As for you not reading my forum, here’s a clue: whether a fact is public or private doesn’t depend on whether Bruce Cohen is aware of it.

“Play” with you? I had a project to potty-train you. It didn’t work. You’re on your own.

“Relax”? Shedding you is, in the context of my LP activism, one of the more relaxing things I’ve done in quite a while.

So you just keep pretending that being fair and honest about people has anything to do with notarizing things, and I’ll keep bird-dogging your every false or unsubtantiated statement about any LPCA member. But please: don’t keep zooming through the speed trap just because you’re desperate for the social interaction of being ticketed.

You need some thicker skin, buddy.

I have no idea about any of what your deal was and I think it’s super nice of you to reimburse Allan. You both are grouches on the outside but softies on the inside.

It’s ok if you don’t want to play with me anymore, Brian, I can take it.

I wasn’t reading your forum then.
Do I need to read all 972 posts, or even the one?
I believe you.

I’m not going to ask you for a notarized contract and copies of canceled checks.

It’s ok, relax.

Not yet, because I’m not sure of my move date. It’s sometime between now and September, but you’re right in that it’s probably a good idea to do so now. I hope for my sake that you’re right in your assessment that such contact should be all it takes.

It’s on the first page of results if you Google:

California libertarian “floor fees” 2005 convention

And look, there goes Brian, breaking the poor guy’s privacy.

Allen still does small-L libertarian activism, though. His latest project tracks the current initiatives seeking ballot qualification in California: http://www.wgla.org/Politics/2009/Initiatives/index.htm

Every time I have been involved in any way, I saw organizers making allowances for people who were willing to do that.

Isn’t that what being Libertarian is all about?

Steve is right on, too.

Aaron Starr did that a few years ago.
He had a donor, I think actually other people even offered, but one very nice but persnickety old guy put up the money for anyone that could not afford the gate.

Somebody will have to pay for some kind of big hall and for it to be vacuumed and have chairs set up, etc..

Unless we go with Starchild’s ‘Liberstock’ idea of a festival kind of thing outdoors.
[which has some AMAZING possibilities and it's a SUPER idea to explore for the future...]

So if you want to be pure, we could tell the hotel how many people we were going to have, and they could do the math and just sort of ‘split the check’ and bill everyone at the door.

We could do it that way so there is literally no charge.

Or, we could set up a fund.

Tons of ways to skin a cat.

Too late this time, let’s discuss for next time.

We all agree to keep costs down.
For most people the cost of getting and staying is what keeps ‘em away.

And I really don’t want to sleep in my car and eat at McDonalds.

Been there, done that.

What does waiving the 50-100 bucks do with the budget?

Even Tom Knapp and I, both known for making pennies plead for mercy, we squeeze so hard, know that’s a fairly small percentage of the total attendance budget.

One thing that really concerns me is that large fees tend to discourage the young from attending. This hurts us thrice. First, they don’t become connected to the party and senior members of the party. Second, they are less likely to become activists. Third, we loose their innovative thinking.

No doubt about it. I stopped by to take her out to dinner. Wall to wall sewing machines.

She told you it was a quilting retreat? And you bought it? Mwuhahahaha!

(Just kidding!)

It is a good the the quilters aren’t a political party or their efficiencies would mop us up.

Here is what you do.

If you own or rent any property, give it away, including vehicle, bank account(s), credit card(s), house/apartment, except perhaps a few items of clothing and toiletries that can fit in a backpack and which you can easily carry for miles over rough terrain.

Get rid of any computers and phones you have, and any lists of phone numbers, addresses or emails.

Lose your wallet, all cash and all forms of ID.

Go to Mexico.

Cross the border back into the US on foot without going through a checkpoint.

Do not attempt to contact any friends or relatives whose address, phone or email you have memorized,

Do not attempt to get a copy of a birth certificate or other identifying document.

Please tell me how it went.

And if you don’t think it will be to your advantage to try this, thank the next undocumented worker you see for coming to this country and improving our standard of living. Which they most certainly do (see Julian Simon’s writings on this).

Remember, too, that a wall can keep Americans fenced in at least as well as it can keep anyone else out.

For bonus points, if you are not a French speaker, try sneaking into Quebec. That will give you a slightly better sense of what it’s like.

Luckily for me, I was considered a refugee due to Cold War propaganda (although many people who are not considered refugees have a much more legitimate claim to the status), or I would have had to grow up in Israel or worse yet Russia.

The best way to stop “illegal” immigration is to legalize it, and remember that no human being is illegal.

(and see the other articles on Boot Boortz Blog http://www.freedom2008.com/bootboortz/

ATLANTA NEWSPAPER BLASTS BOORTZ
The senior editor of Atlanta’s Creative Loafing newspaper has authored this substantial piece, which gives a lot of information and insight into Boortz and his views. Apparently the author is responsible for “outing” Boortz as a chickenhawk, having revealed what is known about Boortz’ evasion of service during the Vietnam War.

The piece also discusses the LP National Convention situation in depth, and even plugs the petition.

I’ve copied the entire piece into the extended entry section.

——————————————————————–

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2003-12-18/fishwrapper.html

Neal Boortz is no John Galt

Libertarians will ensure their irrelevance if they embrace radio ignoramus

BY JOHN F. SUGG

Atlanta’s radio offerings are so, so, so very awful that, yes, on my drive to the office, in desperation I am forced to tune in to the city’s pinnacle (or is it pit?) of know-nothingness, Neal Boortz. But I have a rule. At his first lie, gross misrepresentation of the truth, or race baiting, I go to a book on tape. Often, I don’t make it out of the driveway. Seldom do I travel the five miles to I-85, and never have I completed the 30-minute drive to the Loaf without Boortz bellowing some deceitful absurdity.

Neal dissembles, John hits the off button.

For example, just last week Boortz proclaimed that the Bushies told no fibs to con Americans into supporting the war. Huh? I paused for a minute before switching on my current recorded book to make sure Boortz wouldn’t qualify that astounding fiction or giggle and say, “Just kidding,” since all the world now knows George Bush lied. So did Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the contemptible gang. They politicized and distorted intelligence, and when that didn’t work, they fabricated and uttered gross untruths. They have even admitted it, but now claim it doesn’t matter.

I sometimes jot down Boortz’s lamest deceits. It’s a long list. Ranking at the top was his hysterical claim, in the days before Bush’s invasion of Iraq, that Saddam Hussein’s military might surpass that of Nazi Germany. I slapped my forehead at that one — the claim went beyond mere bad information and makes me wonder if there isn’t serious impairment of Boortz’s reasoning capacity. The fellow needs a 12-step program for the chronically dishonest and incorrigibly stupid.

The truth, by the way, was that in 1939 Adolf Hitler boasted 98 divisions, with 1.5 million well-trained men, for the invasion of Poland. For the Western offensive, Germany had 2.5 million men, and 2,500 tanks. In June 1941, Hitler had available 3 million men and 4,000 tanks to invade the Soviet Union. Saddam, prior to our invasion, never had more than 400,000 troops and 2,200 tanks, and the demoralized and largely broken-down Iraqi military was never in the same universe as the Wehrmacht.

In other words, Boortz equals bullshit.

I don’t want to argue the war here, but it was just so Boortzian for him to proclaim that pure lunacy as truth. And the sheep that follow him bleat their belief that they are actually getting “information.”

That Boortz struts about touting himself as a libertarian would make his daily mission of mendacity a good laugh — except for one thing: For Big Brother to win, the Bush regime needs to bovine-ize America. Ignorance and the Orwellian capacity to simultaneously believe glaring contradictions are the essential intellectual diet of the Bushies. Force feeding America the swill are Faux News and the phalanx of talk show screechers, of which Boortz is, to his chagrin, merely a farm team lightweight.

(In October a University of Maryland survey measured how much false information — such as that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq — people believed and whether they primarily relied on Fox, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN or print. Those relying on Fox were far less likely to know the truth about critical world and national issues, and far more likely to believe distortions of the truth. Boortz, of course, gets it wrong more often than the heavy-hitting propagandists he worships on Fox.)

America needs real libertarians, whose origins are firmly rooted in the Bill of Rights. The Libertarian Party (libertarians with a big “L”) is holding its national convention in Atlanta in May, and the party has invited Boortz to be a speaker.

I’m told by Libertarian activists the decision was rooted in the group’s cheapness — they didn’t want to foot the freight for major talent.

Well, you get what you pay for — free traders such as the Libertarians should understand that. In lib — or Lib — ertarian land, there has been a howl of protest over the invitation to Boortz.

One of the few points on which Boortz’s rants coincide with the Libertarians is ending the Drug War. Hell, there are a lot of tokers out there who can’t even spell Libertarian who are in tune with the party on that point.
Boortz is no libertarian. He is a sorry shill for the Bush big-government, interventionist, xenophobic, authoritarian regime. Imposing our will on the world, looting resources and guaranteeing Halliburton billions in profits — that isn’t free trade; it’s empire. Gutting the Bill of Rights, spying on law-abiding citizens, manipulation through agitprop — that isn’t freedom; it’s slavery.

“The Libertarian Party is so desperate, it has led them to abandon their issues in favor of seeking popularity,” says Eric Garris, who helps run a libertarian website, antiwar.com, and who has long been involved with the party at the national and state (California) levels.

On the key issues confronting America, Boortz clearly stands on the side of those who attack freedom, and those who want to turn Big Government into Gargantuan Government (as long as someone besides rich people and corporations pay for it).

Examples: He applauds the FBI investigating anti-war demonstrators, making a broad smear recently on his website (that could have been authored by Karl Rove, and maybe was) that activists should be hounded by the feds because they are “pro-Saddam and anti-U.S.,” and that they are “largely anti-American communists and Islamic radicals.”

Likewise, in the same epistle, he applauded the police riot last month against trade demonstrators in Miami. I never met someone who claimed to be a libertarian but was so antagonistic toward the First, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments. It just doesn’t compute.

In Boortz’s best imitation of Joe McCarthy, he has insinuated that Justin Raimondo — a nationally prominent Libertarian since the 1970s and the prolific editor of anti-war.com — is a red. Raimondo “doesn’t like me,” Boortz huffed on his website last week, “because I approve of our actions in Iraq. Fair enough. Do you know who else doesn’t like our Iraqi actions? Well, communists, for one.”

Slimey, slimey, slimey.

On economics, Boortz worships Ronald Reagan — ignoring the fact that government grew much faster under the Gipper than under, say, Bill Clinton, who the talk show host blames for just about every ill that has ever happened (another script line from Karl Rove). And, of course, Boortz has nothing but gushing praise for Bush’s economics, somehow equating fiscal responsibility with pumping up government spending to $21,000 per American household, compared with $16,000 during the Clinton administration — the biggest increase in more than 50 years.

That remarkably un-libertarian accomplishment, coupled with Bush’s tax cuts for the plutocrats, has created record deficits that will indenture our children and grandchildren — hardly what Ayn Rand, the spiritual guru for Libertarians, had in mind in Atlas Shrugged.

It’s the war, however, that has real libertarians frothing at the invitation to Boortz. The Libertarian Party platform is decidedly anti-war, stating: “We call for the withdrawal of all American military personnel stationed abroad. … There is no current or foreseeable risk of any conventional military attack on the American people, particularly from long distances. We call for the withdrawal of the U.S. from commitments to engage in war on behalf of other governments and for abandonment of doctrines supporting military intervention such as the Monroe Doctrine.”

Pretty clear writing, and it’s at the heart of Libertarian thought. An irony is that since Boortz is peachy happy with the FBI snooping on anti-war activists, and since most Libertarians are anti-war, the radio blowhard is all in favor of the government investigating the very people who invited him to address their convention. And, in the witch-hunting delusions that substitute for thought in Boortz’s diseased mind, it’s quite likely all those Libertarians are really either commies or radical Islamists.

Boortz doesn’t like me. I outed him as a chickenhawk. He keeps changing the story about how he evaded military service during Vietnam (was it the asthma or your eyesight, Neal?). Last week, he was claiming the military wouldn’t take him. More precisely, when he couldn’t get a relatively cushy job as a pilot, he wasn’t about to get dirty (or dead) crawling through rice paddies. It’s so easy to be bellicose when it’s the other guy — probably an oh-so-expendable member of the working class and a minority — who is getting shot.

But that’s Neal Boortz, the apotheosis of cowardice. He doesn’t like to debate when he can’t be in control. He keeps his finger on the disconnect button so that when callers start to score points, he can quickly cut them off.

If that’s who the Libertarians want to hear, the party — already victim to several internal scuffles — might as well admit that it’s history. If its program is to imitate the Democrats’ emulation of the Republicans, the Libertarian Party stands for nothing.

Neal Boortz was offered space for his unedited remarks on libertarians’ “boot Boortz” efforts. Boortz apparently preferred to pout in silence. For those who would like to sign the petition to give Boortz the heave-ho from the Libertarian convention: http://www.petitiononline.com/noboortz/petition.html.

Senior Editor John Sugg — who says, “Neal, you gutless bag of wind, this is a challenge to a smackdown” — can be reached at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com or at 404-614-1241.

12.18.03

I also don’t agree that Iraq was not a threat to the USA and it’s freedom.

Any of the above would merit a discussion of the outcome of the use of force as policy.

There we go with the name calling again.
Bruce disagrees with us, so therefore he’s not a Libertarian, he’s a Republican, woo woo.

I’ve heard far worse before.

I disagree and think attacking Iraq was very much self-defense. OK so? You have your opinion, I have mine, neither of which is better or more rooted in Libertarian theology.

I happen to be in the minority right now, along with John Hospers and Larry Elder and other good company.

So?
I’m still a Libertarian and always have been.

I don’t agree with your premise.

Point taken. I think I’m done after my last post (41). Thankfully, Bruce isn’t half as influential as he thinks he is.

Much like in your interactions with Tom, you have “a habit of addressing arguments I haven’t made.”

Let’s again attack this step-by-step:

BC: “Poorly thought out?
Nonsense coming out of my mouth?
LOL

I guess that means you lost the argument.”

Response: How does that equate with winning or losing an argument? In what delusional world do you operate? You don’t even address the arguments I (or apparently, others also) make. If you think that minor insertions on my part regarding your neurotic nature are ‘points’ for you, then perhaps you should step back and realize how many ‘points’ others would have/get for your constant straw-manning of their positions.

BC: “Let’s all ask Objectivists and Yaron Brooke what Ayn Rand’s position on the use of force was.”

Response: I believe I said, and I quote, “Ayn Rand hated libertarians. The association between libertarians and Rand has been done by others, and was never done by Rand herself.” Thank you for proving my point. Others could claim a lot of people are libertarians by throwing the label around enough, but it doesn’t make it so. It’s like calling yourself a Christian without believing one bit of the story of Jesus as a Christ figure, nor its philosophical implications.

BC: “And Afganistand was not pre-emptive.
It was post-emptive, it was reactive and punitive and prophylactic. As was Iraq.”

Response: I don’t recall bringing up Afghanistan at all. I recall bringing up Iraq, and Iraq was pre-emptive whether you prefer to think that way or not. 90+% of the policy community would agree with the notion that it’s pre-emptive, even it’s most ardent defenders.

BC: “None of those things had anything to do with Bush having a temper or anything but his policy of how to defend the country.”

Response: I’m assuming you’re talking to Tom at this point, since I’ haven’t spoken on this point. Do you just mindlessly ramble, or is their an ability to formulate your arguments somewhere inside of you? Now that you’ve brought it up though, invading a country that didn’t attacked us (Iraq) hardly qualifies as “defending” our country. It’s attacking another one, plain and simple.

BC: “If you think it wasn’t worth the money, fine.
If you think it didn’t give the best result, great.

But to pretend that it was something it was not, or that Libertarians only have individual rights of self defense and the country does not, is a sheer flight of fantasy.”

Response: Iraq had nothing to do with self-defense. It’s not self-defense if you walk down a hallway and punch someone in the face on the delusional premise that they could someday attack you. If you’re not attacked first, it’s no defense. Iraq didn’t attack us.

I’ll close by asking why it is you even consider yourself a libertarian. (?) You seem to have far more in common with Republicans as far as I can tell. Would they not let you feel important in their party, so you tried to corrupt a smaller one? Not that you’ll actually answer this question.

You’d do well to follow their example. Engaging Bruce in philosophical or political discussion isn’t even good practice, since he’s too irrational to give you any sort of consistent mental workout.