Atlas! PAC

We founded Atlas! PAC to provide Libertarian affiliates at all levels the practical, nuts-and-bolts support necessary to become an effective force in local politics. Because Atlas! is not a think tank, our focus transcends ideology, positions, and principles to focus on the mechanics and hard work of real politics and the knowledge and resources our affiliates need to win elections.

Atlas! will provide training on fundraising, a complete walk-through of how to become an FEC filer (which everyone must to do when they are effective fund raisers), voter registration, lobbying, and much more of the heavy lifting of successful retail politics. The mission of Atlas! PAC is simple: provide Libertarians with a desire to win elections the resources, money, and training to do so.

Atlas! PAC federal PAC supporting Libertarian committees and candidates by raising money to help give Libertarian committees and/or activists the following benefits:
a. Database Training
b. Fundraising Training
c. FEC compliance Training
d. General Campaign Training
e. Implementation of Small Business Initiative Training

Atlas! PAC has already sponsored people to attend the Campaigns and Elections 3 day seminar in Washington DC the first of June this year.

I am the advisory Board Chair for this Political Action Committee. There will be a board meeting in Las Vegas on the weekend of August 25 and I will be there to attend.

If you can help us grow by donating to Atlas! PAC please go to our web site to do so. The federal limits and reporting requirements are on the donation page.

Check us out and if you have any questions, there is a “contact us” page on the web that you can use.

The web site is at http://www.atlas-pac.com/

Membership to the National LP

If you are a Libertarian in Kansas you need to go to the LP.org web site and donate at least $25 between now and December 31st. (the $25 level is the minimum that will work for the below)

The reason I ask that this happen is that on December 31st – the National LP will “freeze” the membership numbers to use for allocating each states number of delegates to the 2008 national convention. The more people that have donated at least $25 between now and December 31 will help Kansas have a larger delegation of voting delegates. With the 2008 convention in Denver (and a reasonable drive for us) – I expect that we will have a bunch of LP’ers from Kansas that will want to go as our “official” delegates to be able to vote on who our next presidential candidate will be.

Those of you that are current members -- check your membership expiration date. When I look at the member data, there are a large number of Kansans memberships that will expire in November and December. We need those people to make sure they renew – and we need those that have not done so to donate in the next six months.

We need all the LP’ers to donate soon so that we can have a large delegation – in 2006 (Portland) the total number of allowed delegates (national total) was trimmed – we were allocated 15 to Portland – under the new rules that would have been pretty close to 11/12 instead.

Help us – donate at least $25 to national ASAP it will help all Kansas LP’ers to be able to have a larger voting block representing us that will make a difference nationally.

Libertarian State Leadership Alliance

From My Friend Jim Duensing - LP State Chair Nevada

BTW - The LSLA is very much worth your time to attend - Plan ahead and be there - I will be!

**********

2008 LSLA in VEGAS baby VEGAS!

A great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit. Yep, I'm talking about Las Vegas. Home of the 2008 LSLA conference. Negotiations with Sunset Station are almost final. Here is what I can guarantee at this early date:

1) The convention will be at Sunset Station (which is actually in Henderson near the airport).
2) Over Presidents' Day Weekend 2008 (Feb 16-18)
3) The largest LSLA conference in LP history.
4) The most information in LSLA history. It will be physically impossible to see it all.

I view the LSLA or Leadership Conference as a gathering of party organizers and candidates all attempting to improve in their respective roles, to train replacement leaders, to build camaraderie amongst ourselves, to trade successful ideas, and for fun.

It is an event that every State Chair, every member of every Executive Committee and every county officer should go to. This is the event where we are free to discuss practical effective techniques and strategies to grow our respective parts of our entire organization.

At the 2008 conference, there will be four separate 8 hour tracks of information for everyone to learn. Presently, the four tracks of instruction are classified as

1. Candidate Training - including everything from dress, body language, the green zone, tone of voice, lessons for radio and television, debate techniques and the most effective method of expressing the Libertarian message ever devised. (I fear I may not be complementing this track
adequately.)

2. Treasurer / Secretary - this track will include information on how to keep acct. books, how to take quality minutes, how to file with the FEC, Roberts Rules for Conventioneers and other as of yet undetermined subjects.

3. Outreach / Fundraising - this track may include all of the following and more: creating a monthly pledge program, ballot base, legislative directors, how to write a fundraising letter, marketing / branding, organizing new affiliates / energizing longtime Libertarians into organizers and candidates, etc.

4. Institutional - this track is designed to discuss what Stephen Covey would call quadrant II activities - things that are important but not urgent. These consist of the most important problems and greatest opportunity that any organization or individual faces. Tentatively, this track will include presentations / discussions on an affiliate agreement, the work of the platform committee and bylaws committee prior to the May 08 convention, maximizing our use of the national database, etc.

These are obviously not set in stone. Once the details with the hotel are finalized, I'll be able to devote more time to planning these tracks in more detail. Also, if any of y'all have any good ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Also, because I want every county officer in every state to attend this meeting, the LSLA will be offering group discounts on tickets. More details on that will be available as soon as the ink is dry on the catering contract.

I believe our record attendance is around 100. I want to double that. 200 people is only 4 per state. My state brought 5 from NV to Orlando and 4 to Phoenix, so I know it is possible. And, we're a small state. We only have 5 electoral votes. 200 should be easy.

Imagine if we brought 200 Libertarians to a meeting designed to improve their ability to communicate our message and expand our party right before an election where the popularity rates of the other two parties is around 30% each. That spells progress period.

We can do it if each of you begin selling this meeting to all of your members. Push it to your general membership. When they get to Las Vegas and meet all the people working for our party, you'll not only have a new energetic activist, you'll have one who is well trained and who can train others.

This may seem like a gargantuan Leadership Conference, compared with prior years, but I think it is just a continuation of the direction we have been heading. In a few more years, I do not believe we'll be able to get by with only four tracks of information. And, the level of training of our organizers and candidates will require increasingly more nuanced and advanced training sessions. The classes outlined above are mostly what I would consider a 101 level political course. Before long we'll need 400 level classes.

The point of this email is to let everyone know the date of the event and to get all of you to begin selling this event to all of your members. By the way, to figure out what number of people you'll need from your state to get us to 200, take 40% your electoral college vote. This will give you a rough estimate. For my part, I know I'll bring more than two people. That should lessen the load on some of you and entice the rest of you to outnumber NV. I'm trying to outnumber CA, and from talking to the new state chair, Kevin Takanega, that may be difficult. However, I know I can beat CO. You want to go double or nothing on our other bet Travis? This time I get the odds - not because it's fair, but because you got 'em last time. By then Super Tuesday will be over and I can collect both bets in one weekend.

Thanks for suffering through another characteristically long email from me. I'll see everyone in Vegas in 08.

Jim Duensing
Chair NVLP

Van’s Warped Tour

The LPKS will be staffing an Operation Politically Homeless (OPH) booth this summer at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater for the Van’s Warped Tour on Wednesday August 15th. This event is a one-day gathering in Bonner Springs Kansas that brings a bunch of regional bands together in one place. Their web site is at: http://www.warpedtour.com/warpedtour/index.asp

I am interested in how the booth will do as this will be an 18 to 25 (in general) crowd. In the past when I have worked the OPH’s in Kansas – it is not the young people that generally stop to talk to us.

I am pretty good at working these type of outreach – however if anyone out there has ideas on how to reach the young people better – I am listening. I have had pretty good luck talking to High School Advanced Placement (AP) government classes and to college political science classes, however, I believe they are tuned into politics much more than the average student is. Maybe I am wrong on that assumption and if so, I will have a ball working this booth.

Kudos’ go out to Travis Nicks the Colorado State Chair for helping get us a booth at this event, I believe that Travis knows one of the organizers of the Vans group and he leans heavily libertarian.

I believe that this will be a gathering of very liberty minded people. I really look forward to taking the day off from work and meeting all the new people that can help us continue our LP growth in Kansas.

Ron Paul LP savior or saboteur?

I lean to saboteur;

I have debated with many people about the “Ron Paul effect” and my belief that if we let it - this “Ron Paul effect” will destroy the Libertarian Party. I see that effect starting in Kansas and nationally.

Our actions have consequences and we will pay the devil for these poor decisions to follow another party’s candidate. We have a former state chair that is trying to walk the borderline and has not even realized he has stepped over it. Here is someone that was intricately involved with writing the by-laws and state constitution and yet he ignores it (as a matter of convenience). Other “officers” are also backing RP. (Supposedly as the person and not as the “officer”) However, the reality is this; how does the media (or anyone else) separate the two? They don’t, so in crossing the line to back another political party candidate, you have betrayed the LP.

My reasoning;

First - Ron Paul is a Republican, and he is running as a conservative republican, not a libertarian republican. People that say that RP is helping the LP cannot validate those claims with any substantial evidence. There is not a surge in LP voter registrations, no surge in LP donations or any growth in LP volunteers that can be directly attributed to RP. The claims that RP is helping create positive LP media is false. RP was in KC and the only mention that had libertarian used as a word in it, was used only to say he ran for president before as an LP'er (and the intent of using Libertarian was as a verbal slight, not as a descriptive term) & there were no mentions of the word libertarian on the TV clips. RP only brings up the LP if he HAS to talk about it - he does not volunteer that info. The claims that RP is doing good in polls is also not true as they are internet polls that let someone stack the results - real polls have RP numbers at dismal levels.

I have no control over republican internal politics (and I would not want any control there anyway) The fact that RP has zero chance means I would rather spend my time doing something I can control and that is to work to grow the LP just like I have done for the last 8 years. I have no problem personally with RP - except that he is a republican and that is all I really need to say.

*** Second - National LP and State LP bylaws state that we cannot endorse another party candidate - PERIOD.

I will not jeopardize our status as Kansans need the KSLP as a third political foil. (the Reform party in KS is just a protest vote and is not an effective alternative)

*** Third - the presidential race is a federal candidate race and we (the LPKS) will not be actively backing the LP presidential candidate (whoever it turns out to be) due to the FEC rules that impose major reporting issues if we were to back a federal candidate.

Therefore, even if RP was running as a Libertarian presidential candidate we (the LPKS) would not/could not actively endorse him unless major internal changes happen and we become a FEC filing entity.

Folks, politics are politics and there are ground rules.

Keep politics separate from your personal feelings.

There is no Libertarian "savior"!

This is actually one of the best signs I have seen in a long time. We are starting to make a difference - if the republicans are willing to try to disrupt us with Ron Paul (and by getting LP’ers to waste their time trying to get RP in the R debates) they are getting desperate, and that means we are close to a major breakthrough. We need to stay focused on growing the KSLP and not playing into the republican hands by getting distracted and stopping what we have been doing.

LIBERTY is only what WE work to make happen -- Ron Paul will not do it for us.

-- Rob --

Going to use this for more communication

I am going to try to start keeping this blog much more up-to-date than I have been.

Sooo...

This week I attended the Tri-county Libertarian meeting in Lenexa KS and they are starting to get very active in their outreach efforts. They have multiple county fairs and other events planned to staff Operation Politically Homeless (OPH) booths at. They will be working with other local LP groups to make these efforts a success – The Free State LP and the Libertarians of North East Kansas (LNEK) are involved in staffing outreach volunteers this summer also.

This is the time for the LP to be working hard to gain new people to the LP as activists and candidates. This effort today will reap many rewards when the campaigns start really kicking into gear in 2008. We need a ton of volunteers to help the candidates in 08 – the candidates running are the most effective way to get our message out and when we start getting elected – the “glass ceiling” we deal with as a “minor” party in Kansas will crack.

Interesting – our domain provider (for lpks.org) is being hammered by a DDOS attack. (DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service. A DDoS is carried out by instructing hundreds or thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of computers to send traffic to a target site or IP address. From a virus infection – you now see why you have to keep your virus protection up-to-date) – with the DDOS attack - the LPKS website is down and email to the domain is stalled (if not lost). I hope that this problem will be solved soon.

I will be attending the LNEK meeting next Thursday evening in Topeka KS. I look forward to meeting the LP’ers there, as I have not been to the Topeka area in a while.

More to come as I get into the “blog” mode.

-- Rob --