Tag Archives: Election 2016

Op-Eds

After the Circus, Consider Your Options

5 Comments
Libertarian Party Logo
Libertarian Party Logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Maybe I don’t get out enough, but among people I’ve talked with about next year’s presidential election there’s a deep feeling of disgust. Watching the Republicans debate and the Democrats speechify, their feeling so far is “Really? We can’t do any better than these clowns?”

I feel their pain — and, I suspect, yours too. I wouldn’t leave my wallet alone in a room with any of the guys or gals running for president on a “major party” ticket. But then, I usually feel that way.

What’s changing is that more and more people are agreeing with me. Since 2004, according to Gallup, the percentage of Americans who think we need a “third party” has risen from 40% to as high as 60%. The percentage of Americans who think the Republicans and Democrats do an “adequate” job has fallen from 56% to 35%.

So, enjoy the circus for now, I guess, but as Donald Trump pedals his giant tricycle around and Hillary Clinton juggles disappearing email servers, keep the “third party” thing in mind …. and don’t forget that there already IS a third party working hard to earn your support.

The Libertarian Party boasts 152 currently serving elected public officials, ranging from city council members to fire and water district representatives.

The party has yet to elect a governor, congressmember or president, but not for lack of trying. The first woman to receive an electoral vote wasn’t Geraldine Ferraro; it was the Libertarian Party’s first vice-presidential nominee, Tonie Nathan, in 1972. The party has elected hundreds of local officials and a few state representatives. It’s clearly a serious political player. If you’re unhappy with the “major party” offerings, why not take a closer look?

Darryl W. Perry, Cecil Anthony Ince and Marc Feldman have already declared for the Libertarian Party’s 2016 presidential nomination. Rumor has it that the elephant in the room (pun intended — he’s the former Republican governor of New Mexico), Gary Johnson, may throw his hat in the Libertarian ring again and try to top his 2012 total of 1.6 million votes.

Pay attention. Explore. If you’re not a libertarian, check out the Greens, the Constitution Party, heck, even the Prohibition Party. There ARE alternatives to the “major party” freak show.

Or you can keep on doing what you’ve always done and get what you’ve always got. Because that’s worked so well in the past, right?

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.

AUDIO VERSION

 

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

It’s Classified: A Tale of Two Scofflaws

2 Comments

RGBStock.com Prison Photo

For the crime of telling America and the world about the lawlessness of the American political class — including one Hillary Rodham Clinton — Chelsea Manning is now a political prisoner, serving a 35-year sentence at Fort Leavenworth’s US Disciplinary Barracks, after a show trial which violated nearly every basic benchmark of American justice.

For her crimes and misdeeds — including, since Manning’s day in kangaroo court, the discovery that she, too, was compromising classified information by running her official email through an illegal, unsecure “private” email server — the same Hillary Rodham Clinton’s punishment has, so far, been limited to a slow, agonizing fall from political grace.

This week, Manning once again finds herself in the news. She faces solitary confinement as punishment for a variety of “offenses” so minor that it’s nearly impossible to call them “offenses” with a straight face. The highlight: She is accused of possessing a tube of toothpaste that’s past its expiration date (I could be wrong here, but isn’t toothpaste in prison dispensed to inmates BY the prison?).

This week, Clinton once again finds herself in the news. She faces further drubbings in the pre-primary polls as punishment for getting caught lying, yet again, about her illegal handling of classified information. In New Hampshire, she now trails avowed socialist Bernie Sanders, who even a year ago would have been considered an interesting gadfly candidate at best, in the race for the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nomination.

I find it painful to compare Chelsea Manning to Hillary Clinton.

Chelsea Manning is an American heroine who knowingly exposed classified information for the purpose of revealing war crimes in Iraq and other government lawlessness, including Clinton’s orders to her State Department underlings to bug the offices of UN diplomats.

Hillary Clinton is a power-monger who carelessly exposed classified information because she believes she’s above the law. Like the late Richard Nixon, on whose impeachment papers she worked as a young congressional staffer, she believes that if  Hillary Clinton does it, it’s not illegal.

I probably owe Ms. Manning an apology for linking her name with that of a disreputable figure like Clinton. But, dissimilar as they are, it seems to me that the solution to both their problems is the same: They should both get out.

Chelsea Manning should get out of prison.

Hillary Clinton should get out of politics.

How’s that for a win-win solution?

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.

AUDIO VERSION

 

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Op-Eds

Social Security: An Inconvenient Truth

Leave a comment
English: Scanned image of author's US Social S...
Social Security card. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The first “top ten” Republican presidential nomination debate consisted almost entirely of empty calories, and it’s easy to see why. The event was put on by Fox “News,” its dominating presence was Donald Trump, and its focus was, simply, on who could get most militaristic about Iran and immigration.

Issues of substance? Fuhgeddaboudit … except for one brief exchange between New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas governor (and Fox talk show host) Mike Huckabee. Between the two of them, they revealed the narrow and dangerous range of thinking on the future of Social Security that characterizes both major American political parties. Even Bernie Sanders, allegedly a fire-breathing socialist, can’t seem to think outside that range on Social Security. A quick roundup of the positions:

Huckabee thinks that Social Security can and should be “saved” by switching from progressive federal income taxation to the “Fair” Tax, a 30% national sales tax.

Christie thinks that Social Security can and should be “saved” by increasing the retirement age by two years over a period of 25 years (i.e. every year or so, the retirement age goes up by one month) and “means testing” (i.e. stopping Social Security checks to senior citizens with retirement incomes in excess of $200k and $4 million in liquid assets).

Sanders thinks that Social Security can be “saved” by un-capping the tax that supports it. Right now, only the first $118,500 of each individual’s income is taxed for Social Security purposes. Sanders wants to remove that ceiling.

Social Security has long, and rightly, been characterized as the “third rail” of American politics. Those who touch it tend to die spectacularly gruesome political deaths. It has to be talked about, but nobody’s willing to talk about it outside the context of “saving” it.

That fear may be justified, but it’s also incredibly bad for America.

The ratio of retirees to current tax-paying workers is inverting — Baby Boomers are retiring, having had fewer children than their own parents.

Social Security’s  “trust fund” consists entirely of IOUs from a government already more than $18 trillion in debt and showing no signs of ever learning fiscal responsibility.

None of the gimmicks proposed by the likes of Huckabee, Christie and Sanders changes those fundamentals.  Even Social Security’s trustees predict insolvency by 2035, and their bookkeeping looks suspiciously optimistic.

Here’s what the politicians don’t want to tell you: Social Security is going to end.

Even if the US government hadn’t operated it as a Ponzi scheme, spending its revenues and paying old claims from new revenues, the demographic changes of the last 50 years would have made it untenable. And even absent those demographic changes, well, Ponzi schemes always collapse sooner or later.

It’s going to end. The only choice is whether it ends with a bang (total collapse and sudden mass destitution among the elderly) or a whimper (phasing it out with minimum possible harm to those counting on it).

Any politician who tells you otherwise is lying to you.

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.

AUDIO VERSION

 

 

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY