I’m the only democrat for governor to receive an A rating by the NH Firearms Coalition!
Though sidelined by much of the NH mainstream media, my campaign has not been ignored by various interest groups across New Hampshire. I’ve responded to a bunch of candidate questionnaires thus far, more than I was sent in 2014. As a result my campaign spending has increased from about $2.50 last year to just over $5.00 here in 2016. Some of the results are in!
The New Hampshire Firearms Coalition selected me as the only democratic candidate for governor to receive their “A” rating. Derek Dextraze received a C- and the others didn’t bother to reply to the questionnaire.
Granite State Taxpayers ranked me as the best-scoring democrat in the five-way contest, with an 83%. Derek Dextraze was the next on the list at 61%, with the others failing to respond to the survey.
Hopefully more ratings will come out publicly – if so, I’ll post them here as I find them! To learn more about my low-budget campaign for governor as a democrat, visit my page on the NH Liberty Party website.
It’s not a coincidence that New Hampshire has arguably the highest concentration of bitcoin and crypto-friendly people anywhere. For more than a decade there have been active migrations of libertarian, voluntarist, and liberty anarchists moving to New Hampshire. Many of these movers are activists who are into alternative currencies and the bitcoin community here has exploded as a result.
The oldest migration of libertarians to New Hampshire is the Free State Project, which as of September 2016 boasts nearly 2,000 participants already in New Hampshire, with 18,000 more pledged to move by the year 2021. There’s also the more decentralized Shire Society which has been encouraging liberty-loving people to declare their personal independence and move to “The Shire” since 2010.
These early movers are not only users of bitcoin, but are also some of the key developers and creators of the bitcoin world. Liberty migrants to New Hampshire created the iconic, most-installed-in-the-world Lamassu bitcoin vending machine in Manchester. Some are developing the evolutionary “Open Bazaar” and “LBRY” software. Decentralized ride-sharing app “Arcade City” has also sprung up just this year, and within a week of it being announced, signed up 1000 drivers worldwide. Arcade City founder and liberty migrant Christopher David said, “With its libertarian leanings and an influx of free staters, New Hampshire is perfectly positioned to become a major hub for bitcoin and blockchain startups. That’s a big reason why I moved here.”
Bitcoin Outreach Booth at the Cheshire Fair
Here are some more fun facts about the burgeoning bitcoin scene in the Shire: Manchester is home to the world’s longest-running weekly bitcoin meetup, plus regular meetups are being held in Keene and the Seacoast. According to Overstock.com, the highest concentration of their bitcoin orders comes from New Hampshire. Plus, you can actually use bitcoin in real life here, at mom-n-pop businesses like “Corner News”, “Local Burger”, and multiple food trucks in Keene, plus “Pizza 911”, “Dancing Lion Chocolate”, and more in Manchester. It turns out that Keene, the Southwestern NH city of 23,000 people, even outdoes San Francisco in amount of bitcoin-accepting business per capita! Take a look at CoinMap.org to see the dozens of New Hampshire businesses that are taking crypto!
New Hampshire also boasts New England’s only public Bitcoin Vending Machines (BVM), connecting people with bitcoin from as far away as New York and Boston. (more…)
Steven Zeiler started a Meetup group for people interested in learning to use Node.js, a tool for making web apps. They meet once a month in Portsmouth. At their first meeting this week, 8 guys got together and in 1 hour, they installed Nodejs, got it running, and created a chat program and were able to communicate with each other over web sockets. At their next meeting, they’ll be learning about Electrum, a tool for making desktop apps for Windows, Mac, and Linux. As Silicon Valley’s prominence wanes under the heavy burden over overzealous regulators, will the free state become ground zero for the next tech boom?
I was eating dinner with my boyfriend in our kitchen watching a Facebook live stream debate about guns on campus at the University of Texas when suddenly the video stopped. A pop up said something like, “Session expired.”
Someone reported a photo of me my friends at the beach as nudity, and Facebook responded by restricting my ability to communicate with you on their platform in two ways. I can not post on my wall or respond to messages using Messenger for the next 3 days.
I feel sad that I can’t use Facebook. It is the primary way I communicate with the world. Especially the Messenger app. An acquaintance I met at a conference asked me a question, and I am not able to respond. I am not even able to explain why I can’t respond. That is embarrassing and frustrating. I want to maintain a good reputation with this new friend, but I can’t respond to him, and he doesn’t know that I can’t. Fortunately I have been using Signal, Telegram, and other messaging apps, so I am still largely able to communicate. (more…)
Darryl and I are running an outreach booth this weekend at NH Hempfest in Lancaster at Roger’s Campground. We’re sharing the Shire Society declaration with attendees, along with plenty of know-your-rights propaganda, and a Bitcoin Vending Machine. We’ll be at the booth all day until Sunday and at night we’re hosting Free Talk Live.
Hempfest is packed with dozens of live bands and is kicking off right now. Hope to see you!
Lachance recently announced the big news privately to his friends via his facebook profile, which included photos of him in uniform from his days as a Bedford officer. Then, after a final confirmation from the LEAP board late last week, he authorized Free Keene to break the news. He will have his first speaking engagement at the upcoming NH Hempfest and Freedom Rally happening at Rogers Campground August 25th through 28th.
When he started his career in law enforcement, Lachance was totally brainwashed into believing in prohibition. It didn’t take him long to realize that arresting drug users was only making their lives worse. In an email Lachance told me he, “saw first-hand how the war on drugs is a failure…Arresting someone for a small amount of cannabis or controlled substance only adds to the problem. The war on drugs encourages the cartels to make a black market for banned substances and creates a huge profit motive for the underground.”
Rick Naya, NH Hempfest Organizer and Joe Lachance
Lachance isn’t the first speaker that LEAP has had in New Hampshire. Cheshire county jail superintendent Rick Van Wickler has been speaking against prohibition for many years now. There are other LEAP speakers who are former cops from Concord and Durham as well. The more, the merrier! More police coming out of the closet against prohibition means we’re getting closer to ending the insane “War on Drugs”, which is really just a war against our friends and family.
Lachance gets why prohibition doesn’t work. He points out, “Drug violence isn’t a reason to fight the war on drugs…it is a reason to END the war on drugs. Take away the cartels’ main source of revenue and they too will go away, much like in the 1920s with Al Capone.”
