Presidential Candidate Ambushes Begin Again in Keene with Bernie Sanders

Longtime readers of Free Keene may recall the 2012 campaign season where cornered all the candidates we could with ambush interviews including Santorum, Biden, Huntsman, and Romney. Now that Barack Obama isn’t in the running, we’ll have all kinds of slimeball politicians from both political parties coming to town to campaign.

First up is presidential candidate Bernie Sanders who ignored tough questions from independent media at his first campaign appearance event in Keene, NH today.  He did grant answers however to local mainstream media’s softball questions about unimportant things like the size of the crowd and other inanities. Here’s what happened:

Stay tuned here to Free Keene for more fun haranguing the political class throughout the election!

NH Senate “Tables” Cannabis Decriminalization Bill During First-Ever Full Hearing

What happened to the cannabis decriminalization bill that overwhelmingly passed the house with more than 80% of NH state reps voting for it? In an embarrassing display of ignorance, watch as multiple NH senators spout off various prohibitionist lies and nonsense in this hearing that came at the end of a 12-hour day for liberty activists at the state house. Despite initially having enough votes to pass the measure, prohibitionist senator Carson moves to strip some more from the already-crippled bill. This ultimately kills it, for political reasons.(Technically it’s “tabled” until 2016.)

The good news is this is the first time the NH senate has ever had a floor discussion on the issue (the house has passed decrim six times in eight years), as ignorant as much of it was, it’s a step in the right direction. The next step is to target the bad senators for either education or elimination in 2016’s election. More detail on what happened below the video, from someone who was with me witnessing the debacle.

HB618 (Marijuana Decrim) is dead until January, at the earliest. Last night, the Senate voted 15-9 to overturn the committee’s recommendation of ITL (inexpedient to legislate/kill this bill) so that Senator Pierce could introduce a compromise amendment. This was encouraging.

 

At the point the vote was taken, Senator Sharon Carson (R-Londonderry) walked out of the session and began loudly yelling and ranting about how she couldn’t believe this was happening, (more…)

Stone Farm Threatened With $275/day in Fines by Town Selectman; Charges Ultimately Dropped!

Stone Farm on Liberty Acres

Stone Farm on Liberty Acres

Stone Farm on Liberty Acres has provided hospitality to liberty lovers for a bitcoin donation since 2013. Visitors have been raving about the property and it has received coverage in the Keene Sentinel and Bitcoin Magazine for its acceptance of bitcoin, the international cryptocurrency.

Proprietors Katie McCall and Matt Roach were threatened last week by Fitzwilliam town selectman CJ Holman with $275 a day in fines if they continue to operate what Holman alleged is a “bed and breakfast” (a legal term that doesn’t apply to Stone Farm). Why all-of-a-sudden is Stone Farm on this politician’s radar?

It appears that there has recently been a dispute with the property’s landlord regarding an over-full septic tank due to a broken leach field that has on more than one occasion backed sewage up into the shower. Katie and Matt say the landlord has refused to fix the leach field or even pump the septic tank and seemed to not even realize the property has a septic tank. As a result of this disgusting issue, Stone Farm has been closed to visitors for weeks and the duo are planning a move to a new location.

Katie McCall and Matt Roach

Katie McCall and Matt Roach

Rather than do the right thing and fix the septic issue, the landlord apparently decided to contact the town gang and snitch on their tenants for running a bed-and-breakfast without a government permission slip. That’s why after two years of service and zero complaints, that Katie and Matt received a threat via certified mail last week. Katie also received an additional threat over her midwifery training business, which ended on its own a while back.

Katie and Matt sent a response to Holman’s threat demanding to know the section of ordinance that was allegedly being violated, as it was never mentioned in the supposed “violation” notice.

Ultimately the duo attended this week’s town selectmen meeting, where they were the only two townsfolk in attendance. According to Katie:

The one selectmen [CJ Holman] who spearheaded the aggression against Stone Farm failed to show and the two remaining selectmen oozed apologies for his inappropriate actions. Both violations were dropped…sometimes people feel comfortable being bullies when the person they are bullying is unknown to them. Putting a face to a name sometimes holds people accountable on its own merit.

Success! Stay tuned here to Free Keene for any further developments.

P.S. Stone Farm is moving to another location – please help them by donating to their fundraiser and get perks like a weeklong stay at the new location!

NH Senate defeats cannabis decrim

On June 4, 2015 the NH Senate voted on cannabis decriminalization for the first time. Similar legislation has passed the NH House 6 times in the past 8 years. After the Senate amended the bill, it was tabled. After spending 12+ hours watching the Senate, Matt Simon from the Marijuana Policy Project spent a few minutes to talk about the history of the cannabis decrim efforts in NH, and the future.

If you like this video, please consider a Bitcoin donation: 1DPxGsNzsdguLnS37grqrvjeCQ7qTpN6ee

More Ambush Interviews from Keene School Board Meeting

Dave Ridley continues his series of videos from the Keene School Board meeting last month.  As usual, his ambush-style interviews capture more ridiculous, unaccountable behavior from the school board members and school staff.

In this video, one school board member refuses to agree to support ANY kind of budget cap.  No amount of taxing is too much!

In this video, Ridley confronts school bureaucrats who do not want to answer questions about anything as well as another school board member who refuses to support a budget cap: (more…)