Category Archives: Libertarian

Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, and Nick Gillespie tackle a suddenly-pervasive topic: critical race theory. Plus, tune in for the fine details of a debate brewing within the Libertarian Party (L.P.). All that and more on this Monday's Reason Roundtable.

Discussed in the show:

1:54: Some condolences are in order.

7:46: Breakdown and assessment of why critical race theory dominates headlines.

35:31: Weekly Listener Question: What are your thoughts on the ongoing civil war within the L.P. between pragmatists and the Mises Caucus, following the crackup at the New Hampshire L.P. and the resulting fallout? Do you think a Mises Caucusled L.P. would bring new voters into the party or just alienate everyone who isn't an edgelord?

50:21: Media recommendations for the week.

This week's links:

Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Today's sponsors:

Audio production by Ian KeyserAssistant production by Regan TaylorMusic: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

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How the Critical Race Theory Debate Misses the Mark - Reason

Susan Gore of Cheyenne founded the Wyoming Liberty Group and Republic Free Choice. (Courtesy Wyoming Liberty Group)

June 26, 2021byNick Reynolds, WyoFile

Wealthy conservative donor Susan Gore was a key financier of a years-longeffort to spy on Wyoming Democrats and Republicans, an article published Friday by the New York Times revealed, shining a light on the lengths to which the Gore-Tex heiress and Wyoming Liberty Group founder has gone to influence the states politics.

Thereportalleges Gore helped finance the infiltration of numerous political organizations in the state by a pair of spies tied to the right-wing group Project Veritas. Their targets were varied, according to the investigation, ranging from liberal advocacy group Better Wyoming and advocates of medical marijuana. Democrats and moderate Republicans within the Wyoming Legislature were also singled out, as well as the executive leadership of the Wyoming Democratic Party.

Article continues below...

The activity even reached the office of Republican Gov. Mark Gordon, the New York Times reports.

The Gordon Administration is conservative and transparent, Gordons office said in response to the news. The Governors actions have demonstrated his commitment to fiscal conservatism, life, the Second Amendment, patriotism and always putting Wyoming first. The allegations, if corroborated, of the deceptive behavior of a few politically motivated individuals contained in the New York Times story reflect a sad situation and have no place in Wyoming.

The spies, a man and woman with alleged ties to Blackwater founder Erik Prince, along with Project Veritas, were largely unsuccessful in their efforts, according to several of the victims interviewed by WyoFile. However, observers say the botched incursion into the highest circles of Wyoming politics symbolize Gores escalating role as a puppeteer in Wyomings politics, and her role in the populist rights newfound traction in Cheyenne.

I think this was the logical progression, former Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat, said. People like Susan arrive with all this outside money that suddenly shows up, funded by people whose ties to the state are usually its tax climate. I dont know if theyre concerned at all about the agricultural community or coal miners, or the schools or any of the things that were traditionally issues that people in Wyoming tried to work on.

Wyoming Liberty Group did not respond to a request for comment.

Shock and confusion

News of the espionage operation stunned many in Wyoming politics, not only for the nature of the operation, but for its chief targets: The Wyoming Democratic Party, the high-powered liberal donor Liz Storer and the progressive advocacy group Better Wyoming and its director, Nate Martin. (Note: The Storer Foundation is a major donor to WyoFile.)

I dont really understand why you would try and infiltrate the Democrats, said Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander), a longtime acquaintance of Gore and a former board member for her advocacy organization, the Wyoming Liberty Group. Theyre not driving the bus in this state, you know.

Others believe it was not the liberal groups activities that drew the interlopers attention, but a false perception of their influence by conservative groups that have grown to believe Wyomings Republican Party is rife with liberal politicians backed by special interest groups.

In 2018, one of the infiltrators, Sophia LaRocca, traveled to Cheyenne to meet with LGBTQ activist Sara Burlingame, then a Democratic candidate for the Wyoming House of Representatives. Burlingame told WyoFile LaRocca pitched her on the concept for an advocacy organization intended to flip Wyoming blue, an idea Burlingame told her was unrealistic.

Burlingame detected red flags about the woman, she said. LaRocca told Burlingame she wanted to spy on Republicans, Burlingame said. LaRocca had few ties to the state and hadnt resided here long. She also lacked a working understanding of Wyomings politics, Burlingame said.

The things that they themselves were guilty of, they projected onto us, and assumed that we would also be guilty of, Burlingame said. But every person they talked to agreed that not only was [spying] unethical, but it was also not strategic.

Living in the least-populated state in the union, you just couldnt afford to do that, Burlingame continued. You burn through all your bridges too rapidly. But I think they had an assumption that behind a closed door, wed drop the mask.

Members of the Wyoming Democratic Party encountered similar red flags, noticing an overeager quality from LaRocca and inconsistent details about her life, communications director Nina Hebert said. While the party offered LaRocca training, Hebert said she and the partys digital director limited her access to party infrastructure, leaving the party largely unexposed to her infiltration attempts.

LaRocca and her partner, Beau Maier, made inroads elsewhere, befriending Better Wyomings Martin and his wife, Wyoming Rep. Karlee Provenza (D-Laramie) through activist trainings. LaRocca even attempted to join Provenzas campaign, the lawmaker said in an interview, only to be rejected.

Through their relationship to Martin and Provenza, Meier and LaRocca became connected to individuals who were part of a multi-partisan coalition to lobby for the legalization of medical cannabis. Gore has been a vocal opponent. Several lawmakers said they believe the effort was intended to gather intelligence on Republican lawmakers who supported legalization.

I now look back on these conversations through a lens of rage, Provenza wrote in a letter to her legislative colleagues sent Friday morning. Rage because I now know that they came into my home under false pretenses to target me and my family. Rage because they attempted to bait me and my husband into saying or doing something shameful so they could use it to hurt us. Rage because they used the same tactics against some of our most honorable colleagues here in the Legislature.

The motivation behind the sting, some believe, stemmed from Gore.

I met with some people from the Liberty Group before running the [cannabis] bill. And what was really fascinating was that almost every person that I talked to who was previously affiliated or with the group all personally took a stance for the decriminalization of medical marijuana, consistent with what I would view as a libertarian position, said Rep. Jared Olsen (R-Cheyenne), the chairman of the Joint Judiciary Committee and the main sponsor of last sessions marijuana legalization bill. But they all said the same thing to me, which was that Susan Gore personally has such an issue with marijuana that the Liberty Group would not be taking a position on it.

Gore traveled to the Capitol to testify against the bill, which ultimately failed.

From Libertarian influencer to espionage

Some, like Freudenthal, believe Gores alleged activity was inevitable.

Gores ties to Wyomingdate back to the mid-1990s, when she first moved to Jackson after more than a decade living in a transcendental meditation community in Iowa. In 2008, Gore entered Wyomings political scene with the founding of the Libertarian-leaning Wyoming Liberty Group.

The mission, according to a former staffer who declined to be named, was smaller government, school choice and low taxes. As the group grew in influence, Freudenthal then in the final years of his second term began to take notice of Gores activities, he said. Freudenthal said he grew concerned over the influence a single, wealthy individual could have on Wyomings politics.

Gore eventually cemented a place amid Wyomings political class. She donated large sums of money over the years to the Wyoming Republican Party, according to campaign finance documents reviewed by WyoFile. After rebooting its image in 2015, the Liberty Groupgained influence. In its growing sway in the Legislature and with the public, Freudenthal said, Gores personal influence grew as well, with candidates eventually tailoring their messages to match her politics.

She played a role in the defeat of House Speaker heir apparent Rosie Bergerin the 2016 primary elections. In 2018, she donated handsomely to Republican gubernatorial candidate Sam Galeotos. Gore was instrumental in a populist wave in the 2020 Republican primaries, donatingtens of thousands of dollarsto hardline conservatives. Many of those candidates went on to win their elections.

What was transpiring was simply a matter of how do we gain power at any cost? Freudenthal said. And unfortunately, theyve been largely successful.

In 2019, then-Wyoming Liberty Group board member Case realized his political philosophy was no longer compatible with Gores, he said, due to his stance on social issues and taxation.

I was always trying to steer the Liberty Group more toward the Libertarian area in issues about economic reform and economic development issues, Case said. But I could never get a lot of traction on the big social issues.

He left the board in 2019.

In recent years, Case has watched Gore funnel thousands of dollars to defeat Democrats as well as conservatives he sees himself aligned with. He wonders when he will be targeted, Case said, particularly as donors like Gore seem bent on purging moderate Republicans in Name Only, or RINOs, from the party ranks.

Paranoia, Rep. Cyrus Western (R-Sheridan), said of the trend. Go figure.

Burlingame considers the rise of Gores influence culminating in espionage inevitable considering current trends, she said.

In a post-Trump world, you have all these hyper-wealthy donors who have been radicalized into a paranoia about the Deep State, Burlingame said. And you also have this small army of con artists who are just out looking for someone to fund them. And theyre a perfect match.

This article was originally published byWyoFileand is republished here with permission.WyoFileis an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

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Stun and dismay follow Wyoming political espionage revelations - Oil City News

Based on relationship

Last month, I suggested that personal identity has shifted from relationship-based to market-based notions of success and that this shift contributes significantly to our political strife. Today I suggest that this shift has been driven by the political right.

Libertarianism with its emphasis on extreme personal freedom and rugged individualism within the marketplace--raw capitalism, let's call it--has taken over the GOP. This value system leads many to feel undervalued or left out. The schism within the GOP between libertarian/capitalist values and traditional conservatism with its focus on family and community relationships has led directly to Trumpism, which attempts to fill the void by emphasizing class or race as a basis for identity.

Democratic ideals have changed little from those well-articulated by Mario Cuomo in the mid-1990s when he likened society to an extended family stating that we should provide for the education, clothing, feeding, health care and housing of members of our family. One can argue about whether large-scale social programs are effective, but few would argue with the principle of helping others. We used to agree on helping each other and differ on the means to achieve this.

Our biggest threat is not socialism, but elevation of libertarian capitalism to a moral rather than an economic system. This criticism is not anti-capitalist because capitalism thrives best in a society based on traditional moral values of caring.

Religion is not the remedy because those parts of the country with the highest degree of religiosity are those with the highest rate of "deaths of despair": suicide, and deaths from substance abuse, specifically more rural areas. Let's all recommit to relationships and social responsibility as the bedrock of society. These values transcend party.

KATHY CURTIN

Fayetteville

Solve issues together

It seems Republicans have always been opposed to entitlements, yet our governor has stopped the added monthly unemployment benefits to those who need it the most. All in an effort to force people to go back to work for starvation wages so someone can own a hamburger stand, all this when maybe only 30 percent of the people are fully vaccinated.

This is on the governor. This is the very definition of entitlement. What about helping with child care, which is almost impossible to find, or help with transportation, health care, etc.? Work with small-business owners and potential employees. Let's solve these issues together. What would it hurt? I was in the staffing business for 30 years and it's just not this hard.

J.E. JACKSON

Hot Springs Village

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Based on relationship | Solve issues together - Arkansas Online

Getting down to the specifics of these bills, they range from bad to ugly, said Patrick Hedger, vice president of policy for the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, which is funded in part by groups connected to the Kochs. Americans for Prosperity, a Koch group, called the antitrust package a jumble of legislative proposals [that] targets American companies [and] treats them as guilty until proven innocent.

The critics are arguing, in part, that the bills are antithetical to GOP values, which traditionally emphasize the free market and oppose regulatory intervention.

These bills represent a huge intervention into the U.S. economy, said Jessica Melugin, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institutes Center for Technology and Innovation, which has received tens of thousands of dollars from Koch foundations in recent years as well as funding from the major tech companies. This is not on-brand for Republicans.

The Houses top Republican, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, weighed in against the legislation on Wednesday, saying it only gives Democrats in the federal government more power to tip the scales. McCarthy, a California lawmaker, has received tens of thousands of dollars from Google, Amazon and Facebook, as well as the Koch Industries PAC, in recent years.

But traditional Republican aversion to meddling in big business saw serious erosion under Trump, whose Justice Department filed a major antitrust suit against Google. The antitrust bills right-leaning supporters say the Koch groups are simply out of touch with a populist GOP base that feels censored and silenced by the tech giants.

The Koch group and all of these pro-big tech people on the right, they do have an advantage, which is inertia, said Jon Schweppe, the director of policy and government affairs at the populist American Principles Project, which has received money from the Mercer family. The Republican Party for a long time has been a party opposed to any antitrust or concern about concentrated power. But the divide here is that the base definitely wants to break up Big Tech.

One sign of the anti-tech messages growing appeal among the GOP caucus: Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, the top Republican on the House Judiciary antitrust subcommittee, co-sponsored all five of the antitrust bills, along with North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn and Texas Rep. Lance Gooden.

Buck said he believes that the legislative efforts are an extension of his outreach to blue collar voters.

When I go back to my district, I hear a lot of people talk about the fact that what Big Tech doing is wrong, he said. They dont necessarily know they cheated this particular company in this way, but they have this gut feeling that these companies are too big and theyre cheating. So I do think that we will reach out to a broad spectrum [with these bills].

Democrats behind the legislation have welcomed the support from Republicans, seeking to ride the populist wave to garner lasting support for their agenda.

Ultimately, its a fight for the future of the Republican party Trump-style populism vs. traditional conservatism and the Koch network isnt going down without a fight. As soon as the bills were introduced last week, Koch-backed groups including Americans for Prosperity, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, the Open Competition Center, TechFreedom and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation came out with statements and campaigns condemning the legislation.

Aside from the tech companies themselves, the Koch groups and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have been some of the loudest voices blanketing Capitol Hill urging Republican lawmakers to oppose the legislation, according to two aides familiar with the conversations who asked to remain anonymous in order to discuss private conversations. (Many of the groups that receive Koch funding also receive money from Facebook, Google or Amazon.)

I dont think Koch is out on their own on this, said Zach Graves, head of policy at the Lincoln Network, a right-of-center tech advocacy group. I think they have a lot of alignment with relatively powerful industry groups not just tech, but also just general Chamber of Commerce types who dont want to see massive expansion of the antitrust regime and giving big new powers to the [Federal Trade Commission] and DOJ.

Each of the bills has at least one Republican co-sponsor, but the legislation will need more GOP support to push through the Senate. Thats left undecided Republicans in the middle of a tense debate.

For instance, the Heritage Foundation, which is building out its tech policy apparatus, has chosen to stay out of the public conversation for now as it weighs how to thread the needle between taking on Big Tech and maintaining a hands-off approach to government regulation.

As with any other meaningful policy debate, Heritage is carefully looking at the issues inherent to the Big Tech debate in order to come up with policy recommendations that address legitimate concerns about censorship and the growing influence of Big Tech platforms, said John Cooper, the Heritage Foundations associate director for institute communications. To argue that these are issues that dont require some sort of action is simply unrealistic at this point, though its important policymakers act in a way that doesnt give the federal government undue authority that Americans will regret giving to bureaucrats down the road.

Another crucial dynamic is the fact that the Koch network and the Chamber of Commerce, once two of the most important forces in the Republican Party, fell increasingly out of favor with GOP backers during the Trump era. The Koch network alienated a huge swath of formerly devoted Republican followers as its political arm expressed new openness last year to backing Democrats, and the Chamber drew fire for backing several Democrats as well.

The Koch network and Chamber crowd have zero influence right now, said one House Republican aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly. Most of the House Judiciary members and their staff couldnt pick out their people from a police lineup.

But on the other side of the schism, many traditional conservatives and libertarians feel theyre defending the core of their party against Trumps influence. That includes growing GOP calls for a government crackdown on social media companies that they accuse of censoring conservatives, a theme that Trump pressed repeatedly during his time in the White House.

I reject the premise that this is the right is divided, said Berin Szoka, president of the tech- and Koch-funded think tank TechFreedom. People accusing tech companies of censorship, he added, are seeking to compel social media sites to host the most despicable people and content imaginable.

The Democratic-led bills H.R. 3816 (117), H.R. 3825 (117), H.R. 3826 (117), H.R. 3843 (117) and H.R. 3849 (117) dont include prominent anti-tech proposals that Trump and other Republicans had championed, such as stripping or reducing the online industrys protections against lawsuits over user-posted content. But anti-tech activists on the right have made it clear that they support the House antitrust bills in part to punish the major tech companies alleged censorship.

Conservatives are being canceled by Big Tech, we are being kicked off these platforms, we are being silenced and censored, said Mike Davis, founder and president of the right-wing Internet Accountability Project, which receives some funding from Oracle. Conservatives need to pick a side theyre either with everyday Americans or theyre with these Big Tech monopolists and their D.C. lobbyists.

Both sides agree that theres nowhere near as robust of an apparatus on the right for supporting antitrust changes. Whereas a swath of academics and groups on the left have taken up trust-busting as a priority policy area, only a few groups and figures are devoted to the issue on the right.

I think its going to take a new generation of folks, said the House Republican aide.

So far, most Republicans in Congress have not weighed in publicly on the legislation. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the pro-Trump ranking member on the House Judiciary Committee with a more libertarian bent, has been actively whipping against the bills, targeting their Democratic roots.

On the other side, lobbyists for News Corp. and fellow Murdoch-owned company Fox have been working Republican lawmakers to vote in favor, according to two people familiar with the dynamics. And the tech giants themselves some of the biggest lobbying spenders in Washington are caught in the middle.

There is going to continue to be a battle on this, and it parallels the realignment, Schweppe said. The Kochs have always been this more libertarian wing. I dont think thats the main thrust of the party anymore.

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How the Houses Silicon Valley smackdown is dividing conservatives - POLITICO

USA TODAY Published 8:00 a.m. ET June 19, 2021

From Joe Biden's meeting with Putin, to a Pulse nightclub shooting, and vaccine passports, here are some of our top columns you may have missed.

In today's fast-paced news environment, it can be hard to keep up. For your weekend reading, we've startedin-case-you-missed-it compilations of some of the week's topUSA TODAY Opinionpieces.As always, thanks for reading, andfor your feedback.

USA TODAY Opinion editors

By Tom Nichols

"It all started in 2019, when in response to an open invitation from a user on Twitter to post ourmost controversial food takes, I decided to bypass all the hatred for mayonnaise and other foods, and to fire off a zinger about the cuisine of an entire subcontinent. 'Indian food,'I said, 'is terrible and we pretend it isnt.'"

By Philip Levine

"Yet when partisan politics get in the way of good intentions, policies and people suffer needlessly.Exhibit A: Florida.First, Gov.Ron DeSantis uses a libertarian, free-market approach to keep the state open while others closed shut.Now hes doing an about-face,dictating rules to ailing cruise companieswho want to set sail swiftly and safely."

By Connie Rice

"To my fellow Americans I have an urgent alarm: Stop distractifying over 'wokeness'and deal with the wolf at the door. Firing folks over 'forbidden'words or views is absurd. Shaming the interracially clueless is counterproductive.But arguing 'wokeness'right now is the strategic equivalent of Titanic musicians debating preludes."

No guns allowed(Photo: USA TODAY Handout)

By Brandon Wolf

"Gunshots endless gunshots filled my ears. I crouched in a dark corner of the bathroom. The smell of blood and smoke singed my nose. Finally, I made a break for the door. I didnt look right; I didnt look left. I just ran. When I dialed Drews number over and over, no one picked up."

ByJon Patricof, Cheri Kempf

"Over the past weeks, softball fans have marked the end of stellar collegiate careers for the likes ofGiselle Juarez, Sis Bates, Dejah Mulipola and Carrie Eberle. But the end of this chapter of their careers marks the start of another one and a chance for fans to continue to follow them:All four were among 12 selected in our first college draft and have been invited to join Athletes Unlimited Softballs second season, which starts this August and will air onCBS Sports Network and Fox Sports."

By The Editorial Board

"If anything, the contrast with Trump's 2018 summit was so stark, it was almost as if roles were reversed. Putin, who spoke to the news media first, complimented Biden as experienced,professional and a man of 'attractive'moral values. 'It seems to me we did speak the same language,'Putin said."

Stop the steal(Photo: USA TODAY Handout)

By Andrea O'Sullivan

"Ransomware attacks happen frequently, but they usually dont shut down gasoline sales on much of the East Coast. These cyberattacks target systems by encrypting or shutting users out from computers until they pay the attackers. Many businesses have had to deal with the headache of ransomware, and it can bemore cost effectiveto just pay the attackers, asColonial Pipeline eventually did."

By Meme Styles

"Like many of their predecessors, 21st century police reform advocates are emotionally intelligent, data driven, socially awareand relentless in the pursuit of justice for all especially those historically and disproportionately impacted by police brutality. Accountability is their armor, and evidence is their driver."

Older vehicles on US roads(Photo: USA TODAY Handout)

By Tim Swarens

"To me, that's sad because coworkers ought be able to share a lunch room without fear of political strife.It's alarming because people will put up with bullying and it is bullying when we're forced into silence to keep the peace for only so long."

By Connie Schultz

"This yard of trees is our map, perhaps, for our grandchildren. It is a story of love and resilience that began with a marriage of second chances and grew into our version of a family tree."

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Joe Biden's meeting with Putin, vaccine passports, nightclub shootings, and other top columns - USA TODAY

SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 17, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Louis Marinelli, an American political activistand California governor candidate, released a short filmexploring the issue of Vrbetice explosions in the light of the first Biden - Putin meeting.

The film was made in collaboration with Adam Kokesh, a libertarian activist who ran for USA presidency in 2020 and was aimed to present a perspective that is not widespread in the media today and discuss an alternative vision of the explosions in Czech Republic, sanctions against Russia and the current state of international relations prior to Putin - Biden meeting.

In 2014, a series of explosions destroyed an arms depot in the Czech Republic, causing two deaths. At the time, Czech authorities blamed the explosions on human error. But now, in the months leading up to the Biden-Putin meeting set for Geneva, the explosions have resurfaced as a topic of international concern - except now NATO allies and EU members are blaming Russia - and placing sanctions on Russia as a result, even though they lack any direct evidence of Russian involvement.

Louis Marinelli unravels the story and presents an alternative theory - is Europe's renewed interest in the 2014 explosions in Vrbetice really just a pretext to place sanctions on Russia and tarnish Russia's reputation before Putin's meeting with Biden? Or maybe the explosions are simply the result of a rivalry between two arms dealers - Emelian Gebrev, and Boyko Borissov, who, until recently, was also the Prime Minister of Bulgaria?

Additional information:

Louis J. Marinelli(born March 28, 1986) is an Americanpolitical activistof theCalifornia independencemovement organized under theYes CaliforniaIndependence Campaign, an umbrella organization representing the coalition of parties and organizations supporting the proposed California independence referendum. Marinelli is the former president of Yes California and the former interim chairman of theCalifornia National Party, under which he also ran forCalifornia State AssemblyinCalifornia's 80th State Assembly districtrepresenting southSan Diego,National City,Chula Vista,San Ysidro, and the surrounding communities.

Adam Charles Kokesh(born February 1, 1982) is anAmericanlibertarianpoliticalactivist, radio host, and author. Kokesh was a U.S.2020 Libertarian presidential candidaterunning on thesingle-issueplatform of an "orderly dissolution of thefederal government."

Kokesh is a formerU.S. Marine Corpssergeant, serving in theIraq Warin 2004. Upon his return from Iraq, he became ananti-waractivist and an advocate forIraq Veterans Against the War.

Media contact:Louis Marinelli[emailprotected]+79859426240

SOURCE Louis Marinelli

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Louis Marinelli: Is Europe's interest in the 2014 Vrbetice Explosions driven by the Biden-Putin meeting? - PRNewswire

Anthony Bland affirms plan to run for governor - Arkansas Times

ANTHONY BLAND

Anthony Bland, a Little Rock teacher and minister, said hell formally announce as a Democratic candidate for governor at 1 p.m. Wednesday in Hot Springs.

He was the Democratic candidate for lieutenant governor in 2018. (I left lieutenant out of the original post.)

His announcement today said:

Many of The Working Poor feel marginalized within their own communities, Dr. Bland wants to provide them with useful resources and opportunities required to pull themselves out of poverty.

Dr. Bland as Governor will enhance the Education System, improve the Healthcare System, work to reform the Criminal Justice System, and improve the Job opportunities for Arkansans, as you may well be aware that many young adults leave Arkansas for better career and job opportunities elsewhere. It is vital for the growth of Arkansas that we retain our talented young people here in the State Of Arkansas.

Other Democrats whove announced: Chris Jones, Rus Russell and Supha Xaysprasith-Mays. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Leslie Rutledge have announced as Republicans to succeed term-limited Governor Hutchinson. Ricky Dale Harrinton Jr. has said hell be a Libertarian candidate.

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Anthony Bland affirms plan to run for governor - Arkansas Times

From the very beginning, I was among those that said the claims inCalifornia v. Texas were categorically different from those in prior Affordable Care Act cases and would ultimately fail. (My prior posts on this litigation are indexed here.) The question was never whether Texas would lose, but how and when. I further said repeatedly that the claims would be lucky to get two votes on the Supreme Court.

What distinguished the claims inCalifornia v. Texas from the claims inNFIB v. Sebelius andKing v. Burwell was not merely relative weakness of the arguments, but also the lack of any grounding in conservative jurisprudence. The arguments underlying aggressive legal challenges often seem weak at first. If they are to go from "off the wall" to "on the wall" they need to be grounded in sound legal principles. Planted in the fertile soil of an underlying jurisprudence, even apparently outlandish legal arguments may blossom. Legal arguments motivated by nothing more than policy aims, on the other hand, are likely to wither.

The claims in NFIBwere grounded in longstanding concern about maintaining the limits on enumerated powers. The individual mandate and Medicaid expansion both represented unprecedented assertions of federal power, and the arguments against each were directly tied to principled arguments about the need for judicially enforceable limits on federal power. (Some of us here at the VC were involved in developing those arguments, as documented in our book, A Conspiracy Against Obamacare.) Thus the arguments inNFIBwere not merely about the ACA. They were about vindicating a constitutional principle that has long been embraced by conservative and libertarian legal scholars and jurists.

Just as the arguments inNFIB were grounded in a core conservative constitutional principle, the arguments inKing v. Burwell were grounded in a core conservative interpretive principle: that the meaning of a statute is controlled by the statute's text. The idea that words in a statute mean what they mean was not invented for this case. The argument that statutory interpretation must be grounded in and anchored by the statutory text have been made for decades. Moreover, the central arguments in King were developed and advanced before there was even any prospect of litigation. (In my case, I first spoke and published on the meaning of the relevant provisions of the ACA before NFIB had been decided and when it still looked as if every state would create their own exchange.) The arguments were no doubt supported by many who saw them as a means to attack the ACA, but the arguments themselves involved straightforward textualist analysis of the relevant provisions in their broader statutory context. (The Court'sKing opinion, on the other hand, not so much.)

California v. Texas, in contrast toNFIBandKing, was not moored to any underlying jurisprudential principle. IfNFIB was about limited and enumerated powers andKing was about text, California v. Texaswas about what exactly? Hamstringing the legislature's ability to use reconciliation? Turning statutory challenges into games of Jenga? In the end, the case was really about nothing more than slaying the ACA by any means necessary. This explains why it prompted significant opposition on the Right found greater support from state attorneys general than from conservative and libertarian legal scholars (as illustrated by the line-up of amicus briefs). Hating on the ACA may win a Republican primary or fill fundraising coffers, but it's not enough to win over a majority of justices.

Not only were the core legal arguments in California v. Texas unmoored from conservative jurisprudence, key elements of the case actually challenged longstanding conservative principle. As I've explained in prior posts, for the plaintiffs to prevail, the Court would have had to abandon longstanding constraints on Article III standing, adopt selective and result-oriented purposivist analyses of legislative intent, and invent a new approach to severability at odds with any notion of remedial restraint.

All of this meant that the headwinds against the arguments in Calfornia v. Texas were simply too strong to be overcome. To some of us, that this would be so was obvious from the start.

The rest is here:

Why the Texas ACA Suit Was Always Destined to Fail (Even on a 6-3 Court) - Reason

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th June, 2021) Joe Biden will likely repair relations with Vladimir Putin at the upcoming summit in Geneva, Gary Dye from the Libertarian Party told Sputnik, adding that the US media will present the American president in a more or less even way to help improve Biden's public image.

"Before the election, the Democratic Party tried to make Russia a great threat and enemy of the United States and it was all political... But now that Biden got elected and the Democrats kind of control the government here, they don't need to consider or say that Russia is this big huge enemy," Dye, who ran for election to the US Senate to represent Oregon, and who is now running for governor of Oregon, said.

He surmises that Biden is trying to bury the hatchet with Putin.

"He had this opportunity to do some bad things against Russia with some of these hackers that seem to be operating within Russia, but Biden didn't do anything. He didn't blame it on Putin. It's all about politics. And I think Biden is going to patch things up," he said.

Dye also believes that the American press is going to be "a little bit more even" while covering the Geneva summit.

"And they're going to try to help that process along and make Biden look like this genius who is able to deal with Russia or peacefully coexist, cooperate. I think it's going to be more of a cooperative press rather than a press that really starts slinging mud at Putin. They want to use this summit to improve Biden's public relations. And make him look like a really smart guy, that other countries like him," the politician continued.

According to Dye, most of the countries in Europe want to get along with Russia, have a "decent amount of trade" and abandon tensions.

"The Ukraine thing disrupted and made it very, very difficult for Western European countries to have decent relations with Russia or to at least not say bad things against Russia," he said.

Putin and Biden are set to face off at Geneva's 18th-century Villa La Grange later on Wednesday.

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Some conservatives believe that restraining government coercion doesnt mean much if liberalism continues to advance in the culture.

Theongoing argument on the American right between classical liberals on the one hand and nationalists on the other is, at its most intellectually respectable, an argument about the nature of power.

Classical liberals of the Goldwater/Reagan school have always believed that a crucial qualitative difference exists between state power and commercial power. When divested of all euphemisms, they argue, government is nothing other than violence, and the nation-state is nothing other than a geographic monopoly on violence held by one group of people (civil magistrates) over all others in a given jurisdiction. These conservatarians are keen to remind us that every law passed by a government is executed and enforced by men with guns, and that every tax they levy is collected in the same way, with compliance ensured by the threat of force. Persistent refusal on the part of the individual to adhere to any of the governments edicts results in the expropriation of his property, his imprisonment in a cage, or, in extreme cases, his death. To their statist opponents, conservatarians point out that, with respect to its basic modus operandi, government has a lot in common with organized-crime syndicates, a similarity that scholars such as Diego Gambetta have explored in the context of the Sicilian Mafia. Milton Friedman spoke for the libertarian school of thought when he wrote that political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority.

Commercial power, these libertarians argue, is fundamentally different. Capital is persuasive rather than coercive, and businesses cannot impose their will violently on either consumers or employees without co-opting the state power described above. Whats more, the success or failure of any given company lies in the hands of the consumer, who is free to take his business elsewhere and neednt fear any threat of violence from a service provider. The individual, rather than the collective, is ascendant in the market. For conservatives of the old Reaganite school, the awful and violent power of the state is therefore to be called upon only to make this society of persuasion and reciprocal bounty economically possible by protecting property rights. George Washington articulated the animating impulse of this modest vision of government in 1797 when he noted that, like fire, government is a dangerous servant and a fearful master. State power is coercive, intractable, and insulated from economic realities, and not, therefore, to be trusted. Market power is benign, nonviolent, and self-correcting, and to be fostered enthusiastically. This was the old fusionist view of power: The violent power of the state had to be tamed and curtailed to make room for the persuasive power of the market and of civil society, or, as Friedman wrote more plainly, government should be a referee, not an active player. (Fusionism, for those unfamiliar with the term, was the intellectual and political coalition that formed on the American right during the 20th century, uniting conservatives,libertarians, and other groups on the right in hostility to communism, in the words of Alvin Felzenberg.)

The faction of the old fusionist coalition that cared most about the power of civil society (which is to say, churches, social clubs, and other nonprofit voluntaristic associations) was the social-conservative constituency. Alongside libertarians and anti-communists, social conservatives were the third leg of the famous three-legged electoral stool that formed the basis of the conservative counterrevolution of the 1980s. But after five neoconservative or fusionist Republican presidential terms had passed between 1980 and 2016, social conservatives began to feel as if their leg of the stool had been sanded down to a stub, with Republican politics being propped up by business interests motivated more by libertarian economics than by culture warring. As they saw it, the Reagan revolution had failed to arrest the exponential liberalizing of American culture that had been set loose in the land during the 1960s. Contemplating a legal-abortion regime that had remained unchanged since the Roe v. Wade ruling, the legalization of gay marriage and its rapid assimilation into bourgeois culture, the spread of transgender ideology, and the shameless exhibitions of vice that saturate entertainment media, many social conservatives began during the middle of the last decade to consider the possibility that the Reagan-era bargain theyd made with the libertarians had left them empty-handed.

This group of newly disillusioned social conservatives began to turn on libertarian politics and economics at astonishing speed. Not only was market power criticized for its ineffectiveness at checking the spread of social liberalism, it was condemned as co-conspiring and collaborating with the onward march of the cultural Left. More and more conservative thinkers began thinking of, and writing about, social and economic liberalism as two sides of the same coin, both aiming to emancipate the individual from the traditional ties that once bound one person to another.

Prominent among this group is J. D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy, who appears to be contemplating a bid for one of Ohios Senate seats. In a keynote speech delivered late last month at the Claremont Institutes What to do about Woke Capital? conference, Vance criticized the American Rights historically supply-side, hands-off approach to capital allocation, which has preferred, wherever possible, to leave cash in the hands of private investors:

Now if a middle-class American wants to sell his house that he lived in for 30 years and makes a profit on the sale, he has to pay taxes on the gain, over a certain exempt amount. But if the Ford Foundation sells $200 million of property in an investment transaction, they pay zero tax, because our public policy has enriched and prioritized the foundations and the nonprofits that are destroying our country. This matters because if you work in private equity, if youre a hedge-fund manager, or if youre just a business that needs money to operate, you have to go to these people to get the capital to do what you need to do.

Vance clearly thinks that the traditional reluctance of successive Republican administrations to discourage or prohibit private transactions of which they claim to disapprove has been a great disadvantage for social conservatives. He notes that the interests of the Club for Growth and of the pro-life movement, for instance, are often in tension in ways that fusionist conservatives dont like to discuss:

A couple of years ago Stacey Abrams said, about a Georgia abortion restriction, that this was a bad bill because it was bad for business. That was the argument of our new corporate, neoliberal class. And she was right. This is something that those of us on the right have to accept. When the big corporations come against you for passing abortion restrictions, when corporations are so desperate for cheap labor that they dont want people to parent children, Stacey Abrams is right to say that abortion restrictions are bad for business.

During the Reagan era, social conservatives bet on the notion that they could team up with libertarian market advocates in order to prevent agents of the state from destroying the American way of life. But gradually, many social conservatives, like Vance, came to the conclusion that the opposite had occurred. Social liberals in charge of the state and economic liberals in charge of the economy had conspired unwittingly to raze the institutions and scrap the mores about which these social conservatives cared the most, in the name of maximizing individual autonomy in all areas of life. Its unsurprising, then, that for social-conservative voters, many of whom believe their causes to have been battered and bruised by their dalliance with libertarian economics, the moral distinction between violent state power and persuasive economic power has been rendered meaningless. They did the right thing: They chose persuasion, and yet they feel as if the allegiance between liberalizing politics and liberalizing economics has left them utterly routed.

The socially conservative corners of the Right believe that their enemies on the left are using every weapon they have at hand to win the culture wars. The Goldwater/Reagan movement convinced these social conservatives that if they put their shoulders to the wheel of limiting state power, the result would be socially conservative culture. The implicit assumption of the fusionist program they bought into was that state power was necessarily liberal in social terms while market power was necessarily conservative. Forty years on from the Reagan revolution, this assumption has been thoroughly debunked.

American conservatives often claim that they care about procedural honesty and integrity whereas progressives go about executing their desired policies by hook or by crook. This isnt quite true, however. The question isnt whether one is going to have an outcome-oriented politics, but rather which outcome one values the most. Many conservatives value markets as worthwhile in and of themselves; these are the conservatives for whom violent state power remains the paramount evil of which to be wary in politics. But other conservatives professed allegiance to markets in the last century because they believed that markets would be friendly to their own vision of the common good. Put another way, the former group accepted a moral dichotomy between market power and state power because they really believed that freedom from violence was the supreme political good; but the latter group accepted this dichotomy because they believed that market power was red and state power was blue. Now that woke capital has shown conclusively that market power can be of a distinctly blue hue, many social conservatives are left asking why state power shouldnt be red. (Leave aside, for the moment, the mixed success of the Reaganite project in actually limiting the state, which seems unable to shake its left-wing hue.)

As a part of this shift, some social conservatives have begun to question the libertarian habit of attributing violence exclusively to the state and persuasion exclusively to the market. As noted above, this distinction goes to the heart of the fusionist project. But the budding trust-busting impulse that one sees flowering in nationalist corners of the Right suggests a loss of faith in this hard-and-fast rule of Reaganite faith, with a consensus emerging in those corners that once businesses hit a certain quantity of market share or consumer reach, they become qualitatively different entities. Businesses ability to buy out and undercut their competitors shades over from persuasion to coercion by undermining the neutrality of the marketplace, the story goes. Whats more, the globalized supply chains of huge multinational businesses allow them to do violence to their own employees by using slave labor abroad or allow for appalling conditions at third-world sites. If companies are wealthy enough to run away from the parts of the world where theyre forced, by government power, to uphold workers rights to find cheap labor in countries with fewer rights for workers in other words, less government power can we really say that in such an instance capital is persuasive and the state is violent?

Ultimately, the future of the conservative movement in America will be determined by the kind of power that conservatives come to view as the greatest threat to them. There is a lot of data to suggest that the past half century has been far kinder to social conservatives than many of them seem to believe. Its possible that socially conservative apocalypticism has been manufactured by media conglomerates distorting the pervasiveness of certain social trends to boost their ratings. But even if so, is not this distortion itself yet another example of how libertarian economics is driving social conservatives to distraction?

Speaking for myself, Ill never be able to overcome my own political gag reflex at the naked and undisguised violence of the state, despite my social conservatism (which is considerable). State violence is not cultural coercion the way that advertising or corporate censorship is. Its the real thing: coercion devoid of any adjective in front of it. But its nevertheless true that when social conservatives and libertarians came together to elect Ronald Reagan 40 years ago, they were each trying to limit two different kinds of power: the first group, social liberalism, and the second, state violence. Many hoped that both could be opposed seamlessly and simultaneously. After all, the shared foreign enemy of the Soviet Union had made them inevitable bedfellows. But what looked like inevitable, natural, and necessary political coalitions during the 20th century now seem increasingly contingent, unnatural, and artificial. Its not at all clear that the center of American conservatism can hold given the unraveling and mutual estrangement. Its not even clear that there still exists such a center at all.

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How the Right Is Dividing over the Nature of Power - National Review