Update on the NC Bar Association exclusion of Michael Munger for its gubernatorial debate

Mr. Allan Head, Executive Director of the NCBA, has not responded to any of my inquires regarding his organization's decision to exclude Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Dr Michael Munger from its upcoming debate this Saturday.

Mr. Head, however, apparently felt constrained to answer NC attorney, Lenoir NC city council member, and Libertarian T. J. Rohr, when he asked much the same question.

The entire exchange is reprinted at the Munger Campaign blog, but here's a taste:

Mr. Head: With regard to the annual meeting, 10 months ago we invited all announced candidates, Those coming accepted our invitation. I believe Dr Munger did not qualify until May 22nd. By that time we had confirmed the other candidates and firmed up times for our convention Saturday morning that is full of award recognitions, elections, a Judicial candidate’s forum, as well as gubernatorial and senatorial forums. We could not add another award or candidate if we wanted to. So, I hope that speaks to your concerns about the forum. We did not decide “…..not to include him,” by the time he contacted us, rather late in the game, there was not enough time to accommodate him.

Mr. Rohr's response:

Thank you for the quick response. I do have some questions regarding the statement that “10 months ago we invited all announced candidates, Those coming accepted our invitation.” First of all, to plan that sort of thing ten months in advance makes no sense. Ten months ago, neither McCrory nor Perdue had announced their candidacies. Perdue announced on October 1, 2007, and McCrory announced his candidacy on January 15, 2008. Furthermore, according to http://projects.newsobserver.com/tags/n_c_bar_association, as of May 21, 2008:

The major candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate will face off for the first time next month.

Officials with the N.C. Bar Association say they have received commitments for a forum at the group’s convention at Atlantic Beach on June 21, reports Rob Christensen.

A panel of reporters will ask questions of Democrat Beverly Perdue and Republican Pat McCrory, who are running for governor, and Republican Elizabeth Dole and Democrat Kay Hagan, who are running for the U.S. Senate.

Update: Bar Association officials now say they have firm commitments from Dole and Hagan, but that Perdue and McCrory have only indicated they are likely to participate.

Underlining supplied. It seems like you were willing to be flexible with both the Republican and Democratic nominees TWICE within your ten-month limit. The earliest they could have confirmed was 5/22/08, which is the day Dr. Munger qualified as our presumptive nominee. Can you explain the distinction?

And finally, Mr. Head's rejoinder:

TJ, you are absolutely correct, thank you for your research and appropriately correcting my misstatements.

So Mr. Rohr is right, according to Mr. Head ("I try to live what I say is important.”), but he's still not going to allow Dr. Munger access to the debate.

The image above, by the way, represents the Munger campaign's graphic response to their continuing exclusion from open political process in the Tarheel State.

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

Libertarian National Committee Deathwatch Part 1

As the LNC continues to lurch towards collapse, with the latest news of mass layoffs at HQ, I've decided to begin tracking those things leading the national party to irrelevance, even as state and local parties gain power. As news, rumors and rhetoric break out, I shall chronicle them in this ongoing series at Delaware Libertarian. Organizations approaching failure have a number of characteristics. One of the most striking is renunciation of their purpose and effort to reinvent themselves as a "me-too" provider of services in the marketplace. In this, the LNC has been on a collision course with destiny for a while now. Recently, for example, it hired Republican Party web site developer TerraEclipse to redesign the LNC web site . Terra created a web site very similar to those of the clients it brags most about -- far-right Republican conservatives like Tom McClintock and BJ Lawson. A quick look at the web site they built for the LNC is instructive. The tagline on the ...

The disturbing decline of the Delaware blogosphere: a very unfortunate Around the Horn (even if it's not Friday)

I've noticed a change in my own blog-checking habits over the past several weeks, and I don't know if it's just me or the reality of the last month of a divisive political campaign. I automatically used to check out Delawareliberal first and several times a day, because it was where I could find edgy, thought-provoking, and (dare I say it) funny banter going on. These days visit several other spots first, and my visits to DL are both shorter and less engaged. Why? Because the combination of invading neo-con commenters with the stridency of some of the major contributors has led to such pleasant exchanges as a post dedicated to labeling another blogger racist by donviti, whose own sense of provocative humor is generally so far out there that he makes John Belushi doing Samurai bartender on the SNL look positively pro-Asian. Or I can find Delawaredem and jason periodically spewing the idea that anybody who is not a liberal or progressive Democrat is somehow a non-American,...

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