<div dir="ltr">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.<div><br></div><div>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.)</div><div><br></div><div>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. </div><div><br></div><div>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.</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br clear="all"><div><div class="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr">Joshua A. Katz<div>Westbrook CT Planning Commission (L in R seat)</div></div></div></div>
<br><div class="gmail_quote">On Wed, Aug 5, 2015 at 8:07 AM, Roland Riemers <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:riemers@yahoo.com" target="_blank">riemers@yahoo.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div style="color:#000;background-color:#fff;font-family:HelveticaNeue,Helvetica Neue,Helvetica,Arial,Lucida Grande,sans-serif;font-size:16px"><div><span>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?. </span></div><div><span><br></span></div><div><span>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?</span></div><div><span><br></span></div><div dir="ltr"><span>Roland Riemers of ND</span></div><div><span><br></span></div><div><br></div> </div></div><br>_______________________________________________<br>
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