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Author: James W. Harris

New Poll: Millions of Voters Say They’re Libertarian

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 15 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) A new poll from YouGov brings exciting and unprecedented news for libertarians. Millenial Poll - Libertarian Asked “Would you describe yourself as a libertarian or not?” fully one in five of likely millennial (ages 18-29) voters said yes — thus self-describing themselves as libertarians. YouGov found that young Americans are more likely than any other age group to accept the label libertarian — great news for a growing political movement. And there is room for this figure to grow significantly as libertarian ideas spread, because, in addition to the 20% who self-identify as libertarians, another 42% said they were “not sure.” Only 39% rejected the label. Among older voters, 17% of 30- to 44-year-olds, 15% of 45- to 64-year-olds and 9% of those 65 and older say that the word “libertarian” described their views. More great news: a majority Americans are, broadly, embracing libertarian ideas of limiting government. Fully 51% say they want to shrink the size of government. A whopping 30% of Americans even agree with the radical libertarian statement that “Taxation is theft.” (It probably didn’t hurt that the poll was conducted April 8-9 — a week before Tax Day.) But what is most remarkable about the YouGov poll is that it has found so many millions of voters who accept the libertarian “brand” as a label for their political views — something inconceivable just a few years ago. Nor are these self-described libertarians tied to either of the two older political parties. The libertarian vote is up for grabs to the candidate or party that appeals most to it. Writes YouGov: “There is little difference between partisans when it comes to identifying as libertarians. Republicans (13%) are essentially no more likely than Democrats (12%) to identify as libertarian, while 19% of Independents describe themselves as libertarian.” Notes Reason.com’s Nick Gillespie: “Let’s be clear about a couple of things: First, the fact that YouGov and other groups are hunting down the number of libertarians afoot — Pew even went ‘In Search of Libertarians’ just last year — is itself a sign that something new and different is happening. When you start touting up the way many things are breaking in a libertarian direction — the energy surrounding Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012, majority acceptance of pot legalization and gay marriage, serious efforts at criminal justice reform, plummeting numbers for faith in government, the rise of school choice, embrace of a sharing economy that routes around old-style regulation, general acceptance of free trade and free speech as positive values, and much more — it’s fair to call attention to what we’ve dubbed here as ‘The Libertarian Moment.'” For more excellent commentary on the YouGov poll see “Millennials Are More Likely to Identify as Libertarians” by Robby Soave, Reason.com.

A “Devil’s Dictionary” of Washingtonese

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 15 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) WashingtoneseLibertarian journalist James Bovard — author of a dozen outstanding and eye-opening books including Lost RightsThe Bush Betrayal, and most recently Attention Deficit Democracy — has done Americans yet another service. In an editorial for USA Today Bovard put together a short dictionary of “Washingtonese” — the slippery lingo that politicians, bureaucrats and other such nefarious critters use to hide what they really mean. Or, as Bovard puts it, the government’s “nebulous nomenclature [that] deters citizens from recognizing exactly how well their elected leaders serve them.” Here’s a sampling:
  • Historic — different than last week
  • Unprecedented — different than last month
  • Emergency — the gift that keeps giving
  • Truth — whatever people will swallow
  • Legacy — any political boast that survives more than three 24-hour news cycles
  • Handout — a government benefit received primarily by the supporters of the other party
  • Mandate — whatever a winning politician can get away with
  • Honorable — any public figure who has not yet been indicted
  • Bill of Rights — (archaic) political invocation popular in 1790s
  • Fair play — any process in which politicians or bureaucrats pick winners and losers
  • Rule of Law — the latest edicts from a deputy assistant Labor Secretary or deputy assistant HUD Secretary
  • Patriotic — any appeal that keeps people paying and obeying
  • Waste — federal spending that fails to generate laudatory headlines, votes or campaign contributions
  • Freedom — whatever rulers have not yet benevolently prohibited
  • Election — when voters are permitted to freely consent to one of the two aspiring despots offered by the major parties
  • Cynic — anyone who expresses doubt about the latest bipartisan agreement to gradually eliminate the federal budget deficit over the next 117 years
  • Anarchist — anyone who advocates across-the-board spending cuts of more than 3.63%
  • Scurrilous — anyone who mentions previous federal failures when the president proposes glorious new programs
For much more Bovardian wit and wisdom, see his USA Today article.

The Libertarian Vote: How Big Is It?

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 14 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Now that Rand Paul has officially announced he is seeking the presidency, attention is being focused on the libertarian voting bloc. Just how big is it? How many libertarian-minded voters are out there? The answer may surprise you. First, it’s important to note that “libertarian voter” doesn’t necessarily mean a voter who meets the stricter definition of a libertarian, i.e., someone who consistently opposes the initiation of force. Rather, it refers to someone who would be inclined to vote for a libertarian candidate in an election. Someone who is more supportive of libertarian ideas than liberal, conservative, statist or centrist ideas. Different organizations have used different methods to determine the size of this libertarian bloc. And they’ve come up with some pretty consistent estimates. * For 20 years Gallup’s annual Governance Survey has divided voters into liberal, conservative, libertarian, or populist, based on their answers to two questions:
  1. “Some people think the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses. Others think that government should do more to solve our country’s problems. Which comes closer to your own view?”
  2. “Some people think the government should promote traditional values in our society. Others think the government should not favor any particular set of values. Which comes closer to your own view?”
In their 2014 survey Gallup classified 24% of respondents as libertarian (with 27% conservative, 21% liberal, and 18% populist). This is hardly a rigorous political litmus test, but it may well help single out voters who might be sympathetic to libertarianism.
  • The Cato Institute’s David Boaz has done a lot of work on this over the years, including an important 2012 book (with David Kirby Emily Ekins) that summarizes numerous polls by Cato and others on the topic: The Libertarian Vote: Swing Voters, Tea Parties, and the Fiscally Conservative, Socially Liberal Center. They conclude that, depending on the criteria used, roughly 15-18% of voters can be classified as “libertarian voters.”
  • A 2006 Zogby poll, commissioned by Cato, found surprising results. Zogby asked half of a group of 1,012 people who had voted in the 2006 election: “Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal?” Fully 59% of the respondents said “yes.” Zogby asked the other half a more challenging question: “Would you describe yourself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal, also known as libertarian?” A surprising 44% of respondents — representing 100 million Americans — answered “yes” to that question, thus self-identifying as libertarians. This is obviously higher than the number of true libertarians in America, but certainly it at least indicates that millions of people are open to these ideas and this label.
  • Finally, here’s an often-overlooked but remarkable finding — based on the Advocates’ World’s Smallest Political Quiz. In August 2000 Rasmussen gave the World’s Smallest Political Quiz to nearly 1,000 representative American voters. The Quiz is a far more rigorous test of one’s libertarian leanings than “fiscally conservative and socially liberal” or other looser definitions used by polling firms. Yet fully 16% scored in the libertarian sector then — a figure closely matching to the other estimates we’ve cited.
What can we conclude? While the numbers and the criteria in these studies vary, at the very least there is broad agreement on a figure between 15% to 20%. That’s 30 to 40 million voters — a huge, and growing, voting bloc that could easily swing an election. Add to this the additional millions on the left, right, and center who may vote for a libertarian-leaning candidate who stresses issues of great importance to them — such as a more peaceful foreign policy, marijuana re-legalization, slashing taxes, and reforming the out-of-control surveillance state. Which brings us back to Rand Paul’s presidential run announcement. Rand Paul doesn’t claim to be a libertarian. He has described himself as “libertarian-ish” and in 2013 told Sean Hannity “I use the term constitutional conservative, but I also use the term libertarian conservative. … I accept all of those terms if they mean they believe in limited government and more individual liberty.” But he is certainly the most libertarian-inclined presidential candidate — outside the Libertarian Party — in memory. Cato’s Boaz notes in TIME what may well be the most important thing to come out of a Rand Paul campaign: “One result of his campaign will be to help those tens of millions of libertarian-leaning Americans to discover that their political attitudes have a name, which will make for a stronger and more influential political faction. … Libertarianism is the framework for a future of freedom, growth, and progress, and it may be on the verge of a political breakout.”

New Poll: Voters in Three Key Swing States Solidly for Re-Legalization

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 14 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Since 1960 no candidate has won the presidential race without taking at least two of these three states: Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania. And that makes a new Quinnipiac University poll on marijuana re-legalization so fascinating. The poll, released April 6, finds voters in all three critical swing states solidly supporting re-legalization of marijuana for recreational use. More than 1,000 voters in each state were surveyed. Further, voters in all three states favor legalization of medical marijuana by astounding margins — 5 to 1 or more. Support for allowing adults “to legally possess small amounts of marijuana for personal use” is 55% – 42% in Florida, 52% – 44% in Ohio and 51% – 45% in Pennsylvania. And support for medical marijuana is near-universal. The numbers are remarkable: 84% in Florida, 84% in Ohio and 88% in Pennsylvania. You have to wonder: Why isn’t every politician jumping on this issue? Also important: voters in these states overwhelmingly say they don’t plan to use marijuana themselves. 81% of Florida voters say they “definitely” or “probably” would not use it;  84% of Ohio voters say they “definitely” or “probably” would not use it; and 83% of Pennsylvania voters say they “definitely” or “probably” would not. This indicates they favor legalization because the consequences of marijuana prohibition make the policy undesirable. And it indicates that one of the key arguments of prohibitionists — that re-legalizing marijuana would lead vast numbers of people to start using it — may just be dead wrong.

They Said It With Scott Eastwood, Ron Paul and More…

(From the They Said It section in Volume 20, No. 14 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) CORPORATE WELFARE, A LOVE STORY:  “Michael Moore made a movie criticizing corporate welfare called ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ and received $845,145 in corporate welfare from the Michigan Film Office.” — Michigan Capitol Confidential website, “The Irony of Michigan’s Film Incentive Program,” April 2, 2015. (Hat tip to Carpe Diem blog) Scott EastwoodCLINT EASTWOOD’S SON ON GAY MARRIAGE AND LIBERTARIANISM: “I support gay marriage… I think everybody should be able to be with who they want to be with. My dad is the same way. He’s a total libertarian — everyone leave everyone alone. Everyone live their own private life.” — Scott Eastwood, interviewed by PrideSource.com, March 31, 2015. WHO’S ON FIRST: “Our military is fighting in a tacit alliance with Iranian proxies in Iraq, even as it assists in a campaign against Iranian-backed forces in Yemen. We are formally committed to regime change in Syria, but we’re intervening against the regime’s Islamist enemies. Our strongest allies, officially, are still Israel and Saudi Arabia, but we’re busy alienating them by pushing for détente with Iran. And please don’t mention Libya or Al Qaeda — you’ll confuse everyone even more.” — New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, “The Method to Obama’s Middle East Mess,” March 28, 2015. NEW IRS ATTACK ON FREE SPEECH: Dr. Ron Paul“The IRS is drafting a new regulation that would empower the agency to revoke an organization’s tax-exempt status if that organization sends out a communication to its members or the general public mentioning a candidate for office by name sixty days before an election or thirty days before a primary. By preventing groups from telling their members where candidates stand on issues like Audit the Fed and repeal of the PATRIOT Act, this anti-First Amendment regulation benefits those politicians who wish to hide their beliefs from the voters.” — Ron Paul, “The IRS and Congress Both Hold Our Liberty in Contempt,” Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, April 5, 2015. THEY’D NEVER DO THAT: “If you’ve used a landline to call an abortion clinic, a gun store, a suicide hotline, a therapist, an oncologist, a phone sex operator, an investigative journalist, or a union organizer, odds are the government has logged a record of the call. If your Congressional representative has a spouse or child who has made an embarrassing phone call, the executive branch may well possess the ability to document it, though government apologists insist that they’d never do so and are strangely confident that future governments composed of unknown people won’t either.” — journalist Conor Friedersdorf, “When Will the NSA Stop Spying on Innocent Americans?”, TheAtlantic.com., April 2, 2015 .

They Said It with John Boehner, Gary Johnson, and MORE

(From the They Said It section in Volume 20, No. 13 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) U.S. COVERED UP GASSING OF AMERICAN TROOPS: “During and immediately after the first Gulf War, more than 200,000 of 700,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq and Kuwait in January 1991 were exposed to nerve gas and other chemical agents. Though aware of this, the Department of Defense and CIA launched a campaign of lies and concocted a cover-up that continues today. A quarter of a century later, the troops nearest the explosions are dying of brain cancer at two to three times the rate of those who were farther away. Others have lung cancer or debilitating chronic diseases, and pain. More complications lie ahead. According to Dr. Linda Chao, a neurologist at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, ‘Because part of their brains, the hippocampus, has shrunk, they’re at greater risk for Alzheimer’s and other degenerative diseases.'” — journalist Barbara Koeppel, “U.S. Nerve Gas Hit Our Own Troops in Iraq,” Newsweek, March 27, 2015. BARACK OBAMA, PEACENIK-IN-CHIEF: John Boehner (R-OH)“The world is starving for American leadership. But America has an anti-war president.” — U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) during a Capitol Hill press conference, March 26. Apparently Obama’s ongoing U.S. military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan — not to mention covert operations around the world — slipped Rep. Boehner’s mind. U.S. FOREIGN POLICY IN ONE TWEET: “US praises US ally for bombing US-equipped militia aligned with US foe who is partnering with US to fight another US-equipped militia.” — tweet by journalist/photographer Gregg Carlstromsent as Saudi Arabia began bombing Yemen, March 26, 2015. YOU’RE ENTITLED (TO PAY FOR ENTITLEMENTS): “Your 2014 tax dollars — which are due [this] month — went primarily to pay for government benefits. Major entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare and Social Security) devoured more than half of the 2014 budget at 51 percent of spending. Other federal benefits took another 19 percent, meaning that 70 percent of government spending went to pay some sort of benefit to someone. These additional ‘income security’ and other benefits include federal employee retirement and disability, unemployment benefits, and welfare programs such as food and housing assistance.” — economist Romina Boccia, “The Breakdown of Where Your Tax Dollars Go,” Heritage Foundation, March 17, 2015. THE MARIJUANA DISCONNECT: “Marijuana polls 60% in favor of legalization. Huge, insane, disconnect that the minority is maintaining criminal penalties for the majority!” — tweet by Gary Johnson, 2012 Libertarian Party presidential candidate, March 5, 2015. Nick GillespieLET THEM BAKE — OR NOT BAKE — CAKE: “Nobody should be forced to do something they don’t want to do, whether it’s bake cakes for gay weddings or decorate cakes with anti-gay slurs. To me, whether a person’s or a business’s decision is based in religion is immaterial.” — Nick Gillespie, “Everybody’s Lost Their Goddamn Mind Over Religious Freedom,” The Daily Beast, April 1, 2015.

Tax Freedom Day is Nearly Here — Or Is It?

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 13 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Tax Freedom Day“Tax Freedom Day” is the day when, according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year. To calculate this date, Tax Freedom Day takes all federal, state, and local taxes and divides them by the nation’s income. For 2015 the Tax Foundation calculates Americans will pay a whopping $3.28 trillion in federal taxes and $1.57 trillion in state and local taxes — for a total tax bill of $4.85 trillion, or a staggering 31 percent of total national income. So this year, Tax Freedom Day falls on April 24 — 114 days into the year. And… if you include annual federal borrowing, which represents future taxes owed, Tax Freedom Day doesn’t arrive for another 14 days, until May 8. Until then, the average American is, essentially, slaving away fulltime for the government. To put these taxes in perspective, Americans will collectively spend more on taxes in 2015 than they will on the basic necessities of life — food, clothing, and housing — combined. By contrast, in 1900, in pre-income tax America, Americans paid only 5.9 percent of their income in taxes, meaning Tax Freedom Day came on… January 22. This year’s Tax Freedom Day is one of the latest ever. It’s a day later than last year, and is the latest since 2007, when it fell on April 25. The latest-ever Tax Freedom Day was May 1, 2000. Awful as all this is, some critics argue that the Tax Foundation greatly underestimates the cost of government. Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), a group that lobbies for lower taxes and smaller government, each year calculates its “Cost of Government Day.” Cost of Government Day is the date on which the average American has earned enough to pay taxes — PLUS the cost of mandatory but unfunded federal, state and local regulations. Last year ATR’s Cost of Government Day didn’t arrive until July 6 — meaning that government consumed 51% of national income, and the average American labored more than half the year — 186 days — to pay what the state demanded. Further, writing in the conservative New American magazine, Bob Adelmann argues that the Tax Foundation doesn’t take into account many government costs and hidden taxes, including estate taxes and fees (such as drivers’ licenses, boat registration, building permits, hunting and fishing licenses, phone and cable bills, etc.); that it ignores the staggering cost of complying with the tax laws; and that it also ignores the devastating “hidden tax” of inflation. Combining all the above — fees, compliance costs, regulations, hidden taxes, etc. — adds up to a government that is devouring far more than half of our incomes. Which brings to mind the old joke: “Taxes are revolting. Why aren’t you?”

Major New Bill to Legalize Marijuana for Medical Use Now in U.S. Senate and House

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 13 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) The Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respect States — CARERS — Act is Legalize Marijuana for Medical Usethe most comprehensive medical marijuana bill ever introduced in Congress. It was introduced last month by Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Cory Booker (D-NJ), and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and just last week in the House by Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) and Rep. Don Young (R-AK). The CARERS Act will do the following:
  • Allow states to legalize marijuana for medical use without federal interference
  • Permit interstate commerce in cannabidiol (CBD) oils
  • Reschedule marijuana to schedule II (thus acknowledging marijuana has medicinal value and making marijuana research far easier)
  • Allow banks to provide checking accounts and other financial services to marijuana dispensaries
  • Allow Veterans Administration physicians to recommend medical marijuana to veterans
  • Eliminate barriers to medical marijuana research
“Reforming our nation’s failed drug policies is one of the few issues Democrats and Republicans can agree on,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. “The tide is quickly turning against marijuana prohibition and the War on Drugs in general.” This seems to be a bill whose time has come. Polls show roughly three-quarters of Americans support legalizing marijuana for medical use. Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have laws that legalize and regulate marijuana for medicinal purposes. Twelve states have laws on the books or are about to be signed into law by their governors regulating cannabidiol (CBD) oils, a non-psychotropic component of medical marijuana which some parents are utilizing to treat their children’s seizures. Four states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for non-medical use. “This legislation is a game-changer,” said Michael Collins, policy manager for the Drug Policy Alliance. “It is worth noting that senators with a national profile are championing this issue. Ending the war on medical marijuana is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do.” The Drug Policy Alliance has created a web page where supporters of the bill can send an email to their senators urging them to cosponsor it.

Libertarians Cheer New “Surveillance State Repeal Act”

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 12 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Two congressmen have introduced bold bipartisan legislation that will fully repeal the police-state 2001 U.S. PATRIOT Act and substantially roll back the U.S. surveillance state that has metastasized in recent years. Repeal the Surveillance StateThe Surveillance State Repeal Act (H.R. 1466) was introduced on March 24 by Reps. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), and it offers a great opportunity for Americans to restore lost liberty and privacy in one swoop. “The warrantless collection of millions of personal communications from innocent Americans is a direct violation of our constitutional right to privacy,” said Rep. Pocan. “Revelations about the NSA’s programs reveal the extraordinary extent to which the program has invaded Americans’ privacy. “I reject the notion that we must sacrifice liberty for security — we can live in a secure nation which also upholds a strong commitment to civil liberties. This legislation ends the NSA’s dragnet surveillance practices, while putting provisions in place to protect the privacy of American citizens through real and lasting change.” “The Patriot Act contains many provisions that violate the Fourth Amendment and have led to a dramatic expansion of our domestic surveillance state,” said Rep. Massie. “Our Founding Fathers fought and died to stop the kind of warrantless spying and searches that the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act authorize. It is long past time to repeal the Patriot Act and reassert the constitutional rights of all Americans.” Libertarians and other defenders of civil liberties have cheered the bill. The Surveillance State Repeal Act will:
  1. Repeal the 2001 U.S. PATRIOT Act, which among other things contains the telephone metadata harvesting provision by which the NSA has justified collecting phone information on millions of Americans.
  2. Repeal the FISA Amendments Act (which contains the email harvesting provision), with the exception of the provisions regarding FISA court reporting and WMD intelligence collection.
  3. Protect whistleblowers: Make retaliation against federal national security whistleblowers illegal and provide for the termination of individuals who engage in such retaliation.
  4. Ensure that any FISA collection against a U.S. Person takes place only pursuant to a valid warrant based on probable cause (which was the original FISA standard from 1978 to 2001).
  5. Retain the ability for government surveillance capabilities to be targeted against a specific natural person, regardless of the type of communications method(s) or device(s) being used by the subject of the surveillance.
  6. Retain provisions in current law dealing with the acquisition of intelligence information involving weapons of mass destruction from entities not composed primarily of U.S. Persons.
  7. Prohibit the government from mandating that electronic device or software manufacturers build in so-called “back doors” to allow the government to bypass encryption or other privacy technology built into said hardware and/or software.
  8. Increase the terms of judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) from seven to ten years and allows their reappointment.
  9. Mandate that the FISC utilize technologically competent Special Masters (technical and legal experts) to help determine the veracity of government claims about privacy, minimization and collection capabilities employed by the U.S. government in FISA applications.
  10. Mandate that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) regularly monitor such domestic surveillance programs for compliance with the law, including responding to Member requests for investigations and whistleblower complaints of wrongdoing.
  11. Explicitly ban the use of Executive Order 12333 as a way of collecting bulk data, which pertains to the collection and storage of communications by U.S. Persons.
Make no mistake: The bill faces an uphill battle in Congress. FreedomWorks chair Matt Kibbe called upon its 6.9 million members to fight for the bill, and created a web page where supporters of the bill can easily email this message to their representatives. Libertarian Party chair Nicholas Sarwark called on all Americans who love liberty to create a grassroots campaign to support the Surveillance State Repeal Act, to contact their congressmen and women and urge them to support H.R. 1466, and to spread this message through social media and whatever other means possible. In fact, Sarwick’s only complaint was that the bill, sweeping though it is, doesn’t go far enough. “The Libertarian Party would like to see all aspects of government mass surveillance ended, including complete elimination of the secret FISA court whose work issuing warrants for terrorist and criminal suspects can be easily assumed by existing federal courts,” said Sarwark. “But this bill is a good first step.”

Obama Is Wrong: Marijuana Re-Legalization Is No Joke

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 12 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) “Every so often, President Obama is confronted with young Americans who favor legalizing marijuana,” notes Conor Friedersdorf of the Atlantic magazine, in an enlightening short article entitled “Obama’s Critique of Young People Who Want Legal Marijuana.” “He typically treats their enthusiasm for the issue as a joke, despite the fact that he almost certainly wouldn’t be a successful politician today if he’d been arrested and convicted for smoking marijuana … in his youth.” Friedersdorf points to the latest example of our ex-pot-smoking Drug-Warrior-in-Chief doing this: an interview Obama did in mid-March with VICE News founder Shane Smith. When Smith told Obama that marijuana re-legalization was the number one issue online readers said they wanted addressed, Obama’s reply was again condescending: “It shouldn’t be young people’s biggest priority,” the President said. “Let’s put it in perspective. Young people, I understand this is important to you. But you should be thinking about climate change, the economy, jobs, war and peace. Maybe way at the bottom you should be thinking about marijuana.” Wrong, says Friedersdorf. He reverses Obama’s argument: “The young people to whom Obama addressed himself would be fully justified in reversing the criticism: ‘Given challenges like climate change, an uncertain economy, joblessness, and war, how can you justify spending perhaps $160 billion over the course of your tenure on marijuana prohibition? Isn’t it the federal government, not us young people, that has irrationally prioritized marijuana policy? We’re fighting for a more rational allotment of resources, where government funds are directed away from weed and toward challenges you listed as more pressing.'” Further, Friedersdorf points out, young people may not have settled opinions, agreement, and effective political strategies for action on the problems Obama lists. But on the re-legalization issue, they are already in agreement and having major success, winning re-legalization battles in several states and winning public opinion. Plus the solution is straightforward and the benefits tremendous. And, he notes, “If they mobilize, they have a realistic chance of ending prohibition in the next decade [and] that would meaningfully enrich the lives of many millions of people here and abroad.” So why shouldn’t young people press forward on this issue? Is it sensible to wait for the climate debate to be settled and solved, war to be halted and world peace achieved, and jobs and prosperity to be available to all — before dealing with the far simpler-to-solve issue of marijuana re-legalization? Conor Friedersdorf’s excellent short article has much more of interest on this, and includes a link to the full VICE News interview with President Obama.

They Said It With Julie Borowski, Libertarian Girl and More…

(From the They Said It section in Volume 20, No. 12 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) OUR BIGGEST PROBLEM: Julie Borowski“Obama suggests voting should be made mandatory. Yeah, the problem with this country is that not enough uninformed people are voting.” — Facebook post from libertarian commentator Julie Borowski, March 19, 2015. Libertarian GirlGOV’T PRIORITIES: “There are 400,000 untested rape kits across the U.S. The excuses are ‘they’re expensive’ and ‘there’s no time.’ Governments sure do seem to have the time and money to arrest, prosecute, and jail non-violent drug offenders and [those who commit] other victimless crimes…” — Facebook post from Libertarian Girl (aka Marianne Copenhaver), March 16, 2015. DISMANTLE THE TSA, SAYS GOP CHAIRMAN: “I believe we made a big mistake in 2002 or 2003 when we set up the TSA. The Transportation committee… had experts from the British, the Germans, the Israelis all come testify before the committee and overwhelmingly they told us: Don’t set up a federal [agency].” — House Transportation Committee Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.) in a March 18 briefing. Shuster suggested that airport security — currently provided by the hated TSA (Transportation Security Administration), now metastasized to over 50,000 employees — be turned over to the private sector, with federal oversight. Quoted in The Hill, “GOP chairman: TSA was a ‘big mistake’,” March 18, 2015. ONE BEGINS TO SUSPECT… Jacob Sollum“According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, accounts for nearly two-fifths of global military spending. It allocates more money to the military than the next eight biggest spenders combined. The United States is a large country with peaceful neighbors. Yet it spends more than $2,000 per capita on defense — as much as Israel, a tiny country beset by enemies, and more than twice as much as European countries such as the U.K., France and Germany. One begins to suspect that our so-called defense budget is spent on a lot of things that have little or nothing to do with defense.” — syndicated columnist Jacob Sullum, “The Squeal of the War Hogs: Why Do Lindsey Graham and John McCain Think Half a Trillion Dollars Is Not Enough To Defend the Country?”, March 18, 2015. STOP THE EXPORT-IMPORT BANK RIP-OFF: “[T]he federally run Export-Import Bank… is a case study in corporate welfare. Founded during the New Deal, its mission is to ‘support jobs in the United States by facilitating the export of U.S. goods and services.’ In practice, it offers taxpayer-backed loans, guarantees and insurance to private companies. When a company profits from the bank’s support, it pockets the money. If it defaults, taxpayers’ pockets get picked. … In 2013, roughly 93 percent of the bank’s loan guarantees by value benefited only five companies — including Caterpillar, General Electric and other multinational corporations with hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in annual profits… In 2012, 83 percent benefited a single company: Boeing. … The Export-Import Bank’s charter expires at the end of June and businesses and lobbyists are lining up to persuade Congress to reauthorize it.” — Chris Rufer, founder of The Morning Star Company and Advocates Board member, “End This Corporate Welfare,” New York Times, March 23, 2015.

Rutherford Institute: We’re Living in “Every Dystopian Sci-Fi Film We’ve Ever Seen”

(From the Activist Ammunition section in Volume 20, No. 11 of the Liberator Online. Subscribe here!) Dystopian Sci-Fi FilmDisturbing excerpts from “How DNA Is Turning Us Into a Nation of Suspects” by Rutherford Institute president John W. Whitehead, with lots of startling links: “Every dystopian sci-fi film we’ve ever seen is suddenly converging into this present moment in a dangerous trifecta between science, technology and a government that wants to be all-seeing, all-knowing and all-powerful. “By tapping into your phone lines and cell phone communications, the government knows what you say. By uploading all of your emails, opening your mail, and reading your Facebook posts and text messages, the government knows what you write. By monitoring your movements with the use of license plate readers, surveillance cameras and other tracking devices, the government knows where you go. “By churning through all of the detritus of your life — what you read, where you go, what you say — the government can predict what you will do. By mapping the synapses in your brain, scientists — and in turn, the government —will soon know what you remember. And by accessing your DNA, the government will soon know everything else about you that they don’t already know: your family chart, your ancestry, what you look like, your health history, your inclination to follow orders or chart your own course, etc. “Of course, none of these technologies are foolproof. Nor are they immune from tampering, hacking or user bias. Nevertheless, they have become a convenient tool in the hands of government agents to render null and void the Constitution’s requirements of privacy and its prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. “Consequently, no longer are we ‘innocent until proven guilty’ in the face of DNA evidence that places us at the scene of a crime, behavior sensing technology that interprets our body temperature and facial tics as suspicious, and government surveillance devices that cross-check our biometricslicense plates and DNA against a growing database of unsolved crimes and potential criminals. … “All 50 states now maintain their own DNA databases, although the protocols for collection differ from state to state. That DNA is also being collected in the FBI’s massive national DNA database, code-named CODIS (Combined DNA Index System), which was established as a way to identify and track convicted felons and has since become a de facto way to identify and track the American people from birth to death. “Indeed, hospitals have gotten in on the game by taking and storing newborn babies’ DNA, often without their parents’ knowledge or consent. … “What this means for those being born today is inclusion in a government database that contains intimate information about who they are, their ancestry, and what awaits them in the future, including their inclinations to be followers, leaders or troublemakers. “If you haven’t yet connected the dots, let me point the way: Having already used surveillance technology to render the entire American populace potential suspects, DNA technology in the hands of government will complete our transition to a suspect society in which we are all merely waiting to be matched up with a crime. “No longer can we consider ourselves innocent until proven guilty. … We are all suspects in a DNA lineup until circumstances and science say otherwise.” Read the rest of John W. Whitehead’s article here.