Find out more about Nebraska's government at congress.org State legislature page State Constitution Secretary of State website

Laura Ebke (LauraEbke) [Message] 1935 St. Andrews Drive Crete, NE 68333 (402) 540-6510 (402) 826-4704

Nebraska's Campaign For Liberty membership gets larger every day! We have members in every Congressional District, and in many of the counties of the state. We have District Coordinators in each of the Congressional Districts, and several of our counties have County Coordinators. In the coming days, we will be updating District pages. If you're interested in taking on a leadership role, you'll need to join first as a Precinct Leader and progress through the Precinct Leader training. After you've done that, contact your District Coordinator or the Interim State Coordinator. We will be developing criteria for the appointment of more County Coordinators soon. You should be aware that ALL Coordinator appointments are considered "interim"--at such point as the state has adequate leadership to become a chartered organization, there will be elections of some sort. For the time being, members in counties who do not currently have appointed coordinators are encouraged to nominate those who seem to be strong leaders. The Interim District and State Coordinators will then confer on the selection. In some counties, if two people seem to be compatible, co-coordinators may be chosen. In the near future, the State Coordinator will be able to track training progress, as well as how many "recruits" Precinct Leaders have been successful with. Since this is an organization designed to "do", it will be important for coordinators in the future to demonstrate some evidence of action.

Once you've joined the Campaign for Liberty in Nebraska, be sure to check back often, log in and check your messages, and return to this state page (as well as your district and county pages)--this site is a social networking site for liberty lovers, and this will be the best way for us to share information with you--but YOU'VE got to sign in so that you can read it.

Finally, be sure to try your hand at the blogging tool--all members can blog on the site, and the best ones will be featured on the home page.  We'll also post the best blogs that we can find on our district and state pages, so that everyone has the opportunity to take a look at them.

For those of you who are interested in following what's happening in Nebraska's Legislature, and how our U.S. House Members are voting, check out this site for the Unicameral, this one for the House and this one for the Senate.  If you are interested in helping the members of that site in following what's going on, leave a comment, or contact me and I'll put you in touch with the appropriate folks.

Posted by nadams on 12/21/08
Last updated 12/21/08

Ike Hall was impressed with the Fulton County page that I setup, and asked me to give some pointers on how I put it together. I decided to make it a blog entry so that it could be easily shared with other C4L coordinators. I am certain that my ideas can be improved upon, so please let me know if you have any suggestions.

Audience is Everything

Before you begin, you need to realize who your audience will be and what kinds of information they will want to know. The specifics will of course vary depending on whether you are a State, Congressional District (CD), or County coordinator, but I would claim that your target audience falls into one of two categories:

• New C4L members wondering where to begin, or
• Existing C4L members wondering how to get involved.

Keep your audience and their goals in mind at all times; all information on the page should be directed at them.

The Lay of the Land

First I would recommend that you take some time and determine which political boundaries are contained within your state, CD, or county.

If you are a State coordinator this work has already been done for you by the C4L website; the blue side bar lists all of your State's CDs and Counties along with the coordinator for each. Your State flag is shown along with links to important State government bodies. That was easy!

If you are a CD coordinator, I would recommend that you first determine which Counties your CD crosses. Provide a short sentence with links to each C4L County page. Next, see if you can figure out how many Precincts are covered by your CD. Luckily, a map of your CD has already been provided by the C4L website (complements of nationalatlas.gov).

If you are a County coordinator, you have your work cut out for you. :) Provide a link to your County's official government website. If your county provides a mapping service, provide a link to that as well (example). See if you can locate and insert a simple County map graphic that shows all of the major cities and towns (example). A count of the Precincts within your County might be helpful. Be sure to link the C4L website for all CDs that cross your County. I also recommend that you list each city and town in your county and link to each official government website (example). All of those links will come in handy as you fill up your calendar with local government and political events...

Note: There is a bug in the C4L website where links to other C4L pages become mangled. For the time being you will need to convert your C4L links using TinyURL (Thanks for the tip Bill!).

Trivia

For each State, CD, and County page I recommend that you (briefly) make mention of any politically significant trivia that you know of. Be creative and keep it interesting.

Party Time

Be sure to list (and link to) any and all political parties and grass-roots organizations that have organizations specifically for your State (example), CD (example), or County (example). Keep in mind that almost all political parties agree with the Campaign For Liberty on some issues. It is important that C4L learn to build coalitions with those parties on any issues that we share in common.

Mind Your Boundaries

Be careful not to duplicate information that belongs on some other page. For example, don't post links to a State-wide political party on a CD or County page. Instead, email those links to your State coordinator and ask that they be added to the State page where they belong. This applies to State, CD, and County pages alike and will help keep the information on each page relavent.

Mind The Time

Don't put time-sensitive information on the State, CD, or County pages. Instead, post time-sensative information as an Announcement or blog entry and be sure to set an expiration date.

Conclusion

Your State, CD, or County page should be a one-stop shop for anyone wishing to get involved at each level. This guide should not be taken as canon, and I would encourage you to improve upon it.

Posted by LauraEbke on 11/17/08

There are, from time to time, discussions in C4L circles regarding what party we should be supporting.  There are numerous schools of thought on that, ranging from: "anyone but the Republicans or Democrats" to "whichever of the two major parties is the closest to what we believe."  The real answer to the question depends on what your (our) goals are politically, I think.

I tend toward the latter answer, and choose to work within the Republican Party, because I think it's the most natural major party home for those of us who love liberty.  I respect those who choose to do otherwise, but I'm not one who likes to do something just for the sake of protest, and I'm usually up for a good political battle--even an uphill one.  I believe in participating in the political process because I want to have an effect on governance--not just because I want to make a point.

Some of my friends tell me that I'm being untrue to the cause; that to give any encouragement to the Republican Party just allows the Party to perpetuate the bad behavior that has resulted in it falling away from the small government principles that it still claims to believe in.  Maybe that's true.  But then again, maybe working within the Republican Party represents the best hope for actually moving in the direction of increased liberty.

You see, no one's been able to tell me how we ever get into a position where a third party can play a major role in governance.  The "system"--for better or worse--favors a two party system, and the perpetuation of the current two parties, at least in name.  Since 1860, only Republicans or Democrats have been able to put together enough electoral power to lay claim to governing power.  Why is that (beyond the tried and true answer that "the system is biased")?

To answer that, you have to understand a couple of important elements of our political system.  First, a winner take all system, which means that whoever wins the MOST votes (which might not be a majority) wins the office, which we have just about everywher, except in a few isolated locations (like Georgia) which have instant runoff systems to make sure the winner gets a majority.  A winner take all system devolves naturally into two main parties, as the citizenry does not want to have an election with 7 parties where the "winner" only gets 20% of the vote (or less).  Psychologically, I think we want the "winner" to have at least a strong plurality of the vote, if not an absolute majority, and multiple parties decrease that chance.  Take a look at multi-party governments.  Many of them have proportional representation where there is more than one representative for each jurisdiction (which doesn't require that a party receive the MOST votes to get representation, but rather that some minimum threshold for vote is reached, and then representation will be allocated based on the vote.

So, the second thing we need to understand: in a winner-take-all system, we tend toward two parties, but that also necessarily results in "big tent" parties rather than specialized interest parties.  In multi-party parliamentary systems, it is unusual that any one party has an absolute majority of the members which would allow them to form a government (elect the Prime Minister, for example, and name the various cabinet-type officials).  So, what happens in that instance, is coalitions are formed to create a "ruling majority."  A couple of parties work together--even if they don't agree on everything--in the interest of forming a government, and usually the larger of the parties gets to choose the head of government, but the smaller parties that have joined the coalition get to have a voice, perhaps some minor Cabinet offices, etc.  In our system, we form the coalitions within the Parties.  And so you have people who are primarily interested in economic liberty, and social conservatives, and international interventionists/military hawks, and civil libertarians, who--in different measures across time, may decide to come together to form a single party.

Sometimes the tensions between the groups within a party are too great and it's no longer possible to keep the coalition together.  And that's when you have what the political scientists know as "realignments"--where chunks of a group break off and move to another party.   But new coalitions form; sometimes folks from third parties are welcomed into the fold, or their ideas are adopted by one of the major parties, in an effort to increase the size of their influence.  But for 150 years, while the Republican Party of 1860 (and the Democratic Party of 1860) would look very different than they do today (and both parties have undergone numerous evolutions), those two parties have been "it" in American politics.  Brief flirtations with third parties have done little--the Bull Moose Party, the Reform Party, and others have had the effect, occasionally, of (arguably) changing the results of one election, but they never emerged as a real tool of governance.  All you have to do to see that is look at the partisan identifications of members of Congress.  What are there, about 3 total who are not officially attached to one of the two parties?  And they typically caucus with one of the two parties, because they want to participate in governance.

I understand that the Republican Party has lost its principles and become a shadow of what it once was.  But think of it this way: how many people do we have?  Let's say that Ron Paul supporters--who voted primarily as Republicans this year, made up 10% of the Republican vote.  And let's say that Republicans make up a generous 40% of the voting population.  Folks, we don't have the numbers to go out and make any progress on our own.  Even if we joined forces with the Libertarians and the Constitution Party (both), we'd still have less than 6% of the vote nationally.  But...10% of of the Republican vote, might be able to form coalitions with other Republicans on a variety of issues.  10% of the Republican vote--if that 10% is vocal and principled--could push or pull the Party in a direction more in line with its thinking, and could draw some of the Independent vote over.  10% of the Republican vote makes you a potential player on the inside of the world of governance, whereas 6% of the vote outside of the major parties makes you an irritant, or in the best case, a potential spoiler, but it gives you little real voice in the actual operations of government.

I believe that a small group of dedicated activists could have a major impact on the Republican Party--especially now, when it is so obviously at a low point.  That's where I intend to work--I hope others will join me.