More Americans opting out of school system

Kindergartners Abandoning Public School in Fall 2021, Too | Reason - Matt Welch:

April 9, 2021 - "'We're proud to show the nation what is possible in terms of safely educating our one million students,' New York City Schools Chancellor Meisha Porter tweeted Wednesday.... Porter may need to refresh her math. The nation's largest school district announced Thursday that kindergarten applications for fall 2021 were down a whopping 12 percent over last year, after having dropped 9 percent the year before.... [I]t's clear that the pandemic enrollment hit — which this school year cut overall K-12 participation down 4 percent, to 960,000 — will not be a one-year phenomenon. Early learners are abandoning public schools, and not just in New York....

"We already knew that the 2020–21 year was a wipeout for public school kindergarten enrollment nationwide—down 16 percent, according to an NPR survey of 100 districts last October. Hard numbers are devilishly hard to pin down, varying from state to state (as do kindergarten attendance requirements), but the rough estimate is that about one-third of overall K-12 decline this year (which itself has been estimated at between 2 percent and 5 percent) is attributable to kindergarten alone.

"Where have all the 5-year-olds gone? Not Catholic schools, which despite being much more likely to be open five days a week saw their biggest single-year drop (6.4 percent) in a half-century, concentrated most heavily at the pre-K and kindergarten levels. Overall private school numbers, however, appear to be slightly higher.

"About the only unambiguous growth categories in the entire field of minor education are learning 'pods' (ad hoc groups of parents pooling their efforts either full or part time, to fill in the gaps left by school closures), and homeschooling. That latter category is absolutely exploding — up from 3.3 percent before the pandemic, to 5.4 percent in the spring of 2020, to 11.1 percent last fall, according to the Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey, which takes care to distinguish between genuine D.I.Y. education and remote-learning hell.

"The tantalizing question raised by New York City's fall application numbers against the backdrop of the homeschooling spike is: Has the pandemic fundamentally altered the public's appetite for public education? Bruno V. Manno, senior adviser for the Walton Family Foundation's K-12 Education Program, thinks so.

"'The result of the Covid-19 shock dynamic in K-12 is a more pluralistic education system, one that's being redefined to include more options from more providers for more families and students,' Manno wrote for Education Next last month. 'Some significant number of parents and students will return to some version of the "old normal." But some won't. Some have exited, permanently. So the long-term effect is a question of magnitude.'

"The shift is already having a direct impact on per-student-based school budgets and staffing, even as the Biden administration hurriedly shovels the better half of $200 billion in federal bailout money out the door. Gilbert Public Schools in Arizona laid off 152 employees last month. Hillsborough County, Florida, the country's eighth largest school district, will soon ax 1,000 more employees after already losing 2,000 during the pandemic.... [E]ven with the record levels of federal funding, the basic math of K-12 funding is that with declining enrollment comes a declining number of jobs....

"After 13 months of the pandemic, public school K-12 enrollment is down all over the country, private school enrollment is flat or slightly up, and homeschooling has shot through the roof. This spring is the first time millions of parents will have truly been able to make a premeditated, non-panicky decision about the best schooling options for their kids. If such deliberation continues to produce measurable exit from government-run institutions, the basic structure of American education will change in profound ways."

Read more: https://reason.com/2021/04/09/kindergartners-abandoning-public-school-in-fall-2021-too/

Libertarians oppose all the mandates

Libertarians are not against people social distancing, wearing facemasks, or vaccinating their kids. They are against people trying to bully or force other people to do those things.

Jo Jorgensen: 'Requiring People To Vaccinate Their Children Is One of the Most Egregious Things That the Government Can Do' | Reason - Matt Welch: 

October 10, 2020 = "As the Libertarian Party has established itself as the most electorally successful third party in the United States, voters have grown accustomed to the group's radical messaging against taxation, prohibition and war.... Less broadly known, though on full display in a streamed interview I conducted last night with presidential nominee Jo Jorgensen, is the party's antipathy toward international institutions, pandemic restrictions, and vaccine mandates.

"Jorgensen last night volunteered the latter as an example of the type of 'personal decision' best left to individuals, rather than determined via the political process. So I asked her whether, philosophically, she considered it wise for public schools to require children be vaccinated as a condition for enrollment. 'I think it is immoral,' she responded. Then, after noting that she personally has chosen to vaccinate her family, Jorgensen contrasted vaccination policy with the types of prohibitions Libertarians have long opposed — on drugs, gambling, vaping, consensual sex transactions, and so on.

"'All of these are laws that the government is telling you what not to do,' she said. 'Vaccinations, on the other hand — we're talking about somebody forcibly putting a substance into your body. I am just shocked that that's even a question in our country that is supposed to be free. And even though I have chosen vaccinations, and I've chosen vaccinations for my children, I would never use the excuse of herd immunity to force other people to put something into their bodies that they don't want to.'

"This is not a majority opinion – 82 percent of American adults favored school-based vaccines in 2016 ... [and] the vaccine mandate issue divides libertarians, too, as illustrated by Reason's 2014 debate "Should Vaccines Be Mandatory?" [Still] the COVID-19 pandemic has not only put such once-esoteric philosophical discussions on the political front-burner; it has given what many Libertarian candidates see as their opening.

"The Libertarian gubernatorial candidate making the biggest splash in 2020 is Indiana's Donald Rainwater, who has polled between 6 percent and 24 percent in a three-way race. 'Indiana Libertarian candidate for governor targets voters upset by COVID-19 mandates,' went the headline this week in The Indianapolis Star. 'I don't think it's the government's responsibility to tell people how to take care of themselves," Rainwater told the paper. "I think this all goes back to the idea that I get to choose what I do to keep myself safe. I am against mandating vaccines, too.'

"The other Libertarian gubernatorial candidate likely to make Election Day waves — Montana's Lyman Bishop, who is polling within shouting distance of the Republican-Democratic margin — is also campaigning against pandemic mandates. 

"'I have said from the beginning, asking people to stay home is one thing. Telling people they have to stay home is something else altogether,' Bishop recently told Montana Public Radio.   'The same logic applies to any other precautionary measure. In the face of any threat, our liberties and individual rights must come first.... The pending collapse of our economy and the steady growth of tyranny and authoritarianism in our country is of the utmost importance and supersedes all other issues. If we cannot address these issues there will be nothing left for us to discuss'....

"As we approach the finish line, the radical limited-government party is reacting more and more to big-government pandemic policies. The politics of face masks, it turns out, is not a strictly bipartisan affair."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/10/16/jo-jorgensen-requiring-people-to-vaccinate-their-children-is-one-of-the-most-egregious-things-that-the-government-can-do/

Also read: Jo Jorgensen on lockdowns

U.S. Congress triples 2020 federal deficit

$2 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Bill Presents A Reckoning For Libertarians | NPR - Ron Elving

May 22, 2018 - "Let us all have a moment of sympathy – and perhaps even understanding — for Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky. Massie was the guy who caught hell from all sides Friday when he tried to force a roll call vote on the coronavirus relief bill in the House of Representatives. He said he wanted every individual member to record his or her vote on the gargantuan $2 trillion package, which he called the biggest relief bill in the history of mankind. For Massie and many like him, the bill that aims to forestall economic disaster in the face of a pandemic is, in itself, a fiscal calamity and a radical turn in governing philosophy. Letting this go without a recorded vote was capitulation on a profound scale....

"'If this bill is so great for America, why not allow a vote on it?' he fumed on Twitter.... 'I’ve been told that they don’t even have 1 minute available for me to speak against this bill during the 4 hour debate. The fix is in. If this bill is so great for America, why not allow a vote on it?  Why not have a real debate? #SWAMP'....

"Massie had a point.... Explicitly, the CARES (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security) Act spends money faster than any legislation in history, shoveling it out with an air of near-desperation....  Implicitly, the act says that when the chips are down, we as a nation turn to our national parent — the federal government....

"Speaking about federal outlays decades ago, Republican Senate leader Everett Dirksen once joked: 'A billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.' Have we now translated that to the language of trillions?

"If one were writing a 30-second TV spot attacking a free-spending Congress ... one might have written something like this: 'This is an unprecedented gusher of taxpayer money — with no offsetting revenues or spending cuts — that not only balloons the federal budget but triples this year's anticipated deficit of a trillion dollars (already among the highest in history). With this single vote, Congress has added as much to the national debt as was accumulated in the first 200 years of the Constitution's existence'....

Yet the power of this current crisis and the force behind this bill in this hour was such that even the leading fiscal conservatives who would normally be front and center were conspicuous by their absence. President Trump wanted the bill on his desk now. The Senate had voted 96-0. So even members of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus stood back as a big bipartisan majority of the House played the matador and let the bull roar past.

"That's what Massie decided he could not brook without a protest.... But the derision arrived without delay.... President Trump demanded Massie be ousted from the Republican Party.... Back on Capitol Hill, the floor leaders of both parties scrambled to stymie Massie. Within a few hours, they had established the rule of debate on the bill so that the Senate's version of CARES could be approved without a roll call vote....

"[W]hile his lonely crusade was joined by none of the leaders of his own party, Massie was at least speaking for others across the country who could scarcely believe what they saw unfolding on C-SPAN — and the lack of any meaningful opposition in Washington.

"Matt Welch, an editor-at-large for Reason, a libertarian magazine, called the CARES Act 'a massive course of experimental economics' and compared the American public to 'laboratory rats.' Even the trillion-dollar stimulus package of President Barack Obama, opposed by Republicans in 2009, had not been so robust. 'There is no more politics of fiscal prudence in America,' Welch added."

Read more; https://www.npr.org/2020/03/28/822969308/-2-trillion-coronavirus-relief-bill-presents-a-reckoning-for-libertarians

2020 Libertarian National Convention in limbo

Libertarian Party's Presidential Nominating Convention in Coronavirus Limbo | Reason - Matt Welch:

March 25, 2020 - "On Tuesday, the city of Austin, Texas, issued a coronavirus-avoidance stay-at-home order that permits residents to leave their homes only for 'essential' work and activities, such as providing medical care or buying groceries. The order, which lasts preliminarily until April 13, could have at least an indirect impact on the 2020 presidential race....

"Austin is the site for what was scheduled to be the May 21-25 Libertarian National Convention, ... the sole venue and mechanism by which the party's presidential and vice presidential nominees are determined. Rather than arrive with delegate slates earned in binding state primaries and caucuses the months before, Libertarian candidates show up, vie for scarce space on the debate stage, then endure however many rounds of voting it takes (lowest candidate lopped off after each round) among the 1,000 or so delegates in attendance until someone wins 50.1 percent of the vote.

"'We are evaluating all of our contingency plans,' Libertarian National Chair Nicholas Sarwark told Reason Friday.... The Libertarian National Committee (LNC) is scheduled to discuss precisely that [at] a special meeting conducted via Zoom Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET. Sarwark reckons that some kind of remote meeting, or an Austin plus remote hybrid, might be set up with a pared-down agenda focusing mainly on candidate selections both for the presidential ticket and the LNC.

"The convention website on March 19 informed delegates, 'The Coronavirus crisis is of an incredibly fluid nature, and as of the writing of this 61 days before our event, it is still too early to make any "permanent" plans.... Expect more definitive guidance as to the plan for the event about one month before the delegates and attendees are scheduled to arrive for registration and credentialing. For now, we can expect release of more definitive guidance on 4/20.'

"Added Sarwark: 'Basically the convention oversight committee meets weekly with updates and is in constant contact with the venue, and then they give me updates at a slightly lower periodicity. We're looking at probably somewhere around 30 days out, maybe three weeks out, to make a final decision.'"

"There have been seven nonbinding Libertarian primaries and caucuses thus far.... In the overall popular vote thus far, according to this Wikipedia page, [Jacob] Hornberger leads [Vermin] Supreme 22 to 10 percent, with 1996 L.P. vice presidential nominee Jo Jorgensen just behind with 9 percent. The rolling shutdowns across the country — postponing primaries and most large gatherings — alter the basic calculus for winning delegate votes, which is usually: Show up to state conventions, glad-hand, and perform in debates....

"The L.P.'s presidential nominating process can be a lengthy event, filled with horse-trading and intrigue. Since the goal is to win a majority of delegates on-site, ... candidates have in prior cycles invested much energy into making sure friendly state delegates show up. Canceling or significantly physically altering the Austin gathering will certainly upend business as usual for America's third party."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/03/25/libertarian-partys-presidential-nominating-convention-in-coronavirus-limbo/

Libertarians want to keep the borders open

Libertarian Presidential Candidates Champion 'Open Borders' | Reason.com - Matt Welch:

February 26, 2020 - "Donald Trump, the most anti-immigrant president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, is running against a Democratic presidential field that almost unanimously favors providing government-run health insurance to illegal immigrants. Surely there is some middle ground....

"The Libertarian Party, still the country's number-three political grouping (however distantly), has a platform very copacetic toward immigrants.... 'Libertarians believe that people should be able to travel freely as long as they are peaceful,' the party's immigration plank reads. 'A truly free market requires the free movement of people, not just products and ideas.... Of course, if someone has a record of violence, credible plans for violence, or acts violently, then Libertarians support blocking their entry, deporting, and/or prosecuting and imprisoning them'....

"To a notable degree, the L.P.'s top 2020 presidential candidates are hewing to the party's radical-for-American-politics immigration platform. 'One of the proudest positions that we have in this party is our open-border plank,' Future of Freedom Foundation founder Jacob Hornberger, who won the party's non-binding presidential caucuses in Iowa and Minnesota this month, said during a California debate that I moderated Feb. 16.... Adam Kokesh, whose big campaign idea is signing an executive order on day one that dissolves the federal government, posited that 'Government borders are not legitimate,' and that 'only private property borders' deserve respect....

"Vermin Supreme, who won the party's only other early-state contest so far (New Hampshire), quipped that 'You cannot outlaw people. If you outlaw people, only people will be outlaws.' Mark Whitney, an ex-convict comedy enthusiast who founded THELAWNET, said of undocumented immigrants, 'I not only want them to be citizens, I want them working on my campaign'....

"Jo Jorgensen complained that, 'Right now, we've got a system in which we keep everybody out, except we just let a few people in. What we need to do is flip it'.... And ... Lincoln Chafee stressed the political expediency of it all: 'I see this as a political advantage that with our open-border policy and libertarian views on immigration, especially the fastest-growing voting bloc in the United States, the Hispanics, are going to have the opportunity in 2020 to look at our platform and come to our side'....

"At the Massachusetts state Libertarian convention last July, months before he jumped into the race, Hornberger gave a fire-and-brimstone defense of open immigration as essential to a free society.... Part of what makes Hornberger's immigration message saleable to Libertarians is that he couples it with obliterating, not expanding, the welfare state.

"'We live in a society that is based on massive mandatory charity,' he said in Massachusetts. 'With the crown jewels of this system being Social Security and Medicare, along with a host of others. There is no way to reconcile a genuinely free society with mandatory charity. No way at all. Because people have a natural, God-given right to keep everything they earn, and decide for themselves what to do with it'....

"The L.P. presidential race, which will be settled at the national convention in Austin, Texas, May 21-25, has so far been a battle to see who can best represent the libertarian wing of the Libertarian Party. As such it is striking, in this moment of major-party polarization and deep immigration-policy divides, to see a principled Libertarian immigration message emerging: Mr. Trump, tear down this wall."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/02/26/libertarian-presidential-candidates-champion-open-borders/

Amash raises over $500,000 in 2019 4/4

Justin Amash Outraises Democratic and Republican Opponents in Fourth Quarter – Reason.com- Matt Welch:

February 1, 2019 - "The fourth quarter 2019 campaign disclosure reports that were due at the end of January brought some welcome news for embattled independent Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.): Despite being abandoned by some of his biggest historical backers, the pro-impeachment libertarian raised more money and has more in the bank than any of the Democrats and Republicans gunning for his Grand Rapids seat.

"According to the Detroit Free Press, Amash raised $595,000 over the last three months of 2019, or almost as much as all the Republican contenders for the seat combined. Supermarket magnate Peter Meijer brought in $313,000 ($75,000 of which was a loan to himself), DeltaPlex Arena owner Joel Langlois netted $212,000 ($200,000 of which was a self-loan), and state Rep. Lynn Afendoulis announced $113,000.

"In the cash-on-hand sweepstakes as of the end of 2019, Amash led $722,000 to Meijer's $557,000, Langlois's $333,000, and Afendoulis's $200,000.

"What about the Democrats competing in MI-3? Social worker and immigration attorney Hillary Scholten raised $124,000, and had $207,000 cash on hand, while former Barack Obama aide Nick Colvin raised $101,000 and has just $60,000. Primaries for both major parties are scheduled for August 4....

"The three-way race in this Republican-leaning but hard-to-characterize district has widely been seen by election forecasters as a toss-up or slight lean toward the GOP.... Both major parties are expected to pour money into the contest once the primaries are settled, giving a three-way scrum a chance at being among the most expensive in the country."

Read moew: https://reason.com/2020/02/01/justin-amash-outraises-democratic-and-republican-opponents-in-fourth-quarter/
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Beware the lies of war

Reminder: American Officials Lie About War – Reason.com- Matt Welch:

January 3, 2020 - "'Don't trust liars—especially about matters of war and peace,' writes Vox's Matthew Yglesias. 'Today's a day," The Atlantic's David Frum posits, 'when the most untruthful administration in US history will wish its statements could be believed.' It is appropriate, necessary, yet insufficient to remember that government lying is bad, that government lying about war is particularly bad, and that Donald Trump is one of the most bizarrely promiscuous liars ever seen in American political life....

"The truth, which literally hurts, is that every administration lies about war.... It was literally only last month that The Washington Post's "Afghanistan Papers" project detailed how ... 'Every data point was altered to present the best picture possible'....

"Frum wrote President George W. Bush's infamous 'Axis of Evil' State of the Union Address in January 2002, linking Iran, North Korea, and especially Iraq .... 'I was to provide a justification for war,' Frum recalled in his memoir. The justification was ... damaging in a way that relates directly to this week's escalation with Iran.... Reformers inside the government, who had advocated a rapprochement with the United States, were put on the defensive....

"'We knew,' Barack Obama said on March 28, 2011, 'that … if we waited one more day, Benghazi, a city nearly the size of Charlotte, could suffer a massacre that would have reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world..... I refused to let that happen'.... 'This policy,' concluded a detailed and damning post-facto report by the British House of Commons, "was not informed by accurate intelligence'.... Western intelligence agencies, the report found, 'could not verify the actual threat to civilians posed by the Gaddafi regime [and] selectively took elements of Muammar Gaddafi's rhetoric at face value....[S]trategy was founded on erroneous assumptions and an incomplete understanding of the evidence.'

"American administrations going to war routinely exaggerate threats, Hitlerize enemies, euphemize foreign casualties, and bend tales of U.S. heroism beyond all human recognition.... The world has never seen an arsenal as powerful as ours, and Lord Acton had a point about that power stuff....
[T]he fog of war, the temptations of power, the quickening heartbeat of fight-or-flight patriotism ... should be, advertisements for human fallibility.... And it should make us more reluctant to give the commanders more authority. Instead, too many people turn off their brains once the battle bugle calls....

"So no, don't trust Donald Trump. Or Mike Pompeo. Or Mitch McConnell. And for God's sake please don't trust David Frum or Matthew Yglesias or Matt Welch either. America will continue being a bull in a china shop for as long as the body politic has more heft than humility. Those audacious enough to wield that awesome power, or to influence the wielding of it, will only begin to earn respect when they acknowledge the mountain of their own lies."

Read more: https://reason.com/2020/01/03/reminder-american-officials-lie-about-war/
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Hornberger enters Libertarian POTUS race (video)

Candidates Vie to Represent the Libertarian Wing of the Libertarian Party – Reason.com - Matt Welch:

November 7, 2019- "[T]his past weekend at the South Carolina Libertarian Party state convention ... Jacob Hornberger, the 69-year-old founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, formally announced his candidacy for president, immediately becoming one of the most well-known of the dozen or so names working actively to take the baton from two-time nominee Gary Johnson....

"Hornberger, the third-place finisher in the 2000 Libertarian presidential race, portrays his candidacy as a way for the party to return to principle, an implicit critique of nominating former Republican elected officials in the past three cycles.... Hornberger, notably, is a longtime antiwar activist."

Read more: https://reason.com/2019/11/07/candidates-vie-to-represent-the-libertarian-wing-of-the-libertarian-party/
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LP POTUS candidates go negative on Amash

Libertarian Presidential Candidates Prefer Each Other Over Justin Amash – Reason.com - Matt Welch:

July 15, 2019 "Saturday night just outside of Boston, at one of the first L.P. presidential debates this cycle, ... I was moderating, and had just asked the assembled candidates — [Kim] Ruff, Arvin Vohra, Adam Kokesh, New Hampshire State Rep. Max Abramson, and Dan 'Taxation Is Theft' Behrman — whether they would support Amash.... Vohra, then Kokesh, then Behrman, each said that they would support everyone on stage before the newly independent libertarian congressman. And even the two other comparative moderates were critical of his potential candidacy.

"'We aren't Republican light; we're not Democrat light,' said Ruff, an Arizona-based manufacturer.... 'We're advocates of full, unencumbered liberty. And that means taking positions that make the public squeamish.... I don't see somebody who is personally conservative being comfortable saying, "Yeah, I think we should legalize all narcotics. I think sex work is work. I think that you should have body autonomy. And if that means you want to end your life or ask a friend to do it for you, you should have that right." So no, I don't think he would be a great candidate for us. He's got a lot to learn.'

"Vohra ... dismissed the idea that Amash's defection from the GOP represents any kind of bravery. 'It does not take courage to speak out against a president that is unpopular with more than half the population,' said Vohra.... 'We don't need somebody who's ... just pandering to a large group of people who believe that the orange man is bad.... I would support any of the people sitting here in a second — in a second — over Justin Amash, because they have shown real boldness, not just pandering. They have been willing to say things that are true, honest, and unpopular, and that to me is the true measure of leadership.'

"Kokesh ... portrayed it as a referendum on institutional self-confidence. 'We cannot elect or nominate a former Republican…for the fourth cycle in a row. I just think that would set the party back so far,' Kokesh said.... 'Gary Johnson was better than [2008 nominee] Bob Barr, and Justin Amash might be that much better than Gary Johnson even. It's the worst temptation we've ever seen from this vector. But it's the most important time to resist it'....

"Even Abramson, the only elected official of the bunch (and he was elected as a Republican ... before ... switching back to the party he ran for governor in 2016 with), lamented the 'Republican savior' complex..... 'We have our own message. We're a different party. We're not Republican light, we're not cheap Democrats, we're something completely different. We want a free society'....

"'We need to be doing this now,' said Behrman.... 'And if Justin Amash is busy doing something else that he can't commit to this.... Let him stay where he is, do what he's doing; let him choose his own path. But we need to put our support behind myself and these other great candidates so we can start getting this message out and start getting people to see our faces'....

"The decision by potential contenders to go negative on Amash ... makes all the sense in the world from an incentives point of view. They're running to win, and there is pent-up grassroots Libertarian frustration at the tendency for their presidential nominations to be handed to temporary Libertarians like Bob Barr rather than longtime activists such as Mary Ruwart. (Indeed, Ruwart was singled out for praise by three of the five candidates on stage.)

"As for Amash, he has little incentive to make any premature declaration about running for president. The first major-party primaries are seven months away, and God only knows what American politics will look like then."

Read more: https://reason.com/2019/07/15/libertarian-presidential-candidates-prefer-each-other-over-justin-amash/
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Hewitt gives Libertarians' 2019 SOTU presponse (video)

The Libertarian Party State of the Union: 'Americans deserve better' than 'Republicans and Democrats careen[ing] toward socialism and fascism' - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:

February 5, 2019 - "While Democrats bicker over who should give responses to tonight's State of the Union Address, Libertarians have gone the prebuttal route, delivered by the party's biggest star, the recently elected Riverside County Supervisor Jeff Hewitt.

"Hewitt, the pension-reforming former mayor of tiny Calimesa, California, who now represents 438,000 constituents, starts off the message from America's third-largest party by reciting piles of contextual good news that "you won't hear in the torrent of doom and gloom from our nation's capital'.... But ... the mood does turn darker. 'Our national debt has skyrocketed to almost $22 trillion.... [H]undreds of thousands are behind bars for no just reason at all... Our sons and daughters have been deployed to far-flung, never-ending wars without constitutional authorization.'

"And on the political conflict du jour, Hewitt comes out foursquare in favor of immigration.... 'The prohibition of immigration requires an extensive apparatus for mass surveillance and government intrusion into our daily lives. Libertarians say: The United States should welcome immigrants.'"

Watch the whole message here."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2019/02/05/the-libertarian-party-state-of-the-union

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Libertarian state reps defeated in NH, Nebraska

Libertarian State Sen. Laura Ebke of Nebraska Loses Re-Election Bid - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Brian Doherty:

November 7, 2018 - "Nebraska state Sen. Laura Ebke won office in 2014 as a Republican, but switched parties to Libertarian in 2016 because of her dislike for lockstep discipline in a party that she didn't think hewed to consistent small government principles. After coming in second in a three-way nonpartisan primary in May, with 33 percent for Ebke and 44 for Republican Tom Brandt, she lost to him tonight, 57-43.

Ebke was extraordinarily well-funded for a state legislative race in Nebraska. Due largely to big-money contributions from out-of-state libertarians, she raised nearly a quarter million, huge by Nebraska standards and more than twice Brandt's take....

"The Libertarian Party didn't put a lot of effort or time into Ebke's race, which seems fine with her. She wasn't stressing the party connection much in her campaigning or messaging; unless a voter directly asked her, she wasn't apt to bring it up.... Her campaign manager, Asa Bryant, agreed in an interview last month that trying to sell a voter on the entire L.P. package was less useful to them in a local campaign than just trying to sell the candidate. So he advised Ebke not to stress the party label and not to use the term libertarian in her promotional material."
Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/11/07/libertarian-state-sen-laura-ebke-of-nebr

Party-Switching N.H. State Rep. Brandon Phinney Gets Slaughtered as a Libertarian - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch

November 6, 2018 - "Brandon Phinney was a model for one genre of elected Libertarian: The party-switcher. The New Hampshire state representative, elected to the 400-member body in 2016 as a Republican, switched to Libertarian in June 2017 after watching the machinery of allegedly small-government Republicanism up close.... He targeted archaic laws to be stricken from the books, helped effectively legalize visiting bands drinking beer on stage, and prepped for his first election wearing the 'L' right there on his sweater....

"He got trounced.... 'After two years of voting to protect personal freedom, control spending, provide transparency and after two years of proposing legislation to do the same (with two bills as a prime sponsor signed into law),' Phinney wrote on his Facebook page, 'my district rewarded me with 377 votes.... The Democratic candidate, who barely campaigned, received 1,548 votes. The Republican, who did NOTHING but put out yard signs, received 1,720 votes'....

"In another post, Phinney complained that 'voters care more about party than literally anything else and that's the biggest problem in this country.'" "
Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/11/06/party-switching-nh-state-rep-brandon-phi

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NM LP & GOP sue to stop straight-ticket voting

Justin Amash: 'Straight-Ticket Voting Makes it Prohibitive to Run Outside of the Major Parties' - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:

August 30, 2018 - "The Libertarian Party of New Mexico has joined the state Republican Party's lawsuit to block yesterday's decision to reinstate the 'straight ticket' ballot option. With straight-ticket voting, [registered party voters] can choose a political party's entire slate of candidates by filling in just one blank.

"Critics have derided the move as a brazen attempt by an elected Democrat in a heavily Democratic state to blunt a historic challenge by the Libertarian Party's U.S. Senate candidate, Gary Johnson.... New Mexico L.P. Chair Chris Luchini called the change an 'abuse of power via executive fiat'....

"The move was also criticized by Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, a libertarian Republican, who serves in one of the nine straight-party states in the country. 'Straight-ticket voting makes it prohibitive to run outside of the major parties,' Amash told me....

"Libertarians, independents, and other third-party candidates face a blizzard of obstacles in getting on ballots, into polls, and onto debate stages. Straight-ticket states add the wrinkle of simplifying the voting process for their major-party competitors, particularly in down-ballot races. Registered Libertarians in New Mexico are outnumbered 66 to 44 to 1 by Democrats and Republicans, respectively, while the 22 percent of registered voters there without a party affiliation have to go through the trouble of selecting each candidate rather than voting just once for their entire team....

"New Mexico Secretary of State Toulouse Oliver, who made the decision to reinstate straight-ticket voting, is running for re-election against Republican nominee Gavin Clarkson. In a statement today, Clarkson pointed out that [Oliver is] reversing a legislated repeal of the practice that was signed into law by none other than Gary Johnson....

"'Maggie Toulouse Oliver's unilateral and likely illegal straight-party ballot decree is an attack on our democracy and the rule of law. Sadly this act of voter suppression is just another cynical example of the abuse of power in the service of extreme partisanship....

"'Straight-party voting was repealed in 2001 by a Democratic legislature and a Republican governor, Gary Johnson. Specifically, House Bill 931 repealed Section 1-9-4 of the Election Code, which permitted each voter 'to vote a straight party ticket in one operation.' That was the only law authorizing straight party voting in New Mexico, and it has been gone for nearly two decades.

"Since then, the people's elected representatives in the legislature have refused to reinstate it..... Legally speaking, the Secretary of State simply doesn't have the authority to unilaterally make laws, especially against the expressed will of the legislative branch as she is now attempting to do.'"

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/30/justin-amash-straight-ticket-voting-make
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Rand Paul endorses Gary Johnson for Senate

Huge News: Rand Paul Endorses Gary Johnson for Senate - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:

August 28, 2018 - "In a surprising move that could have dramatic impact on third-party politics and Capitol Hill's balance of power, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) today endorsed Libertarian Gary Johnson for the U.S. Senate over Republican nominee Mick Rich.

"'Gary Johnson is a true fiscal conservative,' Paul said in his endorsement statement. 'As Governor, he reduced the size of government while improving services. He cut taxes, and he set what may be a record by vetoing more than 700 unnecessary pieces of legislation.

"'His leadership on issues of government overreach, protecting Americans' Fourth Amendment rights against mass surveillance, and common sense foreign policy is sorely needed in the United States Senate, for New Mexico and the nation. He will be an important ally and a critical independent voice.'

"Paul's endorsement is sure to add pressure on Mick Rich to step aside and give Johnson, the two-term former governor of the state, a clear shot at challenging what until now has been considered a safe Democratic seat. In the only poll taken since Johnson officially entered the race two weeks ago, the Libertarian was up on the Republican 21 percent to 11 percent (versus Heidrich's 39), and even held a slight edge among registered Republicans....

"[T]oday's announcement could mark a watershed moment in which the Republican Party's once-ascendant, now-embattled 'Liberty Movement' rump breaks ranks to make selective common cause with a competing political party that has 'Libertarian' right there in the name."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/08/28/huge-news-rand-paul-endorses-gary-johnso
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Elected Libertarians making a difference

How Elected Libertarians Are Making the World More Free - Reason.com - Matt Welch:

July 14, 2018 - "What exactly do Libertarians do? Wait — don't answer that. As someone who edited a small-l libertarian magazine for eight years, I know all your jokes.... But at least 169 of these exotic creatures also hold elected office across the [U.S.].... And what these critics of government power are doing once they acquire it may provide a flicker of whimsical hope in these dark and fractious times.

"Brandon Phinney, a 30-year-old Army vet who found libertarianism through Ron Paul, was elected to the 400-member New Hampshire House of Representatives in 2016 as a Republican. He then switched parties after discovering to his horror that elected GOP officials did not mean what they said about cutting the state budget.... Phinney ... pores through the ever-expanding state code, looking for laws that are anachronistic, impossible to enforce, and/or just plain wrong. [Then] he tries to remove them.

"For instance, the Live Free or Die State had on its books for more than a century a prohibition against reusing glass milk-delivery bottles for any other substance besides milk.... New Hampshire is one of the few states in the union where performers are barred from drinking alcohol on stage. Or I should say were, until Phinney tackled the problem....

"Phinney faces his first reelection with an "L" next to his name this November, which will be an important early indication of whether the L.P. is able to protect, and thus lure more of, its recent converts from the two older parties.

"Another key party switcher facing electoral challenge this year is Nebraska state Sen. Laura Ebke. Ebke, who transferred from the GOP to the L.P. two years ago over issues of civil liberties, achieved something this spring that libertarians have been talking about forever: occupational licensing reform. Like Phinney's bills, Ebke's passed with overwhelming bipartisan — nay, tripartisan — support....

"Having Libertarians play the honest, respected brokers between Dems and Repubs may seem far-fetched... But that's just what Mayor Jeff Hewitt has done in Calimesa [California].

"The swing vote on a split city council, Hewitt, a garrulous former swimming pool digger, convinced his small town to tackle one of California's biggest problems: The unsustainability of public sector pensions. Instead of contracting fire services from unwieldy Riverside County, with its top-down engine-staffing rules and defined-benefit pensions, Calimesa under Hewitt's tutelage opted out and created its own tiny fire department, saving taxpayers a bundle. Now Hewitt is running for a spot on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors....

"The Libertarian Party needs, and is finally getting, some demonstration projects about how to govern better. Getting more Jeff Hewitts in more important positions could transform the little party that couldn't into not just the country's leading third party (which it is already), but also a bloc that can at long last change the behavior of the top two."

Read more: https://reason.com/archives/2018/07/14/how-elected-libertarians-are-making-the
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Vohra announces 2020 Libertarian POTUS bid

Controversialist Arvin Vohra Announces 2020 Libertarian Presidential Run - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:

July 6, 2018 - "Arvin Vohra, a 39-year-old educational entrepreneur notorious for questioning age-of-consent laws for 14-year-olds, for arguing that joining the military to pay for college is 'morally unacceptable,' and for joking about shooting up school boards, announced at the tail end of the Libertarian Party's biennial national convention that he is running for president. Vohra joins longtime libertarian activist and serial arrestee Adam Kokesh, a 36-year-old Iraq War veteran who is running on a platform to dissolve the federal government, as the two biggest L.P. presidential candidates to officially announce.

"'On the first day of my presidency,' Vohra tweeted Thursday, 'I will pardon those in prison who have neither harmed anyone nor stolen anything. I will start with @Snowden and @RossUlbricht.' Next comes 'all nonviolent drug users, all nonviolent drug traffickers, all nonviolent drug kingpins...anyone that's in jail for crypto-currency crime [and] gun possession where they didn't actually hurt anybody.'

"'My number one goal,' the candidate tells me, 'is to end the welfare state and abolish the income tax. I'm going to be using my campaign to spread that message on the policy level, but also to help people realize there are so many ways to reduce government without changing policy, including opting out of government schools, including using cryptocurrency, including using the power of jury nullification.'

"Vohra, who served two terms as national vice chair, has been the Libertarian Party's single most controversial figure the past year and a half. In February, he survived attempted suspension and censure motions from the Libertarian National Committee (LNC) over his age-of-consent and military remarks; in April, a second effort to suspend after the school-shooting joke came one vote short. Vohra's self-conscious controversialism—what movement graybeards call the 'libertarian macho flash'—was a recurrent, negative theme throughout the three-day national convention....

"[I]n all three rounds of voting ... Vohra's limped along at 9–8–10. Party delegates had ample opportunity to weigh in on the incumbent's provocative rhetorical strategy, and the conclusion was unmistakable: two thumbs way down.

"Vohra sounds cheerful about seeking his party's presidential nomination after such a snub. 'I'm going to be trying to bring a lot of new people into the party,' he explains. Also, 'a presidential campaign to me is just different from being a vice chair. A vice chair is about kind of half externally focused, half internally focused, and realistically most people objected to my internally focused messaging.... A presidential campaign ... is 99 percent externally focused, and so the type of messaging that goes into it is just different.' In other words, he says he'll tone it down at least a little."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/06/controversialist-arvin-vohra-announces-2
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Sarwark re-elected Libertarian chair in landslide

Libertarian Party Rebuffs Mises Uprising - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:

July 4, 2018 - "The Libertarian Party on Monday afternoon re-elected in a surprising first-ballot landslide incumbent Chair Nicholas Sarwark to an unprecedented third consecutive two-year term. In doing so, the nation's third-largest political party swatted down what was supposed to be the most contentious challenge at its biannual national convention — to a leadership that was considered by various critics to be too operationally incremental, too ideologically tepid, and too (in the words of Ludwig von Mises Institute Senior Fellow and popular podcaster Tom Woods at a nearby New Orleans rally Saturday) 'SJW-friendly.'

"Sarwark's main opponent, the Mises Caucus-endorsed Joshua Smith, stumbled badly in a defensive debate performance at the New Orleans Hyatt Regency Sunday night, and ended up Monday on the business end of a 65 percent-22 percent rout. In the vice chair race, two-term incumbent Arvin Vohra, who has become a lightning rod over the past year-plus for intentionally provocative public comments such as 'Bad Idea: School Shootings. Good Idea: School Board Shootings,' was resoundingly drummed out of office, never receiving more than 11 percent of the vote in three rounds of balloting that ended Tuesday with a positivity-exuding 33-year-old finance/tech/consulting guy named Alex Merced squeaking past the 50 percent finish line.

"'What I think the race shows is that if you want to change the direction of the Libertarian Party, if you have new ideas about how we can grow and reach new members, the election of Merced to vice chair shows that the delegates want that kind of change,' Sarwark told me Tuesday afternoon. 'If your campaign is seen, or has themes of trying to kick people out, of trying to attack people like Gov. Weld, or... basically anyone — if your campaign was seen as trying to drive people out of the party, the delegates soundly rejected that. And I think that that is the biggest takeaway from the convention.'

"Weld, the controversial-within-the-party 2016 vice presidential nominee and former moderate Republican Massachusetts governor who is laying the groundwork for a possible 2020 presidential run (and was everywhere to be seen at the convention, amiably taking on all skeptical comers), played a pivotal role in the decisive debate. Candidates had the opportunity to ask their opponents one question, and when it was Smith's turn, a delegate in the audience shouted out, 'What do you think about Bill Weld?!' (Weld-heckling was a sporadic feature throughout the three-day event.) Smith decided to make that his question.

"'What I think about Bill Weld," Sarwark started slowly, building into a feisty crescendo, 'is that he is still in the Libertarian Party, while many of his opponents are not. [He's been] raising money for and endorsing Libertarian candidates. He is fundraising for us. And the exposure of Bill Weld to the Libertarian Party has not made the Libertarian Party more like an establishment Republican, but has made Bill Weld a lot more like a Libertarian....He knows something about winning public office, and [we need to] learn how to do that from anybody who will help us, anybody who will join us. And we should not PUSH PEOPLE OUT who are willing to help!'

"As New York gubernatorial candidate and popular party organizer Larry Sharpe, who had backed Smith, commented later, after that exchange it was 'game over'."

Read more: https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/04/libertarian-party-rebuffs-mises-uprising
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Bill Weld readying 2020 Libertarian POTUS run

Bill Weld Lays Groundwork for 2020 Libertarian Presidential Run - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:

May 2, 2018 - "2016 ... vice presidential candidate Bill Weld ... is now openly laying the groundwork for a 2020 presidential campaign. The only question is whether he'll be the one running....

"'I take this stuff seriously," he told me. 'But I'm sincere when I say that I'm not talking about who is going to do the Libertarian race in 2020; I'm just here to say that I think that's a race that has some real potential to go the distance, and the sooner we all wrap our minds around that, the better'....

"Weld has been schlepping his favorite brown coat from Houston to New York to Long Beach for state conventions, delivering his rap about how the party can best grow from here ('The number one thing we need to do by November 2020 is to elect a Libertarian president of the United States') and sketching out tantalizing visions of '$50 million or $100 million in the bank at the beginning of the campaign'....

"Weld is also issuing strategic endorsements to some of the party's biggest names — Republican-turned-Libertarian Nebraska state Sen. Laura Ebke (facing her first re-election with an "L" by her name starting with a May 15 jungle primary), Massachusetts auditor candidate Dan Fishman (said to have a plausible shot if some local scandals break right), Phoenix mayoral hopeful Nicholas Sarwark (the party's national chairman), New York gubernatorial challenger and ubiquitous state-party-convention presence Larry Sharpe, and others. More rounds of endorsements are expected in the near future.

"Other party-building activities include filing lawsuits to make the allocation of electoral votes proportional instead of winner-take-all in four states (which, Weld says, would have resulted in the L.P. receiving 17 electoral votes in 2016); recruiting potential candidates, donors, and (quietly) vice-presidential possibilities; and starting the obligatory 501(c)(4) advocacy group, Freedom for America....

"Weld's access to money, media, and prestige stands in stark contrast to his potential presidential competitors, though that's in part because there really aren't any so far, aside from anarcho-libertarian activist and trouble-magnet Adam Kokesh. The Adam vs. the Man impresario has been dogging Weld on the L.P. circuit, challenging him to debates, ambushing him on camera with questions like 'How much did Hillary Clinton pay you off?' and accusing him of being a 'liar and backstabber'....

"At the same time, if a growing party is going to continue to grow, and to position itself as the beneficiary of the Democratic and Republican parties' ongoing nervous breakdowns, it is going to need to absorb major-party defectors with less libertarian cred than Bill Weld....

"The Libertarian Party has a truly valuable commodity: likely ballot access in all 50 states, at a time when the major parties are both abandoning even rhetorical support for balanced budgets, free trade, civil liberties, non-interventionism, and a host of other key issues. By planting a tentative flag in early 2018, Weld is establishing a floor of mainstream possibility — and signaling to any would-be outsiders eyeing the prize that libertarian-leaners are going to need to tack more Libertarian if they want to woo the activists who have made this moment possible."

Read this: http://gdspoliticalanimal.blogspot.ca/2018/05/reason-bill-weld-readying-2020.html
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Reason webathon raises record $375,000

Thank You for a Record-Shattering Reason Webathon! - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:

December 7, 2017 - "Reason's 10th annual webathon crushed all its predecessors like a bug on a windshield, for which we thank you, mouths agape, and vow to leap back into the fray like Popeye after 10 cans of spinach.

"The final tally: More than 1,300 of you generous souls made tax-deductible donations totaling an unbelievable $375,000+, doubling last year's haul of $187,000, and clearing far above our previous record (the year before that) of $246,000. This gobsmacking sum, which included a single gift of $75,000 worth of bitcoin (way back when the crypto currency was trading at like $11,000) allows us to be even more editorially independent and financially resilient, a rare and precious combination in today's creatively destructing media landscape.

"Your gifts also allow us to do new stuff you like — redesign the magazine, develop a podcast line, bring John Stossel into the fold — while keeping ourselves well-covered on the classics of cutting government, combating criminal injustice, fighting tyranny in far-flung locales, defending alcohol sales at cinemas that show unicorn-masturbation scenes. As we enter our 50th anniversary year, this massive jolt of adrenaline gives us the step on another half-century of innovative irreverence, sober number-crunching, and flying the libertarian flag in all kinds of unlikely places.

"On behalf of Katherine Mangu-Ward and Nick Gillespie, as well as the many behind-the-scenes heroes who made not only the webathon but our entire day-to-day existence here at Reason possible, THANK YOU."

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2017/12/07/thank-you-for-a-record-shattering-reason
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FCC to vote on 'net neutrality' repeal

Ajit Pai: ‘We Are Returning to the Original Classification of the Internet’ - Hit & Run - Reason.com - Matt Welch:

November 21, 2017 - "Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Ajit Pai announced this morning that he is submitting a proposal to repeal what he characterized as the "heavy-handed, utility-style regulation" of Internet companies adopted by the Obama administration in 2015.

 "Colloquially (if misleadingly) known as 'net neutrality' ... the rules, which included classifying Internet companies as 'telecommunications services' under Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act instead of as 'information services' under Title I, were intended by advocates to be a bulwark against private companies discriminating against disfavored service or content providers. In practice, Pai asserted today in a statement, net neutrality 'depressed investment in building and expanding broadband networks and deterred innovation,' and amounted to 'the federal government ... micromanaging the Internet.' The measure will be voted on next month....

" Pai came on the latest installment of the Fifth Column podcast to explain and debate the announcement with Kmele Foster and myself....

Pai: Sure, so I'm proposing to my fellow commissioners at the FCC to return to the bipartisan consensus on how to think about the Internet. And so instead of putting the government in control of how it operates and how it's managed, we're going to return to the light-touch framework that was established during the Clinton administration.... Essentially, we are returning to the original classification of the Internet....

[S]tarting with the commercialization of the Internet in the 1990s all the way until 2015, we thought of Internet access as what's called an 'information service.'....It meant that the FCC would not micromanage how it developed, how it operated. We would let the market develop, and then take targeted action if necessary to protect consumers.

In 2015, that changed, and we switched to calling it a 'telecommunication service,' essentially treating every Internet Service Provider in the country, from the big ones all the way down to the mom-and-pop fixed wireless providers in Montana, as anti-competitive monopolists to be regulated under 1934 rules that were developed for Ma Bell, the old telephone monopoly.

And so we are simply returning that classification back to the information-service one that started under President Clinton. And additionally, we are getting rid of some of the regulations that were adopted under that so-called Title II 'common carrier' classification, in terms of the various … rules that were adopted back in 2015."

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2017/11/21/ajit-pai-we-are-returning-to-the-origina

Invictus leaves Libertarians, joins GOP

Controversial Western Civilization Crusader Augustus Sol Invictus Bolts Libertarian Party for the GOP - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Matt Welch:

July 17, 2017 - "Augustus Sol Invictus, the lawyer, 'revolutionary conservative,' and crusader 'to guard western civilization against foreign aggression and internal corruption,' has for the past few years been the single most controversial member of Florida's Libertarian Party, for reasons [that include] disputed allegations of neo-Nazism [and] accurate reports of ritual goat sacrifice....

"Well, as of July 13, after years of recriminations, resignations, and mutual accusations of bad faith, the L.P. won't have Invictus to kick around anymore. The onetime trouncee in an unusual L.P. primary fight over Florida's U.S. Senate election in 2016 posted a video on his Facebook page, declaring that he was 'Moving from the collegiate levels to the big leagues, and playing to win,' seeking along the way to 'unite the right wing of American politics at long last in order to save our country and our civilization'....

"In May, Invictus and I both gave lunchtime talks at the Florida L.P. 2017 state convention ... after which I had two main takeaways: 1) The Party was clearly rattled by his ongoing presence (and sponsorship), and 2) his apocalyptic, nationalist-populist vision of libertarianism stuck out like a throbbingly sore thumb compared to what I usually encounter at Libertarian gatherings. I do not often hear discussion, however guarded, about 'the genocide of the white race,' from either capital- or small-l libertarians these days.

"Invictus portrays this as the result of 'leftists who have infiltrated and corrupted the Libertarian Party,' leading to an insufficient defense of his chin-leading on the front lines of the Free Speech/AntiFa wars. Most L.P. activists I surveyed counter along the lines of Andy Craig: 'We can only hope his gang of enablers and skinhead fans now follow him back whence they came.' (Libertarian National Committee Chair Nicholas Sarwark simply tweeted, 'May he go in peace.')....

"'We find ourselves afflicted by the deadliest cancer in human history,' Augustus Invictus declares in his mission statement at The Revolutionary Conservative, 'manifest in the twin symptoms of leftism and international finance: in a word, globalism.' It's a diagnosis that has even less resonance within the Libertarian Party in month six of Donald Trump's presidency.

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2017/07/17/controversial-western-civilization-crusa
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