Residents of Grafton, NH had their deliberative budget session on Saturday the 7th, in preparation for their annual town meeting on March 10.
As most readers know, Grafton is home to a number of members of the Free State Project, the band of armed miscreants moving to NH with the stated intent of taking over the NH government, dismantling it, and threatening secession. Grafton was ground zero - the town that the FSP intended to take over and turn into a model community at the beginning of their invasion. It hasn't gone well. Free Staters (then and now) don't seem able to grasp that not everyone shares their vision of a glibertarian utopia - and that many of those who don't share their vision were here before the FSP arrived to liberate them.
I found two stories covering the Grafton deliberative session. They couldn't be more different. I suggest you read them both and reach your own conclusions.
In the Union Leader, news correspondent John Koziol is desperate to portray the town moderator as a weepy woman. It's mentioned twice in his story, and once in the headline:
Effort to constrain Free State backfires, confusion brings Grafton moderator to verge of tears
In the story, she goes from "weeping" to "seemingly weeping." Hmmm....sounds like weepful thinking on the part of the writer.
Koziol casts Free Stater Brian Fellers as something of a budget watchdog; asking for each department to review the budget, and making a variety of motions to cut the budget. He never mentions Fellers problem with impulse control. Last year he was found guilty of disorderly conduct after his arrest for disrupting the deliberative session.
For an entirely different look at the Grafton deliberative session, we turn to the Valley News:
By the end of a 10 -hour deliberative session yesterday, no substantive changes had been made to the 36 articles on the warrant that Grafton residents will vote on next month.
In some ways, the meeting resembled last year’s — an 11-hour slog that, despite Free Staters’ efforts, resulted in no cuts to the operating budget. This year, attempts to slash the budget were once again rebuffed.
I'm just not seeing the "backfire" here.
Many see Free Staters’ focus on procedure as a ploy to drag out the meetings so other residents will become frustrated and leave, allowing those remaining to vote in changes to their liking.
The delay, disrupt, and obstruct tactics that the residents of Grafton see at their deliberative session are the same tactics that the Free Staters and their libertea allies use in the NH legislature. In Grafton it shows contempt and disrespect for the other residents of the town. In the NH House, it shows contempt and disrespect for their colleagues in the House - and even more contempt for the people of New Hampshire.
Two stories about the same event - yet they couldn't be more different.
The Valley News appears to engage in a quaint, yet time honored practice known as "reporting."
The Union Leader has long served as a stenographer for the far right. In recent years they've embraced the Free State Project, and attempted to cast them in a flattering light whenever possible. This tear-stained story is just another of those attempts.
15 comments:
The Union Leader is pro-Free State not just because of their reactionary stance but because the daughter of one of the top editors is married to a Free Stater.
We call them the 'Useless Misleader" around my house.
Fellers is a local. The moderator was not merely "portrayed" as weeping. She regularly puts on crying theatrics, like a toddler having a tantrum. She's only involved to protect her family's financial interests (neither article mentions that her son - a Selectman - and his wife were found guilty of fraud by the State, and that he is the subject of other ongoing fraud investigations).
If the situation was covered in a balanced manner, even that hothead Fellers (who, as a Grafton resident, I cannot stand) and the Freestaters would come out smelling like roses, when compared to the massive corruption that's being exposed.
Well, Anonymouse - you make a lot of accusations. I sure do hope you're proving them on your own blog somewhere.
Sorry acacia - I don't click on links sent by strangers.
The moderator's behavior is proven on video (these meetings are recorded, so folks interested in the honest facts can reach their own conclusions - a YouTube search will find a copy, I believe).
The fraud findings are public record, and copies are on file with the Town, so a quick call could get you copies of the letters. The ongoing investigations are ongoing, but once they wind their way through the legal system (unlike TV, that takes months or years in the real world), this town should be a much more pleasant place.
Anonymouse - I do hope you understand that I don't consider it my job to investigate the accusations of someone who isn't honest enough to use their real name. If you want an expose - do it yourself.
acacia - I'm sorry you're offended by my lack of willingness to click on the link of an anonymous stranger. After years of harassment and threats, I'm wary of the Anonymouse clan.
I'm assuming you're a Free Stater, and you want me to post the video as free publicity for the cult.
Any reader who is interested can go to You Tube and look for videos of the deliberative session.
Anonymouse - I can't tell you how much I enjoy being lectured about honesty by someone who is too cowardly to use their real name.
It's pretty obvious what faction of the town you represent.
Incredible and really sad. Sad because there appears to be no real grey matter being utilized anymore, at least in Grafton. "Weepy" appears to be an unfortunate, undignified and immature reaction by those on the right, I think of course of Boo hooner otherwise calling himself Boehner (baynor). Is it really 2015? And you are right. Both reports could not be more different. One is old fashioned reporting, the other is opinion, poorly disguised favoritism and plain pandering.
So terribly sorry Susan about your accident and continued healing to you, all strength and welcome back!!!
"To be a genius means to use the soul, to strive for the divine to escape from the mean."- Dietrich Eckart.
And what do you strive for Susan The Bruce? Is it the truth or an attempt at subversion and deception?
Anyone that knows anything about Grafton is that this is a community forged in conservative yankee granite.
Not a bad thing.
The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation could propose to finance the town and it would get voted down. That is just the way that it is.
Interesting but unsupported is your comment about "reporting" by the Valley News. Since when does this newspaper do anything outside of the edict and liberal mantra of Dartmouth?
The answer is they don't. Perhaps you should spend some real time in western New Hampshire instead of basing your deceptions on a google search.
Oh, look who is here - Steven J. Connolly, admirer of Nazis. It's always a treat when you stop by to bleat your misogyny, Herr Connolly.
You strive to be a writer, yet the best you can manage is NH Insider, a fratboy cesspool with a readership that is barely measurable.
You strive to be an elected official, and each time you discover that you're about as popular as chlamydia in your district.
It really crawls under your SS uniform that a woman dares to have opinions in public, doesn't it, Steven J. Naziquoter?
I'm reading and re-reading the comment from Mr. Connolly and find it rather bizarre. What's with the quote? Using "the soul" certainly doesn't speak to behaving unkind, believing in violence etc. Escaping the mean would certainly refer to escaping from those who would want to harm us and impose anti social doctrine on the rest of us. Those who WANT to believe that commentary is reporting will believe it. The rest of us have the brains to recognize the difference between plain factual reporting and personal opinion.
I found it odd that there wasn't more focus from either the Union Leader or the Valley News on at least some of the warrant articles themselves.
For instance, spanking the NSA for illeagla spying on "us", civil forfeiture and freeing people to own their own bodies (marijuana related warrant) seem to me like they should get more attention.
Thank you,
Bob Constantine
thats good stb
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