What is a libertarian, if Ron Paul, former LP Presidential candidate and two time GOP contender for President isn’t considered good enough? That’s the reaction many party members had in response to the widely floated story that the retired Congressman had been banned from speaking at the 2018 LP national convention. Several Libertarian officials and personalities have since set the record straight that it was simply a booking issue (i.e., the convention not wanting to pay Paul’s speaking fee). The complication with this (which had lent credibility to the story) is that several LP national committee members have recently made openly critical remarks about Paul, as Julie Borowski relates in the below video:

From Reason magazine’s massive profile of Queens’ own Larry Sharpe and his libertarian philosophy: 

Libertarians like Larry Sharpe.

It was nearly impossible to attend a state-level Libertarian Party (L.P.) convention in 2017 and not see the affable former Marine and 2018 candidate for governor of New York laying out his seven-year plan to transform the party from a distant third-place finisher to the country’s decisive swing bloc at all levels of government.

When I asked former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld how Libertarians could best build on their momentum, he began his reply with: “You want to get out more candidates like Larry Sharpe.”

Of course, Bill Weld is the only reason a normal consumer of politics might have heard of Sharpe in the first place. Weld was the Libertarian vice presidential nominee in the 2016 race—by far the most famous and electorally successful candidate for that office since the party’s founding in 1971. And in May 2016, at the Libertarian Party’s national convention, Sharpe came this close to beating him. A measly 32 votes on a hotly contested second ballot separated Weld’s 50.5 percent from Sharpe’s 46.9, much to the bafflement of the assembled national press corps. At a raucous moment, the party’s radicals and anarchists rallied behind Sharpe, even though he is decidedly not one of them.

Read the rest.

The Queens Libertarians (or QL, formerly the Libertarian Party of Queens County), the authentic voice of libertarian views, activism, education and advocacy in Queens since 1994, has completed its most successful Annual Toy Drive in its history. Members of the organization collected over 150 toys and donated them to homeless black children, through the family shelter support program Restfull Nights, at its Jamaica office in mid-December. The achievement, being the 17^th straight toy drive conducted since 2001, was duly noted at the QL annual Holiday Dinner on December 17.

“This shows how libertarian beliefs also include individual responsibility for helping the community, as well as individual freedom,” says Toy Drive Coordinator Michelle Yaskel. This year the toys were personally delivered by Yaskel, with QL Chair Tom Stevens and Vice Chair John Clifton, and were the largest number collected to date for their annual drive. Following the September 11, 2001 tragedy, the drive was initially launched to benefit police and firefighter families, and the effort has been acclaimed by the national Libertarian Party (LP).

The event capped a very productive year for the Queens Libertarians, who in addition maintain an over 300 active email and member list, held a convention, holiday dinner, speaker program and 12 monthly meetings featuring guests including Fred Cookinham, Augustus Invictus, and 2018 LP gubernatorial contender Larry Sharpe. The QL meets (since 1994) on the second Saturday of each month at the Takara Sushi restaurant in Whitestone, and on January 13 at 11 am will hold its next convention, featuring a discussion of the state of Queens Republican politics by Tea Party activist Alan Bemben.

The Queens Libertarians is not currently chartered with the Libertarian Party of New York (LPNY) due to a bylaws dispute, and over its documenting wrongful expulsions, and ongoing defamations of several Queens activists led by certain factions within the state party. QL expects its positive achievements and fully active organization will result in a re-merging or restoration of its status and members with LPNY, through a future state convention or committee. The Queens Libertarians plan to further celebrate its history on their 25^th anniversary in 2019.