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NewsThe official newsletter of the Libertarian Party of Queens County
Attending a Libertarian Party convention is a great way to renew one's enthusiasm for libertarianism and for working on the enactment of libertarian policies. Conventions are opportunities to meet with fellow libertarians, recognize our accomplishments of the past year, learn more about the mechanics of political action, and revitalize our determination to persuade the public that libertarianism is the best hope for humankind. Because 1996 is a Presidential election year, we have local, state, and national conventions to look forward to.
The Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk County Chapters are currently working on a combined convention, billed as the Long Island Caucus of the Libertarian Party of New York. As this goes to press, it is scheduled tentatively for Saturday, March 30, at a location to be announced in Nassau County. Libertarians in Kings County have not yet organized a chapter, but they are encouraged to attend; perhaps this will spur them on to form a new chapter. Our combined numbers at this Long Island-wide event will increase the charge we get from being with so many libertarians at once, as well as the likelihood that we will get media coverage.
The LPNY convention is set for April 27-28, at a location to be announced in Westchester County. Bill Winter, the LP's Director of Communications, will address the convention, and planners are working on lining up celebrity libertarians as convention speakers.
The 1996 convention season will culminate in the Libertarian Party convention, to be held July 3-7 in Washington, DC. Planned events, many of which will be covered by C-SPAN, include a celebration at the Jefferson Memorial, a 25th birthday party for the LP, candidate training sessions, debates, and nomination of the LP's Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates.
Members will receive registration information about each convention from the sponsoring entity--county chapters, the LPNY, and the LP. Mark your calendars, attend as many conventions as you can, and help make 1996 a banner year for liberty!
By Jim Strawhorn
http://members.aol.com/lpqc/index.htm. That's the address of the LPQC's new site on the World Wide Web, recently created by Elliott Werner. The Web is a part of the Internet which allows easy browsing of information posted by organizations throughout the world. Our Web site contains information on upcoming meetings and other activities, past issues of LPQC News, and links to other libertarian organizations.
The Internet is emerging as the public forum of the 1990s. The major issues of the day are being debated on electronic forums, and advocacy organizations of all stripes are setting up shop on the Web. Every major political party and candidate now has a place there. The Net is frequented by people who have faith in the future, who are constantly seeking new ways of doing things. Many are libertarians, and our Web site will make it easy for them to find us.
Over 20 million homes and businesses now have access to the Net. Based on growth rates of the last few years, one could confidently project that accessing the Internet will soon be possible in every library, school, business, and home in the United States.
If you have access to the Internet, we hope you'll pay a visit to our new Web site. And tell your friends--one of the beauties of the Web is that people can sign on and access a wealth of information about the LPQC almost instantaneously. As we embrace the future in communications, we are working to ensure the future of liberty.
By Elliott Werner & Jim Strawhorn
At its January 20 meeting, the LPQC elected Joe Quinn as Acting Secretary, to serve the remainder of Jim Strawhorn's term. (Until Joe's election, Jim had been Secretary, Treasurer, and LPQC News editor.) Joe, the president of SEFCO, an export-management firm, comes to the LPQC with extensive, high-level political and public-policy experience. Upon graduation from Villanova University in 1981, he began work as a political consultant for the Republican National Committee, overseeing its training program for college-based campaign workers. In addition, he worked on the staff at the Leadership Foundation, where he wrote an analysis of the federal deficit which was used by the Reagan White House; he also served as principal aide to the Foundation's president. And these are just highlights of Joe's experience.
Despite his previous work for the Republican Party, Joe assures us that he is a thoroughgoing libertarian. Congratulations on your new office, Joe! The LPQC looks forward to benefitting greatly from your political savvy.
By John Clifton
This month we give a fond farewell to Christiana and Adam Mayer, the founding Chair and Secretary of the LPQC, respectively, as they move out west to Oregon. The Mayers were prime movers in establishing libertarianism in our county over the last year, setting up the founding meetings, initiating connections with the LPNY and other state resources, managing our mailing list, and largely financing our first annual convention.
Let it never be suggested again that nothing good came out of the Howard Stern candidacy of 1994. The Mayers were attracted into making the big plunge towards activism in the LP, by way of the Shock Jock's campaign. Chris was particularly eager to adapt grassroots political skills and instincts she had developed in college to enable the LPQC to get off the ground. Through Chris Mayer's leadership, the first months of our development went more smoothly than expected, allowing us to quickly get to this stage (amazingly, we are at present one of the better organized LP county chapters in New York).
Chris and Adam had to curtail their level of involvement after the convention because of their schedule, and the complications involved in preparing to move to 3,000 miles away, but they intend to stay in touch. I don't doubt it, as Chris is a natural (or even compulsive) at networking--she's already forged a relationship with West Coast libertarians like Janice Moerschel, Chair of the Washington State LP. I think the state of freedom in Oregon is in good hands, once they settle and become politically active again. My predecessor was and is every inch an Officer and a Lady, and we at the LPQC all wish her and her husband well.
By John Clifton
To overcome the news media's apparent belief that anyone who repudiates both the Democratic and Republican parties cannot possibly be serious about politics, a campaign book is perhaps the best means of getting a new message out to the voters. Authors, after all, are often invited to appear on radio and television because, as they promote their books, on-air discussions can make for interesting programming. Selling a book and a political philosophy at the same time may be an act of strategic brilliance. When David Bergland ran as the Libertarian Party's Presidential nominee, in 1984, his Libertarianism in One Lesson (now in its sixth edition) introduced our philosophy to thousands of readers, many of whom joined the party and support it to this day.
Harry Browne, who is campaigning for the LP's nomination as its Presidential candidate, has written a new primer on limited government, called Why Government Doesn't Work. Whereas Bergland explained libertarianism as a coherent, principled philosophy with strong implications for public policy, Browne takes a more empirical approach. He begins by identifying the feature that distinguishes government from all other societal institutions: coercion. Corporations can undertake mammoth projects and the Salvation Army can help the needy, but they have to raise the money to do so through voluntary means. Government's only means of acting, however, is force. Because people naturally avoid or resist coercion, government programs almost inevitably misfire, harming some while they attempt to help others.
In Part One, Browne develops this theme, recounting the major eras in U.S. history in which government power grew dramatically--and individual liberty shrank proportionately--and citing many examples of how government coercion has led to results opposite those of the stated intentions of lawmakers. The antidote is a return to libertarian principles: "Only when we turn to free individuals and voluntary endeavors--and away from government and force--will we recover the American dream."
Part Two shows how the libertarian philosophy can be applied to the major issues being debated today-- regulation, health care, education, welfare, crime, national defense, Social Security, the national debt, and "family values." For those of us who already know libertarianism well, the answers will be familiar; to newcomers, the prescriptions will be thought-provoking at the very least.
Interestingly, there are almost no partisan references until the final chapters--this is a bipartisan expose of the evils of big government. The word "libertarian" is not mentioned until page 200, where Browne begins to develop the proposition that the Libertarian Party, based as it is on the principle that coercion must be strictly limited in a civilized society, is the new third party that can actually solve today's problems.
Perhaps the best feature of Browne's book is its periodic restatement of the principle that asking government to mandate this or outlaw that is a dicey business; the force you'd like to see used on someone else can easily wind up being directed against you. In discussing the expansion of well-intentioned government programs in chapter 5 ("If You Were King--The Dictator Syndrome"), Browne states, "The government that's strong enough to give you what you want by taking it from someone else is strong enough to take everything you have and give it to someone else. The government you want to suppress your enemies can be used as easily by your enemies to attack you." In chapter 12 ("On the Road to a Better World"): "Every time you allow government to use force to make society better, you move another step closer to the nightmares of Cambodia, the Soviet Union, and Nazi Germany." In chapter 25 ("Do We Really Want Government to Protect Family Values?"): "You can't control government. So asking it to enforce your values is opening the door to enforce someone else's values on you."
Why Government Doesn't Work is written in simple, direct language. Its arguments, buttressed by plenty of concrete examples and statistics, are clear and forceful. Two appendices guide inquisitive readers to further support for the arguments in the text and to resources for learning more about the philosophy of liberty.
For anyone who wants to promote the libertarian message, this book will be a useful tool. We can read it, lend it to friends, talk it up among our associates. Because Browne is making campaign appearances every day, his book is already receiving public attention. By reading it we can prepare ourselves to discuss Browne's reasoning whenever we find ourselves discussing this year's campaign.
Browne's book is much more than a campaign book: nearly all of it is occupied with developing a line of reasoning rather than promoting a particular candidate or party. That should make it useful as an introduction to libertarianism for years to come.
By Jim Strawhorn
One outcome of the Great Highway Robbery of '95, otherwise known as the Metropolitan Transit Authority transit fare increase, will undoubtedly be a massive increase in the use of gypsy cabs and non-legal vans throughout New York City. Even before the fare hike, Newsday reported last September on an epidemic of 30,000 illegal cabs and vans still operating throughout Queens, despite heavy increases in tickets and fines issued by police to curtail the practice. The NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, swift on the heels of its proposed 25% increase in fares, insists on purging this menace through still heavier ticketing and policing, to eventually make all of New York City safe for yellow cabs. Despite the TLC's efforts to stamp the gypsies out, commuters (i.e., the market) continue to patronize the usually uninsured, unlicensed vehicles. Gypsy ridership has even expanded recently, due to MTA service cutbacks on 14 bus lines in mid-September.
The MTA estimates that it "loses" up to $60 million in revenue yearly competing with illegal vehicles along its busiest bus routes. The Jamaica Bus Company likewise estimates that 25% of its revenue is "stolen" as it loses passengers to the vans. (Hmm ... does Burger King "steal" revenue when it competes with McDonald's?) Here, too, fines and purges have burgeoned, but despite new TLC regulations (conditionally legalizing vans that meet certain licensing requirements), the harassment has extended to legal and illegal vans alike. I have personally witnessed police abusively going after insured, licensed, traffic-law-abiding van operators with the same hostility and threats they direct at illegal operators. Daily News columnist Jim Sleeper has argued that the licensing regulations are merely a fig leaf for warring against the vans in another way-- entangling them in legal run-arounds.
The market for a needed and legitimate service will exist, in either distorted or undistorted form, regardless of how much police power is hurled against it. Busy Queens commuters want better service than that provided by the MTA/TLC's sparse, crowded, wait-'till-you-die-standing-up buses and taxis. Gypsy cabs fill a void by serving areas the yellow cabs find unprofitable to canvas. Vans restore frequent and convenient service on bus routes long since lost to bus bunching and curtailed schedules. The trade-off risks are lack of vehicle insurance, sometimes-unorthodox driving, and annoying Caribbean music--risks that customers seem more than willing to take. They are emphatically not saying, "Please hold my hand, Mr. Transit Bureaucrat; I can't be trusted to use my own judgment in using un-anointed vehicles." O Municipal Pharaoh, why not just Let My Commuters Go?
By John Clifton
LPQC News
Jim Strawhorn, Editor
Bradford R. Arter, Associate Editor
John Clifton, Contributing Editor
Elliott Werner, Web Site Editor
LPQC News is published bimonthly by the Libertarian Party of Queens County (LPQC). Opinions expressed in LPQC News are not necessarily official positions of the membership or the officers of the LPQC. Please direct all correspondence to: LPQC News.
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