by Dan Johnson [main]

Stand up and shout it out loud! Now is the time for the Libertarian Party to step forward and be a major presence in the political landscape for 2010. I am convinced that there will be a sea change in the next two election cycles. Look around…listen to what is being said across the MSM. You hear the term Libertarian OFTEN! You SEE Libertarians in action during interviews and in news op-eds. Our presence grows stronger every day that the main parties continue to expand government presence, force their own agenda and initiative and trample the individual rights of “We the People.”

John Stossel, Drew Carey, Glen Beck, Penn Jillette (of Penn and Teller) and other Libertarians are coming out with their political views, their voices are being heard and people KNOW who they are. We all know, as Libertarians we are pretty much “independent thinkers” and are definitely NOT sheep…so everything that these people communicate we may not agree with. However, what is important is that the message IS getting out. That being a Libertarian is suddenly almost en vogue and fashionable. That being a believer in individual liberties, smaller government and less taxation isn’t just lip service, but true ideals that we as Libertarians believe in. Can you think of a more exciting time to be a Libertarian?! I cannot.

So, now is the time my fellow Patriots. Now is the time to “act” and not just “wish.” Now is the time to double your efforts. Now is the time to become involved. Now is the time to lose your timid ways and shout to the masses that we have something to say and something to believe in that is NOT politics as usual. The whole voting for the “lesser of two evils” has only succeeded in voting in…evil. Our platform is logical, our ideals are solid and our principles are Constitutional. Is there any question about who is the party of the future?

I challenge each and every person who is reading this to actively participate in any way you can. Turn people on to the Libertarian platform, have them take the world's shortest political quiz (Nolan Chart) Invite friends, neighbors and family to your monthly meetings, to our annual convention or to our affiliate gatherings (picnics etc.). If you have not done this yet…why not? If you believe in this party and in the principles upon which the party stands, then share that passion with others. Let them see what you see and feel what you feel. NOW is the time and 2010 is the year. Let’s make it a great year by starting to prepare for it now. I look forward to joining you in this endeavor.

Dan Johnson is also the LPM Affiliates Director. Contact him at vicechair@mi.lp.org

The Libertarian National Committee has hired Wes Benedict as its new Executive Director. Wes is former Executive Director of the LP Texas, where he had an excellent track record of organizing that state party, recruiting candidates and gaining new donors. Wes has an MBA from the University of Michigan; it’s always nice to see a Michigan Man in charge. Good luck, Wes. At the LNC meeting in St Louis on July 18-19, it was announced that LPHQ Outreach Coordinator Austin Petersen, who spoke at our 2008 state convention, would be leaving to go to work for the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. Austin established a vigorous intern program at the Washington DC headquarters, which has been helpful to us on various projects. Best of luck, Austin. We will miss you.

Also at the July LNC meeting, the national credentials committee was named for the 2010 convention. I’m a member of the committee, and Ben Bachrach from Michigan is developing a new online credentialing system to use there. I hope you’re making plans to attend the national convention, which will be May 28-31, 2010 in St. Louis, MO. The number of delegates Michigan may send to the convention depends on our number of national sustaining members as of October 31, 2009. If you haven’t sent at least $25 to the national party in the past year for sustaining membership, please do, so we can increase our representation at the convention. Michigan was routinely ranked among the top 5 states nationally, but we’ve fallen on some hard years lately. Currently we’re ranked 10th, but we’re less than 40 votes away from 7th place Illinois. Come on, let’s move up! Go to www.lp.org today to join.

At that convention we will be selecting a new National Chair. Bill Hall sent an article from the Independent Political Report announcing Mark Hinkle of California will be running for the position. The article claims other likely candidates are former VP candidate Wayne Allyn Root and Ernie Hancock of Arizona. Should be a horse race—don’t miss it!

The new online Michigan Libertarian will debut on August 1 and will replace the monthly LPMOnline.  It will go out on the first of every month and will be distributed free to anyone who signs up, which can be done at the LPM web site www.mi.lp.org (or www.michiganlp.org).

The deadline for submissions of articles or calendar events will be the 25th of each month. Greg Stempfle will remain as editor, with Brian Wright, our Webmaster, doing the layout.  LPM members who need a hard copy may request one be mailed to them by contacting Greg Stempfle, or 313-929-1789.

On Saturday, July 25th, the Libertarian Party of West Michigan (Jay Gillotte – Chair) took a great deal of initiative in starting the 2010 election cycle training for various candidates.

This was the first course in a series. Bill Gelineau (Past Chair) was instrumental in creating a syllabus and training guideline for the 15 attendees. With Bill leading the way and spearheading the idea, these 15 patriots came together to learn about the different types of candidates/campaigns that there are, and to determine under which category they might fall. More importantly…where do they want to BE…and how do they get there?!

People from as far away as Detroit (Greg Creswell) and others drove 2-3 hours to learn as much as possible about a preparedness plan for 2010! All attendees were motivated by Bill and had the opportunity to understand the nuances of campaigns. At the end, everyone had the opportunity to do a one minute “stump” speech to explain WHY they were running as a candidate and to hone their public speaking skills. To Jay, Bill and the West Michigan team…bravo. To the Patriots who attended, great job and be prepared as the next classes will have even more people!

As a reminder, the LPM Vice Chair ( Dan Johnson ) is STRONGLY encouraging other affiliate leaders to prepare early and to help their candidates in their areas get on the ballots and elected! A strong leadership provides a strong affiliate membership.

In Liberty , Dan Johnson Vice Chair LPM  

The world famous Ann Arbor Art Fair was held July 15-18 this year, for the 49th instance. Check out the booth; we had plenty of volunteers this year, and plenty of interest. Over the years the presence of the LPM has expanded, and our booth has increased in size. Some remember the early days when Jim Greenshields and James Hudler would take a beatup old card table over to the Quad with some Ed Clark brochures. Ah, progress!

Quote of the Month

[main]

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?

— Mohandas Gandhi

The following article was delivered to the editor by Daniel Grow, member of the LPM judicial committee. It's a Four-Step Health-Care Solution, by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "The Free Market," April 1993, Volume 11, Number 4:

It's true that the U.S. health care system is a mess, but this demonstrates not market but government failure. To cure the problem requires not different or more government regulations and bureaucracies, as self-serving politicians want us to believe, but the elimination of all existing government controls.

It's time to get serious about health care reform. Tax credits, vouchers, and privatization will go a long way toward decentralizing the system and removing unnecessary burdens from business. But four additional steps must also be taken:

1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health care personnel. Their supply would almost instantly increase, prices would fall, and a greater variety of health care services would appear on the market.

Competing voluntary accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing--if health care providers believe that such accreditation would enhance their own reputation, and that their consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it.

Because consumers would no longer be duped into believing that there is such a thing as a "national standard" of health care, they will increase their search costs and make more discriminating health care choices.

2. Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders innovation and increases costs.

Costs and prices would fall, and a wider variety of better products would reach the market sooner. The market would force consumers to act in accordance with their own--rather than the government's--risk assessment. And competing drug and device manufacturers and sellers,
to safeguard against product liability suits as much as to attract customers, would provide increasingly better product descriptions and guarantees.

3. Deregulate the health insurance industry. Private enterprise can offer insurance against events over whose outcome the insured possesses no control. One cannot insure oneself against suicide or bankruptcy, for example, because it is in one's own hands to bring these events about.

Because a person's health, or lack of it, lies increasingly within his own control, many, if not most health risks, are actually uninsurable. "Insurance" against risks whose likelihood an individual can systematically influence falls within that person's own responsibility.

All insurance, moreover, involves the pooling of individual risks. It implies that insurers pay more to some and less to others. But no one knows in advance, and with certainty, who the "winners" and "losers" will be. "Winners" and "losers" are distributed randomly, and the resulting income redistribution is unsystematic. If "winners" or "losers" could be systematically predicted, "losers" would not want to pool their risk with "winners," but with other "losers," because this would lower their insurance costs. I would not want to pool my personal accident risks with those of professional football players, for instance, but exclusively with those of people in circumstances similar to my own, at lower costs.

Because of legal restrictions on the health insurers' right of refusal--to exclude any individual risk as uninsurable--the present health-insurance system is only partly concerned with insurance. The industry cannot discriminate freely among different groups' risks.

As a result, health insurers cover a multitude of uninsurable risks, alongside, and pooled with, genuine insurance risks. They do not discriminate among various groups of people which pose significantly different insurance risks. The industry thus runs a system of income redistribution--benefiting irresponsible actors and high-risk groups at the expense of responsible individuals and low risk groups. Accordingly the industry's prices are high and ballooning.

To deregulate the industry means to restore it to unrestricted freedom of contract: to allow a health insurer to offer any contract whatsoever, to include or exclude any risk, and to discriminate among any groups of individuals. Uninsurable risks would lose coverage, the variety of insurance policies for the remaining coverage would increase, and price differentials would reflect genuine insurance risks. On average, prices would drastically fall. And the reform would restore individual responsibility in health care.

4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased breed illness and disease, and promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate them, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living. In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid.

Only these four steps, although drastic, will restore a fully free market in medical provision. Until they are adopted, the industry will have serious problems, and so will we, its consumers.

(by Hans-Hermann Hoppe)

The following reviews have been contributed from LPM Webmaster Brian Wright's commentary and review site, The Coffee Coaster (anyone who wishes to post his or her own reviews, please contact the editor):

Movie
Gran Torino
Academy ignores one of the all-time best, ever

Kowalski is a pure Detroit throwback, a shot-and-a-beer, love-it-or-leave-it, old-neighborhood-glorifying piece of work. Behind the gruff exterior is only a glimmer of anything sensitive or caring... much less tolerant of change. The other white ethnic Europeans Walt hangs out with basically see the world as he does, but they've grown into the times, and don't drag around a pain body the size of the Penobscot Building. Walt is not about to give up that pain body. Dammit, he earned it.

Roughly coincident with the departure of Kowalksi's wife, an extended family of Hmong Asian people moves in next door.  The neighborhood lies in a typical deteriorating American city where "white flight"[1] is the name of the game: either the problem or a symptom of the problem, depending on your point of view.  ... [full review] [main]

Book
Moral Politics:
How liberals and conservatives think
by George Lakoff

Moral Politics, a book whose message is considered prophetic, is the most recent pick of the book discussion group I belong to.  In our previous gathering we discussed Fred Singer's remarkable Unstoppable Global Warming.  The majority then seemed to revel in that what I regard as that book's weird endorsement of carbonofilia (love of choking on automobile
fumes and smokestack emissions).

These are libertarians who, I'm sure for the most part, like to firmly plant their political value-judgments on reason and science.  WHAT IS THE DEAL?  Well, Moral Politics provides a clue; in fact it reveals an entire roomful of clues.... [full review][main]

Take a stroll down memory lane with this excerpt from one of the longest-running state Libertarian newsletters. Today, check out the July/August issue of 1987. Click on this link for the full PDF version of this newsletter.

Newsletter editor Greg Stempfle has compiled the entire body of available Michigan Libertarian newsletters up on this page of the LPM Website.

The following letter was submitted to the Website by LPM member Roy J. Kozora II (This is an excerpt: for the entire letter, please access this link on our Website.):

Once you understand why the Bill of Rights wasn’t in the original Constitution…

Did you ever ask yourself why there is almost no mention of the rights of the people in the body of the Constitution, and they don’t show up until after it is ratified, in the form of the first ten amendments collectively known as ‘The Bill of Rights’?

Once you understand the history of why the Bill of Rights wasn’t in the original Constitution, you will, at last, have a great appreciation for the wisdom of the authors of that document in regards to protecting the liberty of future Americans from the natural progression toward the ever expanding and encroaching tendencies of fallible human politicians.... [full letter]

We like to publish shorter letters in general. Please voice your (short-constructive) comments or (short-constructive) opinions to the newsletter editor, Greg, via email by the 25th of the month... and we will endeavor to post them.

 August 4 – St. Clair and Sanilac  Counties Monthly Meeting – LP  group  meets the 1st Tuesday of  the month  starting at 6 pm at  Military Street  Music Cafe, 1102  Military Street  (downtown), Port  Huron. Contact  Mark Byrne, 810- 987-9856,  iwantska@hotmail.com

This is also Primary Election Day, and Mark Byrne is running for Port Huron City Council. If you live in Port Huron, make sure to cast your ballot for Mark!

August 4 – Macomb County Monthly Meeting of the Libertarians of Macomb County. LMC will now be meeting on the 1st Tuesday of the month. All members of the Libertarian Party, their friends and family, and anyone interested in learning more about the LP are invited to attend. The meeting begins at 7:30 but feel free to join us for good food and conversation at 6:30 pm at the Loon River Café, 34911 Van Dyke Ave, Sterling Heights. Contact Jim Allison, jim.e.allison@gmail.com

August 5 – Washtenaw County LP of Washtenaw County Monthly Business Meeting -7 to 9 pm at Classic Cup Cafe, 4389 Jackson Rd, Ann Arbor (In the Parkland Plaza west of Ann Arbor). Contact James Hudler, 734-475-9792, or Larry Johnson, michlibertarian@comcast.net

August 5 – South West Michigan LPSWM Executive Committee Meeting – 6:00 – 6:50 pm at IHOP, 1981 Pipestone Rd., Benton Harbor. Guests are welcome. Followed by: Round Table Political Forum hosted by the LP of South West Michigan. 7-9 pm at The Livery, 190 Fifth St, Benton Harbor. Visitors are welcome to participate. Contact Bill Bradley, 269-637-4525, secretary@lpswmich.org

August 6 – Wayne County Monthly Meeting –
**NEW LOCATION**
Monthly Meeting -
Cheli's Chili Bar,
21918 Michigan (corner of Oakwood Blvd), Dearborn. Dinner orders at 7 pm, meeting at 8 pm. Contact Ray Warner, raymondrand@yahoo.com 313-361-2522

August 11 – Capital Area Capital Area LP Monthly Meeting – 7 pm at former LPM office, 2722 E Michigan Ave, Ste 22, Lansing (park and enter in back). Contact Will Tyler White, 517-349-3806, whitewi5@msu.edu

August 12 – Oakland County Monthly Meeting of the LP of Oakland County. 6:30 pm dinner, 7:30 meeting. Sila's Restaurant, 4033 W. 12 Mile (2 blocks east of Greenfield), Berkley. Please join us in planning out and implementing the next phase of a Libertarian presence in Oakland County. Contact Contact Jim Fulner, LPOC Chair, jim.fulner@parrot.com

August 19 – Washtenaw County LP of Washtenaw County Social/Work Meeting -7 to 9 pm at Classic Cup Cafe, 4389 Jackson (In the Parkland Plaza west of Ann Arbor). Contact James Hudler, 734-475-9792, or Larry Johnson, michlibertarian@comcast.net August 25 – Calhoun County Monthly meeting of the LP of Calhoun County Executive Committee, 7 p.m. Please contact Jack Worsham for location. (269) 963-2679, WORSHAM74@aol.com

September 1 – Macomb County Monthly Meeting of the Libertarians of Macomb County. All members of the Libertarian Party, their friends and family, and anyone interested in learning more about the LP are invited to attend. The meeting begins at 7:30 but feel free to join us for good food and conversation at 6:30 pm at the Loon River Café, 34911 Van Dyke Ave, Sterling Heights. Contact Jim Allison, jim.e.allison@gmail.com

September 1 – St. Clair and Sanilac Counties Monthly Meeting – LP group meets the 1st Tuesday of the month starting at 6 pm at Military Street Music Cafe, 1102 Military Street (downtown), Port Huron. Contact Mark Byrne, 810-987-9856, iwantska@hotmail.com

September 2 – Washtenaw County LP of Washtenaw County Monthly Business Meeting -7 to 9 pm at Classic Cup Cafe, 4389 Jackson Rd, Ann Arbor (In the Parkland Plaza west of Ann Arbor). Contact James Hudler, 734-475-9792, or Larry Johnson, michlibertarian@comcast.net

September 2 – South West Michigan LPSWM Executive Committee Meeting – 6:00 – 6:50 pm at IHOP, 1981 Pipestone Rd., Benton Harbor. Guests are welcome. Followed by: Round Table Political Forum hosted by the LP of South West Michigan. 7-9 pm at The Livery, 190 Fifth St, Benton Harbor. Visitors are welcome to participate. Contact Bill Bradley, 269-637-4525, secretary@lpswmich.org

September 3 – Wayne County Monthly Meeting – **NEW LOCATION**
Monthly Meeting -
Cheli's Chili Bar,
21918 Michigan (corner of Oakwood Blvd), Dearborn. Dinner orders at 7 pm, meeting at 8 pm. Contact Ray Warner, raymondrand@yahoo.com 313-361-2522

September 8 – Capital Area Capital Area LP Monthly Meeting – 7 pm at former LPM office, 2722 E Michigan Ave, Ste 22, Lansing (park and enter in back). Contact Will Tyler White, 517-349-3806, whitewi5@msu.edu

September 9 – Oakland County Monthly Meeting of the LP of Oakland County. 6:30 pm dinner, 7:30 meeting. Sila's Restaurant, 4033 W. 12 Mile, Berkley (2 blocks east of Greenfield on south side of 12 Mile). Please join us in planning out and implementing the next phase of our Libertarian presence in Oakland County. Contact Jim Fulner, LPOC Chair, jim.fulner@parrot.com

More...
For more events, see the full online calendar.

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The Michigan Libertarian is published/posted on the first of each month. Send calendar events and news/articles to newsletter editor Greg Stempfle—or to LPM Chair Emily Salvette—by the 25th of the prior month. [Note: Pressing the [main] button, which occurs throughout the newsletter, takes you back to the Main Menu (table of contents at the top of the newsletter).]

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