[Lnc-business] agenda business items

Mon Feb 8 17:05:14 EST 2016

In regards to our presidential candidates,  I agree,  we need to raise the bar a bit.  To get only serious candidates we could say require a $10,000 filing fee to the party (which would be used for ballot petition drives),  but I doubt that would fly.  Another possibility is require any candidate to get the sponsorship of at least 5 state chairs,  or the signed support of 200 party members.  That would not be a huge road block, but would at least eliminate the non-serious.
In regards to SD ballot petitions, it appears Tuttle did get a $5,000 initial payment, and there are now about 4,000 signatures with about 3,500 to go, but Tuttle needs the second installment of $5,000 to make expenses (it seems no petitioner has a glue how to budget his money) and feels he can wrap it up in the time allowed.
In regards to future petitions,  I would like to bring that up at this months LNC meeting, and will make a motion that in future petition drives that the state be required to do its part by gathering or paying for gathering, 20% of the required signatures.  It is time we work on getting out of being the sole means of ballot access for the states.
Roland Riemers Reg. 6

      From: Joshua Katz <planning4liberty at gmail.com>
 To: lnc-business at hq.lp.org 
 Sent: Monday, February 8, 2016 3:06 PM
 Subject: Re: [Lnc-business] agenda business items

Hello again Kevin.  (The dangers of me having unexpected time off.)
1.  That's expert enough for me, and my point stands:  I don't see anything wrong with the website, but I'm not the target audience.  The target audience is the general public, and if you tell me it needs an overhaul, I agree with you.  I stand corrected on the two organizations.  I think the appropriate thing here would be to move to allocate the funds for hiring a third party firm, and to direct the IT committee to select a firm and give them the specs, with a firm time limit.  I would vote for that.
2.  I think we may be overstating the degree to which we disagree.  It certainly isn't my position that candidates have a right to play dress up, as you say, on websites to which we point people.  In fact, it's my position that no one has a right to have us point to any website, but that we should not point to some candidate's websites and not others.  Let me ask you:  Does the fact that a person seeking the Democratic nomination for President wears a boot on his head make you think the Democratic Party is not serious about electing candidates to office?  The DNC has not disqualified VS from being nominated at their convention - if he can line up the delegates, he can have the nomination.  Does that make them unserious?  I say of course not.  So why are we different?  Because we think, unlike the DNC, that we need to filter candidates, that we need to point people to their websites, that we need to be the gatekeepers, whereas the DNC tells candidates to figure it out, sanctions debates held by others, and promises to support the candidate post-nomination.  
We are the only party that creates the appearance of endorsing some candidates pre-nomination.  Why do we do that?  What led to that situation?  Good question, but part of it has to be that our candidates lack public notoriety, by and large, to start with.  The DNC isn't afraid that no one will have heard of Hillary or Bernie prior to their convention.  
So, what is it that actually makes us appear unserious?  First, focusing disproportionate time and effort on a ludicrous race (that is, the Presidency).  Second, unlike other parties, making ourselves the center of public attention for our candidates.  Third, being involved in the process in a way that would force us to treat people with boots on their heads as serious candidates, except that the fellow with a boot on his head would rather associate himself with a party that has more elected officials.  Fourth, operating as a party while not emphasizing winning elections where we can and putting our members into public office in order to move public policy in the direction desired by our donors.  Fifth, failing to attract enough qualified, serious candidates for many offices (that is, for winnable offices).  The problem is never who is seeking the nomination, it is who is not seeking it, and the fact that we have many vying for our nomination for the Presidency yet go looking for candidates for municipal and state legislative office, and often don't find any speaks volumes.
We can't solve any of that by involving the LNC in the nomination process, but we can make it worse.  I also consider it just plain mistaken for the LNC to interfere, just as I don't think the RNC or DNC should interfere in their processes.  They have rules that set up the nomination fight, and they should provide needed resources, arrange the convention, and otherwise stay out of the way.  I say the same about us.  We have nothing to gain by attempting to give the LNC the power to disqualify candidates from the nomination or otherwise to interfere in the nomination process.  You ask how we can fix our system without infringing on rights, and my answer is that the LNC can take itself out of the process, not list some candidates on the website, not point to candidates' websites, and let the market decide which candidates succeed.  We can let the candidates figure out getting attention and appealing to delegates on their own until the nomination is decided.  That's my suggestion.
Joshua A. KatzWestbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat)
On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 2:45 PM, Kevin Ludlow <ludlow at gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for the thoughtful response, Josh.

A couple of quick thoughts:

1) I've owned a software firm that build data-driven sites and web-based interfaces (think of banking websites) for about 10 years and have been doing that line of work professionally for about 17 or 18 years now.  I don't know if I'm an expert, but I get to bill like one.  The caveat I would like to point out is that the two sites I recently took through this process were NOT clients of mine.  If they had been clients we would have moved much faster.  They are non-profits of which I serve on the board of directors and my time is entirely voluntary (just like this board).  I make the distinction because even though both are voluntary, we managed to accomplish the process in less than 2 months for both of them.  Professionally speaking, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever we have not accomplished this.  It would be trivial for any professional firm to knock this out.  The bottleneck is without a doubt our board (and I suspect our general timidity to change).

I want to make the motion because even if it gets shot down, at least I can say it was made.  If the IT committee wants to trump me on this then by all means.  I'm not looking for the glory of orchestrating it.  I'm just looking to serve my role as a representative and make at least some effort to correct this glaring embarrassment we refer to as our website.  I am pretty comfortable in saying that the leadership of the states I represent would largely back that notion.

2) Like I wrote, I don't have a good way to accomplish it and am asking for the body's help.  If the other 25 members on this body think it's a non-issue and that our candidates should be permitted to play dress up on the websites that we point people to, then I suppose I'm just outnumbered.   I have found that this party is more interested in preserving the rights of people to do these things more than preserving the party itself.  To your statement that if we made a rule whereby all male candidates had to wear a tie and somebody tied it around their head, I would opt to disqualify this person immediately.  Any reasonable person would opt to disqualify this person.  Such nonsense wouldn't fly in any other organization.  I can't understand why it would fly in ours.  The LP is a private party.  It is privately governed.  Within the confines of the law, we can discriminate as much or as little as we'd like.

All I am really able to conclude is that we take that to mean anyone can do anything they want to and we just have to tolerate it.  The LP has freedom of association.  We hold this dearly.  We should not be associating with clowns and other such people who cannot take their role seriously.  Such people want the benefit of saying that they are being represented by the LP.  What benefit does the LP get from them?  

Barring better solutions, I'll still happily make the motion and let it get voted 16-1, but I really hope at least someone on our team sees the problem with our system and is interested to suggest how we can change it without it being seen as infringing on someone else.

-Kevin

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 1:01 PM, Joshua Katz <planning4liberty at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Kevin.  I feel a bit odd that I get to respond to this in the early afternoon because work is canceled today.  It makes me feel like a young kid (I know, I look like one too, thanks in advance for that) to have a "snow day."  In fact, not only is work canceled, but so is government, in that my Planning Commission meeting tonight is canceled.  Each day that the legislature is not in session is one day less when each person is imperiled.  I kid - mostly...
Anyway, on to your points.
1.  I don't claim to be an expert on websites.  Neither are any of us, so far as I know.  I think you are the closest, and I don't know if you'd call yourself an expert.  As I suggested about messaging the other day, that's only a problem if we, for some odd reason, abandon being a board and, instead, decide to things we were not elected to do and are not qualified to do - in this case, web design.  If you tell me the website is no good, fine, I'll believe you.  Since we don't have a web-developer on staff, I agree, we should hire a firm to update it.  I think the money is present in plenty of lines - you could use advertising, or IT, or outreach, or probably a few others.  (If by some chance you're wrong, presumably a third party web designer would say "hey, what you have looks good" and collect a small fee.)  
The only parliamentary roadblock I can see is that this matter may be in the hand of the IT committee.  The remedy to that is a motion to remove it from their hand.  That motion would, I think, require a 2/3 vote, or a majority vote of the LNC, or a majority if the deadline for a report was missed (this might be the case) or a majority if made during a report of the committee.  I would agree that something seems off if you took your clients through this process in 2 months and we have not achieved it in 18 or so months.  Perhaps someone from the IT committee can explain what went wrong.
2.  I agree that this party suffers from a credibility problem, but I do not think it comes from our Presidential candidates.  It is simply not the case, in my experience, that any large number of people are rejecting the LP because of who seeks our nomination.  Sometimes a candidate seeking our nomination receives a lot of media attention, which could have that effect, but it's relatively rare.  I think we're locating the problem in the wrong place.  Think of candidates seeking our nomination as job-seekers.  We don't judge Microsoft on the basis of who sends applications in when an opening is advertised.  
That aside, I disagree that the LNC has the right or the responsibility to govern our candidates.  Most of us point to the RNC or DNC interfering in their nomination processes as examples of what is wrong with those parties, and I think we're right to do so.  The nomination is made by the convention, and this board has no right, and hence no obligation, to interfere with a decision by a higher authority (the delegates).  This is why, in my view, the bylaws give us no power over nominations.  (The LNC does have some power after the nomination, but not before.)  
What we can control is our own role.  For instance, the chair has given staff instructions on listing candidates on our website:  to be listed, candidates must have a website, have filed with the FEC (or refused to do so), have a photo, meet Constitutional requirements to be President, and meet LP requirements to be our nominee.  I've previously mentioned my unease with this specific set of requirements, in particular that failing to file would be a reason to not list some candidates, while others who have not filed can still be listed, my point being that this list fails to be objective enough, in my view.  The LNC could certainly supersede this and substitute our own requirements for listing.  We could also, as we have done in the past, simply not list candidates, and not get involved in the perception that some candidates have our blessing (which is not what we do when we have requirements, but it appears that way to some).  
In fact, to the extent that this is an issue for our credibility, I would suggest it is such precisely because of the ways we have gotten involved.  Democrats.org does not maintain a listing of candidates; it maintains a list of Republican candidates.  Here is a small sample of the candidates seeking the Democratic nomination:  Forrest Gump, Larry Ellis Ealy, Anus The Goat, Barack Obama Mandela, Vermin Supreme.  GOP.com, on the other hand, has an article explaining their nomination process, a straw-poll (with no claim that the list there is exhaustive), and, oddly, a main link to an attack page on Hillary Clinton.  Here are some Republican candidates:  Turk Yoleninetimes Fratterson, Adam Leili, Lucy Chimi Lilpup, Donald Trump.  
Does anyone think that the Democratic Party isn't serious because the DNC doesn't tell Vermin Supreme to get that boot off his head?  The Democratic Party just doesn't play that game, and perhaps we shouldn't either.  Our choices are to use objective criteria, list no one, or to list anyone who wants to be listed.  I don't like the latter, and the former is hard to use to capture what is meant.  The DNC and RNC, in fact, simply sanction debates, but do not conduct them themselves.  There are criteria set for those, and one could reasonably trace them back to the parties for giving their sanction.  We have an advantage in that we don't sanction debates; there is one held at the convention, but that is not an LNC production.  This is also probably a good thing.  They use popularity; we are engaged in two lawsuits challenging the use of popularity as a cut-off for debate inclusion because debate inclusion is what lets candidates get popular.  We'd be stuck if we had to set criteria for that, too - not because we're mean, but because we want to give candidates a fair shake without letting anyone who feels like it get in the way.
If, like the Democrats and Republicans, you don't want the LP judged by who seeks its nomination, and I think that's fair, in my mind, the solution for the LNC to be less involved with the selection of a nominee, not more.  
Failing that, we could establish, as I said, different rules for being listed on our site, but we absolutely could not, and should not, set up rules for who may be nominated.  We could say that they need photos with ties, for instance - and then someone will come forward with a tie wrapped around their head.  We could say that their website needs to be professional, and then we'll have someone submit a link to us for their assassination services.  Why not, instead, trust the market at least as much as the Democrats and Republicans do, and trust our candidates to find our delegates themselves, campaign for themselves, and not feel the need for the LNC to promote candidates, cull the herd, or involve ourselves in any way, other than, as Mr. Wiener previously suggested, circulating a contract and letting delegates know who has signed it prior to the convention?  That seems perfectly legitimate, as the party has an interest in making a good agreement and having it done quickly.  

Joshua A. KatzWestbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat)
On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 1:08 PM, Kevin Ludlow <ludlow at gmail.com> wrote:

All:

I'm going to guess that I lack the ability to craft these motions in a way that will satisfy the nuances of our process.  I don't think this makes them any less relevant or necessary; I think it just illustrates that I'm not as good at politics as many of you are.  So with that, I would like to ask for some help - publicly in this discussion thread - about how we can address these.

1) Our website is a joke.  I mean a real, horrible, laughable, "maybe it's 1996 and the www portion of the internet has just been unleashed" joke.  It's got ridiculous internal ads all over it.  It's terribly organized.  It uses bad images.  It has an outdated font, not great font colors, and antiquated font-spacing and sizing.  It barely functions on mobile devices.  It's full of information it doesn't need to have.  It conveys that we're not a serious organization.

As I mentioned to some of you in previous months when discussing this, I just took two non-profits I work with from start to finish with new websites.  I facilitated the conversations with multiple 3rd party vendors, selected one within days, created the deadlines for them, and then worked as the point of contact to ensure they were built, tested, and rolled out.  Both of these from start to finish took less than 2 months.  One was $15,000, the other was about $12,000.  We have we not been able to do that in 24 months?

This can be done and it should be done.  It is incredibly simple.  We could pay for it with so many different budget strategies I don't even know where to begin.  How can we accomplish this?  How would THIS body like to put it on the agenda?

If the solution is to spend more time talking about the details then I'm not interested and I'll just proceed with my original motion.  We are supposed to be a high-level governing body.  How do we allocate $20k and give this to a 3rd party to have it built?

2) It's bad enough that we are excluded from most media discussion.  I commended Nick on his on-camera interview a few weeks back.  It was great.  Unfortunately such interviews only happen once in a Blue Moon.  My point being that we are not taken seriously.  We are neither seen as a threat to other parties nor much of an beacon to voters angry with the two parties.

Derrick Michael Reid appears to be dressed in a union soldier costume on his website.  ...which is only slightly better than if he appeared to be dressed as a confederate soldier.  Ms. Sterling's headshot isn't even a real proportion.  It's actually stretched tall on our site and on her own website.

I really have no idea what the language needs to be to correct this kind of behavior, but I firmly believe that the LNC has both the right and the responsibility to govern our candidates.  They serve to provide an impression of our party.  Most of my friends are not Libertarians (few are very politically engaged at all).  When they see many of our candidates, they actually laugh out loud.  I hear this commonly from people.  Yes it's anecdotal, but this is a subjective matter and therefore relevant.  I cannot imagine any of you can take some of these candidates seriously.  This presents a even worse PR problem for the LP than it already has.

I realize everyone is paranoid that creating rules will allow us to remove people who are unpopular (Austin Peterson for example) which is not at all my intent.  So you guys tell me, from the point of view of living in the real world, the one that has newspapers, and media stories, and where PR matters and people think with their emotions and don't philosophize all day, how do we fix these two specific problems that I listed and ensure that this body has a process in place for addressing it in the future?

I would be happy with the LNC making a motion directing Ms. Sterling to provide a proper headshot and to Mr. Reid altering the content of his website consistent with the professionalism that we should be pushing for.

Am I really the only person on our board who has a problem with these things?

Thanks very much.
Kevin Ludlow
Region 7 Rep

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 11:04 AM, Kevin Ludlow <ludlow at gmail.com> wrote:

Happy to do that, Sam. 
Is the intent to provide the specific motion to the group? I thought all I was asking for was time on the agenda thus allowing me time to present a Motion at the meeting. 
If I need to or it is strongly suggested that I provide motions then I can do so now.  I figured they would get amended anyways in session so the broad idea would suffice. 
Kevin 

On Monday, February 8, 2016, Sam Goldstein <goldsteinatlarge at gmail.com> wrote:

Kevin,
You might want to develop your ideas into formal motions to give the committee a basis of discussion in your time allotments rather than just opened ended ramblings.
Sam
On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 11:49 AM, Kevin Ludlow <ludlow at gmail.com> wrote:

Perfect.

Thanks guys.  I'd like to have the following two items put on the agenda:

1) I would like 30 minutes to discuss allocating $20,000 for the purpose hiring an outside software firm to redesign and launch the lp.org website.  I would note that if we took action on this on February 20th, a fully functional site could be in place 4-6 weeks before the National Convention.

2) I would like 20 minutes to discuss creating stricter standards for our presidential candidates.  Namely, I would like to make it a requirement that our candidates submit a professional headshot, bio, and website before being permitted to be considered a nominee of the Libertarian Party.  I would also like to introduce a motion whereby the LNC can vote in 2/3rd majority to remove any candidate from the nomination process based upon subjective criteria including, but not limited to, their professional demeanor, their headshot, and/or their candidate website (or lack thereof one). (and yes, I'm referring to the absurdity that is Totaliarian Democracy, although Ms. Sterling isn't doing us any favors either). 

That's all.

Thank you.
Kevin

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 10:31 AM, Sam Goldstein <goldsteinatlarge at gmail.com> wrote:

But be aware that motions submitted in advance have different rules/priorities than motions submitted without prior notice.
Sam
On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 11:28 AM, Nicholas Sarwark <chair at lp.org> wrote:

Kevin,

If you (or any other LNC member) would like items added to the agenda,
just send me an email with the topic and the time requested.  It is
often advisable to send a motion out ahead of time to the LNC Business
list so people have time to consider it before the meeting, but it's
also in order to make a motion at the meeting.

-Nick

On Mon, Feb 8, 2016 at 1:54 AM, Kevin Ludlow <ludlow at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mr. Chair,
>
> Could you (or staff) let me know when would be the appropriate time for me
> to request items on our upcoming Phoenix agenda.  I have a few topics that I
> would like to have come up for discussion and potentially a vote.
>
> Do I need to have motions distributed in advance of the meeting or can I
> present these in Phoenix?
>
> Thanks very much!
> Kevin
> LNC Region 7 Rep
>
> --
> ========================================================
> Kevin Ludlow
> 512-773-3968
> http://www.kevinludlow.com/
>
>
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