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Reason.com, a libertarian article which is trending now: Joe Manchin of West Virginia Is Once Again Telling Republicans and Democrats What They Don't Want To Hear. During the first two years of the Biden administration, Sen. Joe Manchin (D–W.Va.) often ended up having to be the responsible adult in the room. https://reason.com/2023/03/03/joe-manchin-is-once-again-telling-republicans-and-democrats-what-they-dont-want-to-hear/ What is your view of Joe Machin? I started a poll. ---> will go with a responsible adult. Is great, in my opinion, to have a force there which is not part of the 2 main parties' doctrine.

More from within the academic world in the United States. <--- Just imagine, Bernie Sanders has his way and opens the gates for colleges. More voters for him, what a deal that will be for old Bernie. 😄 Here are his supporters, that can't wait to get in, embracing Bernie as some sort of guru: 😄 The cultism is scary, it reminds me of MAGA world. ---> 😄 but back to the academic world: From Reason.com / Libertarian Platform 40 % of Liberal Professors Are Afraid They'll Lose Their Jobs Over a Misunderstanding As the academy gets younger it grows more authoritarian, according to a new survey of over 1,400 faculty members conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). The free speech group's findings portend a dark future for higher education if this course isn't reversed—and if faculty minds don't become more open to dissenting viewpoints. Over the past decade or so, many academic departments embraced ideological views in their teaching and research, promoting social justice–laden scholarship as a way of correcting the wrongs of the past. Unsurprisingly, many departments developed left-of-center academic monocultures, becoming unfriendly to differing opinions. Young faculty entering the profession are only adding to this academic echo chamber. As a professor, I'm on the younger side for faculty members. My cohort is much more illiberal than their older colleagues. Two-thirds of faculty over 55 years old said students shouting down a speaker is never acceptable. That number plummets to 37 percent for faculty 35 and under. Shockingly, younger faculty report more acceptance of violence to combat speech. While 97 percent of older faculty say it's never acceptable for students to use violence to stop a campus speech, only 79 percent of younger faculty agree. That one in five younger professors show any level of acceptance for violence to stop speech should alarm all of us. Mixing age with ideology reveals even more pronounced support for illiberal attitudes. Among liberal faculty 35 and under, only 23 percent indicated that students shouting down a speaker is never acceptable, compared with 88 percent of conservative faculty. Moderate faculty in this age group were also much more likely than their conservative colleagues to endorse the acceptability of these tactics. Perhaps most alarming of all, only 64 percent of young and liberal faculty say it's never acceptable for students to use violence to stop a campus speech. Illiberalism runs deep among young liberal faculty members, and their views regrettably resemble those of their students rather than their more senior peers. As newer and far less tolerant numbers of professors replace older faculty, colleges and universities may be in a true crisis if the higher education enterprise destroys its core values. The research also finds that faculty members are self-censoring at higher rates. In 1955, at the end of the second Red Scare after World War II during the age of McCarthy and deep anti-communist fear, 9 percent of social scientists said they toned down their writing for fear of causing controversy. Today, 25 percent say they're very or extremely likely to self-censor their writing in academic publications. More than half of faculty—52 percent—say they're afraid they'll lose their job or reputation over a misunderstanding of something they said or did, or because someone posted something from their past online. While almost three-quarters of conservative faculty expressed this year, 40 percent of even liberal faculty agree. That's staggering: two in five professors who are a part of the prevailing orthodoxy on campus are fearful of losing their jobs over a misunderstanding. As the report says, this "speaks volumes about the climate of fear, intimidation, and censorship on campus." This cannot be the environment of the future. Our society cannot thrive when opposing voices are met with fists rather than facts. And as a professor, I know that what starts on campus rarely stays there. This fear will continue to grow and infect our neighborhoods, our workplaces, and our communities. There is still time to course correct. But students, trustees, donors, alumni, and the public must demand better from the faculty today before these young authoritarians run higher education tomorrow. https://reason.com/2023/02/28/40-percent-of-liberal-professors-are-afraid-theyll-lose-their-jobs-over-a-misunderstanding/?itm_source=parsely-api

As someone who follows at times Reason.com, Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and other libertarian figures, I'm interested in hearing thoughts on Libertarians in the US. I often see people identify themselves also as <- libertarian right & libertarian left -> Do most Libertarians in the US vote for the Republican Party? What is your opinion?

Is time the Reasonable Libertarians have some voice too. 😄 Enjoy - Trending & Comical: ---> These funds were for the Covid-19 era ... but why not buy yourself a little something too? LYRICS: Getting Congress to cut spending is getting harder these days The only thing that we've been trimming are our resumes We sent out money for pandemic help But don't hesitate to go spoil yourself Is your municipal golf course in need of a spritz? Do you want a stadium? Do you not exist? Can you not even afford to put air in your balls? Pick up the phone and put in a call to Uncle Sugar Sending cash to the entire nation Uncle Sugar Send the tab to the next generation All is right in the world when you're reading the blotter And see Ted Kennedy's institute is underwater Sure this cash was for less people dead But at least we finally found a way to pay a debt How could you've known when you borrowed for that fancy degree The gender studies companies would not be hiring? You signed your name and said you'd pay them one way or another Don't they know your daddy's creepy brother is Uncle Sugar Sending cash to the entire nation Uncle Sugar Send the tab to the next generation It was the greatest civilization the world has ever seen Though not everything they did was done impeccably Every few decades their dollars cut in half From the looks of this they also worshipped golden calves And when a pandemic came and times got hard They gave cash to first responders…of misparked cars Voted themselves money, borrowed abroad How did it end? With thunderous applause for Uncle Sugar Sending cash to the entire nation Uncle Sugar Send the tab to the next generation https://reason.com/video/2023/02/17/remy-uncle-sugar/ @myata the Libertarians above are better than anarchists. Is a much better choice in my view than other rebel ways.

Yesterday a right wing populist on this website assumed that he knows my position on so called "Russia-Gate." Probably because I troll his master Trump, daily. Well, like every person of the mob, he was wrong, and this article which just popped-up now describes some of my views on this topic. I was always at the belief, is just a theory that some members of the media with influences from the Democratic Party overexaggerated this story for their own agenda. Did Trump used the Russians for his narcissism? Sure! But to think there was a conspiracy without the intelligence communities not alerting the political class or the media is just a wild theory out of the woods. Trump is just a puppet in my view, if he would have crossed that line, the people that are the muscle of America would not have allowed it. Muller Report, no action was taken. From Reason.com - leading libertarian source To retain journalistic credibility, getting a story right is more important than pursuing a crusade. That's a fair takeaway from a report published this week by the Columbia Journalism Review dissecting the so-called Russiagate saga, during which former President Donald Trump was accused of colluding with Russian officials to win the 2016 election. While pursuing the story, many journalists went well beyond their traditional role of scrutinizing powerful officials and not only openly picked a side in America's escalating political warfare but committed to proving a literal conspiracy theory true, no matter the evidence. It didn't go well. "The end of the long inquiry into whether Donald Trump was colluding with Russia came in July 2019, when Robert Mueller III, the special counsel, took seven, sometimes painful, hours to essentially say no," former New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth writes at the beginning of his detailed analysis. His old employer was at the center of the frenzy and its editors still defend their efforts, he adds. "But outside of the Times' own bubble, the damage to the credibility of the Times and its peers persists, three years on, and is likely to take on new energy as the nation faces yet another election season animated by antagonism toward the press. At its root was an undeclared war between an entrenched media, and a new kind of disruptive presidency, with its own hyperbolic version of the truth." The whole piece is worth reading, but make yourself a pot of coffee or crack open a bottle of wine—it's long. Nobody comes off looking especially good. That's true of the former president, though the flaws it reveals in Trump are nothing new to anybody who has watched him and his ego on the national stage. It's true of the FBI agents who joined with too many journalists to fan each other into a hopeful frenzy over the Steele dossier and its assertions that Trump was Putin's puppet. And it's especially true of those members of the press who shed credibility by committing to a narrative that didn't pan out. "Before the 2016 election, most Americans trusted the traditional media and the trend was positive, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer," Gerth notes. "Today, the U.S. media has the lowest credibility—26 percent—among forty-six nations, according to a 2022 study by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism." That Reuters study is echoed by other studies finding minimal trust in the media. But distrust is unevenly spread. "Americans' trust in the media remains sharply polarized along partisan lines, with 70 percent of Democrats, 14 percent of Republicans and 27 percent of independents saying they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence," according to Gallup polling in October 2022. That divide is explained by the public perception that the media is not only biased, but out to push an agenda without regard for honesty. Americans "suspect that inaccuracies in reporting are purposeful, with 52 percent believing that reporters misrepresent the facts, and 28 percent believing reporters make them up entirely," a Gallup/Knight poll found in 2020. Journalistic shenanigans like the Russiagate debacle can only feed such concerns. Strictly speaking, there's nothing wrong with journalists having a point of view, so long as they're open about it and emphasize getting the story right. You're reading a libertarian publication right now; we do our best to confine our beliefs to interpreting facts that exist independent of our preferences. A partisan press is well-rooted in American history, from the newspapers that gleefully tormented the early presidents to the Republican and Socialist newspapers over which my grandparents screamed at each other. Efforts at "objectivity" in news coverage—however successful—didn't really become the norm until after World War II. And it's likely a passing norm as journalists re-embrace partisanship and find (or don't) supportive audiences. "A little more than half of the journalists surveyed (55 percent) say that every side does not always deserve equal coverage in the news," Pew Research reported last summer. "By contrast, 22 percent of Americans overall say the same, whereas about three-quarters (76 percent) say journalists should always strive to give all sides equal coverage." "Beyond Objectivity: Producing Trustworthy News in Today's Newsrooms," published last week by the Knight-Cronkite News Lab, found that "a growing number of journalists of color and younger white reporters, including LGBTQ+ people, believe that objectivity has become an increasingly outdated and divisive concept that prevents truly accurate reporting informed by their own backgrounds, experiences and points of view." Authors Leonard Downie Jr., formerly of the Washington Post, and Arizona State University journalism professor Andrew Heyward wisely recommend that post-objectivity newsrooms should be open with their staff and the public about their core beliefs. But, troublingly, they also suggest that newsroom leaders should "move beyond accuracy to truth." It's really hard to get to any sort of truth if you bypass accuracy. "My main conclusion is that journalism's primary missions, informing the public and holding powerful interests accountable, have been undermined by the erosion of journalistic norms and the media's own lack of transparency about its work," Gerth writes in the afterword to his Russiagate post mortem. "One traditional journalistic standard that wasn't always followed in the Trump-Russia coverage is the need to report facts that run counter to the prevailing narrative." If more of the journalists pursuing the Russiagate story had been scrupulous about getting the facts right, they might have noticed that a story that many wanted to be true was remarkably thin and, ultimately, inaccurate. Failing to perform due diligence did the media no favors when the facts finally emerged and further eroded public trust. Gerth calls for his colleagues to recommit themselves to "a transparent, unbiased, and accountable media" in order to win back trust and audiences that are increasingly siloed along partisan lines. "Unbiased" is probably a big ask given the inclinations of journalists themselves. It's not even obvious that it ever existed; the media giants that dominated for a few decades were likely more monolithic in their newsroom ideologies than they were truly neutral. But transparency and accountability should be expected of journalists who should be open about their methods and pursue stories, not results. In the end, no matter what ideologies or causes motivate journalists, nobody will put faith in us if we fail to get the story right. https://reason.com/2023/02/03/getting-trump-was-more-important-to-some-journalists-than-getting-the-story-right/

So Alec Baldwin got charged, every single article is about him that is trending. The other one that is trending is one that will most likely descend into chaos in terms of discussion, but before I post it, would like to say my piece on the Covid Vaccine yet again: ---> If you have a physician, please talk to them, on a personal level, this why I did, double vaccinated, I made a personal decision to stop (no booster) as I got Covid already. I survived so far, Bill Gates is not controlling my mind contrary to what the conspiracy folks are saying. ---> This article is from Reason.com, the leading libertarian publication from the US which got hold of some files. ---> There has to be a discussion amongst reasonable people, has the political class flexed their muscles too much during this pandemic? I don't believe in any grand conspiracy, possible that the virus was let out via incompetence by the CCP, I can believe that. ---> I think we can hold a rational discussion on the question above, without descending into radicalism and asking for overthrowing of governments. ---> The beauty of the West, is not like in China, once one side of the political class flexes their muscles, we change them by vote @myata ---------------- Inside the Facebook Files: Emails Reveal the CDC's Role in Silencing COVID-19 Dissent Throughout the pandemic, the CDC was in constant contact with Facebook, vetting what users were allowed to say on the social media site. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) played a direct role in policing permissible speech on social media throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Confidential emails obtained by Reason show that Facebook moderators were in constant contact with the CDC, and routinely asked government health officials to vet claims relating to the virus, mitigation efforts such as masks, and vaccines. For a broader analysis of the federal government's pandemic-era efforts to suppress free speech—and whether they violated the First Amendment—see Reason's March 2023 cover story on the ramifications of these emails. This article provides screenshots of the emails themselves. After Elon Musk took control of Twitter, he permitted several independent journalists to peruse the company's previous communications with the FBI, the CDC, the White House, and government officials elsewhere. These disclosures, which have become known as the Twitter Files, reveal that government bureaucrats put substantial pressure on Twitter to restrict alleged misinformation relating to elections, Hunter Biden, and COVID-19. The Facebook Files, which were obtained by Reason as a result of the state of Missouri's lawsuit against the Biden administration, reveal that the CDC had substantial influence over what users were allowed to discuss on Meta's platforms: Facebook and Instagram. The messages reveal an environment where the CDC kept tabs on Meta's moderation practices and regularly told the company what the agency wanted it to do. For instance, in May 2021, CDC officials began routinely vetting claims about COVID-19 vaccines that had appeared on Facebook. The platform left it up to the federal government to determine which assertions were accurate. Facebook's moderator notes that some of the above claims "would already be violating"—an implicit admission that the CDC's opinion on the other claims would be a deciding factor in whether the platform would restrict such content. Facebook was clearly a willing participant in this process; moderators repeatedly thanked the CDC for its "help in debunking." Claims vetted by the CDC included whether "COVID-19 is man-made." The CDC told Facebook that it was "theoretically possible, but extremely unlikely." For months, it was Meta policy to prohibit users from asserting that the pandemic may have originated from a lab leak. The platform revised this policy around the same time that the above email exchange took place. By July 2021, the CDC wasn't just evaluating which claims it thought were false, but whether they could "cause harm." Then, in November, the Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for children to receive Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine. Meta proudly informed the CDC that it would remove false claims—"i.e. the COVID vaccine is not safe for kids"—from Facebook and Instagram. Meta also provided the CDC with a list of new claims about vaccines and asked whether the government thought they could "contribute to vaccine refusals." The CDC determined that this label applied to all such claims. It's important to consider the ramifications. Meta gave the CDC de facto power to police COVID-19 misinformation on the platforms; the CDC took the position that essentially any erroneous claim could contribute to vaccine hesitancy and cause social harm. This was a recipe for a vast silencing across Facebook and Instagram, at the federal government's implicit behest. Meta frequently gave the CDC lists of pandemic-related topics that had gone viral, seeking guidance on how to handle them. And the CDC informed Meta "to be on the lookout" for misinformation stemming from specific alleged misconceptions. Meta also kept the CDC apprised of criticism of Anthony Fauci, the White House's COVID-19 advisor and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). One email warned the CDC that Facebook users were mocking Fauci for changing his mind about masking and double-masking. The CDC replied that this information was "very helpful." If the tone of Meta's communications seems overly friendly, it's worth noting that staffers viewed government employees at the CDC as their "colleagues." In one email, Meta discussed providing said colleagues with access to a "reporting channel" for COVID-19 misinformation. The list of individuals with access included CDC staff, as well as employees at Reingold, a communications firm advising government health agencies. This is just a snapshot of the messages exchanged between the CDC and Meta. They also had regular conference calls. The CDC was not the only arm of the federal government engaged in this work, of course: White House staffers also castigated Meta for not deplatforming alleged misinformation fast enough. President Joe Biden himself accused Facebook of "killing people" in July 2021. One wonders whether these condemnations, from Biden and others in his administration—which included the specific threat of punitive regulation if demands for greater censorship were not met—influenced Meta's decision to delegate COVID-19 content moderation to the CDC. https://reason.com/2023/01/19/facebook-files-emails-cdc-covid-vaccines-censorship/

Via Reason.com - A leading Libertarian Source: The massive power of federal government attracts frauds. When George Santos was elected to Congress to represent Long Island, New York, the media narrative at the time was that he was the first openly gay Republican elected to the House of Representatives as a non-incumbent. It was a minor story in the news cycle, which focused more generally on how voters rejected the fringier and Trumpian candidates the Republican Party put forward in November. But now Santos is getting all sorts of national press coverage, because it turns out huge chunks of his biography—including his education and past employment—are complete fabrications. Earlier this month, after investigating Santos' background, The New York Times reported that it could not verify much of the information he had told voters. Santos publicly admitted some of his lies in an interview over Christmas weekend with the New York Post. He has not worked for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup, as he has claimed. (He was apparently working as a call center employee for Dish Network during that time). He also never graduated from Baruch College in New York City, as he had claimed. It's not clear at this point how much of Santos' background is actually true. Is he even gay? He was once married to a woman, The Daily Beast reports, but divorced her in 2019 just prior to his first (failed) run for Congress in 2020. This, of course, doesn't mean he's not gay. (He recently married his male partner). But it is a bit unusual. The misleading claims even turned comical when he admitted to the New York Post that he's Catholic and not Jewish, as he had claimed. "I never claimed to be Jewish," he explained. "I am Catholic. Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background I said I was 'Jew-ish.'" It sounds like something a character from Seinfeld or It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia might say when they're caught in a lie. Reason's Jesse Walker tweeted a memory of Harry Shearer telling a similar joke in the 1990s. While the whole scandal is hilarious, it is also deeply distressing. Democrats are demanding that Santos resign for his lies or that Congress somehow refuse to seat him, but, really, is anybody in U.S. national politics in a position to seize the moral high ground here? Sen. Elizabeth Warren? President Joe Biden? The scandal is not that Santos lied. The scandal is that Santos lied about so many things that we can't even be certain of who Santos is. And that does call into question whether Santos' campaign platform accurately represents him. But isn't that somewhat true of all politicians? Ultimately, we get to know our representatives by how they act once they're actually in Congress—what they vote for or against, what bills they introduce, and even whether they show up to do their job. On the campaign trail, politicians promise whatever they think will be necessary to swing the election in their favor. They could completely lie about who they are to impress voters. They could make promises to pass laws or create policies they have no intention of keeping or don't have the authority to keep. They can change their minds entirely once they get into office. Remember when Barack Obama campaigned for president promising to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? It is unfortunate that the truths about Santos didn't come out prior to his election. There are also some financial discrepancies in Santos' stated finances as part of his campaign run. Where did all his money come from if his job history is a lie? That may be what gets him in legal hot water. Otherwise, Santos presumably has a seat in Congress for two years unless he decides to resign over the scandal. At the moment, he is adamant that he will serve his term. There is no mechanism for his voters to recall him (or any other member of Congress). The Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can't refuse to seat him as long as he meets the constitutional requirements and was legally elected. There is accountability for Santos in the form of the 2024 election. If it turns out that he is this weird con artist, presumably his behavior in office will follow suit. Certainly the press will watch his actions closely. What is the moral of the story here? Well, first of all, political parties need to do a better job investigating their opposition. Apparently the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee did pick up some discrepancies about Santos' finances and the animal rescue charity he claimed to have connections to, but it didn't research his employment and educational background. Instead, the committee focused on his ties to Trump, claims of election fraud, and positions against abortion, which to be fair, did turn out to be a winning political argument elsewhere in the country. But the report took a lot of stuff about Santos at face value that it shouldn't have. As for the rest of us, it's a reminder that the tremendous power and wealth accorded to those in the federal government attracts many of the worst sorts of people. For those reasons, it's important to restrain the amount of power the federal government has. Santos is an anomaly not in his way of saying whatever will get him elected but in his willingness to take it much further than anybody else. Or so we think. --- Update: Since then, Federal Prosecutors have opened an investigation into George:

Via Reason.com - Libertarian leading source Despite $80 billion in new funding, the agency is living up to its reputation of hassling low-income taxpayers over rich people. Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released data provided to it by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on audits performed by the agency in fiscal year 2022. Despite the infusion of new funding earmarked for the IRS via last year's Inflation Reduction Act, the agency continued historic trends of hassling primarily low-income taxpayers, with relatively few millionaires and billionaires getting caught up in the audit sweep. "The taxpayer class with unbelievably high audit rates—five and a half times virtually everyone else—were low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit," reported TRAC, noting that the poorest taxpayers are "easy marks in an era when IRS increasingly relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn't have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions." In fact, "if one ignores the fiction of auditing a millionaire through simply sending a letter through the mail, the odds that millionaires received a regular audit by a revenue agent (1.1%) was actually less than the audit rate of the targeted lowest income wage-earners whose audit rate was 1.27 percent!" The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August 2022, directed $80 billion worth of new funding over the next decade to the IRS so it could hire 87,000 new workers, purportedly to better target millionaire and billionaire scofflaws. The Biden administration and credulous journalists claimed that this would in no way increase audits for those making under $400,000 annually—suspect assurances not provided within the text of the actual bill. This increased capacity meant only those at the top would be targeted, supporters insisted. But this ignores how the IRS's incentives work and how agencywide reform might be too heavy of a lift. Correspondence audits—which are conducted via mail, and are the type frequently used when interacting with the poorest of taxpayers—are much easier and cheaper to conduct than other types of audits. Plus, the earned income tax credit is easy to get wrong. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that new hires with experience in the field will take almost three years of ramp-up time, with more junior new hires taking longer. The lag time between 2022's infusion of funding, and legitimately increased capacity, will be enormous—if the agency can even snag the best in the industry when TurboTax and H&R Block will surely be swelling their own ranks. It makes sense that, given a dearth of experienced auditors not likely to be fixed soon, the agency would rely on the easiest and least time-consuming types of audits. But be suspicious of the idea that an infusion of cash will solve longstanding problems within the IRS. This is, after all, the agency that sent $1.1 billion in child welfare payments to the wrong people over the course of merely five months during the pandemic. It's the agency that was hacked back in 2015, resulting in the personal information of more than 700,000 taxpayers being compromised. It's the agency that has been foolishly going after Americans who hold $10,000 or more in a foreign bank since 2010, never mind the fact that many of them are middle-class expats, not folks with yachts in the Mediterranean. And it's the (leaky) agency that enabled the richest Americans' intimate financial information to be thumbed through by ProPublica readers. It will take more than a little cash to fix all this, and, as the IRS's competence and tenacity increase, so too will the tenacity of the vast infrastructure of accountants and lawyers hired by the rich to creatively minimize their tax burdens. Though some libertarians may argue such an agency ought not to exist in the first place and cheer its relative ineptitude at going after the well-to-do, it's decidedly absurd that the agency taxpayers just fed $80 billion to has, for another year, continued its assault on the poor. https://reason.com/2023/01/06/in-2022-the-irs-went-after-the-very-poorest-taxpayers/

Political criticism of Southwest's mass flight cancelations mask a cronyist relationship between government and the passenger airline industry. One hates to see friends fight. It's therefore a little uncomfortable to watch an airline that's received billions in taxpayer-funded bailouts on the outs with politicians who actively supported those bailouts. Southwest Airlines has been in disarray after a mix of winter storms and the company's outdated crew tracking system led it to cancel the vast majority of its flights this week. Passengers have been left stranded, with no luggage and no idea when they'll actually be able to get to their destinations. Politicians have been eager to capitalize on the public's rage by calling for investigations of Southwest and stricter regulations of the airline industry generally. "The problems at Southwest Airlines over the last several days go beyond weather. The Committee will be looking into the causes of these disruptions and its impact to consumers," said Sen. Maria Cantwell (D–Wash.), chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, yesterday. The senator also refreshed her demand that the U.S. Department of Transportation require airlines to cover passengers' secondary costs of canceled flights like meals and hotel rooms. Cantwell's criticism of Southwest contrasts with her advocacy of airline bailouts during the pandemic. She supported the $25 billion in relief grants to passenger airlines that were passed as part of the $2 trillion CARES Act in 2020. In exchange for that money, the CARES Act program required airlines to forgo forced layoffs, stock buybacks, and increases in executive compensation. They also had to provide the federal government with stock options and maintain minimum levels of service. That latter requirement led to "ghost flights" with more staff than customers. At that stage in the pandemic, there were few opponents of federally funded bailouts of just about anything. Yet Cantwell was also an advocate for a second round of airline bailouts later in 2020 that was far less certain. At the time, proposals for a second stimulus bill from both Democrats and Republicans didn't include additional money for airlines. But Cantwell urged lawmakers to "come back to the table" with the airline industry about another round of aid. The spending bill that eventually passed in December 2020 included $15 billion for passenger airlines. The American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021 included $14 billion in grants for passenger airlines. Cantwell not only voted for that bill, but also authored a provision of it that extended bailout funds to manufacturing companies in the aerospace supply chain. Altogether, passenger airlines received some $54 billion in COVID bailouts. Southwest has claimed about $7 billion of that money. The first two bills containing airline bailouts had wide bipartisan support. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan was a partisan, Democratic bill. So Cantwell has been the most vocal about both supporting airlines financially while rhetorically criticizing them, but she's hardly the only person to be in that position. For instance, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) supported all three bills containing airline bailouts. In the wake of the Southwest debacle this week, she's called for stricter anti-trust enforcement in the airline industry. It's not obvious why Cantwell and Warren are so offended by airlines charging customers for canceled flights when they've supported taking billions from those same consumers in the form of taxes to pay for flights they didn't even want to take in the first place. Their outrage now comes across as a little less than genuine. The investigations and regulations they're now calling for are hardly going to make taxpayers whole for the bailouts they've already paid for. Meanwhile, this week's massive flight cancelations from are a good reminder of what a raw deal those bailouts were for taxpayers and consumers. Rather than allow the shock of the pandemic to create some needed disruption in the passenger airline industry, Congress chose to prop up a messy status quo. The $7 billion Southwest received from three COVID relief bills allowed ineffective practices at the airline to persist. Allowing the competitive pressures to more freely do their work might have spurred some productive change within Southwest. It's something to consider while you wait for your flight. Reason.com - Leading Libertarian Source

An opinion posted in the Reason.com magazine, a leading libertarian source. Maybe "Marshal Law" can save the Republican Party? Unfortunately, the reality is something far more sinister. In the "Marshal Law" comic-book series, Law is the last name of a law-enforcement officer "with superpowers in the city of San Futuro, the near-future metropolis built from the ruins of San Francisco following a massive earthquake," according to Wikipedia. I've never read these comics, but they offer a satirical take on superhero characters and our government. Perhaps some Republican officials mixed up the Marshal Law character with the term "martial law"—defined by Investopedia as "the substitution of a civil government by military authorities with unlimited powers to suspend the ordinary legal protections of civilian rights." I'm referring, in part, to text messages that Donald Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows released to Congress' January 6 select committee, which is examining the Capitol breach that many Trump supporters continue to depict as a jolly stroll through the Capitol that went awry. The texts portray something far more sinister. Talking Points Memo found that 34 GOP members of Congress texted Meadows about the day's events, including messages "rife with links to far-right websites, questionable legal theories, violent rhetoric, and advocacy for authoritarian power grabs." Rep. Ralph Norman (R–S.C.) offered the best reminder that one need not be a statesman (or brain trust) to win a seat in Congress: "Mark, in seeing what's happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits (sic) attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of no return in saving our Republic !! Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!" Of course, Twitter went wild with the misspelling, but Norman's content was no laughing matter. When Huffington Post asked him, Norman seemed embarrassed by the typo and offered an excuse worthy of a social-justice warrior: "I was very frustrated then, I'm frustrated now." Oh yeah, frustration is a totally legitimate rationale for dictatorship. Many Republicans love Donald Trump because he doesn't sugarcoat his opinions, yet neither Trump nor many prominent Republican officials can talk about what transpired on January 6 without euphemisms or evasion. "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle," Animal Farm author George Orwell wrote. As I've noted before, the GOP and its MAGA base refuse to see what's right in front of their noses. After losing dozens of court reviews of his election-fraud claims, President Trump refused to concede defeat and threatened the peaceful transfer of power that has been one of this nation's hallmarks. His legal team concocted bizarre legal theories to let him stay in power. Some supporters stormed the Capitol—and Trump has vowed to pardon the trespassers and rioters if he wins a second term. During the fracas, many members of Congress communicated with the president's chief of staff and conspired to overturn the election results. Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio), texted the following: "On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional." These are top U.S. officials, not Twitter trolls. Some of these Republican House members dressed up their efforts that would have destroyed our republic in constitutional-sounding verbiage. Jordan, for instance, argued that letting Pence throw out any inconvenient electoral votes was "in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence." That might have made him feel better, but it no more makes those efforts constitutional than communist North Korea's "Democratic People's Republic" nomenclature makes it a democratic republic. By the way, Meadows didn't ignore Jordan's proposal, but responded as such: "I have pushed for this. Not sure it is going to happen." This was an active effort to subvert our democratic system. For those who still scoff at the idea of January 6 as anything significant, here is what Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) recently told a group of New York Republicans: "And I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would've been armed." Take heart that only one member called for martial law. Then again, former President Trump demanded something similar in a Truth Social post earlier this month He called for the courts to invalidate the 2020 election and noted: "Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution (italics added)." When the federal government declares martial law or terminates the rules and articles of the Constitution, it gains unlimited power to do whatever it wants—take your guns, steal your property, quash your speech, and put you in prison. It's hard to believe that a former president (and leading presidential candidate) thinks this way, so I'm going to stick with the story that Republicans simply want superhero Marshal Law to save them.

I want to bring back to life a theory that I first heard actually on an European think tank. This idea that a lot of Trumpists were pushed by Democrats in the GOP primaries. The libertarian Reason.com publication had an article in regards to this in the past. If this was indeed the tactic, imagine these Trumpists win. Talk about irony. You run away from men like Mitch McConnell ---> just to find Trump standing there. 😂 or maybe the hope is that a lot of moderate republicans will vote for the Democrats? Democrats paid $435,000 to back a pro-Trump Republican in Michigan—nearly $100,000 more than the candidate himself raised. On August 2, freshman Rep. Peter Meijer lost the Republican primary for Michigan's 3rd Congressional District to John Gibbs, a challenger backed by former President Donald Trump. Gibbs' victory over Meijer, who voted to impeach Trump, highlights the strange role Democrats are now playing in the GOP's internecine battles. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) funded an ad labeling Gibbs "handpicked by Trump" and "too conservative for west Michigan." While ostensibly an attack, the ad also served to entice Republican primary voters. The DCCC paid $435,000 for the 30-second ad—nearly $100,000 more than Gibbs raised in total contributions. Gibbs beat Meijer by more than 3,000 votes. For a decade, Meijer's district was represented by Rep. Justin Amash, the Republican-turned-Libertarian who quit the GOP while criticizing Trump and Trumpism. Meijer won the seat in 2020 after Amash chose not to seek reelection, and his single term was characterized by an independent streak reminiscent of his predecessor. Most notably, Meijer was one of only 10 Republicans (and the only freshman) to vote for Trump's impeachment after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot. Despite Meijer's principled opposition to Trumpism, the DCCC saw Gibbs, a far-right conspiracy theorist who believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen, as preferable because he will be easier to beat in the November general election. Based on similar logic, Democrats have backed Trumpists over centrists in several GOP primaries. In July, the Democratic Governors Association (DGA) spent $1.2 million on ads targeting Dan Cox, a Republican state delegate in Maryland who attended Trump's pre-riot "Stop the Steal" rally on January 6 and is now running for governor. The DGA's ads said Cox was "handpicked" by Trump and "too conservative for Maryland." He ultimately beat his more moderate Republican opponent by 15 percentage points. In May, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat running for governor, sponsored an ad describing state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a GOP gubernatorial candidate who was photographed on the Capitol grounds on January 6, as "one of Donald Trump's strongest supporters." Mastriano prevailed over his closest primary competitor by more than 20 points. These pro-Trump candidates might have won their primaries without help from Democrats, and Democrats may be right that extreme candidates will be unpalatable to the general electorate in November. But it's a risky bet with serious consequences: As Pennsylvania's governor, Mastriano would have the power to appoint a secretary of state who could directly challenge the results of the next presidential election. This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Why Are Democrats Backing Trumpists?". https://reason.com/2022/10/31/why-are-democrats-backing-trumpists/ *A leading libertarian publication outside the left/right spectrum. Midterms are coming soon. Almost there.