Category Archives: Libertarian

How much should 14-year-olds be on their phones? The effects of phones and social media on teenagers and adults continue to be at the center of public health, tech, civil liberties and more.

In March, Utahs Republican governor, Spencer Cox, signed an extensive package of laws intended to limit kids access to social media platforms, including time restrictions and requirements that parents and guardians have access to private messages and posts. On Sunday, he said that Utah in the coming months would file lawsuits to hold tech companies accountable.

Utahs laws were among the first in a tranche of actions by state governments, like those of Montana and Louisiana, which have greatly limited access to certain social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, either for minors or all users. Some researchers have alleged that social media is responsible for increases in anxiety and depression. If this was childhood cancer or childhood car accidents, or if we had seen these significant changes anywhere else, we would all be losing our minds about this, he told me.

The legislation is already facing legal challenges, as tech groups and libertarians balk at how involved the government will be in verifying users ages. But the governor told me he wasnt worried. When I asked if he had any hesitations about the bills he said simply, Uh, no.

This is the first in a series of Opinion Q. and A.s exploring modern conservatism today, its influence in society and politics, and how and why it differs (and doesnt) from the conservative movement that most Americans thought they knew. This interview has been edited for quality and clarity.

Jane Coaston: Utah has passed legislation that would bar people under the age of 18 from having social media accounts without the explicit consent of a parent or guardian, create a social media curfew of sorts, and give Utah parents and guardians access to the childrens posts and private messages. Why this legislation, and why now?

Gov. Spencer Cox: Theres a couple of reasons. Look, weve talked to mental health professionals across the state and across the country. Weve looked extensively at the research. Weve done our homework on this one. Weve spent time with parents and children, all across the state, and there is a general consensus and acknowledgment that social media and access to these devices is causing harm. Significant harm.

If you look at the increased rates of depression, anxiety, self-harm since about 2012, across the board but especially with young women, we have just seen exponential increases in those mental health concerns. Again, the research is telling us over and over and over again that it is not just correlated, but its being caused, at least in part, by the social media platforms.

[The C.D.C. found that in 2021, nearly three in five adolescent girls felt persistent sadness and one in three girls had seriously contemplated suicide. The rates of mental health issues reported has increased with every report since 2011.]

So we felt like we need to do something. If this was happening anywhere else, if this was childhood cancer or childhood car accidents, or if we had seen these significant changes anywhere else, we would, I think, all be losing our minds about this.

The second part of your question is, why now? And I think the better question is, why didnt we do this four or five years ago? Now because its sooner than tomorrow.

Coaston: You talked about the problems that could be caused by social media, but it seems as if the problems of social media and young people, they could be amorphous enough to invite potentially endless legislation. So what kinds of results are you looking for? What would tell you or the Utah legislature, yes, this is working, or no, it is not working?

Cox: The biggest results would be that we would see a decline in the terrible tragedies of anxiety, depression and self-harm. Those are the most important numbers that we look at, and that weve been following very closely. Over time, were hoping to see a decline back to close to pre-2012, 2013 levels.

Coaston: Last April you shared an article by Jonathan Haidt on Twitter, titled online Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid, and its about social media. And you said of the article, if I could convince every elected official, every voter, every citizen to read one thing today, it would be this. That leads me to think that your concerns about social media arent just about kids. Is that true?

Cox: That is absolutely true, yes.

Coaston: Is this about the types of platforms? Are these concerns about specific tech? Or something broader about social media, what these platforms mean now?

Cox: I think its all of those things. I do think its important though to separate them. And I think the answers to the problems that were facing are maybe different for the problem and the person.

Again, we have a longstanding tradition in our country of drawing lines around ages for brain development when it comes to certain activities. We dont let kids smoke or drink or drive a car before certain ages, because we know the danger and the damage that is being done there, and the science will back that up.

If I could wave the magic wand and have all adults spend less time on these devices, social media platforms, I would love to be able to do that. But that isnt something I could do. Its not something Im comfortable doing, and its not something that sits nicely within the general legal tradition of our country.

Coaston: Clearly parents could do this without the state getting involved. What are parents not doing that necessitates the state acting in their stead, or augmenting parents?

Cox: We talked to parents, including parents who are in this space. Parents who are psychiatrists, parents who deal with this every day. And what theyre saying is we need help. Even the parents who are the most engaged are desperate for some help, because of the other cultural forces that are just pushing this and making it so very difficult to deal with.

Just a couple of examples, right? One is the ability to have phones turn off or have these social media platforms disengaged at certain hours during the night. Thats something that parents can override, but setting that as a standard and helping them to understand how important this is again from a scientific standpoint, that sleep at that age with developing brains and having that time off from 10:30 at night until 6:30 in the morning, that that can make such a huge difference.

Coaston: There are still a lot of tensions within the conservative movement between a more libertarian viewpoint on, whether its social media or pretty much anything else, about protecting children and certain ideas about family.

Why do you think that there have been more conservatives, whether in Utah or elsewhere, who have been saying, look, libertarianism hasnt led to what we wanted it to do. We have to step in, its time for the government to play a role in how parents parent.

[The Electronic Frontier Foundation opposed the legislation, arguing, Utahs bill is part of a wave of age verification laws that would make users less secure, and make internet access less private overall. EFF opposes laws that mandate age-verification requirements, and Utahs S.B. 152 would be one of the worst weve seen.]

Cox: Well, look, were not telling parents how to parent. The law empowers parents. It doesnt tell parents what they have to do at all. Again, if they want their kids to be on social media at 4 in the morning, they have the ability to allow their kids to do that.

This is giving more tools to parents. So I will push back as vehemently as possible about that narrative, because its wrong. And thats dishonest by the libertarians that are using that narrative that the state is trying to take over for parents. Theyre lying to you about that, because thats not what the law does and they know it, but they know thats an argument they lose every time.

I come from that libertarian background and line of thinking. And it works great with adults. Save those arguments for the adults, but spare me the kids.

Coaston: So I think that Utah has taken a more expansive view with online restrictions on adult material, and now with social media. Are there any trade-offs youre worried about? I know that youve heard from some of the tech lobbies, but as much as people talk about teen anxiety and depression, Im also sure that lots of teens have found a lot of support on TikTok or social media when theyre in a tough home. Are there any concerns that you have about this legislation?

Cox: Uh, no.

Coaston: What other leaders in your party do you think have good ideas about social media? Who are you listening to and who are you reading?

Cox: Weve mentioned Jonathan; Jean Twenge has been fantastic on this issue. Shes got her new book Generations. Shes been really important.

[Twenges 2017 book iGen argued that cellphones and social media were having an outsize and negative effect on the lives of teenagers and young adults.]

And these arent partisan people, these are on the research and the science side. Were working with anybody thats interested in this space, and weve had other governors who have reached out to us. Im really interested in Montana, their decision to ban TikTok completely. Thats a step we have not taken. We did ban TikTok on state devices, and of course TikTok is subject to the social media legislation that we passed. But a complete ban on TikTok is one that were watching very closely. We have a year to implement this, and were working through that process now.

[Montanas ban on TikTok would impose a $10,000-a-day fine on TikTok or app companies that make the app available within the state beginning on Jan. 1, 2024. TikTok has filed a lawsuit arguing that the ban violates the First Amendment and is also funding a lawsuit led by a group of the apps users in the state.]

We knew that there would be some problem points that we would have to work through with the social media companies. And we dont hate business. We want business to be able to thrive and succeed. But we also want people to be held accountable.

Coaston: Yeah, Id be interested to think about those tweaks, because you mentioned that you would know that this was working if you saw rates of depression or rates of suicides going down. What would be the next step if you didnt see the results that you wanted to see? Would there be a moment when youd say that maybe age verification isnt enough? Maybe its time to ban TikTok? Maybe its time to go past where youve gone right now?

Cox: Its hard to answer that. It wont even take effect until next year. So were a couple of years away from seeing the true impact of this, and a lot can change in a couple of years. What I really hope is that over the course of the next year or two, we have a Congress that is engaged here.

I really do think this is the one area where there is just such a broad agreement. The president in his State of the Union address has brought this up. Ive had calls from members of Congress, senators on the left and the right, that are looking at this.

Its because theyre real people and theyre parents, and theyre all (laughs) theyre all dying with this too. And its not just that kids understand it. Its fun sometimes in the media to kind of posit this as like an old man shaking his fist at the clouds, versus kids these days.

I toured 29 schools in the past two months, and I asked the question, do you think social media is causing harm to your generation? They do. They know that this is causing harm, and theyre so often desperate for help.

I guess my point is, I hope that there will be a collective desire to try to solve this. I dont know if ours is the one thats going to solve it. I certainly hope so. Weve put a lot of thought into it. But Im not going to stand here and tell you what we did is perfect and its the right solution.

Coaston: All of your kids have grown up in the social media era. So obviously if youre a little bit older, you might not have gotten on TikTok when you were in eighth grade. Or a little younger, this might have just been what you grew up with. How have their experiences differed? Is there anything that you would have done differently? What has your experience of parenting kids in the social media age been like?

Cox: Yeah. I will say it has been very different across that gap. My oldest, he just graduated from college. My youngest is a sophomore in high school. With my oldest, social media was there, but it was just never that big of a deal. Didnt spend much time on it. Never got addicted to it. We certainly learned as we went along, and to the point now where my daughter does not have social media. Shes the only one among her friends who does not have social media.

But they share videos with her, and were constantly having to try to figure out how long has she been on her phone, and your phone doesnt go in your bedroom at night. Weve set those rules. And it is a constant battle, even though she doesnt have social media accounts.

Shes pushed back hard. That is a battle that we have with her that we did not have with our older kids. My wife will tell you the same thing, that if we had to do it all over again, we would have waited much longer to give our kids a smart device.

Its not just the social media, but its the time spent on that device away from other things. Every hour spent on that device is an hour not spent face to face or engaging or doing something else.

Coaston: How has this shifted your own view and use of social media? Because I think its kind of funny to be having this conversation. I mentioned that Atlantic article that you recommended, but you recommended it on social media.

Cox: I did.

Coaston: I think that theres been a lot of conversation about the threats of social media that were having on social media, which is kind of ironic to me. Has it changed how you think about using social media? How often youre using social media? Your own use of these platforms?

Cox: So let me assure you that I am very self-aware.

I recognize the irony, and this is something that I share with young people as well. Social media, it has positives as well. Again, we could theoretically just ban all social media for kids under the age of 18. Thats not what I wanted. I want the ability for people to connect on social media, in the ways that we originally used social media for. The kind of the good parts of social media, the pieces that we all thought were going to help make our country a better place.

Sadly that has not happened. And so, I am trying to take some of that advice. I have significantly changed the way I use Twitter. I engage a little less. And this is, this is the sad part too. I mean, I used to love being able to engage with people. I admitted this I created a burner account. Not to go on and, you know, say great things about Governor Cox, or anything like that. The purpose of my burner account is it just follows a select group. Because I do get a lot of my media intakes, the reporters, the news that I get. I curate that through social media and through Twitter, and thats really important for me.

Coaston: What does this mean for social media in Utah for everyone? You mentioned a little bit your increasing concerns, but I think that there are lots of people who routinely describe problems with social media, adults who are saying things like, theyre on it too much, its stressful, its bad. Its making our discourse worse. Do you think thats something that obviously what adults do is a very different area but is that something that could potentially lead to some sort of legislation in the future?

Cox: I dont know if we can legislate that piece. Again, I think this is where the hard work of culture changing and of being a patriotic American actually takes place. Youre going to hear me talk a lot more about this over the course of the next year.

Im really focused on how to disagree better and the toxicity of this moment, and how we can, as political leaders, but as just neighbors, as human beings. I dont pretend like Im going to be able to solve that. We have a problem as a country, and it is getting worse, and these social media platforms undoubtedly are designed to make it worse, right? Im hoping I can convince more and more adults to stop making those poor decisions. But I dont know that theres a significant piece of legislation to allow that to happen. We may learn some things from these kids accounts that are helpful. Maybe some things around addictive algorithms and giving people the ability to turn those off.

But I dont know that theres an appetite for that. I dont know if I have an appetite for that either. Im much more of a, when it comes to adults, kind of, you know, let people decide and make those choices, and try to show them the better way.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Read more:

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox wants to spare kids from their phones - Salt Lake Tribune

TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) Former Governor candidate Kari Lake came to Tucson Wednesday to promote her new book. She ran for Arizona Governor in 2022, but Katie Hobbs was declared the winner.

Lake presented several legal challenges to the election outcome in court, though the lawsuits have continued to uphold the certified election results.

She drew a large crowd to Firetruck Brewing on Grant to promote her new book, "Unafraid."

We asked Lake if she plans to run for U.S. Senate. She says shes still occupied with her legal challenge to the result of the Governors election but is thinking of a run for Senate.

So we'll be making a decision on that in the next couple of months and we'll see," Lake says. "I'm actually eyeing the Senate race. It's something I'm considering.

Lake did not answer a question about whether she aspires to run for Vice President in the coming Presidential election.

A look at Arizona's 2024 U.S. Senate candidates, so far:

Sixteen Arizonans have filed a statement of interest in running for U.S. Senate in 2024, according to the Secretary of State's website. The statement of interest indicates that they're collecting petition signatures for a possible nomination.

Here's the field as it currently stands:

Democrat

Libertarian

Republican

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STAY IN TOUCH WITH US ANYTIME, ANYWHERE

Link:

Kari Lake in Tucson: "I'm actually eyeing the Senate race" - KGUN 9 Tucson News

Gary Swinghas run for office on minor party tickets a dozen times in three states since 1996 and is seeking the Colorado Unity Party's nomination on next year's ballot in the 3rd Congressional District.

The 55-year-old Boulder resident and Colorado Unity Party state secretary hasn't won any of the elections he's competed in, but tells Colorado Politics he continues to run to bring attention to issues given short shrift by the major parties. He's also making a point about representation, arguing that the country's current election system, dominated by the Democratic and Republican parties, leaves many voters without a meaningful voice in their government.

Swing supports a move from winner-take-all, single-member districts toward proportional representation, which would allow voters who make up a small percentage of the electorate to have a representative on legislative bodies, from city council to state legislatures and Congress.

Over the years, Swing has run for state representative, the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate and president under a variety of banners, most often affiliated with the Green Party, but lately as the nominee of the Unity Party following a break with the Colorado Greens. (The Green and Unity parties are two of Colorado's seven officially recognized minor political parties, a list that also includes the Libertarians and the American Constitution Party.)

In 2020, Swing filed to run in Vermont as the Boiling Frog Party candidate for president. Later that year, he appeared on ballots in Colorado as the Unity Party's nominee in the 2nd Congressional District. He was the minor party's nominee for Colorado secretary of state last year. He finished in fifth place with less than 0.5% of the vote, behind Jena Griswold, the Democratic incumbent, who won, followed by the Republican, the Libertarian and the American Constitution Party nominee, but ahead of the Approval Voting Party candidate.

Swing grew up in New Jersey and describes himself as a lifelong pacifist and advocate for nonviolence. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science and a masters in public administration from the University of Colorado. He's a spokesperson for the Boulder-based Best Democracy organization and a former national advisory board member for theCenter for Voting and Democracy, which since changed its name to FairVote, but leftthe group when it focused on promoting ranked choice voting instead of proportional representation.

When he isn't politicking, Swing gets in his steps in a big way. He's completed the triple crown of backpacking completing theAppalachian Trail, the Pacific Crest Trail and the Continental Divide Trail and hiked the entireColorado Trail, Arizona Trail, Ouachita Trail, Ozark Highlands Trail and Lone Star Trail. He's also hiked to the highest point in all 64 Colorado counties and climbed all 637 Colorado mountains over 13,000 feet.

Our interview with Swing has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Colorado Politics: The Colorado Libertarians recently came to an agreement with the state GOP not to put up candidates in competitive races, in an attempt avoid being a spoiler, if they consider the Republican nominee sufficiently liberty-minded, and you responded by saying that the Colorado Unity Party welcome spoilers and candidates of all kind. How does the Libertarians' and Republicans' deal figure in third-party politics here in Colorado?

Gary Swing: I'm not a member of the Libertarian Party, but it's really not legitimate for a recognized political party to tell members that they can't seek the party's nomination for any office. That's for the voters to decide, and ultimately, it's up to the members of Libertarian Party themselves to decide whether or not to run a candidate.

Under state law, any candidate who gets at least 30% of the vote at a party assembly qualifies for a primary ballot. If a person is really determined to run for office as a candidate of any recognized party, they can bypass the party assembly and petition on their primary ballot. The only way to stop someone from running on the party's ballot line would be for another candidate to defeat them in a primary. Of course, in 2019, Democratic state legislators vastly increased the number of petition signatures needed for independent candidates and candidates for minor party primaries. Now it's much harder for someone to go around minor party nominating process.

CP: You're the state secretary for the Unity Party, and you're seeking the Unity Party nomination in the 3rd Congressional District. What brought you to the Unity Party after running with the Greens for so long?

Swing:I have a long history of involvement with the Green Party, mostly in Colorado, some in Arizona and elsewhere. I was on the ballot seven times overall as a Green Party candidate. The Green Party in Colorado was taken over by a faction that has systematically purged many former Green Party candidates, activists, organizers and local chapters from the right to participate. The Greens are seeking to exclude as many people as possible from their process. The Unity Party has a process that's pretty much the opposite.

The Unity Party was started as a centrist party, but it has evolved into an organization that celebrates diversity and inclusion. We offer an open and democratic process for political independents and free thinkers to seek our nomination and get on the ballot for county, state or federal offices in Colorado. In the last two general elections, the Unity Party was in fourth place after the Libertarian Party for the most candidates on Colorado's ballot. We had 12 candidates in Colorado the ballot in 2020 and eight in 2020. The Unity Party describes itself as neither left nor right, but we welcome potential candidates from across the political spectrum to pitch their own campaign message at our nominating assembly.

It takes 30% of the vote that are assembling to qualify for a primary ballot. So far, we've avoided holding a contested primary. If one of our candidates doesn't place first for nomination, we encourage them to put their name in for a different office. The Unity Party is a party of friendship. We try to treat each other with respect. Our mission statement says as members of the Unity Party, we focus on similarities rather than differences. We are nonpartisan. We are a blending of diverse parties, political ideals, cultures, sexualities and genders, religions, spiritual practices, ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds. We welcome progressives, conservatives, outliers, nonconformists and those from all political parties.

The Unity Party does have members across the country, but we only have ballot status as a recognized political party in Colorado. That means we're able to nominate candidates for all offices by party assembly. We encourage people to come out and seek our nomination. We'd like to recruit more women or people of color to run as candidates.

The United States has always had a political system that's been heavily dominated by white male conservatives, and we still see that today in the Republican Party. We see that in pretty much all alternative parties. Frankly, the Democrats are really the most diverse party in the United States right now. But still, the United States lags behind most of the world in representation of women or people of color, and also alternative parties in government. We want to give people who feel excluded from the political process an opportunity to participate, to get their message out and to take a stand for what they believe in.

I first thought about joining the Unity Party when I was on the Appalachian Trail hiking [it] for the second time. I was reading a book about Nelson Mandela trying to achieve unity in a post-apartheid South Africa, and I thought that his message of unity in diversity was was a good message, and that the United States and South Africa have a similar history of white supremacy racism, slavery in the United States, apartheid in South Africa and we have a long way to go in overcoming the disparities that resulted from a systematic racial discrimination.

CP: What do you see the role of minor parties and independent candidates in Colorado as being?

Swing: Minor political parties inject new ideas and diversity of perspectives into politics, and we can shift the debate on issues. Alternative parties offer a different perspective to voters. It gives them an opportunity to support to vote for someone other than the two establishment parties on a ballot that tends to be a limited choice between candidates you may not support.

I've said before, everyone owns their own vote; no one is entitled to a person's vote. Democrats often say that you must vote for Democrats in order to preserve democracy. And yet, Democrats in Colorado and elsewhere try to keep independent, alternative party candidates off the ballot through restrictive ballot access laws.

Under the winner-take-all voting system, it's true, minor party candidates really have very little representation in government. There are more than 519,000 elected offices in the United States, including small local offices. Less than one out of 1,000 offices in the United States is held by a member of a party other than the Democrats and the Republicans. There are more than 7,000 state legislative seats in the country. Almost all of them are held by Democrats and Republicans.

Libertarians are the third largest party, but they only have one state representative, in Vermont, and that was someone who was elected as a Republican and then switched after they were elected to become a Libertarian Party member. The Green Party is the fourth largest party in the country, and they currently have no members of any state legislature in the United States. They've only four times elected a Green Party member as a state legislator, and in every case it was under unusual circumstances. So it's very difficult to actually get elected to partisan office in the United States under the winner-take-all voting system as a candidate of a party other than the Democrats or Republicans.

CP:You ran as the Green Party nominee for the U.S. Senate in Arizona in 2016 against John McCain and Anne Kirkpatrick, on the "boiling frog party" theme, is that right?

Gary Swing, wearing a "Save the Frogs" T-shirt, poses for a photograph in front of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver.

Swing:I created a website with a satirical campaign message, and I ended up getting 5.5% of the vote, 138,634 votes, which was the highest percentage and highest number of votes cast for any Green candidate for any U.S. Senate seat out of the last six general elections.

One of my favorite things about being a political candidate has been injecting some humor into politics, which tends to be toxic and nasty. When I ran as a Green candidate, I tended to have a serious, straightforward platform. My Green Party campaigns for U.S. representative and state representative were prescriptive message campaigns focusing on policy proposals. When I ran satirical campaigns as a "boiling frog party" candidate for U.S. Senate and for president in Vermont in 2020, my message was focused on describing the reality of the harm that human impact has had on the ecosystem.

My message as a boiling frog party candidate went beyond what I felt comfortable saying as a Green Party candidate. Human overpopulation and overconsumption has resulted in the mass extinction of animal species over the past 200 years, human beings and livestock have largely displaced about 96% of the biomass of global wildlife mammal species. The mass of plastic now outweighs all animal life on Earth. The amount of human-made material outweighs plant and animal life on Earth. Human beings are just one of millions of species in an interdependent web of life, yet an industrialized human civilization of 8 billion people has created a toxic artificial environment.

CP:Do you think people heard your message, running what you call a satirical, zero-dollar campaign?

Swing: It's hard to gauge that, really. I did get some press in the Phoenix newspaper, I had a website, I had a page with a candidate statement on secretary of state's website, but it's really hard to know how many people voted for me just because I was the only other candidate who wasn't a Democrat or a Republican on the ballot, and how many people might have actually gotten to hear my message.

CP:Did you feel like you were a spoiler?

Swing: No, not at all. It was a landslide reelection for John McCain. He was a former Republican nominee for president, it was clear from the beginning that he was going to win reelection. I was surprised two years later when the US Senate election was so close for [Democrat] Kyrsten Sinema,

CP: In 2018, you helped recruit Angela Green to run for the U.S. Senate in Arizona, and she got attention as a potential spoiler.

Swing: That's right. I reached out to Angela Green. I saw that Angela Green had filed as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate because I was following filings with the secretary of state's office down there. Her message was that she wanted to legalize marijuana, she made a statement, "Make love not war." Her candidate statement seemed like it was a moderate version of the Green Party's message, which now has moved pretty far to the left.

I wrote to her and I said, "You're not going to get on the ballot, you're not going to make much headway running as a Democrat." But under the quirky situation, they have in Arizona, if you file as a write-in candidate for an uncontested primary for a new political party, which legally the Green Party was at that time, you only need to get more write-in votes than any other candidate to qualify for the general election ballot with the party's nomination. And as a result of my writing to her, she switched from the Democrats to the Greens. She was the only candidate to file and got on the ballot as a Green Party candidate.

It was her first campaign I think she wasn't prepared for what happened. She made national headlines when the election was so close, with people calling her a spoiler, trying to intimidate her into dropping out of the election. There was a lot of bullying and harassment going on. And I felt sad that she was subjected to all of that, and I wasn't sure that she was prepared for the reaction that people had to her simply being a candidate not necessarily (to) anything she said, but people were angry that she had the audacity simply to file as a candidate for public office.

I think there should be more candidates from more parties on the ballot, not just two candidates, and not just three or four. I'd like to see 20 candidates or 30 candidates on the ballot, like they have in Australia. And if we had a proportional representation voting system, then you wouldn't have to worry about the idea of spoiling an election for a candidate who might be a little closer to your position than the other major party candidate.

Alternative party candidates don't take votes away from major party candidates. Major party candidates take votes away from alternative party candidates. No one says, "Oh, the Democrat can't possibly win, I'm going to vote for the Green Party candidate instead." But they do the opposite for the Democrats. People who vote for alternative party candidates are either expressing their true preference, or they're expressing a protest vote against the establishment candidates who they feel don't represent them.

The Democrats and Republicans should campaign for people's votes rather than trying to convince other candidates that they must drop out or else they'll threaten to spoil on election for one of the establishment parties.

CP:You've long been an advocate for proportional representation, and are not a fan of instant runoff, or ranked-choice voting. Colorado also has the Approval Voting Party. What do you see as the advantages of proportional voting over these other methods of conducting elections?

Swing:All single-winner voting methods exclude political minorities from representation. The term ranked-choice voting is often used to refer to a winner-take-all voting method, also known as instant runoff voting. This is a ranked voting method, single member districts. Ranked voting could also be used in multi-member districts to provide proportional or semi proportional representation.

The more seats that are elected in a district, the more inclusive and fully representative results are; however, the ballot also becomes longer and more unwieldy. The election reform group Best Democracy proposes to elect Colorado's state legislature by hybrid proportional representation: 80% of Colorado's state legislators would be elected from seven-member districts using a single transferable vote method of ranked-choice voting. Under this system, it would take about 12.5% of the vote to elect a state representative to a multi-member district seat. To make the system more inclusive, the remaining 20% of seats would be leveling seats elected from party lists.

Any party that gets at least 3% of the party list vote would win seats from the party list. Overall representation in the legislature would be proportional to the party list vote. This should produce a state legislature with about eight to 10 parties represented, not just two parties. About 98% of voters would be able to elect representatives of their choice.

Everyone should be able to elect representatives of their choice. That's the point of proportional representation. Ninety-five countries use some form of proportional representation to elect legislators.

Proportional representation makes every vote count. No minor party has been elected to Congress since since 1970. Green Party candidates have been running in the U.S. since 1985, Libertarian candidates been writing since 1972, and yet, we have no Green Party or Libertarian Party candidates holding any statewide office, only one Libertarian state legislator, less than one out of 1,000 seats. If the United States used a party list system of proportional representation, a party supported by 5% of votes should now have at least 22 U.S. representatives and at least 369 seats in state legislatures. Proportional representation provides better representation for women, racial minorities and smaller parties in government.

CP:Short of changing the whole system, are there some changes Colorado can make in the near future to better reflect the will of the voters, to move toward what you're talking about?

Swing:In 2019 and in 2021, Democrats in the Colorado state legislature passed broad-based election reform packages that included provisions to vastly increase the number of petition signatures required for independent candidates to get on the ballot in Colorado, and also to end the filing fee option for independent candidates for president, which will vastly reduce the number of options that people have on the ballot for president in 2024 and future elections, if that stands.

The United States generally has some of the worst ballot access laws in the world. Colorado had some better ballot access laws from 1995 until 2019, because a coalition of political parties, the Colorado Coalition for Fair and Open Elections, successfully lobbied the state legislature to make ballot access easier for independent candidates and for alternative parties.

I would like to see the Colorado state legislature repeal the changes that were passed to make it harder for independent candidates to get on the ballot and, in fact, to move in the opposite direction to make it easier. I think the filing fee option for president was a good idea. It used to take $1,000 to put an independent presidential ticket on a ballot in Colorado. We do tend to have too many people run for top offices, but I'd like to see the filing fee option extended to all offices in Colorado say, $1,000 for president, $500 for other statewide offices, $200 for a U.S. representative, $100 for the state legislature, maybe $50 for county offices. That would make it easier for more people to participate in the political process.

Secretary of State Jenna Griswold has said that she wants everyone's voice to be heard, including unaffiliated voters, and yet she helped craft and lobby for legislation to suppress unaffiliated candidates. Colorado Senate President Stephen Fenberg, who represents the district where I live currently, he says that everyone should have a seat at the table, yet he carried Senate Bill 21-250 to keep independent presidential candidates off Colorado's ballot. He was also the Senate sponsor for the Colorado Votes Act. House Bill 19-1278, which restricts petitioning for independent candidates.

The Democrats are really the party that represents political minorities, women, people who have historically felt excluded from the political process, and the Democrats dominate both houses of the state legislature, they dominate statewide offices. I'd like to see some Democratic legislators come out and say, "Well, we didn't support this, it was part of a broad package of election reform changes." So I'd like to see someone from the Democratic side of the legislature, preferably, introduce a bill to repeal the ballot access restrictions and improve ballot access for independent candidates for elections. Anyone in the legislature could do it, but the Democrats have a supermajority right now.

CP: You've been running for office since 1996, is that right? What motivates you to keep doing this?

Gary Swing poses for a photograph on Springer Mountain, Georgia, at the end of a southbound hike on the Appalachian Trail.

Swing: Every time I run, I say this is the last time I'm going to be a candidate. Politics is toxic. I feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall. And yet, I'm still frustrated with the system.

I started out running as a candidate because I wanted to be an anti-war message candidate. Back in 1996, the Green Party of Colorado encouraged me to run for the smallest partisan office I could, and run to win. So I ran for state representative, which in Denver was the smallest partisan office I could run for. And I put a lot of effort into that campaign, and I got 8.5% of the vote in a three-way race. The Republican candidate, I think, was nominated last minute and really was just a line-holder, but not much more than that, and got 13.5% of the vote. It was the most heavily Democratic, least Republican district in the entire state, and walking door to door, trying to run a serious campaign, being in candidate forums, being in voter education guides, distributing literature door to door, I still got just 8.5% of the vote as a Green Party candidate. It was better than any other independent or third party candidate in the state running against both a Democrat and Republican. Still, it's a tiny minority of the vote.

At some point, I'll say I've had enough, I'm done doing this. But one thing or another happens, like when I was kicked out of the Green Party in Colorado. If someone tells me I can't do something that makes me want to do it. If someone tries to bully or exclude you from participation, that creates more motivation to say, "I'm going to do it anyway." So that's part of my my argument against the spoiler effect. If you tell people they can't run for office because they're going to spoil an election, that's just going to motivate them to run for an office where they can be a spoiler or be perceived as a spoiler.

I recognize the reality that under the system we have, the Democrats and Republicans are the only viable political parties. I think if I were going to leave alternative party politics, the time to have done it would have been 1996 on election night. I should have said, "I'm done with this." I actually liked Penfield Tate, who was my Democratic opponent in 1996. I called him to congratulate him before the polls were closed. I said, "I know what the demographics are, you're going to win, congratulations." And he and I were on friendly terms. I enjoyed going to campaign events with him. I supported him when he ran for mayor of Denver. He invited me to visit him in the state legislature, invited me to sit in his seat on the floor of the House, which is nice.

When I ran in 1996, I had some vague notion that I was trying to run to win, but I still realized how much the system was stacked against alternative party candidates. Since then, I've very openly run as a protest candidate without the expectation that I could win.

I think people have an unrealistic expectation of what their results will be as an alternative party candidate. Running as alternative party candidate does give people an opportunity to participate in the system and get some experience. Some people start with an alternative party and then move to the Democrats or Republicans when they realize they just can't win, they can't get very far as an alternative party candidate. And that's a product of the system we have in the United States.

We have Green Party candidates in at least 30 national legislatures around the world, and that's because they use proportional representation. With our single-member district, winner-take-all voting system, we're tilting at windmills as alternative party candidates. I think once people realize that, they either leave and join a major party or they campaign for fundamental election reform.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have the idea that just changing the system to a different winner-take-all voting methods in single member districts will change it and open the process for alternative parties. But you need proportional representation so that everyone has fair representation. That's how most of the modern world does it.

Read more from the original source:

Q&A with Gary Swing | Veteran minor party candidate advocates for ... - coloradopolitics.com

Over the past quarter-century, Jonah Goldberg has made his name as one of the most provocative and unapologetic conservative journalists around. He was the editor of National Review Online for years before leaving over differences related to Donald Trump and he's penned bestselling books such as Liberal Fascism and Suicide of the West. He was a Fox News contributor for years, resigning in 2021 in protest of the channel's airing of Tucker Carlson's documentary Patriot Purge.

Along with former Weekly Standard editor Steve Hayes (who also resigned from Fox over the Carlson documentary), he founded The Dispatch in 2019. He also hosts the popular podcast The Remnant.

At a recent event in New York City, I talked with him about the fracturing of the political right into groups such as national conservatives, integralists, Never Trumpers, anti-Trumpers, and more. We also discussed the 2024 election and whether libertarians and conservatives can get along.

Previous appearances:

Jonah Goldberg on Why He Left National Review, Dislikes Sean Hannity and Seb Gorka, and Is Inching Toward Libertarianism, December 4, 2019

Is Jonah Goldberg Turning Into a Libertarian? It Sure Sounds Like It., July 5, 2017

Jonah Goldberg on The Tyranny of Cliches, Creating NRO, and the Firing of John Derbyshire, May 31, 2012

Read more:

Jonah Goldberg: A NeverTrumper's Take on the 2024 Election - Reason

LAS VEGAS (KTNV) Nevada is now solidified as a safe-haven for abortion patients.

Wednesday, Governor Joe Lombardo signed Senate Bill 131 into law, which protects out-of-state patients seeking an abortion and providers who perform them.

In a rare move, hes one of three republican governors in the country to sign an abortion protections bill.

Governor Lombardo describes himself as Catholic and pro-life, but has said the issue of abortion should only be decided by Nevada voters themselves.

Dr. Sondra Cosgrove, a professor for College of Southern Nevada and executive director of Vote Nevada, says the move is as unique as Nevada politics, calling it libertarian' rather than blue or red.

If you live in Clark County, we're pretty libertarian down here when it comes to people doing what they want and just being safe. So it really fits within that Clark County paradigm of letting people have personal freedom and having the state not give them their way, Cosgrove said.

When Roe V. Wade was overturned in June of last year, it sent thousands of patients to Nevada for abortions. Planned Parenthood said half of their patients were from out-of-state and wait times were getting longer.

Dr. Cosgrove points to the history, when Nevada had more lax divorce laws than the rest of the country, it became a divorce destination. She predicts this enhancement could send more patients our way.

The Nevada Democratic Party sent the following statement after Gov. Lombardo signed the legislation.

We reached out to Nevada GOP for comment, but did not immediately hear back.

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Gov. Lombardo one of few republicans to sign abortion protections ... - KTNV 13 Action News Las Vegas

Henry George, a 19th century reformer who famously favored an end to all taxes except a levy on land, believed his system would allow us to "approach" the "abolition of government" as a coercive force. He also wrote that his single tax could fund various public services, transforming the state into "a great co-operative society." Depending on which way you tilt your head, he can sound like he's either almost an anarchist or almost a social democrat.

In Land and Liberty, the Georgetown University historian Christopher William England shows that both sides of George's thinking bore fruit after his death.

In the early 20th century, George's followers found homes in a host of progressive reform movements and progressive-run governments. But other followerssometimes the same followershelped create contemporary libertarianism. (Some even had a hand in contemporary conservatism: He kept it low-key, but National Review founder Bill Buckley was a George fan.) By the time the New Deal arrived, Georgists sometimes found themselves lining up on opposite sides of the era's debates.

Perhaps because he is so hard to classify, George is often misremembered as a momentarily popular radical of the Gilded Age, his influence on later movements forgotten. England restores him to his place in political history, both in the U.S. and abroad. (George's international fans stretched from Cuba's Jos Mart to China's Sun Yat-senfigures later honored in name but not in spirit by Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong.) And while England mostly traces George's influence on modern liberalism, he does not ignore Georgism's libertarian current. As he notes, even progressive-minded Georgists often clashed with actual Progressives: While the "dominant strands of Progressivism are now seen as opposed to individualism," most Georgists "were classically liberal, individualistic, and even libertarian on questions like vice enforcement and regulation."

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Review: 'Land and Liberty' Charts Henry George's Influence - Reason

Szymon Marciniak will fulfill his role as the referee for the Champions League final after the Pole apologized for participating in an event associated with a right-wing movement, Europe's football governing body UEFA said on Friday.

UEFA were investigating his presence at an event organized in Katowice, southern Poland on Monday, saying they abhor the values that are promoted by the group, but kept him on as the referee after an apology and clarification from an anti-discrimination body.

I want to express my deepest apologies for my involvement and any distress or harm it may have caused, Marciniak said in a statement.

Upon reflection and further investigation, it has become evident that I was gravely misled and completely unaware of the true nature and affiliations of the event in question, he went on to say.

The Polish referee Szymon Marciniak has been appointed to officiate the UEFA Champions League final between Manchester City and Inter Milan.

Marciniak spoke at an event organized by Sawomir Mentzen, who is co-chairman of the right-wing and libertarian political alliance, Confederation Party which is polling third in autumns parliamentary election.

Marciniak, 42, is one of Europe's top referees and also officiated the World Cup final in Qatar when Argentina beat France.

Manchester City face Inter Milan in the Champions League final at Istanbul's Ataturk Olympic Stadium on June 10.

source: Reuters

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Polish ref cleared of wrongdoing, will take charge of Champions ... - TVP World

Back in January, when he was forced to dole out gifts and dangle committee assignments to the 21 Republicans blocking his path to the House Speakership, Kevin McCarthy looked as if he had traded real power for a lofty title. McCarthy, after all, eventually won the gavel, but only after handing his opponents a giant red detonation trigger known as the Motion to Vacate clausea procedural move that would allow any aggrieved conference member to initiate a vote of no confidence. As I reported at the time, and in the months since, McCarthy had essentially made himself a hostage of the far-rightthe Taliban 20, as the insurgent group was calleda potentially untenable situation that seemed doomed to unravel as soon as McCarthy faced a real test, such as negotiating a deal to raise the debt ceiling.

And yet, surprisingly, over the past week or so, McCarthy succinctly neutered his opposition, winning over former enemies and passing a remarkably moderate, down-the-middle spending bill with an overwhelming majority of both Republicans and Democrats. Jim Jordan, the McCarthy rival who was supported by the 20 for the speakership, whipped support for the bill. Thomas Massie, a libertarian debt-clock obsessive who could have spiked the deal, waved it through committee. Even Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the most far-right members of the caucus, has become an unlikely ally: Republicans have huge wins in this fight, she tweeted on Wednesday, celebrating the package.

The Taliban 20 have also backed down. On Thursday morning, Im told, key members held a conference call to discuss their next movesincluding the possibility of striking back at McCarthy with a vote of no confidence. Shortly afterward, however, Rep. Matt Gaetz, the groups informal leader, told the media that the motion to vacate was the furthest thing from their minds. Behind the scenes, too, members and their outside allies came to the conclusion that this was not the time for a coup.

Excerpt from:

The Taliban 20's McCarthy Red Line - Puck

Leo Morris

Imagine no possessions

I wonder if you can

No need for greed or hunger

A brotherhood of man

Imagine,1971

I dont know if John Lennon was self-aware enough to see the irony of a filthy rich superstar longing for a utopia in which everything belongs to everybody, so nobody has to do without anything, the perfect equality within our reach if we just wish for it hard enough.

But before he was murdered in 1980, he was getting there, slowly but surely. He didnt quite become a full-fledged minimal government necessary libertarian who knew that property rights and human rights are not mutually exclusive, but in fact one and the same. He did grow up a little, though, becoming a family man who understood that freedom begins and ends with what each individual is allowed to do and how much he gets to own of what he has accomplished.

What I used to be is guilty about money, he said in one of his last interviews Because I thought money was equated with sin. I dont know. I think I got over it, because I have to either put up or shut up, you know. If you are going to be a monk with nothing, do it. Otherwise, I am going to try to make money, make it. Money itself isnt the root of all evil.

Let us all hope the United States Supreme Court is on the same learning curve that John Lennon was.

Government has two roles when it comes to private property: To protect those who own it against the machinations of those who do not, and to be cautious when taking any of it for the public good. When the government fails at the latter, it makes it hard to believe it is serious about the former.

Which has so often been the case that there should be an addendum to the national motto of In God we trust give em an inch, and theyll take a mile.

The nadir came with the despicable Kelo vs. City of New London in 2005, in which a 5-4 majority ruled that the Connecticut city taking someones property for a public purpose was the same thing as taking it for a public use constitutionally speaking. But use had always meant something for the public good, such as a dam or a road. Purpose meant whatever might benefit government coffers.

So, in Kelo, the court authorized taking property from one private owner and giving it to another, one that promised to economically develop it and bring in more tax revenue. The court thus legalized thuggery, merging the two roles of governments property function and allowing gross violation of both of them.

There are some signs, thank goodness, that the court has grown up a little since then.

In two rulings this term both unanimous the court has put some brakes on the governments cavalier treatment of private property. Even if there is scant evidence for that conclusion, perhaps you will allow me to Imagine the best.

In one ruling, the court ruled for a 94-year-old Minnesota woman whose home was taken for failure to pay a $15,000 property tax bill. The county sold the property for $40,000 and decided to keep the extra $25,000. No, the court said; that violated the just compensation wording of the Constitution.

The ruling was met with strong approval across the political spectrum, from the very conservative Pacific Legal Foundation to the very liberal ACLU. Nobody likes to see ordinary, defenseless people preyed upon by powerful bullies. It was similar to the reaction in an Indiana case from a few terms ago, when the court ruled that authorities violated the excessive fines clause by seizing a $42,000 Land Rover from a criminal who had been sentenced to probation and a $1,200 fine on a drug charge.

In the other ruling, the court ruled in favor of an Idaho couple and against the EPA, which had required them to get a federal permit to build on their property because it had a wetland, even though it was not connected to anything outside the property by a navigable waterway, a plain requirement of the legislative authorization.

This ruling was not unanimously approved, being decried by a lot of people who seem still confused by the whole public good, use and purpose justification for violating private property rights. They are still living in the 1970s, stuck in the Early John Lennon method of wishing a better world into existence. If the government says everybody needs your property, why are you being so selfish?

The human right of every man to own his own life implies the right to find and transform resources to produce that which sustains and advances life, said economist Murray N. Rothbard. That product is a mans property. That is why property rights are foremost among human right and why any loss of one endangers the others.

He wrote that in 1959, so lets forgive him saying man instead of person. The thought still rings true.

And John Lennon, self-described troublemaking son of a family-deserting merchant seaman, who through talent and hard work became part of one of the most famous songwriting duos in history, could not have said it better.

Leo Morris, columnist for The Indiana Policy Review, is winner of the Hoosier Press Associations award for Best Editorial Writer. Morris, as opinion editor of the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, was named a finalist in editorial writing by the Pulitzer Prize committee. Contact him at [emailprotected]

The rest is here:

Morris: Property: Imagine it anew - Greenfield Daily Reporter

Weekend Reading on Womens Representation is a compilation of stories about womens representation in politics, on boards, in sports and entertainment, in judicial offices and in the private sector in the U.S. and around the worldwith a little gardening and goodwill mixed in for refreshment!

Happy Pride Month! This weeks Weekend Reading covers the good news and bad news surrounding women and underrepresented communities.

Danielle Smith and Rachel Notley may both be women, but they havedifferent ideasof what being Albertas next premier means. Smith is a libertarian and sees the job as protecting a womans right to make her own health choices and then getting the heck out of the way. Notley, previously a premier and a progressive, would have the state actively promote gender equality.

While applauding women in leadership in 2023 carries a whiff of retrograde politics, the reality is that female leaders, to say nothing of female leaders of colour, remain a rarity in this country. Canada has seen just one female prime minister. Even then, Kim Campbell got the job 30 years ago when her predecessor retired and governed for just five months before losing a general election and her own Vancouver seat, to boot.

When it comes to gender equity in Canada, the provincial record is slightly better than the federal 14 women have served as premier of a province or a territory. Nowhere has a woman been more likely to get the top office than in Alberta. Three of this provinces past six premiers have been women, with Smith and Notley already on that list.

This week, aNew York Times MagazinearticleCan the California Effect Survive in a Hyperpartisan America?caught our eye, as it reinforces the importance of local politics. With Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) having declared she will run for Sen. Dianne Feinsteins seat next cycle, many have suggested thatBuffy Wicks, a 45-year-old State Assembly member who resides in the 12th district, run for her seat.

Wicks won her last election with over 85 percent of the vote. But Wicks doesnt want a higher-level office.

Soon enough, however,Wicks put out a statementthat, humbled as she was by the suggestion, she wouldnt be seeking the seat. In March, I met Wicks at her office in Sacramento, where she was seated between a window overlooking the city and pictures from her years in the Obama administration. She told me that aside from the ego boost of having House of Representatives in her obituary, there was little for Congress to offer her. Her current job is bigger and more important, she argued, than much of what happens in Washington. I pass big bills here, Wicks told me. Why would I walk away from my ability to do that and go be one of 435 people in a very divided House that does not have a great track record of actually accomplishing anything?

Consider, she said, an internet-privacy bill she drafted last year, called theAge-Appropriate Design Code. It requires websites to ratchet up their default privacy settings to protect children from online tracking and data collection. The bill wassignedby Gov. Gavin Newsom over theopposition of the tech industry,which argued that it was too complicated to implement and tantamount to a state law setting national policy. That, in fact, was the point: Wicks passed the law with help from a member of Britains House of Lords, who had created similar regulations in her country, in the hope that if Britain and California passed the same rules, a global standard was likely to follow.

TheAssociated Presslaunched a new series this month that examines health disparities experienced by Black Americans across a lifetime. The first chapter is entitled: Why do so many Black women die in pregnancy?One reason: Doctors dont take them seriously.

What should have been a joyous first pregnancy [for public heath instructor Angelica Lyons] quickly turned into a nightmare when she began to suffer debilitating stomach pain.

Her pleas for help were shrugged off, she said, and she was repeatedly sent home from the hospital. Doctors and nurses told her she was suffering from normal contractions, she said, even as her abdominal pain worsened and she began to vomit bile. Angelica said she wasnt taken seriously until a searing pain rocketed throughout her body and her babys heart rate plummeted.

Rushed into the operating room for an emergency cesarean section, months before her due date, she nearly died of an undiagnosed case of sepsis.

Her experience is a reflection of the medical racism, bias and inattentive care that Black Americans endure. Black women have the highest maternal mortality rate in the United States 69.9 per 100,000 live births for 2021, almost three times the rate for white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

RepresentWomen knows how important it is to look abroad to understand better what works and what doesnt regarding systems strategies that remove barriers to womens political power. (If you want to learn more, check out our latest research memo,Voting Systems and Womens Representation: Lessons from Around the World and the Case for Proportional Ranked Choice Voting in the UnitedStates.)

This week, the Times of Israelreportedthat Israel is ranked the lowest for gender equality of all Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The OECD uses a powerful tool called theSocial Institutions & Gender Indexthat deploys the following methodology:

Toi Staffof The Times of Israel reports:

Israel scored lowest among the 38 OECD countries in a recent gender equality index, scoring less than half the average for many Western nations.

The OECD Social Institutions & Gender Index is marked from 0 to 100, with zero indicating no gender discrimination. Israel scored 33.4, compared to 20.1 for the US, 12.1, for the UK, 10.2 in France, 15.9 in Romania, and 24.7 in Turkey.

The ranking places Israel and Japan (33.3) as the OECD countries with the widest gender equality gaps

Ben Gvir heads Otzma Yehudit (Jewish power), the most extremist faction in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus coalition with far-right and ultra-Orthodox parties

In March, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation decided to reject a bill initiated by the previous coalition to introduce electronic tracking of domestic violence offenders, with Ben Gvir promising to bring a more balanced version that also tackles false accusations against men.

In response to anadvertisementcentered around trans women by Starbucks India, a new opinionpieceby Outlook India discusses the nuances of rainbow capitalism during Pride Month. While companies have the platform to raise awareness about LGBTQ+ issues, rainbow capitalism risks reducing queer identities to a passing trend or slogan. A more genuine way to celebrate pride month is by including LGBTQ+ individuals on all seniority levels in workplaces.

Many companies prefer to bring out ads online during the pride month for promotional purposes, but if we may ask them- how many of them hire queer individuals? How many are not doing labor rights violations? Starbucks has been known for underpaying the employees and union busting, how can a company like that claim to be inclusive by mere ads ? says Meghna Mehra, a member of the All India Queer Association (AIQA).

Major corporate houses in India have been at the forefront of campaigns fostering LGBTQ+ inclusion. According to the first ever global analysis done by the Boston Consulting Group on how companies are treating members of the community, more and more Indian companies are adopting a no-discriminative inclusion policy. This includes some of the marquee names of India Inc like Reliance Industries, Mahindra and Mahindra, Godrej and Tata Steel.

But ironically, the same corporations are reportedly simultaneously functioning as a major source for donations and electoral bonds to a political party which has often been under the scanner due to its policies and bills against the LGBTQ+ community, according to reports.

The hypocrisy is not limited to India. Corporates across the world that are eager to wave their flags during June, support anti-gay and homophobic politicians via donations. According to a report by Forbes, nine of the biggest, most LGBTQ-supportive corporations in America gave about $1 million or more each to anti-gay politicians in the last election cycle.

OurWomen Experts in Democracy Directoryis finally out!

This is a great resource for finding qualified and knowledgeable women experts in the democracy reform space for events, conferences, boards, and more.The directory includes experts from a wide range of fields and backgrounds, and its a great way to ensure that women are represented in conversations about democracy. Clickhereif you would like to join the directory.

On a lighter note: Its been a great year for strawberries in my garden.

And Mountain Laurel is lovely:

Thats all for this week! Have a great weekend and happy almost summer!

Up next:

U.S. democracy is at a dangerous inflection pointfrom the demise of abortion rights, to a lack of pay equity and parental leave, to skyrocketing maternal mortality, and attacks on trans health. Left unchecked, these crises will lead to wider gaps in political participation and representation. For 50 years, Ms. has been forging feminist journalismreporting, rebelling and truth-telling from the front-lines, championing the Equal Rights Amendment, and centering the stories of those most impacted. With all thats at stake for equality, we are redoubling our commitment for the next 50 years. In turn, we need your help, Support Ms. today with a donationany amount that is meaningful to you. For as little as $5 each month, youll receive the print magazine along with our e-newsletters, action alerts, and invitations to Ms. Studios events and podcasts. We are grateful for your loyalty and ferocity.

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Weekend Reading on Women's Representation: Stereotypes Can ... - Ms. Magazine