In an interview Wednesday with Neil Cavuto on Fox Business, discussing federalism and state pushback against the federal government, Gov. Gary Johnson was asked directly if he plans to run for President again, and what party label he would do so under. Rough transcript:
NC: Are you going to run for President again?
GJ: I hope so, Neil. I hope to be able to do that. I hope to be able to provide a voice that’s not being heard right now.
NC: Are you going to run as a third-party candidate again, not as a Republican?
GJ: Yeah, as a Libertarian, as a third party. You know, the ideal label right now is “independent,” but that’s a tough nut to crack. You’ve got to get on the ballot in enough states to run for President {…}
That was followed by a brief discussion of the lawsuit against the Commission on Presidential Debates, including the problem of exclusion from the polls used to determine debate participation. Watch the full interview at the video link below:
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/4046917467001/states-rebel-against-federal-government/
Me too 🙂
Andy’s point is well-taken.
“pay one’s taxes” in my comment should have been “pay the government-imposed taxes on each individual”.
That said, I am pleased to see the philosophical discussions has moved to the small-l libertarianism and anarchy thread.
The notion that Johnson pushes for the exact “fairtax” proposal was addressed early on in this thread. Your comments about taxation did start out having something to do with Johnson, but have long since veered way away from that. I’m not too worried about it at this point, but if the thread was new I would be more actively trying to steer discussions of that sort to the open threads.
“paulie
February 21, 2015 at 2:57 pm
That may be a good example of something to discuss at”
I think that those comments from me are very relevant to this thread, not only as a response to Mark Axinn, but also because Gary Johnson has continuously pushed for replacing the present income tax system with the Fair Tax (national sales tax with a bunch of strings attached), and this puts out the false notion that “We’ve got to have some big tax on the American people,” which takes the focus away from the real issues, such as cutting government, and the morality, or more accurately, the immorality of taxation, as in the concept that some people are “authority figures” and that their “authority” gives them the “right” to extort money out of everyone else.
Most people no longer believe in the “Divine Right of Kings,” and it is past time for them to stop believing in the “Divine Right of Politicians and Bureaucrats.”
That may be a good example of something to discuss at https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/02/open-thread-iv-for-discussions-of-small-l-libertarianism-and-anarchy/ … although on the other hand it seems unlikely that we can revive discussion of the original topic in this thread, and if we could, https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/02/paul-frankel-is-oai-diverting-resources-from-the-lp/ may be better for that.
Mark Axinn said on February 21, 2015 at 10:13 am” whether to pay one’s taxes”
I’ve got to object to the terms “pay one’s taxes.” This implies that people somehow own “their taxes,” as if they are “my taxes,” and that people are under some kind of moral obligation to pay taxes. I do not believe that anyone owes taxes, anymore so than a person “owes” a carjacker their car, or that a person “owes” a mugger their wallet. Taxes that people in government claiming to have “authority” say that other people “owe” are just their opinion, they are not fact, just as it is the opinion of a carjacker that a person whom they are carjacking “owes” them a car, or the opinion of a mugger that the person whom they are mugging “owes” them their wallet.
Yes, I am recommending https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/02/open-thread-iv-for-discussions-of-small-l-libertarianism-and-anarchy/ for that.
The last 100 or so comments on use of the term “liberal”, whether to pay one’s taxes and the entire discussion of taxing the rich but not the poor (flowing from Tom’s excellent comment regarding stealing from the golfer rather than the lady with the baby carriage) have nothing to do with Gary Johnson’s musings about running again.
Should we move them to another spot and continue the discussion there?
Joshua
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/02/open-thread-iv-for-discussions-of-small-l-libertarianism-and-anarchy/ would be a good place for any spinoff thoughts that are unrelated to partisan politics which you may have from this discussion.
L – I’m fairly convinced that any response I made here would include too much repetition to be reasonable to include on a thread on another topic. I’m happy to continue the conversation – my email is [email protected], and perhaps we could have a few back and forths, then publish the correspondence here. That’s not a demand, just an offer – take it or leave it.
Thanks for the offer, but for now, I think I’ve said pretty much all I have to say on this topic, although I’m sure the subject will come up again on some other thread pretty soon. In any case, I’ve enjoyed our discussion here.
“were really not really very pro-liberty”
Should read, “were not really very pro-liberty…”
“Going solely by voting records doesn’t necessarily reflect the totality of a pols philosophy.”
True, and even more true when the voting records are put into a ranked indexing system by an interest group.
The RLC’s “Liberty Index” was designed, intentionally or not, to make Republicans look more libertarian than Democrats, and party-line-voting Republicans look more libertarian than “mavericks.”
That is, the index was predicated on how each member of Congress voted on a limited number of bills that were high-profile, introduced/sponsored by Republicans, and “pro-liberty” according to the index’s creator (Clifford Thies).
Now, it’s a given that if there’s a high-profile bill sponsored by Republicans, there will be a Democratic counter-proposal that’s either another bill or a set of amendments to the Republican bill; and if the Republicans have a majority in that house of Congress, the Republican bill will prevail and any Democratic amendments to it will fail, triggering Democrat party-line voting against the bill.
But even if the Democratic counter-proposal or amendments were MORE “libertarian” than the Republican bill, a vote for the Republican bill adds points to the member’s ranking and a vote against the Republican bill subtracts points from the member’s ranking. Ditto for a Republican who votes against the bill not because he’s anti-liberty, but because he doesn’t consider the bill “libertarian enough.”
One year, I did a similar ranking of Missouri’s US House members, “proving” that Democratic congresscritters were “more libertarian” than Republican congresscritters, but I didn’t rig it by just picking Democratic bills. Here it is:
http://knappster.blogspot.com/2005/01/confirmation-of-unexpected.html
I’d still say those results are defective, though.
“paulie
February 20, 2015 at 10:53 am
How long before Rittberg starts ‘Libertarians for Santorum’?”
This would probably only happen if Rick Santorum won the nomination, or if it looked like he was close to winning the nomination.
“Thomas L. Knapp
February 20, 2015 at 6:47 am
‘Actually, a few years back, the Republican Liberty Caucus’s ‘Liberty Index’ not only categorized Santorum as ‘Libertarian,’ but ranked him ‘Most Libertarian US Senator’ for the index’s two-year period.
I was pretty sure the RLC was useless by then, but that pretty much put a bow on the assessment.”
I remember hearing about the Republican Liberty Caucus about 10-15 or so years ago. I thought about joining it until I looked into them further, and saw that they stretched the definition of libertarian to the point where several people whom they classified as being libertarian, or pro-liberty Republicans, were really not really very pro-liberty, so I decided to not join.
Ya know, I pulled RS’s name out of a hat, as I associated him with the least liberty-minded R I could think of. There may be more more-archistic Rs that didn’t spring to mind. It could be that his voting record wasn’t as more-archist as his rhetoric and positions in the ’12 primaries, in my judgment.
Going solely by voting records doesn’t necessarily reflect the totality of a pols philosophy. In fact, I’d say votes on specific legislation could give an inaccurate sense of where a candidate stands.
I once asked Ron Paul if he would vote for a federal budget that had real nominal cuts but included line items that increased. He said No, he wouldn’t.
I find his standard to be ill advised.
L – I’m fairly convinced that any response I made here would include too much repetition to be reasonable to include on a thread on another topic. I’m happy to continue the conversation – my email is [email protected], and perhaps we could have a few back and forths, then publish the correspondence here. That’s not a demand, just an offer – take it or leave it.
I do want to make a quick comment on Mises – whether or not his views are closer to the modern American view than to Proudon, it’s very interesting to me to read the criticisms he made of American libertarians when he got here – and to note that quite a few of his political positions are such that he’d fail to get elected to the LNC or nominated for President if he tried today.
How long before Rittberg starts ‘Libertarians for Santorum’?
Actually, a few years back, the Republican Liberty Caucus’s “Liberty Index” not only categorized Santorum as “Libertarian,” but ranked him “Most Libertarian US Senator” for the index’s two-year period.
I was pretty sure the RLC was useless by then, but that pretty much put a bow on the assessment.
L: Taken to its logical conclusion, you end up with the Capozzi Standard, where “libertarian” means anything anyone wants it to mean.
me: Wow, I get my own standard!
If someone said Elizabeth Warren and Rick Santorum were Ls, how would I handle that? I can’t say they are “wrong,” but I might say EW and RS take so many positions away from the center of what most ID as L positions that I disagree with that person’s def and app of the L label.
Factual inaccuracy – your argument for this is based on the fact that American libertarians have generally premised themselves on the NAP. My point was that I see no reason to give special privilege to this group, given that the word has been used for quite some time before that to mean a wider variety of things.
This is true, but hardly seems relevant. The meanings of words change over time. For example, “gay” used to be a synonym for “merry”, so does that mean that modern arguments about gay rights are really just arguments over the right to be merry? There comes a point when you just have to accept that the meaning of a word has changed, and move on.
In addition, it is not true that, as they use it, it means “just the NAP, nothing more or less.” In fact, such a thing would be impossible, since “aggression” does not have a universally agreed-upon meaning. A person’s interpretation of what aggression means drags in a bunch of other baggage by necessity. For instance, the prototypical American libertarian would reject Proudon as a libertarian. On what grounds, exactly?
On the grounds that his interpretation of “aggression” does not match the one that is generally accepted these days. Yes, modern libertarians can have (relatively minor) disagreements about exactly what constitutes aggression. But that is not a reason to throw the baby out with the bath water. Based on your standard, words have no fixed meanings whatsoever, as people can always argue about the meaning of virtually any concept. Taken to its logical conclusion, you end up with the Capozzi Standard, where “libertarian” means anything anyone wants it to mean. So, if someone says, based on some bizarre interpretation of “aggression” that Hitler was a libertarian, or Stalin was a libertarian, who’s to say they’re wrong? Well, I will, that’s who.
I identify a lot of the content of what the prototypical American libertarian means by aggression with Randian concepts – which is independent of her rejection of libertarianism.
Fair enough, I suppose, although I personally have very mixed feelings about Rand. I certainly wouldn’t describe her as a major influence on my political thought, and I rarely hear other libertarians do so, either, except for the ones that explicitly refer to themselves as Objectivists.
Hijacking – I answered this in depth, but my point is that the hijacking claim is entirely premised on prior beliefs in the first place, and so isn’t really an argument, just a summary.
I don’t think you answered my point that the logic that leads someone to support the NAP would not necessarily lead them to support other positions that are said to be part of libertarianism.
I can just as easily claim that plumb-liners are ‘hijacking’ the term I inherited from Proudon, Molieri, and Mises.
Actually, I think that most modern “plumb-liners” would come much closer to agreeing with Mises’s definition of libertarianism than Mises would to agreeing with Proudhon’s definition. If so, would you then accuse Mises of being the hijacker, since Proudhon predates him?
The “not fully libertarian” implication. I think this arises, in part, from thinking that ideologies must be like logical systems, which would force them to follow the logical rules you used in your argument. I’m pretty sure they don’t work that way, though.
I’m not sure if I understand what you’re getting at here. If your ideology is to be logically coherent, I don’t see how it could work any other way. Are you saying that libertarianism shouldn’t strive to be logically coherent?
It also ignores the possibility that I can think a person is simply mistaken. If we agree on a set of premises, which together define X, and you don’t accept some of the conclusions that I think follow from the premises, this doesn’t kick you out of the group X, it just means you’re a member of the group X whom I believe to be mistaken.
Well, if you stipulate that one must agree with all of the premises to be a member of X, then I would submit that one of us (whichever is actually mistaken) is in fact not a member of X. However, I don’t see libertarianism as a simple threshold, where you either are or aren’t a libertarian, but rather as a continuum, where many people are libertarians, but some are more libertarian than others, depending on how often they deviate from the NAP. In other words, it’s not like pregnancy, where you either are pregnant or you’re not pregnant, and there’s no middle ground. It’s more like sexuality, where there’s not only pure heterosexuality on one end and pure homosexuality on the other, but also many degrees of bisexuality in between.
On the other hand, there is no end to so-called “plumb-liners” (see below) trying to write the rest of us out of the group. See Walter Block’s debates with Kevin Carson – not once did Carson suggest that Block is not a libertarian, but the reverse cannot be said.
I’m not trying to write anyone out of the movement. As far as I’m concerned, to the extent that you agree with the NAP, you’re a libertarian, and there’s nothing I (or anyone else) can do to change that. I’m merely asking that libertarians refrain from trying to change the definition of the term to provide intellectual cover for their other views that have nothing to do with the NAP.
(As an aside, I didn’t follow the entire Block/Carson debate, but from what I did see of it, I thought Block was generally correct from a substantive standpoint, but he often allowed himself to get out-debated by Carson, usually because he failed to take Carson’s arguments seriously enough, and frequently just dismissed them out of hand.)
I don’t discount the possibility of a person being a real plumb-liner and simply opposing aggression in all forms. I don’t discount that such people, in fact, exist – your comments suggest you may be an example. I do think, though, that the vast majority who identify as plumb-line or thin actually lean right, and that this is missed, by them and those who look at them, because libertarianism has become so much identified with the right in the first place.
I actually did at one time identify as a conservative, although I was actually a libertarian even then (albeit a much less consistent one than I am now). The reason I called myself a conservative was simply that I had never heard of libertarianism, and so I just assumed that you had to be a conservative or a progressive (although the term was “liberal” back then). I knew I wasn’t on the Left, so I assumed I must be on the Right. In fact, if I had been old enough to vote in ’92, I would have voted for Pat Buchanan, since, even though I disagreed with him on a lot of issues, he was the only conservative who had opposed the Persian Gulf War. A couple of years later, I discovered libertarianism, took the Quiz (scored an 80 on personal issues and a 90 on economic issues, IIRC) and immediately joined the LP.
OK, this comment is already monstrously long, but I do want to make one more point, which is that I’m not just trying to be pedantic about this, and I’m certainly not trying to write anyone out of the libertarian movement. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The reason that I am so opposed to the attempt to define libertarianism as something more or less than the NAP is because I think doing so limits the growth of the movement, in two ways. First, by making the concept more complicated, it makes it more difficult to understand, and thus, more difficult to communicate to potential converts. Second, by adding in additional “baggage”, it runs the risk of alienating some people who agree with the NAP but are unwilling to accept that extra baggage. This is similar to the way that third parties like the LP and the GP are often able to work together on single issue coalitions, but could never agree on enough things to, say, nominate a joint ticket.
L – there were 3 points there. I think I answered them, but I’ll summarize my answers, then get off this thread:
1. Factual inaccuracy – your argument for this is based on the fact that American libertarians have generally premised themselves on the NAP. My point was that I see no reason to give special privilege to this group, given that the word has been used for quite some time before that to mean a wider variety of things. In addition, it is not true that, as they use it, it means “just the NAP, nothing more or less.” In fact, such a thing would be impossible, since “aggression” does not have a universally agreed-upon meaning. A person’s interpretation of what aggression means drags in a bunch of other baggage by necessity. For instance, the prototypical American libertarian would reject Proudon as a libertarian. On what grounds, exactly? If you ask Proudon whether or not he accepts NAP, he’d say yes – the grounds for rejection would be that the American has dragged in some baggage about what aggression is. My suggestion is that, even in American history, this is not a universal – see Thomas Paine. I suspect that it began quite recently, and I identify a lot of the content of what the prototypical American libertarian means by aggression with Randian concepts – which is independent of her rejection of libertarianism.
2. Hijacking – I answered this in depth, but my point is that the hijacking claim is entirely premised on prior beliefs in the first place, and so isn’t really an argument, just a summary. I can just as easily claim that plumb-liners are ‘hijacking’ the term I inherited from Proudon, Molieri, and Mises.
3. The “not fully libertarian” implication. I think this arises, in part, from thinking that ideologies must be like logical systems, which would force them to follow the logical rules you used in your argument. I’m pretty sure they don’t work that way, though. It also ignores the possibility that I can think a person is simply mistaken. If we agree on a set of premises, which together define X, and you don’t accept some of the conclusions that I think follow from the premises, this doesn’t kick you out of the group X, it just means you’re a member of the group X whom I believe to be mistaken.
On the other hand, there is no end to so-called “plumb-liners” (see below) trying to write the rest of us out of the group. See Walter Block’s debates with Kevin Carson – not once did Carson suggest that Block is not a libertarian, but the reverse cannot be said.
Why I say “so-called:” I don’t discount the possibility of a person being a real plumb-liner and simply opposing aggression in all forms. I don’t discount that such people, in fact, exist – your comments suggest you may be an example. I do think, though, that the vast majority who identify as plumb-line or thin actually lean right, and that this is missed, by them and those who look at them, because libertarianism has become so much identified with the right in the first place.
pf: …nor was I ever very heavy handed
me: I agree. You are one fair dude.
I’s jus’ funnin’ with ya…. 😉
Well, I’m certainly far from perfect and none of the rules are scientifically precise, nor was I ever very heavy handed about enforcing them in this thread. It’s true that pretty much everything being discussed in this thread lately is not relevant to the original topic and is more appropriate for https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/02/open-thread-iv-for-discussions-of-small-l-libertarianism-and-anarchy/ , and my suggestion is that we take it over there. But on the other hand, this thread is old, and a lot of people already got to weigh in on the original topic, nor is there anything stopping anyone else from doing so now (the irrelevant discussion might be a deterrent, but mileage may vary). Plus, https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/02/paul-frankel-is-oai-diverting-resources-from-the-lp/ goes more to the original topic if anyone would like to discuss it some more. I’m less concerned with threadjacking when a thread is already several days old and well into the triple digit comment zone.
Of some relevance, I seem to recall that GJ sometimes says Ls are very conservative on some issues and very liberal on others. I cringe when I hear that, not because it’s not true, but because the way he puts it is unartful and makes Ls sound bi-polar.
If he said Ls are for maximizing freedom on both economic and social issues. We may sometimes sound conservative and sometimes liberal, but that’s because UNLIKE conservatives and liberals, libertarians are consistent. We want the government out of your pocket AND your bedroom.
Hey, we agree again! That’s twice on the same thread. Must be a full moon or something…
re: the discussion of the word “liberal” a few comments up, first, I’m not sure what that has to do with THIS thread? Shouldn’t that be discussed elsewhere, PF? Or do you apply your rules inconsistently? 😉
On that point, when I first found out about the “old” use of the word “liberal,” I found it kinda ironic and interesting. Now it just strikes me as anachronistic mostly. Why battle over the meaning of words? To what end?
The English language has always been evolving, and that appears likely to continue.
Of some relevance, I seem to recall that GJ sometimes says Ls are very conservative on some issues and very liberal on others. I cringe when I hear that, not because it’s not true, but because the way he puts it is unartful and makes Ls sound bi-polar.
If he said Ls are for maximizing freedom on both economic and social issues. We may sometimes sound conservative and sometimes liberal, but that’s because UNLIKE conservatives and liberals, libertarians are consistent. We want the government out of your pocket AND your bedroom.
Or something.
JK, I’ll be happy to have this debate with you. But first, I would ask that, rather than bringing up bizarre straw man arguments about Rand (who no one else in this thread has even mentioned, and who herself thoroughly rejected and even despised the “libertarian” label), you would instead respond to the three arguments I made earlier. In case you’ve forgotten them, they were in this comment: https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/02/gary-johnson-i-hope-to-run-for-president-again-would-do-so-as-libertarian/#comment-1111292
Should read, “because he did time…”
Larken Rose had not stopped baiting the IRS, and he still does not file taxes.
Also, just because did time in prison, it does not mean he was wrong. The government never refuted one thing he said.
Maybe Larken Rose is being too lazy? He should work even harder to “wake up the sheeple” and earn himself repeated convictions with longer sentences. He could work his way up to a sentence of 13 years and 7 months like the one currently being served by Irwin Schiff, or maybe more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_history_in_the_United_States#Old_arguments_and_new
Right, so in other words most people are too “lazy” to get screwed over in court and do 15 months in the penitentiary like Larken Rose did by being less “lazy” than they are, and now Larken Rose gets to stay on this side of the bars and not go back for a longer stay by dropping his public baiting of the IRS and calling everyone else who doesn’t do what he no longer does “lazy”. Makes total sense.
Below, Larken Rose explains why he does not discuss the illegal application of the income tax that much anymore. It basically boils down to the fact that most people are too lazy to learn the truth, and they just pay the tax due to their belief in authority, as in, “The man from the government said that I’m supposed to pay this tax, so I suppose that I have to pay it,” never mind if that man from the government is lying from his teeth about what the actually is. He also gets into how he got screwed over in court by the government, and how the government never refuted anything that he said.
Larken Rose: What Happened to 861?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8suBaugqXp4
Tell me about this hijacking. We use the word as it was originally coined, and in keeping with its meaning and spirit for hundreds of years. I’d say the hijacking is the destruction of the beautiful legacy of libertarianism, the stripping away of its spirit, leaving just separable policy ideas, all based on the laughable premise that reasonable people cannot disagree about what constitutes aggression, mixed with a jumble of Randian non-sequitors. It is not hijacking, if words in fact have meanings, to use a word as it has always been used, except by a group of Americans influenced by a novelist. Even in America the fuller meaning of libertarian existed, as I mentioned, in such people as Thomas Paine (and, of course, the small group of us trying today to maintain this meaning.)
In short, we’re not hijacking anything; the hijacking occurred when it was decided to limit an existing word to an ambiguous principle called NAP (and, for some reason, to an odd notion of heroism, a weird view of corporations, and deontological absolutism.)
The libertarian case against regressive taxation is pretty straightforward to me: government ought not to promote inequality. The attempt to reduce libertarianism to NAP simply sidesteps any questions touching the world as it is. It lets us ignore the difference between government aggressing while promoting inequality, and government aggressing without doing so. Neither is good; one is worse.
Now most of us on the libertarian left aren’t all that interested in writing people out of libertarianism. But since that activity seems to hold so much interest for people who, ironically, and interested in writing out anyone who uses the word as it’s always been used until Rand, I feel somewhat disinclined to be careful about not responding in kind.
I agree. Very well said.
@Thomas Knapp
I’ve had the same thought. I’m happy to let them have “progressive” if we can have “liberal” back, which is why I tend to use the latter more than the former. Also I think it’s better to describe our opponents by the name which they are commonly known and self-describe, instead of trying to talk about “statists” and the like, which comes across as silly libertarian jargon to most uninitiated listeners. Though any time you get a chance to accuse progressives of being “illiberal”, run with it, because in that sense the word still has more of the original meaning.
But even with that trend, the “liberal/conservative” dichotomy is still pretty firmly entrenched. I don’t think Libertarians are going to get away with calling ourselves unqualified “liberals” outside of an academic context any time soon. Maybe in another generation or two. Until then, “classical liberal” gets the idea cross fairly well.
I was just about to say something like that, but less eloquently than Tom did.
Andy,
Lately I’ve been thinking you may eventually get your wish.
For a long time — I kind of link the timeframe to George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign — conservatives worked to make “liberal” a toxic word. That really bore fruit in the 1990s with the constant Rush Limbaugh drumbeat against Bill Clinton and Co.
For the last 20 years or so, state leftists have more and more gone to identifying themselves as “progressives.” And as their self-description as liberals dies out, so does the Republican-manufactured toxicity.
That leaves kind of a yawning historical gap. Modern “progressives” tend to be identified a lot more as supporters of “big government programs” (e.g. Rachel Maddow standing in front of Hoover Dam) than as supporters of the core “civil liberties” agenda of 20th century liberalism.
It seems to me that reclaiming that core “civil liberties” agenda and using it to bridge classical liberalism with a new “liberalism” that, like its classical forebear, was libertarian in political character, might be very doable.
tk: But my enjoyment of yanking other people’s chains is immutable and eternal.
me: Mos’ def’!
I think there’s a lot more ground to be had in reclaiming [classical] liberal than there is “left”, and even that’s a long shot. But Knapp is right, it can be a fun point to make, and given a reasonable explanation can actually be a nice inroads to some voters on the left, particularly if you have reasonably-informed left-progressives who equate “libertarian” with some kind of extreme far-right subset of American conservatism. .
I’ve said before, and I mean it, that if I could simply call myself a liberal and be properly understood, I would.
LOL, you have a point there.
Yes, concepts do evolve over time. But my enjoyment of yanking other people’s chains is immutable and eternal.
Well, concepts do evolve over time.
There are no other kinds of libertarianism. If it’s not left-libertarianism, by definition it is a deviation from libertarianism (and from leftism — the first really big right-deviationist was Marx).
It’s still useful to distinguish left-libertarianism from other kinds of libertarianism. I don’t see what the problem with that is.
L: old archaic meaning of “leftist” that was derived from the French Assembly,
me: We agree for once!!!
L, most dictionaries have multiple definitions of words. Check it out!
TK, if you’re referring to the old archaic meaning of “leftist” that was derived from the French Assembly, I think you’re wasting your time trying to reclaim it. That ship sailed decades (if not centuries) ago. Better to let it go, and focus on keeping “libertarian” from suffering the same fate.
is there some Terminology Panel that hired you to be sheriff of the word “libertarian”?
Your nihilist fantasies aside, words have meanings.
“Left libertarianism” is a redundancy intended to counteract the attempted hijacking of the term “libertarian” by rightists.
“Leftism” and “libertarianism” are politically coterminous. You can’t be a consistent libertarian without being a consistent leftist, nor can you be a consistent leftist without being a consistent libertarian.
Personally, I’d be happy to use either of the terms alone as synonymous with the other, but doing so confuses people who don’t understand that they mean the same thing.
In the time you wrote this, you COULD have answered MP’s question!
I already did. He just repeated your silly “equation”, remember?
L: But please avoid trying to hijack the term “libertarian”,
me: Are you self-appointed only, or is there some Terminology Panel that hired you to be sheriff of the word “libertarian”? 😉
L: We’ve been over this a thousand times: I have a life that involves more than IPR; apparently, you do not. Very sad, but not my fault!
me: Deflection number 173! 😉 In the time you wrote this, you COULD have answered MP’s question!
Except, I suspect, you have no answer.
…in America, libertarianism has been taken as equivalent to the NAP…
Hence, I object to terms such as “left libertarian”, “right libertarian”, “thick libertarian”, “thin libertarian”, and so forth. If you wish to coin new terms for things such as [libertarianism + X, Y, and Z] or [libertarianism – X, Y, and Z], feel free to do so. But please avoid trying to hijack the term “libertarian”, in the same way that the Left previously hijacked the term “liberal” from us.
…generally Langa runs away at this point…
We’ve been over this a thousand times: I have a life that involves more than IPR; apparently, you do not. Very sad, but not my fault!
Tax protester legal arguments are a collection of absurdities, out-of-context quotes, deliberate misreadings, arcane semantic contortions, and more than a few outright falsehoods. Judges are entirely correct in greeting such arguments with hostility, it’s a waste of the court’s time and no legitimate lawyer will even present such a case. Which means if you want to present those arguments you have to do it pro se, and anybody who represents themselves pro se has a fool for a client, as the saying goes. Those who advise others to try it, and land themselves in prison, are the worst kind of charlatan.
If you want to argue against the morality or utility of the income tax, I’m right there with you. If you want to argue that the law doesn’t actually exist, you’re delusional.
jk: libertarianism has been taken as equivalent to the NAP
me: Clarifying…been taken by SOME!
Andy,
The argument whether income taxes are wrong is separate from the one over whether they are legal. I’ll agree that they are wrong. Hopefully you will agree that if you don’t pay them, go around advocating that others not pay them on the basis of a claim that they are not legal, get taken to court and yourself make the claim in court that they are not legal, you are highly likely (albeit not 100% certain) to end up getting locked up, and that no single legal theory out of the many competing ones that you might use to stake your claim is even close to guaranteed to work at keeping you out of shackles if you find yourself in a position to have to make such defense arguments in court. If you don’t agree with that, I can only hope you never have to find out the hard way.
The most vocal right-libertarians have never been shy about declaring left-libertarians less libertarian, or not libertarian at all. I see no reason to be more careful than they are. To be honest, I think many right-libertarian positions entirely miss the boat, as do libertarian arguments that leave no room for utility concerns (note: I’m not saying every argument must be utilitarian, I’m saying that certain deontological arguments, if believed, make it impossible for utility to be of any concern. Such arguments are, to my mind, completely wrong-headed since I do not consider it possible for the morally right position to be, for instance, also the society-destroying position.)
The key is the inclusion of “in America, at least.” I object to the homogenized, deradicalized American libertarianism – and, by the way, it hasn’t always been that way. See, for instance, Thomas Paine, who forms a part of what I consider the forgotten American left-libertarian option.
I might remind you that Mises himself was dismayed by what he found when he looked at American libertarianism. Notice how many self-identified libertarians are entirely ignored in America, while they form a part of any historically recognizable libertarianism.
But yes, in America, libertarianism has been taken as equivalent to the NAP, and under that view, it is equally wrong to steal a man’s last dollar, and to steal a dollar from a millionaire beneficiary of protectionism.
As to claw-backs, yes, of course it would be better to not give privilege in the first place, and that should be the first argument of the moralist and the philosopher. I am a politician, I work in the art of the possible (although I believe that the politician should strive to be also a statesman, and should be inspiration and motivational. I would not counsel MLK to stop being so inspirational if he had run for office.) In terms of immediate impact, a claw-back can be done, unspooling centuries of privilege requires a set of policies that will work their effect over time. I see nothing wrong with working for both.
Martin, just because Irwin Schiff went to prison it does not mean that Irwin Schiff was wrong. Irwin Schiff was railroaded in his trial, as the judge prevented him from presenting certain evidence to the jury.
There are people in the Tax Honesty Movement that the government has been reluctant to go after, or who they have gone after, but whom they failed to get a conviction against, such as Bob Schulz, Joe Bannister, and Vernice Kuglin (sp?).
Even if a person goes to jail or prison, it does not automatically mean that they are wrong. People are wrongfully convicted in this country on a disturbingly regular basis.
Quoth RC:
“I think it?s a mistake if lessarchists play the game of class warfare.”
Since this is getting waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay far from the actual thread topic, I’ve taken the liberty of answering your question over at “Open Thread IV for discussions of small l libertarianism and anarchy”:
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/02/open-thread-iv-for-discussions-of-small-l-libertarianism-and-anarchy/#comment-1111562
MP, generally Langa runs away at this point…and yet hope springs eternal!
Such questions fry his/her circuits, it appears. 😉
….their skills….
“You all seem to be missing the most important part of my claim, which was: “From a libertarian perspective, is stealing from the rich any better than stealing from the poor?” ”
I did not miss it. See my original response.
L: political futility of targeting the rich,
me: I would think that the strength of lessarchy is that it is good for all. The hallmarks of a healthy civil society is that there’s a commitment to domestic tranquility and equity.
I think it’s a mistake if lessarchists play the game of class warfare. The rich, poor and those in between should over time do better materially and psychologically, as the dog-eat-dog aspects that a large state promotes is really in no one’s real interest.
It would also be honest to say that bureaucrats and the deeply politically connected (generally but not always the more affluent) would lose their privileged positions in the social order. Even there, their efforts to maintain a large state would no longer be a valuable skill, but that there skills should be re-purposed in a peaceful direction.
Tom, I agree; my comment was limited to a moral argument against taxation, not a practical one for the LP to shout from every street corner. (For that, we have Irwin Shiff who, as Martin aptly pointed out, will celebrate his 87th birthday in jail.)
From a moral pov, it is equally wrong to tax the golfer as the lady with the baby carriage. But from a practical, political one, if we appear to only want to protect the rich, we lose the argument right off.
One brilliant thing the Clintons are really good at is feigning the appearance that they actually care about the poor.
TK, I don’t disagree with you about the political futility of targeting the rich, and in fact, I hinted at a similar notion way back in my original comment, when I noted that the regressive nature of the “Fair” Tax (sans “prebate”), while irrelevant from the standpoint of purist libertarian theory, could be a problem in practice, as it might very well make it tougher to sell politically.
Of course, that’s a bit of a moot point, as I think the vast majority of libertarians are strongly opposed to the “Fair” Tax (with or without the prebate) for numerous other reasons.
L: the easiest is to simply point out that the libertarian prohibition on taking other people’s property is in no way based on the instrumental value of said property.
me: I prefer to use the language as precisely as I can. So I challenge that there is such a thing as a “libertarian prohibition.” There, I submit, is no such thing.
Some Ls believe what you believe. Some don’t. And that’s on the level of a CONSTRUCT.
To my knowledge, MOST/VIRTUALLY ALL Ls recognize that there is a State and it needs taxes to operate, at least for the foreseeable future. Those of us who do are far more practically-minded than you appear to be, and we recognize that the particulars of how the State raises revenues is an important consideration.
Yes, you can simplistically declare that taxation is theft, taxes should be zero ASAP.
I once drank that Kool Aid, too.
I now see the obvious: That such statements are futile and very probably counter-productive, as it leads to loopy conclusions.
Far more productive to advocate things that move things in the DIRECTION of liberty than pronouncing scary end-states. Maybe like TK’s raise the exemption works best, though I’d want to consider some kind of rebate/refund for FICA, too. I might want to cap tax aggregate preferences and lower marginal rates as well. That might be the beginnings of a compelling public offering that moves things toward liberty.
Wow. Great comment by Tom. Imagine what the LP could accomplish at the ballot box if it effectively articulated a message like that…millions and millions of Americans would respond positively. That’s the message they’ve been waiting for.
Mark,
I’m unaware of any “legitimizing theft” going on here. The question is, with all of this theft going on and with limited ability to affect the politics of what is stolen from whom, where should we concentrate our efforts?
I am all for the elimination of taxation, full stop. I will constantly advocate for that and whenever see an opportunity to get there, I’ll go all-in for it. In the meantime, when presented with discrete choices for the REDUCTION of theft, I will consider various factors including who’s hurt worse by what theft and how possible it is to achieve the proposed reduction. Not as a matter of economic calculation (I’ve written elsewhere on why that’s an impossiblity), but as a matter of human kindness and practical politics.
Which brings me back to langa, who writes:
“libertarianism makes no such distinction.”
True. But the Libertarian Party is not libertarianism. (l)ibertarianism is a constraint. The Libertarian Party is a political organization trying to implement that constraint, as best possible at all times, in a political system which does not recognize that constraint as valid.
Our Statement of Principles says where we want to take society — to a status in which libertarianism, aka the non-aggression principle — is observed in all particulars.
In my opinion, our platform should also do that with respect to all issues. At present, the platform doesn’t do that. It is in essence a long-term program. I would prefer that the platform be brought into complete harmony with the SoP and that the LP biennially adopt a program of specific, currently implementable measures for bringing society CLOSER to the goals in the SoP and an SoP-harmonized platform.
For example, the platform could clearly oppose taxation of any kind, while the program could recommend e.g. a regular, annual automatic increase in the personal exemption to the income tax to REDUCE taxation (and that program should also oppose any tax increases, any spending increases, and hopefully recommend specific spending cuts in addition to whatever tax cuts it proposes).
The thing about the program is “who are we trying to appeal to for votes and support in our attempt to move society closer to our end goals through electoral politics.”
In my opinion, the Democrats and Republicans have the support of “the rich” sewn up. Why? Simple: Because large, wealthy, focused special interests fund their campaigns and get what they want in return for that funding. Any little lagniappes for the poor are just that — crumbs thrown to the voters to induce them to let the gravy train keep rolling down the tracks. And in many cases, they are just disguised subsidies (if you think that food stamps and school lunches are about feeding the poor, you are naive — their chief proponent is big agriculture, which loves having billions of dollars forcibly directed to the purchase of its products). Karl Marx was wrong about a lot of things, but he was absolutely right in noting that the state is “the executive committee of the ruling class.”
So as a matter of practical politics, the voter niche open to the LP’s persuasion is “the not rich.” Therefore, we should aim our proposals at them. Not proposals to steal more on their purported behalf, but proposals to force government to steal less FROM THEM.
Personally, I’d like to see it broader than just an annual, regular increase in the personal exemption to the income tax. I’d like to see the same exemption applied to FICA taxes. And I’d love to see state LPs advocating for a similar, and constantly rising, exemption from property taxes.
At the other end of those exemptions, I also relish the fight over their effects. What? Poor little government agency isn’t bringing in enough money to do what it does? GOOD. DO LESS OF IT, THEN.
One problem with the legitimizing theft argument is that it does not consider any other source of helping the lady with the baby carriage.
Most people are generous and voluntarily give to charity. I know of a man who was out of work for a long time, so I mailed him a check.
Yes, the man whose golf fees were taken can better afford the $50 loss; in fact it’s just an annoyance. But is it morally correct to steal from him, rather than letting him choose how to spend his own funds, merely because the thief has what the thief considers to be a better way for the $50 to be spent?
“If there’s one thing we need to get through our heads it’s that they’ve got the system sewn up and that we will never win while that system is still functioning as they’ve set it up to function.”
That’s true. The two major parties seem to have the whole the system completely under their control at the moment, but there will come a breaking point — one, I believe, that will occur sooner rather than later.
MP, RC, TK (and anyone else whose initials I may have neglected to list):
You all seem to be missing the most important part of my claim, which was: “From a libertarian perspective, is stealing from the rich any better than stealing from the poor?”
I never once said that in my personal opinion, there is no difference between stealing from the rich and stealing from the poor. I said that libertarianism makes no such distinction.
As for RC’s silly hypothetical, I could refute it in a thousand different ways, but the easiest is to simply point out that the libertarian prohibition on taking other people’s property is in no way based on the instrumental value of said property.
Finally, in regard to TK’s hypothetical, if I were forced to steal from one of those people, I’d probably choose to steal from the pharmaceutical guy as well. But that choice would have nothing to do with libertarianism.
To reiterate once more (so there’s no confusion), libertarians are free to hold any personal views that they choose. Just don’t call those views “libertarian” when they clearly are not.
Darcy,
Thanks! I’m pretty egotistical, but even I think you’re misoverestimating me 😀
If I could offer one reason for LP members to read my book, it would be because it includes a lot of the same mistakes I way made back when that a whole new generation is making all over again now (and that some from my generation and previous generations continue to make — “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.”
And I don’t think I have any plan that would leave the Democrats and Republicans not standing a chance in 2016. If there’s one thing we need to get through our heads it’s that they’ve got the system sewn up and that we will never win while that system is still functioning as they’ve set it up to function. It’s going to take a major crisis, and we don’t have the ability to manufacture that crisis. The best we can hope for is to keep fighting and hold ourselves ready to exploit the crisis when it comes.
Tom Knapp is arguably the most intellectually profound — and the most insightful — libertarian of our time. Everyone here should read his book. LP members, in particular, should heed what he has to say….nobody else in American politics speaks the truth like he does. If the Libertarian Party had more people like Tom calling the shots — instead of trying to play the part of the GOP’s neglected baby brother — the Democrats and Republicans wouldn’t stand a chance in 2016.
Nobody in the Libertarian Party comes remotely close to his use of our language, his perceptive way of stating the way things really are. He’s long been my favorite writer.
The vast majority of Americans — the poor, working-class and middle-income folks — are all ‘riff-raff’ in the eyes of our country’s wealthiest citizens…if you doubt that, you still have a lot to learn. A lot more.
Though Tom expresses it far more eloquently than I can possibly state in this brief post, the Libertarian Party should stop cuddling the comfortable — those who have prospered unfairly from this country’s enormously uneven economic playing field — and begin battling for everyone else.
More to L….
To me, in all candor, it IS *sad* that your philosophy is so limited that you don’t see the difference in TK’s example above.
But it’s never too late to get really radical and reconsider your philosophy afresh.
langa,
As a “thin” libertarian, I agree with you. All that libertarianism, aka the non-aggression principle, tells us is when it’s not OK to use force (it’s not OK to initiate force).
But most libertarians of all types are also human beings who hold other convictions or other practical opinions above and beyond — but not superseding — the non-aggression principle.
Scenario 1: I am a thief. I happen to know that single working mother Margaret pushes her shabby baby carriage with her baby in it to the store once a week, carrying all the cash ($50) that she has for grocery shopping that week in a little purse next to the kid. One day as she is walking down the street, she stops for a moment and bends over to pick up an abandoned bottle that she can get 10 cents in deposit money for. I walk by and snatch the little purse from the carriage while she’s not looking.
Scenario 2: I am a thief. I happen to know that pharmaceuticals magnate Mike drives his Mercedes convertible to the golf course once a week, carrying his greens fees ($50) in a little pocket on the side of his golf bag in the back seat. One day as he is exiting his car, he notices his $300 golf shoes are untied and bends over to tie them. I walk by and snatch the $50 bill from the pocket of the golf bag while he’s not looking.
In both cases I stole. In both cases I initiated force. Those are equally violations of the non-aggression principle. And you’re goddamn right I think that one of them is worse.
Now, let’s pretend that I’m not the thief. The thief is the state, and I’m the one neuron in his brain that controls not whether or not he steals — he’s GOING to steal — but whether he steals Margaret’s grocery money or Mike’s greens fees. You’re goddamn right Mike’s going to have to wheel that convertible home for another fifty bucks or borrow it from one of his friends while they bitch about those thieving riff-raff.
L and MP, my sustenance point was no joke. L may think it’s “sad,” but then L clings to a rigid, old school def of his political philosophy, one that most recognize is unworkable.
Clear your mind for a moment, L. Forget your Rothbard, your von Mises, your Spenser.
OK?
Now, tell us why it’s OK/not worse to tax a person past sustenance.
“L: From a libertarian perspective, is stealing from the rich any better than stealing from the poor?
[RC]: Since sustenance of the human body requires $X, and the poor only have $X while the rich have more, the answer is yes.
I’m honestly not sure whether this answer was a joke or not (humor is hard to discern online).
If it was, it’s pretty clever.
If it wasn’t, it’s pretty sad.”
Just for the sake of argument let’s say it is not a joke. How would you counter the argument besides characterizing it as pretty sad?
For anyone who isn’t aware, the gentleman in the screencap from the video above is Irwin Schiff, who ended up doing prison time for practicing what he preaches and preaching what he practices about the tax code more than once, and in a few days will turn 87 years old in federal prison.
According to wikipedia,
“Irwin Allan Schiff (born February 24, 1928) is an American and prominent figure in the tax protester movement. Schiff is known for writing and promoting literature that claims the United States income tax is applied incorrectly. He has lost several civil cases against the federal government and has a record of multiple convictions for various federal tax crimes. Schiff is serving a 13-plus year sentence for tax crimes with his location listed as the Federal Correctional Institution at Fort Worth, Texas. His projected release date has been changed from October 7, 2016 to July 26, 2017.”
Many other people with theories about income tax law that are at odds with the prevailing interpretation by the IRS have likewise ended up in prison, had their property confiscated and/or wages garnished. If you are interested in joining them in having such experiences you may want to follow their advice regarding whom the income tax does and does not apply to.
There are many different alternate theories regarding the legality of the income tax, and it’s true that every once in a while some of them win in court. However, it is also true that followers of every one of these arguments have ended up behind bars and divested of their ownings in other cases. If you like those kinds of chances, go ahead and give that wheel a spin.
It’s likewise true that millions of people manage to avoid income taxes while escaping these consequences. However, the ones that go around preaching these esoteric theories openly, especially if they try to recruit other followers, and/or trying to apply them once actually facing active collection efforts by the IRS in the courts, do not typically fare very well.
Check out this clip from Aaron Russo’s film, “America: From Freedom to Fascism” as it does a good job of explaining why the income tax is misapplied in most cases in this country, as in why most Americans are not legally obligated to file or pay the income tax. The part where Aaron Russo meets with several experts from the Tax Honesty Movement starts at 2 minutes, 45 seconds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-HOh1fb2d8
Oh, and one more thing: While it might be possible to concoct an actual libertarian argument that money obtained from corporate welfare should be taxed at a 100% rate, such a stance would seem to be redundant and pedantic. It would be much simpler and more logical to just stick to the traditional libertarian position of opposing corporate welfare in the first place.
Paulie said: This may be one of those thick libertarianism things. I don’t necessarily think all my values have to boil down to only being about libertarianism. Regardless of whether it is more libertarian or not, it’s just a shitty thing to do to screw over people who are barely holding their head above water as it is, over and above being politically stupid to advocate it.
Joshua said: I think a good case can be made (albeit not a NAP-based case, probably) that regressive taxes are worse, all else being equal. I don’t think being a libertarian prevents me from thinking it’s worse to rob poor people than rich people – especially given the amount of corporate welfare that exists today.
I say: I agree that libertarians are certainly free to hold these sorts of opinions, and in fact, I hold plenty of opinions that aren’t based on libertarianism (for simplicity’s sake, I will call these “personal” opinions, even though they may well be supported by many other people, or even by other, non-libertarian schools of thought).
In fact, my recent attempts to play Devil’s Advocate on another thread notwithstanding, I have no problem with libertarians voicing these “personal” opinions. The one thing to which I do object is when these “personal” opinions are said to be libertarian positions. I object to this practice for 3 reasons:
First, it is factually inaccurate. Libertarianism, as it is commonly understood (in America, at least) is a theory about when it is legitimate to use force. No more, no less. Trying to add in other things merely makes the concept more confusing, and also runs the risk of alienating those who oppose aggression, but are unwilling to get on board with all these other ideas.
Second, by hijacking the word “libertarian”, it attempts to provide intellectual cover for these positions, by implying that the same logic that leads people to support libertarianism should also lead them to support these other positions. While it is possible that such might be the case, establishing that would require an actual argument, rather than merely an assertion.
Finally, it necessarily implies that anyone who does not hold these positions is somehow “less libertarian” than someone who does. This holds true even if it is not the intention of the person who employs this practice. After all, if opinion X is “part” of libertarianism, then someone who disagrees with X is only embracing “part” of libertarianism, and thus, is not “fully” libertarian.
L: From a libertarian perspective, is stealing from the rich any better than stealing from the poor?
[RC]: Since sustenance of the human body requires $X, and the poor only have $X while the rich have more, the answer is yes.
I’m honestly not sure whether this answer was a joke or not (humor is hard to discern online).
If it was, it’s pretty clever.
If it wasn’t, it’s pretty sad.
“February 17, 2015 at 8:21 pm
“the section of the Constitution that prohibits a direct tax was never repealed”
Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration?”
Amendments change/supersede conflicting prior language. That’s why they’re called “amendments” and not “random additions what sounded good at the time.”
Perhaps you missed what the Supreme Court said, AFTER 16TH AMENDMENT HAD BEEN ALLEGEDLY RATIFIED.
Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co. (1916)
This Supreme Court case, Brushaber v. Union Pacific R.R. Co., is the very first decision handed down by the Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of the Subtitle A income tax laws enacted in 1913. HOWEVER, it is not a case about any individual (Brushaber) paying income tax directly, it is a case about contesting the legal duty TO COLLECT INCOME TAX, not pay it ! This decision, together with the Stanton decision, a case about a CORPORATION paying the income tax on its MINING (of commodities) activity, handed down consecutively, immediately after this one, are still the recognized, controlling Supreme Court decisions on the issue of the constitutionality of the income tax laws.
In the very first sentence, of the very first paragraph of this decision, it clearly states:
“As a stockholder…the appellant filed his bill to enjoin the corporation from complying with the income tax provisions of the tariff act of October 3, 1913.” Brushaber, supra at 9
The Supreme Court obviously disagreed with Tom Knapp that the 16th amendment somehow did away with the part of the Constitution that prohibits direct taxes on the American people, and says that direct taxes have to be apportioned to the states based on the census.
“Here the Court states that it is an erroneous conclusion to believe that the 16th Amendment did away with apportionment requirement regarding direct taxes. And, in further denying the proposition and contention that the 16th Amendment authorizes a direct income tax, the Court very clearly states:
“…it clearly results that the proposition and the contentions under it, if acceded to, would cause one provision of the Constitution to destroy another; that is, they would result in bringing the provisions of the Amendment exempting a direct tax from apportionment into irreconcilable conflict with the general requirement that all direct taxes be apportioned … This result … would create radical and destructive changes in our constitutional system and multiply confusion.” Brushaber v. Union Pac. R.R., 240 U.S. 1, 12
The Supreme Court ruled in Stanton vs. Baltic Mining: Stanton v. Baltic Mining Co., 240 US 103 (1916)
“…by the previous ruling, it was settled that the provisions of the 16th Amendment conferred no new power of taxation but simply prohibited the previous complete and plenary power of income taxation possessed by Congress from the beginning from being taken out of the category of INDIRECT taxation to which it inherently belonged..”
So, in Stanton vs. Baltic Mining, the Supreme Court said that the 16th amendment “conferred no new power of taxation,” and in the Brushaber vs. Union Pacific Railroad case, the Supreme Court called the income tax a foreign revenue tariff, and they said that IT DID NOT, “cause one provision of the Constitution to destroy another,” meaning that the Constitution’s prohibition against direct taxes on the American people was still in effect, and that direct taxes had to be apportioned among the states, based on the census.
So this part of the Constitution, according to the Supreme Court (a decision which has never been overturned), is still in effect today:
“No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. (Article I, Section 9, Clause 4)
Now, if you go back before the 16th amendment was allegedly ratified (which evidence indicates is was not), in 1895 there was a case called Pollock vs. Farmers Loan & Trust.
In the early 1890’s Congress passed a law that tried to impose a direct income tax on the interest and dividends from stocks and bonds, paid by companies to shareholders, and on interest earned on deposits at U.S. banks. This tax was challenged immediately, and the challenge was settled by the Supreme Court in 1895 in the Pollock v. Farmer’s Loan & Trust Co. decision.
This decision states that it is UNconstitutional for Congress to try to impose a federal tax on the income of the U.S citizens derived from those sources, because that would be a Direct Tax WITHOUT APPORTIONMENT, which Congress is not authorized to enact, and is in fact, specifically prohibited by the Constitution (Article 1 Section 2, Clause 3).
Excerpts from the decision:
“…Ordinarily, all taxes paid primarily by persons who can shift the burden upon someone else, or who are under no legal compulsion to pay them, are considered indirect taxes; but a tax upon property holders in respect of their estates, whether real or personal, or of the income yielded by such estates, and the payment of which cannot be avoided, are direct taxes …”
So, as per the US Supreme Court, the federal government did not have the legal ability to put a direct income tax on the American people without apportionment before the 16th amendment, and they STILL DID NOT HAVE IT AFTER THE 16th amendment, and they STILL DO NOT HAVE THIS LEGAL AUTHORITY TODAY.
The government today gets away with the income tax scam because most people are too lazy to do any research on their own, and they are trained to be compliant slaves in the “education” system and by most of the media.
” after the 16th amendment was allegedly ratified (there is evidence that it was not)”
This is about on par with arguing that the judge is a fraud because the flag has a gold fringe on it, or that a subpoena isn’t really addressed to you because your name is in all caps and that only refers to the fictional secret corporation the government created in your name. It has about the same relationship to actual law as astrology does to astronomy.
and of course they were not “prohibited.”
“the section of the Constitution that prohibits a direct tax was never repealed”
Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration?”
Amendments change/supersede conflicting prior language. That’s why they’re called “amendments” and not “random additions what sounded good at the time.”
Tom,, the section of the Constitution that prohibits a direct tax was never repealed, and the US Supreme Court recognized this even after the 16th amendment was allegedly ratified (there is evidence that it was not), as they ruled that the income tax was a foreign revenue tariff, as in it was properly a tax on foreigners working within the USA, or on American businesses that dealt in international commerce. It did not apply to most Americans.
“The income tax started out being very simple, and the sales tax could be loaded with all sorts of exemptions and complexity after it is enacted.”
Yep. Just for shits and grins, in case the idea is ever enacted, here are my predictions:
1) There’s no argument against exemptions, because it already comes with one — on “used goods.” As soon as the thing is passed (actually, probably before it is passed), the powerful industry lobbies will start lining up for exemptions and they’ll get them. The first three will be homebuilders/mortgage brokers, the auto industry and big insurance/big pharma. “Nobody wants to build a new home/new car because of the 30% tax, and the prices of used homes/used cars are through the roof because that’s where all the demand is going. Patients are dying because they can’t afford (read: Their insurers don’t want to pay) a 30% tax on top of the cost of their prescriptions.” After that will come all the domestic manufacturers claiming that even with foreign companies paying the same tax, US goods just can’t compete. “It’s of vital importance that we save the American geegaw industry! You must either exempt American geegaws from the tax, or else double the tax on imported geegaws!”
2) To the extent that the “prebate” really is intended as a break for poverty, the poverty lobbies will game the poverty statistics like hell and keep pushing for increases in the “poverty level” and in the amount of “prebate” paid out. And of course everyone will be on their side because everyone wants that monthly check, and a bigger one too.
3) Changing the income tax is complicated because of all the weird arguments over variable marginal rates, exemptions, deductions, etc. Changing the “Fair” Tax would be simple. “It’s 30%. We need more money. Raise it to 31%.” Of course, “simple” and “easy” are not the same thing, but it would be easy, too. “You need to support this, because at 30% we just can’t afford to keep sending you that monthly check. It will go away. Scream! Run around in circles! Don’t just support this, demand it! And by the way, if you do demand it, the amount of that check will go up. Come on, it’s just a measly 1%. Oh, and did we mention the monthly check will go up by 2%?”
The complexity issue is a separate issue from sales tax vs. income tax. The income tax started out being very simple, and the sales tax could be loaded with all sorts of exemptions and complexity after it is enacted. There are libertarian economists who argue that a sales tax is in principle less destructive than an income tax, although I don’t agree with them.
Paulie – absolutely. Bailouts are one thing, but what Roderick Long calls “primary regulation” is an important factor also.
I’m not all that concerned about sales tax not hitting corporations – it hits the principals and the shareholders since they, you know, buy stuff. There are economic/fairness issues, but I don’t think that’s one of them.
I think the only actual libertarian case that can be made about the method of collection (as opposed to amount/distribution of collection) is the complexity of compliance – it redistributes wealth to a particular credentialed group, it creates the ability to penalize and jail due to complexity, and so on. Under that standard, a sales tax is preferable. On the other hand, I think there are other, non-libertarian (not anti-libertarian, just neutral) cases to be made about method of collection; namely, economic arguments, and I’m fairly convinced those lean towards a sales tax being more destructive.
TLK: Definition of income, as I am sure you know.
BTW what does the regional stuff about different states have to do with it? I missed how that entered the conversation.
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
What, precisely, do “Truth in Taxation researchers” consider unclear about that?
FYI, income tax does pre-date the 16th amendment, but it was also thrown out in court, which is why those pushing it went to constitutional amendment, and if you look at the early application of the amendment, as well as early court rulings after the amendment was passed, you will find that the income tax does not legally apply to the earnings of most Americans who work within the 50 states.
There is no “nonsense” from the deep south. The is a prejudiced New England elitist type of statement. There are Truth in Taxation researchers from all over this country, such as Bob Schulz from New York, and Larken Rose from Pennsylvania, and Irwin Schiff from Connecticut (although he later moved to Nevada). There was also the late Aaron Russo, originally from New York, but who relocated to California and then Nevada. Another one is former IRS agent, Joe Bannister, who is from the San Fansisco Bay area in California.
I have spent a lot of time all over this country, including Massachusetts, and I can say that Massachusetts has its fair share of idiots and assholes, just like the rest of the country.
We may wish to replace the income tax or reduce it, but nonsense from the deep south about the tax as being invalid simply convinces the electorate that we are not in our right minds.
The income tax amendment, which envisioned a tax as currently in existence, though simpler and with heavier taxes on unearned income than on wages and salaries, postdates the Constitution and therefore replaces it. Right wing conspiracy kooks simply ignore the real legal history.
A, I vaguely recall that ruling, but I do believe it was long overturned.
A1, S9 says more than you do. It says: “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.” The “unless” part’s meaning is not entirely obvious to me, but the income tax as currently structured is not obviously OUT of proportion, in that the IRS code applies to everyone in all states.
Regardless, I’m sure you agree that your “forbid” statement is simply false on its face, yes?
I’m no fan of the income tax, but your argument simply doesn’t work.
The US Supreme Court ruled that the definition of “income” in the internal revenue code is a corporate profit.
Also, the US Constitution forbids a direct tax on the American people. It says that direct taxes have to be apportioned among the states, and this section of the Constitution was never repealed, as acknowledged by the US Supreme Court.
Yes, that’s much better.
Also true.
The Constitution actually says this: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;”
As I read this, only duties, imposts and excises need to be “uniform.” Congress can lay and collect TAXES as it wants to, per the Constitution. They need not be “uniform.”
Not ideal.
Correct. Well, almost everyone.
tk: Just get Congress to regularize/annualize and increase the amount of what it already occasionally does: Increase the personal exemption to the federal income tax. Every year, everyone gets a tax cut and the poorest Americans fall off the tax rolls completely.
me: Y taxes only. They still pay FICA.
tk: And if they’re paying all the taxes they’re far more likely to get small government religion.
me: But even with FICA, the richer pay most taxes now. For the most part, I’m not seeing the rich wanting small government so much. I think that may be because they are rich despite their tax burden. They like the status quo, because they are livin’ large. Some of them are guilt-ridden, too. Some of them like to think of themselves as playas, and they luxuriate in the drama of the political economy as structured.
“as corporate taxes are actually constitutional (since corporations are not people, but rather legal fictions)”
There is no basis for this argument in the constitution. Corporations are generally incorporated under state law. Would it be constitutional for the federal government to place a tax on concealed carry permits, or drivers licenses, or business permits? I doubt it, but those are all “legal fictions” granted by state governments, too. What makes incorporation different, or per se offensive? Limited liability, perhaps, (though I think there’s a pretty straightforward way of dealing with that), but the very concept of “corporate personhood” or, more accurately, “entity status”? The idea that you can’t sue McDonald’s, you have to sue 90 million individual stockholders? The New York Times can’t claim 1st Amendment rights? There are no debts owed by or to the Libertarian Party, just the dispersed obligations of 400,000-ish individual members?
I think the effort of some libertarians to pander to the left by attacking the very idea of corporations, and jumping on the anti-Citizens United bandwagon, is as misguided as attacking your local donut shop for having a business permit. There is no reason private, voluntary, contractual arrangements can’t replicate almost all of the essential features of an incorporated organization. At which point the question isn’t – “why does the government allow it?”, but rather “why does the government restrict, regulate, license, and tax it?”
“…having the pay the tax”
Should read, “having to pay the tax…”
One thing I find odd about the “Fair” Tax — or for that matter any proposal for a wholesale switch from the existing system to a consumption tax or whatever — is that its proponents in the LP and in the libertarian movement tend to be of the “now, now … we have to be INCREMENTAL … we have to move slowly … big, sweeping changes scare everyone away” school of thought on most other issues.
It seems to me that if you want incremental tax reform that cuts taxes without rocking the boat, getting the strong adverse reactions from special interests, etc. AND “helps the poor,” it’s hard to beat the Boston Tea Party’s 2008 proposal.
Just get Congress to regularize/annualize and increase the amount of what it already occasionally does: Increase the personal exemption to the federal income tax. Every year, everyone gets a tax cut and the poorest Americans fall off the tax rolls completely.
Interestingly, “old whig”/”upper left” guy Lloyd Sloan recently came to that same conclusion. When we were discussing it, the obvious problem came up and oddly enough it was he who convinced me of what I should already have known.
The obvious problem is that the more people at the lower end who don’t pay income taxes, the easier it is for them — let’s think of them in terms of Mitt Romney’s “47%” — to call for government programs and benefits that they don’t have to pay for. This is true if the mythology of American democracy is true.
What Lloyd pointed out to me — what I already knew but just wasn’t thinking about when it came to that subject — is that the mythology is bullshit. It is the rich who control the political establishment, who make the campaign contributions and fund the PACs and get the politicians elected and call in the favors. And if they’re paying all the taxes they’re far more likely to get small government religion.
”
Martin Passoli
February 17, 2015 at 2:13 pm
‘See, these Libertarians are just for rich corporations, because they think that corporations should not have to pay taxes, but they want regular people to pay a big sales tax every time they buy a good or service. I told you that Libertarians were just for the rich.’
That is why they are throwing the so-called prebate in there.”
Which then leads to the, “Give everyone in the nation a welfare check from the federal government problem,” and even with this, I bet that there will still be those who grumble about having the pay the tax while “rich corporations” are not getting taxed on “income” (defined by the Supreme Court as corporate profits).
“See, these Libertarians are just for rich corporations, because they think that corporations should not have to pay taxes, but they want regular people to pay a big sales tax every time they buy a good or service. I told you that Libertarians were just for the rich.”
That is why they are throwing the so-called prebate in there.
“over and above being politically stupid to advocate it.”
One problem from a marketing perspective with the Fair Tax is that it eliminates corporate income taxes, but then puts a sales tax on the purchase of goods and services by everyone in the country. Eliminating corporate taxes is not really a bad thing, but many people will see it as, “See, these Libertarians are just for rich corporations, because they think that corporations should not have to pay taxes, but they want regular people to pay a big sales tax every time they buy a good or service. I told you that Libertarians were just for the rich.”
There is also a constitutional issue here, as corporate taxes are actually constitutional (since corporations are not people, but rather legal fictions), while a direct sales tax on the American people is not.
“Ron Paul’s vote total in 2008, and especially in 2012, had the potential to be way higher than it was if Ron Paul had been on the ballot in November as a Libertarian or independent. He may not have gotten to a Ross Perot 1992 level, but I think that he could have beaten Ralph Nader 2000. ”
Maybe not Perot ’92 but I can see maybe Perot ’96.
The question of complexity is separate from the question of method of taxation. The income tax started out as very simple as well, and there is no reason that a consumption tax could not become complex over time.
Ron Paul’s vote total in 2008, and especially in 2012, had the potential to be way higher than it was if Ron Paul had been on the ballot in November as a Libertarian or independent. He may not have gotten to a Ross Perot 1992 level, but I think that he could have beaten Ralph Nader 2000. Remember, lots of people do not vote in primaries, or even pay attention to politics during primaries, and also remember, some states require people to be registered Republican to vote in the primaries, and not every Ron Paul supporter bothered to register Republican. Another factor is that there is less of an incentive to vote in later primaries than in early primaries due to it being more apparent who is going to win by the time the later primaries happen. So Ron Paul could have easily smashed the 2 million vote figure that he got in the Republican primaries had he been on the ballot in the general election in November as a Libertarian or independent (which is something that most of his supporters wanted him to do).
“The method of extortion, as in whether we are under an income tax or a national sales tax, is not the biggest issue.”
I don’t think that’s a proposition most libertarians would agree with, given the many evils of the income tax system that have nothing to do with the net total percentage eventually paid. Compliance costs, complexity, intrusiveness, arbitrariness, – those taken together are a perfectly legitimate libertarian issue, and part of the question of the total tax *burden* instead of just how many dollars end up in the treasury. Then there’s the well-established argument that a system that suffers all of those flaws, allows for a higher level of taxation than would otherwise be politically viable under a simpler, broad-base single tax.
Most of the Ron Paul “supporters” I knew never actually voted in the primaries, even though many of them could have. It was really more about spouting off whether online or in person more so than voting for many of them, I think.
“My hypothesis is that most Ron Paul supporters were not Republicans and did not vote in Republican primaries, and that only a relatively mall number actually went through with changing their registrations and voting in Republican primaries (or bothering to do it in states where changing registration was not even required). Of the Republicans who did vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, I think only a minority would have stuck with him if he jumped, but that they would have been far more than outbalanced by his independent/libertarian supporter that never voted in the Republican primaries. However, that will all have to remain speculation.”
From my rough count, 25 states with a majority of the population had open or semi-closed (open to independents) GOP presidential primaries in 2012. I don’t think a substantial fraction, and definitely not a majority, of active Paul supporters would have refrained from voting for him in those states. In a decent chunk of the states with closed primaries, same-day registration is in effect, making them effectively open. There might have been a slightly lower turnout in those states for Paul, but again the burden is so trivial and Paul supporters so motivated I doubt it kept many home. So really this is only an issue for substantial numbers of Paul supporters in states that 1) have fully-closed primaries 2) don’t have same-day registration 3) set a deadline or otherwise make it relatively burdensome to register as a Republican in time for the primary, and/or to disavow that registration afterwards. And indeed those did tend to be the states Paul did worse in, ceteris paribus, despite some concentrated voter-registration drives ahead of the deadlines.
It’s an interesting theory, but given the high turnout rates Paul supporters tended to have, I’m dubious there was a larger number of Paul supporters who didn’t vote for him than did. The biggest such chunk, would probably be those living in states where the nomination was already decided by their late primary date, not those who refused as a partisan matter to vote in a GOP primary.
You’re right, it’s all moot speculation. But it’s interesting to think about. Obviously Paul didn’t want to run as a Libertarian or independent in 2008 or 2012, for reasons that have little to do with whether he would have got 2% or 20%.
The complexity of the tax code is also a separate legitimate issue. And the method matters at the very least in so far as we are likely to get a new tax on top of existing taxes, intended or not, all protests and precautions aside.
The method of extortion, as in whether we are under an income tax or a national sales tax, is not the biggest issue. The two most important things are not the method of extortion, but rather the rate of the extortion, and the fact that the extortion is even happening at all.
Exactly. And the visible corporate welfare is just the bare tip of the iceberg.
I think a good case can be made (albeit not a NAP-based case, probably) that regressive taxes are worse, all else being equal. I don’t think being a libertarian prevents me from thinking it’s worse to rob poor people than rich people – especially given the amount of corporate welfare that exists today.
I’m assuming he would have. My hypothesis is that most Ron Paul supporters were not Republicans and did not vote in Republican primaries, and that only a relatively mall number actually went through with changing their registrations and voting in Republican primaries (or bothering to do it in states where changing registration was not even required). Of the Republicans who did vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, I think only a minority would have stuck with him if he jumped, but that they would have been far more than outbalanced by his independent/libertarian supporter that never voted in the Republican primaries. However, that will all have to remain speculation.
Neither am I. Among other things, I think we are more likely to end up with both it and existing taxes, regardless of what its proponents intend.
This may be one of those thick libertarianism things. I don’t necessarily think all my values have to boil down to only being about libertarianism. Regardless of whether it is more libertarian or not, it’s just a shitty thing to do to screw over people who are barely holding their head above water as it is, over and above being politically stupid to advocate it.
L: From a libertarian perspective, is stealing from the rich any better than stealing from the poor?
me: Since sustenance of the human body requires $X, and the poor only have $X while the rich have more, the answer is yes.
pf: Wouldn’t have mattered when he was leaving office.
me: It would have for his political future.
But again mostly I’m interested in what is expected of Ls who get into office.
As guv, do L, A and others expect an L to take steps for the state to secede? Should GJ have raided Los Alamos? etc.
What is the standard?
“I suspect if Ron Paul had been in the general election as an LP or independent candidate in 2008 or 2012 he would have had a lot more votes than he had in the primaries, in 1988, and in all his runs for congress added together. I don’t think he would have won, or come close, but an order of magnitude more than what Johnson ended up with seems plausible.”
I’m not so certain about this. Better than Johnson? Probably. Better than Barr? Of course. But still a lot closer to Nader 2000 than Perot 1992.
If, hypothetically, Ron Paul had been the Libertarian nominee in 2012, I’m not so certain he would end up getting radically more votes than he did in the primaries. Maybe another million, plus most of his two million from the primary, so I think a plausible estimate is in the 2-3 million range (or ~3%), and that’s with the dubiously generous assumption that he wouldn’t have lost a substantial number of primary voters to the GOP nominee.
It would have been a high-profile campaign, relatively speaking, but he wouldn’t have been included in the debates and may even have been the target of high-intensity negative campaign keeping his general election results *below* his primary results. But even if that didn’t happen, and he ran a relatively hiccup-free campaign, I think the >5 million votes you posit is over-optimistic. (all of his Congressional campaigns add up to roundabout a million votes just on their own, he ran so many times). I also don’t think he would have cracked the 5% that has been a high-end goal for the LP presidential ticket for a long time, though at the outside that might have been within reach. But not the 10% or 12 million votes that it would take to do “an order of magnitude” better than Johnson.
Primary results tend to show more impressive-looking percentages because they’re expressed over lower turnout, not because a libertarian running in the primary actually ends up drawing substantially more voters than a libertarian running as a Libertarian in the general. And all of those “independent” general election voters are a lot more likely to switch back and forth between R and D (if they even do that much) than they are vote third-party.
“That doesn’t mean that it’s any easier to break them of non-voting than it is to break D and R voters of voting for Ds and Rs. In many cases it is actually harder.”
Exactly. The campaign that wins by turning out non-voters despite losing big among regular/likely voters, has never existed and never will. It just doesn’t work that way.
… the “prebate” is actually not tied to the tax at all, it’s a near-universal welfare check which is sent out regardless of spending so long as one uses an SS number. What’s bad about it is that it makes the vast majority of the population used to receiving a government welfare check, which most people will consider to be a gift from the government rather than getting back their own money (witness what happens with income tax refunds). The “fair” tax will most likely be included in the shelf price of goods, like the gasoline tax, making it less visible to the average consumer/taxpayer. This will make it a lot harder to advocate for cutting government, because most people will view government as that benevolent entity that sends them a check every month (or whatever the mechanism will be).
Yes, I agree, although I’m not a big fan of the “Fair” Tax, with or without the prebate.
As for the tax being regressive, while that may be a big practical liability when it comes to “selling” people on the idea of it, from a purely theoretical standpoint, I think it’s pretty trivial. From a libertarian perspective, is stealing from the rich any better than stealing from the poor?
More non-voters may well agree with us than D and R voters (not necessarily though; may D and R voters are just voting for what they think is the lesser evil and some of them actually agree with us more than with who they vote for; getting them to actually vote for us is a separate issue). But let’s say that a larger percentage of non-voters agree. That doesn’t mean that it’s any easier to break them of non-voting than it is to break D and R voters of voting for Ds and Rs. In many cases it is actually harder.
“paulie
February 16, 2015 at 7:13 pm
Going after non-voters is way more effective than going after most Democrats and Republicans.
Not necessarily. Some Rs and Ds are stuck in their usual voting pattern, some can be peeled off. Some non-voters, whatever their reasons for not voting (you and I both mentioned many of them, and there are others), are stuck on not voting; some can be convinced to start voting. In any of these cases persuasion to change an established pattern is hard, and gets harder the older people get. The easiest time to get people is before they have established a pattern of voting a particular way, or of not voting at all, over many election cycles.”
Outside of the people who vote Republican because of Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Justin Amash, etc…, I think that a higher percentage of Libertarian converts can be won with mainstream Democrats and Republicans.
I think there are way more than that. I suspect if Ron Paul had been in the general election as an LP or independent candidate in 2008 or 2012 he would have had a lot more votes than he had in the primaries, in 1988, and in all his runs for congress added together. I don’t think he would have won, or come close, but an order of magnitude more than what Johnson ended up with seems plausible.
I would agree that most of those extra voters probably would have voted for Paul in the primary, but many of them weren’t eligible or just didn’t bother.
Good point.
Yes, but the “prebate” is actually not tied to the tax at all, it’s a near-universal welfare check which is sent out regardless of spending so long as one uses an SS number. What’s bad about it is that it makes the vast majority of the population used to receiving a government welfare check, which most people will consider to be a gift from the government rather than getting back their own money (witness what happens with income tax refunds). The “fair” tax will most likely be included in the shelf price of goods, like the gasoline tax, making it less visible to the average consumer/taxpayer. This will make it a lot harder to advocate for cutting government, because most people will view government as that benevolent entity that sends them a check every month (or whatever the mechanism will be).
On the other hand, yes, without it the sales tax is more regressive.
Pedophilia is not illegal. Child molestation/assault is illegal. We cannot (or at least should not) outlaw mental states or tendencies, only actions.
I’m not quite clear how eliminating the prebate makes the “Fair Tax” better. Doesn’t that just make it regressive?
I think the truth about how vote totals is often counter-intuitive. For instance, there is a certain intuitive nature to the “spoiler effect” when applied to, say, a right or left wing party (as opposed to the Libertarians, where it makes no sense.) Yet many times, the presence of a right-wing alternative has helped, not hurt, a moderate conservative, by giving them a foil against which to appear reasonable. I suspect the same may be true about the presence of strong alternatives, like Nader, or more so Anderson – they make non-R/D votes seem more reasonable, and hence may have the effect of lifting other small parties, not hurting them. On the other hand, L+G is close to a constant in many races, which suggests a different interpretation.
@ paulie “Unless I missed something, that’s Knapp, not Perry.”
Fair enough, perhaps I had accidentally conflated an argument I saw from one and not the other. But the point stands as applied to Knapp, and his constant bashing of Johnson as being “a Republican.”
@ Andy “Gary Johnson of course was a candidate for the Republican Party’s Presidential nomination for 2012, although he dropped out of that race early in the process.”
Yes, of course. That’s why I was a little pedantic referring to being the nominee of a competing party. Of course the similarity ends at the technically true fact that both Knapp and Johnson have both been the nominees of parties that are not the LP. But isn’t technically correct the best kind of correct?
@ paulie “I don’t think the overlap is as high as many people here seem to think it was.”
Perhaps not. You raise many good reasons why that might be the case. I find it hard to believe that less than half of Johnson’s 1.2 million weren’t also part of Paul’s 2 million, though, just because I don’t think there are that many other libertarian-leaning voters out there. Without tapping heavily into Paul voters, I don’t think there’s anywhere else plausible that Johnson’s ~6-700k votes over the baseline Libertarian vote could have come from. But that doesn’t per se means those people wouldn’t have voted for Johnson anyway regardless of Paul running, like those trying to give all of the credit for Johnson’s vote total to Paul assert. Just that they overlap.
I don’t think it came from turning out non-voters, which never works, nor does simply being the strongest non-D/R candidate account for it (i.e. no Nader, etc. running.) Jill Stein was still running after all, and she got about half as many votes as Nader + McKinney combined did in 2008, presumably from mostly the same voters. The Constitution Party got more votes in 2008 than they did 2012, but the difference is less than 100k votes. So the non-Libertarian third party vote decrease from 2008 to 2012 doesn’t plausibly account for more than 2-300k Johnson votes.
Wouldn’t have mattered when he was leaving office.
If Gary Johnson pardoned drug offenders and lowered taxes while in office, I’d be impressed. Since neither happened Ill just vote for him cause he’s a lib.
“This, iirc, was part of the whole Ruwart kerfuffle in 08, yes?”
No, it wasn’t. That would have required resort to fact, reason, logic and truth, four qualities not possessed in significant quantities by her attackers.
tk: Does the LP’s platform call for the legalization of child molestation?
me: No, but nor does it call for — iirc — pardoning of drug-law offenders.
It DOES say this: “We support restitution to the victim to the fullest degree possible at the expense of the criminal or the negligent wrongdoer.” This, iirc, was part of the whole Ruwart kerfuffle in 08, yes? And Bergland seemed open to the NAMBLA position in 84.
Some Ls believe the NAP would imply something like the NAMBLA position, and the NAP is essentially embedded in the platform.
My main point, though, is that L and A seem to believe that GJ failed as a guv because he did NOT pardon drug offenders, even though he may have had the power to do so. I’m trying to understand their perspective by testing it with an even more extreme example.
It might have been “nice” had he done so, but such an extreme act did seem awfully risky on a lot of levels. So I want to understand why they think this error of omission (in their minds) is worthy of bringing up when considering GJ’s potential 16 run as a L.
My sense is that IF he had pardoned drug offenders, he did run the risk of a) impeachment and b) being made toast politically. Would such self-sacrifice make sense, ATC?
Probably not, but perhaps I am missing something…..
If I ran for President and had to beat Gary for the nod, my campaign slogan would be Vote For Herd – He’ll tear Gary Johnson a new Tax Loophole! and it wont feel fair or flat.
See how my campaign strategy differs completely from Gary’s at votesnotforsale.com/campaign_strategy
Flat tax isnt fair. Neither is fair tax. All a stupid ploy, watch out……Washington LOVES taxes, especially MORE tax revenue streams. Reduce taxes, don’t flatten so poor pay more. Reduce military, foreign aid, then reduce taxes in next paragraph of same bill. Sorry Gary, didn’t mean to flatten your tax plan..
Norm Olsen to LNC list:
I agree. That, the “prebate,” and a number of other reasons are why I do not support the plan.
Not necessarily. Some Rs and Ds are stuck in their usual voting pattern, some can be peeled off. Some non-voters, whatever their reasons for not voting (you and I both mentioned many of them, and there are others), are stuck on not voting; some can be convinced to start voting. In any of these cases persuasion to change an established pattern is hard, and gets harder the older people get. The easiest time to get people is before they have established a pattern of voting a particular way, or of not voting at all, over many election cycles.
He wants to advocate a position that will not be immediately dismissed by most people. Harry Browne and Ron Paul did appeal to some people, but Johnson has larger ambitions, perhaps foolishly, perhaps not.
So long as taxes exist he wants to radically simplify the tax code and to eliminate many taxes, not only the income tax. Like many libertarian economists, he thinks a consumption tax is less bad than an income tax. He also wants it to not be regressive or hurt poor folks, although he is not necessarily in favor of the near-universal welfare check the “fairtax” proponents mislabel as a “prebate,” but he wants some mechanism to address that particular feature of a consumption tax that many people see as its chief weakness. He does not support a revenue-neutral tax rate; he wants both taxes and spending to be much lower.
The reason he says the “fairtax” is a “starting point” for discussion – and bear in mind that I do not agree with him here – is that it is an existing plan with an existing group of active supporters. But that does not mean he has to agree to every detail of their plan.
paulie
February 16, 2015 at 6:47 pm
‘eep in mind that Gary Johnson had the benefit of running in an election year when he was the highest profile minor party candidate in the race, so he did not have to contend with somebody like Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, or John Anderson.’
Ron Paul in 1988 did not have such a problem, not did David Bergland in 1984. On the other hand, Ed Clark was up against Anderson in 1980, so I’m not sure whether
”
Gary Johnson came into a Libertarian Party that was in better shape ballot access wise that David Bergland and Ron Paul.
Also, Gary Johnson had the benefit of running in the age of the internet, David Bergland and Ron Paul did not have this advantage.
I also think that Gary Johnson actually benefitted by Ron Paul’s runs in the Republican primary for President because it greatly increased public recognition of the word libertarian.
Thank you.
From what I know, that is correct.
Agreed.
This may well be true, but not necessarily.
I hope so. We’ll see.
Me too. Although I’ll remain uncommitted as a delegate for now, and quite possibly until the convention.
Hard to say. It appears to have been the nazi troll, who may or may not actually really be Mark Herd. I did check youtube, and Herd is in fact posting negative videos about myself and Jill among others on there. There is also at least one comment purporting to be from Mark Herd on the nazi troll’s blog claiming credit for the videos. If you want to discuss this further, please take it to one of the threads about trolling.
Ron Paul in 1988 did not have such a problem, not did David Bergland in 1984. On the other hand, Ed Clark was up against Anderson in 1980, so I’m not sure whether that makes a difference or not. On the one hand, yes, some of the generic protest vote may go to the best known “other” candidate. But on the other, the presence of a better known third candidate may cause some people who otherwise wouldn’t consider any but the established two to think outside that box, and fourth on down may benefit as a result.
It may not have. Or it may have been even better.
Those may have been some of the factors. I’m not sure how important they were in comparison to some others. Relatively better media exposure and ground game may have had something to do with it, too.
Good question.
George,
Please give up on yours.
Paulie
Paulie,
Give up on your fantasies about the Johnson finances.
George
He thought there may be an opening for libertarians running for the Republican nomination after seeing Ron Paul run in 2008. He didn’t count on Ron Paul running again, nor on how little room that left for a second libertarian-leaning candidate in Republican primaries. Nor did he count on how much of a difference a few degrees of disparity between his positions and Ron Paul’s when it came to the issues of abortion, immigration and gay rights would make in Republican primaries. While both of their actual positions were nuanced on all those issues, the limited attention span version had Paul on one side and Johnson on the other, and Johnson’s perceived side of those made him a non-starter in Republican primaries. He did not count on being excluded from most of the polls that determined who would be in the primary debates, either.
>Also there are surely some people who voted for Johnson but not Paul, though less than vice versa.
Well, I voted for Ron Paul (1988) and Gary Johnson (2012), but I am willing to bet the number of people like me are actually relatively few and virtually all of them are members of the Libertarian Party.
Yes, there are some superficial similarities there. However consider the following from wikipedia:
If Dr. Feldman gets the presidential medal of freedom, performs a groundbreaking medical operation, delivers a widely publicized speech at a well-known national event, and becomes a popular figure in the mass media for his views on social and political issues, that would be a closer comparison with Dr. Carson.
I’m also not aware of Dr. Carson placing a $5 limit on contributions. And if he manages to get in the polls and get into primary debates, he will be speaking to an audience of millions or at a minimum hundreds of thousands on national TV, while Dr. Feldman will be speaking to audiences of dozens at LP state conventions (only if they proactively invite him, because he won’t contact them first) and in youtube videos and internet radio shows of similar audience range. I hope I am wrong, but Dr. Feldman needs to prove me wrong, because that is the path I see his current campaign plan taking him on based on all my experience in participating in and observing political activities over the years.
“paulie
February 16, 2015 at 5:56 pm
Yes, which was because his ideas were out of place there.”
And it took him entering the Republican Presidential primaries to figure out that libertarian views were out-of-step with the mainstream of the Republican Party? He must be a slow learner if this is true. I figured this out after listening to Harry Browne speak for a few minutes back in 1996.
Yes, which was because his ideas were out of place there.
“paulie
February 16, 2015 at 5:17 pm
‘Gary Johnson of course was a candidate for the Republican Party’s Presidential nomination for 2012, although he dropped out of that race early in the process.’
Yes, because he learned that his positions were out of step with the Republican Party and that his true home was in the LP. Well, better late than never. ”
I think that the real reason he dropped out of the Republican primaries is because he knew that he stood no chance of winning.
I don’t think the overlap is as high as many people here seem to think it was. A lot of people supported Ron Paul but never voted for him. Many Ron Paul supporters were not even registered voters, or at least not registered Republicans in states where you had to be one to vote for him, or live(d) in states where the vote took place after the nomination was basically decided. As for what Ron Paul supporters from the primary season did in the general election either time – it was to scatter to the four winds. Some wrote in Ron Paul regardless of whether it counted or not, some didn’t vote at all, some voted for each of the choices listed on their ballot or wrote in someone else. Since the biggest chunk of Ron Paul supporters who actually voted for him in the primary came from registered Republicans – yes, some switched for this purpose, but not as many as some people here think – I would guess that out of those the largest chunk ended up voting for the Republican nominees as the “lesser evil” (albeit reluctantly). The same is not necessarily true for all the Ron Paul supporters who did not vote in the primary.
Good point. I would say though that the general popularity of the L word has a lot to do with voter registration, which does not have to come strictly due to efforts to directly promote the party per se. A lot of LP registrants and even LP voters are not necessarily all that in line with the LP platform, nor willing to actively donate to or volunteer for the LP, they just see us as less bad than the other guys.
I mentioned that reason along with a bunch of others in an earlier comment. I’ve done a pretty good sampling of public opinion of this, in almost 40 states, over the better part of two decades, having registered literally tens of thousands of people to vote, many for the first time, and unsuccessfully having tried to persuade an even larger number.
I agree that he should have issued a lot more pardons, at that time or ideally even much earlier. He says he now wishes he had as well.
Yes, because he learned that his positions were out of step with the Republican Party and that his true home was in the LP. Well, better late than never.
BTW, here is a campaign commercial for NOTA from Russia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHQ1y3LxhDc
“Andy Craig Post author
February 16, 2015 at 5:00 pm
I know, I was talking about the Boston Tea Party in 2008, vs. Johnson’s last campaign for Governor in 1998.”
Gary Johnson of course was a candidate for the Republican Party’s Presidential nomination for 2012, although he dropped out of that race early in the process.
IIRC he was the party chair, but not a BTP candidate for government office listed on the ballot anywhere as far as I know.
Unless I missed something, that’s Knapp, not Perry. Perry would be willing to seek the nomination of any other pro-liberty parties that are on the ballot anywhere, if any are. He does have a variety of ways he criticizes Gary Johnson, but it’s on the basis of issue positions (and maybe the financial allegations, I’d have to check), not on the basis of ultra-partisanship.
NOTA is a complete opportunist with no loyalties to any issue positions whatsoever. NOTA is perfectly content to allow the other politicians who manage to beat NOTA in the other races make all the public policy decisions if NOTA doesn’t make a clean sweep of every race on every ballot.
NOTA has never come out for or against any of these positions. When asked directly about them, NOTA just shrugs and says – I’ll just go with whatever those other guys come up with.
I know, I was talking about the Boston Tea Party in 2008, vs. Johnson’s last campaign for Governor in 1998. And of course Darryl W. Perry, who is running in 2016, was also on board with the BTP, though I don’t know if he ever ran as a BTP candidate. I just find it odd for those who were involved in that project, to preach at other Libertarians about the importance of hard-line Libertarian partisanship, and that those with a history or running in/with other parties should be rejected on that basis. Does that only apply if the other party in question was larger and more successful than the LP, instead of smaller and less successful?
lol @ NOTA. Do we really know NOTA’s loyalties, when NOTA has been willing to seek and even sometimes receive the nominations of so many other parties? Do we know NOTA isn’t really a socialist, or a theo-con? Has NOTA gone on record as opposing the Fair Tax? 😉
Knapp is not running for the nomination. But so was NOTA, as it is on the ballot in Nevada.
Thomas Knapp was the nominee of a competing party more recently than Gary Johnson was.
Just sayin’
No, because I was the one presenting the facts and what your side is presenting are falsehoods and distortions. To take just one fact, Gary Johnson has been a member of the Libertarian Party since the 1980s. That’s when he first signed the membership pledge, which he never revoked, and you are the one who has pointed out more than anyone else in IPR history that a non-dues-paying member is still a member. That is longer than most (and maybe any) LP presidential candidates had been in the LP when they ran. Most LP presidential candidates had been Republicans before they switched to the LP, and some of them went back to the Republicans afterwards. Gary Johnson was not a member of the Republican Party, nor in line with the views of the Republican Party platform or establishment, when he became the presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, but he was a LP member (including caught up on dues). All those are facts. I also laid out the true facts about your side’s distorted allegations of fiscal irresponsibility. As Andy Craig correctly noted, I am more than tired of repeating them, but I am sure I will have to repeat those corrections many more times in the future as I can see that going negative against some likely candidates for the LP nomination is the preferred go to method of some other campaigns for the nomination and some NOTA supporters.
But wouldn’t it have been better to preface exactly what you said with “what follows is a bunch of excuse-making to try to distract attention from the facts?”
No, I meant exactly what I said and said exactly what I meant.
“I addressed both the ‘fiscally irresponsible’ and ‘Republican’ falsehoods earlier in the thread.”
Only if by “addressing falsehoods” you mean “trying to blow off facts as falsehoods.”
I disagree. All relative measures of party strength are important, especially as they relate to each other from a whole-systems and momentum perspective.
I addressed both the “fiscally irresponsible” and “Republican” falsehoods earlier in the thread. You would have even less basis to mislabel Gary Johnson as a Republican if he runs in 2016.
There’s legitimate room for libertarians to argue about the moral question as far as that goes. As a practical matter, Johnson learned his lesson and has told me he has no intention of seeking any such government check if he runs again.
I’d be happy to. Ping me with an email or IPR comment when you have it ready, as I don’t always check your website often enough.
Brat beat Cantor while being outspent 25:1. That’s rare, but it does happen once in a blue moon. You are proposing winning a race where the LP is typically outspent by 1,000:1 and on top of that you propose to further significantly handicap what little fundraising ability you would have as an LP nominee. In fact, with the $5 rule in effect, you would have to probably pay for any travel costs to go to events or interviews as the LP nominee out of your own pocket or decline most of the invitations, and you would either have to pay for most of the campaign materials out of your own pocket or have supporters pay for things like yard signs and bumper sticker for themselves individually.
200k is clearly not 5 million, but it’s enough to reach a lot of eyeballs in the district with things like yard signs and billboards, and to pay for radio ads. Brat also had significant coverage in the local media and presumably shook a much higher percentage of voters’ hands as a congressional candidate than you could possibly hope to as a presidential candidate. To have that level of coverage nationally, multiply that 200k by 435, which is the number of US House districts in the country, or somewhere in the neighborhood of 80-90 million dollars. I could see a LP campaign having an outside shot at pulling off an upset with that kind of funding, even though the Ds and Rs are spending a billion or more. As it is we usually only raise about 1-2% of what Brat spent on a per capita basis for presidential races, on top of our disadvantage of not having one of the two labels most people are used to voting for. And getting national media coverage without spending at least in the tens of millions isn’t easy. Even the level of media coverage we get by spending one million and having the candidate do a lot of travel to interviews and events may be hard to do with a campaign that does not even raise that much.
That would also be the place to discuss private nukes, machine guns on the subway, private nukes on the subway, anarchy pods, crack vending machines on the subway, private nukes and heroin vending machines in anarchy pods, etc…
😛
Nope, and neither does Gary Johnson, so please take any such issues over to the new thread.
I’ve put up a new thread on small l libertarianism and anarchy. If people would like to pursue the tangent about pardoning child molesters or handling enforcement of social rules against child molestation in a hypothetical anarcho-libertarian society please take that discussion over there, as I do not see how it relates to this topic.
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/02/open-thread-iv-for-discussions-of-small-l-libertarianism-and-anarchy/
How the hell do you get from should have pardoned some pot heads to should have pardoned child molesters?
GJ claimed to support legalization, or decriminalization, or something like that, of marijuana, yet he did little or nothing to free people imprisoned on marijuana charges. GJ did not claim to support legalization of child molestation, and I am sure that he does not support it now.
those same Libs, least the ones I know , at the same time call it a whole lot more than a felony…just because they dont want a system handling business , doesnt mean they dont believe business wont be handled…
Well, we’re not just talking about “some Ls” here. We’re talking about a political party with a platform. Does the LP’s platform call for the legalization of child molestation?
L, some Ls believe pedophilia is not a felon, but rather POSSIBLY a civil matter. You apparently are not one of them.
As I said, if the premise is that a wrong (wrongful drug laws wrongly putting people in jail) should be righted, then IF one believes that the NAP leads to anti-pedophilia laws being struck down in a “L society,” it follows that convicted pedophiles should be pardoned along with non-violent drug offenders.
Hope that clears things up for you….
… does this mean that GJ should have pardoned all imprisoned pedophiles, or at least those where the child voluntarily engaged in the sex act with the pedophile?
Wow, that is a truly bizarre (not to mention desperate) red herring if I’ve ever seen one!
For what it’s worth, if I were to somehow find myself as Governor (or President), I would try to carefully review all requests for pardons, or at least have someone I trust review them, and pass on to me any that they think I might be willing to grant. However, I am extremely skeptical of the idea that young children are capable of giving meaningful consent, so I seriously doubt I would pardon any child molesters.
Meanwhile, I have no idea what that has to do with the idea that Johnson should have pardoned more nonviolent drug offenders.
L, A, and anyone, it seems some believe that an L/l in office should do everything they can to right any and all wrongs regardless of the politics of doing so. Correct?
So does this mean that GJ should have pardoned all imprisoned pedophiles, or at least those where the child voluntarily engaged in the sex act with the pedophile?
If not, what is the standard you hold an elected L/l to in terms of righting wrongs?
For those of you who think money is critically important, I brought up an old comment I made about the Cantor-Brat race:
Cantor deserves congratulations for his remarkable victory over
challenger Dave Brat. The final count had Eric Cantor with over
$5,000,000 to Mr. Brat disappointing $200,000. Mr. Cantor was able to
achieve this victory even though he only raised 44% of the vote,
compared to Mr. Brat’s 55%. Just goes to show you, votes don’t
necessarily bring the dollars.
@Andy
“I also don’t see how you are going to get very many people to donate if you do not do any active fundraising.”
This is a great comment and it deserves a serious and detailed response. However, since it speaks to the whole thrust of my campaign, “Votes Not For Sale”, it doesn’t belong in a Gary Johnson thread. I will put a detailed response on my blog, and perhaps one of you generous editors will put up a new thread.
And thanks for spelling my name correctly. That makes it easier to Google.
For all the recurring analysis of number of votes received, etc., it seems to me that there are two metrics being ignored:
1) With respect to the votes that actually count for the election of president — electoral votes — Johnson/Gray received exactly as many votes as every LP slate since 1976, and as all LP slates with the exception of Hospers/Nathan in 1972: Zero.
2) With respect to actually influencing the outcome of the election, the last LP candidate to do so was Harry Browne in 2000. He more than covered the popular vote differential between Al Gore and George W Bush in both New Mexico and Florida, and unless the votes he received split right down the middle with respect to second choices, the New Mexico outcome is what made Florida the deciding state and his totals in Florida threw the thing to the Supreme Court (he exceeded the popular vote differential there by a multiple of, IIRC, times 20-something). In Florida, several other third party candidates could make the same claim — if any of them had not been on the ballot the race might have been decided without controversy — but being one of several to affect the outcome is still affecting the outcome.
This constant obsession over who got more votes in the sub-2% range is stupid. Especially when the price of getting 1.5% instead of 0.5% was nominating a fiscally irresponsible Republican who made no bones about his intention of using that nomination to get a government welfare check. If the LP doesn’t have the decency to be ashamed of itself for that, it should at least have the fucking brains to be embarrassed over it.
First, as to the reason why people don’t vote, it obviously varies, but one reason is that from an individual cost/benefit standpoint, voting tends to be irrational. One vote will rarely change the outcome of even a local election (and in a federal election, or even a state election, “rarely” means “never”), so it doesn’t make sense to waste a couple of hours (or even a few minutes) traveling to the polling place and standing in line, when doing so achieves no tangible benefit. I know most third party activists don’t like hearing it, but that’s the simple reality of the situation.
Second, as far as the pardon issue, many lame duck executives (including both Presidents and Governors) have been known to issue a flurry of pardons during their last couple of weeks in office, when it is too late for anyone to really “retaliate” against them. I see no reason why GJ couldn’t have done the same thing, unless he was too concerned about his own political future.
for california… if i had to bet it was Governor Browns anti pot stance and that growth in libertarian registrations was in regards to pro-legalization.
Gary Johnson, being a pro-leaglization candidate matched the disenfranchized california youth. The people that though Obama ment change but that change didn’t mean ending the wars in the middle east or ending the drug wars. Obama change meant making the young responsible for the health care of the middle age and more then inflation adjusted higher education costs.
Now Ron Paul adressed these issues… but was rejected by the establishment republicans…
Ron Paul got 2,095,795 votes in the 2012 primaries. Gary Johnson got 1,275,971 votes in the general election, or 60% of Paul’s total. .
Ron Paul got 1,160,403 votes in the 2008 primaries. Bob Barr got 523,715 votes, which works out to 45% of Paul’s same-year primary total. I’m honestly surprised it’s that high, given… well, you all know the sad story.
Of course, aside from the apples-to-oranges problem of looking at primary vs. general election totals (i.e. states where only Romney and Paul were on the ballot after Romney had already won, and that sort of thing), Ron Paul’s base included a decent chunk of ideological non-libertarians (I think a plausible estimate would be 10-20%, maybe higher). Also there are surely some people who voted for Johnson but not Paul, though less than vice versa.
But still, it’s a reasonable inference that a comfortable super-majority of lowercase-l libertarian voters voted for Paul in the primary and then voted for Johnson in the general. Whether or not those were voters who voted for Johnson because they had voted for Paul, or whether or not they were pre-existing libertarian-leaning voters who would have voted for Johnson either way, or people who became libertarian voters because of Johnson, is open to interpretation. Probably a mix of all of the above. What’s not deniable, is that Johnson’s vote total was a substantial (not overwhelming, but substantial) increase over the baseline expectation for just any old name on the ballot with a Libertarian label. And that since 2012, there has been a pretty clear trend of Libertarians running more candidates and getting more votes for other offices, which we didn’t see after 2008.
As for the general observation that others have been spreading the popularity of the libertarian label outside of the LP, that’s certainly very true. But that doesn’t automatically translate into more Libertarian Party members or voters, and none of the other figures named (Paul, Stossel Napolitano, Amash, etc.) have been actively directing that increased energy and attention towards the LP. Johnson’s been the one doing that, and doing it more successfully than the party was before his involvement.
Andy,
Libertarian Registered Voters with repsect to the candidates. Bob Barr didn’t piss of the voters. Barr did better with respect to registered Libertarians then Browne and Badnarick. Look at the results. But Johnson kicked both their rears with results.
SteveM is also overlooking the change in the law in California that allowed people to register to vote online.
This is because Bob Barr pissed off a lot of libertarians.
Andy,
“Libertarian Party voter registrations in California grew because of other factors besides Gary Johnson. One of which was Ron Paul greatly increasing public awareness of the word Libertarian (along with Andrew Napolitano, John Stossel, and a few others). Also, a lot of Libertarians had switched to Republican to vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, and then switched back to Libertarian after Ron Paul and his delegates got treated like crap at the Republican National Convention in 2012. ”
A bunch of California Libertarians switched from Libertarian to Republican and then back?
No the data shows that didn’t happen not in California. In 2004 you had less then 90 thousand registered califonrnia voters and in 2012 you had 109 thousand registered libertarian voters so you think that a bunch switched and then switched back and reproduced while doing so?
The data clearly shows that you have far more registered libertarians in 2012 and beyond that you have far more votes for the libertarian candidate then you have had before.
Now lets suppose that these new votes for the Libertarian candidate, these cross over votes where those that crossed over from Ron Paul. Well I would respond by saying thank you Ron Paul, But now convince me that any other candidate that the Libertarians ran would have done as well as Gary Johnson.
After all, Ron Paul ran in 2008 and Bob Barr didn’t do what Gary Johnson did.
“Marc Allan Feldman
February 16, 2015 at 1:34 am
As one of a very small number of announced and registered Libertarian candidates for President, I don’t mind the criticism, but I would appreciate it if you would spell my name correctly. Marc Allan (2 As and 2 Ls) Feldman.”
Sorry about the misspelling of the name.
I just checked out your website. It looks decent.
Here is something I found on your website which frankly, does not make your campaign sound very realistic to me:
“If you would like to become a supporter, please donate up to $5.
You cannot donate more.
You cannot make multiple donations with a total over $5.
That is not what we are about.
You will never receive a fundraising letter, fundraising call, or be asked to sponsor a fundraiser.
Because we do not do fundraising.
Because we think votes should not be for sale.”
How do you expect to get anywhere on one time $5 donations? I don’t see how you could run much of a campaign on that.
I also don’t see how you are going to get very many people to donate if you do not do any active fundraising.
As one of a very small number of announced and registered Libertarian candidates for President, I don’t mind the criticism, but I would appreciate it if you would spell my name correctly. Marc Allan (2 As and 2 Ls) Feldman.
Two addtional notes:
1. I have a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, so I prefer “Dr.” Feldman. On many current GOP polls the number two potential candidate is Dr. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon I used to work with when we were both at Hopkins. Neither one of us has ever held public office, but that seems to be more of a problem for a Libertarian than for a Republican.
2. If you are going to talk about the importance of having a “nice website” I would appreciate it if you would look at mine, http://www.VotesNotForSale.com and comment. It is part of a NationBuilder voter relationship management system.
Thank you for your attention.
“Steve M
February 16, 2015 at 1:16 am
Andy,
Yet the statistics show that in California Libertarian registration grew from 84,000 to 109,000 and the percentage of votes for their candidate the libertarians grew from 81% to 132%.
Who do you have on hand that you can imagine can do better?”
Libertarian Party voter registrations in California grew because of other factors besides Gary Johnson. One of which was Ron Paul greatly increasing public awareness of the word Libertarian (along with Andrew Napolitano, John Stossel, and a few others). Also, a lot of Libertarians had switched to Republican to vote for Ron Paul in the primaries, and then switched back to Libertarian after Ron Paul and his delegates got treated like crap at the Republican National Convention in 2012.
Another factor in California is that a law was passed that allows people in California to complete the entire voter registration process online. Lots of libertarians are computer geeks, so the ability to do the entire voter registration process online is naturally going to skew in favor of Libertarians.
Gary Johnson may very well have inspired some people to register as Libertarians, but I think that there were other factors involved.
Andy,
Yet the statistics show that in California Libertarian registration grew from 84,000 to 109,000 and the percentage of votes for their candidate the libertarians grew from 81% to 132%.
Who do you have on hand that you can imagine can do better?
SteveM said: “Who ever deserves the credit…. in 2012 the California Libertarian Party and Gary Johnson reversed 12 years of reduced registration and received more votes for their candidate then they had registered voters. Johnson was a crossover candidate. People who weren’t libertarians crossed over to vote for him. If the party registration is going to grown you have to get people to cross over. ”
Keep in mind that Gary Johnson had the benefit of running in an election year when he was the highest profile minor party candidate in the race, so he did not have to contend with somebody like Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, or John Anderson.
If Americans Elect had succeeded in recruiting a high profile candidate to run for President, the outcome for Gary Johnson may not have been as good.
I hate to sound like I am pissing on somebody’s parade, but these facts need to be kept in the discussion in order to do a fair analysis.
One more factor is that the Ron Paul campaigns of 2007-2008 and 2011-2012 greatly increased public awareness of the word libertarian. The LP Presidential ticket in 2008 likely would have had a lot more votes if Barr / Root did not alienate so many libertarians. I think that Gary Johnson did better because there was no Ralph Nader in the race in 2012, and because he managed to not alienate as many people as the Barr / Root ticket did.
The reason I will support a Governor Johnson campeign as a Libertarian for president in 2016 is very simple.
for California
in 2000 there were 94,900 voters registered as Libertarians, Harry Browne recieved 45520 votes or 48% of the registered libertarian voters
in 2004 there were 89,617 voters registered as Libertarians, Michael Badnarik recieved 50165 votes or 56% of the registered libertarian voters
in 2008 there were 83574 voters registered as Libertarians, Bob Barr recieved 67582 votes or 81% of the registered libertarian voters
in 2012 there were 108736 voters registered as Libertarians, Gary Johnson recieved 143221 votes or 132% of the registered libertarian voters.
Who ever deserves the credit…. in 2012 the California Libertarian Party and Gary Johnson reversed 12 years of reduced registration and received more votes for their candidate then they had registered voters. Johnson was a crossover candidate. People who weren’t libertarians crossed over to vote for him. If the party registration is going to grown you have to get people to cross over.
I am now waiting for the California February 2015 voter registration statistics to be published to see how the party is doing.
The best hope that I see from this discussion is that there are quite a number of very dedicated Libertarians involved in OAI. If Governor Johnson does announce his intention to seek our nomination — which I would hope would be soon — then the increased involvement by our activists in a second campaign is likely to improve both the numbers and the retention rate of volunteers after November 2016. We can also hope that they would be able to influence the message.
And I don’t even mind making a buck. It’s that the bumpersticker is Advertising it publicly. Scary.
“Losty
February 15, 2015 at 7:45 pm
Andy,
1. If this is that Andy, Hope you’re feeling better. ”
I don’t know if you are addressing me or not, but I rarely get sick, so I do not know about which you are speaking. I did have a cold/flue for a few days a few weeks ago, but I was OK within a few days, and I never mentioned it online, so like I said, I don’t know about which you are speaking.
“2. From 2/14 1:28 PM:
‘Had on a Romney for President” and a staffer on GJ For President??’
Even if you support Romney, (or any other candidate), How Can You while YOU ARE A FULL TIME STAFFER on another Candidate Committee, and HOW DON”T YOU TAKE IT OFF.
That is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard of. Even if you DO support someone to win over your guy, you wouldn’t keep that where the PUBLIC CAN SEE IT if GJ gets out of your car, etc.”
This is one of the reasons why I asked the question of how many Gary Johnson campaign staffers were actually Libertarians, and how many of them were just political mercenaries out to make a buck.
This is also yet another example of why Libertarians need to hire and train other Libertarians about how to do all aspects of campaign work, from petition drives, to fund raising, to designing campaign literature, to producing videos, to etc…
If I were running for President, there’s no way in hell I’d want somebody working on my campaign staff that would knowingly drive around in a car with a Mitt Romney for President bumper sticker.
Andy,
1. If this is that Andy, Hope you’re feeling better.
2. From 2/14 1:28 PM:
“Had on a Romney for President” and a staffer on GJ For President??
Even if you support Romney, (or any other candidate), How Can You while YOU ARE A FULL TIME STAFFER on another Candidate Committee, and HOW DON”T YOU TAKE IT OFF.
That is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard of. Even if you DO support someone to win over your guy, you wouldn’t keep that where the PUBLIC CAN SEE IT if GJ gets out of your car, etc.
I just looked up the law in regard to the pardon powers of the Governor of New Mexico. Here is what I found:
“New Mexico Pardon Information
Authority
The New Mexico Constitution gives the Governor the power to “grant reprieves and pardons, after conviction for all offenses except treason and in cases of impeachment.”[1] The Legislature may regulate the manner in which a person can apply for a pardon.[1] However, the Governor has a lot of discretion in granting clemency/pardon. In making pardon decisions, he is not restrained by anything other than his “conscience, wisdom and sense of public duty.”[2]
The Legislature has created the New Mexico Parole Board which has the authority to, at the request of the Governor, accept, investigate, and make recommendations on pardon applications.[3] The Parole Board is made up of fifteen members who are appointed by the Governor and confirmed by the Senate; they each serve a six-year term.[4] ”
I do not buy Gary Johnson’s excuse that he had to go through the New Mexico pardon board for most of this stuff. The Governor appoints the pardon board! Also, the Pardon Board only makes recommendations to the Governor for whom to pardon, the Governor is under no obligation to listen to or wait for the pardon board before making a pardon.
I could see using the pardon board to investigate cases where there was a great deal of controversy, but how hard would it be for the Governor to say, “I want to grant pardons to all non-violent drug offenders convicted under New Mexico law,” or, “I want to grant pardons to anyone in New Mexico who has been convicted for a crime where there is no actual victim, and ‘the state’ does not count as a victim.”
I remember when Gary Johnson first announced he was running for the LP nomination for President he acted like he pardoned more people than he actually did. I actually took it upon myself to research his record on pardons, and that was where I came up with the 124 or 128 figure (it has been a while since I looked it up, but it was something like that). Johnson has since back peddled on his record on pardons, but I see that he is now coming up with this, “I had to wait for the Pardon Board excuse.” This is lame. I’d have more respect for him if he just said something like, “I wish I would have pardoned more people, but at the time I was afraid to do it because I feared a political backlash, or that the federal government would come after me.”
What good is it to have a libertarian elected Governor if the libertarian Governor does not have the balls to stop people from going to jail or prison for victimless crimes?
If I were elected Governor of a state, you’d best believe that I’d start pardoning people wrongfully imprisoned for some BS law from day one.
It seems to me that Johnson could have at least pardoned a bunch of people who were convicted for victimless crimes before he left office in late 2002 or early 2003.
“Mark Herd
February 15, 2015 at 7:03 pm
Andi you are ”
I doubt that that this is the real Mark Herd. Now get out of here with this bullshit.
Well, I have just spent half an hour reading and re-reading all of the comments above and agree with Mr. Feldman that this is most interesting discussion. I will go further and state that it is one of the most thought-provoking IPR discussions (and there have been many good ones lately).
I particularly enjoy and endorse the comments of the two Andies (or is it Andys?), Paulie and Josh.
My two cents: No one has made much money on OAI because it hasn’t raised that much. Wasting our time on such a canard is, um, a waste of time. Gary Johnson wants to run for President again, and of course that will be as a Libertarian and it is very likely he will win the nomination on the first ballot. He will never fully satisfy the purists in the Party, but I actually expect his campaign to do better than 2012 both in raw numbers and in quality of message: With experience one learns what works and what does not. But Gary should not expect to win an election, we hope to win hearts and minds, and so I hope he announces soon so he can raise money and use the “L” word instead of “Independent” in all his future interviews.
I noticed that for some reason, the link I posted above for The Liberty Radio Network does not take you to that site. I think that it is worth checking out for those who are not familiar with it, so here it is again: http://lrn.fm/ .
“Joshua Katz
February 14, 2015 at 9:51 pm
I don’t quite get the ‘starting point’ bit. The way negotiation works is you start out asking for more than you want, isn’t it? If I start by asking for a sales tax, how does that open up a discussion that will lead to more freedom?”
I totally agree with Joshua Katz here. If you are negotiating, you want to start the negotiation high, as in for what you want, or at least close to what you want, and then you work your way down only if the negotiations are not going for the “best case scenario” of what you want. It is a bad negotiating tactic to start off negotiations at a low point, so either Gary Johnson is not being a good negotiator here on the subject of taxes, or maybe he just wants more government than what most libertarians want (which is little to no government).
I really preferred the Harry Browne method of getting a discussion going about the subject by saying, “Did you know that if the federal government actually followed the Constitution, that there’d be no need for an income tax?” He then focused the discussion on why the income tax is not necessary, and why it does not need to be replaced with anything, rather than putting out the false assumption that, “We’ve got to have some kind of big tax on the American people.” Harry Browne also presented a real plan to reduce government, and liquidate Social Security and Medicare at the same time by selling off government assets.
“Matt Cholko
February 15, 2015 at 4:05 pm
Paulie, I have not seen or heard of any such plan. I’m just saying, the non-voter rolls are so huge, that peeling off just a tiny fraction of those, and bringing them into the LP in some way, could result in a huge boost for us. So, targeting non-voters seems like a worthwhile approach to me. Likely more effective than trying to convert Ds and Rs.”
Going after non-voters is way more effective than going after most Democrats and Republicans. I have long said that the two biggest potential support bases for Libertarians are independents and non-voters.
People do not vote for a variety of reasons, such as (in no particular order):
1) They do not see anybody or anything for which they feel it is worth voting.
2) They have “given up” on the process because they think that it is too corrupt and that nobody good can win.
3) They are not interested in politics.
4) They are lazy (and stupid too, in some cases).
5) They are legitimately very busy people and do not have time for politics.
6) They can’t vote due to a felony, or they are in a state where they can vote even though they are felons, but they assume they can’t vote because their parole or probation officer never bothered to tell them that they can get or have gotten their voting rights back.
7) They are part of a religion which does not take part in electoral politics (such as the Amish, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc…).
8) They are principled anarchists who refuse to take part in electoral politics because they think that even taking part in the system for self defense helps to legitimize the system, and therefore even voting for the pro-freedom candidates or issues is bad.
Now we obviously will not be able to get all of the people who are non-voters to come out and vote for Libertarian Party candidates, but I do believe that we can get a percentage of them, and even if this percentage is not a majority, it could still mean several million people, and this is something that could make a big impact. The problem is that it take a lot of money and a lot of hard work to reach these people.
There was an expression that became popular during the Ron Paul for President campaigns of 2007-2008 and 2011-2012 that went, “Dr. Paul cured my apathy.” I met lots of people who got involved in politics for the first time, or for the first time in a long time, because they were inspired by the Ron Paul campaign. The Ron Paul campaign was able to do this because they raised $10’s or millions of dollars, and because Ron Paul was able to get on TV where a lot of people see him and hear his message. He was able to raise that much money and get that message out because, 1) He had been building a large cult following for many years prior to this, 2) He ran as a sitting elected official to the US House of Representatives, which is a federal office, 3) He ran in the Republican primary and was able to get on stage and debate the big name Republican candidates.
Surveys showed that Ron Paul did well with independents and non-voters. Surveys show the same thing with Libertarian Party candidates (and Ron Paul basically was a libertarian candidate (he was still a Life Member of the Libertarian Party, and in fact, has never revoked his Life Member status in the LP, so he’s still a member of the LP today), he just ran under the Republican label). I went to numerous Ron Paul meetings/events all over the country, and most of the people I encountered did not come from the rank-and-file mainstream Republican ranks, most of them were either small “l” libertarians, big “L” Libertarians, independents, former non-voters, or Constitution Party types, and I even ran into a few Greens. The Ron Paul r3VOLution crowd was basically a radically different crowd of people than what you saw supporting the mainstream Republican candidates, like Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, etc… This was especially apparent when I attended the Republican Caucus in Fargo, North Dakota in 2012. You could practically pick out the Ron Paul supporters from the rest of the crowd there who were supporting the other candidates, as it was almost like picking out thinking human beings (as in the Ron Paul supporters) from a crowd of zombies (the people who were supporting the other candidates).
Ever since I’ve been in the LP, which is since 1996, and ever since the party’s inception, from what I’ve heard, the LP has had an over-focus on doing outreach to Republicans & conservatives. Some in the LP have argued for years that the party needs to do more outreach to people on the political left, and I agree with this. I’ve got nothing against doing outreach to Republicans/conservatives, but it should not be done at the expense of alienating the rest of the political spectrum. However, rather than just focusing on the left, there also needs to be a big effort put into reaching out to independents and non-voters, because I think that independents and non-voters represent the biggest potential bases from which the Libertarian Party can draw support.
“Mark Herd
February 15, 2015 at 3:35 pm
Not sure about Gary Johnson. Should have switched to Libertarian BEFORE he ran for gov. Why, because there is a difference and he knows what it is. Also I dont believe in a punitive flat tax. His stance of ‘its only a starting point’ doesnt work, needs to be ‘Im against a flat tax, nothing FAIR about it'”
The Fair Tax and the flat tax are not necessarily the same thing. There is an actual plan called the Fair Tax that was put out by Republican John Linder and former radio host (who claimed to be a libertarian) Neal Boortz. I think that it is a badly flawed plan, as do most actual libertarians, but there is a small contingent of people who support the Fair Tax and have been trying to cram it down the throats of Libertarians ever since the plan was released around 10-15 years ago. It is basically a national sales tax which is designed to be “revenue neutral” (as in it is designed to bring in as much money for the government as the present income tax system brings in), and it has a bunch of strings attached to it. There is also the very real possibility that by pushing it, we could end up with both an income tax and a national sales tax. I think that the people who are at the top of pushing the plan are fake libertarians and fake fiscal conservatives, and that unfortunately, some well meaning moderate libertarians and fiscal conservatives have latched on to the plan.
“Even an average Lib is better than any candidate from the parties of tweedle dee and tweedle dum”
I agree with this statement.
Paulie, I have not seen or heard of any such plan. I’m just saying, the non-voter rolls are so huge, that peeling off just a tiny fraction of those, and bringing them into the LP in some way, could result in a huge boost for us. So, targeting non-voters seems like a worthwhile approach to me. Likely more effective than trying to convert Ds and Rs.
Not sure about Gary Johnson. Should have switched to Libertarian BEFORE he ran for gov. Why, because there is a difference and he knows what it is. Also I dont believe in a punitive flat tax. His stance of “its only a starting point” doesnt work, needs to be “Im against a flat tax, nothing FAIR about it”
GJ should have no problem getting Lib nod, hes the only elected if he runs. But no matter who runs, I will likely vote for every single lib on my ballot. Even an average Lib is better than any candidate from the parties of tweedle dee and tweedle dum.
@Andy – I’m more positive on Johnson, but I think that’s a very accurate summary of the situation. It’s also not a personal attack on Feldman (who I look forward to seeing at our convention), or Perry, it’s not even a case that such candidates per se shouldn’t run. Just like in a major party, running a second-tier pre-nomination campaign can shape the debate, influence the future of the party, build up a base for a possible second attempt, bring attention to issues important to the candidate, etc. So it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it doesn’t mean a majority of the delegates will seriously consider nominating such a candidate.
So you’re spot-on as to why Johnson will win the nomination again on the first ballot, if he runs again. You can pick at his weaknesses and disagreements- I don’t disagree with some of those criticisms, Johnson himself doesn’t disagree with some of them- but at the end of the day nobody who might plausibly seek the nomination is a credible alternative to re-nominating Johnson. I’ve yet to see any names of anybody who would a) run a stronger campaign b) is acceptably libertarian and c) has any interest in or desire to seek the nomination.
Even if hypothetically Johnson didn’t run, I haven’t seen any big names that I’m convinced would actually jump in at that point to replace him, and that are only holding off because they don’t want to run against Johnson for the nomination. Run down the list of celebritarians and other notables, and you’ll get well into the D-list before you find somebody who hasn’t already been asked to run for President as a Libertarian before and said no.
“…will beat the Clinton machine for the Democratic nomination in 2016. …” That’s no more absurd that his getting the 2016 Republican nomination. My point is that if someone wants to advocate nonsense about running a libertarian as a Republican or a Democrat, the Republicans are the worse choice, twice.
Marc Allen Feldman said: ” Joshua Katz describes me as a member of the “Loser parade”.
I do not know if Joshua Katz used the term “Loser Parade” or not to describe Libertarian Party candidates for the party’s Presidential nomination who are not well known or well funded (by LP standards on both counts), but I did.
Yes, it sounds mean, but I do not really intend it to be a personal attack, although I can certainly see how some would take it this way. If I were running for the Libertarian Party’s Presidential nomination, I would face the same problem, that is that I too would have to shake the “Loser Parade” stigma.
I don’t know you, and I do not know much about you, Marc Allen Feldman, and I do not know much about the other candidates for the nomination besides Darryl W. Perry. I met Darryl W. Perry in person one time, and I spoke to him on the phone one time on Free Talk Live, plus I’ve read a bunch of his comments on this site as well as other places online, plus I’ve heard him a bunch of times on Free Talk Live and other programs on The Liberty Radio Network ( http://www.LRN.FM ). Darryl W. Perry seems like a good guy, and a good Libertarian activist. I would vote for him if his name appeared as a candidate on my general election ballot.
However, it takes more than being a “good guy” and a “good Libertarian activist” to run for President. You’ve got to have a good campaign. You’ve got to raise money, as much as possible. You’ve got to have a nice looking website. You’ve got to get interviewed on TV, radio (Free Talk Live and the Liberty Radio Network are nice, but you need to reach a much bigger audience than that), newspapers, magazines, and websites with high traffic. You need to travel around the country and give speeches to as many groups as possible, and I am not just talking about speaking at Libertarian Party conventions and meetings, you need to speak to groups where you are not just preaching to the choir, which is basically what you are doing at a Libertarian Party meeting or convention. You need to print up nice looking campaign literature that can be handed out to the public, and you need to have supporters who will actually hand them out to the public. You need yard signs and billboards, You need to have videos on YouTube that get lots of hits. You need to inspire as many people as possible to get involved in the campaign, as well as the party and movement.
It is really hard to do this if you are some candidate that is not well known (even by Libertarian Party standards) and if you have little to no money on which to run a campaign.
Gary Johnson is a somewhat well known person. He’s not a household name by any means, but he is a lot more well known than the likes of Darryl W. Perry and Marc Allen Feldman. Gary Johnson has actually been elected to something, as he’s a former two-time Governor of New Mexico, which is a high level office. Gary Johnson is also personally wealthy, as according to the financial disclosure statement that he filed with the FEC, he has a net worth of $10 million. He earned a lot of his net worth from the construction company he used to operate, which he sold several years back. Being worth $10 million is not enough money to effect a Presidential race, and I don’t know if he even put up any of his own money for the race, but regardless of whether he put any of his own money in the race or not, being worth $10 million is more than enough money to be considered rich, therefore he looks successful, and does not have the negative perception of a “broke loser” trying to run for President. Gary Johnson also has a better track record for being able to raise money than the other candidates for the nomination. Like it or not, money is the life blood of politics. Money is not the only factor in a campaign, but to deny its importance is delusional in my opinion.
I do not think that a person should have to be rich to run for any political office, including President, but it certainly helps if the candidate is rich. A person who is not rich can still be a good candidate, but they have to make up for their personal lack of resources by working hard and working smart as a candidate.
Michael Badnarik is a good example of a candidate who had the “broke loser” stigma surrounding him, but who made up for some of that by working hard as a candidate, and doing a lot on a shoe string budget. Pre-nomination, Michael Badnarik traveled around the country speaking to various groups. He got on some talk radio shows and he even got a little bit of newspaper coverage. He wrote a book for his campaign. He even made a TV commercial (although I am not sure if it aired on television prior to the nomination or not).
Badnarik ran for the nomination against two better known, and better funded candidates, in Gary Nolan and Aaron Russo. Nolan and Russo were both running real campaigns (by Libertarian Party standards), and all of the candidates were fairly solid on the issues, so it basically came down to who a majority of delegates thought could best sell the message to the public. Badnarik won in an upset for two reasons, 1) Nolan and Russo basically canceled each other out, and many saw Badnarik as a good compromise candidate, and, 2) Badnarik had the best performance in the debate (I think that Russo had the best closing statement, but Russo also flubbed on a couple of questions in the debate, while Badnarik sounded very good on every question, and had a decent closing statement). So without getting into a debate over whether the party would have been better off if Nolan or Russo had won the nomination instead of Badnarik, I just want once again point out that Michael Badnarik did a lot to make up for not being well known and not having a lot of money by working hard as a candidate. His campaign did end up raising a little over $1 million post-nomination, which is not bad by LP standards, but of course our candidates for President need to raise a lot more money than that if we are every going to get anywhere.
I’ve been a critic of Gary Johnson as a candidate (see comments above), but even so, he’s not completely bad as a candidate. I’d even say that he has some good points as a candidate, in spite of my disagreements with him. I would personally prefer to see a more hardcore Libertarian get the nomination in 2016 than Gary Johnson, but knowing how most LP delegates think, this is not going to happen if the contest comes down to “Loser Parade” vs. Gary Johnson (unless there is a radical shift in delegates at the 2016 convention, but I doubt this is going to happen). I did not vote for Gary Johnson in 2012 (although I did do some volunteer work for his campaign, in spite of my disagreements with him), and I do not plan to support him at the 2016 convention, but having said this, I do think that Gary Johnson for President part II is better than the Libertarian Party not having a candidate for President in 2016 (and I do not think that Rand Paul, or anyone else who is remotely pro-liberty will get nominated for President by the D’s or R’s, nor do I think that there will be any other serious candidate for President who falls in the Libertarian quadrant on the Nolan Chart who will run for President as an independent or under another party label).
So, those who are interested in running for the Libertarian Party’s nomination for President who are not well known (even by LP standards), and who do not have lots of money (even by LP standards), are going to have to work hard and work smart in order to break through the “Loser Parade” stigma if they want a real chance at beating Gary Johnson for the nomination.
Yes, it would be. Show me that there’s any realistic plan for doing the latter rather than just wishful thinking and we’ll talk.
On the other hand, if a Libertarian POTUS candidate could get just one half of one percent of those non-voters to come out and vote for him, he would get more than double our usual vote total.
Of course, its not about the number of votes (at all, really) at this point. But, getting 500,000 more people to hear and seriously consider the libertarian message would be a big deal. Turn 1% of those into party members/donors/active supporters, and then you’ve got a really big deal.
My personal bar for a candidate to beat NOTA is pretty low. See past threads for why I think NOTA will be a disaster for us. For example this one:
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2014/11/joshua-katz-will-not-seek-libertarian-presidential-nomination-endorses-nota/
Yes, because the former Republican Governor of a small state from the 1990s and early 2000s decade, who ran as a third party candidate in 2012 and who wants to dramatically lower government spending and government regulation, will beat the Clinton machine for the Democratic nomination in 2016. That may be the only thing that’s less realistic than Gary Johnson winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, or Marc Feldman getting a hundred million life-long non-voters to suddenly vote for him while spending very little money.
There are a lot of different kinds of non-voter.
Some just don’t know or care about politics at all. That’s probably the biggest chunk. How are you, with no money, going to make them all of a sudden aware and care about it? Dude, there’s a football game or a soap opera on, or a cat skateboarding on youtube, or some chick taking five penises into three different orifices at the same time on pornhub, or a runoff election on American Idol (I have never watched the show, I have no idea if they have runoff elections; and that’s as much as many of the show’s viewers know or care about the presidential elections). You are really going to compete with that when the establishment parties with their billions of dollars of ads can’t?
Some are busy. They just don’t have the time to study up on the candidates, much less to actually go vote.
Some are lazy. The chances of their one vote deciding the election are lower than winning the megamillions powerball, and the results will be a lot less dramatic for them personally even if it does. Why should they bother?
Some are cynical. “They” are going to do what “they” want to do anyway, they say. They believe that the votes aren’t counted honestly and that the real power lies in the hands of unelected bureaucrats, plutocrats and lobbyists. And they may well be right.
Some are paranoid. They think the world is imminently about to go to Mad Max land and are busy stockpiling guns, ammo and dried goods. They see the election as a meaningless distraction. They are less likely to be right, but they could be,
Some believe registering to vote will put them on jury duty.
Some believe that if they have ever been arrested for anything at any time in their life they have lost the right to vote forever.
Some are like me, bouncing around too much to have a stable address for voter registration purposes and sometimes not even knowing what address to send an absentee ballot to, and/or lacking adequate current valid government ID to be allowed to vote.
Some people are afraid that voter registration records will be used by stalkers, angry exes, bill collectors, telemarketers, spammers, junk mailers, and various other unwanted persons to track them down.
Those are some of the main things I have run into in the course of registering tens of thousands of people to vote over the course of the better part of two decades in almost 40 states. And failing to register even more people than I registered because they just plain refused to do it no matter what I said.
So you are suddenly going to convince all these people to register and to vote for you, and all without hardly any money? Good luck, and I do mean that sincerely.
I don’t think that is necessarily true. It might be, but it will depend on a how a lot of things will go after the nomination.
I don’t see that happening. The Republican party is not going to nominate someone who describes himself as pro-choice, who favors making borders more rather than less open, and who supports marriage equality. They are unlikely to nominate someone who supports legalizing marijuana, ending domestic espionage and bringing the troops home, either. What little libertarian-leaning sentiment exists in the Republican party will be sopped up by Rand Paul, and if Gary ran for their nomination again it would go even less well for him than last time. Now he would be beat up over party loyalty on their side, and beat up over it again if he tries to come back to us again after that (and justifiably so). No one would trust him on either party’s side, it would be the dumbest move ever. Luckily I think Gary has gotten that message. Yesterday’s email from Ron categorically said that if Gary runs it will be as a Libertarian and that there is no chance he will run as a Republican.
But hopefully not the concerned citizen (nevermind, IPR inside humor).
Please let me know when we have a candidate for the nomination whose campaign is about the Libertarian Party first and foremost. It won’t be the only thing I will consider but it will be a definite factor in making me want to vote for them as a delegate. The purpose of the presidential campaign should be to build the party, up until we get within striking range, and we are a long way from that. Harry Browne was the last presidential nominee that understood this, as far as I can see.
Let’s give credit where it’s due, that was Andy Jacobs. And for the record, while I certainly would not call you a loser, I agree with some of the other things Andy said in that comment.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that there is much of a chance of either one of you being president, although if somehow that becomes plausible, Gary at least has some executive experience as the head of a company with over a thousand employees and as a governor. As far as being a candidate, yesterday at 1:58 pm Andy wrote “If anyone wants to beat Gary Johnson for the 2016 nomination, they need to run a campaign that looks like a real campaign, as in they need to raise money, have a nice looking website, travel around the country speaking to different groups (and I am NOT just talking about Libertarian Party meetings/conventions), get interviewed on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and websites with high traffic, produce videos that get lots of hits on YouTube, etc… Just basically look like you are running a real campaign” I agree that anyone not doing these things seems to me to be unlikely to beat Gary Johnson for the nomination if Gary runs, and unlikely to win my vote as a delegate regardless of whether Gary runs or not (unless none of the candidates seeking the nomination are doing these things, which would be unfortunate).
Me too. Although the Badnarik campaign turned out a lot better than I expected coming out of the convention in Atlanta. The Barr campaign, I did not have any good expectations for, and was relieved that it turned out to be so easily forgettable to so many people.
And you did not have to resign. Recently, Charlie Frohman and myself asked Darryl Perry to be NH director, with the full knowledge that he is running for the presidential nomination. I am Alabama director, South region director and Eastern region co-deputy director, and I have made it clear that my delegate vote is not committed and may well not be committed until the convention.
Well, yeah, there’s truth in that, but as the past and possibly future LP nominee he should be working to change that as far as the L goes, not perpetuating it. Also, there has to be a better way to phrase that, if that was all he meant.
That’s the same thing he said in this interview, and what we have been discussing all along. Scroll further up to see a variety of opinions on that, ranging from ones that are much like yours, to some like mine that are more nuanced, to Andy Craig’s which is a defense of a different way of looking at that statement. And see my long email from yesterday replying to Daniel Hayes and some other people.
True, all governors can pardon some people, and I’d be interested in seeing how those numbers compared with other states at the same time. However, Andy Craig is correct that using pardon power wholescale to effectively nullify a law – that is more or less dictatorially taking the place of the legislature – could have easily led to the inability to sustain vetoes or to impeachment and removal. It is conceivable it could have led to even worse things than that, but those would be bad enough. Nevertheless, I wish he had done it anyway, and he now wishes he had too.
Sounds to me like if he was doing all that the state police would just stop taking his orders and might just arrest him.
“Could the non-voters be insprired to vote?”
The short answer is: no, they can’t.
It’s a perpetually appealing idea, because the numbers seem so tantalizing. But the fact is that almost nothing can get non-voters to turn out in substantial numbers. Any candidate that does manage to do so, will only be after they’re already polling very well among likely-voters, and even then if they’re lucky they’ll get no more than ~10% of regular non-voters.
Non-voters are not, for the most part, refusing to vote just because they don’t like either the Ds or Rs and would turn out for an L or other third-party. There are some like that, but they’re a relatively small number. For the vast bulk of them, they’re refusing to vote because they know nothing about politics and genuinely don’t care who wins, and no outstandingly awesome candidate is going to change that.
“first we have to see if the Libertarian Party is ready to select someone who
has much less experience,
much less name recognition,
much less money,
and is less “Presidential””
That describes the majority, if not all, of the party’s past nominees.
I do not remember writing anything about a “Loser parade.” The closest I can come to a statement like that, in my memory, is statements about how people outside the party view some of our actions – similar to what Dr. Feldman writes above. I would ask for a citation.
“.. ideally he would run as the Republican nominee.” Ummh, no, if you care about nothing but winning he runs as the Democrat. They have the demographic advantage. Also, running a Libertarian as the candidate of the Republican party of homophobic bigots, islamophobic geneocide advocates, antiabortionist daughter-killers, apostles of antiscience and anti-reality (global warming denial, evolution denial, young-earth advocacy, and, of course, rape cannot cause pregnancy) et tedious cetera, would not be a good thing for our party’s future.
A candidate with superpowers. Incredibly [yawn] exciting. Campaign at comic conventions and we’ll have a winner!
So when are the real candidates going to start announcing? So far I feel a desire for NOTA…
“OTOH, all GJ could be saying is [something other than what he seems to those who speak English to be saying].”
You do have a point there. Yes, it’s possible that Johnson is either an extremely unskilled communicator of what he actually believes, or a not-very-artful liar as to what he actually believes.
But do either of those things really look any better on his resume than “meant what he said?”
This is a very interesting discussion. Some thoughts:
I consider Gary Johnson the best candidate for POTUS the LP has had since Harry Browne. I consider myself a Gary Johnson supporter. I was the Ohio director for OAI. I am only running against him because I believe I would be a much better candidate, and a much better President. It is not because I think I am a very special person. It is because I think Americans are special people, and Libertarians are very special people. I can better represent Libertarians.
Gary said that ideally he would run as an independent. I give him credit for honesty. But I wonder if it would be more even more honest if he said that ideally he would run as the Republican nominee.
The Gary Johnson campaign is not so much about the Libertarian Party, as it is about Gary Johnson. My campaign will be about the American people first, the Libertarian party second, and Marc Allan Feldman little or not at all. I am only a concerned citizen. I am not great, but I could be a great candidate and a great President if I can represent a great group of people.
My only superpower is incredibly thick impenetrable skin. Joshua Katz describes me as a member of the “Loser parade”. Well, I take that as a compliment. Because there a lot of people who describe the Libertarian Party as a Loser Parade. If given the opportunity to represent this Loser Parade as a candidate, I believe I offer the best chance to lead this Loser Parade right into the White House.
Gary Johnson is a very good politician. He has been very politically active and successful for a long time. He believes in freedom, and he can well represent most everyone who is politically active in the various independent freedom movements. The problem is that there is not a lot of people. He received 1% of the vote in 2012, and I think he would probably get fewer in 2016.
I come from a very different poliitical background. Before I became a Libertarian, I was a member of the largest, most powerful, and least powerful, political party in the United States.
In 2012:
Barack Obama voters were about 65 million
Mitt Romney voters were about 60 million
Gary Johnson voters were about 1 million
Non-voters were about 107 million
Non-voters are not lazy. It is not that they don’t care who runs the country. It is that they are not inspired by any of the candidates, and they don’t think their vote makes a difference.
Could the non-voters be insprired to vote? Is it possible that they might select a Libertarian? Is it possible that the public is ready to support someone who has much less experience, much less name recognition, much less money, and is less “Presidential”, just because he has principles and integrity? I don’t know the answer, but I have a plan to test the hypothesis.
Libertarians are early adopters. We were ahead on same-sex marriage. We were ahead on Marijuana legalization. I believe that if you want to see the future of real hope and change in America, look to the Libertarian party. To find out if America is ready to select a candidate who: has much less experience,
much less name recognition,
much less money,
and is less “Presidential”
first we have to see if the Libertarian Party is ready to select someone who
has much less experience,
much less name recognition,
much less money,
and is less “Presidential”
Stay tuned.
OTOH, all GJ could be saying is that the word “independent” has more cachet than R, D or L.
There’s a lot of truth there, too.
Gary Johnson seems to view the Libertarian Party as the cheap date. In the above videoo interview, 2012 Libertarian Party Presidential candidate effectively says that running as a Libertarian is not desirable, but it’s the cheap way to go. I also see where LNC member Daniel Hayes reports that Gary Johnson said “The ideal political affiliation right now is independent,” Johnson said. “I would be that, but to get on the ballot in all 50 states would be a $10 million endeavor. Running as a Libertarian, with all the volunteers, they cover that base. They make that happen.”
The Johnson quote is strong negative advertising for our national party, which gave him the highest honor that a political party can bestow on one of its members, namely we entrusted Johnson with our 2012 presidential nomination.
Governor Johnson did in fact pardon either 124 or 128 (I looked it up a while ago), so he obviously had the power to do it.
He could have gotten cops fired for violating their oath to defend the Constitution.
He also could have rallied in favor of jury nullification, and urged jury rights activist to hand out jury nullification pamphlets in front of every court house in New Mexico, and he could have had anyone who tried to interfere with this 1st amendment activity arrested.
“he did not use his pardon power as Governor to pardon everyone convicted of a non-violent marijuana offense”
I’ve asked him about this in person, and the fact is the Governor of NM doesn’t really have that power. As a formal matter yes, but in practice like most states it’s delegated to a Pardon and Paroles Board that have to initiate the process. He was quite reasonably concerned that he would be impeached for doing it unilaterally, that the legality of a blanket pardon might not have been upheld, and that it was possibly a bad precedent to set even if he could. He also said he wished had pushed ahead and done it anyway, but the balance of concerns at the time weighed against it.
I would have done it, in fact I made some campaign hay out of the fact that a weird combination of obsolete provisions could have let me do so as Secretary of State turned Acting Governor for a few hours when the Gov/LtGov were both out of state. Keep in mind though that had he done this, his political ability to get anything else done the rest of his time in office (most of his second term) would have been nil, his vetoes could have started to be over-ridden by Republicans defecting, and that’s if he was even allowed to finish his term at all by an irate legislature. It’s basically demanding that he sacrifice every other issue in favor of marijuana legalization.
“nor did he order the New Mexico State Police to stop arresting people for marijuana.”
This one isn’t even close: he had no power to do any such thing. That really would have gotten him impeached, not even close. The Governor can’t just order to the police to not enforce certain laws. If they did get such an order, their own lawyers would tell them to ignore it because the actual statute trumps.
If the Libertarians turned their nose up at anybody who’s ever had any involvement in or been association with either of the major-parties, then there wouldn’t be very many Libertarians. It’s also a bizarrely hypocritical stance for a party that founded, for the most part, by ex-Republicans who left that party in protest of Nixon. I say as somebody who has never had any involvement with the GOP and is a pretty die-hard partisan Libertarian.
“Certainly helped in Bama. We were dying. Most of the active leadership of the state party now came in as a result of the Johnson campaign. I know this to be true in several states.”
I’ll put it this way: pre-2012 I didn’t even have an active state party to do anything worthwhile with. Post-2012 I do. Of course, I also moved from one state (Arkansas) to another (Wisconsin) in 2012, so that’s not quite apples-to-apples. 😉 But it also holds up comparing both of those states today to their pre-2012 selves. I think the smallest effect is in states that already have very active successful parties, but in other states you are quite correct that the energy and interest in the Johnson campaign pulled several state affiliates from the brink and turned them around.
1999 was not near the end of his tenure as Governor; he served until early 2003. It’s true that he should have used his powers as governor more in this regard.
Gary Johnson advocated legalizing marijuana toward the end of his tenure as Governor of New Mexico, yet he did not use his pardon power as Governor to pardon everyone convicted of a non-violent marijuana offense, nor did he order the New Mexico State Police to stop arresting people for marijuana.
I like Johnson. Speaking just for myself I voted for him and do not think I’d have voted for Mr. Wrights in 2012. Alas I was still harboring under the “wasted vote” syndrome, and GJ’s credentials convinced me to cross over. That may have happens with others, or I may just have been an odd duck.
Of course, I should hasten to add I don’t really consider myself a libertarian. So more purist LP members would probably be justified in arguing that people like me whom Johnson attracted were not the ones the party should have been going after. Still, I think Johnson probably deserves some credit for all the success the LP has had recently. If it’s gaining members while even the Greens are losing some, this suggests something about it is appealing to folks rather than solely two party disillusionment.
Certainly helped in Bama. We were dying. Most of the active leadership of the state party now came in as a result of the Johnson campaign. I know this to be true in several states.
Can’t agree with Knapp on that one. Johnson has been a pledge signing LP member since the 1980s, was a dues paying LP member on a couple of occasions in the 1980s and 1990s, and was widely, frequently described as a libertarian even while he was a Republican governor. He was the subject of LP draft efforts in 2004, and perhaps in 2008 as well, although I don’t remember the latter. So saying that he is a Republican is inaccurate. The last time he was a Republican in any way was in 2011, and he has been active in the LP ever since. This is nothing like Barr.
I don’t think anyone is being fleeced here, nor is time and money being wasted.
Most of the LP’s past presidential candidates had been Republicans at some time in their lives. Several of them went back to the Republicans after running with the LP. Browne is the only candidate in 11 presidential elections so far that we have nominated more than once. The only thing that allegedly makes Johnson “worse” here, and derided as a Republican, is that as a Republican he was elected Governor and got on a debate stage with leading candidates for their presidential nomination. But then, he also got more ACLU torches than anyone the ACLU considered worthy of ranking (more than Ron Paul or others seeking the Republican nomination or Barack Obama), openly advocated legalizing marijuana as a Republican governor, vetoed more bills than all the rest of the governors combined…so I won’t hold it too much against him that he was an elected Republican at one point.
It seems to me that at least in state by state registrations, the Libertarian party is going through a period of healthy growth. Would most people here say the party’s in better shape overall than say in 2008? I guess the question then becomes if GJ has helped, harmed, or had no impact on the party’s success or lack thereof, depending on your view.
“Here we go again.”
Yes, here we go again.
Usually when the LP nominates a Republican for president he has the good grace to slink away after wasting their time and money once. Apparently this one’s out to fleece the yokels a second time.
I wrote a long email to the State Chairs list about some of these issues today. A lot of it is my own opinion, so I am on the fence whether it would be appropriate for me to post the article, although it’s a sampling of opinion so technically maybe I could. I’ll forward it to the IPR list and see what other IPR writers want to do with it for now, and anyone else upon request. It may be posted here later.
Exactly! Andy Craig nails it.
As for reporting to the FEC the same value he would have charged an average client, that’s not only not illegal, it’s legally required. So is reporting the difference between that estimate and actual payment as a debt. Doing what you can to get around the FEC’s insane unconstitutional restrictions on 1st Amendment activity isn’t something I’m going to hold against anybody, as a libertarian, particularly when not even the government bureaucrats themselves have an issue with it.
He was the highlight of our 2014 convention in Wisconsin, bringing attendance up to, if not an all-time record, certainly a recent-years record. He is, and remains, one of the few speakers available to LP events who can bring in a significant attendance boost and sometimes even local media coverage. Put out the word to the average state membership that Gary Johnson is going to be there, and everybody gets excited and checks their calendars. Put out to the state membership that [fill-in-the-blank average notable Libertarian speaker] is going to be there, and half of people are going to google to find out who they are.
I’m not saying that Johnson is the only big-draw speaker within the broader libertarian movement, but he is one of the only ones, and the biggest one, who regularly does LP events and conventions in particular. To say that he hasn’t done anything for state LPs is woefully inaccurate.
The financial allegations have been re-hashed so many times I’m a bit surprised paulie has it in him to repeat the same old perfectly-valid explanations he’s offered every other time this has come up, as it inevitably does on every GJ/OAI-related thread. Anybody who thinks somebody is getting rich off of OAI, clearly has had minimal-to-no interaction with the organization. It’s as silly as when outsiders accuse the LP of cashing huge checks from the Koch bros or whoever: anybody who’s ever dealt with the shoestring budgets of the LP knows how absurd it is.
Ron Nielson via email today:
Mark Axinn wrote:
And I can personally confirm that Gary Johnson has provided a huge shot in the arm, repeatedly, to the Alabama LP.
I don’t have any proof that anyone has lied to me. Joe Buchman, despite being anti-Gary Johnson and anti-Ron Nielson now, confirms the facts I have heard from many sources about the actual salaries at GJ12/OAI to be low, and he is speaking from first hand knowledge. The fact that there is a debt to Nielson and that he is not being very aggressive in collecting the debt is public knowledge also, so that is evidence that Ron is telling the truth that he lost money, not lined his pockets.
So when someone gives you their word you don’t consider it to be evidence?
They know what they paid people. What they put on FEC reports were very high end estimates of what the expenses were based on what they generally charge most clients. So they have an explanation for the only evidence you provided, and you do not have proof that their explanation is false, only assumptions and characterization of it as fairy tales.
There’s also the claim that it was fraud from the government’s legal perspective. I have already said that I am not qualified to evaluate that claim, but that I brought this up with Ron and he denied it. I am however open to the possibility that it may be. Do I consider it morally wrong to put down potentially misleading information on government paperwork that should not be required anyway in the first place? Not especially. And even if it is, it’s pretty far down my list of sins. If it is fraud, who is being defrauded? Do we have a right to demand this information of anyone at the point of being threatened with government guns and cages if they refuse? Is creative accounting on reports to the government, if that is what happened, an initiation of force or fraud, or would it be retaliatory?
Langa – I don’t consider it an example of being a political opportunist. I don’t think it will play all that well either to say you’re appearing on the ballot line of a party you’re not enthusiastic about. Since most people don’t understand ballot access, and they wouldn’t have given him time if he tried to explain more fully, most will walk away saying “if you want to run independent, you should do it” and saying “gee, the LP is nominating a candidate who doesn’t even really like them.” I am objecting more here to how this comes off than to the factual matters, which are correct. I think it’s a bad political play.
Actually, I didn’t mean to say that this quote seemed opportunist. On the contrary, I think he’s being truthful here, and that he would prefer to run an independent campaign without the LP.
Where I think he’s being an opportunist is in exaggerating the extent of his commitment to libertarian principles and especially his commitment to the Libertarian Party. Basically, I think he’s using the LP for ballot access in much the same way that men often use women for sex, women often use men for money, etc. His only “mistake” in that interview was being too candid.
@ 8:38PM You can keep repeating your fairy tales from the Johnson campaign staff, but “X told me” not even in writing is zero evidence. The idea that the campaign does not know what it paid people is, like, bizarre.
I don’t quite get the ‘starting point’ bit. The way negotiation works is you start out asking for more than you want, isn’t it? If I start by asking for a sales tax, how does that open up a discussion that will lead to more freedom?
Yes, tariffs, duties, and excises taxes still generate revenue for the government, and are still theft, but the difference is that Ron Paul, Harry Browne, and Michael Badnarik wanted to eliminate a big tax and replace it with nothing, while Gary Johnson wants to eliminate a big tax, and replace with another big tax, one that is more difficult to avoid as well.
Tariffs, duties, and excise taxes are also way of generating revenue, or stealing money. Neither Browne, nor Johnson, nor Ron Paul proposed completely eliminating all involuntary taxation of any kind.
They were high end estimates of expenses. Very high end. Based on what Ron charges other clients. Whether this was legally allowed or fraud or not is a question I am not competent to answer, but Ron says it was legal.
The actual reality as far as I have been able to determine is that no one made high salaries and Ron may have actually lost a lot of money – legally this is “debt” now but no one sees any realistic chance that it will get paid.
Neither did Harry Browne or Ron Paul. But it does do away with quite a few other taxes which are not income taxes, in direct contradiction to your previous claim further up that “it only replaces income taxes.”
He’s also publicly said many times – starting point for conversation, and that he does not necessarily endorse the details of the proposal. I’ve heard him say it quite a few times, and not only behind the scenes but publicly as well. It’s a fact and has been discussed in many past IPR threads. It is true that some of the time he does say “fair tax” but that’s only to save time. I wish he would not call it that, but every time I have seen him pressed in detail on this point, in public or in private, he always says he does not necessarily endorse the details of the plan and just wants it to be the starting point of a conversation – and that has been quite a few times.
Sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn’t. I have seen him throw it in there quite a few times when not pressed on it as well. I think he should do it more often.
Gary Johnson is the real deal!
Buchman: “As for high staff salaries — there were a lot of people being paid, I believe, relatively little and perhaps one or two or three being paid an amount that IF the books were transparent would upset donors. I do not know that for a fact (the amount paid) but I do not see/have not seen the transparency regarding expenses either.”
In the refilings, we have the number of hours worked as well as the dollar amounts. ‘A lot of people paid relatively little’ is not consistent with the FEC filings made under penalty of perjury.
Now, someone else might propose that those filings are fraudulent, a claim for which I have seen absolutely zero evidence, but, you know, don’t Libertarians have a position on using fraud for political purposes? Perhaps someone else here can remind me of what it is. And if you use a lie for political purposes, you really cannot complain when other people crucify you on your true confessions, now can you?
If Gary Johnson doesn’t actually support the Fair Tax, as proposed by Boortz and others, he should stop saying that he does. If he’s saying something different behind the scenes, that’s nice. But he absolutely has, many, many times, publicly said that he supports the Fair Tax.
I have seen him say publicly, when pushed, that he views it as a good starting point for a conversation, much like what Paulie said above. But, he does not generally throw that line in unless challenged. He seems to default to something like “I support the Fair Tax.” So, any confusion about the matter is purely his own fault.
” Sell off unconstitutionally ”
Should read, “Sell off unconstitutionally held…”
“since the Fair Taxes say ”
Should read, “since the Fair Taxers say…”
“‘Get rid of the income tax and replace it with nothing’ is a soundbite, not a plan. Actually try to put it down on paper how much money you’d still be spending and where it would come from, and the apparent radical libertarianism of the soundbite falls apart.”
It is not just a sound bite. Harry Browne was right, if the government simply followed the Constitution there’d be no need for an income tax, and you would not have to replace the income tax with anything.
Harry Browne had a real plan, end the income tax and replace it with nothing, and start cutting the size of government. Sell off unconstitutionally and unneeded government assets, and use the proceeds to liquidate Social Security and Medicare.
If you want to reduce the size of government, you need to take away its ability to generate revenue (ie-steal money from people). Ending the income tax and replacing it with nothing does this, ending the income tax and replacing it with the Fair Tax does not.
“As defined in the proposed legislation, the tax rate is 23% for the first year. This percentage is based on the total amount paid including the tax ($23 out of every $100 spent in total). This would be equivalent to a 30% traditional U.S. sales tax ($23 on top of every $77 spent—$100 total).[”
Fair Taxers are deceptive about the rate of the tax. It is really a 30% tax, but they deceptively sell it as being a 23% tax by not calculating the percentage the way that tax rates are traditionally calculated, which is also the way that just about everyone who is not being deceptive would calculate the percentage.
How does paying a 30% tax on the sale of goods and services make us any more free than we are now? Does it really matter if the government goes from paycheck extortion to point of sale extortion, especially since the Fair Taxes say that the Fair Tax is designed to be “revenue neutral,” in that it is supposed to take in just as much money as the current income tax system does?
“The Fair Tax does not replace every other tax, it only replaces income taxes. It would still leave tariffs, duties, and excise taxes in place”
As paulie notes, this isn’t true of the Boortz Fair Tax, and also isn’t true of what Johnson advocates.
“all of which are constitutional (not purely libertarian, but in line with the Constitution), unlike the Fair Tax, which is unconstitutional because it is a direct tax on the American people, which is prohibited by the Constitution.”
Which is why every version or variant I’ve ever heard involves passing a constitutional amendment, that would explicitly authorize it and simultaneously repeal the 16th Amendment.
“The Fair Tax would also be more difficult to avoid, since everyone would get hit with it every time they purchase goods and services, and it would be easier for the government to go after goods and service providers than it is for them to go after millions and millions of people who earn money.”
You say “the government [not going] after […] millions and millions of people.” like it’s a bad thing. Low compliance costs and ease of enforcement is one of the benefits of a single consumption/sales-type tax. Using this logic, we should support making the income tax as obtrusive and complicated as possible, because more people being hurt by it is somehow a good thing. And it’s not like the government doesn’t already go after goods and service providers anyway, both for tax and regulatory reasons.
” It would replace all federal income taxes (including the alternative minimum tax, corporate income taxes, and capital gains taxes), payroll taxes (including Social Security and Medicare taxes), gift taxes, and estate taxes with a single broad national consumption tax on retail sales. The Fair Tax Act (H.R. 25/S. 155) would apply a tax, once, at the point of purchase on all new goods and services for personal consumption. The proposal also calls for a monthly payment to all family households of lawful U.S. residents as an advance rebate, or “prebate”, of tax on purchases up to the poverty level.[1][2] First introduced into the United States Congress in 1999, a number of congressional committees have heard testimony on the bill; however, it has not moved from committee and has yet to have any effect on the tax system. In recent years, a tax reform movement has formed behind the FairTax proposal.[3] Increased attention was created after talk radio personality Neal Boortz and Georgia Congressman John Linder published The FairTax Book in 2005 and additional visibility was gained in the 2008 presidential campaign”
Notice how it says nothing about eliminating tariffs, duties, and excise taxes.
Also, how are they going to know to whom to credit with Social Security payments unless they get a Social Security Number from everyone who purchases a good or service? They’d probably have to require people to scan their drivers license or state issued ID card, which means that the government would know every purchase you make.
That is factually incorrect. While I happen to oppose the Boortz plan, it helps to know what it actually is regardless of whether you are for it or against it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax
The Fair Tax does not replace every other tax, it only replaces income taxes. It would still leave tariffs, duties, and excise taxes in place, all of which are constitutional (not purely libertarian, but in line with the Constitution), unlike the Fair Tax, which is unconstitutional because it is a direct tax on the American people, which is prohibited by the Constitution.
The Fair Tax would also be more difficult to avoid, since everyone would get hit with it every time they purchase goods and services, and it would be easier for the government to go after goods and service providers than it is for them to go after millions and millions of people who earn money.
“It’s not a line. I’ve discussed this with him personally, privately as well as publicly, many times. He does not necessarily support the plan, just the idea of a single, simple tax, which he thinks would be best as a consumption tax, to replace not just the income tax but all the other federal taxes as well.”
This is true, as you’ve pointed out many times before, but as usual those who level this complaint are more intent on fighting the Gary Johnson they’ve constructed in their imagination than the actual positions he’s taken.
Not only is Gary Johnson’s position on taxes perfectly libertarian, it’s in fact *more* libertarian than saying you’d get rid of the income tax and leave every other bad tax in place. In other words, these are “purists” (or whatever you want to call it) who are implicitly defending every Federal tax minus one. Even Harry Browne’s line (also used by Ron Paul), about funding the federal government minus the personal income tax, is premised on corporate taxes, capital gain taxes, import taxes, inheritance taxes, special taxes levied on certain goods, etc., etc. staying as they are. How is *that* a more libertarian position than the single-tax argument, replacing *all* Federal taxes with a single transparent broad-based least-wasteful lowest-compliance-cost tax, which would be much easier to keep low than a wide range of arbitrary, narrow-based taxes? The entire idea has a long and well-founded tradition in libertarian economics and thought long predating Boortz’s plan.
‘Get rid of the income tax and replace it with nothing’ is a soundbite, not a plan. Actually try to put it down on paper how much money you’d still be spending and where it would come from, and the apparent radical libertarianism of the soundbite falls apart.
FYI, the movie I posted, “Freedom to Facism” talks a lot about income tax. I’m sure Andy and Paulie have seen it, but I’d recommend that anyone who hasn’t seen it take the time to do so.
It’s not a line. I’ve discussed this with him personally, privately as well as publicly, many times. He does not necessarily support the plan, just the idea of a single, simple tax, which he thinks would be best as a consumption tax, to replace not just the income tax but all the other federal taxes as well.
The income tax is not the only, main, or even necessarily the worst federal tax. Personally I think FICA/payroll tax is the worst. Then there’s also the debt, which is a hidden tax.
I do not buy into “The Fair Tax is just Gary Johnson’s starting point for a discussion about tax reform,” line. He obviously supports it and he purposefully avoided debating critics on the plan.
Harry Browne had a much better starting point for a conversation about tax reform by saying, “Did you know that if the federal government actually followed the Constitution that there’d be no need for an income tax?”
Natalie Whittle–another beautiful, smart (but married) Los Angeles girl!
Who is the LA area representative?
I have invited the Los Angeles-area representative for Our America Initiative to speak at our meeting in March. I don’t believe she was involved with the LP when Johnson was our candidate. I’m curious to how the meeting will go.
Here we go again.
Remember too he is a proponent of the (alleged) “Fair Tax.”
No, he said he wants it to be the starting point of a conversation. I disagree with that, although I do agree with making the tax code much simpler as long as it exists. He does not back a revenue neutral rate, nor does he necessarily support the so-called “prebate.”
His performance on various internet radio interviews indicated a shocking lack of preparation/understanding of Libertarian principles, platform and philosophy.
He didn’t feel internet radio was a good use of his time, either. If he runs again he’ll stick with mass media outlets and skip the internet radio shows. I’d say he is easily in the libertarian idea ballpark as far as any conversation with a general public audience.
As for high staff salaries — there were a lot of people being paid, I believe, relatively little
Correct.
and perhaps one or two or three being paid an amount that IF the books were transparent would upset donors.
I’m for transparency but nevertheless the key word there is perhaps. Ron denies that this is true.
Ron Nielsen, Joe Hunter and others? who knows?
Yeah, for all you know Ron may have lost money on it, at least so far.
I am personally disinclined based on my experiences to support Governor Johnson for a second try at our nomination
Find some better candidates and we’ll compare them.
As for the CPD lawsuit, I wonder if donors in Columbus last year, or donors prior to that imagined the lawsuit would still be being researched, developed, subject to years of overhead?
Some of the necessary pre-conditions for the lawsuit only came together just recently, including a new team of attorneys, paperwork that was needed from the LP and from Jill Stein/Greens, etc.
Johnson also wanted us to intervene in “humanitarian wars” in Africa.
He said he would not necessarily rule it out under any circumstances, and while I would, that’s a long way away from wanting to intervene as such.
Johnson also wanted us to intervene in “humanitarian wars” in Africa.
George Phillies @ February 14, 2015 at 10:47 am
Remember too he is a proponent of the (alleged) “Fair Tax.” His performance on various internet radio interviews indicated a shocking lack of preparation/understanding of Libertarian principles, platform and philosophy.
As for high staff salaries — there were a lot of people being paid, I believe, relatively little and perhaps one or two or three being paid an amount that IF the books were transparent would upset donors. I do not know that for a fact (the amount paid) but I do not see/have not seen the transparency regarding expenses either.
I do know I was paid $5,000 for six plus months work (what I wanted was a minimal salary, enough to cover direct expenses without having to keep every receipt. Most of the others who I worked directly with were being paid about twice that, I think (based on what they told me).
Ron Nielsen, Joe Hunter and others? who knows?
I am personally disinclined based on my experiences to support Governor Johnson for a second try at our nomination, and highly disinclined to support any Libertarian Presidential Campaign or PAC or initiative of any kind that does not offer a far higher level of transparency regarding its finances.
As for the CPD lawsuit, I wonder if donors in Columbus last year, or donors prior to that imagined the lawsuit would still be being researched, developed, subject to years of overhead?
Joe
Joshua Katz
February 14, 2015 at 1:20 pm “I recognize he’s trying to gain support from independents, a much larger from than libertarians. I don’t think this is the way to do it, though. Maybe I’m wrong. I also think it’s premature, in that he hasn’t actually locked up the nomination if another big name enters, which is certainly not inconceivable.”
I hate to sound mean, but right now it is looking like the Libertarian Party 2016 Presidential nomination contest is going to be Loser Parade vs. Gary Johnson, in which case, I predict that Gary Johnson will be the winner.
This is really what it came down to in 2012, as in it was either vote for Gary Johnson or vote for somebody from the parade of losers posing as candidates pretending to have campaigns.
I did not vote for Gary Johnson at the 2012 convention, as I cast a protest vote against all of the candidates by casting a write in vote for Ron Paul. I had thought about voting for None Of The Above, but I do think that the party should have a candidate for President, it was just that I was not satisfied with any of the candidates for the nomination, and I thought that writing in a name would be a better way of voicing my protest than voting for None Of The Above. Other names I considered writing in were Andrew Napolitano, Doug Stanhope, and Alex Jones.
If anyone wants to beat Gary Johnson for the 2016 nomination, they need to run a campaign that looks like a real campaign, as in they need to raise money, have a nice looking website, travel around the country speaking to different groups (and I am NOT just talking about Libertarian Party meetings/conventions), get interviewed on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, and websites with high traffic, produce videos that get lots of hits on YouTube, etc… Just basically look like you are running a real campaign so you can break out of the “Loser Parade” stigma.
If nobody does this, then expect the 2016 nomination to be another lock for Gary Johnson, in spite of his flaws and the flaws in his campaign last time (which, admittedly were not as bad as the Bob Barr 2008 fiasco, but even so, I’d prefer better for 2016 than 2012).
Of course, the GJ campaign had a bit of the burden taken off of them by the LASPAC, at least in terms of getting marketing materials in the hands of volunteers. The Barr campaign didn’t have that helping hand. And I did make use of LASPAC stuff in 2012 quite a bit. But, I also got stuff directly from the campaign, multiple times.
It is getting awfully nit-picky in here. I didn’t particularly like the statement about having to run LP, but I’m not going to hold it against him unless I hear it several more times.
I’m pretty much neutral on GJ. I like him a lot on a personal level. I’ve not spent a lot of time with him, but I certainly would like to hang out with him some more. As our candidate, I think he leaves quite a bit to be desired, but not so much that I won’t support him if he gets our nomination.
Regarding his campaign in 2012, I’ve only got one to compare it to directly, and that’s 2008. I believe they raised similar amounts of money, but I saw a hell of a lot more done with the money in 2012 than 2008. I was actually able to get GJ literature and signage when requested, both Johnson and Gray came through town (the Washington, DC area) multiple times, and I heard from state coordinators regularly. None of that is true of the Barr campaign in 2008. So, until I see another campaign show me more for less money, I’m not going to complain about GJ’s campaign.
“George Phillies
February 14, 2015 at 10:47 am
If we give our nomination to someone who really does not want it, but sees it as a convenience, we will get what we the record already promises: huge staff salaries.”
“Stewart Flood
February 14, 2015 at 11:48 am
And that is something I am fearful of. The 2012 campaign was top-heavy with highly paid staff, which cut significantly into what could have been spent doing real campaigning.”
I’ve got to wonder how many of these campaign staffers were actually Libertarians, and how many of them were political mercenaries out to make a buck.
I remember hearing about one Gary Johnson for President campaign staffer who had a Mitt Romney for President bumper sticker on his car during the entire time of the campaign. No libertarian would knowingly drive around with a Mitt Romney for President bumper sticker on their car. I’d question this person’s loyalty to the campaign, as well as to the Libertarian Party and movement.
Langa – I don’t consider it an example of being a political opportunist. I don’t think it will play all that well either to say you’re appearing on the ballot line of a party you’re not enthusiastic about. Since most people don’t understand ballot access, and they wouldn’t have given him time if he tried to explain more fully, most will walk away saying “if you want to run independent, you should do it” and saying “gee, the LP is nominating a candidate who doesn’t even really like them.” I am objecting more here to how this comes off than to the factual matters, which are correct. I think it’s a bad political play.
I also want to know how you can walk into the convention and talk about your desire to be the LP candidate with that kind of statement floating around.
I recognize he’s trying to gain support from independents, a much larger from than libertarians. I don’t think this is the way to do it, though. Maybe I’m wrong. I also think it’s premature, in that he hasn’t actually locked up the nomination if another big name enters, which is certainly not inconceivable.
I already addressed that canard in past threads.
And that is something I am fearful of. The 2012 campaign was top-heavy with highly paid staff, which cut significantly into what could have been spent doing real campaigning. Governor Johnson needs to get in or get out. I believe that his advisors or whoever it is keeping him out of the race are making a serious mistake.
If we give our nomination to someone who really does not want it, but sees it as a convenience, we will get what we the record already promises: huge staff salaries.
I see it more as him saying look, I wish I could just run as an independent and not have this party label and its platform and other candidates hung around my neck, but then I would have to pay too much to get on the ballot, so I do it out of convenience.
That’s also how I took it, but what do you expect? GJ is, at heart, a politician (an opportunist).
mp: I wish I could just run as an independent and not have this party label and its platform and other candidates hung around my neck,
me: Yes, I took it that way too. Can you blame him? He knows there’s no cult of the omnipotent state and the other wild exaggerations in and around the LP. It may be the best vehicle available for him to express himself, a hoopty needing an overhaul.
https://www.google.com/search?q=hoopty&rlz=1CAACAG_enUS593US593&espv=2&biw=1242&bih=575&tbm=isch&imgil=eQJ15g4EOiI5wM%253A%253Bh8t6Yh-X-k4ZcM%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fgenius.com%25252F113469%25252F50-cent-21-questions%25252FIf-i-went-back-to-a-hoopty-from-a-benz-would-you-poof-and-disappear-like-some-of-my-friends&source=iu&pf=m&fir=eQJ15g4EOiI5wM%253A%252Ch8t6Yh-X-k4ZcM%252C_&usg=__JgK8g-w4WigFTbUsla1MxGhPfs8%3D&ved=0CDYQyjc&ei=6zHfVKeYLcGANsmKhPAK#imgdii=_&imgrc=4g2PuuigOmG-dM%253A%3B0ISN2tmowFVFoM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fimages.rapgenius.com%252Fd095dfff6d56c596931d38537bdbc1a6.1000x577x1.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fgenius.com%252F2563491%252FDj-khaled-all-i-do-is-win%252FSnoopy-in-the-hoopty-system-overload%3B1000%3B577
He’s not perfect but neither are we (Libertarian Party.) And we have a lot more in common with each other than either of us have with the Dems & Reps.
I see it more as him saying look, I wish I could just run as an independent and not have this party label and its platform and other candidates hung around my neck, but then I would have to pay too much to get on the ballot, so I do it out of convenience.
1) The point about independent ballot labels is just factually correct. A candidate with that ballot label (in the states that allow it, vs. “nomination by petition” or “no affiliation” etc.) will typically do better, because of the positive connotations the word has vs. the neutral-at-best connotations associated with a Libertarian label among the average voter.
2) In part because of that, I’ve seen many Libertarians also refer to themselves as “independent”, even where they’re clearly LP candidates who have that label. In our little corner of political nerd-world, that’s obviously incorrect and contradictory, but to the vast majority of people who think “independent” means “any non-D, non-R candidate” it lets you tap into those positive associations. Heck, it’s even used that way in the name of this website.
3) It lets him raise the point about ballot access and what a hurdle that is, which is worth raising in its own right but also leads into his point about 270+EV ballot access as a genuine threshold for the debates.
4) Far from putting down the LP, it raises one of our strongest strengths, something which plays heavily into successful candidate recruitment: the established ballot access we have earned in most states, and the capacity to successfully petition onto most if not all of the rest. It’s basically saying “I’d rather start with a half million Libertarians behind me, then all on my own from scratch.” – which isn’t an insult.
Joshua Katz is correct. Libertarians should contact Johnson to ask him to stop saying that.
Maybe this is too nit-picky, but I dislike the bit about independent vs. L. It sounds like he’s saying he wants our line just for ballot access. I don’t really object to that, it’s smart thinking in a stupid system, but I object to saying it out loud, particularly in public places. It doesn’t put us in a great light to say that on tv, in my opinion.
I hate the “hope to run” thing. It’s one thing to set up an exploratory committee, it’s another to commit without committing. Shit or get off the pot.
B performa.nce.
Still needs some work to crispen up his delivery
Perhaps, but it’s been a while since we covered it and if anybody else was being asked about running as a Libertarian or other third-party on one of the big cable news networks, we’d cover that I assume (Sanders comes to mind). Maybe I’ve missed it elsewhere, but this is the first time I’ve seen an interviewer ask directly about GOP vs. LP in 2016, particularly since there’s been a bit of chatter about it after that one article urging him to run GOP came out recently. I agree it’s not a particularly new or surprising answer from Johnson.
That’s exactly what he has been saying in every interview for months now.