By now most of you have heard that most of the 63 2004 Platform planks
were deleted. However, some of you have immediately lept to the
conclusion that this was done as an ideological act. It was not. It was
almost entirely a procedural matter. I asked a random sample of the
delegates how they were voting on plank retention, and almost every one
of them said they were voting not to retain planks they had not had an
opportunity to read, and that they couldn't vote for planks without a
copy of the platform to read, which was not provided in the convention
package. Had copies been printed and placed in the folders along with
other materials, I have no doubt the outcome would have been completely
different.
I am a member of the Platform Committee, but was added only a few days
before the Convention.
With the exception of a handful of planks with which many members were
familiar from memory, the only planks that were retained were those that
were the result of the Platform Committee consolidating planks, which
were presented to the body and approved.
The Platform Committee spent almost all its time on consolidating a few
planks, and although it did revise some planks for constitutional
compliance, those planks did not become part of the group of
consolidated planks presented to the Convention, so they got deleted
along with the others.
The plan was for the revised and many of the more important other planks
to be introduced as floor motions, and various of us duly filed those
with the Secretary according to the rules. The last two hours of the
Orders of the Day on Sunday were devoted to hearing such motions. Four
of mine, the first on *juries,* were next in line to be brought up when
Jim Duensing of Nevada, who was aggravated by a motion just made by
Aaron Starr of California and rejected, made a motion to adjourn the
Convention, with an hour and a half to go, and that motion, which is not
debatable, passed, cutting off consideration of the more important
planks, which by being thus introduced by motion, would allow reading by
the members present.
My proposed planks are attached. The first two, on juries and immunity,
would have replaced the planks on juries and "individual sovereignty",
and the second two would have added language to begin to get
Libertarians to take positions on constitutional construction, something
I think it is important they begin to do, and not just take policy
positions. If some of you do not get the attachments, send me a a
message and I will send them in a reply.
I doubt that if the members had known what was about to be introduced,
they would not have voted to adjourn, but they didn't know. The result
will be a strangely skewed platform for the next two years, and one that
is sure to generate a lot of intense controversy in the Party, perhaps
diverting us from more important issues. Of course, this also opens the
way to developing a completely reworked Platform for 2008 that will
hopefully strike a balance between the aspirations of Libertarians and
the needs for a tool to focus debate, educate the public, and get
candidates elected.
However, at the 2008 Convention I intend to introduce an amendment to
the By-laws that a motion to adjourn is out of order before the
expiration of all elements of the Orders of the Day (Agenda). This would
be an override of Robert's Rules of Order, but a necessary one. An
alternative would be to make motions to adjourn debatable, but I think
it better to require a motion to suspend the rules to amend the orders
of the day to end the scheduled items before cutting them off by a
premature adjournment. This would give people an opportunity to inform
the body of what will be introduced that they might want to consider.
I agree with the decision to go to a two-day convention agenda, but if
we are going to make it work conferees are going to need to make some
adjustments to the ways they conduct themselves, and cooperate in not
extending debate on trivia as though the Convention has all the time in
the world to take up everything it needs to do.
I also suggest that if the Convention is going to try to conduct
balloting as complex as a plank retention, they should adopt ballot
forms that can be marked and actually scanned by a machine so we are not
delayed by hand-counting. Standard forms and scanners are available, the
latter for rent, at a not excessive cost, with only a little setup to be
done to assign blocks on the form to items to be decided. The legend
mapping the blocks to the issues could be displayed on the screens so
that they wouldn't have to be printed and distributed. The alternative
would be to set up several voting computers with software that would
allow the members to vote in several lines, but this would be more
expensive and might not save much time.
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [TxSLEC] 2006 Platform Committee - Guy McLendon's Preliminary
Report to Texas
Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2006 01:25:22 -0500
From: Guy McLendon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
CC: George Squyres <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Fellow Platform Committee Members,
I am sending this report via BCC to many folks in Texas, and am doing
BCC to avoid an endless email chain. Feel free to forward.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Status Report
* * * * * * * * * * * *
*_Platform Committee Work:_*
The 2006 Platform Committee work focused on two areas - consolidation,
and constitutional consistency. The consolidation planks combined 11
planks down to 5 planks, and these 5 were approved by Convention in a
single vote. Multiple other planks were considered on a plank by plank
basis. Approved Platform Committee planks included Sexual Rights,
Immigration, Government Debt & Conscription. In addition, this partial
list of planks were also moved forward to 2006 from the 2004 Platform:
Right to Bear Arms, War on Drugs & Freedom of Communication. For info
on the consolidation, please see attachment, or HTML table below.
Without having exact numbers in hand, the following is based partly upon
remarks from the Platform Committee Chair: as compared to past
Conventions, the Convention passed roughly about 50% more planks in much
less time than previous conventions. Considering the results of the
subsequent retention vote, it is fortunate the Platform Team had a
relatively high productivity. The Convention voted to retain the 2006
Platform Committee as a special Committee that will continue working
until the 2008 Platform Committee is named. Since most members are also
involved in campaigns for the coming Nov election, we plan to resume our
work in earnest beginning in Jan 2007.
*_Retention Vote:_*
By now, many of you have heard that over half of the 62 planks from the
2004 National Platform were rejected by the 2006 Convention. The last
word that I heard from the floor was that our 2006 Convention is
expected to contain 17 planks, but my figures seem to suggest only 15
survived ... Please be patient while the convention secretary works to
get the info to George Squyres - the Platform Special Committee Chair,
and for him to get a copy to me & the webmaster. Hopefully, the lp.org
website will be updated before too long.
The decision by the delegates to not retain the full platform was
unprecedented in the history of the LP. Although their decision may
seem shocking at first, I believe in hindsight we will all decide the
overall impact was very positive. While the 2006 Platform will have
some gaps during the next two years, there are nonetheless real benefits
to our current situation. For instance, the Committee's consolidation
work eliminated the verbiage that had been misconstrued as saying the LP
supports sex services for minors ... which, of course, we don't.
Please do not be needlessly alarmed about the notion that the platform
has been gutted. Yes, there are a few gaps in the 2006 Platform.
However, anyone wanting to know the LP's positions can always refer to
our Statement of Principles, and consider his/her application. All 2006
Platform planks are compliant to the Statement of Principles, and
contain a section "Solutions" [long term vision]. It is in this
designated location where our party's long term vision is intended to
reside. So long as our Statement of Principles remains, the platform
can never truly be "gutted".
Yours in Liberty,
Guy McLendon
Texas Member to Platform Special Committee
~
Convention Handout Information:
*The following planks are recommended to be combined:*
*The platform committee also recommends changes to the following planks:*
II.6 Monopolies and II.7 Subsidies merged into "Corporate Welfare,
Monopolies and Subsidies"
I.22 Sexual Rights (renamed Sexuality and Gender)
IV.D.3 Space Exploration, IV.C.3 Unowned Resources, I.12 Property Rights
merged into "Property Rights"
I.18 Immigration
I.2 Crime and I.3 Victimless Crime
II.2 Taxation [Did not pass Convention]
III.13 Postal Service and II.9 Public Utilities, with a suggested new
name of "Government-provided Services"
II.5 Government Debt
III.5 Population and I.20 Women's Rights and Abortion merged into
"Reproductive Rights"
I.17 Conscription and the Military
--
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