NH Free State Project: From Cop Block to Speed Dial

 

See the guy on the far right, with the big badge on his pocket? That's NH State Representative Max Abramson (R-Free State Project), who ran for president on the Libertarian ticket. Needless to say, he was not elected. 

Today, when NH House Democrats got up and walked out of the House session, Libertarian Standard Bearer Max Abramson went to the Speaker and urged him to call the state police to bring the Democrats back. He gave the House clerk the phone number. 

Gone are those halcyon days of yesteryear when the Free Staters started Cop Block. Now they have cops on speed dial. 

Independent Gubernatorial Candidates

Somehow we have survived both the Republican and the Democratic conventions. It was a very long two weeks, where huge amounts of money were spent on a big public charade meant to convince us that our democracy is working just fine. Meanwhile, back in the real world, the NH state primary election is September 13, about a month and a half away. Candidates who are hoping to get statewide name recognition don’t have much time.

Last time I wrote about the Republican gubernatorial candidates, using information gleaned from their candidate websites. After the two conventions, I’m sick of both major parties, so this week, we’ll take a look at the independent or third party candidates using their websites as our guide….when we can.

There are four of these candidates. One is running as a libertarian, the others aren’t affiliated with a party.

Republican State Representative Max Abramson of Seabrook is running for governor as a libertarian. He doesn’t really have a candidate website. He has a personal website that announces his gubernatorial run as almost an afterthought. He has a Facebook page for his position as State Representative that seems to sort of function as a site for his gubernatorial campaign as well. Given the absence of a real online presence, one wonders how serious Representative Abramson is in his quest to become governor.

Abramson moved to NH in 2004 as part of the Free State Project. Abramson achieved some notoriety after being elected to the House, when it turned out that he had been assigned to the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. Abramson is a convicted felon. He had a party that got out of hand and decided the way to calm things down was to pull out a gun and start firing - in a residential neighborhood. (Hey, it works on TV!) After being removed from the Criminal Justice committee, Abramson refused another committee assignment. In fact, he refused to meet with Speaker of the House, Shawn Jasper, claiming it was “a trap.”
Max is a quirky fellow. He’s ranted extensively about the fact that legislators are paid $100 a year.  He’s running for governor because he’s upset about high property taxes. When the House refuses to raise sufficient revenue to run the state properly, the costs get shifted to the towns. Welcome to the property tax! It’s difficult to discern what Abramson did for 2 years in the House, but he doesn’t seem to have learned anything about NH fiscal policy. 

Also hoping to put the goober in gubernatorial is Michael Gill from Derry. Gill the owner of a company called The Mortgage Specialists, and is best known for his electronic billboards that are often defamatory or profane. Gill regularly produces semi-literate rants about corruption in NH. He’s a regular on right wing talk radio and has a website that appears to be the NH equivalent of Alex Jones.

One thing Gill does not have is a campaign website. Not even a candidate Facebook page. No positions, no policy –  no reason given to vote for him except his rage against this big, unspecified corruption. He is paying people $5 a signature to get his name on the ballot. He can pay signature collectors, but he can’t manage to put together a campaign website? It’s hard to take this candidate seriously.

Jilletta Jarvis of Sandown is running as an independent. She has a website and a Facebook page. Her website has a schedule of events, and offers information about her views on the economy, drugs, family, casinos, health care and more.  Ms. Jarvis appears to be opposed to Social Security and supports state’s rights. Her views on how health insurance should work are rather naïve. She thinks that people on welfare should have to work for it, and somehow childcare for them will be worked out. Again – naïve, but hey - at least she is willing to put a position out there that doesn’t involve slander on an electronic sign. Jarvis appears to be allied primarily with the libertarian crowd.

William Fortune is our final indy candidate for NH governor. According to the Secretary of State’s office, Fortune is from Rochester. The Live Free or Die Alliance site has him listed as living in Lee. His non-candidate Facebook page says he’s from Warner. On the positive side, they’re all towns in New Hampshire, so we know he lives somewhere here in the granite state. Mr. Fortune has no candidate website. He does not have a candidate Facebook page.

He has two questions answered on the LFOD Alliance page. Apparently Mr. Fortune doesn’t care for college students, and he attempted snark about their need for free college. He’s opposed to renewable energy, saying that it is cost prohibitive and obsolete, “just ask China.” Does this mean all that smog over Beijing is from solar installations? Who knew?

Fortune does have a Facebook page.  It is a treasure trove. You won’t find his gubernatorial platform, but you will find out what he thinks about a lot of things. From a July 31 entry: “Apparently hysteria is not limited to just females.” Oops. He just lost my vote. Further down the page, “This all starts with the destruction of the family by the feminists, the growth of government dependency fostered by the Liberals and the lack of meaningful employment.”

Oh, those pesky feminists. They ruined everything with the crazy notion that women shouldn’t have to stay with abusive husbands. A little more research reveals that Bill Fortune is the head of an angry dad organization. Mad dads are men who have lost custody of their children, and may have lost visitation rights. Over the years I’ve seen men friends lose their kids to vindictive ex partners. More recently I’ve seen women friends lose their kids to abusers.  And it wasn’t just the woman they were abusing. The angry dads have created a backlash against mothers that has led to some kids being sent off to live with molesters. Doing what is best for children is not a gender issue. As long as parents use children as weapons, this problem will continue. I repeat – this is not a gender issue. It’s an adult behavioral problem.

Of the four independent candidates, only Jilletta Jarvis has an actual campaign. Given that Gill is buying signatures, he may well be the only independent candidate that gets on the ballot. All of these candidates plopped down $100 to run for governor. None of them have the kind of name recognition that will propel them into the corner office. Dreamers? Fools? Check them out and decide for yourself. The independent candidate of your dreams may be closer than you think.

Pitfalls of a 400 Member Legislature, Part Two

Max Abramson is a member of the Free State Project, the group of armed libertarian miscreants that intend to take over and dismantle the NH state government, then threaten to secede from the US. He's also an elected state representative from the town of Seabrook. This is a screenshot of a comment he left at a story at the Union Leader newspaper. The UL is one of the propaganda arms (along with WMUR) of the NH GOP. 

The 10,000 refugees he mentions are the sum total of ALL Syrian refugees slated to come to the US in the next 12 months. 10,000 for the entire country. Not the state of NH. 

Also, only US citizens can vote in US elections. 

Felonious Max is deliberately spreading dishonesty and deliberately fearmongering, just like his GOP colleague Dick Marple. We should expect better from our elected officials. 


This is another instance of what you get when you have a 400 member volunteer legislature.