I agree with Brian.

Mea culpa: I graduated from the government subsidized University of Alabama. And yes, I use government roads and government operated and/or subsidized transit. That doesn’t mean I should not be able to advocate changing the system.

In Kentucky, whenever someone wants the party to become a mechanism for education, rather than political activity, I simply show them the advantages of being a 501(c)3 or 501(c)4

Not sure how that applies to Oregon – Wagner et al are running more candidates than in other recent elections, despite the lawsuit – but in general you are correct. And: people who want to be a rump caucus of the Republican party should be encouraged to that from within the GOP rather than as LP members. And: people who want to practice agorism and countereconomics should be encouraged to that as well. I see all those things as being good things people should be encouraged to do, rather than fighting over the crumbs of the LP. To the extent we can keep things friendly, it’s nice to have the LP be a hub tying all these spokes together, but none of them should waste their time trying to take over the LP, much less waste their time preventing the others from doing so.

the man is in his early 60?s

or

Old Man Tom Stevens is 71 almost.

Or mid 60s as you said earlier?

Shoot, early 60?s is “old”?

Depends on one’s perspective. I don’t think that is in any way too old for a county chair.

he appoints people in North Hampton County that aren’t even LP-PA members.

That is a genuine concern. His age is not.

As I understood, the convention was kept in Portland to keep the leadership elected. The impression that the leadership wouldn’t fair well in places like Bend back in the 90?s.
——————————————

The Burke majority voted to have the convention in Bend in 1998 or so because they felt that the recently new old Deschutes County LP members would be very pro-Burke (in the short term, i.e. just long enough) due to the attention given them by Burke & Co. as if there was no one else.

On top of that, they had been doing their best to bad-mouth their rivals so that the Bend area people would be suspicious of the anti-Burke people. What Burke hadn’t counted on was that a number of the key bend people were long time libertarians with friends in the Portland area, and who therefore were not empty headed newbies prone to brainwashing by drek like Burke.

Some Burke people also let slip their real interests. One Deschutes Co. libertarian who had been following e-mail in-fighting discussions grew sick of people like yours truly and openly said that people like me were bad for the party. Later, some weeks prior to the start of the convention in Bend, one of Burke’s inner-inner-circle members was in Bend talking with this guy and the latter pointed out that they felt down there that it was too soon for a Bend state convention because the party was not built up enough yet, and that on top of that, he was very familiar with a lot of the lower income members in the greater Portland area and said that a lot of them had cars that would not be able to make it to Bend, to which the Burke operative said, “That’s the idea”.

Whoa there! Ain’t that interesting! Well, the decent libertarian from Deschutes County realized right then and there that everything he’d been hearing about the Burke gang was true, and he wrote to me soon afterwards and said that I was welcome in Bend anytime.

Lots and lots of Burke’s followers are very short term people because he uses them for short term power grabbing gains before they drift away after they catch on to what an egotistical, lying sociopath he is. He then has to recruit more people for the next round.

In 2000, the Burke people scheduled the state convention in La Grande, Oregon, on the other side of the Blue Mountains, in February. Northeast Oregon has lots of snow and ice in winter, and their plan was to get all of their people in La Grande first and hope that many of his opponents would not risk the trip or would actually be delayed by bad weather which could strike at any time there. Really stupid place for a February convention.

One member – a Burke opponent – had driven all the way out there, showed up at the convention site only to find it locked because it was too early, and then got some breakfast in a nearby cafe before returning only to find that the
meeting had been called to order and the Burke majority refused to call the lunch break a recess or to break to allow late-comers to register and participate (an old tradition of the LPO which Burke squashed every time he could). So this guy had driven the 300 or so miles to La Grande only to be denied entry into the entire day long convention.

B. Tiernan

Well, the comparison isn’t to the same levels. A better comparison would be of the IRS to the Interprovincial commission.

The IRS is a sub-gang agency created “by law” by a gang (the US government). The Interprovincial commission, likewase, is a sub-gang agency created by a gang (the Sicilian Mafia).

The only other real differences are slogans, oaths, etc. — pledge of allegiance vs. omerta oath and so forth. Roughly the same as the difference between the Dallas Cowboys and the New England Patriots.

Abolishing the IRS would also require a law. Abolishing the Mafia might happen by law, too, although the enforcement of that law requires great vigilance OR some really badass Hoppean insurance companies!

http://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2013/05/201358152317954140.html

…George Phillies

If there anything close to a ‘state religion’ in this country, it is the “Church of Public Education”.

I don’t owe your children a college education.