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9 Comments

  1. Richard Winger Richard Winger March 27, 2016

    Dear Dr. Feldman, the U.S. Supreme said in 1986 in Tashjian v Republican Party of Connecticut that a political party has a First Amendment freedom of association right to nominate a non-member if it wishes. Dwight Eisenhower was not a registered Republican when he was nominated for President in July 1952. Also the Democratic Party nominee for president in 1872, Horace Greeley, was a Republican; and the Republican nominee for vice-president in 1864, Andrew Johnson, was a Democrat.

    Since the 1986 US Supreme Court decision, the Democratic Party of Colorado and the Green Party of New Mexico have won lawsuits against state laws that prohibited them from nominating someone because that person had not been a party member long enough. The Florida Libertarian Party would win a lawsuit against the Florida law that keeps your mother from running for US Senate in Florida. However, for the lawsuit to win, the Florida LP must revise its bylaws to express the party’s will about the duration of time someone must have been a member of the LP in order to run in the LP primary.

    The Alaska Democratic Party has a lawsuit pending against an Alaska law that says only party members can run in the Democratic primary, and I expect it to win in the next few weeks. The Alaska Democratic Party wants independent voters to seek a Dem nomination.

  2. Marc Allan Feldman Marc Allan Feldman March 27, 2016

    Thank you for your comment. It is an interesting question to what extent new civil rights legislation impacted the change in public attitudes vs. the impact of the change in public attitudes on the development of the new civil rights legislation. Either way, it is not particularly relevant to my point about electoral campaigns. I was not speaking of anti-corruption legislation in general, but specifically campaign finance reform. There are many who would like to enact laws preventing the use of large donations in political campaigns. I draw a parallel to legislation preventing the use of racism in political campaigns. Both acts of racism and acts of financial corruption are illegal in government contracting. My point is that neither trying to use racism nor trying to use large donations to win elections should be made illegal. We should just vote against it.

  3. Jeremy Jeremy March 27, 2016

    Correcting one error of historical interpretation on Dr. Feldman’s part: it is absolutely untrue that the reason open racists can’t win office is “not because we made racism illegal, it’s because we stopped voting for it.” Legal decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education, and legislative achievements such as the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, resulted in a generation of people growing up in formerly openly racist areas who suddenly didn’t see open racism around them — and grew up to be less racist than their parents. People did stop voting for racism, precisely because we made racism illegal first.

  4. Matthew Schutter Matthew Schutter March 27, 2016

    Dr. Feldman it was a pleasure to talk and meet you last weekend. Good luck with your campaign sir!

  6. Marc Allan Feldman Marc Allan Feldman March 26, 2016

    Thanks Anastasia. I don’t believe my views are righteous, just that they make sense to me, and I try to explain them to others. As a physican and a scientist, I am try to keep an open mind and re-evaluate in the light of new argument or evidence. And I prefer to be called “Dr. Feldman” or Marc.

  7. Anastasia Beaverhausen Anastasia Beaverhausen March 26, 2016

    “Failure to carefully examine my positions on your part does not constitute “flippancy” on my part.”

    Cool smackdown, Mr. Feldman – a Presidential candidate who’d rather stand tall in the righteousness of his views than be pleasant.

  8. Marc Allan Feldman Marc Allan Feldman March 26, 2016

    @Pete Blome
    Thank you very much for your rapid and thoughtful comments.
    A few responses:
    It seems like a small thing, but spelling a candidate’s name correctly goes a long way to appearing credible. My name is Dr. Marc Allan Feldman. That is Allan with two A’s, and two L’s (as in libertarian Libertarian).
    I was born in Washington, DC, but I am most recently from Cleveland, Ohio.
    I appreciate your respectful and polite way of saying that I look like someone who received multple blunt facial trauma. My brother always said I had a face made for radio.
    “unable to appreciate what a problem it is that it costs more than $10,000 for a candidate for U.S. Senate to file to run in Florida”
    On the contrary, I understand how difficult it can be for some people to raise $10,000, and not hard at all for others. I am very disappointed with the Florida Senate race. I recruited by mother-in-law, a Jewish Florida senior. She agreed to run for Senate as a Libertarian, however because she recently voted as a Democrat, she is ineligible. Although I would only accept $5 as a candidate, I am happy to donate thousands of dollars for Libertarian party affiliates, and for Libertarian ballot access, and I have.
    I do not purport to ” solving the immigration problem ” but we can make the immigration situation much better. I do not propose to “just let the welfare state collapse” but to simultaneously build the private voluntary social safety nest so the welfare state collapses as a combination of being too expensive, ineffective, and unnecessary. Failure to carefully examine my positions on your part does not constitute “flippancy” on my part.

  9. Pete Blome Pete Blome March 26, 2016

    From my article “Blatantly Subjective Biloxi”

    The first to speak was Marc Allen Feldman. An anesthesiologist from Washington D.C., he is a Libertarian Party life member and the LNC Region 3 rep. A compact man with horn rimmed glasses, he has a feisty and engaging personality, and looks like he might have been a boxer when younger, though he wasn’t. He speaks well, won’t take a donation greater than $5, and has accumulated $1000 in campaign funds from at least 200 people without the help of any campaign volunteers. He wants to implement dollar for dollar tax credits for things like private charity, but in table conversation I found him remarkably unable to appreciate what a problem it is that it costs more than $10,000 for a candidate for U.S. Senate to file to run in Florida. He truly gave the impression he didn’t care about money, and finding candidates is as easy as asking for them, attitudes that tell me he doesn’t care about winning. During the debate he advocated solving the immigration problem by opening the borders and just letting the welfare state collapse; an answer that made me shift in my chair because it ignores the incredible pain (and violence) it would bring to the country. There has to be a better way than collapse. Flippancy is not something I like in a President, nor in a national party rep.

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