In a pair of articles at Libertyforall.net, George Phillies writes:

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The LNC Meeting, the open parts, were streamed electronically and can be seen on the Internet.

I was there for much of two days. I have seldom seen a less effective use of the time of several dozen — counting the gallery — highly intelligent pro-liberty people, except perhaps at other LNC meetings.

As one example, Mr. Starr made the highly sensible suggestion that the committee should revisit its strategic plan, work through the 20 strategies, and vote up or down which should be retained. Heaven only knows, if they did this for long enough, they might consider trying to do some of them.

The committee spent a good fraction of an hour discussing this question. The discussion was entirely spent in parliamentary wrangling. The substantial content of the discussion was nonexistent. One strategy was mentioned, but that was somewhat incidental to a more general question as to whether there were 20 or 21 strategies.

The leadership level “we should do X” of the committee is rather limited.

There was a shift in voting blocks. It appears to me that several former supporters of the former administration have drifted toward the opposition. Thus, for example, the vote on viewing the Haugh complaint was 8-8, forcing Chairman Redpath to vote.

On the bright side, the effort on Mr. LaBianca was in the end withdrawn.

Mary Ruwart gave a truly excellent report on membership renewal rates, which have gone to that other place in a hand basket. I used closing comments to point out to the committee that those rates predict what our membership will be at the end of this year — around 13,000 — and in the long term — around 9,000, unless something changes. (I don’t believe my predictions are better than 10%, and they are sensitive to renewal rates.)

It appears that there is a new candidate for Treasurer.

Membership:

Mary Ruwart gave a fine report on membership renewals and new members. The numbers are sufficiently important as to be worth revisiting.

For the past seven months, the party budget had projected for 6282 renewals and 2034 new donors.

The National Party actually had only 4101 renewals but 2631 new donors.

The renewal numbers are well under what had been expected. The reason for the numbers are the renewal rates. About 50% of long-time members are renewing, where “long-time” refers to people who have already renewed once. About 1/3 of new members — people who joined last year and are renewing for the first time — are renewing.

There are some points where those numbers could mean slightly different things. Also, there were no explicit numbers for life members.

Having said that, if you project 6700 members in seven months out to a full year, you get something around eleven and a half thousand people joining or renewing this year. Add life members, and you get an estimated party membership at the end of the year of around 13,000. There are several bits of imprecision, for example, there are monthly donors, changes in the number of life memberships, points where numbers quoted for donors and for members might entangle, but at current rates you are looking at 12-14,000 members, not 17,000.

You can also approach by looking at the renewal rates. 2631 new members in seven months translates to four and a half thousand new members this year. A third of them will renew for the first time, for another fifteen hundred members. At the second and each subsequent renewal, the party loses half the people who might renew, which is a well-known geometric series; if you sum it, you find the total is around fifteen hundred members who have belonged for more than two years. Adding in life members, and you find that the current rates imply a long-term party membership around 9000.

Needless today, 13,000 members at the end of this year, with a trend taking us toward 9,000 total members in the long term, are not positive outcomes for the organization that purports to lead America’s third political party.

On a slightly more positive note, 97% of the new members were from the web. Under 4% of the new members were from direct mail campaigns.

Money

It was reported that we ran a surplus for the first five months of the year. Despite the late date — weeks after the end of June — the June income and outgo numbers were not reported. They have crashed; if you extrapolate current income, which was not mentioned during the meeting but which is now available, to year’s end, total LNC income for the year would be under one million dollars.

Addendum

In a prior report, I had noted that Mr. Wrights’ membership on the LNC had been saved by a one-vote motion on the Judiciary committee. The question was reasonably asked of me: If it had not been saved, what would have been done? The reasonable answer, given a prior LNC vote to do so, was that the LNC would have appointed a new member, and would then have voted again to reappoint Mr. Wrights to the LNC as they had tried to do previously, or they would have said that they had already so voted. I hadn’t taken my discussion previously to the next step, but it was fair to ask me, and that’s my best estimate of the answer.

LNC Other Bits

Mr. Karlan had a motion on Mr. LaBianca. There had been a motion to strike this section of the agenda, on the grounds that Mr. LaBianca was not there to defend himself and had not been informed of charges against him; that motion failed. Karlan refused to say in advance what his motion would be. He made his motion, which was a motion of commendation. There followed a half hour or so of discussion, at the end of which the motion was withdrawn. Nothing was accomplished.

There was a motion on the Wrights and Haugh issues in the agenda. There was a motion to strike the motion. The motion to strike passed 9-8 with the chair voting to strike. It appeared to me that the people voting to strike were Sink-Burris, Mattson, Hinkle, Sullentrup, Jingozian, Starr, Flood, Karlan, and in the end Redpath. Voting against the motion to strike were Fox, Rob Latham (alternate for Tony Ryan), Ruwart, Lark, Wrights, Colley, Dixon, and Hawkridge. This was a part of a longer discussion of the agenda, a discussion that went on for the better part of half an hour.

This sort of event went on for most of the meeting. In essence, the LNC is so locked in parliamentarianism that it gets very little done. Instead of arguing about actions, it argues about the parliamentary way to argue about actions.

Mr. Starr moved the highly sensible suggestion that the LNC should discuss its strategic plan and the 20 or 21 strategies and at the end vote them up or down. The motion was seconded. There followed a half hour of debate as to how the strategies should be debated or whatever. In the end, Mr. Karlan had made a motion to strike from the LNC Policy Manual — a record of LNC motions — Article 4, Section 4

“Section 4: STRATEGIC PLAN

The LNC shall review the Strategic Plan annually, to set metrics and monitors for future years, and amend, as needed, those parts of the Plan that are the responsibility of the LNC or staff. Amendments to the Goals or Strategies in the Strategic Plan may be made by a two-thirds vote of the LNC.

Amendments to Tactics, metrics and monitors may be made by a simple majority at a single meeting.

Within the Strategic Plan document, an appendix shall maintain a record of when all such changes were made.

A Strategy can be deleted by a one-third vote of the LNC”

In essence deleting the requirement that the LNC occasionally look at the strategic plan that it spent a year developing. Mr. Karlan’s motion passed. There was no actual discussion of any strategy. The motion leaves the 2001 Strategic Plan in place. Someone else can look up whether the 1998-2000 Bergland strategic plan, under which we are soon to take control of Congress, is still in place.

There was a motion to distribute quarterly financial reports to delegates who are sustaining members and any other sustaining member who so requests. Jingozian objected that the report would reach the internet, and people would see how we are spending our money…we will get fewer donations.

It seems to me that there is a message in Jingozian’s final remarks.

Hawkridge asked how we could support transparency in government if we oppose it for ourselves.

The APRC came with a motion directing it to propose revised language dealing with its function. One LNC member came to the interpretation that the motion was allowing the APRC to revise the policy manual. Instead of simply asking that chair for a ruling as to what the motion meant, an amendment to the motion as inserted. Several members demonstrated how much time can be consumed in saying that the motion was dilatory and a waste of time. In the end the motion passed 9-8 with Redpath voting in favor.

The Secretary reported on speakers for the next National Convention. In addition to Gary Nolan and Bob Barr, N. Boortz and a Jefferson Davis were signed. Davis claims to be a relative by descent of Jefferson Davis. He appears to be the same Jefferson Davis who writes for the far right “Southern Party”. His connections with our Party and movement appear to be dubious.

Red alert level issue: the Bylaws committee proposed a series of changes in the Bylaws including omitting a bunch of issues ‘because they are in Roberts’.

George Phillies is a contributing editor for Liberty For All. You can contact Dr. Phillies at phillies@wpi.edu.

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The two articles have been combined for IPR. For background see:

Roger Gary announces candidacy for Treasurer of Libertarian National Committee

Mark Hinkle running for Libertarian National Committee Chair

LNC meeting: live broadcast

Open Letter to LP Leaders From Party Founder

2008 LP Delegate Petition Calls for Treasurer to Apologize for Sharing Donor Data

Libertarian National Committee to meet this weekend in St. Louis

LP Judicial Committee 4-3 For Wrights, Nolan Dissents

Remarks To Libertarian Party Judicial Committee

Memo To Libertarian Party Judicial Committee

Libertarian Leaders Send Brief To LP Judicial Committee

Libertarian National Committee Votes to (Re-)Seat Lee Wrights

Statement from the LP Judicial Committee Regarding Wrights

Petitions of Denver Libertarian National Convention delegates and sustaining members against the removal of Lee Wrights from the LNC

LNC Memo: Wrights Was Not Member When Elected

Removal of Lee Wrights from Libertarian National Committee appealed to Judicial Committee

Applicants Sought For LNC Vacancy

Libertarian National Committee budget controversy

Lee Wrights: ‘The seduction of silence’