Category Archives: Libertarianism

In November 2019, local property owners in Delaware and Maryland were sent a letter from Save Our Beach View asking neighbors to lobby local politicians against the Skipjack wind farm.

The plan, which was approved in 2017, sanctioned a Dutch company to build a 120-megawatt capacity wind energy project enough to power 40,000 homes by placing turbines 26 nautical miles offshore. The letter warned that the project would irreparably damage beach tourism, home values and the economy, lower rents generally, and produce no environmental benefit. In fact, the letter claimed, regional air quality would become worse because of them.

While the letter was signed by a local resident, it made little mention of its true author: the Caesar Rodney Institute, a libertarian think tank at the time funded by the oil industry. The subterfuge was intentional. In an interview with the State Policy Network, a group that coordinates best practices for oil-and-gas-backed and libertarian think tanks, the Caesar Rodney Institute said it produced the letter and had it signed by a local concerned beach homeowner to establish rapport with the target audience of local residents and merchants.

Save Our Beach View was also created by Caesar Rodney expressly for the purpose of undermining the Skipjack project.Our strategy was to market and promote the campaign rather than our organization, so we came up with the name Save Our Beach View, a project of the Caesar Rodney Institute, said the think tanks representative in the interview.

The buzzsaw of advocacy threatens to derail the Biden administrations ambitious goal of opening up wind energy production from coast to coast. rsted, the Dutch company in charge of the Skipjack project, has delayed construction until 2026 and may face further delays as local opposition and regulatory barriers mount.

The Caesar Rodney Institute-backed network, the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, has backed a federal lawsuit, petitioned regulators, and mobilized seaside communities to protest offshore wind turbines as an existential threat, arguing that the turbines will diminish tourism, endanger local wildlife, and could lead to leaking oil [lubricants] from turbines.

Its true that while wind energy provides many climate benefits to power generation, particularly its ability to generate power without burning fossil fuels, the energy source is not without its risks. The effects of offshore wind farms on the fishing industry, as well as marine and bird life, arenot fully understood.

Groups backed by oil industry money demanded expedited approval of offshore oil drilling in the same regions now under consideration for wind farms.

But many of the groups leading the opposition to the wind farms are not entirely sincere in their concern for the environment and the demand that regulators slow down construction. In previous years, these groups, backed by oil industry money, demanded expedited approval of offshore oil drilling in the same regions now under consideration for wind farms. In advocating for offshore drilling, they cast aside any concerns around tourism, potential pollution, or impacts on local wildlife.

Many of the groups also emulate the appearance of local grassroots organizations, despite backing from the oil and gas industry and sophisticated communications support from national conservative groups.

David Stevenson, the director of the Caesar Rodney Institutes Center for Energy Competitiveness, has said he is raising funds to file lawsuits against wind energy projects along the East Coast. And the American Coalition for Ocean Protection has similar advocacy efforts against wind projects in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Virginia, Maine and the Great Lakes. Last summer, Stevenson, a former Trump official, led a press conference in Boston to announce a lawsuit aimed at stopping the construction of Vineyard Wind, the first major offshore wind project in the U.S., which is slated to be built 12 miles south of Marthas Vineyard.

In June, the Caesar Rodney Institute filed comments to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, a division of the Department of Interior, arguing that regulators overseeing the Vineyard Wind project had failed to account for the lost tourism that would result from visible wind farms in the ocean.

We communicate with each other, help each other out with resources and ideas, said Stevenson last summer, speaking about the growing opposition to wind farms led by his coalition. Youve got the emotional power of the beach community, that comes without a lot of background in how to get things done, with these state policy groups.

In response to a request for comment, Stevenson wrote that the Caesar Rodney Institute, like other nonprofits such as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council, protects the privacy of our donors. I cant speak for all the coalition members as we dont share donor info, but we are not receiving donations from the fossil fuel industry. Our donors do not impact our positions which are determined by the facts our research uncover. We would accept donations from the fossil fuel industry if offered. Got any contacts?

Grant information from 2019 shows that the institute was supported financially by the American Energy Alliance at the time of their Skipjack campaign.

The group does not voluntarily disclose donor information, but grant information from 2019 shows that the institute was supported financially by the American Energy Alliance at the time of their Skipjack campaign. AEA is funded by the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, an oil refinery trade group, as well as the Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, the business trade group formed in part by Koch Industries. The president of AEA is Thomas Pyle, a former in-house lobbyist for Koch Industries.

My research on offshore wind shows it as an environmental and economic disaster, added Stevenson, pointing to a study showing potential harm posed by offshore windmills to North Atlantic right whales. My basic, and consistent objective is to do honest research and support things that actually work rather than whats popular at the moment.

The American Coalition for Ocean Protection includes another group, Protect Our Coast NJ, that makes similar grassroots appeals for members of the public to oppose offshore wind turbines over environmental concerns, claiming the projects will lead to an industrialization of our ocean with turbine towers that threaten marine and bird life. The group makes no donor information public, but alinkredirects viewersto donate to the Caesar Rodney Institute.

The appeals are especially insidious given that less than a decade ago, in 2014, the Caesar Rodney Institutesponsored a study that promoted drilling off of the shores of Maryland and Delaware, touting the benefits of offshore oil for jobs, energy independence, and boosted economic development.

In 2017, Stevenson called offshore drilling near North Carolina a potential boon to the local economy that would help achieve energy independence. The following year, in an article for the Heartland Institute, Stevenson praised the potential for offshore drilling near Delaware. The risks of seismic testing and oil spills have been exaggerated and are manageable compared to the potential large economic benefits, he said.

In his statement to the Intercept, Stevenson said he does not specifically endorse oil drilling and that his comments attached to the 2014 study simply called for a more lively debate about whether to develop the oil reserves off our coasts.

Highly motivated fossil fuel interests have long lobbied to prevent the adoption of wind and other renewable energy into the nations energy portfolio. The State Policy Network has long worked to prevent the adoption of renewable energy in favor of maintaining a reliance on oil, gas, and coal.

In previous years, AEA has acted as the tip of the spear against renewable energy, lobbying against electric vehicle subsidies, greenhouse gas emission regulations, and wind energy projects. In 2019, AEA spent $1.7 million advocating on its agenda.

Stevenson a policy adviser to the Heartland Institute, a nonprofit that denies that the burning of fossil fuels influences global warming previouslywas amember of the Trump administrations EPA transition team. Stevenson used the position to request recordsrelating to Climategate, hacked emails from 2009 between climate scientists in the U.K. that many conservatives claimed showed doctored climate projections, and records relating to the cost of carbon regulations.

Stevenson, who was also a former DuPont executive, has reversed many long-standingfree-market principles in fighting the expansion of wind energy. Most fossil fuel-backed libertarians have long argued against environmental rules that tend to bog down energy development, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act. But the Caesar Rodney Institute, notably, cited the NEPA, which requires major federal projects to undergo careful environmental impact review and additional review under the ESA, in attempting to block wind energy.

In previous years, during the Obama administration, the Caesar Rodney Institute argued that NEPA and the ESA, along with additional environmental regulations, created permitting delays as the agencies are flooded with paperwork.

Other fossil fuel think tanks in the coalition are also singing a dramatically different tune. The John Locke Foundation, a North Carolina-based think tank involved in the State Policy Network and the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, filed comments with regulators in opposition to the Kitty Hawk Offshore Wind Project off thecoast of the Outer Banks.

The foundation argues that any offshore wind development would pose risks for the environment given North Carolinas location and vulnerability to hurricanes, depressed tourism, and potential ecological damage. But those concerns were not raised a few years ago, when the John Locke Foundation, which is funded heavily by the Charles Koch Institute and Charles Koch Foundation, advocated for oil drilling off the coast of North Carolina.

In those days, any concerns about environmental impact were minimal. There are certainly some risks associated with offshore drilling, as there are with pretty much any large-scale enterprise, said John Hood, chair of the John Locke Foundation, in a Hickory Daily Record newspaper column in 2018. But the many benefits, wrote Wood, outweighed the risks. After all, he added, There are highly traveled tourist destinations in many places around the world that have coexisted with offshore drilling for decades.

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Oil-Backed Group Opposes Offshore Wind for Environmental Reasons - The Intercept

Laura: Thats so interesting, because I think those examples really help when youre trying to imagine what that would be like. And the answer is Orbns Hungary.

Sam: Theyre very explicit about that. The whole Christian democrat tradition in Europe is something that they approve of.

Alex: So the sort of politicians and leaders that these people look up to basically gives away what they are after. Theyre looking for illiberal authoritarianism.

Laura: But is anyone listening to them? After a short break, well be back to talk about how much influence this group has. How worried should we be?

Alex: Now that weve established what sort of regimes they admire, I feel like we should ask, Why should we care about these guys? Your subjects are a couple of young people working at a magazine, right? Whats the case for caring about their wacky beliefs?

Sam: Its a good question. The place that I came down is that were familiar with this argument about the left: that people who graduate from elite universities have pretty extreme left-wing views compared to the median Democrat, and certainly compared to the median voter. The same thing is true of these negatively polarized right-wing, highly educated elites. Theyre far to the right of the median Republican, but all the signals point to: We cant discount it just because its a sort of a phenomenon amongst these very strange elite intellectuals, because very strange elite intellectualsand very young, strange elite intellectualshave been in charge of the conservative movement forever. Its just that the character of that movement is changing, because their character is changing.

Laura: You talk about the sense of isolation this group of guys has. Can you explain how that forms in college?

Sam: I would say that for a certain kind of white man who came up in an elite university in the past 10 years, but maybe even more so in the past five, six, seven, there was a sense of a suffocating liberal orthodoxy on their campus. If they have some other kind of ideological inputs pushing them in the direction of misogyny, or nasty racial ideas, or just a contrarian instinct, they may find themselves in a position where they go: All of the people who are the authority around me on this campus are telling me to believe this set of often superficial but nonetheless progressive things. Im going to look for the people who are saying the bad thing, the thing youre not supposed to say. And then they find each other.

Laura: Some of them are so young, like Nate Hochman. Hes only 23, just out of college. Do they maintain a sense of isolation after college? Because when you look around, elite Conservative Catholics are pretty well represented. Look at the Supreme Court, because on the Supreme Court, for a religious minority to be so well representedthis is not the mainstream version of Christianity in the U.S. They actually have a huge amount of power.

Sam: Ill say two things. One is that from their perspective, the only place in American life where conservatives have any power is basically the courts and, every once in a while, the federal government. They are very fixated on the fact that progressives and leftists control all the cultural hegemony. Thats precisely why they think its so important that when they periodically get power in the form of a Trump, and when they have a supermajority on the court, that they absolutely need to use it to enforce in the private sphere their ideal morals. Otherwise, in every input into American private morality, the morality that reigns regardless of what the government does, liberals and progressives have control. So thats their perspective. Its also especially because they live in D.C. and New York and California, where they actually are surrounded by liberals. These people arent living in small communities that are conservative, where they could. But theyre intellectual elites who want to work in the power centers. So, their perspective on what America is is totally skewed by the fact that they spend all their time on Twitter.

Alex: Its mediated, and its, like, vibes-based.

Sam: Completely vibes-based.

Alex: And you will never feel like you will win if you have won everything and then see that people still dont think the right way. That seems like a flaw in their ideology.

Sam: Well, its a flaw, but its a dangerous and symptomatic flaw that makes them attracted to authoritarianism because thats how they imagine youre able to change the way people think.

Laura: The argument that Hollywood is overwhelmingly liberal, and that the people who are conservative are bombarded with liberal propaganda and that they have liberal values rammed down their throats, is one you hear all the time. But the right has its own very robust and incredibly well-funded media infrastructure. You dont hear of small right-wing magazines collapsing because theres no money with anything like the same frequency you hear about liberal magazines going under. Going back to what you said about people being radicalized and pushed to the right in college, when they graduate from college, there are jobs for these people. There are so many think tanks you can go and work for if youre a young conservative, so many magazines where you can get associate editor jobs that dont exist in the liberal media. What do you make of that, and of that right-wing ecosystem?

Sam: One of the things that Nate said to me in the piece is that he acknowledges that there is this conservative welfare state for unsophisticated but right-wing people who graduate from college and want to write takes, and so he has encountered people who are not particularly smart in that world. But the thing is that there are also a certain number of people like him who are really interested in ideas and are pretty good writers, and do like to think hard about intellectual topics. For those people, its an embarrassment of riches. Part of whats so attractive about it is that you not only get a job, but you get let into this rarefied world thats both really luxurious and also rebellious. For intellectual conservatives, that is just an intoxicating stew that keeps young people engaged in conservative bullshit for a long time.

Alex: I find it interesting that if youre a young left-winger on campus, there is no network that will invite you to retreats to drink scotch with rich people, rich leftists. Even if youre a normal progressive, your entry into this world might be working for the worlds worst boss at a nonprofit, or being abused in a campaignthe lowest rung of the campaignor freelance writing for no money. I wonder if the right has this way of identifying their future talent, grooming it, and even sort of spoiling it in that way. Why do they do it so differently?

Sam: Well, to take on the left side of it, I think one of the things is that the power centers of the Democratic Party are controlled by mainstream liberals. Theyre not scouring the campuses for, like, really sparked Marxists to give internships to, and to be a mainstream liberal, it has much less of this kind of rebellious quality. Its just kind of like being invited into the power elite in a sort of uncomplicated way. Whereas right-wingers, even though we may think of this as delusional, they still think of themselves as a rebellious, insurgent troupe of outsiders with dangerous ideas, and therefore they feel that they need to teach their new, up-and-coming talent a sort of countertradition of American history and of political philosophy. On the left, there is no comparable thing. Id like it, as a left-winger who likes reading books, to get paid to live in Pomona for a week and read Karl Polanyi. That sounds good.

Alex: I would love a fellowship. I would love for someone just to give me a fellowship of some kind.

Laura: Its easier to offer someone the feeling of entering this glamorous elite if your whole thing is hierarchy. The right has this built-in advantage: This is what we believe, and were going to pull you up into it to be one of the important people. And the whole thing on the left is like, No, we want equality! We want everyone to be treated the same and to have the same opportunities.

Alex: I want everyone to get fellowships! Everyone, every working American, deserves a fellowship. I believe this very strongly.

Sam: Thats a really good point, Laura. We have incompatible goals. We dont want to create an elite elect who understand the true nature of society and then can direct it from on high.

Laura: I think its the same with the funding, too, for these magazines, for these think tanks. Its completely consistent with a right-wing view of the world that you are going to make lots of money and then dump it into an organization so that you can control what people think. Thats not really what left-wing donors are trained to do.

Sam: I think that you can have this experience as a liberalmaybe not as a revolutionary leftist.

Laura: You can have this experience if youre a liberal who is like, Im going to come up with some health care plans that will minimize the amount of coverage we offer to people with stage-four cancer.

Sam: Exactly.

Laura: Speaking of this whole ecosystem, Claremont is something that comes up in the piece. Can you explain for the uninitiated what that is?

Sam: The Claremont Institute is a right-wing, socially conservative think tank in California. Claremont was one of the first places that came out and said, Lets go for Trump. Because of its populism, its nationalism, its way more aggressively patriotic. Claremont has been punching way above its historic weight in the Trump era, and since Trump, playing a role in trying to justify his coupin effect, playing a role in bringing more illiberal and scary strains into acceptable conservative discourse. A lot of the people who are these young New Right figures move through its very robust programming and fellowships for young conservatives.

Laura: Going back to the coup thingyou mentioned that John Eastman, who wrote the memo on how Trump could try to stay in office despite losing the election, is associated with Claremont.

Sam: Yeah. Hes a legal scholar, a constitutional scholar, associated with them. He wrote the memo for the vice president telling him how he could constitutionally make it so that Trump would stay in power, basically.

Alex: Some of the people youve talked to, I think, are actually surprisingly realistic about the unlikelihood of their vision of society happening democratically. But my question is: Are they going to install a Catholic theocracy, though? Like, regardless, are they going to do that?

Sam: I dont know. I actually dont know if I have a great answer to this question. Internal to conservative debates and even internal to people who are sympathetic to New Right goals, theres an acknowledgment that the public is really not with themthe conservative public, even. Trumpism doesnt represent some victory for hard-core conservatives, like Catholic hierarchical authoritarians. Its more like a victory for Jacksonian libertarian impulses. Tanner Greer, this right-wing blogger who is quite smart, wrote this blog post about this discrepancy between the means of the New Right and their ends. His line is, Pity the Whig who wishes to lead the Jacksonian masses!that in effect, they are inheritors of some sort of patrician, pietistic, Northeastern puritanical tradition, which wants to impose all these orthodoxieswhich is not really what Trumpism represents. That said, if these people are serious about trying to impose this moral orthodoxy on America, then thats why they become more sympathetic to things like John Eastman telling Trump, You can keep power, no matter what, or people like Adrian Vermeule, whos a Harvard integralist who believes that you should use the administrative statewhich used to be the thing that the conservatives hated more than anythingyou should use the levers of power and the administrative state to nudge the moral orthodoxy of America toward Catholic theology, that you should use the unaccountable powers of the state, nondemocratic powers, to achieve their ends. And so the reason that theres this sympathy, I think, for countermajoritarianism, for anti-democratic measures, for state power through the bureaucracy as opposed to through the legislature, is that they know that their ideas are really not a majoritarian proposition.

Alex: Well, Im alarmed now. Sam, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today.

Sam: As you can see, I could talk about this forever.

Laura: I feel like we very rarely end on a note of being alarmed.

Alex: Not usually, yeah.

Laura: Well be like, Oh, this thing we were talking about didnt actually exist.

Alex: Its fine!

Sam: Wait, so we dont have to be worried about the rats? Was that the takeaway?

Alex: No more worried than usual was our conclusion.

Sam: Were more concerned about Catholic theocracy than rats.

Alex: Than rats, Havana syndrome

Laura: Or cops dying from seeing fentanyl without touching it or taking it.

Alex: It was really nice talking to you, Sam.

Sam: You too.

Laura: Before we end the show, I have a correction. On our recent episode about rats, I said that 311 doesnt have a rat response squad. A listener from D.C. wrote in to say thats actually wrong: Many cities have a whole process for responding to rat complaints. So we looked into this, and the New York City Health Department says that after you call 311, Your complaint will be routed to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The health department will inspect the property within two weeks of receiving the complaint, unless the property was recently inspected. My apologies for getting that wrong. If you want to know more about the state of rats in New York, I can highly recommend checking out the rat information portal at nyc.gov/rats.

Alex: Im sorry, I cant hear the phrase the state of rats in New York without my mind immediately going to Albany.

Laura: Well, do you have a URL recommendation?

Alex: I dont knowwould there be a landing page for Cuomos book?

Follow this link:
The Illiberal Upstarts Trying to Reinvent Conservatism - The New Republic

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has released a report examining the extensive ties between the far-right and Bitcoin, many of whom built fortunes in the cryptocurrency.

In a Dec. 9 Hatewatch report, the SPLC shared its findings on how right-wing extremists and white supremacists, discuss and use cryptocurrencies claiming that many have amassed tens of millions of dollars from crypto donations.

The report How Cryptocurrency Revolutionized the White Supremacist Movement identified and compiled over 600 cryptocurrency addresses associated with white supremacists and other prominent far-right extremists to reach its conclusions.

One of the main claims it makes is that although less than one-quarter of Americans own cryptocurrency:

"Hatewatch struggled to find any prominent player in the global far right who hasnt yet embraced cryptocurrency to at least some degree."

The most common reasons these individuals used cryptocurrency was because they were debanked or because they want to hide the their transactions.

Stefan Molyneaux, who is described by Wikipedia as a far-right white nationalist and white supremacist has been accepting donations in Bitcoin for eight years. The SPLC noted that the first Bitcoin wallet that has been linked to Molyneaux dates back to Jan. 25, 2013, and that his followers have donated a total of 1250 Bitcoin since 2013.

Molyneaux has realized an estimated $3.28 million from $1.28 million in crypto donations. This is more than any other extremist studied for the SPLC report.

Greg Johnson, who goes by the pseudonym Karl Thorburn, has gained over $800,000 from crypto. Johnson is the founder of the controversial website CounterCurrents.

The site requests donations from his followers to be paid in 12 different cryptocurrencies and is currently trying to raise $200,000 goal to further its political ambitions.

Crypto critic and author David Gerard told the SPLC in an email that although at first glance the amount of money these extremists are making from crypto is alarming, it is not a reason to associate all cryptocurrency with their actions. He claimed:

Bitcoin started in right-wing libertarianism This is not at all the same as being a neo-Nazi subculture. That said, theres a greater proportion of Nazis there than youd expect just by chance, and the Bitcoin subculture really doesnt bother kicking its Nazis out.

While extensive, the SPLC report relies heavily on historical events and incidents that have been reported previously, such as extremist publication Daily Stormer citing in 2017 a Bitcoiner TV host's views on the use of the cryptocurrency as a way to liberate its readers from what it sees as Jewish control of centralized banks.

It tied extremist Andrew Weev Auernheimer to the privacy coin Monero, which facilitates private, untraceable transactions better than Bitcoin, with a 2017 podcast when he said: I hold a lot of Monero though. Thats my big thing now. Im way into Monero. I hold a significant amount.

Excerpt from:
SPLC report examines use of Bitcoin and Monero by right wing extremists - FXStreet

An Instagram post by popular podcaster Joe Rogan, host of The Joe Rogan Experience, that referred to authoritarian and libertarian political theory, has received over 600,000 likes since it was posted to the site. In it, Rogan refers to the Hindu fourth world age, aka the Kali Yuma, and urges his followers and others to elevate themselves from the madness that is in the air.

Rogan is often at the center of controversy due to his often esoteric political philosophy, his many clashes over free speech issues, as well as his personal stance in regards to the COVID-19 virus. His iconoclasm has earned him over 13 million followers on Instagram but has also led to clashes with people across the political spectrum.

Kali Yuga is a reference to the Hindu concept of the four great Yugas, or ages, of the world. The Kali Yuga is the fourth and last of these and is associated with great strife, deprivation, and contention. The Kali Yuga derives its name from the demon (not the goddess) Kali, and Kali Yuga can be roughly translated as Age of Darkness, Age of Vice and Misery, and Age of Quarrel and Hypocrisy.

It is not known where Rogan sourced the graphic from, but he seems to be implying that, as times grow harder, those on the left of the political spectrum tend to drift towards more authoritarian ideals while those on the right tend towards the center or right forms of libertarianism. Although the Hindu idea of the Kali Yuga does purport it to be a time of spiritual and moral degeneration it does not mention specific political ideologies.

According to the Puranic sources, the Kali Yuga began on February 18th, 3102 BCE with the departure of the Avatar, Krishna from the world. The sources also suggest it will be a long wait for the Kali Yuga to come to an end. It is not scheduled to do so until the year 428,899 CE.

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Joe Rogan's Insta Post on "The Age of Conflict" Garners Over 600K Likes - We Got This Covered

A lot of angry and frightened civil libertarians (many of whom I admire ) were rattled last week by the use of urgency to pass the traffic light vaccination passport scheme.

On any other day of the week, I would be alongside them demanding to know what the bloody hell was going on too, but this aint one of them.

Firstly the entire breathless denunciation of what Labour did had a whiff of the hysterical about it from people who were making arguments of due process which seemed to miss the urgency of the reality.

There is a pandemic going on! Urgency to ram through urgent law in a truncated democratic process is what is required!

We have urgency powers for issues of immense urgency! We are looking at limiting peoples liberty and that demands oversight and obligations WHICH HAVE BEEN BUILT INTO THE LEGISLATION!

This is not the same as when Key misused urgency to ram through the mass surveillance powers! This legislation must be voted back in using the basic majority of Parliament every few months while there is a sunset clause built into the law that removes all these powers altogether once the pandemic is over!

This is hardly the civil liberties crushing Nazi Germany framework its being sold as.

Of course Government should be challenged every day over its use of power over us but this traffic light system is a hurried response to an ongoing public health emergency of course there will be stupid anomalies and counter productive outcomes because of the haste and those will be cleaned up in whatever omnibus package is passed to do that, but all in all this is a Government moving as fast as it can to treat a novel virus in the middle of a pandemic.

There are legitimate reasons to use urgency a fucking plague is one of them!

Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, soif you value having an independent voice please donate here.

If you cant contribute but want to help, please always feel free to share our blogs on social media

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Dear panicking civil libertarians isn't a pandemic the reason you have urgency? - thedailyblog.co.nz

Charlie Harper| Savannah Morning News

Stores ransacked in NYC shopping district

Early Monday morning in Manhattan's Soho neighborhood, mobs of people rampaged down the sidewalks, smashing into numerous luxury shops to steal merchandise. (June 1)

AP

This is a column by Charlie Harper,an Atlanta-based public policy expert and a longtime contributor.

Five or so years ago I attended a one-day session in Washington DC hosted by FreedomWorks. The libertarian leaning conservative advocacy group brought together a couple dozen writers and grassroots leaders to discuss the topic of criminal justice reform.

What still strikes me most about the day was the uniqueness of the afternoon session. We left the FreedomWorks conference room and went down the street to the offices of the Center for American Progress. CAP can be considered about as far left down the spectrum as FreedomWorks is on the right.

It wasnt that long ago that working across the ideological divide on issues was considered common. It actually still happens regularly, in Washington, Atlanta, and in local counties and cities. Its how routine issues and even occasionally some much bigger problems get solved.

More from Charlie Harper: Economic literacy is at a low in America. Political leaders will exploit that ignorance.

Where it doesnt happen is on cable news and in other forms of entertainment that mask as parts of the political process. Too many have learned that enraging the base makes for a good business model.

The common ground the members of the left and right found that day on criminal justice reform was that we had to understand that violent criminals needed to be punished, but those committing singular minor offenses needed a full pathway back into American citizenship and worker productivity.

It just so happened at that time that Georgia had been a leader in this issue for several years, allowing me to engage in translating talking points between the left and the right. It continues to surprise many that a bright red state had taken the lead when tough on crime slogans are a better sell to the GOP base.

Unfortunately, too many running with the banner of criminal justice reform have continued to expand their efforts without remembering the basic compact that violent criminals must be held accountable and society must be protected from them. Municipalities have begun eliminating bail bonds and have created revolving doors at our police stations and our courts.

More from Charlie Harper: Cargo ships stuck at Port of Savannah a symptom of more complex problems in supply chain

Last week an organized ring of approximately 80 people descended on a Nordstrom store in Walnut Creek California, an upscale suburb of San Francisco. Two store employees were maced while a flash mob looting occurred.

I thought this was a one-off California kind of thing until I watched the CEO of Best Buy detail her quarterly earnings report on CNBC a few days later. Despite beating estimates for both revenue and profit, the stock got hammered after releasing earnings because margins were squeezed. The reason for the increasing cost of doing business that stood out was shrink, or loss of inventory. The CEO sounded the alarm that across retail, organized mobs that steal inventory are a problem both for store owners as well as increasing anxiety among store employees.

Its easy to see that justice delayed, as it was by the original D.A. in the Ahmaud Arbery case, causes a loss in faith in the judicial system. It should be just as plain to see that those who are supposed to be enforcing laws on theft but ignore them, and judges that routinely establish bail policies equivalent to a revolving door at the courthouse are doing the same.

Last week Darrel Brooks fled a domestic dispute and killed at least six people during a Christmas parade in Waukesha Wisconsin. He had been set free on bail just days earlier facing five counts including battery and domestic abuse. The D.A. in his case called the bail recommendation inappropriately low.

There are still many of us considered on the conservative side of the political spectrum willing to fight for criminal justice reform. For that discussion to have any hope of continuing, were going to need to hear more voices demanding that laws on the books actually be enforced, and the concept of justice include holding those who commit violent crimes be held accountable.

Continued here:
Justice system reform is a wedge partisan issue. It doesn't have to be. - Savannah Morning News

Maybe the Recall Dunleavy people saw the writing on the wall when they laid down their cannons this past summer and quit: Gov. Mike Dunleavy is, in fact, popular.

Dunleavy is the 16th most popular governor among the 50 states, according to Morning Consult, a survey firm that seasonally ranks the popularity of elected officials.

Dunleavy ranked higher than Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a Democrat who recently beat a recall attempt at the ballot box. Dunleavy also ranked higher than Gov. Brad Little, of Idaho, a Republican who is being challenged for governor by his own Republican Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin in the May, 2022 primary.

At 57% approval rating, Dunleavy is just one point below South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem in the survey.

The most popular governor in the survey was Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican serving in Vermont, who has a 79% approval.

Of the top 20 governors in the approval rankings, 15 are Republicans, while five are Democrats.

Dunleavy, who faced a recall campaign that started only three months after he took office, has seen his approval rating go up and down and up again. In the fourth quarter of 2019, Morning Consult had him at a dead even, with 42% approving, and 42% disapproving of him, and he was ranked 9 among all 50 governors for popularity. At that same time, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had a 58% approval rating.

Morning Consult successfully predicted the free-fall of former Gov. Bill Walker in 2018. The polling firm named him the least popular governor running for re-election in 2018, with net approval of -26%. He ended up with just 2 percent of the vote 5,757 Alaskan voters to Dunleavys 51.4% or 145,631 votes.

Walker posted the largest net slide in approval of any governor in the fourth quarter, falling 19 points compared to the previous quarter, the survey firm reported.

In this final quarter of 2021, a reputable Alaska survey firm showed the same results as Morning Consult did for Dunleavy, who will face off against non-party candidate Walker, Democrat Les Gara, and Libertarian Joe Miller, who is set to announce his candidacy on Monday morning.

Republican DeSantis, although much lauded by conservatives around the country this year for his battle with President Joe Biden, has a 52% approval in his state, and Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is at 50%.

The least popular governor in the country is Oregon Democrat Kate Brown, who has a 43% approval rating. That is up slightly from the fourth quarter of 2019, when 37% of Oregonians approved of her.

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Poll: Dunleavy ranks high in popularity, compared to all other governors - Must Read Alaska

(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Rae Duckworth speaks at a protest hosted by Black Lives Matter, Utah Against Police Brutality and The Community Activist Group demanding police reform, in Salt Lake City on Nov. 4, 2021.

By David Brooks | The New York Times

| Nov. 25, 2021, 3:35 p.m.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks once observed that being a minority in 19th-century Europe was like living in someone elses country home. The aristocrat owned the house. Other people got to stay there but as guests. They did not get to set the rules, run the institutions or dominate the culture.

Something similar can be said of America in the 1950s. But over the ensuing decades, the Protestant establishment crumbled and America became more marvelously diverse. If youre reading this, theres a good chance youre a member of a minority group or several. Maybe youre Black or Jewish or Muslim. Maybe youre gay, trans, Hispanic, Asian American, socialist, libertarian or Swedenborgian.

Even the former country house owners have come to feel like minority members. The formerly mighty mainline Protestant denominations, like the Episcopalians and Methodists, have shrunk and lost influence. Even some of the people who used to regard themselves as part of the majority have come to feel like minorities. White evangelical Protestants are down to about 15% of the country. They vote for people like Donald Trump in part because they feel like strangers in their own land, oppressed minorities fighting for survival.

We live in an age of minorities. People assert their minority identities with justified pride. It might be most accurate to say that America is now a place of jostling minorities. The crucial questions become: How do people think about their minority group identity and how do they regard the relationships between minorities?

Historically, to riff on another Sacks observation, there have been at least four different minority mindsets:

First, assimilation. The assimilationists feel constricted by their minority identity. They want to be seen as individuals, not as a member of some outsider category. They shed the traits that might identify themselves as Jews or Mexicans or what have you.

Second, separatism. The separatists want to preserve the authenticity of their own culture. They send their kids to schools with their own kind, socialize mostly with their own kind. They derive meaning from having a strong cohesive identity and dont want it watered down.

Third, combat. People who take this approach see life as essentially a struggle between oppressor and oppressed groups. Bigotry is so baked in that theres no realistic hope of integration. The battle must be fought against the groups that despise us and whose values are alien to us. In fact, this battle gives life purpose.

Fourth, integration without assimilation. People who take this approach cherish their group for the way it contributes to the national whole. E pluribus unum. Members of this group celebrate pluralistic, hyphenated identities and the fluid mixing of groups that each contribute to an American identity.

Our politics is so nasty now because many people find the third mindset most compelling. Americans are a deeply religious people, especially when they think they are not being religious. And these days what I would call the religion of minoritarianism has seized many hearts. This is the belief that history is inevitably the heroic struggle by minorities to free themselves from the yoke of majority domination. It is the belief that sin resides in the social structures imposed by majorities and that virtue and the true consciousness reside with the oppressed groups.

At a recent Faith Angle Forum in France, British political scientist Matthew Goodwin defined wokeness as a belief system organized around the sacralization of racial, gender and sexual minorities. Id add that right-wing populism is organized around the sacralization of the white working class and the belief that left-wing minority groups have now become the dominant oppressive majority.

Right and left warriors disagree completely about who the dominant majority is, but they agree that we are an oppressed minority, that those with power despise us, and that the war must be won.

Theres some truth in their diagnoses. There really is a lot of oppression out there. But this mindset is based on a dangerous falsehood that the line between good and evil runs between groups, the good over here, the oppressive over there.

Once you accept the truth that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart, then you begin to see not just groups, but also the struggles of diverse individuals within groups. You begin to see that each person, embedded within the richness of a particular culture, is trying to tackle the common human problems to live a life with dignity and meaning, to have some positive impact on the world.

Integration without assimilation is the only way forward. It is, as the prophet Jeremiah suggested, to transmit the richness of your own cultures while seeking the peace and prosperity of the city to which you have been carried.

It is hard. It means socializing with diverse and sometimes antagonistic groups rather than resting in the one that feels most at home. It means recognizing and embracing the fact that, as an American, you contain multiple identities and cultures. You wear different uniforms and are sometimes not sure which one you ultimately belong to.

But this is the most creative way to live. Its the clashing of different viewpoints, histories and identities within a single people and even within a single human mind. Integration without assimilation is the nuclear reactor of American dynamism.

Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

David Brooks, acclaimed NEW York Times columnist, shares a stage with pundits during a panel discussion, "2012: The Path to the Presidency", at the University of Chicago in Chicago on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

David Brooks is a columnist for The New York Times.

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David Brooks: We live in the Age of the Creative Minority - Salt Lake Tribune

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Letter: Libertarianism is inherently antithetical to racism | Letters to the Editor | unionleader.com - The Union Leader

Michigan's road conditions deteriorated ashighways improved nationwide, according to a new report by the Reason Foundation.

Thestate ranked34th nationallyin highway performance and cost effectiveness in 2021, dropping 10 spots in the libertarian think tank's Annual Highway Report compared to the 2020 report, and landingin the bottom 10 states in several measured categories.

The report released Thursday looked at highway data from 2019 and congestion data from 2020, and gradesstate roads in 13 categories. Those include pavement condition, traffic congestion, bridge structures, traffic fatalitiesand spending per mile.

Michigan was one of only four states, includingNew Mexico, Ohio and South Carolina, to declinein the rankings by 10 spots or more in the same time period, compared with the 2020 report, which looked at 2018 and 2019.

There were1,219 bridges and more than 7,300 miles of highway in poor condition in Michigan, according to an August report released by the White House.

Since 2011,commute times have increased by 4.6% in the state andindividual drivers paid an average of$644 ayear in costs related to driving on damaged roads.

The report came days after President Joe Biden signed into lawthebipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which will include around $7.8billion in fundingfor highway and bridge repairs over five years in Michigan.

This is in addition to the $3.5 billion of bonds that the Michigan Department of Transportation was authorized to issueover fouryearsforthe repair and rehabilitation of 122 major highways, per the self-described "Fix the Damn Roads" governor,Gretchen Whitmer's request.

The fiscal year 2019 budget wasset by the Legislature under the Snyder administration.

"Our pavement is deteriorating more quickly than we can maintain itwith current funding levels," said Diane Cross, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Department of Transport, on Sunday."The governor's $3.5 billion Rebuilding Michigan plan, now complemented by the federal IIJA, will slow the decline but everyone agrees that long term, we need more and sustainable investment."

The Governor's Office said Whitmer is working on the roads and acknowledged more work was needed to "make up for the prior decades of disinvestment" and working with the Legislature and federal government for more funding.

After decades of disinvestment in the states aging infrastructure, Michigan has made a strong shift toward focusing on the type of investments that we need to rebuild roads and bridges across the state," saidBobby Leddy, press secretary for Whitmer.

"Since taking office, Governor Whitmer has fixed more than 9,000 miles of roads and secured additional funding to fix 100 bridges in serious or critical condition without raising taxes. And the governors Rebuilding Michigan plan is creating tens of thousands of good-paying jobs to fix our states roads and bridges with the right mix and material to ensure the repairs last longer."

Michigan's best rankings in the Reason Foundation's report were in the rural fatality and overall fatality rates on highways, 7th and 14th respectively.

On the other end of the findings, thestate's worst rankingswere in urban Interstate pavement condition and congestion, with commuters spending 42.07 hours a year in rush hour traffic. Drivers in onlyfour other states in the country spend more than 40 hours in traffic, according to the report; New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Illinois.

"Despite not having a metro area that ranks in the top 10 for population, Michigan has the fifth worst traffic congestion in the country, said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of the reportand senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation.

Compared to nearby states, the report found that Michigans overall highway performance is worse than Wisconsin,Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, but better than Illinois.

"Michigan is one of the few states that could benefit from spending slightly more on its highway system to improve the overall condition," continued Feigenbaum.

Michigan spends around $92,500 per mile of state-controlled road.

The country's most cost-effective highway systems, according to the report, were North Dakota, Virginia, Missouri, Kentuckyand North Carolina, while the worst combination of highway performance and cost effectiveness was found in New Jersey,RhodeIsland, Alaska, Hawaii, and New York.

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How do Michigan roads rank in US? Libertarian think tank crunches the numbers - The Detroit News