The right to petition governments for redress of grievances is an essential liberty. Article 31 of the NH Constitution states: “The legislature shall assemble for the redress of public grievances…” and Article 32 states: “The people have a right… to request of the legislative body, by way of petition or remonstrance, redress of the wrongs done them, and of the grievances they suffer.” However, it is now more difficult to have your petitions answered.
In mid-December, the NH House Rules Committee voted 6-4 to recommend the removal of the Grievance Committee. On January 2, the House voted 226-147 to eliminate the committee. Supporters of the committee say it was a constitutionally created mechanism to help people redress grievances and that every petitioner coming before the committee had to propose a legislative action or the petition wasn’t entertained.
Rep. Gary Richardson, who motioned for the rule change, said the New Hampshire House is one of the most representative bodies, and any outstanding or pressing issue could be raised via legislation, on a case-by-case basis.
The main problem with that claim is that legislation can only be proposed during a brief period between Legislative Sessions. Secondly, the claim assumes that someone’s Representative will actually introduce the requested legislation.
First it was Time Warner announcing Wideband speeds and now Verizon has launched 4G service in Keene! The bandwidth in town just keeps getting better – hooray for competition!
A test earlier today with the free SpeedTest app resulted in typical 4G speeds, 15mbps down and about 10mbps up from Main St. in Keene.
UPDATE: User claims US Cellular has had 4G for months in Keene
I’ve been working on a project to release my raw videos from the NATO Summit protests in Chicago and recently created an introduction segment. The videos will be released first as single videos featuring an entire day’s footage to Fr33manTVraw. From the single large video, a trimmed cut will be produced with audio commentary and released on the FreeConcordTV youtube channel. After creating the intro, I found that it worked very well as a trailer for the footage to come. It features video from both myself and other videographers, with channels cited in the video description.
Editor’s note: This is the last in a series exploring the Free State Project. This week, we look at what the future holds for the Free State movement.
The logo of the Free State Project includes a crudely drawn image of a porcupine, a symbol that became part of the movement’s iconography after an online vote by early project participants.
The porcupine won out over more conventional symbols of liberty, such as the “Don’t Tread on Me” snake, menacing and coiled, depicted in the early American flag designed by Gen. Christopher Gadsden.
According to the Free State Project’s website, the porcupine was chosen by popular vote of its members because something more original and “public relations-friendly” was desired to emphasize the “freshness” of the movement’s approach.
“Porcupines are cute and nonaggressive, but you certainly don’t want to step on them,” explains the official literature of the organization.
There’s little doubt that the Free State Project has established a foothold in New Hampshire. (more…)
Yesterday I called in to Keene’s open-phones local news show, Talkback, after the main host, Cynthia Georgina suggested jail telephone systems were too expensive. She didn’t understand why such an expense was necessary where jails are ‘supposed to be punishment’.
In the program, we were only able to touch on a few aspects of her belief, when there’s so much that could be said about that mentality. People who are not affected by jails can fail to recognize the unnecessary strain on human life created by conditions of caging. In the nation that has 25% of the world’s institutionalized inmates, it is still easy to ignore the plight of others when they are removed from sight and mind.
Because Cynthia was specifying jails, she was endorsing punishment of people held for either misdemeanor convictions (facing a penalty of under a year of incarceration) or those being detained pending trial. Detention pending trial could simply mean one is too poor to afford bail, or that they were in violation of any number of stringent bail conditions. When I brought up that New Hampshire jails are occupied by a large number of individuals convicted of driving infractions, Cynthia was surprised, unaware of the mandatory minimum prison sentence written into state law for those designated habitual offenders. (more…)
Still more footage of KPD’s Ken Meola behaving poorly towards Dave Ridley. Ridley also suggests I am “passive aggressive” and that I’ve wasted my time having breakfast with people like Ken. I disagree that it’s time wasted conversing in a humane manner with government workers and politicians. Ridley may be angry, but I am generally not. If I find myself angry, I’ll do my best to admit it, and work on shifting to better feelings. As usual, when someone accuses me of being “passive aggressive”, I think that’s just projection on their part. Ridley wants me to be angry for him, because he feels, perhaps, as though he would be angry in the situations in question.
I’m long past being angry at the government guys. They are just humans doing the wrong thing by aggressing against their peaceful neighbors. Everyone can change – I know I have. Here’s Ridley’s report:
First it was 
