Saturday, August 23, 2014

FSP: Stand Against Violence in Ferguson by Moving to White NH!



                                                                        Carla Gericke

As the events in Ferguson, MO unfolded, I couldn't help but wonder where the libertarians were. Oh, sure, Rand Paul penned a late-to-the-party piece for TIME magazine, but he didn't exactly hustle off to Ferguson to put his toupee on the line to defend black folks.

And what of Cop Block, the anti-cop organization? It turns out they have one guy on the ground there. Is anyone there from New Hampshire - the place where Cop Block was founded?

Nope.

Last year Free Keener Garret Ean made some big noise about going on the Cop Block Police Accountability Tour. One might think that the situation in Ferguson merited another road trip, but one would be wrong. 

Why? Why in a situation where there is escalated police violence are our friends from the Free State Project ignoring the opportunity to document what's going on? Free Staters are the biggest media attention whores around - so why are they passing on the chance to get their names and faces up in lights by bravely risking tear gas and bullets in Ferguson? 


Perhaps Carla Gericke can provide us with some enlightenment. 
From the President of the Free State Project

Ferguson, MO, is a stark reminder of the importance of the Free State Project’s mission: to concentrate enough liberty lovers together to make a real difference in our own lives.
Come stand with the community that has been fighting against police militarization for years. Come stand with the community that believes in government accountability and that affirmed the right to record police officers in public.


The subtext? Come make your stand in nice, safe, white NH. 

If this were happening in a white community, Cop Block and the FSP would be all over it. (That this wouldn't happen in a white community is moot.) They'll use Ferguson as a way to ramp up anticop/antigubmint fear and as a tool for their own fundraising, without ever risking their own asses. And without ever questioning the racism inherent in the libertarian movement.

Of course, if you point out that the FSP is comprised mostly of white men, you'll be accused of racism:
http://susanthebruce.blogspot.com/2013/08/free-staters-and-that-pesky-first.html


Why Blacks Aren't Libertarians:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/08/11/why-blacks-aren-t-libertarians.html



Cop Block history:

http://susanthebruce.blogspot.com/2014/06/cop-killers-love-copblock-founded-by-fsp.html

http://susanthebruce.blogspot.com/2014/06/copblock-backpedaling-furiously.html

http://susanthebruce.blogspot.com/2014/06/big-turd-lands-in-free-state-project.html


Thursday, August 21, 2014

The Whole World is Watching



The death of the Fairness Doctrine and the consolidation of media have left us in a sorry place. Newspapers are on the decline and we haven’t yet figured out how, exactly, electronic media will fill the void. We live in an age rife with communication possibilities, yet our ability to obtain actual news through conventional sources is increasingly stunted. Narratives have been created that are trotted out when they’re needed, to ensure stories are reported in line with the pre-approved narrative. Nowhere has this been more visible than in the coverage of the events still unfolding in Ferguson, Missouri.

An unarmed black teenager was shot repeatedly by a police officer and killed. His body was left for hours in the road in the hot sun. That much we know for sure. The members of his community were outraged by the young man’s death, and began protesting. The police responded to the outrage with a show of paramilitary equipment, tear gas, and violence. The media didn’t cover the story much at all for the first couple of days, but when the protests and the militarized response continued, the media couldn’t ignore it any longer.

That’s when the narrative kicked in. Whenever a young black man is killed, he’s put on trial for his own death. We saw it in the case of Trayvon Martin. We’re seeing it again in the death of Michael Brown. Eyewitness reports do not match the police story. A video was put out that purports to show the teen stealing some cheap cigars. The outrage! The horror! Suddenly the honor student became a thug and a thief and deserved the death penalty for his crimes. This is not a narrative that would ever be applied to a white kid, but hey, jury pools don’t taint themselves.

This story has unfolded for millions on Twitter. Some incredible people are on the ground in Ferguson, tweeting out the news as it happens. Several nights last week I was up till the wee hours, watching videos of a SWAT team arresting a couple of reporters at a McDonalds. St. Louis Alderman Antonio French was arrested one night. If there is ever a Pulitzer for tweeting, it should go to Antonio French, whose level-headed tweets have kept us informed about events almost as soon as they happened.

Sending in MRAPs and battle clad SWAT teams in to respond to an angry community was a declaration of war, right from the beginning. A highly militarized white police force waging war on unarmed black citizens. If you’ve been watching the news coverage, you know that the black folks of Ferguson aren’t getting the same sort of reverent coverage that Cliven Bundy received. We saw footage of armed thugs pointing weapons at law enforcement – and that was presented by the media as a sort of patriotism. That Cliven Bundy is essentially a welfare rancher who refused to pay his bills was not the story that was told. Black folks fighting back against injustice? Well, now, that’s covered as violent thugs burning and looting. That young black men stood in front of stores to prevent looting was not shown on your teevee news.

You haven’t seen the story of Kajieme Powell. Kajieme Powell was shot about 10 times by Ferguson police on Tuesday night. After they killed him, they handcuffed him. Several other police cars appeared, and other officers got pretty angry with folks who witnessed the killing. The police said that he was coming at them menacingly with a knife. They didn’t bother with pepper spray or a taser. They just pumped him full of lead. Kajieme Powell was known locally as someone with learning disabilities. An observer made a video on his phone of the entire sequence of events. The story the police tell is not the one that the video tells. You should watch the video. It’s disturbing and instructive.

A great deal of attention has been given to the increasing militarization of police departments. They get grants from the Dept. of Homeland Security to purchase military gear, like MRAPs; mine resistant ambush protected armored vehicles, built to withstand IEDs. Those are the big tank-like vehicles we see in the coverage of Ferguson, with camo clad officers peeking out from the top, guns trained on the crowd. Less attention has been given to the militarization of police training, which is equally, if not more important. If we train cops to be a paramilitary force instead of peace keepers, we get cops who view civilians as the enemy and are untroubled by using the tools of war to subdue the citizenry.

The drumbeat goes on about looting, because property is always more important than lives, especially black lives. We saw it in the aftermath of Katrina. People had no water or food. White folks foraged. Black folks looted. The best coverage of what is going on in Ferguson can be found in The Guardian (UK) and Al-Jazeera (America) and the twitter feed of folks like Antonio French, Wesley Lowery, and Elon James White. What you see on Morning Joe is cattle by-product. What you see on the nightly news is no better.  

If the events in Ferguson were happening in another country, we’d be looking at them with scorn and a tinge of superiority. Instead, the Ferguson police kicked out a group of observers from Amnesty International a few nights ago. They’ve arrested journalists and cameramen. The police teargassed a news team from Al Jazeera. If this is how they behave when the whole world is watching, imagine what they do the rest of the time?

Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Tom Alciere, Free State Project Role Model


Remember Tom Alciere?

He was elected to the NH House in the November 2000 election. Days after taking office in 2001, he was forced to resign after this:


Alciere told the Valley News of Lebanon that he loves it when someone kills a police officer: ''It's unfortunate that cops do make it necessary (to kill them) when they're waging a war on drugs, and I view cops as enemy officers.'' He said he is ''too chicken'' to do it himself.
He acknowledges posting his views at Internet chat sites for months, including this 1999 comment: ''Nobody will ever be safe until the last cop is dead.'' 

It seems the doughty Republicans of Nashua weren't paying much attention to whom they voted for:

In 1997, three days after Carl Drega killed two state troopers, a part-time judge and a newspaper editor in Colebrook, Alciere sent a letter saying that except for the editor, Drega was ''an otherwise innocent cop-killer taking out enemy officers in battle.'' 

And there was this:

After the election, Alciere went online and said he was elected by a ''bunch of fat, stupid, ugly old ladies that watch soap operas, play bingo, read tabloids and don't know the metric system.'' 

In 2009 he was arrested for assaulting an 11 year old girl. 

He's back on the radar, because he sent a letter out to GOP candidates warning that Paulbearers would "sink the Republican Party" if they failed to nominate libertarian extremists. Tuck has the story at Miscellany Blue.

Alciere was forced to resign in 2001 when the NH GOP cared about things like violent rhetoric. That was before the Free State Project chose NH as the state they intended to colonize and take over. They flew under the radar for nearly a decade, but their violent rhetoric has begun to ratchet up in the last couple of years. Some are quite vocal these days about their "obligation" to respond to the evil statists with violence, including those who advocate cop killing. 




It was Free Staters who started the Cop Block website, where Larken Rose (member of the FSP) narrates a video called When Should You Shoot a Cop?

Alciere isn't the only libertarian nutter who venerated Carl Drega. Vin Suprynowiscz, FSP member, wrote a book attempting to make him a sympathetic character. 

Given all that Alciere has espoused, it's no wonder that he served as an inspiration to early Free State Project colonizers, as we see in this 2002 Yahoo Group:

The point I'm trying to make is that if Tom Alciere can get elected, 
anyone can. He found a way to work the system and got himself 
elected, when he would otherwise be unelectable.

Why is he unelectable? He posted several times on Usenet that if a 
person is selling drugs, and the cops try to bust him, then the drug 
dealer has a right to shoot the police in defense of his honest 
trade. He refers to his constituents as "lame-brains who will vote 
for anyone that smiles and waves at them." He also runs a website, 
deporttheborderpatrol.com on which he gleefully contemplates the 
possibility of Mexicans sniping Border Patrol agents from across the 
Rio Grande. He is not a lawyer or well-known businessman, if I 
recall (can't find it on his site right now), he stocks groceries at 
the supermarket.

And 

So I suggest that if you think we need a new party, a porcupine 
party, independence party, or whatever, just STOP...and consider that 
what we really want to do is to get our porcupines elected. Read 
Alciere's story, see how easily he got elected by running AS A 
REPUBLICAN, just BECAUSE he ran as a REPUBLICAN. There are three 
ways to get votes: win people to your side with the issues you 
believe in, run with a party that most voters will DEFAULT to if they 
don't know the issues, or outspend everyone else in a massive PR 
blitz. By infiltrating a major party, we will have the advantage of 
all three--financial support, votes from the "default voters" as well 
as ISSUES we can use to win over the voters.

Are the Free Staters infiltrators of the NH GOP or allies? 

Read Alciere's website. Note how that if he can get elected in New 
Hampshire, certainly a Porcupine can.


Back then the Free Staters marveled that Alciere could get elected. Now they sound just like him. 

A reminder: 


Last year, NH GOP Chair Jennifer Horn was on NHPR's The Exchange, speaking of the Free State Project in the most glowing terms:

Horn said the group’s philosophy is “something that’s right in line with the Republican Party.”   
"For the most part," explained Horn, "the Free State Project has been very much a movement with character that I think has probably been a positive thing in our state.”

When is it okay to shoot a cop, Jennifer? 

Thursday, August 07, 2014

Same Old Song and Dance



Last week in Los Angeles, a 100-year old water pipe broke, and spilled more than 20 million gallons of water. That’s a day’s worth of water for about 100,000 people. According to a story at Grist.org, due to our aging water infrastructure, ancient pipes leak 7 billion gallons of treated drinking water every day. Most of our water infrastructure was put into place during the early part of the 20th century. It’s now languishing in disrepair because we have other national and state spending priorities. We aren’t willing to invest in our country, because it would mean spending less on offense, and it would mean creating jobs, and that can’t happen while the Black Guy is in the White House. All that dripping water is something to chew on as we await the coming water wars.

It is an election year, and around New Hampshire, politicians are gearing up for the primary on September 9. The signs are coming out, and so are the usual talking points. “Cut spending!” “No New Taxes!” That’s been the GOP mantra since I moved to NH thirty years ago. It’s been successful because it is easily absorbed and repeated by low information/low intellect voters. As a plan for running a state, it has not been successful – any more than it would be a successful business plan. A business that doesn’t invest in itself will eventually go under. We’re seeing what becomes of a state that doesn’t invest in itself – all the states around us are bouncing back from the meltdown of the economy in 2008. Our neighbor states invested in education and infrastructure. They began planning for the future. NH remains obstinately stuck in the past. 

According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, over half of NH’s roads are in poor or mediocre condition. NH reports the need to invest $847 million in drinking water infrastructure over the next 20 years. We need to invest $1.2 billion in wastewater infrastructure over the next 20 years. We all know that there are hundreds of red listed bridges that need fixing, and that our state park system has unmet needs of about $100 million because we don’t fund the park system properly.

With all of that in mind, I looked at the websites of our top gubernatorial candidates. Andrew Hemingway wants to offer tax cut incentives to bring new businesses here. He wants to create a business friendly atmosphere, which in Hemingway speak means “a regulatory and tax structure that is inviting to small and large businesses.” Nowhere in the “Solutions First” section of his website is infrastructure even mentioned. We’ve heard all of this before.

Walter Havenstein, the Maryland resident who wants to be our governor, has a snappy graphic and a 3-part plan on his website. It seems that our problem is business taxes and high electric costs. Havenstein blames the high electric costs on REGGI. Perhaps it is unfair to expect a recent emigre to be familiar with what the Seabrook nuclear plant did to our energy costs, and how PSNH has managed itself over the years. He also adds the usual mantra of no income/no sales tax. No unions. Passing right to work will send a strong message to the whole country that we are open for business! We need qualified employees! The university system better shape up! We need to eliminate regulations and fees! And so on.

This is all in his plan for The Economic Transformation of NH.  If it sounds curiously familiar, it’s because it’s the same plan we’ve heard from every GOP candidate for the last 30 years. The word infrastructure is never mentioned in Havenstein’s 3 point plan. He does, however, pat himself on the back for his career at BAE Systems, a company that relies entirely on government contracts. Walt may be a stranger to NH, but he’s no stranger to feeding from the public trough.

Havenstein and Hemingway have both taken the Americans for Prosperity pledge. The Koch funded AFP is desperate to ensure that NH residents don’t have health insurance or roads and bridges. The more pledges a candidate signs, the less creativity or actual thought is required of them.

Governor Hassan acknowledges the need for modern, safe, transportation infrastructure on her campaign website, and touts her accomplishments in investing in business-backed plans for investing in road and bridge projects. She’s the only candidate who uses the word infrastructure on her campaign website.

None of the candidates mentioned telecommunications infrastructure at all. The idea that we can somehow continue to struggle to move into the 21st century without dramatically improved telecommunications infrastructure is befuddling.

A great deal of high volume whining goes on about the transportation fund. Many people seem to think that somewhere in the highway budget is buried treasure that’s just waiting to be properly spent. The Bartlett Center for Kochenomics insists that it’s the carve outs from the highway fund that are the problem. It is true that money from the highway fund goes to the Dept. of Safety, and sometimes to other departments. The trickle downers are aghast upon their fainting couches at the very thought! What they don’t ever acknowledge is this: If NH doesn’t raise enough revenue to run the state properly, then departments will continue to rob Peter to pay Paul. That’s how the NH budget has worked for as long as we can all remember.


Infrastructure investment isn’t a sexy subject. It does not inflame the passions of voters. Addressing NH’s infrastructure needs won’t be cheap. The longer we put it off, the more costly it becomes, and we’ve been putting it off for decades, because NO TAXES/CUT SPENDING. Guns get people wound up. Infrastructure bores people. Roads, bridges, and drinking water are all essential to our state’s economic future, and all we’re getting from our candidates are the same old non-solutions from the last 3 decades. Its no wonder the future looks bleak – we can’t seem to find candidates who have any interest in it.



© 2014 sbruce

Published in the August 8 edition of the Conway Daily Sun Newspaper. 

Sunday, August 03, 2014

Neanderthalenis Seabrookis


Max Abramson is a Republican candidate for the NH state legislature. He's also a member of the Free State Project, the group of armed malcontents moving to NH to take over and dismantle our state government, then threaten to secede. 

His illiterate friend is a real prince, isn't he? 

This is Abramson's sports section from his FB page. Apparently "hot females" are a "sport" in his world. 



I'm so tired of guys like this. The men of the NHGOP are a constant source of shame. 





https://www.facebook.com/max.abramson1?fref=ts

Friday, August 01, 2014

Two-Gun Tasker Strikes Again!


Once again, NH State Rep. Kyle Tasker covers our state with glory!

HuffPo:

On Wednesday, New Hampshire Rep. Kyle Tasker expressed his disbelief that the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council had hosted the National Black Caucus of State Legislators at ALEC's annual meeting in Dallas this week.


"How do I join the white caucus of state legislators?" Tasker asked, in response to a post by Jordan Ulery, a fellow Republican in New Hampshire's state house.
That Tasker (a Republican)  is already part of a rather large white caucus, would never occur to him. 

"Caucuses are merely groups of people with similar likes/dislikes," Ulery helpfully explained in response to Tasker. "Personally I long for the day of character, not color being again the guiding principle."

Jordan Ulery (another very white man) leaps in to bemoan the emphasis on "color." In 2011, Rep. Ulery tried to teach us all a lesson by filing a bill that would require any shop that has a sign in a language other than English to have signs in all of the official languages of the UN. This was not because he's in favor of inclusivity. He doesn't like signs in anything other than Murriken. Ulery then dug himself a hole by trying to suggest that the Holocaust was the fault of the Jews. 

"Yea that was kind of my point," Tasker replied. "So what are the likes/dislikes of the black caucus that precludes white people from joining? I'm fond of rap music..."

We should be grateful that he didn't mention that some of his best friends are black. 


More Tasker: