California Freedom: LPCA Convention

The LPCA gathered at the San Ramon Convention Center the weekend of April 21. The weekend was packed with interesting panel discussions, but having an infant and two other young children at home required this reporter to limit his attendance to the weekend business sessions only.

Saturday morning business was devoted to the Bylaws Committee Report. Delegates voted to codify the Bylaws Committee's practice of doing its work early, and to require 2/3 approval for any later changes. The Judicial Committee was made a two-year office that may hold meetings by voice or video conference. Delegates rejected a proposal to let counties set their own membership requirements and make them set and collect their own dues, despite outgoing Chairman Aaron Starr's personal offer to donate $15,000 to the counties if it passed. A proposal was passed to allow each Executive Committee (ExCom) member to sponsor for convention credentialing a member who would otherwise be too new to be seated. Also passed was the elimination of county apportionment of convention delegates, so that any 90-day-tenured member will be automatically seated at conventions. The time allotted for Bylaws work finished with only 11 of the 24 Bylaws Committee proposals having been considered. At the lunch break, the count of credentialed delegates hit its official peak of 101, compared to 91 at the 2006 convention.

The officer elections started with the Chair race. Kevin Takenaga, who had been database chairman and Santa Clara County Chair, lead a slate who promised to emphasize municipal- and county-level politics and coalitions. Takenaga won handily over the self-nominated James Ogle, 83-3-4. Takenaga emphasized the need for coalition building, noting that it "doubles our manpower". His top priority will be development of county parties, since counties are "where all the action is at". He wants local Libertarians to "reach out to people within your own community", and pointed out that "everyone agrees with us on something -- half agree with half of our positions, the other half agree with the other half".

Outgoing Northern Vice Chair nominated his successor Richard Newell, the hero of the Libertarian Perspective media relations effort. Before being elected by acclamation, Newell gave an impassioned speech arguing for a bottom-up approach to LP electoral politics. He said the experiences of Badnarik and Smither in 2006 show that "the public is not ready to vote for us" even when our candidates have big-time money or the "perfect storm" of a write-in opponent with a hard-to-spell name. "The public is not going to put us into higher office until we've proven we can govern effectively at lower levels first. Let's get real." He cautioned that there would be no LP landslide victories in D.C. or state capitols, and pointed to Ocean View school board member Norm Westwell as a model of local success built on the hard work of speaking at public meetings and building credibility in municipal politics. He said "all the heavy lifting has to be done at the county level", and that the LPCA should monitor Sacramento and do just the things that require economies of scale.

Zander Collier won Southern Vice Chair by acclamation, as did Beau Cain for Secretary. Outgoing Secretary Dan Wiener received a richly-deserved standing ovation at the beginning of the Secretary election. In winning Treasurer by acclamation, Don Cowles added a little spark to what was the fifth straight effortless victory. He began his speech by dramatically and silently taking James Ogle's map of California's 12 virtual mini-states and setting it up near the stage -- then suddenly stopped and said "I scared you guys, didn't I?"

The election for Executive Committee were next, with the top five winning 2-year terms:

Ted Brown 70
Camden McConnell 61
Laurence Samuels 58
Brian Holtz 53
Mike McMahon 52
Matthew Barnes 51 (wins 1-year term)
Bruce Dovner 46
Jesse Thomas 40
Starchild 33

The Judicial Committee was chosen to be Bob Weber, Allan Hacker, Dan Wiener, Rick Nichol, and M Carling (later elected JudCom Chair). The ExCom Alternates election chose Chuck Moulton and Jesse Thomas. Moulton is the national LP Vice Chair, and was fortuitously available for a 1-year alternate slot because he will be spending the next year at San Jose State U. in a master's program in Austrian economics.

During the Sunday afternoon business session, the credentialed delegate count was 99, and the exits were informally guarded to help maintain a quorum of 49. This meant that any two or three delegates could block changes to the Platform, which requires 2/3 of those voting but 50%+1 of the credentialed delegates. The room agreed to call for repeal of the federal Real ID act, but declined to oppose 1) any wall or fence on California's border with Mexico, 2) incarceration upon arrest when there is no immediate physical threat from the accused, 3) holding reporters in contempt for not revealing their sources, or 4) deployment of US armed forces beyond America's borders.

There were no resolutions offered for consideration, and the penultimate item of business was the announcement that a contract had been signed to host the 2008 convention on a cruise the weekend of April 18 from Los Angeles to Ensenada. Informed that we were $188 short of raising $5000 in donations this weekend, Starr inspired the delegates to cough up many tens and twenties, and then persuaded Takenaga to empty his wallet for the cause. Retiring Chair Aaron Starr then handed the gavel over to incoming Chair Kevin Takenaga, in front of a dozen cameras and the loud applause of delegates grateful for Aaron's six years of service.

The new Executive Committee met after the convention adjourned. Executive Director Angela Keaton will be managing California Freedom, with Libertarian Perspectives contributor and LA County LP Vice Chair Tom Sipos being retained as editor. Bruce Dovner and the two ExCom alternates Chuck Moulton and Jesse Thomas were nominated to fill the three ExCom vacancies created by the election of Newell and Cowles and the resignation of M Carling to allow his service on the Judicial Committee. The three were elected without objection, as they were the top three vote-getters among ExCom candidates who finished "out of the money" (as Dovner put it). ExCom deferred the filling of the two alternate seats to a future meeting, but voted in an Operations Committee consisting of the five executive officers. The ExCom passed resolutions thanking the convention committee and the outgoing officers, and set the next ExCom meeting for Saturday June 9 in San Diego.

LPCA Convention Day 3

During the Sunday afternoon business session, the registered delegate count hovered around 99 (compared to its peak of about 105), and we almost had to lock people in to maintain our quorum of 49. This put us in the interesting situation that any two or three delegates could block changes to the Platform, which requires 2/3 of those voting but 50%+1 of the registered delegates. Nevertheless, we gamely pushed forward with consideration of the Platform Committee's report.

Item 1 called for repeal of the Real ID act, and passed. Item 2 successfully fixed the apparent contradiction between opposing all strict liability and supporting it for on-the-job injuries, by changing the latter language. Item 3 was to oppose any wall or fence on California's border with Mexico, and failed. Item 4 was a proposal by Starchild to oppose incarceration upon arrest when there is no immediate physical threat from the accused. The delegates were sympathetic to the principle, but were not willing to write on the floor the language that the proposal should have already had concerning questions of bail, crimes of violence, etc. Item 5 was to oppose holding reporters in contempt for not revealing their sources. I was willing to support this only with an exception for the Sixth Amendment right of the accused to have subpoena power, saying "if a reporting is hiding the name of the witness who can save me from the death penalty, I want that reporter to sing". A few other delegates had even firmer objections, and so this item failed too. Item 6 corrected "is comprised of" to "comprises". Item 7's call for proportional representation and multi-member districts was overwhelmingly rejected. Enough delegates opposed item 8's language about deployment of US armed forces beyond America's borders.to cause it to fail too.

There were no resolutions offered for consideration, and the penultimate item of business was the announcement that a contract had been signed to host the 2008 convention on a cruise the weekend of April 18 from Los Angeles to Ensenada. Informed that we were $188 short of raising $5000 in donations this weekend, Aaron inspired the delegates to cough up tens and twenties, and had easily reached the $5K mark by the time he persuaded Kevin Takenaga to empty his wallet for the cause. Retiring Chair Aaron Starr then handed the gavel over to incoming Chair Kevin Takenaga, in front of a dozen cameras and the loud applause of delegates grateful for Aaron's six years of service.

The new Executive Committee met after the convention adjourned. In public comments, Jonathan Zwickel discussed his complaint to the Judicial Committee concerning the current dues structure, and Aaron Starr responded that he was still willing to defend the ExCom in that case on the grounds of its clear dues-setting power under Bylaw 5.1.C. He also said he will be continuing to work on the conversion from MYOB to DonorPerfect and QuickBooks, and on compiling the mailing addresses of all elected officials in the state. Executive Director Angela Keaton reported a 2% return rate on a recent renewal mailing, and that work proceeds on integrating DonorPerfect with the web site's order-taking feature.

ExCom voted to offer Tom Cipos a three-month trial as editor of California Freedom. Cipos is Vice Chair of the LA County LP and a contributor to the Libertarian Perspective. Keaton will be supervising Cipos, in lieu of having a Communications chair. The ExCom also voted to get a price quote for switching CF from color to black and white. The ExCom then thoroughly discussed Zander Collier's proposal that it should obtain business cards for each member. I asked Keaton how many times she's used her business cards, and she answered that they've been very useful in making it seem that the LP is not merely a hobby. Chuck Moulton sensibly suggested that each member absorb the cost by arranging to get his own cards, but Kevin said that the cards should be consistent so that we look like a team. It's not clear to me who is going to be comparing the cards of ExCom members, except perhaps the prospective donors that Cowles said should be wooed by ExCom pairs. (As I said before being elected, I'm primarily going to be fund-raising from myself and my wife, and business cards won't help my case very much there.)

Bruce Dovner and the two ExCom alternates Chuck Moulton and Jesse Thomas were nominated to fill the three ExCom vacancies created by the promotion of Newell and Cowles to officers and the resignation of M Carling to allow his service on the Judicial Committee. The three were elected without objection, as they were the top three vote-getters among ExCom candidates who finished "out of the money" (as Dovner put it). ExCom will fill the two alternate seats at a future meeting.

Incoming Treasurer Don Cowles reported that our fixed administrative expenses (rent and salary) are about $3500/month and that ExCom members will need to help him fundraise. He urged everyone to contribute via the LPCA Coffee Club.

Starchild arrived and made his by-now-traditional attempt to move a chair up to the Committee table from gallery seats along the wall. Moulton, Brown and I wanted to explore an alternative to ordering him back to the wall, but as he Starchildishly inched his seat back in response to the order, the episode devolved into farce, and Kevin got back to business once Starchild was sufficiently far from the table.

Ted Brown and the balance of the five officers were nominated to join the Chair on the Operating Committee. The secret ballot was Newell 12, Cain 11, Cowles 10, and Collier and Brown tied at 7. Travel plans called Brown and Dovner away before the subsequent runoff was won 6-4 by Collier.

Cory Nott was chosen as the California rep to the national credentials committee, with Cam McConnell made the alternate after Moulton suggested the need for one. McConnell will also be the initial coordinator for the 2008 LPCA convention. Dan Minkoff will be taking over the reins of the Libertarian Perspective from Newell to clear Rich's plate for his Northern Vice-Chair work.

Moulton requested the first of two or three time extensions to discuss the 2008 convention cruise contract. It has a fixed $2500 cancellation penalty, and each ExCom member was given a chance to express his opposition to floating conventions. Moulton's objection centered on the need for a passport, but Dovner suggested that the rule might be relaxed before the cruise. McConnell complained that the 2006 cruise didn't have many speakers and didn't allow communal LPCA dining, but suggested this may be different next time. Brown defended a convention cruise only to the extent it was better than no convention at all. I said that I enjoyed the 2006 cruise, heard more guest speakers there (1) than I heard at the two 2007 lunches (0 - guest speaker Rod Long canceled), and favored any venue that (like a boat) could lock delegates in and prevent a repeat of today's embarrassing quorum problem. (McConnell himself had earlier requested an apology for the absence from the Platform debate of the incoming Chair, Southern Vice Chair, Treasurer, and Secretary, prompting Takenaga to apologize to Starr.) I also pointed out that this weekend's landlocked convention had barely any more delegates than the cruise convention. Rich then claimed that $5000 was spent to promote the cruise compared to nothing for this weekend, but in the March 2007 P&L statement for 2006 I only see $2355 in convention expenses and $3506 in convention revenue.

The ExCom passed resolutions thanking the convention committee and the outgoing officers, and set the next ExCom meeting for Saturday June 9 in San Diego.

Tactical Ideas For The LPCA

I've proposed to the LPCA ExCom that the former portfolio of Communications -- i.e., communication to our members and sympathizers, via California Freedom and our email list -- be supplemented with a new and separate portfolio whose job is encourage and enable members and sympathizers to communicate in turn with the non-libertarian world. The new portfolio would include tasks like:

• A web-based form for a libertarian to enter his zip and be able to compose and send a LTE to the significant media outlets for that area (cf. http://www.capwiz.com/lwv/dbq/media/)
• A web-base form for a libertarian to enter his zip and be able to compose and send a message to his representatives in Sacramento and/or D.C (cf. http://takeaction.lwv.org/lwv/dbq/officials/)
• A forum (e.g. Yahoo Group) that displays and archives the above messages
• Adopt-a-politician, in which a volunteer writes to (or an LTE about) the adopted politician at least once a quarter, and/or updates article(s) about that politician on Wikipedia/LPedia/LibertarianWiki
• Adopt-a-competitor, in which a volunteer attends and reports on local meetings of competing parties
• A web-based form for libertarians to give us a prospect acquaintance's
  • name, email address, city or zip
  • (suspected) current party registration or leaning (D, R, Grn, DTS, etc.)
  • referrer name, email address, city or zip
  • checkboxes of interested issues from a list of about 20 (e.g. these)
• A subscription list dedicated to alerts about outreach opportunities, e.g. public hearings, rallies, candidate call-ins, even (ugh) online polls
• A photo gallery of cars (plates obscured) with libertarian bumper stickers, and a bounty of five more free bumper stickers for every vehicle whose owner agrees to be stickered
• Property rights justice league -- monitor/attend local planning commission hearings and contact hassled property owners
• A photo gallery of public hearings attended or spoken at by libertarians
• List of top-Alexa-rated non-libertarian political blogs and suggested high-quality libertarian resources to reference in comments there
• A forum for logging one's call-in appearances on broadcast media
• A system to score and rank the efforts of libertarians for using the systems above. I'd be willing to fund cash awards for the top scorers. We could call it Lights of Liberty, Lasers of Liberty, Flames of Liberty, etc.

I also suggested that we conduct a survey of best practices of peer or near-peer organizations. We should look at e.g.

• other major-state LPs
• all significant California and national political parties
• the top 13 libertarian activist groups
• MoveOn.org, NRA, Emily's List, EFF, PETA, LWV, NAACP, etc.

and list potential practices to emulate in areas like

• self-service viral outreach like the ideas above
• member inreach communications (e.g. newsletters)
• dues structure
• organizing and fundraising.

Best of all would be to re-use any such investigation that anyone anywhere has already done.

LPCA Convention Day 2

Saturday morning business was devoted to the Bylaws Committee Report.

Proposals 1 and 2 were minor technical cleanups that passed without debate. Proposal 3 was to add a requirement that candidates for the five party offices be party members. Harland Harrison successfully requested debate, and when he disputed the voice vote and called for a standing vote, 80% of the delegates stood to approve it. Harrison also called for debate on proposal 4, and the convention voted it down in apparent agreement with Alan Rice's analysis that a simple majority of ExCom should not be able to rescind an endorsement if a convention had given it. Proposal 5 failed, leaving it mandatory that the Judicial Committee hear appeals of membership suspensions. Proposal 6 easily passed, institutionalizing the use of web sites over paper for satisfying member requests for party documents.

Proposal 7 was presented as codifying the Bylaws Committee's admirable practice of doing its work early, but it also contained a provision requiring 2/3 approval for late changes proposed outside the committee process. This was inevitably going to inspire resistance from those suspicious of the party leadership, so when Starchild voiced general opposition, I proposed that the 2/3 provision be considered separately. The remainder of the proposal passed easily, and after protracted debate and wordsmithing clarified the 2/3 rule, it too finally passed. Proposals 8 and 9 passed, making the Judicial Committee a two-year office that may hold meetings by voice or video conference.

Proposal 10 was a controversial effort to let counties set their own membership requirements and set and collect dues independently of the LPCA. Outgoing Chairman Aaron Starr made an impassioned offer to immediately and personally donate $15K to the counties if it passed. (I had expressed support of this effort to simplify the perennially fouled-up revenue-sharing between the state and the counties, but my mind started being changed by considerations about economies of scale. When Aaron complained that the current 60/40 county-heavy split made LPCA fundraising inefficient, that undid my support, since I think the state LPCA focuses too much on fundraising just to raise money to finance the next round of fundraising.) Proposal 10 failed, with me voting against.

Proposal 10a allowed each ExCom member to sponsor for convention credentialing a member who would otherwise be too new to be seated. I voted against this proposal, agreeing with Starchild that this useful power should belong to the convention instead of to ExCom, but it passed (and was soon used to seat seven new members. Proposal 11 was to eliminate county apportionment of convention delegates, and make any 90-day-tenured member automatically seated at conventions. The convention passed it on agreement with M Carling's argument that no other state has such a rule, but I voted against it on the grounds that the LPCA alternates conventions in the north and south of a state with by far the longest north-south axis in America. These were the only two proposals in which I voted on the losing side.

We thus only got through 11 of the 24 Bylaws proposals in the allotted time, and when we broke for lunch we were at 101 registered delegates.

The officer elections started with the Chair race, from which Bruce Cohen bowed out in view of the widespread support for Kevin Takenaga. Thus many people were surprised when James Ogle nominated himself to oppose Kevin. Ogle said he was a "self-employed artist, and I need a job, that's why I'm running." It's unclear whether he knew the office is unpaid, but he then made it clear that his primary cause was an online virtual government simulation that he was promoting, complete with a map dividing California into 12 mini-states.

Takenaga emphasized the need for coalition building, noting that it "doubles our manpower". His top priority is development of county parties, since counties are "where all the action is at". He wants local Libertarians to "reach out to people within your own community", and pointed out that "everyone agrees with us on something -- half agree with half of our positions, the other half agree with the other half.". (I'd be interested to know where the LP or LPCA platforms could be split to produce such a result -- which is just a snarky way of agreeing with Kevin's larger point that the LP can be more mainstream than it has been.) Kevin won 83-3, with 4 for NOTA.

Outgoing Northern Vice Chair nominated his successor Richard Newell, and Takenaga seconded effusively, saying "every great leader needs a team". Before being elected by acclamation, Rich gave an impressive and impassioned speech arguing for a bottom-up approach to LP electoral politics. He said the experience of Badnarik and Smither in 2006 show that "the public is not ready to vote for us" even when our candidates have big-time money or a write-in opponent with a hard-to-spell name. "The public is not going to put us into higher office until we've proven we can govern effectively at lower levels first. Let's get real." He cautioned that there would be no LP landslide victories in D.C. or state capitols, and pointed to John Inks and Norm Westwell as models of modest success built on the hard work of speaking at public meetings and building credibility in municipal politics. Rich said he "would like to activate a few more counties during my term", and said Dan Minkoff [sp?] would be taking over Rich's media relations operation. "All the heavy lifting has to be done at the county level", and the LPCA should mainly monitor Sacramento and do just the things that require economies of scale. "Being on the outside and throwing rocks may be fun, but it's not very effective."

I'm glad that we're going to have energetic leaders to test this "farm-team" strategy for LP success, but I would not agree that statewide and federal electioneering cannot have positive influence without a farm team that can threaten to win control of a statehouse, legislative house, or White House. The Socialist Party only had two congressmen and never won more than 6% of the popular Presidential vote, but Milton Friedman famously called it the most influential party in early-twentieth-century America because almost all of its 1928 platform's economic planks became law in the subsequent decades. There are very strict limits on how much good (say) an LP-controlled school board could do, and that any path toward a significantly free market in education soon reaches a dead end if it doesn't go through Sacramento or Washington.

Zander Collier won Southern Vice Chair by acclamation, as did Beau Cain win Secretary. Cain has previously been a professional secretary for ten years, and is finishing three years on the board of the Society For Technical Communication. Cain elicited another richly-deserved round of applause for outgoing secretary Dan Wiener, who had earlier received a standing ovation at the beginning of the Secretary election.

In winning Treasurer by acclamation, Don Cowles added a little spark to what was in effect the fifth straight walkover victory. He began his speech by taking James Ogle's map of California's 12 virtual mini-states and setting it up near the stage -- then suddenly stopped and said "I scared you guys, didn't I?" He revealed that he had proposed to nickname the Takenaga slate "the nuts and bolts, but I was told immediately there are no bolts in the LP."

The nominations for Executive Committee were next. M Carling honored and embarrassed me when he said "I worked at the the Hoover Institute for three years. I nominate for ExCom the deepest thinker in the Libertarian Party -- Brian Holtz." I vouched that I didn't know M would say that, and continued: "Instead of killing trees for pamphlets, I paid the convention for the privilege of spamming most of you with some ideas for the party, and I hope you were persuaded enough to earn your vote. If you never saw the email, then you can take that either as evidence that my approach is not a good one, or as evidence that we need to get better at modern communication technology. And if any of you really really hate trees, I do have a few paper copies you can ask me for."

The nominees and votes earned were as follows, with the top five winning 2-year terms:

Ted Brown 70
Camden McConnell 61
Laurence Samuels 58
Brian Holtz 53
Mike McMahon 52
Matthew Barnes 51 (wins 1-year term)
Bruce Dovner 46
Jesse Thomas 40
Starchild 33

My prediction had been that I would come in fifth to the four incumbents Brown Dovner Samuels McConnell (in that order), followed by Starchild, Barnes, and Thomas/McMahon. I was surprised that Dovner and Starchild received so few votes, since both are well-known and (in my opinion) very thoughtful. Starchild wore his butterfly wings as he invoked the five principles of the Grassroots Caucus, and while I thought his pitch for such self-expression in such a friendly room was not unreasonable, I suspect that his flamboyant appearance made his vote count understate the amount of potential agreement with him that was in the room.

The Judicial Committee election seated the top five among:
Bob Weber 70
Allan Hacker 68
Dan Wiener 58
Rick Nichol 58
M Carling 57 (later elected JudCom Chair)
Ed Bowers 37

A motion failed that proposed to cede the ExCom Alternates choice to the ExCom itself to allow the time to be used for more Bylaws debate. The election seated the top two of

Chuck Moulton 47
Jesse Thomas 38
Michael Seebeck 30
Starchild 30

Moulton is the national LP Vice Chair, and was available for a 1-year alternate slot because he will be spending the next year at San Jose State in a master's program in Austrian economics. This is a wonderful bonus for the LPCA, and for any of us on ExCom who want to hear the latest in Austrian economic theory.

I had to return home upon adjournment to resume my share of the babysitting duties for our three young girls, and break the news to Melisse that my new ExCom duties would impose even more babysitting work on her in the next couple years. She was not exactly thrilled at the choice that the convention made. :-)

This weekend's LPCA elections

The multi-term incumbents of all five executive offices have announced they are not running for re-election. Chair Aaron Starr says he is too busy now that he's added national LP treasurer to his Libertarian National Committee duties. The others are taking a break because of (in at least one case) health reasons and apparently a bit of fatigue with the level of personal acrimony on the Executive Committee -- even among the formerly cohesive moderate pragmatists. ExCom members have been publicly stalwart and tight-lipped about their differences, but it appears the points of contention include the continuing struggle with the member database, the handling of the November change in the Executive Director position, the disappointing results from Operation Breakthrough, and even the handling of ExCom contact info on the web site.

Kevin Takenaga, who had been database chairman and Santa Clara County Chair, is leading a slate of moderates who apparently will emphasize the importance of involvement in municipal- and county-level politics and coalitions. The slate has organized an opening-night party this evening and seem to be the front-runners, with only Takenaga facing any announced opposition. Only one member of the slate (Cowles) has publicly offered any details about plans or accomplishments. I approve of my friend Kevin's candidacy and I'm confident he'd be a good Chair, but I can't endorse him over his opposition given this lack of information. If he wins, I urge him to be more transparent in his performance as Chair than he was as database lead or Chair candidate -- or for that matter than Aaron was during his tenure as Chair.

Bruce Cohen is the Orange County LP Chair, and has had the blessing and curse of being communications chairman, making him the most visible (or is it audible?) ExCom member. The departure early in his tenure of California Freedom's paid editor Elizabeth Brierly forced Cohen to choose maintenance of content quality over consistency of publication schedule, as volunteer contributors like me found it hard to fill Brierly's shoes. Cohen evangelized the LPCA email outreach list that is now over 4000 working addresses, and began using it more frequently to spread the LPCA message. Bruce's copious hard work hasn't been flawless, but since his record is more open to public examination, and since it's easier to see in his public statements on strategy and tactics his agreements with my ideas there, I'm endorsing my friend Bruce over my friend Kevin for Chair.

Richard Newell has been the hero of the ExCom for his running of the Libertarian Perspective media outreach operation. He is running for Northern Vice Chair, and I suspect he has plans to do as a great a job with this county support portfolio as he's done with the media outreach portfolio. I endorse Richard Newell for Northern Vice Chair.

Zander Collier has been ExCom's chair for campus recruitment and coordination. His relocation last year to SoCal could not have helped make this very difficult but very important job any easier. I see only now that the May 2006 minutes mention that the ExCom read his written Plan for the Libertarian Party of California, of which I'd love to see a copy. Nevertheless, I know Zander is a pragmatic moderate with a passion for real-world local politics, and I endorse him for Southern Vice Chair.

Don Cowles chaired ExCom's audit committee, and his success in the financial services industry makes him a good choice for Treasurer. I endorse Cowles for Treasurer.

Beau Cain worked as press secretary on Collier's 2004 Assembly campaign (whose treasurer was Takenaga), helping to boost Collier's first-time vote total to 5.2% (compared to the subsequent LPer's 3% and the 2000 second-timer's total of 4%). I don't know Cain, but if he worked with Kevin and Zander then he's surely a pragmatic moderate, and will very likely get my vote for Secretary if Dan Wiener can't be bribed, blackmailed, or otherwise coerced into keeping the job.

Three other ExCom non-alternate members are up for re-election, and I haven't heard that any aren't running.

Ted Brown has done a super job as candidate recruiter and Platform Committee chairman for years now, and has always brings a voice of reason and civility to any gathering. I heartily endorse Ted.

Bruce Dovner is replacing me as California's rep to the national Platform Committee. While Bruce is more of a purist than I am, he is reasonable and civil and both intellectually honest and curious, and he champions the pragmatic cause of having a Legislative Program. I endorse Bruce, and not just because I plan to keep trying to persuade him in the direction of pragmatism. :-)

Camden McConnell was appointed to fill the vacancy created on the ExCom when Angela Keaton resigned to become Executive Director. Cam is distinguished, honorable, and sensible, and I endorse him.

I had a long talk with the one announced non-incumbent ExCom candidate, a certain Brian Holtz, and grudgingly decided I could endorse him despite the hints of schizophrenia in his recent habit of referring to himself in the third person.

Brian Holtz For LPCA ExCom

Purpose: Unite voters who want more liberty behind the electoral choices that will most move public policy in a libertarian direction Strategy: Make LPCA a scalable/viral voter-outreach machine as we attack institutional/legal barriers to 3rd-party influence Tactic: Build email contact DB of members & RegLibs; motivate their use of LPCA-provided self-service Internet outreach tools Theme: Avoid overreach, work smart not hard Issues: School choice; environment; tax revolt; medical marijuana; civil unions 2006 CA rep to LP Platform Committee Author of Libertarian Reform Caucus "Greatest Hits" draft LP platform Libertarian blogger and frequent contributor to California Freedom 2005/2006 member of LPCA Platform Committee 2004/6 LP candidate for Congress, CA14 (Silicon Valley) San Mateo County LP Newsletter chair 2004-2005 LP Life member since 1999 Software engineer at Yahoo (2002-), Sun Microsystems (1990-2001)

Some Possible Reasons To Vote For Me	Some Possible Reasons Not To Vote For Me
Clear strategic and tactical priorities	My priorities might not be yours
Willing to finance important LPCA projects	Won't raise funds from anyone but himself
Communicative and transparent	Too damn communicative and transparent
Reformer	You think the LP and LPCA are (or were) doing just fine
Technologically savvy	Silicon Valley nerd
Independent	Not aligned with your faction
Intellectually principled economics-oriented minarchist	Not an anarchist, thus an unprincipled socialist
Intellectually rigorous	Always tries to get the last word
You've found a fresh perspective in something I've written	You've disagreed with something I've written
Advocates big tent on abortion, immigration, libervention	Advocates big tent on abortion, immigration, libervention
Won't back down from public threats of being "beaten to a bloody pulp"	Scared shitless of being satired on Angela Keaton's Liberated Space
Makes lists of reasons not to vote for him	Makes lists of reasons not to vote for him

LPCA Strategy & Tactics

Strategy & Tactics for the California Libertarian Party

Purpose & General Strategy

Purpose - What do you see as the primary purpose(s) of the LPCA? [cf. Bylaw 2]

The purpose of the LPCA should be to use electoral politics to move public policy in California in a libertarian direction. It should do this by uniting voters who want more liberty behind the electoral choices that will yield the most liberty. The LP should maximize the size of the pro-liberty voting bloc and then seek to use it as a carrot or stick as circumstances dictate or allow.

Biggest strategic or tactical opportunity - What is ours?

Strategically, we need to work within coalitions that will help tear down any and all institutional barriers to third-party influence: rules against fusion candidacies, single-representative plurality-wins districts, gerrymandering, mandatory primaries, debate lockout, etc. This is too undifferentiating to be our lead issue-set with the general public, but there are many potential allies and sympathizers on these issues, and our long-run success is so heavily constrained by current barriers that we cannot let this be a second-tier priority.

Tactically, we need to systematically identify and exploit all the institutional portals that are wide open to us: ballot arguments, Voter Information Guide candidate statements, SmartVoter, uncontested races, free TV time, email addresses in voter registration rolls, candidate forums, candidate web sites, etc.

Tactical overreach - How can we ensure our goals are reachable and measurable?

We should design our efforts so that incremental effort yields incremental progress. We should institutionalize the use of careful worst-case planning to immunize ourselves from excess optimism and overreach and the burnout they engender. We should not be afraid to try tactics where failure causes limited setback and can be recognized early. We should be cautious about plans whose failure would cause non-trivial setback but would not be recognizable early.

Electoral Strategy

Operation Breakthrough - Should we try it again? [cf. ExCom minutes item 7]

OB 2006 cost something like $42K, and is projected to finance at most $30K of that in redeemed pledges. We should investigate if a continuous but lower-cost and less-ambitious version of OB is possible, whereby on an ongoing basis we track the electronic contact info of possible candidates. The savings could perhaps be applied to support (e.g. voter guide statements) for candidates specifically recruited by OB.

Ballot status - What if anything needs to be done to maintain it?

Without Smithson and Ogden matching their occupations to their respective races for Treasurer and Insurance Commissioner, the LPCA in 2006 would have flirted with loss of ballot status. As a backup plan for increasing our 0.86% registration mark to the 1% threshold, we should have Ted Brown repeat this occupation-matching in his usual stellar candidate recruitment efforts.

Federal races & BCRA - What are the risks, and how should we manage them?

As I understand it, the only "federal election activity" we really need to do that's constrained by BCRA is identifying and promoting our federal candidates in our non-Internet-based communication efforts -- i.e. California Freedom. If we can get our election issue of CF out for less than $1000, we shouldn't even need to file with the FEC -- but the money would still have to be raised into and spent from a "federal" account. Or maybe we should use this as the final justification for taking (at least the election issue of) CF completely into cyberspace, beyond the reach of BCRA and the expense of the government monopoly on distributing dead trees.

Candidate support - What specifically should the LPCA provide?

The LPCA should coordinate candidate recruitment with the county LP. Ideally the LPCA should acquire complete voter registration tables for all of California, but if this is too much work then county LPs should be given an incentive to get the tables for the LPCA. In exchange for exploiting a mandatory subset of the institutional portals mentioned above (SmartVoter, web site, candidate forums, etc.) determined by the LPCA (perhaps in conjunction with the county LP if it provided voter tables), the candidate should be provided with contact info for his district's (or counties') LPCA members, registered Libertarians, and voter contact info (especially email addresses). LPCA should also provide candidates infrastructure for mass emailings that meet certain strict guidelines, including opt-out management and LPCA-funded self-sanction invocable by annoyed recipients. The LPCA should maintain a best-practices guide for candidates, with practical advice about free campaign site hosting, free business cards, SmartVoter, web site templates, example speeches, debate-ready 60-second sound bites on specific issues, etc.

(Un)winnable races - Should the LPCA focus its resources on the bottom of the ticket or the top?

It's primarily up to the candidates to decide what offices to seek. The baseline of candidate support should be uniform up and down the ticket, and it may be very rare for the LPCA to pick a candidate to get extra resources. It might be less rare for the LPCA to apply resources to controlled experiments at different levels of the ticket, to measure using fine-grained election returns the results of various tactical uses of campaign resources.

Ballot measures - How do they fit into our strategy?

Ballot measures are incredibly important in California. We should help form coalitions to support or oppose important initiatives, and especially work to make sure that ballot argument opportunities are not missed.

Coalitions - How (if at all) should we work with other groups and other parties?

The most important Coalition policy is discussed in "biggest strategic opportunity" above. Regarding "carrot and stick" in the Purpose discussion above, we should push the envelope of the self-defeating national LP Bylaw (6.4) against endorsing candidates of other parties. When it makes sense, we should persuade potential LP candidates not to run in some races, while in other races we should recruit the candidate most likely to hurt the greater enemy of freedom among the leading candidates.

Legislative Program - What should be our primary issues, and how should we promote them? [cf. LPCA Program]

We should pick as our primary issues the ones that a) are popular, b) can differentiate us from competing parties, c) are long-term issues, d) are balanced in Left-Right appeal, and e) are heavily or exclusively non-federal concerns.

1. School choice. This is a no-brainer. Education is a perennial top-of-mind state issue, and it sharply distinguishes us from all competing parties with the possible exception of GOP.
2. Market-smart environmentalism. The only challenge is to differentiate from Leftist parties' command-and-control environmentalism, but otherwise another nearly-ideal issue.
3. Tax revolt. In the home of Prop 13, the next phase of the tax revolt should be something like the Colorado Taxpayer Bill Of Rights, which limits government revenue growth to population plus inflation.
4. Medical marijuana and 5) Civil unions. These are good wedge issues against the GOP that would align us with younger voters without alienating too many mainstream voters.

Left-leaning Libs need to realize that interventionism is a federal issue that will not long survive the Bush presidency, and is a me-too issue with California's other three minor parties. Right-leaning Libs need to realize that immigration is a mostly federal issue, has demographics that work against us, and is a me-too issue with the Republican and American Independent parties. It's not sufficient to pick issues that voters are passionate about. They have to be issues whose passionate voters can be induced to choose us over the competition, and there aren't enough single-issue voters who would do so. (Raise your hand if you came to the LP over a single issue.) Addiction to single-issue votes is a prescription for continued failure.

Litigation Strategy - What lawsuits should we join, file, or worry about being filed? [cf. Prop 60]

We should consider challenging Prop 60 in court, and to oppose whenever possible the strategic institutional barriers mentioned above.

Operations

Dues & Revenue Sharing - What's the right model? [cf. Bylaw 7, ExCom minutes item 6 & pp. 7-9 ]

• We should lean toward counting registered Libertarians as members for the purposes of internal communications -- perhaps counting them as "associate" or "non-sustaining" members if there is a Bylaws problem here.
• The dues relationship between state and counties should be as simple and easy to administer as is practical.
• Dues should be as close to zero as is practical, to maximize our membership as the top tier of an outreach network, rather than the bottom tier of a donor base.
• LPCA activities should in general be self-financing, so that dues can be scaled down to the minimum needed to maintain healthy relationships with our county affiliates and close electronic contact with even our non-dues-paying members.
• The current extra charge of $30 for a paper newsletter subscription is a good idea that doesn't go far enough. We should consider a membership discount for any member who maintains with us a working email address for 1) himself and 2) two unique never-before-member prospects willing to accept outreach contacts from us.

Database - How should the problems with the database be fixed? [cf. ExCom minutes p. 6]

Information from ExCom on this topic has been scarce, but DonorPerfect sounds like it might finally be an adequate solution. The database needs to help -- or at least not obstruct -- our use of the membership as an electronic outreach network and not just an old-fashioned direct-mail donor base.

County support - What specifically should the LPCA provide?

Aside from the question of revenue sharing, the absolute minimum is sharing of up-to-date data on dues-paying membership. It's vital that the LPCA coordinates with the counties on acquiring, integrating, and sharing voter-registration tables and the RegLib contact info therein. The LPCA should leverage its economies of scale in the area of candidate support (see above), and coordinate in candidate recruitment. Regional vice-chairs are charged with nurturing less-than-fully-active counties, but I don't have any good advice for them on that task.

Fundraising - What should be the fundraising expectations for LPCA officers?

We shouldn't need to be to be doing heavy generic LPCA fundraising if we have the right dues model and engage in projects that are either self-financing (from incremental project-specific fundraising) or are cheap (e.g. due to use of information technology). Aside from money for specific projects, we should more often being asking our members for their time (e.g. in outreach efforts) than their money. See Communication, below.

Bylaws - Which of the proposed changes do you support, and why? What other changes are needed?

The ones I care most about are these:

10. Support county autonomy in dues and membership. (How does LP life membership relate here?)

12. Oppose, unless every other state LP is also similarly fleeing in the face of BCRA.

16. Oppose. See above for the purpose of the LPCA.

23. Support removing the Pledge, in order to include RegLibs as members.

24. Support ignoring exclusively federal issues, but I do so not for BCRA fears, as the way we traditionally communicate our Platform (by posting it on our web site) is outside the scope of BCRA.

Conventions - What should be the model for granting convention rights?

I have no problems with how Conventions have been handled during my seven years with the LPCA.

Executive Director - What are your thoughts about this job? [cf. ExCom minutes p. 6-7]

I want to run the LPCA on the cheap, so the more transparent and communicative the ED is about work performed, the better I feel about paying for the work.

Transparency - How will you keep members involved and informed?

If I have my way, members will be hounded into being more involved and informed, right up to their individual ability to tolerate it.

Divisiveness - How will you help to minimize it?

By continuing to be a big-tent Libertarian, and by promoting a party culture in which even party reformers seek to balance their inreach with their outreach.

Outreach

Members - How should we recruit and retain them?

Recruitment and retention should be a by-product of successfully using our membership as the top tier of an outreach network.

Reglibs - How should we recruit and retain them? How important are they compared to members?

Our RegLib count is more important than our membership count or budget size. RegLib count and votes received are the two best proxies for our most important metric: how many people are receptive to our message of increasing liberty.

Youth - How should we appeal to them?

This is a hugely important question, and I don't have any easy answers. It's naive of me to hope it will be answered by our choice of issues (viz., personal freedoms and entitlements) and an increased emphasis on Internet-based outreach. Speaking in front of students needs to be encouraged and rewarded systematically. Building student clubs sounds great, but I don't know anybody who knows how to do it. If anybody can do a better job of promoting the idea to teachers than I was able to, I'm still willing to donate $2000 to an essay contest.

Newsletter - What should be its role, schedule, and distribution? How can it be improved?

The content and production values have continued to be excellent, even if schedule consistency has been impacted by the over-extension of volunteers. Every paper copy of California Freedom that we mail is a miniature indictment of our efforts to modernize our communication technology.

Communication - How much can we replace paper/mail/phone with Internet technology?

Intensify Bruce Cohen's excellent efforts to build an email distribution channel. Minimize fundraising as a goal of communication. Share contact info across liberty-oriented organizations. Try to collect email contact info from every paper contact. Create and promote a simple web-base infrastructure for self-service contact of your local media and government officials. Systematically encourage letters to the editor, speaking at government meetings, contacting government officials, gathering prospects from among acquaintances, monitoring the actions of the government and other enemies of liberty, speaking in front of local groups, posting to non-liberty-oriented electronic forums, Wiki contributions, etc. We should have incentives (e.g. scoring like the LNC Candidate Tracker) for such forms of activism.

Website - In what ways could it be improved?

Lean heavily toward simplicity and maintainability. Every hour invested in gee-whiz visuals and behavior is an hour diverted from crucial database-based viral electronic outreach.

Traditional Media - In what ways could our current strategy be improved? [cf. Libertarian Perspective, Press Releases]

Richard Newell is a hero for his management of the Libertarian Perspective.

New Media - How should we use it?

Blogging. Wikis (like LPedia and Paul Studier's LibertarianWiki). Video sharing. etc. Study and copy the best tactics of groups like MoveOn.org. Keep things simple and scalable, so that the payoff comes not from how much Herculean effort you put in, but rather from the sum of all the small efforts you elicit.

Questions For LPCA Internal Candidates

All five LPCA offices (President, two Vice-Chairs, Secretary, & Treasurer) are apparently not running for re-election this weekend, and 8 of 12 Executive Committee seats (including 2 alternates) are up for re-election. However, as of four days before the convention, there doesn't seem to have been any public announcement of any candidacies. Here are some questions that candidates should consider answering.

Purpose & General Strategy

• Purpose - What do you see as the primary purpose(s) of the LPCA? [cf. Bylaw 2]
• Biggest strategic or tactical opportunity - What is ours?
• Tactical overreach - How can we ensure our goals are reachable and measurable?

Electoral Strategy

• Operation Breakthrough - Should we try it again? [cf. ExCom minutes item 7]
• Ballot status - What if anything needs to be done to maintain it?
• Federal races & BCRA - What are the risks, and how should we manage them?
• Candidate support - What specifically should the LPCA provide?
• (Un)winnable races - Should the LPCA focus its resources on the bottom of the ticket or the top?
• Ballot initiatives - How do they fit into our strategy?
• Coalitions - How (if at all) should we work with other groups and other parties?
• Legislative Program - What should be our primary issues, and how should we promote them? [cf. LPCA Program] What technical changes (e.g. to election law) should we ask friendly legislators for?
• Litigation Strategy - What lawsuits should we join, file, or worry about being filed? [cf. Prop 60]

Operations

• Dues & Revenue Sharing - What's the right model? [cf. Bylaw 7, ExCom minutes item 6 & pp. 7-9 ]
• Database - How should the problems with the database be fixed? [cf. ExCom minutes p. 6]
• County support - What specifically should the LPCA provide?
• Fundraising - What should be the fundraising expectations for LPCA officers?
• Bylaws - Which of the proposed changes do you support, and why? What other changes are needed?
• Conventions - What should be the model for granting convention rights?
• Executive Director - What are your thoughts about this job? [cf. ExCom minutes p. 6-7]
• Transparency - How will you keep members involved and informed?
• Divisiveness - How will you help to minimize it?

Outreach

• Members - How should we recruit and retain them?
• Reglibs - How should we recruit and retain them? How important are they compared to members?
• Youth - How should we appeal to them?
• Newsletter - What should be its role, schedule, and distribution? How can it be improved?
• Communication - How much can we replace paper/mail/phone with Internet technology?
• Website - In what ways could it be improved?
• Traditional Media - In what ways could our current strategy be improved? [cf. Libertarian Perspective, Press Releases]
• New Media - How should we use it?

Defending Libervention In Iraq

I do not believe that the duty of a liberty-loving polity to defend human liberty vanishes completely at lines drawn on maps by statists. It was reasonable (but not necessary) for American liberty-lovers to decide to liberate Iraq based on the conjunction of

• Saddam's apparent threat to America, consisting of his
  • admitted nuclear ambitions,
  • hatred for America (regardless of whether some think it justified), and
  • support for terrorists who have targeted American civilians;
• Saddam's record of aggression, in which he
  • killed over a million people,
  • invaded one sovereign neighbor,
  • annexed another by force,
  • fired ballistic missiles at two more,
  • defied UN nuclear disarmament mandates that Iraq was bound to obey as a 1945 UN Charter signatory,
  • used chemical WMDs in a war of aggression, and
  • used chemical WMDs in genocidal attacks on his own citizens; and
• the existence proofs we had in Kurdistan and Afghanistan that the U.S. military could depose tyranny in even less-modernized Islamic societies and replace it with reasonably stable self-determination.

There are two predictions that could have changed my mind about liberating Iraq if before the invasion we had been given reasonable grounds for believing them. The most important is the prediction that, despite the stability in Kurdish Iraq under U.S. military protection, and despite the surprising success America had in deposing the Taliban, a sectarian civil war would be more likely than not to eventually undermine our effort to liberate the rest of Iraq -- a region much more secular, prosperous, and literate than Afghanistan. This prediction would have needed to be accompanied by evidence that this sectarian civil war was likely to be permanently avoidable under some alternative US course of action that had acceptable costs in terms of what evils Saddam and his sons committed or abetted (both in the region and against the West) during the rest of their tenure.

The other crucial prediction would have been that Saddam in fact had neither a nuclear WMD program nor the capability and intention of reconstituting the pre-1991 program that we found out in 1995 he had so successfully hidden from the West. On my blog I document an intensive but fruitless search for any Iraq Cassandra who credibly registered either of these two predictions. Indeed, the Iraqi people themselves were still failing to make the first prediction a year after the invasion. In an April 2004 CNN/Gallup nationwide poll of Iraqis, 42% "said Iraq was better off because of the war", and 61% "said Saddam Hussein's ouster made it worth any hardships." In a nationwide poll of Iraqis completed in Mar 2004 for BBC by Oxford Research International, "56% said that things were better now than they were before the war".

Was the invasion unconstitutional? Art I Sec 8 grants Congress the power "to declare war" and "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying [that power] into execution". Public Law 107-243 (the Iraq War Resolution of Oct 2002) said "the President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to [...] enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq." In the text of the resolution, Congress explicitly mentions its "war power" when discussing its authority to enact this law. Whether Congress believed it was exercising its Constitutional war power is not even a close question.

Was the invasion not justifiable under international law? Iraq is a signatory of the UN Charter and owes America and all other signatories a duty to obey UN Security Council resolutions. From the end of the 1991 war until US troops started massing on his border in 2002, Saddam had consistently and repeatedly violated his obligations under the terms of the UN Security Council resolutions governing the 1991 cease-fire. The UN Security Council itself said in resolution 1441 that "Iraq has been and remains in material breach of its obligations under relevant resolutions, including resolution 687" -- i.e. the 1991 cease-fire terms. Thus a reasonable case can be made that the 2003 invasion was simply a resumption of the 1991 war, which was indisputably justified under international law.

We have now achieved our two most important war aims: 1) elimination of any WMD capability or international terrorist infrastructure, and 2) deposing Saddam's regime in favor of a federal democratic constitutional framework designed to protect minorities and fundamental human rights. We would have liked to also successfully transition security responsibility to the new Iraqi government, but Iraq's thirst for civil war has effectively exhausted the reconstruction and stabilization efforts we owed the Iraqis for having liberated them. It is now time to accept our partial victory and let the Iraqi people take responsibility for their own future.

Liberty has blessed America with the prosperity required to defend its freedom, and with the worldwide respect that has made such defense so rarely needed. However, modern weapons technology and our high expectations for near-perfect security have combined to make Americans feel vulnerable to those who oppose America's influence on the rest of the world. America has done more to advance the cause of human liberty than any other society in human history, and yet America's foreign policy has fallen tragically short of the standard of conduct on which any libertarian would insist. We are appalled at the loss of life and compromises against liberty that some American leaders have considered an acceptable price for advancing liberty and opposing tyranny. Reasonable and principled Libertarians hold good-faith views on both sides of the question of liberating Iraq, but we all can agree that our candidates when elected will hold America to the highest standards of conduct.