Dear Friends:

It is with regret that I announce the end of my exploratory campaign for Governor of Idaho in 2010. When I announced my intentions of looking at the race, I said that I would not run unless I could make the necessary time and money commitment to a serious campaign. An objective assessment of that - combined with several major changes in my life over the past several months - have convinced me that a statewide race will not be viable for me in this upcoming cycle.

I will continue to advocate for pro-liberty classical liberal Democrats both in Idaho and elsewhere across the country. Thank you for your support.

W. Lane Startin

The National Committee of the Democratic Freedom Caucus issued the following statement:

-----------------------------------------------

The Democratic Freedom Caucus respectfully recommends that President-elect Barack Obama appoint Bill Richardson to serve as Secretary of State, or in another position in his Cabinet.

Bill Richardson's experience as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Representative in Congress, Governor of New Mexico, and U.S. Secretary of Energy, makes him extremely well-qualified to serve as Secretary of State, or in another cabinet position of President-elect Obama's choice.

. . .

The Democratic Freedom Caucus is a caucus which promotes the values the Democratic Party was founded upon: individual liberty, constitutional democracy, and social responsibility.

http://www.democraticfreedomcaucus.org

Who screwed up the credit crisis legislation? Republicans or Democrats?

Well, neither - and both. I have little sympathy for either Nancy Pelosi's critics or Barney Frank on this one. Nine Senate Democrats (including libertarian Democratic favorites such as Russ Feingold and Jon Tester) voted against the Senate bill. The House tally was anything but party line. Seriously, how many times are you going to see Barbara Lee and Bill Sali on the same side of a major issue?

It should be noted Freedom Democrats-endorsed candidates Darcy Burner and Bob Lord spoke out against this too. I guess if you count me, that makes three.

In many respects (though not entirely), this was a libertarian revolt in both parties.

I suppose you could argue that Republicans voted against this to be anti-tax and to let the crisis solve itself. By and large the Democrats voted against this for different reasons.

I believe some action is necessary. There's nothing wrong with government regulation provided it fundamentally engenders public trust in financial markets. If we had more of that to begin with, perhaps there wouldn't be any need for this now. After all, regulation can exist with the aim of preventing further regulation.

Basically I'm agreeing with Sen. Feingold, who said, "The bailout legislation also fails to reform the flawed regulatory structure that permitted this crisis to arise in the first place. And it doesn’t do enough to address the root cause of the credit market collapse, namely the housing crisis."

Markos Moulitsas is another dissenting Democrat. I largely agree with what he's saying, too.

There were a few items in the Senate bailout bill that were good. Increasing the FDIC deposit guarantee limit to $250,000 immediately springs to mind. It's a shame Congress couldn't vote on some of those things separately.

What I'd like to see is us plug up the holes first and foremost and deal with whatever necessary taxpayer assistance later. Once Wall Street and the credit markets are sufficiently stabilized, get the government out - and no excuses. That's a plan I can support. Hopefully we'll get something vaguely resembling that when this is all over.

Shifting to a purely political focus, admittedly it is difficult to defend Obama from a libertarian standpoint on this matter, other than to say we as libertarian Democrats weren't all that surprised. Our support of Obama has always stemmed primarily from his positions on civil liberties. Once Bill Richardson dropped out, we knew we were settling on many things.

We'll be settling in '12 too, which is increasingly shaping up to be an Obama re-election effort on our side. Even in the ever-more unlikely event McCain pulls this election out of the fire, we'd be extremely hard-pressed to keep Hillary Clinton away from the Democratic nomination again. A defeated Obama - although probably still in the Senate - would be discredited on the national stage. The PUMAs would be out in full force, and there wouldn't be a change movement to stop them. Personally I'd much rather take my chances with a President Obama in '12 and try for someone more to our liking in '16.

As for McCain, is there any shred of credibility left in his imploding campaign? For me it's not an ideal situation, but nevertheless I'm truly going to enjoy voting against this joker and his moose-hunting Christian Dominionist sidekick even if my state doesn't.

Before I say anything else, let me say that ka1igu1a's recent blog on the Paul endorsement of Baldwin is spot on. Go read it and come back.

His summary, "2008 as the year of the libertarian has degenerated into a sorry joke from a political perspective," is sadly correct. Even so, there's no need to despair. Libertarians in general - and libertarian Democrats in particular - now have a perfect opportunity to regroup and redefine who we are. We just need to set a few guidelines for ourselves.

I hate to say I told you so, but Ron Paul's endorsement of Chuck Baldwin is just another step toward that movement's steady metamorphosis into yet another lame retread of the Buchanan Brigades. If that's what the die-hard Paul apologists want, so be it. I'm perfectly fine with letting them go down that road to ruin. I for one refuse to.

Given the fact Paul is becoming increasingly irrelevant, and that he's utter anathema to most Democrats anyway, our legacy as libertarian Democrats lies elsewhere. It should go without saying that Democrats aren't going to be terribly receptive to people in their party singing the praises of folks like Paul and Bob Barr. There's a very good reason why. Building coalitions with others is critical to our overall success, and it needs to start somewhere. Instead we should be invoking names like Proxmire, Schweitzer, Feingold and Richardson. That's a "revolution" we as libertarian Democrats can embrace and other Democrats can accept.

Stop confusing strict interpretation of the Constitution with libertarianism. While one can naturally lead to the other, they're not synonymous concepts. Crying for freedom and liberty at the federal level - but at the same time taking the attitude that the states are free to moralize and tyrannize at will - may be Constitutionally correct (well, maybe), but it's exceedingly dishonest from a libertarian standpoint.

Let's be crystal clear on this point: there's nothing wrong with being a strict constructionist, but if you're not also advocating both civil and fiscal liberties on ALL levels of government, you're not doing anyone any favors.

The Libertarian Party will probably survive the Barr campaign in some form, but it'll never be relevant in the grand scheme of things. The culture of incompetence, infighting and self-defeatism in the national LP has become so pervasive that nothing short of starting over with new leaders and new candidates will rescue it from its inconsequential fate. At this point I think it would actually be easier to start a new party from scratch. It would be easier still to organize a faction in the major parties; one doesn't have to worry about issues like ballot access doing that.

Should we do it with the Republicans? The same party responsible first for not paying attention to public trust issues government can play a role in, and then reacted by effectively nationalizing three financial services companies in the space of 10 days, with perhaps many more to follow? I don't think so. Sure, there are obstacles within the Democratic Party as well, but nothing like that.

Enough theory. Let's win some elections. Our underlying political philosophy should be quite simple. The German Free Democrats say, "as much government as necessary, as little government as possible." That pretty much sums it up for me.

Instead, many libertarians are prone to bombard us with topics like Hayek, Rockwell, Rothbard, anarcho-capitalism, Objectivism, paleolibertarianism, etc. ad infinitum. Scholarly political and economic theory is absolutely necessary to the long-term health of the political process, but at a certain point immersing oneself in theory becomes tantamount to pointless and counterproductive wheel-spinning. Many, many libertarians crossed this crucial threshold a LONG time ago.

Some libertarians spout this stuff with a zeal that would make the most ardent Cultural Revolution-era Red Guard blush. Except that they don't have a little book (red or otherwise). They have a whole freakin' library. Do they have any idea how annoying, ineffective and - yes - pathetic they are? Many, many people are sympathetic to libertarian ideals, but couldn't care less about the Mises Institute and frankly never will. The consistent single-digit election performances of the LP, as well as the general lack of direction of libertarian factions among both Democrats and Republicans, should have clued folks into this by now. Enough already.

This is not to say the philosophies of the Austrian economists and others are useless in the political process. They have their place, and they do make a positive contribution overall. We just need to operate in the real world around here.

Indeed, that's perhaps our greatest challenge: reconciling libertarianism with Realpolitik. Surely we libertarian Democrats can do that better than what we've seen recently. I think it would be difficult not to.

I'm really loathe to bring up Ron Paul yet again, but I must admit today he provided an extremely valuable public service to America: he helped prove beyond a shadow of a doubt why we're a two-party system. Contrary to what he tells us, it's no charade at all. It's because our third parties are so spectacularly shallow and incompetent that in the space of only hours a seemingly innocuous and well-intentioned attempt at consensus-building ignited a full-scale civil war.

More so than ever before, it's blatantly obvious what we're witnessing is not a revolution, but a devolution. Following Paul like this is most definitely not the path libertarians in general - and libertarian Democrats in particular - want to take.

Today's nugget of rhetorical kerosene-soaked Sterno comes in the form of a "four-point platform of consensus" ostensibly endorsed by all the third-party presidential candidates. In fairness, in and of itself this document is fairly sane and decent, albeit not anything terribly groundbreaking. Most of this could have come straight out of Russ Feingold's office.

But that's not the half of it. A no-show at Paul's announcement of the platform was none other than Paul's own reputed preferred choice for president, Bob Barr. Depending on who you ask, Barr intentionally snubbed Paul because he believes he's a "major player," (and wouldn't be caught dead on the same stage as Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney), or because he believes "scattering support for the liberty agenda to the four winds as Dr. Paul is proposing will not serve liberty."

Another likely factor in this is that Barr very recently attempted to dump his running mate, the supremely embarrassing yet LP convention-approved Wayne Allyn Root, and replace him with ... Ron Paul. Evidently Paul declined.

Regardless of who said or did what, the ensuing kerfuffle already makes Barack Obama vs. the PUMAs seem like a minor misunderstanding by comparison. Now Paul's followers, many of whom only 24 hours ago were proclaiming their solid support for the LP ticket, are disowning Barr at the top of their lungs, vowing instead to either vote for ultra-conservative theocrat Chuck Baldwin or even dyed-in-the-wool leftists like Cynthia McKinney or Ralph Nader (I can't believe it either).

And for what? Barr's camp is justified in pointing out Paul's attempt to lump together the Libertarians with the likes of Baldwin, McKinney and Nader is counterproductive at best. If anyone should know better than to try to corral the hotheaded zealots that make up our third parties into one area like this, it's Ron Paul.

Even so, for Barr to intentionally snub his own kingmaker as he did is the single most spectacular display of idiocy I've seen in a good, long time. Among other things, this likely has done permanent and irreparable damage to the Libertarian Party. There are no winners here, but plenty of ignominious failure to go around. No wonder more than 95 percent of the voting public won't touch third parties.

So why talk about this comically inept farce involving a group of candidates which even before this collectively failed to crack three percent of voter support? Is this just a case of the inconsequential arguing over the pointless? It sure is, and that's precisely the point. Ron Paul and Bob Barr are the public faces of libertarianism, and folks, we're obviously in dire need of new faces.

Politics1 reports that Ron Paul will be on the general election ballot in two states, Montana and Louisiana. In Montana at least, this brings up a couple very intriguing points.

First, in Montana Paul has been given the ballot line of the profoundly theocratic and un-libertarian Constitution Party. The Constitution Party of Montana dumped the national party's presidential nominee, Chuck Baldwin, in favor of Paul due largely to a dispute with the national organization over abortion. To wit, Montana Constitutionalists don't think their national party favors criminalizing abortion strongly enough.

In Louisiana, Paul is the nominee of an apparently independent organization called the "Taxpayers Party." Perhaps not coincidentally, the Constitution Party was known as the US Taxpayers Party until 1999.

What's more, Paul has at least tacitly given these folks in Montana and Louisiana his blessing to do this. It's just another argument that Paul is a half-libertarian at best who has no real interest in civil liberties. This is even more puzzling considering Paul had more than ample opportunity to secure the nationwide LP nomination. All he needed to do to convince Libertarians to brush aside Bob Barr and Wayne Allyn Root was make a couple phone calls before the convention.

But as we all know in politics, perception is reality. It's worth noting that in libertarian-minded Montana, Paul beat John McCain in the 5 February GOP caucus. I believe is entirely reasonable to assume Paul would draw a few libertarian and conservative votes in Montana that would otherwise go to McCain. Given the fact Montana is very much a swing state, a halfway decent Paul protest vote would be more than enough to give Obama a plurality win in Montana, and the state's electoral votes to boot.

Sure, Montana only has three electoral votes, but if the election goes down to the wire any state could be the difference. Quite in spite of himself, Ron Paul may be doing Democrats a huge favor.

Who will be the Democratic nominee for Idaho governor in 2010? I've been giving that question some thought for the past few days. Jerry Brady has been an outstanding candidate for the past two elections, but I wonder if he'll be up to a third run in 2010.

Governor Otter has taken some good stances for Idaho, but I feel he may be too compromised by his own party to truly make a difference. Otter says he's anti-tax, but vetoed legislation to increase the grocery tax credit. Otter says he's pro-education, but gutted an early childhood education program started by his Republican predecessor. I believe Governor Otter is fundamentally a good man, but given his struggles thus far I wonder if he'll be able to truly be an effective governor.

So who else is out there?

Then I thought, what about me? I'll be 37 in 2010. I’m a successful businessman, a published author and a community activist. I've run for major public office before, which at the very least gives me a good sense of what not to do. I believe I can bring a great deal of substance to the 2010 election which frankly I don’t see coming from Governor Otter or the Republicans.

I'm interested to know what you think.

Cross-posted to 43rd State Blues.

OK, here's something to shake out the cobwebs.

Here in the land of 2T plates we're vaguely aware of a certain Brandi Swindell. It's my understanding that Brandi has taken it upon herself to "to represent the voiceless, the preborn - that we represent our (post-Roe v. Wade) generation."

Well, that's all fine and good, but I rather resent the implication that the aforementioned post-Roe v. Wade generation is necessarily of the Religious Right ilk.

Consider me, for example. I was born in July 1973, six months after Roe v. Wade. I'm adopted. I'm very solidly pro-choice and always have been.

As for the "voiceless preborn," I very well could have been an abortion (my birth mother was 16), so it goes without saying that I've given the matter a lot of thought for a long time. I believe was born because I believe that's what was intended. Had I not been, I feel it would have been because it wasn't my time, and that sort of thing one shouldn't trifle with. Therefore, I support the Clintonian "safe, legal and rare" standpoint on abortion, combined with means to make adoption easier for worthy parents.

So do we stamp out reproductive rights - and necessarily my beliefs - by government statute? That's not very neighborly, Brandi. It's not very conservative, either.

Supporters of the Iraq situation, which in my humble opinion is the single worst foreign policy blunder committed by the United States since ... probably the XYZ Affair or something like that, like to point out that many people in Muslim countries support terrorist "jihad" and its goals.

I dispute how prevalent that really is, but even if it is true, I wonder how much of that is genuine faith, and how much of it is their way of "sticking it to the man."

There's no question the military presence in Iraq is resented by the average Iraqi who just wants to live a normal, peaceful life. I should stress in the strongest possible terms that this is not the fault of the troops there in any sense. For example, I personally know of one Iraq veteran who tried to interact with the Iraqis and find some common ground, but he was basically ordered not to do that. I suspect there's a lot of that going around.

Today's situation in the Middle East is largely a result of Western foreign policy stupidity over the past 75 years, from the British blundering of the Balfour Declaration, to the CIA overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government with 1953's "Operation Ajax." In fairness, it's also caused by a strident reluctance throughout the Muslim world to liberalize their governments and societies. Until both of these issues are addressed, no serious progress can be made.

What's past is past, and now we're left with several inescapable conclusions:

-Israel has the right to exist as an independent state. Deal.

-Palestine has the right to exist as an independent state, too. Deal.

-No action by any entity within the United States Government, military or otherwise, can solve this problem.

-The Muslim world has to get serious about fixing itself. This has nothing to do with terrorism, it's a general standard of living issue. I assure you al-Qaeda wouldn't be near as popular if more Muslims enjoyed comfortable lifestyles.

The world does a pretty good job with the first point, but attention to the others is, um, lacking. Meanwhile, the average worker in Iraq or Syria or Saudi Arabia sees the United States interfering (or perhaps more correctly, perceives them as interfering) in their own lives and understandably gets grumpy. Reactions range from the aforementioned desire to "stick it to the man" to suicide bombings.

With these conclusions in mind, withdrawing our troops and revisiting this area with a politically-based agenda based on these inescapable conclusions can only serve to help our standing in this part of the world (not to mention it stops American kids getting killed out there). This is _NOT_ a concession to terrorism in any sense. It's common sense.

Radical wingnuts will still be out there, and they still should be tracked down and brought to justice. Like 99.99% of the free world, I want Osama hunted down, taken in, and his operation shut down permanently. Let's be crystal clear on that. Too bad the administration isn't.

We can't fix this, but we can stop it from becoming worse by not being "the man" so much.

You know, it should stand to reason that anyone serious about a free market economy would abhor the idea of state-run industries. Even so, several "small government" states have exactly that: state-run liquor stores. Here's an example of such lunacy in Idaho.

According to the state, in 2006 the Idaho Legislature appropriated around $15.2 million to the Idaho State Liquor Dispensary (ISLD) (1). The ISLD in turn generated nearly $110 million in sales in 2006. They spent around $58 million on product and around $14 million in operating expenses for a total net income of a little over $37 million (2). Not bad.

Of that $37 million, about $33 million of that went back to the state fund. After existing fund equity and warehouse remodeling were taken into account, they ended the year with a little under $12 million in the bank.

In 2007 the ISLD projects sales of $122 million (3). The Legislature gave them $16.6 million (4) and the process begins anew with the ISLD nearly $30 million in the black.

Now, you may say that over 200 percent return on investment in a year is a great deal. I don't disagree. However, I submit we can do even better. Consider what they do in Nebraska, which has a similar population to Idaho but doesn't have a state-run liquor monopoly. Nebraska spends around $850,000 on its liquor control board (5), but generates $26 million in liquor taxes (6). That's a 3,058 percent return on investment. That's what I'm talking about.

So will privatized booze increase drunk driving? Government studies indicate otherwise. A 2000 study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed a smaller percentage of traffic fatalities in Nebraska involved alcohol than they did in Idaho (7). As of 2004, Nebraska also had the lowest pedestrian fatality rate due to automobile accidents in the country (8).

In other words, we can continue to appropriate $16 million a year to a state-run industry to get $33 million, or we can privatize the industry, appropriate a fraction of that ($1 million at most) for a much smaller state liquor regulatory agency, still expect at least $25 million in liquor taxes, not have any ill effects with respect to drunk driving, and at the same time create at least a $10 million net profit industry in Idaho's private sector overnight. All this by repealing a few laws and rewriting others? Brilliant.

How come the "smaller government" Republican Legislature didn't do this?

SOURCES (all accessed 27 April 2007)

(1) FY 2008 Idaho Legislative Budget Book
(2) Idaho State Liquor Dispensary 2006 Annual Report
(3) ibid
(4) Senate Bill No. 1199, 2007 Idaho Legislature
(5) Nebraska Legislature (click on Appropriations Committee FY2007-08/FY2008-09 Budget Recommendations)
(6) Nebraska Liquor Control Commission - Historical Revenue
(7) NTSA - Transitioning to Multiple Imputation, p. 24
(8) U.S. Department of Transportation, Traffic Safety Facts 2004, p. 155