Hi All;
Attached (and copied below) are the minutes from last Saturday's meeting.
Please let me know within the next week if there are any corrections you want made.
(Please note as usual that the copy and paste does not look like the actual document).
Thanks,
Francoise
Minutes of the LPSF monthly meeting of July 14th, 2007
Members present: Phil Berg (Chair) presiding, Francoise Fielding recording, Bryce Bigwood, Michael Edelstein, Marc Joffe, Jeff Schwartz, Justin Sampson, Ron Getty, Jawj Greenwald, Rob Power, Marcy Berry, Steve DeKorte, Starchild, Jeremy Linden
Guests present: Chris Maden, T.J. Campbell (LP Santa Clara Vice-Chair), Kevin Takenaga (LPC Chair)
New Agenda Items
Jeffrey Schwartz (a long time LPSF member who hasnt been to a meeting for a while)
suggested we talk about Ron Paul.
Officer Reports
Treasurer: Justin reported that the balance last month was $3,063.22. After subtracting $900 to reimburse Phil Berg for the money he laid out for the posters, $86.69 to reimburse Francoise for the brochures she ordered from ISIL for Gay Pride, and adding $33 left over from contributions to last months Pizza Fund, the balance left in the account is $2,109.53
Secretary: Francoise reported on mail received: a brochure from Yahoo and Paypal re creating an online store, a brochure from Foundation for Economic Education, the Libertarian Lifeline & a letter that was virtually undecipherable.
Vice Chair: Starchild was absent at time of report.
Chair: Phil Berg said he had been on vacation in Alaska and didnt have much to report. He says that when he is offered a seat on public transportation he declines and instead gives the person a Ron Paul card. He says he also gives them out to tellers at the bank etc.
Committee Reports
Outreach: Starchild was absent at time of report
Newsletter: Starchild was absent at the time of report.
Special Reports:
Marc Joffe on Peace Activism
Marc said he and Marcy Berry had been to a meeting last Wednesday of the Iraq Moratorium. They are a group that wants to schedule an activity the third Friday of every month to end the intervention in Iraq. Their idea is that taxes should go to funding human needs not war. Because of the Libertarian position on taxes Marc does not recommend that we get involved with them.
Marc also reported on his meeting with Richard Becker of ANSWER. ANSWER
has found that turnout for their marches is dwindling and they want to change tactics and hold single issue marches to end US involvement in Iraq. They have two activities planned: a march on Washington scheduled for September 15th to coincide with the release of the Petraeus report and a local event scheduled for October 27th in conjunction with the group United for Peace and Justice. Marc thinks that the first event may be well-timed with respect to helping Republicans who are up for re-election change their minds. He is not sure the second event will be so useful since Nancy Pelosi seems to be getting the message.
Marc plans to go to the ANSWER planning meeting which has been re- scheduled from Thursday July 12th to Tuesday July 17th. It will be held at 7 pm at the Womens Building (3543 18th St between Valencia and Guerrero).
Marc suggests that we consider whether we want to put all our eggs in the Ron Paul basket or whether we want to spread ourselves out.
Marc also reported that at todays rally for Ron Paul there were between 500 and 1,000 people who showed up. The lunch was attended by between 100 and 150 people.
Charles Olson was scheduled to speak on his Dr Seuss Constitution. He did not show up.
Old Business.
Options for poster distributions.
Various possibilities were discussed.
Buying ad space for them. Marc said that Stop Funding the War had paid $1,000 for putting up three posters for 4 weeks at the Civic Center Muni station and even that had been highly negotiated since in fact there were only 2 weeks left before the march and Civic Center had some empty spaces available.
Bus stop shelters. This looks more professional than shop windows. However there are very specific poster standards so ours would have to be reprinted. Based on Marcs experience with the Stop Funding the War posters, he estimated the cost would likely be around $2,500.
Google and Internet advertising. Bryce will send an email to Google Adwords to inquire about the possibility.
Café Press mugs could have one of the frames from the poster on the front and LPSF information on the back. Bryce will give Rob the PDF for Café Press.
Advertising on our website. We would sell the posters for $5. You could get that back if you could get it put up somewhere. (Note: Starchild picked up 25 posters from Rob last week).
Before we do any of this we need to find our agreement with Scott (the artist) to find out if and what we would owe him for any of the above. The agreement should be in the Yahoo archive.
It was decided to give a poster to existing members who make a $100 donation- in addition to the membership (and newsletter) fee- to the LPSF. For a $200 donation the member would get a poster and a mug. Otherwise the posters are $5.
Any new non-member who comes to a meeting or pizza social and joins the LPSF will get a poster free.
Jawj Greenwald said that a lot of people in the cat and dog rights movement would be receptive to our message. Phil will take care of finding out the cost for an additional frame.
Storeroom for LPSF property. Phil Berg and Rob Power will look into options and costs.
Amazon booklinks. Ron Getty says that money currently goes to Rob Power and then Rob turns it over to us. We need it set up so that the money goes directly into our bank account. We need to get an EIN (Employer Identification Number) so that Amazon can do a direct deposit. There was a discussion of what the tax liability would be. Rob Power says that the worst case scenario is that you have to file a document with the IRS to the effect that the sales bring in less than $5,000 a year. It may even be that if the sales are under $5,000 a year no document would need to be filed. Conclusion: we need to get an EIN and then find out what needs to be filed with the IRS.
Report on webhosting. Bryce says that the website has been set up on the new hosting site (GoDaddy- $6.99 a month) and is working, however Steve DeKorte has offered to host it for free. It was decided to pay Webhosting Logic (our longtime webhosting site) $45 for the next three months and then transfer it to Steve Dekortes site without any further discussion.
Ron Getty and Bryce have made changes to the website and as soon as they are complete, there will be space to put articles of current interest up.
Bryce has set up a calendar with a single password. He will send out an email about it in a couple of days. He will also look into supplementing it with upcoming.org which the National LP is pushing.
Vote on allocating funds for an edited surveillance flyer. Starchild has not sent Michael Edelstein the flyer for editing. He will do so and after Michael edits it, the matter of funding it will be discussed at the next meeting.
New Business:
Ballot Position papers on Initiatives. Phil Berg apologized for not having checked on what initiatives are scheduled to be on the ballot in November. Rob Power said he didnt think there had been any until recently when the Board of Supervisors put something on to the effect that the Board had to have a public hearing before placing anything on the ballot. Previously it just took four Supervisors agreeing to place something on the ballot. Phil Berg will go down to City Hall to find out although it may be too late to do anything about it.
Volunteer to record new LPSF phone message. The current phone message is out of date and sends people to Cybelle instead of the Milanos for the monthly LPSF meeting. Chris Maden has volunteered to record a new message.
Mayoral race
There was a discussion of whether it was worth endorsing/recommending anyone in a non-partisan race and if so who. It was suggested based on our previous experience that paper candidacies are not really worth it without extra work and the expenditure of money.
Starchild would be willing to run but only if he is sure of getting a lot of support and help from us.
Eric Dupree has declared but it is not clear that he is a registered libertarian or a member of the LPSF. In addition he has not filed papers yet.
Marc Joffe made a motion to invite Eric to our next LPSF meeting to answer questions. Marc will draft the letter and will refer to the type of questions he will be asked but will warn him that the questions asked will not be limited to those.
The motion was approved with 12 in favor and 1 person opposed.
At a date closer to the election, Chris Maden will host a forum for the mayoral candidates to come before us and answer questions.
The meeting was adjourned at 5:05 pm.
Francoise Fielding
820 Stanyan Street,#5
San Francisco, CA 94117
415-386-8643
Minutes_July_14.doc (43 KB)