#1. Nazi Cakes
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson was famously outed as an authoritarian on an issue that crosses race, sex, and religious boundaries. In a debate held by John Stossel on the Fox Business Network, Johnson issued his support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which mandated that private business which serve the public not discriminate based on race. In the modern age, liberal activists are working on expanding these protections to LGBT couples who wish to force Christian bakers or photographers to provide services to their ceremonies, even if they disagree with their lifestyles.
Runner up for the LP nomination Austin Petersen tripped up Johnson with a logical puzzle, asking if a Jew should be forced to bake a cake for a Nazi wedding. Johnson responded affirmatively, taking a position that is arguably more authoritarian than the Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton on the matter. Nazis, not being a protected class, are not immune to discrimination. Only those listed as protected classes technically cannot be discriminated against. Whether you believe in forced association for private businesses or not, Johnson’s position is both fundamentally wrong from a legal standpoint, as well as a moral one.
#2. Fair Tax
Governor Johnson wasn’t always a support of the consumption tax. The Fair Tax is a proposal which claims to abolish the IRS, replacing the income tax with a national sales tax on all goods and services. Johnson believes that this would reduce the burden on the American taxpayer because undocumented immigrants would be forced to pay into the system, rather than skipping out on it under the current progressive income tax withholding scheme.
The problem is that libertarians don’t want to replace the taxes they already have, they want to cut them or eliminate them entirely. Nothing would stop congress from reinstituting an income tax on top of the consumption tax, and then we’d be left with two tax schemes. Cato scholar Dan Mitchell has argued that point, which is why he much prefers the flat tax over a Fair tax system.
Also, the stated rate of 23% across the board for goods and services doesn’t add up. When it all comes down to it, the national sales tax would probably be something closer to 30%.
From Factcheck.org
First consider the way in which sales tax is normally figured. A consumer good that carries a $100 price tag might be subject to a 5 percent sales tax. That means that the final bill for the item is $105. The 5 percent figure is the amount of tax that is charged on the original purchase price. But now suppose that instead of pricing the item at $100, the shop owner simply priced the item at $105, then sent $5 directly to the state. The $105 price would be a tax-inclusive sales price. But $5 is just 4.8 percent of $105. That 4.8 percent number, however, is relatively meaningless. You are still paying exactly the same 5 percent tax on the item.
The 23 percent number in H.R. 25 is the equivalent of the 4.8 percent in the previous example. To calculate the real rate of the sales tax, we have to determine the original purchase price of an item. We can begin with the same $100 item, keeping in mind that a price tag that reads $100 has sales tax already built in. If our tax rate is 23 percent of the tax-inclusive sales price, then of the $100 final price, $23 of those dollars will be for taxes, meaning that the original pre-tax price of the item is $77. To get $23 in taxes on a $77 item, one must impose a 30 percent tax. In other words, a 23 percent sales tax on the tax-inclusive sales price is equivalent to a 30 percent tax on the actual price of the item.
#3. Legalizing pot… and that’s it
Governor Gary Johnson has stated unequivocally that the war on drugs has been a complete failure and we should legalize pot… but the war on drugs is about more than pot.
Libertarians absolutely unequivocally believe in ending the war on drugs entirely, for all drugs. “We are not espousing the legalization of any drugs outside of marijuana,” Johnson said in a CNN Townhall discussion alongside his Vice Presidential pick William Weld, former governor of Massachusetts. Johnson has never come out explicitly and stated that he’d like to legalize all drugs, but that’s what ending the war on drugs means. Johnson hemmed and hawed after being berated by a distraught mother who overdosed on heroin, sticking to his prohibitionist talking points on harder drugs.
#4. “Free market is bankrupting the coal industry”
Governor Johnson has been on the record repeatedly stating that he believes the free market is bankrupting the coal industry. Some anecdotal evidence is out there to supplement that opinion, but the weight of the combined evidence tends to be on the side of the argument that regulations killed the coal industry.
In 2008, President Obama advanced an energy plan that he promised would bring the pain to energy manufacturers.
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
With that and the EPA’s Clean Power Plan, it’s believed that coal plants will be retired at a quickening pace, and coal production itself should collapse in the next yen years. Add that to Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) in the Department of Labor’s regulations, and you can get a pretty clear picture of how the government is doing everything they can to halt the production of coal in the United States.
Coal producers and energy manufacturers must comply to the following regulatory rules
These regulations include:
- Cross-State Air Pollution Rule,
- Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (Utility MACT),
- Coal Combustion Residues (coal ash),
- Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards,
- Cooling Water Intake Structures,
- Greenhouse Gas New Source Performance Standard,
- New Source Review,
- Section 404 Clean Water Permits,
- Stream Buffer Zone Rule,
- Proximity Detection Systems,
- Examinations of Work Areas in Underground Coal Mines for Violations of Mandatory Health or Safety Standards,
- Lowering Miners’ Exposure to Respirable Coal Mine Dust, and
- Patterns of Violations.
How’s the “free market” in the coal industry working out?
#5. “Hillary Clinton’s a wonderful public servant.”
Probably the most irksome of positions held by Governor Gary Johnson are his thoughts on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. In the wake of her email scandal, where Clinton admitted to breaking the law regarding national security secrets, Governor Johnson was asked in a CNN Townhall his thoughts on Clinton. Instead of attacking her for her lax approach to national security, her warmongering in Libya and Iraq which has led to the needless deaths of thousands of Americans and Middle Easterners, Johnson decided… to praise her as a “wonderful public servant.”
Why, Gary? Why?
