Allen Hacker's Latest E-Mail ($15,000 more needed)

[joeyforpresident]

Allen's Update - Jan07 - Retire the Debt!


Hello once again,

Allen Hacker here, for the Badnarik for Congress campaign, with what will probably be the last fundraising email of the campaign.

I have good news.  The "hard money" portion of the debt is down to about $15,000.

How did we get so far?  First, I converted all of my non-financial work to volunteerism.  All of my time planning, managing, fundraising and working out in the field, has been taken out of the equation.  I won't be paid personally for consulting or managing, and there will be no fundraising commissions or bonus.  I can't do the same with all of the expenses portion, but even those were reducible because my wife moved here in August and as of our giving up our California home, the double living expenses virtually stopped.  Travel disappeared as well.

Not of lesser importance, you guys have been helpful through your continued contributions.

But that's not to say that we raised $50,000 of the $65,000 I talked about in my last update.  First, there have been two additional months of expenses, so before any payments, that amount went up a bit.  Second, I have found yet another way to retire part of the debt.  I'll tell you about it in a moment.

What this all means is that we only need about $15,000 more in cash and we can close this campaign out!

Yes, I know, there are already 2008 presidential and gubernatorial (and other) candidates asking you for money, some of whom you may want to support.  My first take on that?  It's good.  It proves we've had a positive effect on the way Libertarians do politics.  People are starting early and promising to really work at it.  It's possible that the 2008 LP presidential nominee, whomever it turns out to be, will have raised and spent a record amount of money in the primary for that position. There may also be those who will become shrill about that and criticize (unless the nominee is someone they supported), but that's just a reminder of how far we have to go to prove that libertarians are capable of civilization.

Michael is settled in over at thebumpersticker.com and is in fact taking sticker orders from many of those 2008 candidates already.

You may have seen, or heard about, Michael's own email update of this month, in which he confirms what we've said all along: he will not be a candidate for the 2008 LP presidential nomination.  Perhaps this will finally quiet those who called us liars when we said it before.  Including a last-term member or two of the LNC itself?

I sincerely hope that the LP begins to act its age this election cycle.  35 years old and still acting like an immature teenager in public, it's been embarrassing.  Not that this is an accurate depiction of the vast majority of libertarians.  No, it's just the public image created by a noisy few.  I hope you majority start shutting them down.  Tell them to stop spouting off without the facts, stop jumping to conclusions without asking questions, and to stop running macho-flash campaigns.  Oh, and it wouldn't hurt to demand that they stop misdefining libertarianism.  It's not anarchy, it's not anarcho-capitalist, it's not a front group for Objectivists and Atheists, it's a political party that was founded to challenge the cult of the omnipotent state.  Not to challenge the state itself, because the state is merely a product of the cult.  But to challenge the cult, electorally and educationally.

Of course, using a political party to educate the public hasn't proven to be all that viable a solution.  Sure, more people hear about us every 4 years, but the net results of that have only been that each four years we have that many more ex-members and that much less liberty.

So: to answer the question I've been being asked, what am I personally going to do next....

I've had several offers to manage presidential primary campaigns.  I note that most of those came with the reason being that I am a great fundraiser.  And a few also came with the warning that I would be part of a committee, not in total control.  What's interesting is that in all but two of those invitations, it's been about getting the money and not at all about running the campaign.  What does this mean?  I'm seen as a fundraiser, overall.

Well, I am a salesman, and asking for the money is part of selling, so sure, I can do that.  But another part of selling is making the pitch.  I can do that also, but I don't plan to run for any office.

Besides, running for office, any of us running for office, isn't everything the libertarian movement needs to do.  Actually, first, the movement needs to exist.  It doesn't really, you know.  There's no groundswell sweeping across the nation demanding the rollback of the Patriot Act and the abolition of Homeland Security.  There's not even a significant groundswell in support of medical marijuana.  Modest gains, yes, but way more struggle than there should be.

We have think-tanks like Cato and Reason, we have the LP, but we don't have a dedicated outreach thingy out there in the environment, free from party politics and sectarian influence, just finding and nurturing libertarians.  That's where I'm going.  And, fundraising.

Recall, I mentioned above that I've figured out a way to finish retiring the debt beyond the hard-money portion.  Here's how that works.

When our campaign staff were attacked by name on the blogs for getting paid and fed by the campaign, I terminated them all from the campaign committee itself and brought them into my consulting firm.  This was to shield them and future staffers from dogbite, but it turns out it has other advantages.  I can bill the campaign for their services through the consulting firm, and as long as the campaign pays for that in some form or another, it's up to me to then pay them.

So I can buy the remainder assets of the campaign with cash, which would then be used to pay my firm, and thence to pay the staff.  Or the firm can just accept the assets in payment at reasonable used-car-type valuations, and either convert those assets to cash to pay the staff, or pay the staff with other firm assets or funding.

I'm not sure yet which way that will go, whether I will buy the assets or accept them in settlement, but either way, all that remains to be raised from you and others is the $15,000 mentioned above.  And either way, the net results are the same.  The campaign closes as soon as the $15,000 has been raised, and we all move on.

You might ask, What assets does the campaign have that could possibly be worth, what, $50,000?  Certainly not the remaining furniture and computers, if any.  No.  That's maybe two grand.

But the campaign has refined this mailing list.  It's value is somewhat subjective, but that value is actually a function of who is using it and what they're using it for.  In my hands, as a fundraising foundation for ballot access campaigns, to support the presidential campaign, and to fund a 527 independent expenditure committee, this list will prove quite valuable.  Which is why this will work.  Given that the list started out as a 6500-donor list that had raised over a million dollars in the 2004 presidential campaign, and is now a 20,000-name resource filled with limited-government types, and given my proven ability to raise money through it, the list is easily worth $50,000.  (If you don't want those mailings, just click the Remove Me link in the first one you get.  We'll have that function installed before we use the list.)

Whether I buy it and pay my people, or accept it in lieu of payment and capitalize it to pay my people, makes no difference. --Except that for me to buy it, I have to borrow, and frankly, working 15 months without pay does hurt one's credit rating, so that's not the easy way and the less I were to borrow, the easier (and better).

What's a 527 independent expenditure committee, and what will ours look like?  527 is an internal revenue code section that provides for campaign entities to raise and spend money independently of all candidates but possibly in support of one or more candidates, as long as there's no coordination between the candidate/ candidate's committee and the 527. Think 2004's Swift Boat Veterans.  They weren't part of, affiliated with, or directed by the Bush campaign, they just came in independently (or so we're told) and attacked Kerry for their own reasons.

The beauty of 527s is that they are not limited in contributions the way candidate committees are.  The rules change every year, but as long as the megaparty sees them as useful they'll be there, and we can have the same advantages as well: currently, no contribution limits, yes to anonymous and corporate contributions, and minimal reporting requirements.

Think about this.  Most libertarians complain that campaign contribution limits are unfair restrictions on the donors' political free speech.  But that's not true.  Candidates and individuals can spend all their own money they wish.  The candidate can spend it through a committee or independently; other entities must spend it independently.  But spend it they may.  That's what the 527 is for.

An example is George Soros funding some Billion dollars in "progressive" (marxist) 527s to support radical Democrats and Greens and their issues.

It's time we started getting serious about politics.  Inside the LP and out.  So I'm going to be focusing outside more than in, because that's where our breakdown is.

We don't have a broad enough donor base to win any serious elections?  Broaden the donor base!  Broadening the donor base is impossible because we don't have a big enough supporter base?  Broaden the supporter base!  Find and nurture new people and prevent in-house dufus radicals from driving them away!  Stop saying why we can't and start doing something about it.

That's me, I'm going to do something about it.  I'm going to broaden the donor base by broadening the support base by broadening the membership and registration bases, by committing proactive limited-government outreach toward finding and creating limited-government and libertarian citizens through a project named LawfulGov.Org.

LawfulGov.Org is both a name and a website, and the draft website has already been prototyped. The capitalization is not required in your browser, it just makes the URL/name easy to read.

LawfulGov.org is not totally new.  I started it in 2003 as a grassroots-based multilevel watchdog organization but let it lie while I went out and played in the electoral fields with Michael Badnarik.  Now I'm back to it.

We actually have a track record of success already.  Back in 2003, then-Gov. Gray Davis illegally tripled the tax potion of car registration fees to cover California's financial malfeasance.  We initiated a project named CarTaxRevolt (in honor of limited-government state senator Tom McClintock's call for such a movement), and we were instrumental in getting the tax rolled back and Gray Davis recalled.  We made news all the way to Europe, and it was just 4 guys and 25 donors with a website.  You can confirm all this.  That part of the website is still there.  And you can ask David Nolan.  He lived in Southern California at the time, and when he had questions about the protest procedure for refusing to pay the illegal tax increase, the result of his web search was that he found and called... US!  I know, because I took the call.

Anyway, you can read more at LawfulGov.Org.  You can begin to support it right there at the site, too, if you are so inclined.  You can contribute through the site (after you've given one last time to help retire the Badnarik for Congress debt, of course), and you can apply to become a local facilitator, or you can join - ask me how.

I haven't posted the facilitator job requirements yet (I'm open to suggestions, made through the site), but you can expect the organization to be loosely similar in structure and operation to an "ALL Your Rights, All the Time!" kind of ACLU, without the liberal egenda and anti gun politics.

I'll be spending a lot more time completing the website as I wrap up this campaign.  Suggestions are welcome.

Oh yes.  You might wonder what's to become of the staff.  Jon's got a job for and is waiting for LawfulGov.Org to take off, when he'll then begin to make movie shorts as part of our outreach plan.  Susan's moving back to Ohio after an exemplary stint as assistant treasurer and financial co-manager (part of that hard-money amount is her moving expense, promised when she came here to help).  The others have standing invitations to consider participating in some fashion when we have the thing rolling.

So there you have it, up-to-date info on the progress of winding down the Badnarik for Congress campaign, and what's next.

The final report is in the works but will not be filed until the campaign closes.

All that's left, really, is to raise and pay off that last $15,000.  Your help will be greatly appreciated, particularly by Michael, who will be stuck with whatever doesn't get covered.  Go to www.badnarik.org and click one of the Donation buttons/links, and help us out.

Don't forget to actually select that Retire Debt response code -it's not automatically inserted, and if you don't select it, we'll have to bug you to put it in writing.  If you mail a check, please write "campaign wind-down" on the For line; if you contribute using the PayPal option and you see a comments box, please type in "campaign wind-down".

Do it now, please: www.badnarik.org --thank you!

Thanks for everything, and here's to the next round!!!

Allen Hacker
campaign manager and treasurer,
Badnarik for Congress

[Rocketman]

2,342 words.  I wonder how many recipients actually finished it.   

[KBCraig]

2,342 words.  I wonder how many recipients actually finished it.   

I did, just out of curiosity. But if was on the email mailing list, I'd have chunked it before I finished the first paragraph.

[Braddogg]

Does the man have no friends he can burden with that long, rambling letter?  It read like part fundraiser, part Christmas card letter.

[KBCraig]

I'm just curious how he can brag about his great reputation as a fundraiser and campaign manager, while begging for money.

[Dreepa]

He claims to be some sort of genuis fundraiser.

In fact there seem to be many people in the 'libertarian' movement who seem to be 'famous'  yet I have never heard of them nor do they ever seem to 'do' anything.

[Rosie the Riveter]

 

[ninetales1234]

LOL, personal attack thread!

[Atlas]

I have nothing good to say about ole Hacker.