Readers asked for a thread to discuss the new LNC and the people running it. This is that thread.
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LNC Open Thread
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September 22, 2023
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Readers asked for a thread to discuss the new LNC and the people running it. This is that thread.
Discuss issues. Do not insult people.
Comments are closed.
Thanks to LPedia.org I was able to find the historic plank on “Women’s Rights” added to the Permanent Platform of the Libertarian Party in 1982, and maintained without change through 1994. In 1994 the Plank was improved with an additional paragraph, and retitled “Women’s Rights and Abortion.”
I have posted the 1982 Platform Plank along with the 1994 additions @ The California Libertarian Report https://calibertarianreport.com/2022/08/25/historic-lp-plank-on-womens-rights/
I am looking for such a list. Does anyone have a list of the state-by-state national convention votes? Reply phillies@4liberty.net
I read somewhere (Reason?) that 35 state parties have been taken over by the Mises folks. Is there a list? (It might be easier to list those that remain un-Mised.)
“Decentralized cryptocurrencies allow people to trade in a trusted manner, without the use of any bank, and they are outside the control of governments. This is something which can bring us a lot closer to a libertarian society.”
I don’t do cryptocurrency for the same reason I don’t do forex: I tried it one time for free, couldn’t make sense of why one went up vs. went down when the news was seemingly the other direction, so I didn’t do it because I didn’t understand it (or understand it well enough to not lose money investments if I did it for real), but how can Bitcoin for example be considered decentralized when all transactions utilizing it are public knowledge on a blockchain? That’s a level of control on commercial transactions that the government doesn’t even have.
“Also, Bitcoin, and a lot of other cryptocurrencies have outperformed the US Dollar. Bitcoin was launched in January of 2009, and was trading for well under a penny, and it went up to its all time high of $68,789.63. During the same time frame the US Dollar has gone down in value.”
You’re failing to distinguish between commodities and currency. A commodity, say copper, can be held as an intrinsic store of value versus traditional currencies, and can rise and fall compared to them. A currency is used as a basis of exchange. I always think crypto advocates completely undercut themselves and their argument to use Bitcoin as a currency of exchange by periodically mentioning “my Bitcoin has doubled in dollars the past 60 days”. If the purpose of crypto is to go up up up against the dollar, save yourself from buying crypto and instead just go buy gold because that’s all you’re using crypto for is to be a commodity to compare to the dollar. To quote a gold bug from years ago, if gold is $1000/oz and jumps to $2000/oz, your gold is not worth double in value. You have to sell your gold and turn it into dollars before you can recognize gains of $1000. Before the doubling in value in paper money you have 1 gold ounce and after you still have only 1 gold ounce. So if Bitcoin increases against the dollar 10%, you still at the end only have the same amount of Bitcoin. If you choose to reference the dollar for any currency appreciation, you’re counterintuitively arguing against yourself that it’s a currency and saying it’s instead a commodity a la gold and copper that has a store of value for what it is that goes up and down based on what people pay for it.
Recently found out that the Libertarian Party of Hillsborough County (county affiliate of the LPF) disbanded and is no longer a registered party. It’s sad. When I got involved, it was fun. Just some liberty minded guys eating pizza, having some beer, and donating money to hopefully effect change one day. Now, years after I left, the group is no more. It’s a sad situation. But, that’s what happens when you allow toxic people to lead (yes, I’m including Nekhalia because he allows that behavior).
I had said that we would be moving more vigorous reporting to ThirdPartyWatch.com. I have now done so. My first article is “LAMA – A Record of Inaction” about LAMA spending for the last year and a half. In the past year, they burned through all of their income and most of their initial cash on hand, spending their money on a state convention and computer software. No money appears to have been spent on candidate support, candidate recruitment, or media outreach to the general public. You can read all the details on Third Party Watch, because Someone Is Watching.
I am advised with respect to New York: “They were under the 45,000 minimum number. This is why it never went to a state validity check. There was no need to check the validity of the signatures since they turned in less than 45,000. This is why Sharpe got knocked off the ballot so quickly. If it had gone to a validity check if they did have 45,000 raw signatures, they would have lost a lot of those signatures since since not all of them would have met the state’s definition of a valid signature. They should have turned in at least 70,000, maybe more if their validity rate was low. “
Today, July 23, is George Phillies’ birthday. Happy Birthday George! And thank you for keeping IPR going!
George is briefly profiled @ ourcampaigns.com, which is how I know today is his birthday.
https://www.ourcampaigns.com/CandidateDetail.html?CandidateID=15123
Jared says “I have no use for Murray Rothbard during his early left-wing fusionist phase or his later paleo phase…” I generally agree with that, with the caveat that many of us found ourselves among the New Left protestors against the Vietnam War and the draft. But going to a protest against the war is different from taking the position of Dr Rothbard that American imperialism is a greater threat to peace and freedom than Soviet expansionism.
I read many of Rothbard’s writings after he decided on the Paleo strategy, and I don’t remember any mention of abortion. Nor did he seem to have moved away from his anti-Americanism. The common ground with the paleo conservatives included opposition to the Gulf War (good!) and opposition to “globalization” in the form of NAFTA, WTO etc. And the racial appeals in the Ron Paul newsletters along with opposing Gay Rights were part of the strategy.
Prior to the formal adoption of the Paleo strategy, Ron Paul, during his LP campaign in 1988, made appeals to supporters of Pat Robertson, stressing his own (Paul’s) opposition to abortion, and Rothbard went along with this. But it was political opportunism rather than a phiosophical change on Rothbard’s part. It is perhaps ironic that Rothbard and Rockwell began promoting the Paleo strategy based on their disapointment with the results of the Ron Paul campaign, when Paul’s campaign was the prequel to the Paleo strategy.
I quoted Rothbard not because I think he is the fountainhead of libertarian thinking, but some in the “Mises” Caucus think he is.
Gene,
While I have no use for Murray Rothbard during his early left-wing fusionist phase or his later paleo phase, I wonder if he changed his mind on the legalization of abortion at all stages of pregnancy and infanticide by parental neglect—stemming from his burning hatred of the concept of positive natural rights—when he began to cozy up to hard-right populists. If Hoppe’s views are any indication, then he remained an absolutist advocate of legal abortion on demand even toward the end of his life. Most Mises Caucusers seem to prefer Ron Paul’s position as a pro-life OB/GYN, despite being dyed-in-the-wool Rothbardians in nearly every other respect. Even Rothbard’s bulldog Walter Block, who tries to synthesize Rothbard’s early and late works into a single perspective, takes a very different view of abortion rights than does his master. It’s an area where many devotees of Rothbard deviate from his philosophy, possibly in some cases because of his 90s association with the political Right, but also because his ‘principled’ legal defense of child neglect and starving babies to death is a tough pill to swallow, even for the most autistic anarcho-capitalists in the Austrian camp. It’s no secret that radical libertarians struggle not to put both feet in their mouths where children and minors are concerned.
SInce the Supreme Court decision on abortion, and the actions of the “Mises” Caucus at the Libertarian National Convention, abortion has become an issue again. In the June 1971 issue of Libertarian Forum, Murray Rothbard published an essay on libertarian strategy titled “How to Destatize.” After critiquing the education strategy of right-wing libertarians, and the MayDay violence of the left, Dr Rothbard looked at tow victories for liberty in New York: the end of rent control, and the legalization of abortion. Rothbard credits the focus of the women’s movement on the libertarian principle that “every woman has the absolute right to own and control her own body” and the willingness to act on principle. Here is Dr Murray Rothbard on Abortion: https://calibertarianreport.com/2022/07/21/murray-rothbard-on-abortion/
George, the petition in New York was short by more than 2,300 signatures for sure. They needed 45,000 valid petition signatures. Realistically, they would need to come in with a lot more than 45,000 raw signatures to cover their margin of error with invalid signatures.
The LNC met electronically this evening. The meeting was entirely civil. Few references were made to Roberts. Various sets of revised minutes were approved. The limitation on the number of committees on which one person may serve was removed. There is a major effort to shorten the policy manual, starting with the social media section 5.01.
There was a ballot access report. New York needed 45,000 signatures but probably ended up about 2300 signatures short. There will now be litigation. Illinois has not as many signatures as hoped, but will it appears be successful with their petition drive. New Hampshire needs 1500 signatures in each Congressional District for its two statewide candidates. The LNC-supported group has close to 2500 signatures in the first Congressional District, is advancing in the second C.D., and expects to get both of its statewide candidates on the ballot. They were able to persuade Market Basket to let them petition at their stores. It was stated that no other locations have current petitioning.
Jose, Thanks for the actual quote. It is a doozy.
The NLP statement is a disgrace to our party in more ways than I would like to count. Its authors should have no future role in our party.
Let me try this again. The statement made by the National Libertarian Party concerning the Supreme Court decision on abortion is:
Allowing five politically-connected lawyers to determine ANY policy for 330 million people contradicts liberty and undermines decentralization.
Having a one-size fits all “solution” on abortion has fueled 50 years of national contention. Judicial oligarchy hasn’t helped.
This statement is a two sentence tweet in Twitter.
Stern is a flake. He’s made this kind of stuff up before. The LP should stay very far away from him. He’s burned them once.
“Root’s Teeth Are Awesome
JULY 1, 2022
Howard Stern says he wants to run for President in 2024: https://nypost.com/2022/06/28/howard-stern-wants-to-run-for-president-to-overturn-all-this-bulls-t/
I assume he’ll be running third party or independent. He says he’ll only run if Trump is the Republican nominee.
Stern says one of his goals if he wins is to abolish the Electoral College. He also wants to appoint five more Supreme Court justices.”
Way back in 1994, Howard Stern flooded the LP of NY’s State Convention with delegates, and he won their nomination for Governor, but then he dropped out of the race shortly after this, with his stated reason being that he did not want to fill out the financial disclosure forms from the state. The LP of NY had to scramble to find another candidate, and they ended up nominating Bob Schulz to run for Governor.
I think it is a good thing that Howard Stern did not end up running for office as a Libertarian. I don’t think that he was ever serious about the party of the philosophy, and he has taken some very anti-libertarian positions in recent years, such as he supports forced vaccinations in the name of fighting COVID.
Howard Stern did generate some publicity for the LP for a short time period (and I found out the back story on how it happened from a long time LP member who basically set the wheels in motion by having an LP candidate call in to the Howard Stern radio show), which was good, but the party dodged a bullet when he dropped out of the gubernatorial race.
“George Phillies
POST AUTHOR | JULY 1, 2022
You appear to have received nothing as a quote. Meanwhile, they are pushing the world’s first spontaneously self-organized, crowd-funded ponzi scheme, cryptocurrency.”
I believe that your assessment of Bitcoin and other decentralized cryptocurrencies is wrong. The Federal Reserve System and the Social Security System are more accurate examples of Ponzi schemes.
Decentralized cryptocurrencies allow people to trade in a trusted manner, without the use of any bank, and they are outside the control of governments. This is something which can bring us a lot closer to a libertarian society.
Also, Bitcoin, and a lot of other cryptocurrencies have outperformed the US Dollar. Bitcoin was launched in January of 2009, and was trading for well under a penny, and it went up to its all time high of $68,789.63. During the same time frame the US Dollar has gone down in value.
You appear to have received nothing as a quote. Meanwhile, they are pushing the world’s first spontaneously self-organized, crowd-funded ponzi scheme, cryptocurrency.
This is the statement made by the National Party of the Libertarian Party on the Supreme Court ruling on abortion.
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I know, I know all we get is a two sentence tweet.
Howard Stern says he wants to run for President in 2024: https://nypost.com/2022/06/28/howard-stern-wants-to-run-for-president-to-overturn-all-this-bulls-t/
I assume he’ll be running third party or independent. He says he’ll only run if Trump is the Republican nominee.
Stern says one of his goals if he wins is to abolish the Electoral College. He also wants to appoint five more Supreme Court justices.