Daily Archives: March 27, 2022

By Dan Murphy

A Zogby poll for NY Governor in February had democrat Kathy Hochul at 50%, republican Lee Zeldin at 29%, and Libertarian party candidate Larry Sharpe at 6%. We wondered who Larry Sharpe is and why he is running for Governor.

Larry Sharpe is a businessman, consultant, Marine Corps Veteran, Native New Yorker, and active member in the Libertarian Party. In 2016, Sharpe wanted to be the Libertarian Party nominee for vice-president. He lost the party nomination to Bill Weld.

In 2018 Sharpe ran as the Libertarian candidate for NY Governor, and received 95,033 votes, (1.6%). This total entitled Sharpe and the Libertarian Party automatic ballot access in NY for the next four years.

But in 2019 former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo, angry at the Working Families Party for endorsing Cynthia Nixon for Governor, changed the election laws in NY to make it harder for minor parties like the Libertarian Party to stay on the ballot.

Last year, the Libertarian Party and three other minor parties lost their ballot status in NY. Sharpe is running for Governor of NY in 2022 but at the same time, working to collect the 45,000 signatures needed to run on the Libertarian Party line.

We spoke to Sharpe about his run for governor. Im running to show the people of New York that there is another option. We started this in 2018 and we got on the TV news shows, the Joe Rogan show, and made a real campaign. And to get 2% on the Libertarian Party line in NY, the deepest blue state, is amazing.

Now in 2022 the work continues. We are a real third party. Most of the minor political parties are puppet parties, they follow the democrats or republicans. And while fewer and fewer people are registered democrat or republican, the Libertarians are growing.

My campaign is traveling to every county in New York State. We are building a real party. In 2019 we elected libertarians across the state. The biggest win for Libertarians in New York State was when Michael Korchak was elected District Attorney of Broome County. We have a DA in New York who is a libertarian. That used to be unheard of, said Sharpe.

Now they made it harder for us to run statewide. We now must collect 45,000 signature and we have to get 130,000 votes every two years. In 2018 I did what the state told me to do, we would give you ballot access for four years if you got more than 50,000 votes. The state said screw you and reneged on their agreement.

The decision to cancel our party resulted in disenfranchising registered libertarian voters. If you dont like Larry Sharpe then dont vote for me. But dont put harm on thousands of New Yorkers who lost their party. We are the only political party that allows people from the left and right to come join us. We only ask that we dont let government impose their views and leave us alone.

Sharpe recently picked up the endorsement of former Presidential candidate Andrew Yang and the Forward Party that he created.

Another small political party in NY, the UniteNY party, is also considering endorsing Sharpe, who is hoping to have three ballot lines in November, Libertarian, UniteNY, and Forward Party, but all three parties have to go out and get 45,000 signatures between April 19-May 24, to get on the ballot.

Im taking a year from my life to raise the money and get on the ballot. But for regular New Yorkers, how can they do this? Only the wealthy and the establishment can do it, and thats the way they want it, an elitist system. And we have to raise and spend $150,000 to do it, said Sharpe.

If elected, I will change the rule overnight, and return to the old rules, they were good enough. I think what we have now is unconstitutional and embarrassing.

Sharpe supports three electoral reforms that he says, will open up the election system in our state.

In New York, its 3 to 1 democrat, and in New York City its 6 to 1 democrat. That means that republican have a zero chance at winning statewide. Its either a democrat or an outsider, and the states getting bluer. One million republicans went to Florida and turned Florida republican red.

Im the outsider, and if you are a republican or a democrat you need to think about what it would take to vote for the other guy. And democrats wont vote for a republican, but they would vote for me.

One hurdle that Sharpe knows that he has to overcome is, A lot of people dont want to vote for me because they think I cant win. They think why waste my vote?

Sharpe said that his campaign strategy centers on preparing to be ready, if Hochul stumbles, those pissed off democratic will never vote republican, but they would think about voting for me. And in a three-way race, you dont need 51% you can win with 35%. That is possible.

And what if I come in 2nd? And beat the republican? Now I have the attention of the media and of New Yorkers and we can begin to talk about actual solutions to our problems. And I do have solutions, as opposed to republican who have no ideas and democrats who have bad ideas.

Sharpe wants to cut property taxes in half by raising money to pay for schools in part by leasing naming rights to MTA properties, bridges and tolls. Right now, neither side is offering solutions. It will only be when there is a viable third party that both sides will try again to help you and solve your problems.

I want to help the working poor, the middle class and the entrepreneurs. If we fix those three parts of our state, we can save our state. Sharpe added, I hope Andrew Cuomo runs because that hurts the democratic candidate. He will have to create his own party to run.

Sharpe also distinguished himself from the other candidates by pointing out, Im the only candidate not getting a government check. I dont have a government job or a government pension. Your tax dollars dont pay a dime to me. Im the only one suffering with you.

I say to those New Yorkers who are pissed off at our government, come to me, Im the anti-establishment candidate. Im trying to make New York a better place, visit LarrySharpe.com for more information.

See more here:
Larry Sharpe, and Libertarians, Want New Yorkers to Look Beyond Democrat and Republican Parties - Yonkers Times

Interior of the Liberland Metaverse City Hall, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects for the Free Republic of Liberland (all images courtesy ZHA and Mytaverse)

In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse, Neal Stephenson wrote in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, whose protagonist, Hiro, spends most of his time in virtual reality. There is a reason that the modern-day and ever-growing metaverse takes its name from Stephensons seminal work of science fiction: 30 years later, the book no longer reads as excitingly futuristic, but more like prophecy. If the fictional negotiation between escapism into virtual spaces and a physical world that increasingly struggles to support terrestrial existence felt like a stimulating thought exercise in the 1990s, it feels downright terrifying now, as we crest the rollercoaster and begin the plunge.

If Stephenson hears about plans for the new cyber-urban Liberland metaverse, revealed this week by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA), he will no doubt experience the kind of grim satisfaction that comes from being right about something terrible. The curving cityscape design features the soft, yonic structures for which the firms founding architect became internationally famous, and embodies the kind of paleo-futuristic aesthetics that weve been worshipping since 2001 (the Space Odyssey, not the year).

But its not the design that is troubling about this corner of the metaverse, so much as the fact that its meant to be the meta-counterpart to the real-world Free Republic of Liberland. Situated as a sovereign state between Croatia and Serbia on the west bank of the Danube River, Liberland declared itself a state in 2015 and prides itself on personal and economic freedom for its people. Per a statement on its website, this includes limited power given to the government to ensure less interference with the freedom of the people and the nation as a whole. It is not currently recognized by any other nations.

The citizenry is comprised of 7,000 online applicants, chosen from a pool of 700,000 by the nations founder, Euroskeptic Czech politician Vit Jedlika. According to reporting by CNN, the country itself is an uninhabited patch of land stretching a little over four miles, which is politically contested, heavily forested, and contains only badly maintained access roads and an abandoned run-down house. Extremely fitting, since that is exactly the amount of infrastructure that can be supported under the principles of Libertarianism.

But in the metaverse, oh ho! Liberland can flourish, unconcerned with having to maintain tedious infrastructure, since its already been provided. Certainly, there are bound to be many Stephenson fans in the mix, spending cryptocurrency, visiting business incubators, and attending a gallery for NFT art shows (just to make things extra insufferable). ZHA principal architect Patrik Schumacher proposes that the metaverse is such a good match for Libertarians because both prioritize goals of decentralization and autonomy.

Its a very lively scene of contributorsa lot of IT and crypto and tech entrepreneurs who find the world too restrictive, he told CNN. (If there is one category of people who are incredibly oppressed and never get to do whatever they want, its tech entrepreneurs!)

Plans for Liberland are still developing, but the virtual city hopes to distinguish itself from the rest of the metaverse by creating certain zones which will be free of collective rulemaking, according to Schumacher. Again, it is hard to imagine what Libertarian tech bros need to get up to that they are not already rampantly allowed to do, but one suspects it may not be fully legal.

The Liberland metaverse is currently in beta, being tested on two virtual floors in one of the buildings. Invited guests may explore the space as avatars, chat with each other, and share their screens on one of the rooms windows. An opening party for 100 attendees is planned for April 13, which is the birthday of the third United States President and libertarian hero Thomas Jefferson (eye roll emoji). In the meantime, if youd like some light reading, Ill leave you with another Snow Crash excerpt that feels not-at-all relevant, in terms of the toxic culture of doing whatever you want.

All these beefy Caucasians with guns! Get enough of them together, looking for the America they always believed theyd grow up in, and they glom together like overcooked rice, form integral, starchy little units. With their power tools, portable generators, weapons, four-wheel-drive vehicles, and personal computers, they are like beavers hyped up on crystal meth, manic engineers without a blueprint, chewing through the wilderness, building things and abandoning them, altering the flow of mighty rivers and then moving on because the place aint what it used to be. The byproduct of the lifestyle is polluted rivers, greenhouse effect, spouse abuse, televangelists, and serial killers. But as long as you have that fourwheel-drive vehicle and can keep driving north, you can sustain it, keep moving just quickly enough to stay one step ahead of your own waste stream. In twenty years, ten million white people will converge on the north pole and park their bagos there. The low-grade waste heat of their thermodynamically intense lifestyle will turn the crystalline icescape pliable and treacherous. It will melt a hole through the polar icecap, and all that metal will sink to the bottom, sucking the biomass down with it.

Science fiction, am I right?

Link:
Architects Reveal Bizarre Plans for a Libertarian City in the Metaverse - Hyperallergic

Its easy enough to get on Nevadas ballots if youre a Republican or a Democrat. Its both a little easier and considerably more complicated if youre not.

The easy part, if youre not a Republican or a Democrat and youre running for partisan public office most elected offices youve heard of, like governor or assemblyperson, in other words, plus a few others is you dont have to think about primaries. Those, according to statute, are reserved for what the law calls major political parties the two political parties youve heard of who have won nearly every partisan election in this state since the Silver Party stopped being a going concern during the Taft Administration. Consequently, assuming you meet the minimum requirements to file and serve for public office, you can rest easy, secure in the knowledge your name will be on your voters general election ballots in November.

The harder part, however, depends on how you want to run for partisan office without being a Republican or a Democrat.

If youre planning on running as a nonpartisan candidate as someone without any party affiliation at all for a partisan office, then the law requires you to run as an independent candidate (not to be confused with the Independent American Party). To do so, you either need to get a petition supporting your candidacy signed by 250 voters (if youre running for statewide office), 100 voters (if youre running for county or district office), or one percent of the number of registered voters in your county or district whichever is lesser. In some races in rural Nevada, you might run out of signature lines before you run out of fingers and toes.

If youre planning on running as what is colloquially referred to as a third party candidate, however a minor party candidate, in statutory terms then you better hope your party of choice has ballot access.

***

Creating a political party in Nevada is almost laughably easy. Just write a certificate of existence with the name of your party, the names of its officers, the names of the members of its executive committee, and the name of the person authorized to file the list of candidates for partisan office, then submit it to the Secretary of State.

Its not hard. Heres a free template:

Todays Date

Your Political Party

Certificate of Existence

Nevada Secretary of State

ATTN: Election Division

101 North Carson Street, Suite 3

Carson City, NV 89701

This certificate of existence, pursuant to NRS 293.171, hereby declares the existence of a new political party, named Your Political Party, to the office of the Secretary of State. The First Officer of Your Political Party is Your Name. The Second Officer of Your Political Party is Their Name. The First Officer and Second Officer constitute the Executive Committee of Your Political Party. The person authorized to file the list of candidates for partisan office for Your Political Party is the First Officer, Your Name.

For any questions regarding this submission, please contact First Officer Your Name at Your Phone Number or Your Email Address.

Sincerely,

You

Go ahead copy and paste that into the word processor or text editor of your choice, personalize it a bit, and mail it to the Secretary of State. Tell them The Nevada Independent sent you.

Legally, the only real requirement is plurality since the law says your certificate of existence must have names (plural) of officers (plural), then your new political party must have at least two members. Even that modest requirement was seldom adhered to strictly, however if the Legal Marijuana NOW Nevada Party ever had more than one member when they filed their certificate of existence in 2016, the acting chairperson, treasurer, and secretary never bothered to commit their names to electronic paper.

Getting your new political partys candidates on any of Nevadas ballots, however, is a bit more involved, which is why only two minor parties have succeeded at doing so since 2010. NRS 293.1715 doesnt grant ballot access to just any group of nobodies who send the secretary of state a letter. Instead, it provides minor parties three options to earn and maintain ballot access.

If your party is extremely lucky, at least one percent of Nevadas voters will voluntarily choose to register to vote under your party affiliation if they do, you automatically get to file your candidates for partisan public office. This is why the Independent American Party which has attracted nearly 100,000 very confused voters who think theyre not actually registered with any political party at all will remain on our ballots until either the heat death of the universe, the end of electoral politics in this state, or until someone finally makes them remove Independent from their name.

If your party is moderately lucky, at least one percent of those who vote for a Nevadan congressional candidate will also vote for one of your partys candidates somewhere on their ballot. This could be any of your partys candidates it could be your presidential candidate, it could be a candidate for Clark County District Attorney, or it could even be a Washoe County commissioner candidate. This, with a couple of exceptions well get into shortly, is how the Libertarian Party has kept its candidates on Nevadas ballots since the law was changed in 1993 to require a minor party candidate to receive only one percent of Nevadas congressional votes instead of the three percent originally required in 1987.

One of the exceptions happened because the Libertarian Party was extremely lucky in 2020 none of the partys candidates met this threshold in 2018, but ballot access was maintained because just over one percent of Nevadas voters were registered Libertarian on January 1, 2020. They were considerably less lucky, however, when none of the partys candidates reached the one percent threshold in 2000 and consequently lost ballot access going into 2002.

After the 2000 election, the Libertarian Party had to earn ballot access for its candidates in 2002 the same way the Green Party tried to earn ballot access for itself in 2016 they put together a statewide petition drive. Unlike a nonpartisan candidate, however, they had to collect far more than 250 signatures. A political party without existing ballot access needs at least as many signatures as one percent of the congressional voters in the last election for any of its candidates to show up on a single ballot. Because 1,355,607 Nevadans voted for (or against) a congressional representative in 2020, minor parties without ballot access need to collect at least 13,557 signatures this year and, as many signatures are duplicates or invalid, they should probably collect another 7,000 signatures or so just to be on the safe side.

The deadline for turning those signatures in, by the way, is 10 days before the third Friday of June (June 7, this year), long before most voters are even thinking about an election. If your party doesnt have enough signatures, or if too many of your signatures are thrown into the trash (sorry, Green Party), none of your candidates will make it onto a single Nevadan ballot.

This is where most candidates give up or, more accurately, decide its not worth betting their presence on Nevadas November ballots on the petitioning skills of the Green or Legal Marijuana NOW or whatever other minor party. If a candidate runs as a nonpartisan, they need no more than 250 signatures, and frequently far fewer. Run as a nonpartisan candidate in either an Esmeralda or Lincoln county commission district race and you only need about as many signatures as you have fingers. If you want to run in the same race as a Green Party candidate, you better hope someone can miracle 20,000 signatures or so for you by the beginning of June.

Losing ballot access in Nevada, in other words by failing to have enough registered voters and failing to secure enough votes in an election is catastrophic for minor parties. To overcome the loss, minor parties have to commit to spending tens of thousands of dollars (well in excess of what a minor party can usually expect to raise in a decade) on a statewide petition drive with no guarantee of success. Failing that, they disappear off of the ballot entirely, never to return.

***

The Libertarian Party of Nevada might maybe run the risk of losing ballot access this year.

To understand why, we need to take a look at how the Libertarian Party has secured ballot access for itself in the past:

During presidential years, the Libertarian Party has been incredibly fortunate. Gary Johnson ran some truly impressive campaigns, for a minor party candidate, in 2012 and 2016, and Jo Jorgensen enjoyed a bit of afterglow from those runs in 2020.

Support for the rest of the partys candidates, however, has been lackluster for over a decade.

Part of the problem is Nevadas status as a swing state because every election in Nevada feels like it could go to either major party, both of the major parties are far more likely to run candidates in every partisan race than they were in the past. In 1998, for example, there were no Democratic candidates for secretary of state or treasurer consequently, those who werent interested in voting for Republicans Dean Heller or Brian Krolicki had to either vote for a minor party candidate or vote for None of These Candidates.

Nowadays, however, there are Republicans in every partisan race in the state and Democrats in most of them (except in rural Nevada, where there arent enough voters to reach the necessary threshold to maintain ballot access even if a Libertarian won something for once). Consequently, there are fewer races, like Kim Schjangs run for state Senate against David Parks in 2016, where a Libertarian can get double-digit percentages of the vote in a race by being the only opposing candidate.

The other part of the problem is that Americans are frankly just less likely to vote for minor party candidates than they used to be. From 1980 to 2000, minor party presidential candidates earned over five percent of the popular vote three times once when John Anderson ran in 1980, followed by Ross Perots two runs in 1992 and 1996. Not a single minor party presidential candidate has repeated the feat since Gary Johnsons most successful run, in 2016, only netted him 3.28 percent. Ralph Nader, meanwhile, didnt even earn that much in 2000 he only received 2.74 percent of the popular vote.

Even those modest percentages are enough to secure ballot access in Nevada, however provided the rest of the partys candidates can achieve even that much. Other than its presidential tickets, however, the Libertarian Partys statewide candidates have routinely failed to even reach the necessary 1 percent threshold for over a decade. The last time a non-presidential Libertarian candidate won over 1 percent of Nevadas votes in a statewide race was in 2004, when Thomas L. Hurst ran for Senate. Jared Lord came closest since then in 2018 during his run for Senate, but he only picked up 0.96 percent. Art Lampitt, Jr. didnt even earn 5,000 votes from his gubernatorial run in 2010 he needed at least another 2,000 votes to reach the necessary threshold.

During non-presidential years, however, there has been a comparatively surefire way for the Libertarian Party to maintain ballot access, at least when the party could be bothered to execute it run someone for a Clark County partisan race.

The reason is mathematics more than 70 percent of Nevadas voters live in Clark County mixed with a greater willingness for voters to vote for a minor party candidate as they get closer to the bottom of their ballots. When a minor party is lucky, they stumble into a two-way race in Nevadas most populous county, like the Libertarian Party did in 2014 when Jim Duensing ran for district attorney against the man who was prosecuting him for resisting arrest at a traffic stop. Even if theyre less lucky, however, like in 2010, minor party candidates for offices like county assessor, county recorder, or public administrator routinely get nearly 2 percent of the vote. That doesnt sound like much, but 2 percent of 70 percent of the states voters works out to 1.4 percent not enough to make much news, but more than enough to secure ballot access and allow your partys candidates to run for office without a petition drive in the subsequent election season.

When the Libertarian Party hasnt thrown someone at a Clark County partisan office during a non-presidential year like 2022 their luck has been pressed to the wall. In 2018, they only kept ballot access because, for the first and last time in state party history, over 1 percent of the registered voters in the state registered as Libertarians they are currently 14 voters shy of that threshold now. In 2006, it took Tom Koziol securing over 5 percent of the vote in his run for Washoe County assessor to reach the necessary 1 percent statewide threshold and he barely made it.

***

The reason I bring all of this up is two-fold.

The first reason is, just like in 2018, the Libertarian Party of Nevada chose not to run anyone for a Clark County-wide partisan office. Theyre not even running anyone for a Washoe County-wide partisan office. The closest theyre coming to running anyone that far down-ballot is a Clark County commissioner candidate (not a single one of those has ever secured ballot access for the Libertarian Party) and a Washoe County commissioner candidate (one of those somehow actually did keep the Libertarian Partys ballot access alive Ernest Walker pulled the improbable off in a two-way race for county commissioner in 1996). Instead, theyre running candidates in every statewide race, from senator and governor to controller races which, historically, the party has historically struggled to get more than a few thousand votes in.

Additionally, only one race Darby Lee Burns candidacy against Richard McArthur (R-Las Vegas) in Assembly District 4 is a two-way race. Securing ballot access from an Assembly race isnt impossible Nate Santucci received enough votes to secure ballot access in his run for Assembly District 22 in 2008 but its not exactly probable. Despite earning nearly 40 percent of the vote and running a comparatively energetic campaign, by minor party candidate standards, Dennis Hof still fell 100 votes short of the necessary threshold when he ran against James Oscarson in 2016.

If a single paper candidate a candidate who paid the filing fee and then disappeared for the rest of the year filed for Clark County clerk before the filing deadline, that candidate would be in a three-way race at the bottom of the ballot where a few extra voters will happily vote for a minor party candidate because the stakes are, in their minds, nonexistent. Instead, the partys ballot access fortunes likely rest upon two three-way statewide races the attorney general race, which is likely to be high profile this year (and, consequently, one voters are less likely to vote for minor party candidates) and the race for controller, which might maybe have a low enough profile in Nevadas voters minds for a few thousand voters to vote for a Libertarian while they vote for major party candidates farther up their ballots.

Maybe.

The second reason is admittedly personal. I used to be a member of the Libertarian Party of Nevada, and while I was one, I was usually in a position to strongly influence where we filed our candidates (unlike major parties, minor parties in Nevada actually get to pick and choose who runs under their banner and where). In 2018, however, my colleagues, who were flush with confidence following Gary Johnsons unprecedented success in 2016, talked us out of running any paper candidates for a Clark County-wide partisan office we were, you see, beyond running paper candidates and worrying about ballot access.

In retrospect, we were most certainly not.

After 2018, I started to wonder if I was sinking my energies into something which did some long-term good, or if I was just wasting my time. Two years later, I developed severe ideological differences with some of the new activists and leaders who joined after the pandemic and grew increasingly dissatisfied with the systemic dysfunction of the national party. Finally, tired of spending time on a project I no longer believed in anymore, I left the Libertarian Party.

Even so, even with all of the differences Ive developed with the party through the years, I spent over a decade organizing and running for office with the party to, if not succeed on my or our own merits, to at least ensure somebody could succeed under that banner under their own merits at some later point down the road. I may not agree with what the party stands for today, I certainly have no intention of voting for their candidates, and I certainly wont encourage anyone else to but, for purely personal and sentimental reasons, I would still miss seeing Libertarian Party candidates on my ballot.

It would mean all of my efforts for the party all of them were ultimately for nothing.

Which perhaps they were.

Perhaps, given the direction the party is taking these days, its for the best if they were.

Whether its really for the best or not, though, Nevadans are seeing fewer and fewer choices on our ballots, and thats not something I can cheer for. If past experience the experience of the Green Party, the Natural Law Party, the Tea Party, or the other minor parties who no longer place candidates on our ballots anymore is any guide, if the Libertarian Party doesnt earn ballot access this year, we may never get their choice back.

David Colborne ran for office twice and served on the executive committees for his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is now an IT manager, a registered nonpartisan voter, the father of two sons, and a weekly opinion columnist for The Nevada Independent. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [emailprotected].

Read this article:
Nevadans may have one fewer political party on ballots in 2024 - The Nevada Independent

One of the hallmarks of this present age is our growing inability in Western society to define anything with any degree of cogency. As J.K. Rowling has pointed out repeatedly, the concept of woman is now a matter of bitter debate and not, as it was until the day before yesterday, something that was essentially tied to biology, even if some cultural variation regarding what constituted femininity has always existed. But it is not simply those words targeted by the mainstreaming of the least plausible aspects of modern academic theory that have plunged into the abyss of incoherence. Others have become victims too, not least the whole notion of conservatism.

What is modern conservatism? Is it the Christian nationalism that haunts the nightmares of so many evangelical elites? Is it working-class populism that pits itself against the claims of the privileged panjandrums of the progressive political class? Is it just code for a rejection of any notion of progress? Is it a radical libertarianism? Or is it the vision, now an increasingly forlorn hope, that was set forth in book after book by the late great Roger Scruton and inspired so many of us over the years? The answer, I suspect, is that all of the above are considered by somebody somewhere to be conservatism.

Nowhere is this problem seen more dramatically, yet seductively, than in the rise of gay conservatism. The recent Twitter announcementby right-wing pundit Dave Rubin that he and his same-sex partner are expecting two children later this year is a case in point. The post plays powerfully to the spirit of our age: two attractive and charming young men smiling with delight as they display the sonograms of the children they will be welcoming into the world. The moral narrative is what we might term an aesthetic one: The visible happiness of the couple is the key thing, and that plays to the spirit of our age. There is no larger moral vision by which the picture is to be judged.

There must, of course, be a larger moral vision, no matter how overwhelmed it is by the photogenic nature of the subjects. The creation of new life, and the circumstances surrounding such, is something of pressing importance not simply to the couple involved but to society at large. The moral vision here is that whatever makes the modern man or woman happy and which technology makes possible must be good. That may be the spirit of the age, but it is not the spirit of conservatism.

Conservatism and same-sex marriage are incompatible because, whatever else conservatism is, it respects the basic boundaries and limitations of what it means to be human and thus the limits that places on human relationships. The latter denies this, even if it can on occasion couch itself in the trappings of domestic traditions originally built upon such limitations, as here in the winsome picture of two people anticipating parenthood. But this is not parenthood that respects human limitations, such as sex difference of parents or of the child as a created gift rather than a manufactured commodity, whatever the personal sentiments or intentions of the adults involved. It is a form of human relationship made possible by the marriage of technological capabilities, late modern moral tastes, and a basic rejection of the natural structure of reproductive relationships.

In fact, gay conservatism has more in common with an increasingly influential strand of revolutionary thought than with conservatism more broadly considered: cyborg feminism. This was a strain of feminist thinking developed in the 1970s and 80s by thinkers such as Shulamith Firestone and Donna Haraway. This was a feminism that looked to technology, specifically reproductive technology, to shatter all distinctions between the sexes. And at the center of this was the matter of reproduction: By using technology to conceive children, the burden (as they saw it) of motherhood would finally be lifted off the shoulders of women and the last great oppressive division of laborthat which naturally existed between men and womenwould be abolished. This note has recently been picked up and developed by contemporary feminist Sophie Lewis in her campaign for what she dubs gestational justice. It is no coincidence that cyborg feminism is trans-affirming, for biological sex is merely a condition that technology must be used to overcome.

Gay conservatism is much the same, only more so with the attempt to be more tasteful and less threatening in its aesthetics. It repudiates traditional marriage while parasitically feeding off its traditional trappings to give its revolutionary character a veneer of traditionalism and an emotionally attractive appeal. Yet gay surrogacy is the move that gives the game away: It operates with precisely the kind of technologically enabled logic outlined by Firestone, Haraway, and Lewis, all of whom were far more honestor perhaps merely more astute and self-consciousabout the implications of their thought. Those implications are as socially and politically revolutionary as anything advocated by Firestone and Haraway, and the tragedy is that its conservative advocates do not seem to understand that. Cyborg conservatism, like gay conservatism, is no conservatism at all. Not even close.

Read the original:
Gay conservatism is a contradiction in terms - WORLD News Group

Even some Democrats are sensing a shift in the political winds and adapting accordingly. The leading challenger to Gov. Kathy Hochul in New Yorks Democratic primary race, Representative Tom Suozzi of Long Island, this week joined Republicans in Albany who have criticized the states 2020 bail reform law as too soft on dangerous criminals.

When theres no consequences for crime, Suozzi said, crime keeps going up.

What a return to tough-on-crime messaging could mean for policy at the national and state level remains an open question.

The United States presides over one of the largest inmate populations on Earth about two million incarcerated people spread across more than 1,500 state prisons, 102 federal prisons and thousands of other detention facilities large and small. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden pledged to cut the number of people in prison by more than half, but there is scant sign of progress toward that goal.

A conservative turn against reducing the prison population would make Bidens promise nearly impossible to fulfill.

Adam Gelb, the president and chief executive of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan policy and research organization based in Atlanta, said he saw signs of retrenchment on the right, but added, Too many strands of the conservative coalition have been woven together to unravel entirely.

That coalition has been an unusual set of political bedfellows: fiscal conservatives who object to prisons as a bloated, expensive bureaucracy; libertarians who fear government overreach into peoples private lives, especially when it comes to drug use; and evangelical Christians who believe in second chances and redemption. Hard-right traditionalists like Cotton and Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri were never part of that group, advocates emphasize.

Meanwhile, Republican-controlled states including Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Utah are all moving ahead with moves to limit no-knock warrants, revamp civil forfeiture rules and expunge criminal records for nonviolent offenses.

See the article here:
Jackson's Hearing Shows How Republicans and Democrats Are Diverging on Crime - The New York Times

But this leads to the second point, which is that dissent can still be important in cases where the interventionists are initially correct. Our decision to topple the Taliban in 2001, for instance, remains the right and necessary call in hindsight, notwithstanding the debacles that followed. But that didnt make Lees dissenting vote any less important because it anticipated the disaster of our nation-building effort, the over-expansive application of the authorization to use military force, the various abuses of presidential power in the War on Terror.

Likewise, in the current moment theres no way to know for sure whether Thomas Massies libertarian warnings about the Houses measures that theyre overly broad, escalatory and liable to presidential abuse will be borne out by events. But its entirely possible for arming Ukraine to be good policy and for Massie to be right that some elements of the American response to Russian aggression could go badly or disastrously astray.

Finally, dissent matters because the potential scale of a disastrous outcome in a conflict with Russia is so much greater than even the worst-case scenarios in other recent wars. Lets say, for the sake of argument, that because of the Biden administrations caution, theres only a 5 percent chance that our support for Ukraine leads to unexpected escalation, to the American militarys direct involvement in the war. Whereas if you looked at the Bush administrations policy toward Iraq in late 2002, you would have said that the odds of a war for regime change in that case were well over 50 percent.

On that level, the Biden policy seems much safer for a cautious realist to support. But that hypothetical 5 percent risk carries with it some still-more-fractional risk of nuclear escalation, which is a much more existential danger than even the more disastrous scenarios for Iraq. That has to create its own distinctive set of calculations. Even if the Biden policy is the best course, you still need an unusual level of vigilance, a somewhat hyperactive caution, around the possibility of escalation. And here the anticipatory critique of elite failure that were getting from the populists becomes valuable: Not because it will necessarily be vindicated, but because even a small risk of elite folly is worth worrying over when nuclear weapons are potentially involved.

For a practical example of that folly from Republican politics, consider the G.O.P. Senate primary in Ohio, where J.D. Vance has been running as a populist traitor to the intelligentsia that helped make his Hillbilly Elegy a best seller. (Full disclosure: I used to have long conversations with Vance about the future of the G.O.P., if youd like to hold me responsible for the tone of his campaign.) That populist pitch has included a strong dose of anti-interventionism, which led him to declare his indifference to what happens to Ukraine, relative to domestic concerns, just before Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade.

Its a comment that has been highlighted and condemned by populisms critics since the invasion, and in the recent Republican Senate debate Vance took predictable fire over the issue. But in the same debate the two candidates who are seemingly ahead of him in the polls, Mike Gibbons and Josh Mandel, both endorsed an improbable halfway kind of escalation a no-fly zone somehow imposed by Europeans rather than Americans, with the idea that this would thread the needle between thwarting Russia and accidentally starting World War III.

It was an idea that only Vance wholeheartedly condemned, and he was right. Under wartime conditions, the escalatory fantasies of his rivals have our European allies close Ukraines skies, and then when they get into a shooting war with Russia, we do what? carry a more immediate risk than the dangers of populist indifference, the flaws of isolationist dissent.

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Opinion | Why We Need Wartime Dissent - The New York Times

When Im asked to explain Web 3.0 I always try to start by explaining that the world is far more diverse than just coins and financial assets.

This is similar to my old saw about history being more detailed than just who won what war and why. Culture is not just coinage.

The entirety of the human experience, which arguably will be predominantly expressed via the web if anywhere in technology, is vast and rich beyond monetary action. Only about half of transactions even involve money at all.

Yet, for many people their only topic of interest or focus on technology is how to capitalize as quickly as possible on anything new. Beware their depictions of the Web solely as finance instead of encompassing our most rich and interesting possibilities.

Geolocation data, as just one facet, has long been recognized as a source of power and authority. Think of it in holistic terms of the English and Dutch cracking the secretive Portuguese spice trade routes and upending global power, instead of just focusing on the spices being traded.

Knowledge is a form of power, which have been expressed as political systems far more vast than markets alone could ever encompass.

Here is an example to illustrate how oversimplification of humanity down to financial terms becomes an ethical quagmire, highlighting some very important mistakes of the past.

Ukraine cancelled a Crypto airdrop.

a lot of people were abusing the possibility of an airdrop by sending minuscule donations just to benefit themselves. This is a common tactic among crypto investors, known as airdrop farming.

Farming is in fact the opposite of what is described here. Growing food at low margin so that others may gain has somehow been framed backwards: extraction of value from someone elses plan to help others.

In other words airdrop farming is far more like airdrop banking as it has nothing in common with farms but a lot in common with banks. It begs a question why there there was any direct return and benefit of donations, given what has been said in past about that loop.

Appropriation of the term farming in this context thus reads to me as propaganda; we may as well be in a discussion of Molotovs WWII bombs as a delivery of bread baskets.

Likewise in the same story Krakens CEO displayed complete ignorance by saying his company would be on the side of Russia in this war and could not help Ukraine because in his mind political Bitcoin only has libertarian values.

Exchanges including Coinbase, Binance, KuCoin, and Kraken all refused Fedorovs February public request that they freeze all Russian accounts, not just those that were legally required by recently-imposed sanctions. The companies said such an action would hurt peaceful Russian citizens and go against Bitcoins libertarian values, as Kraken CEO Jesse Powell put it.

Calling Bitcoin libertarian is like calling diamonds bloody.

In fact, Bitcoin is notoriously slow-moving (terrible for payments) and notoriously volatile (terrible for currency) just like blood diamonds being extracted from dirt at artificially low cost to artificially inflate their value to a very small group desperate for power.

Mining doesnt have to be an exercise in oppressive asset hoarding with a total disdain for the value of human life, but Kraken clearly displays here they operate intentionally to repeat the worst thinking in history.

So what values are we talking about really? Proportionality (tailoring response to the level of the attack, avoiding collateral impact) is not a libertarian concept, obviously, because its a form of regulation (let alone morality).

Note instead there is complete lack of care for victims of aggression on the principle of protecting peaceful among aggressors, with absolutely no effort to prove such a principle.

Its sloppy and exactly backwards for a Bitcoin CEO to claim he cares about impacting others. The inherent negative-externality of Bitcoin means it carries a high cost someone else has to pay, proving that if Kraken cared about peaceful Russian civilians it would shutdown all Bitcoin since it harms them all while benefiting few if any.

Systemically redistributing transaction costs from selfish individuals to society instead, while claiming to be worried about societal impact of an individual action is dangerously reminiscent of nobles and clergy of pre-revolutionary France who ignorantly stumbled into their own demise.

The Web already is so much more than a narrow line of thought from the ugly past of feudal thinking, and 3.0 should be more broadly representative of the human condition instead of boxed in like this by selfish speculators trying to get rich quick through exploitation and manipulation of artificially constrained assets.

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Feudalistic Threats to Web 3.0 - Security Boulevard

A few times during his hourlong speaking engagement at UC Hastings School of Law on March 1, students briefly stopped shouting down Ilya Shapiro and goaded him to speak. Each time, the prominent constitutional law scholar and mouthpiece for the libertarian think tank Cato Institute managed only a few words before students banged on tables and chanted Black lawyers matter to drown him out again, according to a video recording shared by the law schools Black Law Students Association.

Shapiro was on the San Francisco campus that day to discuss the Supreme Court vacancy as part of an event organized by the schools Federalist Society, a conservative libertarian group. But Shapiro had shared his thoughts on the matter more than a month earlier. In a since-deleted series of tweets, he said President Bidens pledge to nominate a Black woman would result in a lesser black woman serving on the nations highest court.

Shapiros casually racist tweet quickly got him suspended from a new administrator job at Georgetown University Law Center, but didnt scotch his appearance at UC Hastings, which triggered the student protest.

On March 2, UC Hastings Chancellor David Faigman and his fellow deans sent a letter to students scolding them silencing a speaker is fundamentally contrary to the values of this school, the letter reads and hinting at possible disciplinary action. The letter also argues that legal professionals must be able to engage with the full range of ideas, legal arguments, or policies that exist in the world as they find it.

More from Justin Phillips

UC Hastings spokesperson Elizabeth Moore told me the school would not provide further comment.

The way the schools leadership chided students made me think about how Black people are expected to be docile in the face of insensitivity. In this vein, Shapiro is a lot like the Republican mob attacking federal appeals Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearings. Both use the topics du jour of white nationalism Shapiro implying that Black folks are intellectually inferior; Republicans grasping at culture war talking points that have nothing to do with Jacksons record.

Not challenging rhetoric that is ignorant or actively intolerant only serves to legitimize inequality. The responses from UC Hastings students and Judge Jackson reveal the necessity of speaking up.

A few weeks after the Shapiro event, the Black Law Students Association, with support from allies and some of the schools faculty, sent UC Hastings leadership a letter and list of demands regarding how the school can address its racial equity issues.

Included in it was data from a 2021 UC Hastings Campus Climate Advisory Committee assessment, which was shared with The Chronicle and found that 40% of respondents of color, including multiracial people, experienced exclusionary, intimidating, offensive, and/or hostile conduct at the school within the previous two years. Only 8% of white respondents reported the same experiences.

Among the students demands was for the school to ensure that no disciplinary actions will be taken against students who exercised their free speech rights during the Shapiro protest.

Dominique Armstrong, a co-president of the Black Law Students Association, told me that as much as the protest was about Shapiro, it was also about Black students not feeling welcome on campus.

One of the schools big things is telling us to be advocates, Armstrong said. But if you cant advocate for yourself, how can you advocate for your clients?

Shapiro described the protesters as an unruly woke mob taking part in a national cancellation campaign. But what I saw were passionate students taking a stand for change they felt is long overdue. I saw the faces of individuals who could one day follow Judge Jacksons path, on which theyre forced to both confront Americas shortcomings and help the country overcome them.

Thats grueling, thankless work, as Armstrong already knows. Its exhausting for Black students like myself to constantly have to explain how something is racist.

Which is why, for me, it has been equally spectacular to watch Jackson push back against often-hysterical Republicans during the Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Republican senators have floated absurd QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories in their desperate attempts to make Jackson seem like a judge who is sympathetic to people convicted of possessing images of child sexual abuse and who uses critical race theory to shape her decision-making.

Jackson has been calm and measured in her responses, often pointing out that her record is a balanced one that cant be seen as supporting one viewpoint or another.

Underneath the GOP theatrics is their palpable fear of Black people like Jackson attaining positions of power.

Jacksons loudest moment, in my mind, came toward the end of Wednesdays marathon session when Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., asked her to address young people who may want to follow her path. Jackson capped off an emotional reply with this line: I would tell them to persevere.

In other words, silence simply isnt an option.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Justin Phillips appears Sundays. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JustMrPhillips

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When Black people refuse to quietly endure intolerance, amazing things can happen - San Francisco Chronicle

Andrew Yang rose to prominence on the back of a very peculiar idea: universal basic income. This proposal that every American should receive a no-strings-attached $1,000 check from the federal government every month propelled Yang to the presidential debate stage. Though it was impressive that he shared the stage with experienced politicians like (then Vice) President Biden and several senators, his lack of experience and a stable base were ultimately his downfall.

Leaning into meme culture and popular podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience, Yang often touted his approval rating with Independents and Trump supporters, but he was sorely unable to transform that general likability into cold hard votes.

After this impressive but nonetheless disappointing campaign for a relative newcomer to electoral politics, Yang transitioned to running for mayor of New York City. I wont delve too deeply into Yangs journey from leading the mayoral primary to a disappointing fourth-place finish, but rest assured that his subsequent failure hinged on the same issues: an inability to form a coherent base from merely a friendly smile and some unique ideas.

After his defeat to current New York City Mayor, Eric Adams, Yang made a public announcement.

He had formally left the Democratic Party and formed the Forward Party. He announced this new party in his book of the same name. Forward which I read laid out the platform of ranked-choice voting, open primaries, fact-based governance, human-centered capitalism, modern and effective government, universal basic income and grace and tolerance.

Yangs core claim was that this party, with its hodgepodge of reasonable-sounding policy ideas, would be able to fill a gap in the American party repertoire that both Democrats and Republicans were neglecting. Through an assortment of commonsense policies aimed at reforming government, Yang believes this party could inspire action in a diverse coalition of discouraged and infrequent voters.

In some sense the polls are on Yangs side: many of his ideas are certainly popular. Seventy-seven percent of Americans agree that campaign spending needs to be curtailed. Eighty-two percent side with his call for Congressional term limits. Nine in 10 Americans share his stance against partisan gerrymandering. With 42% of Americans identifying as independents, this should be great news for a party that aims to capture the politically homeless middle.

Unfortunately, even though a plurality of Americans identify as Independents, as many as 91% of Americans have a significant preference for one party or the other, with the leftover 9% of true Independents varying significantly in race, occupation and economic interests. This makes forming a base from voters with common interests like how Democrats captured the union vote and Republicans successfully courted evangelicals very difficult.

Currently, the Democrats base is largely young people, urbanites, ethnic minorities, LGBTQ+ people and those with college degrees. The Republican base is largely white evangelicals, business owners, those living in rural areas and voters older than 65. These bases are sustainable, based on groups with shared interests and are able to mobilize effectively to achieve concrete outcomes.

Even though Yangs policies are broadly popular, the electorate he is targeting centrists who are dissatisfied with the political system are, as the Pew Research Center describes those in the middle, Stressed Sideliners the group with the lowest level of political engagement. This makes them the least effective voters to be targeting. The polling I exhibited earlier (that was generally approving of Forwards main ideas) displays much less the strong principled standings of likely voters who are ready to jump on board a new party, and more the vague preferences of those who dont vote in midterm or local elections. A sustainable, enduring third party cant be made up solely of unlikely voters.

That is not to say there is no room for another party in the American political system.

The most successful third party in recent history was the Reform Party, led by Texas billionaire Ross Perot in the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections. In 1992, Perot, utilizing a mishmash of right- and left-wing ideas, famously captured almost 19% of the vote, making for a third-place finish. Despite this relative success, the coalition disintegrated when Perot was no longer on the ballot.

I appreciate that Yang has been reluctant to put forth a Forward Party presidential ticket, as third parties often do. Focusing on local and statehouse races is much more rewarding for a party hoping to get a foothold than doomed White House runs. The Libertarian Party, for instance, has a singular state legislator elected nationwide (two are listed on the partys website, but John Andrews of Maine changed his affiliation to Republican last year). Instead of investing in local and state races, the Libertarians focus their electoral energy on securing a measly 1% of the vote every presidential election cycle.

Third parties, at least in their incipient stages, seem to be dependent on having a strong personality at their forefront. Yang can capitalize on his already existing fame like how billionaire Ross Perot did in 92 and 96 to hopefully help his down-ballot candidates move along in the future.

Polling shows that Yangs political base during the presidential primary largely consisted of non-voters, men under 44 and Asian Americans. Many of Yangs most vociferous supporters were those who would fall into the Tech Bro category.

If you want a place with a strong base of wealthy donors, a generally left-of-center voter base and high populations of Asian Americans, there is a clear answer. Yang has an obvious strategy in front of him, but it will require him to pick up shop and move West.

Californias election laws favor third parties more than almost any other state in the U.S.. Since 2011, the Golden State has had a top-two primary system, wherein all candidates Democrats, Republicans and Independents have run against each other in an open primary. The California Secretary of States office describes the process as candidates are listed on one ballot and only the top two vote-getters in the primary election regardless of party preference move on to the general election. Yang included this idea of open primaries in Forwards platform, so taking advantage of it for electoral gain would be serendipitous.

Lets digress from the political realities and focus instead on concrete outcomes for a moment. I want this new party to succeed. Even though we certainly differ ideologically, if even half of the ideas in Yangs book were implemented, we would be in a much better national position to take the 21st Century by the throat. But I know he can do better. If Forward ever becomes a more substantial organization currently both registered Democrats and Republicans can join, which is incredibly odd, and not how a legitimate political party operates it must focus on a demographic it can win, as opposed to targeting the least engaged voters on the political spectrum. Trying to secure what some have called the politically homeless middle is a noble endeavor, but it cant be the sole objective of a serious party in these polarized times.

Julian Barnard is the Editorial Page Editor and can be reached at jcbarn@umich.edu

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Are Andrew Yang, Joe Biden & Donald Trump the future of US politics? - The Michigan Daily