A stone foundry in Rochester, a martial arts studio in Derry, a chiropractor and a cafe in Newmarket and law firms in Concord and Manchester have something in common.
They’ve joined the growing number of New Hampshire businesses that accept Bitcoin, a virtual currency that exists only on the Internet, as a form of payment.
The Granite State’s reputation as a hotbed of activity for the digital currency was enhanced last week, as visitors to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas got a peek at the first Bitcoin ATM, created in Manchester by brothers Zach and Josh Harvey. (more…)
Last year Keene voters had two options to choose from regarding the Keene School District operating budget. Either a budget increase of .86% (5.8% tax increase) or a budget increase of 3%. The year before that was the same “lesser of two evils” option. The other six warrants on the ballot included various schemes geared toward allocating more money into the district’s hands. The voter turnout was a dismal 10% of registered voters. But can you blame them. After all who would want to waste their lunch break voting on a crappy, bloated budget and a bunch of money grabbing warrants? Vote: you lose. Don’t vote: still lose. This year, if everything works as planned, will be very different for Keene voters. With the assistance of Darryl Perry, I have drafted 7 very different petition warrants aimed at reducing the budget and removing certain authorities from the school board. They are as follows: (more…)
This week: Intellectual property and why you don’t need it, the inefficiency of local government, how to fix the parking debacle in Keene and extreme activists and how they hurt the cause. Marcus joins. Show notes, archives, and audio at BlackSheepRising.org
As reported here this week, I was threatened with arrest along with Darryl for handing out fliers inside the new courthouse. Further, on Wednesday, Jason Repsher was similarly threatened by court security agents. I went to court this morning for Graham’s trespass case and was told there is a new “order” in place for both courthouses. I was given a copy of said order. Basically, it continues the standing media restrictions in all NH courthouses, and further bans any distribution of literature inside the courthouse.
The new order is signed by both robed men, Edward J. Burke and John C. Kissinger, and with the whisk of their pens, freedom of speech has now been prohibited along with freedom of the press.
It matters not that I’ve been handing out “Don’t Take the Plea Deal” flyers in the public lobby of the district court in Keene (as well as other district courts in NH) for years. Now if I hand someone a flyer, I’ll go to a cage for an indefinite period of time for “contempt”. “Contempt” is a “power” that robed men have that is inherent in the system, not statutorily authorized, meaning there’s no way to change that part of the system, and there’s no way to challenge a contempt ruling, as I understand it. They literally can cage you forever with virtually no accountability.
So much for freedom of speech and the press inside government buildings. If you want to speak, you can do it outside in the freezing cold or rain.
Last month, myself and Darryl, as ministers of the Shire Free Church, contributed a check in the amount of over $1,400 to the “City of Keene” for services we value, that are not coercive in nature, such as road maintenance. We specifically left out of the check the amount of money the city was demanding for the government school system.
Instead of sending money to a system based on coercion of our peaceful neighbors, we have chosen to send $1,000 instead to a peaceful school that does business by consent, the Monadnock Waldorf School. People have asked how schools can be funded without the state – it’s easy. One method is to pick the school(s) you like and send them the money the state system would have otherwise taken from you. Let the market decide how money should be distributed, not centralized bureaucracy that gets their funding by threat of stealing homes.
This is not a property tax revolt. Churches and their parsonages are not supposed to pay property tax, even under the state’s system. The city people sent a year-end property tax bill to the home I used to own that I donated this summer to the Shire Free Church, and we used the amount of money demanded on that bill as suggested amounts to calculate what we would actually give for the community services we value.
Whether the people calling themselves “the City of Keene” will recognize the Shire Free Church’s freedom of religion and cease sending property tax bills to the church’s parsonage remains to be seen. We delivered their exemption form (the BTLA-9) to the city assessor this week, as a courtesy, not because we feel the church is in any way obligated to the rules of their coercive system. Stay tuned here to Free Keene for the latest.
Today at the NH state house, both critical legislative votes were delayed until next week due to there being too much to do. The NH Freedom blog has a rundown of what did today, including the good news where they voted to legalize home poker games.
Multiple Free State Project participants are interviewed for this feature story in the Union Leader all about businesses in NH that are accepting bitcoin!
