True Loki. But like you said before. Limited option. I'm a Bernie guy, he or Yang was the only real chance

Now we get some old guys that refuse to act for the will of the people. Mostly because they are bought and paid for by lobbies

I'm don't think you can point necessarily to any individual policy and accurately project the fiscal impact. For example, rising healthcare costs, what percentage is due to ACA legislation? I don't think anyone has that number. The bigger the move, the riskier the result.

Rising health care costs are bad for individuals. But I see that when you have no options you go to the Obama boogie man.

I like Yang, but think he's more ready for a key Cabinet position than an overall leader in charge. He's the ONLY Dem in primaries who I saw make intelligent points about energy policy, and act like he had some real clue, not just spouting consultant driven words.

Good point Loki.

I'd favor Yang over most of the lineup.

Why not a Bernie?

I think Bernie was too much of an activist/base growth candidacy, less of the Statesman/Arbiter that I'd like to see.

The decades long Senator isn't a Statesman?

representative of the US to the world abroad

And orange face is?

No better.

Too much from the Bern (including staff actions that represent him) didn't hold up so well on close inspection, as superficially. I'd support a full blown revolutionary if it seemed to move in directions that shut down historic government frauds and scams, and supported a rights model consistent with ConLaw. Bern seems to be just an alternative statist and games player, taken in light of how staff ran his own campaign operations.

So dems it is then.

I'm more of a policy guy.

Likewise.

@LokiV I'm not really clear what percentage of Bernie's candidacy was playing to a shifting base of the DNC vs shifted because of it.

The Tea Party pulled the GOP way over hard fascist right to compete, while Trump zig zagged around that area as if more of an opportunist than having any real positions or values besides propping up his own mental illness based self-image.

Then Hillary, in part based on who she pandered to in order to financially recover from Wasserman-Schultz's horrible financial mismanagement, pushed the Dems into being the party of Zionist genocide proactive support, among other dirty directions. And election law violations of types difficult to prosecute, against Bern.

Biden's in bed with some of that, and VAWA as sexist, misandrist, and anti-Due Process, plus setting up psychobitch scammers, and an attack on RTKBA. Lots of blatant ConLaw violations there, for which ideally we need better process to blackball perpetrators out of government positions for life quickly.

I think Harris on the ticket is going to drive Red to the polls more than it will drive Blue votes.

FWIW, as a left libertarian, I was hoping to see more from Bret before. I also lean to policy standards so long as it's coupled to functional practice, and am not of party above all religious-equiv in any direction. IOW, we need systemic change to allow NOTA when no candidate meets base qualifications, and to push better compliance with core standards even if popular vote pushes elsewhere.

I would love to see election reform, but that system plays to the entrenched 2 party system, so I don't foresee any progress there.

> I think Harris on the ticket is going to drive Red to the polls more than it will drive Blue votes.
@drenath
Red that's anti-Trump mania to vote against Biden-Harris, or support Harris due to her hard right prosecutor positions in the past, despite anything she says now as a Dem for high office?

The first.

sorta.

> I would love to see election reform, but that system plays to the entrenched 2 party system, so I don't foresee any progress there.
@drenath
I'm part of an anti-Gerrymandering group that's worked for years on a state Amendment to restrict that, which I suspect will pass this year.

That's a small step and tiny piece, but it ties hands of malicious Dems who see themselves taking over, while doing more to restrict efforts like what Karl Rove's dark money funded via Rick Jankowski's operation to make GOP wins in places where the vote supports Dems. Caliper's Maptitude for Redistricting lowering the price of entry to that game also played a big role, which I noticed, mentioned to some Dem leaders as needing attention a decade ago, and got blown off as if math is hard for low intellect Dem base, and so couldn't possible need party focus or attention during the previous Gerrymandering cycle.

PoliSci and election IT project wonks I've studied universally conclude GOP gains more by that style of district tampering than Dems generally can.

Very cool on the state Amendment.

> FWIW, as a left libertarian, I was hoping to see more from Bret before.
@LokiV
What kind of things were you looking for?

> @LokiV
> What kind of things were you looking for?
@drenath

The Libertarian Party was founded decades ago largely by the Goldwater branch of the GOP, which was in some ways more like Classic Conservatives, a term not at odds with Classic Liberals but often synergistic, unlike those labels today. OTOH, that campaign led to the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater Rule when many of their members thought the candidate was crazy in his nuclear big red button use views, and should be stopped. (Those conflicts of medical ethics still persist, with 37 doctors recently publishing a book that cites their "duty to warn" as prevailing over Goldwater Rule against discussing Trump's obvious dangerous mental illness.)

Political Compass generally places LP platforms as extreme hard right, and only mildly libertarian. Many LP members advocate for solving civil rights violations not by actually protecting said rights, but privatizing oppression, and ignoring or undercutting "Public Accommodation" and similar legal standards to treat corporations as creatures of government privilege, as having some duties of quasi-government fairness.

An under-discussed key trait distinguishing left-libertarians is that (often without express statement or realization) we treat financial systems of urban industrial society as equivalent types of potentially abused force as arms use historically, capable of denial of food, shelter, etc. That's a pretty big deal as to what in theory shared values in a government that treats people more fairly, does or doesn't mean in practice, and is more than a trivial "we have minor policy view differences" blow-off Bret seemed to use.

> corporations as creatures of government privilege
@LokiV

Can you go into more detail here?

Going back a few years, I would have found it interesting to see what Harry Browne might have accomplished, had it been possible to elect him.

I had mixed impressions of him from afar, though he had more statesman qualities than many revolutionaries. But, I got some private behind the scenes insight, as his far younger girlfriend was the brightest Psychologist I've known (way beyond JoJo), his campaign strategist, and a personal friend and part of a private micro-think tank shoulder tap group I was tapped for decades ago, due to her having been a grad school housemate of a physicist mutual friend at Berkeley back in the day.

> @LokiV
>
> Can you go into more detail here?
@drenath

Wait, where are my notes from when an anti-fascism group a couple years ago asked me to give a 2 hour presentation on that topic.....

Short form, corporations are legal fictions created by state Sec. of States under legislative fiat. what that means has some twisted history, but they don't exist to grant types of qualified immunity they're given, other than by state legal privilege largely based around the kind of philosophy of government used by kings and feudal barony.

Certain types (mainly meals, housing, travel) have a Federal designation of Public Accommodation with explicit statutory civil rights obligations. Labor laws often impose additional limits, as do states in widely disparate forms, often not enforced honestly (consider CA's Unruh Act from 1957).

I personally think it's overdue to ban corporate status for churches, as if one state's very lawyer-costly trial state Supreme Court ruled correctly that it cannot decide issues based on religious doctrine, and when church corporations often have ByLaws and local affiliation agreements that are based in large part on just that, it's antithetical to the rule of law to have courts of competent jurisdiction or last resort that cannot or will not decide issues of malfeasance or fraud as for other corporate ownership and management structures.

As to Hobby Lobby or Citizens United or Affordable Care Act birth control bypasses, there's a lot of absurdity or fraud in how some courts too often act. And messy law from conflicts in dirty politics.

Fiat currency is very good. Far superior. Limits are very good because they strengthen society. Churches are very useful also.

It is very good that we have Corporations separate from individuals. They make society prosper because they limit the liability. And offer more rights. This is great.

@LokiV Thanks for the extra details. It would be very interesting to me to sharpen which policy adjustments that a GOP-shifting-toward-Libertarian party could make to attract Left-Libertarians/Centrists without alienating the majority of the traditional Conservative base.

My major concern is that this point is already where we are at, and tactics to win elections have eclipsed the policies that seek to actually improve the commonwealth.

> My major concern is that this point is already where we are at, and tactics to win elections have eclipsed the policies that seek to actually improve the commonwealth.
@drenath

I could suggest two books, one by a UK investigative journalist, one from a Canadian Psychologist, that both conclude Western societies value the arrogant, driven traits of psychopaths as government or corporate leaders, to such a warped extent, some of those are more extreme and dangerous mental illness models than the average psychopath found in prisons or long term locked wards as too crazy to stand trial, too dangerous to release.

And that reflects on the populace and electorate.

I think I already understood that the qualities needed to win elections varies wildly from qualities that I'd like to see in my representatives.

> I think I already understood that the qualities needed to win elections varies wildly from qualities that I'd like to see in my representatives.
@drenath

I can honestly claim over the years that I have blocked, helped pass, or reshaped, law or regulation at all levels from local Councils or Boards, through a few international treaties. It's a lot of work, in windows of opportunities, for small snippets of major needed changes.

But most monkeys with car keys do closer to zero of that. I've been at public meetings with large protests, and seen officials ask where people were 3 months or 2 years prior, when they solicited public input or comment, and went into newspapers, libraries, and community groups seeking it, with little response. So as office or position rises in larger branches of government, their message changes to send money to help elect us, and tries to skip details.

I would agree that the public at large is mostly clueless and/or disenfranchised with regard to how a citizen should interact with the political system, outside of the voting booth.

I would be very interested to know of the history of some of those accomplishments and your role in them. But I understand this is the internet and you might prefer to remain anonymous 🙂