| Forwarder offers from Liberty for America magazine a Report on LNC spending during October 2009.
The following numbers are based on the Libertarian National Committee FEC reports, primarily for the October reporting period. There are also the financial reports supplied the LNC by the Treasurer, which show at certain key points some very different numbers. Given the miracles or modern accounting, it does not follow that one of the sets of numbers is wrong, but readers should realize that in accounting reports truth can be multivalued. A separate article treats the large differences between the LNC internal and FEC financial reports.
The Libertarian National Committee began October with $28512.27 cash on hand, had Total Receipts of $92044.55 and Total Disbursements of $95036.04, and closed October -- the November reporting period -- with $25520.78 cash on hand. For the year to date, total income was $914185.78, while total disbursements were $891843.48. A projection forward to the end of the year suggests an income for the year of $1.15 million, give or take, which is about $40,000 less than the 2009 draft budget.
So where did that money go?
Answered Below Fold |
There's a paid staff, who received $19580 in net pay. That staff includes Wes Benedict, Susan Dickson, Dominick Dunbar, Casey Hansen, Robert Kraus, and Mark Meranta. Also on the list was Louise Calise, who according to my sources on the LNC complained to the LNC that she was let go by the new Executive Director. Associated with that net pay were unemployment, withholding, social security tac, medicare, health insurance, 401K payments, not to mention the cost of payroll services, totalling $9443.
Then there were the other people and groups also paid for services:
$1000 to for Writing for Non Candidate Mailing
$1200 to Arthur DiBianca for Administrative Support Services.
$1250 to Paula Edwards for FEC Filing
$3000 to Gary Sinawski for Legal Services
That's $6450.
The staff needs an office. We are paying $10928.89 a month in office rent. Those of you who own homes can do a comparison here. Add up your mortgage, your taxes and utilities as paid separately, and some reasonable number for plumbers, roofers, et painful cetera for keeping the house in one piece. The LNC office is about two and a half thousand square feet. Are you paying $10,928 a month for 2500 square feet of your house? If you are payng less, you are seeing that DC is expensive.
The office needs bits and pieces. Copier leasing and mainenance, postage meters and resets, and office supplies come to $2951.44.
There are costs associated with raising money, such as $2489.87 in credit card processing fees and $815.99 in D&O insurance. (Director's and Officers Insurance? Yes, if you have money, someone may want to sue you to get their hands on it.) $14,736 accounts for non-candidate printing, mailing and editing.
Bringing us into the 21st century, we have $8720 to Terra Eclipse for Website Management, $3000 for email marketing, $1190 for phone and data services, $649 to Rackspace for website hosting, $574 for an email server, $330 for cable service...all in all, close to $14,000 for internet efforts for this month.
In other interesting motions the LNC rejected a motion from Dan Karlan, Aaron Starr, Alicia Mattson, and Stewart Flood that, among other things, defined "candidate support" as not being a core activity of the LNC. It also specified "Intimate" is any person with whom one has or has had a relationship of a romantic or intimate nature.
Readers may wonder what this definition is doing in a motion.
That's explained by another part of the motion:
"The office of the LNC shall not engage or contract with anyone serving on the LNC or any Bylaws-specified committee, or with any Relative, Intimate, or Economic Partner of such, unless approved in advance by the Employment Policy and Compensation Committee after full disclosure of the relationship. The Chair shall promptly disclose to the LNC as a confidential matter that such approval has been given. The LNC may override such approval, but the motion shall not reveal confidential details."
Readers familiar with the Federal Fraud by Wire Statute and that interesting Circuit Court of Appeals decision in United States vs. Bush (no, not W.) will recall the curious fact that failure to disclose matters materially significant to the operations of one's organization can be a Federal Felony, and if you are an LNC member that list of intimates is now materially significant to the LNC's operation. At one end, there is always speculation as to which LNC members may not want to disclose names in a gender or time-specific way. On a second end, there was the LNC member or candidate who responded not only that she or he did not remember all of them, but she or he was quite sure that she never acquired a significant number of their names. On the third end, what counts as a 'romantic relationship'? How many LNC members can remember who they turned down for a date in seventh grade?
Mercifully, this crock was voted down by the LNC: Fails 4-8
For: Aaron Starr, Alicia Mattson, Stewart Flood, Dan Karlan
Against: Michael Jingozian, Pat Dixon, Lee Wrights, Mary Ruwart, Tony Ryan, Mark Hinkle, Julie Fox, Rachel Hawkridge
Abstain: Bill Redpath, Bob Sullentrup, Michael Colley, Rebecca Sink-Burris, James Lark |
Gold America Group
