Libertarians Against Liberty: News Miner 66
Threads, Libertarians, the YIMBY coalition, lawn mowers, open meetings, and more.
Threads
So far I don’t much like the new Zuckerberg-controlled social media site Threads, because it doesn’t have good feed control and it’s intrusive, but if you end up over there give me a follow at ariarmstrongwriter. I think Elon Musk is badly mismanaging Twitter and generally acting like an asshole on the site, but at least Twitter has read lists!
Libertarians Against Liberty
Last month Complete Colorado published my column, “Liberty the loser in Colorado’s GOP/Libertarian alliance.” Here are some excerpts:
The Libertarian Party of Colorado is now committed to electing . . . Republicans. That’s provided those candidates are sufficiently “pro-liberty.” Apparently, then, we’re going to start seeing Republican candidates run on a platform of legalizing all drugs, keeping abortion legal, expanding immigration, protecting LGBTQ freedoms, reforming criminal justice to reduce police abuses, and repealing zoning laws, right? Of course not. . . .
The standards by which Libertarians will judge a Republican candidate sufficiently pro-liberty remain murky. Judging from a conversation in which Libertarian chair Hannah Goodman falls all over herself praising Republican chair Dave Williams, such candidates will look a lot like . . . Williams himself. . . .
Dave Williams is a social conservative, not a libertarian. Let’s start with LGBTQ issues. The libertarian Cato Institute was on the forefront of fighting for equal rights for gay couples, including equal protection under the marriage laws. Williams took the anti-liberty side, signing onto a bill to ban gay marriage and even ban adoption by gay couples. Bluntly, for the LP to openly ally itself with such an anti-gay bigot as Williams is despicable. . . .
Williams sponsored a bill to outlaw abortion from the moment of fertilization, which would ban even some forms of birth control and most cases of in vitro conception. By my lights, Williams’s bill is radically anti-liberty and extremely oppressive. Yet now the LP apparently has committed itself to the position that a candidate who wants to ban all abortion from the moment of conception—and to impose the Orwellian government mechanisms required to enforce such a law law—nevertheless can be “liberty minded.”
Read the entire piece.
YIMBY Denver
On July 10 I attended an event in Arvada cosponsored by YIMBY Denver and Denver New Liberals. Around 70 people attended, and Rep. Brittany Pettersen (shown in the photo) and State Rep. Iman Jodeh spoke. The theme was the need for more housing through zoning reform and other measures. Generally the people in attendance lean left, yet, in this case, on the whole, these “leftist” groups are championing the causes of economic liberty and free markets. In this sense, they are more “libertarian” than today’s Libertarian Party! They tend to use different language, of course. See the archives for various other posts on the topic, including my critique of O’Toole.
Quick Takes
Libertarian Party: The state LP was kicked off of Twitter (the lpco handle) for “violent speech.” I have no idea what the party said that set off Twitter, so I am in no position to judge the fairness of the ban. Meanwhile, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire continues to Tweet vulgar bullshit. The Libertarian Party is an embarrassment.
Gas Lawn Gear: From the Sun: “Under a new air quality proposal, stores across the Front Range would be prohibited from stocking gas-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers starting in 2025. Further regulations would limit the use of the equipment during the summer ozone season. Starting in 2025, public entities, like schools and cities, would be banned from running the equipment from June through August under the proposal. Commercial landscaping businesses would face the same restrictions in 2026.”
Open Meetings: A lawsuit by Reps. Elisabeth Epps and Bob Marshall “alleges Colorado House Democrats’ near-weekly caucus meetings, during which pending legislation is discussed, should be publicly noticed and that meeting minutes be recorded and offered to the public. . . . The lawsuit also argues that House Democrats’ use of Signal . . . also violates the state’s open meeting and public records laws.” reports the Sun. I Tweeted, “I'm nervous about overly strict application of open meeting laws. On one hand, the public generally should know what legislators are up to. On the other hand, people have to talk to figure stuff out and formulate policy ideas. The goal should not be to hamstring communication.”
Bike Welfare: Duh: Denver ebike subsidies “are going mostly to those who can afford them, and not low-income residents.” They also benefit mostly “an out-of-state company and not local bike shops,” Axios reports.