How to Win in the Game of Politics your own lobby groups, pursue higher forms of law, and social graces therein. I will however give you three ways to help the by JD Stuer Libertarian Party with constant lobbying commitments and simultaneously make participants more successful with both Unfortunately, almost money and position as a result. everything we have experienced as libertarians is a shroud over 1) Meme groups, social media groups, and party position: The our eyes. Politics is a very Libertarians actually form a glue between the Republican and tough subject with a lot of Democratic parties. We have become well-known as the emotional tension surrounding “mortar between the bricks” or “the referees” of the political issues often held dear to people. arena. These are powerful metaphors to use in social situations For this reason, the Republican to bridge the gap between the unreasonable Left and Right. and Democratic parties have Use powerful metaphors to draw power and interest from our adopted a “stick-to-it-iveness” opponent parties and/or people upset with these parties for about platform policies and letting them down, directing them towards Libertarian ideals! have functioned in the past like opposing mafia groups, 2) Find news articles about gridlock: These are easy to find but supporting only those who are arguably harder to respond to for Libertarians. The idea here is on their own side regardless of right or wrong. that gridlock isn’t all about Republicans or Democrats, but rather about Americans. Libertarians as being “the glue”, What I have noticed recently, in the polls and throughout the “mortar”, or “referees” between world, is that Republicans and Democrats, like gangs, have the two old parties holds a certain become increasingly more infatuated with winning. power to get more out of bills and demand Democrats and Where do libertarians fit in? We form oddly like a porcupine Republicans alike to consider group, but, true to form, we do fit in. We don’t function much third party interests in their like a gang since we maintain standards of peace, ethics, social legislation as a way to bridge liberty, justice, and economic sensibility – and so what sets us gaps between them and form a apart from the larger elephants and donkeys we are running up bond in gridlocked negotiations. against? Money, plain and simple. This indeed is the ultimate reason for our country’s 3) Go party with the blue politics, the non-malleable D emocrats and the red platforms, and the often R epublicans ( w earing gold) ! complete disregard for ethics Remember, without the help of and morals in the political an the old parties, it is much harder legal process. So the question to leverage the political then becomes what can we do environment. You may actually find yourself helping the two to get more money into the old parties to satisfy a gridlock issue and in return it could Libertarian Party, and the open the door to the funds Libertarian Party needs. answer again is simple: Libertarians are the real party animals! Best to party with Lobby for LP efforts! every party and bring back the best to the Libertarians. This helps us make the case directly so that our government can There are lots of how-to fully understand and begin to implement more libertarian videos, books, and content solutions to ongoing problems. (Think of it this way: Most out there about how to lobby printouts cannot be done with just cyan blue ink, or magenta and make a successful career red, they also need the yellow to print it out in full color!) doing it. I won’t attempt to We’re all Americans, remember, and we were never promised cover all of that material, but will leave it up to you to find 100% intelligent libertarians in federal or state houses even Page 1 Libertarian Party of Dallas County, Texas June 2021 since the country’s inception. President Washington warned as Are Medical Associations Responsible much in his farewell address. There will always be a share of Republican and Democratic stooges creating clannish for Your Irrational Medical Bills? divisions. Our goal is to learn to enjoy them, party with all by Naveen Sankar parties, negotiate, build our own individual platforms, all the The cost of healthcare has grown in America significantly over the last 60 years. Numerous attempts have been made to control cost, but none of them have seen any success. As of 2019, total healthcare expenditure stands at 17.7% of GDP. Many factors can cause the price of a service to rise. In a supposedly free market, such as in the US, it always comes down to the underlying market fundamentals. So let’s take a quick look at it. while lobbying for our party’s positions. These three things, if we communicated to the Republican and Democratic parties properly, would allow Libertarians better pay as referees. External Events Committee! Among many of the LPDC’s goals is our desire to send representatives regularly to the events of other groups, both like-minded and otherwise. The External Events committee manages the calendar of upcoming events around the county and keeps track of which libertarians attend which events. The law of demand says that at higher prices, This committee currently needs a chair! We could use a buyers will demand less of an economic good. reliable volunteer who has good organizational skills to The law of supply says that at higher prices, take on this role. If interested, send an e-mail to the LPDC sellers will supply more of an economic good. Chair! These two laws interact to determine the actual market prices and volume of goods that are traded on a market. Markets in which prices can move freely are always in equilibrium or moving toward it. For example, if the market for a good is already in equilibrium and producers raise prices, consumers will buy fewer units than they did in equilibrium, and fewer units than producers have available for sale. In that case, producers have two choices. They can reduce the price until supply and demand return to the old equilibrium, or they can cut production until the quantity Page 2 Libertarian Party of Dallas County, Texas June 2021 supplied falls to the lower number of units associations. This is where subtle changes were made to demanded at a higher price. But they cannot keep reduce long-term supply. The vehicle for this throttling was the price high and sell as many units as they did the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 championed by President before. Bill Clinton. Residency Cap of 1997 US med students pay for the first four years of their medical education either out of pocket, through student loans, or a combination of the two. Once a student graduates, they enter residency. In the residency phase, they practice care with an experienced physician. Funding residency training is another subject. A major player in this process is Medicare. Enter US Congress. Congress passed the BBA in 1997 partly in order to place some controls on the continuing growth of GME positions. The BBA contains several important changes in the GME funding Also, let’s take a quick look at what a cornered market is. mechanisms, designed to affect the number and mix of residents trained. Cornering the market consists of obtaining sufficient control of a particular stock, We must note that when Congress instituted this cap there commodity, or other asset in an attempt to was a predicted surplus of 70,000 physicians, and some in manipulate the market price. One definition of the medical field were worried about the ramifications of cornering a market is “having the greatest market having too many MDs in the United States. share in a particular industry without having a monopoly”. The impact of the law is better visualized by this picture published by a UCH Study. Just wonder what happens to all The asset that we are talking about is healthcare professionals those who are on the left side of the funnel. that can provide a service. By reducing the number of healthcare professionals, the supply stays down and keeps the service cost high. This is comparable to the strategy adopted by Gulf states when they formed the Oil cartel OPEC in 1960 to reduce oil supply production. Lack of transparency in the health insurance industry is also contributing to this problem, but that’s another article. The supply I am talking about here is new medical professionals. Let’s take a look at how medical trade unions such as the Texas Medical Association or American Medical Association are in a unique position compared to any other industry. They are in control of the supply while writing rules and regulations of their industry. Source: University of California Health The steps involved in becoming a physician presently consist of, at the minimum, a 3-step process. Texas Medical Association 1. Complete medical school and pass your boards to Coming back to my title, what does the medical association become a licensed doctor (4 Years) has to do with all of this? Do a search for ‘Texas medical 2. Complete your residency (3-4 Years) association’ online and you will find pushes to stymie efforts 3. Pass your final boards to practice independently to fix this government-created problem. The standard for all these steps is defined by medical Page 3 Libertarian Party of Dallas County, Texas June 2021 Medical trade unions effectively destroyed crown jewels of TMA Online Lobbying Effort American health care ‘teaching hospitals’ using the BBA of 1997, and now they are attempting to throttle the only other Texas’s 87th Legislature had bills open to change rules around source of medical professionals: advanced nurse practitioners.