Meeting of 14 April, 2018

Minutes for April 14, 2018 Meeting of the Libertarian Party of San Francisco taken by Aubrey Freedman

Location: San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St., Sycip Conf. Room (4th floor)

Attendees:  Nick Smith (Chair), Rebecca Lau (Vice Chair), Aubrey Freedman (Secretary), Phil Berg, Chris Bowman (guest), Michael Denny, Richie Greenberg (guest), Randy Li (guest), Starchild, Samuel Tan (guest), and Ian Todd (guest).

Introductions:  Randy is attending in the hope of learning something new.  Richie is running for Mayor of San Francisco.  Sam works with Nick, so now we know there are at least two Libertarians at YouTube.  Chris has been active with the GOP for decades and is currently working on the gas tax repeal petition (must be mailed off by Monday) and the groundwater blending with drinking water issue on the westside.    

Chair’s Report:  Nick and Rebecca went to a fundraiser last week-end for Tim Ferreira, who is running as a Libertarian for Lieutenant Governor.  Tim has put up $2,000 of his own money and is running an active campaign, and Nick felt he is worth endorsing.  Nick and Rebecca also visited a new high school called the Academy of Thought & Industry, which is being started by Michael Strong, who is very Libertarian-oriented and a possible additional panelist for our “Tax Day” panel discussion.  On the Zoltan event which occurred right after last month’s meeting, Nick reported that the crew from NBC Nightline was there, but he hasn’t heard anything from them as to broadcasting their coverage of the event.  Nick reported that the Top Two signature collecting period ends on April 23, when each county coordinator turns in their signed petitions to their county registrar’s office.  He is not too hopeful that enough signatures were obtained to make the state ballot.  He mentioned about picking next month’s meeting location (Phil’s apartment or the library), but nothing conclusive was decided.     

 Vice Chair’s Report:  Aside from the events mentioned above, Rebecca attended an event at Foresight Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which is run by libertarian Christine Peterson.  She continues to keep up our social media posting something new every day on Facebook.  She posted something recently on the state ballot measure about splitting California up into three states, and it got quite a bit of discussion. 

Treasurer’s Report:  In Jawj’s absence Nick reported that our coffers still look good:  $5,167.56 in our credit union account and $1,474.20 in our PayPal account for a total of $6,641.76.  That’s after the $900.00 for our paid arguments for the June election was paid out. 

Secretary’s Report:  Aubrey reported that membership is unchanged from last month with 21 lifetime members and 26 regular, currently paid-up members, for a total of 47.  He again noted that the party is offering two-year memberships now, and more members are choosing that option. 

Newsletter Report:  Aubrey reported that the April newsletter just went out directly from the website in one email blast to 366 subscribers.  Nick redesigned the format to add graphics and connected it directly to our website with links to drive more traffic there.  Sending it out from the website via Mailchimp one gets to see the results:  93 opened the email (so far) which is about 26% and there were 14 click throughs to our website.  No bounces so far.  Aubrey encouraged anyone who feels moved on an issue to contribute an article to the newsletter and website, as long as it’s liberty-oriented.

Tax Day Panel Discussion:  Aubrey reported that things are moving along for the panel discussion on school choice.  He received a positive response right away when he contacted Carol Kocivar, a past President of the California State PTA, who will present the case against school choice.  She has been very responsive with emails back and forth trying to nail down a date, so Aubrey is very confident we have her as a panelist.  The other panelist is Vicki Alger from the Independent Institute who will present for school choice.  Aubrey met Carol today when he presented against Prop C (new tax on commercial landlords for early child care) at the 2nd District PTA.  Nick and Rebecca have tentatively invited Mike, the founder of the Academy of Thought and Industry, to be an additional panelist too since he is actual teacher and could add another perspective to the discussion.  If he is added, Aubrey felt this will make the panel unbalanced in favor of school choice and will scare away “the other side,” so he will contact Josephine Zhao, who he also met at the 2nd District PTA today, because she’s running for the school board and perhaps she would be interested in joining the panel.  Four panelists, rather than the usual two, could make the panel even more interesting and pull in a bigger audience this year.  Aubrey is still working on the dates, which are mostly for June, and Rebecca attends a lot of panels and noted that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings are popular for folks after work, so Aubrey is now working on mid-week dates with the panelists.  He is also looking at venues like the Main Library, the Jewish Community Center, and the Mechanics Institute, but the date has to be nailed down first.  

Tax Day Event with LP San Mateo:  There have been some emails regarding ideas for a rally or presence at public places like post offices to coincide with Tax Day on April 17, but so far nothing definite.  If we do anything at all, it will be with the LP San Mateo County folks. 

 Ballot Arguments:  We finished up the two remaining ballot measures that we did not cover for the Voters Handbook that were not that as interesting from a Libertarian viewpoint.  Prop B is a charter amendment that would make appointed members of boards and commissions give up their positions once they filed for running for state or local elective office.  This would level the playing field so that folks serving in these government positions would not get the unfair advantage similar to being an incumbent over an outsider.  London Breed giving up the temporary Mayor’s job while she is running for Mayor is a good example of how the measure would work.  We will support this measure..  Prop I is a non-binding symbolic measure declaring The City will not try to lure any professional sports team already established in another community to The City.  Sports teams should be free to relocate any time as they choose, but The City should not be in the business of sports at all, so we can easily support this one.  We also discussed mailing out a postcard of our recommendations, as we have done in the past, and running ads in local neighborhood newspapers or online ads.  Chris Bowman pointed out that the ballots go out on May 7, and many folks vote early, so if we’re going to try and influence folks on how to vote, we need to get the postcard and ads done very soon.  He also advised to perhaps mail our postcard to all 2,800 registered Libertarians in The City, rather than just the high-propensity Libertarian voters that we usually send the postcard to. 

 

Endorsements:  The fundraiser for Tim Ferreira was briefly mentioned.  Nick supports him, but since the LPSF hasn’t vetted Tim, there would be no point for us endorsing him at this point.  Nick mentioned that Ted Brown is resigning as state Chair at the state convention at the end of the month due to him moving to Arizona, and Mimi Robson and Robert Imhoff are both vying for that position.  The consensus was that both are great activists, but not so sure on their philosophical differences.  No endorsement for either at this point, though Starchild prefers Mimi.  Ali Sarsak is running for District 10 as a State Senator and he presented at the LP Santa Clara meeting—they didn’t care for him and will not be endorsing him at all. 

 

Activist Reports:  Time was running short, so we only spent a few minutes on this segment.  Aubrey presented against props A and F before the Executive Committee of the Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods and against C before the 2th District PTA.  Phil continues his one-man battle to talk economic sense to whoever will listen when he takes Lyft.  He reported that one Lyft driver amazingly mentioned The “F” (Fed) Word in a not positive way even before Phil started his ranting.  Aside from organizing the Zoltan event with Rebecca, Nick went to a Lincoln Network (mixes technology with liberty) event.

Guest Speaker – Sean Roberts from the Open Data Initiative:  This is the sixth start-up for Sean.  Open Data Initiative is a non-profit and currently works under the wings of Lincoln Network.  The company works mainly with state government agencies right now trying to get them to post their financial data more transparently.  With the Data Act, state governments are passing laws that force their bureaucracies to be more transparent.  Ohio is currently the most successful of any state in publishing their data with 1,200 cities posting financial data, but Indiana is giving Ohio a good run for its money because its transparency has been improving.  He noted that all managements tend to have a lot of animosity towards open source data.  Sean also noted that many government agencies are doing a decent job of posting the data, but the quality of the data is lacking because it tends to be in PDF format, so it’s hard to find the information one needs.  California rates poorly when it comes to data transparency because the bureaucracies are all using different financial systems.  One concern was raised about the tone of the wording for the data collected that it not be biased in favor of more government.  Another question was raised about how the public will be able to see how recipients of government largesse spend the money they receive.  Sean talked about how politics can affect the success of making government data more accessible and readable because if the open data process isn’t implemented in a fundamental way with a designated data board or officer, then the next administration might just drop the whole project.  Most important, the data must be readable and make sense to the public. 

Announcements:

April 25 (Wednesday) Conscious Capitalism – Exploring Purpose in the South Bay
6:00 PM – 8:30 PM – Faultline Brewing Company at 1235 Oakmead Parkway in Sunnyvale
https://www.facebook.com/events/383699162105590/

April 25 (Wednesday) Tim Draper on How Blockchain Will Change the World
Geology Corner at Stanford
https://www.facebook.com/events/211471526277236/

April 27-29 (Friday – Sunday) Libertarian Party of California Annual Convention
Long Beach Marriott
https://ca.lp.org/convention/

April 28 (Saturday) JSA Norcal Spring State Convention – Helpers still needed!
3:45 PM – 5:45 PM -- Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport – 1333 Bayshore Highway in Burlingame
http://jsa.org/conventions/spring-state/

April 28 (Saturday) YAL San Francisco Spring Summit
5001 Great America Parkway in Santa Clara
https://yaliberty.org/summits/

April 30 (Monday) Wildstar Meets YAL of De Anza College
6:00 PM – 8:00 PM -  De Anza College – 21250 Stevens Creek Blvd in Cupertino
https://www.facebook.com/events/163646147787378/

May 8 (Tuesday) Lawrence McQuillan – California’s Public Pension Crisis and Why It Matters to You
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM - Silicon Valley Liberty Forum – 432 Stierlin Road in Mountain View
http://www.theconservativeforum.com/speakers/lawrence-mcquillan-californias-public-pension-crisis-and-why-it-matters-to-you

May 19 (Saturday) Mises Institute Seminar on the Future of Money
10:00 AM – 1:00 PM – *JW Marriott San Francisco Union Square at 515 Mason Street
https://mises.org/events/san-francisco-seminar-future-money