I just joined the HVLP discussion group so this should post there too. I just searched "Silberger" to find an article about Snowden.
Cool! The pieces are falling into place.
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From: John Bechtol <javlin@...>
To: "MANHATTANLIBERTARIANS@yahoogroups.com" <MANHATTANLIBERTARIANS@yahoogroups.com>; "lpny_discuss@yahoogroups.com" <lpny_discuss@yahoogroups.com>; Genesee County LP <gclp.ny@gmail.com>; Rochester LP <greater-rochester-libertarian-party@...>; Albany LP Meet-up <libertarian-345@...>; LP-Hudson Valley <hvlp@yahoogroups.com>; Orange County Libertarians <orangecounty.libertarians@yahoo.com>; LPNY-Westchester <lpny_westchester@yahoogroups.com>; LPKC <lpny_kings@yahoogroups.com>; LPQC <lpqc@yahoogroups.com>; SILP <info@statenislandlp.org>; LP-Nassau <nassau_lp@yahoogroups.com>; LPSC <sclp@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 10:28 AM
Subject: Re: [MANHATTANLIBERTARIANS] FW: Nominating charlatansDr. Silberger,
Maybe you could give me a call?John F. Bechtol
707-623-6005________________________________
From: mark axinn <markaxinn@...>
To: "lpny_discuss@yahoogroups.com" <lpny_discuss@yahoogroups.com>; Genesee County LP <gclp.ny@...>; Rochester LP <greater-rochester-libertarian-party@googlegroups.com>; Albany LP Meet-up <libertarian-345@...>; LP-Hudson Valley <hvlp@yahoogroups.com>; Orange County Libertarians <orangecounty.libertarians@...>; LPNY-Westchester <lpny_westchester@yahoogroups.com>; "ManhattanLibertarians@yahoogroups.com" <manhattanlibertarians@yahoogroups.com>; LPKC <lpny_kings@yahoogroups.com>; LPQC <lpqc@yahoogroups.com>; SILP <info@statenislandlp.org>; LP-Nassau <nassau_lp@yahoogroups.com>; LPSC <sclp@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2014 7:48 AM
Subject: [MANHATTANLIBERTARIANS] FW: Nominating charlatansI am not certain if Dr. Silberger's remarks below were distributed as widely as they deserved to be.
Disclosure: I nominated Donald to run for Gov. against William Weld at the 2006 Convention. Weld was nominated, promising to run as a Libertarian even if the Republicans nominated someone else. Eventually, the Republicans nominated someone else, Weld dropped out and John Clifton was then our candidate for Gov. and Donald Silberger for Lt. Gov.
Mark
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I must concur with Mark in this exchange. Suppose that we encounter a willing non-LP celebrity,
Madam Cissy Celeb, say, who has cash and "name" backing her, and even is sort of libertarian in lots of ways. That is, she concurs with most of us on most issues, although she seems to be a bit new to reflecting upon how our stances on those issues might enjoy a common intellectual and moral root.Let's suppose that, furthermore, Madam Celeb thanks her eager nominating-petition carriers although she is too busy with her business of being a sought-after personality to carry such a petition herself. Celebrities usually don't carry petitions. Celebrity is full time work per se. Petitioning is for peons or for paid hacks -- although we do manage to dig up some professionals who are honestly conscientious about how they go about their petitioning duties, even if they care nothing about libertarian issues. Anyway, Madam Celebrity can't be bothered. But, putting the best face on her candidacy, let's say she does direct a good chunk of her own or her friends' cash towards the paying of petitioners.
Suppose Madam Celeb actually submits the appropriate disclosure forms to the Board of Elections on time to get on the ballot, becoming our bona fide candidate. Being Madam Celeb instead of one of us schlubs, she gets lots of invitations to interviews. She's not keen presenting interesting speeches of any length (or any depth from an ordinary libertarian's vantage point) because, being a celebrity, she is accustomed instead to sound bites and photo ops and autobiographical tidbits of the sort that appeal to those bibliophiles who favor People Magazine and the like for truly giving the feel of the lives of the rich and the famous and, of course, the gloriously favored in the appearance department.
Let's go overboard, and say that our gubernatorial candidate, Madam Celeb winds up with 172,681 votes not even counting the absentee ballots that pour in from her fans overseas. 50K votes are all we ever needed to become a "real" political party in NYState, and finally... WE IS ONE!! We is REAL!
Let us consider some of the possible results, and let us guestimate their comparative likelihoods. Let us weigh also the value gained from the attainment of results we want and of the prudent avoidance
of results we don't want. I put forth a short, necessarily incomplete, list:
Possibility(1). For at least four years, we -- under the name "Libertarian" -- are empowered to get people on sundry ballots across NYState for Mayor, for Assemblyperson, for StateSenator, for whatever elective offices get listed for those four years in NYState.
Analysis(1). We don't have enough active libertarians in NYState to get the 25K signatures the law says we need to get our candidates for nationwide office on the ballot _now_, but suddenly now, on account of Madam Celeb's curvaceous popularity, we are certain to have a thousand candidates running for office as Libertarians before our four-year term of official party status expires. Really?
Maybe a few of those (unlikely) myriads of Celeb groupies, who are also libertarians and energetically organized enough to run for office, may get elected to, for instance, the Marlborough Town Board (if there is such an entity) or even elected as the Libertarian Mayor of Elmira. Those people will certainly have their photographs and stories distributed to LP members via LP publications and fundraisers. We will be told how successful our LP has become. But the people who have gotten elected as LPers to public office here and there will either do bad jobs in the offices to which they are elected or they will function as other citizens elected to such positions function, and libertarianism will neither be better understood by the public than before nor will its actual agenda necessarily be advanced except by, perhaps, a tax reduction here or there, at best a dubious attainment even by libertarian standards.
It is my guess that an even more lugubrious scenario would be likely: We find that, just as we cannot muster the grassroots enthusiasm to get us on the ballot without having to pay professional petitioners to do that job for us, we discover that increased ballot-access ease alone does not automatically produce a large number of willing and attractive LP candidates for office. Thus, this particular open door opportunity gained for us by Madam Celeb winds up largely wasted. And our four years are up.
Possibility(2). Madam Celeb is willing to run for Governor a second time under our banner, thus increasing the probability that our long-coveted party officiality may persist for four more years.
Analysis(2). It is overwhelmingly likely that Madam Celeb will have too many other fish to fry to waste her time and resources a second time on our pathetic cause. After all, she is unlikely to be elected Governor on our ticket, and she will have milked all of the possible publicity and personal benefits that can be squeezed out of her outrageous choice to be an LPNY gubernatorial candidate in one election period. To repeat this a second time, potentially with a worse resulting vote total, is not worth the pain Madam Celeb since, as John Clifton's hypothesis allows, Cissy Celeb not really at heart a libertarian. Emphatically she's not a committed libertarian. So... the LPNY again nominates one of its own as usual, with no expense to speak of to be sure since we are official this time around. But it's all very ho-hum and depressing after all of the "news" that resulted from Cissy Celeb's candidacy four years earlier. We likely get less than 50K
votes as usual. Then, behold: We are no longer official. Probably our activist base shrinks at least to pre-Celeb levels.
Possibility(3). While Madam Celeb is quipping and fielding questions and comments during her many interviews as our candidate, she is going to talk a good bit of shit from a libertarians viewpoint, since
as John Clifton allows, Madam Celeb is not a libertarian, and probably has devoted very little of her possibly considerable brain power to introspective reflection on our concerns in political philosophy.
Analysis(3). The situation presented as Possibility(3) is, alas, a near certainty. Madam Celeb will have gotten the word "libertarian" mentioned far more often than if one of us had been the candidate instead of her, but because she talks a fair amount of political shit when given free reign to do so -- witness Sarah Palin -- she will insert vividly into the public consciousness some of that nonlibertarian or even anti-libertarian shit. And, from Madam Celeb's candidacy onward, the answer to "What do libertarians want and why?" is this in the public mind: "Cissy Celeb is Libertarian. She ran for Gov.