<div dir="ltr"><div style="font-size:11px;text-align:left;color:rgb(0,0,0)"><div><span style="font-size:medium">This
is a heads-up to the LNC that I expect to shortly be asking for
co-sponsors for an email ballot to immediately relocate our headquarters
to North Dakota. This matter is extremely urgent, for the following
reasons:</span></div></div><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><br></div>You
may already have read on Twitter the sad news that Wyoming Knott passed
away early this morning, after she fell 60 feet from the top of a
fracking drilling rig. Wyoming Knott is of course better known as the
"North Dakota Fracking Queen" and was an ardent advocate for personal
liberties. She was an uncompromising individual who demanded total
freedom from any state interference in the booming fracking industry.
She will be sorely missed, and our heartfelt condolences go out to her
family and friends and the entire fracking community.<br><br></div>Back
in 2003, Ms. Knott apparently altered her will to bequeath a quarter of
her estate to the Libertarian Party. At the time her estate consisted
primarily of undeveloped land near Williston, North Dakota worth an
estimated $375,000. A quarter of that ($93,750) was certainly a
generous amount even back then. Today, as a consequence of development
of the Bakken Shale Formation which underlies it, that land has
appreciated enormously, with a November, 2014 appraisal coming in at
just over $6 billion. That would put the value of her bequest to the
Libertarian Party at $1.5 billion, although that may have since declined
to about $900 million due to the drop in oil prices.<br><br></div>However,
Ms. Knott detested everything connected with Washington, D.C.,
including the fact that the LP's office was located there. So she added
a codicil to that bequest that it would only be effective if the
Libertarian Party's office was located in North Dakota, which to her
represented the cultural and ideological opposite of Washington, D.C.
She believed that removing the Libertarian Party from the center of
government corruption would help it avoid the inevitable rot.<br><br></div>One
possibility is that we could challenge that condition in court. But
let's be realistic. Regardless of whether the eventual value is $1.5
billion or $900 million or somewhere in between, there will be scores of
lawyers crawling out of the woodwork, anxious to do everything possible
to deny us that bequest, if they can cobble together even the slightest
pretext. So the sooner we can move our headquarters to North Dakota to
prove we are complying with her codicil, the better.<br><br></div>Again,
time is of the essence. If all LNC members immediately vote on the
upcoming email ballot, we ought to be able to complete it by the end of
today. In the meantime, our Executive Director can fly to North Dakota
and rent a temporary office to get us started, until we can construct a
major new high-rise office building. (It's been suggested that it be
named the Wyoming Knott Memorial Office Building, and my response is
"why not"?). If all this gets finished today (on the same day as her
death, April 1, 2015) I think it will greatly strengthen our legal
position.<br><br></div>Daniel Wiener</div></div>