After almost four years of railing against the wasteful spending going on here in the city of Keene, you might be under the assumption that this place is a lost cause and subsequently choose to settle elsewhere. Don’t. Keene is a great place with a lot of good people and a lot of potential. The truth is this sort of nonsense is going on across the country and in a lot of places it is much worse. The key difference here is the strong liberty community that has chosen to keep tabs on the powers that be and hold them accountable for their misguided decisions. We’ve cleared our eyes of the veil of apathy to see the truth for what it is.
To the wise old city bureaucrats and school officials: this may be your legacy, but it’s my inheritance. I WILL NOT stand by and watch while you squander it. You may get your way this year, but I’m not going to make it easy for you.
As some of you may well be aware, the Keene School District plans to cut 36.7 full-time positions, close an elementary school, and has projected a loss in enrollment of around 80 students. And yet, as you probably already expected, the budget will still be going up.
The school district has presented us with a proposed operating budget of $64.98 million, an increase of $181,394 from the previous year. Should that article fail, the default budget of $65.66 million will kick in. So, lose/lose. But here’s the real kicker: Due to less incoming revenue in the form of state tuition and previous-year surplus, the actual impact on the Keene taxpayer will be an additional $1.7 million increase. This will amount to a 5.31 percent increase on the school portion of your property tax.
These yearly increases in both school and city spending are unacceptable and ultimately unsustainable. If the school district were a private business it would have gone belly-up years ago due to its mismanagement of funds. But unlike the private sector, the public school system doesn’t need to sell you a good product to stay in business. They’ll get your money regardless of the quality and affordability of service they provide us. Or else they’ll take your house.
In an attempt to reign in this out-of-control spending, I have introduced three warrant articles that will help school board members and administrators with their future budget preparation. They include a budget cap of .5 percent, a reduction of $500 per student per year until the student tuition matches the state average, and the formation of a committee to study the feasibility of withdrawal from SAU 29. I’ve also included a fourth article to cease participation in the one-size-fits-all common core program. Sadly, all four warrants will undoubtedly be amended in such a way as to remove their original intent at the deliberative session this Saturday.
If there is one thing the school and its supporters excel at, it is removing any alternative options from the ballot.
Keene is big enough to have the conveniences of a city, but small enough to be walkable. For activists of all stripes, it’s easier to have a larger impact here because the population is smaller than Manchester. Check out the 150+ Reasons to Move for details on the area’s conveniences and demographics. Plus, liberty activists already have a major footprint here. Free Keene is not only an international source of news of activism across NH for Google News, but locally we serve as a much-needed third news-and-opinion destination for Keene area inhabitants.
Liberty activists here have built bridges with the community through volunteering, sponsoring local charity, and even working to assist Keene police when they are doing the right thing.
Though many more people move to the big city, Manchester, for obvious reasons like more jobs, Keene is high on the list of destination choices for many people planning their move. That’s likely because of the historic, publicity-generating activism that has transpired here over the years. There’s even a feature-length documentary about a year of activism here, “Derrick J’s Victimless Crime Spree“.
Recently, Keene activism has become more political with multiple candidates for office, petitioned warrant articles for school board, and election media generated by FSP early movers, like Darryl W. Perry’s excellent mayoral debate, which received accolades for its fairness.
As a result of the loads of media, both internal and mainstream that we’ve generated over the years, more people in Keene know about us – for better or for worse. That means there are a segment of people who fear change that have and will continue to lash out at liberty activists here. However, as the Free UBER activists found in Portsmouth, that’s what happens ANYWHERE the state is threatened and that activism is publicized. People form strong opinions for/against said activism.
Keene’s not without it’s challenges, but it’s the challenge that attracts so many here. Keene is the Western outpost of the Shire and we are shining the light of liberty to keep the encroaching statists from NY, VT, and MA at bay. Consider Keene as your destination for the Free State Project. Here are 150+ reasons why you should.
FSP Founder Jason Sorens Speaks to Nearly 100 This Morning
Nearly one hundred liberty-loving early movers were in attendance for the press conference this morning held by the Free State Project at the Radisson in Manchester. FSP founder Jason Sorens spoke on the creation of the FSP and why the first 5,000 participants chose New Hampshire as the destination. Jason said,
“The free state project is working because it gives people hope”
That’s definitely true for me. When I moved here as an early mover for the FSP in 2006 I was pretty angry about the government. I felt very lonely in Florida, with little more than a handful of libertarians in the area. Now there are more liberty-minded people living at my intersection in Keene than there were in the entire city where I’m from.
With over 1,600 having moved across NH from all around the globe as early movers, (the official FSP move begins today) and having a major impact, it’s clear that there is hope for liberty here in the Shire. I’m not angry anymore and haven’t been for many years. I expect other libertarians who feel isolated or cornered where they live will have a similar transition when they are surrounded by people who actually care about liberty and are willing to do something about it. It’s quite encouraging to be here. Here’s the full video of the press conference:
After Jason Sorens’ speech, FSP president Carla Gericke got up to address the crowd and journalists in the room, officially announcing that the FSP has reached its goal of 20,000 liberty-minded folks signing and promising to move to New Hampshire within five years of today, Feb 3rd, 2016. It’s now been dubbed “Porcupine Day”, and happens right after Groundhog Day. (The porcupine is the mascot of the FSP.) Once here, the FSP movers are to put forth the maximum practical effort to achieve liberty in our lifetime. Carla explained to the audience what it took to get the project to completion, including a sustained, expensive ad campaign on Facebook, for which much credit was given to Vince Perfetto who is well known in the NH liberty community as the producer of the excellent documentary, “101 Reasons Liberty Lives in New Hampshire“. (more…)
Today at 11am, the FSP will be holding a press conference in Manchester to announce the good news. I’ll be there and do my best to tweet it live here via the Free Keene Twitter:
In the Summer of 2015, Heidi Lilley and B. Liz MacKinnon were ticketed on Gilford beach in alleged violation of the town’s ordinances. In late December, they went to trial at Laconia district court and Free State Project early mover and attorney Dan Hynes put on an excellent defense. Judge James M. Carroll took the case under advisement and has now issued his six-page order: both cases are dismissed!
Don’t get too excited. If you read the order, you’ll find that Judge Carroll is no hero of constitutional rights or equality. Page three of his order ridiculously cites the private Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings system as evidence of a supposed “societal desire” to regulate female toplessness. Carroll argues that because the state’s three prudish witnesses (the three snitches) don’t appreciate female toplessness and because the town gave notice of the existence of the ordinance, that somehow means the town ordinance doesn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution or Article 1 of the NH Constitution’s Bill of Rights.
Given that Article 1 only mentions men when it says, “All men are born equally free and independent”, is it Judge Carroll’s opinion that only men were born free and that women can be told what to wear, for the good of “society”? He’s not foolish enough to come right out and say that, but his order does make excuse after outrageous excuse for the town’s ordinance, claiming it’s constitutionally sound:
The township’s compelling interest is met in maintaining the beach as a natural resource to be enjoyed by young and old , men and women, families and single persons while preserving appropriate standards that allow the township to maintain their local values and mores…The Court does not find that the prohibition violates any constitutionally protected right…the movement “does not have ‘a right to impose one’s lifestyle on other who have an equal right to be left alone.
Topless Tuesday, Keene’s Central Square, 2010
So, if the social mores were that all women must wear burqas, because seeing any skin at all bothered people, it sounds like Carroll would consider that mandate constitutional as well.
Though Carroll defends the right to marry either gender, he says that such marriage is a protected right, while toplessness is not. On the final page, he claims the toplessness in this case had no artistic value, while on page three he acknowledges the female nipple “has been the subject of great beauty in art”. Apparently Carroll is an art critic now, too.
Ultimately, Carroll decides the case in the favor of the defendants, but not on the excellent constitutional or equal protection arguments made by attorney Hynes, but simply on a technicality of the system: (more…)
The original piece in Mother Jones in 2011 was written by Tim Murphy and called Keene activism a “hybrid of Gandhi and Project Mayhem”. I was impressed with Mother Jones – they actually had a fact checking person call me separate from the reporter to verify the facts in Murphy’s submitted piece. It was a well-researched piece.
The new piece, published today overviews the project and interviews several participants moved and yet-to-move. Check it out!
