On the morning of June 16th, 2014 myself and fellow Free Keene blogger Joel Valenzuela were accompanied by activists Angela Aronoff, Nicholas Buroker, and new Free State Project mover Andrew Vermiglio at the Hillsborough County Superior Court House located in down town Manchester NH. We arrived at the court house to warmly great jurors as they approached the building. As they approached, we were handing out NHJury.com pamphlets to jurors. The pamphlets inform the jurors of their rights as a juror. The emphasis being that a jury can vote not guilty if the law is unjust. Jury nullification outreach has been consistent every jury selection at this court house since March of this year. Hopefully other activists around the state will do the same at other court houses.
Wednesday, June 18th 2014 – 10am – Activists convened at the NH Supreme Court to hear Rich Paul’s attorney argue for an appeal. That means even though Rich Paul lost his original trial, he can ask a higher court to hear arguments to decide if the original ruling was wrongly decided. If they decide to go forward with the appeal, Rich will have a whole new trial. The Supreme Court’s ruling is where laws are challenged and clarified. Whatever they decide has the potential to set future precedent.
This week, liberty activist Graham Colson was tried for a “contempt of court” charge that he received while out on bail after being arrested on a later-determined-unconstitutional no trespass notice from the “city of Keene”. In legal land there is a concept known as the doctrine of the “fruit of the poisoned tree”. My understanding of this is that if, for instance, the police raid your home on a bad warrant (say they lied to the judge to get the warrant), that any evidence collected based on that warrant cannot be used against you. It’s the “fruit of the poisoned tree”, and so charges must be dropped.
However, this doctrine appears to not apply to the “orders” of the judge. In Graham’s case, he was arrested for violating the no trespass notice from the city that banned him from Central Square. He was let out on bail conditions that included no contact with a couple of parking enforcers. He was later arrested for walking through Central Square and talking to a parking enforcer. For this act he was charged with “contempt of court”. Then, last summer, the district court’s judge Edward Burke threw out the no trespass letter as unconstitutional and illegal. Since the no trespass letter was illegal, shouldn’t the contempt case be thrown out too, since the bail conditions were originally issued on a case based on an illegal no trespass notice? Maybe in a system actually oriented towards justice – not this one.
So, the contempt charge went to court this week and Graham was found guilty, despite a valiant attempt to defend the charge by Garret Ean. Graham will be turning himself into the Keene Spiritual Retreat, aka the county jail to serve 60 days. He will have five months suspended over his head for two years. All because the city police were handing out illegal no trespass orders. Yeah, justice! Here’s the full video of the trial:
There’s a hate group in Keene trashing the FSP because they don’t like Free Keene (or Robin Hooding, or something like that).
My status update included more, but the part above about the group called Stop Free Keene (SFK) got considerable attention. Some SFK members were openly hateful towards Free State Project (FSP) participants on the basis of group affiliation. Some were even promoting violence. My message and some of the comment thread was copied into the Stop Free Keene group and generally met with negative responses from SFK members.
In the comment thread on my status message, I noted,
Of course, I’m concerned someone’s going to get hurt… (more…)
It’s budget time and of course it’s going up again. Just like last year. And the year before. Surprisingly, the Parking Fund is going down $200,000 even though the city collected $80,000 less than it had planned on (no doubt thanks to Robin Hood and his merry misfits). Some have been quick to applaud the city bureaucrats in this reduction, but wait. The TIF tax portion went up $200,000. What the hell is a TIF tax? If all you saw was “tax” and you already knew it was something bad, then you would be correct. Here is a brief explanation in my LTE to the Keene Sentinel:
Tax Increment Financing is not “free money”
Who pays for Keene’s downtown parking?
If you were to ask city management, they would tell you it’s paid for through rentals, fees and fines. If you then asked them if the taxpayers paid into the parking fund as well, they would most likely tell you “no.”
This is a flat-out mistruth. Let me explain. This year, $1 million (47 percent) of the $2.2 million proposed parking budget will come from the city’s Tax Increment Finance (TIF) tax pool. This is a huge increase from $840,000 (34 percent) last year.
The TIF tax pool is generated from Keene’s two developmental districts and the revenue collected can only be spent in those districts. It cannot be spent elsewhere. The idea is the money will be put aside and used to improve the assessed value of these properties and therefore increase the potential tax revenue over time because, according to social engineer Mayor Lane, development in these areas would never happen unless they had a little help from the taxpayers. This is a ridiculous notion.
One of the biggest problems with TIF is how the money is spent. Right now, almost half of Keene’s TIF revenue goes to the parking fund. The other half is spent mostly on principal and interest. We’re talking about $2.4 million that could be going directly to the general fund to pay for city services, which would ultimately help lower the already unsustainable tax rate.
On the morning of June 16th, 2014 myself and fellow Free Keene blogger Joel Valenzuela were accompanied by activists Angela Aronoff, Nicholas Buroker, and new Free State Project mover Andrew Vermiglio at the Hillsborough County Superior 
Court House located in down town Manchester NH. We arrived at the court house to warmly great jurors as they approached the building. As they approached, we were handing out NHJury.com pamphlets to jurors. The pamphlets inform the jurors of their rights as a juror. The emphasis being that a jury can vote not guilty if the law is unjust. Jury nullification outreach has been consistent every jury selection at this court house since March of this year. Hopefully other activists around the state will do the same at other court houses.
It’s budget time and of course it’s going up again. Just like last year. And the year before. Surprisingly, the Parking Fund is going down $200,000 even though the city collected $80,000 less than it had planned on (no doubt thanks to Robin Hood and his merry misfits). Some have been quick to applaud the city bureaucrats in this reduction, but wait. The TIF tax portion went up $200,000. What the hell is a TIF tax? If all you saw was “tax” and you already knew it was something bad, then you would be correct. Here is a brief explanation in 
