It was the first official event hosted by the Free State Project after the February 3 announcement that the group had reached it’s goal of 20,000 signers on the statement of intent to move to New Hampshire to “exert the fullest practical effort toward the creation of a society in which the maximum role of government is the protection of individuals’ rights to life, liberty, and property.” Liberty Forum 2016 was part celebration of all that has been accomplished over the past 15 years by the nearly 2,000 early movers, i.e. people who made the move to New Hampshire for the Free State Project prior to the move being triggered, and part conference on how to move forward. (more…)
Recorded February 16th, 2016
Christopher David, super activist and start-up entrepreneur joins us in studio this week on the eve of Liberty Forum. Topics this week include Chris’s decentralized competitor to Uber called Arcade City, a status update on Chris’s legal issues surrounding his Free Uber activism and an update on Uber Grandma, Ethereum and the impact it will have on governments, Ann’s desire for driverless cars, updates on The Rebel Mistress and Chris running for state rep, the FSP hitting 20K, The Rebel Mistress with Flaming Freedom hosting the Hallowkeene Dance Party, and the Rebel Love Show’s latest psychonaut journey. The Rebel Love Show will also be recording at Liberty Forum Saturday February 20th 2-4pm from the Radisson in Manchester NH. The Rebel Love Show airs every Tuesday night 10pm-12am EST on LRN.FM and RebelLoveShow.com/live.
Don’t call 911 during emergencies, call your trusted friends instead, using Cell 411, the decentralized emergency alerting and response platform. Cell 411 is a powerful smartphone app that allows you to stream content and notify people in your cell(s) during police interactions and things like medical emergencies, car troubles and fire.
HB 1546, if it passes, will make the much-needed change to turn New Hampshire into a one-party consent state for recording conversations. It also would expressly protect the act of recording police and other government workers, so naturally, multiple government bureaucrats came to testify against it yesterday at the state house committee hearing.
What do they have to hide? One lady from the Attorney General’s office testified that bureaucrats should know they are being recorded. If someone is honest and on the up-and-up, then whether they are recorded or not should not change how they handle a conversation. It’s so obvious these sleazy bureaucrats don’t want to be held accountable for their actions. Don’t miss 29:27 in the video where Cop Block’s JP Freeman, Free Concord’s Garret Ean, and I all corner one of the lying bureaucrats in the hallway after his testimony!
Oh, by the way, only government bureaucrats testified against this bill. Everyone else testified in favor. Here’s the full video of the hearing:
Some of last Saturday’s attendants at the school deliberative session are actually concerned with the Bigger Picture: the future health of the community. Sure, a good education is important, but at what cost?
In NH, as the law stands currently, a Warrant Articles can be amended to pretty much anything you want as long as the subject matter isn’t changed. New legislation that would protect the “intent” of all future warrants was introduced this year, but was ultimately killed on the House floor, 194-100. Without that protection, this is the sort of nonsense that can take place at our Town Hall meetings.
Many have voiced concerns over the extremely poor turnout and lack of participation in city and school politics over the years. The bureaucrats are clueless as to why. Ian nails it.
Around 80 registered voters showed up to last Saturday’s 4 hour Deliberative session, around 25 fewer than last year. Note this is .47% of Keene’s 17,000 registered voters. As usual, the bulk of the room was made up of school board members, school administrators and teachers.
Once again, local lawyer and resident busybody Ted Parent was there ready to gut my petitioned warrant articles with his own prepared amendments. I plead with the voters in the room to leave the articles untouched in their original wording and allow the voters in March to decide on them. Each amendment would require a secret vote that would take 15-20 minutes to administer. From the reaction in the room, I was led to believe that the majority were in favor of this motion. However, Parent wasn’t having any part of it.
My first Warrant to enact a budget cap of .5% was amended to 10%. 65 in favor, 25 against. Two more attempts were made to amend it to 2% and then 4.9%. Both failed.
My second article to reduce student tuition by $500 per student until tuition matched the state average was amended to “Form a committee to study whether the district should make the reductions.” Surprisingly, this only lost by 1 vote: 41 in favor, 40 against.
Parent then made an attempt to amend my “Cease participation in the Common Core program” article by instead forming a committee to study the concept. This motion failed 60 to 21. School board member Susan Hay made her own motion to amend the article to read “Shall the school district continue to be aligned with and compliant with the state education standards.” This passed 66 to 10. It will be interesting to see how the voters react to this one in March.
Parent also made an absurd attempt to amend my fourth article “to form a committee to study the feasibility of withdrawal from the bloated SAU29” to “form a committee to form a committee.” It failed 56 to 19.
In the end, one warrant survived. Three were amended—one of which I can live with and one that only lost by a hair. Comparing those results and voter turnout to previous years, I can definitely say that there is change in the winds. Stay tuned for the ballot results in March.
Last Tuesday the NH senate judiciary committee committee heard SB-498, which would give prosecutors the ability to not charge cannabis possession as a class A misdemeanor. However, it also increases the fine for a first time offense. It’s a mixed bill, and interestingly prosecutors argued in favor of it, where normally they are against any decrim. From their perspective, it would allow them to get more fine money as well as still give them the option to charge as a Class A. It’s not really decriminalization at all – just gives them the option to move it to Class B if they want.
I had a lot to say about it, then got into an interesting several questions with prohibitionist senator Sam Cataldo. Here’s the video:
