Brian Richard Wright (Founding Libertarian) Dead at 73

By Scotty Boman, Editor of Michigan Libertarian

Kevin Kangas , Matt Karshis and Brian Wright at the Oakland County Libertarian’s Christmas Party in 12/2017. (Diane Szabla has her back to us. The Szablas were very gracious hosts). Photo by Claranna Gelineau.

Michigan – On February 1^st, the liberty movement lost a devoted writer, activist, philosopher and leader. Brian R. Wright

Brian Wright

succumbed to Kidney disease; a disease had previously claimed his mother. Also his brother and father had passed away in their early 50’s. He is survived by his former wife, and long-time friend Rose Wright. He is also survived by his close friends Randy and Diane Szabla along with many others.

Brian was a creative writer who authored dozens of books on philosophy and alternative political thought. He spent several years as a Webmaster and Newsletter Editor with the Libertarian Party of Michigan. Long-time member Jerry Bloom commented, “He was a good guy and will be missed” He has been a liberty activist most of his life and was a founding member of the Libertarian Party of Michigan. He is the author of several books. While his deteriorating health took a toll on his intrepid commentary, his blog and website are still up for now:

https://www.brianrwright.com/Coffee_Coaster/

Brian Wright’s Early Life

Born in Kalamazoo Michigan in 1949, he grew up near Kansas City, and later his family moved to Oklahoma City. He discovered seminal libertarian writings, in a bookmobile, which inspired him to join Barry Goldwater’s 1964 Presidential campaign. Around 1968 he moved to Detroit and earned his BSME from Wayne State University around 1971, at which point he became a passionate voice for Ayn Rand’s artistic vision of heroic individualism.

Brian Helping to Build a New Party

Brian was a founding member of the Libertarian Party of Michigan. As part of the “The Libertarian Party of Michigan Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Project,” He wrote about his involvement in the 1972, within a year of when the Libertarian Party of Michigan was formed. There were a couple different gatherings that year.  The most frequently referenced event was a party, that Summer, in Taylor Michigan at the home of Kathryn Augustin and Pete McAlpine. Brian was there, and he was also at Oak Park the home of Sam Harris. Randy Szabla recalls seeing him there along with Johnny and Diane Garner. He recalls that, “there were very few people at the Oak Park meeting where people were excited about starting the party.”
Kathryn Augustin described him as a

… lifelong advocate for freedom–political, economic and personal.  Supporter of like-minded persons ( both in and outside the party).  Searching for answers to liberate everyone from the elite, and power control freaks.  A tireless writer and communicator.

His friend and former wife Rose Wright noted,

I mourn and will miss him forever.  (besides my father)  Brian was the most honest man I’ve ever known, passionately dedicated to the cause of liberty above all else.

Early and Recent Newsletter Editor

He was Editor of the Michigan Libertarian from 1979 through 1981. Then he became state Chair from 1982 to 1984. Then he stepped up to Edit the Newsletter, again, in 2009 where he and out-going editor Greg

Brian R. Wright

Stempfle over-saw and facilitated the transition from a hard-copy to virtual Newsletter format. This work also ended the need for the separate publication of LPMOnline, which was created by the late Greg Dirasian. Brian continued producing, and often writing for, the virtual version of the Michigan Libertarian through 2013, when he stepped down from that roll.

Long-time Webmaster

Since 2004, Brian looked at other options for achieving liberty in our time, including participation in the Free State Project. In 2008 he returned to Michigan and stepped up to the task of further developing a new website.

Brian served as Webmaster before and during his service as Newsletter Editor.  After the departure of Greg Dirasian, who had designed the earlier lpmich.org website, the Party needed to develop an all new website in 2007.  Brian served as Webmaster for the Sharepoint based website, then in 2013 he and Scotty Boman transferred all of the legacy content into a WordPress site.  This was the last time such a large migration of content was initiated; the site created in 2013 now serves as the platform of the Libertarian Party of Michigan Historical Archives.

Political Campaigns

Brian ran for office at least 8 times under the Libertarian banner. In 1982 and 1986 he ran for Secretary of State. In 1980 and 1982 he was a United States House of Representatives candidate. He ran to serve in the Michigan House in 1984.

In 1994 and 2014 he was a candidate for the Board of governors at his Alma Mater, Wayne State University. Then he ran, again, to represent District 38 in the State House in 2018.

Planning for Life After Life

Brian made plans for the end of his life.  At one time he was a member of the Cryonics Institute, however he later decided to live on through others. He wanted for himself the same arrangement he made a decade earlier for his mom at Farmington Hills Generations, where following cremation he instead opted to hold a later private memorial service for her.

Rose Wright said,

In terms of an ‘afterlife’ he always admired his dad for donating his body to the Michigan State University  Medical School. So he too offered whatever organs might benefit future users, in his case The Gift of Life asked only for his eyes.  He’d have loved the symbolism. More sentimentally, he got surprising comfort from my oft repeated metaphor “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”

Those who wish to honor Brian can donate to Gift of Life here:  https://giftoflifemichigan.org/become-a-donor

Copyright 2023 Permission granted to reproduce with attribution to Scotty Boman.

Judicial Committee Ruling Resets LEC, Special Convention to Follow

By Scotty Boman

Link to the January 2023 Michigan Libertarian

All Rights Reserved 2023. Please see the end of this article for fair use guidelines. *

Michigan – On December 19^th the Libertarian Party of Michigan (LPM) Judicial Committee (JC) issued the following statement regarding an appeal by Wayne County Affiliate Chair Andrew Chadderdon:

On November 18^th, Mr. Chadderdon submitted an appeal to the Judicial Committee (JC). Mr. Chadderdon (the Appellant) alleged that the body (the Appellees) violated the Libertarian Party of Michigan bylaws by conducting improperly noticed business at the July 9th Candidate Nominating Convention.

All interested parties were given an opportunity to submit argumentation for and against the appeal. The JC reviewed all of the submissions and conducted a hearing on December 9^th, allowing all parties to further argue their cases. The submissions, hearing recording, ruling, and concurring opinion can be reviewed in the Judicial Committee (Public Access) folder.

On Tuesday, December 13^th, the JC voted to grant Mr. Chadderdon the appeal, on all points. The vote of no confidence, the election of officers, and the election of Congressional district representatives conducted at the Candidate Nominating Convention on July 9^th are to be considered out of order as a violation of our bylaws and parliamentary procedures. The Libertarian Executive Committee shall be reverted to its composition as of July 8^th, with Mr. Chadderdon assuming the Chair. Any actions taken by the erroneous board which are of a continuing nature are null and void.

Please take the time to review the detailed analysis in the ruling in the Judicial Committee (Public Access) folder. Also please note the concurring opinion provided by JC member, Bob Roddis, Esq.

A link to the documents, where people speaking for and against the appeal, are posted here:
https://michiganlp.org/wp-json/civicrm/v3/url?u=13639&qid=4332060

Some Members express Outrage at Judicial Committee Ruling

District 5 Representative David Canny Commented:

The net result of the JC ruling is that, as a party, we are right back to where we were prior to the July convention; divided on one of the most basic issues to a political party. Do its members have the right to choose their leaders, representatives and party direction or does an unelected chair get to hand pick board members and unilaterally dictate the party agenda.

While the Judicial Committee likely ruled correctly on appeals related to the officer elections and the filling of district representative vacancies over issues of notification it totally disregarded the will of the members and their vote and the precedent established of filling these seats at past conventions in a like manner.

I have two other issues regarding the Judicial Committee.

The first is that the JC ruling on the first element of the appeal, that the convention was a “special convention” went against the opinion of all three certified and highly credential parliamentarians that ruled that the convention was not a special convention. Even the Mises Caucus parliamentarian brought in by Andrew Chadderdon stated that the convention was neither a regular or a special convention but something different and then proceeded to make up rules for the “unicorn” convention.

My second concern is that all three members of the committee were obligated to recuse themselves from ruling on this matter based on:

• Being members of the Mises Caucus, a caucus that in multiple internal caucus communications referred to the appeal being filed by the caucus. One can not rule on an appeal filed by a group that they belong to and be perceived as unbiased.
• Notification was a key element of this appeal and one member of the Judicial Committee as Communications Director took it upon himself to refuse to send the no confidence motion notification to members after the Chair said that it would be sent and the Secretary directed the ComDir to do so. This same JC member sent a communication to Mises Caucus members that officers would be elected at the July convention but that communication did not go to the members at large.

A Judicial Committee Member Responds

Judicial Committee Member Connor Nepomuceno had a different take on the ruling:

Before I begin, I would like to point out that LPedia has published a fact based article detailing this chain of events and archiving much of the documentation related to it. Anyone who wants to understand these circumstances should read it and the documentation in full. At the very least, I would hope that the membership reads the Judicial Committee Ruling so that they understand what the Judicial Committee actually said instead of the misrepresentations by Mr. Canny.

Let me say in very explicit terms: No one is contesting the notion that the membership can remove officers and elect their leadership. However, our bylaws detail the conditions by which they must be conducted, including providing proper notice to all members about the intent to take such action so that all members can exercise their right to participate in such a decision.

Dave Canny asserts that the convention cannot be a special convention because it is “regularly scheduled”, and therefore no notice would be required to add business, which is a claim not supported at all in either the LPMI bylaws or Robert’s Rules of Order, also known as RONR (which is a governing document of the LPMI considered part of the bylaws).  The LPMI bylaws do however specifically state in Article VI Section 1 that “During odd-numbered years, the Party shall hold a regular state convention between April 1 and July 31, performing such business as required herein.”  There are no other statements that would give any support to the claim that a regular convention could occur in an even number year such as 2022.  Additionally, to take the assumption that an even year convention could be a regular convention would render several additional provisions of the bylaws completely absurd and inoperable. For example, the LPMI bylaws call for the terms of party officers in Article III Section 1, and terms of the Judicial Committee in Article V Section 1, to last for 2 years, from the end of one regular convention until the end of the next regular convention.  How could this be the case if a regular convention occurs on both even and odd years?

According to RONR, “The only business that can be transacted at a special meeting is that which has been specified in the call of the meeting.” (RONR 9:15).  The LPMI Bylaws state explicitly in Article VI Section 4.2 that “The Executive Committee shall issue a call to each state convention to all affiliates no later than 60 days prior to the scheduled date of the state convention”.  RONR 25:7 further states that “Rules contained in the bylaws cannot be suspended – no matter how large the vote in favor of doing so or how inconvenient the rule in question may be – unless the particular rule specifically provides for its own suspension….”.  Claims that any number of delegates at any gathering of the party are allowed to violate those rules are simply false, and the actions addressed in the appeal to the JC were reversed accordingly and properly.

Mr. Canny has falsely claimed that he, as a single member of the LEC, had the right to add insufficiently noticed business to the agenda after the deadline for new business. He has attempted to direct party staff outside of his authority. He has done both of these things without even attempting to call a vote of the LEC. In doing these things and more, he has grossly ignored the processes of our board and violated the bylaws repeatedly. He is the one who has in fact made dictatorial edicts without any just authority to do so. In so doing, it is he that has violated the rights of his fellow board members and the party members who couldn’t come to the July Candidate Nominating Convention and participate in unnoticed elections.  All of the rest of his accusations are addressed thoroughly in my Concurring Opinion to the Judicial Committee Ruling.

How the LPM Got Here

The root cause of the dispute was the nearly simultaneous resignation of Chair Tim Yow, and First Vice Chair Ben Boren. Also, they did this shortly before the July Convention.  The LPM Bylaws explicitly say, “The first vice chair shall act as assistant to the chair and shall perform the duties of the chair in his or her absence.” However, they don’t mention what happens if there is no first chair to fill the post. As a result, officers applied Roberts Rules of Order and elevated Second Vice Chair Andrew Chadderdon to Chair. Because of the way Yow and Boren timed their resignations, there was not enough time to notify delegates that the convention would elect officers to fill vacancies. From this point the events that lead to the election of the Libertarian Executive Committee (that served from July 9^th to December 19^th) took place.

The Man Who Set These Events In Motion Speaks Out

Resigned Chair Tim Yow commented:

I trust this maneuver will cause Andrew Chadderdon, Connor Nepomuceno and the others on the judicial committee to lose to NOTA, at the state and local levels, for years to come. I am looking forward to seeing that happen.

As for the state party, they’ll bounce back. The membership consists of so many young liberty giants who are wise beyond their years who will, without a doubt, do the right thing and turn the party into a better version of its old self, once they permanently bench these bad apples who have put their incompetence and misplaced loyalties on full display. The will of the members should have been honored, not vetoed. If I had been able to attend that last convention, I would be demanding reimbursement from those 4 for my travel expenses incurred on that weekend.

The Michigan Libertarian reached out to former Resigned Vice Chair Boren, but he had not replied at the time of this posting.

Members Submit Special Convention Petitions in Response to Judicial Committee

On January 3^rd a group of party members submitted petitions for special concurrent conventions. One petition called for the filling of vacancies of both Vice Chairs, Treasurer, Representatives for the 2^nd, 6^th, 8^th, 13^th, and 14^th Districts, as well as any other vacancies that may occur prior to or at the convention.

The other petition called for a vote of “no confidence” and subsequent removal of Andrew Chadderdon from Chairmanship.

On December 26^th former LPM Chair and long-time archivist Gregory Stempfle sent out an email with links to the petitions. Others may have sent out other emails, to their contacts, but the author only got one.  In it he gave some background on the dispute.

Who Crafted the Petitions?

According to the email, a group of at least a dozen party activists, some of whom were directly impacted by the JC ruling created the petitions. They decided on a pair of calls for special conventions. One would be to fill officer vacancies and one is to remove the chair.

The authors wrote the petitions in a manner that would allow delegates to attend two conventions on the same day

The email included a link to join or renew ones membership.

The email instructed signers to send images of signed petitions to either of two people: District 10 Representative Joe Brungardt or District 5 Representative David Canny.  Before the JC ruling Joe Brungardt was serving as Chair, having been elected by delegates at the July 9^th State Convention.

According to Article VI Conventions Section 3:

The Party shall hold a special convention within 45 days upon the call of the Executive Committee or when petitions are submitted by 10% of the current membership, specifying the purpose for the special convention.

So members should have received a call to convention prior to the time of this article’s posting.  There may, however, be a third special convention.  Because of the bylaws time restrictions, it could not be on the same date.

A Third Petition Targets Circulators of the First Two Petitions for Investigation

A third petition is now in circulation.  It calls for a special convention to address a “motion to appoint an investigatory committee to consider possible misconduct by Dave Canny, Greg Stempfle and Joe Brungardt in the creation of the petition which was ultimately submitted on January 3^rd, 2023.”

Chairperson Andrew Chadderdon expressed support for the additional convention saying,

In light of potential misconduct in the creation of the petitions that were circulated for the call for a special convention to fill vacancies and call for a motion of no confidence in the chair, an additional petition is being circulated in the party to call for the creation of an investigatory committee to look further into that conduct and determine if it was improper.  This committee is part of the formal and transparent disciplinary proceedings called for in the LPMI bylaws.

One of the targeted people is District 10 Representative Joe Brungardt. He was elected Chair at the July Convention, but his position was revoked by the Judicial committee Ruling.  He said,

I welcome an investigation and demand a very public apology when my name is cleared.

At the time of publication, nobody has submitted this third petition, and the LEC has not issued the call to convention or set a date and location for it. February 17^th is 45 days after Friday January 3^rd. Saturday March forth is 60 days after January 3^rd.

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* Because of the ubiquitous nature of this drama, I asked for a break from the policy (originally set up when Bill Hall was Chair) that excludes reports on factional conflicts from the Michigan Libertarian. The current chair did not wish to grant an exception to this policy, so I went ahead and made it a personal blog post.

Note that I only included links to petitions that had already been submitted. I am not writing this article to promote something, but rather reporting on an existential topic.

Please share this with anyone who has an interest with the LPM. Permission to reproduce (as is) with attribution granted.

Permission to quote portions granted, with a link to the original article.

Aafiaa Siddiqui Unjustly Ensnared in “War on Terror” Dragnet

I normally publish my own content on this blog, but when Ms. Friedemann sent me this work, I felt a larger audience should read it.  Feel free to repost (unedited) with full attribution to Karina Friedemann. Also share the link as a comment on this article.

By Karina Friedemann

Most of the world has stopped thinking about the long-incarcerated detainees of the War on Terror that was declared by George W. Bush after 9/11/2001. In truth, Federal government and Israel-connected Homeland Security agents had already started investigating and raiding Islamic organizations and charities around the US earlier that year. Of all the Muslim political prisoners of the US, one person in particular stands out: the graceful, articulate and brilliant young Dr. Aafia Siddique.

All the other Muslim War On Terror prisoners who were extra-judicially rendered in Afghanistan or Pakistan and sold for bounty to the US have been male (to my knowledge). Everyone at Guantanamo is male. All of the Afghan militants held in Bagram prison are male. Only Aafia Siddique is female. Long before anyone knew her name, she was known as the “Grey Lady of Bagram.” She and her children were held and abused for years, separately, inside the walls of the US military prison in Afghanistan.

After the US invaded Afghanistan they dropped leaflets down from airplanes offering between $2000-6000 per head for any suspected terrorists. As a result, a market was created for kidnappers. Thousands of random men were detained and handed over to the US for interrogation. Aafia Siddique was disappeared in Pakistan in the spring of 2003.

In the recently published book, “Don’t Forget Us Here: Lost and Found in Guantanamo,” Mansoor Adayfi, a Yemeni tourist thus detained without charge, explained that while there were a handful of prisoners there that actually knew Osama bin Laden or belonged to some kind of Islamic fighting group, the vast majority were completely innocent, non-violent people being held for years and years and brutally humiliated and tortured in an attempt to force them to confess to being people they were not, and that they had committed crimes they knew nothing about.

It has always been a mystery as to why Aafia and her children were abducted while on their way to visit relatives. Was she the victim of a vindictive ex-husband’s slander? Did someone utter her name while being waterboarded? Was it her charity efforts as part of the Muslim Students Association to collect boots and winter clothing to send to displaced families fleeing war?

Aged 34, speaking fluent English, having earned a PhD in Child Development at MIT and Brandeis before returning to her native country of Pakistan, Aafia with her gentle eyes and happy demeanor does not fit the profile of an Islamic terrorist. It seems unlikely that this arrest, made most likely by ISI, Pakistani security services, was a random error in judgment.

An important clue emerged as a result of the Peace and Justice Foundation’s recent series of Freedom Rallies in various cities to support and raise awareness of US political prisoner Dr. Aafia Siddique. While most of America has forgotten her, or has no idea who she is, a very enthusiastic detractor crawled out of the woodwork: Sam Westrop, director of the Zionist extremist hate group that stalks Muslim leaders, “Islamist Watch.” He published a very dangerous hit piece on Aafia’s supporters in both the Middle East Forum and National Review, – publications with long and close connections to Bush-era neocons and anti-Muslim smear campaigners Daniel Pipes and Steve Emerson, who facilitated the imprisonment and deportation of Muslim and Arab academics’ for their political views by feeding false intelligence to the US government via their “think tank” the Investigative Project and other extreme right-wing racist organizations whose main objective is trying to prevent Palestinians and American Muslims attain political equality. After these groups failed to prevent local Muslims from building the golden-domed Roxbury Mosque, I had totally forgot about them.

But here Sam Westrop was, taking pictures of protesters without asking their permission and trying to get an interview with Mauri Saalakhan, the primary organizer of the event. Sam’s intense enthusiasm for the cause of undermining the case to free Aafia Siddique after 18 years really made it crystal clear that taking her down was one of his organization’s pet projects.

But why did the pro-Israel lobbyists target this cute little grad student? Westrop leaves us a very important clue by linking to a press conference, covered by CNN, two years after she was abducted. US Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller on May 27, 2004 displayed Aafia’s face alongside 6 men declared as America’s Most Wanted. Americans were to be “on the lookout” for them. Mueller claimed, “Aafia Siddique is an al Qaeda operative and facilitator, she attended colleges in the Boston area, and is believed to have left Boston in January of 2003.” Literally that’s all they could come up with. Bent over in agony from bullet wounds to her stomach, Aafia was sentenced to 86 years in US Federal prison by Judge Richard Berman for “attempted murder” of heavily armed US soldiers in an Afghan police station in 2008 as she allegedly tried to escape from custody. Her supposed “crime” was committed in Afghanistan by a Pakistani citizen. So by what stretch of the imagination should she go to trial in the United States? Keep in mind that al Qaida is not even known for recruiting female militants. The neocons have always been known to use the labels “al Qaeda” and “Islamofascist” extremely loosely.

It sure looks like these right wing Zionist criminals were intimately involved in providing false intelligence to the US government in order to help the US create an illusion of “doing something” against the “Islamic threat” while simultaneously getting rid of a popular Muslim community organizer and public speaker. Boston neocon fingerprints are all over this case. Their time-worn approach, which they also used against the Roxbury mosque, was to feed fake terrorist allegations to the media, while simultaneously creating court cases over lesser crimes like money laundering or even civil infractions such as parking zoning laws. Similarly, at Aafia’s trial there was zero mention of her belonging to any terrorist group even though news agencies had claimed that she had gone to LIberia to sell diamonds in order to raise funds for al Qaeda.

In 1996, Professor Noam Chomsky said fondly of Aafia, who was his student, “Aafia Siddique is an Institute in her self. She will bring change wherever she goes.”

Did the FBI target Aafia as the next Malcolm or the next H Rap Brown?

Aafia Siddique was an enthusiastic Muslim community organizer who was diligently engaged in outreach to explain Islam to her American fellow students, a philosopher who taught feminist theory based on theology, and who encouraged her fellow Muslim students to upgrade their religion. She was very much part of the movement to modernize Islamic political and moral thought to make it make sense for this century. She was a Hafiz of the Quran. She was also an idealist. Katherine Ozment describes in Boston Magazine how far-fetched seem the claims that this young mother and student had the time or the resources, let alone the desire to join al Qaida.

Retired Professor Chomsky issued a statement to be read at the Freedom Rally in Boston that took place on October 23, 2021:

“The US “war on terror” has left a shameful record of torture, vicious brutality, brutal crimes of state, still continuing. Aafiaa Siddiqui’s ordeal is one of the most disgraceful chapters of this trail of horror. She should be freed and compensated to the extent that it is at all possible. And we should all be asking ourselves whether we want this is what we want our country to be.”

Pastor Neil Carrick Files Civil Rights Lawsuits in Federal Court

Pastor Neil Carrick has long been an advocate of people’s right to structure their families according to their spiritual and personal beliefs instead of government mandated templates.

He is most known for his efforts to actualize the separation of marriage and state by suing to decriminalize private religious marriage ceremonies that do not meet the license standards for Michigan.

These links give some background that help put this latest effort in context.

• Libertarians Issue Statement In Support Of Reverend Neil Carrick On Religious Freedom.

• Rev. Neil Carrick To Speak to Wayne County Libertarians on Marriage and Religious Freedom.

• News Release from Neil Carrick.

• Neil Carrick Files Suit for Religious Freedom

• He was luncheon speaker at the 2015 Libertarian Party of Michigan convention.
• Neil Carrick Speaks on Religious Freedom at Wayne Co. LP Meeting.

Pastor Neil Carrick and related parties including his daughter, couples and church will file Civil Rights Lawsuits in Federal Court. Pastor Carrick was the Pastor who brought a lawsuit against the state of Michigan will be bringing two lawsuits with other parties.

The first one is against the Wayne Country Count regarding adult adoptions. in 2007 Neil tried to adopt an adult who he has known as his child since 2001 when he began care of her when she was 16 and her 1 year old daughter. The Wayne County Courts process creates a higher bar and special rules beyond that the code of Michigan provides. He was told by Wayne County Court employees he would not be able to meet the requirements because of these special rules.

The state law or codes for Adult Adoption has minimum rules.

n Michigan that state code appears to suggest that:

The Requirements for Adult Adoption are very minimum: 

• Both individuals are adults, that is, 18 years of age or older;
• Both the adoptee and the adoptive parent are competent;
• The adoptee gives his or her consent to the adoption.
• If a legal parent of the prospective adoptee is alive, he or she is given notice of the proceedings, but consent is not required. The only one who needs to consent to an adult adoption is the adoptee.

Pastor Carrick and his daughter will be filing the lawsuit in the coming weeks.

Pastor Carrick along with other parties will be filing a lawsuit regarding the marriage laws of Michigan. The suit will seek to decriminalize private religious marriage ceremonies that do not meet the license standards for Michigan.Pastor Carrick will be joined by a congregation and potentially religious organizations and couples.

You can find out more at carrickfamily.com in the coming days.

 

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Forgive me for the complexity and length of this email. This is regarding to potential upcoming lawsuits.

I will try my best to explain this. But if you do not have a good understanding of the difference between de-factor and de-jure I would highly suggest that you spend a few minutes understanding the differences between the two.

As many of you know I filed a lawsuit against the state of Michigan some time back regarding Marriage. In particular Religious Marriage vs State Marriage.

In the end the typical issue of standing become problematic. The state arguing I did not have standing over the lack of harm basically.

I have advocated for some time that Family life should have limited governance involvement.

I have a daughter that is not my biological or adopted daughter. But I established as being my de-factor daughter in minor but significant ways in the Michigan Court as part of other cases.

Michigan has code regarding “Adult Adoption”.

In most counties I would most likely be able to file for adult adoption and successfully be granted it. But because of issues not related to this adult child it will most likely be thrown out and I be denied. I have an arrearage from another family court case that I have made arrangements on that happened during a period when I was disabled after a series of strokes. And another that is actually a result of the local administrative Friend of the Court system making continual mistakes because of a flawed IT system.

I have already contacted the Court Administrator for the Wayne County Court who is asking their General Counsel to respond to me.

My thoughts are they are going to in typical (court) fashion not find a solution that is reasonable but will kick to the Judge who would have to make a decision and deny my motion/petition regarding adoption. If they do it will create a “standing” for a lawsuit. If the Judge does so based on a reading of the local court rules I will be left with having to file for an appeal within the state court. If the Judge denies it based on a reading pf the state law than I will walk a civil lawsuit into the Federal Courthouse in Detroit.

Having said that I have performed weddings involving situations that I believe could end in me having standing.

Kindest Regards,

Neil Carrick

Please Blame Me! I Voted Libertarian.

Last Tuesday was the greatest election in my lifetime.  Finally we libertarians have statist politicians right where we want them. If we play our cards right politicians will be supporting more policies that respect individual liberty, while distancing themselves from those that don’t.

At first glance this may appear to be a celebration of Donald Trump’s victory.  It isn’t.  Rather, it is a celebration of libertarians attaining the balance of power at the Federal and state level. Here the phrase “balance of power” refers to the attainment of a greater number of votes by an alternative party candidate, then the margin of victory between the two establishment party candidates. For people trapped in the bipartisan paradigm, this is a situation to be avoided.  For those who have broken free, it is cause for celebration.

In the days leading up to the election, Donald Trump supporters kept pushing the idea that a vote for Libertarian Gary Johnson was a vote for Hilary Clinton, while Clinton supporters kept pushing the idea that a vote for Johnson was a vote for Trump. Taken literally, either one of these statements is blatant nonsense, and is an outright contradiction when taken together.  But at their core, these remarks were a symptom of fear by devotees of both establishment parties that the Libertarian Party’s nominee would attain a balance of power in the election, and they thought libertarians would be afraid of this as well.  To some extent they were right; many people who thought Gary Johnson was the best choice chickened out in the voting booth, and voted for one establishment party candidate out of fear of the other.  I addressed the folly of this mindset in my previous Blog post, “Voting Your Hopes And Not Your Fears In 2016” where I wrote:

If your vote (and the votes of others for the same candidate) is more than the margin of victory for either establishment party candidate, then your vote is more powerful than ever!  Now you and your comrades have done much more than send a message that you want change in a direction that is consistent with the platform of your candidate and his or her party. You have become a voting block that the winning party must prevent the opposition from recruiting in the next cycle.  The winner must appease you by incorporating some of your policies.  At the same time the loser will actively seek out those who are of like mind to secure future victories, and this can only be accomplished by adopting some of the policy positions that your favorite candidate and party advocate.  A win-win for you.

Well now the selection of the electors is over and Clinton supporters are blaming those who voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson or Green Party Candidate Jill Stein for Trump’s victory.  If the results had been reversed, Trump supporters would be placing the blame on us instead. Unfortunately, many Johnson voters are feeling guilty, or dodging culpability by arguing that Libertarian votes affected both establishment parties equally. Whether or not the numbers support this last claim, the mindset that views citing such numbers as necessary is ultimately defeatist and condemns alternative parties to indefinite irrelevancy.

If all libertarian leaning voters held their ground and voted for the Libertarian nominee, I have no idea who the current President elect would be, but I do know that we would be a much greater force to be reckoned with. I do know that Libertarians would have earned Federal recognition as a minor party, and more states would recognize us a major party.  Most importantly, for the point I’m making here, supporters of the losing establishment party would still blame us.

In 2000 Ralph Nader and the Green Party finished with only 2.75% of the vote, but were blamed for the defeat of Al Gore by George W. Bush because of the narrow margin of victory in some states, especially Florida. Neither Ralph Nader nor the other Green Party Presidential candidates have done nearly so well since.  Though the claim that their participation in the election tipped the outcome in Bushes favor has been largely disputed, I think it is a good bet that many left-leaning voters have coward away from alternatives to the Democrat because they fear the so-called Nader effect.  By contrast, Johnson won 3.28% of the national popular vote while Trump and Clinton’s votes differed by less than a percent.  In Michigan Gary Johnson’s vote total was thirteen times as great as the difference between Trump and Clinton!  So if attempting to deflect blame didn’t work for Nader, how can it possibly work for us?  In my humble opinion it won’t and it shouldn’t.

We are at a crossroads.  We can either move full speed ahead and become players on the national stage, or retreat back to obscurity, cautiously avoiding the risk of tipping the scales in favor of the worst candidate.  If we are to move forward, we must be willing to be blamed for every electoral outcome until we finally win.  We must convince others that this course is a righteous one, and that our mission is more important than which of the establishment party candidates, wins a particular election.

No matter how bad the winner is, that winner will need to draw from the libertarian voting block to win.  This time that appears to be Donald Trump. As long as the Libertarian Party sticks to principal and doesn’t coddle the “lesser-of-two-evils” game he will need to go out of his way to win over libertarians if he doesn’t want the Libertarian Party to receive their votes in 2020.  The Democrats will be doing the same if they expect to defeat Trump.  It remains to be seen if they will be courting Green voters or Libertarians, or both on certain issues where Greens and Libertarians agree like marijuana, privacy, militarism and civil liberties … The more we refuse to chicken out, the harder they will try.

Down-ticket, a strong libertarian party can have leverage even in races it is unlikely to win.  If there is a critical piece of legislation we need passed, or rejected, we can make a deal.  We can strategically chose to run or not run a candidate in a given contest.  What about libertarian-Republicans or libertarian-Democrats?  If they are really all that libertarian (and some are) they will have no problem attracting libertarian votes and will have no reason to fear the participation of a Libertarian Party opponent.  Libertarian participation might even help them stick to principle; when establishment insiders try to lead them astray, libertarian-Republicans and libertarian-Democrats can pragmatically point to the participation of the Libertarian Party “spoiler” as a reason they can’t make an exception and vote for the tax increase or regulation that the establishment insider is trying to push.

So we win even if we lose, the establishment parties can decimate the Libertarian Party by championing a libertarian agenda, or they can ignore us at their peril and watch us grow until we become a major party nationally, but either way libertarians win.  Because we will have more liberty.  More importantly, America wins, because everyone will either have more freedom in a two party system that bent to the wishes of libertarians, the way they once did to the socialists, or Americans will have a three party system where candidates will no longer be able to win elections by simply making us fear the other candidate.  Instead they will need to give people a reason to vote for them, not against an opponent.

So take pride in your Libertarian vote.  Take the blame!  Embrace it! Own it! You have the power to demand more liberty, and don’t be shamed into doing otherwise!

Voting Your Hopes And Not Your Fears In 2016

The 2016 Presidential election is upon us, and once again the establishment parties are telling us that a vote for a third party candidate amounts to a vote for the “other candidate” who is supposedly much worse the their candidate.  If you’re excited about the prospect of a Hilary Clinton or Donald Trump Presidency, read no further; I’m not writing anything here that is likely to change your mind… Now for the rest of you…

If the thought of both a Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump Presidency turns your stomach, you may be thinking of voting for one of these two in order to stop the worst candidate from winning.  But don’t take the bait; this very thinking is the reason you are faced with such an abominable choice to begin with.

If you are leaning toward a third party candidate like Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, Darrel Castle or somebody else, you have probably been approached by Hilary Clinton supporters who insist that a vote for your favorite candidate is a vote for Trump, and Donald Trump supporters who insist that voting your conscience is a vote for Hilary.  This is a logical fallacy. There are two possibilities, either your vote determines the outcome of the election, or it doesn’t.

If your vote (and the votes of others for the same candidate) is less than the margin of victory for either establishment party candidate, then at least you and your comrades sent a message that you want change in a direction that is consistent with the platform of your candidate and his or her party. A minor victory.  If you vote with either establishment party candidate, you would be giving a nod of approval to that candidate.  In the case of an over-whelming victory by the “lesser evil” you chose, you would be giving a “mandate” to enact that candidates policies. A lose-lose for you.

If your vote (and the votes of others for the same candidate) is more than the margin of victory for either establishment party candidate, then your vote is more powerful than ever!  Now you and your comrades have done much more than send a message that you want change in a direction that is consistent with the platform of your candidate and his or her party. You have become a voting block that the winning party must prevent the opposition from recruiting in the next cycle.  The winner must appease you by incorporating some of your policies.  At the same time the loser will actively seek out those who are of like mind to secure future victories, and this can only be accomplished by adopting some of the policy positions that your favorite candidate and party advocate.  A win-win for you.

The reason that the choices keep getting worse is because the establishment parties and their accomplices in the mass media have found a strategy that works.  Ironically, It only works with the acquiescence of those who are most disgusted by it.  As long as there is the illusion of only two choices a candidate only needs to show his or her opponent is so horrifying, that anyone is better… and there is only one other choice.  The media keeps emphasizing the bi-partisan horse race with rigged polls that leave demographics out of the sample who would vote for a third-party alternative, or the polls will only ask about two candidates at first.  So this way, frustrated third-party supporters will feel increasingly marginalized, and begin to think they are “throwing their vote away” by voting their hopes and not their fears.

Here’s where things get really ugly.  If the establishment parties candidates were simply lame, but not scary, then many voters might still be willing to “throw their vote away” to send a message, but not if they were horrified by one of the establishment candidates, then all that matters is stopping that candidate.  This goes both ways.  SO THE WORSE THE TWO ESTABLISHMENT PARTY NOMINEES ARE, THE MORE THEY CAN COUNT ON YOU VOTING FOR ONE OF THEM!!! Taking the bait and voting for a lesser evil out of fear of the greater evil reinforces this atrocious bi-partisan political machine, and drives a race to the bottom whereby we can keep expecting worse and worse candidates.

Now the above seems to imply some level of collusion which smells of tin-foil hats and conspiracy theories right?  Well sort of.  Wherever two people and greed are gathered there is a conspiracy, and yes, there is genuine collusion.  The most visible and obvious example of this collusion is the Commission on Presidential debates.  It was created by the establishment parties to keep out other candidates. Before then, the League of Women voters hosted the debates, but they were no longer willing to limit the forum to two candidates.  Since the time of Ross Perot they have raised the bar to prevent any future three-way debates.  However, even without planned collusion, this mindset is bound to be encouraged by each of the major campaigns, and the outcomes are likely to be just as abysmal as long as voters take the bait.

But isn’t this election different?  Are the stakes much higher than a few policy issues?  Absolutely!  Especially for libertarians.  If you are a libertarian it is absolutely essential that you cast a vote for the Libertarian nominee in this election.

For the first time since the election of Abraham Lincoln, we have a chance to break the two party system for the foreseeable future!  Some might argue that Ross Perot’s Reform Party presented such a possibility and withered away quickly, but this is different. The Reform Party was really a ballot access vehicle for one independent candidate, whereas the Libertarian Party has been a nationally balloted party since 1972.  It has been on the vast majority of state ballots in every election since then and has been on the ballot in all fifty states on previous occasions.  Since the party’s founding about 600 Libertarians held elected or appointed offices . Since the party’s creation, 10 Libertarians have been elected to state legislatures. The Libertarian Party has a platform based on a specific ideology, libertarianism.

In Michigan, a political party whose top of ticket candidate earns over 5% of the vote caste for Secretary of State in the previous election is treated the same as a major party.  The only difference being that that Michigan election law reserves the phrase, “major party” for the top two vote getters, but other than that, there would be no difference.  So if Gary Johnson’s electors receive 154,040 votes in Michigan, the Libertarian Party of Michigan will effectively become a major party!  Most other states have similar laws.

In addition, Federal election laws will kick in that will make large sums of money available to the Libertarian Party thereby enabling it to overcome ballot obstacles in states where these problems still exist.  This last benefit is controversial among Libertarians, but I think Michael Emerling made the same points I would make.  Even being in the enviable position of being able to reject these funds would be a game changer. Being a federally recognized “minor party” is just a stones throw away from being a “major party.”

Having three major parties instead of two, would improve the candidates of the Republican and Democrat parties too; they would need to appeal to our hopes and not our fears.

Then there is the Holy Grail of Presidential elections… The Oval.  This is the first time in the Libertarian Party’s history when there is a reasonable probability of winning the election.  At first this claim may seem outrageous since even the most favorable polling doesn’t bring us to within a margin of error of earning a majority of electoral votes.  Here’s where the contingencies of the Twelfth Amendment of the US Constitution come into play.  If no candidate gets a majority of the electoral vote, then the election is up to the US House of Representatives, which must pick from the top three electoral vote getters. Given the fact that they are mostly Republicans who can’t stand Trump or Clinton, their would be a reasonable chance they would nominate a two-term Republican Governor turned Libertarian.  For the first time a number of Republican leaning major dallies, including the Detroit News, have chosen to endorse Gary Johnson because of their disgust with Trump.  Even former Republican nominee Mitt Romney who won’t vote for Trump, won’t rule out voting for Johnson.  So the idea of the House picking Johnson may not be that far-fetched.

How could Johnson get electors?  The untold story on the evening news is that there is enough support for Johnson in some states, that a plurality is not out of reach for the former New Mexico Governor.  Given the mass defections by Republicans who can’t stomach Donald Trump, a few disloyal electors can’t be ruled out either.

Another reason Republicans might settle on Johnson is that they would still be able to get their Vice Presidential nominee elected.  Under the Twelfth Amendment, only the top two electoral vote getters for Vice President could be considered.  This would probably be Mike Pence and Tim Kaine. The Republican Senate would probably choose Pence.  This leaves Bill Weld without a probable path to victory.

It is time to break the two party system and you have a chance to do it.  Furthermore, you would be voting for the most qualified candidate.  By himself, Governor Johnson has more executive experience than all of this years opposing Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates combined.  Unlike his opponents he is not likely to corner Russia and flirt with Nuclear war in Syria, nor is he a loose cannon who is likely to push the proverbial button in the midst of a temper tantrum.  Rather he supports a strong defense and a non-interventionist foreign policy. He is not under criminal investigation for endangering the national security or sexual assault. He has a positive message based on reducing the scope of government and affirming individual liberty.  He is a successful businessman who did not use repeated bankruptcies to avoid paying contractors.  He won’t be putting people in Prison for non-violent drug offenses.

He is a moderate, but here’s the biggest benefit to us more radical libertarians.  With the rise of the Libertarian Party, the new paradigm will no longer be left-versus right; rather it will be liberty versus authoritarianism, paving the way for a more clear cut ideological dichotomy moving forward.  Eventually this may devolve into another entrenched bi-partisan paradigm, but that tragedy is a way off.

Thomas Jefferson suggested that 20 years was too long to go without a revolution, the revolution we can win this Tuesday is way overdue.  Don’t blow this once in a lifetime opportunity by falling for the same old scare tactics.

My Michigan Primary Endorsements

I am a very active Libertarian. So when the general elections comes along, I will be voting for Libertarians. However, we are in primary season until August 2^nd. So I am taking a break from my endless push for Libertarian Party candidates to chime in on Tuesday’s primary.

First of all, I will address why there are no Libertarians in the primary. By state law only parties who reach a specific threshold for their top-of-ticket candidate are included in the primary system. We have not yet reached that threshold. So all of our candidates are nominated, at no cost to taxpayers, in Conventions and primaries.

I live in Detroit’s Second State Representative District. In this solidly Democratic district Bettie Cook-Scott stands out as best qualified. She has served in the state house before and has a demonstrable record of being an advocate for the residents of her district. One distinction is that she is a retired police Sergeant, who was supportive of the late Ron Scott and his efforts in the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality. She correctly articulated the fact that all police should oppose police brutality, because it is their job to serve the public and prevent violence, not excuse it. She was a law-enforcement officer who chose her job because she cared about people, and that is also why she wishes to return to the Michigan House.

On the topic of police, there are good cops and bad cops. I just endorsed one of the good ones. When I was awaiting trial, as a result of the conduct of a bad cop, only a couple friends showed up in support. One of those was Republican State Representative candidate Matt Schonert. I have known Matthew over the years as principled advocate for individual liberty. We first met through the 2008 Ron Paul campaign, and he has continued doing Paul’s work of trying to steer the Republican Party in a libertarian direction, as a Campaign for Liberty delegate, and now as a candidate for the fourth State Representative District.

Also, through Campaign for Liberty I have come to know an incumbent State Representative from the Forty Fourth District. He is Jim Runestad. Representative Runestad has consistently supported legislation that is designed to make Michigan’s government more transparent, and more respectful of individual rights, and more respectful of individual privacy. Before being elected to the Michigan House, Jim Runestad was on the Oakland County Commission. While there, he introduced the “Liberty Preservation Resolution,” which stated that Oakland County would not be complicit in indefinite detentions as defined in the 2012 NDAA.

Another incumbent State Representative from Oakland County is Martin Howrylak. Representative Howrylak is the type of conservative who truly believes in smaller, less invasive government. He has frequently introduced and supported legislation that shows he is willing to walk the walk. His principled support for liberty earned him the support of Oakland County Libertarians when he successfully ran for the Troy City Council in a non-partisan election. Opponents attempted to use this against him by claiming that Libertarians supported him because he was into drugs (A serious distortion of the Libertarian Platform). The attacks backfired since Howrylak’s personal commitment to conservative family values was beyond reproach; he is as clean as they come. Over the years I have found Howrylak to be a person who never compromises on matters of ethics decency, and honesty. If re-elected he will serve his constituents in the Forty First District with integrity.

During my visits to Lansing on behalf of Brass Roots and Our America Initiative, I have become acquainted with another outstanding State Representative, Triston Cole of Michigan’s One Hundred Fifth District. Cole is a principled supporter of the right of citizens to own and carry firearms. He is a sportsman who believes in protecting the environment with out infringing on private property rights. He believes in fixing roads without raising taxes, and he knows that entrepreneurs, not government, creates jobs. If re-elected I am sure he will be an asset to his district.

The Fifth State House District is a Democratic stronghold.  One of the candidates in the Democratic Primary is the host of the talk show, Stand Up Now. She is Cynthia Johnson.  Through her show, she has raised public awareness of the need for electoral reform in Detroit, a cause that I made the centerpiece of my City Clerk run in 2013.  She has also brought attention to police brutality problems in Detroit and has organized walks to draw attention to the lack of adequate public lighting in Detroit neighborhoods.  I am sure she could shine some light on Lansing politics as well.

At this point my fellow Libertarians might be feeling a bit worried about me. Won’t saying these nice things about candidates in other parties hurt their Libertarian opponents in November? Not to worry…

… their are none. There will be 69 Libertarians on the ballot in Michigan’s general election. None of them will be running against the above candidates.

Ramblings Of A Pro-Johnson Radical

I’ve been a Libertarian since the eighties. I am of the variety who believes ALL human interaction should be voluntary. Each election season, I have yelled at the TV while crumbling up proverbial newspapers and pelting the pundits who followed every move of “BOTH” candidates.

The World-wide web gave us a bit of a voice, but (in the average voters mind), the so-called MSM (ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, AP and UPI) remained the final word on which candidates were credible. Anyone could post stuff online, and everyone does. This paradigm of the establishment media as curators of truth is dissolving, but not gone.

Have I been alone in this frustration? Hardly. Until recently, this ideological shunning has been obvious to libertarians, and of no interest to people who were not minor party activists. For years the official political discourse had been about liberals, moderates, and extremists (meant in a scary-bad way).

Enter Ron Paul’s second Presidential run. Twenty years after being the Libertarian Parties nominee, he returned to Presidential Politics as a libertarian-Republican. While the  establishment did their best to marginalize him, they could no longer do so without being  called out.

Libertarians of all backgrounds were finding each other, and the Ron Paul campaign was the catalyst. Finally we were hearing the word “libertarian,” and people were using it correctly; but they were referring to the philosophy, not the party. Ron Paul supporters became the Campaign for Liberty, which has attempted to make the GOP more libertarian. I’ve been there, and can’t blame them for trying… but how’s that working out in this Presidential election cycle? Privately many C4L-Republicans have told me that in general elections, they vote Libertarian if no liberty-Republican made it through the primary.

So once again, I find myself throwing those proverbial crumbled newspaper balls at the TV and cursing at pundits who talk about “BOTH parties” or “THE candidates” and would go on on to talk as if only two parties existed. Sometimes they would ask if it might be time for a third party, as if none existed yet…

…but sometime between 2012 and 2016 change was underway. Those moments of hopelessness and frustration were punctuated by respectable recognition of the Libertarian Party by many of the mainstream broadcasters and publishers who had once shunned them.

The major parties continue to nominate hard-core statist candidates, but this time the idea of picking the lesser of two evils is no longer taken for granted. Mixed in with the idea that Americans need a third choice, there is an acknowledgement that the choice exists, and that choice is the Libertarian Party’s candidate. Most of the time they name that candidate, and when they do, it’s Governor Gary Johnson.

Something I have been working toward for about 30 years is finally happening. Conversations outside the echo chamber have included respect for the Libertarian alternative. This is beyond a token mention. There are interviews and analysis… even polling results indicate 10% of the voters being willing to support a Libertarian candidate. Most interviews with a Libertarian Presidential candidate are with Gary Johnson. He is also the candidate polling 10%. Of course there is one glaring omission to most of the hype, that Governor Johnson, himself, has to keep alerting people too: He has not been nominated.

After years of stagnation and shrinking membership, the Libertarian Party is respected by regular people outside the movement. When Johnson was nominated in 2012, many Libertarians were overly optimistic about the effect of nominating a two-term governor. The fact was that the Libertarian brand was no longer taken seriously; most people found us to be irrelevant. In spite of that Johnson earned us a record number of votes, and in my home state of Michigan he earned the highest number of statewide write-in votes in the states entire history.

The Johnson-Gray team never went away. Through the non-partisan issues oriented organization, “Our America Initiative” they had been providing a libertarian network whereby activists, working on libertarian legislation, could unite and lobby for it on an issue-by-issue basis. This way we were gradually showing relevance. Also, through Our America Initiative, Gary Johnson, Judge James P. Gray and others have taken the Commission on Presidential Debates to court. Even if the lawsuit fails, Libertarians are winning; we are on track to regaining our long-lost 50-state ballot access. I can hardly keep up with all the news reports and interviews that have focused on the Libertarian Party and the Johnson candidacy. I can hardly contain my excitement either (so I blog about it). Recent polls have Johnson at 10%, but if the libertarian nominee reached that 15% threshold, the commission could just close shop, thereby exposing themselves as a fraud to the general public. At this point we would be the proverbial naked man running down the street. Ignoring us would be like ignoring the 800 Lb gorilla in the room. We would have to be recognized by the people covering the election, and voters could begin to think of us as a viable choice; the death of the “wasted vote” argument is upon us.

For years we have looked for the magic bullet. Little did we know that round was already primed in 2012, and if the Libertarian delegates are willing, it will exit the muzzle this weekend. This is our moment, but only if we seize it!

But what about the message? Has it been watered down? In a way, but it’s a good thing.
Here’s the Real Politik. A while back my late friend, Pat Clawson found that more people would support him petitioning to run as an independent rather than the much less costly option of being nominated at a Libertarian convention; they just didn’t feel right about the about the Libertarian Party. He said we needed to do some market research. Well, it’s been done for us.

The sucess Gary Johnson has had reaching people outside the movement shows that he is doing something right. Perhaps those of us who thought the logical elegance of libertarianism would be universally recognized for its crystalline beauty were distracted from a blind-spot.

People have different learning styles. The fact that they don’t readily agree with what ever we say, doesn’t make them sheeple. They think differently, and need to be spoken to in a way that makes sense to them if we are to persuade them to agree with us. To people who love to debate (as I do), he comes across as indirect. His policy positions often don’t go far enough to satisfy libertarian activists. This does not make him the perfect candidate at a Libertarian Convention. In 2012 Johnson was quick to credit R. Lee Wrights with out-debating him.

However, Gary Johnson is the perfect candidate, and an excellent spokesperson, on the national stage. People connect with him emotionally. He doesn’t scare people, and his policy positions take us in the Libertarian direction.

At an event in 2013 I asked why he supported a “harm reduction” approach to hard drugs, like heroin, rather than just legalizing them outright. His response was that everything he does must be “reality based.” I didn’t get this right away because I thought in terms of physical reality, but there is also the world of political reality. If one wants to affect change, one needs to get people on one’s side.

Governor Johnson knows how to reach people where they are. In the current political context. The reality is that we live in a popular soft tyranny, not a state of nature. The reality is that we are not ruled over by a few statists with fancy hats. Millions of people put leaders in office, and most people are comfortable with what they do.

The way to move from a soft tyranny to a relatively free society, is to appeal to that libertarian part of them that would like to remove government aggression from some part of their lives. Let’s give people a taste of liberty and hopefully they will want more. Respect the moderate Libertarians because we need them to move forward. They are reasonable, but cautious, people. They will vote for us, and we can expand liberty by getting government out of the way, one reform at a time.

I have renewed optimism that we may finally reach critical mass, and we might even win the oval. I hope my optimism survives past this weekend.

Don’t you?

Transracial People Define Themselves

Define yourself, or be defined
-Cass Corridor sidewalk graffiti-

I am deeply disturbed by lack of sensitivity people have shown toward Rachel Dolezal. For those unfamiliar with her plight, Rachel Dolezal was a Spokane Washington NAACP President who considered herself to be “African-American” or “black.” Recently, it became apparent that her biological parents considered themselves to be “White,” and using reasoning derived from Public Enemy’s “Fear of a Black Planet” lyrics, “White man, white woman, white baby” journalists concluded that if she was born “white” she must still be “white.” Next came accusations that she was lying about her race, and that her “True race” was “white.”

The implication here is that a person can’t change his, her, or its demographic. Put another way, the paradigm at work here dictates that you’re personality must adapt to the body you were born with, and any attempt to modify your body to externalize one’s inner sense of identity is somehow phony or dishonest. Most people are comfortable in their own skin and don’t wish to change it, but that isn’t any reason to be so harsh on people who are not so fortunate.

To some extent, changing the way one looks, in ways that bypass heredity, is common and accepted. Genetics determines hair color, but people who feel they are more blond, brunet, or red head can chose to be that. Even then there is a bit of snobbishness. Ever see a blond rolling her eyes as another one passes and remark “She’s not a natural blond.” When I was first asked to fill out an application for my drivers permit I was confused, because it asked for eye color. Knowing that my eyes changed color (normally based on what I was wearing), I asked nearby people what color my eyes were. After receiving multiple answers I was tempted to write “rainbow” in on the form, but was later urged to call them “hazel” Since then I have seen people with purple and yellow eyes. There are contact lenses for that.

Switching other traits is much more controversial. This may be because they are groups that politicians like to pander to; the divide and conquer strategy of the establishment depends on a lack of mobility between demographic groups. In these united states of America collectivist politicians love the categories of “race” and sex.

Mobility between sexes has achieved an unprecedented level of acceptance. Lately there has been a lot of buzz about Decathlon gold medalist Bruce Jenner having sex reassignment surgery and changing her name to “Kaitlyn,” but Jenner walks a path that has been blazed and cleared by a variety of other individuals. One of those people was, the tennis player Richard Raskind. While he was successful as a man, he chose to become a woman. She went on to be the Tennis player Rene’e Richards. When Richards was first outed as being born a male, she faced criticism that was very similar in content to the rhetoric used against Rachel Dolezal now. Richards was accused of pretending to be a woman in order to get an advantage by playing against male rather than female athletes. They would say she lied about her sex. Athletic organizations banned Richards from playing her favorite game because the United States Tennis Association, established an unprecedented women-born-women policy.

Of course Richards laughed off the notion that men would be lining up for the emasculating surgery so they could play professional tennis against men. Of course transsexual and transgender people face different challenges then transracial people. [Side note: Gender is not the same thing as sex. “Masculine” and “feminine” are genders, “male” and “female” are sexes.]

One distinction is that there are structural, functional and chromosomal differences that delineate sexes (though many people are born as hermaphrodites with intermediate or combined sexual traits). Race, on the other hand is a social construct, or a look. The belief in distinct races is a myth largely promoted by the likes of eugenicists and slavery apologists, to serve their particular agendas. Modern humans don’t exist as distinct subspecies, like say wolves and coyotes. So it would seem that changing races is even easier than changing sexes. From a medical perspective this is certainly the case, but social acceptance has ironically proven more difficult.

While Richards scoffed at the idea that someone would have a sex-change simply to gain some advantage, it is possible that someone would, but so what? As a libertarian I believe in peoples right to do as they wish with their property, and the most valuable piece of physical property individuals can own is their own bodies. As a matter of enlightened self-interest, I would hope that anyone choosing to change ones physical identity to such a degree, would be doing so to be true to one’s self. However, that’s not up to me. There are other cases where people have “passed as” members of another race in order to gain an advantage. Examples include Carol Channing, and reputedly Dinah Shore. By “passing” they were able to perform in venues that were off limits to those who held onto the look that was then called “negro” or “colored.” While this is less ideal then people taking on a look that matches their sense of self, such pragmatic “passing” is still morally defensible. If it is to ones advantage to change one’s sex or race, then it seems to me the fault is in the society that makes these changes advantageous, not in the character of the person who is trying to better one’s self.

I don’t know Ms. Dolezal personally, but it is my distinct impression that she is transracial. That is to say, that she has chosen a racial identity that differs from the one that she was supposedly born with. If this is the case, then she can’t be said to have lied about her race. She simply changed her public identity to harmonize with her inner self. I have often been confused when looking at Federal forms that ask people to categorize themselves into narrow racial categories. This is probably more confusing to an educated person who knows that race is mythical then it is to a person who has been duped by racialist politicians. There it defines black as follows, “A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.” These forms also ask what one considers oneself, rather than what one is. By the aforementioned definition, any human could honestly answer “yes,” based on current paleontological and mitochondrial evidence, which shows modern humans to have a common ancestry in sub-Saharan Africa.

Dolezal’s parents showed an attitude similar to the attitudes people used to have toward members of the LGBT community.  They said, “We hope she gets the help she needs.”  The implication was that she was sick, and needed professional “help.”

There is one thing I have put on the back burner: She lied about her father. Lying is wrong and I don’t wish to defend it, but it is understandable. In an age of discrimination against transracial people, as is evidenced by the harsh rhetoric she has faced, she may have felt compelled to lie about her past. I suspect many transsexuals may hesitate to tell people they used to be a different sex, often as a matter of self-preservation. Perhaps unintentionally, Ms. Dolezal has opened the way for another wave of diversity acceptance. People who have been labeled “Oreos,” “wanabees,” and “wiggers” for instance, may soon be recognized as transracial. At least, that is, until we move past this categorical mentality altogether, and see people as individuals, and not members of politically defined categories.

The ACA: Washington’s Assault on American Labor

Medical Symbol

Obama’s so-called “Affordable Care Act” (BKA Obamacare) is devastating to many working class Americans.  Unfortunately, the unions we pay to represent us, are not speaking up about this since they have become tools of the Democratic Party.  The Democratic Party along with some Republican accomplices have betrayed labor, but labor would rather betray the rank and file then break the chains that keep them beholden to their political masters.

I am one of Obamacare’s victims.  This is my story.  If I am the only victim, then it’s no big deal…. but I have a feeling I have lots of company.  I have never read about this in the mainstream media, but this is the truth.

As a part-time college professor, I have been teaching at two institutions to earn a decent income.  I have been able to use that money to buy my own insurance.  Since the law passed my premiums have increased significantly with no significant new benefits.  But that is the least of my problems.

The ACA requires employers to buy health insurance for any employees who work three-fourths of full time or more.   So many employees are having their hours slashed by employers who don’t wish to face penalties for giving their employees too many (sic)  hours.  Most people would expect this to force employers to restrict their part-time employees to 29 hours per week, since most people think of 40 hours as full-time.  Such an intervention is bad enough, in principle, and a person struggling to make ends meet in the current depression may not be able to afford any loss in income.  Nonetheless, the reality is even more outrageous.

According to the ACA college faculty who teach over 11.5 hours per week are categorized as three-fourths full time.  No, that’s not a typo.  According to bureaucrats, the law says eleven and one half hours are three-fourths full time!  Since my regular course load involved two six hour classes (12 hours total) per week, my hours have been nearly cut in half at one of the places where I teach.  Fortunately, the union local at the other college refused to cave in and I still have all of my hours there.

If I can’t find additional work in the next couple weeks, I may be faced with bankruptcy. Meanwhile I have had to forgo Christmas shopping in preparation for this impending financial crisis.

The rank and file need to stand up and tell their unions to withhold endorsements from any candidates who supported the ACA or any part of it’s implementation.  Workers of the USA unite!  We have plenty to loose.