Episode 2 - The Opportunist and the Interrogator: Radical Only When It Suits Me

Jacob Hornblower - A cracked vessel.

In 2020, there are some radical Libertarians who are supportive of the Hornblower campaign.

I am personally glad they've found someone running for POTUS who they are excited about.

They have certainly taken Hornblower's promotion of his steadfast "principles" to heart.  I am worried that, like charlatans of every generation, when Hornblower finally shows them his true colors, these radical, genuine Libertarians will not understand that his grandstanding and posing is a front for a conflicted individual, and that as a result, their disappointment will lead them to abandon being active in the Libertarian Party, or the movement in general.

Maybe this time, Lucy won't pull the football away from Charlie Brown's kick, but I wouldn't bet rent money on it.

Hornblower isn't so much a "radical" or "principled" as he is an *opportunist*.

In his (lawyer-funded) campaign for the U.S. Senate for Virginia (where he couldn't even beat a LaRouchie), he distanced himself from the radical elements of our platform.  In other words, he did the exact same thing -- when it was convenient for him -- that every other "reformer" in the LP has done.

But don't believe me just because I said it.  Hornblower said so himself.

Here's Hornblower himself whining about encountering people who disliked the LP because of our long-held beliefs about the drug war and other things -- but be mindful that most of these "quotes" he most likely made up himself, and that none of these conversations ever actually took place:

There's one big problem with that hypothesis, however. It assumes that the voters already have a positive image of the Libertarian Party and that as long as they don't discover the truth, all will be okay.  My conversations with Virginia voters during the past several weeks of petitioning reflects the exact opposite. Many ordinary people have shared the reasons for their prejudice against the party with me, and most of it adds up to: "You people stand for nothing. You have no values, no morals. Anything goes for you all, especially drug use."

At a gun show in Salem, a man in line yelled, "Marijuana Party coming down the line" and the next 10-15 people refused to sign my petition.

A man in Harrisonburg said to me, "You Libertarians are nothing but Republicans who smoke dope."

A man in front of the Post Office in Culpeper angrily told me, "Your party is a barrel of rotten apples and the longer you stay in it, you're going to rot too."

A woman at a grocery store in Falls Church said to me, "You people are so extreme -- you favor just about anything."
... I have absolutely no doubt that no matter how hard LP members work, no matter how much money you raise, no matter how many rich or famous candidates you recruit, no matter how many new members you secure, it won't do any good until you are able to disintegrate the negative "anything goes" perception that voters have of the Libertarian Party.

Personally I think he made up all of those quotes himself.

Of course, he said that in the context of his so-called "ethics campaign" against other LP members; alleging that the above people -- who (assuming any of them actually existed beyond the confines of Hornblower's skull) had likely never even met a Libertarian before, and had no idea who these supposedly "corrupt" individuals were that he was struggling heroically against -- would only have said those things if they likewise believed all those LP members were corrupt.

Pure fantasy.

But anyway, this was Hornblower backtracking *after* the obligatories, like getting on the ballot and deciding on who his support would be.

Had he won the LPVA endorsement, dog-whistling to bootlickers by whining about the Libertarian position of repealing drug prohibition may well have sent many good Libertarians in Virginia packing.

Previous questions still unanswered:

1)  Was Hornblower's entry to the race prompted by the disappearance of Yahoogroups?
2)  Why does Hornblower, who is supposedly a "consistent" Libertarian, use a state subsidy when it suits him to suck at the government teat?
3)  Why did he allow even one LPVA titleholder help him with his campaign prior to the state convention?

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
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Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, March 2020.  This work is licensed to individuals except specifically Jacob G. Hornberger and/or his supporters -- under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.  Jacob G. Hornberger or his supporters may use any portion of the above at a cost of $1000 per word plus free use of their most valuable automobile for a year.

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Episode 1 - The Opportunist and the Interrogator: Insider Help

Jacob Hornblower - A cracked vessel.

Hornblower made a big stink about "insider help" given to Harry Browne's campaign in 1996 or 2000, prior to Browne's nomination.  He wasn't nearly so concerned, however, about wallowing in his own stink.

Hornblower decided to run for US Senate sometime in 2001, for the 2002 election season.  In Virginia, the petitioning window to get on the ballot statewide opened officially on January 1, 2002; so his petition drive began at that time.

The question of whether to formally endorse his campaign for US Senate was proposed for consideration at the convention of the LPVA scheduled for April of that year.

With that meeting still months away, and even before the petitioning window even opened, Hornblower was secretly soliciting advice and help from various leaders within the Virginia Libertarian Party, including:

LPVA Ballot Access Committee Chair, Shelley Tamres
Local Prince William County officer, Philip Hodson
LPVA 8th District Chair, Dana Johansen
LPVA 6th District Chair, David Briggman

All of these sitting Libertarian Party of Virginia or local affiliate leaders, along with a handful of other Libertarian Party members in the state, began petitioning for Hornblower as soon as the window opened -- long before the state convention.  All of these leaders also began soliciting help on those petitions via various LPVA discussion lists, and at meetings of their local chapters of the LP.  They made petitions available for others to take and circulate at their local LP meetings, and solicited signatures from anyone in attendance who was willing to sign them.

As time went on, the fact -- that sitting LPVA titleholders were behaving as if the Hornblower candidacy had already been endorsed -- became apparent to other Party members in the state, and became an issue for the campaign, because other members began pointing out the hypocrisy of it.

Shelley Tamres, in particular, went above and beyond and recruited phone bankers for Hornblower who then began soliciting volunteers to actively help the Hornblower campaign.  These volunteers actually identified themselves as "calling on behalf of the Libertarian Party of Virginia".

According Charlotte Patrick, who was then an activist with the Shenandoah County (VA) Libertarian Party, the Hornblower petition caller said:

"... she was calling from the Libertarian Party of Virginia, [and] started in with a statement regarding getting ballot signatures for Jacob Hornberger, and I interrupted her before she really got into the pitch.  ...  After my initial "I'm not interested" she asked why, and offered followup suggestions, (is it his position on guns? was the first part).  I declined to discuss it with her.  She ended with "I guess I'll see you at the convention" - [and] mentioned that it should be "interesting." She did say that she had not been with the party long, for whatever that's worth...  She sounded like a college kid.  [She] DID give her name.  I wouldn't put it past Marianne to give a false name, but I wouldn't expect it of Shelley."

Supposing Hornblower is "all about ethics", his minions shouldn't have made it sound like he already had the endorsement and that the LPVA was officially behind him.

Hornblower did not acknowledge any of these objections to his campaign staff suggesting that he was already the LPVA-endorsed candidate until over two months had passed.

Some LPVA members were not in favor of any Senate campaign at all because they were concerned by the cost and toll on activists; some simply didn't like Hornblower and preferred None of the Above (NOTA); and others were simply annoyed that Hornblower's campaign team was behaving like endorsement by the LPVA was already a "done deal", prior to the state convention.

After several months, when it became abundantly clear to Hornblower that he had shat too much in his own doghouse, and the "NOTA" campaign looked more and more likely to prevail at the state convention, Hornblower finally threw in the towel and announced that he would not seek the endorsement of the LPVA, and run instead as an independent.

As it happened, his campaign was was heavily supported by fat-cat lawyers -- more on that in another article, but suffice to say if you go to the FEC website and look up his campaign donors, you can see for yourself.

In his withdrawal statement, he obliquely referenced his campaign's surreptitious practice of using sitting insiders to attempt to preload the endorsement question for him, and their petitioning efforts to assist:

"Everyone should know that almost 100 percent of the 8,500 signatures that I have in my possession have been collected by my associates, my close friends, and me. However, there are those LP members who have collected signatures for me (but haven't yet delivered them to me) or who have committed to collecting signatures for me under the assumption that I would be representing the Virginia Libertarian Party. I want them to know that while I would still welcome those signatures, those volunteers are relieved of any moral or ethical obligation to deliver them to me or to collect any more signatures, given that the commitments and the signature gathering were made under the assumption that I would be running under the Virginia LP banner."

[From a message sent to LPVA-Forum@yahoogroups.com; Subject: U.S. Senate Race; Date: Thu, 21 Mar 2002 10:52:10 -0500]

In case it's not clear enough, make sure you understand this part: "... the ASSUMPTION that I would be running under the Virginia LP banner."

By the way, that "almost 100 percent" figure can be fact-checked by an in-person visit to the Virginia State Board of Elections, where past election archives are kept.

Hornblower also bloviated this on his now-memoryholed http://www.jacobghornberger.com/bergland3.asp:

"I believe that, at a minimum, members of the national LP staff and LP National Committee should be prohibited from supporting, directly or indirectly, any person who is vying for the LP presidential nomination and should instead remain fair and impartial as between LP candidates vying for the same position. Moreover, I believe that in the off-presidential election years, the LP national office should be devoting its efforts to "base-building" by supporting state and local LP parties and candidates."

Substitute, where appropriate, Virginia LP, SCC, US Senate race, etc.

It is worth noting that any time a Libertarian seeks the LP endorsement or nomination, there are BY DEFAULT two candidates already: in this case, for US Senate in Virginia, those candidates by default would have been the two-legged prevaricator plus NOTA.

So if Hornblower's own advice were followed, not a single person who held an LPVA title should have either helped or hindered anyone, or NOTA.

But that's not what he wanted it to mean, was it?

Such a fine example of the "Ethics Only When It Suits Me" caucus.


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Mystery of the Day: Speaking of Yahoogroups...  Might Hornblower have pulled the trigger on his decision to seek the 2020 nomination when he learned that the trail of documentation of all the victims he rolled over and all the prevarications he made -- which had been preserved in hundreds of email mailing lists that he and his supporters spammed at the time and which were hosted by Yahoogroups -- was effectively going to be eliminated by the closure of the Yahoogroups archives in December?

The Other Mystery of the Day: Why does Hornblower copyright everything he splashes far and wide?  I thought he was supposedly a consistent, radical Libertarian, who asked the state for NOTHING?

There is NO support for copyright or any other kind of IP within the libertarian philosophy.The phrase "intellectual property" is a misnomer. What the state calls intellectual property is more accurately referred to as "intellectual monopoly" - a state-granted monopoly on the use of an idea, or goods and services derived from an idea, to a certain limited group. In other words, a STATE SUBSIDY.  Libertarians call for the elimination of the protection of such state-enforced monopolies thereby freeing the market, encouraging content providers and product developers to improve on existing products thereby bringing more and better choices to the market.

So just how is it that such a "superior intellect" and a libertarian's Libertarian like Hornblower can claim a state-granted privilege and still think of himself as a "Libertarian"?


Just for this rustbucket Hornblower, this article shall carry my usual open license with a specific exception (see below).

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Vote Libertarian * 800-ELECT-US * http://www.LP.org
------------------------------------------------------------
Written by Marc Montoni <AMCAmbassador@gmail.com>, November, 2019.  This work is licensed to individuals except specifically Jacob G. Hornberger and/or his supporters -- under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.  Jacob G. Hornberger or his supporters may use any portion of the above at a cost of $1000 per word plus free use of their most valuable automobile for a year.

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For more information about the Radical Caucus, see www.LPRadicalCaucus.org or see the Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/2497146127/  .
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The Lie Search

The "Ethics Only When It Suits Us" candidate -- for brevity, hereinafter referred to as "JACKASS" -- used to sign off a few of his lawyerly interrogation screeds with the statement:

"Endnote with Respect to Lie Search: Bergland failed to establish any lies by [JACKASS] in this section of his email message."

I, however, can take just ONE of JACKASS' character assassination screeds of that era, and point to multiple lies in series, by JACKASS.

JACKASS LIE #1:

"Lark, who was in charge of running the convention, ..."

Lark was "in charge" of jack squat.  The State Central Committee had asked for bids for the 2000 convention in the summer of 1999 and accepted Stew Engel's proposal at its State Central Committee meeting in August 1999.

FACT: Stew Engel was in charge of running the convention.

JACKASS LIE #1 PROVEN.

JACKASS LIE #2:

"[Lark] refused to give Gorman more than 5 minutes of time to present his views to the convention attendees, claiming that the convention schedule could not be altered. After Gorman continued to insist on more time, LP National Director Dasbach finally agreed to relinquish 10 minutes of his 30-minute speech to Gorman. Thus, in the midst of a presidential election year, an LP presidential candidate got the grand total of 15 minutes to present his ideas to his fellow Libertarians in Virginia, after spending a considerable amount of time and money traveling to the convention."

Again a lie.  As stated in #1 above, Lark was in no position to "refuse" Don anything.  Stew was the CONTRACTOR, and he had been given authority by the SCC EIGHT MONTHS PREVIOUS to set up the convention -- which included arranging the schedule as he saw fit.


JACKASS LIE #2 PROVEN.

It's also a moronic assertion for several other reasons:

Since Jim Lark knows many of the people who spoke at our convention, Lark was asked by Engel (remember, the CONTRACTOR) to assist with getting speakers to the event.  In that capacity, Lark sent a request to Gorman to come and speak in DECEMBER before he even announced he would be a candidate.  Gorman DID NOT RESPOND TO LARK'S REQUEST.

Only after Engel had contracted with all of his speakers who responded affirmatively to Lark's initial feelers did Gorman's campaign finally ask for time.

Is Stew supposed to be psychic?

JACKASS OBFUSCATION PROVEN.
Inconvenient Truth: Gorman took advantage of a hospitality suite that Gary Reams paid for out of his own pocket and got to meet many of the people in attendance the night before the convention.

Under JACKASS's definition of things that would probably be a reportable campaign donation from Gary to the campaign.

By the way, JACKASS, can you please let us know the assessed value of the 12 oz Pepsi, twenty-two potato chips and a pretzel that Don ate while there?  Does Gary need to report the value of floor space that Don stood on as a campaign donation too?

Inconvenient Truth: Gorman got a bunch of time to speak again that evening, alongside Krawchuk and our other candidates.

If I were a Valley Girl listening to this moronic tripe about Gorman being supressed, I'd be walking around a room shouting "AS IF!!" at the top of my lungs by now.  This accusation is just plain stupid.

Gorman did JUST FINE without JACKASS White-Knighting him.  In fact, if one totaled all of his time up, he probably got as much or more time than any other single speaker.

JACKASS LIE #3:

"Could Lark have given Gorman more time? Absolutely. He could have moved Dasbach to the evening session ..."

As I've made clear, Lark had NO decision-making powers over the convention schedule.  Stew did -- he was the CONTRACTOR.

JACKASS LIE #3 PROVEN.


JACKASS LIE #4:

"... to share a 75-minute block of time that Lark provided to another official in the LP national office, LP Political Director Ron Crickenberger."

Again -- as I've made clear, Lark had NO decision-making powers over the convention schedule.  Stew did -- he was the CONTRACTOR.  Lark didn't provide a 75-minute block of ANYTHING.

JACKASS LIE #4 PROVEN.

And it wasn't even 75 minutes, it was more like 40.

JACKASS LIE #4.5 PROVEN.

JACKASS LIE #5:

"He [Lark] could have asked the hotel to delay the lunch (a buffet) by half-an-hour."

No, he couldn't -- he was not the one paying the hotel, Stew was.  Jim could ask them nothing unless Stew directed him to, otherwise he would have been interfering with Stew's fiduciary relationship with the hotel (remember, Stew was the CONTRACTOR).

JACKASS LIE #5 PROVEN.


JACKASS LIE #6:

"Or he could have advertised a morning pre-convention speech by Gorman. (The convention started at 10:30 a.m.)"

Wrong.  Lark wasn't in charge, Stew was.

JACKASS LIE #6 PROVEN.

JACKASS LIE #7:

"In other words, if Lark had wanted to make it happen, he could have."

Wrong.  Lark wasn't in charge, Stew was.

JACKASS LIE #7 PROVEN.

JACKASS LIE #8:

"What is relevant is that what Lark did to Gorman was wrong."

Wrong.  What was relevant is that Lark "did" nothing to Gorman -- it wasn't in his power to "do" a damned thing to him.  Lark wasn't in charge, Stew was.

JACKASS LIE #8 PROVEN.

JACKASS LIE #9:

"When a person enters the race for the LP presidential nomination, he has an implicit right to present his ideas and views to his fellow Libertarians."

Now this one is such a "DUH" that it's amazing that a long-time Libertarian like you would even utter it.  Sounds pretty socialist to me.  Even the smallest-l libertarian would agree that the right of association includes the right not to associate. 

Had Stew wanted to, he could have prohibited Gorman from showing up at all on the floor space Stew had rented.  Remember, Stew was the CONTRACTOR.  The Party didn't rent it, Stew did.  The Party "rented" Stew's time & talent in putting together the convention.

In short, this is a lie.  NO ONE has ANY right to demand air time at someone else's expense.

JACKASS LIE #9 PROVEN.

It's also unlibertarian as hell.

JACKASS INACCURATE ASSERTION #1:

"And he has implicit priority over LP bureaucrats such as Dasbach and Crickenberger."

Actually, Crickenberger raised about $1700 for the Libertarian Party of Virginia that night, so, if anything, Gorman had less priority -- if it's boosting the LPVA that we were looking for.

People weren't listening to "bureaucrats", they were listening to individuals who had contracted with Stew to provide his convention a particular service.

I am really surprised that THE JACKASS would suggest any capitalist arrangement was inappropriate.  Stew hoped to draw many people to his convention so he could make a profit on it.  The speakers wanted to earn whatever they were paid in return.  The people in attendance came because they wanted to attend the event Stew had put together.  The LPVA wanted a successful convention to energize its members and come out of the convention in better shape spiritually and financially than it went into it.

The LPVA wanted a fundraiser after the main program, and got it.

I would not have supported replacing Crickenberger with Gorman -- and I have a right to have some input because all of my activities for the past fifteen years of holding this party together GIVE ME THE RIGHT TO HAVE INPUT.

If anything, my priorities are not a presidential candidate's ego but making the Party grow.  Most of the people on the State Cebtral Committee at the time likely agreed.

INACCURATE ASSERTION #1 REFUTED.

So just in one email, JACKASS managed to tell several lies and repeated them several times.

This is an "ethical" individual?  Someone who lies through his teeth?

Choose carefully.

Some individuals wonder whether the real purpose of JACKASS's campaign since 1996 and continuing through today (November 2019 as I write this) has always been a desire to capture the Libertarian Party's only million-dollar asset, for the use of the separate organization which pays JACKASS's salary.

Of course if asked, JACKASS's response will sound like:

"Oh, no, my ETHICAL PRECEPTS would never allow any such transferance!"

Right.


Bless you, Harry Browne.  And I regret terribly that this pissant gnat was nipping at your heels so much during the last few years of your wonderful life.