Sipos Wrong On Barr PAC Dollars

Editor Tom Sipos writes in the Jan 2009 California Freedom: "Bob Barr only contributed millions of PAC dollars to GOP candidates running against LP candidates, while he sat on the LNC." This is a recklessly extravagant falsehood.

Barr joined the LNC in Dec 2006. OpenSecrets.org tells us that the Bob Barr Leadership Fund donated a total of $41,300 to 25 non-LP federal candidates in the 2008 campaign cycle. Even if by some miracle all 25 had Libertarian opponents, Sipos's reckless charge against our party's recent presidential nominee would still be wrong by two orders of magnitude.

Meanwhile, during the 2008 cycle Barr's PAC relied on its presumably conservative/Republican donors to finance contributions of $4,300 to federal LP candidates, $21,000 to the LNC, and $5,000 to the South Carolina LP. I seriously doubt that any other source donated more to LP causes during that cycle. Barr has also personally donated thousands of dollars to the LP and its candidates, including several hundred dollars to the LPCA. Meanwhile, Sipos is paid by the LPCA about $4000/year -- surely much more than any other state LP editor -- for stuffing California Freedom with multi-page editorials and multiple antiwar articles per issue. I find no record of any donations by Sipos to the LP or its candidates. (Full disclosure: I've donated over $10,000 to the LP and its candidates in the last 5 years. Details at http://libertarianmajority.net/bh-lp-activism.)

If by chance this letter to the editor is printed in full in CF, take note whether Sipos will once again allocate himself more space to answering a critical letter than he allocates for the letter itself. For my response to the most recent time I got that treatment, see http://knowinghumans.net/2007/08/cfs-new-antiwar-obsession-still-wont.html.