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Iowa Nice is a simple motto to some and a way of life for most. It may present itself in the form of gestures as simple as an index finger wave from the steering wheel to the stereotypical Ope, Im sorry..

As rigid, divisive and tribal as politics have become across the nation, the process of stepping out into neighborhoods and knocking on doors with a clipboard and a pen to obtain signatures for ballot access still often results in the respectful discourse that Iowa Nice is known for.

Over the past three weeks, I have been working closely with Libertarian Party members across the state as they have tried to obtain the signatures needed to get on the ballot this coming November. What started out as a speed bump while out door knocking quickly turned into a full fledged roadblock as concerns about the spread of COVID-19 took over all aspects of our lives. A welcoming greeting quickly turned into a respectful dismissal through a tiny crack in the doorway. Stopping on the street to engage in respectful debate with petitioners was replaced by a neighborly wave of decline in a time of social distancing.

Last week, I issued a request to Gov. Kim Reynolds and Secretary of State Paul Pate, on behalf of candidates from all parties, to issue a temporary delay in the filing deadlines for candidates based on the uncertainty of the recent coronavirus outbreak. While Libertarians are devoted to providing Iowans as many options on the ballot in November as possible, the health and welfare of petitioners and voters alike need to take precedent. With the recommendation to practice social distancing, a delay of the filing deadlines is not an unreasonable request. In fact, New York, one of the strictest states in the nation in terms of ballot access, ordered a temporary modification of their election procedures to ease the requirements to get on the ballot.

Our requests were ultimately denied, and while were excited to have eight Libertarian candidates on the ballot in November, there is no doubt about the impact made by the hurdles third-party candidates face in trying to attain ballot access. The one-two punch of the COVID-19 outbreak and early filing deadlines Iowas Legislature laid on third-party candidates last spring left a number of passionate Libertarians sitting on the sidelines while Republicans and Democrats can rest easy knowing that they can still qualify for the general election as late as August.

Theres still the opportunity to obtain the necessary signatures to ensure the Libertarian Party presidential nominee will give the nearly 38 percent of Iowa voters who are registered as a third-party or no-party a viable option outside of the duopoly that works so hard to control our daily lives.

If theres one thing that is absolutely certain, its that the Iowa Libertarians are not bowing out as easily as the Republicans and Democrats would like. We continue to fight the new ballot access laws in court, acting as a voice for all Iowans who deserve a choice on the ballot. We remain vigilant in fighting for policy that is focused on limiting government overreach and that gives every Iowan a beacon of liberty and freedom in a political landscape where both main parties are focused on depriving citizens of such.

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Finally, with our devotion to private charity and goodwill, we will continue to prove that in times of need like the current crisis, if there is a party that truly exudes the characteristics of Iowa Nice, it is the Libertarian Party.

Mike Conner is chairman of the Libertarian Party of Iowa.

Original post:
Partisan stonewalling and coronavirus conspire against Iowa candidates - The Gazette

The Federal Reserves bag of tricks is now empty. Politicians, however, always have more lies to tell about the economy. Voters might get a shot at hearing the truth, however, if the Libertarian Party nominates the right candidate.

Its consistently a top priority for voters, even during the high points of this fake recovery from the 2008 recession. The economy is closely tied to other issues like health care and education, with their high costs due to government price controls and red tape.

The economy is the essential issue for a candidate to speak on, especially a libertarian one. Only a libertarian can get at the crux of the matter the Federal Reserve and its vacuous fiat money system causing madness in markets and the wealth stagnation of Americas middle class.

Beyond their pocketbooks, voters stand to also gain clarity of mind on so many other crises that fuel the governments growth in power. Thanks to the Feds easy money, U.S. militarism can run wild abroad and at home, well beyond what citizens would naturally put up with under direct taxation.

It takes a special communicator to raise the Fed issue and command attention. Only Dr. Ron Paul grew his crowds and audiences on his call to abolish the Federal Reserve, making it a populist campaign theme while educating the youth, referring them to Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard, and other heroic economists.

In 2020, there is an effort within the Libertarian Party to do that again. Jacob Hornberger, one of six candidates vying for the partys nomination for president, seems to be leading the primary race in no small part due to his ability to speak on the Fed in an educational and exciting way.

Hornbergers track record goes back decades, founding the Future of Freedom Foundation in 1989. It grew with the Ron Paul Revolution movement, so many libertarian activists see him as something of a rightful heir.

End the Fed and separate money and the state, reads Hornbergers campaign website. The Federal Reserve is nothing more than a socialist central-planning agency.

Like Paul, Hornberger can connect the dots between Fed policy and housing, education, and other issues typically treated as wholly unrelated. This holistic approach contrasts with previous Libertarian Party presidential campaigns that attempted to dilute libertarianism down to fiscally conservative, socially liberal.

His nomination is no sure thing, however. The way the Libertarian Party decides its nominee is not by primary electoral victories, but rather a direct vote of the party delegates at the national convention. That event takes place the weekend of May 22nd in Austin, Texas.

The state contests until then will give a sense of what Libertarian voters support, and so far, Hornberger is leading with about 29 percent of the total vote after winning five of eight elections.

Markets are crashing as the Federal Reserve runs out of bubble-blowing tricks. President Donald Trump blames his own pick for Fed chairman for not printing money fast enough, while he also claims to have created the greatest economy ever.

Meanwhile, former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders are also full of lies, pushing essentially the exact same policy as Trump, though with more taxes and bureaucracy.

Whoever the Libertarian Party nominates, he wont be allowed to debate on the same stage as the Republican and Democratic nominees. But the party does have ballot access, and the internet isnt quite dead yet, so if there is any hope for voters to hear the truth about the economy, the Libertarian Party will be largely responsible for keeping it alive.

Go here to see the original:
On the 2020 Campaign Trail, Where's the Truth on the Economy? - The Liberator Online

I am a libertarian. I'm generally supportive of a very limited government that performs a few necessary functions. Redistributing wealth and bailing out folks from their own misadventures are not among those necessary functions of a limited government. If the government is going to provide a social safety net, it should try to design it so that it does not incentivize unproductive behavior and does not waste public resources.

Those considerations do not apply to the current debate over federal appropriations to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. The government should just send the checks. Quickly and with minimal red tape. Means testing and complex fade outs are not what is useful in the moment. The immediate crisis calls for relief, plain and simple.

It is certainly the case that some on the left want to use the present moment to launch expansive new social programs. Those debates can wait until another day, and politicians on the left are doing no one any favors by trying to exploit the crisis by tying aid to a host of onerous restrictions or attempting to erect new permanent programs. Crises are often exploited to expand the state, and we should be vigilant in resisting such efforts.

Likewise, there are those on the right who have fallen into familiar routines of resisting any government assistance as a hand-out, packaging government assistance as a tax cut, or tying government assistance to their own favored set of conditions and exceptions. If we were discussing a new permanent social program, then such design details would matter a great deal and should be central to the debate, but we are not.

In the present moment, the government itself has ordered businesses to stop operating. The global pandemic has brought economic activity to a standstill in ways that could not have been anticipated or adequately planned for by responsible private actors. With good reason, the government has disrupted people's livelihoods and restricted individual activity for the sake of the common good. Even if we were to think the government has been misguided in some of the steps it has taken, the fact remains that the government has taken steps that have unavoidably done substantial economic damage.

In such circumstances, the government should compensate individuals for the damage it has wrought and relieve individuals from the unforeseen burdens that they have been asked to assume. What individuals earned last year has no bearing on what their current needs are given the government-ordered lockdown. The more complex and burdensome the government makes any financial assistance that it offers, the less effective it will be in mitigating the economic costs of the pandemic and relieving people of their current suffering from the effort to contain the pandemic. The more complex the policy the government attempts to design, the longer it will take to reach agreement on what to do, the more difficult and time-consuming the implementation will be, and the greater the uncertainty and economic disruption that the government will be creating. The more complex and nuanced the policy the government attempts to design, the more room there will be special-interest favoritism and rent-seeking cronyism.

The government's current efforts to lockdown social and economic activity in order to stem the spread of the disease will necessarily rely heavily on voluntary compliance. The state might be able to effectively quarantine some individuals or isolated areas, but it cannot for any extended period of time shut down the country. People will voluntarily assume some individual burdens for the collective good if the necessity of doing so is clearly explained and those burdens are not too onerous. The government cannot expect people to assume those burdens forever and cannot expect them to take truly heroic actions. The government needs an exit strategy from the current policy of containment, and that will eventually require extensive testing, tracking and individual quarantine. In the meantime, the government needs to minimize the damage and maximize the efficacy of the current containment strategy, and that requires relieving individuals from immediate financial uncertainty.

The government has instantly thrown millions of people out of work in what was previously a full-employment economy. There will be unavoidable economic consequences to that, and the government can only take steps to mitigate those consequences. It should, however, act as quickly to provide financial support for those adversely affected by the societal lockdown as it has to impose that lockdown. If the government had been more fiscally responsible in the past, we would be in a better position to take the necessary steps now. But we cannot fix past mistakes by closing our eyes to current needs.

Even a libertarian should support a simple, temporary program of massive relief to be immediately phased out as soon as the crisis has passed so as to collectivize the hardship of fighting this common foe and insure as smooth a transition as possible to the post-epidemic situation.

Original post:
Just Send the Checks - Reason

New Hampshires Longest Running Regular Libertarian Social Meetup

Its an outrageous order and contrary to a basic right of humans, which is the right to assemble. Its also a violation of the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In order for many humans to be happy, they need to be around other people. We are a social animal. Now the people calling themselves the state or the government have decided to threaten everyone with violence if they dont do as they are told and OBEY for their own good, of course.

Normally, libertarians are skeptical of the things they are told by government goons, however weve seen yet another schism in the movement in the last few weeks over this Coronavirus scare. Apparently if an authoritarian puts on a lab coat then many libertarians will fall under their spell.

I dont know if Coronavirus is the threat the government and media are making it out to be. I do know this, however:

1. Politicians and bureaucrats lie. Theres no reason to believe they are telling the truth now. There is a long history of governments manufacturing a crisis and spreading fear in order to attain more power. We saw this in a big way prior to Coronavirus in the hysterical paranoia fostered by the state after 9/11. As a result we saw the rise of Homeland Security and the further elimination of freedom. The response to Coronavirus is even worse. In some cases like San Francisco people are under total lockdowns. They also use the term lockdown in prison.

2. Media benefits when it propagates fear. If it bleeds, it leads! News is a business. They have advertisers, so the more people they can get to tune in, the more valuable the ad space. If people are in a state of fear, they are more likely to hang on through that next commercial break. Plus, mainstream news sources depend on government for its press releases and usually incorporate them, verbatim, into their on-air copy. Though in theory their job is to expose political corruption, if they are too good at this, the state agents will not talk to them any longer and then they wont get the scoop, so any critique of government from mainstream media is usually highly limited.

3. Whenever government takes more freedoms, it doesnt cede that ground back to liberty after the crisis has ended.

Keene Bitcoin Meetup

I do know this, people are obedient and more than willing to do what they are ordered by people wearing fancy hats, uniforms, and lab coats. They are easily frightened into giving up their freedoms, all for the promise that theyll be able to continue to suck air.

However, what is the point of living if you cant make your own choices?

Thankfully, not everyone is living in fear. There are occasional breaks in the fear porn news to reveal that many younger people are still getting together. In New Hampshire some heroic folks have filed a lawsuit against the State of New Hampshire over the governors unconstitutional and anti-freedom executive order.

If people across New Hampshire dont stand up and take back their liberties, then we no longer deserve the live free or die slogan. To that end, in spite of Sununus order, the longest-running weekly social gathering of libertarians in New Hampshire, Social Sundays will continue. Previously held at Local Burger on Main St, it has moved to the Bitcoin Embassy NH located at 661 Marlboro St. in Keene. The new start time is now 5pm. Attend at your own risk and bring your own food and drink. If the event gets to over 51 people a special prize will be awarded. No cops allowed.

More here:
The Right to Assemble Not Erased By Government Emergency Libertarians to Continue Meeting in Keene Sundays at 5pm - Free Keene

This article was featured in our weekly newsletter, the Liberator Online. To receive it in your inbox, sign up here.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is notorious for being a principled voice for limited constitutional government. Even better, he amuses us with how swiftly he induces tantrums among the political establishments flunkies.

Aside from President Donald Trump, its Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell who is usually the face of evil for liberals. But on Tuesday night, an NBC News story, based on two anonymous McConnell-linked sources, redirected the ire squarely on Paul.

What did the libertarian ophthalmologist-turned-politician do to deserve this? He did his job.

Paul proposed an amendment to the coronavirus bill being rushed through the Senate after passing the House 363-40. For those keeping track, libertarian-leaning Republican Thomas Massie didnt vote, and libertarian-leaning Independent Congressman Justin Amash voted present.

Pauls amendment, according to NBC News reporter Julie Tsirkin, was officially summarized as: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to require a social security number for the purposes of the child tax credit, to provide the President the authority to transfer funds as necessary and to terminate United States military operations and reconstruction activities in Afghanistan.

Twitter is littered with righteous indignation constantly, but Tuesday night, it was mostly directed at Paul. And it was mostly thanks to the NBC News story poorly co-written by Tsirkin.

Before getting into the catty tone of the article, lets consider the actual concerns people have with Pauls amendment.

First, isnt there a national emergency going on? Now isnt the time for nitpicking whats legal under the Constitution or how Congress appropriates funds. Theres no time for delay, were led to believe.

The answer to this critique is short, because there simply is no delay in voting beyond a few minutes just because an amendment is proposed. All of this drama is just political theatre, with McConnell aides directing the show.

Second, and perhaps more reasonably, it may be asked what the war in Afghanistan has to do with this coronavirus. That almost begs the question though. Why is Congress leaping to this hot new political commodity known as a coronavirus when theyve skirted their true duties for so long?

Beyond the deadly Afghanistan misadventure being a drain on financial resources, its worth investigating how human resources are wasting away, mired down in that desert. In Syria, most of the U.S. troops are from the South Carolina National Guard. Might be nice to have them here!

Here Paul is doing the job all the other senators are supposed to be doing. Unfortunately for him, it doesnt fit into the narrative most comfortable for the political and media elites.

As a result, we end up with junior high school level journalism weaponized against patriotic dissent.

Paul is notorious for forcing votes on amendments he knows will not pass, the NBC News story goes.

It concluded in a similar fashion: He even briefly caused the government to shut down in 2018, using a procedural tactic to block the Senate from meeting the deadline to keep the government open because he objected to the price tag.

Both of these statements are lies, though the authors probably believe them. Its a sure sign of the deep divisions in the country.

Whether its the 9/11 Victims bill, the Ukrainegate impeachment failure, or foreign aid, Paul consistently upsets the right people by doing the right thing. This doesnt mean Paul is perfect, but it does mean Americans should appreciate his special role in Washington, DC.

Original post:
Rand Paul Proves He Is Too Good For Us, As He Upsets the Right People - The Liberator Online