Intro Thread

[Jason_Gatties]

Figure I would start a thread where everyone can introduce themselves. You see this on many forums, so I figure, may as well start one here as well.

Guess I'm starting it...

My name is Jason Gatties. I'm a proud member of the Libertarian Party, although I have my issues with the local Libertarian Party group at the moment. I'm happily married & have a 13 year old son. I'm 33 years old and I have a 13 year old son? Man, I'm starting to feel old!

I work full time as a Business Manager for a small contract security company in Michigan. I also do some "side work" as a security consultant, which I hope will be my full time career at some point.

I'm a proud member of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. In my spare time, I run a Rugby & Soccer blog (http://www.TryGol.com) & host a online talk show with my wife (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/livefromcourtstreet).

I'm heavily into sports, especially rugby & soccer. My favorite teams are Fulham FC (Soccer-England), Chicago Fire (Soccer-USA) & London Wasps (Rugby). I'm also a proud supporter of US Soccer & USA Rugby.

Nobody has ever really asked me about my religion & I usually keep that sort of thing to myself. However, over a year ago, I converted to Buddhism, so there you go, probably the last time I'm going to discuss this. I'm also a Universal Life Church minister. I did that as a joke back in 2003, but I have performed a marriage ceremony since then, so I guess it became useful after all.

My #1 goal in life is to one day be a public servant. I would love to be elected to office, especially at the local level. Unfortunately, our local Libertarian group sucks at the moment, so right now I'm getting very little support. Hopefully the guys running "the show" will get bored at some point and just walk away or I can get enough people to get involved so we an just vote those idiots out next year. That way, those of us who are serious about the cause can step in and move the local party in a proper direction.

[ElfNinosMom]

Hiya, Jason! This is a fantastic idea for the forum, thanks for starting it!

Wait until you're in you're 40s, and your son is grown. Then, you really feel old.

Here's the pertinent intro from my personal blog, which probably says more about me than anything I've put on the LFV blog:

The progeny of a prostitute and a schizophrenic, I am an eccentric humanist libertarian with a weird sense of humor, who writes about criminology topics for a living. I therefore work only when I run across something which catches my attention, which is why I have plenty of time maintain a blog.

I am of Scots-Irish descent, as you’ve probably ascertained from my appearance. Yes, that is my natural hair color.

If I seem to disappear for a while, you may safely assume I am either researching or writing, or maybe just got bored and went to the beach or the mountains for a while.

I got my nickname because ElfNino is my grown son’s old RPG nickname, from many years ago, and all his online friends called me ElfNino’s Mom. Obviously, "ElfNino" is a play on the name of the weather phenomenon, but as written it means “the elfen child”. His RPG character was always an elf, and he kind of looks like the main character from the movie “Elf”, so it works on multiple levels.

That of course means that ElfNino is not my son’s real name, though you'd be surprised how many people make that brain-dead assumption.

I am a widow, and am in a very happy longterm committed relationship. When I say “committed”, I mean that we may as well be married, except that at our ages (mid 40s) we don’t plan to have children and therefore see no reason to seek governmental approval of our relationship.

[m3talsmith]

Hi Jason and ElfNinosMom! I'm glad to see this forum and the blog (yours of course) that led me here.

So a quick run down of who I am.

I am a "l" libertarian. I was a member of the National party for one year. But I was discouraged by their lack of interest to let other people in without paying some sort of fee to join the party. I was also discouraged by the corruption that was going on then with fraud in that funding department etc. I'm just not convinced that putting speed bumps in the way of people willing to take an oath on the non-aggression pact, and willing to become involved in the party, was a very intelligent or honest idea.

That explanation aside, I am a libertarian who has traveled a lot around the US. Not only that but I am a recovering Republican by birth.

I currently live in Northern Michigan. I have been elected into office once as a Libertarian; a write in no less. I have helped the Badnarik campaign, and more recently the Ron Paul campaign; let's not get into the Ron Paul isn't a libertarian argument just yet please.

I am 30 years old in a week, a father of three children, a programmer with some major sites under my belt ( herbalessence.com , lime.com , attwilliams.com , zoecity.com ), and I have a beautiful wife of the same age. If I hadn't married before I became a libertarian I wouldn't have asked the State's approval to be in love and live with my wife for the rest of my life. I would instead have given them the middle finger.

My passion is not public office, my passion is in making liberty a reality. To that effect I no longer care about running for office. I'm spending every waking moment, not spent on client work of with my family, on developing services, hardware, and programs to help liberate people from the bondage they were born into. I'm currently writing a barter system that's open sourced, with the intent to run a service based on the code to form networks of local people willing to barter with each other and other people, creating a mesh based wireless system to help people create a new backbone to replace the internet over time, one that is dynamic and has no central point to snoop, and building The Urban Rebellion, a site that both my wife and I are working on to teach people the basics and to help people no longer become enslaved by the 9-5 career, debt, and consumption slavery to the dollar.

That's a long list I know. But it's only a fraction of what is going on in the background of my life.

[ElfNinosMom]

Hi, M3talsmith! Sorry for the late welcome, but for some reason I did not get a notification of your post.

I agree with your views about the LP. I have always kind of wondered why any political party would charge a fee for membership, given that most people will not shell out cash for something they can do for free elsewhere.

[m3talsmith]

It's very strange. Especially when you can't afford to not have people of the same mindset coming along side you and helping.

Speaking of which, we need to get more people in here and build this forum up. It gets lonely in here for days at a time. If it doesn't pick up soon I have no idea where I'll next distract myself during a really boring day.