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Last week, Congress avoided a government shutdown by agreeing to a continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded for another week. Then over the weekend, US lawmakers agreed to a deal that will extend funding through September while Congress and the White House continue to negotiate longer-term fiscal policy priorities. The US House passed the budget deal Wednesday. But amidst Washington's annual kabuki theater dance around fiscal policy and possible government shutdowns, a litt

The Libertarian Party continues to bask in a historic election year, gaining party status and ballot access in more states in 2016. The general platform of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism/tolerance/openness is striking a cord with many voters looking for alternatives outside the two-party political structure. In some states, like Iowa, the local Libertarian Party is celebrating major party status. However, other Libertarian Parties must fight Republican and Democratic forces to gain t

The issue of civil liberties versus states' rights has entered the forefront of the national political discussion as the White House made two announcements this week: (1) It's a states' rights issue to decide bathroom policy for transgender people, and (2) there will likely be an increase in enforcement of federal marijuana prohibition in states that have legalized it for recreational use. Source: Reuters Source: Washington Post Source: NPR Source: Market Watch Here is what White House Press

I was 14 when I saw "The Fountainhead" with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. I saw the film on a Saturday afternoon at the North Park Theater in the San Diego community by that name (a 10 cents trolley ride from our home on Redwood Street). I did not go because "The Fountainhead" was playing, but rather because that’s what kids did on Saturday afternoons when the Pacific Coast League Padres were not playing at Lane field, we took in a flick. Looking back 67 years later, I’m certain "The Fountain

Recently, Real Clear Politics extrapolated demographic trends to project which states are likely to gain or lose U.S. House seats in the reapportionment that will occur after the 2020 Census. Their forecast, shown below, has nine states losing one U.S. House seat and six states gaining seats. These are only projections, but given that we are now six years into the decade, many of the demographic shifts of the decade are already well advanced and difficult to reverse. Overall, we see a reduced n

Out of all the winners of the 2016 elections, the biggest might have been the Libertarian Party (LP). While Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson did not reach the coveted 5% in national polls to boost his party in future presidential elections, he did help his party extend its ballot access to 39 states for the 2018 elections. READ MORE: The 2016 Election’s Biggest Winner: Gary Johnson and The Libertarian Party? For a third party, that is a big deal. It means they do not have to spe

On Monday, December 19, electors from across the country gathered to cast the official votes for president. Of the 538 votes that were tallied, seven came from faithless electors – electors who chose not to vote for the nominee who won a plurality of votes in their state. These included four Democratic electors in Washington state, two Republican electors in Texas, and one Democratic elector in Hawaii. There were also three "would-be" faithless electors whose dissenting votes were not counted.

Keep up with the reform efforts building on the post-election momentum. Big change starts small, and these organizations have been hard at work to fix our broken system, little by little. With so much negativity in the media, it is nice to catch up on some of the encouraging efforts of hardworking Americans, fighting for reform. The following summaries have been provided by the organizations themselves: Open Primaries Open Primaries launched a new petition asking the incoming chairs of the R

According to sources connected to the deal, the Independent Voter Network has confirmed Timken’s plans to build a $16 million factory in San Jose Iturbide, Guanajuato, Mexico ended Wednesday. The factory was a planned 200,000 square-foot facility. Sources say the decision to cancel the factory is directly related to the president-elect’s talk of border tariffs that brought into question the business sense of building such a plant. There are political ties to the president-elect and Timken as w

Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is now beating President-elect Donald Trump in the popular vote by more than 2 million votes. This is by far the biggest deficit in popular votes by a winning candidate in the history of the country. But the discrepancy between electoral and popular votes shouldn’t make us question the legitimacy of the election -- the Electoral College is the law of the land. In the words of president-elect Donald Trump, abolishing the Electoral College would make for a “