Guest Post: Race-Based Rhetoric is Inherently Un-American

by U.S. Representative Tom Garrett

Racism is an abhorrent institution, period. No one who believes they are better, worse, or unequal based on the color of their skin has a place in the District I represent or the America I defend. The charade that took place in Charlottesville on Saturday night was either criminally naïve or an intentional image meant to stoke the bigotry and intolerance that our Commonwealth fought to bury decades ago. Unfortunately, I am under the impression that it was the latter and I have no sympathy for those who embrace it. As I learned more about the gathering that occurred this weekend, purportedly to save the Lee statue from removal, I could not believe what I was hearing. While the First Amendment protects speech and expression, whoever thought that two hundred people carrying torches was anyway productive must have failed basic American history. Regardless of any cause they wanted to represent, their actions spoke for themselves in the message they delivered and that message should be rejected by all of us.

Race relations are a complex issue in the South, especially in Virginia, but I am proud of the special role the Fifth District has played in their progress. It is the home of flawless documents written by flawed men that created a system for all man to be treated as they were created, equally. It is home of General Lee’s surrender, the symbolic end to our bloodiest war and slavery. And it was home to Barbara Johns, a young spark in the Civil Rights movement who led her high school walkout against segregation and became the only student-initiated case in Brown v. Board of Education. These positive legacies inherently stem from dark pasts. We cannot forget where we came from, for progress will not seem as sweet. The pictures and chants of Saturday evening remind us of the darkness that once intimidated millions, but it will not intimidate us now.

I embrace an ideology rooted in protecting the ultimate minority – the individual. Collectivization based on race or any other distinguishing trait has no home in republican principles. These practices inherently divide us, run counter to our core, and regressively reject others from joining our cause. There is no home in my party—the party of our founding documents, the party of Lincoln, and the party that fought to pass the Civil Rights Act—for a race-based organization. For as much rhetoric as the modern Left uses to associate these actions with my party, I expected to see more of Virginia’s democratic leaders condemn these actions, yet Senator Kaine and Governor McAuliffe remain silent.

As a soldier, prosecutor, and legislator, I’ve devoted my life to defending American ideals. Anyone who believes the color of a person’s skin makes us different is an anathema to the values I’ve fought for. We must remove the plank from our own eyes and work together, regardless of partisanship, to reject these organizations and look beyond physical differences on our way to our more perfect union.

Source: Office of Congressman Tom Garrett (R-VA5)

From the Archives: Virginia U.S. Senate candidates react to Fourth Circuit gay marriage ruling

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on July 29, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Virginia U.S. Senate candidates react to Fourth Circuit gay marriage ruling

Two of the three candidates for the U.S. Senate from Virginia released official statements in reaction to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Bostic v. Rainey, affirming that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.

The 2-1 decision upheld a February federal district court ruling that Virginia's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment.

Incumbent Senator Mark Warner (D-Alexandria) issued a statement from his office in the form of a news release.

“I am so happy that yet another federal court agrees that Virginia’s ban on gay marriage is unconstitutional,” said Warner, who is seeking a second term in 2014. “Allowing people to marry who they love is the right thing to do, and it also strengthens our families and our communities. Virginia should be a welcoming place for all, and I am very pleased at the rapid progress toward marriage equality that we’re seeing in Virginia and around the country.”

Robert Sarvis, the Libertarian Party nominee who is challenging Warner this fall, also distributed a press release. Sarvis had made marriage equality a priority issue in his 2013 campaign for governor, when he won 6.5 percent of the vote in a three-way race against Republican Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

Public opinion shift
“Marriage freedom is a deeply important issue to me,” said Sarvis, “which is why I made it a centerpiece of my campaign for governor last year.” He noted that it was a Virginia case, Loving v. Virginia, that led to the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that prohibitions on mixed-race marriages are unconstitutional -- a ruling that made Sarvis' own marriage legal in Virginia.

“Public opinion in Virginia has shifted dramatically since the Marshall-Newman Amendment was enacted in 2006. In fact,” Sarvis pointed out, “polls now show that a majority of Virginians support marriage equality.”

Sarvis explained that while he preferred that Virginia change its marriage laws “through the democratic process,” it was judicial action that made it possible to see “same-sex couples in Virginia celebrating their marriages and enjoying equal treatment under the law.”

The LP candidate ended his statement with a warning that “this decision would not have been possible if the U.S. Constitution had been amended to ban same-sex marriage, as my Republican opponent Ed Gillespie advocated when he was the Chairman of the Republican National Committee.”

A request from the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner for a reaction to the appeals court's ruling from GOP Senate candidate Ed Gillespie resulted in a brief reply from a campaign spokesman, who said only that, “as Ed said in the [Virginia Bar Association] debate, marriage is properly the jurisdiction of the states,” with no further explanation or clarification.

SUGGESTED LINKS

'Republicans have learned a lesson' says GOP Senate candidate Ed Gillespie
Senator Mark Warner defends his record against GOP challenger Ed Gillespie
'Proselytizing for freedom,' Robert Sarvis bids for U.S. Senate in Virginia
Libertarians praise Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling in DOMA case
Author Brian Doherty explains Ron Paul’s ambivalence on gay issues

Original URL:  http://www.examiner.com/article/virginia-u-s-senate-candidates-react-to-fourth-circuit-gay-marriage-ruling

From the Archives: Gov. Terry McAuliffe touts Virginia film industry at Charlottesville movie fest

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on November 6, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe touts Virginia film industry at Charlottesville movie fest

On the opening night of the 2014 Virginia Film Festival on November 6, Governor Terry McAuliffe (D-McLean) came to Charlottesville to introduce the world premiere of Big Stone Gap, which was directed by screenwriter Adriana Trigiani and based upon her best-selling novel.

Big Stone Gap was filmed entirely in its namesake Virginia mountain town and stars Jenna Elfman, Jasmine Guy, Ashley Judd, and Patrick Wilson. All four actors and Trigiani spoke at a press conference at the Paramount Theater prior to the film's screening, and Governor McAuliffe made a surprise appearance as it ended.

McAuliffe took that opportunity to boast about Virginia's film industry and the economic benefits it generates.

“We are so excited about our film industry,” he said, pointing to figures from 2012 that indicate there was “about $380 million of economic activity here in the Commonwealth,” creating 3,000 jobs.

Governor McAuliffe noted that Ithaca, a new film set in California during World War II and based on William Saroyan's The Human Comedy, is being made in Virginia by producer Tom Hanks and director Meg Ryan and that the AMC Revolutionary War-era television drama, Turn, is filming its second season here.

He listed Killing Kennedy, Killing Lincoln, and Steven Spielberg's Lincoln as significant films made in Virginia. “This is a great place to make movies and we really are working hard to bring more movies in,” McAuliffe said.

Spending the night with Bo Derek
On a personal note, the Virginia governor mentioned that actress Bo Derek spent the night at the executive mansion in Richmond, being careful to add that “my wife was there” and that he had recently “had a beer with Tom [Hanks].”

McAuliffe said that “we're really trying to bring folks into Virginia,” and touted the state's natural and historical resources.

“Look at the mountains,” he said. “We've got the beaches, but we've got the history. You look at the Capitol, which was designed by Thomas Jefferson. You've got Mount Vernon.”

Virginia, he said, has “assets that no other state in America can replicate. Jamestown, Williamsburg – we've got it all.”

Justifying subsidies
Asked by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner how he responds to critics who suggest that giving taxpayer money, in terms of subsidies and tax credits, to Hollywood producers is a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy, McAuliffe did not blink.

“We give tax credits and incentives to many different businesses,” he replied. “I just had a major announcement yesterday in Appomattox for a pharmaceutical company from China.”

If a business comes to Virginia “to create jobs and [if] you look at the economic return of almost $400 million in 2012 and 3,000 jobs, compared to the modest incentives we give,” McAuliffe explained, “what I look at as governor is return on investment. Investment in the film industry in Virginia [has] a great return on investment and we need to do more of it.”

The Virginia Film Festival continues in and around Charlottesville through Sunday, November 9.

SUGGESTED LINKS

Gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe hosts campaign kickoff event at PVCC
Library of Congress collects pornographic films, violent video games
Va. Film Festival to feature politicians from Goldwater & LBJ to Nixon & Bush
Porn king Larry Flynt defends free speech in Charlottesville
Witness to 1963 Kennedy assassination speaks at Virginia Film Festival

Original URL:  http://www.examiner.com/article/gov-terry-mcauliffe-touts-virginia-film-industry-at-charlottesville-movie-fest

Recent Articles from Bearing Drift: free speech, marijuana, & domestic spying

As many readers know already, I am a contributor to Bearing Drift, which uses the tagline "Virginia's Conservative Voice."  When I appear on Coy Barefoot's radio show on WCHV-FM, he identifies me as a writer for Bearing Drift as well as for this web site.

I have not previously done a round-up of my Bearing Drift articles but, seeing how I have done the same for Examiner.com, it may be worthwhile to start doing that periodically.

Here are my recent contributions to Bearing Drift, in reverse chronological order, dating to December 2014, with brief excerpts from each.


In Virginia, what's the difference between a barber and a rent-a-cop? (April 30, 2015)

Virginia lawmakers and regulators should be embarrassed.

According to a 2012 report from the Arlington County-based Institute for Justice,

Virginia is the 11th most broadly and onerously licensed state. It has the eighth most burdensome licensing laws, requiring aspiring practitioners to pay $153 in fees, lose 462 days — more than 15 months — to education and experience and take one exam. Sixteen of the 46 low- to moderate-income occupations Virginia licenses are commercial construction contractors and account for much of the state’s ranking.

A 2015 study from the liberal Brookings Institution notes that more than 20 percent of Virginia jobs require either licenses or certifications by the state...

24th annual Jefferson Muzzle Awards announced tonight (April 20, 2015)

We all recall Thomas Jefferson’s quip: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” No doubt, if Jefferson were alive today, he would include blogs as well as newspapers — and perhaps even cheekily elevate blogs above newspapers.

Each year the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression celebrates its namesake’s birthday by awarding the Jefferson Muzzles to malevolent or stupid government officials or agencies that violate the spirit and the letter of the First Amendment by preventing or punishing speech.

Conservative movement co-founder Stan Evans passes away (March 3, 2015)

M. Stanton Evans, one of the founders of the modern conservative movement, has died at 80. Evans was a Loudoun County resident but was better known for his involvement in national politics than Virginia affairs.

Evans graduated from college in 1955, after helping organize what became known as the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, still the largest conservative organization serving university students with intellectual ammunition.

For 60 years, Evans worked alongside William F. Buckley, Jr., Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and others in building the conservative movement and giving it its strength and character. He was “present at the creation” by drafting the Sharon Statement, which was the founding document of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) and animated the conservative movement for 40 years or longer.

NPR interviews Del. Rich Anderson about privacy concerns (February 23, 2015)

Anderson explained his concerns about how police are able to take “thousands and thousands of photographs” of license plates “every hour.” By piecing that information together, he said, “they are certainly able to determine the whereabouts, the habit patterns, the associations, the interests, and all those sorts of personal things that, I think, most American citizens would rather be protected.”

He said the use of license plate readers “creates an ill-at-ease sort of response among the many citizens with whom I have spoken. It’s just an inherently American quality that we have an expectation of privacy.”

Anderson noted that he had patroned a bill this year that limits the period of time law enforcement can keep the data collected by license plate readers.

Poll shows majority of Virginians favor marijuana law reform (January 28, 2015)

It’s noteworthy that even “self-identified conservatives and Republicans” support legalizing medical marijuana. Question 23 of the survey, which asks about decriminalization in general, shows that 54 percent of conservatives and 52 percent of Republicans support the idea.

Four years ago, former Delegate Harvey Morgan (R-Gloucester), a retired pharmacist, introduced legislation similar to Ebbin’s bill. The effort failed but Morgan told me at the time that “almost everyone thinks it’s the right thing to do. Many people say legalize it and tax it” in addition to decriminalizing it. He added that he foresaw wider support emerging because “the cost — not only to the individual but the cost to our court system — is unbelievable with marijuana enforcement.”

Two years ago, while he was running for governor, former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli also expressed interest in the federalism implications of states’ decriminalization efforts.

Jim Gilmore for President? (January 25, 2015)

Former U.S. Senator Jim Webb is not the only Virginia politician exploring a possible presidential bid in 2016. Former Governor and Attorney General Jim Gilmore (also a U.S. Senate candidate in 2008) was in Iowa this weekend doing all that one expects from a potential candidate — especially seeking out opportunities to talk to national news media.

Governor McAuliffe's voting machine proposal needs rethinking (December 22, 2014)

Sunday’s Richmond Times-Dispatch carried an op-ed piece of mine in which I take issue with Governor Terry McAuliffe’s recent proposal to provide $28 million in funding to Virginia counties and cities to buy new, up-to-date voting equipment — on the condition that all the localities buy the same hardware and software.

I argue that election security and protection against fraud is better served when each locality can purchase its own equipment, based on its own assessment of the needs of its voters and the capabilities of its election officials. A variety of voting systems is a deterrent against those who seek to alter the results of elections by hacking into the machines.

Congress votes to expand domestic spying powers (December 11, 2014)

Only two members of Virginia’s delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives voted against the Intelligence Authorization Act for fiscal year 2015, which includes a provision to expand the executive branch’s authority to spy on American citizens and to monitor our communications.

The two Virginia representatives who voted to protect citizens’ privacy were Dave Brat (R-VA7), the state’s newest Member of Congress, and Morgan Griffith (R-VA9, in photo).

The provision to expand communications surveillance authority was inserted by Senate Democrats and discovered at the eleventh hour through the due diligence of Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who warned his colleagues about it in a letter circulated shortly before the bill came to a vote.

For frequent updates from Bearing Drift, check out its Facebook page, here.

Recent Articles on Examiner.com: Bernie Sanders, Rick Santorum, & chickens

It has been quite some time since I provided a round-up of my recent interviews and articles on Examiner.com.  So why not now?

Here, in reverse chronological order, are the pieces I have written since October 2014, with brief excerpts from each:

Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders stumps for support in Charlottesville (May 13, 2015)

White House hopeful Bernie Sanders spoke to an enthusiastic audience in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Monday, May 11, laying out his policy vision and contrasting it directly with that of the Republican Congress and indirectly to that of his opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Sanders delivered his remarks to an overflow crowd at Trinity Episcopal Church, whose sanctuary has chairs for just 100 people. Another 175 or so squeezed into a basement room and the narthex....

In what is likely to become his standard stump speech, self-defined Socialist Sanders addressed a range of issues that were only related to the budget in the sense that they are items the government spends money on, such as free college tuition for students in public institutions and a multi-trillion dollar program to improve transportation infrastructure. He decried the Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case and proposed public financing for federal election campaigns.

That article about Senator Sanders' visit to Charlottesville also included this video:

Poultry industry is trade-talk pawn of South African government, says analyst (May 5, 2015)

After a presentation about South Africa's economy at the Cato Institute in Washington on May 4, the CEO of the South African Institute of Race Relations, Frans Cronje, suggested that this “playing chicken (literally)” represents a significant and troubling trend within South Africa's policy making circles.

In an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, Cronje -- author of A Time Traveller's Guide to Our Next Ten Years (2014) -- explained that “South Africa is recording a trade deficit with every major region and country in the world except the United States and non-energy Africa, and that's only because of the generosity of AGOA.”

In the AGOA negotiations, he said, what we saw “was the chicken producers being used as a pawn by South Africa's Department of Trade and Industry.”

Think-tank head Jason Grumet reacts to Obama's mandatory voting idea (March 19, 2015)

Grumet described his 2014 book, City of Rivals: Restoring the Glorious Mess of American Democracy, and, in a post-panel interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, he reacted to the president's idea of making voting mandatory, under the threat of punishment, for American citizens.

“There's a constitutional issue,” he said.

Compulsory voting, he explained, is “more of an aspiration than a practical solution. Like everything, there are pros and cons.”

Grumet conceded that “it would be terrific to have greater participation in a participatory democracy” but he pointed to problems in the country identified by President Obama as a potential model.

In Australia, he said, experience has shown that “the downside is a lot of people are essentially forced to vote who have no desire to participate in the process, no information about the process, and so there's a question about whether you dilute the quality of the voter pool.”

Former Senator Rick Santorum says homosexuals deserve protection (March 8, 2015)

First, Santorum, who is well known for his socially conservative positions with regard to gay rights, was asked whether it is appropriate for the U.S. Department of State to defend the rights of homosexuals in foreign countries where their lives might be threatened by anti-gay governments.

“We have to defend human rights everywhere,” Santorum replied. “If someone's life is threatened because of race, sexual orientation, or other [reasons], I think we have an obligation to stand up and defend that human right. I don't have a problem at all, if people's lives are in jeopardy, then we have an obligation to protect all people and their freedoms.”

That article also included this video of a press gaggle with Rick Santorum at CPAC:

Lamar Alexander honored for his work promoting civics, history education (March 5, 2015)

Alexander recalled that the subject of his maiden speech on the floor of the United States Senate “was the importance of teaching U.S. history in our schools so our children could grow up knowing what it means to be an American.” He noted that the lowest test scores for high school seniors “are not in math or science. They're in United States history.”

He conceded that “there's not much the federal government ought to try to do about that in local schools” because that kind of involvement at the local level is “not a very good Republican, federalist idea.”

He explained that he was inspired to sponsor congressional and presidential academies for school teachers, one from each state, to learn more about American history and how to teach it better.

Conservative icon Stan Evans dies at 80; remembered as 'present at the creation' (March 3, 2015)

Noting that Evans had been “present at the creation” of the conservative movement, he replied to a question about whether the movement today is more disputatious than in the past, or if it is in an unprecedented crisis.

“Other times were infinitely worse,” he said, “because we didn't have the resources or the positions of strength we have now,” noting the low point of the movement may have been the 1964 presidential and congressional elections, when Barry Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide and the Democrats won their largest majority in Congress since the 1930s.

In contrast to those years in the wilderness, Evans explained, 50 year later “we have a Speaker of the House, a Republican majority in the House. There are 30 Republican governors. We have 24 states that have one-party rule, governor and the legislature of the same party, all Republican,” compared to just 12 states controlled by Democrats.

“The list goes on,” he continued, but cautioned that “we're not using the position of strength we have. We're not fighting hard enough.”

African ambassador calls for 'peace, love, and understanding' in D.C. speech (February 22, 2015)

Referring to Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker's 2012 book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Ambassador Moussa-Adamo noted that “we live in the most peaceful era of human history. Not only are there fewer wars now than there were even in the recent, 20th-century past, but there are fewer violent crimes such as assault and murder.”

He added that this is true not only in the industrialized, Western democracies like Europe and North America, but also in so-called developing countries of Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

Nonetheless, he said, statistics that say violence is reduced to record low levels is small comfort to the victim of terrorism or sexual assault.

Virginia General Assembly passes bipartisan bills to legalize industrial hemp (February 12, 2015)

“The United States is the largest consumer of hemp products in the world,” says Virginia libertarian activist Nicholas Cote, “but it is the only industrialized country that prohibits farmers from growing hemp.”

Despite this, Cote is optimistic that change is on the horizon. Last week, both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly approved bills to allow the licensed cultivation of industrial hemp, following the lead of legislatures in Kentucky and North Dakota. The bill in the House of Delegates (HB 1277), sponsored by Del. Joseph Yost (R-Blacksburg), passed on a vote of 98-0. The Senate bill (SB 955)sponsored by state Senator Roz Dance (D-Petersburg), passed on a vote of 32-5.

In a recent interview, Cote -- who heads up the advocacy group, Right Way Forward Virginia -- told the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner that the bipartisan nature of the support for these bills is heartening, but he is disappointed that Virginia's congressional delegation has not stepped up to the plate.

Index of Economic Freedom shows global progress for 2015, while USA loses ground (February 2, 2015)

Florance noted that people are surprised to find out that the United States is not in the “free” category, and does not even have one of the ten most free economies in the world.

“The United States is actually twelfth,” she said, “in the mostly free category and it falls behind countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Chile, Canada, and even a very small African country, Mauritius.”

That last country, she explained, is “an island but still part of sub-Saharan Africa and it is actually ranked tenth – so a very tiny economy is actually ranked more free than the United States.”

In the past two decades, according to the annual Index of Economic Freedom, the world as a whole has become increasingly free. The United States is something of an exception in that it has become less free.

Top 10 most-read Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner stories of 2014 (December 31, 2014)

Interviews with the three U.S. Senate candidates – Republican Ed Gillespie, Libertarian Robert Sarvis, and Democrat Mark Warner, who narrowly won re-election in November – were among the top ten, as well as an assessment of David Brat's surprise victory over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in the Republican primary. Early in the year, conservative activist Grover Norquist correctly predicted that the GOP would gain control of the Senate.

Gay marriage, Governor Bob McDonnell's indictment on federal corruption charges, podcaster Adam Koresh's views on NSA spying, and the self-defense products sold by entrepreneur Paul Jones rounded out the top ten most-read stories by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner.

Barry Goldwater 'absolutely' was a libertarian, his son explains (December 30, 2014)

Goldwater, who represented California in Congress from 1969 to 1983, explained that his father remained an icon of the Republican Party despite differing from social conservatives on contentious issues.

In the senior Goldwater's view (and his son's, too), “whether you're gay or a lesbian is a personal thing. It's no business of the government. And abortion, a woman who is carrying this baby – that's her decision, not the government's,” said Barry, Jr. “He was pretty consistent with his libertarian and conservative views when it came to such things as social issues.”

Cato Institute panel discusses obscure but pivotal gay civil rights case (November 24, 2014)

Although these events took place decades ago, Rauch said, “this is not ancient history. The principle is alive today.” Linsky noted that the current work of the Mattachine Society of Washington is a “testament to history itself,” because it is “giving voice to individuals who couldn't stand up for themselves.”

Noting the progress over the past several decades – including legal gay marriage in the majority of states, the end to the gay military ban, and other legal achievements – Rauch said that ONE Inc. v. Olesen is “the most important civil rights case we've ever had” as gay people and it put gay men and lesbians “on the path to freedom,” because it provided the legal foundation to talk about ideas and to “transmit those ideas at a great personal risk.”

After a series of questions and answers with the audience, moderator Walter Olson noted the importance of the discussion, which has broader applications than simply gay Americans. It demonstrated, he said, how “freedom of expression” assists the liberation of “historically marginalized groups” and their individual members and that, ultimately, suppression of speech and the press harms those groups by depriving them of their capacity to argue for their own dignity and civil rights.

Gov. Terry McAuliffe touts Virginia film industry at Charlottesville movie fest (November 6, 2014)

Big Stone Gap was filmed entirely in its namesake Virginia mountain town and stars Jenna Elfman, Jasmine Guy, Ashley Judd, and Patrick Wilson. All four actors and Trigiani spoke at a press conference at the Paramount Theater prior to the film's screening, and Governor McAuliffe made a surprise appearance as it ended.

McAuliffe took that opportunity to boast about Virginia's film industry and the economic benefits it generates.

“We are so excited about our film industry,” he said, pointing to figures from 2012 that indicate there was “about $380 million of economic activity here in the Commonwealth,” creating 3,000 jobs.

Virginia Senate hopeful Robert Sarvis talks about U.S. policy toward Africa (November 1, 2014)

The role of African countries as transit ports in the international illicit drug trade is something that also concerns Sarvis, and he has a solution for it.

“Our drug war has undermined the rule of law and civil society in Latin America,” he noted. “That's also happening in Africa. It's also undermined our efforts in Afghanistan over the past decade.”

Whether in Africa or elsewhere, he explained, “the problem is our war on drugs and anything that we can do to move away from our prohibitionist mentality is going to undermine the violent gangs and organized criminal enterprises that we created” through current drug policy dating back several decades.

Sarvis said that legalizing marijuana in just two states, Colorado and Washington, has already had an adverse effect on drug cartels operating in Mexico.

“We can have beneficial effects around the world by changing our policy at home on drugs,” he asserted.

Monique Luiz, 'Daisy Girl' from controversial 1964 campaign ad, speaks at UVA (October 15, 2014)

For more than four decades, Luiz did not acknowledge that she was the girl in the ad. In 2009, however, she discovered that another woman was claiming to be her and was trying to capitalize on the TV spot's notoriety. Luiz came forward with documentation that she was the authentic “Daisy Girl” and subsequently was interviewed by Mann for his book, which is how she came to appear at UVA this week.

When she auditioned for the part, neither she nor her parents knew that DDB was making a political ad. She stood out among the many little girls who tried out because of her red hair, and also because her father was persistent.

“I think it was my father who sold them” on the idea “that I could do it,” she recalled. “He pretty much said, 'I can't guarantee anything but she'll try.'”

Economist Adam Smith looks at the 'Bootleggers & Baptists' phenomenon (October 14, 2014)

Smith explained that the term “bootleggers and Baptists” originated during alcohol Prohibition in the 1920s, when “you had bootleggers and Baptists with aligned interests” even if they did not realize it.

Baptists, he explained, proclaimed “Down with legalized distribution of alcohol!” because they saw drinking as morally detrimental. Bootleggers, too, proclaimed “Down with legalized distribution of alcohol!” because Prohibition raised the price of illegal liquor and fed more profits to the bootleggers.

“It was a boon to the bootleggers,” Smith explained, “and the Baptists were kind of oblivious to that situation.”

A full, reverse-chronological listing of Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner articles can be found here.

'Big Stone Gap' Cast and Author Visit the Virginia Film Festival

Ashley Judd, Adriana Trigiani, and Terry McAuliffe

Last month in Charlottesville, the director and screenwriter of Big Stone Gap (based on her own novel), Adriana Trigiani, brought along several cast members to the Virginia Film Festival for a screening of the movie, which was produced in its namesake town in Wise County.

Just before the screening at the Paramount Theater on the downtown mall, Trigiani and the cast spoke at a press conference about the making of the film, the hospitality of the town's 5,600 residents, and the value of producing an independent film in Virginia.

The actors who participated in the press conference were Erika Coleman, Jenna Elfman, Bridget Gabbe, Jasmine Guy, Ashley Judd, Patrick Wilson, and Paul Wilson. Not present were additional cast members Whoopi Goldberg, John Benjamin Hickey, Judith Ivey, Jane Krakowski, Anthony LaPaglia, and Chris Sarandon, among others (including a large number of non-professional local actors from Southwest Virginia who appear in the film).

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe made a surprise appearance at the end of the presser and posed for photos with the cast.  He used the opportunity to tout Virginia's film industry and the tax credits and other subsidies available to film makers.  (McAuliffe's comments to local news media about the Virginia film industry are reported here.)

A video recording of the entire press conference, including Governor McAuliffe's interactions with the cast members, is below.

During the press conference, Trigiani reveals that she originally conceived of the story as a screenplay but decided first to put it in novel form and then adapt it as a film. She also notes that she has known actress Jasmine Guy since they both worked on the TV series, A Different World, a spinoff from The Cosby Show. (Guy played Whitley Gilbert on the show; Trigiani worked on the writing staff along with executive consultant Bill Cosby and Kadeem Hardison.)

My understanding is that Big Stone Gap did not have a distributor at the time of its world premiere at the 2014 Virginia Film Festival. 

The press conference and screening of Big Stone Gap took place on Thursday, November 6, 2014.

Should Virginia taxpayers subsidize the film industry?

Regal Cinemas: 'Welcome Virginia Film Festival'

How should Virginia's relate to the film industry?

The Commonwealth has become a popular location for shooting prestige motion pictures. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln used Richmond as a stand-in for 1860s Washington, and Spielberg used the Shenandoah Valley as a stand-in for Massachusetts in his 2005 War of the Worlds remake. Other movies shot on location here include Gods and Generals, Sommersby, Killing Kennedy, Evan Almighty, Giant, Toy Soldiers, and Swedish Auto (those last four made in the Charlottesville area).

Not simply a location for making films, Virginia often is an early venue for seeing other big movies.

For example, one of the Oscars' Best Picture nominees for 2013, Alexander Payne's Nebraska, had pre-release screenings both at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville, where co-star Will Forte and producer Ron Yerxa discussed the film, but also at the new Middleburg Film Festival, where Yerxa appeared with lead actor (and Oscar nominee) Bruce Dern. The 2013 Virginia Film Festival also screened Philomena, another Best Picture nominee this year. In 2011, eventual Best Picture winner The Artist was a closing night feature at the Virginia Film Festival. Oscar-winning live-action short subject West Bank Story also had an early screening at the 2005 festival in Charlottesville.

It's clear that Virginia has strong ties to the film making industry. But should Virginia taxpayers have to pay for them?

Although Virginia has, for some time, offered substantial tax benefits to movie companies that come here to make films, a bill introduced in this year's General Assembly -- and passed by both chambers -- would expand tax credits to the millionaires who would probably do business here anyway.

According to the summary of HB 460, patroned by Terry Kilgore (R-Gate City) and copatroned by Chris Peace (R-Mechanicsville, the bill

Changes the motion picture production income tax credit by (i) increasing the percentage of qualifying expenses eligible to be claimed from 15 percent to 20 percent, and from 20 percent to 25 percent for productions in an economically distressed areas, (ii) increasing the total biennium cap for all such credits from $5 million to $25 million, and (iii) having the credit expire on December 31, 2023. The bill also requires the Department to publish information regarding the credit regardless if it does not prevent the identification of the taxpayer claiming the credit. The bill is effective for taxable years beginning on or after January 1, 2014.

Does this make good sense as policy? Economists say no.

Even uber-liberal Robert Reich, the Clinton administration's Labor Secretary, agrees that states that subsidize the film industry are making a mistake.

According to Variety, Reich

called the bonanza of states offering production tax credits a “race to the bottom,” as competition sees governments sweetening the pot to try to lure movies and TV shows within their borders.

“These tax credits and tax incentives are a zero sum game,” he said in an interview last week. “They don’t create a single new job. They just move jobs around, and they rob the states of the money they need for education and infrastructure.”

Closer to home, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University headlined an article by one of its scholars, Antony Davies, "The Film Tax Credit Farce." Davies, an economist at Duquesne University, wrote:

According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, every independent study of film tax credits has found that the credits are money-losers for the states. Arizona's Department of Commerce calculated that Arizona made back 28 cents in tax revenue for every $1 it “invested” in film tax credits. Connecticut's Department of Economic Development estimated that the state earned 7 cents in tax revenue for every $1 it lost. State agencies in Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico and even Pennsylvania's Legislative Budget and Finance Committee found that state coffers received less than 30 cents for every dollar they paid out in film tax credits.

If film production is such a great cash cow, why aren't venture capitalists lining up for a piece of the action? The problem is that the film industry wants special treatment. It wants someone else to shoulder the risk of investment while it keeps the profit for itself. No investor would agree to such a deal, and that is why the film industry has turned to our state government.

Filmmakers know the state can force taxpayers to invest in something taxpayers would never choose on their own.

Some politicians are getting the message that tax credits for the film industry do not bring states the benefits touted by their proponents. Variety quotes another GMU source, economist Eileen Norcross:

Other arguments against incentives hold that they don’t help the states that offer them. In March, the Massachusetts revenue commission issued a scathing report on the state’s tax credit program, which stated that two-thirds of the total $175 million awarded in 2011 went to out-of-state spending. “The critique is that while they appear to bring in short-term temporary activity to a state or community, a lot of those benefits flow to the production companies,” says Eileen Norcross, a senior research fellow at George Mason U. “The people who are hired locally tend to be (in) more low-wage service industry jobs. It provides a temporary economic blip on the radar, and then it’s sort of fleeting.”

In a commentary piece for U.S. News and World Report, Norcross explained the case against film industry subsidies. States, she said, are

finding that it is barely worth the lost revenue. A recent report by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue found that of the $44 million in tax credits awarded in 2011, two-thirds of the $175 million in spending generated due to economic activity went to out-of-state workers, and 47 percent of the wages generated, or $53 million, went to those earning over $1 million.

On net, Massachusetts' film credit program is costing the state more than it delivers. After subtracting payments to out-of-state residents and the budget reductions required to fund the credits, only $39 million in state economic activity resulted. The findings have prompted Governor Deval Patrick to cap the state's program to $40 million in annual credits.

North Carolina's Legislative Services Office analysis shows their film credit program realizes even less impressive returns. In 2011, the state awarded $30.3 million in film credits – reimbursing productions that spent over $250,000 up to 25 percent for qualifying expenses. Yet, the program could only claim about 55 to 70 new jobs. Based on their model, the report claims that if instead North Carolina's business taxes had been reduced across the board by $30.3 million, between 340 and 450 jobs and $14 million in personal income would have materialized.

Why, against all this evidence, are states -- including Virginia -- continuing to transfer tax dollars from poor- and middle-class residents to rich out-of-state film producers?

There's a widely held belief that putting the state's locales on film encourages more tourism. That's dubious. Consider the examples above: Tom Cruise fought Martians in the hills near Lexington, Virginia, in War of the Worlds. But Virginia was never mentioned in the film. Virginia played Massachusetts. Daniel Day-Lewis was Abraham Lincoln while Richmond was Washington, D.C.

Of course, even 50 years after it was made, The Sound of Music still brings tourists to Salzburg, Austria, and its environs, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy became the basis to attract tourists to New Zealand. Those are outlying exceptions, however, with cult followings that films like Evan Almighty and Swedish Auto can't match.

In addition, politicians hopefully believe connections with film producers, directors, and actors bring with them "movie magic," as though having Sally Field or Dakota Fanning in town will result in fairy dust falling on Richmond or Lexington. Even governors and senators are dazzled by celebrity, not to mention delegates and city council members.

As Variety's David Cohen pointed out on public radio's Here & Now,

place after place has discovered these things are rife with corruption and they don't deliver the returns that they expect. But there's always another politician or another city that's willing to be seduced by Hollywood glamour.

It turns out that HB 460 passed both chambers of the General Assembly and was signed into law by Governor Terry McAuliffe on April 6, with an effective date of July 1, 2014.

Too bad the governor failed to listen to his friend Bill Clinton's old friend Robert Reich.  He has helped  Virginia join the "race to the bottom."

Adapted from an earlier post on Bearing Drift.

@rick_sincere | facebook.com/ricksincere

Will Medicaid expansion actually make poor people healthier?

Members of the General Assembly who oppose Governor Terry McAuliffe's proposals to expand Medicaid in Virginia under the terms of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also called "Obamacare") may find some intellectual ammunition to bolster their case in a study published on March 24 by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

The Economics of Medicaid: Assessing the Costs and Consequences, edited by Jason J. Fichtner, contains a lot of wonkish economic analysis, such as Nina Owcharenko's chapter on "the state side of the budget equation," which shows the astronomical growth in Medicaid spending and enrollment over the past two decades (see the graph to the upper left), but the most significant findings may be in the book's last chapter, by Robert F. Graboyes and titled "Medicaid and Health."

Graboyes relies on previous studies in several states and on reports from the Government Accountability Office and other federal agencies to demonstrate that people who rely on Medicaid for health insurance not only have worse health comes than those who have other types of insurance, but worse than people with no insurance at all.

What's more, rather than taking patients out of emergency rooms and putting them in doctors' offices for routine health care, expansion of Medicaid coverage tends to increase emergency room visits by Medicaid recipients.

I'll let Graboyes -- a senior research fellow who was formerly an economist with Chase Manhattan Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, as well as a faculty member at the University of Richmond -- tell it in his own words (end notes omitted).

Pages 175-76:

A Mercatus publication I authored in 2013 stated the following: “An ideal health care system will provide better health to more peo­ple at lower cost on a continuous basis.” By this standard, Medicaid is an abject failure. For lower-income Americans, Medicaid yields poor coverage, poor care, and poor medical outcomes. While prom­ising coverage far beyond the program’s original scope, it fails to enroll millions of people who are among its intended population and who are eligible for enrollment. The data suggest that Medicaid does surprisingly little to improve its recipients’ health and in some ways may even harm them indirectly. It is a pennywise-and-pound-foolish program that, paradoxically, sends costs soaring by underpaying pro­viders. And the coverage, care, and cost elements show little or no improvement over time.

Pages 181-82:

In 2010, the University of Virginia conducted a large-scale study that suggested that an individual without insurance has better health outcomes than an individual on Medicaid.47 Even after adjusting for risk factors, Medicaid patients had higher in-hospital mortality, longer hospital stays, and higher costs—compared with the uninsured, those on Medicare, and those on private insurance plans.48 A University of Pennsylvania study examined data on patients receiving surgery for colorectal cancer; Medicaid patients had higher mortality and surgical complications than uninsured patients.49 A 2011 Johns Hopkins study found that “Medicare and Medicaid patients have worse survival after [lung transplantation] compared with private insurance/self-paying patients.”

Perhaps the most damning of all the recent studies is the Oregon Experiment. This was a rare example of a large-scale, fully ran­domized experiment in health care. In 2008, Oregon expanded its Medicaid program. Approximately 90,000 people applied for 30,000 newly available slots, and the state used a lottery to choose who got in and who did not. Afterward, the state tracked the health of 6,387 adults who were chosen and 5,842 who were not. From a standpoint of physical health, the results were devastating: “This randomized, controlled study showed that Medicaid coverage generated no sig­nificant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years, but it did increase use of health care services, raise rates of diabetes detection and management, lower rates of depression, and reduce financial strain.” Supporters of Medicaid point to positives that follow the word “but” in the preceding sentence.

Page 177:

Rapid expansion of Medicaid, as envisioned under the ACA, also has the potential to touch off a cycle of expansion, financial over­load, and mass cancellations of coverage. The best example of such a process is the TennCare disaster that began in 1994 in Tennessee. The state sought to convert Medicaid to managed care, assuming this would lead to enough savings (from efficiency gains) to cover children and the uninsured. In less than a decade, however, enroll­ ment swelled far beyond what had been predicted, and the savings proved elusive. The expansion threatened the state government with bankruptcy and, by 2006, the program was forced to cancel cover­age for approximately 200,000 Tennesseans. A high-profile study of Oregon’s Medicaid expansion provides powerful new evidence that expansion increases rather than decreases the use of emergency services; putting it another way, one of the principal arguments in favor of expansion now appears illusory [emphasis added].

The whole book, which is also available in a Kindle edition, is chock-a-block with nuggets like these. Even legislators who don't read bills before they vote on them should read this book.

Cross-posted from Bearing Drift (April 12, 2014).

@rick_sincere | facebook.com/ricksincere

What Were the Top 10 Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner Stories in 2013?

Over at Examiner.com, I have posted a listicle featuring the top ten stories reported by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during 2013.

I used Google Analytics to provide the statistics and generate the top-ten list. Technically, the article I listed as number 10 was number 11.

The reason for that is that the article that came in ninth, according to Google Analytics, was originally published in November 2010. It's an interview I conducted with author and documentary filmmaker Mary McDonagh Murphy at the Virginia Film Festival that year, when she presented Hey, Boo: Harper Lee & To Kill a Mockingbird.  (That film covers the same ground as Murphy's 2010 book, Scout, Atticus, and Boo: A Celebration of To Kill a Mockingbird.)

I suspect that the staying power of that three-year-old article, "Filmmaker: To Kill a Mockingbird was ‘ammunition in the civil rights movement'," is largely the result of web searches by high-school students doing research for a term paper about Harper Lee's famous novel or its well-regarded movie version.

Since just nine of the top ten stories for 2013 were actually published in 2013, I decided to skip number nine and include number 11 to reflect more accurately the events of this year.

Here's part of my summary of the 2013 top ten. I'll omit the "number one" article for now. If you want to see that story and be as surprised by it as I was, click here.

Virginia politics, the 1963 Kennedy assassination, humorist Tina Fey, marijuana legalization, liquor laws, and the Boston Marathon bombers dominated the most popular stories reported by the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during 2013.

Given that 2013 was a gubernatorial election year in Virginia, it comes as no surprise that articles about Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe (now governor-elect) and his Republican rival Ken Cuccinelli drew a large number of views. Cuccinelli, in fact, was the subject of three of the top-ten stories, although Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis entered the top ten only in an interview about the election with political scientist Larry Sabato. Marijuana-smoking lieutenant governor candidate E.W. Jackson (R) also made the list.

The JFK assassination was a trending topic on Twitter and Google through much of November, and an interview with Lee Harvey Oswald's co-worker ranked third. (An interview with another assassination witness just missed the cut, at twelfth among 2013 stories.)

Publishing this top-ten list continues a tradition I began in December 2011.  That first yearly list was divided into three parts published over three days: Part I, Part II, and Part III.  The second annual top-ten list, in 2012, was slimmed down into a single article published on the last day of the year.

Robert Sarvis Finishes Campaign in Downtown Charlottesville

Robert Sarvis in Charlottesville

Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis held his final campaign rally at the Free Speech Monument in downtown Charlottesville on Monday evening, November 4, just hours before polls open statewide for the 2013 general election.

Sarvis, the Libertarian Party's nominee, faces two rival for governor in Tuesday's election:  Republican Ken Cuccinelli and Democrat Terry McAuliffe.

The Libertarian candidate brought his wife, Astrid, and two young children to the rally, along with his mother, who cared for the kids while Sarvis answered questions from supporters and reporters.

Both NBC29 and the Newsplex were on the mall to interview Sarvis.

In this exclusive video of the complete Q&A with voters, Sarvis talks about immigration, taxes, abortion, transportation, reforming marijuana laws, privatizing state liquor sales, EPA stormwater regulations, Medicaid and health care policy, his reaction to being endorsed by the Danville Register & Bee, and generally reducing the size and scope of Virginia's government.

The video is unedited and there are some audio problems because a train rumbled down the nearby railroad tracks in the middle of the rally.

Polls open at 6:00 o'clock a.m. and close at 7:00 o'clock p.m. on Tuesday, November 5. The polling hours are uniform throughout the Commonwealth. Weather is predicted to be partly sunny with cool temperatures.

If Sarvis receives 10 percent or more of the vote, the Libertarian Party of Virginia will obtain official ballot status and will be able to nominate its candidates for public office in the same manner that Republicans and Democrats do, avoiding the lengthy, labor-intensive, and costly process of gathering petition signatures.  For statewide office, the law requires independent or third-party candidates to collect thousands of signatures across Virginia.

The Libertarian Evolution of George F. Will

Reason magazine's current issue has a lengthy interview with conservative columnist George F. Will, conducted by Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, authors of The Declaration of Independents.  Not yet on line, the article is headlined "George Will's Libertarian Evolution."

That's a title I thought of using myself recently (and you will see a variant above) when I saw Will's October 23 column that virtually endorsed Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis, running as a Libertarian Party nominee, and I remembered Will's 1992 column about Libertarian presidential candidate Andre Marrou, which in the Washington Post was headlined "Consider a Libertarian?; Get Serious."

(I should mention that, as a campaign advisor, I accompanied Marrou to the interview with George Will at his Georgetown office that preceded the publication of the column, and we both came away from it feeling positive and expecting, perhaps naively, great praise and even an endorsement.)

At the Post, that article is behind a paywall, but I found a copy on the Baltimore Sun's web site.  Here are some tidbits:

There hangs about [Marrou] the acrid aroma of strange incense burnt at silly altars. There is, in fact, some Lenin in the clanking rhetoric by which he expresses his encompassing ideology, his life in the familiar 20th-century abode, the well-lit prison of one idea.

The idea is that ''government power is opposed to individual liberty.'' Must we still debate such sophomoric notions? One's spirit sags at the prospect of plowing all the over-plowed intellectual ground from late-night college arguments, long ago when we smoked French cigarettes and thought Italian movies were deep. But plow we must.

So, here goes: Police and armies that keep bad people at bay, and roads that make practical the freedom to travel, and education that makes people competent for life in a free society, these are not ''opposed to individual liberty.'' Besides, liberty, although very important, is not the only value. There are also justice, domestic tranquillity and a good five-cent cigar.

The Libertarians' extremism (they oppose laws setting minimum drinking ages, or banning concealed weapons, or restricting immigration, and so on) makes them unelectable, so their extremism also makes them safe recipients of protest votes....

All of which makes the Libertarians' frivolousness especially regrettable. Once upon a time there were politically serious third parties -- Bob La Follette's Progressives, Norman Thomas' Socialists -- which, by working at the margins, expanded first the nation's political discussion and then the nation's agenda. No more.

By contrast, Will's latest foray into commentary on Libertarian candidates has more negative to say about the Republican and Democrat running against the LP candidate than about the Libertarian Sarvis, whom Will finds so attractive he includes the script of a pro-Sarvis TV ad:

During an intermission in the telecast of a notably disagreeable McAuliffe-Cuccinelli debate, viewers heard from their television sets a woman’s voice asking, “Can’t vote for these guys?” Then Sarvis’s voice:

“Like you, I can’t vote for Ken Cuccinelli’s narrow-minded social agenda. I want a Virginia that’s open-minded and welcoming to all. And like you, I don’t want Terry McAuliffe’s cronyism either, where government picks winners and losers. Join me, and together we can build a Virginia that’s open-minded and open for business.”

McAuliffe is an enthusiast for, and has prospered from, government “investments” in preferred industries, which is a recipe for crony capitalism. Cuccinelli is a stern social conservative, an opponent of, among other things, gay marriage. Marriage equality interests Sarvis (whose mother is Chinese) because his wife is African American, so his marriage would have been illegal in Virginia before the exquisitely titled 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia.

Earlier in the piece, Will noted:

The Democratic and Republican candidates, Terry McAuliffe and Ken Cuccinelli, each say that no good can come from electing the other fellow; Sarvis amiably agrees with both.

In Sarvis, the man and the moment have met. He is running at a time of maximum distrust of established institutions, including the two major parties. He has little money, but McAuliffe and Cuccinelli have spent millions of dollars on broadcast ads making each other repulsive to many Virginians, who surely feel as Will Rogers did: “You got to admit that each party is worse than the other.”

To be sure, Will doesn't predict Sarvis will win, but he recognizes the value of the vote as a message-bearing mechanism:

Third-party candidacies are said to be like bees — they sting, then die. Still, Sarvis is enabling voters to register dissatisfaction with the prevailing political duopoly. Markets are information-generating mechanisms, and Virginia’s political market is sending, through Sarvis, signals to the two durable parties.

One aspect of that signal is that Virginia voters want an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans.

Robert Sarvis with Coy Barefoot

If Sarvis breaks the 10 percent vote threshold, the Libertarian Party will have official ballot status for the next four years, meaning the LPVA can nominate candidates the way the DPVA and RPV do, through caucuses and conventions (and even primaries), without going through the tedious, time-consuming, and expensive process of collecting petition signatures to get candidates' names on the ballot. Money that could instead go into voter education (TV and radio ads, direct-mail appeals, phone banking) now gets spent on ballot access.

For four years, if the LP is organized well enough to take advantage of its new status, Virginia Libertarians can spend money on campaigning rather than on petitioning.

Whether George Will explicitly knew about this aspect of Virginia election law is not really relevant. The fact that he recognized the Libertarian candidate as a torch-bearer for electoral choice as well as human liberty -- and that this represents a shift in his thinking over the past two decades -- is what I find significant.

Does Robert Sarvis Disdain Austrian Economics?

Robert Sarvis

Various individuals who have been trying to cast doubt on Virginia gubernatorial candidate Robert Sarvis' libertarian credentials have pointed to a comment he made in an interview with Ron Paul biographer Brian Doherty in Reason magazine, which has been interpreted to mean he is not entirely dedicated to Austrian economics, a staple of libertarian thinking.

Sarvis is the Libertarian Party's nominee for governor. He faces two rivals on Election Day, November 5: Republican nominee Ken Cuccinelli and Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe.

Current public opinion polls show Sarvis might expect 8 to 10 percent of the vote, an unusually high number for a Libertarian (or any third-party or independent candidate for statewide office) so close to an election.

Charles C.W. Cooke cited the Reason interview on National Review Online on October 31, for example. 

Another instance of the questioning of Robert Sarvis' libertarian bona fides can be found on Examiner.com, where International Politics Examiner Andrew Moran wrote:

George Mason University is known for its free-market economics program (see Walt Williams). This is where Sarvis attained his economics degree. However, he doesn’t adhere to the principles of Austrian Economics, which is usually what libertarians promote.

Here is what Sarvis said in his interview with Reason: “I’m not into the whole Austrian type, strongly libertarian economics, I like more mainstream economics and would have been happy to go elsewhere.”

Wait does he mean “mainstream economics” that has gotten us into this current mess and continues to cause more problems?

An answer to that question may be found in an interview I did with Sarvis two years ago, when he was running for the Virginia state Senate.

That interview was also published on Examiner.com (just a coincidence). I had asked Sarvis about his favorite economist, and he offered up names of three people he admired: Friedrich Hayek, Adam Smith, and Scott Sumner.

It seems that, to Sarvis, "mainstream economics" means that derived from the work of Adam Smith, author of An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations.

Here's the relevant excerpt:

His libertarian philosophy is reflected in his answer when asked about his favorite economist. Without pausing, he named Friedrich von Hayek, the Austrian Nobel laureate who taught at the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago.

“Hayek is someone who really influenced my thinking,” Sarvis explained: “How to think about problems that face national economies and how public policy can influence it in many unintended ways.”


While a lot of people, such as talk-show host Glenn Beck, focus on Hayek’s 1944 book, The Road to Serfdom, Sarvis said he “was more influenced by his 'The Use of Knowledge in Society,' which was probably the seminal paper that won him the Nobel Prize, and also [volume] one of Law, Legislation, and Liberty, where he talks about rules and order.”

In addition to Hayek, Sarvis cites Adam Smith as an influence in his economic thinking.

“In philosophy, they say, there’s Plato and all else are footnotes,” he quipped. “I think that can be said more truly of Adam Smith than of Plato.”

Among contemporary economists, Sarvis pointed to Bentley University professor Scott Sumner, who blogs at TheMoneyIllusion.com. As Americans have focused on the financial crisis and the recession, he said, “Sumner has been the most persuasive in what exactly is going on [with regard to the] monetary policy mistakes of the Fed. We really are in many ways repeating some of the mistakes of the depression.”

Then there is Sarvis' biographical sketch on the web site of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. (Both the Mercatus Center and the GMU economics department are hotbeds of Austrian economists.)

Emphasis added below:

Robert is a native of Northern Virginia and a lifelong believer in freedom, free markets, and the rule of law. He holds degrees in mathematics from Harvard University and the University of Cambridge and a JD from NYU School of Law. During law school, he co-founded a libertarian and classical liberal law journal, the NYU Journal of Law & Liberty, dedicating the first issue to Friedrich Hayek, and he has been outspoken in arguing against government regulation of the tech industry. Robert has worked as a software developer, a lawyer, and a tech entrepreneur, and his research interests span a wide range of topics relating to law, economics, and public policy.

Can the off-hand comment Sarvis made to Reason about his choice of a graduate school overwhelm the other evidence of his admiration for, and influence by, Austrian economists?