Changes to the National Committee

The national committee of the Boston Tea Party includes the chair, vice chair, secretary, and four at large members.

At 11:51 pm on Saturday 7 June, Rocco Fama resigned his position on the committee. Earlier that same day, Tom Stevens resigned as vice chair, and resigned from the party.

For the last two weeks, Todd Andrew Barnett has been very helpful in covering events with the Boston Tea Party, interviewing me for his radio show, and organizing a Michigan state affiliate. He has also been active on Facebook and Myspace putting our presence there in order. We now have over five dozen members on Facebook which is pretty good for six days of existence.

Todd joined the party back in 2006 shortly after it was formed. He was one of the many LP members who were upset by the shattering of libertarian traditions in Portland when the platform was eviscerated. Todd has also served on the national committee in the past.

I've asked Todd to accept the position of vice chair, and he has agreed. So, I've put it before the national committee for their approval.

Tom Knapp, Todd, and I have discussed a number of candidates to fill the two vacant at-large positions. I'll be approaching these individuals soon. If you would like to be considered for one of the positions, feel free to contact me.

It is my expectation that the character of the new national committee shall more accurately reflect the wishes and preferences of the members of the party as a whole. Obviously, and as I've written elsewhere, the idea of representation is essentially mistaken. No one person can be properly represented by anyone else. The best you can hope for is that your representative won't constantly betray your interests. Agency is, and always will be, a grave difficulty.

Nevertheless, it is what we have in the bylaws, and it is a process we can live with. To make the best of it, we need as much feedback as possible.

Don't be shy. Write to us on this site. Write to us in private e-mail - click on the name of the person posting any comment or topic to use the site's internal e-mail sending system. Contact us by phone or in person. The national committee can best represent you if you tell us what you want.

Submitted by planetaryjim on Sat, 06/07/2008 - 23:34
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Comments

1

planetaryjim:

I would like to welcome Todd Andrew Barnett, Chris Bennett, and Elle Larkin to the Boston Tea Party national committee. I closed the voting earlier tonight, and only three votes were cast before voting closed. Mr. Fitzsimmons tried to vote after voting closed, however, and joins Mr. Reid in wanting to prevent the Boston Tea Party from getting anything done.

06/08/2008 - 21:48
2

planetaryjim:

Mike Reid has resigned his at large seat on the national committee, asserts that the Pennsylvania affiliate, if there ever really were one, is now no longer affiliated with our party, and resigns his membership in the party. So, there is a new vacancy on the national committee.

We can have the national committee vote, again, on the three new members, but unless Michelle were to change her vote, they are now on the committee. Mr. Fitzsimmons vote was not counted because he replied to a message "voting is closed" in his attempt to cast it. However, if we vote again, and he votes in a timely way, the votes would be two to one in favor, again.

I suggest we simply move on.

06/08/2008 - 22:07
3

planetaryjim:

Alex Fitzsimmons has also resigned his seat on the national committee. He also asserts that the New Jersey affiliate, if we ever had one, is no longer affiliated with the party. He also resigns his membership in the party. So we have two vacancies to fill. The national committee members who remain both voted for all three new members, so if we re-vote now, the results would be the same. We now have a scarcity of approved affiliates in the various states, but we have a committee dedicated to advancing the cause of freedom and the purposes of the party. So, we should have several state affiliates, soon.

06/08/2008 - 22:16
4

jasongatties:

Had no idea a vote was going down.

There has to be a better way to give members a heads up. Some of us do other things every so often other than site online constantly with our eyes glued on the BTP website.

Jason

06/08/2008 - 21:57
5

planetaryjim:

Jason, the vote to add members to the national committee for temporary duty until the regularly scheduled convention in October was organized by the national committee for its members to vote on.

If you want to stay informed of national committee actions, you are welcome to subscribe to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/btpnc/

Personally, I think it is all very unsavory. Ever since November of 2007, the party has been in a transition mode to get things done without proper authority. You see, the old committee was supposed to have set a party convention this year before Memorial Day weekend, and did not.

My involvement, as unpopular as it may be, arises from my being friends with Tom Knapp when he was looking for someone to do something to keep the party going. I agreed to step in.

06/08/2008 - 22:20
6

planetaryjim:

Dear Friends,

I'm very excited and pleased to report that both Elle Larkin and Chris Bennett have agreed to serve in the vacant at-large positions on the national committee. I feel very confident that they are the best people for the post, and it was really great having our first two choices accept.

Elle Larkin is a long time libertarian activist and Mises enthusiast. Her Facebook profile lists her as a fan of Murray Rothbard. She's in the Dallas Fort Worth area of Texas, so she brings good geographical diversity to the national committee.

Chris Bennett is also a long time libertarian activist and lives in Illinois. Since Chris has been a candidate for the LP's VP nomination and is a candidate for ours, many of you probably know all about him. I met Chris in Kansas City, Missouri at the Heartland Libertarian convention, and was very impressed with him. More words about how great he is may be found here:
http://lastfreevoice.wordpress.com/2008/03/26/candidate-endorsement-chri...

I've asked the national committee to fill the fourth at-large position which has been vacant with Elle, and to fill Rocco Fama's vacated seat with Chris. We'll see what happens.

Regards,

Jim

06/08/2008 - 16:13
7

jasongatties:

Couldn't a meeting be called to tweak the by laws? October is so far away at the moment and it looks to me like this group needs a solid National Committee right now. If this group seriously plans on running candidates for office this year, a strong National Committee is needed.

Why not make the changes needed to put a new Nat Com up for vote at the upcoming nomination convention?

06/08/2008 - 05:17
8

planetaryjim:

Bylaws. I'm not a big fan. We have them, let's make them better.

Jason, I would invite you to indicate here:
http://bostontea.us/node/72
what bylaws you like, which ones you dislike, and proposals for changes. I invite everyone who feels that the bylaws need improvements to go to that thread - node 72 - and no there aren't 72 virgins and a mule there, or whatever - and post your thoughts.

One of the things that three decades of organizational politics have taught me is that bylaws don't change what is in the hearts of men and women. People with decency in their souls will find a way to do the right thing with or without bylaws to guide them. People determined to control for the sake of control, or to do evil, will do so and only sometimes violate a bylaw here or there.

Wisdom is in finding the good people to work with, not in writing perfect bylaws. Perfect bylaws like a perfect constitution would be extremely effective if only we were able to find perfect people to abide by them.

06/08/2008 - 15:38
9

admin:

Jason,

There's a bit of a chicken and egg situation ...

The old national committee, myself included, got off the bylaws track by missing some key deadlines, including appointing a bylaws committee to make recommendations to the membership.

Jim was trying to get things BACK on the bylaws track by doing as little damage as possible, and even though I gave him some hell over some of his decisions, he was doing just that until the recent "Stevens incident."

I have two opinions on this matter:

1) A "strong national committee" isn't necessarily needed for the next few months. The main thing the national committee can do between now and November to enhance the national ticket is to "officially recognize" state affiliates deserving of same. Hopefully that will happen anyway, but thing is, it's not really necessary ... the state BTPs can get together and do things without ANYONE's permission, whether they have a pretty frameable certificate saying they're an "affiliate" or not. So can the presidential ticket, once nominated. We're lucky in that respect PRECISELY because the states that ticket may be on the ballot in, it'll be either listed as "independents" anyway, or Florida could be a state-only party for this cycle. The rest is mainly propaganda generation, which works better without central planning in any case.

2) There was to be a Denver meeting. Then it became a Denver nominating convention. Then it became a recommendational (is that even a word?) meeting TO an all-member convention. Then the convention was on the 14th. Then it was on the 15th. Then it was "affiliates only." Then it was "one member, one vote" again. I was part of forcing some of those changes, but I have to admit I'm tired of things changing on a near-daily basis. I suspect others are too, and I believe that as the national committee is reconstituted and the vacancies filled, it will be a strong enough committee to do what it needs to do without more such agenda U-turns.

If the national committee wants to try to get a bylaws committee appointed, and if that committee can get its work done in one week, I'll buckle down as site admin and poll the proposals, etc. But personally I think that that would just be throwing more dust into air that is finally beginning to clear, and that we can wait until October for bylaws "tweaks" with little or no harm done, and less harm than would be done by trying to rush it.

I hope the national committee will appoint a bylaws committee in the next month or so and give them until October to do the job right. As the author of the original bylaws, I've become painfully aware of their deficiencies, and would be interested in serving on the committee that has to offer corrections for those deficiencies.

Regards,
Tom Knapp

06/08/2008 - 11:11