All posts by Thomas L. Knapp

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And Then There Were 16: Perry Drops Out

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Governor Rick Perry of Texas speaking at the R...
Governor Rick Perry of Texas speaking at the Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

I am neither a Republican nor a Rick Perry fan. Nonetheless I find Perry’s decision to drop out of the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination contest disheartening. Here’s why:

Like Perry or not, agree with him on the issues or not, he was arguably the single most experienced political executive in the race. He served three-and-a-half terms as governor of Texas, America’s second largest and second most populous state.

His executive experience arguably extended into foreign and trade policy more than that of most governors. Texas shares a long border with Mexico and boasts the busiest foreign-tonnage port in the US at Houston. And under Perry’s governorship, Texas did better than most states during the economic downturn on fronts like employment and family income.

Frankly, Perry was a dream candidate for Republicans who cared about executive ability, plausible policy proposals, and “getting things done.”

No, I wouldn’t have voted for him. I’m a political libertarian and a partisan Libertarian; he’s neither of those things.

But it boggles the mind that out of 17 “serious” candidates, Republicans chose to cut Perry from the pack first, panning him in polls and not funding his campaign. What’s going on here?

I wish I could report that Perry just isn’t libertarian enough for a Republican Party with a growing and powerful libertarian wing. But that’s not the problem. The GOP, after some flirtations with libertarianism during Ron Paul’s tenure in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail, has taken a hard turn back toward authoritarianism.

Perry’s problem seems to be that Republicans are looking for the flashiest demagogue they can find this election cycle.

Topping Perry for demagoguery on immigration was a tall order. After all, he’s the guy who deployed Texas’s National Guard to “secure the border” with Mexico. But he’s been, in a word, Trumped.

He’s the first, but won’t be the last, candidate to fall to the GOP’s sudden infatuation with flash over substance. Right now, the polls show Donald Trump way out front, with loose cannon Ben Carson in second place. Moving up fast: Carly Fiorina, whose only real qualification seems to be her gender (she was fired as CEO of Hewlett Packard, and her only real political experience consists of badly losing her race for US Senate from California).

The Democratic front-runners aren’t very attractive either. But they don’t really have to be. They’re set for a walkover unless the GOP gets its act together, which seems unlikely.

If you had high hopes for a real horse-race, you’re probably bummed out . But look at the bright side: Perhaps the Libertarian Party can take advantage of the major parties’ state of disarray and start a real discussion about America’s future.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Election 2016: Can John McAfee Change the Game?

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The 2016 presidential election cycle got a lot more interesting on September 8 when John McAfee announced his candidacy under the banner of a newly formed “Cyber Party.”

McAfee, whose eponymous computer security software made him a multi-millionaire, sports a long record of public eccentricity that I need not waste words on here — you can look up if you’re interested. What’s important about his eccentricity is that where it touches on politics, he generally supports two important values: Freedom and privacy.

I’m definitely down with those twin emphases, and so far McAfee seems like the only bright light in a pretty dark and dismal presidential field. If the election was held today, he’d have my vote from among the declared candidates. But the election is 14 months away, and I have a few suggestions to offer McAfee for making the most of those months.

First, I hope he’ll forget his plans for a new political party. If he’s serious about freedom and privacy (and I believe he is), there’s already a party ready-made for his candidacy: The Libertarian Party.

Libertarians substantially agree with McAfee on the issues he cares about.

The Libertarian Party has a long record of securing ballot access for its candidates in all, or nearly all, of the 50 states. That alone would save McAfee millions in campaign costs versus establishing a new party (I speak from experience — in 2006 I founded a new political party; that party was only able to get on the 2008 presidential ballot in four states).

Additionally, the Libertarian Party will run hundreds, if not thousands, of down-ticket candidates in 2016 — candidates who also substantially agree with McAfee on the core issues. He doesn’t need to create a new movement. There’s a movement already in place and awaiting his leadership.

Beyond affiliating with the Libertarian Party instead of going it alone, I hope McAfee will identify freedom as the core issue and clearly mark out privacy as an emergent property of that issue, not a separate issue per se.

A well-known, reasonably well-financed Libertarian candidate who takes the US government to task for its depredations — in particular warrantless searches and wiretaps, wholesale eavesdropping on telecommunications, and imprisonment or exile of heroic whistleblowers who expose government abuses (Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, to name two) — could tear this presidential race wide open. And that’s something we desperately need.

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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More Sequestration: The Best Bad Thing, For Now

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English: CBO Long-Term Public Debt Scenarios
English: CBO Long-Term Public [sic] Debt Scenarios (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

If American politicians lived in the real world, US president Barack Obama would propose and Congress would pass a balanced budget for the federal government.

But American politicians don’t live in the real world. Since World War II they’ve inhabited a utopian fantasy in which the federal government has continuously spent more money than it has brought in, on the promise that that debt will eventually be paid off.

Someday.

By someone.

So we’ve once again reached the periodic moment of untruth, with a September 30th deadline for Congress to decide between three alternatives:

Obama’s completely insane budget proposal (which increases spending across the board on both the military and civilian sides of government); or

One of several equally crazy Republican budget proposals (which would likely increase military spending and make some cosmetic cuts to civilian spending); or

Another fake “government shutdown,” accompanied by automatic “sequestration” entailing trivial cuts in both areas.

Under each of these alternatives, the federal government will run a deficit (in English, it will kite a check and overdraw its accounts), adding half a trillion dollars or so to the federal government’s debt (euphemistically referred to as the “national debt” or “public debt” — the politicians want to keep you believing that you’re responsible for their fiscal irresponsibility, and their creditors believing that you’ll cough up someday).

The best choice — in fact, the only reasonable choice — would be for the president and Congress to bite the bullet and balance the budget. That is, make a reasonable estimate of revenues and craft a budget that appropriates and spends less than that estimate.

But, like I said, reasonable is off the table. Neither the president nor Congress is willing to balance the budget this year, or to commit to doing so for any year in the near future. So it looks sequestration is the best we can hope for right now.

How about the next crop of politicians?

American voters will elect a new president, replace (or re-elect) the entire House of Representatives, and replace (or re-elect) 1/3 of the US Senate next year, to take power in January of 2017.

Many of the campaigns are already under way, and the presidential candidates are already debating each other in public.

Why not hold their feet to the fire, and let them know that any candidate who proposes to continue deficit spending will not receive your vote?

Thomas L. Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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