New Keene District Court Judge Erin B McIntyre Smacks Down Prosecutor
Keene, NH business owner Christopher Waid received a parking ticket when he was downtown in late 2017 and immediately went to the parking department in the city building to demand his right to a trial. While inside the building, he received a second ticket on his car! He also immediately filed for his trial on that one. The double ticket trial was slated for early April and would involve two of the three Keene parking enforcers, meaning they couldn’t be on the streets victimizing other peaceful motorists if they are sitting in a courtroom! Even if Chris had lost the trials, just keeping the enforcers off the streets for a couple hours is a win on its own.
Chris entered the Keene District Court to face down the charges on April 9th and emerged victorious, with both tickets dismissed by new Keene judge Erin B McIntyre. (Longtime district court judge Edward J Burke is recently semi-retired and is only doing fill-in work.) Chris brilliantly challenged both parking tickets on technicalities. The first ticket was thrown out by McIntyre because the location of the alleged offense was not correct and the second ticket was tossed because parking enforcer Linda Desruisseaux lazily cited the wrong section of city code. Many judges would have simply allowed the prosecutor to amend the tickets upon request but McIntyre wasn’t letting the prosecutor have any slack! The exasperated Keene police prosecutor, Eleanor Moran, upon the second dismissal vowed she’d be filing a motion to reconsider, however she never did, according to court records. Here’s the full trial video:
There are a couple of important lessons here. (more…)
The fifteen-year libertarian camping event in New Hampshire, Porcupine Freedom Festival aka Porcfest has long been renown as a cryptocurrency hotspot. It’s the place where Bitcoin’s early successful investors like Roger Ver, Erik Voorhees,and Charlie Shrem have all come to hang out with the New Hampshire libertarian activists and hundreds of visitors, all considering a move to the Shire for more freedom. One year, Roger Ver (aka “Bitcoin Jesus”) famously gave away dozens of Casascius “physical bitcoins”, which became a collectors item and are now worth significantly more than a bitcoin!
Porcfest, like all growing groups of people eventually had a schism, or “fork” as its called in the cryptocurrency world. Out of that, Forkfest was born in 2017 (under different names). While both are libertarian camping festivals held at Roger’s Campground, Forkfest is a decentralized event, meaning that each attendee decides what to do or create for others to do while at the festival. There are no organizers and no board of directors. Given the name of the event and those planning to attend, it will likely be a very cryptocurrency friendly event as Porcfest is. Last year for instance, crypto point-of-sale provider Anypay‘s founders came and helped throw a rave.
The Olde Bostonian Tavern and Grill
This year, I’m excited to announce that cryptocurrency acceptance has now migrated off the campground and will now be year-round in Lancaster, NH thanks to the new restaurant just down the street from the campground: The Olde Bostonian Tavern and Grill located in the Cabot Inn. The restaurant was created by Rogers Campground’s longtime manager, Laura Hardiman. She was instantly interested in taking cryptocurrency like Bitcoin and DASH due to her exposure to the various libertarian campers she’s met over the years. As of this week, she’s up and running and accepting multiple cryptos including BTC, BCH, ZCH, and DASH with the slick, easy-to-use, NH-based Anypay POS. If you’re planning to attend Forkfest and/or Porcfest, make sure you plan a dinner at The Old Bostonian at 200 Portland St and bring your cryptocurrency wallet. I recommend you pay with DASH and then watch your wallet to see what happens after the payment is sent.
Forkfest 2018 will be held this year from June 14th through 18th and Porcfest is immediately afterwards from the 19th through the 24th. That’s eleven days to give you a taste of what it’s like living around more liberty people than you could possibly know. You already know about the exciting NH Freedom Migration that’s been happening here – this is your chance to really experience it.
Unofficial Forkfest Logo
In other Forkfest news, more self-organizing is happening with two competing calendars springing up. One on Google Calendar, the other on Liberty.menu. There are discussion threads on the unofficial Forkfest forum about the calendars as well as food vendors announcing they plan to attend! Plus, according to one post on the forum, the lon
As we did in 2017, Keene cryptocurrency fans got together yesterday, May 22nd, to celebrate Bitcoin Pizza Day. What is Bitcoin Pizza Day? On May 22nd of 2010, a computer programmer made the first recorded real-life bitcoin purchase – two pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin. Today, that 10,000 BTC is worth over $80 Million dollars. A year ago, it was worth $25 Million.
We gathered at Little Zoe’s Take and Bake and ordered several pizzas. However instead of paying with BTC, as we did last year, this time we paid with DASH. Why DASH? Last year during the dramatic spike in fees on the Bitcoin Core network, several local businesses began accepting DASH as an alternative to BTC, to give their customers a choice.
In order to spend cryptocurrency, it’s the buyer who pays the network fee for processing the transaction (this is the opposite of the credit card system, where the merchant takes the fee out of their profit). Given that today fees to send BTC are typically about $0.40 and to send DASH about $0.01, it’s a no-brainer. No one would choose to spend BTC when a better option is available.
That better option is DASH, aka “Digital Cash”, a cryptocurrency that confirms four times faster than BTC and has really taken off at retail locations across southern New Hampshire. It proliferated because NH-based crypto point-of-sale merchant processor Anypay introduced DASH first with its release of their POS software in 2017. In fact, in an interview with Albert, the operator of DiscoverDash.com, a website that shows the physical locations of DASH-accepting businesses across the world, he told me that Keene is number three in the world for real-life DASH acceptance, behind Caracas, Venezuela at number one and Portsmouth, NH at number two!
Well well well. The 8th Anniversary of the first-ever cryptocurrency purchase (10,000 Bitcoins for 2 Papa John’s pizzas in Jacksonville, Florida), and digital cash enthusiasts everywhere are celebrating by gathering to eat pizza and and spread their favorite money. Portsmouth, New Hampshire (aka “Bitcoin Village“) was no exception!
“Free Talk Live” Moves up to #27 on the TALKERS “Heavy Hundred” for 2018!
Keene, New Hampshire-based nationally syndicated talk radio show Free Talk Live has done it again! We’ve moved up higher on the list of the “Heavy Hundred” most important talk shows from #29 in 2017 to #27 on the 2018 rankings. Our first appearance on the list was in 2009, and we’ve been moving up year after year.
Originally founded in 2002, and syndicated in 2004, Free Talk Live is the only nationally syndicated radio show on the list that is delivering a principled, voluntaryist, pro-peace, pro-cryptocurrency message every night. We also hit another record recently, crossing over 185 radio affiliates on AM and FM from coast-to-coast.
It’s an honor to have TALKERS Magazine recognize what we’re doing here. Thank you to publisher Michael Harrison and the rest of the TALKERS crew for including us again.
Of course, we never could have done it without the direct support of our listeners via the Free Talk Live AMP program, where people who support what we do for $5 per month. Thank you for listening and for your support!
Now, the gigolo-turned-television star-turned voluntaryist talk show host and now published author has made the move to New Hampshire!
When I asked him to comment on what pushed him over the edge to deciding to move over 2,700 miles for more freedom, he said, “Your talk at Anarchapulco 2017 first sparked my interest. I ended up meeting [then Free State Project president] Matt Philips the next day and he invited me to speak at PorcFest. That got me intrigued. Then I was invited to speak at FreeCoast Fest and Liberty Forum. With my involvement in crypto and the ability to really ‘live it’, along with people I liked asking me to make the move. I just decided to go for it. I’m glad I did.”
Here’s the first episode of Vin’s show that he’s released since making the move where he and his co-host cover moving to NH, cryptocurrency, psychedelics, and liberty as a spiritual evolution. Great show! Welcome home, Vin.
P.S. You’ll be hearing more from Vin this week as he’ll be guest co-hosting Free Talk Live with me and Mark Edge this Tuesday evening from 7-10pm Eastern. You can listen live at Free Talk Live’s site, or watch our video feed via the LRN.FM Twitch.
A few weeks ago in Keene there was a standoff in West Keene to which dozens of cops and state police responded. They brought out the BEARCAT, MRAP, a bomb robot, all kinds of cruisers and trucks, and apparently every state cop from all over – in full camouflage, plus Keene police and Cheshire Sheriffs.
To their credit, the cops didn’t hurt the man in the home this time, but they didn’t need to respond like this. This is a scary level of police militarization and very dangerous to liberty.
Think this was the first time something like this has happened in Keene? Think again. In 2012 police had a similarly ridiculous response to an even less-threatening domestic incident in West Keene where a man stormed off into the woods while armed. Oh and don’t forget the lockdown of part of Downtown prior to that in 2010 over an abandoned backpack full of beer. More recently, who could forget the ridiculous response to the Pumpkinfest Riots the police created in the first place by raiding peaceful day parties.
