The LPSF uses battering rams to break through the locked gates that lead to the garden of liberty.

A tremendous thank you to all who participated in the LPSF April 2001 Tax Protest on Monday, April 16^th, from 6 p.m. to midnight. Thank you a million times over. Our attendance compared to last year was 800%.

I would especially like to thank Mike Acree and Kelly Simpson for showing up an hour early to help with the set up. Thank you also to Chris Maden for passing out our "LP Million Dollar Bills." And finally, the last thank you to Guinness for wearing a sandwich sign protesting taxes. Arf, arf. (Thanks, Tim and Jenn Myles!)

Last month, I wrote that our goal for April was 50 Libertarians attending our four events. We have rammed past that goal. The total for the month of April is 60 total participants. Thank you all for your dedication and hard work. You made this happen. If we include March’s totals in our count, we have had 72 total participants. This is more than an 900% increase from last year’s participation.

It is now up to all of us to sustain and increase these numbers. We cannot sit back and rest. Membership is our number one goal. We have much work to accomplish if we wish our Libertarian philosophy to resonate throughout San Francisco, throughout California, the U.S., and the world.

Last month, I stated that we will throw an event in July or August (maybe September) so we can get AT LEAST 100 Libertarians at ONE event. This is our next major goal for the LPSF. Do you think we can? I do.

Our hard work is being noticed throughout the state and the nation. Please see the article LPSF Recognized Statewide, Nationally. Through our hard work, we are on our way to making a huge presence in San Francisco. Our respect and admiration for Libertarians of San Francisco is 1000%.

I would love to see you at one of our events in May: the Financial District Meeting on Thursday, May 1, and the Richmond District Meeting on May 12. The Financial District Meeting will be great—a Libertarian Wine Tasting. (Please see calendar and article for more information).

Yours in liberty,

David Molony

Chair, Libertarian Party of San Francisco

This is the event you’ve all been waiting for.

Mr. Michael Denny, President of American Wine Distributors — America's leading Sales Logistics service provider to the Drinks Industry—will be using his homespun humor to relate what it is like for a Libertarian to do business in one of the most heavily regulated industries in the United States.

Mike will tell us stories about his jousts with government regulators while simultaneously describing delicious wines, specially selected for the LPSF. We will learn about the soothing effects wine has on the average Libertarian. ("This wine tastes great while filling out an IRS Form 1040." "Drink this one when you are paying 48 cents tax on every gallon of gas you pump." "And this one, it does wonders to relax your mood when the government confiscates your property as wetland because you’re sprinkling the lawn.")

Mike Denny is an excellent raconteur; we are sure you will enjoy this special evening. If you are a nondrinker, water and sodas will be available. We will have a drawing for 2 bottles of wine for lucky Libertarians. As usual, we will provide food and beverages for all. Last month we had cold cuts and bread, water crackers, caviar, vegetarian pâté, potato chips, sodas, and bottled water.

57 Post Street (one block from the Montgomery Street BART/Muni Station), Room 403, San Francisco

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Several Cato faculty gave shorter talks.

Jerry Taylor, Director of Natural Resource Studies at Cato, challenged the prevailing libertarian analysis of California’s energy crisis (such as that recently published by Jim Elwood in Freedom Network News). Taylor maintained that the fundamental problems were natural rather than political, and that wholesale prices would have skyrocketed under any system. These included the supply shocks of a decrease in hydroelectric power following several years of drought, a natural gas shortage, and ruptures in gas lines, and the demand shock of a hot summer and cold winter. Greens, he said, have slowed plant construction from 4-5 months to 3 years, but have actually blocked the construction of only one small plant. Politicians, of course, always favoring East German solutions, made the worst of a bad situation. Quoting Mencken’s definition of democracy as "that form of government that gives people what they want–good and hard," he reported a Los Angeles Times survey showing that 70% of people favored continuing blackouts over removing price caps. Cato Founder and President Ed Crane observed that those survey results made a good argument for school choice.

Adam Thierer, Cato Director of Telecommunications Studies, disputed claims of a "digital divide." Computers are now cheaper than TVs, and 97% of poor households have TV. Employers are also increasingly providing PCs free or at little cost. Market penetration happens much more quickly than it once did–compare CDs and VCRs with electricity and the telephone. People with low incomes are now the fastest-growing segment of the computer market.

José Piñera is famous for having reformed the Chilean Social Security System. Chileans have 10% withheld (vs. 12.4% in theU.S.), which they can put in an IRA, and pass on to their heirs. They were given a choice, but the 94% who opted out of the government system have averaged 11% above inflation for 20 years, compared with the 1% return under the old system. Most interestingly, Piñera reported that China had recently consulted with him about creating a similar system there. Will we be the last country on earth to get rid of Social Security?

Tax Day Protest 2001. Holy smokes. Zoiks. Sacre bleu. We tore the place up (philosophically speaking).

First things first. A tremendous thank you to all who participated in the LPSF April 2001 Tax Protest on Monday, April 16. Thank you a million times over. Your dedication is the key to the LPSF’s tremendous growth rate. With your avid focus and self-discipline, the LPSF is catapulting into a true power in the City and County of San Francisco.

The stage. Last-minute filers drive to the main Post Office on Evans Avenue, the only one open until midnight, and file their taxes. Thousands of slaves (oops, taxpayers) drove by and, without getting out of their cars, handed their money to postal workers who were out in the streets.

The Protest. The Protest was a blast–24 shoutin’, hollerin’, ruckus-raisin’ Libertarian maniacs. Not only were we internally rewarded by satisfaction of a job well done, we were also rewarded with lots of food and drink. The LPSF provided sandwiches, and Tim and Jenn Myles brought Cokes and bottled water for everyone. (Thank you, Tim and Jenn!) Additionally, Ben and Jerry's heard about what we were doing and dropped off a big ole ice cream stand especially for us. LPSF participants gorged on all the free ice cream we could eat—woo-hoo. Good citizens that we are, we shared it with everyone else there. (A few people told me Ben and Jerry's set the stand up for ALL the taxpayers that were there—well, pfft, they have their opinion, I have mine.) And in case any LPSFers got sick of the whole idea income tax idea, Pepsid Antacid was there handing out indigestion tablets. (What…you think I could make this up?)

Sign (Sighin’) of the Times. All those thousands of drivers read our LPSF signs: Replace Taxes with Charity and User Fees, If You Voted Libertarian You Wouldn’t be Here Now, and Armed Robbery Is Illegal–Unless You’re the IRS. Most of the signs had our LPSF name or website on them as well. When we started at 5 pm, people gave us the thumbs-up and smiles. And then, at about 6:30, geniuses that we are, we thought up the creative slogan HONK if You HATE TAXES! Explosion. The moment this sign was hoisted, the blaring of horns was instantaneous and deafening. People hate taxes, I guess. I think the two police officers in the patrol car assigned to "protect" us probably had to change their shorts later that night, with all the horns going off at the same time. We even had government-paid Muni bus drivers honking and giving us the thumbs up. And there was one taxi driver who kept driving taxpayers to our location. Every time she went by to drop off slaves (oops, sorry, did it again…taxpayers), she leaned on the horn for two to three minutes. Guess she doesn’t like taxes much. Go Libertarians!

The LPSF Refund. We decided if the Fed won’t refund money, the LPSF will. We refunded $1.5 billion to harried taxpayers. That’s right, we bad. We distributed about 1500 Libertarian Nonnegotiable Million Dollar Bills, a new San Francisco record. (Each bill represents the amount of money the federal government spends every 5 seconds). Naturally, we print our Libertarian message on the reverse of these bills.

Of special note: LPSF Contributions Chair Chris Maden must have passed out 1499_ of the 1500 bills we distributed. He was a whirlwind of energy—slipping here, jumping there—no taxpayer on foot escaped his falcon-like eyesight. Woe be to the fellow Libertarian who got in between him and a taxpayer! Thank you Chris, Bryce, Kelly, Jenn, Tim, John, Mike, and everyone else who passed out our 1 Million Dollar Bills!

The Future. Last year we had 3 protesters. This year we had 24 protesters (800% of last year). Next year we go for the whole enchilada. 100 participants. Nah, too wimpy. Let’s go 150 participants. With lots of media in attendance. For those of you who have been following San Francisco Libertarianism, you know I am not kidding. I hope everyone will participate. You have a year in advance to prepare and take time off. Let your boss know you want time off next year. If you work for yourself, what’s your excuse? Heck, we all should take the entire day off to protest, just like the socialists (ain’t that a thought?).

Next year, not only will 150 Libertarians be at the Main Post Office, two or three will cover every single San Francisco Post Office. When the branch Post Offices close at 7 or 8 pm, everyone will converge at the Main Post Office, if possible. I will be calling the San Francisco Police FOB (Field Operations Bureau) this week to let them know that the LPSF will be involved in an APRIL 2002 CITYWIDE TAX PROTEST with 100 to 150 participants.

Finally, we will continue to focus on increasing membership/activists. It is much easier to get 150 people to a protest in April 2002 if we have 400 active Libertarians in January 2002. Remember, the LPSF’s sole goal is to increase membership/participation. If we increase membership to 300, or 400, or 1500, any activities we choose will be an automatic success. And that is what we want, isn’t it —success?

Put Tax Protest 2002 it in your calendars right now, Libertarians. If this year is any indication, next year will be a howling, excellent, successful event.

Yours in tax freedom,

David Molony

Chair, Libertarian Party of San Francisco

The SFLGBTPCC (San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Celebration Committee) is hosting a workshop on float-building on Monday, April 30, at 7:30 p.m. at Pier 45 (the end of Taylor Street at Fisherman’s Wharf). Additional workshops will be held on Saturdays at 1:00 on May 19 and June 2. Storage space is available from April 30 to June 30 at Pier 45 on a first-come first-served basis. J. R. Manuel has offered the use of a flatbed truck for a float, so it remains only to recruit the people and design make the float.

The theme of this year’s celebration, "Queerific," is less specifically libertarian than last year’s "It’s All About Freedom." As a general celebration of diversity, however, it invites us to celebrate political diversity in particular. Goodness knows, Libertarians are treated commonly enough as the queers of the political spectrum. In fact, Mike Acree, in a speech at the 1988 Gay Freedom Day celebration, drew the analogy explicitly between libertarianism and bisexuality, both serving as bridge communities between left and right, gay and straight. Certainly our calls for the repeal of laws prohibiting or restricting gay marriage and adoption, and for the abolition of the FDA−to pick our points of strongest appeal to the Pride Day crowd− lie recognizably outside the political mainstream.

Several ideas for a float, or for a skit, have been proposed, and all of them have been criticized.

1. Have two Lady Libertys holding hands or making out on a float. One holding the torch, one the tablet, trading as needed to relieve the torch arm. The image itself communicates a strongly gay-friendly attitude from the Libertarian Party, and the float can be covered with signs with liberal appeal, such as calling for the abolition of the FDA and the INS. This idea has been criticized on the ground that there can be only one Miss Liberty.

2. A more elaborate skit would have Miss Liberty in chains, hounded and harassed by the FDA, the INS, the BATF, and all our favorite villains. The government agents, in combat attire, attacking Miss Liberty with their signs, would then be driven off by the LP, and so on in an endless loop. A skit like this could be done with or without a float. The obvious problem with any such skit, of course, is that it would challenge the attention span of the crowd.

A dozen Libertarians turned out to hear Barbara Meskunas and Theresa Coleman speak about problems in public housing at the Direct Action Forum on April 18. Meskunas was a member of the Libertarian Party back in the ’70s, but dropped out, she said, when the LP supported making gloves out of Peruvian penguins. She is currently Public Housing Program Director for Self-Governance, a division of the Institute for Contemporary Studies.

The fundamental problem with public housing is that it is exempt from the law requiring buildings with more than 12 units to have a resident manager. The result is that residents have little control over what happens in their building, and get blamed for all the crime. Paternalistic statists can then say that poor people are unable to take care of themselves.

Coleman said that when she was growing up in SF in the ’60s and ’70s, "I felt good about my city. It didn’t seem to put its foot in our face so hard." But one day shortly after returning to Hunter’s Point after being away for some years, she heard shots fired. She didn’t know what the sound was, but her 9-year-old son identified the make and model of the weapon they’d heard. She was so shocked she ordered him into the house. "You have to learn things fast, Mamma," the boy told her.

Coleman has worked with Meskunas, and said that what she liked about libertarianism was that she hadn’t seen government work for anybody. She liked the idea of self-governance, and felt that most public housing residents didn’t want to be a burden to taxpayers. But the government requires a demonstrable plan for achieving self-sufficiency, and few residents are prepared to comply with all the paperwork. Half the people in Hunter’s Point, she said, don’t even know what taxes are.

Coleman founded a program, Ujamaa, to empower her fellow residents and improve their run-down and violence-plagued neighborhood. The nonprofit ICS, with Meskunas as point person, helped educate Theresa and her colleagues about the laws and paperwork they needed to understand in order to make changes. The effort initially got city cooperation under Jordan, until the unions started to perceive residents making their own repairs as a threat to their patronage jobs. There was an eventual rapproachment with at least the painters’ union, but by this time Willie Brown was mayor, and his appointee to head the SFHA, Ronnie Davis, had other ideas. Within three months, accoding to Coleman, Davis and his agency had "demolished" everything the residents were trying to do.

Meskunas noted that Supervisor Matt Gonzales has proposed rescission of the San Francisco Housing Authority, an agency supported by a steady stream of federal money and little accountability; and she encouraged us to support Gonzales’s effort. What is needed in any case is not low-income housing, requiring bureaucratic assessment of qualifications, but simply low-cost housing.

Last year, the LPSF backed candidate Tony Hall for District 7 Supervisor. It paid off last month when several Libertarians met with the newly elected Supervisor at his office. "I wanted to make sure that we followed up and developed a working relationship," said LPSF Outreach Director Starchild, who arranged the session.

The meeting, attended by LPSF members Kelly Russell Simpson, Mike Denny, and Chris Maden along with Starchild, lasted over an hour. Supervisor Hall asked right away what he could do to help. "What are your priorities?" he asked the Libertarians. Starchild presented the Supervisor with a resolution he'd written with input from several other Party members condemning the "War on Drugs," and asked if Hall would introduce it. Hall said he was in total agreement with the LP on the issue, but voiced reservations about the wording and whether the political support was there, and asked for some time to study the proposal.

Starchild also urged Hall to oppose efforts by some members of the Board to create taxpayer-funded district offices and hire a third aide for each supervisor, a proposition already rejected by San Francisco voters. Tony Hall said he opposed these moves, and that his office had been misquoted on the matter.

Hall also complained strongly about Board members continually introducing resolutions to commend various individuals, often without providing adequate information for him to feel comfortable doing so. He singled out Supervisor Chris Daly as the worst offender. Chris Maden, the LPSF's Contributions Chair, noted that the Texas legislature, acting in a similarly ill-informed manner, had once inadvertently commended the Boston Strangler for his contributions to the cause of "population control."

Perhaps the highest-profile initiative Hall has taken since assuming office has been to introduce legislation that would end San Francisco’s moratorium on the construction of new loft or "live-work" housing. This moratorium, which has exacerbated already sky-high rents and housing prices in the city, was pushed through by leftists who complained that live-work housing originally intended for artists was being used by others. Hall, like Barbara Meskunas at the LPSF's recent Direct Action Forum event, said he believed that home-ownership is a key goal. He encouraged the LP to consider supporting a pending ballot initiative that would make it easier for tenants to buy their units from willing landlords. "Have him come to one of your meetings and grill him," Hall urged, referring to one of the measure's proponents. He stressed that it was not too late at this stage to make changes in the initiative if it was felt to have problems from a libertarian perspective.

Finally, the Supervisor agreed to meet with members of the LP every two months to discuss our concerns and plan legislation. The next meeting is scheduled for June 6.

As participants went over scheduling and other details with Hall aide Mary Landers after the meeting, the mood was ebullient. "I still can't get over the fact that someone on the Board agrees with us," enthused former LPSF Vice-Chair Kelly Simpson, whose offer to volunteer answering phones in the office was gratefully accepted. Landers, one of the Supervisor’s two overworked aides, told her guests that Hall’s response on learning that Starchild had phoned on behalf of the LP to request a meeting was immediately positive. "You really have his ear," she said. Simpson plans to spend some time volunteering at Hall’s office.

Meanwhile, the SF Bay Guardian slammed Supervisor Hall in its April 18-24 issue. "He's already racked up the worst voting record on the board," the dogmatically left-wing paper charged. Obviously he must be doing something right.

Webmaster Bryce Bigwood alerted us recently to an interesting-sounding event at the Fairmont on April 4: KGO talk show host John Rothman was addressing Republicans on the need for a two-party system in San Francisco. Two LPSFers decided to join him in crashing the party: the Mikes Denny and Acree.

Rothman was an interesting choice, given that he has been a registered Democrat since 1973. But we wasn’t the only Democrat in the overflow crowd. The explanation of Supervisor Tony Hall in conversation after the talk was that there are many "moderate" Democrats in the Bay Area who are dissatisfied with the westward movement of the local Democratic Party. In casting about for a more congenial political home, they are naturally repelled by the radical right in control of the California Republican Party. Rothman himself was active in the Teenage Republicans, as a "Rockefeller" Republican; he regularly worked on the Stassen campaigns. (Anyone remember the perennial Harold Stassen?) Our hopes for recruiting him to the LP were dashed when he said he had left the Republican Party because of in-fighting. But it was still interesting to see a Democrat arguing, emphatically, that San Francisco needed a revitalized Republican Party.

What is evidently going on is that large numbers of both Republicans and Democrats see their traditional parties as having been taken over by extremists. It is not clear how rich an ore they constitute for Libertarian prospecting. They generally see themselves as looking for a soft center, and would not want to identify with anything they perceived as hard-shell. It is not inconceivable that over time the LP could come to be seen as representing the mainstream, as it did a century or two ago; but we would have our rhetorical work cut out for us.

A more encouraging constituency may be the young. Rothman said that there were high schools in San Francisco where Bush outpolled Gore. He was urging Republicans to go after these "future entrepreneurs," but I would actually expect that they would be more receptive to the Libertarian message. Adolescence is nothing if not a time for sorting out issues of relation to authority. There also used to be a concept of youthful idealism, to which the avowed avoidance of ideology among Republicans has little to offer. Kelly Simpson has been speaking to high school classes for years, but this may be an area which we want to target for much more active outreach. We can offer students not just ideology for the future, but opportunities for meaningful activism in the present. The LP has had delegates at its national conventions at least as young as 12. What other party can offer that?

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We're looking for in-kind donations: computers, office equipment, trucks, vans, or anything else that can help us. We specifically need two recent (Pentium or higher) PC-compatible computers and two printers, one for newsletter production and the other for the Activities Committee. If you can help out, please contact the Contributions Chair, Chris Maden, at contributions@lpsf.org or 415.504.8677. Thank you.

In the wake of the riots that followed the shooting of an unarmed black man by Cincinnati police, this month's DIRECT ACTION FORUM, on Wednesday, May 16, will focus on the police and civil rights. Samantha Liapes of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights will be speaking, with possible additional speakers to be added. Liapes is a director of Bay Area PoliceWatch, a project of the Ella Baker Center, and has worked as a legal advocate for people with AIDS and the mentally ill homeless.

The Forum takes place on the third Wednesday evening of each month at the Thai House Restaurant, located at the corner of Market and Sanchez streets in San Francisco, from 7 to 10 p.m. The purpose of this event series is to provide Libertarians and members of the public with the information needed to effectively engage the fight for freedom at the local level. A secondary purpose is to familiarize our guests with the Libertarian Party and expose them to libertarian ideas through our questions and discussion. We are attempting to publicize the Forum via the community events listings of local media outlets, and hope to eventually attract significant numbers of non-Libertarians.

For more information, or suggestions for future speakers or publicity opportunities, please call Starchild at (415) 626-3036.

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The LPSF is in the process of creating a calendar of San Francisco dates and events which happen on an annual basis. Specifically, we're looking to list events at which the Party might wish to have a presence or dates on which we might wish to organize an activity, such as Tax Protest Day. Other examples include street fairs, commemorative days, official events like the Mayor's annual budget speech, etc.

If you know of any dates or events we should add to the list, please call the LPSF voicemail number, (415) 775-LPSF, and leave us a message.

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Monday, April 30: Float building workshop for Gay Pride Day, Pier 45, 7:30 p.m. Contact Mike Acree.

Tuesday, May 1: Financial District meeting, 6:30-7:30, 57 Post Street. Wine tasting with Michael Denny.

Saturday, May 5: Million Marijuana March. Contact Leilani Wright for more info.

Saturday, May 12: Richmond District meeting, 3-6 p.m., Round Table Pizza, 5160 Geary.

Wednesday, May 16: Direct Action Forum, Thai House, 2200 Market, 7-10 p.m. Featuring Samantha Liapes of Bay Area Police Watch.

David Molony

chair@lpsf.org

(415) 820-3923

Leilani Wright

vice-chair@lpsf.org

(415) 786-5505

Vince Grubbs

secretary@lpsf.org

(415) 682-9482

Mike Acree

treasurer@lpsf.org

(415) 668-5794

Jerry Cullen

elections@lpsf.org

(415) 567-9642

Mike Denny

membership@lpsf.org

(415) 750-9340

Starchild

outreach@lpsf.org

(415) 626-3036

Jerry Pico

media@lpsf.org

(415) 885-5350

Chris Maden

fundraising@lpsf.org

(415) 504-8677

Opinions expressed in unsigned columns of the Golden Gate Libertarian do not necessarily represent those of anyone but the Editor. Submissions are encouraged. The deadline (including agenda and calendar items) is the first Thursday of the month.