Category Archives: Libertarian

On 9 August 2022, Kenyans will vote for their fifth president. It will be the countrys seventh general election since the resumption of multiparty electoral democracy 30 years ago.

This year will see the lowest number of presidential candidates on the ballot since 1992. The countrys Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission has cleared four contenders. They are Deputy President William Ruto of the Kenya Kwanza coalition, former prime minister Raila Odinga of the Azimio la Umoja coalition, law professor George Wajackoyah of the Roots Party and lawyer David Waihiga of the Agano Party.

While Ruto and Odinga are the frontrunners, Wajackoyah and Waihiga are fringe presidential aspirants. Generally, fringe candidates are aspirants whose chances of passing a frontrunner are slim to none.

They play a significant role, however, in testing democratic spaces for maturity. They also accrue personal benefits, such as grooming for future political careers.

A look at fringe candidacy in established democracies shows that marginal aspirants are more significant than we might think. In the United States, for example, the 2020 elections had Jo Jorgensen (Libertarian Party) and Howie Hawkins (Green Party) as fringe candidates. The 2016 elections had four such contenders: Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party), Jill Stein (Green Party), Evan McMullin (Independent) and Darrell Castle (Constitution Party).

While Kenyas 2022 general election will have just two fringe candidates, previous elections have had between three (in 2002) and 13 (in 1997).

Read more: Money, influence and heroism: the allure of political power in Kenya

Kenyas 2010 constitution changed the outcome for presidential candidates after an election. Under the old constitution, the president had to be a member of parliament. This meant presidential candidates also vied for a parliamentary seat, raising their chances of being in government even if they failed to clinch the top seat.

The 2010 constitution changed this requirement. Presidential candidates cannot vie for any other seat, drastically reducing their political options should they not get elected.

Despite this change, fringe candidates continue to throw their hats in the ring. This means there are other motivations.

Read more: Odinga is running his fifth presidential race. Why the outcome means so much for Kenya

Fringe candidates serve four main functions. First, their presence in an election offers proof of a stable or steadying democracy. Political systems, institutions and politicians learn to accommodate alternative candidates as equal players with the right to contest elections.

Second, fringe candidates give the media a break from horserace journalism. This is the kind of reporting that focuses on powerful, influential and popular political players.

Third, fringe candidacy can serve as a political nursery for politicians. They gain name recognition from media coverage of presidential aspirants, and showcase their political ambitions through campaigns, interviews and debates. This builds their political profile.

They also go down in history as having contested the presidency, regardless of their performance in the elections.

For presidential candidate Wajackoyah, a peculiar manifesto that includes popularising marijuana and snake farming to offset Kenyas public debt seems to be working for him. His campaign speeches are often a trending social media topic in Kenya and his manifesto launch got prime news coverage.

There was similar excitement among voters in 2013 and 2017 when Mohammed Abduba Dida appeared in presidential debates with unusual ideas on how to better govern Kenya.

Fringe candidates often atypical ideologies and beliefs give democracies a break from regular political themes.

Fourth, fringe candidates can front a third force that unseats a powerful regime. This played out in Kenyas 2002 elections when fringe candidates from the 1992 and 1997 polls formed a coalition that nominated Mwai Kibaki as their flagbearer. He won the election against Daniel Mois preferred successor, Uhuru Kenyatta who is Kenyas current president.

There are aspirants who hope to one day replicate the luck Kibaki and Kenyatta had, and are happy enough to seek the presidency as fringe candidates.

Read more: William Ruto, the presidential candidate taking on Kenya's political dynasties

Waihigas presidential campaign seeks to infuse a moralist voice into Kenyan politics. He has hit out at Wajackoyahs plan to legalise marijuana and accused him of insulting church leaders. He is running a campaign that revolves around easing taxes, lowering the prices of basic foods and bringing back to Kenya money illegally obtained and stashed abroad.

Not all fringe candidates play a positive role in elections. Some have been accused of using their candidacy to split votes and give a frontrunner the advantage. This can be viewed as a well-orchestrated political move.

For instance, in 2007, former vice-president Kalonzo Musyokas bid for the presidency split the 2.4 million votes in the countrys eastern region. At the time, Kenya had just over 14 million registered voters. The eastern region is a significant constituency in elections and has traditionally supported Odingas presidential candidacy.

When Musyoka set out on his own, he ended up with 8.91% of the total votes cast. Odinga obtained 44.07% of the votes against a victorious Kibakis 46.42%. Had Odinga and Kalonzo remained united, the presidential poll results might have been different.

Another former vice-president, Musalia Mudavadi, fell out with Odinga in 2013 and decided to launch his own campaign. Mudavadis presidential candidacy split the votes in the western region which includes vote-rich counties like Vihiga, Kakamega and Bungoma.

Western Kenya is Mudavadis ethnic base and has often supported Odinga. In the 2013 election, however, Kenyatta won with 50.51% of the votes against Odingas 43.7%. Mudavadi came in third with just under 4% of the vote.

In developed and developing democracies, fringe candidates have a constitutional right to contest. Since their presence can often be a sign of a maturing democracy, the media and allied cultural institutions need to give them attention.

Additionally, its possible that those who vote for these candidates might not have exercised their right of suffrage had they not had the option on the ballot. For this reason, fringe contenders can help entrench a culture of voting and counteract voter apathy.

See the rest here:

Kenyas fringe presidential candidates: what they offer in elections - The Conversation

Good morning everybody,

Today is the 5th of July, and this is The Tuesday Pillar Post.

Todays the feast of St. Zoe of Rome, a third-century noblewoman whose husband maintained the Roman jail in which was imprisoned St. Sebastian, a prophet who would become a martyr.

Zoe couldnt speak; she apparently suffered an illness that left her unable to talk for more than six years until Sebastian, the holy prisoner overseen by her husband, prayed over her.

After Sebastians blessing, Zoe began to speak and soon found herself praising Sebastians God, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Zoe and her husband were converted, baptized, and - for that - Zoe was soon martyred. She was apparently suffocated by smoke in 286, after she was suspended over a fire pit amid the Christian persecution of Diocletian.

May the Lord give us healing, may he open our lips, and may we praise God no matter the cost.

St. Zoe of Rome, pray for us.

Share

Heres whats happening in the world:

Pope Francis on Monday appointed Bishop Kenneth Nowakowski, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Bishop of London, to become apostolic visitor for the Ukrainian Greek Catholics in Ireland.

Why? Well, because nearly 40,000 Ukrainian refugees have arrived in the Emerald Isle in recent months war-weary and often in poverty and the sole Ukrainian Catholic parish in Dublin faces a daunting task to provide pastoral care for them.

Nowakowski told The Pillar yesterday that hell look into the prospect of establishing new Ukrainian Greek Catholic missions in Ireland, while he takes care of his growing flock at home more than 65,000 Ukrainian refugees have already arrived in the U.K., where the bishop already exercises pastoral care.

I think the Church always has to be seen as a lighthouse, where those beacons of hope are there, and that its not just an electronically manned lighthouse, but theres actually a human being there able to provide a compassionate ear, prayers, and the ability for people to know that God loves them, the bishop told The Pillar.

The big thing - and I emphasize that time and again - is to keep us in prayer, to remember Ukraine, dont let it slip off the horizon because its become, perhaps, old news. Its very important, he said.

Leave a comment

Albanys Bishop Edward Scharfenberger on Friday proposed a plan to settle outside the courtroom more than 400 claims of sexual abuse in his New York diocese.

The bishop told The Pillar that mediated settlements would ensure more fair compensations for abuse victims, and help the diocese avoid filing for bankruptcy.

Albany is the not only diocese to propose mediation with victims; some dioceses have established large victims compensation funds administered by third parties.

But Scharfenberger talked openly last week about the real challenge of providing monetary compensation to victims in a diocese with a declining population and limited cash:

The thing, I think, that's not been understood is that there is a limited amount of money, the bishop told The Pillar.

I dont want any hidden corners whereby we say we've got this pot over there saving for a rainy dayIll throw everything out there, but the thing is, the pot is limited.

Scharfenberger said he believes mediation would provide settlements for a higher number of victims than would litigation. He said he thinks thats just. But the bishop said he knows victims will find it difficult to trust him:

I understand that my efforts are naturally difficult to trust. It will be hard for many to believe that I am acting or speaking from my heart, or that what I do or say is credible, he told The Pillar.

Its not yet clear that the attorney leading lawsuits against the Albany diocese has actually brought the offer to his clients - or whether he intends to.

But Scharfenberger spoke strongly for serious ecclesial accountability during the 2018 McCarrick scandals he was a leader among bishops pushing for serious reforms - and transparency. And as the Church continues to address a just resolution to clerical sexual abuse, one victims advocate told The Pillar that Scharfenbergers views are worth discussion.

Read all about it.

You can't buy fireworks

for just 5 bucks a month

But you can make 'The Pillar' happen!

We're cooler than a box of sparklers

The Catholic Church in Liechtenstein is going through a moment of serious upheaval the tiny countrys archbishop has declined to participate in the synod on synodality, and is under fire for his handling of a priest accused of sexual assault. And Liechtensteins Church leaders have had some tangles with both prince and parliament in the small country.

With all that going on, its possible that the archdiocese in Liechtenstein might well be eventually folded back into the Swiss diocese from which it was carved. Its an unusual situation but one from which the entire Church can draw some lessons.

Luke Coppen reports on Big Trouble in Little Liechtenstein.

Share The Pillar

And while hes spending time on small European countries, Luke brings you this profile of Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, one of Europes most influential Churchmen.

You might remember Hollerich from some controversial comments he made a few months ago, which called into question the Churchs doctrine on homosexuality. But you might not know that the cardinal plays a very big role in the universal synod on synodality and in the confederation of European bishops conferences.

Hollerich has a lot of influence over the direction of the Church in much of Europe. So if you want to understand how the business of the Church gets done in Europe and who will be influential in guiding the shape of a future conclave the cardinal is worth reading about.

Check it out.

Give a gift subscription

Heres some more news that might be of interest:

Cardinal Blase Cupich said yesterday that gun violence is a life issue, after 6 people were killed in an Illinois suburb, and nearly two dozen more were treated in hospitals, most for gunshot wounds. They were shot during a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, just north of Chicago.

Whatever one makes of the right to bear arms, there is plenty of room for prudential judgment in interpreting the Second Amendment so as to enact serious, broadly popular gun-safety measures. The Senate finally passed a significant, yet modest, gun-safety bill last month. But clearly more must be done, the cardinal said in a statement.

The right to bear arms does not eclipse the right to life, or the right of all Americans to go about their lives free of the fear that they might be shredded by bullets at any moment.

May the Lord of mercy embrace in love those who have died, bring healing to the wounded, comfort to their loved ones, and courage to all of us, so that we may respond to this tragedy united as Gods children to build a path to safety and peace.

Pope Francis sent a telegram Tuesday morning to Cardinal Cupich, conveying prayers that Almighty God will grant eternal rest to the dead and healing and consolation to the injured and bereaved with unwavering faith that the grace of God is able to convert even the hardest of hearts, making it possible to depart from evil and do good.

For more on what the Church has to say about guns, read my May interview with Bishop Dan Flores, who talked with The Pillar after the Uvalda school shooting about guns, public discourse, and a crisis of hope.

Brazilian Cardinal Cludio Hummes, who encouraged the pope to take the name Francis, has died at the age of 87.

Police in Nigeria have rescued a kidnapped Italian priest, while two other priests were abducted in Nigeria on Saturday.

Myanmars military is reportedly continuing to target churches.

Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes has expressed deep regret after Nicaraguas government ordered the closure of Mother Teresas Missionaries of Charity apostolates in the country. (Spanish report).

Chinese Bishop Paul Lei Shiyin has celebrated the birth of Chinas Communist Party in Leshan cathedral.

Cardinal Reinhard Marx has said that the time is ripe for women deacons (German report).

Share

Much will be made in the news this week about a long interview Pope Francis gave this month to Reuters Vatican correspondent.

The interview covers a lot of ground, but doesnt offer much new: The pontiff told Reuters that he has no plans to resign, denied rumors he has cancer, and said he hopes the Vaticans deal with China will be renewed in October.

The pope was asked about the prospect of denying pro-abortion Catholic politicians the Eucharist.

When the Church loses its pastoral nature, when a bishop loses his pastoral nature, it causes a political problem, Francis said. That's all I can say.

That comment will be taken in the press mostly as a rebuke of Archbishop Salvatore Cordileones decision to deny Rep. Nancy Pelosi the Eucharist in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Perhaps it was intended that way although the pontiff, in Francis fashion, could be understood differently, since last year he talked about the importance of pastoral ministry before, during, and after a denial of Holy Communion, while affirming that there are times when the Eucharist should be denied.

In short, the pope was cryptic on the question, and much ink will be wasted by pundits aiming to show that Francis meant exactly what theyd like him to have meant.

I suspect most readers of The Pillar know that such exercises are rarely illuminating.

Leave a comment

So while everyone talks about that interview, Id like to draw your attention to another one a fascinating - and precisely formulated - set of reflections on the German synodal path, the nature of heresy, and the life of the Church, from Fr. Karl-Heinz Menke, a German dogmatic theologian who won the prestigious Ratzinger Prize in 2017, and whom Pope Francis appointed to the International Theological Commission back in 2014.

The interview includes this important discussion of freedom:

The teaching of the Church presupposes that God has given man real freedom; for in contrast to the animal he can voluntarily be what he should be. When a person is what his Creator intended him to be, he realizes and develops his freedom. And vice versa: if a person is not what God made him to be, he misses being himself - and becomes unfree - a slave to sin.

Seen in this way, freedom is not freedom of choice, but self-commitment to the good. And what is good is not determined by each individual. Ultimately, the content of freedom is love; and what love is, we recognize in creation, with a look at Jesus Christ and the scriptures and traditions that interpret him.

The libertarian concept of freedomis quite different. Freedom understood in a libertarian way determines its content itself [According to this view], whoever wants to be free contradicts himself if he does not in turn grant every other person the recognition he expects from every fellow human being. But what exactly this recognition means is not determined by any external authority such as nature, Scripture or the Magisterium.

A Catholic who thinks as a libertarian will not let bishops dictate whether or not he may receive the Eucharist as a divorced person who has remarried or as a Christian of different denominations. He decides that himself. And he also decides himself whether his sexual relationships - in or outside of marriage, heterosexual or homosexual - correspond to love and thus to the recognition of the freedom of the other person or not.

A libertarian-minded church knows no decreed unity from above, but only unity based on conviction. A church that thinks in a modern way does not sacrifice diversity for unity, but understands unity as a service to diversity. There are - so the libertarians conclude - many interpretations of the recognition of freedom (of love), different interpretations of gender identity; multi-denominational interpretations of the Christ event; dogmas and norms are historically conditioned and can therefore be revised.

Heres the warning:

The vast majority of Catholics in Germany have not alienated themselves from the Church because they have adapted too little, but because they have adapted too much. She no longer has anything to say to the people because she fits her caritas into the structures prescribed by the state.

And heres Menkes sense of the solution:

The future does not lie in the implementation of libertarian freedom thinking, but - for example in the small communities or movements that exemplify their Christian faith in an unabridged and inviting way. From them one can see that attachment to the truth proclaimed by the Church does not bind, but liberates.

Read the whole thing. Use Google Translate if you need to Its not perfect, but itll give you a sense of the text.

This interview lays out the foundation of challenges the Church is experiencing around the globe and the pernicious challenge of a libertarian, non-Christian vision of what it means to be free.It draws from the documents of the Second Vatican Council, aiming to interpret culture through their lens.

Yesterday, many of us toasted our freedom, and watched fireworks memorialize it in the sky.

Today, lets commit to a vision of freedom that sees Christ at the center of history, and knows that he is the object of our liberty.

Have a good week.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

JD Flynneditor-in-chiefThe Pillar

Continued here:

Christ: The center of history, and the source of our freedom - The Pillar

Facts matter: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter. Support our nonprofit reporting. Subscribe to our print magazine.

Two prominent figures have resigned in protest from the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraftthe only major think tank to promote a skeptical view of US power and military interventionism. In announcing their departures, Joe Cirincione and Paul Eaton criticized the organizations dovish response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

They take this indefensible, morally bankrupt position on Ukraine, Cirincione said in an interview Thursday with Mother Jones. This is clearly an unprovoked invasion, and somehow Quincy keeps justifying it.

Cirincione, who was until recently a distinguished non-resident fellow at Quincy, tweeted news of his resignation on Thursday, citing the institutes position on the Ukraine War as his reason. Formerly the head of the Ploughshares Fund, an influential grant-giving foundation in the small progressive foreign policy world, Cirincione helped raise money for Quincy in its early days and connected it with key donors. But Ukraine proved to be his breaking point.

In articles posted online and in media appearances, other Quincy experts have called for the Biden administration to press Ukraine to reach a peace deal that allows Russia to keep some of the territory it has seized, arguing the alternative is a prolonged war and increased risk of direct conflict between the United States and Russia. That position has little public backing from prominent Democrats in Washington, who support the administrations efforts to aid Ukraines military.

In an interview Thursday night, Cirincione said he fundamentally disagrees with Quincy experts who completely ignore the dangers and the horrors of Russias invasion and occupation and focus almost exclusively on criticism of the United States, NATO, and Ukraine.

Cirinciones exit comes just days after Eatona retired Army major general who has long been an adviser to Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groupsresigned from Quincys board for similar reasons. When asked why he left the organization, Eaton said on Twitter, I support NATO, an apparent reference to the strain of thought among anti-interventionists that Russias invasion was motivated by the expansion of the NATO alliance.

The fissures within Quincy reflect a deeper conflict among skeptics of US military power. Russias invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated that conflict, with some backers of the Biden administrations Ukraine policy accusing critics of being Putin apologists.

For Cirincione, the Ukrainian resistance to Putins unprovoked invasion is a just war deserving of US financial and military support. He disputes the view that the United States is engaged in a proxy war with Russia or attempting to bleed Russia dry. (Many international relations experts, not just at Quincy, have said the conflict is edging closer to a proxy war.)

OnResponsible Statecraft, Quincys online magazine, you cannot find a criticism in depth of Russias foreign policy pronouncements justifying the war, Cirincione said.

Trita Parsi, the co-founder and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute, called Cirincione a friend, but said that Cirincionescriticisms were not only false but bewildering.

A quick glance at our website would show that that statement is just simply not true, Parsi said. It is true that we are pushing for diplomatic solutions. We are not going along with the idea that its a good thing to change the objectives in Ukraine towards weakening Russia, because we believe that could lead to endless war.

Parsi said that Cirincione had been encouraged to disagreein private and and in publicwith other Quincy experts. But Cirincione wanted Quincy as a whole to adopt his position, Parsi said, adding that such a move would be incompatible with the think tanks mission and not necessarily compatible with progressive foreign policy either.

A particularly knotty issue for some progressive thinkers is the question of military aid, which is the main forum through which the United States has supported Ukraine. Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), used a recent piece in the New Republic to appeal to progressives on this point, arguing that the Left should not let prior US misadventures abroad blind us to the instances when provision of military aid can advance a more just and humanitarian global order.

There is not much division among congressional Democrats on that question. Not a single Democrat in the House or Senate voted against President Joe Bidens request for $40 billion in weapons and humanitarian aid for Ukraine. But outside of theDemocratic Party, a collection of prominent figuresspanning the progressive left and libertarian righthave been vehemently opposed to such a huge aid package, which is one of the largest sums of foreign aid in US history.

Many of these critics view the source of the conflict as broader than Putin himself. Taking their lead from John Mearsheimer, an influential international relations professor and non-resident fellow at Quincy, they argue that the United States gravely miscalculated at the end of the Cold War by expanding NATO to include several Eastern European countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. Mearsheimer has argued that the US government should have expected Russia to perceive the expansion of NATO as a security threat.

Many of these critics do not think the US governments aims in Ukraine are necessarily noble. As examples, they have seized on comments from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin,who said that he wants to see Russia weakened, and media leaks that claiming that US intelligence is helping Ukraine kill Russian generals. (I think the Biden administration has done an exemplary job of aiding Ukraine, but its not flawless, Cirincionetold Mother Jones.)

While functionally a debate about means and endsno different from many arguments in the national security spacethe fractious conversation about Ukraine on the Left also speaks to the kinds of questions that remain out of bounds in the elite world of US foreign policy. Quincy was a unique entry in to the debate from the start. The institute is proudly not progressive; it prefers to call itself transpartisan. Its experts often align with the anti-militarist worldview shared by many progressive Democrats and libertarians, a coalition that is reflected in the organizations primary funders: George Soros and Charles Koch.

Outside of Quincy, there is not much money on the anti-militarism side, making the institute even more important as a rare voice of dissent from foreign policy orthodoxy. Even as figures like Cirincione and Eaton find substantial support from Democrats in Congress, their views have encountered backlash among the wider progressive community. Whether there continues to be room for a progressive foreign policy that includes skepticism of NATO expansion or the wisdom of a prolonged war against Russia is still an open question. For Cirincione, there remains a glaring need for a truly progressive think tank. A lot of us thought Quincy was going to be it,he says. But its just not.

Link:

America's Top Anti-War Think Tank Is Fracturing Over Ukraine Mother Jones - Mother Jones

As gas prices continue to increase nationwide, one group is staging promotions that involve temporarily lowering prices at the pump at individual stations across the country.

Gas prices have hit record highs in the U.S. for the last several months. According to data from the American Automobile Association, the national average price of gas on Wednesday is $4.868. In comparison, on the same day last year, the national average gas price was $3.109.

Now, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a libertarian conservative political advocacy group that is funded by David and Charles Koch, has started The True Cost of Washington Tour, which plans to hit 100 cities in a little over 90 days. In collaboration with the group, participating stations across the U.S. are lowering the price of gas, most for limited amounts of time, to $2.38the average cost of a gallon of gas on January 20, 2021, the day that President Joe Biden was inaugurated.

The first stop on the tour, which is still going on, was on May 3 in Greensboro, North Carolina. Several gas stations in Illinois slashed prices to $2.38 over the Memorial Day weekend. For a two-hour event, AFP paid stations the difference while they offered customers cheaper gas.

On June 17, an Exxon gas station in Wilmington, North Carolina, dropped its prices as well for the day, and WECT News reported that a line of cars stretched for over a mile to fill up for $2.38 a gallon.

While stations are slashing prices, they are also choosing how long to offer the deal to customers. On Tuesday, a gas station in Lansing, Michigan, offered the deal with AFP for only one hour, whereas a station in Forest, Mississippi, rolled back prices on Tuesday and plans to continue to offer gas at $2.38 until supply runs out.

The Forest station owner, Vance Cox, told WLBT, "Inflation is hurting everybody and costing everyone more money, but [Americans] are not making any more money. So it's really cutting into people's budgets and we're excited to be cutting the gas prices down for a little while and give people a break on some of the prices."

A station in Lower Burrell, Pennsylvania, discounted the fuel only to the first 150 cars in line on June 22, and the tickets being handed out to those in line were sold out 45 minutes before the event began.

And AFP is continuing the tour across the states and posting updates of each location it hits on its website.

Newsweek has reached out to Americans for Prosperity for additional comment.

More here:

Gas Prices Are Being Lowered Across U.S. by Conservative Group - Newsweek

WASHINGTON The Supreme Court ruling in the Environmental Protection Agency case on Thursday was a substantial victory for libertarian-minded conservatives who have worked for decades to curtail or dismantle modern-style government regulation of the economy.

In striking down an E.P.A. plan to reduce carbon emissions from power plants, the court issued a decision whose implications go beyond hobbling the governments ability to fight climate change. Many other types of regulations might now be harder to defend.

The ruling widens an opening to attack a government structure that, in the 20th century, became the way American society imposes rules on businesses: Agencies set up by Congress come up with the specific methods of ensuring that the air and water are clean, that food, drugs, vehicles and consumer products are safe, and that financial firms follow the rules.

Such regulations may benefit the public as a whole, but can also cut into the profits of corporations and affect other narrow interests. For decades, wealthy conservatives have been funding a long-game effort to hobble that system, often referred to as the administrative state.

This is an intentional fight on the administrative state that is the same fight that goes back to the New Deal, and even before it to the progressive era were just seeing its replaying and its resurfacing, said Gillian Metzger, a Columbia University professor who wrote a Harvard Law Review article called 1930s Redux: The Administrative State Under Siege.

When the United States was younger and the economy was simple, it generally took an act of Congress to impose a new, legally binding rule addressing a problem involving industry. But as complexity arose the Industrial Revolution, banking crises, telecommunications and broadcast technology, and much more this system began to fail.

Congress came to recognize that it lacked the knowledge, time and nimbleness to set myriad, intricate technical standards across a broad and expanding range of issues. So it created specialized regulatory agencies to study and address various types of problems.

While there were earlier examples, many of the agencies Congress established were part of President Franklin D. Roosevelts New Deal program. Wealthy business owners loathed the limits. But with mass unemployment causing suffering, the political power of elite business interests was at an ebb.

The Eisenhower-style Republicans who returned to power in the 1950s largely accepted the existence of the administrative state. Over time, however, a new backlash began to emerge from the business community, especially in reaction to the consumer safety and environmental movements of the 1960s. Critics argued that government functionaries who were not accountable to voters were issuing regulations whose costs outweighed their benefits.

In 1971, a lawyer who had represented the tobacco industry named Lewis F. Powell Jr. whom President Richard M. Nixon would soon put on the Supreme Court wrote a confidential memo for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce titled Attack on American Free Enterprise System. It is seen as an early call to action by corporate America and its ideological allies.

Mr. Powell acknowledged that the needs and complexities of a vast urban society require types of regulation and control that were quite unnecessary in earlier times. But he declared that the United States had moved very far indeed toward some aspects of state socialism and that business and the enterprise system are in deep trouble, and the hour is late.

His memo set out a blueprint to fund a movement to turn public opinion against regulation by equating economic freedom for business with individual freedom. In line with that vision, wealthy elites financed a program to build political influence, including steering funding to organizations that develop and promote conservative policies like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

In 1980, the billionaire David H. Koch ran a quixotic campaign as the Libertarian Partys nominee for vice president on a platform that included abolishing the range of agencies whose regulations protect the environment and ensure that food, drugs and consumer products are safe.

His ticket failed to win many votes. But with his brother Charles G. Koch, he would become a major funder of like-minded conservative causes and candidates and built a campaign funding network that pushed the Republican Party further in a direction it had already started to move with the election in 1980 of President Ronald Reagan.

The Reagan Revolution included appointing officials to run agencies with a tacit mission of suppressing new regulations and scaling back existing ones like Anne Gorsuch Burford, the mother of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, whom critics accused of trying to gut the E.P.A. when she ran it.

In parallel, the conservative legal movement, whose origins also trace back to the 1970s and spread with the growth of the Federalist Society in the 1980s, has focused its long game as much on a deregulatory agenda as on higher-profile goals like ending abortion rights.

That movement has now largely taken control of the federal judiciary after President Donald J. Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices. The chief architect of Mr. Trumps judicial appointments, Donald F. McGahn II, the first Trump White House counsel and a Federalist Society stalwart, made skepticism about the administrative state a key criterion in picking judges.

Adherents of the movement have revived old theories and developed new ones aimed at curbing the administrative state.

To give (usually Republican) presidents more power to push deregulatory agendas in the face of bureaucratic resistance, they have put forward the unitary executive theory under which it ought to be unconstitutional for Congress to give agencies independence from the White Houses political control even though the Supreme Court upheld that arrangement in 1935.

A 2020 ruling by the five Republican appointees then on the Supreme Court was a step toward that goal. They struck down a provision of the law Congress enacted to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that had protected its head from being fired by a president without a good cause, like misconduct.

And to invalidate regulations even when (usually Democratic) presidents support them, movement conservatives have argued for narrowly interpreting the power Congress has given or may give to agencies.

Some of those theories have to do with how to interpret statutes. The E.P.A. ruling, for example, entrenched and strengthened a doctrine that courts should strike down regulations that raise major questions if Congress was not explicit enough in authorizing such actions.

In certain extraordinary cases, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote, the court needed something more than a merely plausible textual basis to convince it that an agency has the legal ability to issue specific regulations. The agency, he wrote, instead must point to clear congressional authorization for the power it claims.

The strict version of that doctrine signaled by the ruling will give businesses a powerful weapon with which to attack other regulations.

The ruling was foreshadowed by short, unsigned rulings last year in which the court blocked the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions moratorium on evictions to prevent overcrowding during the coronavirus pandemic, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administrations requirement that large employers get workers vaccinated or provide testing.

But both of those decisions involved tangential exercises of authority by agencies trying to address the pandemic emergency: The C.D.C., a public health agency, was getting into housing policy, and OSHA, a workplace safety agency, was getting into public health policy.

The ruling on Thursday involved the E.P.A.s primary mission: to curb pollution of harmful substances, which the court previously ruled included carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, the text of the Clean Air Act empowers the agency to devise the best system of emission reduction. Even so, the majority ruled that the agency lacked authorization for its Clean Power Plan.

In dissent, one of the courts three remaining Democratic appointees, Justice Elena Kagan who once wrote a scholarly treatise about the administrative state accused the majority of having discarded the conservative principle of interpreting laws based closely on their text to serve its anti-administrative state agenda.

The current court is textualist only when being so suits it, she wrote. When that method would frustrate broader goals, special canons like the major questions doctrine magically appear as get-out-of-text-free cards. Today, one of those broader goals makes itself clear: Prevent agencies from doing important work, even though that is what Congress directed.

Conservatives have also developed other legal theories for attacking the administrative state.

They have argued, for example, that the Supreme Court should end so-called Chevron deference, named for the case that established it. Under that doctrine, judges defer to agencies interpretations of the authority that Congress gave them in situations where the text of a law is ambiguous and the agencys interpretation is reasonable.

Conservatives have also argued for a more robust version of the so-called nondelegation doctrine, under which the Constitution can bar Congress from giving regulatory power to agencies at all even if lawmakers unambiguously sought to do so.

Chief Justice Robertss majority opinion, in keeping with his preference for incremental approaches to major issues, left those other theories and arguments for another day. But a concurring opinion by Justice Gorsuch, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., discussed the nondelegation doctrine with apparent relish.

While we all agree that administrative agencies have important roles to play in a modern nation, surely none of us wishes to abandon our Republics promise that the people and their representatives should have a meaningful say in the laws that govern them, Justice Gorsuch wrote.

In theory, undercutting the administrative state does not necessarily subtract from the governments ability to act when a new problem or a better way of solving an old one arises. Rather, it shifts some of the power and responsibility from the agencies to Congress.

For example, lawmakers could theoretically enact a law explicitly declaring that the E.P.A.s power to curb air pollution under the Clean Air Act includes regulating carbon dioxide pollution from power plants in the way the agency had proposed. Congress could even pass a law directly requiring the detailed system for reducing emissions.

As a matter of political reality, however, agencies issuing of new rules based on old laws is often the only way the government remains capable of acting.

Congress is increasingly polarized and dysfunctional, sometimes too paralyzed to pass even basic spending bills to keep the government operating. And the ideology of the contemporary Republican Party, combined with the Senates filibuster rule, which allows a minority of senators to block votes on substantive legislation, means that it is unlikely that Congress will enact new laws expanding regulations.

The prospect that the Republican-appointed supermajority on the court may be just getting started in assaulting the administrative state over the coming years is alarming those who say the United States needs regulations to have a civilized society.

If you dont have regulations, then the only people who will benefit will be those who, with no rules, will make more money, said Marietta Robinson, a former Obama appointee on the Consumer Product Safety Commission who teaches about administrative agencies at George Washington Universitys law school. But it will be to the great detriment to the rest of us.

Continued here:

E.P.A. Ruling Is Milestone in Long Pushback to Regulation of Business - The New York Times

It seems obvious to me from my own education that one learns things mostly when youre interested in learning them and not mostly when somebody sits you down and makes you learn them, said David D. Friedman in our conversation on unschooling in the latest episode of the LiberatED Podcast.

Friedman, a physicist, economist, and law professor who is the son of the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Milton Friedman, is a staunch supporter of unschooling, or the idea of self-directed, non-coercive learning that occurs either as an approach to homeschooling or in unschooling schools, such as those schools modeled after the Sudbury Valley School in Massachusetts that was founded in 1968.

I wrote extensively about unschooling, the Sudbury model, and other unschooling schools in my 2019 Unschooled book, and was delighted to discover that the most recent edition of Friedmans well-known book, Machinery of Freedom: Guide to A Radical Capitalism, first published in 1973, includes a chapter on unschooling entitled: Unschooling: A Libertarian Approach to Children.

Friedman unschooled his own children, writing in Machinery of Freedom and on his blog: Judged by our experience, unschooling not only saved our children from having to spend a substantial part of every week sitting in class being bored, it also gave them a better education.

Friedman continues:

Unschooling worked for us, but two very bright children brought up by highly educated parents are not exactly a random sample of the relevant population. There is evidence that it works for quite a lot of other people; interested readers may want to look at the literature on Sudbury Valley School, the model that the school where our children started their unschooling experience was built on. There may be some children who would learn more in a conventional school, even children who would enjoy the process more. But, judging by our experience, unschooling, home unschooling if no suitable school is available, is an option well worth considering.

The research on the Sudbury Valley School that Friedman references includes several academic and informal studies of alumni. A 1986 study of Sudbury Valley alumni by Peter Gray and David Chanoff published in the American Journal of Education concludes: Although these individuals educated themselves in ways that are enormously different from what occurs at traditional schools, they have had no apparent difficulty being admitted to or adjusting to the demands of traditional higher education and have been successful in a wide variety of careers.

Gray, a psychology professor at Boston College, elaborates on this research in his 2013 book, Free To Learn. He and his colleagues Gina Riley and Kevin Currie-Knight published similar findings in a 2021 paper on the outcomes of alumni of the Hudson Valley Sudbury School that was modeled after Sudbury Valley.

Even though Friedman home-unschooled his two children after briefly sending them to a small Sudbury-style school in California that closed shortly after they left, he believes that children learning in unschooling schools is preferable to them learning at home. He would like to see a robust free market of unschooling schools with different organizational structures from which families could choose.

My ideal system, which doesnt exist, would be to have multiple, competing unschooling private schools in which the unschooling school is run by whoever owns it just like an ordinary school, but is constrained to treat the students properly by the fact that if not theyll leave for another school, which is the way we handle most things in the free market, said Friedman in this weeks podcast.

The flurry of education entrepreneurship over the past two years, including the proliferation of microschools, learning pods, and homeschooling and unschooling collaboratives, may be edging us closer to Friedmans vision and toward a robust free market of education options.

Listen to the weekly LiberatED Podcast on Apple, Spotify, Google, and Stitcher, or watch on YouTube, and sign up for Kerrys weekly LiberatED email newsletter to stay up-to-date on educational news and trends from a free-market perspective.

View post:

One Prominent Libertarian Explains Why Unschooling Is the Best Way to Educate Kids | Kerry McDonald - Foundation for Economic Education

The US right often appeals to liberty freedom from the state as a justification for its policies. But it also seems to oppose liberty in many key political issues, particularly when it comes to the private domain of sexual relations. This seeming contradiction flummoxes liberals how can the right both defend and attack individual liberty? But there is no contradiction. The right simply has a different conception of liberty, one that, contrary to that of liberals, isnt universal but applies only to a select few, the real citizens, argues Toby Buckle.

Liberals imagine that the US far-right is incoherent on the question of freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth; it has at its heart a vision of freedom that is ancient, coherent, and compelling.

From the perspective of mainstream American liberalism, conservative invocations of freedom seem caught in a mad confusion between its libertarian and authoritarian impulses: The right identifies itself with individual freedom, particularly freedom from the state, and yet will reliably cheer on the worst excesses of state violence from police. The family, it proclaims, is a private domain, yet a central part of its rhetoric is the demonization of those in non-heterosexual relationships. These demonised groups are claimed to be a sexual threat to children, one that requires state intervention to address, yet the right also pushes to make (heterosexual) child marriages more legally permissible. Mandatory masking was rejected as a disgraceful violation of bodily autonomy by the same people who are currently rejoicing that states can now force women to carry pregnancies under pain of criminal sanction. The contradictions seem obvious.

While morally grotesque, the values underlying these positions are not incoherent, rather they are simply not coherent with liberal values. Specifically, they are not compatible with the liberal value of universality the requirement laws and norms apply equally to all persons. Because this value is so ingrained in liberalism, the assertion of other, older, values appears to us as a contradiction, but its not. For the most part, the American right does not believe in liberal universality and, to be fair, it has never really pretended to.

Theres no discrepancy to be resolved in demanding libertarian protections for yourself and defending police violence against Black men if you think that law enforcement should enforce different standards on different groups. This view, while still obfuscated to some degree, is more or less explicit in much of what the right says: when the government enforced lockdown laws it was said that it was wrong to treat small business owners like criminals. The same protest was made by, and on behalf on, those arrested after the Capitol riots on January 6 that they were being treated like criminals.

___

Supremacist liberty can be defined as follows: freedom consists in the group or groups within a state who constitute the true citizenry being unconstrained both in their own lives, and in their domination of the groups who are not.

___

To the liberal it may seem puzzling to say we should not treat as criminals people who are, objectively, criminals. To the right however (as with freedom) the word simply means something different: criminal is not a person who commits a crime, but a category of person thats defined by other features. The purpose of the law is to protect the (innately good) true citizens and repress (innately bad) criminals.

These terms are heavily racialized, especially in the US. Criminal is coded as Back, small business owner as white. They also convey a much more visceral fear than is commonly understood. In his account of dehumanisation the philosopher David Livingstone Smith argues that it renders the other not just inferior, or even dangerous, but monstrous. Dehumanised persons are seen as representing both a physical and a metaphysical threat, an affront to both our safety and the natural order of things. Past ages might have used terms like demonic to express this, today criminal has a similar function.

At this point we run into challenges in naming the core values that animate this ideology. To call them far-right adds little and understates their spread and acceptance. To use which I have previously the ideological label of fascist risks derailing the conversation into extended historical comparisons. Taking an intersectional approach, and labelling it by vectors of oppression, results in inelegant formulations like cishetro racist capitalist patriarchy. Authoritarian can be misleading we conventionally place it at the other end of an ideological to freedom, and US conservatism is centrally (and sincerely) about freedom. Finally, hierarchy is better, but is possibly too general.

One of the core values animating the seemingly contradictory policy preferences of the right is a specific conception of freedom. One that can be defined, and distinguished from other conceptions, such as a republican conception, or a true libertarian conception. At the risk of adding one more piece of jargon to the conversation I propose that we can usefully term this supremacist liberty.

___

Whereas a republican freedom demands that there is never someone with arbitrary power above you, supremacist freedom asks that there is always someone (and not just anyone) below you, subject to your power.

___

Supremacist liberty can be defined as follows: freedom consists in the group or groups within a state who constitute the true citizenry being unconstrained both in their own lives, and in their domination of the groups who are not.

From this perspective, the rights claims that anti-racism, or feminism, are existential threats to its adherents way of life are not hyperbole or hysteria, but an obvious statement of social fact. The domination that social justice opposes is ineliminable from its vision of a free society. Whereas a republican freedom demands that there is never someone with arbitrary power above you, supremacist freedom asks that there is always someone (and not just anyone) below you, subject to your power.

It is this conception of freedom that Obamas election was seen to be taking from people. It was an example of the wrong kind of person ending up with power over true citizens, an inversion of the natural order of things. This is what was behind Trumps questioning of Obamas citizenship he was not, as they clearly saw, a true citizen. When he eventually became president, there was a spate of his supporters hurling racist abuse at service workers and declaring Trump is president now. It is this vision of freedom they were reclaiming.

Those advocating for supremacist freedom will often employ libertarian language claiming that what theyre against is state intervention. This is contingently adjacent to the concepts core, but isnt contradictory as such its a useful rhetoric for asserting the appropriate norms that should govern the superior group. Unlike liberalism however, or a true libertarianism, these norms are either implicitly or explicitly bounded (we should get the government off the back of hardworking citizens, or real Americans).

One might wonder how such a conception of freedom is to be achieved in a legal system premised on universality (equal treatment under the law, and so on). A little reflection however shows just how easily it already is actualised under nominal universality. For example, the Supreme Court recently ruled in favour of the right of citizens to conceal carry handguns. Nothing in the ruling limited it to certain groups. However America is also a country in which the Police Officer who killed Philando Castile, a 32 year old black man, after being told he (legally) had a concealed weapon, was acquitted of all charges. As political theorist Jacob T. Levy recently tweeted, this obviously isnt a universal right to concealed carry:

Instead, its a recipe for asymmetrically adding a lot more armed white people in public places, including some who will feel that much more emboldened to harass and confront people they consider suspicious.

Hence, while the law is nominally universal, the social reality is one of supremacist freedom. It is expected, indeed demanded, that law enforcement, and other instruments of state power, will distinguish between groups in this way.

___

While the pro-life movement is certainly steeped in misogyny, the contours between the superior and inferior groups here are best understood not as man vs woman, but Christian vs non-Christian.

___

With this conceptual sketch in mind it should be reasonably straightforward to disentangle the seeming contradictions of the rights account of bodily autonomy. Mandatory face mask policies applied to true citizens, a clear violation of supremacist freedom. To add insult to injury, they were usually applied universally. Hence real Americans were being treated like criminals (the reader should by now be able to do the appropriate decoding). More generally, COVID restrictions were at their most burdensome for a group that is at the centre of the true citizen ideal small business owners. To the supremacist this was a gross violation of a just natural order. It was hardly surprising then, that their resistance was so fierce.

The end of a constitutional right to bodily autonomy (in the form of abortion access) that occurred last week, conversely, is seen as the true citizens asserting themselves against the illegitimate, dangerous parts of society. While the pro-life movement is certainly steeped in misogyny, the contours between the superior and inferior groups here are best understood not as man vs woman, but Christian vs non-Christian. White evangelical Christianity is thoroughly fused with the Trump-right at this moment, and it openly desires supremacy over the political realm and all other section of society.

Compelling pregnancy and childbirth through state violence is a mechanism for maintaining domination over those who fall outside of the true Christian citizenry. The Christian right has long set itself against a society it sees as promiscuous, debauched, and sexually immoral. Forced pregnancy, as they keep telling us, creates earthy consequences for sexual sin.

As with the necessity of repressing criminals, there is both a satisfaction in the domination (people love putting women in their place), and a need for protection against a perceived threat. In this case an overtly supernatural one. Remember that conservative Christians do not see the US as a pluralist society of many groups; but as islands of believers who will go to heaven, surrounded by a sea of sinners who will go to hell. Given the belief in eternal torment, not as metaphor but concreate fact, it becomes quite rational to seek and use state power to save people from it.

While implicit and explicit appeals to supremacist liberty are becoming more mainstream, the conception itself is nothing new. The contours defining the superior group have changed over time, but something like it has existed as long as the concept of freedom has. It was, after all, invented in the slave societies of ancient Greece and Rome and championed by slaveholders. In the modern world its most famous and consequential evocations the American constitution and Declaration of Independence where likewise the work of men who owned slaves (and in the latters case, a man who enslaved his own children).

This seems like a contradiction to many, but, again, it is only a contradiction when viewed from within liberalism. A classic definition of a free person is someone who is not a slave. There is nothing about this that implies that a free person may not own slaves or rules out a view that his freedom will be enhanced by his doing so. After all, freedom is about choice, being self-directed, having control over things - your body, your mind, your property. Hence, having control of other human beings (according to this conception) makes you more free.

Far from being a relic of the dark but remote past, something like this idea is alive and well today. Supremacist freedom is attractive and compelling for reasons that the modern mind struggles to articulate, but the ancients and early moderns understood perfectly well on their own terms: We like the idea of getting special treatment. We enjoy punishing others, or seeing them punished. Our sense of self-worth is enhanced by knowing others are inferior to us.

And once you add in the belief that there are real demons out there, supremacist freedom doesnt just feel good, it becomes necessary. We the small business owners, the Christians, the hardworking, the straight, the White, the sexually pure, the real Americans require the freedom to deal with them the lazy, the gay, the trans, the criminals, the promiscuous, the sexually immoral, the immigrants, the illegals, the aliens, the traitors before they destroy us all.

There is much more to say on this topic having coined a term to describe a conception of freedom I should trace a history of it, anticipate and answer objections, consider its relation to other political concepts, give my own moral evaluation of it, and so on.

For now though, let me just close with this:

I have tried to give an account of supremacist liberty more or less on its own terms, not because I think it is a worthwhile conception, but because I think its worth understanding, given that its animating a large part of the American right. It is not, of course, the only conception of liberty. Liberty will always have competing conceptions, and it is worth our time and energy to ensure the better ones become ascendant. A great deal depends on it.

Go here to read the rest:

Supremacy, Liberty and the Right | Toby Buckle - IAI

By Bennett Brinkman NonDoc.com

In addition to the Republican race for state superintendent of public instruction, three other primary elections for statewide office are heading to GOP runoffs Aug. 23. In the races for a Corporation Commission seat, commissioner of labor and state treasurer, no candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote.

All results posted by the Oklahoma State Election Board online are unofficial until they are certified by the board.

Two of the three races are for open seats, but the third has seen term-limited Rep. Sean Roberts (R-Hominy) push incumbent Commissioner of Labor Leslie Osborn into the runoff. Osborn received 47.82 percent of the vote, while Roberts (R-Hominy) gained 38.27 of the vote. (Keith Swinton finished third, with 13.91 percent of the vote.)

The winner between Osborn and Roberts will face Democrat Jack Henderson and Libertarian Will Daugherty in November.

Osborn has been the commissioner of labor since 2018. Before that, she represented House District 47 in Canadian and Grady counties. Roberts is the current representative for state House District 36 and has been endorsed by Gov. Kevin Stitt. He made headlines when he filed his campaign under the name Sean The Patriot Roberts. The state election board later struck The Patriot monicker from the ballot.

In the battle for an open seat on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, Sen. Kim David (R-Porter) finished in the lead Tuesday, with 41.07 percent of the Republican primary vote. For the Aug. 23 runoff, she will face second-place finisher Todd Thomsen, who brought in 25.99 percent of Tuesdays vote.

Finishing in third was Justin Hornback, a welder who works in the oil and gas industry. He brought in 20.35 percent of the vote. Harold Spradling finished fourth with 12.59 percent support.

The winner of the runoff between David and Thomsen will face Democrat Warigia Bowman and Independent Don Underwood in the general election on Nov. 8.

David is the current senator representing District 18 in the Oklahoma Legislature. She is term-limited for that seat. During her time in the Senate, she became the first female majority floor leader.

Thomsen formerly represented House District 25 from 2006 to 2018, and he is a former Oklahoma Fellowship of Christian Athletes leader. He was a football player at the University of Oklahoma and played on the national championship team in 1985, according to his website.

On June 7, NonDoc and News 9 hosted a Republican primary debate among candidates for the open Corporation Commission seat, which is being vacated by Dana Murphy owing to term limits.

In the race for state treasurer, Rep. Todd Russ (R-Cordell) took 48.5 percent of the Republican primary vote and will face former Sen. Clark Jolley, who garnered 33.87 percent of the vote, in the Aug. 23 runoff.

David Hooten, who recently resigned from his position as Oklahoma County Clerk amid allegations of sexual harassment, finished third with 17.62 percent of the vote.

The runoff winner will face Democrat Charles de Coune and Libertarian Greg Sadler in November.

Russ is the current representative from House District 55, which sits in western Oklahoma. According to his website, Russ has more than 30 years of banking experience in various parts of the state and was president and CEO of Washita State Bank.

Jolley is a former state Senator for District 41, which includes Edmond and northern Oklahoma City. He also formerly served as the state secretary of finance and chairman of the Oklahoma Tax Commission.

See the article here:

Treasurer, labor and corporation commissioner elections head to GOP runoffs Daily Ardmoreite - Daily Ardmoreite

Tuesdays event was hosted by the states Democratic Party and included Libertarian candidates as well.

FISHERS, Ind About 100 voters turned out at a Fishers library Tuesday night to hear from candidates for state and federal office in the upcoming election.

If the forum was any indication of the issues voters will be thinking about when they head to the polls in November, you can expect abortion, gun violence and safety, and the economy to be top of mind.

Im so glad to be in Hamilton County, you guys are doing a lot of things right here, Jeannine Lee Lake, the Democratic candidate for Indianas 5th Congressional District, told those gathered.

Tuesdays town hall was hosted by the states Democratic Party and included Libertarian candidates as well.

Our politicians should not act as physicians, James Sceniak, the Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate, running against Republican incumbent Todd Young.

Organizers of the town hall said they extended invitations to GOP candidates as well, but none took part.

The first issue candidates were asked about was abortion.

Im sure there are other issues, but for me right now, personally and professionally, thats a big deal, said Bryrony Homan, a mother of four who is also an OB/GYN. It will totally change the way I practice.

Homan said she came to the forum looking for some guidance.

Were just really trying to figure out how we can practice and what can we do, she said.

Im a woman, Im a veteran, Im former law enforcement," said Amy Ewing.

She said she had questions about the safety of her kids at school.

"I have three daughters. Im somebody who knows all about firearms, being a veteran and former law enforcement. Id like to hear their thoughts on what they believe for firearms and mass shootings that are happening in schools, she said.

Ewing was also concerned about issues of equity.

As a Black woman, with Black children and mixed-race children, what can we do in our community where our children can feel safe? When you look around and you dont see people that look like you, it matters, Ewing said.

You always hear that guns come from Indiana and if they do, why? And lets stop it, said George Mather from Noblesville.

He said gun violence is one of his top concerns and the main reason he came to hear what the candidates had to say about that issue.

In this political environment, I think we all need to be involved with our candidates and know what they stand for, Mather said.

Indiana Democrats say voters will have plenty of time to find out before November. They plan to host another town hall June 30 in Zionsville, with several more planned for the months ahead.

What other people are reading:

See the article here:

Abortion rights top of mind at candidate town hall in Fishers - WTHR

A libertarian political advocacy group is partnering with gas stations across the country to offer discount fuel.

WYOMING, Mich. For just a few hours, some motorists in West Michigan got to capitalize on gasoline priced at $2.38 a gallon.

A privately-owned Citgo gas station in Wyoming partnered up with Americans for Prosperity-Michigan, which is a libertarian political advocacy group.

From 10 a.m. to noon Thursday, the gas station offered up discounted gas on a first-come-first-serve basis. Hundreds of cars lined up for their chance to fill up.

The group chose $2.38 a gallon because that's what they say was the national average price of gas on the day that President Joe Biden took office.

Rep. Peter Meijer stopped by Thursday morning to take part in the event.

This short event mirrored similar discount gas events across the country to highlight the increasing costs of energy. According to AAA, the average price of gas for Americans sits around $4.86 per gallon.

Make it easy to keep up to date with more stories like this.Download the 13 ON YOUR SIDE app now.

Have a news tip? Email news@13onyourside.com, visit our Facebook page or Twitter. Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

The rest is here:

Wyoming gas station temporarily offered gas for $2.38 a gallon to shine light on inflation - WZZM13.com