Join us on August 19th at 37-70 79th Street, Jackson Heights for an LPQC meeting and to rally around our District 25 city council candidate, Suraj Jaswal! Feel free to invite your friends to attend. We could use any and all support to ensure Suraj has the best chance of winning his race!
THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2021 AT 7 PM EDT – 9 PM EDT
KITCHEN 79 – 37-70 79th Street, Jackson Heights
FB EVENT: https://fb.me/e/iZISj6AI2
Help elect Jo Jorgensen as President by spreading the message in New York!
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The NYC public education system has revamped its entire way of teaching our children, with the parents being in control, teachers now having the freedom to teach, and children learning at their own pace with no standardized testing. I know it’s a HUGE struggle; suddenly being thrown into routine change and working parents have to adjust more. But let’s focus on the benefits instead of the negatives. My child has had zero meltdowns, no bullying issues, more freedom to move around, more exercise, & learning what she wants to learn with a dedicated home teacher giving 1:1 lesson instruction. What are some of the positive changes in your child you have seen?
— Debra Altman,
as posted on her Facebook account,
reprinted by permission
Debra Altman is a Citywide Council for District 75 schools, has a special need child with an IEP, double masters in business and works for the family court system helping families as a paralegal. Born and raised NYC, Staten Island.
for distribution by the Libertarian Party on 03/24/2020
“Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”
— Milton Friedman
As of right now, AMERICANS IN ONLY 35 STATES will have a third choice in November. This is not enough! We cannot stop until we have secured 50 state ballot access for the Libertarian Party once again.
We have already deployed, or had planned to deploy petitioners in several states to collect the mandatory number of signatures to grant us access to each ballot. That method has become IMPOSSIBLE to continue with while also following suggested guidelines and essential requirements of social distancing in order to protect against the Coronavirus. Moreover, knowing that asymptomatic people can still spread the virus makes any attempts to continue with this method far too risky for both our petitioners, and the many thousands of people they would come into contact with. For this reason, we have shifted our strategy to one of appealing to the good sense and empathy of the Governors and other officials of the states in question.
So far letters have been sent to Governors and Secretaries of State in Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Maryland, and Minnesota. Ten more states are preparing letters at this time, and in Texas similar action is being taken in an attempt to grant permission to postpone their state convention — a date that is currently mandated by law. Please contact your state chair IMMEDIATELY to find out how you can assist in this campaign. While any sensible and rational person would grant the requests in each of these appeals at such a time as this, we have to remember that politics can poison even the most sensible. In the case that any of these appeals are rejected, we will take this fight to the courts. Libertarianism will not become victim to political abuse of power no matter how dire the situation becomes. Our fight will continue until our Libertarian candidate has a place on every ballot once more.
for immediate release by the LNC on 03/23/2020
The Libertarian Party calls on the Republicans and Democrats to become aware of the tremendous changes Americans are dealing with in their lives, and to make a similar change in the way Congress operates.
Firstly, it is critical that Congress allow remote voting immediately. In the absence of a functioning congress, the Executive branch has too much power. With members of both the House and Senate stricken, the need is urgent and logical. There are no technical issues that could not be overcome.
Secondly, Congress must put aside it’s constant game of position and opposition and recognize when they put things into bills that their opponents cannot live with, that they are hurting the American people. Of course as Libertarians we’d prefer Congress stimulate the economy by removing regulations. We’d prefer Americans be given more money by telling them there’s no income tax this year. And we’d prefer the government completely get out of the process of handling the medical response, and let doctors and health care companies operate freely.
The Libertarian Party however recognizes that we cannot get the legislation we want passed in this political environment. And Republicans and Democrats must recognize the same political reality. Republicans and Democrats should meet with their separate bills, and then give the opposition a “line item veto” to reject the things they cannot live with.
It is clear that a majority of lawmakers of both parties and a majority of Americans support an emergency payment to every adult and extending the deadline for filing income taxes. Bringing a clean bill that did only those things to a vote would provide emergency relief to people, not bailouts to politically connected industries.
Whatever remains is the bill that can be passed today. It’s unclear what the best path forward is because our situation is changing daily. Yet Congress is in a unique situation where they can model a behavior they would like the citizens to repeat. When you cannot see how to get to the end of a problem, do the next right thing. A unified Congress passing the smaller things they can agree upon would be a message to the country that though we may not know how this will all turn out — we can make progress towards making things better.
The Libertarian Party calls on Republicans and Democrats to put aside the leveraging of the crisis for political gain, and to, for the sake of the American people, find the things they can agree upon and pass them immediately. The country doesn’t need monolithic legislation because the people know that nothing is going to be solved overnight. The people need to see that progress is being made. And the people should rightly despise the villains who absent getting their politically divisive agenda passed, will block any other legislation that will provide relief.
Daniel Fishman
Executive Director
The Libertarian Party
originally published in the Libertarian Party website on 03/16/2020
by Bob Johnston on March 16, 2020
in News From Ballot Access News
on March 11, 2020:
The New Mexico Libertarian Party has 12 candidates for State House on its June primary ballot, and 6 candidates for State Senate. That is the highest number of legislative candidates that any party, other than the Democratic and Republican Parties, has had in New Mexico since the 1910’s decade.
Historically, New Mexico has not had vigorous third parties, relative to other western states.
“I have to thank our state legislature and governor for helping us recruit candidates, the arrogance displayed by passing “red flag” legislation that destroys due process (for their political enemies), and the glee with which a historic budget surplus was rapidly spent on crony projects while calling for new taxes in the same breath, provoked enough anger to motivate many libertarians to step up and run for office. ” said New Mexico LP chair Chris Luchini.
Click here if you are interested in running for office in 2020 as a Libertarian.
originally posted in the LP website
by Dan Fishman on March 9
Be self reliant! Don’t wait for the government!
Ingredients (links included for example purposes only)
1/3 cup of Aloe Vera Gel
2/3rds cup of rubbing alcohol (at least 91%)
10 drops of one of the following (or mix and match) essential oils:
Combine in bowl and whisk well!
originally printed in in the Volume 50, Issue 1 of LP News
reprinted by permission
by Bob Johnston
LNC Staffer & LPMD State Chair
A month ago, a former Maryland Libertarian Party candidate called to let me know that he is going to run for the same race in 2020 as a Republican.
I thanked him for having the courtesy to let me know and asked him why he was planning on running as a Republican. He replied that he wanted to win.
I asked him why not run as a Democrat for that seat.
He sputtered incredulously, “Why would I do that?”
I said, “Because a Democrat has won that seat the last three elections, the last two by double digits.”
After a pause, he replied, “Well, I have a better chance of getting elected to the seat as a Republican than as a Libertarian”.
“True, but you still have much better shot getting elected as a Democrat”. Nonetheless, he still couldn’t fathom running as a Democrat.
The supposed affinity with the Republican Party is a problem the Libertarian Party has had for most of its history.
Part of the fault is on the Libertarian Party. For decades, the party has reached out mostly to disaffected conservatives, particularly on the issues of spending and gun rights. There has been a theme going around for years that the LP is a bunch of conservatives who like to smoke pot. In 2016, many Libertarians tried to position the party as one for “Never Trumpers.” Well, the Republican Party has sucked for a long time prior to Donald Trump getting elected president. The LP has done a poor job of reaching out to those who are anti-war, for civil liberties, against corporate welfare and for immigration. Further, former Libertarians running as Republicans give the GOP libertarians credibility they don’t deserve.
The other part of the problem is that Republican candidates love using libertarian rhetoric when running for office. Never mind that they never deliver. In 2000, Bill Clinton’s last year as president, the budget was $2 trillion and the debt around $5.5 trillion. The budget is now $4.4 trillion and the debt reaching $23 trillion, with a majority of the spending since the Clinton Administration written and passed by Republican-controlled US House members. They have been fully behind our aggressive foreign policy, where we have been mired in the Middle East for 16 years with no end in sight — a war that has cost over a trillion dollars, thousands of deaths and massive environmental destruction. Going back to Nixon, they have enforced the War on Drugs which has locked up countless nonviolent people and ruined their lives.
Some libertarian-ish people have been elected to Congress as Republicans, such as Rand Paul, Thomas Massie and Justin Amash. Rand Paul has come out and said he isn’t a libertarian, rather a “constitutional conservative.” While he has tried to push the Republican Party to limit our presence in our foreign wars and pushed for some changes to civil liberties, he is a full supporter of Donald Trump and has backed some of Trump’s un-libertarian legislation and appointments, such as Mike Pompeo. He recently tried to get the Republicans in Congress to pass a budget that would cut a whopping two percent in spending. He got no takers. And Amash was run out of the Republican Party for speaking out about Trump. Paul, Massie and Amash have had to fight their own party as much as they have the Democrats, and they haven’t made the Republican Party any more libertarian than it was prior to their getting elected.
When Rand’s father, Ron Paul, decided to run for Congress again in 1996 after being away for eight years, the GOP did everything they could to prevent him from getting reelected. They backed former Democrat-turned-Republican Greg Laughlin against Dr. Paul since the district was strongly Republican and the winner of the Republican primary would most likely win the general election. Then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, along with his father, former President George H. W. Bush, both campaigned against Dr. Paul, as did then-Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. Fortunately, Dr. Paul still won. In 2006, also in Texas, then-Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay resigned after winning the primary, due to ethics violations. It was too late for the Republicans to place another candidate on the ballot, thus there were only a Democrat and Bob Smither, a Libertarian appearing in the general election for that seat. Did the Republicans back the Libertarian? Of course not. They chose to get behind a write-in campaign for a Republican candidate. It didn’t work, and the Democrat won.
The Republican establishment would rather a Democrat win than a Libertarian.
The national GOP has made it extremely difficult for Libertarians to get on the ballot in partisan races in Arizona, has spent over a decade trying to keep us off of the ballot in Ohio, and recently the Republican-led Texas legislature passed a law requiring minor party candidates, such as ours, to pay expensive filing fees to get on the ballot — fees which will cost in the thousands to run for statewide office, and which few of our candidates can afford. Republicans (and Democrats) will do anything to prevent candidates who want to shrink government from winning elections.
Libertarianism isn’t conservative nor liberal, in the current sense of that term. To be a Libertarian means you are against the initiation of force or fraud to get what you want or feel needs to be done. Period.
Working for freedom can be a long, slow grind. It is quite possible that I won’t see a free society, or any significant shrinkage in government by the time I pass on. My time and efforts working for the cause through the Libertarian Party may not come to fruition. But I also know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I will never get a free society working through the Republican or Democrat parties.
Are you a Republican, or are you a Libertarian?
