Monthly Archives: June 2020

George Floyd's death at the hands of the Minneapolis police has sparked nationwide protests against police brutality. Anew consensus is forming around the urgent need for criminal justice reform.

Six years ago, after the police killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, just 43 percent of Americans believed that such incidents indicated a systemic problem. Now, though police killings have remained level since 2014, 69 percent of Americans agree that "the killing of Floyd represents a broader problem within law enforcement."

To better understand this shift and to get a sense of what changes would be most effective, Nick Gillespie sat down withWashington Post opinion writer Radley Balko, a former Reason reporter who covers police abuse, the drug war, and criminal justice reform. His Reason coverage of Cory Maye, a black man in Mississippi put on death row for killing a police officer during a no-knock raid, helped bring about Maye's acquittal, and his books Rise of The Warrior Cop and The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist document widespread problems with law enforcement, expert testimony, and media coverage of crime.

Original post:

Radley Balko on George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and the Libertarian Case for Criminal Justice Reform - Reason

In a competitive election, critics of third-party candidates often regard them as spoilers, who may tip a close election to the candidate most ideologically divergent from them by drawing away votes from the candidate they are ideologically closer to.

Grassroots-Legalize Cannabis Party Chairman Chris Wright strongly disagrees with the characterization. He says that both major parties have failed to deliver on important issues and that by voting for one of them, voters are enabling the status quo to continue.

We havent spoiled the economy, social policies or the environment, he said. They like to call us spoilers because they feel they have an entitlement to power.

While DFL candidates might seem to be more in danger of losing some of their supporters to a pro-marijuana Party candidate, Gustavus Adolphus College Professor Chris Gilbert said its not that clear cut.

Gilbert said that while legalizing marijuana is traditionally seen as a liberal issue, and enjoys strong backing from young voters, who lean DFL in general, many libertarian-minded voters who hold right-leaning views on other issues support it as well.

According to the Star-Tribune/MPR News Minnesota poll, support for recreational marijuana is strongest among DFLers, with 59% expressing support. But with support from 50% of Independent voters and 42% of Republicans, it doesn't break down as neatly along party lines as many other issues.

Carleton College Professor Melanie Freeze said shes studied the spoiler issue extensively and the evidence is far from clear cut. While she said that third parties can tip an extraordinarily close election, she said their impact is often less direct.

Its hard to find evidence of the spoiler effect, she said. (Third parties) activate people who wouldnt have come out to vote and pull from both candidates.

On the other hand, young voters tend to be the strongest demographic of support for third parties, recreational marijuana and DFL candidates. Thus, many Republicans are expecting that the DFL side is more likely to take a hit if they do well.

Rice County Republican Party Chair Kathy Dodds said that she expects the district's conservative voters to largely eschew pro-marijuana candidates. Dodds said that many Rice County Republicans are comfortable with the party's skepticism towards recreational marijuana.

"I don't think it will hurt the Republicans so much, but I think there are a lot of liberals that want marijuana legislation to pass and they would consider voting for the third party," she said.

Dodds noted that while Republicans have expressed discomfort with recreational marijuana, many have also voiced support for medical marijuana. However, attempts to relax the state's restrictive medical marijuana laws have faced resistance from Republicans.

Since the medical marijuana program launched in 2015, the state has banned sale of the raw cannabis flower, only allowing marijuana extract to be sold in liquid, pill or vaporized form, which medical marijuana advocates say has driven up costs while limiting treatment options. An attempt by the DFL-controlled House to remove this ban was included in the state's healthcare omnibus bill. However, Senate Republicans blocked the provision, siding with advocacy organizations skeptical of marijuana who say the ban is needed to prevent smoking.

By simply being on the ballot, third parties can raise attention to certain issues and pressure candidates. Freeze noted that while a variety of factors are at work, DFLers have become increasingly vocal about the issue since both pro-marijuana parties achieved major party status.

Still, both Gilbert and Freeze agreed that both pro-marijuana parties are extremely unlikely to win seats. Even during the height of its popularity, the Reform/Independence Party of former Gov. Jesse Ventura rarely won more than 10% of the vote, Freeze said.

Last year, DFL House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler launched a listening tour, traveling the state to get feedback from residents across Minnesota on the issue. He subsequently introduced a bill in the legislature that would legalize it.

Similarly, Gov. Tim Walz ordered state agencies to prepare for the legalization of marijuana. However, the State Senate remains under Republican control, and has remained firmly opposed to marijuana legalization.

Scrambling

While both pro-marijuana parties are enjoying unprecedented levels of support, Minnesotas other minor parties have been left scrambling to maintain a presence on Minnesota ballots at all.

Currently, the state has three official minor parties. Any party which achieves more than 1% of the vote in a statewide election is granted minor party status for the next two elections, which brings several benefits.

Under that program, Minnesotans can make a contribution of up to $50 to a recognized major or minor party and receive a full refund. Currently, the Green Party, Libertarian Party and Independence-Alliance Party qualify as minor parties.

The Independence-Alliance Party, once known as the Minnesota Reform Party, was the party of Ventura and enjoyed major party status for 20 years. It lost that after failing to reach 5% in any statewide race in the 2014 elections.

With COVID-19 making it impossible to gather signatures for ballot access through face to face voter contact, the Libertarians, Greens, Independence Alliance Party and Veterans Party of Minnesota successfully lobbied for changes allowing signatures to be gathered electronically.

When it comes to getting on the ballot in local races, Libertarian Party Chairman Chris Holbrook said that electronic signature gathering has proved next to useless, because under state law signatures to get on the ballot in a local race must be gathered from residents of the district.

While signatures of residents living in a certain area could easily be gathered by going door to door, Holbrook said its nearly impossible to do that electronically. With most email addresses private, its exceptionally hard to electronically send a petition to a large number of people in a certain neighborhood. As a result, very few minor party candidates successfully managed to make it on to the ballot for Congress or state Legislature. In an attempt to gain more time, the four parties filed a lawsuit seeking additional time for signature gathering.

The Secretary of States Office fought them and court, arguing that as the minor parties had received other accommodations, including permission to gather signatures electronically, additional time should not be needed.

The minor parties lost their initial case, though appeals are ongoing. Holbrook noted that in a number of other states, courts have provided additional relief to make it easier for minor parties to get on the ballot.

Nominating petitions to get presidential candidates on the ballot are ongoing, and are not due until August. Last week, Minnesota Libertarians started circulating a ballot petition to get its candidates, Jo Jorgensen and Jeremy "Spike" Lee, onto the November ballot.

Holbrook said that while the Libertarian Party may not have ballot access, a number of Libertarians and libertarian-leaning candidates have taken advantage of the official party status held by the two pro-marijuana parties to run under their banner.

In general, he said that Minnesotas third parties have had warm relations and offered each other support. In addition, he noted that the Libertarian Party has strongly advocated for legalization of marijuana and an end to the War on Drugs since its inception.

Aided by the historic unpopularity of major party candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, third parties enjoyed a historic rise in support. The Libertarian ticket performed the best, winning about 3.8% in Minnesota and 3.3% nationwide.

Third parties tend to do better when they name someone who has some political resume, and that usually means someone who served for one of the major parties, he said.

See the rest here:

While pro-marijuana parties thrive, other minor parties struggle - Southernminn.com

S ROSS suggests that I should have spoken earlier with regard to Matt Hancocks handling of Covid-19, (HAS June 13).

I am not an expert in any of these matters, but I do read the newspapers and listen to the TV.

There has been much criticism of the slowness of the Governments decisions and particularly of the timing of their moves.

The WHO were warning in January that extreme measures were necessary and countries which responded quickly were rewarded with much lower rates of infection and death.

We do not know the details of the advice from SAGE and particularly when it was given, but many experts, independent of SAGE, who have been willing to speak out have acknowledged that the Government should have acted much sooner and that thousands of lives could have been saved.

It has been suggested that the libertarian beliefs of Boris Johnson, not to impose restrictions on people until they were absolutely necessary, was the reason for the delays, with their disastrous consequences and the staggering death rate.

Eric Gendle, Nunthorpe, Middlesbrough.

Originally posted here:

Letters: 'It is suggested that Boris's Libertarian beliefs were the reasons for delayed Lockdown' - The Northern Echo

Aimee Stephens gave one of her final televised interviews in January of this year, wearing a tasteful pantsuit, sitting next to her wife, explaining to the Today show how shed once stood in her backyard contemplating suicide because she couldnt bear to live as a closeted transgender woman.

But I realized I couldnt go through with it, she said. I was important enough to keep going.

So she came out, in 2013. She wrote a letter to her colleagues at a Michigan funeral home explaining that she would now be using a different name and wearing different clothes. It was difficult, but she did it, and the funeral home fired her because of it, and she sued.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Stephens dismissal seven years ago had been unconstitutional. Six of nine justices agreed that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred discrimination because of sex, should also protect LGBTQ employees.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, wrote the courts majority opinion. Those of us who dont make a habit of reading Supreme Court opinions might have skipped it in favor of skimming the news headlines. I recommend wading into the decision itself, though. Its history, after all. Its good to see how many citations and addendums go into the documents that will inform our rights as citizens.

One of the opinions repeated arguments is that the issue of sex discrimination cannot be viewed only as the equal treatment of men and women as classes, but as the rights of individual men, individual women, individual humans. An employer who has a blanket ban on hiring both lesbians and gay men might be technically treating women and men equally, but this perverse version of equality means nothing to the individual employee who has lost his job for bringing his husband to the company picnic.

An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex, Gorsuch wrote.

Gorsuch has a libertarian bent, and constitutional scholars might argue this is where the focus on the individual comes from. But in the opinion it has a more poetic effect: There is law, and there are policies, and there are companies and the jigsaw puzzle of compliance and theres a rope-ladder of courts, District to Supreme, made up of judges who might, like Samuel Alito, write a catty dissent invoking pirate ships and the ghost of Antonin Scalia, or who might, like Gorsuch, agree that the law means Aimee Stephens deserves to keep her job.

And then, there are the individuals. The Aimees. The human beings whose lives give meaning to the law, and test whether something is merely legal, or actually just.

Aimee Stephens didnt get to reclaim her job. She died of kidney failure last month.

The case outlived her, just as it had outlived Don Zarda, another plaintiff in Mondays decision. He was a sky diving instructor. Back in 2010, preparing for a tandem jump, he reassured a nervous female customer that he was gay, and then he was fired, and then he sued.

He died in 2014, in a base-jumping accident. It was four years after hed lost his livelihood, but six years before the Supreme Court would finally decide that he shouldnt have. He would just be beyond excited, his mother, Shirley, told the New York Post of the courts decision.

Aimee and Don were not trying to do anything but exist. They died while the legal system was still treating their existence as if it were a matter of philosophical debate. Thats one of the struggles of America, though. We have devils advocate debates, and we have provocative op-eds, and majority and minority opinions, and meanwhile our existential questions are someone elses actual existence.

Seven years of waiting. In the life of the law, its a blink. In the life of an individual, its an eternity.

Aimee Stephens had been open about her health struggles. Those who followed her story could see it declining in interview after interview: hair turning from auburn to white, wrinkles papering her skin, the eventual use of a wheelchair.

Year after year, her case meandered through a methodical legal system motions, objections, filings and appendixes and Stephens continued to wait. Because she was important enough to keep going. And because, when the countrys moral dilemma is your very own life, you dont have any choice but to keep living it.

In that same Today show interview, Stephens acknowledged the vast implications of her case. It is my life, but its also a lot of other peoples lives, she said.

Mondays ruling honored her as a hero. It came too late to honor her as a human.

Monica Hesse is a columnist for the Washington Posts Style section who frequently writes about gender and its impact on society.

Read the rest here:

OPINION EXCHANGE | At the center of that Supreme Court ruling were people - Minneapolis Star Tribune

Two white guys in their 70s. Thats the best the two-party system has offered to represent the U.S.

Dr. Joanne Jorgensen believes this is the best time to be a third-party candidate. And the best candidate might just be a woman not in her 70s, which she is both.

Dr. Jo is the Libertarian Partys 2020 presidential candidate. And she says, for those who think voting third-party is, essentially, like voting for Donald Trump, theyre wrong.

History shows that we typically take from both sides equally, Jorgensen said on La Crosse Talk PM. However, we do take more votes from independents or people who havent voted. Thats who we take most of our votes from. People are so fed up.

She added thats pretty much how we got Trump in the first place.

It was a bunch of people who said, Were fed up with the professional politicians, we want an outsider, but then we get Trump, who promises us smaller government, but gives us bigger government, Jorgensen said. He was supposed to get rid of the deficit, but its just getting bigger.

Part of Jorgensens platform is, of course, ending government debt, but also to get the U.S. out of foreign wars and transition the world not just the U.S. away from coal and oil and toward nuclear power.

On that note, Jorgensen said that the new tech surrounding nuclear is what environmentalists should be pushing over green energy options, like wind and solar.

If they were efficient, if they were a good option, then people would have invested their own money in it to make a killing, Jorgensen said. If there were profits to be made, you know that the greedy capitalist would have done it, right? And I say that facetiously.

Thats the good part of the free-market system, is that the dollars go to the good market choices.

Green energy, however, at its most efficient, might not make capitalists any money, however, unless they figured out a way to charge to use the sun or command the wind.

Jorgensen also touched on income inequality, which she said theres not a problem at the top.

Whenever we have progress, she said, whenever we have technology and people working to better their lives we have a wealth gap, because there are opportunities that some people make that others, either choose not to or whatever.

Jorgensen was very much against anything having to do with a wealth tax, as that word, tax, is not anything Libertarians stand for. The problems, to her, with poverty has been the governments fault.

Her solutions to end poverty hover around eliminating government policies and regulations that, she says, drive up costs for anything from housing to health care to new businesses.

Jorgensen lays out some of the issues on her campaign website taxes, health care, social security, among others but notes that they are just brief overviews.

Originally posted here:

The other Jo, wants your 2020 vote, if youre fed up with the two-party system or if youre not - WIZM NEWS