FreedomWorks Shuts Down
MAGA has eaten the Tea Party.
POLITICO (“FreedomWorks Is Closing — And Blaming Trump“):
FreedomWorks, the once-swaggering conservative organization that helped turn tea party protesters into a national political force, is shutting down, according to its president, a casualty of the ideological split in a Republican Party dominated by former President Donald Trump.
“We’re dissolved,” said the group’s president, Adam Brandon. “It’s effective immediately.”
[…]
In an exclusive interview with POLITICO Magazine, Brandon said the decision to shut down was driven by the ideological upheaval of the Trump era.
After Trump took control of the conservative movement, Brandon said, a “huge gap” opened up between the libertarian principles of FreedomWorks leadership and the MAGA-style populism of its members. FreedomWorks leaders, for example, still believed in free trade, small government and a robust merit-based immigration system. Increasingly, however, those positions clashed with a Trump-aligned membership who called for tariffs on imported goods and a wall to keep immigrants out but were willing, in Brandon’s view, to remain silent as Trump’s administration added $8 trillion to the national debt.
“A lot of our base aged, and so the new activists that have come in [with] Trump, they tend to be much more populist,” Brandon said. “So you look at the base and that just kind of shifted.”
This same split was creating headaches in other parts of the organization as well. “Our staff became divided into MAGA and Never Trump factions,” Brandon said in an internal document reviewed by POLITICO Magazine. It also impacted fundraising.
“Now I think donors are saying, ‘What are you doing for Trump today?’” said Paul Beckner, a member of FreedomWorks’ board. “And we’re not for or against Trump. We’re for Trump if he’s doing what we agree with, and we’re against him if he’s not. And so I think we’ve seen an erosion of conservative donors.”
Brandon, for his part, said some donors would contact him to complain that the organization was doing too much to help Trump, while others called to complain that they weren’t doing enough to help Trump. “It is an impossible position,” he said.
In trying to balance these competing pressures, Brandon said he resolved to “keep a working relationship [with the pro-Trump populists] on the issues we agreed upon.” This too created conflicts.
In an interview with POLITICO Magazine last September, an ex-FreedomWorks employee claimed that the organization under Brandon’s leadership had turned its back on its values while Trump was in office; during this period, for example, the organization issued tweets spreading election conspiracies and deflecting criticism of the Florida legislation that came to be known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. “He let a bunch of right-wing nutjobs turn FreedomWorks into a MAGA mouthpiece,” the former FreedomWorks staffer said.
Brandon said he “did my best to balance the two competing ideologies.”
In the midst of this turmoil, FreedomWorks launched an effort last fall to rebrand itself as a more centrist organization, one that could target the independent voters that its leaders believe would be more receptive to libertarian ideals. But the effort failed to get traction, Brandon said, largely because the independent voters viewed FreedomWorks as a right-wing group. As a result, Brandon and the board began discussing the possibility of shutting down FreedomWorks altogether.
“This has been my life for so long and to turn the lights off, it’s a real emotional thing,” said Brandon, who joined FreedomWorks in 2005 and has been president for about a decade. “The problem is that it’s just not the best vehicle for our [libertarian] principles and values set.”
FreedomWorks, which was founded in 1984, grew out of the Koch-funded group Citizens for Sound Economy. FreedomWorks split apart from the Koch political network in 2004.
Dave Weigel at SEMAFOR (“FreedomWorks collapse marks the end of the Tea Party era“):
Founded in 2004, spun off from the Koch-funded group Citizens for a Sound Economy, FreedomWorks was one of the first right-leaning groups to organize conservative grassroots opposition to the Obama administration in 2009. (Stand Together, the network Charles Koch founded, is an investor in Semafor.)
After CNBC pundit Rick Santelli went on a viral jeremiad against the new president’s mortgage relief proposal, FreedomWorks launched an “Angry Renter” campaign to organize conservatives against it. As the Affordable Care Act moved through Congress, Brandon’s group put together a “Taxpayer March on Washington,” and trained activists across the country on how to elect more Republicans.
But FreedomWorks lost relevance and donors after Donald Trump’s 2016 primary victory, as the remnants of the Tea Party movement got behind a candidate whose economic nationalism clashed with the group’s philosophy.
[…]
The end of FreedomWorks comes a few months after Americans for Prosperity — the other libertarian group created by the 2004 split — abandoned its effort to beat Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primary. Neither organization was part of the Republican Party per se. But their retreats confirmed one of the biggest Trump-led changes in the party: The victory of right-wing populism over big-tent libertarianism.
FreedomWorks veterans told me today that the 2023 reboot, backed by polling and demographic research, was doomed by the group’s longtime identification with the conservative movement.
It was stymied when it actually reached out to independents and Democrats, who looked up what the group stood for, and saw stories about its work to elect Republicans (true) and its association with the most-demonized conservative donors in America (false, It was famously born from a 2004 split in the Koch donor network, which backed AFP). The group got too close to Trump and “MAGA-world,” I was told; after the Trump presidency and the 2020 election, that baggage was simply too much for non-Republicans, who’d found plenty of other ways to advocate for “individual liberty.”
Wikipedia reminds me that, when FreedomWorks was created in 2004 by a splintering of Citzens for a Sound Economy into two groups—and also a merger with yet another organization called Empower America—it was led by Reagan era holdovers Dick Armey, Jack Kemp, and C. Boyden Gray. So, really, the Trump era travails marked a third era for the group, with the Tea Party era the one for which it became famous.
The collapse demonstrates the difficulty of maintaining an ideologically-based organization in a political system dominated by two parties. In theory, a libertarian advocacy group could work across the aisles, as Democrats are much more libertarian on social issues (drugs, pornography, and the like) while Republicans are more libertarian on economic issues (taxation, regulation, etc.). In reality, almost all activist organizations align with one of the two major parties and FreedomWorks was, from its outset, Republican.
A principled libertarian group pretty much has to reject Trumpism. Aside from tax cuts, he’s pretty much diametrically opposed to their entire agenda. But its membership and donor base were, at the end of the day, more committed to keeping Republicans in power—or, at least, Democrats out of it—than they were to their ostensible ideology.
Yesterday on another subject I commented on how there are always people who say “Let’s burn it all down” and that this is a stupid idea 99.99% of the time. The Tea Party is a perfect example of that. They had no truck with norms of decency or fairness. The billionaire hobbyists who funded them were strident on the need to send frothing rage-aholics to every town meeting held by any elected official, Republican or Democrat, to spew spittle flecked invective and shout down every attempt to hold a dialog. Inevitably, as they assumed more power, they drove out reasonable, competent people and instead we got Joe McCarthy, Jim Jordan, and (it could be argued) MTG. “He that brings trouble on his house shall inherit the wind”
Thankfully, nothing of value was lost
Republicans took over the Tea Party.
Gun Control
Democrats should campaign on unrestricted tax payer funded abortions, teaching CRT, gender theory to kids, the highly popular (polled 90%+) repealing the 2nd amendment and put forward a common sense law requiring all registered Democrats to register and allow confiscation of their guns as 99% of Democrats fully support full gun registration and confiscation.
On this topic the Libertarian Party, thanks to the ascendence of the Von Misses caucus, also seems to moving towards being absorbed into the MAGA movement as well. Trump will be a headline speaker at their conference, and they are now selling Trump-themed merchandise.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/05/07/opinion/trump-speaker-libertarian-party/
Behind the green curtain there are wheels within wheels we’ll never see, at least as long as WAPO and the rest of the supposedly liberal MSM ignore Deep Throat and never, ever follow the money. Freedom(sic)Works was Koch funded. Has Koch moved on? Have he and his coconspirators run out of money? Have they reluctantly decided to kiss Trump’s … ring? Again?
With the ‘Young Guns’ of the Tea Party driven out, is that some sort of gun control?
There’s not enough Alka Seltzer in all the world to fix that indigestion.
@Matt Bernius: The Libertarian Party would never have amounted to anything more than a scam perpetrated by forth rate political consultants who weren’t able to land a real candidate if it wasn’t for the billionaires who find them useful stooges. Libertarianism itself attracts only lazy, selfish narcissists. It’s no accident that one of the big complaints whenever Libertarians try to take over an area is that their houses and yards end up as eyesores. Whatever right they have to throw trash on their front lawn it still speaks volumes about them that they chose to.
@Paul L.: Yeah, I believe everything they say. Totally unbiased source. I wonder where their funding comes from?
I’ll bet when you look around the table you never see the mark.
Money usually becomes the bottom line for libertarians, and part of the reason isn’t just the donor base, it’s the fact that if you have money, that offers you a way out of the restrictions the social conservatives want to impose. Enough money can get you an abortion even in Alabama. The old joke that a libertarian is a Republican who likes smoking pot has some truth to it, but the demographics that libertarians appeal to the most aren’t the ones being targeted the most for weed possession.
There’s another dimension to it, though, which is that if there is a group besides plutocrats who have long been a significant part of the umbrella of so-called libertarians–much more than is usually talked about–it’s the conspiracy, New World Order freaks. That’s what was heavily behind Ron Paul’s candidacy, which helped launch the Tea Party movement in the first place (I believe Paul was the first to use the words “tea party” in that way, even before Santelli’s rant). What drives those in this orbit isn’t necessarily deference to the moneyed classes (though they are the sorts of people hawking gold-bar scams), but rather a dark and apocalyptic view of the federal government, which in practice doesn’t really translate to fighting against actual intrusions into people’s personal lives.
@gVOR10: FreedomWorks was not Koch funded, as Weigel notes. Citizens for a Sound Economy, founded in 1984, was but in 2004 it split into Americans for Prosperity, which continued to be sponsored by the Kochs, and FreedomWorks (which simultaneously merged with Empower America), which was not.
A principled libertarian group wouldn’t brand itself with Taxed Enough Already.
A sad byproduct of the rise of Trumpism is that the bar has been lowered so far now that an obviously self-righteous group like the tea party protesters can now claim their demise is due to being true to their principles. From the beginning, FreedomWorks focused on freedom from taxation at the expense all other freedoms that libertarians should support in theory.
While I think that there are a handful of principled libertarians out there, I am honestly not sure that a principled libertarian group of any consequence exists.
@Paul L.:
So, it looks like Antifa, as directed by George Santos, is winning, right?
The whole MAGA/Libertarian thing is baffling. It’s almost like no one has any real understanding of policies and issues, and are instead wandering around in the dark, yelling at the walls.
I would say the Tea Party died when it watched George W. Bush send the deficit soaring and said nothing. And one of the unreservedly good things about Trump and MAGA is that it actually tries to represent the interest of its voters, as opposed to advancing the agenda of billionaire plutocrats while lying to those voters.
Note: This is not to say Trump and MAGA policies or politics are good. Only that reality is better than fantasy. A political movement that is honestly opposed to immigration is far healthier for society than one that demagogues the issue of immigration while functionally embracing open border policies.
@TheRyGuy:
The Tea Party began in 2009, after Bush left office, and it was in many ways an attempt by the right to rebrand by distancing itself from Bush.
Having said that, of course, I’m perfectly aware there were many people who were steadfast supporters of Bush who later jumped on the TP bandwagon. There was one poll I saw which found that 57% of self-identifying TP supporters still held a positive view of Dubya.
But before accusing the TP of hypocrisy for having supported Bush’s deficits–an argument I absolutely can get behind–it’s important to recognize how much its brand was built on the claim (which the media largely accepted) that it represented a rejection of the Bush legacy.
@TheRyGuy:
So Trump, representing the interest of his voters, is also sending the deficit soaring by 3+ trillion and saying nothing?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-08/trump-tax-cut-extension-cost-swells-to-3-8-trillion-cbo-warns?leadSource=reddit_wall
https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-did-tcja-affect-federal-budget-outlook
Or creating $80 billion worth of defacto taxes on voters through tariffs*?
https://taxfoundation.org/research/all/federal/tariffs-trump-trade-war/
Help me out, what are the things voters want that Trump has successfully implemented? Especially when the Republican had complete control of the government for the first two terms? Or is politics now giving out consolation prizes for almost doing things.
* – BTW, without a doubt Biden’s continuation of those tariffs has been a mistake.
@Kylopod:
Why are you bringing history in here? I mean that’s like blaming Trump for the BLM protests and Covid, both of which clearly happened when Joe Biden was already President in 2020.
Asking Trump defenders/apologists to acknowledge facts is a bridge way too far. 😉
One other point I’d make about deficits: a lot of people incorrectly equate a desire to lower the deficit with a desire to lower taxes, when in fact those two goals are in conflict. The myth that people who support one goal will naturally support the other is propped up by a mixture of economic illiteracy, the supply-side fairy tale, and a tendency to make a binary distinction between economic and social conservatism where the actual GOP goal of reduction in tax rates for rich people gets lumped together with the fictitious idea that the party has given a damn about deficits any time in the past half-century.
The GOP economic agenda going back to Reagan has been to support a series of policies that objectively lead to large deficits, then simply claim against all available evidence to be committed to fiscal prudence. The TP’s few actual policy criticisms of the ACA centered around its budget-cutting features: its taxes, and its reduced spending to Medicare Advantage, which helped birth the “death panels” hoax.
But of course their slogan was also “taxed enough already,” and since they were talking about economics rather than social issues like gay marriage, that meant the movement was a reorientation of conservatism to its principles of limited government and fiscal prudence. Or at least that’s the story the media fed us about the movement.
@James Joyner: from wiki:
So, yes, no longer useful idiots for Koch family, but still useful idiots for corporations and other right wing billionaires.
@TheRyGuy:
I just love revisionist history. The Tea Party wasn’t even started until Obama became President.
Unless RyGuy just misspoke and was referring to Freedom Works.
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ll bet that when Paul looks around the table all he sees are marks.
@Matt Bernius:
I remember the final GW Bush deficit had TARP and the Democrat passed Obama signed stimulus included. Obama took credit for when the TARP loans were paid back.
Democrats used the final GW Bush deficit as a excuse for the new Washington standard of trillion+ deficits from then on.
I accepted the Covid payments and PPP loans as the state governments shut down the economy for 2 weeks to stop the spread and mocked Trump for trying to reopen by Easter.
@Gustopher:
I am using statistics from a DNC dark money front group 97 Percent like Media Matters/Moms Demand Action which should be more credible than Cato or the NRA as they cater to Democrats/Communists.
@James Joyner: Appreciate the correction. Who do you find useful for investigating advocacy group and candidate finances?
@Paul L.: Communists have no particular view on gun control, but if guns are allowed they want them equally distributed. No gun hoarding, no “gun deserts,” just a world basking in equal access to resources.
Viva la revolutíon, mein comrade!
@Matt Bernius:
Libertarian Party of NH:
(They deleted that tweet, clarifying that they meant orphans should starve, not kids with parents)
Also:
@OzarkHillbilly: I was more fascinated by the vaporware-ish wish casting disguised as tangible policy features. But to each his own.
@just nutha:
See Angry Black Lady and other feminists talking about abortion.
Sigh, I’m breaking my own rule but…
I know, it’s wild that someone who *checks notes* was a sitting senator, who helped negotiate/craft, advocate for, and later voted for TARP would take credit for it. Just like a black dude to do the work and expect some credit…
Again, it’s weird how you seem to be blaming this one on just the Democrats when Trump, while President, pushed through a huge deficit-increasing tax plan. Totally JUST the democrats at fault. No way did Former President Trump have ANYTHING to do with that bill. The Democrats forced him to sign that. They are also forcing him to promise to extend the tax cuts and make them permanent as part of his campaign promises. Oh wait, I get it, the Republican’s didn’t need an excuse and therefore you can support them with a clear conscience.
We hypocrites are nailed again. As always Republican voters bear no responsibility.
@Paul L.:
Listen! Porcupine and other pricklies contemplate conifers.
My opinion of the Tea Party is based on not seeing a peep out of them until the GOP crashed and a lot of people suddenly emerged who were Not Involved With the GOP, but were right wing.
@gVOR10: It can be a pain but there’s a lot on the Form 990 they have to file annually with the IRS. ProPublica has a handy search tool.
@Barry: It was clearly the beginning of what would become the Trump/MAGA coalition, in that it was populist in mindset rather than Chamber of Commerce. But I do think there was genuine anger that the elites of both parties bailed out the big banks and others who caused the Great Recession.
@Paul L.: Oh my.
@Gustopher: libertarians consistently demonstrate they have absolutely no understanding of law. Where do these idiots think that property rights come from?! Do they plan to continuously run around the edges of the land they claim as property in order to deter trespassers? How do they plan to pass land on to their offspring without some form of legal title?
(Also, I love how they’re saying that “government workers” shouldn’t be able to vote. Tell that to the military!)
@Matt Bernius:
Cooking the books.
TARP loans and Democrat passed Obama signed stimulus were counted as part of Trillion+ deficit of GW Bush.
TARP loans paid back were a credit to the Trillion+ deficit of Obama.
How did Obama help negotiate/craft, advocate for, and later voted for TARP?
Pass a blank check of $700 billion amount that someone pulled from their butt to bail out the “too big to fail” banks.
@Paul L.: I think RFK Jr. might be able to help you with your brain worm problem.
Listen, if you’re back on meth because House Republicans are imploding after yesterday’s failed vote to house Mike Johnson and because Trump lost 20% of Tuesday’s Indiana Republican primary vote to a candidate who dropped out two months ago, just say so.
Good post James. Timely and effective.
Isn’t “conservative movement” an oxymoron?
@Matt Bernius:
Typo, or sly dig?
@TheRyGuy:
This may be the first thing you’ve ever said that I agree with unreservedly.
“It’s almost like no one has any real understanding of policies and issues, and are instead wandering around in the dark, yelling at the walls.”
It is a shame about OTB, isn’t it?
@Grumpy realist:
Indeed. This is the crux of Teh Stoopid that is libertarianism.
Just how prosperous and productive do you think a nation would be that had no enforceable laws, no enforceable contracts, no markets in stocks/bonds/commodities, no public roads, no public water treatment, no public education, no regulation of food/drugs/medicine, only private police and fire services… Government is the only efficient provider of those infrastructure services. Government is a prerequisite for prosperity. And taxation is the only sensible way to fund government — and the only fair way, given that any prosperity that does happen could not have happened without government.
During 2020 I saw a video from Penn Jillette, where he expressed disagreement with his fellow libertarians on the issue of masks. He contrasted it with seat belts, where (according to libertarians at least) it’s just a personal decision that doesn’t affect other people. The choice of whether to wear a mask in public, on the other hand, does very much have an impact on the safety of others–and therefore could be mandated from a libertarian perspective.
More recently, I found out that Jillette no longer considers himself a libertarian–and he attributes his shift heavily to the pandemic.
My point in bringing up this anecdote is that I wonder how much Covid has had an impact on the libertarian movement (as it has on other spheres of society). Covid is really part of what I’d say is a three-prong system of interrelated sources of radicalization in the Trump era–the other two being QAnon and the belief that the 2020 election was fraudulent.
Covid itself is complex in how it fueled the crackpots. In 2020 it centered around the backlash to lockdowns and mask mandates. Since 2020 it’s shifted toward opposition to the vaccine, and that in turn has led to a merging with the preexisting anti-vax movement.
What sets the Covid conspiracy theories apart from others, though, is the fact that Covid was truly a national trauma that had a massive disruptive effect on most Americans’ lives.
As I said earlier, the crackpots have long been a significant part of the libertarian movement, but I truly think there has been a turn to a conspiratorial, apocalyptic outlook since 2020 that has infected many sectors of society, and it’s given strength to that portion of the libertarian movement that was always there.
@Paul L.:
Well at least for the voting part, here’s the role call:
https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1102/vote_110_2_00213.htm
So we can start there. As for as the work he did in support of it, I believe the phrase is do the research to prove me wrong. 🙂
And the first part of TARP is clearly under President Bush:
My understanding is that first half is included in the “Bush Deficit”
The second half came under Obama and has been counted there. As far as why Obama gets credit for the repayments, that’s the way annual accounting and budgeting works.
We have now identified another topic you have shown you really don’t understand but act like you do (much like virology, climate science, civil procedure, general parsing of legal info).
@DrDaveT:
Hmm. Really?
Trump and MAGA do not represent the interest of their voters, they represent the interests of Trump and the billionaire class, and it’s mostly predicated on lies. Trump and MAGA have been lying to their voters about the 2020 election for nearly four years. They lie about Ukraine. They smear gays and blacks with lies.
They lie about Joe and Hunter Biden, hence why their fake impeachment effort fizzled lacking evidence. They lie about the border, faking concern — that’s why when it was time to actually pass an immigration bill endorsed by Border Patrol, Trump and MAGA killed it.
Why? Not because they care about promoting the interests of their voters. It’s a ploy to protect and empower Trump, so he can give another tax cut to billionaires while gutting Social Security and Medicare.
MAGA’S lies may sound different from those of the Kochs and the Mercers. But it’s a difference of style and degree, not of substance. The same manipulative, fearmongering, oligarch-fluffing shit designed to keep the poor distracted. Just a different toilet.
@Matt Bernius:
TARP revisionist history
“Do not cite the Deep Magic to me, Witch! I was there when it was written.”
HA HA HA HA HA HA
MAGA is unthinking brainwashed cult but they killed a bipartisan immigration bill endorsed by the Border Patrol and Trump.
@James Joyner: “in that it was populist in mindset rather than Chamber of Commerce. But I do think there was genuine anger that the elites of both parties bailed out the big banks and others who caused the Great Recession.”
ISTR that these people voted to ease regulations on banks imposed during the Obama Administration.
What did I say that was Revisionist History?
1. The Initial Bill passed under Bush. Obama, at a minimum, voted for it. And you have yet to address my other claims. So in that respect he deserves some credit for it.
2. That contained the initial TARP payments that were dispersed under Bush and therefore part of the Bush deficit.
3. The second disbursement happened under Obama, and my understanding is that part is listed under his accounting. If you can demonstrate that’s wrong, please go for it.
4. Following under general accounting practices, the repayments count towards the year they were made, which was under Obama.
So not a lot, if any, reinterpretation there. But hey, good try.
That say, I appreciated the quote. It was funny–though again I’m not sure it helps if you are remembering different facts than what I wrote given you were “there at the time.”
@Paul L.: I didn’t see anything about abortion (or at least didn’t look for any) on the link you posted so I’m having trouble seeing how this head fake of yours is going to lure me into defending the indefensible.
TL/DR: Dude, WTF are you talking about? (And PUT DOWN THE BONG!!!)
@TheRyGuy: “And one of the unreservedly good things about Trump and MAGA is that it actually tries to represent the interest of its voters, as opposed to advancing the agenda of billionaire plutocrats while lying to those voters.”
Well, that certainly explains Trump’s tax bill, which slashed taxes on billionaires and corporations, while raising the inheritance tax exemption up to $13 million. Really representing the interests of those white blue-collar workers there!
@James Joyner: “But I do think there was genuine anger that the elites of both parties bailed out the big banks and others who caused the Great Recession.”
That’s what they claimed, anyway. Personally I think it had more to do with a Black guy somehow becoming president of their country.
@DK:
I don’t follow polling results very closely but would still be surprised if the billionaire class predominantly voted Biden, and politically, they’d be the only class of Trump voters who’s interests matter to Trump and the gang.
ETA: So, I have to score that one for RyGuy and give a big “I see what you did there” to Dr. DaveT
@wr: There was also a lot of complaining about giving money to people who got shitty loans, who should have known better, interest rates would always rise if there was a crisis so they should have planned for it, etc.
And the. A lot of complains about the CFPB, which aims to prevent people from getting screwed over like that again, being socialist.
@Paul L.: Did you know that if you compress spaghetti carbonara hard enough, you will get diamonds?
(We’re talking in random, incorrect nonsequitors, right?)
@Matt Bernius:
SEC. 115. GRADUATED AUTHORIZATION TO PURCHASE
(a) AUTHORITY .—The authority of the Secretary to purchase troubled assets under this Act shall be limited as follows:
(1) Effective upon the date of enactment of this Act, such authority shall be limited to $250,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time.
(2) If at any time, the President submits to the Congress a written certification that the Secretary needs to exercise the authority under this paragraph, effective upon such submission, such authority shall be limited to $350,000,000,000 outstanding at anyone time.
(3) If, at any time after the certification in paragraph has been made, the President transmits to the Congress a written report detailing the plan of the Secretary to exercise the authority under4
this paragraph, unless there is enacted, within 155 calendar days of such transmission, a joint resolution described in subsection (c), effective upon the expiration of such 15-day period, such authority shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time.
@DrDaveT: there are Libertarians who say “ok, we just want sufficient laws to keep everything going, but NOTHING ELSE!”
…which totally ignores the fact that laws need to be implemented, hence police power and courts, which require money to run them, hence taxes.
If libertarianism actually worked there should be multiple examples of countries running under such historically. But there aren’t. (And no, vaguely hand-waving in the direction of some tribal councils in 11th century Iceland doesn’t cut it. check the difference in population, for starters.)
@Paul L.: @Paul L.:
Ok, that is so opaque, you have sucked me back in again because I want to understand the point you think you are making
Seriously can you spell it out and the importance of the section that you emboldened about the “revisionist” history thing? Seriously, explain it to me like I’m 5.
@Grumpy realist:
I was talking with an economist colleague of mine a few years back. He’s a U of Chicago grad and quite libertarian in his proclivities. I asked him if he would agree with the statement that “the role of government is to internalize externalities and take advantage of economies of scale.” After thinking about it, he agree that this was a pretty good summary of what he believes.
Once you agree to that, it’s hard to argue against carbon taxes or nationalized education. (Unless you are a pure climate change denier, as he was at the time…)
@Grumpy realist:
They’ve got a lot of ideas to fund a government without taxes: national lottery, voluntary contributions, contract insurance, policing by subscription, tariffs, competing governments by subscription, and I suppose many more.
I wonder if they ever considered simply privatizing taxation. I mean something like the tax farming systems which were popular across many ancient civilizations. It works like this:
1) government estimates tax revenue in a given county for the next five years. Say it comes to $10 billion
2) the tax liability is auctioned to interested parties. Suppose some random plutocrat, say Xlon Xuxk, buys it for $9 billion.
3) Xlon pays the government $9 billion in advance.
4) Xlon then has five years to collect taxes, in the amounts prescribed by law, but with some latitude in how these get collected.
5) The taxes Xlon collects are theirs to keep. If they collect more than the estimate, good for them! if they collect less, tough cookies. But at least the great and powerful Job Creator can make a profit on taxes.
“But I do think there was genuine anger that the elites of both parties bailed out the big banks and others who caused the Great Recession.”
James- I think most fo the anger was actually directed at those being bailed out and big part of that was directed at poor black people as the CRA was a primary focus, even though it played a tiny part in the crash.
Steve
@TheRyGuy:
So, Senator Lakford and other Republicans were misguided and wrong to work with Democrats to come up with a comprehensive very conservative bipartisan proposal to deal with immigration? You know … the one Trump ordered congressional Republicans to keep from coming to a vote.
You know … to leave the border open until after the November election.
You know … the principled ones who are opposed to immigration.
@Paul L.: I’m not clear; beyond proving that you can cut and paste, what was your point?
@just nutha:
Cooking the books.
TARP loans and Democrat passed Obama signed stimulus were counted as part of Trillion+ deficit of GW Bush. I was mistaken the transfer of the deficit from Obama to Bush was $1.7 Trillion ($700 billion Tarp/$1 Trillion porkulus) instead of $500 billion.
@Paul L.:
Seems like you’re cooking the facts here.
@Paul L.: You’re interested in cookbooks? Didn’t know that; don’t care, either.
For those interested, I finally figured out what Paul was talking about. And credit where it’s due, he is partially correct. A lot of this has to do with what year a budget is counted.
Here are three articles, one right leaning, one centerist, and one left leaning that together provide a lot of useful context:
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna30486758
https://www.npr.org/2011/01/25/133211508/the-weekly-standard-obama-vs-bush-on-debt
https://www.cbpp.org/research/getting-the-facts-straight
I’ll highlight a passage from the most conservative of those articles–an opinion peice published at NPR: