One reviewer, the author noted, called it “the first Tea Party book” because of what McCormick identifies as its themes.
“It’s all about integrity of leadership,” she told the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner in an interview early in 2011, while she was attending the national convention of the Republican Liberty Caucus in Arlington, Virginia. ‘Founding principles’
“All the themes are centered around the Constitution, the founding principles, and what we need to do to be a better republic.”
The reason she published the book, McCormick explained, was that she had been asked to write about her experiences as a member of the Wisconsin Assembly, where she served three two-year terms beginning in 2000. She later twice ran for Congress, seeking the Republican nomination in Wisconsin’s Eighth District in 2006 and 2010.
It was while she was serving in the legislature, representing about 60,000 constituents in and around the cities of Appleton and Oshkosh, that McCormick discovered she was a libertarian.
“I didn’t even know that I was a libertarian Republican,” she explained, “until somebody had actually watched my work and said, ‘You know what? You believe in the constitution and free market.”
‘Core values’
To McCormick, that seemed just like common sense.
“I had a set of core values. I readily knew what they were: opportunities, free market systems, and I actually believed the constitution should apply to everybody.”
When it was pointed out that her statements and the legislation she sponsored manifested libertarian values and ideas, she “thought, ‘So that’s where I fit!’” Up to that point, she admitted, that she “didn’t quite know” what a libertarian was, or that she was one herself.
Running for Congress after her self-imposed term limits ended her time in the legislature “was interesting,” McCormick said, noting an odd paradox:
“When I ran for the state house, I was recognized as having ideas and [people] wanted me. When I ran for the U.S. House, I was recognized as an individual with ideas and therefore people didn’t want me.”
Legislative achievements
Prior to her first election to the Wisconsin Assembly, McCormick had worked with various civic groups and drafted the state’s first charter schools law. She helped form a group that lobbied for the law’s passage.
Once elected to office, she chaired the economic development committee, which became her platform for regulatory reform efforts.
Challenging entrenched interests in Madison, McCormick said she “took on the [state’s] capital investment company. In order to have more capital investment readily available, I wrote the small business regulation reform act.”
Her achievements, she added modestly, came about “just by listening to others and working with them.”
Publisher's note:This article was originally published on Examiner.com on December 20, 2011. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went 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.
Libertarian youth leader from New Zealand discusses his party’s politics
May 22, 2012 12:25 PM MST
Libertarians are not active in politics solely in the United States. There are libertarian movements and political parties scattered through the Western democracies.
In New Zealand, for instance, there is the ACT Party. That name may seem funny, at first, until one understands that it began as an acronym.
Peter McCaffrey was a parliamentary candidate for the ACT Party in 2008 and 2011, when he was just 21 and 24 years old, respectively. He recently sat down for an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner during a Republican Liberty Caucus social event.
At the time, McCaffrey was traveling through the United States on his way to take a job with a free-market think-tank in Regina, Saskatchewan.
About that acronym
The letters A-C-T, he explained, “used to stand for the ‘Association of Consumers and Taxpayers.’ That was when ACT was set up as a think-tank” almost 20 years ago.
“New Zealand adopted the mixed-member proportional electoral system” in 1994, he continued, with plans to hold the first election under that system in 1996. At that time, “the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers decided that with the implementation of a proportional electoral system, actually it would be better to be set up as a party rather than a think tank and so it became the ACT Party.”
The initials do not “stand for anything now but that’s the origin of the name,” McCaffrey said.
‘Classical liberal’
He describes the party as “a classical liberal party but there’s a bit of a fusion there.”
Older members, he explained, tend to be “more conservative-leaning” or split among liberals and conservatives, while “the younger membership tends to be much more liberal, even leaning towards libertarian.”
During the most recent parliamentary elections in November 2011, McCaffrey explained, the party’s “main focus was on the economy, getting tax rates down, [and] cutting regulation,” as well as advocating for school choice.
“We’ve been doing a big push for charter schools,” he said.
“In New Zealand, we have some private schools that are generally privately funded and we have state schools that are state-funded and state-run but there’s not a lot of choice in between those, so we ran a big push for more choice in education,” he said.
During the election campaign, he noted, the ACT Party made a coalition agreement with the National Party, a conservative party in New Zealand, and the two partners “pushed for an implementation of some trials of charter schools in New Zealand.” As a result, he said, “we’ll be setting up a couple of charter schools, one in South Auckland and one in Christ Church and hopefully more over the next three years as part of that deal.”
Under the new charter school law, he explained, the schools may “be run by any number of different non-profit organizations. Whether that’s Iwi, which are local Maori groups (Maori are the indigenous people in New Zealand) or charities, church groups, anything like that will be able to set up a school and run it.”
The new rules allow “more flexibility in the arrangements of the school so that there’s more choice for people in which schools they send their children to,” he said.
Liberalized drug laws
Generally, McCaffrey said, the ACT Party does not “get too involved in social issues. We try to focus on economics but that doesn’t always happen. Our leader last year” -- Donald Brash, a former New Zealand reserve bank governor – “surprised a lot of the journalists when he came out in support of liberalization of marijuana laws,” including decriminalization or legalization. That position came after heavy lobbying on the part of “some of the younger members of the party.”
That position, he pointed out, “startled a lot of people and maybe scared off some of our older members and supporters but it really got the media talking about the issue. It surprised a lot of people who saw us as sort of an old white conservative party, which, I think, was good for the image of the party long run.”
McCaffrey’s own involvement in ACT is relatively recent but it has spanned his whole adult life, so far. Learning in high school
“I turned 18 in 2005,” he said, which is the voting age in New Zealand, as it is in the United States.
While he was still in high school, he said, “I just read the web sites of all the main parties that were in the parliament and had a bit of a think. ACT seemed to make the most sense, and so I voted for ACT in 2005,” the first year he was eligible to cast a ballot.
Then, he said, “having voted for ACT, when I got to university, there was a table at the orientation week for ACT on Campus, which is the youth wing of the ACT Party. I signed up to ACT on Campus and then over the next couple of years I got more and more involved in the ACT on Campus group and also in the party itself.”
McCaffrey explained that the “party is very open to young people, volunteers coming in, even coming into the parliamentary offices, helping out, volunteering, doing research -- all that sort of stuff -- so just sort of slowly I got more and more involved.”
Eventually, he “ended up being the ACT on Campus president, leading the youth wing of the party” and later he was selected to serve on “the board for the Wellington region” (equivalent to the unit committee of an American political party) “and stood as a candidate for the party for parliament in 2008 and 2011 in my local district,” Otaki.
He was not elected, however, noting modestly that “to be honest, my district isn’t a very good area for ACT, so I was kind of the only one who was willing to do it in my area.”
That turn of events, of course, is what brought McCaffrey to North America, where he continues to work on the sorts of issues that brought him into politics in his native New Zealand.
Publisher's note:This article was originally published on Examiner.com on May 22, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went 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.
This article originally appeared in the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot on Tuesday, April 29, 1997, under the headline, "Keep the Lottery -- It's Better Than Taxes."
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A minor tempest is brewing in the Virginia attorney general's race. Two candidates for the Republican nomination for that office have attacked the Virginia Lottery. State Sen. Mark Earley of Chesapeake complains there ``is too much state-sponsored gambling'' while former Public Safety Secretary Jerry Kilgore proposes that if lottery proceeds are not returned to local governments, then voters should have an opportunity to repeal the lottery's authorization.
Virginia State Capitol, Richmond
Pointing out that the lottery brings in more than $330 million to the Virginia treasury each year, state Sen. Ken Stolle of Virginia Beach criticizes his opponents for being fiscally irresponsible, challenging them to ``show me the money.'' Similarly, Fairfax attorney Gil Davis, the fourth candidate for the GOP nomination, asks them to explain how they will make up for lost revenues.
While Stolle and Davis seem to be looking at the lottery from a pragmatic perspective, all of the candidates seem to be missing the larger point: When compared to taxes, a lottery is a morally superior means to raise money for government programs.
The reason for this moral superiority can be explained simply. Taxes are always obtained through coercion (the threat of punishment for nonpayment) while lottery proceeds are obtained from voluntary action (an individual willingly purchases a lottery ticket). Acts that are coerced are always morally inferior to those that are done voluntarily.
As Robert Ringer wrote in his 1979 book, Restoring the American Dream, ``It is instructive to note that, among the many dictionary definitions, a `tax' is described as: `a heavy demand'; `a burden'; `a compulsory payment of a percentage of income . . . for the support of a government.''' Ringer adds: If something is compulsory, it means you are forced to do it. And the use of force is . . . the act of aggressing on a person's rights.'' Thus he concludes: ``No matter how much good certain people may believe is accomplished with `tax' money, the good can never negate the immorality of theft. You cannot change the nature of stealing by calling it taxation and explaining that it is a patriotic means of `raising revenue.'''
There is also a pragmatic case against taxes, made succinctly by the Cato Institute's David Boaz in his 1997 book, Libertarianism: A Primer:
``Now let's consider an ever-popular form of coercion by which governments extract money directly from those who earn it: taxation. Taxes reduce the return each individual gets from economic activity. Since one of the important functions of income - including profits and losses - is to direct resources toward their most highly valued uses, an artificial reduction in the return has a distorting effect on economic calculation. . . . Taxes always have different effects on different economic actors. They drive the marginal supplier or the marginal purchaser out of the market. . . . High taxes discourage work effort. Why work overtime if the government will take half of what you earn? Why invest in a risky business opportunity when the government promises to take half of any profit but to let you bear the losses? In all these ways, taxes reduce the productive effort directed toward serving human needs.''
A lottery is preferable to coercive taxation because compulsory actions eliminate the possibility of virtuous behavior: Virtue is only possible as the result of free will. The 19th century German philosopher Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt explained it this way: ``Coercion may prevent many transgressions; but it robs even actions which are legal of a part of their beauty. Freedom may lead to many transgressions, but it lends even to vices a less ignoble form.''
Opponents of the lottery argue that gambling is itself an ignoble act. Yet buying a lottery ticket is always and everywhere a free choice. No one holds a gun to your head to force you to buy a ticket, and no one will throw you in jail if you refuse to buy one.
Other opponents argue that the lottery is more tempting, and therefore more burdensome, to the poor, who buy more tickets as a proportion of their income than wealthy people do. This is patronizing and ultimately insulting, for the essence of the argument is that poor people are not smart enough, or prudent enough, to decide for themselves how to spend their own money, but ``we who know better'' can decide for them.
A strong pragmatic and moral case can be made for reducing taxes and expanding the lottery and other voluntary means to raise government revenue (such as increasing user fees paid by those who actually benefit from government services).
Our attorney general candidates should be on notice: Rather than eliminate the lottery, a morally superior form of raising government revenues through voluntary (rather then coercive) means, we should expand it.
Memo: Richard Sincere Jr. is state coordinator for the Republican Liberty Caucus of Virginia.
Virginia GOP Senate candidate E.W. Jackson argues for drug-law reform
May 31, 2012 4:28 PM MST
U.S. Senate candidate E.W. Jackson told a group of Virginia Republican activists last weekend that he disagrees with current drug laws and that he is “committed to the idea that we should not be locking people up for the recreational use” of drugs like marijuana.
Jackson, a Harvard-educated lawyer and ordained minister, is one of four candidates in a GOP primary election on June 12. He was responding to a question posed by a member of the Republican Liberty Caucus in Arlington County on May 26 about what the appropriate role of government should be in regulating things like medical marijuana and other drugs. Did he inhale?
In the course of his answer, Jackson admitted his own past use of illicit drugs and did not apologize for it.
“I don’t use drugs, obviously,” he said, “but I have.”
Jackson added that, “as a minister,” he tells his congregation that “it’s better not to do drugs. It’s better not to even use alcohol -- not that I think using alcohol is some sort of mortal sin, but it has a way of getting control of people’s lives sometimes, so you’re better off staying away from it.”
Continuing, Jackson referred to a recent rant by magician and Celebrity Apprentice contestant, Penn Jillette, about the inequities of the war on drugs.
“Let me say, I really am bothered by the idea that we are putting people in jail for getting high,” he explained.
‘Spoke to my heart’
“It’s interesting,” he added, that there’s “somebody who I probably don’t have a lot in common with, Penn Jillette, [who] really spoke to my heart and I had to take a step back when he said, ‘the president has confessed to using cocaine, he’s confessed to using marijuana. The only reason he is president is that he didn’t get caught. If he had been caught, his life would have been completely different.’”
Pausing dramatically, Jackson went on:
“Now folks, I can say the same thing. That’s what arrested me. I can say the same thing. I don’t think we should be locking people up and saddling people with felonies because they have used recreational drugs.”
The Senate candidate did express some skepticism about whether legalizing all currently illegal drugs would “eliminate the crime associated with” the drug trade. Should not lock people up
He did, however, express openness to the idea of decriminalizing marijuana and other drugs by saying that he is “committed to this idea that we should not be locking people up for the recreational use of those drugs -- at the very least, of those drugs that we agree don’t put people in a position to do things that are going to destroy their lives and more importantly the lives of others.”
Jackson’s opponents in next month’s U.S. Senate primary are former Governor George Allen, Delegate Bob Marshall, and Tea Party activist Jamie Radtke.
Publisher's note:This article was originally published on Examiner.com on May 31, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went 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.
This article, based upon survey research I did with Rasmussen Research for Virginians for Justice (later Equality Virginia), was originally published in the Free Lance-Star of Fredericksburg, Virginia, on February 9, 2001. It preceded the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which invalidated the remaining anti-sodomy laws in the United States, including Virginia's "Crimes Against Nature" statute (Section 18.2-361 of the Virginia Code).
Crimes Against Nature Law Allows Virginia Police To Target Gays
Richard E. Sincere, Jr.
CHARLOTTESVILLE - When Republicans discuss the proper role of government, most agree that it should be low-cost, limited in scope, and nonintrusive in the lives of citizens.
Rank-and-file Republican voters, for the most part, stand by the words of the late U.S. Sen. Barry Goldwater:
"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden.
"I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can."
Do Virginia’s Republicans live up to this Goldwaterite ideal? Not always, but the impulse remains. Evidence for this is found in a recent poll from an unlikely source on an unlikely topic.
On Jan. 16 and 18, Rasmussen Research, an independent polling organization, conducted a statewide survey to determine knowledge and attitudes about Virginia’s Crimes Against Nature statute. This statute forbids certain intimate sexual activity, even in private and even for married couples. To be blunt, the law prohibits oral sex for any Virginian, whether they are gay or straight, married or single.
The law is enforced selectively. It is used to target gay men in public places who discuss having sex. It is used as a fallback when prosecutors cannot prove that a sexual assault has taken place, so the alleged perpetrator is accused and convicted of consensual sodomy instead.
And it is used as a pretext to deny child custody to gay or lesbian parents - for example, in the case of Richmonder Sharon Bottoms, which achieved nationwide infamy when the government forcibly took her son, Tyler, from her because she is a lesbian.
The Rasmussen Research poll found that, across the board, Virginians want the CAN law repealed. Large majorities in almost every conceivable category say they want to see the law eliminated, that they want their legislators to vote for repeal, and that legislators who support repeal will not be adversely affected at the ballot box.
This is true for Democrats, Republicans, and independents; it is true for men and women; it is true for whites and African-Americans.
In this random survey, Republicans showed clear consistency in their view that government should stay out of the private lives of citizens.
Virginia State Capitol in Richmond
Asked "Should it be against the law for an unmarried man and an unmarried woman to have sex in the state of Virginia?" 67.4 percent of Republicans answered "no," compared to 71.1 percent overall.
Asked "Should it be against the law for a married couple to have oral sex in the privacy of their own home?" 78.9 percent of Republicans answered "no" (81.7 percent overall).
Asked "Currently, according to Virginia law, it is illegal for consenting adults to have oral sex in the state of Virginia; a proposal has been made to eliminate the Virginia law; should the Virginia law be eliminated?" 61.4 percent of Republicans answered "yes" (65.2 percent overall).
Now, some members of the General Assembly say privately that they would support the repeal of the CAN law, but that they would have hell to pay on Election Day if they did. This is simply not true.
Survey participants were asked:
"Suppose your representative in the House of Delegates or the State Senate voted to eliminate the Virginia law. Would that make you more likely to vote for that person, less likely to vote for them, or would it have no impact on your vote?" Overall, 82.9 percent of Virginians said that they would either be more likely to vote for that representative, or it would have no impact on their vote; 83.5 percent of Republicans answered the same way, as did 77.5 percent of Democrats.
In other words, state legislators who vote to repeal the Crimes Against Nature law will have little or nothing to worry about in their re-election bids. The fear they cite is a red herring.
Republicans are part of a broad "leave us alone" coalition that wants the government to stop breathing down our necks. As speaker of the House of Delegates Vance Wilkins told The Washington Post, "It’s simply a matter of individual liberty versus not having the government be a nanny." We don’t trust the government to run our businesses, and we certainly don’t trust it to run our sex lives.
The spirit of Barry Goldwater lives on in Virginia.
RICHARD SINCERE serves on the national committee of the Republican Liberty Caucus.
Gay and libertarian GOP groups critique SCOTUS Obamacare ruling
June 28, 2012 1:59 PM MST
While politicians around the country have offered their views on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today regarding the Affordable Care Act (colloquially known as “Obamacare”), some discrete interest groups within the Republican party have added their voices to the mix.
Two groups with similar initials – LCR and RLC – have weighed in on the debate about the meaning and impact of the Court’s ruling.
Log Cabin Republicans (LCR), which calls itself the largest organization of gay and lesbian activists within the GOP, raised attention to the discriminatory provisions of the health-care laws.
Not ‘carved in stone’
Christian Berle, LCR’s deputy executive director, said in a press statement that Log Cabin Republicans "have not forgotten that Democrats in Congress stripped provisions protecting LGBT families out of healthcare reform when it was passed. We remain committed to ending the Internal Revenue Service’s discriminatory treatment of employer-provided healthcare for domestic partners. While the Court may have found Obamacare to be constitutional, that does not mean it has been carved in stone. Now is the time to go back to the drawing board and institute reforms that work for all Americans.”
Berle also criticized the individual mandate, which was upheld as constitutional based upon its status as a tax.
“By upholding even the most intrusive provision of Obamacare, the individual mandate, the court has enabled Washington’s addiction to big government and coercive taxes,” Berle said, explaining that “the individual mandate forced through Congress was an unprecedented expansion of federal power in blatant disregard of the will of the American people.”
The Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC), an organization of libertarian and classical liberal activists within the GOP, touted its endorsed candidates as the remedy for Obamacare.
‘Unreasonable taxation’
A statement emailed to members and the news media by RLC chair Dave Nalle argued that “while Obamacare may technically be Constitutional, because the 16th Amendment opens the door to all sorts of unreasonable taxation, that does not mean that it is good policy. Raising taxes enormously on every citizen, either directly in the form of penalties or indirectly in the form of mandated health insurance and inflated prices, is outrageous in a time of high unemployment and economic uncertainty.”
The RLC statement explained:
“As fewer and fewer people pay taxes at all, placing an even greater burden on the productive segment of the population is unconscionable. Even worse, this is just the first step. As insurance prices rise the call will come for more interference by government and we will slide into the complete control of the healthcare system by unaccountable bureaucrats, an end to individual choice and a rapid decline in quality of service.”
Saying that today’s ruling provides Republicans with “a winning issue” and “a rallying cry,” the RLC pointed to its candidates as supporters of repeal of the unpopular health-care law.
“Candidates like Ted Cruz in Texas and Barry Hinckley in Rhode Island are poised to join our prior endorsees like Rand Paul and Mike Lee in creating a powerful voting block in the Senate which will never compromise when liberty is threatened,” said the RLC statement.
“In the House those same values which are being championed today by Ron Paul and Justin Amash will be carried forward with reinforcements like Thomas Massie in Kentucky, Lauren Stephens in Wisconsin, Kerry Bentivolio in Michigan, Jessica Puente Bradshaw in Texas and scores of others,” the RLC continued. “With their guidance Congress will reassert its authority over the federal bureaucracy and demand accountability from the executive branch.”
Earlier in the day, an independent gay conservative group, GOProud, also issued a statement severely critical of the Supreme Court’s health-care decision.
Publisher's note:This article is part of a series to mark June as Gay Pride Month. It was originally published on Examiner.com on June 28, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went 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.
Publisher's note:This article was originally published on Examiner.com on May 5, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went 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. Examiner.com exclusive: Gary Johnson reflects on his first visit to Jefferson's Monticello
Former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson visited Charlottesville on Monday, May 3, to give a speech sponsored by the two local Republican unit committees and the Republican Liberty Caucus of Virginia.
Johnson, a two-term Republican who served from 1995 to 2003, is now honorary chairman of OUR America Initiative, a public-policy advocacy group. Prior to becoming governor, he was a successful entrepreneur who took a one-person handyman operation and turned it into a 1,000-employee contracting and construction company by the time he sold it.
The former governor took advantage of his time in Charlottesville, appearing by telephone on the Joe Thomas morning drive-time radio show on WCHV and on Rob Schilling’s mid-afternoon radio program on WINA-AM.
He also strolled along Charlottesville’s downtown mall, where he wrote a message about “freedom” and “liberty” on the First Amendment Monument near City Hall, and he made his first visit to Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello.
The Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner asked Governor Johnson to reflect on his tour of Monticello.
Jefferson the Architect
The word he repeated in his answer was “fascinating” in reaction to the many elements of Jefferson’s home.
“I found it fascinating,” Johnson said about Jefferson’s design, “and I found it fascinating to see the quirks, if you will, in how it was built and all the fascinating elements”: the wind-direction indicator above the front porch, for instance, and the two-faced clock that Jefferson built for his entryway, a clock that tells just the hours on the outside but minutes, hours, and days of the week on the inside.
“What I found most interesting,” Johnson said, was that Jefferson was a self-taught architect “and that he built this home and that he took 40 years to do that.”
“That’s my background,” he continued. “My background is building and just recently I took two and a half years of my own life to build the home that I’m now living in.”
Contrasting himself with Jefferson, the architect, Johnson added that he “was in the trades long enough to know that I wasn’t going to be a part of that architectural component other than just [giving] advice.”
Jefferson the Politician
Asked about his reflections on Jefferson the man, the politician, and the Founding Father, Johnson replied that he learned on the tour that “having given 50 years of his life in public service, he enjoyed his time here [at Monticello] more than any of that. Yet he did give of himself and I, just in my own small way, felt like I could relate to that also.”
Chronologically speaking, I may have jumped the turnstile by posting videos of the dinner speakers at the February 12 national convention of the Republican Liberty Caucus in Arlington. My choice was not random, however; I had already noticed that YouTube views of the speeches by financial analyst Peter Schiff and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson were greater in number than the other videos I had posted from the convention.
The RLC convention lunch also had two speakers: freshman U.S. Representative Justin Amash (R-Michigan), who at 30 years old is (I believe) the second-youngest Member of Congress as well as a longtime RLC activist in his home state, and Georgetown University law professor Randy Barnett.
Amash had also spoken at CPAC (the annual Conservative Political Action Conference) earlier in the week, where he was reportedly well-received. Amash is perhaps the first Member of the House of Representatives to post all of his votes, and the rationale for most of them, on his Facebook page (www.facebook.com/repjustinamash), a practice he carried over from his time as a member of the Michigan state legislature. He says he wants his votes to be subject to public scrutiny and that the new media -- in this case Facebook, but presumably also Twitter, Tumblr, and the rest -- are the easiest way to bring them to light.
Justin Amash represents the Grand Rapids area in Congress, the same part of Michigan once represented by Gerald R. Ford, who went on to become House Minority Leader, Vice President, and President of the United States. (One questioner suggests his hope for a similar career path for Congressman Amash.) He is the youngest member of the congressional class of 2011, who were elected in the wave election of November 2010. He ran on a platform of "limited government, free markets, and individual liberty."
Congressman Amash's remarks are divided into two segments. The first is his more formal address (though it is delivered without visible notes) and the second is a question-and-answer session with the audience.
RLC activist Laura Crockett introduces Congressman Justin Amash at the RLC convention lunch in part one: Part two of Congressman Amash's presentation, a colloquy with RLC members:
After Congressman Amash finished his remarks and his answers to a number of questions, Professor Randy Barnett took the microphone and gave a speech entitled "Rediscovering the Libertarian Roots of the Republican Party."
Barnett, author of Restoring the Lost Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law, and other books, spoke largely about Chief Justice of the United States Salmon P. Chase, who as a lawyer in the 1840s in Ohio had argued several cases about slavery and the Fugitive Slave Laws. Chase was a founder of the Republican Party after serving in the U.S. Senate as a member of the Free Soil Party. (Chase was also the first GOP governor of Ohio, a Republican Senator for all of two days, and Secretary of the Treasury in Abraham Lincoln's cabinet.)
Barnett makes a strong case for the Republican party's libertarian origins. In the Q&A period, he also discusses the Repeal Amendment that he has proposed, along with the Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, William Howell, which is gaining a lot of attention around the United States.
Listen closely to Professor Barnett's remarks for some astute analysis of the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as well as some sharp commentary on the constitutionality of the "individual mandate" in the 2010 health care law (colloquially known as "Obamacare").
Professor Randy Barnett, Part One:
Professor Randy Barnett at the RLC convention, Part Two:
Professor Randy Barnett answers questions (part three):
Still more RLC videos will be posted here. Watch for them soon.
The Republican Liberty Caucus (www.rlc.org) held its biennial national convention in Arlington, Virginia, on February 12, coincident with the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which was being held across the Potomac in Washington, D.C., that same weekend.
The day was full of policy discussions and speeches, punctuated by a business session at which new officers were elected to lead the RLC for the next two years. Dave Nalle of Texas was re-elected as chairman, Aaron Biterman of Virginia was re-elected as vice chairman, Jason Jeff Hellenberg of Florida was re-elected as secretary, and Matt Nye (also of Florida) was elected treasurer, defeating longtime RLC activist Bill Westmiller, who in turn was elected an at-large member of the board of directors.
The evening banquet featured two prominent speakers: investment analyst and 2010 candidate for the GOP Senate nomination in Connecticut, Peter Schiff, and former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, who is a potential candidate for President in 2012.
Schiff spoke briefly and was well-received by the RLC members, many of whom subscribe to the theories of the Austrian school of economics that are consonant with much of Schiff's analysis.
With apologies for the dim lighting (something customary in hotel banquet rooms at dinnertime), here is the video of Peter Schiff's remarks:
Schiff was followed by Governor Johnson, who the day before had spoken at CPAC and, we learned earlier on Saturday afternoon, had placed third in the CPAC presidential straw poll (with Ron Paul and Mitt Romney placing one and two and virtually tied with Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, who says he lacks the arrogance to run for President after only one year in office).
The Republican Liberty Caucus also sponsored a straw poll that day, and Johnson took first place in that instance, with more than double the votes received by Texas Congressman Ron Paul (who is still a favorite among libertarian Republicans) and six times the number of votes received by the third-place finisher, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Johnson has been traveling across the country -- including numerous visits to New Hampshire and Iowa -- delivering his message, which is largely autobiographical. He talks about his experience as governor of New Mexico, where the registered voters have a 2 to 1 ratio of Democrats to Republicans, and how he was able to reduce the size and scope of government while vetoing 750 bills, some of which were passed unanimously in the state legislature. Yet only two of his vetoes were overturned. During his eight years in office, he vetoed more bills than all of the other 49 governors put together.
In his remarks, Johnson also pointed out how he had come to believe, during his term as governor, that the criminalization of marijuana is wrong-headed, that it is a waste of money and other resources, and that we need to rethink the drug war. Johnson was one of the few incumbent politicians to come out in favor of legalizing marijuana and he has not backed down from his position despite criticism.
Here is part one of Governor Johnson's dinner speech, which begins after a short introduction by RLC national chairman Dave Nalle:
Here is part two of Gary Johnson's RLC speech:
Early in this segment, Johnson salutes Peter Schiff for his on-target analysis of our economic situation -- more than a polite gesture, the former New Mexico governor shows a great deal of passion about how the federal government needs to cut spending, including in entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, as well as defense and so-called "discretionary" spending.
Johnson also talks about his opposition to the Iraq War from the outset, and how he thinks the United States should get out of Afghanistan "tomorrow."
From the national office of the Republican Liberty Caucus -- what I like to call "the Republican wing of the Republican Party" -- comes this press release about the TSA:
For Immediate Release: November 17, 2010
Republican Liberty Caucus Rejects Transportation Security Administration's Assault on Passenger Privacy Rights
AUSTIN, TX -- The Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC) denounces the recent changes in the airport passenger screening practices of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).
RLC Chairman Dave Nalle said the intrusive nature of new TSA procedures draws attention to the fundamental flaws in the government's strategy of attempting to address the threat of terrorism through increasingly draconian domestic security measures.
"In the name of public safety, government agencies have been given more and more power at great cost to our civil liberties and in violation of the Bill of Rights," Nalle said. "The emergence of an unaccountable state security apparatus in America is a reminder of Ben Franklin's maxim that 'they who give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety'."
"The new TSA procedures of giving randomly selected passengers a choice between a full body, backscatter x-ray scan and an intrusive, hands-on body search are unacceptable," Nalle contends. "These searches are a clear violation of our 4th Amendment rights, because they are not reasonable and are carried out with no probable cause. The increase in security at airports with more technology and more violation of the privacy rights of passengers cannot be justified on the basis of any increase in the threat of terrorism, because there has been no such increase," Nalle explained.
The Republican Liberty Caucus believes that Americans have seen enough abuses of the Constitution and calls on the federal government to curb abuses by the TSA and other agencies. We recommend putting control of passenger security in the hands of the airlines, which have a vested interest in making sure that flights are safe. We also support Representative Ron Paul's "American Traveler Dignity Act" (H.R. 6416), which would make TSA employees accountable for their actions.
Nalle observed, "With the increasing level of government intrusion into our lives in the name of security, America reminds me too much of what I saw in the Soviet Union, where I lived as a teenager. How long will it be before police will be stopping us in the street at random to ask for our identity papers?"
The Republican Liberty Caucus, founded in 1991, exists to promote individual liberty, limited government, and free enterprise within the Republican Party. Learn more and become a member at http://www.rlc.org/join-the-rlc/.
The Charlottesville Republican Committee, along with the Albemarle County Republican Committee and the Republican Liberty Caucus of Virginia, will host an appearance by former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson at the Northside Library in Albemarle Square on Monday, May 3, at 7:00 p.m.
Governor Johnson's speech will last about 45 minutes and there will be an additional 45 minutes for questions and discussion.
A triathlete who has climbed Mount Everest, Gary Johnson was elected to two terms as New Mexico's governor after a successful career as an entrepreneur. He is currently chairman of the OUR America Initiative.
The idea has been floated that Governor Johnson might run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, but currently he is not a candidate for any state or federal office.
As Governor of New Mexico, Johnson was known for his common-sense business approach to governing. He eliminated New Mexico’s budget deficit, cut the rate of growth in state government in half and privatized half of the state prisons.
Johnson also shifted state Medicaid to managed care (which led to better healthcare by creating a statewide healthcare network that previously did not exist and which saved money) and reduced state employees by over 1000, with no firings. During his term, New Mexico experienced the longest period without a tax increase in the state’s history.
While in office, Governor Johnson vetoed 750 bills (which was more than all the combined vetoes of the other 49 Governors in the country at the time) and thousands of line item vetoed bills.
For more information about Governor Johnson's May 3rd lecture in Charlottesville, check out the event page on Facebook.
Under the circumstances, it seems both odd and wrong to chide Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell for being two-faced, especially given that I like the result.
Today Governor McDonnell reversed his long-held position that only the General Assembly possesses the authority to add "sexual orientation" to the list of categories protected against discrimination in state government employment. After having, as Virginia's Attorney General, advised his predecessor that an executive order extending employment protections to gay and lesbian Virginians with state jobs was not permitted under the law, McDonnell today issued a similar -- if not stronger -- executive order doing precisely that.
McDonnell's order comes on the heels of a widely-criticized letter sent by the new attorney general, Ken Cuccinelli, which told state colleges and universities that they could not include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies -- neither formal nor informal policies.
I'm divided on this issue because, as far as Virginia statutes go, Attorney General McDonnell was right on the law and wrong on policy. Now Governor McDonnell is wrong on the law and right on policy. I believe, as Attorney General McDonnell did, that the General Assembly had to act in order to expand Virginia's employment non-discrimination protections.
It's a mixed bag, to say the least.
A few weeks ago, I testified before the state Senate's Committee on General Laws and Technology in favor of SB66, a bill introduced by Senator Donald McEachin that would have added sexual orientation to the protected categories. I noted then that "there is no rational justification" for excluding sexual orientation from a broad anti-discrimination policy. Indeed, the committee members who voted "nay" offered no argument to explain their votes.
That bill later passed the state Senate -- a historic first for this type of legislation -- but it was killed in a House subcommittee, again with no Delegates offering an argument against it.
Just before that House vote, I spoke at a news conference at the State Capitol, along with Senator McEachin, Delegate Adam Ebbin (D-49), and other supporters of the bill. You can see the complete event below. (My remarks come in the second segment.)
In Part I, Jon Blair of Equality Virginia introduces the first speaker, former Secretary of Administration Viola Baskerville and offers some remarks of his own. This segment also includes remarks by Glen Pond of the Virginia Governmental Employees Association and Patricia W. Cummins of the American Association of University Professors.
My remarks (representing the Republican Liberty Caucus of Virginia) open the second segment (Part II), which also includes comments by Andres Tobar of the Virginia Coalition of Latino Organizations; Irving Taylor of AARP Virginia; Ben Greenberg of the Virginia Organizing Project; Falls Church city council member Lawrence Webb; and Delegate Adam Ebbin. Note that I make clear that, if SB66 applied to the private sector as well as the public sector, I would oppose it -- as would the RLC-Virginia.
In Part III, State Senator Donald McEachin (D-9), chief patron of Senate Bill 66, speaks to a gathering of journalists and activists to explain why the bill is needed. McEachin answers questions from the Associated Press, Virginian-Pilot, and other news organizations. The news conference ends with a few announcements by Jon Blair of Equality Virginia.
In his answer to a question, McEachin took a cheap shot at Governor McDonnell, suggesting that he had created an atmosphere conducive to protests by the virulently anti-gay (and clearly insane) members of the Westboro Baptist Church (the people behind godhatesfags.com). This was uncalled for, since the Phelps clan also held protests in Virginia during the administrations of Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, often demonstrating at the funerals of soldiers who lost their lives in service to our country.
Getting back to today's announcement by Governor McDonnell, it's noteworthy that he asserts in his executive directive that the rights of lesbian and gay people are protected by the U.S. Constitution. He says:
The Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution prohibits discrimination without a rational basis against any class of persons.
(Andrew Sullivan may have been the first to point this out, but others may have mentioned it, as well.)
Bearing Drift -- which first reported the story about the new McDonnell administration policy -- has posted excerpts of a news release from Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling, who as Virginia's new "job creation czar" has a particular concern for issues like this. Bolling said:
“While various federal and state statutes set forth certain classifications in which employment related discrimination is prohibited as a matter of law, our policy and practice will be much broader than this. All state employees should take comfort in knowing that we will not tolerate employment related discrimination in any form or for any reason, including sexual orientation.”
What is troubling is the terse response by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who -- if you read between the lines -- seems to have no intention of enforcing the governor's executive directive. Here is the complete comment by Cuccinelli:
I applaud Governor McDonnell for the tone he is setting for the Commonwealth of Virginia. I will remain in contact with the Governor and continue to work with him on issues important to Virginians. I expect Virginia’s state employees to follow all state and federal anti-discrimination laws and will enforce Virginia’s laws to the fullest extent.
Since neither state nor federal law recognizes "sexual orientation" as a category subject to employment non-discrimination protection, then Cuccinelli can "enforce Virginia's laws to the fullest extent" without including gay and lesbian employees in that protective umbrella. His words sound expansive but, in fact, they offer nothing more than his -- and the previous Bob McDonnell's -- insistence that only the General Assembly can add sexual orientation as an anti-discrimination category.
As I noted before his election as governor, Bob McDonnell has matured on issues regarding gay and lesbian Virginians since his notorious reply to a reporter that he could "not recall" whether he had ever engaged in oral sex (or any violation of Section 18.2-361 of the Code of Virginia -- still on the books despite Lawrence v. Texas).
Although I agree that Virginia statutes do not currently allow an expansive sort of non-discrimination policy for Virginia state employees, I believe this is a quirk in the law that should be scrutinized and reversed. For me, the legal standard should not be "unless it is permitted, it is prohibited." Notwithstanding the General Assembly's pride of place in the making of policy, the standard should be: "Anything not prohibited is permitted."
In his new executive order, Governor McDonnell acknowledges that latter, and better, standard. Let's hope his legal judgment -- as Governor, not as Attorney General -- holds up in both the court of public opinion and the courts of law.
Update: There is a distinction between an "executive directive," which is what Governor McDonnell issued with regard to sexual-orientation non-discrimination policy, and an "executive order." An "executive directive," first used by Governor (now Senator) Mark Warner is a statement of policy without the force of law. An "executive order" has the force of law. The difference between the two provides McDonnell with the wiggle-room he needs to deny that he has reversed the position he held as Attorney General. Reporter Rosalind Helderman has a more complete explanation in Friday's Washington Post.
Also, it is noteworthy that McDonnell's decision is coming under attack from the religious right, including the Virginia Family Foundation, Delegate Bob Marshall, and one-time lieutenant governor candidate Michael Farris. This suggests that McDonnell issued his directive cognizant of the political risk of alienating part of his base, something for which he deserves credit.
Side note: Victoria Cobb of the Family Foundation coins a new word in her news release: "unimmutable." Kind of like non-unchanging, I suppose. Here's the quotation, which was distributed by email in a FF "Information Alert" yesterday but does not appear to have been posted on the Family Foundation's web site:
We absolutely agree with one statement in Governor McDonnell’s directive – that state employment should be based on “qualifications, merit and performance,” regardless of one’s immutable or unimmutable characteristics.
"One of the smarter blogs is the libertarian-leaning collection of Charlottesville posts put up by Rick Sincere..." -- Bob Gibson, The Daily Progress, May 8, 2005
"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden.
