[Lnc-business] Motion to rescind

Fri Sep 23 04:17:57 EDT 2016

	I've interspersed below some responses to Arvin's message...

On Sep 22, 2016, at 10:38 PM, Arvin Vohra wrote:

> Hi All,
> 
> This motion to rescind is a bad strategy.
> 
> As LNC members, we often discuss issues of sensitivity, employment, strategy, and legality in executive (secret) sessions. That includes everything from employee salaries to legal and media strategy.

	When the Libertarian National Committee goes into a secret meeting, we hold a vote first. I proposed a motion for a similar up-or-down vote on the secrecy of this contract:

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Moved, that the National Party Agreement and Joint Fundraising Agreement documents signed by the LNC chair with the Johnson campaign not be disclosed beyond members of the LNC and staff who have agreed to this confidentiality until January 21, 2017, at which time the documents will become public unless the LNC votes prior to that date to extend the term of secrecy for some additional period of time.
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 	If you favor hiding the contents of the contract with the Johnson/Weld campaign from our membership until at least January 21, 2016, then I suggest you co-sponsor that motion (which appeared on the list September 17, 2016 6:21:13 AM PDT if you'd like to go back and find it in your emails in order to respond in that thread). 

	If secrecy is what you want, have the courage to openly vote for it!

> A contract with a high profile presidential campaign, in my view, falls into at least one, if not all, of those categories.

	Does it? Neither you nor I have seen it (unless you looked at it since we last spoke), so I'd say we don't know. The LNC also discusses things like strategy, media strategy, and so on openly here and in other venues, and it's my understanding we even tell the government which is run by Democrats and Republicans what our employees' salaries are in the form of FEC filings. I haven't seen any evidence these disclosures are hurting us, have you?

> What exactly do we hope to gain by announcing the details of this contract to the DNC and RNC?

• The moral authority to demand similar transparency from them and their candidates
• Greater accountability of the LP's leadership and presidential campaign by laying our guarantees to each other on the table in public view
• More sets of eyes to spot potential issues in the contract that ought to be addressed
• The institutional knowledge to enable future LNCs to write better contracts with future presidential campaigns instead of having to reinvent the wheel from scratch
• An environment in which we as LNC members can talk openly and freely instead of worrying about trying to remember what information we're supposed to conceal from others
• Avoiding the mistrust and rumors that secrecy frequently engenders
• Helping make the Libertarian Party's governance a model for the kind of open and transparent bottom-up governance we want to see practiced in society

> Why on earth would we announce the specifics of our new member outreach strategy, or our joint media strategy, to our opponents?

	Because our keeping stuff secret ultimately hurts our cause more than our being open helps theirs!

> If LNC members want to rescind the ability to sign the contract based on some strategic flaw, financial liability, or other reason, I'd be open to thoroughly consider that. But opposing a strategic document for being secret makes no sense. Strategies are supposed to be secret.

	This isn't about opposing the contract itself, only the secrecy provision. Rescinding the chair's authority to sign an agreement on our behalf, i.e. the LNC exercising that signing authority itself, doesn't mean we can't have an agreement.

	Again I have not yet seen any evidence that the contract is a "strategic document" containing "strategies" that it would hurt us for the Democrats or Republicans to know about.

> Even on the facebook team, we don't let new members see what we have scheduled. We don't want the old party facebook pages to know what's coming and create a counterstrategy. It seems that making a strategic document with the importance of this one open to the public would be a thousand times more unstrategic.

	I'd be curious to hear an example of a past LP Facebook campaign that was secretly planned, which you think would have been seriously impeded if "the other side" had gotten wind of it in advance. Perhaps you have a good example, but I'm having some difficulty imagining what it might look like. Would it be so bad to let the cartel parties follow our lead on Facebook? If they started being reactionary and counteracting us as a result of our not trying to keep our plans secret, we could always point out that's what they're doing. It seems to me that if some people who don't support us join our groups and spend time paying attention to what we're doing, boosting our hits and join numbers and so on, we should welcome that (just as we welcome, for instance, trade with countries like North Korea). Some of them may learn more appreciation for liberty through increased exposure to libertarian ideas.

> Our goal is to cut government to advance individual freedom, prosperity, and greatness. That does not necessitate our acting like the government we want. After, all, if we wanted the LNC to act like the ideal federal government, our job, and Nick's job, would not be to be open and transparent.
> 
> It would be to fire everyone and quit.

	That might be the ideal approach to the federal government from an anarchist perspective, but the Libertarian Party isn't an exclusively anarchist group. At the 1974 LP convention in Dallas, delegates adopted the informal "Dallas Accord", agreeing to leave the door open to either anarchy or minarchy (very limited government) as our end goal rather than specifying one or the other, with the noble aim of minimizing infighting on that issue until we have reduced the State down to a bare minimum and its continued existence in any form becomes an immediate, practical question. 

	When the blessed day arrives that the world is free in the eyes of most Libertarians from legal aggression that needs the active opposition of groups like ours, I personally hope those of us around then will quit our positions, lay off our employees, and disband the organization, rather than keeping the party in existence past the point of it having a clear mission or serving a useful purpose. But clearly we are not there yet!

	Until these desirable circumstances are attained, I see no contradiction in wanting the Libertarian Party to act like the ideal federal government by practicing, while we exist, the kind of openness and transparency that we want the U.S. federal government to practice while it exists. 

> I urge you to remember that strategy works when the other side doesn't know the strategy.

	Strategy can often work just as well when the other side does know the strategy. Knowing it is not the same thing as being in a position to do much about it. Strategies also can – and frequently should – be changed and revised as conditions change.

> This contract is open to every LNC member as long as they do not disclose the content, just like our employment contracts and executive meeting contents are.

	Is it? I want to see the contract, and am willing to agree to not knowingly disclose it if the LNC has voted to keep it secret, just as with the contents of our secret meetings, which I have agreed to keep secret on a case-by-case basis. 

	But if we do not have that vote for secrecy, our default condition should be openness and transparency, just as with our meetings.

Love & Liberty,
                                  ((( starchild )))
At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
                                (415) 625-FREE

> To be frank, I'd much rather the DNC or RNC know Wes's or Carla's salary, than to have them know the details of our joint strategy with the Johnson campaign.
> 
> I intend to vote against this motion.
> 
> -Arvin
> 
> -- 
> Arvin Vohra
> 
> www.VoteVohra.com
> VoteVohra at gmail.com
> (301) 320-3634
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