Last Updated on Sunday November 12, 2023 12:49pm EST The 2023 South Carolina Libertarian Party Convention was held the weekend of November 10-12, 2023 in North Charleston, SC. The convention featured a debate between some of the (qualifying) presidential candidates. Interviews were scheduled with all of the candidates listed as attending as of October 22, 2023, and one of the two others since listed as attending. The interviews will be published on Independent Political Report and referenced on this page. It will be a ten question format, with several in multiple parts. I hope to conclude each interview in ten minutes or less of each candidate’s time. Followup political analysis of the candidates and the evening’s debate will be published on Third Party Watch. The best-laid plans of mice and men… As noted when this was first posted the day before the convention, I planned to interview five candidates. All six announced candidates appeared at the convention and I was able to get solid sit-down interviews with each of them. 160 minutes of recordings. Yup! Nearly three hours. Add in the analysis of the debate, and we (my ten fingers) are looking at possibly a day or two to sort all this out and produce a good article (or articles) covering each of the interviews. Fortunately as of this update it is Sunday and I hate football. To start, the following was published on IPR Saturday evening about 11pm. On the Road: Libertarian Presidential Debate Publication Order The anticipated publication order is: An Interview with Lars Mapstead Interview with Mike ter Maat Interview with Chase Oliver Interview with Joshua Smith Interview with Michael Recktenwald Interview with Jacob Hornberger
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A case for a new Classical Liberal Party
Last Updated on Friday November 10, 2023 01:01pm EST This series began near the end of May 2023, when I felt the need to start writing about how I felt the Libertarian Party had failed, and a new Classical Liberal party – not the same as the current libertarian party – was needed. The series stalled in early July, with The Hunt for Red October having being written in July, but not actually sent for publication until October, after Leave the Party, take the Canolli. WordPress seems to like to put unrelated links as next, and previous at the bottom of each article (they like the term post, which reminds me of breakfast cereal), so until I figure that out and get it to go in the correct order, I recommend reading based on the order of the articles on this page. May 2023 Is “retaking” the LP really the best solution? Forming a New Party The Question of Political Purity Tent City June 2023 MacArthur Versus Hooverville How the West was Lost Robert’s, the Political Weapon of Mass Destruction October 2023 Leave the Party, take the Cannoli The Hunt for Red October The series will continue with Deliverance, currently being written.
Your phone doesn’t ring just goes to voicemail
Losing family can be difficult. Correction: is usually difficult. I remember exactly where I was on the day before Christmas Day in 1995, when I heard that my father had had a heart attack. My mother and sister did not understand why I had to hang around until the 26th before I could leave Charleston and head to Philadelphia. There were things that had to be taken care of, or employees would not be paid at the end of the week. It may have sounded cruel to them, but I had to make sure that if I was gone for a while — which I was — I would not be hurting others. Needless to say, I did not get back to Charleston until after the first of January. I also remember exactly where I was on Valentine’s Day in 2005, when my sister called to say that our mother had just died. The details of that day have been written about elsewhere, so I won’t bother to repeat them other than to say that that day changed the direction of my life significantly. I was born in 1957. My father was born in 1912 and my mother in 1916. His father was born sometime in the late 1850s. And his grandfather died in the retreat from Brandywine. My mother‘s family is even longer. In her mother’s branch, I am only eight generations from the founding of the Rhode Island colony in the early 1600s. Five of my ancestors are in the same cemetery on a hill in New Jersey, covering a span of exactly 250 years. I was there once, about 50 years ago. The point of all this is that people usually live a long time in my family. So growing up, all my grandparents, most of whom lived into the 80s or 90s, were already dead. Funerals were not something I was used to attending. I am pretty sure that the only one I ever went to was my father’s. And although my mother died in 2005, my sister and I talked for years about burying her where she wanted to go, but we never got around to it. Too many federal laws would’ve been broken to coordinate it easily. Unfortunately, her family cemetery is on a wooded hill in the middle of a federal park on land that they stole from our family. But again, another story! In the spring of 2022 I had a heart attack. It was supposed to kill me, but it didn’t. About that time, my sister started getting ill. But she did not tell me because she thought it would get me upset. Of course we all know it is the exact opposite and I would’ve been less upset if I had known what was going on instead of having to search and call hospitals for literally weeks trying to find her when her phone kept saying that it was out of the service area. I can say this about the hospitals in the Philadelphia area: they will not even tell you if someone has ever been a patient, but they will be very polite about it. It doesn’t matter how much identifying information you can give, they won’t answer questions. But fortunately one of them accidentally gave me clues, and I eventually found her. Somehow I managed to get in touch with my brother-in-law, who has a habit of changing his cell phone number every year or two, as did my sister. She was in and out of hospitals all fall. They even had her in the University of Pennsylvania hospital for a while. It was something called EBV-associated A-plastic anemia. I had to look it up. Her body slowly ate itself to death. I don’t know much about blood platelet counts, but I know that they are supposed to be in something like the millions. Her’s got down to one. That is a numeric one, not 1 million. Then zero. She suffered a long and painful death, possibly more painful for her husband and daughter, who had to watch. I never made it up there to see her. She died on January 11, 2023. I have many memories of her when we were growing up. Some good, some bad, but many still vivid. We talked a lot on the phone the last few months of her life. We talked about some of her memories as a child and some of mine. Some that she told me I could not possibly have remembered but that I could clearly articulate to her amazement. We probably talked more in the fall of last year than we had across the previous 40 years combined, when she would always call me on my birthday, and I usually, but not always, on hers. I remember very clearly as a small child, probably either three or four years old, sitting down on the couch, with my sister sitting facing me on some sort of foot rest that was there. Our mother had told her to teach me to read, so she did. Which is why, to this day, I can still read upside down and backwards faster than most people can read forward. Yes, she taught me to read facing me not next to me. An accidental skill that I took advantage of for decades in the business world. Isn’t it amazing how often somebody will just leave a piece of paper on the desk in front of them while they are talking to you, not realizing that you can read every word without them really realizing it? My sister gave me that skill. The 8th of September would’ve been Margaret Louise [Flood] Mattox’s 68th birthday. I will certainly admit that I was affected, starting a few days before, and lasting more than a week. I still have the last text message I sent to her on December 20 of last year: Your phone doesn’t ring just goes to voicemail But I also have a
The Good, The Bad, and the Non-Partisan
Earlier in the week I was sitting here at my desk, working on some code, when there was suddenly a knock on the door. No, it wasn’t Santa Claus, it was something better. I went over the door and asked who it was. The response came back: “this is Mike Gastin and I’m running for city council”. I immediately asked him to hang on a minute while I found a shirt. A minute or so later, I opened the door, and no, it was not Mormons pretending to be running for city Council to try to hand me pamphlets, it was an actual candidate! He introduced himself, and we talked for a bit. We actually ended up talking for 20 or 30 minutes, and I am amazed that he talked to me at all since I realized after he left that I am a month overdue for a haircut and I don’t believe I’ve shaved since August. He told me a little bit about himself, and why he is running, and I asked him some questions – geared to determine if he really was a non-politician as he claimed. Charleston has too many career politicians at the local level, so it was refreshing to find out that he was sincere. We talked a bit more about the issues facing our district, and I even asked him to say one good and one bad thing about all of his opponents and about the candidates for Mayor. He was able to identify good and bad things about each of the candidates, which told me that he would be able to work with a mayor that did not necessarily agree with everything he thought should be done. At one point he mentioned that someone had put me on his list as someone he needed to talk to, which explains why he was knocking on my door on a Wednesday morning at 10 or 11 o’clock, when most people are not home. The person who put me on his list knew I would be home. I was extremely pleased with his knowledge of the critical issues, and after he left, I also did a little research into his résumé. He is certainly not running to get a paycheck. I can’t imagine that he would be doing it to try to start a “political career”. So a local citizen, running for office to try to get a job done. I don’t want to make this sound satirical, but it is almost out of a Jimmy Stewart movie. The question of course is whether he can win over a two term incumbent that I only hear from when he tries to say hello as I walk into the polling place every four years. Constituent services? Not in most city council member’s vocabulary. But I believe it might be in Mr. Gastin’s. I was impressed enough that I actually decided that I am going to vote this November, and I told him that I would spread the word that I had actually met somebody who could answer my questions – and for those of you that don’t know me, most politicians run for the hills when I start asking questions. Now we get to the interesting part: it is a non-partisan race. I did not ask him his party affiliation, and when he thought I was going to ask him he immediately interjected that he wasn’t going to say – that it is a non-partisan race and party labels are not discussed. So, who do I tell? We all know the truth about local politics. Even though it is non-partisan, people in the back rooms of the Republican party, and the Democratic party know who the candidates are. The Greens would as well. I have been out of the libertarian party for over three years now, so I tried to look up who to contact locally. It would be easier to find a Maytag repair man in Alaska. Eventually, I called someone in another part of the state, and was told he believed that the Mises caucus had taken over the local county party, and that all they cared about was mises minutia and trying to figure out how to vote for Trump or RFK Jr. I have no idea if that is true, but that is what my friend thinks is going on. But this is a non-partisan election, as many are. My friend and I talked about a couple of other non-partisan races he knows of in Georgia that he is hoping will succeed. The mayoral race is non-partisan here in Charleston, as is city Council. So there really isn’t anything a minor party could do, other than spread the word that there is at least one candidate worth considering. I am certainly not saying that there are no other candidates to consider, but when I see people running, some with the same last name as their parent that held the seat, I have little doubt that they are just trying to extend political dynasties. And what would a minor party do anyway? Well, they can influence elections. In Charleston county, the sum total of the minor party votes is frequently greater than the difference between the two other party candidates. In other words, support from minor parties and independents is still important. Of course, most minor parties are going to be even more stringent with verifying that a non-partisan candidate passes a purity test before even considering support. That is why they are failing. Rather than find someone you can agree with on three out of five issues, they will only support someone that agrees with them on five out of five. It doesn’t matter what the five are. If they disagree, forget it. The end result is that most non-partisan candidates get treated exactly like Eli Wallach in the final scene of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. In the end, they are left with their hands and feet tied, standing