Wisconsin Libertarians nominate "Nobody" for Governor

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by Clifford F. Thies, Senior Editor

This year's Libertarian Party ticket for Governor and Lt. Governor of Wisconsin are nobody for Governor and somebody for Lt. Governor. Pretty ingenious move by the Libertarians, who always run behind "None of the Above" in Nevada where state law requires this option be available to voters. Obviously, nobody is the least of three or more evils!

This reminds me of Karl Hess's answer, a few years ago, to the question, who would make a better President, H.L. Menchen or Murray Rothbard, to which Hess replied, why, Menchen, of course, he's dead! (Now, sadly, all three are equally qualified for the job.)

It also reminds me of a note tacked on the kitchen door at the church of which I am a member: When ANYBODY can do a job, EVERYBODY will assume that SOMEBODY will, and NOBODY will do it.

And, the scene in The Odyssey, where Jason tells the Cyclops that his name is "Nobody." Then, after Jason pokes out the Cyclops' eye, the Cyclops cries out to his brother Cyclops, "'Nobody' has poked out my eye.," leaving his brother befuddled as to what happened or didn't happen.

Editor's Note - Cliff Thies is the former National Treasurer for the Libertarian Party, and ran as the Libertarian candidate for US Senate in Montana in 1984.

Democrat Marcy Kaptur wins Reason’s "Porker of the Month"

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Delivered $$$ earmarks in exchange for campaign contributions

From Eric Dondero:

Once a darling of left libertarians for her visceral hatred of George W. Bush and staunch opposition to the War in Iraq, Ohio Democrat Rep. Marcy Kaptur is now being taken to task for her fiscally un-libertarian actions.

In cooperation with Citizens for Government Waste, Reason presents this video highlighting her wasteful ways.

Quinnipiac: McCain now favored over Obama

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Time to Say "WE TOLD YOU SO!"

From Eric Dondero:

John Fund, libertarian columnist for the Wall Street Journal is reporting that for the first time, voters regret their decision in the 2008 Presidential race and would now vote McCain if they could do it all over again.
From the WSJ:

Democrats will be gulping this morning at the Quinnipiac Poll's latest results. For the first time in the survey's history, Americans believe by a 48% to 40% margin that President Obama doesn't deserve re-election. Almost as stinging, a plurality believe the country would have been better off if John McCain had beaten Mr. Obama in 2008.

Perhaps even more damning for Obama - "Only 39% rate him positively for his handling of the economy..."

Another recent poll by Rasmussen had McCain's running mate Sarah Palin tied with Obama for 2012 at 43% each.

Democrat Jerry Brown of California bashes "libertarian" CEI

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Rated Very Worst AG by libertarian group

From Eric Dondero:

Democrat Attorney General and candidate for Governor of California Jerry Brown was recently rated the "Worst AG in the Nation," by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Now he's responding by seeking to write CEI off as a fringe operation, and linking the Institute to corporate interests.

From the Examiner:

The nation's worst state attorneys general abuse the power of their office for political ends, undermining the rule of law. In recent years, many state attorneys general have "usurped the roles of state legislatures and Congress by using lawsuits to impose interstate and national regulations and extract money from out-of-state defendants who have little voice in a state’s political processes,” as I explain in a recent study, The Nation’s Worst State Attorneys General.

Here are the six worst state attorneys general in the nation:

1.Jerry Brown, California
2.Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut
3.Drew Edmondson, Oklahoma
4.Patrick Lynch, Rhode Island
5.Darrell McGraw, West Virginia
6.William Sorrell, Vermont

Brown: libertarian group works for oil and tobacco interests

From the LA Times, "Focus shifts to Brown's attorney general role" July 22:

“It’s a right-wing operation; in fact, I think it’s pushed by the same people — oil, tobacco kind of interests — that don’t like reasonable regulation,” Brown told his hosts on KGO-AM (810). “Certainly I’ve strived to achieve a balance between vigorous enforcement but refraining from excessive intervention in pushing our regulatory framework so it becomes suppressive.

“What these people want is a dismantling of the basic protections of our society, particularly in terms of the environment.” Brown added. “When they say libertarian, they mean free them from any kind of restraint or reasonable regulatory framework.”

Brown’s spokesman added that the groups’ list seemed to find the most fault with Democrats. "It’s a nonsense report,” he said

Praised in the 1970s by left-libertarians

Ironically, there was a time in the 1970s, when Brown was viewed as libertarian-oriented himself, fiscally conservative, advocating austerity in government spending, and legalization of marijuana.

Wrote Garris, "25 Years ago in Reason" (Reason On-line):

"Jerry Brown[is] more libertarian than the average politician, and much more so than any recent Governor of California. He is more fiscally conservative than many so-called conservative leaders, and yet is a good liberal on civil liberties questions."

—Eric Garris, "California's Other Governor"

Though, oddly, he backed his libertarian side with a call for mandatory national service and support for the military draft.

Photo from a 1970s Newsweek cover of Gov. Brown with then girlfriend Linda Rondstadt

MAJOR DEVELOPMENT! Tancredo threatens to jump in Colorado Gov.’s race as Third Party

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American-Constitution Party

Colorado Republicans were on their way to an easy win for Governor, after 4 years of Democrat Bill Ritter. Then frontrunner Scott McInnis became immersed in a plagiarism scandal. Second-place runner Dan Maes, the more conservative Tea Party favorite, never caught on. His campaign has been regarded as lackluster.

Now a major development is threatening to rock the Colorado race.

Showdown! To GOP contenders: Leave by Noon Monday

The Denver Post reports this morning:

Former Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo demanded today that the two GOP gubernatorial candidates drop out of the race.

If they don’t, he said he will run for governor as an American Constitution Candidate, a move likely to split the Republican Party in November’s general election.

“There’s nothing left to split. The reality is that with the two candidates we have, we will lose the general election,” Tancredo said in an interview.

Tancredo called upon Scott McInnis and Dan Maes to commit to leaving the race Aug. 11, just hours following the results of the primary. That way a Republican vacancy committee could appoint a replacement. Tancredo said he doesn’t care if the substitute is not himself.

He gave both candidates until noon on Monday to release public statements agreeing to his terms.

Obama worse than Soviets remark a precursor to race?

For many years, Tancredo served as President of the libertarian Independence Institute out of Golden, Colorado.

More recently, he received national attention and excited rightwing libertarians with his statement at a Tea Party rally, that Obama was as big a threat to the United States as Communism and Islamo-Fascism. From LR July 9:

"We had that threat [from the former Soviet Union] and we survived it. Later we found out we had another threat to our way of life and that was al-Qaeda. We found that out on 9/11.

But I firmly believe this... the greatest threat to the country that was put together by the founding fathers is the guy that is in the White House today."

Hope fades for 4 missing – Detroit Free Press

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MiamiHerald.com
Hope fades for 4 missing
Detroit Free Press
Jerry Freed, the pilot, was pulled from the water alive Friday and was released Saturday afternoon from the Memorial Medical Center of West Michigan in ...
Doctor pens goodbye note as plane plungesmsnbc.com
Passengers left note in Dr. Hall's medical bagThe Morning Sun
Grief sweeps Alma after Lake Michigan plane crash leaves four presumed drownedThe Grand Rapids Press - MLive.com
Deseret News -Blue Star Chronicles (blog)
all 1,124 news articles »

Dr. David Druker, Palo Alto medical CEO, dies – San Francisco Chronicle

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Dr. David Druker, Palo Alto medical CEO, dies
San Francisco Chronicle
... where he worked at the Palo Alto Medical Clinic and was a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at Stanford University School of Medicine. ...
Palo Alto Medical Foundation CEO dies after battle with lung cancerSan Jose Mercury News
PAMF CEO Dr. David Druker Passes AwayEarthtimes (press release)

all 14 news articles »

Linguistic diversity, other views | Gene Expression

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Readers might find these responses of interest. Mostly I just laughed, though some of you may be a bit more serious than I, so if anthro-gibberish drives you crazy, don’t follow the links. As I told “ana” below a lot of the discussion we had was basically just talking past each other. I kept telling her she was vacuous because she was assuming presuppositions which I simply did not share as empirical background descriptions of the world (e.g., a strong form of linguistic relativism where the specific nature of a language shapes cognition). Though at least she was concise. On the other hand, see this small section of Creighton’s response:

I think this is what bothered me the most about Khan’s piece. No discussion of what poverty means, what it is, how it’s defined. I could be completely wrong, but that led me to feel that there was a high degree of Eurocentric neo-colonialism behind Khan’s proposition. Who is saying to who what “median human utility” means? Are we assuming that homeownership, vehicle ownership, and other tangible measures of economic prosperity are involved? Is access to fresh food and water part of this measurement? Khan didn’t discuss poverty at all and he didn’t acknowledge that the neo-colonial policies of certain nations are at least partially responsible for the long-term economic suffering of many of the people he is referring to. I just got the feeling that he was telling the people who belong to small language communities to accept defeat and learn English. It incited me even more that his justification for making this decision was in purely economic terms. Abandoning your heritage will pay out in the end. But will it?


Dhaka smells like human shit. That’s poverty. Most people think that to get rich is glorious, and an understanding of wealth is cross-cultural. Many anthropological types problematize too much for my taste. They confuse the nuance and shading which vary between societies, for the core truths, which are relatively culture-free. For almost all of human history most people lived at the poverty line, because Malthusian conditions were operative. The possibility for wealth, and consumer society, is new. Those who opt-out in modern societies do so for explicit ideological reasons and are aware of the trade offs (e.g., the Amish, Hasidic Jews, people who live in communes).

The point which I tried to emphasize a few times, but generally ignored by my interlocutors, is that people as individuals, and communities, make rational decisions in a world of constrained choices. Quite often, and especially today, language change does not occur from on high (in fact, the top-down imposition of standard national languages on the masses is more a recent feature of post-Enlightenment nationalism; Latin spread in the Roman Empire over centuries among the western peasantry). Most Africans who adhere non-world religions are shifting to Islam or Christianity. There is little explicit coercion in this (though a fair amount of social pressure from elites who find Vodun and other native traditions backward). The moral panic that many Westerners have over the extinction of small-scale societies is not shared by many members of those small-scale societies, who wish to opt-out, often for material reasons. And by material, I’m not talking McMansions, I’m talking having income above subsistence. The level of wealth of a Chinese factory worker, not that of an academic adjunct.

As for my critics, note that I don’t really engage them directly, because the theoretical frameworks we use are so distinct. They misunderstand me, and I misunderstand them (honestly, I have no idea what they’re saying most of the time in the broad sense, aside from the fact that they’re offended). I have as much respect for most American cultural anthropology as I do for Talmudic scholarship; I’m sure they’re bright individuals, but they aren’t doing anything which I think relates to a world outside of the minds of the practitioners.* Contrast that with Jared Diamond, who I think is positively wrong in many of his models (not to mention recent ethical controversies which have erupted), but, who I can understand in terms of what he is saying. Being wrong, and asserting things which turn out false, are essential in the process of building a better model of the world. Extreme projects in cultural relativism, and fixation on semantics, tells us more about the psychology of WEIRD people than anything else.

For a better understanding of how I approach anthropology, and the study of human culture, the first half of D. Jason Slone’s Theological Incorrectness describes it almost perfectly. If you continue to read this weblog, you’ll note that I have a deep interest in culture and history. But, my treatment is not going to resemble much of what would find in cultural anthropology in the United States. In fact, I’ll drive you crazy, and perhaps an r-squared here and there will strike as you positivist gibberish. No one’s paying you to read though.

Oh, and yes, I am Euro-centric. Some things can be stated as objective facts, but obviously where you start from impacts how you judge the import of particular facts. Though I think Epoche is methodologically useful. Or at least the attempt.

* To be fair, a large number of people do take the Talmud seriously, and so the scholarship does have an impact because people take the scholarship seriously. But I don’t think this is like mechanical engineering, where the reason to take it seriously from the outside is not dependent on a normative view of the importance of mechanical engineering. As for cultural anthropology, I don’t think it matters too much, aside from intellectual types who think that it is a form of scholarship with non-trivial empirical basis. I think most American cultural anthropology is about as empirically robust as astrology.

Related: Also see my post Knowledge is not value-free.

Faith and Personal Responsibility

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In the past, NASA has been a great source of inspiration, innovation and technological advancement.  Even today, NASA embodies those ideals.  Over the past few months there has been debate about the path that NASA will take.  The debate has been a source of great divide in the NASA community and has motivated many at NASA to hail the end of America’s leadership in space.  Recently, the Senate came up with a compromise between the Constellation Program and the Obama Plan which hopefully will end the debate and allow NASA to move forward.

The point of this blog isn’t to talk about the debate in Congress, the point is that regardless of the decisions that are made by the politicians of this country, we will not propel space exploration forward unless we believe that we will end up victorious.  Mohandas Gandhi once said that “a small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history”.  Well I am here to tell you that this paradigm can have both positive and negative impacts.   We are at a cross road in NASA’s history, and where NASA goes from here will not be decided by Congress, but by the dedicated men and women that work at NASA.  If we believe that the end of America’s leadership in space is over, then no amount of money will help us keep that leadership.

Leadership begins with oneself….

Responsibility begins here….

We can not always choose our environment, but we can always choose to do our best.  If NASA is to remain a leader in space and be a source of inspiration to the world, we must stop looking up for leadership and we must start leading up.  We ALL have the capacity to influence our environment for the better, and if we are to remain a leader in space we must take every opportunity to make things better.

That means, that we must end the CYA paradigm that plagues NASA, and replace it with paradigm of personal responsibility.

Imagine how great NASA would be if everyone at NASA took personal responsibility for the quality and safety of the work they did, instead of separate groups being tasked to police the work of others.

Imagine how great NASA would be if when a group’s utility was no longer needed, the leader’s first inclination was not to invent reasons to keep the group alive, but to help those in the group transition to other opportunities that would safely allow the group to be eliminated.

Imagine how great NASA would be if instead of trying to save a dime to do more mission, NASA invested in those who execute the mission so that they can handle more mission.

Imagine how great NASA would be if instead of us pointing the finger at others, we pointed the fingers at ourselves and took the time to see the good in others.

Do the negative things I implied above happen?  Yes.  Do I think they are bad?  No!  I think they are human.  Failure is not only an option, failure is imminent, because we are human.  The question is how do we succeed in an imperfect world where failure is a fact of life?  We do it by remembering that leadership begins with oneself, and that responsibility begins here.  We do it by accepting that NASA’s fate is in our hands, not in the hands of those above us or in the hands of those far away.

We can all help NASA be better, and each of us knows best how we can help.  I encourage everyone to search deep in oneself to find your personal way of helping NASA be better, and I have faith that we will all have the courage to do so when the opportunities present themselves.  The path forward will not be easy, but I have no doubt that we will not only remain leaders in space, we will inspire the world with as much vigor as days gone by.