxes you pay, the more tokens you recieve. Jedlicka believes this is much fairer than trying to give everyone the same vote.

"If you paid $30 million in taxes, you still have one vote. That's one of the things that's a little broken about the systems that we are living in, Jedlicka said. It's very important to do it so that the majority of society cannot dictate the minority, especially the minority that actually pays the taxes and makes the country possible.

A Liberland flag and a beer sit in the grass on the Serbian banks of the Danube River. Photo: Jake Kruty (IG: @jakedog___)

In a discussion with Jillian Crandall, an architect and instructor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Edward Ongweso Jr, a staff writer at Motherboard, the CRYPTOLAND panel talked more about the community and its goals, and how it intersects with current themes around crypto-colonialism, or crypto-wealthy people trying to set up enclaves that benefit them in foreign territories.

"It stems from the foundation of a very explicit tax haven from the EU for people who are self-proclaimed techno-libertarians and right-libertarians, to form their own community, Crandall explained. "Where I get concerned is where these systems are being rolled out as a techno-fix for a more efficient governance systems that allow its citizens to participate in a voting structure that they're being told is a very democratic voting structure increasing efficiencies because its using computational technologies and using the blockchain (which is a very transparent, trustless system). People might say yeah, absolutely, I want to get behind that, I like how that sounds. But they might not understand that the more tokens you have, the more votes you have, the more pull you have.

Read the rest here:

Inside Liberland, a Crypto-Libertarian Micronation In Eastern Europe

Libertarian Black Cover Image

The state was abuzz last night with the results of the primary election runoffs. The abysmal turnout of a mere 15% of eligible voters underscores the notion that Alabamians are fed up with politics as we have come to know it. If the back-and-forth attacks that have become so commonplace in political ads werent enough, we heard more of the same in concession speeches.

For the 85% of Alabamians who didnt vote yesterday, the Libertarian Party of Alabama (LPA) presents a glimmer of hopea beacon of light in political darkness. The LPA announces its slate of candidates for the November 8, 2022, general election.

The biggest race yesterday by many accounts is the GOPs US Senate primary runoff. For those disinterested in the result, meet the LPAs US Senate candidate, John Sophocleus.

Instructor Sophocleus began his career at Ford Motor Company as a Warranty & Policy Administrator for a decade where he earned enough to devote most of his professional time to research and teaching; first at Clemson in 1989 then at Auburn (including AUM and Southern Union at times) beginning in 1992.

Recognized among the top 2% of college instructors in Whos Who Among American Teachers, he was also adjunct faculty at the Mises Institute and occasionally lectured there, usually on US tariff history. He considered it a great honor to lecture at the Air War Colleges International Officer School each summer at Maxwell AFB and also found teaching honor students a wonderful teaching experience. Perhaps most rewarding was his time teaching economics to prisoners as APAEP [Alabama Prison Arts & Education Project] faculty. Instructor Sophocleus generally taught Microeconomics classes and is published in leading economics journals such as Quarterly Journal of Economics, Public Choice, and more noteworthy to local folks as a columnist for the Alabama Gazette since 2009.

Instructor Sophocleus first run as a candidate was part of a project with the AU Student Libertarians. Some may recall the 2002 Libertarian Gubernatorial Campaign where Candidate Sophocleus beat the margin of victory leaving the outcome unknown for weeks.

Learn more about the LPAs full slate of candidates at lpalabama.org/candidates.

I am a graduate of Midfield High School and Bessemer State Technical College (now Lawson State CC). I am a lifelong resident of State Senate District 19. I am an automotive technician by tradea welcome divergence from the lawyers and corporatist businessmen that we have come accustomed to in politics.

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Libertarian Party of Alabama Offers Voters Another Option in November - Bama Politics

As four Republican gubernatorial hopefuls consider their options to try and remain in the race, one election expert has floated an alternative path available to them.

Following the disqualification of former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, businessman Perry Johnson, financial adviser Michael Markey and businesswoman Donna Brandenburg from the Aug. 2 primary ballot, each has sought various legal remedies to restore their candidacies.

To date, none has succeeded, most recently with a federal judge denying Johnsons last-ditch effort. Craig, meanwhile, has announced hes started a write-in campaign.

The four were tossed off of the ballot after the Bureau of Elections (BOE) released a report last month detailing an unprecedented number of fraudulent signatures on their petitions.That ruling was then upheld when the Board of State Canvassers (BSC) deadlocked along party lines.

That leaves five candidates running for the GOP nomination: Ryan Kelley who was arrested last week on charges related to the Jan. 6 insurrection; Garrett Soldano, a chiropractor; businessman Kevin Rinke; right-wing personality Tudor Dixon; and the Rev. Ralph Rebandt. The winner will take on Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Nov. 8.

Steven Liedel is a former counsel for Gov. Jennifer Granholm whos now with the Lansing-based Dykema law firm in Lansing, specializing in election law. Hes noted that Michigan law does provide another path to getting ones name on the ballot that does not require petition signatures.

Liedel, who represented Carol Bray of Haslett in her challenge to 6,000 of Perrys signatures, says candidates could seek a nomination from one of the five minor political parties; U.S. Taxpayers Party of Michigan, Working Class Party, Libertarian Party of Michigan, Green Party of Michigan and the Natural Law Party.

ZERO valid petition signatures required, tweeted Liedel. These parties select their nominees for governor at conventions held by August 2nd and simply notify the Secretary of State of their selections for placement on ballot.

Liedel told the Michigan Advance that since these GOP candidates had issues getting valid petition signatures, mounting a write-in campaign like Craig is doing may not be the most efficient path to the ballot.

What are their options if theyre not on the ballot as one of the candidates for the Republican nominations? said Liedel. A write-in to become the Republican nominee, if you get more write-in votes than one of the folks that appear on the ballot; go get 12,000 valid signatures from voters [by July 21] and appear on the general election ballot as an independent candidate without party affiliation; or much like Gary Johnson did, seek the nomination of one of the other political parties.

Gary Johnson was a former Republican governor of New Mexico who became the Libertarian Party nominee for president of the United States in 2012 and again in 2016.

Theyve all said that theyre interested in being governor and they have ideas that they think should be advanced, said Liedel. And so those are the three paths that they have at this point.

Liedel said that of those three options, seeking a minor party nomination presents the fewest technical obstacles, especially considering that a run for an independent spot on the ballot requires 12,000 valid signatures, just 3,000 less than they needed to get on the ballot as a major-party candidate.

If past performance is an indicator of future results, they might have trouble qualifying with the lower 12,000 signature requirements that are applicable to an independent candidate in terms of securing the nomination of another party, he said.

Messages seeking comment were sent to the Johnson, Craig, Markey and Brandenberg campaigns, but were not returned.

He acknowledged that the candidates themselves may have no interest in affiliating themselves with another party, and that the parties themselves would have to be interested in having one of them as their standard bearer on a ballot in November.

Its not something that they can control on their own, Liedel said. Youd have to have a willing party willing to nominate you, and you have to be willing to be affiliated with that party.

However, he said if those ideological differences could be overcome, their names would be on the ballot for their supporters, while the minor parties would receive wider recognition.

Those minor party candidates are at least interested in continuing their minor party status, which means they have to get a certain percentage of the vote in the race for governor to qualify for the next election cycle, said Liedel. So the parties could have an interest in at least maintaining their minor party status and potentially achieving major party status.

Regardless of whether any of the disqualified candidates have a desire to seek such a nomination, Liedel says it remains an option that contradicts the claims being made in some of the court challenges.

I think that several of them, and Mr. [Perry] Johnson in particular, were arguing in court that there was no alternative for them to seek the office and no other mechanism for folks that wanted to support them, claiming somehow that they were being disenfranchised, said Liedel. And, you know, that definitely was not the case.

Excerpt from:

Disqualified GOP gubernatorial candidates have options to get on the ballot Michigan Advance - Michigan Advance

A leading conservative activist and organizer of the Save America rally on January 6 said former President Donald Trump is "disconnected" from the GOP base and "getting bad advice" after he switched his endorsement in an Alabama Senate race.

Katie Britt, who Trump backed shortly before the runoff after initially endorsing and then un-endorsing her opponent Rep. Mo Brooks, won a Republican primary runoff for an open US Senate seat in Alabama on Tuesday.

"Donald Trump is disconnected from the base," Amy Kremer, leader of Women for America First and a Brooks supporter, told Politico for a story about Tuesday's Alabama Senate runoff.

"I don't know what has happened there," Kremer, also a longtime activist in the Tea Party movement, told Politico. "I think he's getting bad advice from the people around him, and I think it's unfortunate, but it's time for those of us in the movement to get back to basics, back to our first principles."

"We were here long before President Trump came along, and we're going to be here long afterward," she said.

Brooks was one of Trump's top allies in his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Congress and he secured endorsements from a slew of Trumpworld figures in his Senate campaign.

But after Brooks' fundraising sputtered and he faltered in the polls, Trump pulled his endorsement, saying that Brooks "went woke" over the 2020 election.

"It's quite clear that Donald Trump has no loyalty to anyone or anything but himself," Brooks fumed in an earlier interview with AL.com.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a longtime Brooks supporter, similarly said Trump turning on Brooks had "certainly a sense of bad irony."

"Many of us were conservative, slash libertarian, slash constitutionalists well before there was a Donald Trump," Paul said on a campaign call in support of Brooks, according to Politico. "We were glad Donald Trump was with us on so many things, but it doesn't make him the end-all of everything."

"I would say, without question, Mo Brooks is probably the most loyal person to Donald Trump than probably all of the congressmen I can think of," Paul added. "And there's certainly a sense of bad irony that the president didn't repay that loyalty. And I'll never understand it, and never justify it."

Some of Trump's other endorsements so far this cycle, like his backing of Dr. Mehmet Oz and JD Vance for open Senate seats in Pennsylvania and Ohio, have rankled some Republicans in those states and spurred a feud between Trump and an influential Republican group, the Club for Growth.

In other cases during the 2022 primary cycle, Trump has swept in at the last minute to endorse a candidate, like his backing of Britt after he un-endorsed Brooks, and his 11th-hour endorsement of Doug Mastriano for the GOP gubernatorial nomination in Pennsylvania.

And two more of Trump's endorsed US House candidates in Georgia, former state Rep. Vernon Jones and Jake Evans, also lost in Republican primary runoffs on Tuesday.

Jones' and Evans' defeats continued a losing streak for Trump in Georgia, where his chosen candidates to challenge Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger lost outright in May.

But their losses aren't an all-out repudiation of Trump given that the victors, Mike Collins and Rich McCormick, also embraced Trump's brand of politics. In one campaign ad, for example, Collins is seen driving a truck with "TRUMP AGENDA" painted on the side and a Trump bobblehead on the dashboard.

"At this point in time, the Trump endorsement is neutral. It's not a plus and it's not a negative," Gordon Rhoden, chairman of the Athens-Clarke County Republican Party, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "People are moving beyond that."

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Top conservative activist says Trump is 'disconnected from the base' - Business Insider