independentsforkerry.org

Bob Barr was the Presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party in 2008, as well as a former member of the House of Representatives as a Republican. Barr now writes a regular column in The Daily Caller–in this article he urges readers to actively oppose SOPA.

Congress has been in a constitutionally feisty mood lately. Shortly before taking off for its traditional Christmas recess, for example, it passed the annual defense authorization bill, which included a troubling provision that apparently permits the U.S. military to indefinitely detain anyone — including American citizens — it suspects of having even remote ties to any group it has determined to be linked to terrorism.

Now, in what would be another serious blow to our liberties, which are supposed to be protected against government intrusion, some members of Congress are pushing legislation that would greatly impede our freedom to communicate over the Internet. The inaptly named “Stop Online Privacy Act” (SOPA) would supposedly protect intellectual property rights, but in effect would dramatically enhance the power of the federal government to block websites it suspects infringe intellectual property rights or simply promote the distribution of copyrighted content.

While Bob Barr’s byline biography notes his time in the House of Representatives, it does not mention his presidential candidacy with the Libertarian Party.

Independent Political Report

Resident blogger Ross Levin has penned an article over at Polizeros. His article, which is about the Occupy Wall Street Protests generally, nevertheless manages to touch on a few personalities and parties that are of interest to IPR readers.

Barack Obama’s rhetoric certainly has a populist tone to it these days, but words are cheap.  At the same time that he invoked Teddy Roosevelt, Obama sought to undermine Social Security, one of the fundamental social safety net programs in this country.  Ron Paul and the newly Libertarian Gary Johnson, on the other hand, provide adequate solutions to some of the symptoms of this greater problem.  Both are opposed to the race-driven drug war and the military-industrial complex and the empire which sustains it.  They are even opposed to our modern “crony capitalism,” and in my eyes they are certainly better choices than any of the offerings of the major parties, yet their libertarian ideologies encourage corporate greed and power in some nasty ways.  Actual solutions, or at least the first steps toward actual solutions, to our systematic socioeconomic inequality are present in the campaigns of the Green Party’s Jill Stein and the Justice Party’s Rocky Anderson.  Stein’s campaign is centered on the idea of a “Green New Deal,” providing employment and a fair, democratic redistribution of wealth while jump-starting American environmental efforts.  Anderson, the former mayor of Salt Lake City, recently formed the Justice Party and the central theme of his candidacy is, in his words, “to change the system and get the corrupting influence of corporate and other concentrated wealth out of our electoral system and out of our system of governance.”

Teddy Roosevelt, Ron Paul, Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, and Rocky Anderson either are now, or once were, third party Presidential candidates.

Independent Political Report