Santa Clara Libertarian Volume 27, Issue 6 July 1999 For Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness -------------------------------------------------- This is Your Last Issue! -------------------------------------------------- Inside This Issue * Your Last Issue! * Going (back) to the Fair! * DMV Outreach a Success! * Chair's Column * Flame and Glory * DMV Outreach Photographs * Schedule * Officer List * Membership Form -------------------------------------------------- Your Last Issue! Jascha Lee LPSCC Newsletter Chairman So far 99.9% of the respondents to my subscription question have answered that they prefer to receive the newsletter electronically. However very few people have responded. My theory is that very few people read the newsletter. I'm only going to send the newsletter (either paper or electronic) to those who reply. So here's what I'm going to do. I have enclosed a postcard on which you can check off your preference and pop in the mail. You can also call me at (650) 933-7324, fax me at (650) 932-7324, or email me at lpnews@sebastian.com. If you want the paper edition continued, so be it. My guess is so few people actually read it that it is hardly worth doing (let alone consume over $300 per month). So I'm only going to send the newsletter (either paper or electronic) to those who reply. Prove me wrong, and let me know you want to continue receiving this newsletter! -------------------------------------------------- Going to the Fair! Jascha Lee LPSCC Newsletter Editor That's right! Our ambitious Publicity Chair is going to manage this year's Santa Clara County Fair booth. This will be two years in a row that we've had a presence there. This is a big effort, requiring that the booth be manned from July 30th to August 8th from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. (2 p.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays). If you can help man the booth, especially on a weekday afternoon, call Frank at (408) 935-9652 or email FGroffie@aol.com. He's managed to get a corner booth in the first block of booths in Exposition Hall (the main building) at the price of an ordinary in-line booth! Come out and participate in an activity that puts us in front of thousands of people! -------------------------------------------------- DMV Outreach a Success! Roger Ver, our new Membership Chair, recently manned a booth at two DMV sites (thanks to Marv for securing the permit). This proved to be one of our more successful boothing endeavors, based on the June Registrar of Voters numbers it may have accounted for a 1% jump in registered Libertarians! Read Marv's column on the next page for more details, and see the photos below. -------------------------------------------------- Chair's Column Let's Get Growing! Marv Rudin LPSCC Chairman Hi Folks - in PC fashion, I'll give you the good news first, then the problems. Very Promising LPSCC "Motor Voter" Trials In June our very active Membership Chairman, Roger Ver, began trials on the DMV Outreach Program (DOP) with the best results in new registered LP voters versus volunteer hours that I've ever heard of for an unselected segment of the population: about 1 man-hour (Trials at the Eastridge Mall in '97 and '98 were about 10 man-hours per registrant). I helped him at the Santa Clara DMV on June 16th, and new SJ High graduate Anthony Gregory helped him on June 25th at the Los Gatos DMV. At the SC DMV first comer gets the spot by the door, so we arrived early and got it before the usually daily occupants, the Jehovah's Witnesses. We - mostly Roger - handed out over 600 OE cards as people entered, saying "here's something to look at while you're in those long lines" to persuade them to accept the cards. The first day yielded 13 registrations, and the second at Los Gatos - which has much less traffic - yielded 9. And this didn't include those people who took a form home to fill out later, nor a professional looking booth setup and specially designed literature for this purpose. At this rate, just one day per week at one of the 6 DMV offices in the county probably would produce at least a 10% per year growth rate. Having volunteers at all the offices, could get us a 60% rate, and staffing every day 300%! Obviously the big hurdle is to enlist volunteers. If at least 20% of all registered Libertarians would take one 4 hour shift each year - say a half day of vacation time - the evidence is that we could double every year, and be at a size the media can't ignore within 3 years. I know most of you members aren't exactly champing at the bit to be out selling freedom at a public table. But it sure beats what the guys who signed the Declaration of Independence went through, doesn't it? Carr's Talk to Exchange Club Will Break the Ice for Speakers Bureau I think attendees will agree, Ron Berti's Speakers Bureau meetings at Cocos in Feb., March, May, and June between quarterly business meetings in Jan. and April, have been informative and enjoyable forums for both Libertarian speaker practice and development, and for member discussion. The reader would be well served by attending the next one in August. You could even try out your own speech. Maybe voice too weak? Not to worry - we now have a microphone so you can easily be heard in the back of the room. On June 9th Activity Chair and outstanding dinner speaker Bill Carr gave an excellent presentation on many problems caused by big government that small business people would probably recognize, and then closed with our new mantra - "Send a message that you want a lot smaller government - Register Libertarian!". He was rehearsing it to give to a business and professional men's service club - The Exchange Club of San Jose under the invitation of Libertarian CPA Bill West. Now I'm told that the date is set for early August. This will be the first such speech to a public organization, and we will be soliciting opportunities at other service and fraternal clubs like Lions, Kiwanis, Rotary, and Masons, Elks, etc. If you can help us get speaking opportunities please let me or Ron Berti know (see contact info in back). Libertarian Party Radio Show on KSJS in San Jose? I have good news on the publicity front. In mid June, KSJS' Naked Radio talk show host Archimedes Garcia called me, and engaged me in a lengthy discussion about a lot of things, culminating in a plan to have a "Libertarian Night" the third Thursday of every month. I promised to appear and start the series the next day. The show is from 5 pm to 7 pm on Thursdays. The frequency and band is 90.5 MHz FM. Arquimedes calls himself a "new" Democrat. I suggested that he could just as easily call himself a "moderate" Libertarian, and sound more exotic to listeners. I'm working on him to go Libertarian, but for now the naked Radio Libertarian Night'll be between the mid-left and the top, instead of the usual left versus right debate. Please listen and call in (408) 924-KSJS with your Libertarian viewpoint. It'll impress and influence him and his several thousand listeners. And it'll tell me my trouble may be worth it. In the future I hope we can get leaflets passed on campus at SJSU and at selected sites around San Jose to help build a regular listenership for Libertarian Night on KSJS. I also started discussions with the assistant manager about having a Libertarian talk show on KSJS that would combine the LPSCC and Joel Johnson's SJSU Libertarian club. Added to the KKUP "Free and Clear" show (91.5 FM) of Jonathan Steele, Dante Damicis, and Don Cormier, this will double our local Libertarian talk show presence. Want Meeting Reminders? Do you sometimes intend to go to our monthly meeting, but forget when the time comes? Would a phone reminder the day before make the difference? Please let me know because we now have a way to arrange it with little expended member time. The NRA Members Council of Silicon Valley has an automatic phoning system for this purpose, which we probably can rent at a nominal cost. But because of one more Republocrat law, your permission may be needed, or at least an opportunity to object. I plan to try the system for one of our upcoming meetings. I will assume that as a member, you want the reminder, unless I hear from you otherwise (see my contact info in back). Save Your Money And Get News and Announcements Faster via Computer Thanks to member and web publishing and graphics expert David Scott, local party news soon will be available to you with glorious color photos and art via the internet. If you want to save our funds for use in growing the party, and to get your news faster and looking better, and late-breaking announcements about upcoming events, please let me or Newsletter Chair Jascha Lee, know by emailing us (rudin@lpty.org or jascha@sebastian.com). Problems You and I Need to Solve I always assume we're all in this fight for freedom together, and that if you're not asked for too much, you'll do your share. But first you need to know what needs to be done. So here goes. Current problems we need to overcome are: LTEs: Letters to the editor are a very effective and inexpensive way to influence the most politically interested segment of the population. Our target this year was one LTE per week - preferably in the Mercury News - with the word "Libertarian" in it somewhere. Thus far we have just 3 in 23 weeks. We have members capable of providing quality Libertarian LTEs (we also get some great ones from LP headquarters in Washington) which would be published if you'll just put your name on one and email it in. Would you be willing to do that? If you express interest, Frank Groffie will send you instructions on how to submit to the editor, and an LTE draft that you can modify as you see fit before submittal. What could be easier? It's as easy as mailing a letter or an email, and you'll impress your friends and make yourself and your family proud! OE CARDS: A sample poll of members indicates that only about 10% of our members had passed out their OE cards (came with the April newsletter, if you still haven't opened that issue). We have 6 web visits (to lpty.org) from the card, which would be an expected level for 10% of the cards being out. But most of them came at the beginning, which may mean that members who had just received their cards - not the public - were visiting the web site. We have had just one phone call thus far- from a lady whose father gave her a card (she asked for 3 registration forms for her, her son, and herself). A low level of calls isn't surprising, but a low web hit rate is; the 500 LIFE cards I passed out in '97 got 15 web hits and no phone calls. Card recipients can register using forms at various public places such as libraries and post offices. So we won't know just how well it is working until we poll the new LP paid members and registrants. In the meanwhile, I am reviewing the OE card design for possible changes before a new trial. But please still pass out the ones you have and don't wait for it! The 10% member handout figure suggests that many members will need to see how easy it is to pass OE cards before they'll have the courage to do it. Even our very active and outgoing Membership Chair had passed out no cards until he saw how I did it at the May NRA meeting (I gave out 3 OE cards to people sitting at our table, and two of them asked for and filled in registration forms). How To Transport Table For DOP? In our two trials to date, I've carried one of our folding tables to the DMV site in my Van. The tables are 6 feet long - may fit in some hatchbacks, but too big to carry in many coupes and four door sedan. If we find enough volunteers to do this weekly or daily, and maybe at several DMVs in the valley, I won't be able to do it. Either we have to find a kind of table that any volunteer could carry in their car, or we need one of those professional foldup booths, or maybe a party truck. Can you give any help on this? VOLUNTEERS FOR DOP DURING WORKDAY: After seeing the promising results attained at the DMV the last two weeks, I Have A Dream..... It's like MLK's dream, but it's a little different. I too want people to be judged as individuals. But my dream and vision is about how it will be made to happen in the U.S.' winner-take-all political system. I dream that all Libertarians will see it as their duty to serve by doing outreach - just as the Swiss all do military duty, or the Mormons all do missionary duty. And I don't think it's unreasonable, because the way I see it happening in our party would require far LESS commitment from you than the Swiss or Mormons ask of their members, and far far less than the U.S. founders gave. I dream of all Libertarians passing out OE cards that have been developed and tested until they get maximum response, and giving as little as 4 hours per year at a DMV table, causing the party to a least double its registered voter numbers every year until we have the 10% of the population who are thinking Libertarian. Can you share this dream, and will you help us make it happen? Remember, I'm as busy with my business and personal affairs as are you - all of us Libertarians are busy as hell. But without your help it will be impossible, and I'd l have to give up on this dream... Will you please start by expressing your willingness to sit a DMV table during a half day of vacation or if you can take time off a half day per year? Please contact me or DOP manger and Membership Chair Roger Ver. -------------------------------------------------- Flame and Glory Karl Lembke Vice Chair, Region 63 As the Fourth of July draws near, legislators undertake what seems to be one of their favorite hobbies: passing the latest incarnation of the Flag Burning Law. Mere legislation having failed time and time again to prevent the "desecration" of the U.S. flag, lawmakers are now proposing a Flag Burning Amendment. If Congress has its way, it will be possible for states, cities and other localities to pass laws making it a crime to burn or otherwise desecrate the U.S. flag. These laws, which have previously been ruled unconstitutional, would be specifically declared constitutional on account of the proposed amendment. I see problems with a law forbidding the burning of a flag. Firstly, there's the problem of deciding just what conduct is supposed to be illegal. I watched someone burn a flag once. It was at summer camp. The flag was old and tattered, and with great respect, it was laid upon the campfire for final disposal. For those who remember the codes governing how the flag is to be treated, this is how the U.S. flag is disposed of. I guess it was considered more respectful than having it wind up in a landfill. Obviously, respectfully burning an old flag in order to dispose of it wouldn't be covered under any flag burning law, but the fact that police would have to make this distinction turns flag burning into a thought crime. Whether an action is criminal or not depends on what the mental state of the person performing it may be. Worse, it depends on someone else's guess about the mental state of whoever burns the flag. To be sure, sometimes it's an easy call, but sometimes it won't be. What if someone burns an envelope with a U.S. flag stamp on it? Indeed, what if some yahoo shouts out "burn, baby, burn!" while some Boy Scouts are disposing of an old flag? Who goes to jail for that one? The yahoo with the mouth, or the Scouts with the match? Secondly, just how often do people burn flags in the town square? A Constitutional amendment is a pretty big thing. It has to pass both houses of Congress, be signed by the President, and then be approved by a supermajority of the States. Is the flag being burned often enough to justify all that effort to make it a crime? Are there no more urgent demands on our attention? Secondly, despite what the proponents of this amendment say, burning a flag is a form of expression. Proponents say that it's not expression, but merely an action. Well, so's speech. And haven't we all heard that "actions speak louder than words"? It is precisely because of what the action of burning a flag says that people are trying to outlaw it. If we were burning a copy of the local newspaper, how many people would be calling for a Constitutional amendment? Now to be sure, the First Amendment doesn't protect every person's right to express himself in any way he likes. A boss is not allowed to tell his secretary, "go out with me Friday night or look for work elsewhere". You're not allowed to yell "fire" in a crowded theater, especially if there isn't any fire. But the First Amendment is intended to protect political speech, especially unpopular political speech. And in today's legislative climate, burning the U.S. Flag is about as unpopular as it comes. One of the sayings from the Talmud is that "one can be disgusting with the full consent of the law". This means that a person can engage in disgusting, distressing and distasteful behavior without ever violating any of the laws handed down at Sinai. Furthermore, it's futile to even attempt to outlaw distressing behavior, simply because people are so good at finding ways to distress others. Germany has laws barring any group from using the swastika as a symbol. It is illegal to organize a political party and use a swastika as the symbol for the group. This has had only minimal impact on any of the neo-Nazi groups that compete for public attention in Germany; all they do is use symbols that are suggestive of swastikas, but aren't themselves swastikas. If we pass laws against desecrating the U.S. Flag, what's to stop someone from desecrating a near-Flag? If it's illegal to burn a flag with thirteen stripes and fifty stars, how about one with eleven stripes and sixty stars? How about a red, white, and blue striped piece of paper? How about a banner with the words "United States Flag" spray-painted on it in green ink? I submit that burning any or all of the above can be just as offensive as burning the actual flag. All the people doing the burning have to do is let everyone know they're burning a stand-in for the actual Flag. Frankly, people who want to spit on the United States will find a way, no matter what we outlaw. I say let the loudmouths burn as many flags as they like. It says far more about them than it does about my country, or its flag. -------------------------------------------------- DMV Outreach Photographs Our indefatigable Membership Chair, Roger Ver, shown manning an outreach booth at the DMV. This resulted in 22 on the spot registrants, plus over 600 Operation Everyone cards being handed out. This is one of our most successful registrants-per-man-hour efforts! |-------------------------------------------------- | Paid Advertisement |-------------------------------------------------- | | Do Any Libertarians 'Get It' About Y2K? | | Dante Deamicis | dante451@webtv.net | |-------------------------------------------------- | Paid Advertisement |-------------------------------------------------- Schedule Speakers Meeting The next Speakers Meeting will be Wednesday August 11th, at 7 o'clock at Coco's Restaurant. Come and critique a libertarian speech, discuss and debate, socialize and eat. We use these meetings to polish presentations/speeches that we will be giving to various groups. If you wish to deliver such a speech or have a group that would like to hear a libertarian speaker, please call Ron Berti at (408) 255-0248 or email at boomer@batnet.com. Business Meeting Business meetings are held every third month at 8 o'clock at Coco's Restaurant. The next will be Wednesday, July 14th. These are meetings in which, with a quorum, we are able to conduct official party business. The day of both these and the Speaker's Meetings is the second Wednesday of the month. Directions To Coco'S Coco's restaurant is located on the corner of Oakmead Pkwy and Lawrence Expressway. From 101, take the Lawrence Expressway exit south to Oakmead Pkwy. -------------------------------------------------- Officers Chairman, Marv Rudin, (408) 736-5626, rudin@lpty.org Vice Chairman, (vacant) Secretary, John Inks, (650) 941-4167, john.inks@lmco.com Treasurer, Leyla Hanson, (408) 732-9205, riekershoe@aol.com Membership, Roger Ver, (408) 313-1853, roger_ver@hotmail.com Campaign, Ray Strong, (408) 268-8466, tmkx01a@prodigy.com Publicity, Frank Groffie, (408) 935-9652, fgroffie@aol.com Fundraising, Markus Krummenacker, (650) 493-2531, kr@n-a-n-o.com Activities, Bill Carr, (408) 973-8571, billcarr@ricochet.net Newsletter, Jascha Lee, (650) 933-7324, jascha@sebastian.com State ExCom Rep, Thomas Spielbauer, (408) 279-3336, thomas@spielbauer.com Alt ExCom Rep, Joe Dehn, (650) 858-1842, jwd3@dehnbase.fidonet.org Judicial Committee: Don Cormier, (408) 296-7264 Jon Hugdahl, jon@NoMoreTax.com Chris Evensen, (408) 356-5816 This newsletter is the publication of the Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County, a non-profit political organization. For further information, call (408) 243-2711. Or see our web page at http://www.sc.ca.lp.org. Do you have something to say, and want it to reach all the Santa Clara county Libertarian members? Submit a newsletter article! lpnews@sebastian.com or 2301 Shibley Avenue, San Jose, CA 95125-4068. We especially appreciate articles related to local Libertarian news or activities. -------------------------------------------------- The Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County Membership Application Please print out and mail with payment to: Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County 663 South Bernardo Avenue PMB 107 Sunnyvale, CA 94087 Please Print Name: ______________________________________________________ Address: ______________________________________________________ City/State/Zip: ______________________________________________________ Phone: ______________________________________________________ E-mail: ______________________________________________________ I choose to set my dues at: $25 Basic ________________ $100 Sustaining ________________ $250 Sponsor ________________ $500 Patron ________________ $1000 Life ________________ Plus an additional contribution to the LPSCC: $___________ Monthly pledge ________________ $___________ One-time donation ________________ Total: ________________ Payment Method ___________ Check payable to "Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County" ___________ VISA ___________ MasterCard Credit Card #: ____________________________________ Expiration Date: ____________________________________ Cardholder Name: ____________________________________ Signature: ____________________________________ The Libertarian Party is the party of principle. To assure and affirm that our party never strays from its principles, we request our members to sign the pledge below. (Non-signers cannot vote on party business). I hereby certify that I do not believe in or advocate the initiation of force as a means of achieving political or social goals. Signature: ______________________________________________