Page 4«..3456..1020..»

Category Archives: Libertarian

A Legacy of Resistance to Unjust Taxation – Libertarian Party

Posted: December 20, 2023 at 10:23 pm

A Legacy of Resistance to Unjust Taxation  Libertarian Party

Read more here:

A Legacy of Resistance to Unjust Taxation - Libertarian Party

Posted in Libertarian | Comments Off on A Legacy of Resistance to Unjust Taxation – Libertarian Party

The Croatian Invasion of the Micronation of Liberland – Reason

Posted: October 9, 2023 at 12:25 am

Vt Jedlika, a Czech libertarian activist and president of the would-be libertarian micronation he founded called Liberland, remains cheery about the future of his project. He has aspired since April 2015 to create what he hopes will be the freest nation on Earth on fewer than three square miles of land on a disputed part of the Croatia-Serbia border. (For complicated reasons related to a shift in the flow of the Danube over time, both nations would prefer the bit of land, known as Gornja Siga, on the western bank of the river belong to the other.)

The project drew extended attention from prominent media, including the New York Times, from the start. By July 2023, according to Wired, the project had attracted more than 700,000 online registrants expressing their interest in the so-far mostly conceptual micronation. Plus, "6,000 have signed up as paying e-residents, and roughly 1,000 have paid $5,000 or made an equivalent contribution to become full citizens."

Jedlika was optimistic in early August, for obvious reasons. After eight years of Croatian authorities generally trying to deny anyone entry to Liberland, they began mellowing out and allowing a gaggle of settlers, first handfuls and then close to dozens, to enter and even begin building structures there. Finally, as Jedlika told me in a phone interview in September, "We had a permanent presence inside of the territory."

Liberlander boats were beginning to bring in material to build solar power arrays and small shelters. A set of Liberland-branded deck chairs were lined up on their beach. The first Liberland-generated utility bill, for 25 euros for high-speed internet via Starlink, was proudly displayed on Facebook. Jedlika found a meadow in the jungly tree-thick land that he announced would be Liberland's helicopter pad.

Liberland's and Jedlika's Facebook feeds were awash with enthusiasm and video clips showing Liberlanders constructing, pumping water from a well, celebrating, making music, taking late-night swims, and generally luxuriating in finally being Liberlanders in practice and not just theory.

Sure, Jedlika was a little annoyed that the Croats, while tolerating their settlement, were still randomly harassing or driving out individual Liberlanders for what he saw as illegitimate reasons. They'd hold up every boatload for as long as they could, obsessively checking papers and being general bureaucratic nuisances. And he was a little bugged that some of the big money sloshing around the world of libertarian and crypto causes weren't rushing in during this exciting moment to more swiftly propel Liberland out of its cradle.

But Jedlika's attitude was overwhelmingly positive, even puckishly reframing Croatian harassment as really helpthey might have thought they were confiscating a Liberland boat, but really they moved it to someplace Jedlika needed it to go.

When they arrested him on September 7, and eventually kicked him out of Croatia, they were really giving him a chance to get some sleep away from all the constant Liberland business blowing up his phone all month.

According to a Liberland press release, Jedlika had been "arrested and subsequently deported for a period of five years on grounds of 'national security.'" He was told, per an earlier press release, that "proponents of Liberland had engaged in 'extremist actions' aimed at 'undermining the position of Croatia.'"

Some paperwork he got related to that arrest and expulsion was to Jedlika another wonderful gift from his Croat friends. He says the document listed two distinct expulsions: from Croatia and from Gornja Siga, which he insists means that "Gornja Siga is recognized to be notCroatia."

"They gave us really nice paperwork," he says, that "basically recognizes the fact that they don't believe that [Liberland] is part of Croatia."

The reasons for August's brief thaw in Croatian practice toward Liberland settlers are twofold, Jedlika and Liberland's minister of foreign affairs, Thomas D. Walls, agreed in separate phone interviews in September. (Disclosure: Walls is an old college friend and former bandmate of mine.)

One reason is that Croatia at the start of 2023 joined the Schengen Area, a 27-nation visa-free travel zone, meaning there are no border crossing requirements from Hungary to Croatia. As Jedlika says, this means legally if you have a Schengen Area passport, Liberlanders "cannot really be stopped. They can only be threatened."

A second reason, they both think, is bad press for Croatia that arose from a video made by YouTuber Niko Omilana, which has earned over 8 million views in the past two months.

Omilana seemed to buy in totally to Jedlika's vision of a new, free country. He vowed to set foot and plant the Liberland flag on the disputed territoryand, naturally, to capture it all on video.

After a couple of failures, harassment from Croat police boats, and eventually zooming in on a jet ski faster than those boats, Omilana and a camera-wielding companion made landfall on Liberland. He planted the flag. He exulted in that cheerful YouTuber-dude way.

A Croatian cop landed to challenge them. Despite believing he'd destroyed the Liberland explorers' two cameras, a drone in the air captured the Croat cop shoving and kicking both men unnecessarily.

"I think [the thaw in Liberland border control] is directly related to that," Walls says. "It didn't make the Croatian police look good at allmade them look like bumbling idiots and kind of brutal and, you know, why is he beating these people up for doing something that's totally legal?"

Jedlika believes the Croats have no legal reason to deny entrance to or harass Liberlanders. But throughout August and early September, despite the first multi-person Liberland settlement growing and building, the Croats were still randomly harassing them without worrying much about the legality of the matter. When the Croats have gotten annoyed with certain Liberland visitors, Jedlika relates, "people that have Schengen visa actually get [a] 30-day ban from Schengen after they visit Liberland. How ridiculous is that?"

A lot seemed to depend on the attitude and mood of particular officials, Walls thinks. Jedlika too thinks certain police officials are hostile while others not so much, crediting one for pardoning a Liberlander from a Schengen-Area ban.

The Croats still act like they're in charge. "We built some structures already and they called in some kind of building inspector," Walls says, "and they slapped a sticker on one of the houses we built that says, you know, you need a permit for this, but it doesn't say exactly where [one gets a permit for this area]. So that's going to be fun to take that to court and see. You know, the judge will say, well, what's the location of [the structure]?"

As weeks passed and the Liberland settlement continued to grow and build,Walls says the Croats especially "started putting the heat on people with non-Schengen passports," including Americans. Other Americans he knew, though not Walls himself, "were removed, taken to the police station, given a stern talking to, and were given either seven days to leave Croatia or they were escorted out of Croatia."

Jedlika's optimism in August and early September, as he saw the micronation's first true settlement take root, was one thing; but he was equally optimistic in a phone interview this week when an outsider might think things were no longer going so well for Liberland.

On September 21, as described in an article in Liberland Press, "a private company acting on behalf of the Croatian Forests (Hrvatske ume d.o.o.) accompanied by police made an unannounced extraterritorial incursion into Liberland and demolished and removed Liberland property. Liberlanders living on the land were threatened with arrest if they interfered.Croatian police escorted the demolition crews who committed this act of indiscriminate destruction. This assault was committed without warning and without the forest company or police issuing any reasons or justification."

A series of videos documenting the assault on Liberland and the property destruction can be found on YouTube. A mournful Liberlander played his violin while throughout the day officials milled about, breaking up, chainsawing, and removing their shelters and kitchen.

Jedlika sees all this as merely another small setback on his path to a thriving Liberland. He thinks the Croat media was nearly universally on Liberland's side in coverage of the invasion and that the Croats will eventually decide it is "not sustainable" to keep such a close eye on Liberland. The whole experience, he says, amazed about the "100 calls from media in one or two days" after, ultimately gave Liberland a great public relations boost, its value far exceeding that of the objects destroyed or stolen.

Jedlika still has big plans. So sure is he of a future rapprochement with Croatia that he finds the whole invasion "quite funny" (though he does lament that "they even stole our toilet, I cannot believe it") and says more people, and bikes, are now staying on Liberland than before the Croats invaded. (He relates the latest Croat legal flex: detaining bike riders for lacking a vest to help them be better seen at night. Still, Jedlika's expressed attitude toward all the Croats do is to pleasantly thank them for caring so much about the safety and security of his people. He says Liberlanders and Croats are now cooperating on trash gathering and removal.)

Jedlika wants to get the cryptocurrency that will be the backbone of Liberland business and governance, Merit, on more exchanges at a two-euro valuation. He foresees adventure parks, hotels, and the world's tallest building eventually built in his Liberland on the Croatian border.

While Jedlika still believes a more permanent rapprochement will come with Croatia, and insists a vibrant Liberland will be an economic boon for Croats as well, Liberlanders aren't taking the recent Croatian incursion and property destruction lying down. Jedlika says this week that they have filed court cases in various home jurisdictions of the Liberlanders who had their property taken by the Croats to get it back, and they even plan to hold native Liberlander judicial proceedings against them, in which merits will be given or taken away.

All of itthe rebuilding of a settlement, the launching of Liberland's judicial system, the daily petty conflicts with Croatian officials that Jedlika thinks are still illegitimatewill, he says, "make also a nice reality TV show out of the whole situation, which I think will be hilarious."

UPDATE: Vt Jedlika wants it on record that he does not consider Liberland a "micronation," for one reason because a nation is a people separate from a specific area and he considers all 700,000 online signups to be part of the nation of Liberland.

Read more:

The Croatian Invasion of the Micronation of Liberland - Reason

Posted in Libertarian | Comments Off on The Croatian Invasion of the Micronation of Liberland – Reason

As RFK Jr. Readies an Announcement Monday, Speculation Is … – The New York Sun

Posted: at 12:25 am

If Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announces Monday that he is leaving the Democratic Party to run as an independent, one of the biggest challenges his campaign will face is getting ballot access in all 50 states. So will Mr. Kennedy seek out the nomination of a third party like the Libertarians?

Speculation about this has abounded since the New York Times reported that Mr. Kennedy met in July with Libertarian Party chairwoman Angela McArdle. Both were in Memphis attending the libertarian ideas festival, Freedom Fest.

Ms. McArdle tells the Sun that Mr. Kennedys campaign reached out to her for the meeting because they were interested in connecting him with the people who are leading the Libertarian Party in the larger movement.

He did say at the time that he was running as a Democrat, Ms. McArdle says. He was very clear about that.

Yet Mr. Kennedy has courted the libertarian vote since he jumped in the race last April. He defied in June a warning from the New Hampshire Democratic Party chairman, Raymond Buckley, by speaking at PorcFest, the Free State Projects camping and ideas festival in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Hes gone on Reason TV and made the rounds of libertarian podcasts, all while railing that both parties have lost their way.

An environmental lawyer, vaccine skeptic, and scion of Americas famed Democratic dynasty, Mr. Kennedy is building a coalition of support among anti-interventionist Republicans, libertarians, Silicon Valley tech bros, health freedom advocates, and Democrats nostalgic for the Kennedy brand and disillusioned with the direction of the party and its current geriatric leader.

When a majority of Americans dont want another Trump-Biden matchup, this post-party politics model appears to be gaining traction. Its also fueling concern among Democrats and, less so, Republicans about other third-party runs by, say, Cornel West and, potentially, a No Labels candidate.

Mr. Kennedy is adept at appealing to libertarian crowds, promising to pardon Julian Assange and saying he wont take peoples guns away. His platform, though, is not libertarian. He may be anti-interventionist and anti-war, advocating for unwinding empire and for withdrawing our troops and nuclear-capable missiles from Russias borders. He might be for pushback against big tech censorship and vaccine mandates in a way that aligns with the Libertarian Party.

Mr. Kennedys economic and environmental policies, though, do not. Mr. Kennedy supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and recently proposed locking home mortgage rates at three percent with tax-free bonds to make home ownership affordable both policies the Libertarian Party rejects.

Mr. Kennedy has also railed against free trade, which is a foundational principle of libertarianism. He supports a ban on fracking and has equivocated on nuclear energy, while the Libertarian Partys platform says its members oppose all government control of energy pricing, allocation, and production.

Mr. Kennedy says he is not going to take peoples guns away, but hes also said he would support a bipartisan assault weapons ban. The latter statement riled many Libertarians.

I think hed be a great candidate if he could completely 180 his stance on personal defense weapons, monetary policy, and climate extremism, a Libertarian Party 2024 presidential candidate and former vice-chairman of the party, Joshua Smith, tells the Sun.

The Libertarian Party has a platform that is just diametrically opposed to a lot of his positions, say, on fracking, on guns, another Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Chase Oliver, whose 2022 run for Senate from Georgia forced the runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker, tells the Sun. But Im happy hes exposing how corrupt the Democratic Party is.

A third Libertarian Party presidential candidate, author, and former NYU professor, Michael Rectenwald, tells the Sun that there are many overlaps between the Libertarian Partys positions and Mr. Kennedys, but he says Mr. Kennedy is wrong on the fundamental, principle issues.

Kennedy has this white knight complex, this idea that if we just put the right person in at the top we can address all our problems, Mr. Rectenwald says. We believe that what we need to do is wrest power from the federal government and instead invest it in the people at the local level.

Mr. Kennedy has not confirmed that he is leaving the Democratic Party or what his major announcement on Monday will be. Mediaite, though, reported word from a campaign insider that Mr. Kennedy will announce an independent run at the event.

If Mr. Kennedys positions are so diametrically opposed to libertarianism and reports suggest he will run as an independent, why is anyone even discussing a potential Libertarian Party run? One answer is that obtaining ballot access is so onerous for independent and third-party candidates that Mr. Kennedy may seek to run on an established third-party line, maybe even months from now.

Another is that there is a strain in the Libertarian Party for whom vaccine skepticism, fighting the Covid regime, and being anti-war are the preeminent issues. For some in this faction, Mr. Kennedy represents an opportunity to put the Libertarian Party on the map by getting more than the partys record 3.3 percent of the vote that, with Gary Johnson, it garnered in 2016.

I said that I really appreciated the way he took a strong stance against vaccine mandates and the way he stood for medical freedom, Ms. McArdle says of her meeting with Mr. Kennedy. Im not going to do anything to block him if he tries to run. I think the shot of publicity that has given us is a good thing.

Every state has different third-party ballot access rules, with different filing deadlines, fees, and number of signatures required. Obtaining enough signatures in large states like New York and California requires a serious ground game. If Mr. Kennedy runs as an independent, he will be starting the whole ballot access process from scratch.

The percentage of the vote required to retain ballot access for third parties also varies by state. New York recently changed its law to require that parties get at least two percent or 130,000 votes to maintain ballot access every two years. In Texas, the requirement is five percent of the vote.

After the Libertarian Partys 2020 presidential candidate Jo Jorgenson earned only one percent of the vote, the party lost its ballot access for the next cycle in 20 states. Ms. McArdle says the party is working to get access in those states for 2024, saying the partys worst case scenario would be 48 states.

If Mr. Kennedy runs as a Libertarian and gets more than five percent of the vote, which polling suggests he could, a strong showing would help the Libertarian Party retain ballot access for 2028, and even qualify it for minor party status that would make campaigns eligible for partial public funding.

A recent Zogby poll, commissioned by a PAC supporting Mr. Kennedy, shows him getting 19 percent in a three-way match up with presidents Trump and Biden. He would definitely help us get ballot access and make the news, Ms. McArdle says. Theres upsides and downsides.

If the Kennedy campaign runs into trouble trying to get ballot access as an independent, Mr. Kennedy could throw his name in the Libertarian Partys nominating contest in May at its convention in Washington, D.C. Unlike the Democrats or Republicans, Libertarians choose their candidate at a convention by vote of about 1,000 delegates.

The chairman of the Mises Caucus, Michael Heise, who orchestrated a successful paleo-libertarian leadership takeover of the Libertarian National Committee in 2022, tells the Sun the convention scenario is unlikely.

The Mises Caucus takeover of the Libertarian Party has been a repudiation of this premise, he says, that if we just run a watered-down candidate or if we run a non-libertarian with enough name recognition, itll solve all the problems of the party.

Many of the Libertarian candidates insist that running for president on the Libertarian line is not about winning higher office, its essentially a 50 state media tour to spread libertarian ideas. Mr. Kennedys campaign, by contrast, says it sees a path to victory.

It just seems increasingly likely that path is not through the Democratic Party. Its probably not through the Libertarian Party either. Mr. Kennedys campaign manager, Dennis Kucinich, responded to the Suns inquiries with two words, No comment.

Read the original here:

As RFK Jr. Readies an Announcement Monday, Speculation Is ... - The New York Sun

Posted in Libertarian | Comments Off on As RFK Jr. Readies an Announcement Monday, Speculation Is … – The New York Sun

The libertarian think tank that helped build the ‘No’ case – The Saturday Paper

Posted: at 12:25 am

From now until referendum day, we have removed the paywall on all Voice coverage. Read and share this article for free.

If the Voice referendum produces a No next Saturday, expect a slew of conservative players lining up to claim credit. Yet one organisation that has arguably been most influential will not be trumpeting its success.

The Centre for Independent Studies has not taken a formal position on the referendum. It remains neutral, or so it says. In reality, however, the CIS has been central to the No case. The think tank has warehoused the two most prominent and effective advocates of a No campaign: Nyunggai Warren Mundine and shadow minister for Indigenous Australians Jacinta NampijinpaPrice, the CISs current and former spokespeople on Indigenous affairs.

Several other alumni have been prominent in their opposition. Maurice Newman, the businessman who helped establish the CIS, and is possibly best known for his climate denialism, wrote in The Australian that the Voice was a power grab by elites. Gary Johns, who has links to both the CIS and Australians for Unity, suggested there should be blood tests to determine indigeneity.

At least one CIS board member, Sam Kennard, of storage company Kennards, is a major financial backer of the No campaign. His corporate vehicle, Siesta Holdings, gave $20,000 last year and $20,000 the year before.

As the campaign against the Voice has evolved through its various shifting, interconnected organisational structures Recognise a Better Way, Fair Australia, Advance Australia, which became Advance and then melded with Australians for Unity the CIS has been a constant. It has provided not only the key people, but also much of the factual groundwork used and misused by Voice opponents. Price and Mundine have figured prominently in several of these other outfits.

For almost 20 years the CIS has produced research detailing the failures of Australias Indigenous policies. This has been coupled with contentious advocacy for the full integration of First Nations people into amarket-based society.

Consider these words from a report, The Economics of Indigenous Deprivation and Proposals for Reform, written by then Emeritus Professor Helen Hughes in 2005, when she was a senior fellow at the CIS.

Deprivation in remote communities,fringe settlements and ghettos does not result from a lack of federal, state and territory expenditures, the report says, but from the socialist remote communities experiment that has been central to Australian separatist policies for Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders...

She went on to decry separate education, separate public housing, separate healthcare, separate governance and separate law that had deprived Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders of employment and decent incomes, making them welfare dependent and destroying their families and their communities. Substance abuse and violence, particularly against women and children, inevitably followed.

The views she expressed are indistinguishable from those of Price today, except for the lack of personal anecdotes. The larger point is that it is disingenuous for the CIS to say it is neutral on the subject of the Voice: the organisation has a long-held view, reiterated in numerous papers, reports, and speeches by Hughes and various successors, including Price and Mundine, opposing Indigenous separatism.

When the Recognise a Better Way website says Indigenous Australians poverty, disadvantage and despair is not caused by lack of a voice but rather by a lack of economic participation it is essentially extrapolating on what the CIS has been saying for decades. Price and Mundine are listed as supporters.

CIS research also underpins former prime minister Tony Abbott, who went on ABC Radio on Thursday to argue that the Voice, by giving Indigenous Australians a say in government decisions affecting them, would only lead to greater separatism.

Now, however, the CIS is being very coy as it tries to paper over internal divisions.

Our board consists of a wide variety of members who represent different views on the Voice, says CIS executive director Tom Switzer.

Some like Sam Kennard have publicly opposed it. Others like Rob McLean and Bill English also serve on the board of the Ramsay Foundation, which has supported the Yes campaign with $5 million.

In fact, many of the 27-member CIS board find themselves in a difficult position, if not because of their personal views then because as members of Australias economic and business elite they are extensively networked. The board includes senior lawyers and investment bankers, members of the Reserve Bank board, partners in major consultancies, even a former prime minister of New Zealand.

Many of these figures have connections that go well beyond the CIS. Take Nicholas Moore, for example. As well as being chair the CIS board and former chief executive of the Macquarie banking group, Moore is chair of Screen Australia, the National Catholic Education Commission and The Smith Family, and a former member of the council of the National Gallery of Australia and previous chair of the Sydney Opera House Trust. He holds directorships of a number of private companies and sits on a couple of advisory bodies within the federal Treasury. In November last year, he was appointed Special Envoy for Southeast Asia by the Albanese government.

It is not hard to see why Moore, with his connections to charity and the arts community, and his government work trying to build trade relations with racially sensitive regional nations, might want to express neutrality on the Voice.

Interestingly, The Smith Family, a charity focused on the provision of quality education to disadvantaged children, especially Indigenous children, has also taken no position on the Voice. Some have noted this is curious, given a significant number of major charities, particularly those involved in providing services to Indigenous communities, have come out strongly in support. So have the peak bodies, the Australian Council of Social Service and Community Council for Australia, of which The Smith Family is a member.

Moore declined The Saturday Papers emailed invitation to discuss his position or that of the CIS and The Smith Family. Subsequent to our approach, The Smith Family issued a statement saying its neutrality was informed through close consultation with The Smith Familys Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Group (an external group of 12 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people), and our Aboriginal Staff Network.

Take another member, Michael Chaney, chairman of Wesfarmers, who quit the CIS last year. He became a director of the Yes23 campaign instead. In February, four months before Wesfarmers announced a donation of $2 million to the Yes campaign, he told The Australian Financial Review that he supported the constitutional change both personally and professionally.

Chaney said direct representation Wesfarmers employs 4000 Indigenous staff worked for the company and he believed it was entirely reasonable that the constitution contains provisions in it for the Indigenous community to make representations to government.

He continued: I have had a lot of exposure over the years to the challenges and issues confronting Indigenous Australians and Ive seen how laws made for Australians generally ... have very different effects in remote areas and unintended effects.

On July 6, a full-page advertisement in the same newspaper featured a cartoon depicting Chaney, with his daughter Kate, an independent federal MP, sitting on his knee, handing a bundle of money to Thomas Mayo, an Indigenous member of the Yes campaign. Michael Chaney was shown in a business suit, Kate in a teal dress and Mayo in shorts, work boots and a T-shirt with a hammer and sickle logo, seemingly dancing for the money.

There was widespread outrage. Kate Chaney described it as a personal and racist attack from the No campaign, designed to stoke fear and hate. Nine Entertainment, which owns the AFR, apologised and conceded the ad should never have run.

The advertisement was placed by Advance, a somewhat shadowy organisation that claims to power the major No group, Jacinta Prices Fair Australia.

Advance was set up in 2018 to be the right-wing equivalent of GetUp! but it effectively operated as an external campaigning unit of the Liberal Party. Sam Kennard, who sits on the CIS board, is a donor.

Now, as the AFR noted in a piece in July that attempted to unravel the tangled connections between the anti-Voice groups, Advance has assumed a central role in the No campaign, providing administrative support to the peak Australians for Unity anti-Voice fundraising vehicle, the only specifically anti-Voice body to whom donations have been tax-deductible since June.

The report added: Australians for Unitys funding goes to Advance Australias Fair Australia campaign, whose present configuration formed out of a merger of Mundines Recognise A Better Way campaign and is today led by opposition Indigenous Australians spokeswomanJacinta Nampijinpa Price.Australians for Unitys three ASIC-listed directors are identical to Advance Australias, while both organisations are registered to the same Canberra address.

This structure is intentionally confusing, even if key CIS alumni are clear within it. As The Sydney Morning Heralds David Crowe wrote in a piece that sought to establish where the No case was getting its money, the related groups are secretive by design in contrast with GetUp!, which publishes a running tally of its donations, and the names of all donors over $10,000 on its website.

The Herald did manage to identify a number of those who funded the No campaign in some cases because they publicly disclosed their donations, in others by trawling through Australian Electoral Commission returns and company records.

There was Brett Ralph, the founder and managing director of Jet Couriers and a director of the Melbourne Storm football club, as well as other sporting clubs, who donated $75,000 through his company, JMR Management Consultancy Services, last financial year.

Sydney multi-millionaire Rodney ONeil was also on the list his associated companies contributed $85,000 last year. Marcus Blackmore, who pocketed $334million from the sale of his eponymous vitamin and supplements business this year, gave $20,000.

According to the Herald, former stockbroker and fund manager Simon Fenwick, and his wife Elizabeth, donated $650,000 and $350,000 respectively before the last election, and the Fenwick family trust also donated a further $50,000 last year.

The donations from Kennard were alsonoted.

Crowe suggested the identities of the big donors to the No side undermined the calculated myth that Yes was supported by the elites. He also noted Advances stated tactic of instructing its volunteers to use fear and doubt rather than facts to defeat the Voice.

Switzer defends the neutrality of his organisation on the basis it has published papers both in favour of and against the Voice the Yes case from conservative intellectuals Greg Craven and Damien Freeman, and the No case from journalist Greg Sheridan.

It also has sponsored a series of debates, including one on Switzers radio program on the ABC, and, he says, would have had more except that no leading advocate for the Yes campaign accepted my invitation. Some did only to withdraw later. Many ignored us.

As executive director of the CIS, Switzer also has ultimate responsibility for deciding what the CIS will research, and who will research it, and it was his choice to engage Price and Mundine.

Indeed, the CIS claims credit for first bringing Price to national attention, by selecting the then-obscure Alice Springs councillor to deliver its annual Helen Hughes Talk for Emerging Thinkersin July 2016.

It was a powerful speech, drawing on personal experience as well as research data.

Of 11 siblings in her mothers generation, she said, only two remain ... the majority we lost to alcohol-related illness.

There is not a woman in my family who has not experienced some kind of physical or sexual abuse some time in their life.

The facts state that Aboriginal women are 35 times more likely to be hospitalised from violence perpetrated by those who are related to them.

It was also a contentious speech. Price blamed Indigenous culture for much of the problems she described and called for acknowledgement of our own part in the demise of our people, rather than looking for constitutional recognition or treaties or governments to solve the problems.

On the strength of that speech, she was made Indigenous program director at the CIS. From there, it was a rapid rise. Price won a seat as a senator for the Northern Territory at last years election and was made shadow minister for Indigenous Australians when Julian Leeser resigned from the role so he could support the Voice.

Now, several right-wing commentators are flagging her as a potential future prime minister.

Of course Switzer himself a former Liberal staffer and candidate could not foresee how fast her political star would rise and how bright it would blaze in the right-wing firmament. Yet he knew full well where she stood on the matter of constitutional recognition. She had told him seven years ago.

He would also have known the position of Mundine, the man he engaged after Price moved on.

In spite of it all, the CIS itself remains neutral on the issue. Or so its elites would have us believe.

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 7, 2023 as "The libertarian think tank that helped build the No case".

For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australias leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.

All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.

There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.

News

Into the final week: Yes case more hopeful than optimistic

Karen Middleton Yes campaigners are focusing on direct personal appeals to undecided voters, in the hope of clawing back support as they battle online falsehoods and an increasingly vitriolic debate.

Read more:

The libertarian think tank that helped build the 'No' case - The Saturday Paper

Posted in Libertarian | Comments Off on The libertarian think tank that helped build the ‘No’ case – The Saturday Paper

Fox Chapel Area voters will choose among two candidates for District 3 school board seat – Yahoo News

Posted: at 12:25 am

Oct. 6Two candidates are vying for a single seat on Nov. 7 to represent District 3 on the Fox Chapel Area School Board.

In Districts 1 and 2, there are two candidates seeking two open seats in each district. The Fox Chapel Herald is featuring races only in contested districts.

Here are the candidates' responses to questions posed by the Herald:

Name: Emily Glick

Age: 37 years

Political affiliation: Libertarian since 2020, Independent prior to that

Occupation: Environmental consultant/geologist, project manager

Education: Bachelor's in geological science, Ohio State University; Master's in geology and environmental science, University of Pittsburgh

Elected or political experience: Current O'Hara Township Zoning Hearing Board member, 2020-2022 Director of Pennsylvania Council of Professional Geologists

What is the biggest issue facing the school district?

We live in a fantastic school district with excellent teachers and plentiful opportunities for students. However, I feel that the school board and administration do not view community input as actionable, nor do they clearly communicate the direction in which they are leading us. Healthy communities should have respectful public conversations on a regular basis.

What can you do to solve it?

We are an intelligent community with diverse backgrounds. I believe in the power of people to optimize and find opportunities when freely working together. When I talk with families, I hear repeated concerns and ideas; improve the quality of school foods, increase walkability to schools, and allow for more outdoor learning. I would push for the use of surveying tools for our entire community on an annual basis, and additional surveying when our school district is facing a contentious issue. Ensuring that the school community is heard will ultimately best serve the community now and into the future.

Would you support banning or restricting access to certain books in school libraries if parents demanded it?

As a Libertarian, I am for economic and personal freedom, I wouldn't ban books. The preamble for the Libertarian Party states, "...we defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings..." Refer to FCA School Board Policy Code 109, Resource Material. "A list of resource material provided by the district shall be maintained by the Superintendent and ... available to Board members, district staff, students, parents/guardians and community members." I would provide parents and guardians with information to make the right choice for their children.

Name: Marybeth Dadd

Age: 53

Political affiliation: Democrat/Republican (on the ballot as both)

Occupation: Educator

Education: Bachelor's of Arts, secondary education/social studies; Master's of Science, curriculum Development and instructional technology

Elected or political experience: FCASD School Board Director, 2019-present

What is the biggest issue facing the school district?

We continue to be an academically strong district but now that the pandemic is over, we must redouble our efforts to make sure students are growing academically and feeling supported emotionally.

What can you do to solve it?

As a board member, my job is to review policy, allocate resources and adopt curriculum so that the district can achieve the goals it sets. We benchmark student growth throughout the school year, while also continuing to open up supports for a greater number of students in our buildings. We will also continue to work with families to provide resources for students who may be facing mental health challenges. These are just a few steps that the district is already taking to meet the needs of our students.

Would you support banning or restricting access to books in school libraries if parents demanded it?

The district has a robust process for the evaluation of instructional/resource materials. These instructional/resource materials go through a review process established by our board policies and administrative regulations. These policies are written to follow the law, PA School Code and a belief in the First Amendment. A parent may opt their child out of curricula or activities that they feel are not suitable for them at any time. I trust the highly trained librarians and teachers employed by our district to make excellent choices for our students.

Joyce Hanz is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Joyce by email at jhanz@triblive.com or via Twitter .

See the rest here:

Fox Chapel Area voters will choose among two candidates for District 3 school board seat - Yahoo News

Posted in Libertarian | Comments Off on Fox Chapel Area voters will choose among two candidates for District 3 school board seat – Yahoo News

Far-right party may hold keys to next Polish government, sets tone in talks with Ukraine – Yahoo News

Posted: at 12:25 am

With the Polish parliamentary elections just around the corner, the country's rising far-right threaten Poland's relations with Ukraine in more ways than one.

The Confederation party, a contender for third place in the upcoming Oct. 15 elections, is a disrupting force that pushes the country's mainstream further and further to the fringe, setting the tone for Polish foreign policy.

Traditionally Kyivs most ardent and vocal ally, the Polish governments relationship with Ukraine has been recently marred by diplomatic spats and trade disputes.

The ruling right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) is not only putting its foot down on Ukrainian grain imports but also chastises Kyiv for an apparent lack of gratitude for Polish support and plays on painful historical grievances.

This seemingly sudden change is not without cause PiS is feeling the pressure of the Confederation, a far-right alliance fighting for the same voters and capitalizing on the creeping Ukraine fatigue.

At one point surging as high as 14% and, in the more recent polls, oscillating around 10%, some surveys place the "nationalist-libertarian coalition" party as potentially the third strongest candidate behind PiS's United Right coalition (37%) and the liberal Civic Coalition/Civic Platform (30%).

To halt the spilling of its voters to the more radical and hardline Confederation, PiS is forced to up the ante in its Poland first rhetoric and convince a significant part of its voter base that Law and Justice can protect their interests better than the far-right upstarts.

The ruling conservatives must also consider that the Confederations MPs may hold keys to the next government. With their hands likely on a strong result, the radicals may become the kingmakers of these elections, something that the current Polish government is well aware of.

The Confederation Liberty and Independence was formed ahead of the 2019 parliamentary elections as a coalition of nationalist, conservative, and libertarian political projects, winning around 6.8% and 11 MPs in Sejm, the lower house of the country's parliament.

The far-right group espouses hardline Euroscepticism, a tough stance on immigration, and is set to introduce reduced taxation and government spending. Its members have, however, also accumulated a substantial record of anti-semitic and racist statements.

As the Confederation is heading toward even stronger results in the October elections, its views on Ukraine raise worries regarding Warsaw and Kyivs future rapport.

In their program, the party stresses the primacy of Polands own interests when it comes to their eastern neighbors. The radicals also managed to hit the nerve on some of the most sensitive topics, including the dark legacy of the Volyhnia massacres committed by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) against the Poles during World War II.

Despite mutual efforts by both Ukrainian and Polish leaders to settle this painful chapter of the shared history, the topic of Volynhia, UPA, and its ideological leader, Stepan Bandera, keeps haunting Polish-Ukrainian relations.

Read also: Sawomir Sierakowski: Polands destructive grievance politics

These understandable sentiments are capitalized not only by Polands own radical groups but also by external forces seeking to drive a wedge between the two countries.

Lukasz Adamski, a historian, political scientist, and vice director of the Juliusz Mieroszewski Centre for Dialogue, points out that the Confederation is more closely connected to the organizations of Volyhnia victims relatives an influential lobby in Polish politics than other parties.

While being made up mostly of sincere Polish patriots, these groups have also been, to some extent, infiltrated by pro-Kremlin forces, Adamski said.

For example, a July demonstration at Ukraines embassy in Warsaw ahead of the 80th anniversary of the Volyhnia Massacre was organized by Krzysztof Tolwinski, who preaches reconciliation with Belarus and Russia amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The event was also attended by Mateusz Piskorski, a suspected Russian spy, and Leszek Sykulski, the founder of the pro-Russian Polish Anti-War Movement.

The rally's participants called for holding Ukraine responsible for Banderism and Nazism and urged to cut weapons supplies for Kyiv, a clear nod to Russian decades-long propaganda.

The Confederations own leading members are also no strangers to anti-Ukrainian or pro-Russian statements.

80-year-old Janusz Korwin-Mikke, one of the coalitions founding members notorious for anti-semitic and misogynist statements, has a history of defending Russian President Vladimir Putin and even questioned Russias responsibility for the Bucha Massacre.

In 2015, Korwin-Mikke visited Russian-occupied Crimea and met with Russian occupation authorities.

Firebrand Grzegorz Braun rallies against what he calls the Ukrainization of Poland by Ukrainian refugees and said he wants to seek reparations from Kyiv for the Volyhnia tragedy.

While these statements are likely to grab the media headlines, it is not the face that the Confederations younger party leaders wish to present to the public.

Michal Lebduska, a researcher at the Prague-based think-tank Association for International Affairs, said that figures like Korwin-Mikke or Braun are being pushed to the background as their ultraconservative rhetoric does more harm than good to the partys performance.

Instead, the Confederation focuses on younger male voters, namely entrepreneurs, using their libertarian platform and attacking PiS' populist spending on pensions or family benefits.

The partys 2019 presidential candidate, 41-year-old Krzysztof Bosak, denied that the Confederation would be pro-Russian and said that the party does not have any delusion about Russia.

The far-right coalition criticizes the scale of Warsaws support for Ukraine, branding it gullible and naive, but it does not call for cutting Ukraine support completely.

"I have no doubt that helping Ukraine, also militarily in some sphere which does not lower Poland's own military capabilities, is necessary," Confederation spokesperson Anna Brylka told Reuters.

Adamski rejects branding the Confederation as pro-Russian, explaining their hardline stance toward Ukraine rather as an attempt to set the party apart from the mainstream politics, represented by both PiS and the rest of the opposition, namely Donald Tusk's liberal Civic Platform (PO).

This party (Confederation) is trying to get electorate support by using anti-mainstream political slogans and calling for transactional policy when it comes to Ukraine, and this is fundamentally different than being pro-Russian, Adamski said.

However, it remains unclear whether this shift toward more moderate, rational rhetoric reflects the partys actual policy goals or whether it is merely a play not to scare off potential voters during the campaign.

Some experts warn against underestimating the strength of the anti-Ukrainian strand among Confederations party members.

Wojciech Przybylski, the editor-in-chief of Visegrad Insight, noted that while younger leaders of the Confederation are effective at attracting younger electorate by effective PR and libertarian rhetoric, they have little to say on the security of foreign policy.

When it comes to foreign and security issues, Braun and Korwin-Mikke dictate the party agenda, Przybylski said, adding that these two figures, in fact, set the "value structure and hierarchy of the coalition.

In spite of the months of squabbles coming both from Polish and Ukrainian official channels, it is crucial to remember that the decisive majority of the Polish population remains supportive of Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.

Nevertheless, polls show that the initial pro-Ukrainian fever from the first months of the war is cooling down. This shift is largely driven by war and refugee fatigue common for other countries supporting Ukraine.

With the enthusiasm of the first months slowly falling off, Polands public is shifting attention to the 1 million Ukrainian refugees who became their new neighbors.

According to surveys, the number of Poles decisively in favor of continued support for refugees dropped from 49% to 28% between January and June.

Around 60% of respondents said Ukrainian refugees should not have access to the same social benefits as Polish citizens, and over half are against providing them with free food and accommodation.

Lebduska adds that some of the traditional issues between Poles and Ukrainians, such as the aforementioned historical grievances or Polish negative stereotypes about Ukrainian migrant workers, subsided with the start of the full-scale invasion but are now slowly resurfacing.

As this mood swing played right into the hands of the Ukraine-skeptic Confederation, PiS was forced to adopt a more hardline stance toward Kyiv as well.

With the struggle for electoral support so intense that every one or two percentage points count, other parties are inclined to adopt certain slogans of the Confederation, Adamski said.

Read also: Sawomir Sierakowski: The strongest army in Europe?

In May, Lukasz Jasina, a spokesperson for the Polish Foreign Ministry, said that Kyiv had not done enough to accept responsibility for the Volyhnia Massacre, sparking outrage in Ukraine.

Polish Secretary of State and Head of the International Policy Bureau Marcin Przydacz sparked another diplomatic conflict in the summer when he said Ukraine should show more gratitude for Polands aid.

The tensions reached new heights following Warsaws decision to extend the ban on Ukrainian grain imports past Sept. 15, after which Ukraine said it will sue Poland at the World Trade Organization and threatened its own embargo against Polish products.

This strategy may have brought some fruit. In July, the Confederation peaked in the polls at 14%, and PiSs United Right polled at 35%. The more recent numbers show the far-right alliance dropping to around 10% and the ruling party slightly rising to 37%.

Even so, PiS is most likely still looking at a notably lower result than in the 2019 parliament elections (43.6%) and will need another partys support to secure a majority in the Sejm.

Given the convergence between the ruling conservatives and the Confederation on issues such as the EU or social issues, the far-right party appears to be the most logical choice for post-election negotiations.

As Ukraine-skeptic populists grain ground both in Europe and the U.S., there are concerns that the Confederation might drive Poland to join this trend, especially if PiS tries to accept the far-right as potential coalition partners.

It remains to be seen what will be the result of the October vote, but despite the vitriol in the air, there is little prospect of a new right-to-far-right government spelling a sudden end to Ukraine's military aid.

Both PiS and Confederation have previously spoken against a joint coalition.

While politicians statements often count for little once the last ballot is cast, there are reasons to believe that the Confederation will not seek to enter into the government with PiS.

I dont see Confederation having an appetite to enter (into coalition with PiS), Przybylski said.

The smaller of the parties would be too weak in such a potential coalition and likely devoured by its larger partner, the expert believes.

Lebduska pointed out that the radical coalition has been building an image of a fresh alternative to the stale duo of PiS Jaroslaw Kaczynski and POs Tusk.

Becoming a coalition member in a government led by either of the two could take away much of the Confederations appeal as an anti-system party.

Read also: Ukraine war latest: Biden says American support for Ukraine cant be allowed to be interrupted

Should PiS receive a chance to build a government, they are more likely to try and poach some of the Confederations lawmakers or negotiate some kind of conditional, silent support in the Sejm.

And even if such an improbable but not impossible scenario came to pass, the support for Ukraine, including military supplies, is unlikely to dry out.

Poland will remain an important ally of Ukraine, at the least in the military area, Lebduska said, pointing out that there is a broad consensus on this subject in much of the Polish society.

As the decisively anti-Ukrainian and pro-Russian segment of the Polish population remains in a clear minority, even the Confederation would be forced to respect the majority's opinion.

Polands historical experience with Russian occupation and Moscows military presence in the neighborhood make Ukraines survival a vital security interest for Warsaw and the Polish people.

Join our community

Support independent journalism in Ukraine. Join us in this fight.

Support Us

However, both Przybylski and Adamski said that the shift in PiS rhetoric, driven by the far-right challenge, would likely leave scars on long-term Polish-Ukrainian relations if the Law and Justice holds on to power.

Whatever result PiS gets, some of it will be based on nationalist votes that are skeptical of Ukraine, Przybylski said.

The party knowingly decided to build its strategy on "capturing nationalist sentiments" and will be under pressure to keep their promises, he added.

Neighborhood of two agrarian countries would naturally generate some conflicts, but this conflict has been solved through emotions, Adamski said, pointing out that Kyiv is also to blame for the escalation.

President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered scathing remarks against Poland at the UN General Assembly, hinting that their grain embargo is aiding Russia.

In response, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called on the Ukrainian president to never insult the Poles again.

Gathering nationalist voters, a new PiS government might be obliged, with or without the Confederations political support, to take a more protectionist stance toward Ukraine.

As Kyiv seeks to enter the European Union, its aspirations may encounter hurdles laid by Warsaws economic interests and historical grievances.

Read also: Peter Tkacenko: Slovakia after election If not friend, certainly not enemy of Ukraine

Weve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.

Original post:

Far-right party may hold keys to next Polish government, sets tone in talks with Ukraine - Yahoo News

Posted in Libertarian | Comments Off on Far-right party may hold keys to next Polish government, sets tone in talks with Ukraine – Yahoo News

Aella: Is Porn Too Pervasive? – Reason

Posted: at 12:25 am

This is an audio version ofThe Reason Livestream,which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern onReason's YouTube channel.

On June 30, PornhubAmerica's most-trafficked adult websiteannounced that it was blocking access in Mississippi, Virginia, and Utah. Why? Well, Pornhub was reacting to the passage of age-verification laws in those three states. Similar laws have passed in Louisiana, Texas, Montana, and Arkansas, leading Politico to declare that "A Simple Law Is Doing the Impossible. It's Making the Online Porn Industry Retreat." But the industry is fighting back and won a preliminary injunction against Texas' law.

Reason's Zach Weissmueller and Liz Wolfe talked about these developments with Aella, a former OnlyFans star and outspoken libertarian defender of sex workers who leverages her sizable social media following to run sex polls and surveys, the results of which she analyzes and publishes on her blog Knowingless. In this conversation, they discuss Aella's sex surveys, delve into the psychological literature examining online porn consumption, unpack the privacy implications of age verification laws, and talk about a recent debate Aella attended hosted by The Free Press and FIRE about the effects of "the sexual revolution" on American society.

Continue reading here:

Aella: Is Porn Too Pervasive? - Reason

Posted in Libertarian | Comments Off on Aella: Is Porn Too Pervasive? – Reason

Massie: McCarthy Speakership Showdown a ‘Referendum’ on … – Reason

Posted: at 12:25 am

(UPDATE:The House of Representatives voted 216-206 on Tuesday afternoon to remove Rep. Kevin McCarthy (RCalif.) as speaker of the House, with eight Republicans voting in favor of his dismissal. It is the first time in U.S. history that a sitting speaker has been ousted in this manner. The position will remain vacant until a majority of the House votes to appoint a new speaker.)

Ahead of what could be a dramatic afternoon in the House of Representatives, Rep. Thomas Massie (RKy.) occupies an unusual and possibly unique position.

Massie is the closest thing to a libertarian that you'll find in the House and a frequent ally of the right-wing Freedom Caucussome members of which are aiming to topple Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in a vote that could come this afternoon. But in an interview with Reason on Tuesday morning, Massie offered a defense of McCarthy's speakership, and he warned that the Republican rebels might not understand the damage they would do by firing him.

"In many ways, this is a referendum on whether the House is going to try regular order or not, because the next speakerif Kevin is deposed todayis not going to say 'oh, if only we had tried more regular order, this could have worked out,'" Massie toldReason. "The next speaker is going to go back to the Old Testamentand we're going to devolve to the former method, which was an omnibus bill every year and gang warfare to try and get your thing in the omnibus bill."

For Massieand for anyone who wants to see Congress budget more responsibly regular order is a big deal. Effectively, that means that Congress should bring each of its 12 annual spending bills to the floor via the process that everyone learns in civics class: with committees voting on what to include in each, then amendments, and debate on the House floor before a final vote. Congress hasn't correctly completed that process on time since 1996.

As part of the compromise McCarthy reached with the House Freedom Caucus in January, he agreed to go back to that system.

He's been criticized for failing to follow through. While there are certainly personal issues involved in Rep. Matt Gaetz's (RFla.) attempt to dump McCarthy from the speakership, some of Gaetz's criticism is focused on McCarthy's unwillingness to send single-subject bills to the House floor.

Gaetz filed the motion to vacatea rarely used procedural tool that allows the full House to vote to remove a speakerafter McCarthy suspended the rules to bring a continuing resolution to the House floor on Sunday to prevent the government from shutting down. The bill passed with support from Democrats and against the objections of the Freedom Caucus.

Massie voted against the continuing resolution but said Tuesday it was "the least worst of a bunch of bad options." If the House bill hadn't passed, he said, it's likely that a Senate-drafted continuing resolution including a higher level of spendingmostly because of added military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine, which was left out of the House measurewould have become law.

McCarthy's defenders argue that he's working to reform the budget process and needs more time to see it through.

Massie points out that McCarthy has allowed two Freedom Caucus membersReps. Chip Roy (RTexas) and Ralph Norman (RS.C.)onto the Rules Committee. Together with Massie, that's a voting block that can effectively control what bills reach the House floor, something that Massie says would have been unthinkable under previous Republican speakers.

"They have been listening to us and we have been guiding the process," he says.

Norman has also voiced support for keeping McCarthy in charge of the House. "I have been profoundly disappointed in several elements of Speaker McCarthy's leadership, but now is not the time to pursue a Motion to Vacate," he wrote on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Tuesday morning.

If McCarthy survives today's vote, does that mean regular order will prevail and Congress will pass all 12 budget bills before the new continuing resolution expires in mid-November? Massie says there's "a good chance" that will happen.

On the other hand, "ifKevin fails today, we're going to get the Schumer-McConnell special," he says, referring to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (RKy.), who Massie believes will have the upper hand in any dealings with a leaderless House GOP caucus.

"And it's going to be an omnibus," Massie added, "and it's not going to be pretty."

Originally posted here:

Massie: McCarthy Speakership Showdown a 'Referendum' on ... - Reason

Posted in Libertarian | Comments Off on Massie: McCarthy Speakership Showdown a ‘Referendum’ on … – Reason

ESPN’s Pablo Torre explains how Harvard classmate Vivek Ramaswamy was ‘That Guy’ in school – Yahoo News

Posted: at 12:25 am

[Source]

American sportswriter and host Pablo Torre recently spoke about his college days with entrepreneur Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy, shedding light on the Republican presidential candidate's persona in the classroom.

That Guy: In the Sept. 26 episode of the "Pablo Torre Finds Out" podcast, Torre reminisced about Ramaswamy's college days at Harvard, referring to him as "That Guy" on campus. Torre explained that "That Guy" is typically a "campus celebrity" who possesses an extraordinary level of ambition and an acute awareness of their image.

"Ramaswamy, when we were both freshmen, was famous on campus for his alter ego 20 years ago," the ESPN host recalled. "His alter ego was a libertarian rapper that he called 'Da Vek.'"

Drawing cringe: According to Torre, Ramaswamy fits the "That Guy" description perfectly as he was allegedly undeterred by how his actions leave others cringing. Torre said Ramaswamy would often raise his hand conspicuously in the shape of a 'V' during lectures, resembling a "bat signal for terrible libertarian takes."

More from NextShark: US citizen sentenced to death in China for fatal 'revenge' stabbing of ex-girlfriend

Obama karaoke: Torre elaborated on Ramaswamy's behaviors in MSNBC's "11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle." Torre said part of what's "absurd" about the GOP presidential candidate is his conduct of "Obama karaoke," daring people to think "this is what a smart person looks like" when it's what "an extreme, ridiculous person looks like."

"As a tool of the 'deep state' here to undermine his campaign, I've been instructed to remind people that the dude has been ridiculous for 20 years," Torre jokingly added.

More from NextShark: TikTok suppressing get-out-the-vote content, study suggests

Ramaswamy, who announced his bid for the Republican nomination in February, has a net worth of over $950 million as of August, as per Forbes. Should he win the 2024 election, he pledged to fire 75% of federal employees, end civil service protections for bureaucrats and abolish multiple federal agencies, including the Education Department, FBI, ATF, IRS, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and USDA's Food and Nutrition Service.

More from NextShark: Comedian Resorts to Racism Against Asian People, 'Ching Chong Virus' on Twitter

Here is the original post:

ESPN's Pablo Torre explains how Harvard classmate Vivek Ramaswamy was 'That Guy' in school - Yahoo News

Posted in Libertarian | Comments Off on ESPN’s Pablo Torre explains how Harvard classmate Vivek Ramaswamy was ‘That Guy’ in school – Yahoo News

DeFi has not followed through on its privacy promises yet – Blockworks

Posted: at 12:25 am

When it comes to personal privacy, the promises of DeFi summer have rung hollow.

Projects flooded the scene with buzzwords like financial privacy and cryptographic security during the DeFi boom of 2021, setting user expectations sky high when the industry was still in its earliest stages.

As a result, once the dust settled, it became apparent that most of DeFis bold privacy declarations had fallen short of expectations. This issue has been further underscored with the rise of new on-chain analytics services like Arkham Intelligence and Chainalysis, whose data dashboards revealed how traceable DeFi users on-chain activity actually is.

Now, the DeFi sector is facing increased regulatory pressure to de-anonymize certain transactions and user profiles, while simultaneously dealing with flagging user confidence in terms of their individual rights to data privacy.

But do these challenges mark the demise of privacy in DeFi? We certainly dont think so.

The fact is, todays most pressing issues are not a criticism of the nature of DeFi itself, but of its current state of evolution. More specifically, the problem for developers is that much of this frenzy was built on underdeveloped technology which has not lived up to the hype. However, the underlying infrastructure is rapidly maturing, and the Web3 development paradigm is shifting away from the notion that transparency must invariably be linked with a lack of privacy.

There is a significant difference between a libertarian approach to crypto privacy (doing what you want with no regards to anti-money laundering efforts) and privacy that enables new use cases in a regulatory-friendly way (doing what you want as long as your funds come from a legitimate source).

Read more: Privacy remains sticking point in Americas ongoing CBDC debate

Fortunately, most privacy laws allow for this delineation, which is why the vast majority of existing regulations have more to do with areas concerning customer protection rather than a blanket opposition to privacy.

For instance, the US government supports privacy-enhancing technologies as long as they align with existing AML/CFT rules. However, when organizations use private blockchains without following these guidelines or use services that operate outside the current laws, they create unnecessarily risks for their users.

The key to making this approach to privacy both practical for regulators and agreeable to users could be, for instance, a decentralized data storage of users credentials such as idOS a GDPR-compliant identity system recently announced during this years TOKEN2049 conference. With a solution like that, no single party is in control of users credentials even as the system verifiably ensures that users are not on any authorized sanctions lists.

Rapidly maturing technologies like zero-knowledge proofs and decentralized identity systems eliminate the need for (and the possibility of) divulging extraneous user data to any external party. At the same time, they enable regulators to identify and act on malicious on-chain activity with confidence and rapidity. Combining such a storage system with privacy-enhanced DeFi apps makes for a comprehensive privacy trading suite that is also aligned with AML regulations.

All of which is to say, Web3 builders are listening to both regulators and end users and developing more nuanced solutions that cater to both ends of the spectrum. There is no doubt that the industry as a whole currently does not live up to the expectations of either side.

Read more from our opinion section: DeFi has a reputation problem

However, one could say the same about the modern Internet, which mirrors DeFis evolutionary trajectory from both a developmental and regulatory perspective.

For context: The birth of the internet can be traced to an academic initiative conducted by the US Advanced Research Projects Agency but the Internet as we know it today was largely the result of a series of informal interactions and decisions made by tinkerers and fringe enthusiasts in the following years. Small, experimental testnets and applications that few people imagined would ever matter gave rise to essential Internet protocols still in use today, including File Transfer and TCP/IP.

During this time, the internet was essentially unregulated. Until the expansion and commercialization of the internet in the mid-1990s, the internets primary governance model was decentralized and based on informal standards and protocols voluntarily adopted by builders, with a focus on making networks interoperable.

And yet regulations eventually followed, developers adapted, and the vast majority of todays global financial activities are conducted online something that would have been unimaginable just a few decades ago given the internets discombobulated origins. Despite all its issues, the internet has unquestionably been a force for good in the world: The rapidly maturing DeFi sector has the potential to have a similar impact on the financial system and beyond.

As DeFi continues to grow and mature, regulators will develop new frameworks to govern this industry while developers will create new, responsible privacy-preserving technologies. Thats why Web3 builders should recognize that todays privacy shortcomings are a puzzle to be solved, not an indictment on the industry. And if an industry outsider cannot imagine a Web3 protocol that addresses regulators privacy concerns while satisfying users privacy needs, thats only because that solution hasnt been built by an industry insider yet.

Antoni is a co-founder of Aleph Zero Foundation (Switzerland), an organization overseeing the development of the Aleph Zero blockchain, and a Managing Partner of Cardinal Cryptography (Poland), firm focused on core development of the Aleph Zero ecosystem.

Dont miss the next big story join ourfree daily newsletter.

Follow Sam Bankman-Frieds trial with the latest news from the courtroom.

Here is the original post:

DeFi has not followed through on its privacy promises yet - Blockworks

Posted in Libertarian | Comments Off on DeFi has not followed through on its privacy promises yet – Blockworks

Page 4«..3456..1020..»