Have you ever met a Free Stater? Had a conversation with one? Because you seem to be completely clueless about us. For one thing, few if any of us were fond of Trump. I proudly voted for Gary Johnson in 2016 and for Jo Jorgensen in 2020. I am no more attracted to the tyrants on the right than I am to the tyrants on the left. What I want is freedom, which is why I moved to the Live Free Or Die [ fighting ] state over 10 years ago.
Do I want to escape from the US government? ABSOLUTELY! The US government has done nothing but bleed the people dry to pay for endless, pointless wars and corporate welfare. They have propped up their endless attacks on freedom with lie after lie after lie … spending most of their time, when they are not making war on foreign nations, making war on their own people, with their insane and racist war on drugs, their nasty habit of shooting innocent people in the street for no apparent reason, and their constant encroachments on our right to speak freely, to make our own decisions, an to control our own bodies.
I am pro-choice, but unlike “pro-choice” leftists, I REALLY BELIEVE in “MY BODY MY CHOICE”. Of course the right to abortion is important … too many women — and men — throughout history have been trapped in poverty and hopelessness by their inability to control their own reproduction … but that is not the only right that we have over our own bodies … we also have the right to make our own medical decisions, whether that means choosing for ourselves to treat our PTSD with MDMA, or our alcoholism /drug addiction with Mushrooms … both of which have been done with great success at John’s Hopkins.
And we also have the right to make our own economic decisions. The government could end homelessness overnight, simply by ceasing to cause it. They could get up off the millions of acres of land that they hold for no purpose, and allow people to homestead. That’s all it would take. Once people had a piece of land on which to pitch a tent, the next step would be to start a massive “habitat for humanity” program, not just building houses for people, but teaching them what they need to know to help their neighbors, and to earn money once the immediate crisis is past.
But the government always works to enrich the rich, while further impoverishing the poor. Sure, they sent us $1200 at the start of the pandemic ( which they may well have caused ), but at the same time they did so, they sent 3 trillion dollars in corporate welfare to their cronies. Do the math: Three Trillion dollars divided by Three Hundred Million Americans is 10,000 dollars per person that they handed out to make the rich richer, while returning to the people only a small fraction of that. I hope that you will take the time to get to know a Free Stater. I would be delighted to buy you a cup of coffee any time you are in Keene, or perhaps when I visit my girl in the north country. I think that if you approached us with an open mind, you would quickly learn that we are not at all what you think we are. And if, after that, you choose to remain enslaved by the government, I will quote Thomas Paine by way of farewell …. may your chains sit lightly upon you, and may history forget that ye were our countrymen.
New Hampshire HB 1682 was introduced by Rep. David Welch (R – Rockingham13) on 1/5/2022, followed by a public hearing on 1/14/2022. The House Committee on Criminal Justice and Public Safety voted that the bill “ought to pass with amendment” and has been referred to the House Finance Committee for further review.
On the Surface It Sounds Great: Hold Police Accountable for Their Actions
The idea of this bill is to establish a committee that’s considered “independent” and separate from local police jurisdictions in order to ensure police officers are held accountable for their actions (or inactions.) According to Rep. David Welch, the aim of the bill is “to establish a single, neutral, and independent statewide entity to receive complaints alleging misconduct regarding all sworn and elected law enforcement officers.” – HB 1682 public hearing, 1/14/2022 – watch here
As outlined in the bill, officers could potentially face the new Conduct Review Committee for a number of reasons, including: if they’ve been convicted of committing a felony, any sentence of incarceration, excessive use of force, driving while intoxicated, moral turpitude (dishonesty, deceit, theft), acts of omission, lying in a police report or criminal proceeding, falsification of records, tampering with or falsifying evidence, racist conduct or statements, etc.
This all sounds great, because of course law enforcement officers should be held accountable for their actions! Which makes me wonder, why aren’t they now?
Policing the Police With Police
There’s already an established Police Standards and Training Council that handles internal reviews in New Hampshire. The new Law Enforcement Conduct Review Committeewould fall under that umbrella, dealing exclusively with misconduct reviews. In recent years the public’s interest in holding police accountable has skyrocketed. Perhaps there are so many cases of police misconduct in the state that they can no longer handle the workload or process them quickly enough.
Since the new Conduct Review Committee would fall under the already established Standards Council, the governor would (again) be appointing its members. The current Police Standards and Training Council consists of mainly a bunch of police officers appointed by Governor Sununu. Since it is the governor who will be appointing members here again, I’m not sure this bill will be as effective as it looks. A politician hand-picking members within the context of “maintaining absolute objectivity” is a farce.
The Law Enforcement Conduct Review Committee would consist of:
Four law enforcement officers appointed by the governor
Three public members with no familial associations to a police officer, lawyer, or judge
While out here trying to do my bit against the Kremlin’s re-incarnation of September 1, 1939…It’s important to raise concerns about some of the apocalyptic Moscow-fighting ideas that are getting put on the table in the excitement. It’s shocking my fellow Kremlin foes are advocating a U.S. led no-fly zone over Ukraine. This is a move which has perhaps 10 percent chance of ending civilization as we know it, since it would require direct, large-scale combat between the U.S. and Russia…inside Russia!
The real solution is deadly but a lot less deadly: Peaceable civil resistance inside Russia, at the discretion of Russians. Guerilla war and civil resistance inside Ukraine, funded, peopled and supplied from across the globe. The Kremlin can be beaten, but it has to be without direct conflict between the two top nuclear powers. This is a long established and proven concept; it’s already been done once in much tougher circumstances. Ideally it should happen at private rather than taxpayer expense, definitely without foreign military presence; each of us does need to do our bit without waiting for governments. We also need to do our bit to prevent Russian bystanders from suffering and prevent the Resistance from going nuclear. Most people are probably reluctant to say this; maybe I can say it since I was a volunteer inside Bosnia during that one and am hopefully doing my part for Ukrainians and friendly Russians during this one.
Dave Ridley NHexit.com “Independence without enmity”
1) The Russian government’s act of all-out conventional war is wildly excessive. Any individual or voluntarily funded institution wishing to help defend Ukraine against this overstep is far within their rights, recent Kremlin threats against this non-withstanding.
2) The initial success of the attack on this Western-leaning nation…is a reminder that Washington cannot be relied on to defend New Hampshire. Counterintuitive as is sounds, NH would be better off – and the Western world should benefit – if we handled own defense and diplomacy. Instead of being tied the weirdly aggressive-yet-impotent D.C. zombie, we would find a wide range of better options for our security. These range from the happily de-militarized neutrality of Costa Rica to the gun-heavy but non-aligned preparedness of Switzerland. We would also have the option of doing something better for future nations-under-threat like Ukraine: We could insist that any government we ally ourselves with…free its own people from invasion-enabling gun control laws:
3) Ukraine’s government has made this invasion practical by doing something most European governments and even American governments are still doing: They limited the private possession/carry of firearms up until the week of the invasion, when they finally let civilians carry them without permission. This is roughly what happened in the ill-fated Spanish Republic during the 1936 war. Ukrainians are now reported to be desperately mobbing gun stores, for good reason but probably too late. GunPolicy.org lists Ukraine as having only 7 civilian firearms per 100 persons…a foreign invader’s dream. Civilians in the average U.S. state, including New Hampshire, reportedly possess over 115 per 100.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_law_in_Ukraine
4) Washington has unnecessarily provoked Moscow over the last 30 years. By moving NATO so close to Russian borders and arguably sponsoring a Ukrainian coup in 2014, it ignored the Rodina’s security concerns. Since 2001 especially, it has bombed, blockaded and invaded many nations with little good reason but much abuse of local civilians. It has cast away the relative ethical high ground, against the wishes of most New Hampshirites. It has also become a direct physical threat to all of us with its unconstitutional rules and raids inside our libertarian-leaning state. It has become incapable of credibly condemning Russia’s actions the way it did during the Kremlin’s invasion of Finland in 1939.
5) U.S. ruler Joe Biden’s statement of Feb. 24, 2022 is partially worthy of condemnation: “Putin chose this war, and now he and his country will bear the consequences.” By speaking in this manner, he equated the Russian people with their quasi-dictator…that would be like equating General Franco with the Catalan anarchists he so victimized in the Spanish Civil War. Individual Russians and the Russian nation should be treated as potential allies against Putin; many have already risked their lives this week to protest against him
6) New Hampshire, unlike Switzerland and Costa Rica, is currently on the nuclear target list as a result of its membership in the United States system. This would be one thing if the U.S. were generally in the right and generally humane. It is not and thus is not worthy of *our* lives. Both D.C. and Moscow deserve opposition; neither deserve support.
7) Moscow’s move may be designed to divert attention from a planned attack on Taiwan, where invasion-friendly gun laws are even more severe than Ukraine’s.
8) The appropriate New Hampshire move is to peaceably declare independence from the U.S. (as Rep. Sylvia’s current legislation at Concord is attempting to do). Then it should set a clean foreign policy of its own crafting. This policy should be one that does not overextend and does not aggress but does keep faith with foreign allies by insisting (as a minimum condition of continued partnership) that their governments end all the gun controls they are imposing on their people.
Dave Ridley NHexit.com “Independence without enmity”
“This bill establishes the crime of subversion of the legislative process-treason for any act to subvert the legislative process based on a false claim of emergency caused by COVID-19.”
Politicians and bureaucrats that violate our medical freedom by enforcing unconstitutional and unlawful mandates should go to prison. The legislative process is sacred. President Joe Biden is not a king, and the executive department cannot subvert the legislative process when it is convenient. It is up to individual state legislatures and the United States congress to enact legislation that impacts the citizens…It is well within the authority of the general court to protect its constituents from overreach of federal executive power. This bill aims to check the power of the federal government, and to defend the people of our state from unconstitutional executive actions and decrees that encroach on their ability to conduct business freely. This bill protects the right of private businesses to make their own decisions in what they require of their employees, and frees them from being shackled by executive overreach.” – Rep. Tim Baxter, HB 1027 public hearing, 1/19/2022 – watch here
Arguments Presented at the Public Hearing
Rep. Baxter’s arguments focused on how covid-19 mandates in New Hampshire have affected employers/employees negatively by forcing them into catch-22 situations. One example was a mother in tears because she didn’t agree with the vaccine mandate, but would lose her job if she didn’t comply. Rep. Baxter argued that businesses should be in charge of setting their own parameters, without government intrusion or intervention whatsoever.
Rep. Yokela’s arguments focused on how using covid-19 as the basis for “emergency powers” is an abuse of the legislative system. Over two years into the pandemic, any “emergency powers” enacted are unnecessary, as the entire world is well aware of the situation. Employers do not need hand-holding, and employees should not be forced into unconstitutional positions by the government. Rep. Yokela argued that legislatures have enough time, at this late stage, to follow the legitimate legislative path instead of enacting laws by executive decree. If they do not follow the proper path, it should be considered an act of treason.
I became actively involved in this process in the end of 2021, beginning of 2022, and I was actually appalled with the way people are being discriminated against because of this pandemic. Not only in our communities, but right here in our legislative body. This bill would hold those people responsible and accountable at every level. It needs to be done. I was in a Senate hearing yesterday and one of the senators who spoke…said the bottom line is that we don’t want to approve this because we want everyone vaccinated. That’s not appropriate. That is not appropriate for someone to take that kind of a stand. He’s representing the people of New Hampshire. Not everyone in New Hampshire wants this vaccine. Not everyone in New Hampshire believes in this vaccine. Not everyone in New Hampshire trusts our federal government, or even our state government at this point. I’m here today to support this bill; it’s a good start.” – Russan Chester (NH citizen), HB 1027 public hearing, 1/19/2022 – watch here
New Hampshire constitutional amendment concurrent resolution (CACR27), introduced January 5, 2022, would give “we the people” of NH the ability to boot out the corrupt and tyrannical judges that permeate the current landscape.
All state court judges shall be subject to recall and removal by petition and vote of registered voters pursuant to provisions established by the legislature.” – CACR27 summary
Introduced by Rep. Norm Silber (R), Rep. Michael Sylvia (R), Rep. William Foster (R), and others, a public hearing for the amendment took place January 12, 2022. Rep. Silber began the hearing by stating that many of his constituents (Gilford/Meredith) had come to him with “horror story complaints about their treatment by judicial officers in the court system in the state, most of whom are complaining about how they’re treated in family court. Some dealing with child custody, child removals, DCYF.” Current NH law only allows the removal of a judge through the process of impeachment.
The public hearing for CACR27 lasted about 40 minutes and ended with NH criminal defense attorney Richard Guerriero saying, “I think the greater issue at hand is a greater scrutiny of the courts…This would give the people a path to take should they not be able to inspire their representatives to protect them from government.”
It Seems Obvious This Should Be a Law
I, you, and everyone we know probably knows at least one person who’s gone through the court system only to find it, and the judge, totally corrupt. Obviously when it comes to child custody and child removal from a family, if a corrupt judge is installed entire generations could be destroyed. But really, all corrupt judges ruin lives, don’t they?
It seems obvious this constitutional amendment should be law. Doesn’t it? Why the hell isn’t it? This is New Hampshire! And while we’re at it, let’s vote out all the bad cops, too. It would really put the “public” back into the “servants,” don’tcha think? Sound like a plan? Let’s see what happens with this!
Watch the Public Hearing for CACR27: (4:59:23 – 5:38:00)
