Jeff Bezos’ Housekeeper Says She Had to Climb Out the Window to Use the Bathroom

Jeff Bezos' ex- housekeeper is suing him for discrimination that led to her allegedly having to literally sneak out out of his house to use the bathroom.

Jeff Bezos' former housekeeper is suing the Amazon founder for workplace discrimination that she says forced her to literally climb out out the window of his house to use the bathroom.

In the suit, filed this week in a Washington state court, the former housekeeper claimed that she and Bezos' other household staff were not provided with legally-mandated eating or restroom breaks, and that because there was no "readily accessible bathroom" for them to use, they had to clamber out a laundry room window to get to one.

In the complaint, lawyers for the ex-housekeeper, who is described as having worked for wealthy families for nearly 20 years, wrote that household staff were initially allowed to use a small bathroom in the security room of Bezos' main house, but "this soon stopped... because it was decided that housekeepers using the bathroom was a breach of security protocol."

The suit also alleges that housekeepers in the billionaire's employ "frequently developed Urinary Tract Infections" that they believed was related to not being able to use the bathroom when they needed to at work.

"There was no breakroom for the housekeepers," the complaint adds. "Even though Plaintiff worked 10, 12, and sometimes 14 hours a day, there was no designated area for her to sit down and rest."

The housekeeper — who, like almost all of her coworkers, is Latino — was allegedly not aware that she was entitled to breaks for lunch or rest, and was only able to have a lunch break when Bezos or his family were not on the premises, the lawsuit alleges.

The Washington Post owner has denied his former housekeeper's claims of discrimination through an attorney.

"We have investigated the claims, and they lack merit," Harry Korrell, a Bezos attorney, told Insider of the suit. "[The former employee] made over six figures annually and was the lead housekeeper."

He added that the former housekeeper "was responsible for her own break and meal times, and there were several bathrooms and breakrooms available to her and other staff."

"The evidence will show that [the former housekeeper] was terminated for performance reasons," he continued. "She initially demanded over $9M, and when the company refused, she decided to file this suit."

As the suit was just filed and may well end in a settlement, it'll likely be a long time, if ever, before we find out what really happened at Bezos' house — but if we do, it'll be a fascinating peek behind the curtain at the home life of one of the world's most powerful and wealthy men.

More on billionaires: Tesla Morale Low As Workers Still Don't Have Desks, Face Increased Attendance Surveillance

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Jeff Bezos' Housekeeper Says She Had to Climb Out the Window to Use the Bathroom

That "Research" About How Smartphones Are Causing Deformed Human Bodies Is SEO Spam, You Idiots

That

You know that "research" going around saying humans are going to evolve to have hunchbacks and claws because of the way we use our smartphones? Though our posture could certainly use some work, you'll be glad to know that it's just lazy spam intended to juice search engine results.

Let's back up. Today the Daily Mail published a viral story about "how humans may look in the year 3000." Among its predictions: hunched backs, clawed hands, a second eyelid, a thicker skull and a smaller brain.

Sure, that's fascinating! The only problem? The Mail's only source is a post published a year ago by the renowned scientists at... uh... TollFreeForwarding.com, a site that sells, as its name suggests, virtual phone numbers.

If the idea that phone salespeople are purporting to be making predictions about human evolution didn't tip you off, this "research" doesn't seem very scientific at all. Instead, it more closely resembles what it actually is — a blog post written by some poor grunt, intended to get backlinks from sites like the Mail that'll juice TollFreeForwarding's position in search engine results.

To get those delicious backlinks, the top minds at TollFreeForwarding leveraged renders of a "future human" by a 3D model artist. The result of these efforts is "Mindy," a creepy-looking hunchback in black skinny jeans (which is how you can tell she's from a different era).

Grotesque model reveals what humans could look like in the year 3000 due to our reliance on technology

Full story: https://t.co/vQzyMZPNBv pic.twitter.com/vqBuYOBrcg

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) November 3, 2022

"To fully realize the impact everyday tech has on us, we sourced scientific research and expert opinion on the subject," the TollFreeForwarding post reads, "before working with a 3D designer to create a future human whose body has physically changed due to consistent use of smartphones, laptops, and other tech."

Its sources, though, are dubious. Its authority on spinal development, for instance, is a "health and wellness expert" at a site that sells massage lotion. His highest academic achievement? A business degree.

We could go on and on about TollFreeForwarding's dismal sourcing — some of which looks suspiciously like even more SEO spam for entirely different clients — but you get the idea.

It's probably not surprising that the this gambit for clicks took off among dingbats on Twitter. What is somewhat disappointing is that it ended up on StudyFinds, a generally reliable blog about academic research. This time, though, for inscrutable reasons it treated this egregious SEO spam as a legitimate scientific study.

The site's readers, though, were quick to call it out, leading to a comically enormous editor's note appended to the story.

"Our content is intended to stir debate and conversation, and we always encourage our readers to discuss why or why not they agree with the findings," it reads in part. "If you heavily disagree with a report — please debunk to your delight in the comments below."

You heard them! Get debunking, people.

More conspiracy theories: If You Think Joe Rogan Is Credible, This Bizarre Clip of Him Yelling at a Scientist Will Probably Change Your Mind

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That "Research" About How Smartphones Are Causing Deformed Human Bodies Is SEO Spam, You Idiots

What’s Wrong With Abortion Federalism? – Reason

In this week's Reason Roundtable, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and special guest Damon Root unpack the long-awaited SCOTUS ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade (1973).

1:31: Discussion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

39:06: "Lightning round" on SCOTUS decisions concerning guns and school choice

51:32: Weekly Listener Question: More than most political ideologies, many of the prominent libertarian thinkers were womenAyn Rand, Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, etc. I think it's safe to say that the movement wouldn't exist without them. But libertarianism today, fairly or not, is stereotyped as being almost all men, often men who are, shall we say, not the most socially adept. Why has that stereotype developed? And how do we, in practice, change both the impression and the actual amount of women in the movement? Bonus question: Katherinewhich Roundtabler is like which Buffy the Vampire Slayer character? And why is Nick Cordelia Chase (or Faith, though mostly because of the leather jacket aesthetic)?

This week's links:

"Alito's Abortion Ruling Overturning Roe Is an Insult to the 9th Amendment," by Damon Root

"Here Is a State-by-State Rundown of What Will Happen Now That SCOTUS Has Freed Lawmakers To Restrict Abortion," by Jacob Sullum

"Clarence Thomas Calls To 'Reconsider' Gay Marriage, Sodomy Rulings," by Scott Shackford

"Outside the Supreme Court, Our First Glimpse of Post-Roe Politics," by Christian Britschgi

"Get Ready for the Post-Roe Sex Police!" by Nick Gillespie

"In Defense of Roe," by Nick Gillespie and Regan Taylor

"Alito's Leaked Abortion Opinion Misunderstands Unenumerated Rights," by Damon Root

"In Landmark 2nd Amendment Ruling, SCOTUS Affirms Right 'To Carry a Handgun for Self-Defense Outside the Home'," by Damon Root

"School Choice and Religious Liberty Advocates Just Won Big at the Supreme Court," by Damon Root

Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsors:

Audio production by Ian KeyserAssistant production by Hunt BeatyMusic: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

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What's Wrong With Abortion Federalism? - Reason

The myth of American conservatism – UnHerd

Laura Ingalls Wilder was an American farmer and small-town farm journalist who rarely got involved in 20th-Century politics. She was not an activist for the vote and only entered in politics in old age, when she ran for a paid local office and lost.

And yet for decades, conservative Americans have held up her series, the Little Housebooks, which includesLittle House on the Prairie, as a Bible of libertarianism: true examples of American self-reliance and independent spirit. The nine childrens books about a hard-working pioneer family warned about the encroaching power of the state, and heralded the rise of the modern Republican party. They are fiction, of course, but based on Wilders real childhood.

Published in the throes of the Great Depression, the Little House books were powerful allegories opposing President Franklin Roosevelts New Deal programmes, which provided unprecedented financial support to struggling Americans. They also illustrated a major shift in Republican ideology that took place in the Thirties, as the party sought to widen its appeal. It shed its reputation as the party of elite business owners, and instead began to emphasise the power of the individual.

In one of the scenes in The Long Winter, a storekeeper is overcharging starving residents of De Smet, South Dakota, who want to buy the last grain in town. A riot seems imminent until the hero of the books, Charles Pa Ingalls, speaks up. This is a free country, and every mans got a right to do as he pleases with his own property, he tells the storekeeper. Dont forget that every one of us is free and independent, Loftus. This winter wont last forever, and maybe you want to go on doing business after its over.

This impromptu speech is anachronistic: arguing about unregulated markets was a debate rooted in the Thirties, when this book was written, rather than the 1880s, when it was set. It hints at the secret lying at the heart of the Little House books: it was Wilders daughter and secret co-author, Rose Wilder Lane, who imbued the books with their political message.

Lane was one of the intellectual architects of the libertarian political movement in America: she was an influential free-market activist, writer, and acquaintance of the philosopher Ayn Rand. Her projection of her radical political views onto her mothers pioneering childhood means that the series should be read as a double history: folk stories about the 1870s and 1880s woven through the vantage point of the Great Depression and the Second World War.

Pulsing through the books, meanwhile, are principles rooted in the Declaration of Independence. Thanks often to Lanes revisions, characters occasionally quote that document, noting that they want to be free and independent. In Little Town on the Prairie, Pa takes Laura and her sister to the Fourth of July celebration in town. In Lanes revision, Laura is transfixed by the reading of the Declaration of Independence and the singing of My Country Tis of Thee:

The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the Song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is Americas king. She thought: Americans wont obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences.

This is why the books are so beloved by conservatives today: these libertarian views formed the basis of the modern Republican Party.

Yet the books purposefully understate the difficulty of the American pioneer experience. It was in fact a brutally hard life of crop failures, isolation, and disease. Although the Little House books preserved in accurate and lyrical detail many of the skills that small farmers practiced in the 19th century, Lane recast many scenes as optimistic takes on tragedy that did not reflect how the family actually responded. In On the Banks of Plum Creek, Pa announced during a horrible plague of the Rocky Mountain locust that ate crops for two years: We wont let a pesky crop of grasshoppers stop us. The locusts did, in fact, lead to their financial ruin. Two years later, according to Little Town on the Prairie, the family resorted to eating the blackbirds that had destroyed their first corn crop in Dakota Territory. The family sings Sing a Song of Sixpence at the table. And why not show some upbeat pluck in a childrens book?

But Wilder cautioned her daughter that the family was not an optimistic group. The quality they relied on was stoicism, putting up with the bad that came. Thats very different from hope. I wish I could explain to you about the stoicism of the people, she wrote to Lane in 1938, when they were halfway through writing the series. You know a person cannot live at a high pitch of emotion. The feelings become dulled by a natural, unconscious effort at self-preservation. Wilder insisted that the Ingalls family had never reacted to anything emotionally.

The divergence between Wilders real-life story and the Little House narrative was also apparent from what they left out: crime and tragedy. Gone from the books were stories Laura had written in early drafts: the death of a baby brother, a mournful episode running a tavern that ended with the family fleeing late at night to avoid paying its debts. The hardships that did stay in the books shored up tenaciousness as a value, such as sister Mary Ingalls going blind as a teenager. Laura then had to step in to help her and support the family by teaching at several schools.

The books also downplayed the various ways the government helped the family, spinning a myth of self-reliance. Like many pioneer settlers, they were given a free homestead through the federal Homestead Act, which granted tracts the government had taken from American Indians. Then there was sister Marys state-paid college for the blind in Iowa. The stories only talk of Laura having to teach to pay for Marys college expenses perhaps her clothes.

The stories continue to exert a kind of power on the American psyche. The books have sold more than 60 million copies and were taught in classrooms for many decades; the series remains part of homeschooling curricula. Laura Ingalls Wilder is the quintessential American pioneer, says Wilder expert William Anderson in the PBS American Masters documentary Laura Ingalls Wilder: Prairie to Page.

And Lanes legacy can still be felt in the Republican party. Lane only wrote political articles after publishing the Little House books and her libertarian treatise The Discovery of Freedom. But she campaigned for limited government in the last years of her life. In the Sixties, she took under her ideological wing a young man in Connecticut; he was Roger Lea MacBride, who became a champion of libertarian thought and ran for president for the new Libertarian Party in 1976. Later, MacBride took the libertarian ideas with him as he migrated back to the Republican partys Liberty Caucus.

Lane also donated funds to help businessman Robert LeFevre launch an institution for adults in Colorado called the Freedom School, which named a building after Lane. Two of the early students who studied free markets and limited government there were Charles and David Koch, who went on to become members of the Libertarian Party in the Seventies and Eighties. Later, they returned to the conservative branches of the Republican Party and became hugely influential by donating money to Republicans promising to support free-market concerns, including such notions as refuting the science of climate change.

The myth of the pioneers, embodied by Laura Ingalls Wilder, inspired many conservative American values today. They were seen as the kind of independent, self-reliant Americans that the Second Amendment was designed to protect. But even they would have struggled with some aspects of modern Republican policy gun control in particular.

Certainly, the Ingalls family owned and used guns. In one scene in Little House in the Big Woods, Pa Ingalls trudges with his rifle through the snow of northern Wisconsin, checking animal traps. Rounding a large pine tree, he meets a black bear, standing on its hind legs clutching a dead pig. Pa aims his gun, kills the bear, and immediately runs home for the horses and sled to take the meat home. There, it resides in frozen form in a shed. Pa hacks off pieces with an axe at mealtimes.

Even the mythical Pa Ingalls would not have thought todays Americans needed guns in most situations, especially the range of weapons available today. He preached to his daughters the necessity of restraint. You wouldnt shoot a little baby deer, would you, Pa? says Laura. No, never! he answered. Nor its Ma, nor its Pa. No more hunting, now, till all the little wild animals have grown up. Well just have to do without fresh meat till fall.

When baby animals were roaming the forest, it was time to put the rifle away.

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The myth of American conservatism - UnHerd

CHAMPLAIN IS TREASURER: Whitewater to face Sterling in November; Brecheen, Frix head for D2 Congress runoff – Tahlequah Daily Press

JoAnna Champlain claimed victory as Cherokee County treasurer in Tuesdays primary election, receiving an unofficial 57.84 percent of the votes in 29 precincts.

Champlain defeated Noel Hunter, who received 42.16 percent of the vote. Champlain and Hunter, both Democrats, didnt have a Republican opponent to challenge them in the November general election.

I would like to thank everyone in Cherokee County who supported and voted for me, Champlain said. I am very excited to begin this new journey as treasurer, and serve all of the residents of Cherokee County to the best of my ability. I look forward to the next four years with great anticipation, knowing I will continue to learn and grow, making our office the best it can be.

Hunter said she accepts the results as is, but wished the outcome was different. She addressed Champlain and wished her the best as she takes on her new position.

Current Treasurer Patsy Stafford declined to seek reelection.

Bobby Cub Whitewater, Democrat, will face off against Republican Mitch Sterling in November for the District 1 commissioner seat. Whitewater received 58.16 percent of the votes, while Randy Jones took 41.84 percent.

Jones thanked his supporters and all who helped during his campaign.

it was amazing, and I congratulate Bobby Whitewater on his win in this primary. I wish him well in November in the general election, said Jones.

Current Commissioner Doug Hubbard didnt run again.

In statewide and federal races, between 97 and 99 percent of precincts had reported as of 11 p.m.

Among Cherokee County voters, Republican Congressman Markwayne Mullin obtained 62.64 percent of the vote for U.S. Senate. However, he faces a runoff against former Speaker of the House T.W. Shannon. The winner will meet up in the November general election with Democrat Kendra Horn, a former member of Congress, along with Ray Woods, an independent, and Libertarian Robert Murphy. Competing against him in the Republican primary on Tuesday were: T.W. Shannon, Alex Gray, Nathan Dahm, Luke Holland, Adam Holley, Jessica Jean Garrison, Laura Moreno, Michael Coibion, Scott Pruitt, Paul Royse, John F. Tompkins, and Randy J. Grellner.

Both in Cherokee County and statewide, voters chose to keep Republican U.S. Sen. James Lankford, with 67.80 percent. He turned back challengers Jackson Lahmeyer, 26.42 percent, and Joan Farr, 5.78 percent, as of 10 p.m., Tuesday. Democrat Madison Horn won 36.92 percent of the vote against Jason Bollinger, 16.82 percent; Arya Azma, 7.02 percent; Brandon Wade, 12.29 percent; Dennis L. Baker, 13.88 percent; and Jo Glenn, 13.06 percent. Libertarian Kenneth D. Blevins and Michael L. Delaney, an independent, also will be on the November ballot.

Cherokee County resident Republican Wes Nofire scored 6.32 percent of the votes on his home turf for the congressional seat vacated by Mullin in District 2, but that wasn't enough to advance him to the primary runoff. Avery Frix and Josh Brecheen will meet up in that election on Aug. 23, having tallied 14.74 to 13.75 percent respectively.

Cherokee County resident Clint Johnson got 1.46 percent of votes in that race. He thanked his supporters for their trust and confidence they instilled in him.

There are a lot of good people in this race, and I wish them the best of luck. We will keep them to their campaign promises, said Johnson.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, Republican, defeated Mark Sherwood, Joel Kintsel, and Moira McCabe with 68.58 percent of the votes. Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister will challenge Stitt and Ervin Stone Yen, an independent, and Libertarian Natalie Bruno during the general election, as she received 64.16 percent of the votes against Connie Johnson, 35.84 percent.

Republican Todd Russ, 48.50 percent, and Clark Jolley, 33.87 percent, will meet in the runoff for state treasurer after defeating David B. Hooten, 17.62 percent. Gregory J. Sadler, Libertarian, and Democrat Charles De Coune will go head-to-head in Novembers election with either Jolley or Russ. Current Treasurer Randy McDaniel didnt seek reelection.

Current Attorney General John M. OConnor got 49.12 percent of the vote, apparently indicating he was ousted by fellow Republican Gentner F. Drummond, with 50.88 percent.

John Cox, April Grace, Ryan Walters, and William E. Crozier, all Republicans, sought the seat of superintendent of public instruction, with incumbent Hofmeister switching parties and running for governor. Cox, who is Peggs School superintendent, was able to get 24.15 percent of the votes. However, Walters took 41.46 percent, and the two are projected for a runoff. Grace got 30.63 percent, and Crozier, 3.76 percent. The runoff winner will be joined by Democrat Jena Nelson in the general election.

District 18 Sen. Kim David, Republican, snagged the most votes for corporation commissioner, 41.08 percent. She was joined by Justin Hornback, 20.35 percent; Harold D. Spradling, 12.59 percent; and Todd Thomsen, 25.99 percent. Democrat Margaret Warigia Bowman, and Don Underwood, independent, will challenge David in November.

Republican Cindy Byrd will remain seated as State Auditor and Inspector after beating Steven W. McQuillen, 29 percent.

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CHAMPLAIN IS TREASURER: Whitewater to face Sterling in November; Brecheen, Frix head for D2 Congress runoff - Tahlequah Daily Press

State Auditor Cindy Byrd wins reelection; other state offices head to runoff – Oklahoman.com

State Auditor and InspectorCindy Byrd weathereddark money-fueled opposition in winningreelection Tuesday, beating a challenger who was backed by the founders of a virtual charter school she accused in an audit of stealing millions in tax dollars.

"I've had such a groundswell of support across the state once everyone realized what was going on with this election," said Byrd, who beat Steven McQuillen with more than double thevote total.

With no other candidate on the general election ballot, Byrd essentially won reelection to another four-year term.

In 2020, Byrd drew attention after releasinga scathing audit of Epic Charter School, which her office accused of numerous questionable expenses.

Ben Harris and David Chaney, the founders of Epic who were arrested this month onembezzlement charges,donated $744,500to Prosperity AllianceInc.from January 2020 to March 2021, which supported Byrd's opponent with mailers.

Primary election results: Kevin Stitt, Joy Hofmeister to face off in Oklahoma governor's race come November

Byrd said the arrests backed up her audit's claims, and her election victory showed voters had faith in her office.

"Its been very disheartening that there were some who did not believe the audit report that the state auditors office put out," Byrd said Tuesday evening. "But last week was more evidence that the state auditors office is putting out the information taxpayers need to know to be informed in order to know where their money is going."

Several other statewide primary races are headed for a runoff, including the commissioner of labor, where incumbent Leslie Osborn received 48% of the vote, just shy of the majority needed to avoid a runoff. State Rep. Sean Roberts, who received 38%, will face Osborn in an Aug.23 election. The winner will face Democratic Jack Henderson and Libertarian Will Daugherty in November.

The Republican primary for state treasurer is also headed for a runoff to compete for the open seat, where current state treasurer Randy McDaniel decided not to seek reelection.

State Rep. Todd Russ received 49% of the voteand Oklahoma Tax Commission Chairman Clark Jolley received 34%.

David Hooten, who recently resigned as Oklahoma County clerk amid sexual harassment allegations, received 18%, missing the runoff.

The winner between Russ and Jolley will face Libertarian Gregory Sadler and Democrat Charles de Coune.

The four-candidate Republican primary for an openseat on the corporation commission is also headed for a runoff, as state Sen. Kim David, who received 41% of the vote, will face former state Rep. Todd Thomsen, who received 26%.

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State Auditor Cindy Byrd wins reelection; other state offices head to runoff - Oklahoman.com

Dont Believe the Obits for Bitcoin – The Wall Street Journal

Reports of cryptocurrencys death have been exaggerated. For those whove followed bitcoin since the beginning, the fall from $64,000 to $20,000 is simply another of bitcoins many deaths (one website has tracked 455 obituaries). Those who bought at the top are asking why bitcoin is only $20,000. This question would have been unfathomable a few years ago. We should ask the opposite question: Why is this internet-created money, started by an unknown programmer on an obscure web forum, trading so high?

With millions of dollars in speculation in nonfungible tokens, initial coin offerings and obvious get-rich-quick schemes, its easy to forget that bitcoin wasnt created by people looking to get rich. It was designed by a pseudonymous programmer known as Satoshi Nakamoto, who wanted a money not controlled by government-run central banks. Like gold, the bitcoin network is outside the control of any political entity. There is a predictable rate of money creation, and the number of bitcoins in existence will never exceed 21 million.

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Dont Believe the Obits for Bitcoin - The Wall Street Journal

In the 1980s, My Friends In Texas Said I Was ‘Overreacting’ – Medium

Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell at the Baptist Fundamentalism 84 conference. (AP/Ira Schwartz)

I know my personal experience about this topic is not unique. It cant be.

There were a few others concerned about the long-term fate of secular society in wake of the 1980s fusion of Reagan, Republicans, and evangelical religion the theocratic philosophy now in power on the U.S. Supreme Court. In my case, I was routinely dismissed by friends as overreacting or down right paranoid. Others were probably told the same thing across America. Thats why I am sharing my personal experience from evangelical-creationist ground zero: my home state of Texas!

Now I am not going to pretend I had it all figured out in the mid-1980s. But, given many conversations with conservatives and creationists, it became apparentover timethat the fusion was a toxic mix and trouble was coming. That trouble exploded in 2016 with another theological-political fusion: Trump, MAGA, GOP, and evangelical religion.

In 1984, I was a grad student at the University of Texas at Austin. George Orwells masterpiece 1984 was being widely read. Of course, most thought the USSR was the real 1984, not Team USA. When Apple launched the Macintosh in 1984, few, if any, saw the Orwellian danger of personal computers. I sure didnt.

Lots of cool New Wave bands were passing through Austin, playing at dives like the Continental Club, Liberty Lunch, and various other clubs. New wave fashions were the rage for some. Yep, I had a pair of parachute pants, which I wore a few times to concerts. But, I was much more likely to wear pointy-toed boots with Levis 501s button fly only! Still do.

All the while, the winds of fascism and theocracy were beginning to blow over the big Texas horizons. I saw the theocracy sooner than I saw the fascism.

My loose network of friends included a random mix of liberals, libertarians, quasi-conservatives, artsy fashionistas, philosophy theorists, and an odd assortment of alienated cigarette smokers, espresso junkies, and margarita lovers. In 1984, you could drink at 18 in Texas and smoke inside cafes and coffeehouses. The legendary Les Amis (the cafe featured in Richard Linklaters Slacker) was particularly smoky, but you could always get good coffee and good conversations.

The same was true for Captain Quackenbushs Intergalactic Espresso Cafe, located a few blocks away. Real intellectual conversations were had because most everyone was reading philosophy, history, and literary books with their coffee and Euro cigarettes.

In 1984, Ronald Reagan swept to a landslide second term in a grand fusion of movie star glitz, fervent evangelicalism, quasi-libertarian economics, and sheer patriotic frenzy fueled by conservative Cold War propaganda. Reagans famous TV ad said it was now Morning in America. Astrology was regularly consulted in the White House. And flags, flags, flags!

On election night in 1984, I recall protestors running through campus buildings holding signs proclaiming they were Young Anarchists for Mondale. LOL. Crazy, but no less true!

Walter Mondale and the Democratic platform were far removed from anything anarchist. Mondale and the Young Anarchists never had a chance against Reagan and the conservative frat boys (like the Bushes). Thats because Reagan and Bush were going to save the soul of America! After all, God and old money were on their side.

Ronald Reagan and Jerry Falwell (head of the so-called Moral Majority) led the fusion of the Republican Party with fundamentalists and evangelicals, the faithful who did not believe in evolution and other science concepts. Instead, they believed the universe was 6,000 years old, the Bible trumped the Constitution (or the Constitution was based on the Bible, which is absolutely not true), a clump of cells had more rights than the womans body that contained the cells, guns would prevent (secular) government tyranny, and America was chosen by God to be the promised land that would prevail over the evil commies in the Cold War.

In a foreshadowing of the subsequent decades, President Reagan said the following during a speech at a 1984 campaign rally in Austin:

And finally, last night I asked the House to pass the equal-access bill. It would permit religious student groups the same freedom that other student groups now have to meet in public high schools in their vacant rooms during off-hours. I believe the God who blessed this land of ours never deserved to be expelled from our schools in the first place.

The Equal Access Act of 1984 was passed and became law. Of course, as Orwell would have predicted, the goal was never about mere equal access. The long-term goal was breaking down the wall between church and state, bit by bit, across the decades. That is exactly the intent of the Moral Majority, faith-based government initiatives, the anti-abortion movement, and Justice Samuel Alitos recent Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. Its a theocracy in America.

Sound too alarmist? What about the Supreme Courts recent ruling in Carson v. Makin, in which they ruled that if the government funds any private schools, then it must fund private religious schools the very schools that most likely teach creationism, anti-science, anti-abortion, and discrimination against LGBTQIA+ communities and people of color, including those crossing the southern border. This ruling is a total violation of the First Amendments wall between church and state. Equal Access is achieving its long-term goal: imposing a theocracy in America.

In the days after Reagan was reelected in 1984, my liberal and libertarian friends said almost the exact same thing: Reagan was about big business, deregulation, free markets, and unfettered capitalism. Of course, the liberals feared Reagan, while the libertarians cheered Reagan.

For my liberal friends, Reagans economics were the big concern, almost the only concern, which is in keeping with the Marxist and socialist influence in their worldview. Libertarian fans of Ayn Rand were sometimes atheist, but they were far more focused on defeating communism and spreading capitalism far and wide in the name of individualism and rational self-interest.

I get the fear of Big Brother or big government, but I was more concerned about what happens when Big Brother is a creationist and theocrat. Every time I suggested that we should be more concerned about religious political power, almost all of my friends said I was overreacting and being paranoid. They said something to this effect:

Cmon Vacker, dont overreact. Youre sounding paranoid! Just because youre an atheist and existentialist, it doesnt mean religion is going to take over. Religious freedom is in the First Amendment.

Ive heard some variation of those lines dozens of times across the decades. Every time I raised the problem of growing theological political power, I was repeatedly told by libertarians, liberals, and coffeehouse philosophers it was capitalism and big corporations that were the big issue, good or bad.

By the year 1984, I had read 1984, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, and other dystopian literature (or seen the film versions). From 1984, I could see that the American fusion of religion, propaganda, and political power was a totalitarian mix, especially because of the control of sexuality (which Orwell warned us about with the Anti-Sex League in 1984).

Fahrenheit 451 showed how book burning could reappear in a society dumbed down by television and entertainment. Thats ever more true today. Brave New World showed how people could be seduced and programmed to accept the dominant ideologies, precisely as they think they are free individualists seizing the future or returning us to the past! (Today, thats the cults of Elon Musk or MAGA.)

The University of Texas set aside a free speech area on campus near the Student Union Building, home to the student government offices, a large cafeteria, movie theater, and the legendary Cactus Caf, where famed Austin musicians were known to drop in. In the free speech area, dozens upon dozens of student groups handed out brochures, pamphlets, and Xerox copies of their beliefs and manifestos.

I recall the Young Conservatives group selling Margaret Thatcher posters. For real! When Prince Charles toured the campus in 1986, the frats and sororities turned out in huge crowds, always yearning to be royality, to be among the elite rulers.

Lively (and largely civil) conservations could be heard and had almost any school day. Not meme wars, but actual dialogue. In my many conversations with conservative and evangelical students, it was clear to me that the end result of their beliefs would be, ultimately and necessarily, a theocracy in America. Though many would deny it, a theocracy was always the inevitable end goal, with a paradoxical mix of state-supported capitalism.

The conservative and evangelical activists conflated religious freedom, protected under the First Amendment, with the idea that all America must be ruled under a religion, specifically the religion of the Bible. They ignored the first right in the First Amendment the right to not believe in any religion and not have the government impose any religion.

Additionally, the evangelicals would never seriously consider any evidence, any facts, or any logic that challenged their faith in sacred texts or the existence of God. Nothing. Nada, Nope. Doublethink!

The Bible was the final word. The one thing they all believed with absolute conviction: God exists and is on their side, the Bible is truth, and they want to Make America Moral Again! That means we must go backwards a few decades or, more likely, a few centuries.

By 1986, Hollywood gave us Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer in Top Gun that mind-meld of GQ machismo, jet fighter-fetishism, and Team USA war propaganda. Its no wonder the Soviet Union soon collapsed. The Kremlin and commies knew they had no chance against Maverick, Viper, and Ice. Not a chance!

In the wake of the Cold War, super conservative George W. Bush was elected governor of Texas in 1994 and President of the United States in 2000. My friends (now including profs) said the same thing: Bush is all about corporations and capitalism. Cmon Vacker, didnt you see Bushs Brain (2004 documentary)? Bush is the puppet for Karl Rove and greedy capitalists, the puppet for Dick Cheney and the Pentagon. The Bible has little to do with his policies. Again, I was overreacting. Yet, the very same Bush appointed John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. The same Bush that approved of torture regimes in the Terror War.

Nothing much changed in the 2000s2020s. Is it right to be concerned about privacy, exploitation, free speech, human rights, the environment, and so on? Yes, of course! Concerned about a theocracy. Nah, thats too far.

Even though the American theocracy will smash the wall between church and state, deny basic human rights to disfavored groups (women, people of color, and LBTQIA+ communities), and destroy the environment in the name of economic growth and a biblically ordained dominion over the Earth. Just wait until the current Supreme Court guts environmental protections. Its coming, sooner or later.

Of course, President Trump appointed three more high priests of medievalism and here we are. Its 2022 and America is fast becoming a fascist theocracy. Theres no denying it. Its unfolding right before our eyes.

Its obvious patriarchal and biblical domination are being forced upon women all across America. The evangelical fanatics and Supreme Court medievalists are telling women they have no right to control their bodies, no reproductive rights, and no rights to determine their healthcare. If women have no autonomy for their bodies, then they have no real rights at all. Alitos opinion represents a full-on assault on the universal human rights possessed by all women.

Thats why the Courts goal is not about morality or saving fetuses. The real goal is to inflict pain, cruelty, and domination upon women and anyone else not favored by the theocrats. Misogynous and morally bankrupt fanatics are hurtling women and society backward by centuries in a merger of church and state.

Ultimately, the theocrats on the Supreme Court are attacking the Establishment Clause, the principle atop the First Amendment which says Congress Shall Make No Law Respecting the Establishment of Religion Alito and crew are destroying the wall between church and state.

There is no end in sight, as the fanatics are coming after all reproductive rights and contraception. And theyll come after numerous other rights and freedoms held by the people and groups they do not like. There is no end, there is no bottom.

After all, what are all those AR-15s are for? To prevent tyranny? Or to impose tyranny? Are we supposed to believe the Proud Boys, Patriot Front, and Oath Keepers are going to be peaceful and do nothing? If they get in power, theyll be aiming their AR-15s at Americans who are not down with fascism and theocracy.

Unless defeated, somehow, this theocracy will be like all the others from the past. A complete horror show. A real life Handmaids Tale, a real life Idiocracy, and real life Planet of the Apes.

But, yeah, I and others were overreacting and paranoid in 1984.

_____________

High taxes forced the closure of Les Amis Cafe. The building was bulldozed to make way for a Starbucks. Liberty Lunch closed in 1999 to make way for downtown hipster development. The Continental Club still rocks (as a copy of itself). Keep Austin Weird no longer applies.

I wonder what became of the Young Anarchists for Mondale.

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In the 1980s, My Friends In Texas Said I Was 'Overreacting' - Medium

Kansas GOP governor candidate arrested on felony charge plunges ahead with campaign – Kansas Reflector

TOPEKA Republican gubernatorial candidate Arlyn Briggs recorded a campaign commercial outlining his vision of conservative government in Kansas only to find out a prominent Christian radio network had no intention of airing the advertisement.

He said an employee at Bott Radio Network in Overland Park explained the campaign spot couldnt be used on the network after learning of Briggs arrest on a charge of criminal threat against a law enforcement officer. The arrest in Allen County was a misunderstanding that ought to be resolved in his favor, Briggs said, but the radio networks rebuff was a setback in his primary campaign against GOP frontrunner Derek Schmidt, who is the states attorney general.

Im a strong Christian, Briggs said. My job is to be a strong reflection of Jesus Christ.

Briggs, 64, of rural Kincaid, said the legal trouble stemmed from allowing a man being sought by law enforcement for an alleged stalking offense to stay with him in early June. Briggs noticed a sheriffs department vehicle driving slowly past his home, so he called the department to remind authorities of the castle doctrine, the stand-your-ground right of individuals in Kansas to take reasonable action, including deadly force, in defense of a home.

He warned law enforcement officers not to try anything, he said, and pointedly added I may shoot you. He said he wouldnt have actually fired on deputies, and nothing happened. But officers later served an Anderson County warrant on him for criminal threat. He was released June 15 from Allen County Jail.

If successful in the Aug. 2 primary against Schmidt, Briggs would likely face Democratic frontrunner Gov. Laura Kelly as well as independent candidate Dennis Pyle and Libertarian Seth Cordell in November. If victorious in the general election, Briggs said he would donate his state government salary to charity.

I feel the primary is where the contest is this year. Kelly is so liberal, Briggs said. I say vote for the person. Not what they said, but what they do.

Briggs said he was disappointed with Schmidt as a political leader, and asserted the attorney general was too focused on getting on U.S. Sen. Jerry Morans good list in anticipation of eventually running for Morans seat in the U.S. Senate. Briggs said hed challenged Schmidt to five debates, but hadnt received a response.

I think theres growing concern among conservatives across the United States and Kansas with whats happening with government and our leaders, Briggs said.

On social media last year, Briggs was critical of state legislators who he claimed talked about the value of local government control and then passed bills stripping local elected officials of influence. He said they all should be taught a lesson by being voted out of office.

Briggs ran for the Kansas House in 2012 and 2020, but lost both contests. He was soundly defeated in the most recent campaign, falling to state Rep. Trevor Jacobs, with Jacobs securing 83% of the vote in a GOP primary.

He said he lived in Johnson County for about 30 years. He worked for a Kansas City bank and at Hallmark and has been employed as a trucker and farmer. He performed mission work in more than a dozen countries, he said.

Briggs lieutenant governor running mate is Abilene resident Lance Berland, who Briggs said recently performed community service in Colorado to deal with his own legal challenges.

On social media, Berland said we the people were engaged in a fight against Republican and Democrat warmongers, the most bloated, wasteful bureaucracy in human history and corrupt crony capitalists. He claimed businessman George Soros, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett were involved in demise of U.S. freedom.

We have been played, and Americans killed, by our own government and the ultra-wealthy non-citizens who dominate our nation from Davos, Geneva, and Brussels, he said. These people have perpetuated and delivered the world only racism, eugenics, war, toxicity, disease and unnecessary deaths by the hundreds of millions. These people serve only themselves and the devil.

He also expressed disappointment Presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden were convinced by the global health mafia to recommend Americans be vaccinated against COVID-19.

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Kansas GOP governor candidate arrested on felony charge plunges ahead with campaign - Kansas Reflector

Letter to the Editor: Why Libertarians aren’t on the primary ballot – Reporter-Times

Per Indiana law, a political party must get a minimum of 10 percent in the Secretary of States race to participate in the general primaries. We must get at least 2 percent to maintain ballot access which we have done every year since 1994. So, voting Libertarian for Secretary of State is a vote to continue giving Hoosier voters more choices. This year our Secretary of State candidate if Jeff Maurer. Hes running to ensure our elections are safe and secure. He wants you to get a receipt with your vote so you can verify your vote counted the way you intended.

Our candidates are selected by delegates at convention, at no cost to taxpayers. For county and local races, we are officially nominated at county conventions. For example, Kristin Alexander has already received the Libertarian nomination to run for Madison Township board in this years election from the Libertarian Party of Morgan County. Other higher-level candidates were selected by delegates at our state convention on March 5th, like James Sceniak for U.S. Senate.

Do not be dissuaded by the taxpayer funded primary process. Libertarians will be on your ballot in November, and Hoosiers will have principled options as a result.

Danny Lundy

Mooresville

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Letter to the Editor: Why Libertarians aren't on the primary ballot - Reporter-Times

JOHN HOOD COLUMN: Freedom is a tool for progress – The Stanly News & Press | The Stanly News & Press – Stanly News & Press

RALEIGH Im a conservative without a conversion story. Plenty of others have such a tale they read a certain book, had a certain teacher, or somehow became disenchanted with their previous, left-leaning views.

John Hood

If the conversion happened as adults, after first being politically active as a progressive, socialist or communist, they were called neoconservatives. One of the most prominent, Irving Kristol, famously defined a neoconservative as a liberal who has been mugged by reality and a neoliberal as a liberal who got mugged by reality but has not pressed charges.

I only got mugged once, while working as a magazine reporter in Washington, and I was already a conservative. It was an attempted mugging, actually, because I happened to be carrying a synthesizer in a heavy case, it proved to be a handy weapon to swing, and the would-be mugger was stoned out of his mind.

But Kristol wasnt really talking about crime as a political issue, of course, although the rise of criminality and social disorder during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s was a factor that propelled some Americans into the modern conservative movement. What bound the disparate elements of that movement together was the existence of critically important and inescapable realities such as what the free-market economist Thomas Sowell later described as the constrained vision of human nature, as distinguishable from the unconstrained vision of would-be social engineers.

Both here in North Carolina and around the country, the modern conservative movement is an alliance of what used to be called traditionalism and what used to be called liberalism. Traditionalists believed there are fundamental truths and virtues, either revealed by God or confirmed by millennia of human history, that ought to guide human action.

Classical liberals didnt necessarily disagree with that premise, actually. But they elevated the principle of freedom to the top of the list the right of individuals to make decisions for themselves above the power of the state to take their property and control their lives.

Traditionalists valued freedom, as well, but observed that individuals arent born as human atoms who later, voluntarily, form human molecules. We are born into families and communities, and thus into a thick and complex web of social obligations. Many traditionalists, then, defined freedom in communitarian terms, as ordered liberty. Classical liberals emphasized the right of the individual to make decisions, even if the results dismayed their neighbors or injured themselves.

When cultural critics, libertarians, and anti-communists forged the modern conservative movement in America during the 20th century, they were reacting to the threatening rise of populism, progressivism and socialism. It was a case of longtime rivals, traditionalists and classical liberals, forming first an alliance of mutual need and then, through fits and starts, forging a more systematic integration of their ideas.

The result wasnt a catechism. It was and remains messy and incomplete. There are areas of disagreement and differences in emphasis. But the various strands of modern conservatism have enough in common to work together and what they have in common, for the most part, is a belief that governmental power should be minimized so that freedom can be maximized.

Why? Because it is in the nature of humans to thrive, in the long run, when they are free to make their own decisions, rather than being compelled to comply with some central plan. The empirical evidence for this proposition is massive and constantly growing.

For example, a peer-reviewed study by North Dakota State University economist Jeremy Jackson employed the Frasier Institutes Economic Freedom of North America Index and a set of survey data on life satisfaction. All other things being equal, states with lower taxes, smaller budgets and fewer regulations had a higher share of happy residents than did those with expansive, expensive governments.

My conservative colleagues and I here in North Carolina fight for freedom not as an abstraction but as a practical tool for promoting opportunity, progress, happiness and virtue. And we welcome converts to the cause.

John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member.

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JOHN HOOD COLUMN: Freedom is a tool for progress - The Stanly News & Press | The Stanly News & Press - Stanly News & Press

Ballots in the mail for Alaska’s special election with familiar names – The Center Square

(The Center Square) - Alaska's Division of Elections began mailing ballots Wednesday for the June 11 special election to fill the seat of late U.S. Rep. Don Young, who passed away in March.

The election will be conducted by mail and is the first to test Alaska's new rank-choice voting system passed by the voters in a 2020 referendum.

The top four candidates out of the 48 who qualified will advance to a special primary election scheduled for August 16.

Two familiar names are on the ballot. Former governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin is among the 17 Republican candidates on the ballot.

Palin is endorsed by former President Donald Trump but not by the Alaska Republican Party. That endorsement went to Nick Begich III at their convention last weekend, according to a Twitter post on his campaign page.

Palin said the endorsement was planned in advance.

"This predictable action of the Party establishment proves that the old boys' network is alive and well in Alaska, but the only endorsement that matters is the one from the Alaskan people on June 11," she said in a statement on her website.

The ballot also includes five Democrats and three Libertarians. The remaining candidates do not have a major party affiliation, including a familiar name.

Santa Claus his legal name hopes to make it to the August primary. He is currently Mayor Pro Tem of the City ofNorth Pole, Alaska.

Claus calls himself "an independent, progressive, democratic socialist, with an affinity for Bernie Sanders, and aim to represent all Alaskans."

Before he changed his name and moved to the North Pole, Claus was a special assistant to the New York City's deputy police commissioner. Claus said on hiswebsitethat he is not accepting gifts from his supporters.

The winner of the August special election would serve out the remainder of Young's term, which ends in January. Young's post is on the November ballot, and the winner of that election will take office in January.

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Ballots in the mail for Alaska's special election with familiar names - The Center Square

The Anti-Vaxxers Won. This Is Pandemic Country. – The River – The River Newsroom

In an April 16 interview with New York City billionaire and budding media mogul John Catsimatidis, Governor Kathy Hochul affirmed that she would not shut down the state to deal with the spike in COVID-19 cases caused by the BA.2 variant. Not that anyone expected her to. No, at this point, New Yorkand apparently the rest of the countryis functionally done with COVID mitigation.

Of course, this virus isnt done with us. No matter how many wartime metaphors are thrown at it, a substantial chunk of the population seems unwilling to acknowledge a simple truth: a pandemic is not over until its over, and what endemic means is definitely up for debate.

Once again, the Northeast is leading a rise in US cases. In New York, the 7-day positivity rate as of April 21 is over 5 percent and climbing (in neighboring Vermont, the rate is double that.) A lack of testing may obscure the real amount of spread at present. But the difference this timeseemingly more than ever before, and particularly notable in the blue statesis the unwillingness to do pretty much anything about it.

In fact, unwillingness puts it charitably; it implies there is a choice to be had. Truthfully, Hochuls comments were redundant precisely because the possibility of choice has been forfeitedmaybe long ago, certainly after the first Omicron wave. We cannot wait any longer, we must get back to normal!

Vaccination, accordingly, has become the only mitigation method. While crucial in reducing severity of illness and likelihood of death, vaccines are only one method of mitigationand a method with serious limitations. Vaccines fail in many cases to significantly protect the 3 percent of the population who are immunocompromised from so-called mild Omicron; it also does a dubious amount to reduce transmission.

Last winter, I spent a few months reporting in The River on the anti-vax group Do We Need This?, a Columbia County-based coalition opposed not only to vaccination, but to virtually all efforts at pandemic mitigation. What struck me in my communication with members of this groupmore than their deeply unscientific approach to the coronaviruswas the devaluing of human life implicit in their approach to the pandemic. They would deny it, of course, but the enactment of their worldview in America in 2022 would produce a coldly libertarian reality in which lives are simply unprotectedeven when we have the meansand we accept consigning weak, elderly, immunocompromised, and otherwise vulnerable people to serious illness and death. (It is the exact same belief, parroted in cruder and more aggressive form, by the MAGA movement and the far rightof which the left-libertarian anti-vaxxers are fast becoming a part.)

In New York, about 75 percent of the population is fully vaccinatedwhich is good, if likely not good enough. But to note this only obscures a darker sentiment that I cannot shake: the anti-vax argument has won the day. The COVID-skeptics view of the pandemic and its supposed mildness, their arguments about costs versus benefits, their fundamental privilege and unwillingness to care for othersthis is the ethos that predominates.

This view isnt exactly new. Even at the beginning of the crisis, the willingness of the privileged to abscond to areas like the Hudson Valley was plenty evident, while those sheltering in the city and suburbs cheered from their balconies as essential workers (who were functionally deemed expendable) were made to stay out and continue stocking shelves and delivering groceries.

But there was at least some sense of collective sacrifice and a perceived need to mitigate; now the willingness to accept total uncontained spread is as pervasive as its ever been. Liberal pundits like Leana Wen or David Leonhardt make careers insisting as much in the papers of record, laundering the guilt of those who have, in many cases, never been deeply threatened by this pandemic and now simply dont want to be inconvenienced.

What could be done now? In theory, re-imposing indoor mask mandates (as Philadelphia has done), permanently expanded testing and tracing, full coverage for the poorly insured and uninsured for COVID testing and treatmentand if necessary, targeted closures or shutdownsare all within the capacity of even a society as broken as this one. Above all, perhaps, should be clear messaging that the pandemic is not yet over.

But, as Hochul insisted, none of thats going to be done. The state and country will ride through this wave, just like they did all the other ones, and manycertainly more than necessarymay die or become seriously ill, including with long COVID, because we have collectively agreed to do nothing.

The pandemic might have been an opportunity to have a discussion about priorities, particularly the chronic health inequalities evident in the state and country. Instead, the most terrible disparities of this society have been reaffirmed; a persistent selfishness and unwillingness to suffer the most mild inconveniences for the sake of protecting vulnerable neighbors has won the day; a grotesque American libertarianism is strengthened. And too many people are okay with it.

The Riveris a nonpartisan news organization, and the opinion of columnists and editorial writers do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the newsroom.

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The Anti-Vaxxers Won. This Is Pandemic Country. - The River - The River Newsroom

Libertarian Democrat – Wikipedia

Ideological faction within the U.S. Democratic Party

In American politics, a libertarian Democrat is a member of the Democratic Party with political views that are relatively libertarian compared to the views of the national party.[1][2]

While other factions of the Democratic Party, such as the Blue Dog Coalition, the New Democrat Coalition and the Congressional Progressive Caucus, are organized in the Congress, the libertarian faction is not organized in such a way.

Libertarian Democrats support the majority of positions of the Democratic Party, but they do not necessarily share identical viewpoints across the political spectrum; that is, they are more likely to support individual and personal freedoms, although rhetorically within the context of Democratic values.[3]

Libertarian Democrats oppose NSA warrantless surveillance. In 2013, well over half the House Democrats (111 of 194) voted to defund the NSA's telephone phone surveillance program.[4]

Former representative and current Governor Jared Polis of Colorado, a libertarian-oriented Democrat, wrote in Reason magazine: "I believe that libertarians should vote for Democratic candidates, particularly as our Democratic nominees are increasingly more supportive of individual liberty and freedom than Republicans".[5] He cited opposition to the Stop Online Piracy Act, support for the legalization of marijuana, support for the separation of church and state, support for abortion rights and individual bodily autonomy, opposition to mass surveillance and support for tax-code reform as areas where the majority of Democrats align well with libertarian values.[5]

While maintaining a relatively libertarian ideology, they may differ with the Libertarian Party on issues such as consumer protection, health care reform, anti-trust laws and the overall amount of government involvement in the economy.[3]

After election losses in 2004, the Democratic Party reexamined its position on gun control which became a matter of discussion, brought up by Howard Dean, Bill Richardson, Brian Schweitzer and other Democrats who had won in states where Second Amendment rights are important to many voters. The resulting stance on gun control brought in libertarian minded voters, influencing other beliefs.

In the 2010s, following the revelations by Edward Snowden about NSA surveillance in 2013, the increasing advent of online decentralization and cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, the perceived failure of the war on drugs and the police violence in places like Ferguson, Democratic lawmakers such as Senators Ron Wyden, Kirsten Gilibrand and Cory Booker and Representative Jared Polis have worked alongside libertarian Republicans like Senator Rand Paul and Representative Justin Amash to curb what is seen as government overreach in each of these areas, earning plaudits from such traditional libertarian sources as Reason magazine.[6][7][8][9] The growing political power of Silicon Valley, a longtime Democratic stronghold that is friendly to economic deregulation and strong civil liberties protections while maintaining traditionally liberal views on social issues, has also seriously affected the increasingly libertarian leanings of young Democrats.[10][11][12]

The libertarian faction has influenced the presidential level as well in the post-Bush era. Alaska Senator and presidential aspirant Mike Gravel left the Democratic Party midway through the 2008 presidential election cycle to seek the Libertarian Party presidential nomination,[13] and many anti-war and civil libertarian Democrats were energized by the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns of libertarian Republican Ron Paul.[14][15] This constituency arguably embraced the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns of independent Democrat Bernie Sanders for the same reasons.[16][17] In the state of New Hampshire, libertarians operating from the Free State Project have been elected to various offices running as a mixture of both Republicans and Democrats.[18][19] A 2015 Reuters poll found that 22% of Democratic voters identified themselves as "libertarian," more than the percentage of Republicans but less than the percentage of independents.[20]

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Libertarian Democrat - Wikipedia

Julian Brazier: Meet a hidden driver of a bigger state, higher taxes and more regulation the libertarian movement – ConservativeHome

Sir Julian Brazier is a former Defence Minister, and was MP for Canterbury from 1987-2017.

In the background to the unhappy struggles in the Conservative Party today is a philosophical clash in which the voices of libertarians are loudest. While (mostly) still supporting the man, their accusation is that the Johnson government has abandoned liberty.

These voices call for much that traditional small c conservatives should agree with a smaller state, lower taxes, less regulation but their message carries at its heart a deeply unhelpful strand which would be bad for the country, and calamitous for the Partys prospects of staying in power.

Our most important domestic challenge today is reining back public expenditure so we can lower taxes on struggling families. Government spending is the highest proportion of GDP since the aftermath of the Second World War.

Where I part company from my libertarian friends is that I believe it is time we acknowledged that one of the hidden drivers of runaway public spending is libertarianism itself and its left-wing cousin, the human rights lobby. Both stress freedom and gloss over the responsibilities and consequences which should come with it.

John Stuart Mill formulated the paradox of hedonism: those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.

Similarly, the paradox of liberty is that we can only attain true freedom and a smaller state, if we focus not on selfish individualism but instead on nurturing and rebuilding those natural structures and attitudes which reduce the need for the services of the state. This requires active citizens, robust families, stronger communities and a sense of nationhood. These were themes of the late, great, Sir Roger Scruton.

One of his favourite examples were the American laws which allowed people, in most places, to build freely where they wanted, but then required the American taxpayer to expend huge sums taking roads and power to them. This has created a nightmare of ever-expanding suburbs with social black holes in town centres and heavy government spending.

More broadly, he attacked the growing wish for extending freedoms without accepting any corresponding responsibilities, even crucially where there are heavy costs to the taxpayer and wider community (including later generations).

There is a parallel with Britains NHS. The cost of NHS and social care has exploded to the point where some are claiming Britain is becoming a health and social care system with a country attached. The Party is buzzing with ideas for reform of the NHS and social care from pruning expensive bureaucrats and tackling GP contracts, to moving towards an insurance-based system. Yet there is one way we could reduce NHS spending dramatically and improve productivity in the economy: by persuading millions of obese people to lose weight and the nation to become fitter.

Scandinavian countries adopted a wide range of contrasting approaches to Covid but, with their much fitter populations, all suffered far lower rates of Covid deaths, and lower pressures on their health systems. Indeed, the Swedish approach was never an option here because our large population of obese people would have brought the NHS down.

The impact of Britains obesity, the worst in Europe (apart from Malta), goes far beyond Covid. A range of illnesses from cardiovascular conditions to arthritis to diabetes are made both more likely and more dangerous by obesity and also drive up the cost of the NHS.

Yet libertarians oppose measures to incentivise fitness, from sugar taxes to public health campaigns (what they call the Nanny State). Meanwhile the human rights lobby screams against fat-shaming even in professions (such as the Army and the Police) where fitness is self-evidently important.

So, yes to lower taxation in general. But yes also to taxes targeting unhealthy foods and to tax breaks for gym subscriptions.

A parallel example is opposition to so-called Covid passports. Most of the Covid deaths, for some time now, have been among the unvaccinated. All Conservatives should wish to raise restrictions as quickly as possible. Indeed, the noisy lobby calling until recently for the re-imposition of Covid restrictions was mostly on the Left, but the circumstances which have underpinned their case the existence of large numbers who refuse to vaccinate and get sick is ignored by libertarians and the human rights lobby.

By contrast, millions of Britons saw nothing wrong with those who choose to be refuseniks paying some price (in terms of minor inconvenience) for their potential impact on the NHS. Even as we manage to ease out of the last parts of lockdown, protecting the short-term liberties of the refusenik minority has consequences, not just for public spending, but also for many who have other life-threatening conditions over which unlike the refuseniks they have no choice. Sick refuseniks are occupying beds desperately needed by other sick people.

A broader example is attitude to the family. Individualists on left and right campaigned successfully a generation ago for the virtual end to restrictions on divorce and the end of allocation of fault as a factor in child custody and the division of assets.

Today, attempts to reinforce traditional families are bitterly opposed by many the same people. Iain Duncan-Smiths radical reforms on social welfare reintroduced incentives to work, but he was consistently blocked in trying to remove disincentives for traditional families to stay together.

Yet the result of the decline of the traditional family is not just growing misery among children, with mental health, suicide, self-harm and drug-taking all on the rise and mostly higher than other European countries. It is also extremely expensive for the taxpayer as social security spending and the requirement for police officers, social workers, prison officers and childrens mental health staff grows. Studies consistently show that stable two parent families offer on average the best outcomes for children and family breakdown has an immediate cost to the benefit system.

If the state can encourage responsible personal choices and the rebuilding of those Burkean structures, from the family to the community to a sense of shared nationhood, expenditure can fall as the use of the safety net declines. If, on the other hand, choices which lead to mounting bills for the taxpayer are protected on the basis that We are not a country which asks to see papers, the size of the state will expand as the safety net gets more and more crowded.

Scruton once commented When government creates an unaccountable class it exceeds its remit, by undermining the relation on which its own legitimacy depends. In courser terms, people hate a freeloaders charter; rights should be balanced by responsibilities.

Boris Johnson led us out of the European Union. The next moves we take should seek to re-establish that balance. So, yes to reducing regulation (such as the Clinical Trials Directive which destroyed East Kents biggest employer). Yes to making strategic choices to cut public spending and taxation (a smaller university sector, an end to the triple lock for pensions?). Yes to forging new global trade and wider partnerships.

But lets have an end to the suggestion by so many of the Prime Ministers critics that a combination of offering freedom, alongside state-funded protection from the consequences, will capture the hearts of the British people.

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Julian Brazier: Meet a hidden driver of a bigger state, higher taxes and more regulation the libertarian movement - ConservativeHome

Criticism of libertarianism – Wikipedia

Criticism of libertarianism includes ethical, economic, environmental and pragmatic concerns and is often focused on right-libertarianism.[1] Critics have argued that laissez-faire capitalism does not necessarily produce the best or most efficient outcome,[2] and that libertarianism's philosophy of individualism and policies of deregulation fail to prevent the abuse of natural resources.[3] Criticism of left-libertarianism is instead mainly related to anarchism and includes allegations of utopianism, tacit authoritarianism and vandalism towards feats of civilization. Left and right-libertarians also engage in criticism of each other.

The validity of right-libertarian notions of liberty and economic freedom have been questioned by critics such as Robert Lee Hale, who posits that laissez-faire capitalism is a system of aggressive coercion and restriction by property owners against others:[4]

Adam Smith's "obvious and simple system of natural liberty" is not a system of liberty at all, but a complicated network of restraints, imposed in part by individuals, but very largely by the government itself at the behest of others on the freedom of the "some". ... What in fact distinguishes this counterfeit system of "laissez-faire" (the market) from paternalism, is not the absence of restraint, but the absence of any conscious purpose of the part of the officials who administer the restraint, and of any responsibility or unanimity on the part of the numerous owners at whose discretion the restraint is administered.

Other critics, including John Rawls in Justice as Fairness, argue that implied social contracts justify government actions that violate the rights of some individuals as they are beneficial for society overall. This concept is related to philosophical collectivism as opposed to individualism.[5] In response, libertarian philosophers such as Michael Huemer have raised criticisms of the social contract theory.[6]

Critics such as Corey Robin describe right-libertarianism as fundamentally a reactionary conservative ideology united with more traditional conservative thought and goals by a desire to enforce hierarchical power and social relations:[7]

Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and libertyor a wariness of change, a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These may be the byproducts of conservatism, one or more of its historically specific and ever-changing modes of expression. But they are not its animating purpose. Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians, and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental forcethe opposition to the liberation of men and women from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere. Such a view might seem miles away from the libertarian defense of the free market, with its celebration of the atomistic and autonomous individual. But it is not. When the libertarian looks out upon society, he does not see isolated individuals; he sees private, often hierarchical, groups, where a father governs his family and an owner his employees.

In his essay "From Liberty to Welfare", philosopher James P. Sterba argues that a morally consistent application of right-libertarian premises, including that of negative liberty, requires that a libertarian must endorse "the equality in the distribution of goods and resources required by a socialist state". Sterba presents the example of a typical conflict situation between the rich and poor "in order to see why libertarians are mistaken about what their ideal requires". He argues that such a situation is correctly seen as a conflict of negative liberties, saying that the right of the rich not to be interfered with in the satisfaction of their luxury needs is morally trumped by the right of the poor "not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what is necessary to satisfy their basic needs".

According to Sterba, the liberty of the poor should be morally prioritized in light of the fundamental ethical principle "ought implies can" from which it follows that it would be unreasonable to ask the poor to relinquish their liberty not be interfered with, noting that "in the extreme case it would involve asking or requiring the poor to sit back and starve to death" and that "by contrast it would not be unreasonable to ask and require the rich to sacrifice their liberty to meet some of their needs so that the poor can have the liberty to meet their basic needs". Having argued that "ought implies can" establishes the reasonability of asking the rich to sacrifice their luxuries for the basic needs of the poor, Sterba invokes a second fundamental principle, "The Conflict Resolution Principle", to argue that it is reasonable to make it an ethical requirement. He concludes by arguing that the application of these principles to the international context makes a compelling case for socialist distribution on a world scale.[8]

Jeffrey Friedman argues that natural-rights libertarianism's justification for the primacy of property is incoherent:[9]

[W]e can press on from [the observation that libertarianism is egalitarian] to ask why, if ... the liberty of a human being to own another should be trumped by equal human rights, the liberty to own large amounts of property [at the expense of others] should not also be trumped by equal human rights. This alone would seem definitively to lay to rest the philosophical case for libertarianism. ... The very idea of ownership contains the relativistic seeds of arbitrary authority: the arbitrary authority of the individual's "right to do wrong."

Philosopher Jonathan Wolff criticizes deontological libertarianism as incoherent, writing that it is incapable of explaining why harm suffered by the losers in economic competition does not violate the principle of self-ownership and that its advocates must "dishonestly smuggle" consequentialist arguments into their reasoning to justify the institution of the free market.[10]

Robert Lee Hale has argued that the concept of coercion in right-libertarian theory is applied inconsistently, insofar as it is applied to government actions, but it is not applied to the coercive acts of property owners to preserve their own private property rights.[11]

Jeffrey Friedman has criticized right-libertarians for often relying on the unproven assumption that economic growth and affluence inevitably result in happiness and increased quality of life.[12]

J. C. Lester has argued that right-libertarianism has no explicit theory of liberty.[1] He supplies a theory of liberty, briefly summarized as the absence of imposed cost. Frederick[13] criticizes Lester for smuggling in concepts not specified in the theory. Lester[14] responded. Both Lester and Frederick are proponents of critical rationalism, the epistemological approach of Karl Popper. Lester has criticized libertarians for neglecting epistemology.

Right-libertarians are accused of ignoring market failures, although not all proponents are market zealots.[15] Critics of laissez-faire capitalism, the economic system favored by right-libertarians, argue that market failures justify government intervention in the economy, that nonintervention leads to monopolies and stifled innovation, or that unregulated markets are economically unstable. They argue that markets do not always produce the best or most efficient outcome, that redistribution of wealth can improve economic health and that humans involved in markets do not always act rationally.[16][17]

Other economic criticisms concern the transition to a right-libertarian society. Jonathan Chait argues that privatizing Social Security would cause a fiscal crisis in the short-term and damage individuals' economic stability in the long-term.[18]

Reconciliation of individual rights and the advances of a free market economy with environmental degradation is a problem that few right-libertarians have addressed.[19] Political scientist and author Charles Murray has written that stewardship is what private property owners do best.[19] Environmentalists on the left who support regulations designed to reduce carbon emissions, such as cap and trade, argue that many right-libertarians currently have no method of dealing with problems like environmental degradation and natural resource depletion because of their rejection of regulation and collective control.[12] They see natural resources as too difficult to privatize as well as legal responsibility for pollution or degrading biodiversity as too difficult to trace.[5] As a result, some see the rise of right-libertarianism as popular political philosophy as partially responsible for climate change.[3]

Right-libertarians are also criticised for ignoring observation and historical fact and instead focusing on an abstract ideal.[20] Imperfection is not accounted for and they are axiomatically opposed to government initiatives to counter the effects of climate change.

Anarchism is evaluated as unfeasible or utopian by its critics, often in general and formal debate. European history professor Carl Landauer argued that social anarchism is unrealistic and that government is a "lesser evil" than a society without "repressive force". He also argued that "ill intentions will cease if repressive force disappears" is an "absurdity".[21] However, An Anarchist FAQ states the following: "Anarchy is not a utopia, [and] anarchists make no such claims about human perfection. ... Remaining disputes would be solved by reasonable methods, for example, the use of juries, mutual third parties, or community and workplace assemblies [as well as] some sort of "court" system would still be necessary to deal with the remaining crimes and to adjudicate disputes between citizens".[22][23]

In his essay On Authority, Friedrich Engels claimed that radical decentralization promoted by anarchists would destroy modern industrial civilization, citing an example of railways:[24]

Here too the co-operation of an infinite number of individuals is absolutely necessary, and this co-operation must be practised during precisely fixed hours so that no accidents may happen. Here, too, the first condition of the job is a dominant will that settles all subordinate questions, whether this will is represented by a single delegate or a committee charged with the execution of the resolutions of the majority of persona interested. In either case there is a very pronounced authority. Moreover, what would happen to the first train dispatched if the authority of the railway employees over the Hon. passengers were abolished?

John Donahue also argues that if political power were radically shifted to local authorities, parochial local interests would predominate at the expense of the whole and that this would exacerbate current problems with collective action.[25]

In the end, it is argued that authority in any form is a natural occurrence which should not be abolished.[26]

In 2013, Michael Lind observed that of the 195 countries in the world, none have fully actualized a society as advocated by right-libertarians:[27]

If libertarianism was a good idea, wouldn't at least one country have tried it? Wouldn't there be at least one country, out of nearly two hundred, with minimal government, free trade, open borders, decriminalized drugs, no welfare state and no public education system?

Furthermore, Lind has criticized right-libertarianism as being incompatible with democracy and apologetic towards autocracy.[28] In response, right-libertarian Warren Redlich argues that the United States "was extremely libertarian from the founding until 1860, and still very libertarian until roughly 1930".[29]

The anarchist tendency known as platformism has been criticized by Situationists,[30] insurrectionaries, synthesis anarchists[31][32] and others of preserving tacitly statist, authoritarian or bureaucratic tendencies.

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Criticism of libertarianism - Wikipedia

Opinion | How Being Sick Changed My Health Care Views – The New York Times

But then comes the complicating factor, the part of my experience that turned me more right-wing. Because in the second phase of my illness, once I knew roughly what was wrong with me and the problem was how to treat it, I very quickly entered a world where the official medical consensus had little to offer me. It was only outside that consensus, among Lyme disease doctors whose approach to treatment lacked any C.D.C. or F.D.A. imprimatur, that I found real help and real hope.

And this experience made me more libertarian in various ways, more skeptical not just of our own medical bureaucracy, but of any centralized approach to health care policy and medical treatment.

This was true even though the help I found was often expensive and it generally wasnt covered by insurance; like many patients with chronic Lyme, I had to pay in cash. But if I couldnt trust the C.D.C. to recognize the effectiveness of these treatments, why would I trust a more socialized system to cover them? After all, in socialized systems cost control often depends on some centralized authority like Britains National Institute for Health and Care Excellence or the controversial, stillborn Independent Payment Advisory Board envisioned by Obamacare setting rules or guidelines for the system as a whole. And if youre seeking a treatment that official expertise does not endorse, I wouldnt expect such an authority to be particularly flexible and open-minded about paying for it.

Quite the reverse, in fact, given the trade-off that often shows up in health policy, where more free-market systems yield more inequalities but also more experiments, while more socialist systems tend to achieve their egalitarian advantages at some cost to innovation. Thus many European countries have cheaper prescription drugs than we do, but at a meaningful cost to drug development. Americans spend obscene, unnecessary-seeming amounts of money on our system; America also produces an outsize share of medical innovations.

And if being mysteriously sick made me more appreciative of the value of an equalizing floor of health-insurance coverage, it also made me aware of the incredible value of those breakthroughs and discoveries, the importance of having incentives that lead researchers down unexpected paths, even the value of the unusual personality types that become doctors in the first place. (Are American doctors overpaid relative to their developed-world peers? Maybe. Am I glad that American medicine is remunerative enough to attract weird Type A egomaniacs who like to buck consensus? Definitely.)

Whatever everyday health insurance coverage is worth to the sick person, a cure for a heretofore-incurable disease is worth more. The cancer patient has more to gain from a single drug that sends the disease into remission than a single-payer plan that covers a hundred drugs that dont. Or to take an example from the realm of chronic illness, just last week researchers reported strong evidence that multiple sclerosis, a disease once commonly dismissed as a species of hysteria, is caused by the Epstein-Barr virus. If that discovery someday yields an actual cure for MS, it will be worth more to people suffering from the disease than any insurance coverage a government might currently offer them.

So if the weakness of the libertarian perspective on health insurance is its tendency to minimize the strange distinctiveness of illness, to treat patients too much like consumers and medical coverage too much like any other benefit, the weakness of the liberal focus on equalizing cost and coverage is the implicit sense that medical care is a fixed pie in need of careful divvying, rather than a zone where vast benefits await outside the realm of whats already available.

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Opinion | How Being Sick Changed My Health Care Views - The New York Times

Accomplished Scot Gordon Emslie escaped classism by immigrating to Canada – The Globe and Mail

Gordon R. Emslie: Cricketer. Psychologist. Tinkerer. Libertarian. Born June 30, 1940, in Aberbeen, Scotland; died Aug. 22, 2021, in Toronto, of Alzheimers disease; aged 81.

Gordon R. EmslieCourtesy of family

In 1963, Gordon, a 23-year-old Scotsman, was offered a lucrative teaching post at a posh English university on the condition that he accept immediately, no questions asked. Armed with three MAs German, French and psychology and a postgraduate diploma in psychology from the University of London, refusal seemed unthinkable. But Gordon, unable to ignore the administrations haughtiness, quickly declined and was told hed never teach in England. One month later he immigrated to Canada a wildly disproportionate response to a bad interview.

That was Gordon. He loved London, but the paperwork he valued the most came from Kingston, Ont.: a rent receipt for his first apartment addressed, Dear Mr. Scotch (sic) Boy; the PhD in psychology from Queens University; an obituary clipping from 1966. The Kingston Whig-Standard erroneously announced his marriage, to Judith Rosemary Cafley, under the title: Death and Funerals. The absurdity of a marriage announcement printed in the obituaries perfectly signified Gordons sensibility and demeanour. A charming libertarian, he was quick to send up anything that hinted of classism. He mocked media coverage of the Royal Family; he decried his sister Moyras voice mail. British Telecom programmed it to talk in a fancy London accent, oblivious to its locale: Aberdeen.

Gordon was a born sportsman. He captained hockey and cricket teams for Robert Gordons College and the University of Aberdeen and extended his career in both sports with Ruthrieston H.C., the Scottish Select Team and London University; and Gordonians C.C. and Aberdeenshire C.C., respectively. He dropped down to one sport when, in Canada, he discovered hockey was played on ice. In 1965, Gordon played with the Kingston Cricket Club and met Judith at one of the many team parties. He captained the team in 1968 and often led the Ottawa Valley Cricket League in scoring.

By the early 1970s, Gordon and Judith had two sons, Ritchie and Andrew. The young family moved to Guelph, Kitchener and settled in Etobicoke, where Gordon selflessly allowed Ritchie to destroy his bamboo-lined cricket pads playing road hockey. Also selfless: driving his son to hockey practice, collapsed in pain over the steering wheel, instead of going directly to the hospital. It took Gordon weeks to recover from the kidney stone surgery.

The family took several trips to Scotland to visit Gordons family perhaps to avoid picking up the phone. Gordon hated telephones. A child from a phone-less house, he was far more comfortable crafting intricate letters, dictating adventures on cassette tapes, even reciting Address to a Haggis on Burns Night.

In retirement, he was thrilled to cheer on his grandson, Luca, playing hockey and baseball. He was in constant amazement of the team spirit, athletic facilities and opportunity. His face would light up.

Gordon was a tinkerer. Old cabinet drawers, lockboxes and peanut butter jars were drilled, hinged and bolted into complex contraptions holding three generations of tools. In his workshops, wild turkey feathers were hollowed out and made into pens. Scotch bottle caps were filled with concrete and used as chess pieces. And letters were carefully burned into driftwood signs.

The latter were for the paths at the cottage, named Stonehaven. He had a panache for path making and the names he etched into the signs were more often than not in Doric, a dialect unique to the Northeast of Scotland: Ceilidh Place, Ben Doric, Bothy Brae, Union Street (a thoroughfare in Aberdeen) and Lower Union Street (in Kingston where Gordon and Judith first shared a home). There are 14 signs. At least two are missing. Every so often I find a new one and rescue it from the moss and mushrooms.

Echoing his marriage notice, the venue hosting his memorial sent an e-mail to Gordons widow congratulating her on their recent wedding engagement. Im sure Gordon somehow orchestrated this.

I can hear his laugh.

Ritchie Emslie is Gordons son.

To submit a Lives Lived: lives@globeandmail.com

Lives Lived celebrates the everyday, extraordinary, unheralded lives of Canadians who have recently passed. To learn how to share the story of a family member or friend, go online to tgam.ca/livesguide

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Accomplished Scot Gordon Emslie escaped classism by immigrating to Canada - The Globe and Mail

Liz Truss: The Tufton Street Candidate Byline Times – Byline Times

Sam Bright unravels the ties between Conservative leadership hopeful Liz Truss and Westminsters network of opaque libertarian think tanks

Boris Johnsons premiership of the Conservative Party is dying. It is currently unclear how slowly or quickly the rot is taking hold, but there is little doubt that his political career is on a steep, downward trajectory.

His Downing Street team held multiple parties in breach of lockdown rules both this year and last, some of which were attended by the Prime Minister. The public backlash has been fierce, with focus groups telling former Downing Street pollster James Johnson that the Prime Minister is a coward.

There was something about him that made him a bit more personable to me, one voter in the focus group said, who backed the Conservatives for the first time in 2019. Its gone now, because weve lost that trust in him. Now hes just a buffoon He cant be trusted.

Scenting an opportunity, rivals to Johnsons throne are now encircling the Prime Minister preparing their campaigns for the moment when his leadership begins its final descent. Foreign Secretary Liz Truss is a front-runner in this pack, by virtue of her popularity among Conservative Party members.

But Truss also has another crucial constituency of support that may bolster her efforts to seize control of the Conservative Party: for years, she has developed close ties to the Tufton Street network a group of libertarian think tanks and lobbying groups, many of which are opaquely funded, that for years have exerted considerable influence on the policy decisions and the operation of the Tories.

Several of the groups are currently or were formerly based in brick-clad offices along Tufton Street in Londons Westminster, creating an association between a political ideology and the address as well as suspicions that these libertarian organisations closely coordinate their work.

Tufton Street is much like Fleet Street the former habitat of the newspaper industry. While the titles that were once based there have now scattered across London, Fleet Street is still used as a shorthand phrase for the industry much like Tufton Street and the world of libertarian politics.

Indeed, Shahmir Sanni, a Brexit whistleblower who formerly worked within the Tufton Street network, says that these groups regularly held meetings at 55 Tufton Street to agree on a single set of right-wing talking points and to [secure] more exposure to thepublic.

These organisations are bound by their support for Brexit the Vote Leave campaign was originally registered at 55 Tufton Street and their vigour for low taxes, laissez faire economics, a smaller state, and seemingly close relationship with Liz Truss.

Attempting to institutionalise a right-wing political ideology, the Conservative Party has deployed the public appointments system to install sympathetic individuals in prominent government roles.

This strategy has been adopted by Truss, seen actively during her time as International Trade Secretary from July 2019 to September 2021, which involved the awarding of public positions to Tufton Street insiders.

In October 2020, for example, the radical, right-wing website Guido Fawkes gleefully reported that Truss had appointed a swathe of free market think tankers to her refreshed Strategic Trade Advisory Group a forum of businesses and academics, which meets regularly to consider the UKs international trade policies.

These appointments included:

Lord Hannan himself was also appointed as an advisor to the Board of Trade a commercial body within the Department for International Trade in September 2020. His Initiative for Free Trade was formerly based at 57 Tufton Street, sharing an office with Colviles Centre for Policy Studies, based around the corner from the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Following these appointments to the Strategic Trade Advisory Group, former Liberal Democrat MP Tom Brake wrote to Truss, asking whether proper due diligence had taken place in the recruitment process. Brake asked her to explain what additional checks had been carried out on the organisations that employ these individuals which have a history of failing to declare their donors to ensure that they are not funded by those who might be deemed to be agents of a foreign principal.

Core members of Truss own team have also been drawn from the Tufton Street network.

Sophie Jarvis who previously worked as head of government affairs at the Adam Smith Institute has been a special advisor to Truss at the Department for International Trade and now the Foreign Office. Nerissa Chesterfield, former head of communications at the Institute of Economic Affairs, was also employed as a special advisor to Truss from August 2019 to February 2020 leaving to work for Rishi Sunak, one of Trusss main competitors for the Conservative leadership.

Truss has also recently been given responsibility for post-Brexit negotiations with the EU tasked with ensuring a diplomatic resolutions to various trade disputes. Assisting Truss in this task is Minister of State for Europe Chris Heaton-Harris who chaired the European Research Group, a network of hard-right Eurosceptic Conservative MPs, from 2010 to 2016.

In August 2019, Truss appointed eight advisors to recommend locations for new, post-Brexit freeports ports where normal tax and customs rules do not apply two of whom were senior members of Tufton Street think tanks. One was Tom Clougherty head of tax at the Centre for Policy Studies. Clougherty was previously executive director of theAdam Smith Institute, managingeditor at the libertarian Reason Foundation, and senior editor at the CatoInstitute co-founded and part-funded by the Koch brothers, two radical, right-wing American billionaires.

Truss has surrounded herself with Tufton Street figures, with her departments often relying on their policy advice. She and her ministers held a swathe of official meetings with representatives of Tufton Street think tanks and lobbying groups during her time at the Department for International Trade, departmental records show.

Controversially, two meetings between the Institute of Economic Affairs and Truss were removed from departmental records in August 2020 justified on the basis that they were personal rather than official meetings. Labour accused Truss of appearing to be evading rules designed to ensure integrity, transparency and honesty in public office, and the records were subsequently reinstated.

It was also revealed in December 2018 that Truss met with five American libertarian groups during a visit to Washington D.C. that cost taxpayers more than 5,000. The organisations included:

The majority of these organisations have been closely associated with climate change denial or policies that obstruct efforts to address climate change and its effects.

Americans for Tax Reform belongs to aninternational coalition of anti-tax, free-market campaign groups called the World Taxpayers Associations, according to DeSmog. This includes the TaxPayers Alliance an influential UK libertarian pressure group founded by Matthew Elliot, who was the CEO of the Vote Leave EU Referendum campaign.

Elliott, an authoritative figure on the right, reserved special praise for Truss after an event hosted by Policy Exchange in September 2021, in which they both participated. Truss was on great form, he said, outlining a bold, exciting vision for how boosting international trade benefits UK consumers and workers across the country.

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Truss, along with a number of her colleagues, recently signed up as a parliamentary supporter of the Free Market Forum a new free market project launched by the Institute of Economic Affairs and advised by Elliott.

The MP for South West Norfolk since 2010, she is viewed widely as a political chameleon a former Liberal Democrat and a supporter of the Remain campaign in 2016 but her libertarian convictions have been evident since entering Parliament in 2010.

At the September 2021 Policy Exchange event, the Oxford University graduate emphasised her desire to [champion] open markets and free enterprise, saying that protectionism is no way to protect peoples living standards. This could well have been a veiled swipe at her boss, Boris Johnson, who has been seen as an interventionist Prime Minister using state spending and powers to achieve his political objectives, and raising taxes as a result.

At this critical time, we need trade to curb any rise in the cost of living through the power of economic openness, Truss added.

These sentiments chime with the attitudes of the Tufton Street network, establishing Truss as the Thatcherite contender in the upcoming Conservative leadership contest whenever it may take place.

Johnson has authoritarian instincts, and is certainly not a moderate Prime Minister. However, whichever direction the Conservative Party takes in the post-Johnson era, it seems likely to be more radical particularly in relation to economics. Truss, as the Tufton Street candidate, represents the sharp end of this spear.

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Liz Truss: The Tufton Street Candidate Byline Times - Byline Times

Nuclear and fossil fuel advocates, wind foes among backers of right whale protection suits – Cape Cod Times

Entangled North Atlantic right whale known as Snow Cone gives birth to calf

The 17-year-old mom has been subject to numerous disentanglement attempts, but the stubborn rope remains stuck. Her first calf was killed by a boat

Georgia DNR/taken under NOAA permit 20556

When Nantucket Residents Against Turbines held a press conference in front of the Statehouse in Boston last August to announce it was suing the federal government for permitting a wind farm south of the island, media outlets noted the presence of David Stevenson, a former Trump transition team member and the director of energy and environment for a libertarian think tank.

They are seemingly oddallies: A group that has the stated goal of saving the highly endangered North Atlantic right whales from the impact of offshore wind farms standing shoulder-to-shoulder with someone who hadappeared before state legislaturesadvocating for the Trump administration's proposal to renew Atlantic offshore oil and gas drilling.

In November, the Nantucket group, known by the acronym ACKRAT, helpedannounce the formation of the Save Right Whales Coalition with the stated goal of stopping offshore wind farms. One of the groups in the coalition was led by pro-nuclear power activist Michael Shellenberger and his California-based group Environmental Progress. Shellenberger believes nuclear power is the only abundant, reliable and inexpensive energy source.

They are not part of our organization, Amy DiSibio, an ACKRAT board member, said of Environmental Progress and Stevensons group, the Caesar Rodney Institute.

There have been some coalitions formed where people interested in whales have some interests that go beyond the whales but our lawsuit is purely environmental and focused on the whale, she said in an interview last week.

ACKRAT'ssuit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston claims the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Managementthe lead agency in permitting VineyardWind 1, the 62-turbine offshore wind farm 14 miles south of Nantucket and the first utility-scale project in the country failedalong with other federal agenciesto do an adequate environmental review of its impact on the marine environment, particularly its affect on right whales.

DiSibio said Stevenson and the Delaware-based Caesar Rodney Institute, helped with publicity, advice and some money. Stevenson also recently founded the American Coalition for Ocean Protection, which is fundraising to create a permanent wind energy exclusion zone along the East Coast out to 33 miles.

Its a familiar tactic, said Michael Gerrard, a Columbia Law School professor of environmental law and the director of the Center for Climate Change Law.

We have a long history of industry opposition to environmental regulation and to clean energy projects. The lawyers bringing these cases always want to find the plaintiffs who are the most sympathetic and have standing to sue, Gerrard said. For that reason, its desirable to find groups like fishermen to be the face of the litigation.

The Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, for instance, counted fishermen and wealthy waterfront landowners as supporters in multiple lawsuits against the Cape Wind project, and had backing from fossil fuel interests in William Koch, owner of Oxbow CarbonLLCand a member of the alliance'sboard of directors. He also owned a home in Osterville on Nantucket Sound.

Cape Windhad unsuccessfully proposed to build the nations first offshore wind farm with a 130-turbine project in Nantucket Sound. In 2017 it surrendered its federal lease on the project.

A recent lawsuit against Vineyard Wind, with similar claims tothe ACKRAT suit of violations of the Endangered Species Act, Marine Mammal Protection Actand the National Environmental Policy Act, was filed on behalf of six fishing groups from ports from Long Island to New Bedford by the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Greenpeace, the Texas Observer and other sources cite Koch Industries, ExxonMobil and Chevron, coal companies and other fossil fuel companies and interests as foundation donors. In 2015, the foundation launched its Fueling Freedom Project to oppose the Obama administrations Clean Energy Plan with a mission to redefine the public conversation around fossil fuels, and especially their positive role in society.

The goal may not be to win a lawsuit.

There certainly have been numerous suits against wind and solar projects that have torpedoed them, not because of favorable court decisions, but because of delay and uncertainty, Gerrard said. It is often enough to derail a project. It can make people financing the project nervous and sometimes deadlines for tax subsidies are missed.

Gerrard pointed to the American Bird Conservancy, which has routinely spoken out against land-based and offshore wind projects on the basis that turbine blades kill birds.

In an October 2021 article on the nonprofit, the magazine Gristallegedthe conservancy was accepting money from fossil fuel interests and inflating claims of potential and existing mortality from wind turbines. In response,Mike Parr, the conservancys president, told the magazine thata significant portion of the American economy is derived from oil wealth and that most philanthropic ventures have some oil investment.

The conservancy allied itself with the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound in opposing Cape Wind, saying in a comment letter to the federal Environmental Protection Agency that the science was poor and studies showed that loons will likely abandon the area for years to come, and there may be significant impacts to endangered Roseate Terns. But in 2016, the Massachusetts Audubon Society concluded that after five years of review and three years of ornithological fieldwork, it found no discernible impact from the turbines.

And while they claim an interest in saving right whales, none of the groups involved in litigation have any history of activism, funding or research on their behalf.

For decades, the New England Aquarium and its Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life have been researching and advocating for ways to save North Atlantic right whales, who number around 366 individuals, from extinction. Senior scientist Jessica Redfern said shes not familiar with any of these groups as right whale advocates and knows of no grassroots efforts out of Nantucket to save right whales.

We havent been involved with or approached by any of those groups, she said.

While ACKRAT claims it will be the wind farms that will drive right whales into extinction, Redfern said the greatest threats to their continued existence come from collision with vessels and entanglement in fishing gear, particularly lobster pot buoy lines.

If youre really concerned about the fate of right whales, thats your focus, Redfern said. Another big factor is climate change and one of the ways we can minimize that is adopting clean energy (policies) and offshore wind is a great source of that.

Climate change is the greatest overall threat to all marine species, particularly in the Northeast where the Gulf of Maine is warming faster than nearly any other marine water body on Earth. Researchers believe that temperature increases have affected the distribution of the copepod species calanus finmarchicus, the right whales preferred prey. These zooplankton prefer cooler, subarctic waters and right whales have largely deserted their traditional feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine in recent years and ventured offshore andinto cooler Canadian waters in search of food.

Unfortunately, that put them in the path of heavier lobster gear that requires stronger lines to withstand the currents and depths of fishing far from shore. Until recently, Canadian waters saw relatively few right whales and Canada didnt have the regulations now common in the U.S. requiring gear that whales could more easily break or shed, or procedures to detect and shut down areas to fishing and vessel traffic where the whales were congregating.

The result has been 34 dead right whales due to entanglement or vessel strikes since 2017, with another 16 with injuries serious enough to be deemed life-threatening, according to NOAA. This in the face of research showing that less than one right whale a year can die from human causes if they are to avoid extinction.

Redfern is in charge of the Anderson Cabot program that monitors and maps human impacts on whales including ship strikes, chronic noise, entanglementand minimizing impacts of wind energy. While initial survey work used to establish wind energy lease areas showed little right whale activity there, recent aerial and ship survey work has documented their presence year-round south of Nantucket and in the lease area.

Its something that has caused concern among whale researchers and conservation groups about the impact of wind farms on right whales.

A 2021 study by researchers from Anderson Cabot, NOAA and Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown found that, on average, a quarter of the right whale population including half the remaining breeding femaleswas using an area south of Nantucket and occasionally portions of the state wind energy lease areas. Researchers believed that with a median residency time of 13 days it was likely to be a transition area and not a major feeding or breeding ground.

Two years ago, Vineyard Wind signed an agreement with the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federationand the Conservation Law Foundation that included seasonal restrictions on pile driving employed during the construction phase and a ban from January to April when right whales were more likely to be present. The agreement also called for increased monitoring by ship and aerial surveys as well as stationed observers on vessels, acoustic monitoring, restrictions on sound surveying, underwater noise reduction measures, reporting requirements and vessel speed restrictions.

The agreement could be revisited if the proposed plan didnt reduce impacts to close to zero. Vineyard Wind said findings from the 2021 study would be incorporated into its mitigation plan.

Redfern agreed with the study's conclusion that there was little science demonstrating the effects of wind farm construction and operation on right whales. Because wind energy has not been developed in our EEZ (ExclusiveEconomic Zone, the so-called 200-mile territorial limit claimed by the U.S.), theres still a lot that were going to learn as development occurs, Redfern said.

In 2019, a workshop convened by the Anderson Cabot Center and the Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling developed a framework for studying the effects of offshore wind development on marine mammals and turtles. They postulated there was a high likelihood of short-term effects of displacement, and behavior disruption, but that it was also relatively easy to test for those impacts. A change in distribution whales and turtles either avoiding or being attracted to wind farm areas was considered a long-term impact of high probability that was also relatively easy to evaluate.

Along with other researchers, Redfern feltthe construction and operation of the nations first offshore industrial sized wind farm, Vineyard Wind 1, would provide researchers with the test area and research opportunities that could inform mitigation on succeeding projects.

I do think well learn a lot from Vineyard Wind as a model for development along the East Coast, she said.

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Nuclear and fossil fuel advocates, wind foes among backers of right whale protection suits - Cape Cod Times