Meeting of 13 June, 2009

Minutes of the LPSF Meeting of June 13^th, 2009

 

Members Present: Ron Getty (Vice-Chair) presiding, Francoise Fielding (Secretary) recording, Rob Power (Chair) by speakerphone, Les Mangus, Michael Edelstein, Marcy Berry, Richard Winger, Starchild (arrived at 4:42 pm)

 

New Agenda Items:  

 

Ron sent the Activists’ list a Gandhi quote: “You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her all soul”.

Michael Edelstein suggests that we discuss way we can resist evil.

 

Officer’s Reports:

 

• Treasurer:

Marcy Berry reported that the balance last month was $2,385.07. We received a check from Leslie Mangus last month of which $55 (forwarded to the LPCA) was for membership and $145 was a donation. We spent $87.79 on 300 Left vs Right brochures. We received a check for $270 from the LPCA for dues-sharing. We received a check for $55 from S. Husband for membership renewal (forwarded to the LPCA) and we spent $48.90 on this month’s outreach mailing. There is $60.64 in petty cash. The balance remaining as of this month is $2,724.02.

 

• Secretary:

            Francoise Fielding had nothing to report.

            The Minutes of  the Meeting of May 9^th, 2009 were approved.

 

• Vice Chair:

Ron Getty reported that our outreach effort was finally happening as of this meeting.

            He also said that Rob Power will be doing a new postcard mailing to lapsed      members (going out in June for the July meeting).

 

• Chair:

            Rob Power (on speakerphone) reported that the postcards have not gone out yet          because he has been sick but will soon because he wants to use the postcards to recruit for the Pride Parade.

Rob said he just found out that the National Platform Committee (of which he is a member) will be meeting in Las Vegas at the same time as our December meeting. Consequently Rob will not be able to preside at the meeting and the conference room will not be available. We need to decide what we want to do re location of the meeting.

Rob also reported that Jeff Orrock from LP of Colorado is organizing Vans Warped Tour.  It is a lollapalooza-type thing scheduled for the same week-end as San Francisco Pride. (Pier 30 at 11am Saturday June 27^th). This hurts his ability to get volunteers but if we can volunteer or find volunteers for Saturday 10 am we should get to him asap.

 

Committee Reports

 

Outreach and Newsletter:

• No Newsletter report: Starchild was absent
• Marcy reported that she and Starchild did a table at the School of the Arts. Only one person signed up but Marcy thought it was worthwhile because people stop by and talk and it establishes us as a presence.
• Michael reported that he got a call on the LPSF phone line from Ryan Flynn of Bloomberg news. Ryan wanted to know our opinion on San Francisco’s new recycling law. Michael said: “We are Libertarians and don’t think people should be told where to put garbage unless it hits people on their heads”. Michael wanted to know whether Rob prefers questions be forwarded to him. Rob’s opinion is that Michael can say what he likes and then, for a formal quote, have the person email [email protected].

 

Website and Database:

No report.

 

Membership and Fundraising:

No report

 

Initiatives:

Ron Getty reported that on the November ballot there are three proposed rent laws of one kind or another in nature. All are anti-landlord and hit small property owners the heaviest. The Mayor most likely would veto them which would require a Board over-ride vote of 7 out of 11.

 

Social Networking: No report. Jeremy Linden was absent.

 

Announcements:

 

• Michael Edelstein brought some articles from the Foundation for Economic Education and the Independent Institute and wanted to know if anyone was interested. There were no takers.
• Michael Edelstein also invited people to join him for dinner at the Cantonese restaurant near Rob’s. The event was cancelled because no one could come.
• Michael Edelstein said that Jeremy Linden had volunteered to help people with social networking. Michael has been unable to get in touch with Jeremy and asked if anyone knows his current email. Rob says that Michael has the correct one.
• Rob would like anyone who can make it to go to the ACLU “Just Social” event on June 18^th at Elixir (http://www.aclunc.org/action/events/just.social.shtml)

 

Old Business

 

Top-two primary:

We are against it because wouldn’t benefit us. It is detrimental to all third parties. The Republicans would probably fight it  because the top two could be Democrats.

Richard Winger says the Democrats are against it too. When Burton was elected he said that among his first priorities would be to try to defeat it. This thing wrecks parties. It is like non-partisan elections.

Democrats like the present system because only Democrats get to determine who Democrats nominate. Top two is like an open primary and closed general election.

In Wahington, the only state which has enacted this, there are no third parties on the ballot. Since Schwarznegger has less prestige than when he was first elected even the Chronicle may not endorse it.

We have time to deal with this since it is not scheduled for the ballot until June 2010.

 

Perry Political Software: 

Marcy Berry doesn’t understand what extra benefit we would get from this. Ron Getty can’t “massage” the new disk we got from the Elections Department. Marcy says she used Microsoft Access. Ron used Excel and says that doesn’t work. Rob Power says if it is a CSV (comma separated values), it can be opened in Excel. Rob says that the Perry political software would be useful when we are gathering signatures to get a candidate on the ballot  because it sets up the information by precinct and even by side of the street. A few years ago Bryce set s/t up for us with maps and it was difficult.

It was decided that we can wait for next year to decide on this.

 

New Business:

 

SF Pride Booth/Parade:

Mike Acree and Rob Power attended monitor training on Wednesday night, so we have two trained monitors. We have volunteers (Marcy and Francoise) to “man” the booth on Sunday morning during the parade. We need volunteers for Saturday.

We have raised $150 of the $300 it costs to cover our participation in the event. We need another $150. Mike Acree will print more of the pink GLBT pink brochures.

To get volunteers for the booth and the march Rob will put up a notice on the website, on the postcard he is about to send out, and send an email to the Activist and Discuss lists.

 

Vans Warped Tour:

There will be a problem in getting enough people because of the conflict with Pride. 

We will send out a notice on lpsf-discuss. Maybe we can get some people from the East Bay or some students from Berkeley.

 

Cover letter for future mailings:

Michael Edelstein and Starchild had suggestions for the cover letter. Michael says the changes are minor (for example: Thomas Jefferson was not really the first Libertarian). It was decided that they can make the suggested changes and send it to the lpsf-activists list no later than two weeks before the July meeting (ie. June 27^th).

 

Libertarian health care alternative plan

There has been some progress made in Congress to come up with an alternative to “Obamacare”. What is the Libertarian response? Michael Edelstein suggested that our next in meeting activism should be writing up a press release. Rob Power suggested that s/o come to the meeting with a draft of a press release and then the in-meeting activity would be correcting it. Ron Getty said he would draft something s/t based on his LTEs and bring it to the next meeting for review and discussion.

 

Activism for the next meeting:

The activity will be working on the health care press release.

 

At 4:05 pm the meeting concluded re the agenda items. It continued with respect to the in meeting activity of  sending out the outreach mailing.

 

Starchild arrived at 4:40 pm and requested that we reopen the meeting to discuss his proposed Surveillance brochure. A motion was made and agreed upon that Starchild will finalize the brochure and send it to the ExCom for approval. Rob is willing to help in reformatting it. If the ExCom approves the brochure, that will constitute authorization for $50 to be allocated to print the brochure