Blog from April 2014

There are 3 blog entries from April 2014

Marlin Fishing in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico
April 30th, 2014 | View Post
It took me long enough to finally make this video, but this is a little tribute to the trip that we took with Javier back in January. He chartered a 71' fishing yacht and took a bunch of us fishing in the Pacific off the coast of Cabo.

In all of my deep-sea fishing adventures, I've never even seen a marlin. On this particular day we caught three!


Reddit AMA in /r/Austin
April 23rd, 2014 | View Post
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In an effort to begin getting the word of my campaign out on social media, I decided to reach out to the Reddit community today. Specifically I was only intending to reach the /r/Austin/ subreddit, but the conversation seems to have spread far beyond what I anticipated.

I posted a link to my website around 11:45am with the following Reddit title: I'm running for State Representative in District 46 (east Austin, north of 7th). I'm pro-pot, pro-gay, pro-open-internet, oppose the TSA, and oppose the NSA. Here's my website. Soon after posting the link I left my office for lunch.

A few messages trickled in while I was eating and I quickly answered them. Twenty or so minutes past that and something started happening that I would have never expected, a full-blown AMA organically developed.

I've always wanted to participate in an AMA and having now completed one can definitely say I enjoyed the process. I had the opportunity to personally converse with more than 600 people. Thankfully I am a pretty fast typist (10fastfingers puts me at 117 WPM) because it was the only way I could provide ongoing and thorough answers to all of the questions pouring in.

When it was all said and done I had answered more than 400 questions, had more than 20 people offer to volunteer themselves to the campaign, drove almost 5,000 people to the campaign website, and even raised several hundred dollars.

The AMA is currently the 29th highest post in /r/Austin/ of all time.
State Convention Followup
April 13th, 2014 | View Post
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Patrick Dixon addresses the body at the 2014 Libertarian State Convention in Temple, Texas
The recent Libertarian Party State convention in Temple, Texas was a great success. In addition to electing some very intelligent, well-spoken, and qualified people as statewide candidates, we had an opportunity to address the official party platform.

I'm very proud to say that after many hours of debate, the Libertarian Party of Texas has removed any language from its platform that would even hint at the idea of supporting closed borders. As a long-time supporter of open-borders, I was very pleased to see this change adopted and am proud to say I voted for the language.

So as of 2014, the official party language on border control reads as follows:

"The Libertarian Party believes in and encourages free and fair trade among nations which allows the easy exchange of currency, goods, labor, and services."

This was considerably shorter than the platform committee had come back with and I'd like to personally thank Art DiBianca for proposing this particular language.