Bill Weld has an anti-liberty record

[younglibertarian]

The more I follow Gary Johnson's campaign the more I am convinced that his only real running point is 2 term governor.

 

[Cutlerzzz]

The more I follow Gary Johnson's campaign the more I am convinced that his only real running point is 2 term governor.

What an insignificant point that is. To think we could have a 35 year old blogger instead.

 

[65fastback2+2]

Neither GJ nor Weld are perfect. I'm not a huge fan of either. But I really like the idea of the LP running a credible ticket like this.

Compromising this heavily during the growth stage isnt good.

I can see the debate now...

"Mr. Johnson and Weld...the constitution says the 2nd amendment shall not be infringed and your party's platform is the most pro-gun available...how do your records stack up and what are your stances?"


dead. silence.

 

[RandallFan]

It's like he picked Romney. That's easy pickings to demonize a Johnsonite cuckish political agenda.

 

[Suzanimal]

Yep. I wouldn't call him a pure liberty candidate by any means, but he leans in the right direction on many issues.

One major point he earns from me is that during his term as governor, he cut spending and laid off thousands of state workers. I tend to look at politicians as those who grow government and those that shrink it. He's on the shrink it side of the scale. We can do better, but at least he's workable.

But is he?

...
For all Weld’s talk of downsizing, his administration has “upsized” in every year save its first. Final spending by Massachusetts in fiscal year 1992 was $13.4 billion; the appropriation for the current fiscal year (ending July 31, 1996) is $16.8 billion. State spending, in other words, will have climbed 25.4 percent in just four years. Inflation has totaled just 10.3 percent.
By January 1992, Weld had abandoned his oft-repeated vow to carve $1 billion from the budget. In his State of the State address that month, he proposed adding $1 billion instead. He boasted of multi-million-dollar “increases in several key programs” in his forthcoming fiscal 1993 spending plan. “As these examples illustrate,” he said, “we’re not against government spending. We don’t wish to dismantle government.”
A year later, Weld’s proposed 1994 budget included yet another $1 billion spending hike. “We’re seeing a completely different Bill Weld than we saw a couple of years ago,” exulted James Braude, director of the staunchly liberal Tax Equity Alliance for Massachusetts, which had led the fight against Question 3, the 1990 tax rollback ballot issue. The state’s foremost anti-tax advocate, by contrast, was dismayed. “Spending is out of control,” said Barbara Anderson of Citizens for Limited Taxation, “just like it used to be.”

How could Weld, who had come to office waving a budget-slashing scimitar, have turned into a bigger spender than his predecessor? “Anyone who looks at this budget,” said State Representative Tom Finneran, the moderate Democratic chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, “will see Mike Dukakis, a foot taller, with a different shade of hair. The governor is doing everything he accused Dukakis of.”
Weld’s own explanation was incoherent. “My hope is that revenues continue to go up,” he told the Boston Herald, “even if that means the budget goes up. If to some extent we’re victims of our own successes, . . . that’s not all bad.” Was this the same Republican who used to remind audiences that there was no such thing as government money, only taxpayers’ money?

...

He began bending over backward to get along with the legislative leadership. No longer did he condemn the Legislature as “rotten to the core.” On the contrary: in November 1994, in the face of enormous public hostility (but to enthusiastic acclaim inside the statehouse), he introduced a bill to raise legislators' pay by 55 percent. The move came just a few weeks after Weld told reporters that a pay hike was “not something we’re considering.” Adding insult to injury, the bill made the raise unrepealable by referendum.

...

These were not trivial accomplishments. But they hardly added up to a sweeping overhaul of Massachusetts government. And they didn't spring from any administration-wide passion to shrink state government. Almost all the downsizing and privatizing successes were the work of two officials who shared a genuine commitment to curbing the scope of government. One was Kerasiotes, the highway commissioner later elevated to transportation secretary. The other was Charles D. Baker, who joined the administration as undersecretary for health, moved up to secretary of health and human services, and in 1994 was made secretary of administration and finance, the highest post in the Cabinet.

...

Since Weld has been governor, in fact, no state agency or bureau has been abolished. Several, however, have been created. Weld has further cluttered the state’s bureaucracy with an executive office of education (complete with a Cabinet secretary), several new licensing boards, a Gay and Lesbian Youth Commission, and a Governor’s Advisory Committee on Women’s Issues.

In 1992 he lobbied for the creation of government-managed investment funds to back start-up companies that private lenders deemed too risky. “Some people,” Weld acknowledged, “will ask, ‘Why are you being so proactive?’ I say, these are market failures we are responding to.” This was a far cry from the fiscal libertarian who in 1990 had condemned the state’s “unwieldy structure of ‘industrial policy,’” scorning anyone who thought government ought to be picking the economy’s winners and losers.

...

http://www.city-journal.org/html/bill-weld’s-revolution-wasn’t-12372.html

 

[iNoob]

Johnson thinks Bill Weld is the "Original Libertarian"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNqS890yXh0

 

[afwjam]

Matt can be right sometimes.

 

[Anti Federalist]

Yup...

 

[GunnyFreedom]

Let's Nom an antigun ticket. That'll really draw in the disaffected Republicans. lol

 

[GunnyFreedom]

His record and experience are not dissimilar, he seems more photogenic to me, his home state has a larger population, and Matt Collins doesn't like him.

Remember, Matt Collins spent half of his life in 2012 trying to talk us out of the very Blue Republican initiative that seems to be bringing disaffected Sanders into the LP instead of the Green Party right now. Seems to me his condemnation is strong praise, indeed.

Weld? Really? Brother you may have jumped the shark here. Hillary's gun policy for LP?

 

[William Tell]

Let's Nom an antigun ticket. That'll really draw in the disaffected Republicans. lol

If libertarianism is social liberalism and fiscal conservatism, guns are really just a wedge issue.

 

[William Tell]

Matt can be right sometimes.

He says it is Ok to vote for Weld now.

 

[GunnyFreedom]

Matt can be right sometimes.

He says it is Ok to vote for Weld now.

Aye [MENTION=12229]afwjam[/MENTION] -- but never for very long!

 

[Ender]

No. you can buy a new long gun at age 18 everywhere I know of. I guess Michael Moore and such people might want to change that.

Interesting how you can die for your country at 18 but can't legally drink, and now in some states-smoke, or buy a hand-gun.

When the 2nd Amendment was written, local militias were 16 and up- in some places the age was 14.