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Former Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee launched his Libertarian bid for the presidency Wednesday, calling for the country to have an active, opened-minded discussion about criminal justice reform that includes the decriminalization of drugs.

If he wants to learn more about how to get it done, he might want to take a trip to his home state this afternoon.

Thats because a group of lawmakers and advocates are hosting a conversation at the State House with Dr. Joo Goulo, who is known as Portugals drug czar. Goulo helped craft his countrys plan to decriminalize all drugs and administer administrative penalties in most possession cases.

The Portuguese policy has been widely hailed as a success, helping to curb drug use and overdoses in that country.

Chafee stopped short of saying whether he was referring to all substances, telling Marijuana Moment that it starts with a broad conversation and getting everybody involved - law enforcement, health officials, and thats the process.

And there are other models around the world, whether its Portugal or Uruguay or Holland, and we can learn from them, Chafee said.

Todays discussion at the State House library is hosted by Representative Scott Slater, the Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) on Opioids and Overdose, the Substance Use Policy, Education, & Recovery Political Action Committee, and the Family Task Force.

Governor Gina Raimondo is widely expected to include in her budget next week a proposal to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, but House and Senate leaders have said they will not support it.

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If Chafee wants to decriminalize drugs, he should take a trip to R.I. today - The Boston Globe

9. State Capacity Libertarians are more likely to have positive views of infrastructure, science subsidies, nuclear power (requires state support!), and space programs than are mainstream libertarians or modern Democrats. Modern Democrats often claim to favor those items, and sincerely in my view, but de facto they are very willing to sacrifice them for redistribution, egalitarian and fairness concerns, mood affiliation, and serving traditional Democratic interest groups. For instance, modern Democrats have run New York for some time now, and theyve done a terrible job building and fixing things. Nor are Democrats doing much to boost nuclear power as a partial solution to climate change, if anything the contrary.

10. State Capacity Libertarianism has no problem endorsing higher quality government and governance, whereas traditional libertarianism is more likely to embrace or at least be wishy-washy toward small, corrupt regimes, due to some of the residual liberties they leave behind.

11. State Capacity Libertarianism is not non-interventionist in foreign policy, as it believes in strong alliances with other relatively free nations, when feasible. That said, the usual libertarian problems of intervention because government makes a lot of mistakes bar still should be applied to specific military actions. But the alliances can be hugely beneficial, as illustrated by much of 20th century foreign policy and today much of Asia which still relies on Pax Americana.

marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/01/what-libertarianism-has-become-and-will-become-state-capacity-libertarianism.html

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What libertarianism has become and will become State Capacity Libertarianism - Hot Air

How could we create a digital equivalent to cash, somethingthat could be created but not forged, exchanged but not copied, and whichreveals nothing about itsusers?

Why would we need this digital currency?

Dr. Finn Brunton, Associate Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU, discussed his new book Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency on November 19th, 2019 with CITPs Technology and Society Reading Group. Footage aired on C-SPANs Book TV.

Through a series of how and why questions, Finn constructed a fascinating and critical narrative around the history of digital currencies and the emergence of modern cryptocurrency. How much currency should be produced? How do we know if currency is real? Why gold, relative to digital gold currencies (DGCs)?

Beginning with the $20 bill, as analog beautiful objects of government technology made possible in a digital era by the rose engine lathe, and ending with the first ever tweet about Bitcoin (Running bitcoin), posted by Hal Finney (@halfin), Finn described the unexpected sociotechnical origins of Bitcoin and blockchain. His talk, and the book on which it was based, identify seminal articles (e.g. The Computers of Tomorrow by Martin Greenberger) and discussion communities (e.g. Extropy), key figures from David Chaum and Paul Armer to Tim May and Phil Salin, and digital currencies, from EFTs to hashcash, that served as stepping stones toward contemporary cryptocurrencies. Yet, Finn also importantly acknowledged that while names and dates are memorable and compelling in constructing a timeline and pulling continuous threads through this history, there are n+1 ideas about and versions of digital currency.

In this sense, Finn provides, more so than an attempt at acomprehensive chronology, a sense of the recurring objectives that motivatedthe evolution of cryptocurrency: trust in value, exchangeability, multiplicity,reproducibility, decentralization, abundance, scalability, sovereignty,verification, authenticity, fungibility, and transparency. In addition to thesemany, often fundamentally conflicting, values and objectives, very realconcerns about privacy, surveillance, coercion, power asymmetries, and libertarianfears of crises and the coming emergencies led individuals and communities todevelop their own digital currencies. Finn also identified some of theproblematic narratives around digital currencies, such as the assertion that cryptocurrencyis as real as math, and real challenges that have stymied and limited variousexperimental currencies.

Many of these challenges were highly apparent as Finndescribed the rise and fall of DGCs. The strange union between futuristicdigital currency and precious metals, particularly gold in its magnificent,stupid honesty, emerged in many parallel libertarian communities in the US andaround the world, as digital and analog receipts of ownership in preciousmetals were distributed to document remote stored value in a decentralizedsystem. Finn explained how these DGCs (e.g. eLiberty Dollars or The SecondAmendment Dollar) challenged the power and authority of state currencies andmodern banking and how the abrupt seizure of precious metal stockpiles, asevidence, by Federal Marshals foreshadowed some of the inaccessibility problemsof cryptocurrency, as well as the relationships between illicit activities anddigital currencies which now exist on the Silk Road.

Finn ended the discussion answering audience questions,including about power dynamics and the libertarian origins of cryptocurrency.His assertion that money and crisis are linked, not only in the economy ofemergency preparedness, but also in key points of progress toward the futureof money is compelling in identifying how digital currencies fit into thishistorical pattern in a larger monetary history.

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The Unknown History of Digital Cash - Freedom to Tinker

Founding Father and principle architect of the U.S. Constitution James Madison stated unequivocally: Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.

Libertarians strongly agree with Madison and we believe that people in need are best served by grassroots private volunteer organizations, rather than by government-run, taxpayer-at-large funded operations, which tend to be heavy on bureaucracy and regulation rather than on actually delivering results and aid to those in need.

In the spirit of James Madison, the Gila County Libertarian Party has made a financial contribution to the Payson Homeless Initiative, and we encourage other political groups in the area as well as non-political civic and charitable groups to get behind the Payson Homeless Initiative and make donations or provide volunteers to help this truly grassroots private sector effort.

Americans are the most generous and charitable people on the planet, and we would do even more if we retained more of the fruits of our labor. Less taxes = more money in private hands = more contributions to productive, private voluntary charitable programs. With less of a tax burden, caring members of society will be even more charitable, and society will be strengthened.

LBJs War on Poverty has been an epic failure. 55 years later, homelessness is rampant, especially in California. Tens of thousands of people gather in homeless camps with diseases such as tuberculosis and hepatitis posing great risk to the public at large. There is a better way, and private voluntary organizations such as the Payson Homeless Initiative are a prime example.

The Gila County Libertarian Party extends a well-deserved thank you to all the individuals and organizations that are already volunteering and contributing to the Payson Homeless Initiative. Keep up the great work!

Larry Hoffenberg, secretary/treasurer, Gila County Libertarian Party

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Kudos to the Payson Homeless Initiative | Letters To Editor - Payson Roundup

Conservative: Thanks for the Judges, Harry!

With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnells help, President Trump has appointed federal judges at about twice the rate of his three predecessors, notes The Washington Examiners editorial board. But Trump should be thanking McConnells predecessor, former Democratic Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada. In 2013, with President Barack Obama in the White House and Democrats controlling the Senate, Reid made the fateful and short-sighted decision to change Senate rules so that a bare majority was enough to confirm a judge, instead of 60 votes, as before. During his campaign, Trump regularly and energetically promised to appoint well-credentialed conservatives with excellent character and scholarship to judgeships a promise he has kept, much to his credit.

Culture critic: From Woodstock to Populism

Middle class in Britain was once defined by a safe, lifelong career, allegiance to the Conservative Party and defending tradition but now, Jonathan Rutherford sighs at The New Statesman, it has lost its role and the authority invested in it and has been overtaken by a new middle class fraction forged in the cultural revolution and university expansion of the 1960s. The Woodstock generation went into politics, eschewing traditionally left-wing populist economic democracy in favor of a libertarian identity politics of gender, race and sexuality. Left-wing parties became parties of the new liberal middle class, increasingly contemptuous of lives and experience of mainstream working-class voters. Yet working-class voters pushed back and voted for Brexit and their historic class enemy: the Tories. Back in 1969, no one could have believed it would turn out like this, but liberal elites have only themselves to blame.

Foreign desk: Hurrah for the US-UK Marriage

Among elite opinion-makers, Brexit is destined to turn Britain into an isolated backwater. Not so, says Brandon J. Weichert at American Greatness. The island nation had extraordinary power on its own, and subordinating British national sovereignty to the supranational government in Brussels was always a mistake. Now that its almost out, Britain should forge a stronger relationship with the United States, an Anglo-American marriage that would ensure that Brexit is meaningful and real and not at all damaging to Britain. The good news is that President Trump has already promised a new free-trade agreement with London which will allow Britain to shake off the sclerotic superstate that is the European Union.

Libertarian: A Year of Peak Entitlement

If you listen to many politicians and pundits, you would think the United States is doing terribly while the government isnt spending a dime yet the truth is the exact opposite, argues Reasons Veronique de Rugy. Among other things, the economy is entering its 11th year of expansion, while poverty is at an all-time low, and the unemployment rate hasnt been so low since 1969. Meanwhile, the government is racking up gargantuan budget deficits, largely because both political parties are spending on a whim and condemning our free-market economy the very system that has produced the wealth that everyone takes for granted. The problem, she insists, isnt that free markets dont work, but that we may have reached peak entitlement mentality.

Urban beat: Calis Homelessness Hopelessness

Despite Californias homelessness crisis, Sacramento and city halls across the Golden State are mired in the we-need-more-money mindset a mindset, sighs Issues and Insights editorial board, that has never worked. In fact, despite all the spending, and the pleas and plans for additional money, homelessness has spiked 30% since 2017 in San Francisco, 16% in Los Angeles and a whopping 43% in San Jose. As a result, nearly half of the nations homeless who sleep on the streets today do so in California. Instead of feeding government bureaucracies with taxpayers money, government officials should follow the example of San Diego, where the city took a tough-love approach that rejected widespread street camping and watched its homeless population fall. The shift in thinking and in acting is paying off.

Compiled by Karl Salzmann

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Thanks for the judges, Harry Reid, and other commentary - New York Post