Mesa County LP News - 2025-02-01

Mesa County Libertarians'
MESA LIBERTARIAN PARTY NEWS

Edited by Marc Montoni

This issue: February 1, 2025

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2025-05-31 (Saturday) - Libertarian Party of Colorado 2025 State Convention Coming Up
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MARK YOUR CALENDAR! See the convention web page for full information:

        https://lpcolorado.org/event/lp-colorado-2025-state-convention-2025-05/

I plan to attend, and I have seating available for anyone from Mesa who wants to rideshare.  I will be staying in the area that Friday night, and leaving Sunday morning.  Contact Marc Montoni at 540-689-0754 (voice or text) or AMCAmbassador@gmail.com

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2025-02-19 (Wednesday) - Mesa Libertarians Annual Membership Meeting
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FEBRUARY 19 -- Your Libertarian neighbors here in Mesa County are meeting 6:00 pm., on Wednesday, February 19, to organize for the next year.  If you've thought about "getting involved", the 19th will be a great opportunity!

All Registered Libertarians in Mesa County are invited to attend this -- our 5th annual meeting!  If you're ready to be a full voting member, you can join the Mesa LP on-the-spot for only $10 for the entire year.

Business should only take a few minutes.

Agenda:

    Electing/Re-electing Mesa County Libertarian Party Officers
    Appointing Mesa County representative to state platform & other committees
    Appointing Precinct Captains
    Approving the Annual Plan for 2024
    Candidate ratings?
    and more

Ask for the Libertarian table at Old Chicago in Grand Junction.

Please contact Marc Montoni (voice/text 804-592-6066) with any questions.

Our current Bylaws and leadership information can be found on our 'index' page at: https://LPColorado.org/mesa-county/
 
See you on Wednesday February 19!

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2025-02-19 (Wednesday) - Mesa Libertarians 3rd Wednesday Social
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Starts at 6:15 pm, right after the Annual Membership Meeting, above.  Stop in for FREE PIZZA from the Mesa Libertarians, and enjoy great conversation with good people.

Our Mesa Libertarians Social is always on the 3rd Wednesday of the month.  This one is February 19, at Old Chicago on North Avenue.  Starting just a few minutes later so the Annual Member Meeting can finish Business.  The Social will start at 6:15 pm.

Just ask the Old Chicago host for the Libertarian table.

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RUN FOR OFFICE AS A LIBERTARIAN!
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Interested in being a Libertarian candidate in the near future? Then let us know by filling out the Candidate form at https://my.LP.org/run-for-office/

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SUPPORT YOUR LIBERTARIAN PARTY!
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MESA COUNTY: Your Mesa County LP affiliate needs your support so we can fund our local projects.  Use the QR code on our website at https://www.MesaCountyLP.org/ to donate.

LIBERTARIAN PARTY OF COLORADO: Please join the LPColorado as a sustaining member. Becoming a sustaining member of the LP of Colorado helps the state party support county affiliates like ours as well as supporting Libertarian candidates and gaining or retaining ballot access.  Dues are $25 annually and you can remit using the link for the $25 "sustaining membership" at https://lpcolorado.org/membership/ .

NATIONAL LIBERTARIAN PARTY: Support your national Libertarian Party with an investment of $25 or more. Visit https://lp.org/join/ and join or rejoin today!

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2026 - Libertarian National Convention -- Grand Rapids, Michigan
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The 2026 Libertarian National Convention will be held in Grand Rapids, Michigan; with a specific date and location to be announced in the near future.

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Don't forget to MARK YOUR CALENDAR for our next 3rd Wednesday Socials!

February 19, 2025
March 19, 2025
April 16, 2025

-- end --

Energy: Release the Market!

 I'm not for or against any particular kind of energy. We need it all.

I do, however, oppose any subsidies or penalties for any kind of energy.

Petroleum, for instance, gets a gigantic "gunboat subsidy" -- American warships and troops protecting the Suez Canal, and so on. Our ring of bases along the borders of Russia, Iran, and China is likewise a subsidy -- intended to secure oil supplies to us and our "allies". On the other hand, petrol also has numerous penalties. For instance, auto emissions are now so insane that what comes out of a new car's tailpipe is cleaner than the average sample of ambient air. That's just dumb. Petrol supplies in the US are increasingly at risk because it's now almost impossible to build or expand refining or storage capacity, due to ever-tightening zoning and environmental laws . Refineries are aging and locked into footprints they can't grow out of; ensuring more maintenance failures into the future.

Wind energy likewise gets both subsidies and penalties.  At the same time energy companies are heavily subsidized to bring more wind energy online, turbines don't last forever and the increasing number of decommissioned turbines fills up gigantic landfills fast. American laws have virtually shut down mining for the precious metals wind energy needs, so we're shipping vast amounts of wealth to China to supply our expanding demand for those materials.

Nuclear has the same dynamic going on. The Price-Anderson act is a massive subsidy to nuclear energy. There are no insurance companies that are currently willing to cover the damages nuclear plants can cause -- witness the inability of even the Japanese government to be able to fully pay for the damage caused by just ONE Fukashima. Plus, the cost of burying (or storing) spent nuclear waste is huge -- and energy companies are largely excused from paying for it. Instead, governments do.

Get rid of all of the subsidies and penalties for all forms of energy, and allow the market to sort out which one is the safest and most efficient.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, April 2021.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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Montoni For Mesa County - Survey Answers for CRV

Colorado Candidates: I don't know how many of you are answering candidate questionnaires from groups that typically oppose Libertarian or non-government solutions, but I answered the rather long survey from Colorado Rural Voters.

My answers were rather long, too --there wasn't a text limit in the entry boxes, and I saw no notice that they preferred <100 words until I got to the confirmation screen.

Oh, well.

In any case, Colorado Rural Voters would be better named "Colorado Gimme Your Money and Rights Voters" -- look at their wish list on their main page.

Some of those wishes might sound good upon first blush to Libertarians.  But the tyrannical reality is how they want to implement them.

Anyway, most of my answers on their survey questions were copypasta from things I'd written earlier (in one case I copied something I wrote in 1999).  While some would quip that only proves I'm a closed-minded jerk, what I believe it means is that the takers are making the same arguments and coveting the same rights and property in 2020 as they were in 1999.

And in 1899.

Here is the actual survey.

Jeriel Clark is the contact person for this thing.  I have not looked into who funds this "nonpartisan" group (nonpartisan my ass).   If I remember correctly, before this she was a paid staffer for another group that was trying to saddle up the taxpayers of Grand Junction and every other municipality in Mesa (including the county itself) and take them for a sweaty ride on a massive debt load for a city-owned gym/fitness/pool/recreation center.   It is my fading memory that she was the person who came before the Mesa Libertarians and did a presentation for the gym.

I'm in the wrong business.  It apparently pays to be a leftist activist.

But getting on with the story, here is how I answered their survey:

Libertarians: Decriminalize Sex Work

Larimer County Cops?

In Larimer County, CO, this year, over 300 men have been arrested for attempting to have voluntary sex.  Here's what the cops and their media parrots said about one week's haul: "An operation to help reduce the demand for human trafficking in Larimer County led to the arrest of eight men who are accused of patronizing prostitutes."

But yet there's no "war on men" going on.

So the cops [and parrots] equate having voluntary, contractual sex to "human trafficking".

Ummm..  No.  Sorry, Charlie, but prostitution is not trafficking.

Public schools and caging human beings by police might resemble human trafficking, but prostitution does not.

Besides, no actual humans were trafficked, much less prostituted -- all of the "prostitutes" were cops hiding behind a computer.

The grand total of confirmed "sex trafficking" cases in Colorado -- you know, where someone *was* forced into sex by someone else -- for 2017 was: 14.  And they were rightfully prosecuted.

In 2017, nationwide, there were 467 confirmed cases of sex trafficking, of which 14 were minors.  There is *no* "epidemic" of human trafficking.  If anything, there are fewer human beings trafficked now than there ever have been (at least in the United States).

Well, except cops tend to have an increasing problem with screwing teenaged girls (and boys), and passing them around to their buddies.  Which *is* trafficking.

And put it in perspective: In 2017, there WERE 393,980 reported serious domestic violence cases, and over 1,237,960 reported violent rapes and sexual assaults.

So perhaps we ought to "end the demand for marriage"?

All the stats are available from the FBI pages - and links can be found on Libertarian Norma Jean Almodovar's website (2017 stats are the latest until October of this year when the 2018 stats are available).

The Libertarian Party believes you own yourself.  If you choose to marry a millionaire because you like the bank account, or if you pay $75 for a handy (like police victim Robert Kraft), you're having voluntary sex.  Voluntary sex is not trafficking, and no form of voluntary sex should be prohibited.

The Libertarian Party's platform position on sex work spells it out:

2.10 Sex Work - The Libertarian Party supports the decriminalization of prostitution. We assert the right of consenting adults to provide sexual services to clients for compensation, and the right of clients to purchase sexual services from consenting sex workers.

The Libertarian Party Radical Caucus platform describes the Libertarian position on sexual rights even more thoroughly:

1.9 Sexual Rights - Consenting individuals have the right to private choice in sexual activity.  We support the repeal of all laws and policies which are intended to condemn, affirm, encourage, or deny sexual lifestyles or any attitudes about such lifestyles. Further, we oppose any government attempts to dictate, prohibit, control, or encourage any private lifestyle, living arrangement, or contractual relationship.  Who or how many somebody loves is none of the government's business.  We support separation of marriage and state. Government marriage license regimes were introduced as tools of control like any other license, and therefore we call for their immediate abolition. No free individual should be expected to obtain a "permission slip" from the state in order to marry.  We support the repeal of all laws prohibiting or regulating sex work including prostitution, whether practiced by individuals or in the form of businesses such as those operating brothels, massage parlors, or other facilities.

End the wars on men, women, and sex workers of both genders.  Repeal the prohibition on sex work.  Stop meddling in the private and voluntary affairs of free individuals.

Vote Libertarian.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, October, 2019.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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The Two-Minutes Hate on Vaping

In the news this past few weeks has been a good example of a manufactured "crisis".

Media outlets have breathlessly fixated on the "dangers" of vaping (aka "e-cigarettes").  I guess this is the assigned Two-Minute Hate for the last half of September.

But let's go over a few actual facts that don't fit well into the mainstream crisis narrative.

First: Tobacco is a legal plant that many individuals want to enjoy.  If it is prohibited, then we will simply have yet another war on a plant that will be as effective as the war on poppies, marijuana, coca, khat, and many others.

Standard, over-the-counter nicotine "vape juice" carries basically the same risk of long-term health effects as cigarettes.

Keep in mind that e-cigarettes, like cigarettes, is simply a "delivery device".  When different kinds of "delivery devices" are developed, different people are going to try them, and use them, if they wish to.  There are already cigarettes, cigars, little cigars, cigarillos, dissolvables (such as lozenges, strips, or sticks), smokeless (chewing tobacco and moist snuff), waterpipes ("Hookah"), and now e-cigarettes.


There are already millions of vapers.The mainstream media has generally (with a few notable exceptions) failed to make clear that the current "crisis" among vapers is not caused by vape juice, but rather, by a subset of vapers who are putting THC oils (and vitamin E oil, and other crap) in their e-cigarettes.  And probably a lot of other substances, according to investigative articles in the Washington Post and Wisconsin State Journal.


One of the more interesting aspects of vaping is the possibility that vape juice can be rather easily tailored, and there is already some evidence that the trend among longer-term users of e-cigarettes is to choose smaller nicotine content juice cartridges over time.

If the vaping market were left alone, there is reason to believe that trend (of lower nicotine content vape choices) would continue and/or accelerate: One thing that a free market always does is it tends to mitigate negatives and accentuate positives.

The black market (Prohibition) means adulterated drugs, which means death for more than a few users (especially youthful, inexperienced ones who don't know what to look for).  Which is what we are right now seeing with the current "Vaping Crisis".

Then consider what the free market has delivered in comparison to Prohibition: We now have light beer and non-alcoholic beer, whereas under Alcohol Prohibition the trend was toward harder and harder, more potent varieties of hooch.

In a legal market, and with steady Education and Persuasion campaigns, kids trying drugs will find pure (and ever-safer) prepackaged versions of them at Rite Aid and Wal-Mart, with instructions on safe use.

They won't get that from the local gang-banger who is filling vape cartridges with THC oil.

Over time, then, it stands to reason that it would be better for there to be a less-harmful alternative to cigarettes to be encouraged and available so people who have to put something in their mouths will be able to choose something less harmful rather than more harmful.

If vaping is made illegal, it will simply go underground.  The technology for vape pens is widely known and easy to replicate, and prohibiting it will simply open up a new market for organized criminals to supply.

As an interesting side note, Colorado is not having anywhere near the problem with this that other states are -- because marijuana is legal, and people therefore tend to use traditional marijuana delivery methods.

The THC oil vaping problem would likely resolve itself in a legal market.  If CVS and Walgreens were selling vape juice with THC in it, they would have to find ways to make it as safe as possible, or they would find themselves with a lot of liability claims.  Drug traffickers who are illegally filling vape cartridges have neither the will nor the ability to figure out how to do that -- they're just supplying a product that people want, and they aren't going to be hauled into court if their product hurts someone.

Libertarian Party articles about vaping bans:

https://www.lp.org/libertarians-vaping-industry-condemn-trump-vaping-ban/

1.  What do Libertarians think of Trump’s vaping regulation?


2.  Libertarians, vaping industry condemn Trump vaping ban

3.  I Vape I Vote Membership Promotion


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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, May, 2019.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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Abolish Marriage Licensure - And Stop Collecting Data

In the continuing saga of the state sticking its nose into marriage, three couples in Virginia are suing the state government because the state refused to issue them marriage licenses -- because the plaintiffs refused to state their races on their license application.

Instead of fighting it in court, the Commonwealth should make the suit moot by immediately eliminating the marriage license system and all associated requirements, benefits, restrictions, and regulations.

Every state, not just Virginia, collects demographic information for marriage licenses.  Even if they don't ask directly on the form, all states require a state-issued ID at some point in the process, and those demographic entries are either shown in the clear on the ID itself or it's behind it on the DMV database -- which means that the state marriage license database has all of that as well.

Libertarians support marriage equality -- because we favor the immediate abolition of marriage licensure, for all of the same reasons we favor the elimination of all other forms of state permission slips.  Libertarians regard licensure as the government taking away a right all individuals have, and then selling them that right back as a privilege.

Americans have been fighting this battle over the details of how government permission slips are issued and to whom for decades now.  It's time to bring that battle to a close by eliminating all marriage license laws.

Interestingly, Republicans have picked up the idea from Libertarians, and have recently eliminated marriage licensure in Alabama and introduced repeal bills in other states.

Who or how many somebody loves is none of the government's business.

Libertarians support separation of marriage and state. Government marriage license regimes were introduced as tools of control like any other license, and therefore we call for their immediate abolition.  No free individual should be expected to obtain a "permission slip" from the state in order to marry.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, May, 2019.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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A Libertarian Response to The Fat-State Address by Jared Polis, 2019

In his first "state of the state" address, new Colorado governor Jared Polis proved something: Namely, he is just another in a long line of tax-spend-regulate-subsidize-suppress-penalize political hacks who think they have any moral right to govern the affairs of private individuals.

Libertarians in Colorado listened, where we could stay awake, to Polis' comments with same understanding we have had with every other new governor:

• Taxes will go up
• Spending will fatten
• Regulations will suppress more and more entrepreneurs
• More individual rights will be trampled upon
• Transparency will fade further
• More citizens will be killed by police enforcing ever more new laws
• The war on the recreational choices of individuals will rage on and expand
• Health care will be further taken over by the state
• Bureaucrats will expand their drive to choose economic winners and losers
• Colorado will continue to become the exclusive playground of the upper classes

In short, Polis will do all of the same things that every other governor has done.

Some Libertarian reactions to Polis' fat-state policy desires:

THE ECONOMY

POLIS: "Our economy is strong. From agriculture and outdoor recreation to aerospace, bioscience, energy, and cannabis, we've watched industries succeed and create jobs."

LIBERTARIANS: Meanwhile, the political class, including Polis, have endeavored mightily to destroy and marginalize industries they don't like, ruining the jobs those sectors supported.

Libertarians call for a free, unfettered market economy and elimination of regulations that stifle growth and eliminate hobs.

BIPARTISANSHIP

POLIS: "We've become a model for how we can put politics aside and work together."

LIBERTARIANS: That's what everyone is afraid of.  Thinking individuals know that whenever politicians agree with one another, your right, liberties, and property are at risk.  Gridlock preserves liberty to some degree.

The only reason that statesmen should put aside differences and work together is to repeal and eliminate the Byzantine layers of law and bureaucracy in Colorado.  The state code could be halved, and no one would die and everyone would benefit.

THE POOR AND MARGINALIZED

POLIS: "Despite all of our progress, far too many people are either barely getting by, or falling behind."

LIBERTARIANS: Well, when you increase the tax and regulatory load on taxpayers, some of them break and can no longer keep up.

The cure for that is to eliminate the load on the taxpayer by eliminating taxes.

BROADBAND INTERNET

POLIS: Seeks local government takeover of broadband internet.

LIBERTARIANS: Competing with the private sector is never a good idea.

And what happens when "communities" decide they can disconnect or deplatform individuals or groups who wish to freely exercise their right to freedom of speech or religion?

It's bad enough that private-sector entities sometimes refuse to allow uncensored speech (much of that so-called "private sector" censorship, by the way, is driven by government pressure).

It will be much worse if there is only the government monopoly provider and no other outlet for free speech.  And cost per user will skyrocket, same as with everything else bureaucrats take over.

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM

POLIS: "We [must] address the inequities in our criminal justice system. That means tackling discriminatory practices that make people of color, individuals living with mental illness, and Coloradans experiencing poverty more likely to face incarceration. And it means working to make sure Coloradans who do serve prison or jail time are able to live a dignified and fulfilling life after they've paid their debt to society."

LIBERTARIANS: The biggest single issue looming over criminal justice is the number of nonviolent drug offenders who go through the system.

Libertarians suggest the one reform that would eliminate much of the injustice of our current syustem is to fully decriminalize all victimless crimes, including all recreational drugs, sex work, and gambling.  It's time to end our national experiment with the Progressive Era's national socialist legacy of Prohibition.  Prohibition has been a disaster, costly in both human lives and in expense.  It has decimated several generations of young men in minority communities -- which were revenue-farming targets for law enforcement for decades prior to Prohibition.

Private, consensual behavior is none of the government's business. 

Ending state prosecution of drug and other victimless offenses will eliminate the need for many drug warrior jobs, allowing government employed individuals currently fighting that utterly unwinnable war to seek productive work in the wealth-producing private sector.

EARLY CHILDHOOD INDOCTRINATION

POLIS: "[We will introduce] state-funded early childhood education."

LIBERTARIANS: Hasn't government done enough to our children?  In Colorado the average public school spends a little over $10,000 for each child already, and the results are sub-par.  Meanwhile, homeschoolers and private schools continue to outstrip their government indoctrination centers' results.  The real reason for the push to get kids into the government's indoctrination system earlier and earlier is... well, to increase the amount of time the state has to indoctrinate.

The same kind of bureaucrats who can't seem to deliver mail or keep violent criminals locked up should not be trusted around children.

PARENTAL LEAVE

LIBERTARIANS: Polis' budget package coming up on the 15th includes a formal request to provide paid parental leave for all state employees.

He also wants to force the private sector to establish a paid family and medical leave program.

So he's going to make it more expensive for the private sector to pay their own employees, and then he's going make sure they pay for his patronage of Colorado bureaucrats too.

Where does he think that money is going to come from?

Libertarians call for government to stop regulating everything in life.  Whether one's employer provides leave or not is a private matter that should be left to negotiation by employers and employees.

As for leave for government employees, it would cost a lot less if government employees simply left.

HEALTH CARE

POLIS: Wants to lower "the outrageous cost of health care".

LIBERTARIANS: The only way to do that is to get the fickle fingers of bureaucrats completely out of the health care pie.  A good start would be to eliminate the Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment, end all government funding of or subsidies to the health care industry, and begin eliminating state licensure so that private certification can take over.Perhaps the most laughable of Polis' demands is his proposed "Office of Saving People Money on Health Care".

Maybe this will buck the trend of government agencies being created for a purpose but then having the exact opposite effect in reality (and growing to gargantuan proportions in the process), but that's probably a pipe dream.

PRESCRIPTION DRUG COSTS

POLIS: Wants to "address the appalling costs of prescription drugs", and cites the factoid that "Canada has the same drugs from the same manufacturing plants that we have here in the United States; but often at one-half, one-third, yes, even one-quarter of the cost."

LIBERTARIANS: And the reason for that is Canada's government lets those manufacturers sell their drugs there only at the prices the government sets -- edicts which do not take into account drug development costs.  So when Colorado and other states start buying drugs from Canada and elsewhere at regulated prices, and re-importing them here, expect the pipeline of new life-saving drugs to start drying up.

Polis is just like every other politician in that respect: They are too shallow and ignorant to look for the real reasons why things are the way they are.

ENVIRONMENT, CLIMATE DEBATE, GREEN ENERGY

POLIS: Wants "good-paying jobs in the clean-energy sector that can never be outsourced."

LIBERTARIANS: This is an example of politicians thinking they have any moral right, or the authority, to pick winners and losers.

What the green energy sector needs is for the government to get completely out of meddling in any kind of energy -- green or not.  Eliminate the subsidies, eliminate the penalties, and protect property rights, and the markets will gravitate towards clean energy just fine and without government help.Perhaps the most ironic part of Polis' state of the state speech was his twin arguments for spending billions and writing impossible-to-comply-with regulations to mitigate climate change, and forcing a changeover to electric vehicles on the one hand, but then building more and bigger highways.

If Polis really wishes to reduce emissions, then he should be working towards eliminating land-use regulation by localities that force builders to spread out developments further and further away from city centers.  He should also be looking at privatizing infrastructure so that users pay the full cost of building and maintaining it.

In the meantime, one of the methods Polis and populist politicians like him use to "help" get electric vehicles into use is by penalizing the use of fossil fuels.  Libertarians suggest instead getting government out of the way: Don't subsidize or penalize **any** form of energy.

It is also ironic that Polis cited the all-solar coffee shop and windmill plant in his address.  Politicians like Polis, by making mining the minerals needed to build windmills, solar panels, and other tech either impossible or costly.  Which means that mining such minerals goes overseas, where slave and child labor is used and where environmental oversight is lax or nonexistent.

Polis says he wants to "help" businesses of all kinds start, grow, thrive, and create good-paying jobs.  Once again, this means he will attempt to pick economic winners and losers, when the only thing he needs to do is to get government out of the way by eliminating taxes, fees, licenses, permits, and regulations.  This is clearly not what he intends.  He wants to protect the "right" of communities:

"to have a voice when it comes to industrial activities within their borders. It's time for us to take meaningful action to address the conflicts between oil-and-gas drilling operations and the neighborhoods they impact, and to make sure that all of our communities have clean air and water."

"Communities" don't have rights.  Governments don't have rights.  Only individuals do, and only by protecting the right of individuals to do what they wish with their own honestly-acquired property will liberty be preserved.  If a company damages neighboring properties, the solution is to allow those damages to be addressed in court.

STATE INCOME TAXES; TAX CODE

POLIS: Wants to "make our tax code more fair, so that we can reduce rates for Colorado families and small businesses. Our tax code gives too much power to the special interests who can afford expensive lobbyists, while forcing ordinary families to pay more. As legislators, I know that many of you find these tax giveaways offensive."

LIBERTARIANS:  Again, this is because previous iterations of Polis have tried to pick winners and losers using the tax code.  Rather than continuing to trifle with who gets the better deal at tax time, the Libertarian Party suggests making all taxpayers the winners by eliminating taxes for all and allowing the private sector to provide better services at lower cost -- and without the free rider problem.

Polis referred to alleged "tax breaks" for this or that group as "tax expenditures".  In other words he assumes every penny of your money actually belongs to government, and if the government deems you worthy of keeping some of it, that's "spending" by the government.  That is a disease just about every politician suffers from.  A name for it might be "Grabitis".

Libertarians think you and everyone else in the private sector own every penny you have earned, saved, and invested; while the leeches of government should not expect a penny.

So yes, Jared -- let's modify the tax code.

By eliminating it.

SALES TAXES, OTHER TAXES

POLIS: "90 percent of the retailers in our state are small businesses. It's time to cap the vendor fee, which is a giveaway to the largest and most profitable retailers in the nation, and use the savings to lower rates, which will benefit small businesses and millions of working Coloradans."

LIBERTARIANS: Again, Polis wants to use the tax code to pick winners and losers.  But the only way to level the playing field is to abolish the vendor fee (tax) altogether.

POLIS: Wants to implement "true tax reform that reduces taxes for hardworking Coloradans instead of giving breaks to special interests while forcing families to pay more."

Families pay all taxes.  No corporation pays one cent of tax -- because taxes for corporations are just one more expense of doing business.  If you buy a loaf of bread one day for $1.00, and the next day a new $1.00 per loaf tax takes effect, that family will then have to pay $2.00 for the same loaf of bread.

Libertarians want an "economy where Coloradans from all walks of life don't just get by, but thrive," same as Polis said he wants.

But the difference between Polis and Libertarians is Polis wants you to believe he can wave his wand and do that by saddling Coloradans with higher taxes and more regulation; while Libertarians would eliminate barriers to producing wealth and improving one's lot in life.

MAKING THE STATE "WORK BETTER FOR ALL"

POLIS: He says he "will work tirelessly to make our state work better for you - so that you can earn a good living and share in our special way of life. And I know that this Legislature will do the same, because every single one of us wants to see every single Coloradoan succeed. A Colorado for all."

LIBERTARIANS: What he doesn't say:

• Except oil workers, whose industry is slowly being restricted into oblivion.
• Except the poor, who are being displaced rapidly from their homes due to escalating real estate taxes.
• Except gun owners, who are being threatened with confiscation.
• Except for antique car hobbyists, who are being regulated and harassed out of working on their own cars.
• Except for Republicans, Libertarians, Constitutionalists, and other political minorities.
• Except for the victims of police shootings and beatings.
• Except for those who believe Freedom of Association is an inalienable right.
• Except for those who say unpopular things.
• Except for people in alternative relationships, like polyamory.
• Except for singles.

Polis asked a few rhetorical questions.

Which, unfortunately for him, are easy to answer.

POLIS: "Will our ideas be good for Colorado?"

LIBERTARIANS: Nope.  His ideas will mean more job security for bureaucrats, and more looting from taxpayers.

POLIS: "Will they reduce health care costs?"

LIBERTARIANS: No.  Polis' "solution" for health-care costs are no different than any other worshiper of state meddling.  They will increase costs and make the health-care system even more difficult for patients to navigate.

POLIS: "Will they improve our schools and help our kids get a strong start?"

LIBERTARIANS: No.  Schools will continue to deteriorate and leave students further behind homeschoolers, private schools, and the rest of the world.

POLIS: "We all agree that every child deserves a great education, so let's start there."LP: Excellent idea.  A terrific start would be to begin transitioning government indioctrination centers by selling them to parents.

POLIS: [Detailed a long laundry lists of things he wants to burp forth using other people's money.]

LIBERTARIANS: Sigh.

In summary, Polis is just another in a long line of tax-spend-regulate-subsidize-suppress-penalize political hacks who think they have any moral right to govern the affairs of private individuals.

Libertarians suggest an alternative to politics-as-usual:

• Get government out of the way.
• Eliminate taxes.
• Stop allowing localities within the state to violate individual rights; including property rights.
• Slash spending.
• Eliminate government jobs.
• Abolish regulation.
• Repeal all all unconstitutional regulation of freedom of speech, conscience, religion, expression, and Freedom of Association.
• Privatize government functions.
• Allow the private sector to work.
• Leave people free to improve their own station in life, and don't penalize them for doing so.
• Get government out of education.
• Cease all regulation of private, consensual behavior.
• Eliminate all state laws that compromise citizens' rights as protected by the Bill of Rights; particularly the 2nd, 4th, 5th, and 6th Amendments.

And leave us the hell alone.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, January, 2019.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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Blue Wave?

What "Blue wave"?

I am no Trumpkin, but the Left needs to up its game.

Obama lost SIXTY-THREE House seats and SIX Senate seats in his first midterms in 2010.

Clinton lost FIFTY-FOUR House seats and NINE Senate seats in his first midterm in 1994.

And THEY had an adoring press.

[Bush actually bucked the long trend and gained 2 Senate seats and 8 House seats in 2002.]

Trump has been under unrelenting, vicious attacks by most of the press, yet he is going to GAIN at least 2 seats in the Senate and will lose only between thirty and forty seats in the House.

Y'all are in trouble. Because the 2020 elections just started today, and what you thought was going to be a rout, really wasn't.

In addition, you squandered your opportunity to work with Republicans to get a more balanced Supreme Court by your underhanded treatment of the Kavanaugh nomination.  Your handling of that nomination assured that you will be run over if there are any more vacancies -- two more may well be in the cards within the next year.

Playing the "If you aren't a leftist, you're a creepy racist woman-hating redneck ignorant nazi gun nut homophobic bigot" card is probably too yesterday to work anymore.

What might work better for the left is working on actually solving problems.

Like, repealing the Prohibitions on drugs, gambling, and prostitution that drag the poor and minorities into the justice system disproportionately, ending all the wars, and working towards accountability and transparency for government workers -- including the police, who inflict such a horrendous toll on minorities through policing for profit and revenue farming in general.

And fixing those absolutely corrupt, murderous, bankrupt, and broken Left-led major cities all over the United States.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, October, 2018.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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Truth Gives You Freedom

On November 6, 2018, the Libertarian Party's three highest-profile sitting officeholders all lost their bids for re-election.

Many in the Party bemoaned the result as a "disaster".

I see it differently, because these losses serve as a textbook lesson:

Given the odds against Libertarians in office (we are *usually* out-spent and out-volunteered by 1,000 or more to 1), Libertarian officeholders should stop pussyfooting around and instead be that lone troublemaker while in office.

Say those "scary", extremist things, like "Taxation is Theft, and I want to eliminate that theft by abolishing this ____ tax!!"

Say those "scary", extremist things, like "Prohibition is unconstitutional and immoral and I want to repeal all of it, including the prohibition on crack, heroin, gambling, and prostitution!"

Say those "scary", extremist things, like "Abolish the Police and let neighborhoods contract for the security provider that suits them!"

Say those "scary", extremist things, like "Abolish Public Schools!"

Say those "scary", extremist things, like "Abolish the Military!"

We've spent forty years twisting ourselves into knots trying to avoid offending our opponents.

It's long past time to offend the hell out of them.

Our opponents aren't going to vote for us anyway, and kowtowing to them keeps us from finding and recruiting the millions of people out there who are already basically libertarian but haven't put it together yet because they haven't heard anyone saying it in a way that is both consistent and inspires their own courage.

Libertarianism is OFFENSIVE to those who live at the expense of others.  Libertarianism is OFFENSIVE to those who wish to control others.

Full stop.  There is no way to make it inoffensive to them.

Let us aim to misbehave.

Yeah, maybe you won't get re-elected. But you didn't get re-elected this time either, did you?

The knowledge that victory is fleeting can sometimes be truly liberating.

Once we understand that our fellow libertarians can't see us when we keep our heads down, then we're ready to stand up and let them see us. Once they see us, they will be more likely to join and become members and supporters to help us in next year's elections.

The Libertarian Party has been banging around between 10,000 to 20,000 annual donors for the better part of its nearly five decades in existence.

That is because too many Libertarians think the way to find our friends is to seek out our enemies.

Let's change that model.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, October, 2018.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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Bootlickers Want YOU Out of Your Car

Eric Peters, a car enthusiast in Virginia, wrote on Sept 7, 2018, about something that's been gnawing at me too:

The average cost for insurance for a new teen driver is now north of $250 per month.

How is he supposed to get a car – or afford gas – when he is obliged to pony up $250 each month to the insurance mafia? ... How is a teenage kid working a minimum wage/part-time gig supposed to deal with it?

Faced with this extortion – and that’s exactly the right word; there’s no choice about paying the $250 per month, if the kid wants to drive legally – many simply opt out. A record-high percentage of 16-25-year-olds haven’t even got a driver’s license and forget the car. They stay home instead, game and text. When they need to get somewhere, they ride share or Uber or something that doesn’t require them to spend a minimum of 20-25 hours working at minimum wage (currently $10.50 er hour) gig hauling pizzas or some such just to tithe the mafia.... More and more of them just don’t care about cars – or driving.

Mission accomplished.

One way to get people out of cars – an agenda that has existed since at least the early ’70s in furtive “urban planning” circles but which has become aggressively obvious in recent years – is to make sure they never get into them. And the easiest way to do that is to make driving prohibitively and unavoidably expensive for new drivers especially. If they never learn to drive, they’ll never miss not driving.

I agree with Eric Peters that the dramatic increases in the cost of insuring new drivers is INTENTIONAL on the part of bureaucrats. It is government policy that allows insurance companies to do this. Just one of those policies is mandatory insurance -- which is nothing more than a massive subsidy to rent-seeking insurance companies.

It's many times more expensive to repair accident-damaged cars now than it was at the peak of Car Culture USA. That is again a direct result of federal policy: Cars must be built to federal standards, rather than customer standards. So what might have been a fender, hood, and grille replacement in 1968, now requires dozens of large and small parts, each one engineered to comply with federal crash standards, air bag systems (required by the feds), and crumple-zone standards -- and each one predictably pricey as a result.

Not long ago, there was an article in a car magazine where a GM engineer was reviewing past GM greats -- like the 1966 Chevrolet Malibu.  He said his department had actually studied the idea: that with the identical manufacturing, engineering, and features as one had in 1966, the same identical car would cost a buyer around $15,000 in today's dollars.

He also said that with modern regulation, all of the changes to every part of the car to comply with current regulations, you'd end up with a car that was almost unrecognizable, twice the weight, about the same power, and roughly three times the cost -- and either impossible to repair or horrendously expensive to repair.

The Murderous Left wants people out of cars. The single greatest liberator of all time -- the personal automobile -- is anathema to bootlickers who want to know who you are, where you are, what you're doing, who you're with, and what you have in your possession. AT ALL TIMES.

Bootlickers are control freaks who want the unwashed masses shuttled around in cattle cars that they can centrally shut down for whatever reason, and grab who or whatever they want.

They don't give a rat's ass about the environment, or deaths and injuries from accidents. All they are really after is CONTROL. And one way to get there is to make mobility-at-will all but impossible.

The Libertarian answer is to:

1) Abolish mandatory insurance requirements, like all other regulations

2) Abolish all government-issued identification regimes.

3) Eliminate all government-owned or operated transportation systems, and allow private ownership to mitigate the harm done by poor drivers.

4) Abolish government-operated police, and allow road owners to provide the kind of traffic control that suits them and their paying customers.

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, September, 2018.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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Pole-Shifting and Shifty Alarmists

Earth's magnetic poles are never stable; they move constantly -- and sometimes they flip altogether.  Which is understandable, because the earth's core is actually a giant spinning magnet.

Some scientists who study the earth's internal magnet have noticed that the magnetic poles have moved a lot over the last few years.  There is some speculation that the increased speed of their wandering means they are about to flip.

Check out this article about emerging science on pole shifts.  It's fascinating stuff.

A complete flip from N to S is actually about 500,000 years overdue.

Shifting magnetic poles can change the climate immensely -- particularly, the amount of cloud cover (water vapor).  After the sun, more or less water vapor is the main determinant of temperature.

Which brings us to the politicization of the pole movement by the alarmist environmentalist left.

One would think that the climate models -- the ones the alarmist Left uses to blather up panic about the climate (and the taxpayer grants and book deals for their adherents) -- would have in included adjusting those models for the effect of magnetic pole shift .

So have they?  Have alarmists added the effect of moving magnetic poles into their models?

Not exactly.

They did the reverse: Now that acceleration of magnetic pole movement has become a topic of discussion, alarmist scientists have latched on and are suddenly claiming that melting glaciers and warmer temperatures on the surface are the drivers of the pole movement activity.

So someone else brings it up, whereupon it is adopted to mangle cause-and-effect into further support for their alarmist model -- even though there has been no connection yet proven.

Climate scientists -- at least the mainstream alarmist ones -- are inexcusably sloppy about their work.

Many of the earliest of the alarmists' models relied on data supplied by poorly-maintained weather stations, or stations where development, addition of a large parking lot, etc would rather obviously have had a significant effect on what data was recorded (see http://www.SurfaceStations.org/ ).  For years, the alarmist industry flat-out denied that those surface station assumptions needed to be tested or that the data they were supplying was unreliable.

It took a skeptic to start an audit movement.  Volunteers did all of the auditing because the multi-billion dollar alarmist-industrial complex couldn't be bothered to fund such an audit itself. 

Even gas stations have to get their measuring systems assessed and certified every few months -- but an alarmist industry that depends on the measuring instruments doesn't?

Come on.

Alarmist pseudoscience really got rolling in the late eighties and early nineties. Scientists looked at their data tables and saw that temperatures appeared to be climbing, and then they published, and started the cycle of alarm.

They forgot something major, however: The disappearance from the dataset of stations in more remote regions of Russia / USSR as the state collapsed and stopped maintaining, operating, and checking them, was not in any way accounted for.  Many of the abandoned stations were in Siberia.

If you have 1,000 stations all over the planet and 50 stations in some of the bitterest-cold areas on earth steadily drop out of the calculation, 5th grade math says the temperature average of the remaining stations will go up.

But alarmists glossed over it.

Alarmist scientists have also directly diddled with directly changing data tables they use in their models without either explaining the reasons for doing so or adjusting the assumptions the model builds on that data as a result -- and they pass off their diddled data and the conclusions they derive from it as "science" and claim anyone questioning it is just an apish knuckle-dragging throwback who has no place to talk.  Fudging data is in itself an academic and scientific crime for which none have been called to account.

But the real problem with alarmism is that the alarmist-industrial complex (a multi-billion dollar, taxpayer-funded white elephant), is that everything it "produces" is designed to affect government policy.

If you convince vote-happy politicians that the sky is falling, your budget for the following year will get a lot more lard slathered on it.  "Green" corporations and compliant scientists and other hangers-on get huge new government contracts and grants, while more efficient corporations using traditional energy sources or methods in their production, and skeptical scientists, are ignored.

I'm as concerned about the environment as anyone.  The biggest skeptic thinker I know is completely off-grid, uses solar for all of his home and business energy needs, and otherwise is completely self-sufficient.  Even his personal transportation is the ultimate in re-use: He buys ancient 50 mpg Geo Metros and fixes them up.  Compare the resources that went into his 1990 Metro to the local watermelon's brand-new 2018 Prius. The Prius can't quite beat the Metro on MPG, and its curb weight is roughly twice that of the Metro (twice the curb weight means at minimum twice the resources went into it).

I don't know a single watermelon writer or thinker who has as small a footprint.  I'm sure they exist.  But the mainstream watermelon is usually just the latest snob who moved into the local neighborhood of McMansions and wants to slam the door against anyone trying to follow him into that shiny new neighborhood -- as if taking a few plastic bottles to the curb once every two weeks makes up for the McMansion and the Prius.

All governments should abandon all funding of science and limit their activities to their legitimate role of protecting individual rights (and with them, property rights).

Libertarians suggest that only freedom and a lack of government meddling will bring about the lasting change in individual behavior that is necessary to protect our environment.  Private individuals should be left free to engage in education and persuasion activities for better, more efficient practices.

Using the sledgehammer of government policy to get the compliance you want only breeds waste -- and, eventually, backlash.  Abolition of government spending, including that which goes towards so-called 'science', would actually do much to improve environmental health.

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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, August, 2018.  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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