Historic district proposal shut down. Warnings that it Will be coming back some day • Committee reverses decision on political sign ordinance • A thin blue line coming to a street near you. This spring. • City wants to buy a biofuel generator. Says no to solar • http://CitizenCain.org
An ordinance that would ban political advertising on city property and public rights of way was returned to the Planning, Licenses and Development committee for further review. Current state law prohibits the placing of political advertising on public property but this has never stopped candidates from doing just that every election season. Because of this, a new city ordinance was introduced earlier this month in an attempt to clarify the law by indicating the exact locations within Keene that would be off limits. It was recommended (3 to 1) and sent to full council for a final vote.
However, a recent Supreme court ruling, Reed vs Gilbert, has brought into question the constitutionality of such a restriction. It was decided to return the bill back to committee for further scrutiny. City officials as well as members of the public weighed in and it was ultimately decided to reverse the previous decision. This time the committee voted unanimously to “not adopt” the ordinance. Full city council will vote on the proposal at its Nov 3rd meeting.
On Wednesday & Thursday nights NH1 held a pair of debates for the Gubernatorial & Senatorial candidates from the Republican & Democratic Parties. The Libertarian Party nominees for those offices as well as independent US Senate candidate Aaron Day were not invited to the debates. The Ballot Access Fairness Coalition in conjunction with the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire held a pair of protests outside the NH1 studios to protest these closed debates.
Despite ballot retention requiring 4% in the general election (i.e. the vote threshold needed for a party to retain ballot access without needing to collect a burdensome number of petitions), Libertarian Gubernatorial nominee Max Abramson polling between 4-6% 
and Libertarian US Senate nominee Brian Chabot polling at 4%, NH1 only invited candidates polling over 10%. In short, NH1 set the threshold at a level that only the Republican & Democratic Party nominees could meet.
The protests – including one on a cold rainy Thursday night – served to bring awareness, not only to the candidates excluded from these debates, but also to the media bias that often serves to protect the ruling duopoly.
Cell 411, Now With Ride Sharing!
Originally launched in August of 2015, Cell 411 has since been installed 85,000 times, worldwide. Its primary purpose is to connect people with their friends, family, and neighbors in any emergency situation, from being pulled over, to a fire, to medical emergency. At that it’s been an incredible success, and it’s free to use. Now, by adding ride sharing, Cell 411 has gone to the next level. They’ve decentralized ride sharing even moreso than UBER and Lyft and Cell 411 did it without a single dollar from investors or publicity in advance. For those who have been watching Arcade City – Cell 411 has accomplished AC’s original vision while Arcade City’s app doesn’t even have ride sharing yet.
I’ve been a longtime supporter of Arcade City. Arcade City’s founder, Christopher David gave a great keynote speech at the 2015 Keenevention and is a blogger here at Free Keene. In its early days and through the summer I promoted AC on my radio show and became one of the top recruiters. However with the early September release of the current software, I was pretty bummed that ride-sharing was not included, and instead it was just a “game” involving earning and giving “karma points” to other people in the network. It didn’t make sense, especially since Arcade City already had ride-scheduling in their early 2016 app. Obviously the code from the first app could have been included in the September 2016 release and allowed drivers to get started giving people rides immediately.
Good-bye UBER, Cell 411 is here.
Drivers of UBER and Lyft were understandably interested in Arcade City, which promised an app that would truly decentralize ride sharing. The original vision Chris David had was to cut the corporations out of the picture. No longer would UBER and Lyft (and their imitators) be able to control the drivers. Drivers would be able to set their own rates as well as accepted payment methods – cash, bitcoin, credit card, silver, or whatever. This vision would bring a new level of competition to the transportation business, while making it even harder for governments to target those involved with regulation. (more…)
Historic District annex brought to its knees • Rethinking the prohibition on political signs • Keene 2016 Benchmark. How do we compare? • City wide revaluation. Good for some. Bad for me. • http://CitizenCain.org
Rain and cold didn’t keep these hardcore activists from coming out to support NH Exit!
Despite temperatures in the mid-forties and constant rain, over half-a-dozen supporters of New Hampshire independence showed up in Keene’s Central Square this afternoon to demonstrate in favor of secession!
The NH Exiters have been in the news multiple times since this summer’s historic “Brexit” vote, where voters in Great Britain voted to exit the European Union. Today’s event in Keene featured all-masked participants holding various secession-related signage.
One masked man took the event to a new level with a double flag display featuring the NH state flag on top of an upside-down United States flag. While one woman shouted at us something about “people died for you” out her window, the supermajority of responses to today’s demonstration were positive. We received plenty of honks, cheers, and waves and of course people in cars and on foot had to take pictures, including an amateur photographer from Chicago who was very excited to see people out supporting secession. (more…)
Bill Weld Censured by LP of NH
To others, like Free Keene blogger Rich Paul, the watering down of the message is seen as a way to promote libertarianism in the hopes that people will see Johnson and Weld’s campaign and learn more about the principle of non-aggression on their own.
It’s a disagreement that has split the libertarian party for much longer than just this campaign season. Sadly, the pandering pragmatists have been winning for a decade-or-so, and have nominated unprincipled people like Bob Barr, Bill Weld, and Gary Johnson, when the party used to put forward principled, true libertarians like Harry Browne and Ron Paul. Browne and Paul explained the principles and ideas of liberty, whereas Johnson and Weld won’t even broach the subject. Their campaign is about them, not libertarianism.
Thankfully, the tide is turning in the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire. First, the party’s delegates to the national convention this year were some of the only delegates to NOT vote in favor of Johnson/Weld. Then, more recently the party overwhelmingly voted in principled doers Darryl W Perry and Rodger Paxton into the chairman/vice chairman roles.
Now the LP of NH’s executive committee has made an unprecedented move and voted to censure Weld for donating money to Chris Sununu, the republican candidate for governor here in New Hampshire:
Since the gubernatorial race is pivotal to ballot access retention in New Hampshire for the Libertarian Party, it is a betrayal for Bill Weld to give money to our direct competitor, money that will be used in direct contravention to the money spent by the national Libertarian Party and the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire to achieve and retain our ballot access.
It’s refreshing to see the long-languishing Libertarian Party of New Hampshire finally getting active again and making a stand for the principles that have been long lost on the national LP. Kudos.
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