From Delaware Politics: Legislation that would create a single-payer healthcare system in Delaware was stricken this week after opponents misinterpreted the intent behind the filing of the legislation.When House Bill 392 was filed earlier this month, lead sponsor  Rep. John Kowalko  said that he had no intention of moving forward with the legislation, but simply wanted to start a public dialogue on the issue. Opponents believed that the bill was being rushed through the General Assembly, even after House Majority Leader  Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf  – who helps set the agenda – stated publicly that the bill would not be worked this year. To quell these concerns, Rep. Kowalko struck HB 392, which means that the legislation no longer exists and cannot be revisited. The legislative session ends on June 30, at which point no new legislation can be introduced. Part of the "public dialogue" that Representatives Kowalko and Earl Jaques, along with Insurance Commissioner candi...

1.   Chuck Muth of Citizen Outreach reprises what we know here as the "Dondero strategy" of supporting Gary Johnson only in deep blue states and calling on Libertarians to do "vote-swapping" everywhere else.   This is a strategy born of desperation on the part of Romney supporters, who are now beginning to realize that (A) the LP has actually nominated a credible candidate who is running a real campaign; (B) that the "wasted vote" or "spoiler effect" argument is rapidly losing credibility with disenfranchised independents; and (C) Gary Johnson has the potential to tilt the election in wildly unpredictable ways.  So Chuck pats Libertarians on the head and tells them to be good negroes who have now been emancipated but should not actually expect things to be any different. 2.  More realistically, Art Carden at Forbes explains that the only way to waste your vote is not to vote for the candidate you believe in, regardless of what you are told abou...

George Lakoff:  making up history one counterfactual at a time George Lakoff should be celebrated as the Father of Progressive NEWspeak.  His conscious, cynical, and largely successful attempts to use "framing" to make facts and history irrelevant in political discourse have been credited by many as faciliating Barack Obama's original victory in 2008. In rare moments of candor, Lakoff's naked preference for political victory at any cost shows through. Take, for example, his earnest seeming defense of trial lawyers against the very idea of tort reform: Another multifaceted conservative strategic initiative is "tort reform," which has been made to sound like it is just about capping large damage awards and lawyers' fees. It is really a destruction of the civil justice system's capacity to deter corporations from acts that harm the public, since it is the lawyers' fees that permit the system to function. Ah, very principled, isn't it? ...

. . . like the fact I, and other left-libertarians, are 100% responsible for the Supreme Court decision today on the individual mandate.

Not me:   Kristin Rawls on Alternet. Important reading, because this also lays out Delaware's place in the national scheme of failed education reforms from the Obama administration. If anyone can support the President's education record after reading this, they flunk reading comprehension.

From Governor Gary Johnson: “It has been clear for a while that we need a new President and a new Congress. Now it appears we need a new Supreme Court. “Whether the Court chooses to call the individual mandate a tax or anything else, allowing it to stand is a truly disturbing decision. The idea that government can require an individual to buy something simply because that individual exists and breathes in America is an incredible blow to the bedrock principles of freedom and liberty. It must be repealed, and Congress needs to get about doing so today. “There is one thing we know about health care. Government cannot create a system that will reduce costs while increasing access. Only competition and the price transparency that competition will bring can accomplish the imperatives of affordability and availability. Whether it is the President’s plan or the Republican prescription drug benefit, the idea that anyone in Washington can somehow manage one of the most essential and subs...

. . . you DO NOT create hypothetical execution scenarios for your political opponents , no matter what your cause. To do so pretty much removes all credibility (or sanity) to which you could reasonably pretend. That said, this particular article--no matter how whackey-- is NOT sedition and the author should NOT be in danger of arrest because of the very narrow margin between a hypothetical and a threat. Right?

Why are the parents of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry any less deserving of a complete accounting of the death of their son, and the government's potential involvement in a cover-up than were the parents of Pat Tillman? Yes, the contempt citation is at least partly politically motivated.  What isn't, these days? But that doesn't change the underlying question:  don't Brian Terry's parents deserve to know completely about the government's potential role in their son's death?

First, The Street sets up the premise --a corporation that has done illegal things: A  Reuters probe  found that under the brilliant leadership of its CEO, Aubrey McClendon, Chesapeake plotted with its top competitor, Canada's Encana Corp., to avoid bidding against each other, thereby suppressing the prices of land they wished to lease. Then, The Street blames "Libertarian orthodoxy" for this horrible situation: The recent travails of Chesapeake Energy and an unrelated but, in its own way, equally hideous company, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters ( GMCR _ ) , are the best examples I can find of how the market is simply not equipped to deal with corporate malfeasance, libertarian orthodoxy notwithstanding. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters and Chesapeake don't seem to have much in common. But each has exhibited a collective character flaw that no billion-dollar market cap penalties can even begin to correct. They are the kind of companies for which regulation -- and...

It's true!   People who know much more about these things than the average American have told me. All my reasons for not supporting Mr. Obama--from his disdain for civil liberties and the rule of law, to his insistence on gaining the power of indefinite detention of American citizens or to execute individual American citizens (and whoever might be standing next to them at the moment) without due process or independent review . . . all of those concerns mask the fact that I am a racist. Unlike the self-aggrandizing pseudo-intellectuals who make these amazing statements, I can acknowledge that racism does play a part in political decisions for some folks, even in terms of their casting their vote for President. Unlike the intellectually dishonest and hopelessly vapid folks who consider themselves qualified to tell you exactly how to run your life (no gambling in bars you low-lifes), I can also observe that they have continually played the race card for the past four years to co...

1.   David Brock, in NYT, attributes most of our problems not to our leaders, but to the "fact" that we don't follow them well enough, and that we are uppity enough to think we should be allowed to criticize them. 2.   Sasha Issenberg, at The Atlantic, thinks that we can solve our problem of low voter turn-out by eliminating secret ballots (I do know that worked for decades in Eastern Europe) and by shaming people who don't vote by threatening to publish their names.  Astoundingly, she stops short of demanding the Australian ballot, even though she thinks voting is not a personal choice but a mandatory social obligation. 3.   Gene Healy at the Examiner points out that the Obama administration (despite all boasting to the contrary) is effectively the least transparent presidential administrations in American history.   Among his examples, he points out one major instance in which the government has refused to tell the public how it intends to interpret Sectio...

At least that's what is currently being argued on a remarkable Tuesday Open Thread at Delawareliberal. Using a wonderful counterfactual chart by Bruce Bartlett that argues that we would have a $5.6 Trillion surplus now if Al Gore had won the Election of 2000, DelDem goes on to argue that I believe under a President Gore, 9/11 never happens. Which then socialistic ben takes to its logical (?) extreme, first arguing Trutherism it was ALLOWED to happen under Bush. And then (according to many commenters there) apparently veering into racism. . . . With President Gore, there would have been no President Obama It goes without saying that with President Gore there also would be no global warming and no insensitive rap lyrics (Tipper would not have allowed that), and that we would now be awaiting (or just on the other side of) the rapture. For those who are not particularly religious, replace "rapture" in previous sentence with "Age of Aquarius."

The current nanny-state-panties-in-a-twist unloading on how awful it is for the Delaware General Assembly to consider legislaton making online gambling legal is both amusing . . . and expected. Here's El Somnabulo: They will also leave Dover with yet another revenue source:  more dollars via degenerate gamblers thanks to the so-called online gaming bill . This is a particularly odious example of the Delaware Way. Provisions have been put into the bill to ensure that the racinos and the mom-and-pop stores that sell the lottery tickets don’t get screwed, but no such provision for the compulsive gamblers who will help fill the state’s coffers. No fiscal note is even required for this bill, which makes little sense to me. Neither a projection of costs to implement the system, nor a revenues projection? Really? Hey, they don’t want you to know how much they expect to squeeze out of (in-state only) degenerate gamblers. Because they’re ‘humane’ ...

Hint to people who vote Dem and GOPer: none of these people are actually on your side. Really, just send me a check for $13.3 million and I promise to create more than one job with it. My cleaning ladies, personal masseuse, driver, cook, and dog washer will all be making a good living, and I will pay their benefits, too. Plus, I'll put up solar lights on my sidewalk so you can call it an investment in "green energy." If necessary, I'll incorporate. Exactly how do people keep defending this stuff: Department of Energy officials gave a New Hampshire-based biofuel company access to $80 million for a Michigan project that has already fallen short of job creation expectations, despite receiving another $40 million in state and DOE subsidies. “In September 2008, Mascoma [Corp.] pledged 70 jobs at the plant by the end of 2012. On Feb. 29 of this year, Mascoma  reported to the MEDC  that only three jobs had been created by the grant,” the Capitol Confidential...

Not even Jimmy Carter can stomach the Obama foreign policy. Lots of GOPers like the narrative that President Barack Obama will be the second coming of Jimmie Carter, a one-term president pretty much rejected and reviled by his own party the moment he is out of office. That's low.  (Carter's abyssmal presidency is such an easy target.) This is lower, however:   Carter himself has now bailed on Obama: A former U.S. president is accusing the current president of sanctioning the "widespread abuse of  human rights " by authorizing drone strikes  to kill suspected terrorists. Jimmy Carter , America's 39 th president, denounced the  Obama administration  for "clearly violating" 10 of the 30 articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights , writing in a  New York Times op-ed  on Monday that the "United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights." "Instead of making the world safer, America's viola...

Look! President Obama's foreign policy has a new logo. What is continually amazing to me is the profound silence of anyone except Libertarians over not just the drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen, or the support of Islamist groups in Somalia, but also of the bloody undeclared "drug wars" we are fighting south of the US border. In Honduras DEA special forces teams with attack helicopters are literally marauding through the countryside , killing civilians including children and pregnant women. Meanwhile, inside the US it's still the economy, stupid, and civil liberties are not an issue in this year's election. I know that it is impolitic, politically incorrect, and leads to general condemnation to imply this, but sometimes the truth hurts.

The Delaware Family Policy Council has decided to try to twist arms at Leg Hall on 30 June to get legislators to sign their so-called Delaware Marriage Pledge. Here's some of their propaganda [in which you can see the fine ghost-writing skills of a Dover City Councilman]: Each year hundreds of people descend on Legislative Hall to ask their two representatives to support families. This year, we are asking them to sign the DELAWARE MARRIAGE PLEDGE.   The whole team of Delaware Strong Families and DFPC will be there to welcome you and give you instructions. We make it as easy as possible for you to get involved and make a difference! Use  this bulletin insert  and have this event announced at your church each Sunday until June 30! Appoint a coordinator from your church, arrange for transportation, then see our team when you arrive. It's easy! They are organized, and they are quite qilling to "give you instructions." Here's the plaintive email I receive...

You may recall that a bout a month ago there was a story that indicated that among Delaware's congressional delegation only Senator Chris Coons supports marriage equality. Senator Tom Carper and Congressman John Carney had no position beyond civil unions, and no commitment to legislating for marriage equality. Then we have the website for Equality Delaware , which is Working to insure and promote dignity, safety, and equality for all lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Delawareans. So I guess my question is how Senator Carper and Congressman Carney end up on the Board of Advisors of Equality Delaware if they are not on record supporting marriage equality? An interesting issue in an election season, no?

. . . give it to the Obamas instead . . . .

1.   Another idiotic article by a non-libertarian that tells everyone what libertarians think.  This is apparently the consequence of libertarian ideology beginning to break into the mainstream.  To paraphrase the old Gandhi aphorism, "First they ignore you, then they make fun of you, and then they pretend to know what you're talking about." 2.   Is Libertarian Presidential candidate Gary Johnson a Ralph Nader-type "spoiler" or an indication that what Ron Paul started has gone beyond a phenomenon to become a movement? 3.   Another piece about what happens to the Ron Paul movement after Tampa by Anti-war.com's Justin Raimondo.  As usual for these articles, no mention is made of Gary Johnson, because even the people who oppose the two-party system are often too mired in it to see any alternatives. 4.  More ballot access highjinks:   New Hampshire Secretary of State says he will deny Libertarian Party  its own place on the ballot alongsid...

Sandusky child sex abuse case offers important lessons You know what?  It's not true. Academics and psychologists and attorneys will pontificate, but there is only ONE lesson to be learned here, the same lesson that the Catholic Church has NOT YET learned: Serial child sexual abuse can ONLY occur when the people who know or suspect turn away--for ANY reason. That's the lesson:  don't EVER turn away from that child, because YOU could be the ONLY chance that child will EVER have.

Elizabeth Warren’s Birthday Gift From GOP: An Ancestry.com Account

The US Senate has finally voted overwhelmingly to end the $18 million/party subsidies that the Federal government gives to Dems and GOPers each year to hold their national conventions: Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who sponsored the proposal with Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, says taxpayers should not have to contribute, as they are doing for the two conventions this year, when the nominee has been decided. Coburn says the public this year is spending more than $36 million for the conventions. The measure, if it becomes law, would not take effect until future political conventions. The idea would need the House's OK. The Senate vote was 95-4 for the proposal, which was presented as an amendment to a farm bill. (Notice they didn't do it until the money had already been dispensed this year, and we'll have to wait for the House and the President to follow suit.) Now if somebody would just recognize that other parties should have the right to u...

Time to remove a major part of the doubt about where many of Dr. Ron Paul's supporters are going once the GOP convention is over. From PaulFest: CHICAGO, IL - Paul Festival announced today they had confirmed former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson to their list of speakers.Johnson joins an already packed collection of liberty advocates for the festival featuring vendors, speakers and live music. The event will focus on working with independent minded voters from across the political spectrum. The event takes place August 24-26 in Tampa, Florida. "I am grateful and excited to receive an invitation from Paul Festival and look forward to joining such a great gathering for liberty," said Governor Johnson. "I proudly stand by my record as a Governor who united voters from all parties and beliefs." Gary Johnson  has been a consistent advocate for working with all political parties and defending civil liberties. Judge Jim Gray, who served as as trial c...

Victor Tolomeo is a sophomore at Georgetown University, and I really hope that he is not majoring in Political Science or any other discipline that requires actual analytical thought. His is the latest in the recent flood of college student essayss obviously hyped up by the GOP or the Romney campaign to attack Libertarianism. Not only is Mr. Tolomeo both unsure of the definition of Libertarianism and its distinction from Anarcho-Capitalism (sort of the same distinction lost on GOP critics about the difference between "managed capitalism" and "socialism"), he inverts chronology (for him Ron Paul creates Grover Norquist), and his examples (a game of chess and a family vacation) are both superficial and, well, . . . sophomoric. The "money quote" comes in the denouement when Mr. Tolomeo announces his true colors after "defining" the difference between "New Liberalism" (which, after the fashion of college students, he makes up on the s...

Today the Department of Health and Human Services announced the first round of consumer rebates under the MLR (Medical Loss Ratio or 80/20) rule.   This is the provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires private medical insurers to spend no more than 14-20% of premiums collected (depending on market size) in non-medical care related areas (administration, salaries, or marketing). Nationwide there will be $1.1 Billion in rebates, of which $1.85 million will be shared by 5,639 Delaware families who will receive average rebates of $351/family.  (It is interesting to note that the highest rebates will be paid in Vermont, where the average family will receive $807, and that there will be no rebates whatever issued in Rhode Island or New Mexico.  Not sure exactly what that means.) While any opportunity to receive money back is generally a good thing in the eyes of the person cashing the checks, The HILL points out that HHS was careful to let people know that no ...

It's amazing what the concatenation of ads will bring up on your Facebook page:

If you have been following the torturous story of determining whether the funding mechanism behind HB 392 (Single-payer health insurance in Delaware) will actually pay for itself via a 2.5% Health Security Income Tax, a graduated Health Security payroll tax, and appropriating all Federal medical funding, you will recall this statement by Representative Earl Jaques at Delaware Liberal: DoTheMath: Your comment that somebody ought to do a rough estimate on the math and then see what they think. Rep Kowalko and I did. We had both the Sec of Finance office and the Controller General’s office check the numbers. They took into account the size of employers across the state to determine who has to pay 4% and who would pay 9%. Then they used last year’s tax numbers to determine the 2.5% factor. Then we added in the money which will be included in the pot from various federal programs,i.e. medicare, etc. Guess What? The numbers in the bill work!! Of course, we are now in the fifth day of wait...

Which is exactly what the Romney campaign is doing in Michigan: The Romney effort to keep Libertarian Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico governor, off the ballot is more complicated. Johnson began the year running for the Republican presidential nomination and appeared on the Michigan GOP primary ballot. He later dropped out of that race and won the Libertarian Party nod at its national convention in Las Vegas. Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson, a Republican, says state law puts a time limit on when candidates can switch parties and then run for office. The Johnson campaign was informed of the decision in a letter written by state Attorney General William Schuette, Romney’s state campaign chair. The secretary of state also said candidate Johnson’s ballot application arrived in her office three minutes past the deadline. However, in 1980 when Republican presidential candidate John Anderson ran in the general election as an independent using a newly created Michigan party—the ...

Dr. F. Chris Garcia:  behind that Mona Lisa smile, who'd have suspected there lurked the entrepreneur who opened new frontiers of cybersex freedom? Dr. F. Chris Garcia, the former Prez, and Dr. David C. Flory (retired Fairleigh Dickinson U. physics professor) decided to supplement their retirement incomes by creating "Southwest Companions," that served as a message board for prostitutes and their clients: ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A website that authorities say two aging professors used to run a multistate prostitution ring is legal, a state judge has ruled, highlighting the difficulties that prosecutors face in using decades-old laws to combat a modern phenomenon. The ruling comes as prosecutors were scheduled to present to a grand jury their case against former University of New Mexico President F. Chris Garcia, who is accused of helping a physics professor from New Jersey oversee a prostitution website called "Southwest Companions." State District J...

Gary Wills:  if you vote any way except Democratic, you are either a racist or you support racism. Gary Wills is one of those frustrating, entertaining, truly original intellectuals who often surprises, and often unnerves.  His Inventing America should rank with DeToqueville's Democracy in America as one of the two dozen books every literate citizen should read. Even when I don't agree with him, I find him absolutely necessary reading. Today Gary Wills is writing a diatribe about the fact that only losers would vote for third parties, because What they normally do is damage the party closest to their professed ideals. Third parties are run by people who make the best the enemy of their own good and bring down that good.  This is preceeded by an injunction that one should always vote for the party rather than the candidate: But the man being voted for, no matter what he says, dances with the party that brought him, dependent on its support, resources, and cli...

Still no numbers from Representative Earl Jaques, Representative John Kowalko, candidate Mitch Crane, or Dr. Floyd McDowell to demonstrate that the funding mechanism for HB 392 will provide sufficient money to run single-payer health care in a state that doesn't do organ transplants, and doesn't have a burn center.

. . . that has Nobel Peace Prize in some danger of being rescinded: STOCKHOLM, Sweden  (AP) —  Nobel Peace Prize  officials were facing a formal inquiry over accusations they have drifted away from the prize's original selection criteria by choosing such winners as  President Barack Obama , as the nomination deadline for the 2012 awards closed Wednesday. The investigation comes after persistent complaints by a Norwegian peace researcher that the original purpose of the prize was to diminish the role of military power in international relations. If the  Stockholm County Administrative Board , which supervises foundations in  Sweden 's capital, finds that prize founder  Alfred Nobel 's will is not being honored, it has the authority to suspend award decisions going back three years — though that would be unlikely and unprecedented, said  Mikael Wiman , a legal expert working for the county. Obama won in 2009, Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo wo...

Earl, you may recall, challenged me to disprove the numbers he never provided to validate the funding mechanism behind HB 392. So I did the analysis --with significant help from Jesse McVay--and, guess what? Either his funding mechanism can't raise the money, or he truly believes he can provide health care for nothing. So, I'm still waiting for Earl Jaques and John Kowalko to publish the funding numbers they claim they had run by the Secretary of Finance and the Controller General.

1.   Politico:  Gary Johnson at 7% in Colorado (before his visit to a marijuana dispensary and marching in the pride parade yesterday), 9% in Arizona, and 12% in New Mexico.  Romney crapping a brick. 2.  We must be making progress.   Now HuffPo is telling Libertarians that they can be influential in American elections only if they register as independents, swing back and forth between the anointed Dems and GOPers, and forsake the idea of building their own party. 3.   Ron Paul:  Mitt may have the nomination, but he does not have the "hearts and minds" of the GOP rank and file.   Rand to be spanked behind house later. 4.   Progressives and libertarians agree that excessive government regulation is causing the affordable housing crisis in America?  Be still my heart.

No need for a declaration of war.  No need for Congressional approval.  No worries about the stinkin' War Powers Act.

An excellent appraisal: The Transportation Security Administration has taken quite a beating in the news cycle so far this year. In late April, screeners were caught taking bribes to allow drugs to pass through Los Angeles International Airport. Recently, a 4-year-old was detained, yelled at, patted down and otherwise terrorized for hugging her grandmother, who hadn't completed screening yet. In April, the TSA made us safer by terrorizing a 7-year-old with cerebral palsy. CBS DC reported that Dina Frank cannot use metal detectors because she walks with crutches and leg braces. The thorough pat-down of the 7-year-old caused the family to miss their flight. No doubt such incidents will prompt people to call for the TSA to be streamlined, for the administration to adopt "new procedures" or for other Band-Aids that will create the illusion of decisive action. This is insufficient. The TSA should not be streamlined. Administrators should not "review screening pro...

An astounding, libertarian-oriented bill, SB 100 is awesome in terms of its brevity: BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE: Section 1.    Amend Title 19 of the Delaware Code by repealing Chapter 19, Corporation Income Tax, in its entirety. Section 2.    This Act shall become effective on the second January 1 st  following its enactment. The act is co-sponsored by Senator Bunting, and Representatives Hocker, Ramone, and D. Short. This has to be mentioned here, because it is not mentioned there .

This is John Kowalko standing beside Mitch Crane to endorse him for Insurance Commissioner in his Democratic primary race against incumbent Karen Weldin Stewart: This is what John Kowalko said: "I supported Karen Weldin Stewart four years ago for Insurance Commissioner. However, she has not lived up to her promise to protect Delaware consumers. I've worked with and have gotten to know Mitch well enough to say for certain that he will deliver on his promise to put the consumer first." John did not just support KWS four years ago, he did so enthusiastically, and with much effusive language: I just want to weigh in here if no one minds. In my scores of visits to the Wilmington Carvel State building where our new castle county State offices are located, I’ve often encountered Karen at the front desk where she was stationed as a paid and/or unpaid worker for the Dem. Senate and McDowell. I related some of this story just recently at the UAW Region 8 Women’s Confere...

1.   Under President Obama arms sales to foreign governments hit new highs.  If he can't make war in your country, he'll sell you the tools to do it yourself. 2.   Noah Rothmann of MEDIAite has an essay on what Libertarians have done wrong politically, which is about as persuasive as an essay by Rick Santorum on what progressives have done wrong. 3.   Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson will visit a Colorado medical marijuana dispensary next week to dramatize his support for the legalization bill, Amendment 64, and to lobby for the support of Sensible Colorado. 4.  If Representatives John Kowalko and Earl Jaques have their way with HB 392, I seriously hope that you never need a heart, lung, liver, or kidney transplant; never need to access an organ bank; and don't need the services of a top-flight burn center.   We don't offer those services in Delaware, so the only way their proposed Delaware Single-Payer plan will cover them is if the ho...