Category Archives: Libertarian

COSTA MESA, Calif. A week after the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are people, independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. would not say when he thinks life begins.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Kennedy said the Alabama decision on in vitro fertilization which has caused some IVF clinics to pause services in the state was a mistake to the extent that it limited access to the fertility procedure. He said he had not read the decision, although he later reviewed it and said he wholeheartedly rejects the ruling.

Kennedy did not say whether he would protect abortion access, arguing that while he believes women should have the right to choose, he thinks there is a limitation on what the Constitution says.

Asked what he would do to protect abortion access and reproductive rights if he were elected president, Kennedy said: I dont know, you tell me. What should I be doing?

Kennedy, who left the Democratic Party his family once led to run as an independent, has struggled to outline a clear policy plan on abortion access and reproductive rights an issue that has catapulted to the center of the 2024 election season.

At a time when Democrats have sought to galvanize their base around protecting reproductive rights, Kennedys answer reflects a difficulty he could face in appealing to his former partys voters. Meanwhile, Republicans have scrambled to find unity over the issue that drove voters to opt for Democrats in the midterms and in more recent elections.

After this story published Sunday, Kennedy further clarified his opinion on the ruling. His spokeswoman said he has read the decision since the interview, but she would not elaborate on whether he disagreed with the courts decision that embryos are people.

Most Republicans I speak to are sick of this political theater, he wrote on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. Lets get back to working for the needs of the American people.

Kennedy has previously changed his stance or walked back his positions when asked about a federal abortion ban. In an interview with NBC News at the Iowa State Fair in August, Kennedy said that he believes a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life and that he would support an abortion ban at 15 or 21 weeks. His campaign later clarified that he misunderstood the question in the noisy space and that Kennedy does not support legislation banning abortion. In a town hall last June, he said he thinks women have a choice for the first three months of pregnancy. On Saturday, Kennedy told The Post: Every abortion ultimately is a tragedy.

Kennedy, speaking at the California Libertarian convention this weekend, also emphasized his belief in medical autonomy when asked about the Alabama decision, adding that he doesnt think the government should be making choices about medical treatments for Americans or for what people do with their bodies. He has continued to campaign on doubting the safety and efficacy of the coronavirus vaccine and on arguing against vaccinate mandates.

That message, which has not resonated with Democrats, found appeal among libertarians at the convention. Kennedy and other third-party presidential candidates spoke to the delegates gathered this weekend to try to appeal to the party, which has garnered greater ballot access.

Kennedy said he had not ruled out the possibility of running for the Libertarian Party nomination, telling The Post, Were looking at every option. Yet, few at the convention expressed any interest in him becoming the nominee.

Ahead of the party formally choosing its nominee at a national convention in May, the California Libertarian delegates voted via straw poll for their preference, largely rejecting Kennedy. Out of 95 delegates who voted, one person chose Kennedy.

Most of the delegates votes were split between the Libertarian candidates, indicating that delegates might seek a candidate who better aligns with the partys platforms.

The question of Kennedys potential nomination comes as the party has struggled with its identity and infighting in recent years, as membership has declined. Some in the party have argued that Kennedy could offer the party national recognition, but others vocally opposed what they see as a break from their principles.

The Libertarian Party is extremely fractured right now, said Christopher Thrasher, an independent ballot access consultant who has advised previous Libertarian presidential nominees and has since left the party.

Angela McArdle, the chair of the Libertarian National Committee, warned in a speech to the group Sunday that Kennedys independent candidacy might further threaten the partys efforts, because he could pull voters from their nominee.

Things have been rough over the last year in the Libertarian Party, McArdle said.

The Kennedy campaign and the PAC supporting him, American Values 2024, have spent millions of dollars on getting his name on state ballots, and the Libertarian nomination could offer him an easier and less expensive path toward ballot access. Kennedy will be on the ballot in Utah, and the campaign says it has met the requirements for New Hampshire and Hawaii.

But Kennedy, a lawyer and environmental activist who has spent decades supporting Democrats, has also acknowledged his ideological differences with the Libertarian Party. He has faced criticism here over his support of Israel and for a $15 minimum wage.

How can a supposed antiwar candidate promote that military funding and arming of the state of Israel in their genocidal campaign against the Palestine people? Libertarian presidential candidate Michael Rectenwald said to the California delegates, a line that was met with applause.

Libertarian presidential candidate Jacob Hornberger said Kennedy could be exploring renting the party for ballot access, but it doesnt make sense for Kennedy or the party to pair given their differences.

Hes a big-government, gun-grabbing, welfare-state-loving, liberal Democrat, but hell portray himself as a libertarian, Hornberger said. Hes like a chameleon changing colors.

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RFK Jr. says he didn't read Alabama IVF ruling, won't say when life begins - The Washington Post

Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino brushed off the idea that any disagreements about social justice could divide her government from President Joe Biden as Argentine President Javier Milei prepares to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference in the United States.

When we talk about social justice, its a comment that it hasnt been ingrained in Argentina whether to help someone, they take away from somebody else, Mondino said Friday during a press conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Whereas to our understanding, social justice should be to give each and every one equal opportunities and the possibilities of keeping whatever they are helping produce but not taking away from somebody else.

That libertarian conception of social justice is emblematic of the free market ideology that Milei espoused throughout his presidential campaign, in which a backlash against the leftist government that presided over triple-digit inflation percentages propelled him to victory. The same ideological outlook has made him a natural partner of the U.S. in opposition to Russia and China and a celebrity on the American Right, exemplified by his invitation to join former President Donald Trump at CPAC just one day after his meeting with Blinken in Buenos Aires.

Milei watched very closely what Trump did, how Trump became president, how Trump fashioned himself and learned along the way, Lauri Tahtinen, a South America expert affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Washington Examiner. This is somebody whos been inspired by elements on the American Right for many years.

That makes Mileis trip a tricky visit for Argentinian officials. Mondino, for her part, floated the possibility that Milei might be unable to meet with Trump even if they intend to do so.

I dont know whether there will be any meetings in CPAC, she said.I can say that since these are commercial flights, there might be delays and any schedules might be disrupted.

Blinken was careful not to signal any displeasure over Mileis itinerary. With regard to President Milei, look, I cant speak to his schedule and future meetings,he said. Thats of course entirely up to him. All I can speak to is the meeting that we just had, and I can tell you, following on what the foreign minister said, that it was, from my perspective, at least, an incredibly positive, productive, detailed, wide-ranging discussion.

Mileis background as an economist has contributed to his general desire to cooperate with the U.S. on a range of economic and geopolitical fronts. American free-market economist Milton Friedman, for instance, looms as one of Mileis chief intellectual influences, a philosophical formation that helps to account for Mileis decision to reject an invitation for Argentina to join BRICS, a bloc that China and Russia hope will counter the weight of Western allies.

In the long term, if other Latin American countries follow Argentinas lead in reevaluating their involvement in BRICS, where China plays a major role, it could potentially weaken the blocs regional economic influence and undermine Chinas growing influence in Latin America, Dr. Zhang Chi, in international relations expert at the University of St. Andrews, told the South China Morning Post.

Milei also announced, during a trip to Israel in early February, that he intends to move the Argentine Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. And his government is an outspoken supporter of Ukraine against Russias aggression, as Mondino demonstrated again on Friday.

Its not just about territorial integrity, which of course is very important, Mondino said. Here we are talking about a case involving children that are not with their parents or families in Ukraine but rather in Russia right now, and its hard to identify them.

Her unprompted remark was a reference to the alleged forced deportation of Ukrainian children into Russia, which U.N. investigators and Blinken alike have assessed to be a war crime. That posture represents a major shift for Argentina, as his predecessors joined Chinas Belt and Road Initiative in 2022 and offered to make Argentina Russias gateway to Latin America just weeks before Putin launched the full-scale war in Ukraine.

We would like to see Argentina and the United States showcase their shared values, basically democracy and freedom, Mondino said. Weve had visits focusing on trying to understand what the best way is for us to work together but, above all things, to find the best way for Argentina to be able to fulfill its true goals.

Blinken noted that Argentina has the potential to play a critical role in building supply chains for critical minerals that will drive the economy of the 21st century, particularly things like lithium. The remark could bode poorly for China, which has made multi-billion-dollar investments, as an Australian think tank observed.

The United States is already the leading provider of foreign direct investment in Argentina, but we see tremendous opportunity to do more, Blinken said. Beyond the economic partnership between our countries, we value Argentinas leadership on regional and global security issues.

Despite that backdrop of policy convergence, Mileis decision to attend a political conference organized by Trumps devotees We believe he has captured the spirit of those who see the treachery of globalist elites, CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp said last week when he announced Mileis participation could irritate the Biden administration.

It is not in Argentinas interest to alienate the U.S. leadership, the Wilson Centers Benjamin Gedan, who held Argentina-focused policy roles in the State Department and White House National Security Council during the Obama presidency, told the Buenos Aires Herald. The U.S.-Argentina relationship has enormous potential at this moment. This is no time to wade into partisan combat in the U.S.

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Mondino emphasized that Biden and Milei should be able to get along in any case.

And as regards to whether leaders are compatible or not, well, why not?I mean, everybody supports the same ideas, Mondino said. And even if they didnt, we live in a very complicated world; we all need to work [toward] common objectives. Thats whats really very important.

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Argentina touts libertarian social justice to Blinken before Javier Milei visits CPAC - Washington Examiner

This weeks edition of The HubsWeekly Wrap reflects on three of the past weeks biggest stories, including Pierre Poilievres support for age verification to access pornography, the Conservatives youth movement, and the American Rights continued descent into a cult of personality.

Pornography was at the centre of Canadian politics this week. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre surprised some political observers by signaling support for legislation that would require age verification for Canadians to access online porn.

Although he didnt provide much detail about how such a law might ultimately be implemented, Poilievres endorsement in principle represents a notable divergence from the libertarian politics with which hes become associated. It reflects a more nuanced worldview than weve typically seen from him, and is an implicit recognition of Stephen Harpers axiom that Conservatives have to be more than modern liberals in a hurry.

What Harper was conveying in his influential 2003 Civitas address, and what Poilievres surprise announcement on online pornography signals, is that in todays political context it isnt sufficient for conservatives to merely confront progressivisms economic agenda. They must also be prepared to challenge the excesses of its sociocultural agenda too. As Harper put it:

On a wide range of public-policy questions, including foreign affairs and defence, criminal justice and corrections, family and childcare, and healthcare and social services, social values are increasingly the really big issues.

Canadian conservatism, in other words, must strive for a synthesis between liberal ideals of individual autonomy and freedom and traditional understandings of social norms and values. Jason Kenney, Stephen Harper, and others have referred to this intellectual and political tradition as ordered liberty.

The subject of online pornography for minors is arguably a prime one for conservatives conception of order to trump their commitment to freedom. The negative effects of ubiquitous porn in general and for young people in particular are quite overwhelming. Evidence tells us that the harms extend from individuals to social relationships and ultimately society as a whole. Theres certainly a conceptual case therefore that individual freedoms related to accessing pornographyparticularly for minorsought to be curtailed in the name of the social good.

The details of course matter. There will be an onus on Poilievre at some point to outline how the goal of age verification would be effectuated. A current Senate bill thats supposed to be taken up in the House of Commons is vague on how it should be implemented and who is ultimately responsible for overseeing it. But even if these are complex questions, theyre presumably not intractable. The British government is currently working on them as part of the coming into force of its own legislation. There are doubtless lessons to learn from its imperfect experience.

But for now, Poilievres announcement is as important for its symbolism as its substance. It signals that hes not merely a live-and-let-live libertarian. His worldview is instead more textured than his rhetoric sometimes reveals. It makes one wonder in what other instances we may see him diverge from a strict libertarian position in pursuit of the balance that Harper envisioned more than 20 years ago.

In the meantime, its worth acknowledging the key role that Hub contributor Ginny Roth has played in building a first-principles and policy-based case in favour of the position that Poilievre articulated this week. Shes been a consistent voice at The Hub for what she describes as a conservative feminism, including an August 2023 column that advanced the case for age-gating online pornography, and deserves a lot of credit for contributing to the intellectual conditions that led to Poilievres surprising announcement. Its a valuable reminder of the power of ideas in politics.

This week, the Canadian Club Toronto hosted a much-anticipated panel discussion with Millennial Conservative MPs Adam Chambers, Melissa Lantsman, and Shuvaloy Majumdar as well as prospective candidate Sabrina Maddeaux. The sold-out event was ably moderated by Hub contributor Ginny Roth.

Although its general theme was the state of Canadian Conservative politics, the conversations underlying idea was the generational change represented by the participants themselves. They personify the growing influence of Millennial Conservatives (and conservatives) in our politics. Its fitting that the event was held on the same day that Statistics Canada reported that Millennials have overtaken Baby Boomers as the countrys large demographic group.

Canadian Conservatism (and conservatism) is increasingly a microcosm of this demographic shift in the broader society. Yet, as Ive previously written, its major generational transformation has gone largely underreported by the mainstream media. The political consequences are nevertheless bound to be significant.

The Parliament of Canadas website makes it somewhat challenging to conduct an apples-to-apples comparison of the age distribution of the different parliamentary caucuses. But a cursory review of the Conservative shadow cabinet and the Trudeau governments own cabinet (as well as the caucuses overall) is suggestive that the Conservatives are on balance younger than the Liberals. Pierre Poilievre for instance is roughly eight years younger than Justin Trudeau. Chambers and Lantsman (who are both members of the Conservative shadow cabinet) are between 15 and 17 years younger than their Liberal counterparts.

These generational differences were on display at the Canadian Club event. The discussion covered a set of issues that wouldnt have necessarily animated previous gatherings of conservatives. One example: There was a unique focus on fertility rates, family formation, and the role of government policy to improve the conditions for families to flourish.

Its not that previous generations of Conservatives (and conservatives) were indifferent to these questions. But rather their attention and focus were mostly dedicated to the issues that had been part of their own formative political experiences. As a result, the centre of gravity for a lot of Conservative (and conservative) Baby Boomers was the economic stagnation and fiscal crisis of the 1980s and 1990s. They came of age litigating debates about taxes, spending, and the size of government in the economy.

While these issues still matter to Millennial Conservatives (and conservatives), theyve since been superseded by a new set of concerns that sit at the nexus of the so-called success sequence. The promise of educational returns, marriage, home ownership, and family formation has been fundamentally disrupted in the modern era and, in turn, led to a reorientation of conservative priorities.

Consider the following: a previous study by the Cardus Institute has found that more than half of Canadians in working-class jobs are now over-credentialized. Mortgage eligibility in the City of Toronto is increasingly limited to those with household incomes in the top ten percent. The average age of first-time mothers has increased to 31.6 years old. And research from last year tells us that Canadian women are having fewer children than they tell pollsters they want.

These unique challenges facing younger Canadians require a voice and, as this weeks Canadian Club event demonstrates, its Conservatives (and conservatives) who are disproportionately giving them expression. And so far theyre being rewarded for it. The Conservative Party now outperforms the Liberals with the 18-39 age demographic which makes it an outlier among centre-right parties across the Anglosphere.

It prompts the question: will the next election be the first in which Millennials assert their new generational power over our politics?

American conservatives are gathered in Washington this week for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. CPAC, which was first launched in 1974 with a keynote speech by future President Ronald Reagan, is one of the highest-profile events on the conservative calendar. Thousands of grassroots attendees come each year to hear speeches from leading right-wing activists and politicians.

CPACs evolution over the past several years is a metaphor for broader trends in American conservatism. Its a long way from Reagans inaugural address to this years Reagan dinner speaker Vivek Ramaswamy.

I attended CPAC a few times in the early 2000s. My friends and I went to hear leading political figures like George W. Bush and Paul Ryan as well as intellectuals like Charles Krauthammer and George Will.

The conference was a bit edgy and quirky. Ron Paul regularly won the presidential straw poll, which of course was unrepresentative of his broader political support. But the overall vibe was solidly mainstream.

In the Trump years, though, CPAC has become an expression of the former presidents takeover of American conservatism. The ideas and values that used to underpin the conference (often characterized on bumper stickers or t-shirts by phrases like faith, freedom, and free enterprise) have been subordinated to accommodate Trumps ideological incoherence. A former head of the American Conservative Union, which organizes and hosts the conference, recently said that I dont recognize it anymore. It all gravitates around Donald Trump.

The list of this years speakersincluding Lara Trump, Steve Bannon, and My Pillow founder Mike Lindellreinforces his point. The conference, which used to be a platform for intra-debate among conservatives, is now carefully configured around Trumps ego and political impulses. Its become a cult of personality. The former president who headlines the program on Saturday has seemingly reshaped the movement that Reagan used to personify.

Its interesting to think about the direction of causality here. Did Trump channel or change American conservatism? If its the former, whats behind the change between the CPACs that I attended and this years conference? Is it mostly explained by a counter-radicalization to excesses on the Left or is something else going on? If its the latter, are people primarily motivated by affective polarization or have they actually changed their views to align them with Trump? However one answers these questions, theres no doubt that something has changedand Id argue its for the worse.

Late last year when I interviewed George Will for Hub Dialogues I told him that we had previously met at CPAC in 2007. He replied: thats before it went crazy.

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The Weekly Wrap: Poilievre proves hes more than a live-and-let-live libertarian - The Hub

Logically, authoritarianism and libertarianism are contradictory. Supporters of authoritarian leaders share a state of mind in which they take direction from an idealised figurehead and closely identify with the group which that leader represents. To be libertarian is to see the freedom of the individual as the supreme principle of politics. It is core to the economics and politics of neo-liberalism, as well as to some bohemian counter-cultures.

As a state of mind, libertarianism is superficially the opposite of authoritarianism. Identification with the leader or group is anathema and all forms of authority are regarded with suspicion. Instead the ideal is to experience oneself as a self-contained, free agent.

Yet there is a history of these two outlooks being intertwined. Consider Donald Trump, whose re-election in 2024 would be seen by many as adding to the international rise of authoritarianism.

Others might see him as insufficiently focused to be an effective authoritarian leader, but its not difficult to imagine him governing by executive order, and he has successfully sought an authoritarian relationship with his followers. He is an object of idealisation and a source of truth for the community of followers he purports to represent.

Yet at the same time, in his rhetoric and his persona of predatory freewheeler, in his wealth and indifference to others, Trump offers a hyper-realisation of a certain kind of individualistic freedom.

Trumpisms fusion of the authoritarian and the libertarian was embodied in the January 6 attack in Washington DC. The insurgents who stormed the Capitol that day passionately wanted to install Trump as an autocratic leader. He had not, after all, won a democratic election.

But these people were also conducting a carnivalesque assertion of their individual rights, as they defined them, to attack the American state. Among them were followers of the bizarre conspiracy theory QAnon, who lionised Trump as the heroic authority figure secretly leading the fightback against a child-torturing cabal of elites.

Alongside them were the Proud Boys, whose misty libertarianism is paired with a proto-authoritarian commitment to politics as violence.

Conspiracy theories are also involved in other recent examples of authoritarian-libertarian hybridity. Beliefs that COVID-19 vaccines (or lockdowns, or the virus itself) were attempts by a malevolent power to attack or control us were fuelled by a growing army of conspiracists. But they were also facilitated by libertarian ideologies which rationalise suspicion of and antipathy towards authority of all sorts and support refusals to comply with public health measures.

In the UK, some small towns and rural areas have seen an influx of people involved in a variety of pursuits arts and crafts, alternative medicine and other wellness practices, spirituality and mysticism. Research is lacking but a recent BBC investigation in the English town of Totnes showed how this can create a strong alternative ethos in which soft, hippie-ish forms of libertarianism are prominent and very hospitable to conspiracism.

One might have thought that Totnes and some other towns like it would be the last places wed find sympathy for authoritarian politics. However, the BBC investigation showed that although there may be no single dominant leader at work, new age anti-authority sentiments can morph into intolerance and hard-edged demands for retribution against the people seen as orchestrating vaccinations and lockdowns.

This is reflected in some COVID conspiracists calling for those who led the public health response to be tried at Nuremberg 2.0, a special court where they should face the death penalty.

When we remember that a virulent sense of grievance against an enemy or oppressor who must be punished is a regular feature of authoritarian culture, we start to see how the dividing lines between the libertarian mindset and the authoritarian perspective have blurred around COVID.

Read more: Conspiracy theories about the pandemic are spreading offline as well as through social media

A disturbing survey conducted earlier this year for Kings College London even found that 23% of the sample would be prepared to take to the streets in support of a deep state conspiracy theory. And of that group, 60% believed the use of violence in the name of such a movement would be justified.

A psychological approach can help us to understand the dynamics of this puzzling fusion. As Erich Fromm and others have shown, our ideological affinities are linked to unconscious structures of feeling.

At this level, authoritarianism and libertarianism are the interchangeable products of the same underlying psychological difficulty: the vulnerability of the modern self.

Authoritarian political movements offer a sense of belonging to a collective, and of being protected by its strong leader. This may be completely illusory, but it nonetheless provides a sense of safety in a world of threatening change and risk. As individuals, we are vulnerable to feeling powerless and abandoned. As a group, we are safe.

Libertarianism, in contrast, proceeds from the illusion that as individuals we are fundamentally self-sufficient. We are independent of others and dont need protection from authorities. This fantasy of freedom, like the authoritarian fantasy of the ideal leader, also generates a sense of invulnerability for those who believe in it.

Both outlooks serve to protect against the potentially overwhelming sense of being in a society on which we depend but which we feel we cannot trust. While politically divergent, they are psychologically equivalent. Both are ways for the vulnerable self to ward off existential anxieties. There is therefore a kind of belt-and-braces logic in toggling between them or even occupying both positions simultaneously.

In any specific context, authoritarianism is more likely to have the necessary focus and organisation to prevail. But its hybrid fusion with libertarianism will have broadened its support base by seducing people with anti-authority impulses.

And as things currently stand, were at risk of seeing increasing polarisation between, on one hand, this anxiety-driven, defensive form of combined politics, and on the other, efforts to preserve reality-based, non-defensive modes of political discourse.

Continued here:

Why have authoritarianism and libertarianism merged? A political psychologist on 'the vulnerability of the modern self' - The Conversation

Argentina's annual inflation is above 140% and is expected to hit 200% within months. Four in ten people are living in poverty. The value of the peso has collapsed by more than 90% against the US dollar in the past four years, while dollar bonds trade at less than 33% of their par value. A bewildering assortment of different exchange rates as well as complex controls on capital, prices, imports and exports have crippled investment. And public debt has soared to 90% of GDP.

In an effort to prevent collapse, the outgoing Peronist government (the left-nationalist party that has dominated Argentinian politics for decades) resorted to ever more money-printing, fuelling the inflationary spiral and putting off the day of reckoning.

The country owes $44bn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the central bank is effectively in $10bn of debt (once central bank swap lines and other liabilities are deducted from its reserves).

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Javier Milei is the self-styled anarcho-capitalist and former TV pundit who was sworn in as the president of Argentina on 10 December 2023, having won the November election. Milei, a trained economist who names his dogs after famous free-market thinkers, is a radical libertarian who campaigned on a platform of sweeping economic shock therapy and privatisation, pledging to take a chainsaw to government spending to tackle Argentinas triple-digit inflation and growing poverty.

Mileis most radical ideas and controversial proposals are to shut the central bank and dollarise the Argentinian economy abolishing the national currency, the peso, and adopting the US dollar in its place, with the aim of controlling inflation and encouraging fiscal discipline. Hes promised to bring forward a massive package of reforms to the legislature.

However, Mileis Libertad Avanza (Freedom Advances) coalition is only the third-largest group in the lower house of Congress, meaning he could well struggle to get his programme through.

Hes expected to announce a drastic fiscal tightening; the removal of foreign-exchange restrictions (probably resulting in another big fall in the peso, helping competitiveness but ramping up the public debt burden); and the privatisation of state-owned enterprises.

But theres a big question mark over his core proposal of dollarisation, says The Economist. Yes, eight other countries use the US dollar as legal tender. But to do this in an orderly manner requires elaborate preparation and a large float of dollars with which to back the banking system. On both counts Argentina fails. Dollarising without sufficient dollars is like saying you want the entire population to wear Nike trainers, even though you dont make them and you dont have the resources to buy them, former IMF official Alejandro Werner told Bloomberg. Its also a big risk abandoning a national currency leaves policymakers few levers to deal with external shocks (making an internal devaluation, and a popular backlash, more likely).

Its proponents argue that the experience of other Latin American countries shows that it can work. El Salvador, Ecuador and Panama (admittedly all much smaller economies than Argentina) have all dollarised and have lower inflation and higher growth. Dollarisation would not be a panacea. But it would control high inflation and make Argentina much more attractive to investors craving stability, says Ben Ramanauskas on CapX.

And while its true that the central bank is short on dollars, the people of Argentina are not. They hold an estimated $246bn of US currency either in foreign bank accounts or stashed away somewhere safe. Getting them to deposit that money in domestic accounts would be a tough sell, but formal dollarisation would be a powerful signal that their money is safe in Argentina. However, its not yet clear whether Milei will follow through on his pledge, and there are signs of a more moderate approach.

Hes already started to tack to the centre. Media reports suggest that Demian Reidel, a veteran investment banker who worked at the central bank under Mauricio Macri, will be appointed as Mileis central bank chief in place of Emilio Ocampo, the economist behind Mileis dollarisation plan. Another Macri ally, Luis Caputo, is running Mileis economic transition team and is expected to become economy minister. Meanwhile, Milei has toned down his rhetoric and flew to Washington DC for two days of talks with White House officials, the US Treasury and the IMF.

Encouragingly, Milei does seem keen to win friends and influence people. Hell need to. Meanwhile, financial markets gave a warm welcome to Mileis election with bonds and stocks both posting strong gains on expectations that he will be heavily reliant on the support of mainstream conservatives.

Its unlikely to be a smooth ride. Macri was the sole non-Peronist president to complete a term in office (2015-2019) since the restoration of democracy in 1983, and the disturbing links of some in Mileis camp to Argentinas past dictatorship are likely to inflame tensions in an already fractious nation.

Drastic fiscal tightening of the kind Milei seeks will be much less popular among Argentine voters than it is in the bond market, notes William Jackson of Capital Economics. And Argentinas short electoral cycle means that Milei must very quickly build a national consensus, or risk a massive popular backlash as the short-term effects of his policies begin to bite. So far, Mileis lack of experience and volatile character do not suggest that he can manage this, says The Economist. If the economic situation implodes, social unrest may well follow. Yet if Argentina has become an economic casino, Mr Milei is the last roll of the dice.

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Originally posted here:

Argentina's Javier Milei what are his plans and will they work? - MoneyWeek

"Does this economic system produce a lot of Dollar Stores?"On Glenn Greenwald'sSystem Update Rumble show, former Fox News star Tucker Carlson issued a scathing indictment of what he calls "libertarian economics" over the weekend.

"Libertarian economics was a scam perpetrated by the beneficiaries of the economic system that they were defending," Carlson told Greenwald.

"So they created this whole intellectual framework to justify the private equity culture that's hollowed out the country," said Carlson. "A smarter way to assess an economic system is by its results."

"I think you need to ask: 'Does this economic system produce a lot of Dollar Stores?'" said Carlson. "And if it does, it's not a system that you want, because it degrades people and it makes their lives worse and it increases exponentially the amount of ugliness in your society. And anything that increases ugliness is evil.So if it's such a good system, why do we have all these Dollar Stores?"

Carlson is indicting not just cheaply, readily available consumer goods, but also something deeper, he claimed.

"And the Dollar Store itself is a sort of symbolfor your total lack of control over where you live, and over the imposition of aggressively in-your-face ugly structures that send one message to you, which is, 'You mean nothing. You are a consumer, not a human being or a citizen.'"

On so many counts, Carlson is wrong. Life in the U.S. has gotten better since 1969, when he was born, in clear and measurable wayslife expectancy, child mortality rates, average income per person, liberal democratic scores of countries around the world, and much more. The "lack of control over where you live" is a total fablethough housing supply crunch is real (and government-created). If he's describing a sense that something is wrong within the American spirit, he should come right out and say so, but I'd expect the causes of these maladiesdeaths of despair trending upward, for example, or American males falling behind their female counterparts on educational achievementare deeper than "cheaply available consumer goods have proliferated."

Accidental hostage killing: On Friday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) admitted to accidentally killing three Israeli hostages who had been taken by Hamas.

Three menYotam Haim and Alon Shamriz, both of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, and Samer Talalka, of Kibbutz Nir Am"had emerged shirtless from a building and were carrying a makeshift white flag," in Shejaiye, an area of Gaza City where Israel and Hamas forces had been fighting, perThe New York Times.They had reportedly taken off their shirts to make clear that they were unarmed and not wearing any explosives and were approaching IDF soldiers, speaking in Hebrew.

The Israeli military said in a statement that its "soldiers were on high alert for attempts by Hamas to ambush Israeli forces, possibly in civilian clothes, as they patrolled the area," per aTimes account.

Herzi Halevi, the Israeli military's chief of staff, said that IDF policy is to arrest people who lay down their weapons, not shoot, and that so far more than a thousand people have been taken into military custody this way. "It is forbidden to shoot at those who raise a white flag and seek to surrender," said Halevi. Nonetheless, Israeli soldiers made a profound mistake, which is being criticized by both Israelis and the rest of the world.

Scenes from New York:New York City recently passed a law banning size and height discrimination when hiring dancers, which follows in the footsteps of similar legislation passed by San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

"The law includes an exemption for when height or weight may interfere with the essential requirements of a job," reported The New York Times. "But what are 'essential requirements' in the highly subjective world of dance?"

To put an even more cynical gloss on it: It seems highly unlikely that the government meddling in this way will make a difference, even sidestepping the question of whether this is an appropriate thing for policy makers to be spending time on.

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Tucker Carlson Issues Scathing Indictment of 'Libertarian Economics' - Reason

Vt Jedlika, a Czech libertarian activist and president of the would-be libertarian micronation he founded called Liberland, remains cheery about the future of his project. He has aspired since April 2015 to create what he hopes will be the freest nation on Earth on fewer than three square miles of land on a disputed part of the Croatia-Serbia border. (For complicated reasons related to a shift in the flow of the Danube over time, both nations would prefer the bit of land, known as Gornja Siga, on the western bank of the river belong to the other.)

The project drew extended attention from prominent media, including the New York Times, from the start. By July 2023, according to Wired, the project had attracted more than 700,000 online registrants expressing their interest in the so-far mostly conceptual micronation. Plus, "6,000 have signed up as paying e-residents, and roughly 1,000 have paid $5,000 or made an equivalent contribution to become full citizens."

Jedlika was optimistic in early August, for obvious reasons. After eight years of Croatian authorities generally trying to deny anyone entry to Liberland, they began mellowing out and allowing a gaggle of settlers, first handfuls and then close to dozens, to enter and even begin building structures there. Finally, as Jedlika told me in a phone interview in September, "We had a permanent presence inside of the territory."

Liberlander boats were beginning to bring in material to build solar power arrays and small shelters. A set of Liberland-branded deck chairs were lined up on their beach. The first Liberland-generated utility bill, for 25 euros for high-speed internet via Starlink, was proudly displayed on Facebook. Jedlika found a meadow in the jungly tree-thick land that he announced would be Liberland's helicopter pad.

Liberland's and Jedlika's Facebook feeds were awash with enthusiasm and video clips showing Liberlanders constructing, pumping water from a well, celebrating, making music, taking late-night swims, and generally luxuriating in finally being Liberlanders in practice and not just theory.

Sure, Jedlika was a little annoyed that the Croats, while tolerating their settlement, were still randomly harassing or driving out individual Liberlanders for what he saw as illegitimate reasons. They'd hold up every boatload for as long as they could, obsessively checking papers and being general bureaucratic nuisances. And he was a little bugged that some of the big money sloshing around the world of libertarian and crypto causes weren't rushing in during this exciting moment to more swiftly propel Liberland out of its cradle.

But Jedlika's attitude was overwhelmingly positive, even puckishly reframing Croatian harassment as really helpthey might have thought they were confiscating a Liberland boat, but really they moved it to someplace Jedlika needed it to go.

When they arrested him on September 7, and eventually kicked him out of Croatia, they were really giving him a chance to get some sleep away from all the constant Liberland business blowing up his phone all month.

According to a Liberland press release, Jedlika had been "arrested and subsequently deported for a period of five years on grounds of 'national security.'" He was told, per an earlier press release, that "proponents of Liberland had engaged in 'extremist actions' aimed at 'undermining the position of Croatia.'"

Some paperwork he got related to that arrest and expulsion was to Jedlika another wonderful gift from his Croat friends. He says the document listed two distinct expulsions: from Croatia and from Gornja Siga, which he insists means that "Gornja Siga is recognized to be notCroatia."

"They gave us really nice paperwork," he says, that "basically recognizes the fact that they don't believe that [Liberland] is part of Croatia."

The reasons for August's brief thaw in Croatian practice toward Liberland settlers are twofold, Jedlika and Liberland's minister of foreign affairs, Thomas D. Walls, agreed in separate phone interviews in September. (Disclosure: Walls is an old college friend and former bandmate of mine.)

One reason is that Croatia at the start of 2023 joined the Schengen Area, a 27-nation visa-free travel zone, meaning there are no border crossing requirements from Hungary to Croatia. As Jedlika says, this means legally if you have a Schengen Area passport, Liberlanders "cannot really be stopped. They can only be threatened."

A second reason, they both think, is bad press for Croatia that arose from a video made by YouTuber Niko Omilana, which has earned over 8 million views in the past two months.

Omilana seemed to buy in totally to Jedlika's vision of a new, free country. He vowed to set foot and plant the Liberland flag on the disputed territoryand, naturally, to capture it all on video.

After a couple of failures, harassment from Croat police boats, and eventually zooming in on a jet ski faster than those boats, Omilana and a camera-wielding companion made landfall on Liberland. He planted the flag. He exulted in that cheerful YouTuber-dude way.

A Croatian cop landed to challenge them. Despite believing he'd destroyed the Liberland explorers' two cameras, a drone in the air captured the Croat cop shoving and kicking both men unnecessarily.

"I think [the thaw in Liberland border control] is directly related to that," Walls says. "It didn't make the Croatian police look good at allmade them look like bumbling idiots and kind of brutal and, you know, why is he beating these people up for doing something that's totally legal?"

Jedlika believes the Croats have no legal reason to deny entrance to or harass Liberlanders. But throughout August and early September, despite the first multi-person Liberland settlement growing and building, the Croats were still randomly harassing them without worrying much about the legality of the matter. When the Croats have gotten annoyed with certain Liberland visitors, Jedlika relates, "people that have Schengen visa actually get [a] 30-day ban from Schengen after they visit Liberland. How ridiculous is that?"

A lot seemed to depend on the attitude and mood of particular officials, Walls thinks. Jedlika too thinks certain police officials are hostile while others not so much, crediting one for pardoning a Liberlander from a Schengen-Area ban.

The Croats still act like they're in charge. "We built some structures already and they called in some kind of building inspector," Walls says, "and they slapped a sticker on one of the houses we built that says, you know, you need a permit for this, but it doesn't say exactly where [one gets a permit for this area]. So that's going to be fun to take that to court and see. You know, the judge will say, well, what's the location of [the structure]?"

As weeks passed and the Liberland settlement continued to grow and build,Walls says the Croats especially "started putting the heat on people with non-Schengen passports," including Americans. Other Americans he knew, though not Walls himself, "were removed, taken to the police station, given a stern talking to, and were given either seven days to leave Croatia or they were escorted out of Croatia."

Jedlika's optimism in August and early September, as he saw the micronation's first true settlement take root, was one thing; but he was equally optimistic in a phone interview this week when an outsider might think things were no longer going so well for Liberland.

On September 21, as described in an article in Liberland Press, "a private company acting on behalf of the Croatian Forests (Hrvatske ume d.o.o.) accompanied by police made an unannounced extraterritorial incursion into Liberland and demolished and removed Liberland property. Liberlanders living on the land were threatened with arrest if they interfered.Croatian police escorted the demolition crews who committed this act of indiscriminate destruction. This assault was committed without warning and without the forest company or police issuing any reasons or justification."

A series of videos documenting the assault on Liberland and the property destruction can be found on YouTube. A mournful Liberlander played his violin while throughout the day officials milled about, breaking up, chainsawing, and removing their shelters and kitchen.

Jedlika sees all this as merely another small setback on his path to a thriving Liberland. He thinks the Croat media was nearly universally on Liberland's side in coverage of the invasion and that the Croats will eventually decide it is "not sustainable" to keep such a close eye on Liberland. The whole experience, he says, amazed about the "100 calls from media in one or two days" after, ultimately gave Liberland a great public relations boost, its value far exceeding that of the objects destroyed or stolen.

Jedlika still has big plans. So sure is he of a future rapprochement with Croatia that he finds the whole invasion "quite funny" (though he does lament that "they even stole our toilet, I cannot believe it") and says more people, and bikes, are now staying on Liberland than before the Croats invaded. (He relates the latest Croat legal flex: detaining bike riders for lacking a vest to help them be better seen at night. Still, Jedlika's expressed attitude toward all the Croats do is to pleasantly thank them for caring so much about the safety and security of his people. He says Liberlanders and Croats are now cooperating on trash gathering and removal.)

Jedlika wants to get the cryptocurrency that will be the backbone of Liberland business and governance, Merit, on more exchanges at a two-euro valuation. He foresees adventure parks, hotels, and the world's tallest building eventually built in his Liberland on the Croatian border.

While Jedlika still believes a more permanent rapprochement will come with Croatia, and insists a vibrant Liberland will be an economic boon for Croats as well, Liberlanders aren't taking the recent Croatian incursion and property destruction lying down. Jedlika says this week that they have filed court cases in various home jurisdictions of the Liberlanders who had their property taken by the Croats to get it back, and they even plan to hold native Liberlander judicial proceedings against them, in which merits will be given or taken away.

All of itthe rebuilding of a settlement, the launching of Liberland's judicial system, the daily petty conflicts with Croatian officials that Jedlika thinks are still illegitimatewill, he says, "make also a nice reality TV show out of the whole situation, which I think will be hilarious."

UPDATE: Vt Jedlika wants it on record that he does not consider Liberland a "micronation," for one reason because a nation is a people separate from a specific area and he considers all 700,000 online signups to be part of the nation of Liberland.

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The Croatian Invasion of the Micronation of Liberland - Reason

If Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces Monday that he is leaving the Democratic Party to run as an independent, one of the biggest challenges his campaign will face is getting ballot access in all 50 states. So will Mr. Kennedy seek out the nomination of a third party like the Libertarians?

Speculation about this has abounded since the New York Times reported that Mr. Kennedy met in July with Libertarian Party chairwoman Angela McArdle. Both were in Memphis attending the libertarian ideas festival, Freedom Fest.

Ms. McArdle tells the Sun that Mr. Kennedys campaign reached out to her for the meeting because they were interested in connecting him with the people who are leading the Libertarian Party in the larger movement.

He did say at the time that he was running as a Democrat, Ms. McArdle says. He was very clear about that.

Yet Mr. Kennedy has courted the libertarian vote since he jumped in the race last April. He defied in June a warning from the New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman, Raymond Buckley, by speaking at PorcFest, the Free State Projects camping and ideas festival in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Hes gone on Reason TV and made the rounds of libertarian podcasts, all while railing that both parties have lost their way.

An environmental lawyer, vaccine skeptic, and scion of Americas famed Democratic dynasty, Mr. Kennedy is building a coalition of support among anti-interventionist Republicans, libertarians, Silicon Valley tech bros, health freedom advocates, and Democrats nostalgic for the Kennedy brand and disillusioned with the direction of the party and its current geriatric leader.

When a majority of Americans dont want another Trump-Biden matchup, this post-party politics model appears to be gaining traction. Its also fueling concern among Democrats and, less so, Republicans about other third-party runs by, say, Cornel West and, potentially, a No Labels candidate.

Mr. Kennedy is adept at appealing to libertarian crowds, promising to pardon Julian Assange and saying he wont take peoples guns away. His platform, though, is not libertarian. He may be anti-interventionist and anti-war, advocating for unwinding empire and for withdrawing our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russias borders. He might be for pushback against big tech censorship and vaccine mandates in a way that aligns with the Libertarian Party.

Mr. Kennedys economic and environmental policies, though, do not. Mr. Kennedy supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and recently proposed locking home mortgage rates at three percent with tax-free bonds to make home ownership affordable both policies the Libertarian Party rejects.

Mr. Kennedy has also railed against free trade, which is a foundational principle of libertarianism. He supports a ban on fracking and has equivocated on nuclear energy, while the Libertarian Partys platform says its members oppose all government control of energy pricing, allocation, and production.

Mr. Kennedy says he is not going to take peoples guns away, but hes also said he would support a bipartisan assault weapons ban. The latter statement riled many Libertarians.

I think hed be a great candidate if he could completely 180 his stance on personal defense weapons, monetary policy, and climate extremism, a Libertarian Party 2024 presidential candidate and former vice-chairman of the party, Joshua Smith, tells the Sun.

The Libertarian Party has a platform that is just diametrically opposed to a lot of his positions, say, on fracking, on guns, another Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Chase Oliver, whose 2022 run for Senate from Georgia forced the runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, tells the Sun. But Im happy hes exposing how corrupt the Democratic Party is.

A third Libertarian Party presidential candidate, author, and former NYU professor, Michael Rectenwald, tells the Sun that there are many overlaps between the Libertarian Partys positions and Mr. Kennedys, but he says Mr. Kennedy is wrong on the fundamental, principle issues.

Kennedy has this white knight complex, this idea that if we just put the right person in at the top we can address all our problems, Mr. Rectenwald says. We believe that what we need to do is wrest power from the federal government and instead invest it in the people at the local level.

Mr. Kennedy has not confirmed that he is leaving the Democratic Party or what his major announcement on Monday will be. Mediaite, though, reported word from a campaign insider that Mr. Kennedy will announce an independent run at the event.

If Mr. Kennedys positions are so diametrically opposed to libertarianism and reports suggest he will run as an independent, why is anyone even discussing a potential Libertarian Party run? One answer is that obtaining ballot access is so onerous for independent and third-party candidates that Mr. Kennedy may seek to run on an established third-party line, maybe even months from now.

Another is that there is a strain in the Libertarian Party for whom vaccine skepticism, fighting the Covid regime, and being anti-war are the preeminent issues. For some in this faction, Mr. Kennedy represents an opportunity to put the Libertarian Party on the map by getting more than the partys record 3.3 percent of the vote that, with Gary Johnson, it garnered in 2016.

I said that I really appreciated the way he took a strong stance against vaccine mandates and the way he stood for medical freedom, Ms. McArdle says of her meeting with Mr. Kennedy. Im not going to do anything to block him if he tries to run. I think the shot of publicity that has given us is a good thing.

Every state has different third-party ballot access rules, with different filing deadlines, fees, and number of signatures required. Obtaining enough signatures in large states like New York and California requires a serious ground game. If Mr. Kennedy runs as an independent, he will be starting the whole ballot access process from scratch.

The percentage of the vote required to retain ballot access for third parties also varies by state. New York recently changed its law to require that parties get at least two percent or 130,000 votes to maintain ballot access every two years. In Texas, the requirement is five percent of the vote.

After the Libertarian Partys 2020 presidential candidate Jo Jorgenson earned only one percent of the vote, the party lost its ballot access for the next cycle in 20 states. Ms. McArdle says the party is working to get access in those states for 2024, saying the partys worst case scenario would be 48 states.

If Mr. Kennedy runs as a Libertarian and gets more than five percent of the vote, which polling suggests he could, a strong showing would help the Libertarian Party retain ballot access for 2028, and even qualify it for minor party status that would make campaigns eligible for partial public funding.

A recent Zogby poll, commissioned by a PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy, shows him getting 19 percent in a three-way match up with presidents Trump and Biden. He would definitely help us get ballot access and make the news, Ms. McArdle says. Theres upsides and downsides.

If the Kennedy campaign runs into trouble trying to get ballot access as an independent, Mr. Kennedy could throw his name in the Libertarian Partys nominating contest in May at its convention in Washington, D.C. Unlike the Democrats or Republicans, Libertarians choose their candidate at a convention by vote of about 1,000 delegates.

The chairman of the Mises Caucus, Michael Heise, who orchestrated a successful paleo-libertarian leadership takeover of the Libertarian National Committee in 2022, tells the Sun the convention scenario is unlikely.

The Mises Caucus takeover of the Libertarian Party has been a repudiation of this premise, he says, that if we just run a watered-down candidate or if we run a non-libertarian with enough name recognition, itll solve all the problems of the party.

Many of the Libertarian candidates insist that running for president on the Libertarian line is not about winning higher office, its essentially a 50 state media tour to spread libertarian ideas. Mr. Kennedys campaign, by contrast, says it sees a path to victory.

It just seems increasingly likely that path is not through the Democratic Party. Its probably not through the Libertarian Party either. Mr. Kennedys campaign manager, Dennis Kucinich, responded to the Suns inquiries with two words, No comment.

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As RFK Jr. Readies an Announcement Monday, Speculation Is ... - The New York Sun

From now until referendum day, we have removed the paywall on all Voice coverage. Read and share this article for free.

If the Voice referendum produces a No next Saturday, expect a slew of conservative players lining up to claim credit. Yet one organisation that has arguably been most influential will not be trumpeting its success.

The Centre for Independent Studies has not taken a formal position on the referendum. It remains neutral, or so it says. In reality, however, the CIS has been central to the No case. The think tank has warehoused the two most prominent and effective advocates of a No campaign: Nyunggai Warren Mundine and shadow minister for Indigenous Australians Jacinta NampijinpaPrice, the CISs current and former spokespeople on Indigenous affairs.

Several other alumni have been prominent in their opposition. Maurice Newman, the businessman who helped establish the CIS, and is possibly best known for his climate denialism, wrote in The Australian that the Voice was a power grab by elites. Gary Johns, who has links to both the CIS and Australians for Unity, suggested there should be blood tests to determine indigeneity.

At least one CIS board member, Sam Kennard, of storage company Kennards, is a major financial backer of the No campaign. His corporate vehicle, Siesta Holdings, gave $20,000 last year and $20,000 the year before.

As the campaign against the Voice has evolved through its various shifting, interconnected organisational structures Recognise a Better Way, Fair Australia, Advance Australia, which became Advance and then melded with Australians for Unity the CIS has been a constant. It has provided not only the key people, but also much of the factual groundwork used and misused by Voice opponents. Price and Mundine have figured prominently in several of these other outfits.

For almost 20 years the CIS has produced research detailing the failures of Australias Indigenous policies. This has been coupled with contentious advocacy for the full integration of First Nations people into amarket-based society.

Consider these words from a report, The Economics of Indigenous Deprivation and Proposals for Reform, written by then Emeritus Professor Helen Hughes in 2005, when she was a senior fellow at the CIS.

Deprivation in remote communities,fringe settlements and ghettos does not result from a lack of federal, state and territory expenditures, the report says, but from the socialist remote communities experiment that has been central to Australian separatist policies for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders...

She went on to decry separate education, separate public housing, separate healthcare, separate governance and separate law that had deprived Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of employment and decent incomes, making them welfare dependent and destroying their families and their communities. Substance abuse and violence, particularly against women and children, inevitably followed.

The views she expressed are indistinguishable from those of Price today, except for the lack of personal anecdotes. The larger point is that it is disingenuous for the CIS to say it is neutral on the subject of the Voice: the organisation has a long-held view, reiterated in numerous papers, reports, and speeches by Hughes and various successors, including Price and Mundine, opposing Indigenous separatism.

When the Recognise a Better Way website says Indigenous Australians poverty, disadvantage and despair is not caused by lack of a voice but rather by a lack of economic participation it is essentially extrapolating on what the CIS has been saying for decades. Price and Mundine are listed as supporters.

CIS research also underpins former prime minister Tony Abbott, who went on ABC Radio on Thursday to argue that the Voice, by giving Indigenous Australians a say in government decisions affecting them, would only lead to greater separatism.

Now, however, the CIS is being very coy as it tries to paper over internal divisions.

Our board consists of a wide variety of members who represent different views on the Voice, says CIS executive director Tom Switzer.

Some like Sam Kennard have publicly opposed it. Others like Rob McLean and Bill English also serve on the board of the Ramsay Foundation, which has supported the Yes campaign with $5 million.

In fact, many of the 27-member CIS board find themselves in a difficult position, if not because of their personal views then because as members of Australias economic and business elite they are extensively networked. The board includes senior lawyers and investment bankers, members of the Reserve Bank board, partners in major consultancies, even a former prime minister of New Zealand.

Many of these figures have connections that go well beyond the CIS. Take Nicholas Moore, for example. As well as being chair the CIS board and former chief executive of the Macquarie banking group, Moore is chair of Screen Australia, the National Catholic Education Commission and The Smith Family, and a former member of the council of the National Gallery of Australia and previous chair of the Sydney Opera House Trust. He holds directorships of a number of private companies and sits on a couple of advisory bodies within the federal Treasury. In November last year, he was appointed Special Envoy for Southeast Asia by the Albanese government.

It is not hard to see why Moore, with his connections to charity and the arts community, and his government work trying to build trade relations with racially sensitive regional nations, might want to express neutrality on the Voice.

Interestingly, The Smith Family, a charity focused on the provision of quality education to disadvantaged children, especially Indigenous children, has also taken no position on the Voice. Some have noted this is curious, given a significant number of major charities, particularly those involved in providing services to Indigenous communities, have come out strongly in support. So have the peak bodies, the Australian Council of Social Service and Community Council for Australia, of which The Smith Family is a member.

Moore declined The Saturday Papers emailed invitation to discuss his position or that of the CIS and The Smith Family. Subsequent to our approach, The Smith Family issued a statement saying its neutrality was informed through close consultation with The Smith Familys Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Group (an external group of 12 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people), and our Aboriginal Staff Network.

Take another member, Michael Chaney, chairman of Wesfarmers, who quit the CIS last year. He became a director of the Yes23 campaign instead. In February, four months before Wesfarmers announced a donation of $2 million to the Yes campaign, he told The Australian Financial Review that he supported the constitutional change both personally and professionally.

Chaney said direct representation Wesfarmers employs 4000 Indigenous staff worked for the company and he believed it was entirely reasonable that the constitution contains provisions in it for the Indigenous community to make representations to government.

He continued: I have had a lot of exposure over the years to the challenges and issues confronting Indigenous Australians and Ive seen how laws made for Australians generally ... have very different effects in remote areas and unintended effects.

On July 6, a full-page advertisement in the same newspaper featured a cartoon depicting Chaney, with his daughter Kate, an independent federal MP, sitting on his knee, handing a bundle of money to Thomas Mayo, an Indigenous member of the Yes campaign. Michael Chaney was shown in a business suit, Kate in a teal dress and Mayo in shorts, work boots and a T-shirt with a hammer and sickle logo, seemingly dancing for the money.

There was widespread outrage. Kate Chaney described it as a personal and racist attack from the No campaign, designed to stoke fear and hate. Nine Entertainment, which owns the AFR, apologised and conceded the ad should never have run.

The advertisement was placed by Advance, a somewhat shadowy organisation that claims to power the major No group, Jacinta Prices Fair Australia.

Advance was set up in 2018 to be the right-wing equivalent of GetUp! but it effectively operated as an external campaigning unit of the Liberal Party. Sam Kennard, who sits on the CIS board, is a donor.

Now, as the AFR noted in a piece in July that attempted to unravel the tangled connections between the anti-Voice groups, Advance has assumed a central role in the No campaign, providing administrative support to the peak Australians for Unity anti-Voice fundraising vehicle, the only specifically anti-Voice body to whom donations have been tax-deductible since June.

The report added: Australians for Unitys funding goes to Advance Australias Fair Australia campaign, whose present configuration formed out of a merger of Mundines Recognise A Better Way campaign and is today led by opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswomanJacinta Nampijinpa Price.Australians for Unitys three ASIC-listed directors are identical to Advance Australias, while both organisations are registered to the same Canberra address.

This structure is intentionally confusing, even if key CIS alumni are clear within it. As The Sydney Morning Heralds David Crowe wrote in a piece that sought to establish where the No case was getting its money, the related groups are secretive by design in contrast with GetUp!, which publishes a running tally of its donations, and the names of all donors over $10,000 on its website.

The Herald did manage to identify a number of those who funded the No campaign in some cases because they publicly disclosed their donations, in others by trawling through Australian Electoral Commission returns and company records.

There was Brett Ralph, the founder and managing director of Jet Couriers and a director of the Melbourne Storm football club, as well as other sporting clubs, who donated $75,000 through his company, JMR Management Consultancy Services, last financial year.

Sydney multi-millionaire Rodney ONeil was also on the list his associated companies contributed $85,000 last year. Marcus Blackmore, who pocketed $334million from the sale of his eponymous vitamin and supplements business this year, gave $20,000.

According to the Herald, former stockbroker and fund manager Simon Fenwick, and his wife Elizabeth, donated $650,000 and $350,000 respectively before the last election, and the Fenwick family trust also donated a further $50,000 last year.

The donations from Kennard were alsonoted.

Crowe suggested the identities of the big donors to the No side undermined the calculated myth that Yes was supported by the elites. He also noted Advances stated tactic of instructing its volunteers to use fear and doubt rather than facts to defeat the Voice.

Switzer defends the neutrality of his organisation on the basis it has published papers both in favour of and against the Voice the Yes case from conservative intellectuals Greg Craven and Damien Freeman, and the No case from journalist Greg Sheridan.

It also has sponsored a series of debates, including one on Switzers radio program on the ABC, and, he says, would have had more except that no leading advocate for the Yes campaign accepted my invitation. Some did only to withdraw later. Many ignored us.

As executive director of the CIS, Switzer also has ultimate responsibility for deciding what the CIS will research, and who will research it, and it was his choice to engage Price and Mundine.

Indeed, the CIS claims credit for first bringing Price to national attention, by selecting the then-obscure Alice Springs councillor to deliver its annual Helen Hughes Talk for Emerging Thinkersin July 2016.

It was a powerful speech, drawing on personal experience as well as research data.

Of 11 siblings in her mothers generation, she said, only two remain ... the majority we lost to alcohol-related illness.

There is not a woman in my family who has not experienced some kind of physical or sexual abuse some time in their life.

The facts state that Aboriginal women are 35 times more likely to be hospitalised from violence perpetrated by those who are related to them.

It was also a contentious speech. Price blamed Indigenous culture for much of the problems she described and called for acknowledgement of our own part in the demise of our people, rather than looking for constitutional recognition or treaties or governments to solve the problems.

On the strength of that speech, she was made Indigenous program director at the CIS. From there, it was a rapid rise. Price won a seat as a senator for the Northern Territory at last years election and was made shadow minister for Indigenous Australians when Julian Leeser resigned from the role so he could support the Voice.

Now, several right-wing commentators are flagging her as a potential future prime minister.

Of course Switzer himself a former Liberal staffer and candidate could not foresee how fast her political star would rise and how bright it would blaze in the right-wing firmament. Yet he knew full well where she stood on the matter of constitutional recognition. She had told him seven years ago.

He would also have known the position of Mundine, the man he engaged after Price moved on.

In spite of it all, the CIS itself remains neutral on the issue. Or so its elites would have us believe.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 7, 2023 as "The libertarian think tank that helped build the No case".

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australias leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.

All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.

There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.

News

Into the final week: Yes case more hopeful than optimistic

Karen Middleton Yes campaigners are focusing on direct personal appeals to undecided voters, in the hope of clawing back support as they battle online falsehoods and an increasingly vitriolic debate.

Read more:

The libertarian think tank that helped build the 'No' case - The Saturday Paper

Oct. 6Two candidates are vying for a single seat on Nov. 7 to represent District 3 on the Fox Chapel Area School Board.

In Districts 1 and 2, there are two candidates seeking two open seats in each district. The Fox Chapel Herald is featuring races only in contested districts.

Here are the candidates' responses to questions posed by the Herald:

Name: Emily Glick

Age: 37 years

Political affiliation: Libertarian since 2020, Independent prior to that

Occupation: Environmental consultant/geologist, project manager

Education: Bachelor's in geological science, Ohio State University; Master's in geology and environmental science, University of Pittsburgh

Elected or political experience: Current O'Hara Township Zoning Hearing Board member, 2020-2022 Director of Pennsylvania Council of Professional Geologists

What is the biggest issue facing the school district?

We live in a fantastic school district with excellent teachers and plentiful opportunities for students. However, I feel that the school board and administration do not view community input as actionable, nor do they clearly communicate the direction in which they are leading us. Healthy communities should have respectful public conversations on a regular basis.

What can you do to solve it?

We are an intelligent community with diverse backgrounds. I believe in the power of people to optimize and find opportunities when freely working together. When I talk with families, I hear repeated concerns and ideas; improve the quality of school foods, increase walkability to schools, and allow for more outdoor learning. I would push for the use of surveying tools for our entire community on an annual basis, and additional surveying when our school district is facing a contentious issue. Ensuring that the school community is heard will ultimately best serve the community now and into the future.

Would you support banning or restricting access to certain books in school libraries if parents demanded it?

As a Libertarian, I am for economic and personal freedom, I wouldn't ban books. The preamble for the Libertarian Party states, "...we defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings..." Refer to FCA School Board Policy Code 109, Resource Material. "A list of resource material provided by the district shall be maintained by the Superintendent and ... available to Board members, district staff, students, parents/guardians and community members." I would provide parents and guardians with information to make the right choice for their children.

Name: Marybeth Dadd

Age: 53

Political affiliation: Democrat/Republican (on the ballot as both)

Occupation: Educator

Education: Bachelor's of Arts, secondary education/social studies; Master's of Science, curriculum Development and instructional technology

Elected or political experience: FCASD School Board Director, 2019-present

What is the biggest issue facing the school district?

We continue to be an academically strong district but now that the pandemic is over, we must redouble our efforts to make sure students are growing academically and feeling supported emotionally.

What can you do to solve it?

As a board member, my job is to review policy, allocate resources and adopt curriculum so that the district can achieve the goals it sets. We benchmark student growth throughout the school year, while also continuing to open up supports for a greater number of students in our buildings. We will also continue to work with families to provide resources for students who may be facing mental health challenges. These are just a few steps that the district is already taking to meet the needs of our students.

Would you support banning or restricting access to books in school libraries if parents demanded it?

The district has a robust process for the evaluation of instructional/resource materials. These instructional/resource materials go through a review process established by our board policies and administrative regulations. These policies are written to follow the law, PA School Code and a belief in the First Amendment. A parent may opt their child out of curricula or activities that they feel are not suitable for them at any time. I trust the highly trained librarians and teachers employed by our district to make excellent choices for our students.

Joyce Hanz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Joyce by email at jhanz@triblive.com or via Twitter .

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