Patients have died while waiting for the state bureaucrats to finally allow the four legally-authorized medical cannabis dispensaries to open. Despite medical cannabis passing in 2012, bureaucrats dragged their feet on implementation until now, four years later the dispensaries are finally opening. So far there are locations in Plymouth, Dover, and Lebanon. Until the ultra-restrictive medical cannabis statutes are changed, the fourth facility still-to-open in Manchester will be the final one for the whole state.
Worse, apparently patients are assigned to a specific dispensary and can’t buy at the other three locations. All of these restrictions are continued, desperate attempts by the state to control a plant they’ve never been able to control. One patient, speaking anonymously, told me that he would no longer be buying from the dispensary as the quality of cannabis he can find on the black market is better.
Cannabis needs to be legal to possess, grow, transport, and sell with no government involvement whatsoever. Without true market competition, the government-approved, artificially-limited number of dispensaries will never be able to reach their full potential.
This is going to be a big election year with many prohibitionist senators leaving office as well as the governor, who has long stood in the way of any meaningful decriminalization. Cannabis freedom activists have pledged to make sure legalization is a major issue this election season.
Meanwhile, the state’s medical cannabis program continues to slowly move ahead. WMUR got to take a look inside one of the few legal growing operations in New Hampshire – here’s the video:
A little courage, a video camera, and a handmade sign was all it took to defeat a state trooper’s speed trap in Alstead recently. Eleven-year-old Mikey captured this video of him handling a state trooper like an experienced Cop Blocker. Ademo has the full story here at CopBlock.
When I moved to Portsmouth from San Francisco I immediately set out to find the best businesses that accept bitcoin as payment. Having spent bitcoin during previous visits to Keene, Lancaster, Manchester and Concord I knew that New Hampshire was the world capital of everyday bitcoin use.
Needless to say I was perturbed upon finding no local stores in Portsmouth that take bitcoin! To alleviate my frustration I practiced lots of yoga at the neighborhood yoga studio, where I taught the instructor daily about bitcoin and asked if they would consider accepting bitcoin in addition to central bank money.
Now I always use bitcoin to pay for yoga class, but how did I do it?
I talked to the owner!
A small business owner is the ultimate decision-maker, and has their customers’ needs constantly in the forefront of their minds.
Whether at a boutique handbag store or a San Francisco thai restaurant, the one and only trick that has ever worked for me in setting up a business with bitcoin is to talk directly with the owner.
What if the owner isn’t in? Get their name, phone number and email address and continue to follow up until that “Bitcoin Accepted Here” sticker is in their shop window.
Bitcoin empowers all Americans to control their own finance without snooping from Big Brother or deceptive banks or corporations. My mission is to inform people nearby and around the world about how bitcoin adoption benefits their community.
Want to get involved spreading bitcoin in your town? One great way is tipping your local servers double if they accept bitcoin. Check out https://www.bctip.org to get started.
Once again, I’m throwing my hat into the ring for the office of governor for New Hampshire in the democratic race. The first time I did so was in 2014 where I garnered second place and received more than 4% of the vote against then-incumbent Maggie Hassan in a campaign where I accepted no campaign contributions and spent approximately $2.50 on postage to reply to various candidate questionnaires.
My goal was to spread the ideas of liberty and NH declaring independence from the federal government. That continues to be my goal. It’s unlikely I will defeat the establishment candidates who will be well-funded by the powers-that-be. However, I will do the best I can to spread the ideas of liberty and NH independence with virtually no campaign budget.
NH Liberty Party
In 2014 I had the opportunity to address the republican debate held at Franklin Pierce University, since the other two candidates in the democratic primary refused to debate. What will happen this time? Stay tuned here to the NH Liberty Party blog for campaign updates. Or, just sign up for emailed updates via the signup box in the right-hand column of NHLiberty.info. Hopefully we’ll be announcing other NH Liberty Party candidates for other state races as the filing period runs from today through June 10th.
Here’s a page with details about my campaign and my prime issues which include ending prohibition, declaring independence from the federal government, and ballot access fairness. Thank you for your interest!
Now in its fifth year, the Memorial Day parade peace contingent once again made an appearance in Keene’s Central Square on Monday morning around the time when the yearly Memorial Day parade was scheduled to begin. However, no parade came. Though this prevented us from joining the parade as has been the tradition for several years, it didn’t stop us from getting the message of peace out to those who were on the road that morning.
As usual, we received many positive reactions including waves, friendly honks, and thumbs-ups. Of course, there were a couple nasty drive-by commenters, including one city employee who claimed “we wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for the military”, to which Rich Paul responded, “yeah, I’d still be in bed”. Plus one other guy drove by and rattled off the tired, old comment about the peace sign being the symbol for the American chicken.
Thanks to everyone who was so supportive that drove past – you make it worthwhile!
Here’s a photo of this year’s peace contingent:
Rain on Memorial Day didn’t stop the peace contingent!
The Libertarian Party today nominated two former governors, Gary Johnson and Bill Weld for the offices of POTUS and Vice, respectively. While some Libertarians decried this choice (see Ian Freeman’s opinion on the matter) others, myself included, believe that Gary will be a great spokesman for our ideas. He does not agree with me 100% … I’m an Anarchist, he’s a Libertarian, but he does support reducing government to it’s Constitutional role, and that would be a great start.
Gary is socially liberal and economically conservative. In other words, he believes in letting people make their own decisions, and letting them bear the consequences of those decisions. He believes in letting other countries go their own way and do their own thing, and staying at peace with them, until such time as they attack us. He believes in letting people be free, so long as they do not violate the rights of another.
Gary is not a perfect candidate … I disagree with him on the issue of Religious Freedom with respect to bakers being forced to bake cakes for gay weddings against their will. I think he is more fearful of Islam than he needs to be. But I think he is an excellent, mainstream, well-spoken, impressive candidate, all told.
Best of luck, Gary, and bear our message well. The future of America depends on you … not on your election, but on your communication. Run your leg of the relay race to Freedom well.
After an excellent presidential debate last night, the national Libertarian Party once again proved its irrelevance and nominated another republican as their candidate for president in 2016. According to the official results from the second and final round of voting, there were only two states whose delegates voted for the best two candidates in the race, Free Keene blogger Darryl W Perry and John McAfee. Those two states were New Hampshire and Vermont. Perry and McAfee’s combined votes were higher in NH and VT than the combined votes of the worst two candidates, Gary Johnson and Austin Petersen. In every other state, Johnson and Petersen’s combined votes were higher.
It’s a continuance of a sad trend of the LP delegates selecting republicans – people who do not understand or advocate libertarian ideals – that has been going on since the 2008 presidential election where the LP chose Bob Barr, a republican former US representative (and former CIA boss) from Georgia as their nominee. Then in 2012 they chose Gary Johnson, a republican former governor of New Mexico as their candidate. Johnson was better than Barr, but not by much. He’s not a principled libertarian like Darryl is. Now Johnson’s won the party’s nomination again for 2016 despite the valiant efforts of the “radical” wing of the party.
The party’s been dead, but now it’s even moreso.
The national LP is hopeless, yet activists across the country toil away trying to wrest control of the organization from the hands of the republicans who have had control of the party for about a decade. To those remaining principled libertarians I implore you:
GIVE UP ON THE LP! Your party is dead and has been for years. Your efforts are being wasted on the national and even your state LP. Start planning your move to New Hampshire to get involved with the only proven successful strategy in the liberty movement: concentrating activists in one geographic area.
In New Hampshire we’ve had more political successes in a decade – meaning people being elected who are principled libertarians – than the LP has had in forty years. If you want to keep losing, stay where you are. If you want to see liberty advance, you have to get together with like-minded people and get active here in the Shire.
