• Tag Archives Gary Johnson
  • Why I’m voting for Gary Johnson

    Both Clinton and Trump want to increase spending. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says Clinton would increase the deficit by $200 billion over ten years; they calculate that Trump would increase the deficit by a full $5.3 trillion over ten years.

    We already have a $19 trillion debt load; all both candidates want to do is add to it.

    On immigration, Clinton sounds pro-immigration notes, but her constant pandering to supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders—many of whom view immigration roughly as unfavorably as Sen. Jeff Sessions—concerns me and makes me skeptical of what she will do; she is also far more comfortable with executive action on this and other subjects than I am. Trump is abjectly bad on immigration from my standpoint, favoring mass roundups and deportations of millions of people, and restriction of legal immigration going forward.

    On taxation, Trump sounds a better note than Clinton, who supports even more tax increases than Americans have already sustained in recent years. However, his past support for wealth taxes to fund unreformed entitlements makes me highly skeptical that as President, he would adhere to an economically conservative line. It’s also worth noting that he is, in fact, proposing at least one tax increase as part of his tax plan.

    On civil liberties, Clinton and Trump are both terrible. As a senator, Clinton supported mass surveillance of American citizens until the very last minute when she was desperate to score points with left-libertarians more drawn to then-candidate Obama. She was a critical part of the Obama administration, which oversaw mass surveillance that made it look like a continuation of the Bush administration. Trump supports these kinds of policies, too, as well as reworking libel laws to curtail free speech, and ignoring key civil liberties where they apply to minority groups he believes deserve special attention from law enforcement and national security agencies.

    On same-sex marriage, Clinton came very late to the party and is a profile in cowardice. Trump probably privately supports it, but claims to oppose it as a candidate.

    On gun rights, Clinton is clearly an opponent who would vastly curtail the Second Amendment in practice. Trump claims to be pro-gun, but supports stop, search and confiscate policies where they apply to minorities carrying weapons (in many cases, perfectly legally), and has advocated for various other gun control measures in the past—again, making any thinking libertarian skeptical of what he would actually do on guns if elected.

    Basically, on the issues, there’s minimal difference, and to the extent there is, it is negated by Trump’s blatant dabbling in racism and his other demonstrated character flaws—many of which have been on display to a huge degree in the last week or so. Both he and Clinton are unelectable in my view—and if you look at their favorability/unfavorability ratings, it’s clear that I am not alone in this assessment.

    The good news is, this year, voters in all 50 states and the District of Columbia have a third choice on their ballot: Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson. While he is not perfect, and he will not win, Johnson allows voters like me—in every state across the country— to cast a ballot for a president that we can feel good about, while simultaneously allowing us to send a message to the major parties that their nominating decisions this cycle were thoroughly unacceptable, that they must not nominate candidates like these ever again, and that they cannot take our votes for granted.

    On trade, Johnson is a committed free-trader who knows that protectionism hurts ordinary Americans and our economy.

    On health care, he wants to get government out, and has the right general instincts. Note Johnson’s comments to the LA Times that:

    What is genuinely needed when it comes to healthcare is a free-market approach, recognizing that healthcare right now is about as far removed from the free market as it could be. I reject the notion that in a free-market approach to healthcare we would have insurance to cover ongoing medical need. We would have insurance to cover ourselves for catastrophic injury and illness and we would pay as you go for a system that I believe would be absolutely affordable. How affordable? Maybe a fifth of what it currently costs.

    Johnson wants to cut taxes (as New Mexico governor he did not raise taxes even once). He also proposes cutting spending by 43 percent. As governor, Johnson was rated by the Cato Institute better than the overwhelming majority of all fifty of his peers with regard to fiscal governance, in every year that they assessed him.

    So, with regard to fiscal matters, he is inherently more trustworthy than either Clinton or Trump—at least from a fiscal conservative standpoint.

    Johnson sees immigration as a net positive, not a negative as Trump does, and as many of Clinton’s supporters do—at least with regard to certain immigrants.

    Johnson is opposed to the kind of mass surveillance policies instituted by the Bush and Obama administrations, which Clinton supported as a senator and apparently as Secretary of State, and which Trump continues to support. Unlike Clinton and Trump, he believes in protecting and defending all of our rights, not just a few protected by select Amendments that his base favors. This includes gun rights, on which he has historically been strong and where he has not supported the kind of overt infringements that Clinton and Trump have, and continue to favor.

    Source: Rare election points of view | Why I’m voting for Gary Johnson – Rare



  • 3 Cheers for Gary Johnson’s Supreme Court Short List

    Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson has said that if he’s elected president his nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court will be people that are committed to following the text of the U.S. Constitution. Yesterday Johnson doubled down on that promise, releasing a list of six candidates that he says he would consider naming to SCOTUS if he wins the White House. “The Supreme Court should be guided by a loyalty to the original and fundamental principles of limited government and liberty embodied in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” Johnson announced in a statement accompany the release of his list. “As president, when the opportunity arises, I will nominate justices who have proven records of demonstrating that loyalty to the Constitution.”

    Libertarians have good reason to be impressed by Johnson’s list. Not only does it include Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett, a veteran combatant before the Supreme Court who also happens to be one of the most influential legal scholars at work today; the list also includes two of the most libertarian friendly judges now sitting on the federal bench. They are Judge Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit and Judge Janice Rogers Brown of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

    Judge Kozinski is known for his principled defenses of the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, limited federal powers, and the due process rights of criminal defendants. “I disagree with the liberals on the bench half of the time,” he told Reason in 2006, “and the conservatives the other half.”

    Judge Brown, meanwhile, is revered in libertarian legal circles for her stirring votes in defense of the Fourth Amendment against pro-police “orthodoxy” and in defense of economic liberty against “burdensome regulation” and “a democratic process increasingly dominated by powerful groups with economic interests antithetical to competitors and consumers.” Judge Brown also has the honor—if you want to call it that—of having been denounced as a crazy libertarian by none other than Barack Obama

    Source: 3 Cheers for Gary Johnson’s Supreme Court Short List – Hit & Run : Reason.com



  • Gary Johnson: Libertarian ticket cares about issues

    In life and politics, you need to keep going and put one foot in front of the other. That was my personal mantra when I climbed Mount Everest in 2003, after I served two terms as the Republican governor of a Democratic state.

    I’m running for president as the only alternative to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton on the ballot in all 50 states. My running mate, Gov. Bill Weld, and I have always known that many extraordinary things needed to happen for us to win.

    Some of those things have happened: Young people and independents have connected with our message. We continue to draw support from all four corners of our nation — from Alaska to Maine, from the Dakotas to my home state of New Mexico — as well as heartland states of Illinois, Michigan and Ohio.

    The “system” hasn’t made it easy. The two-party Commission on Presidential Debates excluded Weld and myself — in spite of the urgings from former politicians, newspapers, and a majority of Americans. And seeing our strength among millennials and young independents, Super PACs and pro-Democrat outlets have launched unprecedented attacks against us. It is entirely possible these groups will end up spending more attacking me than our third party challenge will spend in total.

    Trump makes disqualifying and false statements almost daily. Clinton’s ethical and potential legal troubles are accumulating hourly. Yet, the mouthpieces for both sides find it necessary to engage in a “gotcha” campaign against a thoroughly vetted, experienced and successful former governor who tells the truth, abhors hypocrisy and actually has a track record of success both in public service and business.

    Their latest fun at my expense has been to seize upon a rather heated interview in which I clearly ran out of patience with loaded questions, foregone conclusions cloaked in journalism, and flat-out incorrect assumptions.

    Yes, I got animated. Animated was reported as “losing it.” I do a lot of things, but “losing it” isn’t one of them. I built a multi-million dollar business from scratch, served two terms as a Republican governor in a Democratic state — on the overall scale of challenges in my life, dealing with a loaded interview from a guy with a video camera doesn’t even register.

    Americans deserve leaders they can actually know and believe. They deserve the truth, and frankly, they deserve a break from politicians and their media surrogates who measure their worth in internet clicks.

    We have a $20 trillion debt, a government health care system teetering on collapse, children dying in bombing raids in Syria — and my exchange with a reporter is news? Come on.

    Call me naive, but I think Americans care about the issues. And on the issues, Weld and I are the only candidates pledging to deliver a balanced budget, and the only ticket that is pro-free trade.

    We are the only candidates with proven records of cutting taxes and reducing the size of government. On foreign policy, we offer a clear difference from Clinton’s plan to continue meddling in the Middle East, and Trump’s trademark unpredictability.

    Finally, we offer a pathway to national reconciliation on civil liberties, including the First Amendment’s protections for free exercise of religion, for political speech, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, and the simple proposition that everyone deserves equal protection under the law.

    Former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson is the Libertarian nominee for president.

    Source: Gary Johnson: Libertarian ticket cares about issues