Election 2016: Think Three’s a Crowd? Try 2,000

July 27, 2016 Thomas L. Knapp Leave a comment

RGBStock.com Vote Pencil

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson is a “fringe candidate.” I’m not sure what definition of “fringe” Trump is using. Johnson is a former governor, elected twice as a Republican in a Democrat-leaning state. Trump’s main presidential qualification seems to be his legendary skill at trolling his opponents on Twitter.

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton hasn’t deigned to notice likely Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Instead she’s dispatched proxies like runner-up Bernie Sanders (“We have got to defeat Donald Trump. And we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. … this is the real world that we live in”) to heap scorn on the practicality of a post-Philadelphia campaign from Clinton’s left.

OK, I admit it: History and money say the odds are with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — that one of them will be the next president of the United States. The last time a third party or independent candidate really threatened to win the White House was 1992, when Ross Perot knocked down nearly 20% of the popular vote, having at one time polled ahead of both Republican incumbent George HW Bush and the eventual winner, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton.

But it’s strange year. It feels like almost anything could happen. And while Clinton and Trump are the frontrunners, the field is, well, YUGE.

As of July 27, the Federal Elections Commission lists 1,814 candidates for president on its web site.

It’s true that some of them have dropped out, or have been eliminated in party nomination processes, or haven’t done anything EXCEPT file an FEC “statement of candidacy.” Most of them won’t appear on any state ballots, or even register themselves with election authorities as write-in options.

On the other hand, some candidates who haven’t submitted FEC statements may show up on your ballot this November. Candidates are only required to file an FEC Form 2 once they’ve raised or spent $5,000. In some states, ballot access doesn’t cost that much.

If you’re an American voter, you have options. Republicans and Democrats will tell you that you’re “wasting your vote” if you don’t pick one of the two leading brands. I don’t think they’re right — what’s the point of voting if you’re not voting for who or what you actually support? — but even if they’re right, well, it’s your vote to waste, isn’t it?

For once I agree with Ted Cruz: If you vote, vote your conscience.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Think three’s a crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, St. George, Utah Spectrum, 07/27/16
“Election 2016: Think Three’s a Crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 07/27/16
“Election 2016: Think Three’s a Crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 07/27/16
“Election 2016: Think Three’s a Crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 07/28/16
“Election 2016: Think three’s a crowd? Try 2000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pahrump Valley, Nevada Times, 07/29/16
“Election 2016 — Think three’s a crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Newberry, South Carolina Observer, 07/29/16
“Election 2016: Think three’s a crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Dover, New Hampshire Foster’s Daily Democrat, 08/01/16
“Election 2016: Think three’s a crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Fayette, West Virginia Tribune, 08/01/16
“Think 3’s a crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Orangeburg, South Carolina Times & Democrat, 08/02/16
“Election 2016: Think three’s a crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Montgomery, West Virginia Herald, 08/02/16
“Election 2016: You have more than two choices,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Columbia, South Carolina Panorama, 08/02/16
“Think three’s a crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pacific Daily News [Guam], 07/28/16
“Think three’s a crowd? Try 2,000,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Green Bay, Wisconsin Press-Gazette, 07/28/16

Op-Eds

Unicorns, Mermaids, Politicians, and “Free”

July 22, 2016 Thomas L. Knapp Leave a comment

Free Kittens (photo from RGBStock)

Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler wants telephone companies to make robocall-blocking technology available to their customers. And he wants them to do so “at no charge.”

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, riffing on primary opponent Bernie Sanders’s campaign platform (and on a less ambitious proposal from sitting president Barack Obama), now supports “tuition-free” college for the children of families with annual incomes of less than $125,000.

“Free” may be the most popular word in the English language. It’s at least as popular as “unicorn” and “mermaid” (two other words for things that don’t exist in real life).

Everything that’s real costs something. When we talk about making something “free,” what we’re really talking about is shifting those costs, either to other payers or to some different method of pricing or payment.

In the Internet age, we’ve become used to the idea of “free” online services. But, as I am far from the first to point out, those services aren’t “free.” They’re paid for by advertisers. What are the advertisers buying? They’re buying us: Our information, our eyeballs, our attention. They’re willing to provide us with email, search services, games, the works … in exchange for the opportunity to sell things to us. And their costs for providing those services are built into the prices of the things we buy from them. So really, we’re the ones who are paying after all.

The technology that Tom Wheeler wants the phone companies to offer to all of us “at no charge” costs money to develop. It costs money to deploy. It costs money to maintain. Who’s going to pay those costs? Tom Wheeler? No. The phone companies. And their customers. Even if it’s not broken out as a listed charge on your phone bill, either your bill will go up or the service you’re paying for will be cut back somewhere else.

Ditto “free” college education. Campuses don’t build or maintain themselves. Contractors and staff build and maintain them. Professors don’t lecture at their own expense and out of the goodness of their hearts. They must be paid. As must the phone bills, the electric bills, the water bills, etc.

Clinton’s plan isn’t a plan for free college. It’s a plan to make college 100% taxpayer-subsidized. There’s a difference. Words mean things, and we should be very clear on just who’s going to pay for Hillary Clinton’s plan. Hint: It won’t be Hillary Clinton.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Unicorns, Mermaids, Politicians, and ‘Free,'” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 07/22/16
“Unicorns, mermaids, politicians, and ‘free,'” by Thomas L. Knapp, Newberry, South Carolina Observer, 07/25/16
“Unicorns, mermaids, politicians, and ‘free,'” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pahrump Valley, Nevada Times, 07/27/16
“When ‘free’ really isn’t free,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Charleston, West Virginia Gazette Mail, 07/27/16
“Unicorns are Free too!” by Thomas L. Knapp, Florence, Alabama Courier Journal, 08/02/16
“Unicorns, Mermaids, Politicians, and ‘Free,'” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader [Iowa], 08/04/16

Op-Eds

In Support of the Open Carry Society

July 20, 2016 Thomas L. Knapp 3 Comments

Gun photo from RGBStock

“I don’t care if it’s constitutional or not at this point,” Cleveland police union president Stephen Loomis told CNN as Republicans gathered in his city for their 2016 national convention. “I want [Ohio governor John Kasich] to absolutely outlaw open-carry in Cuyahoga County until this RNC is over.”

Kasich, to his credit, demurred, responding “Ohio governors do not have the power to arbitrarily suspend federal and state constitutional rights or state laws as suggested.”

“Open carry” — that is, legal recognition of the right to carry a weapon without concealing it from view — is a hot topic this week, not only due to Loomis’s appeal for suspension of the US Constitution in Ohio, but in the aftermath of a July 17 gunfight in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in which three police officers and a former US Marine from Kansas City were killed.

The police version of the Baton Rouge incident is that 29-year-old Gavin Long “lured” police officers to his location where he “intentionally targeted and assassinated” them. Left unexplained is why several officers rushed to his location on the basis of a 911 call (not made by Long himself) reporting something perfectly legal in 44 states, including Louisiana: A man carrying a gun.

Yes, perfectly legal. Only California, Florida, Illinois, New York, South Carolina, and the District of Columbia prohibit the open carry of firearms. Some other states require a permit, but those schemes as well as the prohibitions are clearly unconstitutional.

Did Long “lure” police officers to their “assassinations” or did he respond to actions he perceived as an armed attack by police in a city on edge since the July 5 police killing of a black man, caught on camera? We may never know. But we can and should draw this lesson from Baton Rouge and from Cleveland:

For some reason, police seem to consider open carry of firearms, even where formally legal (the US Constitution says it’s legal everywhere in America, but that’s another column), to constitute prima facie evidence of criminal intent. It isn’t, and treating it as such can only lead to unnecessary violent outcomes.

More than 100 million Americans own more than 300 million guns.

An infinitesimal portion of those gun owners commit crimes using those guns, and that tiny criminal fraction would do so whether open carry (or concealed carry) was legal or not, because committing crimes is what criminals do.

It neither is nor should be the responsibility of millions of non-criminal gun-owning Americans to coddle and cater to hoplophobia (“a mental aberration consisting of an unreasoning terror of gadgetry, specifically, weapons”) on the part of their fellow citizens, or especially of their putative employees, the police.

Guns, and gun owners, are here to stay. Get used to us.

[Correction: The original version of this op-ed listed Texas as a state prohibiting open carry. Thanks to MamaLiberty for letting me know that Texas now has a “permit” system under which open carry is legal – TLK]

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“In Support of the Open Carry Society,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 07/21/16
“In support of the open carry society,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pahrump Valley, Nevada Times, 07/22/16
“In Support of the Open Carry Society,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Uintah Basin, Utah Standard, 07/26/16