Longtime readers of Free Keene may recall the 2012 campaign season where cornered all the candidates we could with ambush interviews including Santorum, Biden, Huntsman, and Romney. Now that Barack Obama isn’t in the running, we’ll have all kinds of slimeball politicians from both political parties coming to town to campaign.
What happened to the cannabis decriminalization bill that overwhelmingly passed the house with more than 80% of NH state reps voting for it? In an embarrassing display of ignorance, watch as multiple NH senators spout off various prohibitionist lies and nonsense in this hearing that came at the end of a 12-hour day for liberty activists at the state house. Despite initially having enough votes to pass the measure, prohibitionist senator Carson moves to strip some more from the already-crippled bill. This ultimately kills it, for political reasons.(Technically it’s “tabled” until 2016.)
The good news is this is the first time the NH senate has ever had a floor discussion on the issue (the house has passed decrim six times in eight years), as ignorant as much of it was, it’s a step in the right direction. The next step is to target the bad senators for either education or elimination in 2016’s election. More detail on what happened below the video, from someone who was with me witnessing the debacle.
HB618 (Marijuana Decrim) is dead until January, at the earliest. Last night, the Senate voted 15-9 to overturn the committee’s recommendation of ITL (inexpedient to legislate/kill this bill) so that Senator Pierce could introduce a compromise amendment. This was encouraging.
At the point the vote was taken, Senator Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry) walked out of the session and began loudly yelling and ranting about how she couldn’t believe this was happening, (more…)
Dave Ridley continues his series of videos from the Keene School Board meeting last month. As usual, his ambush-style interviews capture more ridiculous, unaccountable behavior from the school board members and school staff.
In this video, one school board member refuses to agree to support ANY kind of budget cap. No amount of taxing is too much!
In this video, Ridley confronts school bureaucrats who do not want to answer questions about anything as well as another school board member who refuses to support a budget cap: (more…)
Despite having previously admitted to spending at least $20,000 of taxpayer money on legal fees in the first stage of the city’s ridiculous civil suit filed against Keene’s Robin Hooders, city manager John MacLean is now claiming he doesn’t know how much it’s all cost thus far. As you may recall, the suit is currently awaiting a ruling from the New Hampshire supreme court. Dave Ridley spotted MacLean at a recent council meeting and confronts him outside. MacLean, who is a very smooth operator, dodges and gives non-answers to Ridley’s legitimate inquiries, including those about MacLean’s salary. Here’s the video:
Now Dave Ridley confronts him about it, more than two years later, and it sounds like Andy denies his own behavior as he scurries out of the city building after a council meeting. Dave gives chase into the parking lot but doesn’t get another word out of Andy. Perhaps he’s embarrassed about his behavior? If so, then why not admit fault and apologize like most good people would do when they do something they regret? I guess that would take some integrity and guts. Here’s the video of the confrontation, which also includes Ridley being blown off and ignored by some city councilors when he asks about tax-cutting:
Nearly six years ago in downtown Keene I was shocked when Emergency Medical Services worker Ronald Leslie snatched my phone out of my hands (here’s another angle) as I was recording video of my friend Kurt Hoffman being loaded into an ambulance. Hoffman had allegedly been attacked by now-sheriff, then-KPD-officer Eli Rivera while in a secret court hearing at Keene District Court. Though I had forgiven Leslie shortly after the incident, others have not forgotten the assault and theft.
Indeed, now that Dave Ridley is back in town, he’s been cornering bureaucrats and politicians in various places. Recently he attended a Keene city council meeting where the very same Ronald Leslie was receiving an award prior to his retirement. Ridley confronted him about the theft and at first it almost looks like Leslie has changed for the better – he even tells a female companion to keep her hands off Ridley’s camera after she begins to assault him. Despite the golden opportunity Leslie has to apologize publicly for what he did or at least admit fault, he actually claims that he thought I was giving him my camera! My mouth just about hit the floor when I heard the ridiculous excuse for his unprofessional behavior. Here’s the video:
