[Lnc-business] Rand Paul contacts

[Joshua Katz]

This is a board, not a candidate committee.  As such, my opinion is that
our primary responsibility is our fiduciary responsibility to the party, to
maintain the integrity of the party, and to protect our basic interests -
the main responsibilities assigned in board governance.  We may decide, of
course, that any particular thing is not a threat or, as Dr. Lieberman
suggests, an opportunity, but to wholesale reject the idea that the
protection of this party's assets, including goodwill, is our
responsibility, and suggest that what really matters is acting as political
strategists - something that appears neither in the LNC's responsibilities
in our governing documents, any concept of board governance, nor in the
goals the LNC adopted this term - strikes me as a mistake.

If I decided to make and sell a product while falsely claiming it was
endorsed by the board of Microsoft, first, this would be ludicrous because
the board of Microsoft does not endorse products.  More importantly,
though, the board of Microsoft might react, or might not, if it deemed me
too small to be a threat, or for whatever reason chose not to.  No one on
that board, though, would react by belittling a member for bringing it up,
or insist that the board should focus on its real responsibility:
 providing advice to programmers on how to do their jobs.  We can support
candidates with our resources, our national reach, and our media access, we
can publicize what they do, but we are not their strategists or campaign
managers (as a board, anyway - individual members might engage in all those
activities, of course.)

Of course, I agree that politics is full of lies and subterfuge.  The
reaction to that is not to simply let all subterfuge go by; it is to deal
with it strategically, both in terms of self-protection and in terms of
positioning.

For the record, I am not someone who should be attacked as having some sort
of Rand Paul vendetta.  I'm the first to congratulate him for a job well
done, such as his work on the Patriot/USA Freedom Act.  I will not
congratulate him on allowing his campaign staff, if it is the case, to
mislead our members, in order to undercut us.  I also won't react with
fainting spells and clutching of pearls, of course - as you suggest, that's
part of politics.  So is the decision as to what to do about it.

Joshua A. Katz
Westbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat)

On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Roland Riemers <riemers at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Oh, get off the Rand Paul issue.  99% of politics is lies and bullshit and
> often campaign staff go off on their own anyway, so why waste our time and
> energy on something of little real importance?.
>
> I think by now all the state chairs know the Paul calls are not
> legitimate,  so move onto real issues that matter in people's lives,  like
> how would our Libertarian candidates respond to the Republican circus or
> the Democratic one candidate race?   And what can we learn from their
> mistakes?
>
> Roland Riemers of ND
>
>
>
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