by Ian | Sep 25, 2016 |
As we have for the past few years, the Keene Liberty Alliance conducted an exit poll on state primary day asking the question, “Is government too big, too small, or just right?”. This year we polled for about two hours in the evening outside of Keene’s ward four and seventy people responded to the question, with 42 of 70 (60%) choosing “too big” and 28 (40%) choosing “just right”. No one who responded thought government was “too small”.
Of the respondents who said government is too big, eleven people shared contact information with us. Another successful outreach for the Keene Liberty Alliance! Here are the results from the last time the survey was conducted, which was during the presidential primary.
Also, thank you to everyone who voted for me in the Democratic gubernatorial primary this year. I ran under the NH Liberty Party banner again as I did in 2014 and received 1,069 or 1.47% of the votes cast, putting me in fourth place out of five. That’s not quite as many votes as the 1,719 I received in 2014, but I likely got some protest votes then against Maggie Hassan who was the incumbent at the time. Given my 2016 campaign spent all of $5 on postage and a few bucks on gasoline to drive to media interviews, that’s a pretty good dollars-spent-to-votes-received ratio.
The point of my campaign wasn’t to win, but to spread the message of New Hampshire declaring independence from the United States as well as the ideas of liberty. In that, I was successful. Thanks to all the media who gave me a fair opportunity to speak. No thanks to some in the media who ignored the smaller democratic candidates including me and Derek Dextraze, the only other honorable candidate of the five who ran for the seat.
by Ian | Sep 6, 2016 |
I’m the only democrat for governor to receive an A rating by the NH Firearms Coalition!
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.
by Ian | Sep 5, 2016 |
Manchester, NH Bitcoin Meetup
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…)
by Ian | Aug 20, 2016 |
LRN.FM – The Liberty Radio Network
Last year we did our first Satellite Fundraiser to gauge the level of support that our listeners have for the platform. While this year’s LRN.FM Satellite Fundraiser did not garner as much in USD as last year’s, we had nearly as many contributors, and that was without the benefit of having a campaign pitch video, like we did last year. (The FBI took the video files in the March raid on the LRN.FM studio in Keene.)
In 2015 we had 46 contributions on Indiegogo, amounting to $4,925. However, $2550 of that came from two individuals. Factoring out those two mega-contributors, the average contribution was about $54. This year we had 40 contributions on Indiegogo for a total of $1760, meaning the average contribution was down a bit to $44.
In addition to the $1760 given at Indiegogo, there were three bitcoin contributions this year, totaling 0.26568 BTC, which is worth about $154 at current exchange rates.
Something new I tried this year that I believe was a mistake was the “Headtalker” campaign that ate up two weeks of potential fundraising right in the beginning. (more…)
by Ian | Aug 18, 2016 |
Steven Zeiler, Free Keene Blogger and Bitcoin Evangelist – Photo Courtesy Seacoast Online
Libertarians in New Hampshire make the news all the time. Does that happen where you live? Maybe you should join us here in the freest state?
by Ian | Aug 16, 2016 |
NH #1 Most Free State – 2016
At the bottom of the charts, number fifty is New York, which is a long distance below number forty-nine, California. Where did your state rank? You can check out the interactive map or dig into the well-researched nearly 300 page study on their site.
With all the freedoms we have in NH, no wonder so many people who love freedom are moving here. Not only is there the most successful libertarian migration in the world happening here, but before that started there were already over 101 Reasons Liberty Lives in New Hampshire. Originally a persuasive text list, in recent years it was made into an excellent hour-long documentary which you can watch for free.
If you are a libertarian or voluntarist and don’t yet have plans to move here to New Hampshire, why are you waiting? Thanks to migrations like the Shire Society and Free State Project, there are thousands of liberty-minded people who’ve already moved here in the last decade and thousands more pledged to come.
Concentration of libertarian activists into a small, low-population state like New Hampshire makes all the difference in the world for accomplishing our goal of liberty in our lifetime. If you’re tired of the continued failures of the libertarian movement, get to New Hampshire ASAP.
For more on the study, we dug in deep on last night’s Free Talk Live:
