Apparently there has been some Internet kerfuffle involving officers being videotaped by citizens. Seems some officers get their Hanes all up in a half-hitch about it — to the point of pulling some truly feather-legged stunts.

Why?

And I’m asking that question of both sides, by-the-by.

 Head over and help him figure it out.

People like Tommy Mozingo would protect you if a criminal showed up and started hurting people. Enacting a regulation which keeps them from being able to carry a firearm makes you far less safe, as people like Tommy are the only ones who will follow said rule. Criminals will be armed no matter what.

Does that policy make sense to you?

Keene’s tax rate is up — but not by as much as it has been in recent years.

The Department of Revenue Administration set Keene’s rate at $30.82 per $1,000 of assessed valuation, a 65-cent, or 2.2 percent, increase from last year’s rate of $30.17.

That means the tax bill on a Keene house assessed at $200,000 would come to $6,164.

The tax rate is broken into four portions — the city portion, the local school portion, the state school portion and the county portion.

This year the rate has increased in all categories except the local school portion, which dropped 23 cents, or 1.7 percent, from $13.55 to $13.32.

“We’re very pleased to see the rate go down,” said John R. Harper, the school district’s business administrator.

This year’s school budget didn’t go up much and there was a surplus from last year, but the real boost came from income — in particular, state building aid for the new middle school and the revenue from the sale of the old middle school, he said.

“There were some good revenue reasons why we needed to raise less from taxes from last year. It’s unusual that we sell a school building, for instance,” Harper said.

The Keene city portion of the rate is up 46 cents, or 4 percent, from $11.32 to $11.78.

That represents a $386,742 increase in the total amount of money that the city raised by taxes — the smallest increase since 2000, according to Martha M. Landry, assistant city manager and finance director.

Retirement payments, health insurance and interest payments on bonds have all increased since last year, but wages are down because the city has allowed positions that have become vacant to go unfilled, she said.

The city’s employee unions also agreed to forgo contractual raises this year.

The county portion of the rate is up 32 cents, from $3.03 to $3.35 — a 10.6 percent increase.

The county raised $1.4 million more from taxes this year than it did last year, according to Sheryl A. Trombly, county finance director.

The county’s expenses have increased because the portion of Medicaid it has to pay for residents in the county-owned nursing home has gone up, along with health insurance costs, while revenue from the nursing home has dropped, she said.

The total share of the county budget that Keene is responsible for has also gone up because of an increase in the total property valuation in the city, Trombly said.

Last year, the increase in the Keene tax rate was $1.37, or 4.8 percent, over the 2009 rate of $28.80. That year’s rate was up 5.1 percent, with a $1.40 increase, from the 2008 rate of $27.40.

Tax bills were mailed to Keene residents on Oct. 28, and payment is due Dec. 1.

For each $30.82 Keene taxpayers pay this year:

u $11.78 goes to the city of Keene.

u $13.32 goes to the Keene School District.

u $2.37 goes to state education taxes.

u $3.35 goes to Cheshire County.

WALL ST – TalleyTV visited occupied Wall Street with three FR33 Agents from the Shire, Michele 7, Derrick J and Ryan Maddox. There they met up with other allies, including Ethan Lee Vita who agreed to be interviewed about his occupation experiences.

During our recording, Ethan and I were approached my a uniformed lieutenant employed by the New York Police Department. He was trying to intimidate Ethan and myself into leaving the spot where we were standing – in front of a piece of art. Neither of us moved and the law enforcer couldn’t cite and reason or law why it was necessary for us to move. So we continued going about our peaceful business.

Via Keene411

Talley arrested, dragged away by the handcuffs in superior courthouse for waking through to window with a filming device

http://bit.ly/nTxgl2

Filming public officials in public is a first amendment right. See Glik v. Commonwealth of MA

To accomplish this, we’re going to need paint, brushes, and other tools. If we wish to repair the ground cover, seed of some variety will be needed, and the effort will be impossible without volunteers. To that end, I will be attending the 4:20 rallies every weekday over the next 2-3 weeks to collect any funds anybody may wish to contribute, as well as any equipment that anyone may wish to donate for our use. I have also created a Facebook event, to be held in Central Square on Wednesday, September 14 at 4:00pm to discuss plans for making repairs.

An action like this is not without risks. Two years ago, another activist was arrested for attempting to create a public garden in Central Square. Arrests relating to this are also possible. The work done, if not done well, may cause bad publicity. And of course there is the chance that agents of the city council may choose to strip and repaint after our work is done, even if no arrests are made. I’m willing to take that risk.

Anybody who is interested is of course welcome to come out to Central Square on Wednesday to help plan. I’ll see you there.

Private schools would be much more affordable than current public or private schools. The competition between schools and teachers for students would drive the quality of education up, as it does in all markets, and because the student is the customer the educational system would be focused on meeting each students needs.

Let’s assume that the school day is broken down into 4 classes, each lasting 1 semester. If the cost to each student per class per semester is $250, paid to the teacher, then the teacher earns $30,000 per semester if the teacher fills all four classes. Much more than a teacher currently earns, and costing a student only $1,000 per semester to attend. We’ll assume the teacher uses the tuition paid directly to them to purchase supplies and facilities, which are also offered on an open market. Rent a classroom for a semester for $6,000. 30 copies of the text book at $100/copy is $3,000. Throw in a supply of paper, pens, pencils and such at $1,000, and the teacher is left with a take home pay of $20,000/semester, or $40,000/year. More than the NH Starting salary of $28,279. Because Textbooks are reusable, the second year the teacher takes home $52,000, which far exceeds the current NH average of $45,263. And all this for a cost of $1,000/student, far, far below the $7,770/student Cheshire County currently averages. Yes, these numbers are arbitrary. The freed market cannot be guessed at accurately. But with competition driving prices and costs down, my scenario is probably much worse for both teachers and students than what would actually occur

But what of quality, you ask. Well, as I just demonstrated, teachers will likely earn more money than currently. This in and of itself will draw better qualified teachers into the field. Teachers will also be competing with each other for students. Those who are best able to engage the students interests and provide the best quality education at the best price will be the most successful. Poor teachers, rather than resting on tenure, will be driven out of the market and will have to find other work, while excellent teachers will be able to command higher tuition. Overall the trend will be toward better quality

Because the students will be customers, providing teachers with income, teachers will tend to focus on meeting student needs. If a student is struggling, the teacher will be economically motivated, in addition to the simple desire to teach, to help the student understand the subject matter. Teachers who fail to teach will soon fail to draw customers, the students.

All told, the private school will allow teachers and students both to excel through lower prices, higher quality and a focus on the student. As an added bonus, people without children, mostly young adults struggling to get started and seniors living on retirement income, won’t be forced to pay for the education of other peoples children at the point of a gun.

Someone lit themselves on fire outside the Cheshire County Superior Court yesterday, in Keene, NH. On the police scanner, the KPD mentioned finding a car nearby that could have been his, registered to a Thomas Ball in Massachusetts. A Thomas Ball, from Massachusetts was involved in a court case around 2007: “Thomas Ball v Monadnock Family Services” A Thomas Ball from Mass. Also signed an online petition here: http://bit.ly/lykCr0, where he states:

The authorities are forcing parents to choice between the loyalty to their families and the loyalty to our government. The government will lose this type of contest.

It is likely that Thomas Ball lost this court case and felt it was an extreme injustice, especially if it involved his children and possibly loosing custody of them.

UPDATE: There is a facebook group scheduled to be archived that was created to provide “Help for men, and women, arrested for domestic violence. Shared parenting for divorced parents.” It is admin’d by a Thomas Ball, whose profile is here: Thomas Ball.

He also appears to have run a website: http://jimbrownprinciple.com which is the only reference to the case “Thomas Ball v. Monadnock Family Services” but is no longer online.

UPDATE 2: Thomas’ Ball’s story about Monadnock Family Services (PDF) (Google Cache Link)

Mr. Ball also sent a last statement to the Keene Sentinal

The neat thing about the second GR is that it can be literalized easily. In the recent anti-war march in Keene, I had a sign that read “Bomb others as you want to be bombed”. Arrest others as you would want to be arrested. Or the reverse, protest against others as you would want to be protested against.

I’ve been looking for a theme that is already accepted to some degree, in order to attempt to change our violent culture. I think I found it in the GR. When you literalize the GR you can start to see if followed, how it can moderate extremes in behavior. If you know that others will use your own behavior as a guide to do to you, you will tend to soften your own activities so that bad things don’t happen to you.
For example:
A while back on a discussion on children and property rights, someone justified killing a child if they step a foot onto their lawn. The reality is that the debate between liberty rights (occasional encroachment, such as to retrieve a ball that bounced onto your yard) versus absolute property rights will never be settled. Animals fight over property all the time and humans are no different. Here is where the Golden Rule excels at mediating between principles and moderating behavior- Harm others for small encroachments as you want to be harmed for your small encroachments. There is a saying, “paybacks a bitch”, that is how the GR moderates the potential for violence WITHOUT violating principles. It encourages voluntary concessions without giving up rights.

I have fallen in love with this concept. It is not pacifism, or outright aggression, it is already an accepted principle, even if it is conveniently ignored.

The tricky part is creating the necessary pressure needed for this to be very powerful. The first, is we have to follow it. Hypocrisy destroys legitimacy. The second is light coercion. The successful peace movements in the past used light coercion, but not force. This is a huge reason why some succeeded, and others didn’t. You cannot use force against an idea. But through group actions we can create pressure against even powerful well armed opponents. A de-escalatory version of Tit for Tat I think could be used to great effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
De-escalation means they arrest someone, we immediately respond and try to pressure them, such as embarrass them, taunts, protests, point out their hypocrisy,(it destroys their legitimacy too) and other creative actions.

We have already used tit for tat, but inconsistently. Tit for tat requires followup, which is hard to do in an ideologically guided decentralized movement.
Other problems we have had is we have justified encroachment or actions we wouldn’t want done to us in the name of fighting their aggression. Prominent examples are the chalking, and the bullhorn use. I would certainly consider both to be light coercion, but it also bothered others not involved in the aggression.

I have been trying to find a popular idea, that isn’t necessarily libertarian, but can possibly get us so much closer than dry economic analysis or ranting and raving will. Any thoughts?

Click here to view the embedded video.