Adam asked me to join y'all with some thoughts and opinions.

I blog on water and related topics at aguanomics so most of my stuff here will be copied from there. (It's a lot of work keeping a blog going!)

I am basically a free-market libertarian, but I am no fan of "unbridled" capitalism. (I've been to China). I think that the State does have a role to play wrt public goods -- either in their provision (laws, standards) or their financing (education, health care). I think that government charity can crowd out private charity, the 10th amendment has been abused too much, the drug war (and illegal prostitution) is a destructive waste of time, money and people, and that taxes should be reformed to reduce distortions (i.e., higher property taxes; zero taxes on corportations). OTOH, I think that corporations deserve no special treatment, and I would like all laws (including free trade agreements) to be one page long.

My number one goal for political reform is neutral redistricting (no gerrymandering). On top of that, I am in favor of gender quotas in the legislature, i.e., merge pairs of districts, then have women compete for the woman seat and men for the men seat.

The State should guarantee basic rights and security for people and then get out of the way. Often people claim that the State is "helping" but the State is really being manipulated by the powerful. See Baptists and Bootleggers

All of this kinda sounds mish-mashy, but life is complicated and simple labels (e.g., democrat, libertarian, white, american, male, etc.) do not capture anyone accurately.