[Lnc-business] record & stream next LNC meeting

[Joshua Katz]

I'm glad the member sent this second clarification email, since I was
unable to determine his view of livestreaming from his first email. :-)

Here are some businesses the LPCT is not in, and I am also not in:
1.  Dealing with officious petty bureaucrats.
2.  Being hassled by security at a building I supposedly own.
3.  Being ignored by bureaucrats.
4.  Having pointless arguments with Republicans asking me to violate
national and state bylaws for the "emergency purpose" of nominating them
for office.
5.  Demanding time and date stamps on forms.

Yet I did all of those things.  The LPCT is in the business of electing our
members to office.  Yet we, and I, need to do things outside of that
specific mission.  Organizations do lots of things not in their mission.
 My fire department has meetings.  That's not what it was constituted to
do.

This says nothing positive; it's just a response to the claim that being in
the business of electing officials somehow conflicts with livestreaming
meetings.

Is the LPUS in the business of electing candidate to office?  Well, I would
say yes in some general sense, although we actually have no candidates and
no elections to run them in.  Our affiliates are certainly in that
business, though, and the LPUS coordinates and assists, so, sure.  Is the
LNC in that business?  Well, the board of any organization is responsible
for governing that organization, not carrying out its operations, so our
business is actually governing the LPUS in its business of coordinating and
assisting affiliates in their business of electing people to office.  It's
a useful shorthand, though.

We elect candidates to office for some reason, I would suggest.
 Presumably, we elect them to office because we believe that doing so is a
useful and good way to move public policy and promote freedom.  I agree
entirely with this idea.  If a Libertarian ended up as First Selectman,
would we expect them to be transparent in governing?  I think so, although
we can't make them do so.  It's a reasonable expectation that Libertarians
like transparency in governance.  We are a governing body.  We're not
obligated to be transparent since we're a private organization (although I
believe that not all evil is done by states, or by initiation of force,)
but if it's something we generally value, we are certainly in the right to
act on that value.

But what about the RNC and DNC watching?  That could be very dangerous, as
a Dilbert cartoon once pointed out - to them.  They could split their sides
laughing.  Suppose you had a livesteam of RNC meetings - what changes would
you make to our party operations as a result?  I have no idea what I'd do
with that information.

But they wouldn't make one, you say - absolutely correct.  They wouldn't do
lots of things.  That's not a reason for us not to, when libertarian values
are involved.

Their membership has different expectations (to the extent they have
membership in the sense we do.)  They need to do different things to win.
 Yes, we need to do different things from what we've done if we intend to
win more often - but that won't always mean copying more successful
parties, because they operate in a different environment.  No one ever says
"I want to vote for this Democrat, but I'm afraid I'll be electing a
Libertarian if I do, so I'll just vote Green instead."  We have obstacles
to overcome that they do not.

One of those obstacles, created by our past last of success, is the
perception that we cannot actually achieve in office what we say we will
do.  This may very well be true - many of our candidates do not demonstrate
an understanding of how government works, while others do.  Another
obstacle is the belief that our ideas will not successfully order society -
that libertarianism is just a bad idea for running a society.  We disagree
with that view, I think.  There may be some of us who think statism works
better but still favor libertarianism for a variety of moral reasons, but I
think that most of us would not work and fight and give so much of
ourselves and our energy without the belief, at the very least, that
running a society on libertarian lines would have an outcome no worse than
what statism brings.  If we believe that, there is no reason we cannot
apply those beliefs to governing our micro-society, also known as an
organization.

Another point - how does one determine the business an organization is
engaged in?  One way is the mission statement or statement of principles.
 Another is to look at what the organization actually does.  By the latter
perspective, we are in the business of talking a lot about one state in
particular; talking a lot about whether or not people should see us talking
a lot about one state; arguing about whether or not boards are allowed to
rewrite bylaws, then seek ratification of their rewriting from a membership
as defined in their new bylaws; allowing bills due to exceed liquid assets;
and a few other things.  State affiliates are primarily in the business of
getting ballot access and then losing it, but sometimes keeping it, and
electing an average of just about 2 officials per state, none higher than
county level.

If we are in the business of electing people to office, we've done a pretty
poor job of it, especially if one calculates how much money has flowed
through this organization in the years since its inception.  We can do a
better job of it with a more energized and supportive membership.  When
they know what we're doing, and we don't keep secrets from them, they will
be more energized, more enthusiastic, and will have a greater belief that
their actions and ideas matter in this party.  Maybe, I don't know, but
it's one possible outcome.  Another possible outcome is that we'll behave
more productively when we know that the people who donate money to us can
be watching.

Joshua Katz




Joshua A. Katz

Region 8 (Region of Badassdom) Alternate
Libertarian National Committee

Chair, Libertarian Party of Connecticut


On Thu, Aug 28, 2014 at 2:04 PM, Scott L. <scott73 at earthlink.net> wrote:

>
>
> As you can probably tell from my previous e-mail, I think live streaming
> LNC Meetings onto the Internet is a stupid idea.
>
>
> That being said, the people who agree with me have lost this battle - for
> the time being.
>
>
>
>
>
> The Libertarian Party is in the business of electing our members to public
> office.  We are not in the “transparency business.”
>
>
>
>
>
> To make the “mandate” to stream the meetings a reasonably easy to achieve
> task, rather than a total PITA, I suggest that we start out by NOT
> streaming the video.
>
>
>
> In other words – just stream the audio.  Once we master doing that, if our
> members really need to see our beautiful (or handsome) faces, we can start
> working on a video stream.
>
>
>    Scott Lieberman
>
> _______________________________________________
> Lnc-business mailing list
> Lnc-business at hq.lp.org
> http://hq.lp.org/mailman/listinfo/lnc-business_hq.lp.org
>
>
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