Libertarian Reform Caucus Newsletter
Volume 1 Issue 2
Sent September 15, 2005
In this issue:
- Membership Report.
- New Platform Plank and Essay Submission System.
- New Comment System.
- Upcoming Events (including time-critical Newsflash!).
- And more.
Membership Report
As of September 14, 2005, membership stands at 228. This is roughly half of what we need at the LP National Convention in order to guarantee that we can get rid of existing planks that need to go.
Of course, this assumes that all caucus members will be going to the convention. This is a very bad assumption! Fortunately, we will likely have success even if we constitute less than half the delegates. We will be able to persuade many non-members.
Still, we have a lot of recruiting to do. More on this later.
New Platform Plank and Essay Submission System
Even if we did have the membership numbers needed to change the platform, we still need to have agreement on how we want to change the platform. New tools are now online to make this process run more smoothly.
Go to any platform area or essay area and you should find a link to the submission guidelines near the bottom of the right sidebar. Below this link there is a button for creating a new plank/essay. If you are logged in and you hit this button, a form will come up allowing you to enter your proposal/essay.
This form is similar to what you have on a typical message board only a trifle more primitive. To add formatting, you need to enter the tags manually. For example, for bold face you surround the text with [b][/b] as in [b]bold text[/b]. Similarly, you have [i]italics[/i], [u]underline[/u] and more. Instructions are on the form.
Sometime after you enter your proposal/essay, an editor will go over it and let you know if changes need to be made. You initial login page will show you the editorial status of your current submissions with links to allow you to make/approve changes.
We would appreciate it if you would read the
Essay Guidelines and/or
Platform Proposal Guidelines as is appropriate. Also, if you suffer from writer’s block, or simply want to improve your writing output, check out
Decent Writing, a Practical Guide.
New Comment System
After your not so humble webmaster got done with the new submission system, he realized, “Hey this would work for comments too!” And so another bout of featuritis ensued.
As a result, members can now comment upon both platform planks and essays. Online debate is now possible.
This debate is not formally moderated, but if flame wars get going, offensive posts will get deleted. Please be gentle in your criticism of other people’s work.
In order to see where the active conversation is occurring, see the right sidebar of the home page. There, you will find links to:
- Recent essays,
- Recent platform proposals,
- Recent comments on essays, and
- Recent comments on platform proposals.
For each of these pages you can launch a small popup which you can use to navigate your main browser window.
Events
As we said earlier, we need more members, especially the sort who are likely to go to the LP National Convention. And what better place to find such people than…(drum roll)…a libertarian convention!
There are events going on around the country hosted by state LP affiliates as well as non-party libertarian organizations. These are great places to meet and recruit the type of people who might attend the national LP convention.
The www.ReformTheLP.org web site has PDFs of
handouts that you can give to people you meet when you work the crowds, or better yet, work a table.
For action as involved as renting and working a table, it helps for multiple caucus members to get together and coordinate their action. To help this process, we have a new events area under “Caucus.” There, members can post short “essays” describing upcoming events and then members can coordinate activities using the comments feature.
For example, the Advocates for Self-Government are holding a conference from October 13-16 in Atlanta, while the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire is holding a Multi Party conference October 14-16 in Bedford NH. If you are thinking about going to either conference, you might want to comment on the relevant “essay” and work on setting up a Libertarian Reform Caucus presence.
News Flash!
One event is coming up this weekend! Too late for the web site. Here is a press release provided by LRC member Guy McClendon:
Texas LP Annual Meeting
AUSTIN, Texas – September 16-18, 2005. Event information is available at the state website:
http://www.tx.lp.org/2005conference.shtml
Long time LP activist and Texas Fort Bend County Vice Chairman Guy McLendon has entered an application to the Texas SLEC state executive committee, and has thereby applied to be the Texas’ appointee to the National LP 2006 Convention Platform Committee. His appointment to that position is by no means certain, and he could use LRC support to lobby during this annual meeting.
The primary lobbying opportunities are the Saturday evening banquet, and the Sunday luncheon. If any speakers suggest the Platform should drop divisive planks or more tightly embrace the US Constitution, please applaud loudly. The members of Texas SLEC who may sway the decision to appoint Guy to the Platform Committee are listed on this webpage:
http://www.tx.lp.org/cgi/district_representatives.lists.cgi
The following goals are summarized from his application:
- Adjust planks to be consistent with a libertarian interpretation of the US Constitution; else, establish proposed amendments as part of any plank that's not constitutionally compliant
- Delete some planks that are intensely divisive
- Adjust the Platform to acknowledge differences between the federal and state levels of government
- Maintain the long range vision of the LP while using the transitional sections to make it clear those goals are long term, and are not intended to be current proposals.
- Provide a real & viable roadmap to migrate the United States from our current situation towards a brighter future.
And More
The formatting system used for proposals, essays and comments also works for your “political resume” in your profile. Feel free to jazz up your profile. If you make comments or submit proposals/essays, then people are likely to see your profile.
Also, if you checked the box allowing people to see your email address, they now will be able to. But they will only be able to see it if they are members logged in! And they will see an image of your email address on a rainbow background, not actual text. This should foil any spam robots.
The entire web site is now printer-friendly. At the bottom of each page is a link that launches a popup of the current page—minus sidebars and color banner.
And there is more yet. Since the last issue of this newsletter there have been many essays and platform planks added to the site. Check it out!
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