[Updates below.]
Libertarians are increasingly isolated in the GOP. Will they bolt in 2004?
While some libertarians like Clark's chances against Bush, only Howard Dean -- with an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association and a vocal throat against the recent Iraq War -- has a shot at broad libertarian support, many in the movement say.
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But holding on to libertarian true believers until the fall of 2004 (if Dean makes it that far) could be tough for the former governor's campaign. Healy, for example, was feeling fairly warm and fuzzy about the doctor -- until Dean came out in favor of sending American troops to Liberia.
Other issues -- extending health insurance or privatizing Social Security, for example -- could derail a potential alliance with Dean as well, especially if he keeps up the left-wing boilerplate he's been spilling on some of his Democratic primary audiences.
No shit. Let me quote some of the things on his
website:
Sadly, President Bush and his House Republican colleagues have consistently tried to block or de-fund measures that would help rural Americans. They slashed funding for value added grants for small farmers, they attempted to block mandatory country-of-origin labeling, they attempted to deny funding for conservation measures, like the CSP, that reward farmers who work to protect the environment, and they have consistently sided with the large corporate farms, meatpackers and processors by providing them with unfair advantages over independent family farmers.
Aside from that last bit about corporate welfare, I disagree with him on everything else.
In addition to restoring those measures that Bush has tried to undo, I believe we can foster an economic revival in rural America.
We can start by ensuring that rural entrepreneurs have access to equity capital. Rural entrepreneurs have good ideas, but too often they don?t have access to the capital they need to turn their ideas into job-creating businesses.
We must also address the cycle of out-migration that has decimated many of our rural communities, which we can do through government matched savings accounts and tax credits to help create businesses with fewer than five employees.
Universal health care will help rural America a great deal as well; small businesses will be able to afford insurance for their employees, and no family will worry about finding money to go to a doctor.
We must also address the digital divide in rural America by making a dramatic investment in broadband technology that will reach every American.
Egads. It's a slew of meddling.
As President, I will work tirelessly to promote these principles:
- I will support affirmative action, from which we have all benefited, because it has strengthened our institutions and provided opportunity.
Big, ugly black mark here. I loathe affirmative action.
The economic policies of the Bush Administration are misguided, unfair, and unsuccessful.
They fail to meet the basic standard of economic justice: decent, well-paying jobs for all who want them. They are policies that have created a legacy of debt for future generations. Huge tax cuts that benefit the wealthy are starving essential government services like education and homeland security and forcing states and local governments to increase sales, income, and property taxes. While America?s wealthiest individuals -- those in the top 2 percent of income brackets -- receive the bulk of the tax cuts, America?s middle class is left behind.
One of the
main reasons I'm dismayed with Bush is due to his economic policies...but this is because they tack too far towards statism and protectionism, something Dean has no problem with.
My economic policies for America are based on four fundamentals:
- Repeal the Bush tax cuts, and use those funds to pay for universal health care, homeland security, and investments in job creation that benefit all Americans.
- Set the nation on the path to a balanced budget, recognizing that we cannot have social or economic justice without a sound fiscal foundation.
- Create a fairer and simpler system of taxation.
- Assure that Social Security and Medicare are adequately funded to meet the needs of the next generation of retirees.
Here are the Big Issues for me. Excepting the middle two (which are generally good things), I cannot and will not support a presidential candidate who affirms the need for universal, state-funded healthcare and who supports Social Security in anything resembling it's current form.
The time has come to make healthcare for all Americans a reality. [...] For a year now, I have been traveling this country advocating a repeal of Bush's tax cuts so that we can provide universal healthcare and restore fiscal discipline. [...] My plan consists of four major components.
First, and most important, in order to extend health coverage to every uninsured child and young adult up to age 25, we'll redefine and expand two essential federal and state programs -- Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Right now, they only offer coverage to children from lower-income families. Under my plan, we cover all kids and young adults up to age 25 -- middle income as well as lower income. This aspect of my plan will give 11.5 million more kids and young adults access to the healthcare they need.
*choke gasp* I loathe socialized healthcare even more than affirmative action.
Second, we'll give a leg up to working families struggling to afford health insurance. Adults earning up to 185% of the poverty level -- $16,613 -- will be eligible for coverage through the already existing Children Health Insurance Program. By doing this, an additional 11.8 million people will have access to the care they need.
Many working families have incomes that put them beyond the help offered by government programs. But this doesn't mean they have viable options for healthcare. We'll establish an affordable health insurance plan people can buy into, providing coverage nearly identical to what members of Congress and federal employees receive.
To cushion the costs, we'll also offer a significant tax credit to those with high premium costs. By offering this help, another 5.5 million adults will have access to care.
Jesus Christ.
Third, we need to recognize that one key to a healthy America is making healthcare affordable to small businesses.We shouldn't turn our back on the employer-based system we have now, but neither should we simply throw money at it. We need to modernize the system so employers will have an option beyond passing rising costs on to workers or bailing out of the system entirely. Fortunately, we have a model of efficient, affordable and user-friendly healthcare coverage: the federal employee health system.
He's being
serious.
Finally, to ensure that the maximum number of American men, women and children have access to healthcare, we must address corporate responsibility. There are many corporations that could provide healthcare to their employees but choose not to. The final element of this plan is a clear, strong message to corporate America that providing health coverage is fundamental to being a good corporate citizen. I look at business tax deductions as part of a compact between American taxpayers and corporate America. We give businesses certain benefits, and expect them to live up to certain responsibilities.
No-
fucken-thank-you.
As President I will invest in early childhood initiatives, which set up American children to thrive in school and in life, while providing more options for parents.
[...]
As President, I will also work to strengthen our schools with improved student health centers, a focus on parental involvement, recruiting and retaining outstanding teachers and administrators, and resources to fund key mandates. We must fully fund the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, increase funding for elementary and secondary education improvement, and oppose efforts to gut vocational education programs.
Again on education, I can't support Dean. He'd increase the government's involvement.
Global warming threatens cataclysmic effects on our environment, our economy, and our way of life. Air pollution damages the lungs of our children if they play downwind of the wrong facility. And our cities and suburbs continue to sprawl, eating up farmland and forests.
We can make a half-hearted effort, we can continue to bide our time. We can pretend that there is no crisis, or that if there is one, it is easy to fix. We can pretend the air is not thick with ozone on hot summer days. We can pretend the climate is not changing. We can call for more studies, take symbolic actions, and hold more outdoor photo ops. Or we can act.
[...]
Environmental policy cannot be separated from other issues such as energy, trade, or economic policy. This is one reason that I will ask Congress to elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to cabinet status immediately, and not drag the process out with contentious debates about restructuring.
[...]
In an act of diplomatic and environmental petulance, President Bush gave the back of his hand to the Kyoto Protocol. In doing so, he squandered much of America?s moral authority. On issues such as global warming, population growth, and overfishing, we have missed opportunities to demonstrate America?s ability to lead. Pollution doesn?t stop at the borders and neither should environmental policy.
[...]
Too many cities have smog so thick that some days children have to go indoors for a breath of fresh air. To help clear the air, as President, I would direct that adoption of health-based standards for air toxins be accelerated. Further, I would immediately crack down on those companies that violate New Source Review requirements rather than broaden the loophole that allows them to spew pollution as President Bush has done as a favor to his big campaign contributors in the energy industry. And I will ask Congress to close the loophole entirely.
[...]
America is capable of making incredible gains in efficiency and renewable energy technologies. That?s why I will set ambitious goals for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and fuel economy standards. I call on American automakers to embrace change, to see the new opportunities ahead, rather than waste time and energy resisting progress. [...] I believe that American automakers should not only catch up, they should become efficiency leaders and market leaders. Under a Dean Administration, they will get the support they would need to make this a reality.
Howard Dean would
dramatically increase state involvement in environmental affairs. I'll pass. And did you catch that hint at corporate subsidies in that last sentence?
As President, I would vigorously enforce worker protections in federal law. I would appoint a Secretary of Labor who is a real friend of workers. I would appoint men and women to the National Labor Relations Board and the federal judiciary who will interpret federal labor laws broadly to protect the rights of workers.
...we need a tough ergonomics standard...
Good jobs are the result of sound fiscal policies, progressive tax practices, and practical, necessary investments in our communities. To this end, I will propose the repeal of every last dime of the Bush tax cuts. I will work to eliminate tax policies that provide incentives for American firms to move manufacturing jobs offshore. And I will propose new ways to help small businesses access the capital they need for growth, job retention, and plant modernization so that they can compete successfully in the global economy. I will also support increased funding for workforce training.
Creating and keeping good jobs for Americans also requires the rigorous enforcement of fair trade policies. I would not negotiate trade agreements that do not include meaningful labor, environmental, and human rights protections. I would not pursue trade policies that undermine important U.S. laws and regulations, especially those that protect American workers. I will vigorously enforce anti-dumping laws.
More subsidies and increasing market intervention. And a proud protectionist.
My essential problem with Howard Dean are his domestic policies. His stated objectives and wishes run counter to much of the libertarian running within me. I refuse to believe libertarians seem to support a Dean presidency. Have their anti-war and anti-big budget tendencies overwritten their other beliefs?
I don't consider being more pro-gun than most Democrats, pragmatic, in favor of civil unions, and somewhat federalistic to overcome the parts I've quoted above. Those are HUGE intrusions into individual rights and the economy. I won't vote for a left-leaning statist in order to replace a right-leaning statist.
I'll vote for whomever best represents my principles.
UPDATE(10/15/2003 12:25am)
Further discussion from Julian Sanchez and Jesse Walker. Says Mr. Sanchez:
I don't much care whether it's Terry McAuliffe or Ed Gillespie throwing the bigger celebratory shindig come November 2004. I don't even really care whether George W. Bush is, in his heart of hearts, a convinced Rothbardian while Howard Dean sleeps with the Communist Manifesto under his pillow. Because libertarians shouldn't be distracted by what policies the president, deep down, really wants. They should care about what he can get.
He then goes on to explain the "divided government" theory of libertarian (and occasionally, conservative) voting:
As Cato Institute economist William Niskanen observes, government tends to grow more slowly during periods when the executive and legislative branches are controlled by different parties. The mono-party regime of George W. Bush, who delivered a touching encomium to Milton Friedman mere weeks before signing new steel tariffs and a bloated farm bill into law, has increased domestic spending faster than conservative bete noire Bill Clinton. Bush has even beaten the "big government" Clinton's record when it comes to the growth of the regulatory state.
This kind of arguement might have mattered to me a few years ago, but not any longer. Though I have
dumped Bush for his domestic policies, it did that because I want to vote for someone who represents my views closer...NOT for someone who represents them worse. That's the whole point of deciding not to vote for someone: that person won't do (or disdains or is ignorant of) the things you want him or her to do.
Howard Dean, like Bill Clinton, may say he wants to dramatically increase government's role in health care. But with fewer vulnerable candidates than in the 2002 midterm elections, it's Republicans who are likely to have the final say on how and whether that happens. And while they've shown they'll happily roll over for Bush, who seems hell bent on delivering a prescription drug benefit, they'll be just as happy to deny President Dean a talking point when he goes stumping at AARP meetings in 2008.
In short Dean (or another Democratic nominee) has vices which are unlikely to translate into real policy.
This is too big a risk to take, in my opinion. As one of the commenters pointed out in a
Hit & Run thread, this ignores the important executive powers the President has control over. Also worth mentioning are the President's veto powers; and in today's gridlock partisan atmosphere, there aren't many issues where there exists enough congressmen and -women to override a bad veto.
His virtues?opposition to an imperial foreign policy, greater support for gay rights, and even a qualified federalism, evidenced by his stance on gun rights?are more likely to be points on which bipartisan coalition building is possible.
He has virtues, don't get me wrong. But those virtues are outnumbered and outweighed by his vices, which Mr. Sanchez should have drastically expanded upon beyond his healthcare platform.
Of course, it might be objected that the natural candidate for a libertarian to support is, well, the Libertarian. And if one is voting largely for personal satisfaction, that may make a certain amount of sense. Yet people's actual voting behavior indicates that our actual motives in the ballot box are more complex. If you were really going to vote on pure principle, you probably wouldn't vote for any party's candidate, since those candidates are always represent some amount of compromise. Instead, you'd just write in the name of the person you'd most like to see hold the office.
Voting on the basis of finding a candidate that correlates 100% with your beliefs and philosophy is the right thing to do, but it's also very impractical. I've
discussed this before and believe the goal should be to find the candidate that deviates
the least from your philosophy, those with minimal compromise.
And from this perspective, Dean fails utterly.
Mr. Walker says:
Comrade Sanchez makes the libertarian case for Dean on the Reason site today. More exactly, he makes the case that a Democratic president restrained by a Republican Congress is better than a Republican president enabled by a Republican Congress. His argument is both controversial and essentially true, and I have just a few additions to make to it.
If a divided government is more restrained than a regime in which the same party controls both the legislature and the executive, it's also true that the combination of donkey president with elephant House seems preferable to the combination of elephant president with donkey House. I certainly preferred living under Clinton plus a Republican Congress to living under Bush Sr. plus a Democratic Congress.
My thing is I won't settle for a "better" that can be best libertarianally (ha!, double entendre!) summarized as "better in two or three areas and worse in most others."
Needless to say, the fact that I could cheer for a Democrat does not mean I would actually vote for him. The chances of one ballot making a difference in a national election are almost impossibly small, and if the outcome ever did come down to my one vote you can be sure the results would be decided in court instead of the polls. So with nothing riding on my ballot, I'd rather not throw it away on a man who's sure to upset me once he's in office. Better to back a third party, to write in a cartoon character, or not to cast a vote at all.
Agreed. Locally, the
Travis County Libertarian Party has been hyping
Michael Badnarik and so far, he's gotten my head nodding far more than shaking.
UPDATE(11/19/2003 12:30pm)
Want more reasons? How about Dean's desire to re-regulate whole industries?
After years of government deregulation of energy markets, telecommunications, the airlines and other major industries, Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is proposing a significant reversal: a comprehensive "re-regulation" of U.S. businesses.
The former Vermont governor said he would reverse the trend toward deregulation pursued by recent presidents -- including, in some respects, Bill Clinton -- to help restore faith in scandal-plagued U.S. corporations and better protect U.S. workers.
In an interview around midnight Monday on his campaign plane with a small group of reporters, Dean listed likely targets for what he dubbed as his "re-regulation" campaign: utilities, large media companies and any business that offers stock options. Dean did not rule out "re-regulating" the telecommunications industry, too.
The man is antithetical to so many libertarian principles it is ABSURD anyone calling themselves a libertarian would vote for him. Argreeing with him on one issue (Iraq) should not be enough of a pass to allow this kind of socialism back into the country.
He also said a Dean administration would require new workers' standards, a much broader right to unionize and new "transparency" requirements for corporations that go beyond the recently enacted Sarbanes-Oxley law.
"In order to make capitalism work for ordinary human beings, you have to have regulation," Dean said. "Right now, workers are getting screwed."
[...]
Earlier in the campaign, Dean reversed his prior support for Clinton's free-trade agreements with Mexico, Canada and China.
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"I certainly would reverse media deregulation," Dean said. "I would go back to the limitations on how many stations you can own in a given market."
[...]
As governor of Vermont, Dean advocated deregulation, angering some environmentalists. But the events of the past two years have convinced him deregulation is to blame for many of the nation's problems.
"California is proving it does not work," he said. "I think the reason the grid failed is because of utility deregulation."
2003 The Washington Post Company
Libertarians: Do
not support this man!
UPDATE(11/24/2003 12:30am)
More here. A commenter on another blog takes issue with some of my characterizations and I respond.
UPDATE(12/5/2003 8:20pm)
Oh yeah, by the way, Howard Dean is no fiscal conservative.
UPDATE 9/24/2004 5:30pm
The Austin American-Statesman, Voting, Free Speech, and Information
When in doubt, always have your cat check it out. Turbo appreciates good build quality even though he can't explain exactly why. He spent most of the evening rubbing his face on the edges of the chassis and corners of the side panel. So yeah, this thing doesn't have too many sharp surfaces. I found none and I spent more than an hour poking around inside.
Here's what I was handed on Wednesday. The Windows XP package is on top. The case came shipped in the retail box which was sturdy enough to survive the trek from California. This should be a note of warning, however, to those who go through 
Can't do this on an empty stomach, right? The format of this review will be fairly simple. After going over some notable features, I'll spend the rest of my time discussing the ACAG. The next time I post, it will be in the process of installing the hardware and I'll append any case-related comments to this post.
