Tag Archives: liberty

Greta Thunberg: We need a ‘concrete plan’ for climate action, not nice words

by DeangelBayly Posted on August 30, 2019

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Unprecedented pressure exerted by young activists will push world leaders to address the unfolding climate crisis, even with a recalcitrant U.S. under Donald Trump, Greta Thunberg told the Guardian.

Thunberg, the teenager whose school climate strikes have ignited a global youth-led movement, said that her journey to New York on a solar-powered yacht was symbolic of the lengths young people will take to confront the climate crisis.

She said: “It’s insane that a 16-year-old has to cross the Atlantic in order to take a stand, but that’s how it is. It feels like we are at a breaking point. Leaders know that more eyes on them, much more pressure is on them, that they have to do something, they have to come up with some sort of solution. I want a concrete plan, not just nice words.”

Thunberg’s vessel emerged from the mist of an unseasonably drizzly day to be met by a throng of supporters and media at a marina near the southern tip of Manhattan on Wednesday. Her arrival was heralded by a flotilla of 17 sailboats, charted by the U.N., that intercepted her vessel near the Statue of Liberty.

Supporters chanted “welcome Greta” as the Swedish teenager stepped off the yacht, shook some outstretched hands and said that it felt like the ground was shaking beneath her feet.

Thunberg told the Guardian: “It’s so overwhelming. I’ve gone from nothing but me and the ocean to this.”

Despite the adulation from the crowds, Thunberg said she didn’t relish being cast as the global figurehead of the climate movement.

She said: “My role is to be one of many, many activists who are pushing for climate action. I don’t see myself as a leader, or icon, or the face of a movement.”

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Greta Thunberg: We need a ‘concrete plan’ for climate action, not nice words

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez takes tech companies to task for conference promoting climate denial

by Reinald0150 Posted on January 28, 2019

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This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a Democrat from New York) and Representative Chellie Pingree (a Democrat from Maine) sent a letter to three of the nation’s biggest tech companies on Monday decrying their sponsorship of a conference this month that promoted climate change denial.

As Mother Jones reported last week, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft all sponsored LibertyCon, a libertarian student conference held in Washington, D.C. The event featured a group called the CO2 Coalition, which handed out brochures in the exhibit hall that said its goal is to “explain how our lives and our planet Earth will be improved by additional atmospheric carbon dioxide.”

One brochure claimed that “more carbon dioxide will help everyone, including future generations of our families” and that the “recent increase in CO2 levels has had a measurable, positive effect on plant life,” apparently because the greenhouse gas will make plants grow faster. The group also sponsored the conference and a talk titled: “Let’s Talk About Not Talking: Should There Be ‘No Debate’ that Industrial Carbon Dioxide is Causing Climate Catastrophe?”

Ocasio-Cortez and Pingree, who are both making climate change a priority in the new Congress, were not pleased by the news. On Monday, they sent a letter to the CEOs of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft expressing their concern that the tech companies are contributing to the spread of misinformation about the reality of climate change despite their public commitment to reducing carbon emissions in their own operations.

Pingree says one of the reasons she and Ocasio-Cortez wrote this letter is that “climate change is clearly an all-hands-on-deck situation.” She adds, “Where I live in Maine, sea-level rise and warming is happening at a rate much faster than anyone ever anticipated.”

She says that the tech companies “claim by policy that they’re on board” with efforts to combat climate change, making their sponsorship of the conference all the more troubling. “The idea that they’re secretly working against it makes our job that much harder,” she says.

Pingree and Ocasio-Cortez wrote in their letter:

We understand that sponsorship of an event or conference is a common occurrence and that these sponsorships do not automatically indicate that the company endorses the variety of political viewpoints that may be presented at these events. However, given the magnitude and urgency of the climate crisis that we are now facing, we find it imperative to ensure that the climate-related views espoused at LibertyCon do not reflect the values of your companies going forward.

As you are well aware, the spreading of misinformation can be dangerous to our society. Today’s coordinated campaign to deny climate change, or to put a positive spin on its effects, is not unlike that of the tobacco companies which once sought to discredit their product’s link to cancer. Their propaganda kept the nation from addressing a public health crisis for years, leading to many preventable deaths. We cannot afford to make the same mistake again with climate change.

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez takes tech companies to task for conference promoting climate denial

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Why Libertarians Are (Still) Plotting to Take Over New Hampshire

by Selina R. Pinkstaff Posted on February 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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On February 18, hundreds of libertarians will flock to the Radisson Hotel in Manchester, New Hampshire, for the ninth annual Liberty Forum, a four-day conference featuring presentations on topics such as religious freedom, school choice, and “Anarchy: Dressing for Success.” A big draw will be Edward Snowden’s keynote speech, delivered over a live video stream. As the exiled NSA whistleblower speaks, conference goers may mull their own flight from government oppression—not to Russia, but to the haven of New Hampshire.

The Free State Project, which runs the Liberty Forum, has spent 15 years trying to recruit 20,000 libertarian-minded activists to take up residence in the Granite State. By accruing a critical mass of small-government advocates in a state with just 1.3 million people, the project seeks to exert substantial influence on state politics to create a utopia of social liberties and deregulated markets. Those who sign the Free State pledge promise to make the move to New Hampshire once 20,000 participants have signed up. Now, with 19,858 signers, the project’s organizers say they are finally recruiting the last of those volunteers.

However, the organizers readily admit they don’t know how many of the would-be Free Staters will actually come to New Hampshire. “That is the million-dollar question,” says Free State Project president Carla Gericke. “It’s all speculative at this stage.” The most fervent believers are likely already in the state. Free State Project founder Jason Sorens says he expects around a third of the remaining signers to move. The group plans to track down those who may have forgotten and nudge them with direct mail, phone calls, and email reminders about their commitment.

Sorens first published his idea for the Free State Project in 2001, when he was a PhD student in Yale’s political science department. In an article in the Libertarian Enterprise webzine, Soren fantasized about a place where state and local budgets would be slashed and federal highway funds would be rejected. By 2003, a community of several thousand Free State Project pledgers had coalesced online and were debating the relative merits of colonizing Idaho, Wyoming, or Alaska. Then a delegation met with then-New Hampshire Gov. Craig Benson, a Republican, who told them, “Come on up. We’d love to have you.”

Since then, 1,909 early movers have settled in New Hampshire, according to organizers. They have started a church, installed Bitcoin ATMs, and protested against an Uber ban. One Free Stater became a school board chairwoman, then used tax money to pay private school tuition for kids in her district. Free Staters in Grafton tried to declare their no-stoplight town a United Nations-free zone. In Keene, libertarian transplants upset old-timers by videotaping and challenging parking officers enforcing “the king’s tariff.”

Influencing state policy remains a major goal for many participants. According to the project, it’s gotten more than 40 “pro-liberty” legislators elected. At least 18 early movers currently hold seats in the State House. The New Hampshire Liberty Alliance, a tea party-aligned nonprofit Soren says was “founded by native libertarians in expectation that the Free State Project would be coming,” has become a force in state politics.

Still, it only became obvious recently that the project would hit its 20,000-pledge trigger. Last fall, after years of standing around conferences with clipboards and taking out advertisements in Reason magazine, the project’s organizers turned to Facebook. More than 2,500 new participants signed on during a four-month ad campaign targeting users who “liked” pages for Bitcoin, “voluntarism,” and George Carlin. In recent weeks, the group has ramped up its Facebook ad spending to $500 a day. Nearly 20 early movers have been arriving in New Hampshire each month—even in winter. “I really hope we can build something that’s historic,” Gericke says. “People are coming.”

That’s good news for Mark Warden, owner and lead agent at Porcupine Real Estate in Manchester, which does around 90 percent of its business with early movers. (Libertarians have adopted the porcupine, a peaceful creature that defends itself when attacked, as their mascot.) “A lot of my clients want to be self-sufficient—whether that’s living off the grid and growing their own food, wanting to shoot and hunt on their own property, or being able tor raise pigs and chickens without zoning laws interfering,” says Warden, who shows his properties with a gun on his hip. “We speak the same language.”

Warden also offers advice to aspiring politicians, setting them up in towns where they would have a chance of winning over voters. Warden is a former state legislator whose old campaign website touts an A+ rating from the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity. He once argued for decriminalizing simple assault during a committee hearing, later apologizing for claiming that some people may “like being in abusive relationships”.

Some future Free Staters say they’re drawn by the free-market business opportunities. Nelson Aquino, a Boston-based sales executive, plans to move in a matter of weeks. Aquino says he’s looking for a community that understands his opposition to police violence and torture, and he also plans to invest: “The people who are willing to make that type of pledge are people who believe in personal responsibility, people who believe in contracts, people who follow through on their word,” he says. “Those are the people I want to do business with.”

John Bush, who tried to start a Texas version of the project called Lone Star Libertopia, intends to open a New Hampshire branch of his Austin-based bookstore, which sells volumes on homesteading and crypto-anarchism alongside nutritional supplements and water filtration systems. “We intend to build some wealth—properties and wealth,” Bush says. “The early movers are what making it all so sexy and attractive.”

Nineteen-year-old Bradley Hunt, who signed the pledge about a year ago, says he was was bummed out when he heard the project was reaching its target—he’d wanted to be an early mover. He’s unhappy living in Michigan but doesn’t have enough savings to pick up and go. In the meantime, he volunteers for the local Libertarian Party, joins jury nullification protests, and tries to boycott the US dollar. He envisions himself and his girlfriend buying a little property in the northern end of New Hampshire in two or three years.

“The only thing I can see stopping me from moving is if I go to jail for my activism or if I get in a car accident or die or something,” he says. In the Free State, “I would have to start over again—but I’m okay with that.”

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Why Libertarians Are (Still) Plotting to Take Over New Hampshire

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Prosecutors Dealt a Setback in Trial of Rand Paul Aides

by LilianaCSSW Posted on October 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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An Iowa judge dealt a setback to prosecutors who have accused several Paul family political operatives of breaking campaign finance laws during Ron Paul’s 2012 presidential campaign. The judge ruled on Friday that all the charges filed against John Tate, a longtime Paul family operative who worked for both Ron and Rand Paul and for groups tied to the family’s political causes, should be dismissed. During the 2012 election, Tate was in charge of America’s Liberty PAC, a pro-Rand Paul super-PAC endorsed by the Kentucky senator. Several of the charges against Jesse Benton, who is married to Ron Paul’s granddaughter and also involved with America’s Liberty PAC, were also dropped. But Benton and a third Paul lieutenant, Dimitri Kesari, are still both scheduled to go to trial next week.

This case focuses on these operatives’ roles running the 2012 Ron Paul campaign and an apparent plan to pay an Iowa state senator to switch his endorsement from Michele Bachmann to Ron Paul. The state senator, Kent Sorenson, initially denied there was a scheme to pay him to back Ron Paul, but eventually he admitted that he took money from the Paul campaign through a third party (to cover the campaign’s tracks). He pleaded guilty last year to federal campaign finance charges and is awaiting sentencing. On Friday, federal judge John Jarvey, dismissed all the charges against Tate and all but one of the charges against Benton, saying that in presenting charges to the grand jury, prosecutors improperly included accusations that Benton and Tate lied about their involvement in the case during meetings with investigators and prosecutors.

The judge’s decision was apparently based on complaints by Benton and Tate’s respective lawyers that the government convinced a grand jury to indict them by using statements the men made when they were under the impression that prosecutors wouldn’t use these remarks against them. According to court documents, last summer, before a grand jury was convened, the two men met, separately, with investigators and prosecutors in what is known as “proffer sessions”—meetings in which the subject of the interview is usually given some immunity and a promise the government won’t use what they tell investigators against them. The one instance in which statements made during a proffer session can be used to prosecute the interviewee is when the government prosecutes the person directly for making false statements to federal investigators. The charges against Tate and Benton that were dismissed today were related to conspiracy and campaign finance violations. The judge ruled that it was improper for prosecutors to bring up what Benton and Tate said in the proffer sessions when accusing them of those crimes.

Benton is still charged with making false statements to federal investigators and Kesari still faces six charges relating to the case, including conspiracy and campaign finance charges. Prosecutors also claim he tried to convince Sorenson to not cooperate with investigators.

Neither Benton nor Tate’s attorney responded to requests for comment, but Peter Carr, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said new charges may still be filed against Tate and Benton.

“The government is free to proceed to trial—and informed the court today that it will proceed to trial—on the remaining counts pertaining to Benton and Kesari,” Carr said. “The decision regarding the dismissed counts will be made at a later date post trial.”

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Prosecutors Dealt a Setback in Trial of Rand Paul Aides

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Rand Paul’s Super PAC is Powered By Whole Foods and Pot

by Neville11O Posted on July 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Rand Paul’s fundraising has been surprisingly anemic over the past few months as the GOP presidential candidate has found his message failing to resonate with some of the traditional sources of GOP campaign money, such as Wall Street. But a recent filing by a super PAC that supports him, and which is staffed by former aides and relatives of the Senator, shows that Paul is getting some traction with libertarian-leaning donors. The bad news for Paul is that the oufit backing his candidacy still raised $100 million less than the one backing Jeb Bush.

The super PAC, America’s Liberty PAC, reported raising $3.1 million in the first half of 2015, with two wealthy businessmen chipping in $1 million or more each. George Macricostas, the CEO of data storage company RagingWire, donated $1.1 million to the super PAC. Jeff Yass, the CEO of Philadelphia private investment firm Susquehenna International donated $1 million. Both represent relatively untapped sources of money for a conservative candidate. Yass has previously written large checks, but none larger than the $50,000 donation he made in 2004 to Club for Growth, while Macricostas appears to have donated a total of just over $12,000 prior to his $1.1 million donation to America’s Liberty.

The super PAC roped in other big donations, including $50,000 from John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods, and $50,000 from Patrick Byrne, the CEO of Overstock.com. The group also also received $15,000 from ICC Holdings, an Illinois company hoping to be one of the first companies to legally operate a commercial cannabis farm.

America’s Liberty PAC is one of two pro-Paul super PACs. To date, the group has spent about $412,000, and produced an anti-Jeb Bush online ad, mocking him as “Bailout Bush.” On the group’s payroll is the consulting firm of Jesse Benton, who is married to Rand Paul’s niece and who was previously a top aide to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. Benton resigned from his position as campaign manager for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell last August over his involvement with an ongoing scandal stemming from the 2012 Iowa caucuses. (A former Iowa state senator has admitted to taking money from the Ron Paul 2012 presidential campaign in exchange for his endorsement and is awaiting sentencing.) Since the beginning of the year, the super PAC has paid Benton’s company $63,000 for consulting work.

America’s Liberty PAC also reported paying John F. Tate, who was Ron Paul’s campaign manager in 2012 and now runs Campaign For Liberty, a grassroots libertarian group founded by Ron Paul.

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Rand Paul’s Super PAC is Powered By Whole Foods and Pot

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How Bernie Sanders Learned to Be a Real Politician

by JoanneLininger Posted on May 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sometime in the late 1970s, after he’d had a kid, divorced his college sweetheart, lost four elections for statewide offices, and been evicted from his home on Maple Street in Burlington, Vermont, Bernie Sanders moved in with a friend named Richard Sugarman. Sanders, a restless political activist and armchair psychologist with a penchant for arguing his theories late into the night, found a sounding board in the young scholar, who taught philosophy at the nearby University of Vermont. At the time, Sanders was struggling to square his revolutionary zeal with his overwhelming rejection at the polls—and this was reflected in a regular ritual. Many mornings, Sanders would greet his roommate with a simple statement: “We’re not crazy.”

“I’d say, ‘Bernard, maybe the first thing you should say is ‘Good morning’ or something,'” Sugarman recalls. “But he’d say, ‘We’re. Not. Crazy.'”

Sanders eventually got a place of his own, found his way, and in 1981 was elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont’s largest city—the start of an improbable political career that led him to Congress, and soon, he hopes, the White House. On Tuesday, after more than three decades as a self-described independent socialist, the septuagenarian senator launched his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in the Vermont city where this long, strange trip began. But it was during Sanders’ first turbulent decade in Vermont that he discovered it wasn’t enough to hold lofty ideas and wait for the world to fall in line; in the Green Mountains, he learned how to be a politician.

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How Bernie Sanders Learned to Be a Real Politician

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