On March 8th and 9th Tennessee's Libertarian Party is holding its 2013 Convention at the DoubleTree Suites near Nashville's airport. Amongst other business, elections will be held for Party Chair, Vice Chair, Treasurer, and Secretary. Libertarian presidential candidate Gov. Gary Johnson's 2012 Tennessee State Director, Jim Tomasik, is currently vying for the chairmanship.
This year's most notable speaker is Huffington Post senior writer and author of the upcoming book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America's Police Forces (out July 9th, pre-order on Amazon.com), Radley Balko. A former policy analyst at The Cato Institute and senior editor for Reason Magazine, Balko is best known for:
His 2009 investigative report on expert witness fraud in a Louisiana death penalty case won the Western Publication Association’s “Maggie Award” for reporting. In 2011 The Week named Balko a finalist for “Opinion Columnist of the Year," and the L.A. Press Club named him Journalist of the Year for small publications, as well as Journalist of the Year overall.
Balko's work has been cited by the U.S. Supreme Court (Hudson v. Michigan), and cited and excerpted by the Mississippi State Supreme Court (Mississippi v. Edmonds). His reporting on the Cory Maye case, in which Maye mistakenly killed a police officer in a mistaken drug raid, helped Maye get off death row and win a new trial. Maye was finally released in July 2011. His extensive reporting on controversial Mississippi medical examiner Steven Hayne helped win a new trial and an acquittal for a 13-year-old murder suspect Tyler Edmonds, and eventually to Hayne's termination.
Other speakers include:
- Hedy Weinberg, Executive Director of the ACLU of Tennessee, speaking on “Policing for Profit”
- James Baird, Assistant TN State Director for the Fair Tax Nation, speaking about HR-25, the FairTax Act of 2013
- Drew Johnson, editor of the Free Press opinion page at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, on how libertarians can be more effective in the media
- Michael Lotfi, Campaign Chairman for Shaun Crowell's Campaign for his 2012 US Senate race, helped create the Belmont Young Americans for Liberty chapter, owner of TheLibertyPaper.org and is a contributor for LibertarianGlobal.org
Apparently you can pay the $35 registration fee ($15 for students) at the door, but early registries will receive a free LP-TN t-shirt.
If anything, libertarians certainly understand incentives, human action, and motivation. According to philosopher Jason Brennan (Georgetown), "It's not rocket science, it's public choice economics."
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