The Libertarian Party has the best chance ever to get more than their usual 1% of the vote in November. Gary Johnson is looking like the middle-of-the-road candidate too, and here’s how he could win:
http://www.denverpost.com/2016/07/21/actually-libertarian-gary-johnson-could-win-the-presidency/
If no candidate wins an absolute majority in the Electoral College, the election is decided by the House of Representatives. Thus, if Johnson were to win, say, Colorado while Trump and Clinton split all other electoral votes 50-50, the House would pick the winner. Given that Trump and Clinton are the most unpopular candidates in recent history, a divided House might compromise by selecting Johnson, a former two-term governor of New Mexico.
If you do not like Trump and Clinton, you needn’t accept them. Johnson is a legitimate option, having recently garnered 13 percent in a CNN poll. At 15 percent, he would be in the debates. Then anything is possible.
From the Libertarian Party Platform about housing:
2.1 – As respect for property rights is fundamental to maintaining a free and prosperous society, it follows that the freedom to contract to obtain, retain, profit from, manage, or dispose of one’s property must also be upheld. Libertarians would free property owners from government restrictions on their rights to control and enjoy their property, as long as their choices do not harm or infringe on the rights of others. Eminent domain, civil asset forfeiture, governmental limits on profits, governmental production mandates, and governmental controls on prices of goods and services (including wages, rents, and interest) are abridgements of such fundamental rights. For voluntary dealings among private entities, parties should be free to choose with whom they trade and set whatever trade terms are mutually agreeable.
While a Libertarian president might mean bad news for Fannie/Freddie and other government-supported entities, there is one thing Johnson could do that would set the real estate market on fire.
He wants to abolish the IRS, and replace it with a federal consumption tax. Because it would be the House of Representatives that gets Johnson into office, nobody would give him much chance of a second term – so he would have to work fast!
If it took him a year to abolish the IRS, it would give those long-time owners of rental properties the next three years to liquidate the portfolio without paying the federal 20% capital-gains tax – the main reason those owners don’t sell now.
A flood of supply – or at least more than a trickle – would help to calibrate the market, stimulate the economy, and provide opportunities for buyers to purchase well-located beach properties!
It would probably get screwed up by politicians who insist on a compromise in the consumption tax that would then penalize those sellers, but given the alternatives, it’s worth considering!
Interestingly, once it goes to the house, each state gets 1 equal vote based on the vote of the representatives within that state. So Alaska’s 1 representative gets to pick for Alaska and California’s 50+ representatives vote to see where CA’s vote goes. I think there are a few states that vote (or have voted) one party for president while the majority of their representatives is the other party.
The Senate picks the VP out of the top 2 VP finishers, while the house picks the president out of the top 3 electoral vote getters.
So I guess Bill Weld (libertarian VP) is out of luck.
Note that due to the exemption of the first 250/500 k of gain from capital gains the change would be a bonus for the coasts at the expense of the center of the country where finding a 250k (or 500 k gain if married) would be difficult.
I have a paper I’ve been working on that I’m looking to get published for Kickstarter purposes, that is obviously as promising as the aforementioned proposal.
My plan, and I’m attempting to keep it as simple as possible, is to flap my arms, and fly to the moon.
I’ve ascertained my weight, along with the size of the tornado of unusual size needed to assist my ascent into the upper strata of earth’s atmosphere, which I theorize will supercharge my arm-flapping efforts considerably.
Once I’ve broken Earth’s gravitational pull, and my space suit is still operational, and my hand thrusters are still in working order, flapping to the moon should be “a breeze.”
As with the Gary Johnson experiment, there’s a lot of negative variables to contend with, but if all is lost, it’s safe to assume President Trump will send along a space shuttle to save me, since America will be great by then, by all theoretical estimates.
Wish me luck, and good luck with Gary Johnson!
“We Can Do This–Together!™”