CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
 |  Subject: Via Anarcho-Capitalists' Forum: Libertarian Success in New Hampshire  Wed Nov 10, 2021 9:20 pm | |
| About 20 years ago, a group of Libertarians realized, quite reasonably, that their numbers were too dispersed to be effective. If they concentrated in a smaller, less-populated state, they had a chance of wielding real political power (instead of being spoilers who helped left-wing Democrats win elections). They chose New Hampshire and began a movement to establish a kind of Libertarian homeland. At first, the establishment ignored them. Then it laughed at them. Then it fought them. Then they won. (Sort of.)
As of 2021, there are more than 5,000 Free Staters in New Hampshire. Despite their small numbers, they have built a well-funded and organized political apparatus that has elected roughly 45 Republicans to the New Hampshire House of Representatives. The libertarians vote as a bloc that, with a slim majority, the party can’t do without.
Washington Monthly portrays this as horror story.
With Free Staters at their back, Republicans this year have cut taxes in the already income-tax-less state, banned critical race theory and late-term abortions, and launched what’s likely the most sweeping education voucher program in the nation. … This June, the legislature passed a $13.5 billion budget for the next two years, cutting nearly $300 million from Sununu’s original proposal. Onto the budget they tacked a ban on abortions beyond 24 weeks (unless to save the mother’s life); the aforementioned ban on “divisive” race education in schools; a program creating “education freedom accounts” (essentially vouchers) that redirect public school money to private schools and homeschooling; and a raft of tax cuts.
There is nothing there I find objectionable.
Under House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, a Free State mover, anti-authority libertarians have joined with anti-elite populists to shoot down anything that smacks of expertise or specialized knowledge.
That would be the same “expertise and specialized knowledge” that lost Afghanistan, turned a relatively moderate pandemic into an economic and social catastrophe, engineered the 2008 mortgage collapse into a government-financial industry “too big to fail” monstrosity, and ran the country into $30 trillion in debt. It takes a lot of highly “specialized knowledge” to get to “$3.5 trillion in spending costs 0” and “there will be less crime if we cut the police and let the criminals out of jail.”
We would probably be better off with more common sense and less “specialized knowledge.”
Recently, a joint House-Senate committee tabled its acceptance of $6.3 million in federal funds for addiction counseling in the opioid-ravaged state, with members saying they needed to see proof that counseling even works.
Whoa! You mean … they wanted evidence that something worked before they spent millions of dollars on it? How antithetical to everything the Uniparty stands for. The Washington Monthly feigns concern that Libertarians have too much influence over the Republican Party in New Hampshire. It sounds to me like it’s just about right.
The Libertarian Party in most times and places is not a serious political movement. It’s more like a clique where everybody tries to outdo everyone else in demonstrating how opposed to centralized government they are. Most Libertarian attempts to go mainstream are a complete disaster. Gary Johnson’s 2016 presidential run comes to mind, when he decided that it was consistent with Libertarian principles for the state to force bakers to participate in gay weddings, otherwise religious factions would be free to murder each other (which sounds like something a college stoner would come up with after three bong hits). The Libertarians in New Hampshire seem to have succeeded … mainly … in forcing the state Republican Party to live up to its stated principles of smaller government, protection for the sanctity of life, and school choice.
Someone had to, I guess.
https://ricochet.com/1088572/libertarian-success-in-new-hampshire-horrifies-washington-leftists/
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RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
| | Subject: Re: Via Anarcho-Capitalists' Forum: Libertarian Success in New Hampshire Thu Nov 11, 2021 3:51 pm | |
| - CovOps wrote:
- Under House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, a Free State mover, anti-authority libertarians have joined with anti-elite populists to shoot down anything that smacks of expertise or specialized knowledge.
That would be the same “expertise and specialized knowledge” that lost Afghanistan, turned a relatively moderate pandemic into an economic and social catastrophe, engineered the 2008 mortgage collapse into a government-financial industry “too big to fail” monstrosity, and ran the country into $30 trillion in debt. It takes a lot of highly “specialized knowledge” to get to “$3.5 trillion in spending costs 0” and “there will be less crime if we cut the police and let the criminals out of jail.”
We would probably be better off with more common sense and less “specialized knowledge.”
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