Speakers

Candidates

Rich Lion, the emcee for the afternoon and past long-time Chair of the LPCT, spoke on his race for Manchester Board of Directors, after giving the welcome address.

Darryl Perry addressed the convention briefly regarding his bid for the LP Presidential nomination.

Federal Intervention in Education:  A "Common" Problem

Mary Burnham has a Master’s of Science in Education from Bank Street College of Education.  She taught kindergarten in Westport for several years in the early-70s.  Upon leaving education, she opened a small business and began raising a family.  She returned to education in 1991, as the Executive Director of the Children’s Center of New Milford.  Mary retired in 2008 to devote time to her grandchildren and work part-time as an educational consultant.  She has been on the accreditation committee for the early childhood programs at Connecticut College and Teikyo Post University.  In the past several years, she has been out spoken against the education reforms being imposed upon CT and has testified against the CCSS before the Legislature Education Committee.  She and Jack Bestor have been married for 45 years and have 5 grandchildren - two of them live in CT.    

Jack Bestor is a recently retired School Psychologist who worked for 41 years in the Westport Public Schools.  Throughout his career he has worked with students, their parents, and teachers at all grade-levels from preschool – grade 12.  In 2005, the CT Association of School Psychologists recognized him with a Life-Time Achievement Award.  For the last several years, he has been speaking out against corporate education reforms, the implementation of the Common Core State Standards, and the excessive testing of students.  He has been married to Mary Burnham for 45 years and has 5 grandchildren – two of which live in CT.

Jennifer Jacobsen has studied and worked in the education field for almost 20 years. She has a Master’s Degree in Education with a specialization in School Guidance and Counseling. She has been certified as a School Counselor in Florida, New York and California in grades Pre-K -12. She also has a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology with a specialization in Child and Adolescent Development. She has worked in both public schools and the corporate arena as an Academic and Special Needs Counselor, and with teens who were wardes of the state in California. She currently owns and teaches at a state licensed early childhood education program. She is a founding member ofConnecticut Unites for Student Privacy-CUSP, advocating for state and federal policy to protect student data, with 17 bills put in the last legislative session. She is also the PTA Chair of Outreach and Community Service at her children’s school, has been a Girl Scout leader for 8 years running and is a member of Fairfield Cares, a substance abuse prevention community coalition.

Thoughts on the Libertarian Party Platform 

The Art of Governance

Joshua Katz is a Libertarian elected to partisan office in a competitive three-way race, and serves as Planning Commissioner in Westbrook, Connecticut.  He is Professor of Statistics at the University of Hartford, and was formerly Chair of the Mathematics Department at the Oxford Academy, an elite private high school, where he taught Mathematics, History, English, and Science.  He has also taught Ethics at the Texas A&M University, where he also served as Emergency Response Coordinator, and History of Mathematical Thought at the University of Connecticut.  A Paramedic, he was Chief of Emergency Medical Services for the Town of Hempstead, where he ran all emergency services in the nation's largest suburban park district.  He is also Secretary and Parliamentarian of the Westbrook Chemical Engine Co. #1, and a member of both the National and New England Associations of Parliamentarians.  Mr. Katz is the Region 8 Alternate on the Libertarian National Committee.

From Stonewall to Rentboy:  Sex Work in the Law

Bella Robinson - a libertarian and sex worker rights activist - she has worked in the sex industry for over thirty years. She is the director of Rhode Island chapter of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) since 2009, and a member of ESPU (Erotic Service Providers Union) and the ESPLER Project, or ESPLERP (The Erotic Service Providers Union Legal, Education and Research Project).

Bella has presented a the5th Annual Desiree Alliance Conference.  Rutgers University, UNH and Brown University.

In 2014 Bella lobbied to oppose the "Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act" because JVTA does nothing to address the needs of our youth, while it further criminalizes and discriminates against the "erotic community." 

Higher Taxes, Lower Jobs 

State Rep. Devin Carney proudly represents the 23rd General Assembly District covering Lyme, Old Lyme, Old Saybrook and Westbrook. He was elected to his first two-year term in November 2014. Carney serves on the legislature’s committees on Environment,Transportation, and Higher Education and Employment Advancement.

Devin graduated from Brandeis University in 2006 where he received a BA in Political Science and a BA in American Studies with a minor in Film. After graduating college, he returned to his hometown of Old Saybrook. Like most college graduates bogged down by student loans, Carney worked part-time jobs at local small businesses, to help alleviate the college debt he incurred. Working on the front lines of a small business provided Carney with a strong foundation to later start his own small business in voiceover production and as a Realtor® with Coldwell Banker.

Mr. Carney spoke about his experiences in his first term in the State Legislature, fighting for lower taxes, gun rights, and ballot access equality.

A View from the Borderlands

Richard Adelstein graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1968, earned a master's degree in teaching at Harvard (1970), and a J.D. and a Ph.D. (1975) from the University of Pennsylvania and its Law School. He has taught economics and social studies at Wesleyan since 1975, and twice received the University's annual Binswanger Award for Excellence in Teaching, in 1993, the year the award was created, and again in 2012. He has spent sabbatical years as a visiting scholar at Oxford, Harvard, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and as a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Munich.

Professor Adelstein's teaching and scholarly interests lie at the intersection of economics, law, history and philosophy, and more specifically in the historical development of social institutions and the problem of how social order is created and maintained. A pioneer in the application of economic analysis to legal problems, his articles have appeared in scholarly journals in a range of disciplines, and his book on the rise of big business in America and the political reaction to it in the years between the Civil War and World War I, The Rise of Planning in Industrial America, 1865-1914, was published in 2012. He is happily married with two adult daughters and a lifelong fan of the Chicago Cubs, all of which has given him a deep appreciation of the limits of reason and control.