Libertarians Should Campaign on Our Issues

Discussion
1

Libertarians Should Campaign on Our Issues

I am in San Francisco now. Sorry I missed the Saturday meeting. I have been
watching TV here and I feel the San Francisco Libertarian Party is missing
some Golden Opportunities to get our issues across.

Because now is election time, the TV channels now are filled with ads for
and against the grocery tax. Proponents say the grocery tax will stop
children from smoking because they will not be able to afford cigarettes.
Opponents say there are already too many taxes.

Then there are those ads for and against affordable housing, those for or
against AirBnB, for and against Uber Drivers and so on.

We Libertarians have a clear view. We are against all taxation, especially
the grocery tax. We are against requirements that a certain percentage of
new housing be “affordable”. Let the builders built what they want. We are
in favor of AirBnB and Uber Drivers as citizens should be allowed to use
their homes and cars any way they see fit.

With all the slick ads appearing on TV, why are not our views being
presented?

I propose that we produce our own TV ads which I will pay for up to a
reasonable amount. We can have our most distinguished representative on the
Libertarian National Committee, Starchild, appear provided he is
appropriately dressed in a bikini and high heels, and if not available I
will appear myself as a spokesman for the Libetarian cause.

I have a video producer in New York City who produced 21 videos for my run
for US Congress and President. You can see them on youtube.com by searching
for Sam Sloan for President and Sam Sloan for Congress.

The only real cost will be the cost of broadcasting the ads on TV. My plan
is to run them a few times (I will pay for it) and then try to get fat cat
donors to play them frequently until election time thereby advancing the
Libertarian cause.

What do youse guys think about this?

Sam Sloan

2

Hello Sam,

I am forwarding your message to LPSF Chair Aubrey, since he is not involved with the Discussion List (he is too busy seeking opportunities to promote the LPSF with the little money we have).

That is extremely generous of you, Sam, to offer to pay for an ad. Yes, Starchild is terrific at presenting the Libertarian message, and so are you. I am saying this in spite of my looking at your "bikini and high heels" comment with an extremely jaundiced eye. Most voters do not respond favorably to bikini and high heels, and a wide percentage of voters is what any political ad would be aiming to reach.

Marcy

3

Thanks for thinking of me, Sam – like Marcy I appreciate your offer to pay for TV advertising, and am certainly willing to participate. I think we can be clever enough to use me in bikini and heels in a way that will get attention and not be seen in a negative light (Marcy may be forgetting all the positive coverage I got from the media at the LP national convention.)

  For instance, you could film me in bikini and heels (you are proposing to do the filming, I presume?) at the Superhero Street Fair next Saturday ( http://superherosf.com/ ) interviewing various other costumed individuals by asking their opinions of stuff like the grocery tax and attempts to restrict and extort money from the sharing economy that you mention, the city government's extortion of money from street fairs and festivals, the war on the poor, police abuse, out-of-control City Hall salaries/pensions, etc.

  We get some footage, use the best clips edited by your producers down to a minute or whatever length you want to pay for, slap on the LPSF's info, perhaps our election recommendations and a plug for Johnson/Weld, and voila!

Love & Liberty,
                               ((( starchild )))

4

Oy Starchild. Your description of "positive" is oh so different from mine. May I appear in the background with a sign with the name of my bookkeeping business, please?

Marcy

5

I'm thinking my Superhero character may be the "Sane Hatter™", possessing the superpower of being able to embarrass establishment politicians by asking inconvenient questions! I've got a big floppy cartoonish hat that'll do nicely. :slight_smile:

Love & Liberty,
                               ((( starchild )))

6

I'm embarrassed already :eyes:

Marcy

7

Only if you come up with an account-superhero personae and dress in character, e.g. men's grey suit, granny spectacles, etc. :wink:

  Actually, in all seriousness, I'm sure we could work you into this if you're interested. What do you think of the idea of being a sort of mime character like the silent half of Penn & Teller? As I ask people their opinions on the various outrages, you could be standing in the background making facial expressions of shock, anger, disgust, etc. :slight_smile:

Love & Liberty,
                               ((( starchild )))

8

Do you want to play an establishment politician? (No doing Willie Brown in blackface though, then I'd be embarrassed!)

Love & Liberty,
                                ((( starchild )))

9

Ha! How bout I play the average voter and run away screaming when I see you in you special Captain Crunch outfit? Would that work?

Marcy

10

No – People won't believe you're from San Francisco. :slight_smile:

11

You are wrong, my friend, tragically wrong, about who San Francisco voters are.

But sorry. I am committing the capital sin of being against something without providing alternatives.

Should the LPSF ever come into enough money to have a political television-type ad, I personally would like to see something on the line of what Sam had a couple of years ago. Sam walked around (in a business suit, but I would also be ok with working clothes THAT THE MAJORITY of folks wear), and pointed to an empty lot that could have been developed by private initiative. Very effective in my view.

Oh, everyone already knows my argument. You can't behave unusually and expect voters, the majority of whom see themselves as ordinary working people, to pay any positive attention to you. Now if all you want is to satisfy the press forever hungry for something peculiar they can obliquely denigrate, then yes, an ad featuring Captain Crunch in his underwear would be perfect.

Let me offer another example of my point. Trump is "unusual" by the ordinary political candidate standards, but his huge success so far in my view is due to his having many characteristics the average Joe can identify with-- he is close to his children, he works hard, he seems to treat his employees fairly, and he talks about jobs. Captain Crunch in his underwear? Not the same.

Marcy

12

One thing you have to learn and I came to know having had 21 of these ads
produced is the ads must be 30 seconds long.
At least that is the case in New York. I will time the ads here to see if
they are also 30 seconds.
Trying to link two of them together to produce a one minute ad does not
work well.
So we have to make a script and produce it tightly because every second
counts.
Sam Sloan

13

Oops. True. 30 seconds in the City Hall Plaza with City Hall and the homeless for background, pointing out a relatively small city like S.F. has a budget of $9.6 billion, with 30,000 employees mostly making astronomical salaries, and 25 proposals on the November ballot: Obscene!!

Marcy

14

Hi Sam, Starchild, Marcy, and All. Thanks, Sam, for your generous offer to
pay for the production costs and the initial running of the ad. That
sounds like a ton of money! I read the hilarious ideas being discussed
back and forth, and though entertaining, I would never endorse the idea of
using the LPSF name to run hilarious ads. We're still trying to be taken
seriously as a political party, and such antics would only set up us back
further. This is just like the almost naked guy dancing on the stage at
the national convention in Orlando. I think it hurt us, and I am not in
favor of such nonsense. I'm also thinking about the "Wicked Witch" video
that the John Dennis campaign ran a few years ago for his second run
against Pelosi. I found it to be totally hilarious and enjoyed it, but I
don't think it did much good for John's campaign.

If you were to make a video like the parking lot video or something else
creative but serious, then I would endorse the idea of using our name.
Otherwise you and Starchild can make the video as suggested and run the ads
but not use the LPSF name on any of it.

Thanks!
Aubrey

15

I want to thank everybody for their responses to my suggestion that we of
the Libertarian Party produce videos expressing our support or opposition
to the many ballot initiatives on the California ballots in the coming
election.
One person asked, "I hope you're joking about using Starchild in any
videos."
I wish to emphasize that I am not joking at all. I consider Starchild to be
the best or at least one of the best spokesperson that the Libertarian
Party has. He certainly attracts the most attention.
As to my suggestion that Starchild be dressed in a bikini and high heels,
that is just a suggestion as Starchild like any person has the right to
decide what he wears.
The thing that brought up my comment was revelations that Our Next
President (I hope I was being sarcastic) required some of his female
workers to wear shorter skirts and higher heels.
Regarding the ads I feel we should produce, I need to explain that the ads
must by TV rules and practices be 30 seconds in length, not more nor less.
Watching TV last night I found ads only 15 seconds in length, but it
appeared to me that in those cases there were two 15 second ads attached
together even though they were from different companies.
The problem is there are 24 propositions on the ballot in San Francisco
this year. Each of these propositions must be studied by us because it
often is not obvious which side the Libertarian Party should take. For
example, the most hotly contested proposals concerned "affordable housing".
We Libertarians oppose rules requiring builders to build within affordable
house guidelines. However, the question on the ballot is whether the
affording housing regulations should be modified and in what way. Each of
these 24 propositions will have to be studied by us before we can decide
what position to take.
Here is a list of the propositions so you can understand the severity of
the problem.

Proposition P: Bidding Rules for Affordable Housing Projects

Proposition U: Changing Affordable Housing Requirements for Private
Developments

Proposition C: Loans to Finance Acquisition and Rehabilitation of
Affordable Housing

Proposition O: Office Development in Candlestick Point and Hunters Point

Proposition X: Requirements for Changing the Use of Certain Properties

*Good government measures*

Proposition M: Affordable Housing and Development Commission

Proposition D: Vacancy Appointments and Letting Voters Elect District
Supervisors

Proposition E: Responsibility for the Maintenance of Street Trees

Proposition F: Youth Voting in Local Elections

Proposition G: Police Oversight and Accountability

Proposition H: Independent Public Advocate (Full disclosure, I’m managing
the Yes on H campaign)

Proposition L: Balancing MTA Appointments

Proposition N: Non-Citizen Voting in School Board Elections

Proposition R: Neighborhood Crime Unit

Proposition T: Restricting Gifts and Campaign Contributions from Lobbyists

*Money measures*

Proposition V: Tax on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages

Proposition A: School Bonds

Proposition B: City College
<http://www.sfexaminer.com/related-entities/?eid=116252&ename=City%20College&lang=en>
Parcel Tax

Proposition I: Funding for Seniors and Adults with Disabilities

Proposition J: Funding for Homelessness and Transportation

Proposition K: General Sales Tax

Proposition S: Allocation of Hotel Tax Funds to the Arts & Family Homeless
Services

Proposition W: Luxury Real Estate Tax to Fund Education

By the way, those of you who were not at the Libertarian National
Convention in Orlando probably do not realize that I was the person who
nominated Starchild for election to the Libertarian National Committee.
Starchild was out of the room when the call for nominations came and he had
not been planning to run this time. I knew that he would like to be on the
Libertarian National Committee again even though he was not planning to
run. I was even fearful that when Starchild returned to the room and found
out that he had been nominated he might withdraw his name. At the 2012
Libertarian National Convention in Las Vegas the two leading contenders
Mark Hinkle and Mark Rutherford had been eliminated under the strange rules
because of a tie vote. So, I nominated fellow chess player Chuck Moulton, a
popular person in the party who would almost certainly have been elected,
but he declined the nomination. So *Geoffrey J. Neale* who was not even
running got the spot. I was afraid that something like that would happen
again.

Fortunately, that did not happen and Starchild accepted my nomination of
him and was elected to the Libertarian National Committee.

Sam Sloan

16

Aubrey,

  It's not like the guy in the thong dancing on-stage at the LP convention at all. That was like a prank – he didn't offer any serious message. This is more like me dressing up at the Pride festival and attracting people to our booth.

  I think being "taken seriously" is an unhealthy obsession among some Libertarians – at least the fearful, conservative way this idea seems to get applied to politics. Sometimes I feel like some of you are living in a different world – a world where the Daily Show and Stephen Colbert don't exist, where the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence aren't big fundraisers who regularly appear with local politicians, where dogs and pigs are not elected mayors of towns, where candidates like Jesse Ventura and Donald Trump and Arnold Schwarzenegger never enjoyed much success, where Halloween has not become a huge national holiday around the custom of adults dressing up in wild costumes, superhero movies aren't huge box office smashes and there are no comic, anime, furry, sci-fi, and other conventions where tons of people put on all kinds of outfits, a world where I could never get elected to the Libertarian National Committee or twice garner the most votes in the SF high school "Youth Vote" mock election for school board, a world where politics are sartorially and emotionally stuck in 1955.

  Did you check out the Superhero Street Fair website – http://superherosf.com ? Thousands of voters and potential voters who enjoy dressing up in creative and sexy costumes or appreciate others who do.

Love & Liberty,
                               ((( starchild )))

17

I will say one thing only because I have been arguing the same point for 13 years: you and I both ran for office in 2002. I also received the Youth Vote. But I also revived more votes from general voters than you did.

Marcy

18

Marcy,

  It would have been quite surprising if you hadn't gotten more votes that year than I did, Marcy. Each of us was running against five other opponents, but you were running for a citywide office (community college board) in which people could vote for up to 3 candidates and the top vote-getter got 98,652 votes, whereas I was running for supervisor in a single district where the top vote-getter got only 9,820 votes (see http://sfgov.org/elections/results-summary-nov-2002).

Love & Liberty,
                               ((( starchild )))

19

With the Election only 20 days away and the Libertarians arguing and cannot
agree on the content of the ad it is probably too late for this idea,
especially since our Chairman Aubrey seems to be opposed.
My video producer Marco is in New York and is willing to fly out here to
make the videos, but we have to come up with a script and buy air time from
the TV stations.

Sam Sloan