The weekend opened without much fanfare. Candidates running for the party’s nomination were seeking “tokens” from delegates in order to appear in the debate and be considered on the floor to represent the LP.

Most of the first two days were consumed with the typical wrangling over the party by-laws and platform. There were some internal issues addressed, such as a dispute between two factions in Oregon where the body had to choose what delegation from the state to seat (some of those not seated in Oregon eventually made their way to Georgia, where we had spots open).

Working (click to enlarge)

These first two days were particularly stressful for me since I had to work three delegations to ensure their support for Gov. Gary Johnson. The campaign gave me Idaho and Iowa as my ultimate responsibilities, but I also spent some time lobbying members from Georgia — after all, that’s my home state. When I wasn’t working on delegates, I was either sitting in the pressroom (where there was Internet access) or catching up with old friends.

On Friday evening, Gov. Johnson and R. Lee Wrights squared off in a debate before convention delegates (you can watch it here). The 2008 debate saw a number of candidates with varying viewpoints of libertarianism and the direction of the Libertarian Party. The debate between Johnson and Wrights showed the clear differences in approach to politics. While Wrights was lobbing one-liners and soundbites to delegates, Johnson was discussing a more political approach. Some friends were complaining that Wrights was only interested in appealing to Libertarians, others said that, since this was our party’s primary, a more “red meat” approach was necessary; no different from Democratic and Republican campaigns.

Most, if not all, of the folks that I talked afterward said that both sides did well articulating their message, and that they hadn’t changed their minds.

War Room (click to enlarge)

Saturday was when delegates selected the party’s nominee. Four candidates were able to get enough tokens to be nominated — Gov. Johnson, Wrights, Carl Person, and Jim Burns. Each candidates received some time to make their case for the nomination. We had heard going into the convention that some delegates were resigned to Gov. Johnson winning the nomination, but wanted to give a nod to Wrights on the first ballot. That was the case with a few folks from Georgia, despite my overtures that were would only be one ballot and that they should get, even what they admit, on the winning team. Thanks to a few of the delegates from Oregon and another couple from Nevada being sat with us, Georgia went for Wrights in a 10 to 9 vote. The other delegations that were assigned to me, Idaho and Iowa, broke for Gov. Johnson.

Boom! (click to enlarge)

And while we may have lost Georgia, Gov. Johnson took the nomination on the first ballot with over 70% of the vote. Wrights received over 25%.

Now, one may think that the stress was off and that we were done with the real work, but that wasn’t the case. You see, in the Libertarian Party, we run candidates for vice president separately. Gov. Johnson let it be known before the convention that he wanted Judge Jim Gray as his running mate. However, Wrights saw the writing on the wall and was collecting “tokens” for vice president as well (he asked me when I saw him on Wednesday evening). Some of were actually nervous here. Wrights is a great guy, but those of us working on the campaign were tasked with rounding up votes for Judge Gray.

But despite a strong showing from Wrights, Judge Gray took the nomination for vice president with 59% of the vote.

That’s it, right? Work is done for the weekend. It time to go drink and gamble. Wrong. Chris Barron, Andrew Ian Dodge, Jenny Everett (a new member from Georgia), and I decided that it was time for a drink, so we headed down to Yard House, one of the fine establishments in the Red Rock casino. The body had moved on to officer elections, and after to speaking to my good friend, Brett Bittner, we had contended that Mark Rutherford would likely win the race for chair. We figured we all could just give him our proxies and have some fun. So, off we went.

Man, were we wrong. After our second round of drinks, we started hearing that there were some strange things going on. By our fourth round, friends were telling us to get back to the floor. By the time we got back, all hell had broken loose. Admittedly, I can’t give the play-by-play, but apparently, None of the Above (NOTA) was a strong candidate. All I can say is that I was incredibly frustrated, probably more than I have been when dealing with party politics or political campaigns. Because of time constraints, voting for chair was postponed until Sunday.

The reasoning for floor fight was because of shenanigans pulled before we even got to Vegas, such as charging a floor fee for delegates and having the convention roughly 15 miles away from the strip. Seriously, it cost around $50 to $60 for a cab ride from the airport or the strip. That was ridiculous.

Delegate Nobody (click to enlarge)

Despite staying until the early hours of Sunday morning, I managed to pull myself out of bed for another day of voting. It got…crazy. During the midst of the voting, Chris was arbitrarily removed from the Missouri delegation along with a couple of other folks apparently for voting the “wrong way.” He’d been voting for Rutherford, but there had been some sort of behind the scenes wrangling going on — or at least, that’s the allegation — to ensure that the delegates seated in Missouri that didn’t actually live there (Chris is from DC, but their delegation was full) would no longer have their votes counted. Again, that’s the allegation, there is no way to prove it. But at the very least, it certainly doesn’t sound good.

In the end, Geoffrey Neale, a former LNC chair who hadn’t even put his hat in the ring until Sunday, defeated Rutherford and on the fifth round of voting that day, won the race for chair. Lee Wrights, who had lost bids for the presidential and vice presidential nomination the previous day, won the race for vice chair. Wrights is a good guy. I don’t know Neale, but everyone I know seems comfortable with him as chair. He certainly understands that he doesn’t have a mandate. Nevertheless, I have confidence that they will serve our party well.

Also, congrats to my good friend, Richard Schrade, who was elected as the Southeast regional alternate to the Libertarian National Committee. He’ll no doubt serve Georgia’s interests well.

Lee Wrights (click to enlarge)

And let me just say that Chris Barron is a really cool guy. My liver blames him for the amount of adult beverages I consumed in Las Vegas. As an aside, I was happy to see so many younger Libertarians at the convention. That was really encouraging.

My body has finally recovered from the week of debauchery and stress. I managed to catch up on sleep by Wednesday, though I think it’ll be awhile before I drink again. You can see some pictures from the weekend at my Flickr page.

[UPDATE] Brett Bittner is now upset with me because I didn’t mention his election to the Libertarian State Leadership Alliance (LSLA). He either didn’t tell me or I don’t remember, which is entirely plausible. Congrats, duder!

[UPDATE II] Bruce Majors shared his photos from the convention in the comments.

While this seems like a very minor example, it was a case of a local government infringing on economic liberty*; and sadly, these cases aren’t few and far between. And though it’s not a simple lemonade stand run by kids, the City of Atlanta has shutdown the Atlanta Food Truck Park and Market, and not because of the lack of a food permit or for health code violations:

Last Thursday, the Atlanta Police Department License and Permits unit arrived at the Atlanta Food Truck Park and began shutting down trucks left and right. The park on Howell Mill Road, the first permanent food truck park in Atlanta open 7 days a week, remains temporarily closed until enough of the vendors can clear up the permit issues with the APD.

For the most part, news about the closing has been limited to references of “permitting issues,” without much detail as to what that means. I spoke with Howard Hsu yesterday, co-owner of the Atlanta Food Truck Park, to get a better understanding of what exactly is happening, and what is next for the Food Park. What follows is a very condensed summary of that conversation.

To be perfectly clear, none of the permits in question have anything to do with food-safety violations. All of the vendors affected had business licenses and had passed health inspections. Also, the park itself is not in violation of any permits, just all of the vendors that populate it.

The crux of the issue is the restriction – or rather, enforcement – of the number of locations allowed by a mobile vending permit. Until the passage of the Food Truck Ordinance, the City of Atlanta’s verbiage was singular – “location” – meaning that a food truck operator would have to re-apply for a new permit and re-pay the associated fees every time it moved locations. Section G of the new ordinance changed the City of Atlanta’s wording to allow for “multiple locations as indicated on the vending permit.”

The other major change brought on by the ordinance was the reduction in permissible proximity to a brick-and-mortar business selling similar items from 1500 feet to 200 feet.

However, the Food Truck Ordinance did not re-write every tangled link of compliance across the wide range of required permits, only the City of Atlanta codes. The wording still remains in the State of Georgia’s code that “a mobile food service unit or an extended food service unit must restrict operation to a maximum of two (2) locations or areas stipulated by the permit.” That would mean a re-application process and hundreds of dollars in fees every time a food truck wants to operate from any location that isn’t one of the two on file with the State Health Department.

Up until this point, the Atlanta Police Department hadn’t enforced the two location restriction in the Georgia code as long as the vendor had valid city permits.

So, technically, every one of the vendors at the park was required to have the Howell Mill Park as one of their two locations on file with the State Health Department. But it wasn’t just one or two lazy owners whose permits were not up to date; every truck in the park was in violation.

Hsu relayed the strong sense of frustration among the food truck operators with the process, as many of them had applied numerous times for the permits showing the Howell Mill address as a location, only to have their application delayed or denied for trivial reasons.

But it wasn’t until he explained the cause of the most recent delay in re-opening the park that I realized just how silly and frustrating this process can really be.

My wife and I attended the opening of the park a couple of weeks ago with some friends. It’s a really a neat concept. The only negative was that, because the lines were so long and some trucks were already running out of food, we wound up eating at Six Feet Under. Of course, we didn’t leave until I had my first taste of King of Pops.

It’s not like the restaurant owners don’t know what they’re doing. For example, Howard Hsu and his wife run at least two restaurants (Gezzo’s in McDonough and Sweet Auburn in Atlanta) and are well-seasoned (no pun intended) in the bureaucracy that comes with being small business owners. They’re bright people with a passion for food and pleasing their clientele.

It’s not a lemonade stand, but it’s a similar story. Unfortunately, these restaurant owners and their hardworking employees now have to deal with economic losses because of bureaucratic wrangling. Great job, Atlanta.

*And no, I’m not speaking out against licensing requirements, merely the overly bureaucratic process that it has become.

You can read the full post here. The data is at the bottom of the post.

Stay tuned.

You can download the show here (in MP3 format). My segment is roughly in the middle of the show.

Thanks to some rather nutty comments by Rick Santorum, who openly questioned the use of contraceptives, Democrats were able to spin the issue into a so-called “war on women.” The situation was exacerbated thanks to comments by Rush Limbaugh aimed at Sandra Fluke, who had argued that taxpayers should fund contraceptives. Even though Fluke’s reasoning was flawed, taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize her contraceptives, Limbaugh’s comments were completely unnecessary and wrong.

The strategy was successful in the short-term, as wedge issues usually are. However, it eventually backfired on them when Hilary Rosen, a Democratic operative, said that Ann Romney, wife of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney, had never worked a day in her life.

Romney took to Twitter to defend herself, setting off a firestorm that caused Rosen to later apologize. The argument from conservatives is that Democrats are waging a “war on stay-at-moms,” largely silencing Democrats on the issue and swinging momentum back to Republicans — at least temporarily.

On Tuesday evening, this “meme war” between liberals and conservatives was escalated thanks to the revelation that Barack Obama, as a kid, tried dog meat. This particularly meme was apparently the result of a David Axelrod taking a subtle dig at Mitt Romney. And just like that #ObamaDogRecipes was born on born on Twitter.

With polls showing that social and cultural issues standing low on voters’ radar, you’d think that the economy would be the focus on both sides. But since Obama has no real record to run on, resorting instead to a blame game to explain away his failures and conservatives apparently still believe that wedge social issues are a winning formula; voters are almost assured that neither party is prepared to be open and honest with them in the upcoming election.

Of course, this is broadly speaking. There are certainly members of each party in Congress that are truly concerned about the economy, which polls indicate is the most pressing issue facing the country. But sadly, they are few and far between.

It’s hard to take any politician or talking head seriously over the cacophony of stupidity that comes to us on social media and in the news, and this isn’t limited to any one side. Most Americans don’t care about about the other side’s “war on [insert group here]” when unemployment and gas prices remain high.

If you’re a blogger, no matter your political or philosophical persuasion, and you’re keeping up with the “Meme of the Day,” kindly get back to what matters in this election and stop deviating to issues that otherwise don’t matter to voters.

Brace yourself for some sticker shock next time you order pine straw for your landscape.

And it’s not because there’s a shortage of pine straw falling on Georgia’s more than 20-million acres of forest land. Landscapers blame their price increases on a shortage of immigrant workers to rake and bale their product.

“I’m having to get some of my stock from Florida because there’s not enough labor in south Georgia,” said Jim Satterfield of Four Seasons Pine Straw.

He believes Georgia’s new immigration law has scared the workers away. It’s the same complaint heard from vegetable farmers during their harvest.

“We probably have 5,000 bales on order that we cannot fill right now,” he said.

This isn’t the first time that the law has impacted Georgians negatively. Last year, the state’s agriculture industry lost up to $1 billion due to lost crops after not being able to find enough workers to pick them. The end result will, of course, be higher prices in stores. Restaurants in the state also complained of labor shortages. And even though the law specifically targeted illegal immigrants, workers that came to the United States legally felt threatened by the law.

One has to wonder, since immigration is effectively at a net-zero, why conservatives still target immigrants. They say it’s not about race and deny that they are restrictionists, but they continue to go on these crusades against immigrants, who, despite their claims, are a net-positive to our economy and they don’t have the negative impact on crime and the labor market that restrictionists claim.

But disclosure is a tricky subject for bloggers, especially for those of us that do sidework in politics — either paid or volunteer. There are no requirements for a blogger to disclose whether or not they’re working for a particular candidate or cause, nor should their be. However, if others catch wind of a particular blogger receiving money or otherwise doing work for a candidate, they will and should call them out.

This was the case a few years ago with Andre Walker. If you don’t know this story, you can read about the specifics here. But to sum it up, Walker, then a Democrat, had received payment while at the same time writing positive posts about Rep. David Scott (D-GA). Many in the blogosphere lit him up like a Christmas tree, and rightly so.

Since I started doing a lot of work on the side a few years ago, I’ve made every effort, when I write about a particular race where I may receive some financial benefit, to make the proper disclosures. It’s the right thing to do.

To be honest, I don’t do that much of this type of work in a given year and I don’t often seek it out — I’ve got enough on my plate as it is. Friends that are general consultants at times come to me and I may or may not bite, depending on what I have going on at a particular time.

Some that are new to the blogosphere may not see the need to properly disclosure whether they are working for a particular candidate. That’s unfortunate. Not only do they harm their own credibility, they do a tremendous disservice to those that may stumble onto their blog, and they paint the rest of us in negative light.

Hopefully, bloggers that may have some ulterior motive or interest will come clean by making proper disclosures, sooner rather than later.