Libertarian Party nominates Jo Jorgensen for president during online nomination

Today, Saturday, May 23, 2020, the Libertarian Party held a bifurcated national convention online — the first-ever for any political party to . The Libertarian Party will hold an in-person convention in Orlando, Florida from July 9-12, 2020. The party’s national convention was originally scheduled for this weekend in Austin, Texas; however, due to the COVID-19 crisis, it necessitated these changes.

Jo Jorgensen, Libertarian Party Presidential Nominee 2020

Libertarian Party delegates elected Jo Jorgensen as their presidential nominee after a session lasting over twelve hours and four rounds of voting. Jorgensen is a lifetime Libertarian Party member and is well known in Libertarian circles; though time will tell if the general voting public in the United States will learn who Jorgensen is before the general election on November 3, 2020. Jorgensen is a candidate for those seeking a principled, freedom-based candidate who also happens to be a woman.

Today’s nomination process was challenging; however, Chair Nick Sarwark expertly threaded through the many interruptions (Robert’s Rules of Order) to get the hundreds of Libertarian delegates to vote for their nominee. Sarwark and all members of the Libertarian National Committee deserve a tremendous amount of gratitude from the delegates and the general membership of the Libertarian Party for handling the difficulties of putting on an online nominating convention. This weekend’s convention will continue tomorrow at 11 a.m. Eastern to nominate the party’s Vice-Presidential nominee. Although delegates will be participating on ZOOM, the public will be able to view tomorrow’s nomination via YouTube and other channels.

Jo Jorgensen will face the Republican Party and Democratic Party presidential nominees who are Donald Trump (incumbent) and Joe Biden, respectively. Jorgensen’s success in the 2020 general election will largely depend upon her ability to garner media exposure. Whether the mainstream media chooses to give Jorgensen equal or significant air time and print alongside Trump and Biden remains to be seen. Jorgensen also gives Republicans and Democrats a better option than the two other candidates who will likely be on the ballot in all 50 states.

The Libertarian Party is accustomed to making history, so today is not unusual. The party’s first presidential candidate was openly gay and had the first female to receive an electoral vote in the 1972 general election. The Libertarian Party was supportive of marijuana legalization decades before the rest of the nation came around to their way of thinking. The same can be said on a multitude of issues like asset forfeiture, same-sex marriage, foreign policy, etc. The Libertarian Party has been the most-advanced political party when it comes to maximizing the freedom of the individual.

Libertarian Party to hold “hybrid” convention

Yesterday, Saturday, May 9, 2020, the Libertarian Party National Committee (LNC) met online to decide how to go about their 2020 national convention due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The previous Saturday, the LNC met and canceled their contract with the JW Marriott in Austin, Texas. This is becoming a common scenario with political parties as they make changes in their conventions in light of personal distancing requirements as well as travel challenges.

The LNC has decided to choose our Libertarian Party Presidential Nominee on Memorial Day weekend, the original time of the Austin, Texas convention. This will likely happen via ZOOM and details will be forthcoming for delegates. The choices for presidential nominees are extensive and vary greatly. You can see a complete list here.

As for other business before the national Libertarian Party, there will be an in-person convention happening July 8-12 at the Rosen Shingle Creek in Orlando, Florida.  No charge for parking for convention attendees 🙂

Yesterday’s meeting got bogged down in a minutia of Roberts Rules of Order as well as an embarrassing amount of infighting. No wonder, current Chair Nicholas Sarwark is no longer seeking to be chair (at least as much as I’ve been told). He was obviously frustrated throughout the eight-hour-long meeting that went from public comments to the LNC meeting, to Executive Session, then back to the actual LNC meeting where the final decisions were made.

Today, the Bylaws and Convention Rules Committee will meet.

For those wishing to watch party business, you can subscribe to the Libertarian Party’s YouTube channel here. Under Sarwark’s leadership, the party has been very good with transparency. In addition, to yesterday’s meeting, you can watch past videos that are very informative and occasionally entertaining.

As a matter of public disclosure, I have been a member of the Libertarian Party since 1996 and have held various positions with the Libertarian Party of Florida and the Libertarian Party of Palm Beach County.

Why aren’t the Republican candidates talking about cutting government spending?

In seven GOP debates, not one of the candidates, who all claim to be fiscally conservative, has vowed to stop today’s astronomically high federal government spending and to balance the budget now. At best, they talk about slowing the growth of the federal government.

When business owners and families spend more than they take in, they are forced to take action—or pay consequences. They must stop overspending immediately, balance their budget, and come up with a plan to pay off their debt.

In 2012, Republicans and Democrats in congress voted for a ten-year plan to balance the budget. If they had kept their word, the 2022 budget would be balanced. But in December 2015, the Republican-controlled congress not only refused to balance the budget by then, they passed a spending bill which, projections show, will nearly double today’s deficit, raising it to over $1 trillion.

“Apparently, the Republicans’ ten-year plan to eliminate the deficit became a ten-year plan to explode it,” said Libertarian National Committee Chair Nicholas Sarwark.

“Clearly, neither Democrats nor Republicans have the slightest intention to reduce total government spending or balance the budget—ever,” he said. “Not to mention paying off the federal debt, which will cost Americans $255 billion in interest payments this year, and rise to $830 billion in 2026.”

“If that wasn’t bad enough,” he said, “these projections assume the federal government will collect a staggering $1.7 trillion in new tax revenue—every year—beyond what we’re already paying today.”

“We must stop overspending now. Not in ten years. Now,” he said.

The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates artificially low. If interest rates are allowed to return to market rates, interest on the debt could balloon even more.

Government overspending and low interest rates have been harming the U.S. economy for years.

High government spending depletes the private sector of capital needed to create jobs. As a result, millions of Americans are unemployed, underemployed, or working two jobs to make ends meet.

The government prints hundreds of billions of dollars out of thin air every year to cover expenses, which devalues the dollar. Retirees despair as they watch their nest eggs dwindle. Older workers, afraid to retire, continue to work instead. This makes jobs even harder to find for young workers. Prices of food, housing, and other essentials continue to rise, lowering everyone’s standard of living.

“The damage done by high government spending goes beyond wreaking havoc on the economy,” said Sarwark. “It fuels Big Government and all its abysmally failed programs: the Iraqi war which gave rise to ISIS; heavy-handed regulations that force small businesses to close their doors; and the drug prohibition, which has failed to prevent a growing epidemic of heroin addiction, has incarcerated millions of nonviolent African Americans, and has made our streets unsafe.”

History has proven time and again: countries that continually print money to balance their budgets are at risk of hyperinflation and economic collapse. Witness the post-inflation economies of Austria (1922), Germany (1923), Greece (1944), Hungary (1946), Argentina (1989), Russia (1992), Brazil (1994), Yugoslavia (1994), Zimbabwe (2008), and Venezuela (today).

“Why hasn’t every single candidate who claims to care about the American economy been talking about balancing the budget—now—in the first fifteen minutes of every Republican and Democratic debate?” asks Sarwark. “Why can’t they talk about cutting anything beyond the trifling amounts that are used to subsidize Planned Parenthood?”

Libertarians are serious about cutting spending. In 2014, dozens of Libertarians running for federal office pledged to cut military spending by 60 percent. This will force the closing of unneeded military bases all over the world, stop dangerous overseas ventures, and still leave the U.S. with the strongest military in the world.

Dozens of Libertarian candidates who ran in 2014 also pledged to bring down federal spending to $1.65 trillion, the level in 1998 when Democrat Bill Clinton was president. This balances the budget while ending the federal income tax and putting an average of $11,525 back into the family budgets of hard-working Americans every year.

More Libertarian candidates will make bold pledges in 2016.

“This is why the Libertarian Party is needed,” said Sarwark. “Voting Libertarian is the only way to end the superficial banter that dominates GOP debates and to focus instead on serious proposals to reduce today’s dangerously high government spending.”

Libertarian Party Chair Nicholas Sarwark has a question for Donald Trump

LNC Chair, Nicholas Sarwark had a question for Donald Trump but didn’t get to ask it at FreedomFest.

The New Jersey government tried to use its power of eminent domain to condemn Mrs. Coking’s property, take it away at the lowest price possible and then transfer it to Donald Trump for a fraction of the market value. Lucky for Mrs. Coking, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy recognized how central property rights are to a free society writing: “Individual freedom finds tangible expression in property rights.” For the whole story: http://ij.org/casino-reinvestment-development-authority-v-coking

The Libertarian Party defends property rights in our platform:

2.1 Property and Contract
As respect for property rights is fundamental to maintaining a free and prosperous society, it follows that the freedom to contract to obtain, retain, profit from, manage, or dispose of one’s property must also be upheld. Libertarians would free property owners from government restrictions on their rights to control and enjoy their property, as long as their choices do not harm or infringe on the rights of others. Eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, governmental limits on profits, governmental production mandates, and governmental controls on prices of goods and services (including wages, rents, and interest) are abridgements of such fundamental rights… Read the entire section at: http://www.lp.org/platform

LNC Chair Nicholas Sarwark has a question for Donald Trump https://www.facebook.com/libertarians/videos/10153439392667726/ @RealDonaldTrump @LPNational #tcot #tlot #FreedomFest

Hillary Clinton enters 2016 race for president – watch her announcement video

Hillary Clinton officially declared she is running for the President of the United States in 2016. Click here for the full story of her announcement, see her announcement video and see how her entering the race affects the entire presidential field!