Veto Washington

A quick google search suggests Romney issued 800 vetoes while in office. That’s 800/​ 4 years. But then context matters. As to this nonsense you’ve been on lately, either Obama or Romney will be President. If it’s Obama freedom won’t be coming back here in the short term or medium term. If it’s Romney, there is a better than even chance that we will see significant course correction for the better. Libertarians who believe in liberty will be supporting Romney not lying about him. That’s common sense.

I saw him in several debates, and while I agree with most libertarian economic policies, on foreign policy their isolationist stance will just repeat the catastrophe that led to so many more needless deaths in WWII by delaying the US joining the allies. 

It is just plain stupid to split the conservative vote by setting up a third party. In Canada (I am a 35 year ex-​pat) and other parliamentary countries, we have had dynasties created by splitting the opposition vote, and so Canada suffered from 30 or 40 years of devastating, corrupt liberal rule. 

It is far more intelligent to work from within. You do not have to win the white house to effect change. Far better to, as the tea party has been doing, field delegates and candidates for the legislature at all levels of government, and, as Mr. Johnson did, serve as an effective governor of a state, to create competition among states for “the best” policies. The President is just one person. We need an army of citizens, voters, legislators, governors, and journalists, columnists and talk radio hosts to turn the juggernaut and keep it pointed in the right direction.

Ben — Why suggest that I’m lying? Do you really think that I am? 

Red State confirms my numbers and statement here: http://​www​.redstate​.com/​k​e​e​p​o​u​r​r​e​p​u​b​l​i​c​/​2​0​1​1​/​0​9​/​2​3​/​g​o​v​e​r​n​o​r​-​g​a​r​y​-​j​ohnson/

Of course, Romney was not in the Massachusetts governor’s office during the 8 years Johnson was governor of New Mexico. Johnson left office in 2003 as Romney was entering office.

Thanks, at least for that fact, which I was not aware of. Romney’s 800 vetoes make the best argument I’ve heard yet about him. Though factcheck​.org dismisses the stat because 700 were overridden by Mass legislators, I think Mitt still deserves full credit for forcing that legislature to override him.

Let’s hope there’s wisdom in crowds, and that the Americans Elect candidate winds up being worthy of support. That’s our only real choice for an outcome that isn’t 100% useless.

This election cycle confirms my belief that there is no change to be had from electoral politics. RJ Harris, the one small L libertarian in the Libertarian presidential race, dropped out on April 15. Now, it’s a lapel-​grabber who’s friends with all the corrupt goons vs. Gary Johnson (of the two nonentities, Gary Johnson would at least probably not throw chairs across the room during press conferences). Ron Paul is a libertarian, but he’s coming up against the full weight of the Republican establishment, and doesn’t appear to have a “plan B.” (I wish I was wrong about this.)

Johnson is almost as worthless as Mitt and Obama. He supports “the fair tax” (which is akin to supporting “the fair rape”), and he supports the idea of humanitarian war. (Translation: he won’t stand up to the bankers who run our government as brutality for profit.) He says he pardoned “hundreds” of victimless crime offenders, and then it turns out that he pardoned 123 victimless crime offenders, when he was in the seat of power. Johnson stated his support for the NYC “mandatory calorie-​labeling on all menus” law, and was called out for therefore being anti-​libertarian by guest commentator Tom Shillue, on the late night Fox TV Show “Redeye.” Johnson supports prison privatization (even before mala prohibita is eliminated, again: favoring brutality for profit).

The real problem? Small L philosophical libertarians in the USA don’t actually value freedom very much. They want freedom, kind of, but not if it requires anything greater than rolling out of bed and voting for it.

This is why Scott Kohlhaas, Bill Redpath, and their various flunkies control LP ballot access (95% of the money that enters the LP). The LP members, donors, and LNC are asleep at the wheel, and have no idea either how to build an effective freedom movement, nor about even what is happening with the freedom movement that they are ostensibly in control of.

And this is why Johnson will get the LP nomination: nobody really cares much for freedom, but Johnson really cares about his political career.

Johnson is a bold man, but a timid politician. He has some of the right ideas, but they are in embryonic form. He claims “Atlas Shrugged” as the book that is necessary to understand him, but then this John Galt supports forcing NYC restuaranteurs to label their menus’ calorie counts at the state’s gunpoint, creating a giant barrier to entry to the market. Duhrrr. It doesn’t really get any dumber than that.

And this is all on the eve of what talented prognosticator and investment guru Doug Casey calls “the greater depression.” 

It’s far past time to start running toward fiscal sanity, and the United States’ “libertarian movement” is considering the option of starting to crawl in that direction. In that analogy, the slow-​moving steamroller of tyranny will flatten the toddler libertarianism that Ron Paul gave birth to in 2008. How sad that the LP never opted to capitalize on that momentum! The Ron Paul revolution is not ignorant of the problems, and there is now a sizeable number of philosophical newbies who are calling out for smaller government.

For my money, I might as well stay home from the LP convention this year, as well as the general election. I have direct personal knowledge that the LP is even more corrupted (or, more likely, infiltrated) than even the major parties are.

I understand fully and deeply what it would take to have a serious libertarian movement in the USA. If I am ever wealthy enough to supplant the FBI agents provocateurs and do-​nothings who currently control the LP, I may turn it into a serious organization. Without that eventuality coming to pass, I am extremely confident that neither the LP nor the US freedom movement will amount to a significant barrier to the Federal Reserve’s plans for us all. Things will continue as they have until the tyrants grow tired of stealing from us.

Mitt Romney is abjectly worthless and completely unprincipled, as is Obama. Obama would happily shovel black infants into an incinerator, if the bankers told him to, just as he happily shovels their fathers into the current US prison-​industrial complex. In this regard, he is every bit as bad as the Bushes. Mitt Romney implemented “Romneycare” and drove businesses out of Massachusetts like rats from a sinking ship, and presided over one of the worst camera-​riddled police states in the USA. Mitt Romney condescendinly scoffed at Dave Ridley and responded “No” with a laugh, as if Ridley was crazy for asking if he wanted to abolish the Federal Reserve. How crazy! To not want to be a slave, looted of all your future wealth. Mitt also stated he does not want congressional oversight of the Federal Reserve.

Those who see any difference at all between Romney and Obama are the kind of people who get obsessed with the trivial and inconsequential, and ignore the immense and vitally important. They are the kind of people who can’t stop obsessing about mosquitos when they are being hunted by cannibals. In short, they are easy prey, mindless serfs, thick-​skulled willing dupes. Some such people have commented on this board already, claiming to have the answer, and that the answer is D‑centralbank or R‑centralbank. Like most Americans, they were fed a hodgepodge of garbage labeled as philosophy. ie: Just enough philosophical misdirection to believe that they don’t need to think about philosophy. Just enough scorn and derision for the concept of ideas that they feel they don’t need to have any of their own.

I see no positives in an Obama, Romney presidency, and too few meaningful positives in a Johnson presidency. I’ll be voting in front of my local courthouse, by handing out jury rights information, trying to do something that will _​actually_​ make someone more free.

And it may make a little difference. Romney will come after your guns, like Obama has. He’ll come after your drugs, like Obama has. He’ll come after your kids’ drugs, and he’ll put your kids in jail, like Obama has. He’ll come after your right to free expression, and he’ll eliminate the remnants of the Bill of Rights under the “one size fits all” war on terror excuse, just like Obama has. He will do whatever his overseers at the central bank tell him to do, because lack of any philosophy beyond narrow self-​interest is mandated by the people who run US presidential elections.

In short: we’ll have as much freedom as we can guarantee ourselves with physical force, and nothing more. In short: there is no freedom candidate, and the electorate are all servile, conformist totalitarians-​by-​default. Just like most conformists were bent to the will of Hitler in 1930s Germany, most Americans will be bent to the will of whatever leader eventually decides to enforce the NDAA, here in the USA.

No party will ever give you freedom. If you want freedom, you must arm yourself to the teeth, and demand it. Just looking around me, I see noone who wants freedom, with say, more desire than they want a sandwich. The very worst enemies of individual freedom are the people in the Republican and Libertarian Parties who really want to raise money to play the game of “get on the ballot, fall off the ballot, then do it again.” The Greens and Democrats are at least open and honest about their desire to rob everyone blind, while pursuing an overt agenda of tribal primitivism.

Johnson is the kind of candidate who, during the Ron Paul revolution, is afraid to hold an unqualified opinion about the weather.

I’ll see you in the camps, comrades.