Libertarian candidate Jim Berns running for Cincinnati mayor

Libertarian candidate Jim Berns running for Cincinnati mayor - FOX19.com-Cincinnati News, Weather & Sports:

"January 30, 2013 - "CINCINNATI, OH (FOX19) - Jim Berns announced Wednesday that he is officially running for Mayor of Cincinnati.

"Berns, a Libertarian candidate, received notification today from the Hamilton County Board of Elections that his petition efforts were successful. [He] will appear on the Sept. 10 Mayoral primary ballot.
"
Berns will be contacting the Hamilton County Libertarian Party, NAACP, Su Casa, Democratic and Republican Parties and other organizations and individuals to ask for their support of a charter amendment to replace the 'Top Two' primary with an open field of candidates for Mayor voted for at the regular November election."

Read more: http://www.fox19.com/story/20810899/libertarian-candidate-running-for-cincinnati-mayor
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Government-Mandated Lunch Breaks are Somehow Libertarians’ Fault

The Nation: Gov't-Mandated Lunch Breaks are Somehow Libertarians’ Fault - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Scott Shackford:

January 30, 2013 - "Rick Perlstein at The Nation has an odd, confounding story ostensibly about how a libertarian University of Chicago student’s experiences with reality turned him into a liberal.... Here are a couple of paragraphs that show some real confusion....

"'He sold books books at Borders in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It 'did kind of a 180 on me. Just in terms of the rigidity of a corporate structure! You know: they tell you you have to take your lunch break at 1:00. But at 12:58 a customer starts speaking to you. And if you speak to them until 1:02 the bosses at Borders would start yelling at you to take your break at one, and then if you got an extra minute to 1:31 it throws off the whole schedule but if you volunteer to go two minutes early they fear they might be fined!"

"'Call it the irrationality of the market.'

"Which of these fellows doesn’t realize that these restrictive lunch break policies are a direct result of government intervention over business policy? Did the word 'fine' not tip anybody off? Who would be fining them?

"Behold, Massachusetts’ mandatory meal break law. These laws are a result of progressives getting directly between the relationship between the employer and employee. Perlstein should be praising this 'corporate structure,' not using it as some sort of misguided attack on libertarians."

Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2013/01/30/the-nation-govt-mandated-lunch-breaks-ar
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School choice the only way to solve teachers' split loyalties - Chicago Libertarian

School choice the only way to solve teachers' split loyalties - Chicago Libertarian - Richard Lorenc:

January 28, 2013 - "This week is being celebrated as National School Choice Week from coast to coast. A whistle-stop tour that began on Friday in Los Angeles will arrive in Chicago's Union Station this evening before heading to its final destination in New York on Sunda

"The fact is the public schooling system today only serves students secondarily. As Chicagoans witnessed last fall, the system is rigged in such a way that a private organization called the Chicago Teachers Union must be appeased first before public schools will even begin to offer instruction to students. Merits of the CTU's demands aside, it was able to close nearly every school in Chicago singlehandedly.

"Far from being a broken institution, public schools across the country are working exactly as they have been designed: to meet the needs of the adults they employ."

Read more: http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-libertarian/2013/01/school-choice-the-only-way-to-solve-teachers-split-loyalties/
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PA Libertarian Party doubles membership in 2012

Bucks County Libertarians Seek to Crash the Party - Upper Southampton, PA Patch - James Boyle:

January 28, 2012 - "If you believe that the government overtaxes its citizens and interferes with the free market, then you are probably a Republican. But wait, you also believe in the separation of church and state and that the government should not impose religious standards that limit individual freedoms, so that must mean you are a Democrat....

"Dr. Tom Stevens suggests that, if you generally follow the fiscally conservative/socially liberal philosophy, you are most likely a Libertarian. It's a realization that has expanded exponentially in the past, politically charged year. 'We doubled our registered members since April 2012,' said Dr. Stevens....

"As chairman of Pennsylvania's Libertarian Party, Dr. Stevens travels the state establishing county committees and adding to the party's membership....

"The party plans to keep building off its 2012 momentum in the 2013 off-year elections for state and local offices, where third party candidates historically have more success. Currently, there are 135 Libertarians holding elected office nationwide, with 27 in Pennsylvania, ranging from mayor and city council to town treasurer and constable."

Read more: http://uppersouthampton.patch.com/articles/bucks-county-libertarians-seek-to-crash-the-party
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George Jonas: I'm an "old-fashioned liberal"

George Jonas: Don’t call me a libertarian | Full Comment | National Post:

January 16, 2013 - "I’m not a libertarian. Nor am I a libertine, in case you wondered. I’m just a liberal, an old-fashioned liberal, therefore often mistaken for a conservative. I’m committed to individual freedom, as liberals used to be in the 18th and 19th centuries. That was in the days when liberalism saw itself as a force for liberty, and liberty a value equal to life. “Give me Liberty or give me Death,” said Patrick Henry and presumably he meant it.

"Those days are long gone. By the time I was born in the mid-1930s, the state had staged a triumphant comeback. Even in western-style democracies, statism was the only game in town. People shopping for a non-statist choice in political philosophy were limited to anarchy and nihilism....

"I preferred to gnash my teeth as a 19th-century liberal rather than as a libertarian, anarcho-libertarian or nihilist. Why couldn’t I accommodate myself to statism? I’m allergic, I suppose, to what Shakespeare called 'the insolence of office,' a.k.a. the normal speaking voice of government.

"Perhaps what I resent in the state most is my own need for it. Government is like medicine, only more so. Anything strong enough to help is strong enough to harm, and government’s capacity to hurt is at least equal to its capacity to cure. Just like medicine, government is poison outside its therapeutic dosage, and it can be toxic even within therapeutic limits because of anticipated side effects poorly tolerated or unexpected side effects not tolerated at all."

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/19/george-jonas-dont-call-me-a-libertarian/
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Organic farmers, Tea Party libertarians make common cause

Tea Party Libertarians and Small Organic Farmers Make Strange Political Bedfellows - US News and World Report:

January 24, 2013 - "In October 2011 [Laura Bledsoe] and her husband Monte decided they wanted to host what they called a "farm to fork" event in their ... farm 50 miles outside of Las Vegas. 'We advertised it as a zero mile footprint," she recalls.... 'we were advertising the fact that this was, for the most part, food prepared directly on our farm'....

"Trouble began two days before the event was to take place. They received a call from the Southern Nevada Health District Office, who wanted to know if the farmers had secured a health permit for the event.... Monte immediately dropped what he was doing and traveled 40 miles to Mesquite to apply for a permit. It was here he learned the process required an inspection to take place the day of the event....

"The health inspector arrived simultaneously with several of the event's guests.... "She literally came in and started looking for things she could find fault with,' Laura recalls. 'That just became apparent in her attitude and demeanor with how she handled things.'

"The health inspector raised several concerns, but chief among them was the meat the Bledsoes were preparing to serve. Because the event was advertised as a 'zero mile footprint,' the meat hadn't been sent through a USDA processing plant, as is required for any meat purchased at a grocery store or restaurant, so the inspector deemed it illegal to serve.

"'She immediately demanded that we send our guests home and cease the event, and if we didn't she would call the police and have them personally escorted off the property'.... In addition to being ordered to send their guests home, the farmers were also told they needed to pour bleach over all the meat to ensure it would never be served."

Read more: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/01/24/tea-party-libertarians-and-small-organic-farmers-make-strange-political-bedfellows
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Tea party groups, libertarian Super Pac vow to challenge McConnell re-election bid

Tea party groups, libertarian Super Pac vow to challenge McConnell re-election bid | WHAS11.com Louisville:

January 23, 2013 - "LOUISVILLE, Ky (WHAS11) -- With speculation rising about actress Ashley Judd challenging U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) in the 2014 general election as a Democrat, Kentucky's senior senator is also hearing some footsteps from the right.

"The leader of a coalition of 14 Kentucky tea party groups, United Kentucky Tea Party,  said Wednesday he is considering mounting a primary challenge against McConnell.... Now, the libertarian Super Pac Liberty for All, which spent $700,000 of Texas college student John Ramsey's inheritance to help elect Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie last year, is also vowing to unseat McConnell.

Read more: http://www.whas11.com/news/local/McConnell-catching-heat-after-cooperating-with-Obama-on-fiscal-cliff-sweetheart-deal-188123551.html
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