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Since the 2016 election, the Libertarian Party (L.P.) has gained two sitting state legislators in New Hampshire. Not by having L.P. candidates win in that election, but by having two legislators who won as a Republican and a Democrat switch allegiance to the L.P.

Caleb Dyer

The first was former Republican Caleb Dyer (Hillsborough 37, the cities of Hudson and Pelham) in February. This month, a new two-person Libertarian Caucus in the New Hampshire House of Representatives was formed when Democrat Joseph Stallcop (from Cheshire House District 4, representing the city of Keene's Ward 1) also went L.P.

Both renegades are 21 years old.

Dyer found the Republican House leadership basically trying to scuttle nearly every bill he sponsored or co-sponsored, and began to suspect it wasn't the Party for him. (The bills included one mandating police body cameras and one allowing for easier annulment of arrest records when no conviction followed.) He was told more or less that anything that wasn't a pre-set part of the state Party's platform, he'd be obstructed on. This didn't sit well with Dyer. (The Republicans currently have a strong majority in the House.)

In a February Reddit "Ask Me Anything" session, Dyer explained that when he runs for re-election as a Libertarian, he has the chance of appealing to normally Democratic voters: "I am a firm opponent of Republicans on a great many social issues. I support the decriminalization of sex work with Rep. Elizabeth Edwards (D-Manchester). I am a co-sponsor on HB656, the primary bill for the legalization of recreational cannabis. I am also fervently against the death penalty." In that same AMA he complained that the state GOP "do not seem very focused on reducing expenditures but rather focused on finding ways spend a surplus that we realistically don't have. Apart from this I also question the Republican party's commitment to the accountability of executive agents including police."

Dyer ran and won last year as a Republican with a reasonably libertarian message: for school choice and constitutional carry of weapons, against income and sales taxes and the drug war, and wanting to reduce business taxes and spending. His handout to voters didn't even mention party affiliation and called him a "young voice of liberty."

In his official statement announcing his party switch in February, Dyer warned Republicans that the Libertarian Party in New Hampshire last year winning ballot access for 2018 (with its gubernatorial candidate Max Abramson passing the 4 percent barrier), shows "that [the GOP's] constituency is slowly but surely growing discontent with their increasingly partisan representation. For elected Republicans like myself who have libertarian leanings this is a truly golden opportunity to establish ourselves as a viable alternative to this representation and become advocates for principled, classically liberal policy....We hope that in two years' time our perseverance will inspire hundreds of People across the state to submit themselves to their peers as Libertarian candidates."

Stallcop, elected in November running unopposed as a Democrat and as a junior studying political science at Keene State, was inspired into politics from a more left-learning direction; in his press release announcing his defection to the L.P. he credited "Personally witnessing the situation at Standing Rock" as a major impetus to his political awakening, as it "showed me the danger of relinquishing power and authority into an institution." (Stallcop did no fundraising for his unopposed race.)

In a phone interview this week, Stallcop says the Standing Rock situation initially disturbed him because of "shocking" scenes of protesters and media being mistreated "for the sake of protecting a subsidized industry," and at one point felt that a policeman was likely to have shot and killed him for walking across a line.

Stallcop noted that when he took a version of the libertarian "Nolan test" (which maps your political beliefs regarding economic and other freedoms in quadrants rather than just a straight line on which one can only be toward the right and left), he was firmly in the "left libertarian" quadrant. (He was passionate when elected as a Democrat at extending anti-discrimination laws in the state to cover the transgendered.)

When he ran as a Democrat Stallcop also advocated a higher state minimum wage, but says he now thinks differently.

He credits Libertarian Party member Mary Ruwart's book Healing Our World with helping shift his political attitude in a more libertarian direction. That book helped him see that "as long as you are for achieving goals without aggression, than you are essentially libertarian, and that me being more left-leaning in my classical liberalism doesn't mean I can't be a Libertarian."

A talk with Dyer helped Stallcop realize the L.P. was a reasonable option for him, though Stallcop says Dyer was "rather surprised about the speed of my decision" to switch; it took him just a couple of weeks of awareness of the L.P. option to make the jump.

Libertarian Party of New Hampshire (LPNH) Chair Darryl Perry, who sought the Party's presidential nomination in 2016 on a platform of hardcore no-state libertarianism, admits that Stallcop is "not the most libertarian guy" but is impressed by his obvious willingness to "learn more about what [Libertarian] beliefs actually are."

Stallcop, who says he felt no particular partisan attachment before running for office and even contemplated being an independent until he learned of the petition requirements, quickly found his the Democratic Party's leadership in the New Hampshire House stifling and annoying.

He felt like he was being basically ordered to vote party line without adequate factual backing for the positions the Democrats insisted he take. Stallcop particularly found their insistence on voting against "constitutional carry" (permitless concealed weapon carry) grating. "I find it funny that many people who raise issues of police brutality" never ask "if we had less of these laws that enable police to come directly up" to citizens, might that not be better? "People want to lock down police yet create all these laws that push police to be more aggressive with us."

As he said in a press release announcing his switch, "it seems there is no longer a place for me here [in the Democratic Party]. With a high regard for individuals personally working in their communities to implement positive change, I hereby transfer to the Libertarian Party."

The Power of a Two-Man Caucus

Can the new Libertarian Caucus in the New Hampshire state house grow? Stallcop isn't sure if he'll run again; it depends on where he ends up going to law school, since that choice may take him out of state.

Dyer is already committed to another run in 2018 with the L.P. banner. (His voting record, for your personal judgments on his libertarian bona fides.) It is a common complaint of state and local L.P. candidates that the Party apparatus is almost always unable to do anything to help them gain office. Perry, the state L.P. chair, says that "I know that we will be able to provide [Dyer] with volunteers for going door to door campaigning. The election is 18 months away" so hopefully more resources might be available from the LPNH by then, though "at this point we are not necessarily able to throw a bunch of money at any legislative seat."

That said, Perry is encouraged that unlike many states, New Hampshire House seats are often winnable with spending of less, sometimes even far less, than a thousand dollars. Neither Dyer or Stallcap felt they had any meaningful help from their former major parties either, beyond whatever benefit the mere label has for party-line voters.

Because of the multi-member district that Dyer represents, in which each voter gets to pick 11 different representatives (meaning the top 11 vote getters all get a seat) he could potentially end up in the House again as a Libertarian with only around 5 percent of the vote. (Back in the 1990s, when the L.P. had four sitting members in New Hampshire's House, Andy Borsa won re-election with the L.P. label in Dyer's district.)

Dyer feels good about how well known he already is around Pelham and Hudson, and feels well equipped to do the necessary door knocking to put him over. But he does hope the state L.P. will be able to help with door-knocking, setting up events, and otherwise start "building a base of voters" but even "one or two people" from the Party to help him door-knock, "I'd consider that a success. I don't expect them to provide crazy phone banks or anything that like" right away "though I hope they will get there." (He won last time spending only around $400, Dyer says.) Having activists knocking on doors will be "infinitely more helpful" than giving him another dollar.

New Hampshire's House is unusually large, with 400 members. Any individual legislator in a committee system controlled by a Party not the legislators' own will likely find actually getting bills out of committee very difficult. One of the issues Dyer hopes to legislate successfully on is easier ballot access for third parties.

Dyer, who works as a Christmas tree farmer with his dad, for that reason is on the Environment and Agriculture Committee. And even though every House member is supposed to be on a committee, the Democrats stripped Stallcop of his and he's currently committeeless.

Stallcop expects that their colorful rarity as a two-man Party caucus could make their media bully pulpit more powerful, and Dyer says the ethos of the way the House works might make it important for the Democrats or Republicans to work on making bills satisfying to them to make them technically "bipartisan."

Perry is quite sure that the New Hampshire state House has more than a few libertarian members who are so far reluctant to abandon the two-party system. Stallcop and Dyer agree, though neither will out anyone publicly. Dyer thinks as many as 10 percent of the legislature might have a natural home in the L.P.

While running a candidate for every House slot is a herculean task even the two majors generally don't manage, says LPNH head Perry, they do hope to field many more than usual next year and also hope to provide more clear "statewide branding, we are Libertarians and this is what we stand for" though he knows they won't be able to provide concrete support to everyone who runs. He expects them to try to figure out "more viable ones" and help them.

Dyer believes "If I won re-election in 2018 as a Libertarian the whole game changes. If I win in Hudson and Pelham, in the Speaker of the House's district, a warning shot will have been fired. People will really take notice. The Republican Party will be very dismayed."

The rest is here:
Libertarian Party Now Has Two Sitting Legislators in New Hampshire - Reason (blog)

Maxime Bernier, QuebecMP and former ForeignMinister, narrowly lost his bid for the leadership of the Conservative Party of Canada on Saturday to Saskatchewan MP and former House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer by just 49% to Scheers 51%.

Scheer is a closeally of former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who was criticized by libertarians during his tenure for his support for Keynesian-style stimulus spending. The relatively bland and generic Scheer is generallyassociated with the party establishment, while Bernier was seen as an outsider candidate.

Bernier was believed to be the frontrunner in this race after the impromptu withdrawal of fellow outsider and Shark Tank star Kevin OLeary, who went on to endorse Bernier.

However, the ranked ballot system usedin the leadership election, which involves eliminating lower polling candidates and transferring their votes to the voters subsequent preferences, made the ultimate result difficultto predict. This system appears to have benefited Scheer, who had less personal support, but had the benefit of being less polarizing than other candidates.

Bernier performed unusually poorly in his home province of Quebec, even losing the area he represents in Canadas Parliament, Beauce, to Scheer. Many in Quebec benefit from Canadas statist agricultural policy of supply management, which Bernier seeks to abolish. Supply management has been a major flashpointin Canada-U.S. trade relations, with President Trump lambasting the policy for its unfairness towards American dairy farmers.

Berniersomewhat made up for his lack of support in Canadas eastwith strong support in provinces in Canadas Mountain West, such as Alberta, where his limited government ideologyresonated with Conservative voters. Unfortunately, it appears this was not enough to prevail over Scheer.

Bernier, a self-described Ron Paul fan and an adherent to Austrian economics, previously didan interviewwith The Liberty Conservativelate last year. Much like Trump, Bernier embraced the use of memes during his the campaign, and garnered the support of prominent Canadian libertarian commentatorssuch as Lauren Southern. He also pitched himself as strong on immigration, calling for Canadian troops to be deployed to the border with the United States to prevent migrants denied refugee status there from illegally crossing the border to apply for refugee status in Canada. Berniers strong support fromCanadas young, libertarian-leaning, Trump-inspired new right managedto push Scheer in a positive direction on several important issues, with Scheer pledging last month to defund colleges that do not protect the free speech of students.

Although this result may dismay libertarians in Canada and beyond, Berniers close second place finish demonstratesthat libertarian ideas dohave electoral potential witha right-of-center electorate when combined with a healthy dose of anti-establishment populism. Should Scheer fail to beat Prime Minister Justin Trudeauat the 2019 Canadian general election, Bernier will be well-positioned to succeed him as Conservative leader and take on Trudeau in the 2023 general election.

See the original post:
Libertarian Maxime Bernier Narrowly Loses Canadian Conservative Party Leadership Election - The Liberty Conservative

Welcome to another edition of The Lowdown on Liberty, where each week we take questions submitted from our readers as we attempt to clarify the inner-workings of libertarian principles. This week, we cover a universal basic income, the non-aggression principle, non-interventionism, and the infamous Antifa!

To answer the first part of your question Lucas, while people have always had a fear of automation rendering human labor obsolete, that type of scenario has yet to happen, and most likely never will. Automation doesnt actually destroy jobs, it displaces them usually the lowest skilled jobs. A popular example is: If we imagine the job market as a ladder with jobs being the rungs, and the lowest skilled being at the bottom, moving up in skill as we climb, then automation simply kicks out the bottom rung of the ladder and places a new, higher-skilled rung near the top.

As technology advances, the least skilled jobs, often repetitive, menial tasks are automated first. Causing the immediate job loss for a person in that position, but creating a more skilled position somewhere else. Whether its building the robot that does their previous job, installing it, maintaining it, programming it, or improving its design, these are all new, more skilled jobs that are added to the market in exchange for the less skilled job being automated. Weve seen this over time as first-world nations either automate or outsource low-skilled jobs and acquire more high-skilled, technical ones. People have always speculated that jobs would run out once automation began, but population has only grown and even though automation has become more prevalent, there are more jobs today than ever. We may theorize that automation will eventually get to a point where human labor is no longer useful, but its much more likely that higher-skilled labor that doesnt yet exist will continue to enter the market, as people continue improving and inventing. Half the skilled jobs being done today didnt exist 100 years ago, and there is no reason to think the next 100 will be any different.

Now, the second part of your question is a bit easier to predict. Universal basic income has been a hot topic lately, with people such as Mark Zuckerberg coming out clearly in support of it. However, libertarianisms core value of non-aggression is incompatible with the idea. A program that implicitly states that each person should receive according to their need, while others pay into it according to their ability (which is what it boils down to), sounds like the antithesis of libertarianism, and more in line with what a communist would endorse. Seeing as automation is unlikely to render us all suddenly unemployed, we should stick to fighting the welfare state, not endorsing it.

Great question, Scott. This example points out the obvious need for pre-determined rules in these situations. In current cases regarding these matters, most cities have laws telling citizens when excessive noise can be punishable as a citable offense. As Murray Rothbard noted, we should have clearly defined and enforceable property rights because we all partake in activities with unavoidable consequences that affect more than just our own property (smells, light and sound pollution, etc.). In a privatized society, we may resolve these with contracts voluntarily signed between neighbors, by-laws within a homeowners association, or a myriad of other ways to ensure that rules are agreed upon beforehand to ensure peaceful resolutions.

The ideas of non-intervention and keeping terror out go hand-in-hand. Our recent history in the Middle East has shown quite convincingly that there is no resolution to be had from nation-building and constant foreign occupation. While you could make the argument that simply pulling out of there would not solve all our current issues with terrorism, its important to point out the Dave Smith argument, which is: when you murder peoples children, they tend to fucking hate you. Our current strategy, Operation Enduring Freedom, is now the longest conflict in US history, outlasting the Civil War, WWI, and WWII combined. And its clearly failing, so there is no harm in trying non-intervention, because at least it would be a change, and the worst-case scenario would only be a return to the status quo. Although, there is quite a case to be made that it is our decades-long intervention and attempts at regime change that have resulted in our current predicament more than anything else. Why is it that we see swarms of terrorist groups in countries around Africa, yet the US and Europe experience almost no problems from them compared to the attacks coming from the Middle East? Non-intervention may not guarantee the total end of terrorism, but ongoing foreign intervention and attempts at nation building will certainly guarantee its persistence.

The Antifa movement seems to be bad joke that simply wont go away. The idea that you could fight fascism by forcibly shutting down the free speech of those you disagree with is so repugnant that its hard to take them seriously. Yet, we see from their actions that they are quite serious in their approach.

This is troublesome for libertarians for two reasons.

First, the ideas they represent fly directly in the face of libertarian ideals. Our strict adherence to property rights and non-aggression are the two foundations Antifa fights most adamantly against.

Second, they are providing the media with the opportunity to damage our image. For those who may not know, true anarchists, those who identify as anarcho-capitalist, fall under the larger umbrella of libertarianism. However, the media, as well as Antifa themselves, call themselves anarchists too. Now, we in the liberty movement can distinguish their anarcho-communism from what actual anarchy is, but most average Americans cannot. To the uninformed, these people fall into the category relating to anyone who is anti-government; thats us. With that in mind, we must fight the ideas of Antifa at every point possible if we hope to distinguish ourselves from them. They are truly a hypocritical scourge in our society, but if we arent careful, they may cause serious damage to our image and our credibility.

Alright, thats it for this week. Thank you to everyone who wrote in, and make sure you submit your questions each week on our The Lowdown on Liberty post, and the top questions will be answered the following week!

Featured image: BasicIncome.org

This post was written by Thomas J. Eckert.

The views expressed here belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect our views and opinions.

Thomas J. Eckert is college grad with an interest in politics. He studies economics and history and writes in his spare time on political and economic current events.

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Can Libertarians Advocate for Universal Basic Income? The Lowdown On Liberty - Being Libertarian

New York Times

Rebuked Twice by Supreme Court, North Carolina Republicans Are Unabashed New York Times RALEIGH, N.C. In Washington, efforts by this state's Republicans to cement their political dominance have taken a drubbing this month. On May 15, the Supreme Court struck down a North Carolina elections law that a federal appeals court said had been ... Cooper v. Harris - Supreme Court of the United StatesSupreme Court of the United States Supreme Court ruling wipes out Republican-drawn House districts in NCUSA TODAY all 57 news articles »

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Rebuked Twice by Supreme Court, North Carolina Republicans Are Unabashed - New York Times

President Trump and House Republicans celebrate the passage of the GOP health-care bill in early May. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Republicans have had seven years to figure out how they want to replace Obamacare, and this is what they've come up with: a plan that, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, would lead to 23 million more people not havinginsurance and, in states that wanted to, sick people being burdened with much, much higher costs.

Maybe they needed eight years?

The real question here is why. Why weren't Republicans able to put a plan together that people actually, you know, like theirs is polling in the low 20s and why did it take so long? And the answer is pretty simple: Republicans are philosophically opposed to redistribution, but health care is all about redistribution. For a long time, they tried to wish that away, and it was only when that wasn't an option anymore that they moved on to Plan B: trying to pass the least redistributive billthey can before anyone noticed how much it doesn't redistribute.

That last part isn't working so well.

Now, if we could start from scratch, Republicans would like our health-care system to work the way Singapore's does. Everyone would have catastrophic insurance to protect against true medical emergencies and then use health savings accounts to pay for routine care out of pocket. It's not just that this would make people pay their own way as much as possible. It's also the idea that making them do so would make them shop around for the best deal.

There are two problems with this, though. First, as economist Ken Arrow pointed out long ago, picking the right medical care is a lot different from picking the right car. People don't know enough to be good comparison shoppers, and they're not going to scrimp when their health is on the line. But second and more importantly we don't have the low health-care costs you need to make all thiswork. Singapore's government, you see, has been able to keep costsdown because it owns most of the country's hospitals, it employs a lotof the doctors, and it subsidizes cheaper treatments to try to get people to choose them. The result is that they spend only about 5 percent of their GDP on health care compared with the 18 percent we do. Which is really all you need to know about why their system works for them but wouldn't for us. It's a lot easier to pay for their own health care when that costs three or four times less what it does here.

How have Republicans dealt with this? Well, for the most part, they haven't. They still want people to use HSAs, to pay higher deductibles, to have more skin in the game that will supposedly turn them from patients into consumers never mind that that would just price a lot of people out of the market altogether. That's actually a feature, not a bug. Health care is only a major priority for Republicans insofar as they can make it redistribute less money. So while conservative wonks might be focused on trying to make the health-care system more of a free market, conservative politicians are more interested in what that means for their tax cuts.

Just look at Trumpcare. It's only a health-care bill to the extent that it takes health care away from the poor and middle class to pay for a tax cut for the rich. Indeed, over the next decade, it would cut Medicaid by $834 billion and health-care subsidies by $276 billion, all to finance a trillion dollars' worth of tax cuts mostly benefitingwealthy investors.

But that was still too redistributive for the far-right House Freedom Caucus. They didn't just want to stop the rich from having to pay for the poor. They also wanted to stop the healthy from having to pay for the sick. So they added an amendment that would allow states to opt out of Obamacare's basicrules. Insurance companies wouldn't have to charge people with preexisting conditions the same as people without them, and could sell plans that didn't include essential benefits such as hospitalizations, mental health and maternity care. That would allow young, healthy people to save money by buying bare-bones plans, while older, sicker people would have to pay more for theirs since they'd be the only ones buying those types of comprehensive plans. The insurance market, in other words, would bifurcate. Healthy people would buy affordable plans that didn't cover a lot, and sick people would try to buy unaffordable ones that did until they couldn't. Republican Mark Meadows, who more than anyone else pushed for these changes, was reportedly reduced to tears when he found out that they'd mean a lot of people with preexisting conditions would lose their coverage, which makes you wonder what he thought they were doing.

The rest of the GOP sure knew.

Read the rest here:
Why Republicans are so bad at health care - Washington Post