Category Archives: Libertarian

On Friday, election offices around Montana began sending out ballots for the June primary election, as they do every two years. However, there was a big difference this year: Mail ballots werent going just to those who asked for them, but to all active registered voters.

In March, Gov. Steve Bullock directed that counties could decide to hold the primary election by mail, to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19. All 56 counties took that option. That means traditional local polling places will not be open, though people will be able to vote in person at county election offices.

Election officials estimate about 600,000 ballots were mailed out across the state on Friday. About 94,000 more registered voters are considered inactive, and will need to contact officials in order to receive a ballot.

In Lewis and Clark County, about 40,500 active voters are having ballots mailed to them. Audrey McCue, the countys elections supervisor, said they have usually had 50% to 60% of their voters request absentee ballots, so it was not as big of a change as it might have been.

That number has gone up, but its not a drastic increase for us, she said.

For the vast majority of voters, the mail packet they receive will include three individual party ballots Democratic, Republican and Green. Some voters, including in Missoula Countys Montana Senate District 45, will also get a Libertarian ballot.

Voters can choose one, and only one, ballot to vote. Once theyre done, they put that ballot back in the secrecy and return envelopes, sign the envelope and mail it back. The other two ballots can be discarded.

If a voter sends in two ballots that have been voted, neither one will be counted.

McCue said, in previous elections, mail ballot packets also included a separate envelope that people could use to send back their unvoted ballots.

You didnt have to send them back, but it gave you somewhere to put them and to send them back, she said. That law was changed last year, so now were not sending out that envelope, and voters arent required or instructed to return them.

Bullocks directive also said that any county that switched to mail ballots needed to ensure voters would not have to add postage to send their ballot in. Each county has chosen its own way to provide postage. In Lewis and Clark County, officials simply put stamps on each return envelope.

In other counties, you might see business reply mail on the envelopes, or you might see metered postage in the top right corner, but statewide postage is covered on those return envelopes, and voters dont need stamps, McCue said.

The governors order also extended the regular voter registration deadline, from 30 days before the election to 10 days before the election. That means there is still time to register by mail. You can contact your county elections office to get more information on how to register.

Business for us is as usual; were still here, said McCue. If you dont get a ballot, call us or come in person; well be here.

In a release, the Montana Association of Clerks and Recorders said voters should contact their local election administrator if they dont receive their mail ballots by May 13.

Residents can use the Montana Secretary of StatesMy Voter pageto check whether they are registered to vote, determine whether they are considered inactive, and track whether their ballot has been received. They can find contact information for elections officialson the Secretary of States website.

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600K primary election ballots are in the mail to Montana voters - Missoula Current

Green Party presidential front-runner Howie Hawkins. Photo: Erik McGregor/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images

If the 2020 presidential election becomes another tense, tight contest like the last one, with candidates battling for Electoral College votes across a complex battleground, minor-party voting could again be an important factor in the outcome. Of the many factors that led to Donald Trumps threading-the-needle win, an unusually high level of votes for Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein is impossible to dismiss entirely, as the Guardian noted immediately after the election:

[Trumps 12,000-vote margin was] significantly less than the 242,867 votes that went to third-party candidates in Michigan. Its a similar story elsewhere: third-party candidates won more total votes than the Trumps margin of victory in Wisconsin, Arizona, North Carolina and Florida. Without those states, Trump would not have won the presidency.

In part because Johnson and Stein were each running for a second consecutive time, they did very well by the standards of their parties:

Johnson (and running mate William Weld), who was on the ballot in all 50 states, won nearly 4.5 million votes; only once (four years earlier, with Johnson as the nominee) had the Libertarians topped 1 million votes. Stein and Ajamu Baraka, on the ballot in 45 states, didnt match Naders enormous 2000 vote, but with around one percent of the total, they beat the previous three Green presidential tickets combined.

Both the Libertarians and the Greens will have new nominees this year who will have to work for name identification and credibility. But the bigger problem they face is the threshold challenge of ballot access, with the coronavirus pandemic complicating the task immeasurably, as Bill Scher explains for Politico:

In 2016, the Libertarian Party was on the general election ballot in all 50 states; this year, it has secured ballot access in just 35. Similarly, the Green Partywhich in 2016 had its best election ever by making the ballot in 44 states, with a further three states granting the partys candidate official write-in statushas qualified for the November ballot in only 22 states

At present, neither the Libertarian Party nor the Green Party has qualified for the ballot in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Iowa or Minnesota. Additionally, the Green Party has not secured a place on the ballot in Arizona, Georgia or Nevada, and the Libertarian Party is missing from Maine.

Collecting the petitions necessary for minor-party ballot access is always a chore. Getting it done during a pandemic is extremely difficult. Unsurprisingly, third-party representatives are asking states to waive petition requirements entirely (as Vermont just did, via legislation), or at least delay existing deadlines. But they also plan to go to court with a combination of traditional and pandemic-related arguments that barriers to the ballot infringe upon voting rights. Prospects for success are at best mixed, as Scher reports:

Those kind of cases are not slam dunks because courts are generally wary of changing election rules, said Rick Hasen of University of California Irvine School of Law, citing litigation over this months primary election in Wisconsin, which culminated in the U.S. Supreme Court deciding that the state could not extend the deadline for mail-in ballots because existing state law implied they needed to be postmarked by Election Day. The Court majority was not very moved by arguments about Covid-19 being a compelling enough reason to change from the ordinary requirements of an election, Hasen said.

I would be shocked if the minor parties do as well in terms of ballot access this year as they did [in 2016], said Michael S. Kang of Northwestern Universitys Pritzker School of Law. He argues because of a lack of binding precedents, judges have a lot of discretion. In turn, he expects a mixed response with some states providing relief and others refusing to change the rules.

Ballot access aside, the minor parties will simply be struggling for attention during the pandemic, much like other political actors who are not in a position to command media coverage of official actions germane to public health and economic recovery. And its unlikely they will attract as much support as Johnson and Stein did. Green front-runner Howie Hawkins is known to some for his claim that he was the originator of the Green New Deal but is not a national figure. And the Libertarians seem to be going through a purist phase, departing from their recent practice of handing their presidential nomination to dissident Republicans like Johnson. The current front-runner, Jacob Hornberger, is committed to the very poorly timed idea of abolishing the Fed and moving to a deflationary hard-money currency.

Yes, independent (and ex-Republican) congressman Justin Amash is flirting with a Libertarian candidacy; a lot may depend on whether the party delays its May convention in Texas. Amash could raise Libertarian prospects significantly, in part because hes from the key battleground state of Michigan and gained significant national attention by voting for Trumps impeachment.

Ballot-access appeals by the Greens and the Libertarians could open the door for other minor parties, notably the far-right Constitution Party, which is already on the ballot in 15 states, including battlegrounds Florida, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. The best-known candidate for that partys nomination (which will be determined by phone balloting May 12) is former West Virginia coal baron Don Blankenship. Most famous for a strange, more-Trumpian-than-Trump Senate Republican primary run in 2018, featuring wild charges that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was involved in the drug trade, Blankenship has the wealth to self-finance something of a campaign.

The relevance of any minor-party presidential candidate, of course, will depend on the dynamics of the major-party competition. Arguably a key factor in the abundant 2016 protest vote was the widespread belief that Hillary Clinton had the presidency in the bag. Its extremely unlikely that opinion leaders or voters will be so confident in the outcome this time around. But crazy things can happen in crazy-close elections, so keeping an eye on the Greens, the Libertarians, and even the theocrats of the Constitution Party as the battle for ballot access unfolds would be a good idea.

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The Coronavirus Might Force Minor Parties Off the 2020 Ballot - New York Magazine

Many are familiar with the long intellectual tradition of progressivism within academia. While progressive ideas may hold true, it is important students are exposed to the full breadth of knowledge academia holds. Without ideological diversity, students lose the critical thinking skills to discern between important ideas. Who I think should be included in the libertarian canon is merely a sample, but sufficient enough for readers to get their feet wet in libertarianism. My methodology is multidisciplinary, ranging from literature, to economics and more. All of the figures in this article are a product of my own research and I have never been formally taught any of them in school, which is why it is doubly important this message is expressed. Besides, one of the main tenets of libertarianism is self-directed education.

Firstly, lets discuss literature. My favorite author, George Orwell was a libertarian socialist. Another author, Ayn Rand, was a libertarian capitalist. Ive read both 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell and enjoyed them, thoroughly. Both were a critique of the overreach of government and totalitarianism. Some readers believe Snowball and Napoleon from Animal Farm represent dictators, Stalin and Trotsky.

Orwell also coined such phrases as The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians, and If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In short this man stood up for and advocated what he believed in: libertarianism.

As for Ayn Rand: I listened to half of her audiobook, Anthem. The book is written in first-person, plural pronouns. Individuality in the book is deemphasized. In fact, individuality is an important theme in her books and her philosophy, which she called Objectivism. Though I disagree with major components of Objectivism it believes altruism is evil I appreciate that it stresses capitalism, individualism and limited government. Ive been learning a lot about Ayn Rands work through her think tanks and through Yaron Brook, businessman and president of the Ayn Rand institute.

Economics is where the vast majority of libertarian theories arises. It goes without saying that I believe students should study the works of F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. As Hayek says, The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful tools human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from doing better. Despite these economists long accolades and contributions to society, my favorite economist is someone else, an obscure economist from Virginia.

I first became a fan of economist Bryan Caplan when I was googling libertarian quizzes, several years ago. From there, I became curious about his work, watching lectures, interviews and debates he participated in. I eventually bought two of his books, The Case Against Education and Open Borders. Caplans statistics were educational and pointed to an idea he called signalling, the idea that educations mere purpose is to convey intelligence, conformity and conscientiousness. In Open Borders, he explained a philosophical thought experiment my favorite about a man named Marvin. I had emailed Dr. Caplan last summer, out of sheer curiosity, about his positions of abolishing the FDA and anti-discrimination laws, ideas hes defended in the past. He answered my emails, thanking me for emailing him, along with a link for senior economics students, using statistics to convey why the general public is not bigoted. Overall, it was an interesting read, but Im not sure if Im ready to repeal anti-discrimination laws just yet, but he definitely deserves to be in the canon.

Overall, this is a sampling of who should be in the libertarian canon. You are free to research, enjoy and discern between opinions. I hope this article helps someone in exploring libertarianism, even if they decide libertarianism is not for them.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by individual writers in the opinion section do not reflect the views and opinions of The Daily Campus or other staff members. Only articles labeled Editorial are the official opinions of The Daily Campus.

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Who should be included in the libertarian canon - UConn Daily Campus

Dont these orders go beyond the Commerce Clause, infringe the Privileges or Immunities Clause, or violate one of the other constitutional provisions Im constantly banging on about? Surely Icant approve such extreme impositions on economic liberty, the right to travel, and just the basic freedom to go about your daily life as you choose so long as you dont get in the way of others freedom to do the same?

Well, thats the rub. As Iexplained during Catos online forum on Coronavirus and the Constitution, in apandemic when we dont know whos infected and infections are often asymptomatic, these sorts of restrictions end up maximizing freedom. The traditional libertarian principle that one has aright to swing ones fists, but that right ends at the tip of someone elses nose, means government can restrict our movements and activities, because were all fistswingers now.

This isnt like seatbelt mandates or soda restrictions, where the government regulates your behavior for our own good, becausesetting aside the issue of publicly borne health care coststhe only person you hurt by not wearing aseatbelt or drinking too much sugar is yourself. With communicable diseases, you violate others rights just by being around them.

The federal government is one of enumerated and thus limited powersat least in theory, if observed largely in the breach since the New Dealbut states have police powers to govern for the public health, safety, welfare, and morals (the last one having fallen away in recent decades). Accordingly, in light of the best epidemiological data we have, state and local executives ordered shut downs to prevent people from being around too many other people and thus spreading the disease.

Interestingly, despite the infamous pictures of springbreakers and St. Patricks Day revelers, these government actions were lagging indicators. Restaurant traffic and airline travel fell off acliff before any official action. Airports are still open, even though the president has total authority to shut them down, as George W. Bush did on 9/11.

People began socialdistancing and wearing masks without any edicts. Sports leagues canceled their seasons without so much as a dont play ball from state umpires.

Not being satisfied with this largescale recognition of the threat we face and compliance with commonsense rules for the new normal, however, governors and mayors have begun to overreach. Although Ihad been telling reporters that nobody was going to get arrested for reading in the park or enjoying wildlife with her family, police were indeed telling people to move along if they were in apublic space, even if they were nowhere near anybody else.

When we got questions at that Cato forum about restrictions on the sale of nonessential products or prohibitions on fishinga right going back to Magna Carta!I thought these were farfetched hypotheticals, but it turns out they were all too real.

Then came the bans on parking at achurch and staying in your car to hear asermon, ahead of Easter Sunday, no less, which led toone of the best district court opinionsIve read in along time, reversing such an order in Louisville. (Full disclosure: Judge Justin Walker is afriend, and Im advising the Mississippi Justice Institute on one of these cases in Greenville, Miss.)

Look, this isnt about religious liberty, or any other constitutional right in particular. Assuming that socialdistancing is required to flatten the curve and fight COVID-19, such rules are fine so long as theyre applied equally everywhere, whether to yoga studios or churches, hackathons or street protests.

But theyre not fine when theyre arbitrarily targeted at some businesses and not others, as if coronavirus spreads more in gun shops than liquor stores. Theyre also not fine when they have nothing to do with socialdistancing, as with the fatwas against drivein liturgy or closing only aisles three and five of abigbox store. Or when tennis courts are closed even if the players wear allwhite masks and promise not to both go to the net at the same time. Or that video of the cop chasing that poor guy going for arun on the beach by his lonesome.

These ridiculous examples of petty tyranny led to mymost viral tweet ever: Angered by citations for being in park with nuclear family, or in car at church, or running on the beach. Or nonessential goods roped off in stores. These things have nothing to do with fighting the virus and everything to do with powerhungry politicians and law enforcement.

Just because significant restrictions on our daytoday lives are warranted doesnt mean its afreeforall for government coercion. To borrow alegal standard from adifferent context, the rules have to be congruent and proportional to the harm being addressed. As amatter of law, judges will give executives awide berth to deal with acrisis, but their enforcement measures still have to pass the constitutional smell test.

More fundamentally, any regulations that dont make common sense, that arent seen as reasonable by most people, are simply not going to be taken as legitimate, and they wont be followed. The American people will decide what restrictions are reasonable, and for how long. Just like they decided when to shut down, they have total authority to decide when to reopen.

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The Government Has a Lot More Emergency Powers Than Libertarians Like, but It Still Can't Control Everything - Cato Institute

On April 15, protesters in Michigan railed against Gov. Gretchen Whitmers stay-at-home executive order. Spurred by right-wing media goliaths like Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh, demonstrators took to the streets of Lansing, holding signs and waving flags. Some of the signs compared Gov. Whitmer to Adolf Hitler. Some protesters waved Confederate flags. Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel tweeted that Democrat Gretchen Whitmer is turning Michigan into a police state.

Sound familiar?

The Tea Party burst onto the national scene in February 2009 after the Obama administration announced the Homeowners Affordability and Stability Plan, which refinanced mortgages while the country was in the throes of the Great Recession. The first national Tea Party protest was on Feb. 27, 2009, but the seeds of the movement were sown before that day.

Modern right-wing populism was born in a time similar to this one, during a recession with a big-government response. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson proposed what would become the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 on September 20 of that year, and while the bailouts were necessary to save the global economy, they were unpopular. Grassroots organizations on both the left and right mobilized against the Acts Troubled Asset Relief Program. Protesters on the left argued against what they perceived to be a policy package that would only help Wall Street, not ordinary Americans, in step with the lefts positions on Wall Street for decades. Opposition to TARP on the right came from a new movement.

When the Bush administration unveiled its bailout plan, fiscal libertarians who would become the Tea Party felt that TARP was the government picking winners and losers in the economy. Staunch advocates against federal intervention, they immediately opposed the plan, despite evidence that without it, Americans would soon be unable to get money from ATMs.

Libertarian conservatives were not unreasonable in their growing discontent with President George W. Bush. The compassionate conservatism he campaigned on manifested in big-government policy. It makes sense that some Republicans felt like their leader had abandoned them with Medicare Part D. Civil libertarians in the party werent happy with the Patriot Act either, as they felt it represented big government violating citizens privacy. The Bush administration also found resistance to its stance on immigration; a nascent paleoconservative wing of the party defeated Bushs immigration reform plan because of the path to citizenship it sought to provide to illegal immigrants.

Conservatives werent stupid to think the Tea Party was going to right the ship. Tea Party candidates won handily in the 2010 midterms, but their time in Washington was indicative of a greater issue in the movement.

Tea Party protesters held signs and waved flags. A lot of the signs compared Obama to Hitler. Occasionally, protestors had Confederate flags. Tea Party Republicans complained that Obama was turning this country into a police state, taking their guns and taxing the bejesus out of them.

Conservative intelligentsia largely saw the Tea Party as a vehicle for a return to Reagan-era conservatism. Tea Party candidates evoked the Gippers memory in their speeches and policies. In fact, Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who rode the Tea Party wave into office in 2010, was hailed as the next Reagan before his 2016 presidential campaign.

But it was all a lie.

If Tea Party voters actually cared about limited government and the separation of powers, they couldnt possibly be Trump supporters.

The thing is, it was never about principles.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), a libertarian hardliner, said to the Washington Examiner of his voters:

All this time, I thought they were voting for libertarian Republicans. But after some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand and Ron and me in these primaries, they werent voting for libertarian ideasthey were voting for the craziest son of a b- in the race.

Massie is spot-on here. The vast majority of Tea Party voters and politicians still in office have pledged fealty to Donald Total Authority Trump, certainly not deigning to investigate his flagrant corruption, their one-time raison dtre. The anti-Whitmer protest, and similar demonstrations across the country, are nothing more than a redux of the Tea Partys beginnings this time without any pretense of support for the free market and limited government.

Lets not get caught up in the same narrative. It was all about tearing down the establishment. Real Americans versus the latte-sipping elites. Thats what it is now, too. Trump, in his unwillingness to listen to medical and epidemiological experts, is a man of the people. Hes draining the swamp when he reassigns career public servants Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman and his brother from the National Security Council to lower posts after Vindman testifies against him in his impeachment hearings.

Bulwark founder and editor-at-large, Charlie Sykes, wrote Thursday that on the populist right, there is no tension between outrage over the Nanny State and slavish devotion to the Orange God King. Although as a matter of political philosophy or logic you would think those two things would be incompatible, as a matter of psychology theyre not.

Hes absolutely right on that point. Its a psychology of war, one that the Tea Party instilled in the partys identity, and that persists today. John McCain was a squishy RINO in 2008 to the conservative wing of the party, so he picked Sarah Palin, who ended up being maybe the highest-profile Tea Party leader. Mitt Romney wasnt conservative enough, and he picked Paul Ryan, who, while as conservative as Tea Party politicians, was seen as too much of a Washington policy wonk.

The right wing of the Republican Party wanted someone to take up the cause. Not of conservatism, but of populism. Donald Trump is the strongman who can give power back to the people the president who will tweet all-caps calls to LIBERATE three states, which might have been incitement.

Its not as if there arent valid reasons for all kinds of Americans to be distrustful of government and our countrys institutions. If the 21st century can be described in one word, that word would be disillusionment. But Trumps goal, and greatest strength, is self-preservation. Hell do whatever he and his team think necessary for him to stay in power.

What happens next?

Trump will likely exploit growing populist indignation, pitting Americans against one another even more than he did in 2016. Hell double down on immigration, citing the coronavirus pandemic as a reason to tighten border security. Hell claim countless powers he doesnt have, all while calling Biden a big-government socialist. His supporters wont call him out on his hypocrisy, because to them, the president isnt the government. Hes a fighter, and the government is the deep state that he has to beat.

My hope is that real conservatives dont fall prey to this faux-libertarian movement the way the right did a decade ago. Considering the responses to Trumps claim that when somebodys the president of the United States, the authority is total and Trumps history of not typically following through on his loudest pronouncements, I doubt anything shockingly more apocalyptic than what were currently experiencing comes to pass. Im sure there will be protests, more hand-wringing from elected Republicans when Trump says something particularly egregious about liberating states and Democrats taking guns, but not much more.

Polling data overwhelmingly shows that Americans support social isolation measures and stay-at-home orders. The divide between those who do and dont is almost entirely partisan. Americans are growing increasingly frustrated with the federal response to the pandemic, and theyre not the ones out in the streets protesting. The new silent majority is the moderate suburban voter, and their vote is right there for Joe Biden to pick up.

If he does, and is elected president of the United States, this new Tea Party wont pick up much political momentum, but itll exist as long as we as a country feel the effects of coronavirus. And theres no telling how long the GOPs populist turn will last, but its clear that its never been about conservative principles.

Zach Kessel is a Medill freshman. He can be contacted at zachkessel2023@u.northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.

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Opinion | A new populist revolution is here. Don't buy in. - The Daily Northwestern

The most fertile places for Minnesotas minor political parties to gather signatures to get their candidates on the ballot are lakes and festivals. But COVID-19 has made both off-limits for party petitioners and going door-to-door isnt a viable alternative.

So the leaders of Minnesotas Libertarian, Green and Independence-Alliance parties have asked state lawmakers for emergency relief to let them gather those signatures electronically.

Secretary of State Steve Simon has included that provision among several others related to the peacetime emergency caused by the coronavirus. But that request has been caught up in the fight over expanded vote by mail in Minnesota.

Under state election law, minor parties must gather signatures of 2,000 registered voters to place a U.S. Senate candidate before fall voters; 1,000 signatures for a U.S. House candidate; and 500 for state House and Senate candidates. They must collect those signatures from May 19 to June 2 (though they have more time for a presidential nominee).

Minnesotas requirements are already a heavy lift, the parties complain, which is why they are part of a federal lawsuit that is set to be heard on May 19.

We can only get so many signatures every day, and we only have 14 days to do it, maybe it limits the number of candidates for us, said Chris Holbrook, the chair of the Minnesota Libertarian party. The coronavirus only underscores the structural problems that we started suing on last year in the first place.

He said the Libertarians get 80 percent of the signatures needed by petitioning around the lakes in Minneapolis and at festivals like Grand Old Day in St. Paul. The parks will likely remain closed and Grand Old Day has been cancelled this year.

MinnPost photo by Peter Callaghan

Libertarian Party Chair Chris Holbrook

The Libertarians are working with the Green Party and the Independence-Alliance Party to win the changes at the capitol.

Were all in the same boat, Holbrook said of the other parties. They have their different political philosophies and ideologies, and were not merging our political efforts with the exception of all minor parties are going to get screwed if they dont give us some option to participate.

The lawsuit is asking the U.S. District Court for injunctive relief to extend the petition window to the August 11 state primary date. At the same time, the minor parties have also asked Gov. Tim Walz to use an executive order to change the dates or lower the signature requirements. Finally, the parties are also asking the legislature to allow electronic signatures so we dont endanger the public or ourselves in getting our candidates on the ballots.

But Holbrook said the changes minor parties have asked for have previously been blocked by legislative Republicans, and that he expects a similar reaction this year.

The bill before the House State Government Finance subcommittee addressing some of the minor parties concerns tries to do a lot of things. Initially, the purpose of the bill was to appropriate money sent to the states by Congress for cybersecurity projects. While some of that money was eventually cleared for use by Secretary of State Steve Simon, an argument between DFLer Simon and the GOP-controlled Senate over voter ID and provisional balloting has left the rest, some $7.39 million, unappropriated. (In the meantime, Congress has sent even more money to the states, this time for COVID-19 related expenses related to elections; Minnesotas share is $6.9 million.)

Amendments to the bill, House File 3499, would give Simon the authority to make other election changes if the COVID-19 crisis continues through the primary and general elections. Those changes could include ordering the closure of high-risk polling places such as those in long-term care facilities. It would also authorize remote filing for office as well as extend the period before and after elections for absentee ballots to be processed and counted. Finally, it would respond to the request of the minor parties to be allowed to gather petition signatures electronically.

It is not really right and fair to make supporters of those parties go door-to-door or to public places to gather physical human signatures, Simon told the House committee Thursday. We might have our differences with people from non-major parties, but to ask them to go out and hustle signatures in public places doesnt seem very safe.

MinnPost photo by Greta Kaul

Secretary of State Steve Simon

Vote-by-mail has drawn opposition for national and state Republicans, making it unlikely to pass the GOP-controlled Senate. But Rep. Jim Nash, R-Waconia, said he was leery of giving Simon any of the emergency powers the bill envisions. Instead, the Legislature could return to pass changes related to COVID-19 should they be needed as the election dates draw nearer.

Im hesitant to say were gonna wrap this up in a bow and let the secretary figure it out, Nash said. The Legislature has to continue operating as the Legislature. We have the election certificates, we have the ability to make these changes, committees are still meeting, we have a commitment to address election issues.

Rep. Michael Nelson, a DFLer from Brooklyn Park and chair of the committee, said the committee will keep working on the bill. I dont see this as us handing huge powers to the Secretary of State, Nelson said.

Current law does not allow any changes to polling places after December, 2019, for example, so moving or combining them because of concerns over COVID exposure must be authorized by the Legislature. There are things that have got to get done in here, he said.

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COVID-19 is killing minor parties' ability to get candidates on the ballot in Minnesota - MinnPost

Review of Nathan RobinsonsWhy You Should Be a Socialist(Macmillan, 2019).

Like Moses and the ancient Israelites, for forty or so years, socialists were lost in the wilderness. From 1975 to 2015, socialists were a fast-greying lot with no power and influence and very little hope. A small few cornered appointments at universities, stuck by their politics, but remained politically isolated. The rest congregated on the margins of political life; or hid their full convictions from their coworkers, friends, and family; or threw themselves into union and community activism but never dared to use the s word. Or they gave up altogether.

That has changed, thank God. Socialismis back. And were now in a moment that is calling out for new books, magazines, documentaries, podcasts, and commentary making the case for democratic-socialist politics to millions of readers.

Thats what makes Nathan Robinsons new book Why You Should Be a Socialist a welcome and useful addition to the bumper crop in cases for left-wing politics. In a little over 250 pages, Robinson persuasively lays out the moral case against capitalism, a system of brutal exploitation, oppression, and waste that Robinson dissects and disposes of in short order.

Robinson launches the book by engaging a hypothetical reader who is extremely dubious about socialist ideas and promises to win them over. Its a fruitful strategy. Even though most of his readers will probably be at the very least already curious about democratic-socialist politics, theyll find many of their doubts assuaged and questions answered.

Robinson does so by directing his attention first to awakening in his readers a socialist instinct. He invokes basic moral principles that many of us share, a hatred of cruelty and a passionate desire to alleviate suffering being prominent among them.

His own process of radicalization provides the starting point for this part of the argument. I saw people buying new phones every year and keeping the old ones in a drawer, while a few miles away, day laborers picked tomatoes, earning 45 cents for every 30-pound bucket. I saw reports of Americans being charged $5,000 by hospitals for an icepack and a bandage, or paying $1,200 a month in rent for a bunk bed.

No doubt every reader has had similar experiences. And while the depravities of the capitalist system are onerous enough for those of us not on the top, the life of luxury for the lucky few makes it all the worse. Robinson appeals to those readers who want to see what being super-wealthy means, but [who] dont have the door codes to get inside their lairs sorry, homes to buy a copy of the Wall Street Journal and turn to its real estate section, which is literally called Mansion.

Robinsons point is a basic one, but one that deserves constant repetition: these shared moral inclinations ought to lead us to want to make dramatic changes to society in a socialist direction.

He then pivots to show how those moral instincts can be hardened into more concrete political commitments, particularly towards policies that help build a more solidaristic and egalitarian society. Such a society, Robinson points out, would actually be far freer than the world of capitalist freedom we live in today. Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, a real plan to end mass incarceration all would expand the freedoms and quality of life of the vast majority, and are part of walking the fine line Robinson draws between both dream[ing] of a very different world and look[ing] closely at the world you actually live in and be[ing] realistic in setting short-term political goals.

Finally, Robinson dispatches with alternative political orientations. He shows how a conservative worldview is at its core an ugly one, and how liberalism is wholly inadequate to the challenges of the moment. In Robinsons apt phrasing, conservatives today are mean, false, and hopeless while liberals are engaged in the unenviable task of polishing turds.

Robinson carries out the core tasks he sets for himself with admirable skill. The socialist movement is lucky to have him, and he has made a valuable contribution to the debate about capitalism and socialism now underway in the United States.

But Robinson runs into trouble when he approaches strategic debates within the socialist left. Though a relatively small part of the book, its worth focusing in on two points where he is on much shakier ground: his unsubstantiated attacks on the most important political tradition in the history of the Left, Marxism, and his self-proclaimed identity with the politics of libertarian socialism.

The problems begin when Robinson turns his attention to Karl Marx, who he introduces as a thinker who cant be ignored. After recognizing the force of Marxs writings on capitalism and economics, Robinson disappointingly drudges up accusations against Marx from Marxs nineteenth-century anarchist contemporaries.

The accusations include claims that Marx had authoritarian tendencies. Where? When? Robinson doesnt say. Marxists have had too little regard for the importance of individual liberty. This is certainly true for Stalinism, but its hardly a fair picture of the rich democratic-socialist tradition inspired by Marx.

And the anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Robinson writes, was right to worry that Marx and other socialists had become fanatics of state power. This is a bizarre claim, considering Marx spent his life running from state authorities in Germany and never lived to see a socialist state for which he could be fanatical.

Robinsons accusations against Marx go beyond establishing some critical distance from an important thinker. They play into destructive anti-socialist tropes that are as common as they are unwarranted.

Contrary to the claims of Robinson, Proudhon, and others, Marx was a committed small-d democrat. Marx was so committed to democracy that in The Communist Manifesto, he and Friedrich Engels argued that the struggle and realization of a democratic society were the key to the achievement of socialism: [T]he first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

Marxs successors in the socialist parties of Europe in the late nineteenth century were no less democratic in their politics. In fact, they were the main organizers for movements to extend suffrage to all, to defend and expand civil liberties, and to build unions and organs of democratic control in the workplace.

Robinsons attempted takedown of Marx therefore does an injustice to a committed democratic socialist, to many who identify as Marxists, and most troubling to young socialists looking for political direction. New socialists political development will benefit enormously from taking Marx and the Marxist tradition seriously and incorporating it into their newfound democratic socialism.

Robinson also throws his hat in with the tradition of libertarian socialism. Libertarian socialists hate government and capitalism alike, according to Robinson. It is a tradition that commits itself unwaveringly to a set of respectable principles and compromises neither its radical socialism nor its radical libertarianism.

What this really amounts to for Robinson personally, however, beyond an understandable desire to reject the authoritarian socialist experiments of the twentieth century, is unclear. If what Robinson wants is a credible alternative to authoritarian socialism, he does not need to reject Marxism. Marxists from Rosa Luxemburg to Ralph Miliband and Michael Harrington have maintained a clear-eyed criticism of Stalinism and its ideological brethren without embracing a hazy notion of libertarian socialism.

These confusing twists limit the effectiveness of Robinsons overall argument. While his moral indictment of capitalism is compelling, his moral defense of the positive program of democratic socialism is lacking.

This is not because Robinson fails to make the case for why democratic-socialist ends would be morally desirable. The democratic-socialist future that Robinson trumpets a world where people do not go to war; there are no class, racial, and gender hierarchies; there are no significant imbalances of power; there is no poverty coexisting alongside wealth; and everyone leads a pleasant and fulfilled life is clearly a desirable one, and he makes that point effectively.

But Robinsons peculiar commitment to the politics of libertarian socialism makes presenting a defense of the democratic-socialist means to get there difficult, if not impossible. After all of Robinsons celebration of the desirability of Medicare for All, the Green New Deal, and other policies paid for by new taxes on the wealthy, he fails to make a moral defense of the necessity of using state power to win them precisely the kind of question the socialist-dubious reader, fed on a steady diet of libertarian capitalist talking points for most of their life, is likely most uneasy about.

Surely Robinson knows that if Bernie Sanders had won the 2020 presidential election and was able to enact these policies, it would have required a massive redistribution of power in society power that he would say he supports. But that redistribution would only have been possible because Sanders and the democratic-socialist movement he now leads would have had access to a portion of state power.

To take just one example, under the very best-case scenario, Sanders would have signed a bill enacting Medicare for All at some point in his administration. The millionaires and billionaires and the CEOs of major health insurance companies would inevitably object. But officials from the IRS and the power of the US judicial system would be used to ensure that new taxes are collected and the doors to every health insurance company in the country shuttered by force if necessary. (The collective shout for joy on that day, when it finally does come, will be overwhelming. I predict fireworks and mass parades.)

Robinson is free to have misgivings about all this as a libertarian socialist. But he must recognize that the kind of political revolution Sanders put forward, that millions of working-class Americans rallied to, and that Robinson himself supported, is a process that would be carried out through the use of state power.

The strategy of the political revolution is therefore at odds with the intellectual tradition that Robinson professes. Proudhon, Mikhail Bakunin, and generations of anarchists would read Why You Should Be a Socialist and be baffled to find one of their ideological progeny advocating such a strategy. Theyd likely apply the same accusations of authoritarianism and state-power worship they once lobbed at Karl Marx at one Nathan J. Robinson.

All this matters because were sure to see a new and forceful moral indictment of redistribution made by libertarian capitalists as part of an ideological offensive against democratic socialism in the years to come. If as a movement we cant compellingly defend the moral desirability and necessity of using state power to redistribute resources, we open ourselves up to defeat in the battle of ideas.

The defense of the use of state power as a means to achieve democratic-socialist ends is readily supplied. Democratic majorities have a right in any society to make decisions for the whole as long as basic minority rights to dissent, dignity, and personal freedom are respected. And massive majorities exist for all the key points of Bernies program. The real activists undermining democracy are precisely todays libertarian capitalists who defend a system that has so far blocked these majorities.

But making that case depends on jettisoning the debilitating anarchist misgivings about majority rule and state power that are still too common even among socialists.

Robinsons views on Marxism and libertarian socialism are inconsistent with the politics he so effectively puts forward elsewhere in the book. But they make up only a small selection from an otherwise admirable work. And I imagine Robinson himself has embraced a kind of cognitive dissonance on this front, enjoying the entertaining prose of Bakunin and friends while advocating for a democratic-socialist strategy for using state power to rebuild the United States.

But if Why You Should Be a Socialist is intended as an introduction to socialist politics, Robinsons false starts on the question of strategy deserve a critical look. After all, as Robinson rightly notes, the battle of ideas is an essential part of the struggle, and getting our ideas right about strategy and history matters. And Robinson himself would be more than welcome in the Marxist-influenced democratic-socialist movement. On every other question, his ideas line up precisely with our tradition.

Still, none of this is to diminish an otherwise rich book that deserves to be read. We need more talented writers and thinkers like Nathan Robinson in the fight for socialism, and his work is a much-needed contribution to our shared project.

Go here to read the rest:

Why You Should Be a Socialist and a Marxist - Jacobin magazine

Tony Robinson grills a sausage for an order. Top Dog, a Berkeley food institution, has stayed open with take out orders during the Covid-19 shelter-in-place order in Berkeley, Calif. on April 14, 2020.

Tony Robinson grills a sausage for an order. Top Dog, a Berkeley food institution, has stayed open with take out orders during the Covid-19 shelter-in-place order in Berkeley, Calif. on April 14, 2020.

Photo: Douglas Zimmerman/SFGate

Tony Robinson grills a sausage for an order. Top Dog, a Berkeley food institution, has stayed open with take out orders during the Covid-19 shelter-in-place order in Berkeley, Calif. on April 14, 2020.

Tony Robinson grills a sausage for an order. Top Dog, a Berkeley food institution, has stayed open with take out orders during the Covid-19 shelter-in-place order in Berkeley, Calif. on April 14, 2020.

Berkeley institution Top Dog is on the ropes. But they still wont take federal aid.

For more coverage, visit our complete coronavirus section here.

You never forget your first trip to Top Dog.

The tiny, Berkeley-born grab-and-go grill is a rite of passage for Cal students, slinging superlative sausages late night til 3 a.m. along with a side of libertarian literature.

Top Dog opened in 1966, during the heart of the Free Speech Movement, and 54 years later, it still features walls plastered with everything from yellow-ish newspaper clippings pushing for the privatization of the postal service to "Freedom Works Better Than Government" bumper stickers.

All of which has made the coronavirus pandemic uniquely difficult for its owners, Richard and Renie Riemann.

"We dont want to take money from the government," Renie says. "Our political background is for smaller government regulations how can we turn around and do the opposite? This will challenge what we believe in."

Will it ever.

Top Dog has closed two of its three locations since the coronavirus pandemic forced a shelter-in-place order for six Bay Area counties including Alameda County and was forced to lay off one-third of its 19-person staff.

Renie, who graduated from Cal in 1967 and married Richard in 1968, said shes hopeful Top Dog can last through April.

"Its a pretty scary time," she admits from inside of a tiny office behind Top Dogs Durant Avenue location the only one still open. "Were trying to stay afloat, but the hardest part is bringing in enough money for rent for all three places and utilities."

The city of Berkeley launched a $3 million relief fund on March 22, offering $10,000 grants to struggling small businesses with 50 or fewer employees to help cover operational expenses (payroll, rent, working capital).

The federal government approved the CARES Act on March 27, which includes the Paycheck Protection Program. The government assistance program offers loans to brick-and-mortars like Top Dog that they promise to fully forgive provided at least 75% of the borrowed dollars are going to payroll costs, and the other 25% are to interest on mortgages, rent, and/or utilities.

Riemann has zero interest in both.

"Theres always something of a catch," she said of borrowing money from the government. "We need a lot more transparency in general. Ive talked to other businesses and customers, and theyre all disgusted by the way money is taken in and we dont know whats happening to it.

"Were fixing our own potholes it just doesnt make sense."

Renie, 76, spends her days in the office and still eats a sausage almost every day (for "quality control"). Like everyone else, she shouts her order from Top Dogs doorway to keep the recommended 6 feet of social distance, and marvels at a grill thats slightly less full of sizzling dogs than usual.

She wears a mask and remembers to wash her hands, but generally feels a bit helpless.

"With the '89 earthquake, my first thought was I need to help somehow. I need to work in a cafeteria, or help at a hospital. But now, Ive realized Im not 30 anymore. I feel 30, but Im 76, and I cant expose myself that would put my husband at risk."

And Renie is at risk, but that seems beside the point for her.

Instead, her full attention is on keeping the business alive not only for her and her husbands legacy, but for the Top Dog employees in their wills. Thats right: Four Top Dog employees will be bequeathed the Top Dog empire when the owners pass.

"A lot of our staff has been around for a long time our main manager, Jeremy (Bower), hes gonna be 60. I think he came on board when he was 18. Theyre all in the will," she says. "My husband and I said, 'You know, we have to keep this going, because when we depart we want to leave this to you guys.'"

To that end, Top Dog has asked for some forgiveness from local suppliers that have deferred bills, plus it haspartnered with Uber Eats to expand its reach locally ("thats been helpful," she says), and, less locally, theres been a slight uptick in mail orders from Old Blues.

"Cal has had so many people come through it; theres still a nostalgia for us," she says. "We just got an order back East, somebodys father who was a Cal grad, probably my age, and they remembered he liked Top Dog. It was costly to them, but I can appreciate it. Id do something like that. And every little bit helps.

"Most businesses like us have a thin profit margin, thats the scary part. You dont have a big buildup of back money to ride this out. Were staying afloat as long as we can."

Its just not entirely clear how long that will be.

"Were struggling along, weve got a skeleton crew, were just hoping the pandemic wont last too much longer for peoples health first of all, but also so we can all go back to business."

The one still-open Top Dog is located at 2534 Durant Ave. in Berkeley and open 10 a.m. to midnight. You can mail order sausages and buns at topdoghotdogs.com.

Grant Marek is the Editorial Director of SFGATE. Email: grant.marek@sfgate.com | Twitter: @grant_marek

See more here:

Berkeley institution Top Dog is on the ropes. But they still wont take federal aid. - SFGate

Billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban said Sunday that he would not rule out running for president this year. Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks professional basketball team and is one of the shark investors on the ABC reality television series Shark Tank.

I would've never considered it prior to a month ago. Now things are changing rapidly and dramatically, Cuban said on the Fox News Sunday program. Im not saying no, but it's not something Im actively pursuing. Im just keeping the door open.

Cuban, who is worth an estimated $4.1billion according to Forbes, has previously described himself as somewhat of a libertarian.

"Not so much libertarian as much as I'd like to be libertarian, he told ABC Dallas-based affiliate WFAA in 2015. "When I think libertarian, it's 'as small of a government as we can get, right now you just cut right through it and you make it [smaller] right now.' That's not real. There's got to be a process. There's got to be a transition. As a country, we make decisions. We make decisions that we're going to provide healthcare, right? We don't just let people die on the street. You can go into any hospital and they have to treat you."

Cuban has also said that while he would be interested in joining the Republican party, he feels the party is too rigid.

"I'm a Republican in the respect that I like smaller government and I like less intrusion in some areas. But there's sometimes where I think we have to intrude. I think there's sometimes when you have to do things," he continued.

The November election will likely be a race between Republicanincumbent Donald Trump, who is seeking a second term, and Democratic rival former Vice President Joe Biden. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders exited the race last week, leaving Biden as the almost certain Democratic nominee.

Cuban and Trump have feuded since 2016. Cuba, who endorsed Hillary Clinton,had harsh words for Trump at a Clinton campaign stop in Pittsburgh.

"You know what we call a person like that in Pittsburgh? A jagoff," Cuban said. "Is there any bigger jagoff in the world than Donald Trump?"

Trump would later callCubandopey" andnot smart.

The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has canceled in-person campaign rallies, forcing candidates to resort to digital events. As of Monday at 2:15 p.m. ET, there have been560,891 cases and 22,681-coronavirus-related deaths in the U.S.

View post:

Mark Cuban To Run For President? Billionaire Dallas Mavericks Owner Does Not Rule Out 2020 White House Bid - International Business Times

Photo by Tom Webster

No one is coming.

A simple phrase, but one that is rich with meaning. Three of those meanings weighed on my mind this morning while I took my morning constitutional around Boston Common.

My friend Jen Iannolo has an entire manifesto built around the phrase, No One Is Coming. Jens use of the phrase is empowering exhilarating, even. We do not wait for our future. We create our future. To realize that no one is coming to help you achieve your dreams is to kick you in the ass to go get what you want however you can with the resources available to you (and you always have more resources than you think.) In its use as an empowerment mantra, it doesnt mean that you are alone in this world. But it does mean that the CEO, COO, and CMO of the entity that will engineer the future you want is you, because no one else is coming.

Its also a very common phrase in movies and TV. Often, no one is coming means the coast is clear! Frequently, it portends a sense of false security. Cmon, Frank theres no one out there. Lets make our move! is the last thing Frank hears before he becomes Body #2 on Law & Order. This second connotation of no one is coming is very worrisome to me, because we are seeing it play out right now, with human lives, amongst elements of the US population who are chafing against social distancing and business shutdowns and what they see as a draconian infringement upon their civil liberties.

Where I live, in Boston, we are right in the middle of a terrible surge of COVID-19. The recent news that 147 out of 396 people tested positive at a local homeless shelter was concerning. The revelation that they were all asymptomatic is terrifying. Its terrifying to me because we all, no matter how smart, rely on empirical evidence. Its easy to poke fun at Florida beachgoers, or the people protesting COVID-related policies on the steps of the State Capitol in Austin, Texas and other places around the country with their misspelled signs, gleefully photographed for us by a media that doesnt exactly trip over itself to paint these people sympathetically. But these protesters, like poor Frank, think that the coast is clear because the facts on the ground suggest that no one is coming. No one they know is sick, and the sickest thing in America right now is our economy.

But you cant know that no one is coming. 400 homeless people at the Pine Street Inn thought no one was coming because none of them were visibly sick. The difference: testing. This is what concerns me about some of my smartest friends who say things like: Im pretty sure Ive already had it to justify their re-entry into society and the opening of their businesses. They cant know it because they werent tested. And they cant know if they are carrying it because it can be asymptomatic and it is virulent and contagious for a very long time. Many of these smart people I know also equate COVID-19 to the flu, which is another false equivalency. Unlike the flu, we are all getting COVID-19 at once.

In last Sundays Boston Globe, there were 15 pages of obituaries.

The flu doesnt do that.

And consider this Massachusetts is pretty sick right now. We are right behind NY/NJ and closing in on 40,000 cases with a 4% mortality rate. This is happening now. But we started isolation and closing down businesses four weeks ago. Imagine what our state would look like if we had not taken these measures?

Soon, I fear, we wont have to imagine. There are absolutely parts of the country that are experiencing this crisis differently to how we are seeing it in Boston. One of these two things will be true: that will continue, and these areas wont be affected by the virus, or that they, like their urban-dwelling fellow citizens in our densely-packed coastal population centers, will still get it, eventually. The future, wrote William Gibson, is already here its just unevenly distributed.

If more sparsely populated areas of the country dont, in fact, get sick, it will be hard for those spared by this crisis to acknowledge anything other than what their eyes can see that they lived their lives without restriction and didnt get sick. There will be no thought that it might, in fact, have been the draconian, liberties-infringing actions of cities like New York City and Boston that sharply blunted the spread of the virus. Well never know, so well just believe what we see.

But if those parts of the country are wrong about this, if accelerating a return to normalcy brings this highly contagious pathogen to places that have not been staying at home and wearing masks and closing businesses, let me assure youno one is coming.

And this is the third and most sinister connotation of this phrase that has me deeply troubled. The groups protesting business closures and isolation are a small minority, but eventually, as the economic toll of this disease mounts, these cries will become more strident and the protests more numerous. Underlying them is a sharp libertarian streak the government has no right to infringe on our personal liberties. I have a few smart libertarian friends, and they speak articulately of the tightrope government has to walk to avoid becoming worse than the problem. I get that. Libertarianism isnt anarchy, though. Libertarians do believe in minimal intrusion from the government. Now, I might posit that slowing global pandemic warrants at least minimal intrusion, but lets set that aside. I am sympathetic to the libertarian argument here, and when the story of this crisis is written, years from now, there will no doubt be chapters about the cities and states that went too far. But heres my question for the protesters seeking a return to normalcy:

Whats the libertarian plan, here? Is there one? What is the plan to restore your familys economic prospects that doesnt potentially deprive other families of their life, liberty, or their pursuit of happiness, which last I checked were also inalienable rights? This question may seem harsh and harshly posed. But the pointedness of the question is due to the awful truth of what we saw last week at a Smithfield plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. There was a report of one sick person there on March 25th. By April 15th, there were 644 cases and the plant was closed, eliminating the citys fourth-largest employer and a noticeable chunk of our nations pork supply. The people who went to work, even perhaps knowing that they were sick, went because they were a missed paycheck from ruin, and no one is coming. Today they are sick and home and still, no one is coming.

What I would respectfully ask re-openers to consider is that Massachusetts, today devoid of both its great marathon and our beloved Red Sox on this Patriots Day, is not different, but first. And part of being first is noticing what the stats say, and dont say, about the hidden impacts of this disease that other, less-affected areas havent had to consider. Here are a few unintended consequences of COVID-19 here in Mass., all reported by the Boston Globe: reports of child abuse cases, domestic violence cases, and heart attacks are all down significantly since we started sheltering in place here. This sounds like good news. It is not. In the cases of abuse and assault, many of these cases are first spotted in public, as victims bearing the marks of that abuse can be seen by co-workers and friends. Now? They are home, locked down potentially with their abusers, and unseen. No one is coming for them. In the case of the decline in heart attacks, there are reports of people experiencing the symptoms of a heart attack (which can present as indigestion) who didnt call an ambulance because they didnt want to risk getting sicker or even dying with COVID-19. We have no idea what is happening with people who live alone. No one is coming.

If Boston and NYC and Sioux Falls are not different, but first then this is what awaits many of the areas of the country that can least afford the disruption that COVID-19 has caused us. I grew up in a part of Maine that has a strong libertarian streak, and count many friends in that part of the world. When the response to COVID-19 or indeed any public policy doesnt seem to affect your corner of the world, I can understand the urge to cry out to a meddlesome government, leave us alone!

But what if, in the blink of an eye, you are?

Link:

No One Is Coming - Tom Webster - Elemental