Category Archives: Libertarianism

The libertarian organization Americans for Prosperity Foundation is suing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to find out what it is doing about $143 billion in improper payments made by Medicaid.

The complaint asks for records on CMS's efforts to recover improper Medicaid payments and for data showing improper payment rates by states. According to CMS, improper Medicaid payments totaled $143 billion in 2019 and 2020, rising from 14.9% of all payments in 2019 to 21.4% in 2020. Medicaid is a joint federal-state healthcare program for the poor.

Failing to recover $143 billion in improper Medicaid payments is an affront to hardworking American taxpayers and a threat to Medicaids long-term fiscal stability, said Dean Clancy, a senior health fellow at Americans for Prosperity Foundation. More transparency and accountability is needed to ensure that CMS manages Medicaid responsibly.

The $143 billion in improper payments is about 11% of the roughly $1.3 trillion spent by Medicaid from 2019 to 2020. By contrast, Medicare, the federal healthcare program for seniors and the disabled, had about $55 billion in improper payments in 2019 and 2020. Additionally, Medicare's improper payments declined from almost $29 billion in 2019 to just under $26 billion in 2020.

Federal law requires CMS to recover any improper payments over the amount of 3%.

SENATE DEMOCRATS PLAN END RUN AROUND STATE THAT HAVEN'T EXPANDED MEDICAID UNDER OBAMACARE

Americans for Prosperity Foundation requested CMS supply the information on improper payments under a Freedom of Information Act request it filed on May 5, 2021. Under federal law, an agency has 20 days to respond to a FOIA request or 30 days under unusual circumstances. When CMS did not comply, Americans for Prosperity Foundation filed suit in federal court.

An improper payment occurs when a recipient receives an incorrect amount of funds or uses the funds in an improper way or when the recipient is ineligible to receive the funds in the first place. Medicaid enrollees cannot receive benefits when they earn more income than is allowed under the program or when they fail to meet residency requirements. The Americans for Prosperity Foundation complaint notes that state governments often do not ensure compliance with federal Medicaid requirements.

CMS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Democrats in Congress are trying to expand Medicaid. Georgia Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin are trying to establish a Medicaid-like coverage plan run by the federal government. It would cover people who live in the 12 states that have not yet expanded Medicaid under Obamacare. The federal government would fully fund the plan. States would not have to provide matching funds.

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Libertarian group sues government over information on $143 billion in improper Medicaid payments - Washington Examiner

Ron Pauls final campaign for president ended nine years ago, but the political movement he ignited is far from over. After he passed the torch to his libertarian legion of mostly young and die-hard supporters, many wondered if the movement would fade without the iconoclastic Texas congressman lambasting the Federal Reserve and the Washington war machine on the presidential debate stage.

Since then, Pauls supporters have won hundreds of elections in state legislatures across the country, reshaping the debate on issues ranging from gun rights to school choice. Young Americans for Liberty (formerly Students for Ron Paul) counts 178 state legislators in 37 states as members. However, it is Live Free or Die, New Hampshire, where Paul-inspired Liberty Republicans have become the dominant force in state politics.

Nine years ago, Paul took second place in the states first-in-the-nation Republican primary. Since then, a gradually growing coalition in the state Legislature has led successful efforts, including the passage of constitutional carry.

In November 2020, the coalition achieved critical mass, sweeping the New Hampshire House of Representatives by winning 86 seats (nearly a quarter of the entire body). Liberty Republicans became the majority of the majority and elected a former Ron Paul supporter, state Rep. Jason Osborne, to House majority leader.

Gov. Chris Sununu was recently caught on tape declaring, Libertarians arent Republicans! and suggesting this new energy should leave the party. His frustration is understandable.

While most governors have enjoyed free passes from their own party over constitutionally dubious exercises of COVID-19 emergency powers, Granite State Liberty Republicans have fought Sununu for emergency power reform, with some even filing impeachment orders against him.

Yet, even Sununu must recognize his recent successes are due to this new coalition. Until last November, Democrats controlled the state Legislature, and Sununu could only veto their worst proposals. Pundits predicted this would continue. Thanks to an influx of new voters with the Free State Project and grassroots organizing by state and nation organizations alike, New Hampshire became the only state in 2020 to flip its Legislature from blue to red.

Tough bargaining by the Liberty GOP put the most libertarian state budget in modern America on Sununus desk. The budget abolishes everything that resembles an income tax and is paid for with real spending cuts past Republican leaders never delivered (even in the Tea Party era).

It also includes major education reform. In a year when public schools and teachers unions have denied students vital learning opportunities, education savings accounts have become the gold standard of the school choice movement.

Funding students, not systems, ESAs allow parents to access state education funds and save their own income tax-free for their students educational expenses, including private tuition and homeschooling costs. Over the loud objections of teachers unions, New Hampshire has become the third state this year to pass ESAs into law.

It even enacts new anti-abortion measures, including a ban on abortion after six months (except for circumstances that endanger the life of the mother). Restrictions on third-trimester abortions are common in America generally, but not in New England, where prominent Republican officials, such as Maine Sen. Susan Collins, tend to be outspoken proponents of unrestricted abortion.

Some may be surprised an influx of libertarian legislators would result in New Hampshire passing major anti-abortion legislation. Unlike the Libertarian Party, which declares support for legalized abortion in its party platform, the Liberty Republican tradition is built upon Ron Pauls brand of anti-abortion libertarianism. Many Liberty Republicans have a principled belief the inalienable rights of the unborn are just as important to protect as those who are born.

Additionally, the budget contained other conservative priorities, including a ban on critical race theory teachings in public schools and limited progress toward emergency power reform.

New Hampshire is experiencing the rise of the Liberty Republican. Whether the critical mass of liberty legislators elected in New Hampshire can be duplicated in other states remains to be seen, but New Hampshire is not unique. If this bottom-up movement continues to gain control of state legislatures in 2022 and beyond, expect Liberty Republicans to play an increasingly prominent role in charting the course of the GOP in the years ahead.

Eric Brakey is the senior spokesman for Young Americans for Liberty. He served two terms in the Maine state Senate and as the Maine state director for the Ron Paul 2012 campaign.

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The rise of the 'Liberty Republican' - Washington Examiner

The payment processing giant Paypal has revealed it has partnered with the nonprofit organization the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). According to the announcement, Paypal is researching transactions settled on the payment network that allegedly fund hate groups and extremism.

A report from Reuters notes that Paypal is studying transactions that involve extremists and that fund hate movements. The company will investigate and disrupt the financial flows that support specific hate groups and alleged anti-government organizations. The announcement notes that the initiative will be completed via ADLs Center on Extremism.

According to Paypals chief risk officer and executive vice president of risk and platforms, Aaron Karczmer said the company has been working on sophisticated systems that help curb illegal activities.

Karczmer hopes this previous knowledge and the current systems can help create a positive social impact. The centralized payment processor has been known to censor transactions for quite some time. In 2010, Paypal froze the account tethered to the whistleblowing web portal Wikileaks and caused an uproar.

The combination of Mastercard, Visa, Paypal and others using a financial blockade against Wikileaks was controversial and the actions drove the website to accept bitcoin donations. In 2016, male escorts in the UK leveraged bitcoin to bypass Paypal censorship. In 2019, Paypal stopped servicing Pornhub models and by January 2020, Paypal suspended all Pornhub accounts. In September 2020, Paypals sophisticated infrastructure censored merchants selling tardigrade merchandise.

The ADLs definitions of extremism and hate are also quite debatable. For instance, five years ago the ADL classified the famous Internet frog meme Rare Pepe as a hate symbol. This caused the meme to get blockchained and turned into an immutable collection of non-fungible tokens.

Moreover, the ADLs definitions of anti-government organizations being dubbed extremists are also considered extreme by those who believe in libertarianism and think that governments are currently corrupt. The latest move by Paypal and ADL has already been criticized by activists, libertarians, and even bitcoiners.

Bitcoin derives its value from censorship resistance, a Redditor on the subreddit r/bitcoin said on July 26. Paypal, your days of forced-relevance are over, the individual added.

The former American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) director, Ira Glasser, explains how banning hate speech is a never-ending slippery slope. When people say they want to ban hate speech, what they mean is they want to ban speech that they hate, Glasser stressed in an interview. But if you allowed something called hate speech to be banned, then the only important question would be who decides?

The report concerning the ADL and Paypal partnership explains that the payment processor has already been taking action against extremism over the last several years. The announcement also notes that Paypal and the ADL will be working with select civil rights organizations. Jonathan Greenblatt, ADLs CEO, sees the partnership as a window of opportunity.

We have a unique opportunity to further understand how hate spreads and develop key insights that will inform the efforts of the financial industry, law enforcement, and our communities in mitigating extremist threats, Greenblatt said in a statement.

What do you think about Paypal joining up with the Anti-Defamation League in order to research transactions that fund extremism? Do you think theres a slippery slope when it comes to classifying extremists? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only. It is not a direct offer or solicitation of an offer to buy or sell, or a recommendation or endorsement of any products, services, or companies. Bitcoin.com does not provide investment, tax, legal, or accounting advice. Neither the company nor the author is responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in this article.

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Paypal Plans to Study Transactions That Fund Extremism, Anti-Government Groups Bitcoin News - Bitcoin News

Check your registration

Editor:

Im a volunteer who works to get more Douglas County residents to register to vote. There have been some important changes in the registration process, and I hope to put some little known public information out there to assist all potential voters. Weve had many new folks moving into our county. A majority are coming from California with voting processes and laws different there than here. I believe this information can be useful to new residents.

One of my monthly functions is to track the voter registration data by political party. Heres the registration data from this past June: 8,485 Democrat (+14 from May); 1,865 Independent American (+5); 457 Libertarian (+2); 7,776 (+108); 544 Other (+36); and 20,659 Republican (+18). That totals 39,772 voters.

It may surprise you to know that now when you visit the DMV to get your license or register vehicles you will be asked to choose your political party preference in order to register to vote: Republican, Democrat, etc. If you dont state, you will then be put in the nonpartisan category. As you can see from the data, there is a fast-rising number of nonpartisan folks out there, and this is mostly why.

You may also opt out using another form that allows you to not register at all, but many folks dont go through this step as there is already frustration in just being at the DMV.

Another important code under Nevadas voting laws states that unless you have a candidate running in the party in which you are registered, you will not have the opportunity to vote on a candidate for that office in the upcoming 2022 primary. Typically, the two parties in our County with candidates are Republican and Democrat. Primaries are important as they narrow the playing field and further refine the ultimate candidates you vote on in November.

Your voting power is cut in half if you cant vote in the primary. Wouldnt most folks want the maximum bang for their buck? Additionally, County Commissioner elections are most often held and decided during the primary elections. This is a very important regulatory position in our community, so you may have to re-adjust your political priorities for the primary. This will help your vote have its strongest power.

I want to encourage our community members to be involved in their constitutional right to vote. Many countries dont have these same rights. Our Armed Services have fought globally for this right and sacrificed much for it.My intention is for this letter to answer questions that may elude new residents to our lovely valley and also those who havent been aware of the recent changes in Nevada law regarding voting registration. Please stop by Republican Headquarters during its open hours or our booth in downtown Minden on Tuesday at the Farmers Market if you need any assistance. Were here for you.

Virginia Nisse

Douglas County Republican Central Committee

Voter Registration Lead

Volunteering for the Tamarack Fire

Editor:

The last weekend in July was very eye opening for me, as I volunteered to answer calls to the Public Info Line at the Incident Command Post for the Tamarack fire at Douglas High School. The amount of coordination and resources that go into managing a fire event of this magnitude is pretty incredible. Fire personnel have come to our aid from Carson, South Lake Tahoe, North Lake Tahoe, Colorado, Alaska and several other states.

It should be noted that for the last two months there have been multiple fires in the west. Currently, there are 22,000 fire personnel on wildfire events with 1.5 million acres that have burned. Several resources are being allocated to the Tamarack Fire despite that.

I am grateful for the opportunity to be able to help out with this response by answering questions, letting people vent their frustrations with road closures and not being able to access their properties, and provide general fire updates to callers. This situation is scary and misinformation can quickly be spread, so it was a great experience for me to be able to provide an empathic ear to my fellow community members for a small portion of this event.

Courtney Walker

Gardnerville

Whose lives matter?

Editor:

Do Black Lives really Matter and if so by whom? Lets look at the facts. The No. 1 cause of black deaths in America is abortion to the tune of 259 deaths each and every day. In 1921 liberal, progressive, socialist Margaret Sanger founded the American Birth Control League, the forerunner of Planned Parenthood, to limit the impact of birth rates in the negro community. Ms. Sanger considered blacks to be weeds and reckless breeders, she divided the American populace into fit and unfit categories and obviously blacks were unfit in her view. For those readers who do not consider a fetus to be a viable being then it is important to add the fact that the greatest threat to blacks ages 18-44 in America is homicide (murder). Roughly 85 percent of these are black-on-black in inner city neighborhoods which is identical to the percentage for white-on-white murders. Only 3 percent of black fatalities are at the hands of law enforcement and the vast majority of these are justifiable as officers try to protect their communities from criminals and thugs who threaten the general population. If black lives truly mattered then Planned Parenthood should be defunded and more resources should be funneled into black neighborhoods in Chicago, St. Louis, New Orleans, Baltimore, and Detroit. Part of the solution is increased police presence in these cities rather than less. Law enforcement programs such as D.A.R.E. and others that allow interaction with American youth without the perception of cops as bad guys is critical to this issue. Of course, black lives matter as do all lives, especially in America where our Constitution expressly states that all have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Dan Paterson

Gardnerville

Virus fear the real danger

Editor:

Count me among the many, yes, multitudes, who agree with - and thank -Daniel J. Casentini for telling the truth, yes, the truth. (letter to RC Editor July 22. What is really subtly happening in our once free nation? What indeed! The virus is bad. Yes. Happy most recover. Fact. The sick and poor will always be with us. True.

But we need to be fearing the right fear. The real fear. The bigger threat that will make us a lot more than just sick and poor - and last a lot longer - if we continue following like lemmings to the cliff. A few are controlling the masses, with mere virus fear. Now. Notice how the goal posts keep moving? And the rules keep changing?

Americans, stand up. I know I will. Am.

Joy Uhart

Minden

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July 29, 2021, Letters to the Editor | Serving Minden-Gardnerville and Carson Valley - The Record-Courier

RAPID CITY, S.D. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem likes to present herself as a normal everyday person who enjoys life.

Appearing at FreedomFest 21, a gathering of 2,700 conservatives and libertarians, Noem said, nobody knew who I was until liberals began attacking me every night on the national news. Shes referring to her conservative views on economic and social issues.

Noem benefits from a roaring economy. She says there are fewer than 2,500 South Dakotans on public assistance and 28,000 job openings. The state has no state income tax. Property taxes average 1.22%. Annual economic growth is 9.9%, among the nations best. Houses are inexpensive relative to many other places. With such figures its no surprise theres been a population growth of 8.9% since 2010.

We talked shortly after recent shootings in Northwest Washington, D.C., and an outraged Robert J. Contee III, the police chief in Washington, blamed judges for releasing criminals back onto the streets where they often engage in more violent criminal behavior.

Noem believes Republicans can and should re-take the law-and-order issue in 2022 and 2024. In an interview, she told me, What we are seeing . . . on our streets (are) the consequences of . . . whats happening in the Democratic leadership and their lack of support for police officers and those who step up and serve. (Its) being played out in the violence citizens are having to live with. Its going to continue if something doesnt change.

She says the street violence and looting in major cities is not only the fault of judges and district attorneys, but also overcrowding in our prison system. Theres less funding for the judicial system so they release individuals instead of putting them through the process of prosecution and sentencing, or through rehab. Its a problem that hasnt been addressed for many, many years (and) has gotten worse as the violence has escalated. When theres no consequence for it, law and order goes away.

Asked about the state of the Republican Party, she responds, Its the party that is bringing hope. If you look at what Democrats are embracing socialism, communism, lack of personal responsibility. Every problem that presents itself they think some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., would handle it better than a Mom or a Dad, or a cousin or grandparent . . .

The Republican Party has a unique opportunity to talk about what we stand for and have always stood for and have proven to be the policies and the values that create opportunities for families and states and businesses. . . . When you look at some states that have done what we believe in you can see overwhelming prosperity and families healthier and in school getting educated, and thats what the American dream is and what the Republican Party needs to be talking about.

Noem believes Donald Trump will run for president again in 2024. I think (former) President Trump did a great job. . . . I believe that is something we all (can) and should welcome back. The policies of seven or eight months ago were contributing to a booming America. We were creating jobs and addressing challenges confronting us together. I think hell run and if he does, Ill certainly support him.

She is open about her Christian faith and says it influences many of her policy positions: What the government has done in the last (several months) is to continue to push secularism. She thinks that will continue and is something we will have to fight. We will drive people to us by our optimism. You turn on the news and its discouraging. You see the violence played out on the streets. Christians have a unique opportunity to bring hope and light . . .

Noem turns 50 later this year and is a first-time grandmother. She also displays qualities for national office Republicans claim to want. Trump and others (including her opponents) should keep an eye on her.

Cal Thomas is a syndicated columnist and author. Readers may email him at: [emailprotected]

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Cal Thomas: Kristi Noem and the GOP's future - Lewiston Sun Journal

The joys of living in a state that cares for its residents. Steve Sack, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Minn.

Today at the Editors glance: No government meetings today, no felony criminal docket in court (but for one minor exception), not even an unusually hot day ahead, which is unusual: highs only in the upper 80s. France may have gotten humiliated by Switzerland at Euro 2020 but its still Bastille Day today, though the Declaration of the Rights of Man wasnt enacted until the night of Aug. 26, 1789. Note the balance between libertarianism and public welfare, a balance often lost in modern American libertarianism driver more by Ayn Rands adolescent selfishness than grown-up sense of civic responsibility: Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.Reading JD Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy and a recently declared GOP candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio, is like coming face to face with Flannery OConnors charactersMrs. May in Greenleaf, the grandmother in A Good Man Is Hard to Find, Mrs. McIntyre in The Displaced Personthose permanently aggrieved, superior whites so proud of having made something of themselves from a little bit more than nothing, who think everyone around them is either out to get them or cheat them or make fun of them or get something over them, a paranoia of the privileged that translates into one, long moan of aristocratic-odored judgments. Tour de France: Stage 18 takes the riders from the bottom of the Pyrenees back up to three mountaintops in another difficult 178 km through heart-stopping country.

Vaccinations: Appointments for the Pfizer-only clinic at the health department are preferred, but walk-ins will be accepted. Please call 386-437-7350 ext. 0 for scheduling or questions. June 25, 2021. Eighteen pharmacies in Flagler County offer COVID-19 vaccinations, and 12 of these offer Pfizer, which is approved for individuals ages 12 and over. The health department will offer COVID-19 testing onFriday, July 2between 2:30 and 3:30PM at its main office, 301 Dr. Carter Blvd.in Bunnell. For more information about COVID-19 vaccination and testing efforts, please visithttps://floridahealthcovid19.gov/.

The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.

For the full calendar, go here.

The many pleasures of studying the Enlightenment include the license to trespass across disciplinary boundaries and to establish intellectual and personal friendships with fellow-scholars from many areas. But the greatest motive for studying this subject is the awareness that the Enlightenment, though distant in time, remains vitally important. In an age that seems dominated by fake news, widespread credulity, xenophobia and unscrupulous demagogues, it matters more intensely than ever to hold on to reliable knowledge, to be aware of our common humanity, and to pursue the possibility of human happiness.

Ritchie Robertson, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 (2021).

The Cartoon and Live Briefing Archive.

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The Daily Cartoon and Live Briefing: Wednesday, July 14, 2021 - FlaglerLive.com

In response to the letter by William P. Stroyan (Thank our White forefathers, July 9):

OMG Mr. Stoyan! I am not aware of anyone piling on the white man and striping him of his dignity nor credit for his accomplishments. Your letter is a perfect example of why the full and truthful history of our country and ALL its people should be required to be taught in every school.

I personally never was told in school about how we had interment camps for Japanese during World War II. I knew little about our treatment of slaves in the early days of this country and am just beginning to learn about all the contributions Latinos make here. There is no need to single out any particular race and pat them on the back, especially NOT the white man. Thats the way we stay divided!

But, if we need to list important accomplishments, here are few items Black people have gifted us with: automatic elevator doors, refrigerated trucks, three-signal traffic light, home security system, central-heating furnace, cellphones!

The credit for our countrys success goes to Americans! Women, men, all colors! And if we are to keep our democracy strong we must love our fellow citizens, all of them! Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, Green Party, etc. We dont have to agree with all of them all the time but we do need to remember that attacking any of them is attacking the very freedoms our country was founded on. Dont just parrot the words of small minds. Repeating a lie ceaselessly doesnt ever make it the truth!

Rebecca King

Spokane

Excerpt from:
Credit every American - The Spokesman-Review

Joseph Bishop-Henchman resigned Friday as chair of the Libertarian National Committee (LNC), after a controversy that began three months ago with provocative tweets, intensified two weeks ago with an attempted schism of the New Hampshire Libertarian Party (LPNH), and has now turned into a battle for the soul of America's third-largest political party.

Two other members of the 17-person LNC, Tucker Coburn and Francis Wendt, have also resigned in wake of the tumult. The long-influential Pragmatist Caucus, associated with the two presidential campaigns of Gary Johnson, has dissolved as a direct result. And one of the party's few elected officials, DeKalb, Illinois, City Clerk Sasha Cohen, resigned from the national Libertarian Party (L.P.) in protest, saying in an LNC Zoom meeting that "we are a big tent party, but no tent is big enough to hold racists and people of color, transphobes and trans people, bigots and their victims."

A "toxic culture has recently been harnessed in the service of a grouping with a declared goal of taking over the party and making it as repulsive as possible to everyone except themselves," Bishop-Henchman wrote in his resignation letter, referring to the party's ascendant Mises Caucus, which for the past few years has been advertising its intentions to launch a "takeover" of the L.P. to realign it more with the policy and messaging associated with Ron Paul and the Ludwig von Mises Institute. "I will not chair a party that knowingly and has now affirmatively chosen to stay affiliated with the toxic garbage that was being spewed by the New Hampshire party and similar bad actors in other states, the violent threats emanating from these people, and the deliberate destruction of the party's ability to appeal to voters and win elections."

Bishop-Henchman did not detail the specifics of the source or nature of the "violent threats" in his public comments on the LPNH matter and his resignation. He declined to be interviewed for this article, deferring to his public written statements.

The outgoing chair had lost the confidence of many Libertarians, and not just Mises Caucus members, by lending support to a highly irregular attempt on June 12 by the LPNH's then-chair, Jilletta Jarvis, to break away from the existing state L.P. and form a new one, seizing the former's digital assets in an attempt to regain control of a Twitter feed that had since the party's convention in March made headlines by saying stuff like "John McCain's brain tumor saved more lives than Anthony Fauci."

On June 16, the LNC voted 122, with three abstentions, to reject a Bishop-Henchman co-sponsored motion to disaffiliate with the existing New Hampshire party, which would have paved the way for Jarvis' rump to be recognized. The other pro-separatist voter, Coburn, the representative for the very region containing New Hampshire, joined Bishop-Henchman in resigning from the board after the vote.

On June 17, Jarvis relented, and returned control of the LPNH website and other digital property back to the existing party.

LNC at-large representative Joshua Smith, a leading member of the Mises Caucus, saw this as a resounding victory for the party's newer members, and for the independence of state affiliates. He says the group has effective control of around 25 state party affiliates now.

The failed New Hampshire coup was condemned by a wide range of non-Mises L.P. factions and figures as well, including 2020 vice presidential candidate Spike Cohen (who called it a "fiasco" that "should have remained an LPNH issue exclusively") and former congressman Justin Amash, who argued that "due process" requires acknowledging that "there's only one legitimate executive committee of @LPNH," while also stressing that "official social media accounts are for advancing the party's mission of organizing libertarians, not for personal experiments in edgelording."

The state party's restored Twitter feed wasted little time resting on its laurels. "The ultimate goal of wokeism is to infiltrate, occupy, and dominate every cultural, political, and corporate institution," the account tweeted June 20. "The Libertarian Party isn't immune to this. It must be identified and stopped immediately."

The "Mean Tweets"

"No one saw this even remotely coming, such a nuclear bomb," says LPNH Executive Committee at-large member Sean Dempsey, a Mises Caucus member. "No one imagined it happening. For my own part I considered myself good friends with Jilletta.We thought she was a true freedom fighter, and this caught us all off-guard. We were very hurt, and still feel stabbed in the back because of the way this was handled."

Jarvis (who declined to be interviewed for this article) and the rest of the six-member state Executive Committee, half of which belong to the Mises Caucus, were elected at the annual state convention March 1921. While he was not on the Communications Committee coming out of the convention, Jeremy Kauffman was added to the committee in April; by May that committee's chair granted him posting privileges. Kauffman is the founder and CEO of a blockchain-based, censorship-free content-publishing system called LBRY. He is a big player in New Hampshire libertarian politics, sitting on the board of the Free State Project, and he is notorious for highly inflammatory tweeting on his own personal account.

Sean Brennan was elected as treasurer only after the convention changed its bylaws to make him eligible; he had not been a dues-paying member long enough to qualify before.**

The Brennan maneuver raised some eyebrows among those resistant to the Mises influx, and there was a smattering of other complaints about the LPNH's post-convention actions. They booted a long-term activist and thorn in the Mises Caucus' side, Jackie Perry, for allegedly revealing private contact information about Jarvis; Perry insists it was all public, and that it was not clear the ExCom even has the legitimate power to get rid of members this way. One executive committee members' suggestion that they consider not running a gubernatorial candidate if a specific Republican much beloved by the state's larger liberty movement (which in New Hampshire has always been far more geared to the GOP than the L.P., even or especially among Free State Project members) was used to suggest the new ExCom was deliberately taking the L.P. out of electoral politics. A filing with the state as a political committee that Jarvis' new group made and the old one did not was used as evidence the Mises crowd wanted to drive the organization out of legal existence, but Brennan says that the LPNH did not get enough candidate donations to hit the legal limit requiring that filing.

All those controversies swirled in the chatter around the LPNH's misdeeds, but Dempsey believes they all amount to "red herrings." The visceral disgust displayed toward the party by Jarvis, Bishop-Henchman, and other Libertarians comes down to what Kauffman has done with the state party's Twitter feed. The whole kerfuffle was traceable to what LNC Secretary Caryn Ann Harlos, a very loud voice standing up for the prerogatives of the LPNH within the LNC, describes dismissively as "mean tweets."

Among the controversial LPNH tweets attributed to Kauffman was a call to "legalize child labor" because "children will learn more on a job site than in public school," another to keep Gitmo open "so that Anthony Fauci and every governor that locked their state down can be sent there, never again to be allowed inside of the United States," and still another to "Repeal the Civil Rights Act."

Kauffman defended his tactics on the Taking Human Action podcast over the weekend. "I'm a very committed libertarian, and I think this is good for the libertarian movement," he said. "I think L.P. national had been sort of taken over by what I would call, you know, woke neoliberal globalists, and they're not libertarians. Libertarianism is private property, bodily autonomy, voluntary association, right? These are sort of the core atoms of libertarian philosophy. And I don't think that the people who were on the LNC endorsed them."

The child labor tweetstorm in particular was "an absolute win" for the L.P., Kauffman insisted, since the backlashincluding from such people as Gary Johnsononly serves to spread radical ideas to those who wouldn't otherwise have been exposed to them. He maintained that the Mises incursion into the LPNH had grown membership from around 60 people last year to around 150.

The debate over "mean tweets" conflated Kauffman as voice of LPNH and voice for himself, in ways that he thinks are illegitimate but that many L.P.-adjacent folk think is perfectly appropriate.

It is Kauffman who Bishop-Henchman referred to, not by name, in his June 14 letter to the LNC when he writes of "an individual who does things like tweet about how black people have lower IQs and murdering trans people would be a good trade-off for lower taxes." Those ideas were tweeted on Kauffman's personal account, not the party's. (Kauffman and his fans stress that he specifically was talking about the superior morality of no taxes to 1,000 murdered transpeople, not just the "lower taxes" Bishop-Henchman wrote.***)

Kauffman insists "if the LPNH is in trouble, it needs to be about things LPNH said, not things I've said," since Mises Caucus folk are "on board with the idea of not policing things people say on private pages." This hits on one of the prime ideological or attitudinal fault lines between L.P. factions: The Mises crowd is far more likely to find only actual physical assaults on people's persons, property, or liberty worthy of condemnation, what they call "NAP violations" (for the "non-aggression principle"), not what they might write off as merely (at worst) bad words or bad thoughts.

Jarvis insisted, in arguing for her move to take the LPNH into her possession, that that messaging strategy "is, frankly, designed to discredit the Libertarian Party in the state and in our nation."

Jarvis continued: "January 6thshowed us what can happen when people are riled up into a frenzy and given little direction. For the last two months, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire has been using this strategy, the strategy of riling up mobs to frenzy and giving them no direction."

The Short and Unhappy Life of the New New Hampshire Libertarian Party

As the LPNH Twitter account continued dropping social media bombs, LNC Chair Bishop-Henchman sent a letter to Jarvis June 7 stating that "the party of which you are Chair is the LNC's sole qualifying organization in New Hampshire" and is "part of the official structure of the national party." Five days later Jarvis announced she was launching the new party.

In a videotaped chat with some LNC members June 13, Jarvis said that Bishop-Henchman knew what she was trying to do when that letter was requested (though she said it was technically asked for by a third party who she wouldn't name), and that she was therefore confident the LNC would recognize hers as the true Libertarian Party affiliate in New Hampshire.

Jarvis had originally been planning just to resign over frustration at the Executive Committee's communication strategy, but unnamed other people told her creating her own new party from scratch was another option.

So was Bishop-Henchman's letter intended to imply that the authority of the LNC was behind the new splinter party? The LNC is in the process of selecting people to form an investigatory committee this week to find out. If so, says LNC Secretary Caryn Ann Harlos, this would count as "corruption"an attack on a duly constituted state affiliate from the national party. For her raucous role in pushing this investigation, within and outside the LNC, Harlos was hit with a motion to remove her as secretary and from all her other L.P. committee positions, then another such motion when the first one was ruled out of order. That second one was also ruled out of order on Tuesday, so her position seems safe for now. She considered herself targeted as a whistleblower for her attempts to get to the bottom of whether LNC officials were illegitimately targeting a state party.

In his June 14 letter, written partly in response to calls for his removal over his alleged interference in New Hampshire, Bishop-Henchman insisted he did not know what Jarvis was going to do. "Claims that I was some kind of co-conspirator are false," he said. "I do not as LNC Chair tell state chairs and officers what they should do."

But Bishop-Henchman also tried to argue that the last three months of LPNH executive-committee behavior "amounted to their constructive resignation," since it was effectively "little different than if they had all gone out and endorsed Donald Trump or Joe Biden, basically." Thus, Jarvis "felt she had no choice to reconstitute the organization as best she could, with the people she could, who still supported the mission of the party."

Jarvis and 13 other LPNH members during the short-lived rump party wrote up new bylaws and a new platform, and crafted a familiar-sounding Libertarian oath with a new ending: "I will not advocate or endorse the initiation of force as a means to achieve political or social goals. I will advocate for the freedom from oppression and coercion for all New Hampshire residents and affirm that as Libertarians we condemn bigotry as irrational and repugnant."

At the same time she seized possession of the original LPNH's digital property.

"When she locked the existing Executive Committee members out of digital assets owned by the party, the website, all the social media accounts, mailchimp, paypal, access to our email account," even membership records, said LPNH Executive Committee Member Sean Dempsey, that amounted to "theft of party property."

The moves shocked New Hampshire Libertarians. Stephen Nass, an at-large member of the Executive Committee, said in a phone interview this weekend that Jarvis was "old school, had been around, knows how to run a party, so she got elected unanimously" by all factions at the March convention.

Caleb Dyer, a former L.P. state legislator in New Hampshire who straddles the Mises/non-Mises divide, says he knows "for a fact" that the separatists' claim that "they exhausted every possible option before going nuclear with this campaign for disaffiliation" is "just a lie."

Dyer does worry that some of the Mises-oriented types care more about radical messaging than they do about winning elections, which to him means "philosophically they are not there to further the interests of the [LPNH]. They are specifically hindering those efforts." But those differences of philosophy are better solved, he thinks, using the available tools of process, negotiation, and management, rather than engineering a radical reorganization on the fly.

According to Executive Committee member Dempsey and current LPNH Interim Chair Nolan Pelletier, if the tweets were a core problem, Jarvis had it within her power all along to keep the keys of the Twitter account out of the hands of the controversial Jeremy Kauffman. As chair, she could have simply issued an order, or changed the password. Pelletier says that Kauffman is not currently one of the people tweeting from LPNH's official account.

What Does the Mises Caucus Want?

Bishop-Henchman's departure is the biggest national victory yet for the Mises Caucus, which functions as a Political Action Committee, one that raised nearly $100,000 in 20192020. So what do Misesians want?

The most common policy complaint heard about the L.P. in 2021 from Mises types is that the national party and most state affiliates were not vociferous enough against COVID-related lockdowns, thereby dropping the ball on the most vital liberty issue of the times.

"I felt my voice was not being represented in the party," says the LPNH's Dempsey. "We went through in 2020 one of the worst tyrannical totalitarian regimes in modern history and the national party was tweeting about trans rights. Yes, those are important, but get on the right page" and "know your audience."

Part of that audience is sick and tired of any party or candidate utterance that smacks of pandering to "wokeism," whether it be 2020 presidential candidate Jo Jorgensen tweeting that "It is not enough to be passively not racist, we must be actively anti-racist" or three-time former LNC chair Nicholas Sarwark serially criticizing the 1990s "paleolibertarian" excesses of people associated with the Mises Institute. Joshua Smith, who lost the LNC chair race to Sarwark in 2018, said: "We [in the caucus] don't message to collectivist ideology."

"I passionately reject the notion that Mises Caucus is completely, or filled with, racists or bigots," Dempsey says. "We just have, probably to our discredit, been so force-fed a narrative about having to virtue signal we probably don't say things enough like 'we reject bigotry' or 'racism is repugnant,' but those are empty words." What's important is making America a nation "dominated by support for freedom, property rights, free association, and due process."

Dyer detects an inconsistency in the Mises Caucus approach. "In broad strokes," he says, "they see themselves combatting wokeness as having infiltrated the Libertarian Party. They claim they don't want to fight the culture wars, while simultaneously picking a side, which I think is disingenuous."

The more Pragmatic Caucusfriendly Libertarians now fleeing the LNC or the party altogether worry that the Misesians consciously attract intolerant (and intolerable) elements.

"When New Hampshire's messaging started getting toxic," Dekalb City Clerk Sasha Cohen said in a phone interview over the weekend, "I got calls and messages from people who supported me during my campaign asking, 'What the fuck is wrong with your party?' A direct quote."

Alexander DiBenedetto, who ran the Pragmatist Caucus until its postNew Hampshire dissolution, warned in a phone interview Sunday that a Mises takeover would likely mean "the majority of the people from the Gary Johnson days leaving the party." (Those campaigns got the party its highest ever national vote totals and percentages.) The L.P. should spend less time and energy perfecting the most polarizing tweet to attract the most hate-retweets, DiBenedetto said, and more time organizing such initiatives as the door-knocking Frontier Project, which actually won a state legislative seat for Libertarian Marshall Burt in Wyoming last year. If a Mises Caucusstyle candidate wins the party's presidential nomination in 2024, he said, state parties unhappy with that approach might disaffiliate from the national party.

Francis Wendt, the Region 1 LNC member who resigned June 19, wrote in his farewell letter, "I will give the [Mises Caucus] credit, they have a very active base.However, activists are only part of the equation. You also need candidates, leaders, staff, and donors. Twitter trolls don't do that. Email blasts don't do that. Regurgitated messages from people that only show up for a day (convention) don't do that. Knocking doors does that. Writing checks does that. Making calls does that. Sitting up till 3 AM pouring over research does that."

In his resignation letter, Bishop-Henchman sounded a warning of his own. "Toxic people exhaust or drive out good people," he said. "Our mechanisms for removing such individuals and addressing such bad behavior are designed to be effectively impossible, and culturally, too many people who should know better passively tolerate it rather than confront it. It turns off donors, repulses allies, and makes team projects unviable."

But for the victorious Mises Caucus crowd, it was Bishop-Henchman and the pragmatists who lost sight of basic libertarian respect for property and due process in the New Hampshire battle and are now taking their balls and going home when things for a change don't go their way.

LNC member Joshua Smith remembers when "this [whole Mises Caucus thing] was just me and 50 other people chatting on a Facebook page." Today he finds his faction victorious after a bitterly fought battle over a party already struggling for respectability and vote-share, one in which an affiliate with fewer than 200 members can shake a national political party to the core.

"But now," he says, echoing a common Ron Paul fan meme, "It's Happening!"

**The article previously stated, according to sources on the scene, that Kauffman had paid for Brennan's LPNH lifetime membership. Kauffman, and other sources, say that is not true, and Brennan provided evidence it was not. The author regrets the error.

***The sentence preceding the three asterisks was added since original posting.

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Inside the Battle Over the Soul of the Libertarian Party - Reason

Economists are debating whether to take a domestic or international perspective on environmental ... [+] policy.

In recent years, an interesting debate has been taking place among economists. It centers around the appropriate scope of regulatory policy, with a particular emphasis on environmental regulation. Given the Biden Administrations ambitious environmental goals, this debate may accelerate in the coming months and years.

The issue economists are grappling with is whether benefits that accrue to foreigners from U.S. policies should receive the same weight in an economic analysis as costs that fall primarily on Americans. This dilemma comes up most often in climate policy, but is relevant to many other areas of policy as well.

The question is ultimately one of standing, meaning who gets counted in an economic analysis. One aspect of climate change that makes the issue so challenging is that the problem is global in nature. Our own emissions have effects that extend beyond our borders, and the same is true of other countries emissions.

The standing issue becomes more concrete when considering some of the technical inputs that go into regulatory economic analysis. Consider the social cost of carbon (SCC), which is a measure of the welfare cost from emitting a ton of carbon dioxide into the air. One estimate suggests that the domestic SCC is only about 7 to 23 percent of the total SCC, meaning most of the welfare benefits from U.S. actions to fight climate change go to foreigners. Meanwhile, the costs of complying with the same U.S. policies generally fall on Americans.

Traditionally, regulatory policy has taken the domestic-only perspective. That is, the focus has been on benefits and costs to Americans, and not on the impact our policies have on people in other nations. To some extent this makes sense. Perhaps our representatives in Washington, D.C. should focus their attention on doing the most good for the constituents who elected them. If our leaders gave the same weight to everyone on the planet in other areas of policy, like defense or immigration, our domestic institutions and resources might quickly become overwhelmed.

But on another levela purely economic levelthe domestic-only perspective really does not make much sense at all. When considering the economic tradeoffs involved with fighting climate change, shouldnt all of the benefits and costs of a policy be counted? Why should some individuals, who feel the effects of our actions as much as we do, be left out of the analysis by being given zero weight?

Many economists adhere to a principal that benefits and costs should receive the same weight in an analysis irrespective of who they apply to. The distribution of those effectswhile also importantshould be considered as a separate matter.

Heres another way to think about it: Even if we accept that some individuals should be excluded from an economic analysis, the decision about who to let in and who to keep out is a matter of values, not science. Its exactly the kind of political question we might expect to see different answers to when there is a change in administrations. We should not be surprised if Democrats, when they are in power, decide to count benefits to foreigners in their economic analysis, while Republicans take an America First perspective. After all, the two parties have different (and evolving) value systems.

But there are also reasons why conservatives and libertarians might want to rethink their position to keep certain people out of economic analysis. While some economists who endorse the global analysis perspective undoubtedly do so to tip the scales in favor of aggressive policy action by increasing those policies estimated benefits, it is far from obvious that things will play out that way.

Consider for example that when a policy is expected to reduce mortality, the analyst conducting the economic analysis will often attach a dollar value to the saved lives, typically using a metric called the value of a statistical life (VSL). Like the SCC, the VSL is another technical input in economic analysis. In this case, it is a measure of what a group of people is willing to pay to prevent the death of one of its members. Valuing lives can be controversial for a number of reasons, but its also widely done by governments, so for now, lets take for granted that our government is doing analysis correctly.

The VSL tends to vary dramatically depending on the group whose preferences are used to dictate policy. For example, when an analysis takes a domestic, U.S.-only perspective, the typical VSL used is an average of what Americans are willing to pay to prevent a death. When the analysis shifts to a global perspective, it stands to reason that the government should use the willingness to pay of the entire world.

Not surprisingly, willingness to pay is largely a function of income, and because the United States is richer than average, it also has a higher VSL than average. So assuming the governments current practices are the right ones, if an analysis takes a global perspectivegiving standing to all peoples of the worldthe appropriate VSL will fall from about $11 million (the current U.S. figure) to roughly $2 million.

So even while the value of climate benefits might rise significantly when taking a global perspective in economic analysis, the value of mortality benefits will decline significantly. Moreover, historically mortality benefits have constituted a much larger fraction of benefits in regulatory economic analysis than the benefits from reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Republicans are within their rights to take the domestic-only perspective when they are in power. But their arguments are less compelling when Democrats are representing the desires of their voters, because the question of who gets counted in an economic analysis is ultimately one of values. Republicans would be on firmer ground by emphasizing that once the decision is made to take a global perspective, consistency requires that all aspects of analysis do so. Democrats must accept all of the analytical implications that follow a change in core assumptions, not just the ones they find politically convenient.

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Why Conservatives And Libertarians Should Think Globally About Environmental Policy - Forbes

WASHINGTON Former Trump administration officials and conservative and libertarian nonprofits have launched lawsuits to block federal relief funds aimed at Black and minority farmers a development that House Agriculture Committee Chairman David Scott of Georgia calls an evil system at work here.

Suits have been filed in Florida, Wisconsin and Texas that say its unconstitutional to direct COVID-19 relief funds to Black farmers, who make up 1 percent of all farmers. The $4 billion in the American Rescue Plan is intended to help relieve debt the farmers accrued from decades of systematic discrimination in USDA lending.

A judge in a Florida federal court issued a nationwide injunction Wednesday, preventing the U.S. Department of Agriculture from issuing grants to those minority farmers. U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard said the agency could still prepare to deliver debt relief until the program is found constitutionally permissible.

Scott, a Democrat, in an interview with States Newsroom was highly critical of the legal challenge, and questioned how any judge could deny the history of discrimination against Black farmers in the U.S.

There is a system, an evil system at work here, Scott said, and added that he believes Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to President Donald Trump, is behind it.

The lawsuit in Texas, Miller v. Vilsack, was filed by the nonprofit America First Legal. The organization was started earlier this year by Stephen Miller and Trumps chief of staff, former Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), as a conservative version of the ACLU.

America First Legal opposes discrimination in all forms, Miller said in a statement when the suit was filed. We hold fast to the immortal words of Martin Luther King Jr. that Americans should not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

America First Legal also includes in its leadership Matt Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa who for a time was the acting attorney general during the Trump administration, and Russ Vought, the former Office of Management and Budget director under Trump.

The lone plaintiff in that case is Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who is a rancher in the Lone Star State. Miller spent $641,000 running for his commissioner seat, according to the Houston Chronicle.

The suit takes issue with Sections 1005 and 1006 of the American Rescue Plan enacted in March that uses language in the 1990 farm bill to define socially disadvantaged agricultural producers as people subjected to racial or ethnic prejudices because of their identity as a member of a group without regard to their individual qualities.

That includes agriculture producers who are African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Hispanic or Asian or Pacific Islander.

The language does not prevent white farmers from also applying to the program, but all three lawsuits argue that the program excludes white farmers and is therefore discriminating against white farmers.

The USDA, which is headed up by Secretary Tom Vilsack, a former governor of Iowa, did not respond to a request for comment.

In her ruling in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Morales Howard wrote that in enacting Section 1005, Congress expressed the intention of seeking to remedy a long, sad history of discrimination against (socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers) in the provision and receipt of USDA loans and programs.

Such an intention is not only laudable, it is demanded by the Constitution. But in doing so, Congress also must heed its obligation to do away with governmentally imposed discrimination based on race, Morales Howard wrote.

The suit is ongoing.

The Florida case was brought by North Florida farmer Scott Wynn, who is being represented by Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian legal organization based in California that has an office in the Sunshine State.

The lawsuit argues that Mr. Wynn is categorically excluded from loan assistance under Section 1005 because he is white.

Pacific Legal Foundation is one of the oldest conservative advocacy groups and receives funding from several conservative and libertarian groups such as the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Donors Trust, which is tied to the Charles G. Koch Foundation.

The Bradley Foundation also helps bankroll the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which filed a suit against USDA on behalf of 12 white farmers from Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota and Ohio in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

From 2011 to 2018 the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty received nearly $6 million from the Bradley Foundation, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, which is a progressive nonprofit watchdog group. Michael Grebe, the former president and CEO of the Bradley Foundation, currently sits on the board of directors at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

The Wisconsin suit, Faust et al v. Vilsack et al, also argues that white farmers are excluded from the program and is therefore discriminatory.

Georgias Scott, the first Black lawmaker to chair the House Agriculture Committee, has held multiple hearings outlining the decades of discrimination Black farmers faced from USDA. He said that white farmers can apply for the relief program.

Its a political gambit too, Scott said of the lawsuits. How can a judge say that there is no past or present discrimination?

Black and minority farmers were left out of the pandemic relief funds during the Trump administration. In a House Agriculture hearing, Vilsack said that only .1% of Black farmers received any of the $26 billion in economic aid provided to farmers through the agencys program created by the Trump administration to help farmers weather the pandemic.

Only $20.8 million went to Black farmers and the rest went to white farmers, he said.

Black lawmakers have also raised concerns that if the relief money is not sent to Black farmers, then those farmers could lose their land.

Were on the verge of losing what little Black and socially disadvantaged farmers we have, Scott said.

In 1920, there were nearly 1 million Black farmers who worked on 41.4 million acres, making up about 7% of the farming landscape.

Today, there are about 50,000 Black farmers who work on 4.7 million acres, making them 1.4% of the nations farmers. White farmers make up 98% of rural farmers.

Scott said that the lawsuits popping up in the courts in reaction to Black farmers getting federal help is just the past repeating itself, starting with the end of slavery.

In 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman gave newly freed slaves 40 acres and a mule. But after President Abraham Lincolns assassination, newly sworn-in President Andrew Johnson reversed Shermans order. Many Black scholars have cited this moment as the beginning of generational economic setbacks for African Americans.

There is a pattern of this refusal to recognize the strong discrimination and racism that Black people especially face, Scott said.

Over the last 150 years, Black farmers lost land due to New Deal legislation programs, and faced rampant discrimination from USDA, to the point that the agency had to reach a large settlement with Black farmers.

Congressional hearings, Government Accountability Office reports, federal courts and USDA reports have continued to find Black farmers faced discrimination that led to land loss and debt.

We got through slavery, we got through Jim Crow, Scott said. Were going to get through this.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news outlets supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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Relief payments to Black farmers on hold amid lawsuits backed by former Trump aides, conservative groups - Kansas Reflector