Skip to main content

Why North Carolina Libertarians are making a dent in the Demopublican monopoly: candidates like Brian Irving


Brian Irving, a 25-year USAF veteran, former United Way communications director and Fayetteville City Planning Commissioner, is the Communications Director for the Libertarian Party of North Carolina and candidate for State Senate in District 17 (Wake County).

Here's the kind of position that makes Tarheel Libertarians like Irving an up-and-coming force in State politics:

North Carolina legislators succumbed to their addiction again by passing the 2008 budget with increased spending, funding for more boondoggles to buy votes for selected legislators, and increased debt for taxpayers.

Libertarians would offer the people a real economic stimulus package by the simple expedient of letting you keep more of your money. My fellow Libertarian legislative candidates and I would never vote for such spending.

↓↓↓No $857 billion more debt

Legislators are afraid to let taxpayers vote on bonds, so they increased debt through “certificates of participation,” which do not require voter approval. This scheme should be called “certificates of non-participation” because only legislators, lobbyists and special interests groups can participate

↓↓↓ No $90 million for ABC bonuses

A classic example of Catch 22: The State sells alcohol to the people, then arrests them for DUIs. The State shouldn’t be selling booze to begin with.

↓↓↓ No $30 million for ‘More at Four’

Despite the fact that this State-run pre-kindergarten program has never been evaluated and is barely monitored, it now costs $170 million a year.

↓↓↓ No $9.4 million for NC Health Choice

This is another State-run insurance program for low-income children. Another feel good program. Why not just give the parents of these kids the money directly, or better yet, let them keep more of the paycheck.

↓↓↓ No Corporate & Non-profit Welfare

The legislature approved several expenditures to improve the “quality of life” — especially for oysters, polar bears and horses — not taxpayers.

$12.9 million in non-voter approved debt for a Film School Production Design Facility at the NC School of the Arts

$4.3 million in non-voter approved debt for a “Research Oyster Hatchery”

$2.7 million in non-voter approved debt for the NC Zoo Polar Bear Exhibit renovation and expansion.

$2 million for an “Oyster Sanctuary Program”

$900,000 for the Hunt Horse Complex in Raleigh

$600,000 in planning funds for the African Pavilion at the NC Zoo.

$500,000 for “Green Industries Education and Promotion”

$500,000 for promoting the CIAA Basketball tournament in Charlotte

$450,000 increase funding for the North Carolina Symphony


The seat is currently held by Republican Richard Stevens, who not only signed off on the aforementioned budget deal, but--interestingly enough--does not even appear to have set up a website for his re-election campaign. Probably doesn't think it's necessary: he won his seat with 62% in 2002, 58.74% in 2004, and in 2006 did not have an opponent.

Go get him, Brian.

Comments

Irving sounds like the sort of candidate you get from cities like Fayetteville strung out like a crack whore on military base money and the endless turnover of personnel who spend a lot but rarely stay long: who needs the arts? Pointy-headed intellectual stuff. Who needs to restore oysters to NC's polluted waters (there used to be enough oysters in Chesapeake Bay, for example, to recycle its entire water volume every couple of days, which was in no small part why so much other aquatic life flourished and so many made a living from it.

And the Symphony? It's the only professional orchestra in America that travels extensively around the state as part of a third to fifth grade music curriculum. I played my little tone flute with a few hundred other fifth graders and the Symphony forty years ago, in a town that would never see such a thing otherwise, ever. They do about 40 a year- free- in a quarter of that state's counties.

H.L. Mencken would be proud of Mr. Irving.
Happy as I am that you got to play the flute, I don't necessarily think that's the point of his objection.

All of us have our lists of what we consider state-run boondoogles that nonetheless manage to make it through late-night budget deals.

I believe strongly in the arts, but I think the current model of state support is pretty well skewed toward paying off political favors rather than providing a wide range of arts experiences for all citizens in NC.

I'm far more concerned with millions of dollars in bonuses to ABC store employees, and I think Irving is, too.
Anonymous said…
Would seem to me that ALL of the items listed are things that COULD be paid for by voluntarily donated funds from people that consider the particular programs important / valuable, as opposed to paying for them with funds extracted at gunpoint from those who are less interested...

(Remember, tax money is ALWAYS taken at virtual gunpoint - ask what happens to those that refuse to give it up - and see if it's any different from what is done by the common street mugger to a disarmed victim...)

ART

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...