LSOCK News

Libertarians Of South Central Kansas (LSOCK) meet for Supper and discussion every Tuesday at Mike's Steakhouse located at 2131 S. Broadway in Wichita, Kansas at 5:30 PM. If we have official business to conduct or a featured guest speaker, that will begin at 6:00 PM. All who support personal responsibility and individual liberty are invited to attend.

To receive the LSOCK NEWS and LSOCK NEWS Alerts! via email please contact Steven Rosile at sarasile@att.net or 316 618-1339.

Contact the Kansas Libertarian Party or LSOCK at:

LPKS / LSOCK
P.O. Box 2456
Wichita, Kansas 67201
Ph. (800) 335-1776

On the Web please go to www.lpks.org  or to the LSOCK Blog at: 

www.libertariansofsouthcentralkansas.blogspot.com

IN THIS ISSUE:

 

      1.   From The Editor

2.   LSOCK Officer Elections

3.   Free Kansan and Weekly LPKS News

4.   LPKS Annual Meeting/Convention on April 20

5.   Libertarianism: Not a Defense of the Rich  

6.   Americans Never Give Up your Guns

1.             From The Editor

Hello everyone,

In this issue of the NEWS  I want to inform you that the LPKS has become a real political force in Kansas. We are suing several cities and counties over their bans on open carry of firearms that violate state law and are supporting legislation that will make it nearly impossible for them to continue these bans even without the lawsuit. The LPKS has even had several articles published in the Wichita Eagle as well as other newspapers around the state regarding our lawsuits against Wyandotte County/Kansas City Unified Government, Prairie Village and Leawood over their violations of state law regarding open carry of firearms.

Representatives of the LPKS have also attended and presented testimony to several legislative Committee Hearings on bills on a broad range of subjects. These include supporting a bill declaring the provision of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that allows for indefinite detention unconstitutional and providing for criminal sanctions against anyone enforcing or attempting to enforce them in Kansas (in effect state nullification of this provision). Other items are medical marijuana (for), abolishing the death penalty (for) and last but not least, support for encouraging the expansion of private schools in Kansas by the means of tax credits so that Kansas students and parents have more choices available while at the same time reducing the cost to Kansas taxpayers.

As a matter fact, the Kansas Education Liberty Act (KELA) was originally written by Stacey Davis, the LPKS candidate for Lieutenant Governor in 2010. Stacey is currently the LPKS Policy Research and Media Spokesperson as well as webmaster for www.LPKS.org which is one of (if not the) best Libertarian Party website in the nation. Thank you so much Stacey.

I encourage all of you to visit www.LPKS.org if you have not done so recently. It is packed with more information on these and other LPKS activities than it is possible for me to cover in this publication.

There are also new ways to keep informed as to LPKS activities and causes with Sharon DeBois becoming Editor and publishing the official LPKS newsletter, the Free Kansan, on a quarterly basis and Webb Garlinghouse is now putting out a weekly Libertarian Party of Kansas News (see number 3 below). Webb is LPKS Database Manager as well. Many thanks to both of them

In other important news, it is also time for our yearly LSOCK Officer elections (see number 2 below) and the LPKS Annual Meeting/Convention is coming up in April (see number 4 below) More information on these items will be in future issues of the LSOCK NEWS and on www.LPKS.org as they became available.

There is real momentum building in the growth of our party in Kansas. As many recent events demonstrate, we libertarians are on the right side of history and we have many opportunities to make a difference and achieve Liberty in our lifetimes and for our posterity.

Please be a part of this exciting and important effort. Support the LPKS with your time and resources. Join your local LPKS activist group or start one yourself in your area. Join other liberty supporting groups, of which there are currently a growing number of here in Kansas. Meet others and demonstrate your support of freedom!

For Liberty,

Steven A. Rosile

Editor, LSOCK NEWS

2.             LSOCK Officer Elections

Elections for LSOCK officers will be held this month or March at the Tuesday Supper Meeting February 26 or, if no quorum is had, at the 2^nd or 4^th Tuesday in March, which mould be the 12^th or the 26^th of March.

LSOCK officers consist of a Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary, Treasurer and 1^st and 2^nd At Large Executive Committee Members.

Current officers are:

Chair;  Gordon Bakken

          Vice Chair;   Randall Batson

          Secretary,    Steven A. Rosile

          Treasurer,     Shawn Smith

          1st At-Large,    Mike Brincefield

          2nd At-Large,   Dave Thomas

Nomination for these offices will be made at the Tuesday Supper Meetings on February 19 and up to and including the day of the election, with the election being held February 26 if there is a quorum. A quorum for conducting LSOCK business is five voting members, including two current Excom members, one of which must be the Chair or Vice Chair, and three other members. If there is no quorum on February 26 then the election will be held at the next regular business meeting where there is a quorum. The regular business meetings are the second and fourth Tuesdays every month.

If you are interested in serving as an officer in LSOCK please attend a Tuesday Supper Meeting or contact LSOCK Secretary Steven A. Rosile by replying to this email or calling him at 316 618-1339.

3.             Free Kansan and Weekly LPKS News

The Free Kansan, official newsletter of the Libertarian Party of Kansas, has a new Editor! Sharon DuBois has taken over the as the Editor of the Free Kansan and will put out four issues a year. The first issue was January, 2013 and I sent it to all of you on the LSOCK NEWS mailing list so you should have received it. To subscribe to the Free Kansan so that each issue comes to you directly send your request to  FreeKansan@cox.net . You can also see the latest issue on the LPKS website at  http://lpks.org/files/2013/01/Free_Kansan_2013-01.pdf .

LPKS Database Manager Webb Garlinghouse has begun weekly updates on LPKS activities and events. I recently forwarded this weeks Libertarian Party of Kansas News to this email list. Webb is setting up his database of Kansas Libertarians with each person’s state Senator and state Representative so that we can coordinate lobbying for or against bills in committee or on the floor of the Kansas Senate and House of Representatives. To subscribe contact Webb at

action@lpks.org   If you wish to receive alerts on pending bills in the Kansas legislature please include the names of your State Senator and State Representative.

Thanks to Sharon and Webb for their efforts to stay in contact with all LPKS members and keep them informed of what the LPKS is doing on their behalf.

4.  LPKS Annual Meeting/Convention on April 20

The 2013 LSKS Annual Meeting/Convention will be held on Saturday, April 20 at Emporia State University in the Memorial (Student) Union’s Webb Hall #2. There will be a social gathering Friday night with details and location to be announced on the LPKS website. See www.LPKS.org before the Annual meeting if you are interested in attending the Friday evening social gathering

The Annual Meeting/Convention will begin in the morning at around 10:00 AM and go on until 3:30 PM.  There will be a box-lunch available in the meeting room at 12:00 PM but you must register for the lunch on the website. There is no charge to attend the Annual Meeting/Convention and guests are welcome. However, you must be registered as affiliated with the Libertarian Party of Kansas to vote at the convention.

Business at the Annual Meeting in odd-numbered years includes election of LPKS Executive Committee Officers, Amending the LPKS Constitution and By Laws and any other business on the Agenda set by the LPKS Chair and Excom.

LPKS Executive Committee Offices are Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary, Treasurer and four District Coordinators, one from each Congressional District. The District Coordinators must live in the particular district they are to represent and are elected by LPKS members from each particular district. Only those members from the 1^st Congressional District can vote for that district’s Coordinator, while members from the 2^nd Congressional District vote for that district’s Coordinator, etc.

The Chair, Vice Chair, Secretary and Treasurer are elected by the whole of the attendees. The current members of LPKS Excom are:

Chair:              Al Terwelp    (Overbrook)

Vice Chair:      Steven A. Rosile    (Wichita)

Secretary:        Mike Kerner    (Lenexa)

Treasurer:        Mike Dann     (Baldwin City)

1^st District Coordinator:    Barry Albin     (Council Grove)

2^nd District Coordinator:   Robert Garrard     (Edgerton)

3^rd District Coordinator     Jeff Caldwell      (Overland Park)

4^th District Coordinator      Currently Vacant

Nominations for the above offices will be made at the Annual Meeting in Emporia but if you are interested in serving as an officer of the Libertarian Party please contact the Candidate Committee Chair, Steven A. Rosile, by replying to this email or calling 316 618-1339.

Amending the LPKS Constitution and By Laws

This year we will be proposing and making Amendments to the LPKS Constitution and By Laws. All members of the Libertarian Party of Kansas can participate in this by going to these documents on the LPKS  website, specifically

http://lpks.org/the-lpks/about/    

which takes you directly to the About page and click on the tab for Constitution or the tab for By Laws located under the heading  Party Info – See Tabs Below. When you click on one of the tabs there (Statement Of Principle – Platform – Constitution – By Laws) the selected document appears below the tabs.

If you are already on the LPKS website then from any page click on the “The LPKS” tab. This is in the upper left corner under the just to the right of the “Home” tab and on the sub-menu select the “About” tab to get to this page.

After reading and studying these documents, if you have ideas on how they can be improved or made more complete please send your proposals to Constitution and By Laws Committee Chair Barry Albin at  albinlaw@tetelco.net  for the Committee to consider them. All proposed amendments must be received by Barry no later than March 20, 2013 to be brought to the floor of the Annual Meeting/Convention April 20.

Proposed amendments will be posted on the LPKS.org website in early April so that our members can make themselves familiar with the proposals and also see the recommendations of the Committee before the meeting.

     5.   Libertarianism   Not a Defense of the Rich

Olly Neville   February 5, 2013

url:  http://thebackbencher.co.uk/libertarianism-not-a-defence-of-the-rich/

One of the fundamental mistakes people make when they attack libertarianism is to view it as an ideology that defends or promotes the interests of the wealthy and the powerful. It is a critique you hear far too often and really shows that the person who makes the claim has no idea what libertarianism is.

The problem starts, usually, with the erroneous assumption that we live in a capitalist society. We do not. If this is capitalism then libertarians aren’t capitalists. What we experience is corporatism – as huge a gulf from true capitalism as socialism is. Corporatism defends the interests of the rich and the wealthy, Corporatism – as Mussolini said, is a brand of fascism, big business and the state leaning on each other, propping each other up over the interests of the ‘normal’ people.
Libertarianism is about true free markets, a system we have never, ever, had before. Those that believe libertarians are defending the rich do not understand what free markets are, and why free markets mean free people – not concentrated wealth.
In Britain today we have not had a new bank set up for over 100 years. In America Goldman Sachs and other big financial institutions was one of the big donors to both the Romney and the Obama campaigns – not to Gary Johnson. The wealthy and the powerful do not owe their positions to free markets, they owe them to the Government, to the special favours that the state gives them. Bankers are so wealthy because FSA and BoE regulation means that no new banks can be set up – competition isn’t possible so profit is huge. Train companies, bus companies, supermarkets, financial institutions, law firms, private health firms and pretty much any big company you can think of benefit from the corporatism system we have. High taxes and complex regulation means that it is very expensive and very hard (if not impossible) for new entrants to enter the market. Which means existing firms can consolidate their position, and reap in huge rewards.
In a libertarian system you wouldn’t have the super wealthy, because they wouldn’t be able to protect their position with the awesome power of the state. The current corporatist system is like a feudal lord or King who gives favours to his courtiers – allowing certain favoured ones the sole rights to sell or trade certain precious commodities. A free market removes the favour-givers; without anyone to ask favours from, businesses have to compete and as we see the rare times that happens, former giants that fail to adapt die off or shrink. HMV is a great modern example of something that looked like it was dominant and failed to change to meet new competition. Other examples include MySpace, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo, Motorola, Dell, Kodak, Sony and even Microsoft, all formerly dominant in their field and now either collapsed, waning, trying to change or severely reduced.
The current system favours the rich; complicated tax laws mean it is the rich who can afford to find ways not to pay. Complicated regulation means it is the rich who can afford to pay people to understand it or work around it. Small business doesn’t have a chance, swamped in paper work rather than being able to serve customers and bled dry by taxes. It is no surprise that it is some of the biggest businesses that call for more regulation, or support membership of regulatory bodies like the EU. The more regulation there is, the more tax there is, the more government there is – the more their position is entrenched.
Libertarians are no fan of the wealthy elite, who get to where they are not by hard work or innovation, but by having government contacts and stamping out competition. Libertarians are not apologists for the powerful, who get their power via the state and use their power to keep themselves where they are. And libertarians are not defenders of the current system that keeps the wealthy and powerful in place and sees the state bail out and lobby for big business while the little guy is simultaneously stomped on and foots the bill. A libertarian hates the bankers as much as anyone, for relying on public money to back up their gambles, for using their elite positions to bet on both horses in political races to guarantee themselves special treatment (why else do you think they donate so heavily to both sides of a campaign?)
True free markets would see the huge regulatory barriers to entry broken down; entrenched firms forced to compete for the first time in their lives would either adapt or die. Competition would force down prices, force down the bloated wages of the fat cats and push up quality of products and services. Government attempts to do this have failed – government-run systems have, ever since they began thousands of years ago, seen the cosy elite supported at the expense of the rest of us. Libertarianism is not a defence of the rich and powerful; it is the only way to fight them.

     6.   Americans Never Give Up Your Guns

28.12.2012

By Stanislav Mishin 

url: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/28-12-2012/123335-americans_guns-0/

These days, there are few few things to admire about the socialist, bankrupt and culturally degenerating USA, but at least so far, one thing remains: the right to bare arms and use deadly force to defend one's self and possessions.

This will probably come as a total shock to most of my Western readers, but at one point, Russia was one of the most heavily armed societies on earth. This was, of course, when we were free under the Tsar. Weapons, from swords and spears to pistols, rifles and shotguns were everywhere, common items. People carried them concealed, they carried them holstered. Fighting knives were a prominent part of many traditional attires and those little tubes criss crossing on the costumes of Cossacks and various Caucasian peoples? Well those are bullet holders for rifles.

Various armies, such as the Poles, during the Смута (Times of Troubles), or Napoleon, or the Germans even as the Tsarist state collapsed under the weight of WW1 and Wall Street monies, found that holding Russian lands was much much harder than taking them and taking was no easy walk in the park but a blood bath all its own. In holding, one faced an extremely well armed and aggressive population Hell bent on exterminating or driving out the aggressor.

This well armed population was what allowed the various White factions to rise up, no matter how disorganized politically and militarily they were in 1918 and wage a savage civil war against the Reds. It should be noted that many of these armies were armed peasants, villagers, farmers and merchants, protecting their own. If it had not been for Washington's clandestine support of and for the Reds, history would have gone quite differently.

Moscow fell, for example, not from a lack of weapons to defend it, but from the lieing guile of the Reds. Ten thousand Reds took Moscow and were opposed only by some few hundreds of officer cadets and their instructors. Even then the battle was fierce and losses high. However, in the city alone, at that time, lived over 30,000 military officers (both active and retired), all with their own issued weapons and ammunition, plus tens of thousands of other citizens who were armed. The Soviets promised to leave them all alone if they did not intervene. They did not and for that were asked afterwards to come register themselves and their weapons: where they were promptly shot.

Of course being savages, murderers and liars does not mean being stupid and the Reds learned from their Civil War experience. One of the first things they did was to disarm the population. From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were. The worst they had to fear was a pitchfork in the guts or a knife in the back or the occasional hunting rifle. Not much for soldiers.

To this day, with the Soviet Union now dead 21 years, with a whole generation born and raised to adulthood without the SU, we are still denied our basic and traditional rights to self defense. Why? We are told that everyone would just start shooting each other and crime would be everywhere....but criminals are still armed and still murdering and to often, especially in the far regions, those criminals wear the uniforms of the police. The fact that everyone would start shooting is also laughable when statistics are examined.

While President Putin pushes through reforms, the local authorities, especially in our vast hinterland, do not feel they need to act like they work for the people. They do as they please, a tyrannical class who knows they have absolutely nothing to fear from a relatively unarmed population. This in turn breeds not respect but absolute contempt and often enough, criminal abuse.

For those of us fighting for our traditional rights, the US 2nd Amendment is a rare light in an ever darkening room. Governments will use the excuse of trying to protect the people from maniacs and crime, but are in reality, it is the bureaucrats protecting their power and position. In all cases where guns are banned, gun crime continues and often increases. As for maniacs, be it nuts with cars (NYC, Chapel Hill NC), swords (Japan), knives (China) or home made bombs (everywhere), insane people strike. They throw acid (Pakistan, UK), they throw fire bombs (France), they attack. What is worse, is, that the best way to stop a maniac is not psychology or jail or "talking to them", it is a bullet in the head, that is why they are a maniac, because they are incapable of living in reality or stopping themselves.

The excuse that people will start shooting each other is also plain and silly. So it is our politicians saying that our society is full of incapable adolescents who can never be trusted? Then, please explain how we can trust them or the police, who themselves grew up and came from the same culture?

No it is about power and a total power over the people. There is a lot of desire to bad mouth the Tsar, particularly by the Communists, who claim he was a tyrant, and yet under him we were armed and under the progressives disarmed. Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question. They hate guns in those whom they have slated for a barrel to the back of the ear.

So, do not fall for the false promises and do not extinguish the light that is left to allow humanity a measure of self respect.

Stanislav Mishin

The article reprinted with the kind permission from the author and originally appears on his blog, Mat Rodina