Reason Magazine’s Brian Doherty blogged the Libertarian Party’s response to the President’s State of the Union speech last evening.
Libertarian Party on Obama’s State of the Union
L.P. Hits Obama: Do Less in Education, Economy, Drug War, Military, Surveillance
Brian Doherty Jan. 20, 2015 10:33 pm
Obama gave a State of the Union speech awash in retrospective triumphalism about economy, energy, health care, and the world implicitly attributed to his administration’s majesty and ability to manage through wise policy.
It was also chockablock with prospective triumphalism that his administration can continue managing and taxing and spending to give people lots of things that he, and probably they, want because “it’s the right thing to do,” to use government to give people things they might want.
Arvin Vohra, vice chair of the Libertarian Party’s National Committee, issued the Party’s official response. Befitting the L.P.’s role, Vohra didn’t jab around the edges of Obama’s hubristic proposals, but questioned some of his new giveaway ideas at their core.
The L.P. suggests not just stopping Obama’s proposed new programs, but rolling back old, even venerable, ones that most Americans don’t consider might be hurting more than helping. Vohra suggests, for example, that rather than further subsidizing community colleges, Obama could do more for both educational affordability and quality by cutting back existing federal interventions and contributions to education, all the way down to Common Core and the Department of Education
Don’t raise the minimum wage to help people really better themselves and get ahead; eliminate it so entry level jobs are available to all, not just those already valuable enough to be worth the enhanced minimum wage.
Vohra calls Obama out on ignoring here the expensive and destructive Drug War, and his hypocrisy on Internet informational privacy while running, and defending, a universal surveillance state, and his refusal to intelligently rethink overall military spending and postures while talking up a supposedly more intelligent form of constant foreign military intervention.
And, it being a Party speech, Vohra gave plenty of plugs for the fact that L.P. candidates pledge to do all the right things Obama won’t—and that Republican politicians can’t be relied on to do either.
http://reason.com/blog/2015/01/20/libertarian-party-on-obamas-state-of-the
