Category Archives: Libertarian

Paul Hager| Guest columnist

This guest column was submitted byPaul Hager of Bloomington.

Following the dramatics of the California recall from afar, I found myself terribly conflicted. As some people may know, Im an occasional libertarian politician from Bloomington, but those who know me best are aware that I view many aspects of nations and governments from a systems perspective. This perspective gives rise to my conflict, one that could be called a matter of heart versus mind.

The USA was founded, ultimately, as a federal republic. A republic is a representative democracy, not a democracy like ancient Athens where citizens had direct control of the government. History demonstrates that the Athenian system was unstable, and our founders rejected it. The chief advantage of representatives in a republican system is that they are ideally separated from transient passions and able to render a judgment based upon facts, facts then weighed on the basis of moral, legal, and such other considerations as may affect the commonweal. One of the greatest exponents of this view was a British member of Parliament during the Revolutionary War named Edmund Burke. Burke supported the arguments of the colonists legally and logically, generally presenting their case. This was his job and doing it risked making his constituents quite unhappy, which it in fact did.

I have never spoken to a little-l libertarian over the years who didnt know something about Burke or, lacking that knowledge, couldnt easily explain the qualities of a good representative. Telling unpleasant truths and making people angry is, from time to time, a representatives job. Political philosophy aside, there is a practical consideration: What if, after every decision a representative makes that angers people, there is a legal mechanism allowing the majority to remove this person from office? This sounds a lot like the dangerous sort of democracy that the Founders concluded was a very bad idea. Aside from that, most humans (even politicians) understand rewards and punishments. If representatives are being promiscuously removed after unpopular decisions, the only ones that are elected will be those who cater to their constituents and dont do their job.

Im a libertarian and a Burkean. I therefore must oppose the very idea of a recall. Let me put it to readers at this point, even if you havent thought about these points before given this history, doesnt the idea of a recall seem at least a little un-American?

But heres the thing. Larry Elder is a great guy and, best of all, he is, like me, a little-l libertarian. Initially, even though I knew he wasnt likely to win, I allowed myself to imagine him winning and how much that could benefit California and the country. But, what if, miracle of miracles, he did win? Edmund Burke immediately appeared before my minds eye. This was for me, an agnostic, as close as Im likely to come to committing a mortal sin and having some divine spirit reproach me for it.

I have a great deal of respect for Elder and think he has the makings of a great representative. But not that way. Please, sir. Reread your Burke and run in the next regular election.

Continued here:

Column: Considerations on the California recall effort and its potential consequences - The Herald-Times

The year 2021 has proved a landmark for the "school choice" cause a movement committed to the idea of providing public money for parents to use to pay for private schooling.

Republican control of a majority of state legislatures, combined with pandemic learning disruptions, set the stage for multiple victories. Seven states have created new school choice programs, and 11 others have expanded current programs through laws that offer taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schooling and authorize tax credits and educational savings accounts that incentivize parents moving their children out of public schools.

On its face, this new legislation may sound like a win for families seeking more school options. But the roots of the school choice movement are more sinister.

white Southerners first fought for "freedom of choice" in the mid-1950s as a means of defying the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which mandated the desegregation of public schools. Their goal was to create pathways for white families to remove their children from classrooms facing integration.

Prominent libertarians then took advantage of this idea, seeing it not only as a means of providing private options, but also as a tool in their crusade to dismantle public schools altogether. This history reveals that rather than giving families more school options, school choice became a tool intended to give most families far fewer in the end.

School choice had its roots in a crucial detail of the Brown decision: The ruling only applied to public schools. white Southerners viewed this as a loophole for evading desegregated schools.

In 1955 and 1956, conservative white leaders in Virginia devised a regionwide strategy of "massive resistance" to the high court's desegregation mandate that hinged on state-funded school vouchers. The State Board of Education provided vouchers, then called tuition grants, of $250 ($2,514 in 2021 dollars) to parents who wanted to keep their children from attending integrated schools. The resistance leaders understood that most Southern white families could not afford private school tuition and many who could afford it lacked the ideological commitment to segregation to justify the cost. The vouchers, combined with private donations to the new schools in counties facing desegregation mandates, would enable all but a handful of the poorest Whites to evade compliance.

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Other Southern states soon adopted voucher programs like the one in Virginia to facilitate the creation of private schools called "segregation academies," despite opposition from Black families and civil rights leaders. Oliver Hill, an NAACP attorney key to the Virginia case against "separate but equal" education that was folded into Brown, explained their position this way: "No one in a democratic society has a right to have his private prejudices financed at public expense."

Despite such objections, key conservative and libertarian thinkers and foundations, including economists Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek, Human Events editor Felix Morley and publisher Henry Regnery, backed the white Southern cause. They recognized that white Southerners' push for "freedom of choice" presented an opportunity to advance their goal of privatizing government services and resources, starting with primary and secondary education. They barely, if ever, addressed racism and segregation; instead, they spoke of freedom (implicitly, white freedom).

Friedman began promoting "educational freedom" in 1955, just as Southern states prepared to resist Brown. And he praised the Virginia voucher plan in his 1962 book, "Capitalism and Freedom," holding it up as a model for school choice everywhere. "Whether the school is integrated or not," he wrote, should have no bearing on eligibility for the vouchers. In other words, he knew the program was designed to fund segregation academies and saw it as no barrier to receiving state financing.

Friedman was far from alone. His fellow libertarians, including those on the staff of the William Volker Fund, a leading funder on the right, saw no problem with state governments providing tax subsidies to white families who chose segregation academies, even as these states disenfranchised Black voters, blocking them from having a say in these policies.

Libertarians understood that while abolishing the social safety net and other policies constructed during the Progressive era and the New Deal was wildly unpopular, even among white Southerners, school choice could win converts.

These conservative and libertarian thinkers offered up ostensibly race-neutral arguments in favor of the tax subsidies for private schooling sought by white supremacists. In doing so, they taught defenders of segregation a crucial new tactic abandon overtly racist rationales and instead tout liberty, competition and market choice while embracing an anti-government stance. These race-neutral rationales for private school subsidies gave segregationists a justification that could survive court review and did, for more than a decade before the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional.

When challenged, Friedman and his allies denied that they were motivated by racial bigotry. Yet, they had enough in common ideologically with the segregationists for the partnership to work. Both groups placed a premium on the liberty of those who had long profited from white-supremacist policies and sought to shield their freedom of action from the courts, liberal government policies and civil rights activists.

Crucially, freedom wasn't the ultimate goal for either group of voucher supporters. White Southerners wielded colorblind language about freedom of choice to help preserve racial segregation and to keep Black children from schools with more resources.

Friedman, too, was interested in far more than school choice. He and his libertarian allies saw vouchers as a temporary first step on the path to school privatization. He didn't intend for governments to subsidize private education forever. Rather, once the public schools were gone, Friedman envisioned parents eventually shouldering the full cost of private schooling without support from taxpayers. Only in some "charity" cases might governments still provide funding for tuition.

Friedman first articulated this outlook in his 1955 manifesto, but he clung to it for half a century, explaining in 2004, "In my ideal world, government would not be responsible for providing education any more than it is for providing food and clothing." Four months before his death in 2006, when he spoke to a meeting of the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), he was especially frank. Addressing how to give parents control of their children's education, Friedman said, "The ideal way would be to abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it."

Today, the ultrawealthy backers of school choice are cagey about this long-term goal, knowing that care is required to win the support of parents who want the best for their children. Indeed, in a sad irony, decades after helping to impede Brown's implementation, school choice advocates on the right targeted families of color for what one libertarian legal strategist called "forging nontraditional alliances." They won over some parents of color, who came to see vouchers and charter schools as a way to escape the racial and class inequalities that stemmed from white flight out of urban centers and the Supreme Court's willingness to allow white Americans to avoid integrating schools.

But the history behind vouchers reveals that the rhetoric of "choice" and "freedom" stands in stark contrast to the real goals sought by conservative and libertarian advocates. The system they dream of would produce staggering inequalities, far more severe than the disparities that already exist today. Wealthy and upper-middle-class families would have their pick of schools, while those with far fewer resources disproportionately families of color might struggle to pay to educate their children, leaving them with far fewer options or dependent on private charity. Instead of offering an improvement over underfunded schools, school choice might lead to something far worse.

As Maya Angelou wisely counseled in another context, "When people show you who they are, believe them the first time." If we fail to recognize the right's true end game for public education, it could soon be too late to reverse course.

Nancy MacLean is William H. Chafe distinguished professor of history and public policy at Duke University and author of "Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America."

See the article here:

'School choice' developed as a way to protect segregation - Newsday

VIDEO: Congressman Alcee Hastings' career in Palm Beach County

from: May 22, 2019. Hastings was a civil rights lawyer, a groundbreaking political candidate and Palm Beach County's longest serving member of Congress.

Produced by Jennifer Podis / Narrated by Wayne Washington, The Palm Beach Post

The special election to fill the congressional seat left vacant by the late Rep. Alcee Hastings is upon almost a half million voters in Palm Beach and Broward counties.

The first important deadline in this election is Monday, Oct. 4.

Thats the final chance to register to vote or to change parties before the primary, which will be held Tuesday,Nov. 2. If a voter misses that registration deadline, they can still participate in the Jan. 11 general election, as long as they register to vote before Dec. 13.

Since Florida is a closed primary state, voters who belong to a certain political party can choose only the candidates belonging to that party in the primaryon Nov. 2. There are 17 candidates in all 11 Democrats, two Republicans, one Libertarian, one write-in candidate and two candidates with no party affiliation who have qualified.

The congressional district includes swaths of western Palm Beach and Broward counties, as well parts of Miramar, Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, West Palm Beach and Riviera Beach.

Hastings, who had served in the U.S. House since 1993, died of pancreatic cancer in April at the age of 84. Gov. Ron DeSantis set the primary and general special election datesfor November and January, rather than the typical August-November dates, leaving constituents without representation in D.C. for months.

Remembering Hastings: Colleagues, supporters remember Alcee Hastings as civil rights fighter, advocate for poor

Hastings' seat: With Alcee Hastings' House seat empty, Democrats have one less vote

Voters in this district 70% of whom reside in Broward County are heavily Democratic. Of the nearly 460,000 active District 20 voters as of Sept. 1, 282,808 were Democrats, 58,368 were Republicans and 112,433 voters did not have any party affiliation.

Early voting in Palm Beach County runs from Oct. 23 through Oct. 31. Polls open at 10 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. There are five early voting sites in Palm Beach County, where any eligible voter can cast a ballot in person.

Those sites are:

Voters can also cast a ballot in person on primary election day, Nov. 2, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. On that day, a voter must cast a ballot at their assigned precinct.

The deadline to request a mail ballot for the primary is Oct. 23 at 5 p.m. A request can be made after this date through election day, but must be picked up in person.

Elections officials have already begun to send ballots by mail. It was not immediately clear how many ballots the Palm Beach County elections office had sent. More than 65,000 ballots had been mailed in Broward County, according to its elections office website.

'We will no longer tolerate disinterest': Frustrated with Democratic Party, Black Palm Beach County residents form independent political caucus

Lawmakers this year put restrictions on the times and places a voter can drop off their mail ballot. In recent elections, voters in Palm Beach County were able to place their mail ballots in drop boxes that were open 24 hours a day and constantly surveilled.

Now, voters may only drop off their ballots at early voting sites during voting hours, or during specific times at one of the four Supervisor of Elections offices in West Palm Beach, Belle Glade, Palm Beach Gardens and Delray Beach.

At the main office on Military Trail in West Palm Beach,drop boxes can accept ballots from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on the weekend days during the early voting period. On weekdays during early voting, and on Nov. 1, the hours are 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m.

The mail ballot drop boxes will be closed on Saturdays and Sundays at the Supervisor of Elections offices in Belle Glade, Delray Beach and Palm Beach Gardens. Voters can drop off their ballots at these offices between Oct. 25 and Oct. 29 or on Nov. 1 between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Voters can drop off their mail ballot at any of the four offices on Nov. 2 between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m.

For more information, visit votepalmbeach.gov or call 561-656-6200.

hmorse@pbpost.com

@mannahhorse

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What voters should know about the special election to fill Alcee Hastings' House seat - Palm Beach Post

A supporter of former President Donald Trump holds up a painting of him outside of the Maricopa County Recorder's Office on Nov. 6, 2020. AP Photo/Dario Lopez-MIlls

In 2020, Stephen Richer defeated incumbent Adrian Fontes by just over 4,000 votes.

He promised to make the office of Maricopa County Recorder "boring" again.

His office maintains the county's list of 2.6 million registered voters.

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Stephen Richer ran on a pledge to make things boring again. And he thought he ran for the best position to do that: as head of the Maricopa County Recorder's Office, best known for processing documents, like deeds to a property, in the greater Phoenix metropolitan area.

But the Arizona Republican - a 30-something attorney who worked at conservative and libertarian think tanks - inherited a responsibility that has made the position of Recorder far more interesting than he would have liked: maintaining the county's list of registered voters. That has put him and his staff right at the center of allegations over the 2020 election.

"This position has given me a front-row seat to many disturbing sides of humanity, really disturbing sides," Richer said on a press call Wednesday. "Our latent herd mentality; our willingness to lie for personal gain; our predilection for violent rhetoric or even physical violence; and our extreme aggression toward contradicting facts and people. It's been eye-opening."

Earlier this month, Richer and a fellow Republican with a normally boring job, Eddie Cook of the Maricopa County Assessor's Office, issued a joint statement rebutting claims from a right-wing activist that "ghost votes" had been cast from vacant lots in the November 2020 election. Meanwhile, for the past several months Cyber Ninjas, a private firm with no experience auditing elections, has been purporting to do just that, searching Maricopa County's 2.1 million ballots for evidence of massive fraud that would discredit President Joe Biden's victory there.

Led by a conspiracy theorist who has made clear that they believe the election was stolen, Cyber Ninjas has accused Maricopa County Republicans of trying to cover up the alleged crime - saying, for example, that they had destroyed key election data, a claim amplified by former President Donald Trump that the company's amateur sleuths later retracted, admitting the information in question had been found on one of their own hard drives.

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The particulars aside, the broader, sprawling conspiracy makes no sense, Richer said. In Maricopa County itself, he noted, "Republicans won the majority of down-ticket races, including mine, in which I unseated the incumbent Democrat chief county elections official - yes, in a race that was supposedly rigged for Democrats."

But we now live in an age of "declining respect for professionals in the public space," Richer said. The knowledge that enables one to counter accusations of voter fraud is itself suspect. It's not enough for local election officials to hand count some 47,000 votes and finding "zero variances," as happened in Maricopa County last year - to be trusted, one has to have already concluded that fraud was there, as the founder of Cyber Ninjas did before being awarded a $150,000 contract from Arizona's Republican-led Senate, supplemented by another $5.7 million in private donations.

We live in an age, Richer argued, where authority is based on the number of followers on Twitter and views on YouTube, at the cost of faith in institutions and the reliability of election results. It's a lucrative hustle for a few, but "it also has a real human cost," he said. "I can't tell you the number of people on my staff who have been targeted, who have been denigrated, [and] who have been harassed."

In the field of politics, and now with vaccines and COVID-19, too many trust the demagogue and grifter - the likes of Cyber Ninjas and their "horror show" of an audit, Richer said - over the boring and competent.

"Oddly, we still know the importance of professionals in our personal lives," he said. "We still send our cars to the mechanic, our taxes to the accountant, and our teeth to the dentist ... And yet, in the public arena, many now seem to favor the loudmouth astrologists over actual experts and professionals."

After weeks of delay, Cyber Ninjas is believed to be on the verge of releasing a report on its findings. In the meantime, legislators from Wisconsin to Pennsylvania, inspired by the example and eager to please a base that still supports the losing candidate, are engaging in their own efforts to relitigate the results of 2020.

It's a trend, Richer said, of undermining faith in elections and experts "will soon cause irrevocable damage - if it hasn't already."

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

Read the original article on Business Insider

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Arizona Republican says false claims of voter fraud have led to violent threats and a 'front row seat to many disturbing sides of humanity' - Yahoo...

Last week, the California legislature unanimously passed a bill making it illegal to nonconsensually remove a condom during sex, an act known slangily as stealthing. If the bill is signed into law, which Governor Gavin Newsom has until October 10th to do, the state will become the first in the U.S. to explicitly acknowledge stealthing as an illegal violation of consent. (Several countries, including Germany, Switzerland, and the U.K., have prosecuted the act as a form of sexual assault.) The bill, which was introduced by the assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, would amend the states civil code and allow victims to sue perpetrators for damages. This is the second time that Garcia has written legislation on the issue. Her previous bill, introduced four years earlier, proposed making the act a criminal violation but did not pass the legislature.

Garcia has credited her interest in addressing nonconsensual condom removal to a 2017 article written by the attorney Alexandra Brodsky, who was a third-year student at Yale Law School at the time. Brodskys paper, Rape-Adjacent: Imagining Legal Responses to Nonconsensual Condom Removal, uses a combination of first-person interviews and legal analysis to make a case for stealthing as a transgression on par with other forms of sexual assault. It was published in the Columbia Journal of Gender & Law in the same year that Garcia introduced her first anti-stealthing bill. Uncommonly for a law-review article, it went modestly viral. It will never stop surprising me that I wrote a term paper in law school, a bunch of people read it, and now theres maybe going to be an actual law??? Brodsky tweeted last week.

I recently spoke to Brodsky, who is now a civil-rights attorney with the nonprofit Public Justice. Soon after graduating from college, she co-founded Know Your IX, an organization helping students navigate Title IX protections, and she is now the author of the recent book Sexual Justice, which turns an activist-cum-lawyers lens on ways that colleges, workplaces, and other institutions can fairly and humanely handle allegations of sexual misconduct. (An excerpt was published in The New Yorker last month.) During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed Californias groundbreaking bill, the implications of whether sexual misconduct is a civil or criminal violation, and the surprising range of opponents to anti-stealthing laws.

How did you come to the idea of exploring nonconsensual condom removal as a legal topic?

Before and during law school, I spent a lot of time working with college students and young alumni who were concerned about sexual violence. I met a lot of survivors, and I was exposed to stories about a lot of different kinds of sexual harm. Sexual violence takes many formsvery little of it looks like the clich of rapists jumping out of the bushesand, especially among young people, sexual violence often happens in the context of otherwise consensual sex. When I started law school, I had this question in my head of whether nonconsensual condom removal is cognizable under any of the laws that we have today that address sexual assault, and in my final semester of law school I decided to dig into the question in a more meaningful way.

The bulk of the paper is legal analysis, which I think is probably not interesting to anyone other than lawyers. But I also talked to people who had experienced [stealthing], and heard them describe the injuries that it had caused. Even among people who agree that sexual violence is badwhich I would like to think is most people, though certainly not allwe sometimes have thin understandings of how sexual violence hurts people. The survivors of this harm talked to me about a range of feelings: how it made them feel powerless, how it made them feel as though their partners just had no concern at all for their autonomy. It was also interesting to me that a lot of the people I talked to were deeply hurt by the experience but didnt know if they were right to feel that way. They didnt know if what they felt as bad was really bad. In my experience, part of the value of naming these things is to affirm for survivors that they have the right not to be treated this way.

Theres a strong feminist tradition of making harms legible by giving them nameslike sexual harassment.

Yes, thats exactly right. It will never stop being bizarre to me that people have read this paper who are not directly related to me, or who are [not] my academic adviser. Usually legal scholarship does not gain a broad audience. But, if I have any explanation for it, its the fact that it was one of the first times that this phenomenon had been given a name in a public forum.

There was a pretty forceful critique of your paper, shortly after it came out, from the writer and activist Judith Levine. She argued that criminalizing nonconsensual condom removal, or making it a civil violation, would be a grievous overreachshe used the phrase the privatization of sexual safety.

I read Levines critique to be a civil-libertarian critiquein effect, that basically any turn to the law to address sexual violence will inevitably serve illiberal ends. In many ways, I understand the root of this critique, but the answer just cannot be that victims of sexual violence are allowed no legal remedy whatsoever. Im a lawyer, so I obviously think that the law is useful sometimes, but I am much more interested in a careful balancing of the benefits and risks of law, and coming to sensible solutions, than I am in just throwing up my hands and giving up on the possibility of legal recourse for victims just because its hard.

Its interesting to me how often civil libertarians seem particularly eager to decry any kind of legal regime specifically when it comes to sexual harms. I fear this sometimes reflects an expectation that victims of this particular kind of harm, who are disproportionately going to be women, must suck it up for the greater good in ways that we dont expect of people who experience other kinds of harm.

In your paper, you ultimately conclude that this violation demands not criminalization but a civil remedywhich is what California is pursuing now. Cristina Garcia, the assemblywoman behind the bill, put forward a similar bill in 2017 aiming to criminalize the act, but it didnt pass. Do you think that shift from criminal to civil violation made the difference?

I havent been involved in the behind-the-scenes of this bill at all. I do think that, for good reasons, many people are worried about expanding the reach of criminal law in any way, even for the kinds of harm that we would all agree are bad. This goes back to my partial sympathy for a civil-libertarian critique. Whenever were making something illegal, we have to figure out what the costs are of making it illegal. There could be many good reasons why people would feel more comfortable with a civil bill than a criminal bill. I favor a civil remedy because I think its far more useful for survivors. Im not speaking for my employer here, but in my day job Im a civil-rights lawyer. Many of my clients are victims of sexual harassment, and the criminal law has almost universally been utterly useless to them. A civil remedy has the benefit of keeping decision-making in the survivors hand. In a criminal prosecution, the victims rely on police and prosecutors to decide whether a case moves forward, which can be a profoundly disempowering experience, coming on the heels of the initial violation, which was itself a supremely disempowering experience. In contrast, in a civil violation, the victim makes the decision about whether to file the lawsuit. Theres a real feminist tradition of innovative civil remedies. The Violence Against Women Act originally had a civil remedy, though it was eventually shut down by the Supreme Court. Im hopeful that this California bill will be an invitation to return to that tradition.

Continued here:

The Meaning of Californias Anti-Stealthing Bill - The New Yorker

A local resident and voter signs the petition to get two marijuana initiatives on either the 2022 or 2024 General Election ballot. SweetwaterNOW photo by Olivia Kennah

GREEN RIVER The Libertarian Party of Wyoming and Compassionate Options Wyoming are out in seven Wyoming cities this weekend to gather signatures to get two marijuana initiatives on either the 2022 or 2024 General Election ballots.

The ballot initiatives aim to legalize medical cannabis for personal use, and decriminalize cannabis for personal use in Wyoming.

The Sweetwater County Libertarian Party is in Green River Friday and Saturday, September 10 and 11 collecting signatures. Interested voters in Sweetwater County can go to Flaming Gorge Harley-Davidson, located at 440 Uinta Drive, between 12 pm and 6 pm on Friday and Saturday either to add their signature or to learn more about the initiatives.

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Theresa Burt, a member of the Sweetwater Libertarian Party and the wife of Representative Marshall Burt, L-Green River, said that the goal is to put these initiatives into the voters hands.

This way, representatives cant dictate what we do, she said.

Back in June, Rep. Burt said that he and the Libertarian Party are pushing to get these initiatives on the ballots because it is an issue of an individuals right to access medical treatments, and because over-criminalizing infringes upon individual liberty.

In addition to the event in Green River, there are also events taking place across the state in Evanston, Rawlins, Riverton, Cody, Cheyenne, and Casper.

Excerpt from:

Libertarian Party Works to Get Marijuana Initiatives on Ballot - SweetwaterNOW.com

After a circus of a summer spent hearing appeals from a motley crew of gubernatorial candidates, Californians will decide on Tuesday whether to recall Gavin Newsom. If they do, the man who replaces him will probably be Larry Elder, a libertarian radio host who rose to the top of a crowded field of small-time Republicans, including a guy who has been touring the state with a live Kodiak bear (we werent kidding about the circus).

The problem with the 69-year-old Elder is that hes no better equipped to run a state of 40 million than the man-bear duo, and more dangerous to Californias future than either of them. Current polling indicates Newsom will prevail, but to have someone as inexperienced, regressive, and bigoted as Elder come this close to assuming control the nations most populous state is a terrifying prospect for the people of California and for the rest of the nation.

How close isthis close? Californians will be asked two questions on Tuesday: Should Newsom be recalled and, if so, who should replace him? If more than 50 percent of voters say yes to the first question, whichever candidate voters bubble in most for the second will be the new governor. There are 46 (!) candidates on the ballot, and polling puts Elders support at around 28 percent, more than 20 points ahead of his closest competitor, a Democratic YouTube influencer named Kevin Paffrath. This means that if enough disaffected voter decide its time for Newsom to go, Elder will likely be on his way to Sacramento despite being favored by only around 25 percent of the 50 percent of voters who want Newsom recalled. Itd be a small miracle given Elders rap sheet, which weve broken down for you below:

The self-proclaimed Sage of South Central, Elder made a career as a Black man espousing conservatives views in a liberal state. Hes railed against Black Lives Matter. Hes claimed repeatedly that racism doesnt exists, or at least that its not a problem in America. Hes said the idea of voter suppression is a Democratic con job. Hes argued Barack Obama had less to overcome in running for president than did white candidates like Mitt Romney and John McCain, and that police are more inclined to shoot white Americans than Black Americans.

Hes also said that if he were in the Senate in the 1960s, he would have voted against the Civil Rights Act, the landmark anti-discrimination bill passed in 1964. To the extent that those laws mandate any kind of interference in the private sector, I would have voted against it, Elder said at a Libertarian convention in 1998.

Elders speech didnt end there. He transitioned from bashing the Civil Rights Act into bashing the Americans With Disabilities Act, saying he was upset that it exists. In August, Media Matters pointed out several other instances in which Elder has criticizes the law that prevents employers from discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities. Elder has called the ADA hideous, said it creates dependency that impinges upon our freedoms, and says he felt double-crossed when George H.W. Bush signed it.

In a 1996 ad promoting his radio show, Elder says this about women: Glass ceiling? Ha! What glass ceiling? Women, women exaggerate the problem of sexism. Not great, which is why a hand proceeds to slap him across the face in the ad, which was uncovered by CNN. He then says that Black people exaggerate the significance of racism and that Medicare should be abolished, with each line eliciting a new slap. Whatd I say? he says at the end of the ad, a grin on his face.

Elder wasnt joking about his lack of respect for women. He argued in a 2000 piece for Capitalism Magazine that women know less than men about political issues, economics, and current events, citing the results of a questionnaire. Elder went on to argue that the Democratic Party was hindered by its fidelity to SHE issues like Social Security, health care, and education, and that those pushing these issues namely women, with Elder citing how Bill Clinton lost the male vote in 1992 and 1996 were ill-informed.

Media Matters also pointed out that in his 2002 book, Elder railed against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Family and Medical Leave Act, positing that employers should be able to discriminate against women based on pregnancy.

Elders former fiancee Alexandra Datig told Politico in August that Elder would often threaten her, and repeatedly demanded that she get a tattoo that said Larrys Girl to prove her devotion to him.

This isnt why their relationship ended, though. No, Datig broke off their engagement in 2015 after, she says, Elder pulled a gun on her after hed been using marijuana. He checked if it was loaded while I was talking, Datig said. He wanted to make sure I saw that he had it.

Datig later in August filed a police report over the incident, also alleging that Elder pushed her in 2014.

Elder has denied he pulled a gun on Datig. I have never brandished a gun at anyone, he wrote on Twitter in August. I grew up in South Central. I know exactly how destructive this type of behavior is. Its not me, and everyone who knows me knows its not me. These are salacious allegations.

There are millions of Republicans in California, but the state is still overwhelmingly Democratic. California hasnt elected a Republican senator since 1988. It hasnt voted for a Republican candidate for president since Ronald Reagan. Every statewide office is currently occupied by a Democrat. Elder, who is vying to hold the states highest office, is close to as far to the right as one can get on several key issues. Heres a brief rundown on where he stands:

Once again, this man stands a reasonable chance of becoming the new governor of California.

Elder told reporters in August that Joe Biden won the election fair and square, but he reversed course a day later during an interview on a conservative radio show. Do I believe that Joe Biden won the election fair and square? Give me a mulligan on that one. No I dont. He then cited Alan Dershowitzs contention that the Supreme Court should have taken up the Pennsylvania election results, calling Dershowitz who has represented both Trump and Rudy Giuliani a left-wing professor.

It isnt surprising, then, that Elder has been drumming up doubt in the validity of the recall. You can also print your own ballot here in California, he said on Sean Hannitys radio show last week. What could possibly go wrong? We know about all the shenanigans that took place in 2020.

On Monday, the day before the election, Elder on his campaign site even said he had detected fraud in the election that resulted in Governor Gavin Newsom being reinstated as governor. This is before any results had even been released.

Just watch the clip until the end.

Stephen Miller is the vilest, most bigoted person to work in the White House in recent memory. Larry Elder is a huge fan.

The two go way back. Miller called into Elders show while he was in high school in the Los Angeles area, and Elder has supported the anti-immigration former adviser to Trump ever since. He even told Miller hed like to see him in the Oval Office himself. I hope to live to see the day when you become president, Elder once wrote to Miller, who responded by telling Elder he is the one true guide Ive always had.

Politicians suck. We know. At the same time, when running a government the size of Californias, it stands to reason that it might help to have some experience running a government, any government, or at the very least working in one.

The last, and only, person to slide into the Governors Mansion after a successful recall in California was Arnold Schwarzenneger, who became governor after Gray Davis was recalled in 2003. Schwarzenneger had no government experience and led the state into a financial quagmire before riding into the sunset with an anemic 22-percent approval rating.

Theres also, of course, Donald Trump, who won the presidency in 2016 despite having no experience in government and proceeded find creative ways to botch just about every problem that crossed his desk. This includes Covid-19, which has now killed well over 600,000 Americans due in no small part to Trumps ineptitude.

Elder indicated in February that he didnt really want to be governor of California. Id love to serve. Id hate to have to run, he said. I just dont believe I have the stomach, the temperament, the personality, the drive, the willingness to deal with these doofi in Sacramento for the next several years of my life.

Its hard to tell here if Elder is saying he doesnt have what it takes to run for governor, or to run for and then also serve as governor. The first part of the quote indicates the former. The bit about dealing with all the doofi in the states capital indicates the latter. Its also possible that making sense isnt a strong suit of Elders, something that could hinder his ability to appeal to a state of 40 million.

(Its also possible Elder just really wanted to use the word doofi, which is a little more understandable.)

Im not going to run, Elder added.

Four months later, he entered the race.

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A Guide to Larry Elder, the Right-Wing Extremist Who Could Be the Next Governor of California - Rolling Stone

Whether Texass anti-abortion law survives inevitable Supreme Court scrutiny, it may already have done irreparable damage to what was once known as the conservative movement despite delivering a crucial part of that movement its greatest win.

The law, which bans abortions after six weeks and allows private citizens to sue abortion providers, has already helped energize a progressive pro-choice base that might otherwise have been complacent or demoralized heading into 2022. Meanwhile, the law threatens to upend a decades-long alliance among several factions of the conservative movement.

From the 1970s onward, that movement was a loose confederation of conservatives with various priorities: a strong defense (with a fervent anti-communist wing), fiscal discipline (with a fervent anti-tax wing) and traditional family values (with a fervent anti-abortion wing). But by the early 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union had made defense and anti-communism less prominent as issues.

So in 1996, conservative activist Grover Norquist announced a new unifying principle. The new common political goal for Republicans, he said, was simple: to be left alone by the government. The Leave Us Alone Coalition was a center-right alliance of conservative and libertarian groups that promoted individual freedom over government involvement.

Norquist, then as now president of Americans for Tax Reform, defined the coalition broadly, including small business owners, the self-employed, home schoolers and gun owners. Democrats, who wanted to raise taxes or increase regulations on all these groups, were part of what he called the Takings Coalition.

Accept that formulation or not, it essentially describes how much of the center-right has seen itself over the last quarter-century.

To be clear: The center-right coalition was not universally pro-life, with many libertarians agreeing to disagree with social conservatives on a womans right to terminate a pregnancy. Nonetheless, the right was mostly unified in its support for conservative judges committed to individual freedom and limited government.

The Texas abortion law threatens to blow up this truce. In empowering anti-abortion activists to sue any party that aids and abets a woman seeking an abortion after six weeks, the law is an open invitation to upend the private lives of untold numbers of Texans. Its not just abortion providers that can be sued; so can friends or relatives who might accompany a pregnant woman, or even a driver hired for the journey. So much for reducing regulations on small businesses or the self-employed.

And for conservatives who have traditionally seen trial lawyers as an adversary, this law is a kind of lawyer-enrichment program. It not only sets a floor of $10,000 in civil claims from a defendant, but it also requires a losing defendant to pay all court costs (the same does not hold if the plaintiff loses).

Its hard to square the philosophy of leave us alone with a law that essentially deputizes private citizens to interfere in their neighbors lives. Previous anti-abortion laws have targeted abortion providers for regulation (or, yes, elimination). This one pits citizen against citizen creating a financial incentive to pry, probe and sue.

It is ironic that the debate over Texass law coincides with increasing calls on the right for greater freedom amid a pandemic. At least members of the Leave Us Alone Coalition are on firmer philosophical ground when they oppose vaccine mandates or mask-wearing in schools. As it turns out, whether you deserve to be left alone depends a lot on who you are, where you live and what youre doing.

Robert A. George writes editorials on education and other policy issues for Bloomberg Opinion. He was previously a member of the editorial boards of the New York Daily News and New York Post.

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True conservatives should hate the Texas abortion ban law - theday.com

Ever since President Trump started nominating new Supreme Court justices, reproductive health activists and court observers have sounded the alarm that Roe v. Wade was in jeopardy. Conservative legislators also took notepassing laws that would contradict Roe in case it did fall.

On September 1, in the middle of the night, the five most conservative Supreme Court justices issued an unsigned order denying an injunction against a new Texas law that bans most abortions and deputizes the citizenry to enforce the ban.

There is no silver lining, but there may be a layer of defense that hasnt been fully explored by activists and reproductive justice organizers to explore: the new progressive prosecutor movement.

Prosecutors are granted a high level of discretion under US law, and they have the authority to simply not criminally charge people using laws they know to be unjust or unconstitutional. Progressive prosecutors have mostly focused on non-enforcement efforts on low-level drug charges. However, in 2019, four Atlanta-area prosecutors promised they would not use a new Georgia law criminalizing abortions to prosecute people for obtaining them, regardless of whether there was a legal challenge to that law.

Such promises are not legally binding. The consequences of going back on their word would essentially amount to some of their left-leaning constituency remembering the betrayal in the next election cycle. But this use of prosecutorial discretionto not charge abortion patients or providerscould play a prominent role in our post-Roe society.

A starting place is to establish where your county DA stands on abortion.

The inverse is also true. Enterprising right-wing prosecutors can turn to new interpretations of old laws to criminalize abortion, even without a specific statute. In the 1990s, former Pinellas County, Florida, State Attorney Bernie McCabe attempted to prosecute a young girl under homicide statutes for getting an abortion.

Prosecutorial discretion is also probably why conservative donors who oppose mass incarceration, such as Charles Koch, never got involved in bankrolling pro-reform candidates in prosecutor elections. A decarceral Republican candidate for district attorney is essentially a libertarian, and many libertarians adamantly support the right to abortion without governmental inference. But funding candidates who might not prosecute people for abortion would alienate GOP allies needed for other parts of conservative donors political agenda. Relatively few Republicans think abortion should be legal.

Traveling from an abortion-ban state to get a legal abortion in a different state is still legal, because Congress never passed a federal law criminalizing abortion. Some Texas residents will be able to procure safe and legal abortions elsewhere; others who dont have the resources will not.

Groups like the ACLU and Color of Change have already been educating the public on the importance of district attorney races and knowing what ones DA stands for as a strategic lever for racial justice. Reproductive justice organizations might now consider doing the same.

A starting place is to establish where a county DA stands on abortion. Rarely have top prosecutors been asked to weigh in on the issue, and whether they run as Democrats or Republicans is not enough to know whether they support or oppose criminalization. Reproductive justice advocates should seek this information from as many DA offices as possible.

If the DAs refuse to not prosecute abortion, or glibly state that the law is the lawnot just downplaying, but outright ignoring, their own power of discretionthat information should be advertised where it will be seen by constituents who might not otherwise be aware. And if any DAs promise outright that they will not prosecute abortion-related charges, that promise should be publicly platformed, too.

In 2020, multiple plaintiffs sued in Tennessee to block a new law that would force abortion providers to tell patients it may be possible to reverse a medication-induced abortion in the middle of the procedure, under the threat of felony charges, fines and incarceration. To guide his decision, US District Judge William Campbell invited the four DAs named in the suitMemphis DA Amy Weirich, Davidson County (Nashville) DA Glenn R. Funk, Knox County DA Charme P. Allen and recently retired 15th District DA Tom Thompsonto state on-record that they would not prosecute providers for giving the required recitation but then stating they disagreed with it.

All of them filed the requested declaration except Nashville DA Funk, who filed a declaration that he would not enforce the new law because of his legal opinion that it is unconstitutional.

An October 2020 open letter from Fair and Just Prosecution also collected the signatures of dozens of locally elected prosecutors across the US who promised to not prosecute anyone who obtain abortions and health care professionals who provide themeven if the protections of Roe v. Wade were to be eroded or overturned.

Photograph via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons 2.0

Continued here:

District Attorneys Could Be Key to the post-Roe v. Wade Abortion Battle - Filter

Joe Rogan isnt really a Democrat or a Republican. He did support Bernie Sanders in the 2020 nomination race. That endorsement, though, was met with outrage by Sanders supporters who considered Rogan to be racist and anti-LGBTQ.

The popular podcast host is more of a Libertarian that anything else. And that way of seeing things has become clear in how Rogan has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. After being diagnosed with the disease, the host said he was taking multiple medications including Ivermectin, a horse de-wormer.

During his how today, Rogan ranted about the way his treatment was covered by the media. He was especially angry with Jim Acosta and CNN.

The podcaster began, Theyre making shit up! They keep saying Im taking horse dewormer. I literally got it from a doctor. Its an American company. They won the Nobel Prize in 2015 for use in human beings and CNN is saying Im taking horse dewormer. They must know thats a lie.

Rogan continued, CNN was saying I am a distributor of misinformation. I dont know whats going on, man. You know, there is a lot of speculation. One of the speculations involves the emergency use authorization for the vaccines. That, in order for there to be an emergency use authorization, there has to be no treatment for a disease.

The host closed his comments, The grand conspiracy is that the pharmaceutical companies are in cahoots to try and make anybody who takes this stuff look crazy. But whats crazy is look how better I got [sic]! I got better pretty quick, bitch.

In addition to taken Ivermectin, Rogan also took drugs that are proven to work against COVID-19 including monoclonal antibodies.

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WATCH: Enraged Ivermectin Taking Joe Rogan Threatens to Sue Jim Acosta, CNN - HillReporter.com