Special Guest John Cantu

Libertarian-leaning humor coach John Cantu will be using humor to help ease our pain. Mr. Cantu was one of the founders of San Francisco’s seminal comedy club "The Holy City Zoo." He has worked with hundreds of performers, including Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, The Amazing Jonathan (Jonathan Szeles), A. Whitney Brown, Dana Carvey, Margaret Cho, Will Durst, Kit Hollerbach, Larry Hovis, Kevin Meany, Kevin Pollack, Paula Poundstone, Rick Reynolds, Bobby Slayton, and Carrie Snow.

Mr. Cantu is a professional speaker (member of The National Speakers Association), and has spoken for Deloitte Touche (San Francisco and Sacramento branches), the IRS Service Center—Austin, Toastmasters District Four Conference, National Speakers Association—both the Northern California and Sacramento chapters, UC—Hayward, UC—Sonoma, San Francisco State, and for many other organizations.

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In keeping with our increasing membership, we have put together our largest activity yet. At least 25 Libertarians are signed up and ready to protest unfair and excessive taxation. Let me tell you, hombres and hombrettes, there is much excitement. We’ve got people chomping at the bit and ready to make some noise.

We will be raising a commotion and awareness on Monday, April 16^th, at 1300 Evans Avenue from 6pm until midnight. You don’t have to stay the whole time. One or two hours is fine. We welcome your participation. Of course, while we appreciate your calling us and letting us know if you will be planning to attend, feel free to stop by spur-of-the-moment as well. This only happens once per year. Don’t miss out this year!

We will be handing out $1 Million dollar bills (fake ones). Each one represents how much the government spends every 5 seconds. People really get a big laugh when you tell them you are giving them a million-dollar bill to help pay their taxes.

I hope to see you there. I will be manning the 6 p.m. to midnight shift, so make sure you come by and say hello to me.

Sincerely,

David Molony

Chair, Libertarian Party of San Francisco

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Adam Chacksfield, a professor of political science at Western Illinois University, discussed "noble lies": false reasons for true positions. An example is Harry Browne’s having argued that we should support certain positions because they’re in the Constitution. But the truth is that we should support these positions because they are right; their constitutionality is a side issue. If we were French, we wouldn’t be constitutionalists, because that would make us statists. Harry knows all this, which makes his appeal to the Constitution a "noble lie." (Chacksfield acknowledged that Browne was generally honest and careful in his speeches.)

Noble lies take several forms: (a) exaggerating the destructiveness of government and the benefits of liberty. "The profit motive will eliminate racism." (b) Denying values that may lead to nonlibertarian policies, such as compassion, nature, gender equality, and community. Many Libertarians complained when the theme of a recent national convention was "community." (c) Promoting policies unreservedly when we have reservations, such as school vouchers. Starchild proposed, as an addition to the list, exaggerating the prospects for campaign victory beyond what you believe to be reasonable.

There are many reasons not to tell noble lies. (a) It is inconsistent with libertarian ethics, defrauding people. (b) As Ruwart contended, it destroys the connectednes to people that brings happiness. (c) Truth telling is the only remedy for the ignorance of voters. (d) Noble lies don’t work well with academics, journalists, and others who are especially well-informed. (e) We may start to believe the lies ourselves.

Honesty will attract people who are in for the long haul. It is our short-term goals as a Party which seduce us into noble lies. Chacksfield clarified that lying to, say, get out of jury duty would not be a "noble lie," and added that he would gladly lie in court to keep a friend from going to jail on a nonviolent drug charge. This prompted the irrepressible Linda Grau to yell, "I think your position is disgusting!"

Jim Lark, LP national chair, emphasized the difficulty of many issues confronting libertarians, and warned expressly against "knee-jerk libertarianism." This "often wrong, but never in doubt" attitude takes several forms: (a) glib assertions that "the market will take care of it," when markets are not perfect; (b) the assumption that all government employees are "lazy statist scum"; (c) failure to recognize our insularity, so that nonlibertarians, unaccustomed to our language and assumptions, may hear something quite different from what we think we are saying; (d) failure to consider "soft landings," and transition programs; (e) failure to realize how other people perceive government benefits. The cure, he suggests, is basically practice, and the recognition that you don’t have to be libertarian to agree with individual points. If we challenge someone’s whole political orientation (libertarianism included), we are attacking his or her identity, and should expect corresponding resistance.

Irv Rubin, of the Jewish Defense League, recently joined the LP at Mark Selzer’s invitation. He is famous as a street fighter, having been arrested "35 or 40 times" in protests and demonstrations. He was urging libertarians to "Shed your cloak of respectability before respectability buries you." His protest of the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, he says, consisted of himself with a bullhorn, surrounded by a crowd of media; but, thanks to his advance manipulation of the media, it was widely reported as a major demonstration. He was planning to protest Robert Downey’s sentencing in Indio, and invited libertarians to join him.

John Hospers directed our attention to the difficult issues, including issues of transition to a free society. He argued that foreign policy situations defy–or ought to defy–simple prescriptions such as categorical noninterventionism. He suggested, for example, that World War II might have been averted if the League of Nations had stood up to Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia in 1936. But he recognized that libertarians, in their attachment to simple principles, will resist any suggestion that individual cases need to be evaluated in their own context.

The biggest problem, as Hospers sees it, is that young people today know nothing of history; they are about as ready to face international reality, he said, as Hitler’s youth. The students he taught at USC regarded it as an oversight of the Founders not to have provided for federal supervision of education. There is no greater priority, he contended, than to "get education out of the slimy hands of the state."

Mark Tuniewicz, LP national treasurer, made a strong pitch for focus on local races. He thought it was actually harmful to run candidates for state and federal office year after year when they draw only a small percentage of the vote. He was concerned about the effects of the "Perpetual Loser Syndrome" on our perception by the general public, as well as our demoralization within.

Rob Latham gave a report on proportional representation and instant run-off voting. Whereas IRV applies to single-winner elections, like governor, PR pertains to multiwinner elections, as for State Assembly. There are several variations, but a PR system basically elects at large rather than from districts, and seats are allotted according to vote totals. If Libertarians got 5% of the votes, they would get 5% of the seats–a long way from 0. Under this plan Libertarian Otto Guevara was already elected to Congress in Costa Rica. Both PR and IRV eliminate the wasted-vote problem. Browne supporters who were worried about throwing the election to Gore would know that, unless Gore got a majority of first choices, their vote would still count for Bush if Browne were eliminated. As a consequence, voter participation is much higher in countries with PR–93% in a recent Belgian election, for instance–than in first-past-the-post systems. PR and IRV also favor the emergence and growth of more than two parties. The Palm Beach problem causes some concern– whether ranking, say, 10 candidates would exceed the cognitive capacity of voters; the best counterargument is perhaps just the fact that these systems have been so widely implemented around the world. (Some would also question whether those unable to rank their preferences ought to be involved in choosing our leaders.) Vince Miller, President of the International Society for Individual Liberty, reported on various developments around the world. The Prime Minister of Belgium is now a libertarian, who has called for the legalization of marijuana. Poles who are caught with subversive, libertarian literature can have their cars confiscated, so they have formed their own underground insurance company, "Lloyds of Warsaw," to cover just such contingencies. ISIL assisted in the publication of Rand’s novels in Russia, which entailed bribing publishers; the first editions were published by the Department of the Navy. When a law was recently passed in Russia requiring all merchants to have cash registers, Vince expressed concern to a Russian friend about the hardship for street merchants. His friend reacted with astonishment: "This is Russia, not a police state! No one will pay attention to the law." Vince sees growing signs of libertarianism being understood even in the U.S. In a men’s room in Richmond, VA, someone had written: "Question authority." Underneath, in a different hand: "Who are you to tell me what to do?"

Richard Winger, publisher of Ballot Access News, presented an election analysis which challenged that of Bill Bradford in the February Liberty. Bradford had examined the 115 races where the LP fielded candidates in both ’96 and ’00, and in these races we did worse on average last year than we did in ’96. Bradford further noted that Nader was on the ballot in most of these cases last year, and surmised that much of the LP vote for President typically comes from people who want to vote against the two dinosaur parties, but know nothing about the others, and choose on the basis of criteria like familiarity.

Winger, however, examined the vote in all counties, and found that Libertarians did better in those races where we hadn’t run anybody in ’96. Forty percent of counties gave Browne more votes in ’00 than in ’96, and most of these were in the South. Winger called state chairs to get their views on what made the difference, and those in the South regularly mentioned Neal Boortz. There are a number of libertarian radio talk-show hosts these days, but Boortz is unusual in mentioning the Libertarian Party by name. In other areas where Browne did better in ’00–Iowa, Oklahoma, Ohio, Michigan, and Washington–having active LP Congressional candidates evidently made the difference. In the 29 counties where Nader did especially well, such as Santa Cruz and Mendocino, Browne did better than he did in ’96 in 40% of them. So Bradford’s substitution theory looks less plausible.

Winger suggested, finally, that Browne hurt his campaign by consistently deflecting questions about himself. People who are fuzzy on the issues, he noted, often vote on the basis of personality, and Ed Clark’s sunny personality won him a lot of support. As far as he could tell from Browne’s Campaign Journal, just three places–Atlanta, Grand Junction, and Indianapolis–got people and media together to greet Browne when he came to town, and these are also places where Browne did well.

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Empowering Public Housing Residents

Barbara Meskunas, former head of the San Francisco Housing Authority Commission under Frank Jordan, will speak to the Direct Action Forum on Wednesday, April 18, about empowering residents in public housing. Meskunas is a former member of the Libertarian Party; she left around 20 years ago over perceived disagreements on environmental issues. She is now at the Institute for Contemporary Studies, a think tank in Oakland.

Not yet confirmed but a strong possibility to join Meskunas is Theresa Coleman, founder of the nonprofit group Ujamaa. Coleman and Ujamaa were the subject of a recent Bay Guardian cover story on how their efforts to empower residents of a Bayview housing project were shut down by San Francisco housing authorities.

Join us for an interesting discussion–no admission charge!–and great food and drink.

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Sunday, April 8, 2001, 6pm

Every six months, Libertarian Party members in San Francisco gather to honor one of our own. This is a time where all Party members get together and celebrate all of the great work of an outstanding individual commitment.

Mr. Acree is a tireless worker. His dedication to Libertarianism is admirable. In addition to being Treasurer of the Libertarian Party of San Francisco, he is also editor of the Golden Gate Libertarian. Michael is such an amazing Libertarian, I am convinced that if we had 100 Michael Acrees, we could take over the world.

This event is for all Libertarian Party members. If you are not an official Libertarian Party member, please take the time to fill out the membship form in this newsletter and send it in. We also welcome your becoming a member the night of the event. (You may also bring guests who do not have to be LP members, of course.) Please come and join us for food and good cheer as we honor Mr. Michael Acree, Treasurer and Newsletter Editor extraordinaire.

Some local Democrats were recently hoist on their own petard–or make that panties. A Mardi Gras fundraiser for Politically Correct District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly at Backflips, a bar and dance club in the Tenderloin, turned out to be a little more PC than organizers had hoped. According to the San Francisco Independent, MC Fred Hobson had on hand several female strippers who planned to perform nude, but were unable to do so. Attendees were no doubt chagrined to learn that the performance would be a no-go because the venue lacks a cabaret license. It is, of course, Democratic city officials and their cronies in the police department who have made getting the "proper" entertainment permits tougher than finding a parking spot in North Beach.

After an interminable investigation whose motto had long seemed to be "hear no evil, see no evil," the Chronicle (among other media outlets) reports that 22 people connected with the San Francisco Housing Authority have been indicted on federal corruption charges. The charges stem from a scheme under which up to $500,000 worth of low income housing vouchers were handed out in exchange for improper payments to SFHA personnel.

One former insider speculated to the Golden Gate Libertarian that this newfound willingness by federal prosecutors to hold guilty housing officials accountable for their crimes can be attributed to Da Mayor's loss of connections now that the Clinton administration is history. "Before, he could pick up the phone and call (Housing and Urban Development Secretary) Andrew Cuomo and get him to sit on it," she said. "Now there's nobody there to call anymore."

"‘I thought it was only in Third World countries that people were forced to pay bribes to get services they're entitled to from their government,’" the Chronicle reported an angry U.S. District Judge Charles Legge saying as he sentenced $72,000-per-year SFHA executive Patricia Williams to 5 years in prison. Is Judge Legge really so unfamiliar with how the scam works? The term entitled is only used to convince the greedy to support government stealing from others. When it comes to actually receiving the stolen goods you've been promised, there is no entitlement except what you can wring out of the system.

Who says government agencies make life difficult for employers? Complying with workplace regulations should be a piece of cake now that the U.S. Department of Labor has helpfully summarized its regulations affecting small businesses in a handbook published on the Internet (Or at least you can bet that's what DOL regulators will say to the hapless mom-and-pop business owners they persecute.). Au contraire–reaching a correct understanding of employment law may now be a bit less like searching the entire beach for a particular grain of sand, but it still resembles the task facing a person who tries to fit a camel through the eye of a needle. The following is excerpted from the agency's own description of its handbook (italics in original):

"The main body of this Handbook consists of 28 discrete chapters describing the requirements of each of the major statutes enforced by the Department of Labor (DOL). The 28 chapters are organized by type of standard (i.e., Retirement and Health Benefit Standards; Safety and Health Standards; Wage, Hour and Other Workplace Standards; and Workplace Standards for Federally Funded or Assisted Contracts). Each chapter discusses: which employers or employees are covered by the statute; the statute's basic provisions and requirements; how to obtain information and assistance from DOL; penalties for non-compliance; and relation to state, local and other federal laws. Users should refer to the regulations and other applicable materials to understand fully their responsibilities under each statute.

"Please note that other federal agencies besides DOL enforce laws and regulations that affect employers. For example, statutes designed to ensure non-discrimination in employment are generally enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Also, the Taft-Hartley Act regulating employer conduct with regard to employees in a wide range of areas is administered by the National Labor Relations Board. Please consult these agencies for further information on their requirements."

If you have a large business, of course, the regulations may be a wee bit more complex, but nothing a small army of lawyers, specialists, and consultants won't be able to handle–assuming you also happen to get lucky, or simply pay off the right politicians.

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