Category Archives: Libertarianism

After years of fighting to reduce the size of government and get public institutions out of peoples lives, Tim Wilson has finally managed to rid himself of the government once and for all, by spectacularly losing the blue-ribbon seat of Goldstein.

Wilson, who was once a policy director at the libertarian think tank The Institute of Public Affairs, said it was a relief to get soundly beaten in the election. For years Ive used my position as a paid-up employee of the government to argue that we need to lessen our reliance on government. So itll be a massive relief to no longer receive a $250k salary from the state, he said.

Every single day for the last six years or more Ive had the government right up in my life. Its suffocating! At some points its been so intrusive that its felt like Ive actually been part of the government!

He said he had always been against a welfare state. Take a moment to think what its been like for me, totally dependent on the government to pay for my travel, my accommodation, my expenses. Its exhausting!

Mr Wilson is expected to last around 2-3 weeks before seeking another government funded position.

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Libertarian Tim Wilson finally manages to get government out of his life - The Shovel

NEW ALBANY On Wednesday, state and federal Democratic Party and Libertarian Party candidates will take part in a town hall in New Albany.

Democrats at the event will include Tom McDermott, mayor of Hammond and a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate; Destiny Wells, a candidate for Indiana Secretary of State; Rita Fleming, an incumbent candidate for District 71 state representative, and Nick Marshall, a candidate for Indiana Senate District 45.

The Libertarian Party of Indiana is also expected to have candidates at the forum.

The event will begin at 5:30 p.m. at the 40/8 Hall at 1101 221 Albany St. in New Albany.

The Indiana Democratic Party in a news release stated that the states Libertarian and Republican parties were asked to take part in the town hall series, which includes stops across the state. Democrats said in the news release the Republican Party declined to participate.

There is no set theme for the town halls. Indiana Democrats have a plan to address the kitchen-table issues important to voters, and from issues like inflation and law enforcement funding to education and broadband, candidates and elected officials will answer as many questions as possible during a 90-minute conversation, the news release states.

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Libertarians, Democrats to hold joint town hall in New Albany - Evening News and Tribune

People would be hired for their ability- not arbitrarily by race, colour, gender, and religion

Editor's note: Mr.Trusslerwrites in responsetoLetter to the editor:Freedom and Democracy.

-----

To the Editor

Trevor Schindeler has never given thought that our unparalleled standard of living is because of competition.

Without competition there is monopoly and un-accountability: monopolies made possible by trade and professional unions.

Unions should also have to compete for members.Why should anyone be forced to belong to a union to practice his or her trade and profession? This universal acceptance is one of the biggest curtailments of our freedom. (freedom to work)

Libertarians believe in competition. They would not replace education, health care, or any other sovereign monopoly with a private system but would allow the private sector to compete and hold all accountable.

People would be hired for their ability- not arbitrarily by race, colour, gender, and religion.

People who are able should help themselves and their families and those unable to do so receive non-political government help and assistance.

Everyone should be given the necessary assistance to survive and prosper, not just catering to the fittest or those who succeed on a level playing field.

Mr.Schindeler: Libertarians are not naive.

Paul TrusslerNorth Bay

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Letter to the editor: Libertarians are not naive - BayToday.ca

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'I have no other choice but to speak up in defence of the people of Sudbury'

By Adrien Berthier

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My name is Adrien Berthier and I am seeking election as Sudburys Libertarian candidate.

I live and work in Sudbury and owe so much of my personal growth to the people of Sudbury. I own salesacorn.ca and Jeesen. I love the fusion of urban and wilderness that Sudbury offers.

I am seeking election because of the loss of personal freedoms that we have been experiencing over the last couple of years. The knee-jerk reaction to lockdowns deprived people of the right to earn a living, to visit dying or severely ill family members and created an underclass of second-class citizens. It also discriminated against certain members of our society, forcing people to wear masks non-stop the entire day to participate in society despite the health concerns.

What we have lived through is a crime against humanity and our politicians, through lack of backbone, have failed us. Our politicians either kept silent during the human rights abuses occurring around them or worse, they were proudly complicit in the events through which we have lived.

Since our politicians are unwilling to defend the freedoms that our society has historically been built on, I have no other choice but to speak up in defence of the people of Sudbury. If we keep voting for the big three parties, nothing is going to change. Its time to make our votes count and either prevent the big three parties from gaining control or at least send them a message that citizens are not livestock on a farm, that politicians are meant to be our servants and serve the people they represent.

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My top priority would be to prevent the loss of freedom from ever happening again so that our children and youth can know what it is like to live in a free society without fear of what their own government might do to them next.

Our health-care system is completely broken. I say this from my own experiences with health care in this city. Our hospital is clearly too small for the needs of our community, but I do not believe that expanding it and pouring more and more resources into a broken system is going to help.

Its time that we look for creative solutions. We need to put our top minds together to brainstorm new ideas. We could look at freeing up all the health care tax dollars collected for each person and spending that money right here in Sudbury.

We could look at reducing the management burden of our hospital, we could look at adding more private clinics for many procedures, freeing up the burden on the system, but most of all, I would reach out to our nurses and doctors and ask them what needs to be done.

I believe that if Laurentian university is unable to figure out a way to restructure or be self-supporting, then maybe we should be looking toward other options. Paying professors more, reducing management and bureaucracy may help to save Laurentian. All options should be on the table to save the university and continue serving the people of Sudbury.

A French-language university in Sudbury would be great. If tuition can be raised to support such a venture, I would support it.

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The drug problem in Sudbury is heartbreaking and I have watched it grow worse year by year. Although I am not in support of spending taxpayer money on safe injection sites my heart goes out to the people afflicted with addictions.

If the safe injection sites could also be somehow combined with other programs, that would give people hope again and give them a clear plan to move forward with their lives and become productive citizens again. I would be supportive of anyone with addictions that really wants to overcome their situation and is willing to demonstrate their willingness with action.

I would be supportive of completing the widening of Highway 69. The important thing here is to have a plan and to steadily follow it through to the end.

To lower prices like gas prices and other goods, we need to produce more. That means more industry, more small business and more entrepreneurs. By producing more goods and services and supporting local solutions, we can drive inflation rates down.

Reducing the size of the government burden on the taxpayers shoulders and emphasizing private solutions can drive down inflation and increase employment. We need to lower taxes, reduce the number of people employed by government and reduce the amount of red tape and paperwork involved in running small businesses.

Reducing the cost of housing in Sudbury is a key issue that comes down to reducing government fees, and government controls over the housing market. We need landlord rights to protect small landlords rights over their own property. By making private property and investing in housing stock a more attractive option, we would quickly increase inventory and pull pricing down for everyday renters.

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Increasing the number of options for tenants would provide not only more choice but also better rates as more and more people compete to invest in housing. Making rents more affordable and bringing up the quality and standards of the rental inventory available would be a win for the poor.

Creating jobs in Sudbury could be done by teaching entrepreneurship to high school students and encouraging entrepreneurs as much as possible. Making Sudbury more self-reliant and innovative would reduce our reliance on government support and encourage more employment.

I would like to see the creation of a charitable foundation in Sudbury to restore the soil and waters of our forests and lakes. Restoring self-sustaining ecologies in Sudbury and bringing back our beautiful wild landscapes would be a good idea.

I am also offering to donate 25 per cent of my MPP salary to the Sudbury Food Bank and am challenging all the other candidates to do the same thing.

Adrien Berthier is the candidate for the Libertarian Party in Sudbury.

sud.editorial@sunmedia.ca

Twitter: @SudburyStar

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Election file: Lockdowns abused the rights of Sudburians, Libertarian candidate says - The Sudbury Star

Al Cross| Opinion Contributor

Tuesdays primary elections in Kentucky reflected increasing polarization of the two political parties.

The Republican Party kept moving right, with the victories of several candidates who campaigned primarily on cultural issues and against government overreach.

The Democratic Party kept moving left, with the U.S. Senate primary victory of former state Rep. Charles Booker of Louisville, probably the most liberal nominee for major statewide office that Kentucky has ever produced.

Booker vowed on election night, Were gonna blow Rand Paul out, but defeat of the two-term libertarian Republican would be one of the greatest upsets in American political history, given the strong Republican trend in Kentucky.

For Subscribers: 5 takeaways from the 2022 Kentucky primary election. (Hint: The first one is 'money wins')

A more likely impact is that of the wins of seven or so Republican primary candidates who emphasized personal liberty (the major exception being a womans right to an abortion), showing that voters GOP primary voters, at least care less about the status and influence of their state legislators than the lawmakers would like to think.

That was obvious in Northern Kentucky, which saw three of its four-state House committee chairs defeated: Reps. Sal Santoro (Transportation), Ed Massey (Judiciary) and Adam Koenig (Business Organizations and Professions). Respectively, they lost to Marianne Proctor, Steve Rawlings and Steven Doan. One common theme was opposition to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshears pandemic restrictions.

In a region where legislative district lines cut across municipalities and even neighborhoods, the liberty candidates consistent cultural themes may have created a tide that lifted all their boats, former Kentucky secretary of state Trey Grayson of Northern Kentucky said on KETs election-night show (where I was also a panelist).

Northern Kentucky also drove the result in an open state Senate race, in which former senator Gex (jay) Williams of Verona, endorsed by libertarian U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, defeated three more mainstream candidates: well-funded Phyllis Sparks, also of Boone County; and Calen Studler and Mike Templeman of Frankfort.

Williams, who gave up a Senate seat to run for Congress in 1998, is now in an interesting matchup with Teresa Barton of Frankfort, who was unopposed for the Democratic nomination. After serving as Franklin County judge-executive, Barton ran the state Office of Drug Control Policy for Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher and supported him for re-election, but didnt change parties. She may be Democrats only hope to pick up a state Senate seat, in a newly drawn district that is 5 to 4 Democratic in voter registration but seems clearly Republican in recent voter performance.

Several liberty candidates lost. The biggest failure was Andrew Cooperrider of Lexington, who led protests against Beshears restrictions and petitioned the legislature to impeach him. He lost to Sen. Donald Douglas of Nicholasville, who was propped up financially and legislatively by Republican leaders who didnt want another liberty fire-breather like Sen. Adrienne Southworth of Lawrenceburg in the Senate. Two other impeachment petitioners also lost, to Reps. Samara Heavrin of Leitchfield and Kim King of Harrodsburg.

Kentucky Republican leaders have tried to steer the state party away from the national partys growing fever swamps of conspiracy theories and misinformation; they know that the hundreds of thousands of Kentucky Democrats who joined the GOP officially or unofficially because of Donald Trump may not want to go as far as the liberty candidates and culture warriors would go. Perhaps the best example of that is how the Republican-controlled General Assembly soft-pedaled the pseudo-issue of critical race theory in the last legislative session, passing a bill that only alluded to it.

Still, candidates who campaigned against pandemic restrictions and other alleged government overreach had enough success Tuesday that they may lead Republican candidates for governor to double down on the issue as they run against Beshear next year, even though the governor built his strongly positive rating during the crisis period of the pandemic. The Williams-Barton race could be a strategic indicator of just how far right you can go and still win.

More: Rand Paul and Charles Booker nab US Senate primary wins and will face off in November

Republicans are beginning a crowded and potentially fractious primary for governor, in which the nuances of cultural issues could be decisive. Attorney General Daniel Cameron and Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles are running partly on their active opposition to Beshears pandemic mandates, and former U.N. ambassador Kelly Craft has indicated that she will do likewise if she runs, as expected. The liberty candidates success will surely encourage like-minded Rep. Savannah Maddox of Dry Ridge to run.

As the GOP sorts itself out, opposition to Beshear will be the glue that holds the party together in Kentucky through 2023, Republican consultant and commentator Scott Jennings said on KETs primary coverage. (Jennings says hes neutral in the governors race.) But looking a year ahead, Beshears pandemic-driven approval ratings appear to be holding steady, and what works in Republican primaries will not necessarily work in general elections. Voters in November should give us a clearer picture.

Al Cross, a former Courier Journal political writer, is professor and director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues at the University of Kentucky. He writes this column for the Kentucky Center for Public Service Journalism. Reach him on Twitter @ruralj.

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Al Cross: As primary voters move GOP farther right, will others follow? - Courier Journal

The epicenter of the Republican intraparty battles was in northern Kentucky where the shakeups occurred.

FRANKFORT, Ky. Three prominent Kentucky House Republicans were defeated in bruising GOP primaries that reflected growing pains within the state's dominant political party.

Several other incumbent GOP lawmakers successfully fended off tough challenges on Tuesday.

The epicenter of the Republican intraparty battles was in northern Kentucky where the shakeups occurred. State Rep. Adam Koenig was unseated by Steven Doan. Rep. C. Ed Massey lost to Steve Rawlings, while Rep. Sal Santoro was defeated by Marianne Proctor.

Republican Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, in sizing up the three races, said Wednesday that a libertarian-populist narrative worked in a very, very low turnout election.

Koenig and Massey were committee chairmen while Santoro had a key role in setting transportation spending as a budget review subcommittee chairman. Koenig also gained prominence for leading the push to legalize sports betting in Kentucky an effort that came up short again this year.

Incumbent GOP lawmakers fared much better elsewhere in the state. State Sen. Donald Douglas defeated challenger Andrew Cooperrider in a high-spending primary. Other incumbents who won closely watched primaries included Reps. Kim King, Brandon Reed and Samara Heavrin.

Asked to assess the overall primary season, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear on Wednesday said: "What I'm seeing are nastier primaries. And we need to get beyond nasty elections in general. I don't wish some of the mailers that I saw on anybody.

Beshear is preparing for his own tough reelection fight next year.

With Republicans so dominant across much of Kentucky, winning the GOP primary in many districts is tantamount to securing a legislative seat. It has resulted in some hotly contested races.

I dont see a huge message in this primary other than it was the first of many where virtually all the action of import will be in May GOP primaries, said Scott Jennings, a Kentuckian and former adviser to President George W. Bush. Weve become so dominant so fast, and the GOP will have to reckon with these internal fights for many years to come.

Republican supermajorities in Kentucky's legislature include lawmakers characterized as business-oriented conservatives, social conservatives and libertarians. Many of their views overlap on such issues as gun rights, low taxes and opposition to abortion. Some of this year's GOP primaries pitted traditionally conservative incumbents against libertarian-minded challengers.

What you're seeing is just growing pains because the Republican Party is growing in Kentucky, Reed said in an interview Wednesday at the state Capitol.

Reed, the vice chairman of the House Appropriations and Revenue Committee, won his primary with nearly 70% of the vote in his rural district. Reed emphasized the primary victories by lawmakers aligned with the traditional party which he said has reshaped Kentucky policies since the GOP won total control of the legislature after the 2016 election.

Asked if he saw room in the party for libertarians, Reed replied: I think there's room in the Republican Party for Republicans. If you want to be a libertarian, you probably need to go join the Libertarian Party and run as a libertarian.

While the losses among the three northern Kentucky lawmakers garnered considerable attention, Thayer pointed to the success of other GOP incumbents in Tuesday's legislative primaries.

"Most incumbents were rewarded for their work passing a lot of priority conservative legislation over the last couple of years," Thayer said in a phone interview.

Primary losses by Koenig and Massey will create openings for two committee chairmanships. Koenig has been chairman of the House Licensing, Occupations and Administrative Regulations Committee. Massey wielded influence as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The outcomes of GOP primaries, both this year and in likely contested primaries in coming years, could factor into the divides that sometimes surface in the legislature on such issues as charter schools and whether to legalize sports betting and medical marijuana.

With Koenig's defeat, another lawmaker will have to step up as the primary sponsor of legislation to legalize sports betting in Kentucky.

It's important that we elect people to all offices that can help us get things done, Beshear said in an interview at the statehouse. That are willing to put differences aside and push forward on key issues like sports betting and medical marijuana. Their time has come and we need to make sure that we are electing people who believe in them.

Elsewhere, GOP voters settled two incumbent-vs.-incumbent primaries -- the result of a new House redistricting map passed as a result of statewide population shifts reflected in the 2020 U.S. census.

In western Kentucky, Rep. Jim Gooch Jr. defeated fellow Rep. Lynn Bechler. In a newly drawn eastern Kentucky district, Rep. Bobby McCool defeated Rep. Norma Kirk-McCormick.

Associated Press Writer Piper Hudspeth Blackburn in Louisville, Kentucky, contributed to this story.

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'Growing pains' | Northern Kentucky incumbents ousted in legislative primary - WHAS11.com

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When the pandemic hit, the centre-left never forgave Kenney for tailoring his policies to the libertarian-right. The latter, meanwhile, never thanked him. This fact must give pause to every right-of-centre politician in the country.

Jason Kenney drove his famous blue pickup truck on to the Alberta stage, and, Wednesday night, off a political cliff, thus becoming not the Conservative wunderkind, the next federal leader-in-waiting, but a cautionary tale for Conservative politicians in Alberta and indeed across the country.

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His pivot to provincial politics, eschewing a crowded and convoluted field to replace Stephen Harper, had been triumphant. Having so skilfully and affably created the conditions to eat the federal Liberals lunch in the early 2000s by literally eating lunch with minority voters in every gurdwara, mosque and church to which he was sent (voraciously courting a base oft-ignored by the right), he would now unite the fractured right in Alberta, fix the provinces economic woes, restore pipeline supremacy and equally triumphantly return to Ottawa, rescuing the federal movement from its time in time-out.

But if Kenney could do little wrong in Ottawa, his time in Edmonton represented a case of reverse-Midas touch, as if every issue, everything he came into contact with turned to well, not gold.

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It started out well enough. In an election that drew 64 per cent voter turnout, his United Conservative Party earned 55 per cent of the popular vote. Three-in-five Albertans approved of Kenney back then. But by last fall, Kenneys approval had sunk to just 22 per cent. Pretty bad for any politician. Really bad for one facing a mutiny in his own caucus. Rachel Notley and the NDP were now finding a second wind competing with and in some polls pulling ahead of the UCP. (Shell miss him dreadfully, no doubt). In March, the Angus Reid Institute found Albertans dissatisfied with Kenneys government on more than a half-dozen metrics of provincial management, including stewardship of the economy, health care and COVID-19.

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Ah, the coronavirus. Kenneys bte noire. At the height of the troubles, while other provinces closed businesses, instituted mask mandates and insisted on vaccination, Kenneys government resisted and resisted, infuriating massive segments of the Alberta population wanting more protection, all to protect itself from the fury of the libertarian, restriction-resisting factions of its own base. In the end, Kenney pleased no one. Then came last years best summer ever, a premature end to the pandemic declared in Alberta which resulted in a surge of infection.

The centre-left never forgave him. The libertarian-right never thanked him. This is the important point that must now give every right-of-centre politician in the country pause.

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Kenneys successor in Alberta, Doug Ford in Ontario, those vying for control of the federal Conservative party each will continue to grapple with a base that has moved if not farther to the right (after all, Kenney has arguably been one of the most hawkish among them), then to a place more stubbornly resistant to authority, rules or a sense of common care. A place of extremes, felt most keenly by people in Alberta and next door in Saskatchewan but with pockets of growing resonance across the country.

While years of the Trudeau government have left those two western provinces, in particular, feeling profoundly alienated, this resentful disengagement has been more vociferously fed by six years of Trump and Tucker Carlson-style politics an ugly, gaslighting brand of misinformation combined with social media and two years of a pandemic that have legitimized all kinds of anti-government, anti-truth, conspiracy-minded kooks.

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The results? The Ottawa occupation. A front-runner for the federal Conservatives (Pierre Poilievre) who decries racism while at the same time using nativist, dog-whistle-style language in a widely shared video. And a splintering even further of the political right. If the Conservative Party of Canada doesnt go far enough, there is the Peoples Party of Canada federally, the New Blue Party in Ontario and any host of independence-minded parties in Alberta.

By no means am I suggesting all these parties or their supporters subscribe to or amplify toxicity, but some do. The more practical reality is that right-leaning parties must decide if they want to chase some voters farther and farther down a rabbit hole, or remain mainstream enough not to alienate everyone else.

It was the political problem that undid Jason Kenney. He wont be the only one.

Shachi Kurl is President of theAngus Reid Institute,a national, not-for-profit, non-partisan public opinion research foundation.

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Kurl: COVID, conservatism and the downfall of Alberta's Jason Kenney - Ottawa Citizen

This fall I participated in the annual Frankel Lecture symposium at the University of Houston Law School. The topic was on academic freedom and diversity, and the lecture was delivered by Jeannie Suk Gersen of Harvard Law School. I provided a response, along with Khiara M. Bridges of Berkeley Law School.

The articles from the symposium have now been published online and printed in the latest issue of the Houston Law Review. The full symposium can be found here.

My article, "Academic Freedom and the Mission of the University," focuses on the relationship between the mission of the university and the commitment to and value of academic freedom to that university. A university dedicated to truth-seeking needs robust protections for academic freedom in order to properly fulfill that mission, and American universities embraced those protections as they reoriented themselves to that mission in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. To the extent that universities deviate from that mission and prioritize other values and commitments, then academic freedom protections will seem less valuable and even counterproductive.

I particularly consider three competing understandings of what universities should be seeking to prioritize and show that in each case academic freedom will likely suffer. The article explores the implications of committing the university to a "patriotic" mission of promoting a rich set of substantive values seen as central to the nation, committing the university to a "neoliberal" mission of preparing students for career success, and committing the university to a "creedal" mission of promoting a rich set of substantive values seen as important to the campus community such as inclusivity or social justice.

From the conclusion:

Modern American universities have struggled to live up to their own ideals, and our current polarized environment will make living up to those ideals harder rather than easier. The educational reformers of the late nineteenth century understood that if universities were to serve their proper purpose of bringing the benefits of knowledge to society, the experts that the university had to offer would have to be broadly trusted. They could not be perceived as just another set of partisans entering into familiar political battles. That is a hard position to achieve. To the extent that society is divided into distant warring camps, it is all the more difficult to bridge that divide. Scholarly judgment might be vilified and dismissed rather than welcomed. But modern universities were launched with a goal of standing above such divides. Their best chance of doing so requires taking scrupulous care to be intellectually open and nondogmatic, standing above the fray rather than diving into it, and protecting dissident ideas rather than suppressing them.

Read the whole thing here.

Khiara Bridges' article ends on a particularly intriguing note. A critical race theorist, she worries about pressure on academic freedom currently coming from the political left and from the political right. Notably, she emphasizes to the left that universities should not be places that prioritize "student comfort," as some diversity, equity and inclusion offices are wont to do. More curious is her discussion of the threat from the political right. There she notes that conservatives responded to critical race theory arguments about free speech in the 1990s by embracing a more libertarian view of free speech principles. She seems wistful that the political right now seems to be abandoning that libertarianism and adopting a more censorious attitude that more closely mirrors CRT.

She writes:

And what is the best way to respond to pressures on academic freedom generated from the right? It seems like the right might need to remind itself of the claims that it made in the 1990s, when self-identified critical race theorists argued that the First Amendment should not be interpreted to protect racist hate speech. During that historical moment, many conservatives (and liberals) rejected these theorists' claims, arguing that the First Amendment was incompatible with protections against injurious speech. They contended that the best response to harmful speech was not to limit speech but rather to ensure that everyone could speak.

In the 1990s, conservatives wanted more speech. In the 2020s, they want less. If conservative pundits, activists, and scholars really value the First Amendment as much as they claimed just three decades ago, then they should recognize the bans on "Critical Race Theory," "divisive concepts," and the like as the wildly unAmerican efforts that they are.

Is the implication here that CRT was wrong about free speech and that everyone should embrace the civil libertarian position on speech? That in hindsight it was a mistake for the left to have spent the last few decades advocating for a more restrictive understanding of the First Amendment and free speech principles? Indeed that CRT principles regarding free speech were "wildly un-American"? Or that it would be convenient for left-leaning academics if the right were to continue to adhere to liberal speech ideals while the left continues to embrace illiberal speech ideals? That the left should censor but the right should tolerate? Free speech for me but not for thee?

I'd like to think that my colleagues on the left are starting to see the light when it comes to free speech principles and realizing that they were playing with fire in urging an illiberal vision of free speech, but we are not there yet. Instead some are doubling and tripling down on theories about how to restrict speech they do not like. And meanwhile, Bridges is right that some conservatives are turning to the dark side when it comes to free speech. Things are likely to get worse before they get better, and the truth-seeking mission of the university might be curtailed, if not abandoned entirely.

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Academic Freedom and the Mission of the University - Reason

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One of the fallouts from the Federal Reserve's period of monetary expansion during the 2020-2021 period may be connected with the regulation of cryptoassets.

The pricing of cryptoassets had been very uninteresting until the Federal Reserve started to flood the banking system with liquidity.

This was true of what was going on in many other financial markets.

Well, the Fed saved the economy, at that time, from any serious economic catastrophe, but it generated many, many financial bubbles that it is now having to deal with as the Fed reverses its actions.

As the Fed moves to tighten up on its monetary policy so as to fight the current rise of inflation, one by one, we are finding adjustments taking place in the economy to deal with the monetary buildup that took place in various sectors of the financial world.

And, we are finding outcomes that make many uncomfortable.

The initial surge of support for cryptoassets that came from libertarian-thinking individuals has now receded somewhat.

More and more, as evidence grows of misuse or misapplication of the free-market program, we find the other side of the argument taking up more aggressive positions.

For example, columnist Greg Ip, of the Wall Street Journal, writes this morning about how "Crypto Meltdown Exposes Hollowness of its Libertarian Promise."

Mr. Ip writes,

"unable to displace the dollar, crypto became just another asset without traditional markets' guardrails."

Furthermore, the lead editorial in the Financial Times, written by Jemima Kelly, claims, in bold letters, "There is a moral case against crypto."

Ms. Kelly writes,

"it seems more appropriate to use the latest market crash as an opportunity to make the moral argument against crypto. Because it's not just that we should not treat it as a serious asset class; we also need to stop imagining that it is just all a bit of harmless fun."

So, some of the weaknesses of the Libertarian case have come to light.

But, we should not overreact and move too far in the opposite direction.

Yes, crypto markets have lost more than $1.0 trillion of value over the past six months.

The price of one Bitcoin (BTC-USD) was just over $67,000 on November 10, 2021.

Today, the price is right around $30,000, where it was below $26,000 several days ago.

TerraUSD (UST-USD), a token whose price was supposed to remain pegged to the dollar, suddenly dropped, along with the coin (LUNA-USD) that was meant to back it.

We have not fully experienced the full fallout of the recent collapse and await the further ramifications of the unregulated space.

Gary Gensler, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission has seen it as his mission to bring regulation to these cryptoassets.

Mr. Gensler is building his case.

After testifying in front of the House Appropriations Committee panel hearing on Wednesday, he told reporters,

"I think a lot of these tokens will fail."

"I fear that in crypto...there's going to be a lot of people hurt, and that will undermine some of the confidence in markets and trust in markets writ large."

Mr. Gensler has his mission set out for him.

Others, like Rostin Behnam, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, are right there with him.

The pieces are all coming together.

Earlier this month, the SEC stated that it plans to add 20 investigators and litigators to its unit dedicated to cryptocurrency and cybersecurity enforcement, nearly doubly the unit's size.

Still, Mr. Gensler does not feel that this is near enough and that more will be added later.

Mr. Gensler, and his predecessor, Jay Clayton, believe that most cryptocurrencies meet the legal definition of a security and thereby should be registered with the SEC,

"There is a path forward," Mr. Gensler claims.

Mr. Gensler is in the process of constructing that path. He is receiving more and more support for this effort these days, and the number of advocates seems to be growing.

To me, this battle is going to grow and grow.

I lean to the side of less regulation than more. But, I believe that one should not just dismiss the need for regulation out of pure philosophical thought.

People cheat. People cut corners. People have incomplete knowledge. Bad things happen. Markets, in general, seem to need to have some kind of a watchdog.

It just makes common sense. In this, I am more of a pragmatist. And, like Cass Sunstein, I believe that the regulation of markets should be done incrementally. That we should work through "nudges."

The problem is, too often, that we wait too long and major problems occur.

In order to put things back into order, we must make major movements.

These major adjustments tend to create their own 'unintended consequences."

And, thus, more problems are introduced into the picture.

Markets need to be regulated.

My old Libertarian days are behind me.

We have a major correction taking place. Many, many people are getting hurt in the adjustment.

We need to have Mr. Gensler and others moving to bring more regulation into the area of cryptoassets so as to avoid even further pain.

The regulation is coming. Let's get on with it.

View original post here:
More Crypto Regulation: Thank The Federal Reserve - Seeking Alpha

Where are they headed next?

There were no signs that the Croydon town meeting in March would be unusual.

The weather was bad; not bad enough to really intimidate New Hampshire drivers, though other towns had canceled their meetings. Amanda Brown attended the town meeting about Croydons schools, expecting nothing special; her husband, who had attended the earlier town meeting, did not attend with her. When Ian Underwood, town selectman and husband of school board chair Jody Underwood, made his surprise motion, Brown texted her husband that he had better get over there right away. But by the time he arrived, it was too late. By a vote of 20-14, the meeting had cut the school budget from $1.7 million to $800,000.

The Free State Meets The Granite State

The Underwoods are part of the Free State Project, founded in 2001 with the intent of moving 20,000 Libertarians to New Hampshire with the hope that they might have an outsized influence on the small-population, liberty-loving state. Free Staters have been successful in landing elected offices in New Hampshire, even at the state level (most elected offices in the state are unpaid).

The Underwoods came to Croydon in 2007. Before moving, Jody had worked for the Educational Testing Service, and before that a researcher for NASA and Carnegie Mellon University. Ian was a "planetary scientist and artificial intelligence researchers for NASA," a certified hypnotist, a "fourth generation wing chun sifu," as well as director of the Ask Dr. Math program.

In New Hampshire, Free Staters find many sympathetic politicians. After Frank Edelblut dropped out of the governors race in favor of Chris Sununu, Sununu offered the homeschooling businessman the post of education commissioner. The Underwoods testified at his 2017 confirmation hearing.

Free Staters oppose most taxation. The small town of Grafton, just up the road from Croydon, has cut spending in the town dramatically (read Matthew Hongoltz-Hetlings A Libertarian Walks Into A Bear for a full picture). Two years ago, Croydons three selectmen (including Ian Underwood) made a surprise motion to fire the towns only policeman and dissolve the department. At that meeting, the twenty-year veteran was told to turn in his uniform and equipment, so in a fine show of Yankee spirit, he stripped down to briefs, boots, and hat and walked home.

Croydons tiny population (801 as of 2020) includes 80 students; the school system maintains a local K-4 school and an innovative, hard-won school choice system which pays full tuition for students to attend whatever school the family selects. Many choose the neighboring public school systems. But those costs are far in excess of Croydons slashed budget, which was based on $10,ooo per student.

Nationally, Libertarians are often vocal supporters of school choice, but the Free Staters have largely moved beyond that position. In a Libertarian Institute podcast, Free State board member Jeremy Kaufman explained that school choice and vouchers are just "a stepping stone towards reducing or eliminating state involvement in schools."

Jody Underwood has written that vouchers are only a stepping stone, while Ian Underwood has referred to school budgets as ransom and (in a post entitled Your house is my ATM), extortion.

Proposed Solutions

Two days after the budget-slicing meeting, over 100 mostly-angry Croydon residents attended a school board meeting. Accusations were thrown about. Jody Underwood insisted that she had no idea her husband was going to make such a proposal, a claim that locals say she later retracted.

Board member Aaron McKeon said that a failure to adapt to the new budget just represented a failure of imagination. The message on that Monday was that the new budget was a legally done deal.

Families with students in grades 5-12 had few options. The solution that was repeatedly floated was the use of microschools, particularly Prenda, a company that just last year won $6 million in pandemic relief money from the state of New Hampshire. The company was founded by Kelly Smith, a physicist who started Code Clubs of Arizona; he launched his first Prenda pod in 2018 with seven neighborhood kids. Prenda has since picked up some major funding from VELA Education Fund, a new Koch-Walton initiative.

Microschools are set up with small pods of students, whose education is delivered via computer. Pods do not require teachers, but depend on an adult guide. Microschools in this model are not public education, but the outsourcing of public education to a private company.

The prospect of giving up schools for pods did not excite many of the Croydon parents. And other taxpayers in the town werent happy, either.

The Real Fight Begins

Among the alarmed taxpayers were folks with long time roots in Croydon. Amanda Brown has lived there for 20 years, having married into a family that had been in Croydon for generations. Hope Damon has lived there 36 years, raising two daughters. They were among the many interconnected Croydon folks who were now sparked into action. The Free Staters were about to find out what the wide web of small town connections can do.

When a mistake is made, says Damon, there ought to be a way to rectify it. Tapping a network that included an education lawyer and connections all the way to state Attorney Generals office, the group found that there wasan obscure law that allowed taxpayers to petition for a special meeting to undo the new budget.

The petition had 150 signatures in two days. The special meeting was scheduled for May 7. In order to act, the meeting would require at least half of the towns 565 voters, and so the battle shifted toward driving turnout.

Brown says, We spent every second we could afford on this. They went door to door. They held two calling events. They wrote letters to the editor. They enlisted assistance from surrounding communities, including teachers, administrators and boards of nearby districts.

Jody Underwood reportedly said the board had legal advice to not advertise the special meeting. Meanwhile, Ian Underwood was blogging increasingly angry posts: parents dont understand how children learn, the special meeting was actually not legal, the school district wanted to take money by force, and a piece in which he argues that majorities in a democracy are a big problem.

We Stand Up For Croydon Students formed to back the budget restoration; soon, another group calling itself We Stand Up For Croydon Students and Taxpayers appeared, causing confusion.

The pro-budget cuts group sent out a mailer that argued that microschools would be fine (small class sizes, limited screen time) and that there would be Better education. Lower taxes. Repeatedly, the plea was to stay home. If you like the budget you have, you can keep it. Just stay home on May 7. If fewer than 283 registered voters attend the special meeting, no vote can be taken.

Dozens of Croyden residents registered to vote. Cathy Peshke, a Croydon freedom fighter and veteran of many school budget debates, resigned her post as a voting official when the state said that the new voters would not change the 283 requirement. The budget cutters, she told residents, were the silent majority in this fight. Somebody stuffed pro-budget cut materials in peoples mailboxes.

Ive been exhausted and distracted, says Brown. April was a long month, but then May arrived. And a lot can change between March and May.

The Special Meeting

379 voters showed up.

Outside, there were tables set up by both We Stand Up For Croydon Students and We Stand Up For Croydon Students and Taxpayers; only one was doing much business.

Independent journalist Jennifer Berkshire traveled from Massachusetts to attend the meeting. She found people piling in, with lots of media and residents of all ages. She anticipated tension. I really was expecting a kind of face off. Moderator Bruce Jasper opened the meeting with his own story and, she says, you could feel people kind of exhaling.

The room was packed and, Berkshire says, it became evident early on that everyone there was supportive. Damon says that supporters anticipated that someone might propose a compromise amendment, restoring only part of the original budget. It didnt happen.

There was no wrangling, no points of order, no real debate. One board member tried to plug the microschools and budget cuts. Says Berkshire, The people in the audience did not appreciate his presentation, and they did not respond to it as gracefully as they might have, and encouraged him to wrap it up.

Berkshire found herself sitting next to Jody Underwood, who was agitated. During the We Stand Up For Croydon Students advocacy for a restored budget, she blurted out lies.

In the end, the Free Stater campaign to keep people home had been effective only with their own allies. The budget was restored to its original full condition by a vote of 377-2.

The Lessons

In the end, the debate in Croydon was not about school choice or about quality education, both of which the town already had. As the re-vote came down to the wire, the argument was literally about democracy itself.

The budget cutters were explicitly trying to keep people from voting, arguing against registering more voters, and insisting that the original vote on a surprise motion by 34 of the towns 585 voters was good enough. This was a fight about dismantling a piece of democratic government.

Budget cut advocates had claimed to be the silent majority, but the actual majority turned out to be taxpayers who support public education and are willing to fund it.

People in Croydon had not paid close attention to their new Free State neighbors. Theyre paying attention now; petitions are circulating to remove two school board members (a move that New Hampshire law doesnt actually allow for). Said Damon, They come in acting nice, people trust them, and they turn out to have goals other than what you thought.

Amanda Brown says, I do not think this fight is over. But people are finally aware.

Asked how they got to this point, Hope Damon says, Apathy. Taking for granted that the status quo would be maintained or that somebody had it covered. Free Staters have gained so many elected positions by virtue of being unopposed.

That may change. We won the battle, not the war, says Damon. Were not going away.

Original post:
In New Hampshire, Libertarians, Budget Cuts, And A Small Town Battle To Save Public Education - Forbes