Posts Tagged craig eaton
What We Stand For Is Only the Beginning
Posted by Roy Antoun in Culture, Democrats, Libertarian, Politics, Republicans, money on July 1, 2010
The Brooklyn Young Republicans and several other young activist groups often chant the tenets of “Reform” in politics; however, what does reform actually mean?
For instance, we Reformers know what we’re against, both locally and federally. We know that we’re against the status quo. We know that corporatism and socialism has been glorified as the be-all-end-all means of politicking and that is effectively wrong. We’re against high taxation and the manipulation of markets. We’re against those abroad to physically threaten our citizens and their security. We’re against a lot of things, but what are we for?
I think the Reform movement in Brooklyn can be categorized into two pinnacles of stratagem.
1) We are for Transparency.
2) We are for Limited Government.
I think these two pillars of Reform are the branches that grow from the tree of Liberty. And from those branches come the leaves, the small issues that form the synergy of the Republican Party. Let’s review. Read the rest of this entry »
On Guns in New York
Posted by Roy Antoun in Democrats, Economics, Libertarian, Republicans on June 21, 2010
Craig Eaton, Brooklyn GOP Chairman. Endorsed a Big Government Mayor.
It’s quite evident that a tenet of a free society includes the ability of the individual to own property. That property includes a gun. One of the first things Nazi Germany did to secure its power in the Reichstag was seize all weapons from every German’s home. Czechoslovakia was next and, soon enough, the Gestapo became social law. I do believe that we would be living in a safer world if individuals were allowed to carry weapons. Criminals will find ways to acquire firearms regardless of whether they are legal or not. I would rather be ready than dead. Individuals would inevitably learn firearm responsibility because they will understand that using it irresponsibly will result in punitive measures; government does have the obligation to protect an individual’s life and if you start firing aimlessly at a crowd or begin to use your gun for reasons beyond self defense, then government must intervene for the victim’s safety. However, government also has the obligation to protect an individual’s property and that includes my right to own a weapon and land.
Mayor Bloomberg is pushing for this legislation to further limit the capacity to which a gun owner can use his gun. Now they want to “microstamp ammunition” which is basically bullet tracking. If we truly want to crack down on crime, perhaps alleviating taxes on the poor and revamping the New York City welfare system will keep the impoverished off the streets and, instead, working and producing capital for society.
Although “abject poverty” is somewhat of a different topic, it is somehow interrelated in that those unemployed in impoverished neighborhoods tend to find havens in gangs and misconduct to pass the time or provide for themselves (because the State clearly is not facilitating that process anyway…). You can even find this in war-stricken countries. Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, for example, are poor farmers or students who have lost their jobs because of the war and have picked up firearms because a local elite is paying them to do so. Yemen, which has recently gone bankrupt is now a haven for “terrorists” because Al Qaeda is paying the unemployed to do their bidding. Violence is usually a byproduct of poverty.
What is more disappointing is that the Brooklyn GOP has given Mayor Bloomberg an endorsement when he ran for reelection in 2009. Mayor Bloomberg founded “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” in 2006. Something didn’t click in GOP Chairman Craig Eaton’s head; perhaps something clicked in his wallet instead. Luckily enough, the State Senate stopped the bill from passing.
Reformers on the Offensive: Brooklyn GOP on the Run
Posted by Roy Antoun in Libertarian, Lifestyle, Politics, Republicans on June 17, 2010
The Brooklyn GOP isn’t as “Grand” as many may think. In fact, the party leadership kind of takes the “Grand” out of “Grand Old Party.” So the split between the establishment and the reformers continues to grow, but who’s leading in this battle for local hegemony?
I believe it’s quite evident that the Brooklyn GOP establishment is lagging behind significantly in any headway they think they’re making. Playing an extremely poor job at defense, the Establishment can’t seem to be crafty enough to compete with the younger, more vibrant Reformers.
There are two premises: 1) The Brooklyn GOP Establishment is playing pure defense; every move they make is only reactionary to the headway the Reformers are making. 2) The Establishment has made it’s sole priority to exterminate the Reformers rather than concentrating on running principled candidates.
1) So, first came the infamous “Atlas Shrugs in Brooklyn” blog a little under a year ago. Atlas Shrugs in Brooklyn has since received, on average, roughly 1,000 unique hits per day. Being a WordPress site, Atlas Shrugs in Brooklyn can track this information via a free plugin. Clearly the site is popular and trendy. It has a keen urban feel to it while still captivating a technosavvy environment. After the County Convention, the Brooklyn GOP Establishment realized that there was a legitimate Reformist opposition thanks to dissenting blogs like Atlas Shrugs.
To combat an extremely competitive and attractive political culture, the GOP Establishment decided to run its own shoddy blog called, “The Jig Is Up Atlas.” There are lots of funny things about this blog. The first and most interesting thing to point out is that the blog was released as a reaction to “Atlas Shrugged.” The title alone gives it away. Reread it: “The Jig Is Up, Atlas.” It is as if the Establishment has something to defend that they needed to name their own blog after the other.
“The Jig” blog is laughable at best. They call all five of their fans “jiggers” and have, at one point, self professed themselves as the “Brooklyn GOP Hate Blog,” which alone tells us that the blog serves no political purpose and instead treads on individuals based on ethnicity and sexual orientation, something they have already done. Whenever a hack of the Establishment writes on this “blog,” they like to begin by stating, “to the millions of fans.” That’s pretty funny considering that BlogSpot has no counter system/ plugin that allows you to track how many visitors go to the site. The comments on each post are clearly written by the writers and the diction is comparable to a retarded panda on drugs.
After the Establishment decided to run their counter blog, they found a new threat to their unearthly existence. The Brooklyn Young Republican ActionCast! aired on May 19th, 2010. With over a hundred viewers, the ActionCast! was a demonstration of sheer transparency in club actions and healthy debate on a variety of issues ranging from Puerto Rican statehood to Lucretia Regina-Potter’s race for State Assembly in the 49th Assembly District.
So, again, what was the Establishment’s reaction? An online radio. Yep, an online radio. They knew they couldn’t carbon copy the Brooklyn YR webcam & chat; that would look too weak (they probably didn’t know how to operate a webcam). So rather than looking “too weak,” they decided to look just plain “weak.” You really have to be desperate and out of ideas to start stealing communications concepts from a bunch of 20 year olds.
Which leads me to my last example. Realizing that their competition has been “a bunch of 20 year olds,” the Establishment understood that their old, neoconservative, narrow minded mentalities on everything were getting them essentially nowhere. To undermine Lucretia Regina-Potter’s campaign, they ran Peter Cipriano, a 20 year old who’s still in college, for State Assembly. I really admire the boy’s feel for politics and I’m glad he’s getting involved. But for State Assembly? Really? He has no political experience (and don’t tell me he worked with Bloomberg; that Mayor is anything but a Republican or a politician), has never been in County Committee, and isn’t even done with school. Again, he’s running as a reaction to Lucretia’s campaign, not as a winnable candidate, let alone against Peter Abbate, a 24-year incumbent.
2) In playing defense, the Brooklyn GOP Establishment has positioned itself in a corner. It realizes that it’s losing grasp of reality and has resorted to personal attacks on its own party members rather than principled debate on issues and Party headway. It’s kind of sad. You’d think that a Party Establishment would welcome new ideas, negotiate improved policies, fund winnable candidates, or actually act Republican. But this one doesn’t. And that’s precisely why the Reformers exist. But the establishment doesn’t like that and cannot seem to engage in open debate… because they lack principle? have egos the size of whales (Gerry O’Brien)? the intelligence of squirrels? I’m not entirely sure but whatever the case may be, the Establishment has a severe case of Jealousy and they need to get that checked. So what’s the new “strategy” (if you’d even call it that)? Undermine and destroy all opposition.
You see, the party runs like a socialist regime. Dissent is quickly squashed and Party Leaders (I like to call them, Kommissars) are Stalinists who engage in the weird demagoguery of State Senator Marty Golden… not entirely sure why. And it’s no coincidence that the Establishment’s median age is 60 while the average Reformer’s median age is 21. It’s also pretty funny that a bunch of 21 year olds are giving the GOP Establishment a nice run for their money (or whatever Craig Eaton didn’t squander away on “political consultants”).
Their really unpopular “Hate Blog” has publicly defamed individuals like myself on accounts of race, religion, sexual orientation, and lifestyle (most of which is clearly untrue, but done anyway to undermine the person but not the principle). I mean, let’s face it, the blog and the establishment are hardly worth talking about, but I find it pretty hilarious that people are capable of being this nuts. And plus, I think this is a pretty neat analysis of human psychology and why people think the way they think or do the things they do.
I say let the GOP Establishment play defense all they want. The Reformers will continue in their steadfast ways to change Republican politics back to where it should be: a party that upholds that thing called The Constitution and truly believes in small government and wide transparency. The Establishment has done absolutely nothing to promote Liberty. We Reformers have found a home in it.
Who is Roy Antoun?
Roy Antoun is a Rutgers University undergraduate student double majoring in History & Political Science. He is also a Young Americans for Liberty Foreign Policy Researcher and Editor-in-Chief of YAL's Foreign Policy Handbook. Roy hopes to attend Law School and work in international law.