Why Aren't All These Guns Making Us Safer?

It was a deadly weekend. On Saturday, a gunman in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, shot and killed 22 people, and wounded 26 more. Early Sunday morning, a gunman killed 9 people in a nightlife district in Dayton, Ohio. 

The weekend before, a gunman shot and killed 4 people and wounded 13 others at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, CA. 

I thought all these guns were supposed to be making us safer?

Meanwhile, here in NH, three gun safety bills languish in limbo, waiting for the attention of our governor. On Monday, August 5, there was a rally  at the Legislative Office Building in Concord, where members of gun safety groups and other concerned citizens called upon the governor to sign the bills. The room was packed with people. 

Not everyone in the room was heartbroken about the slaughter of their fellow humans. Some attendees were so dickhurt by the idea that some people were talking about gun safety, that they showed up with their guns. The guy with the long gun in the photo is Brennan Robinson, a member of the Free State Project, who very obviously came in with the intention of turning the media's attention to him. 

He succeeded admirably. Both WMUR and NHPR gave him the last word in their stories. 

This is emblematic of the NH media, which operates with GOP as their default setting. I expect  it from WMUR - hell, I've seen it in the past, from the same reporter.

I cannot wrap my head around the shoddiness of this reporting. Not a single reporter who covered this event thought to ask, "Hey, pal - these folks are all here because of gun violence - do you think it's really a good idea to bring GUNS into a room crowded with people - especially since you fit the visual profile of a domestic terrorist?" 

These are men who get up in the morning in the safest state in the country, and put on their strapons before they dare leave their houses. And we are all supposed to bow and scrape before their freedumb, because their right to play GI Joe is more important than our right to live. 

I don't expect Governor Sununu to sign those gun bills. His first act in office was to sign a bill that repealed the concealed carry license process. Gundamentalists are his base. 

I don't have any confidence that there will ever be a legislative solution to the wholesale slaughter, either at the state or national level. 

What I do know is this - people are going to stop going out. They won't go to fairs, festivals, concerts, or movies. They won't go shopping in brick and mortar stores. They won't go to bars and restaurants. And brother, when it starts to hit the bottom lines of business - then we'll see some change. Capitalism may be what changes our gun laws. 

To help along the process, I suggest that before you go to a store, a venue, a bar or restaurant that you call ahead and ask if they allow guns inside. NH is an open carry state - BUT - there's a provision built into the law:

"Businesses have the to right to ban firearms from their property, Merrigan said, and can ask customers who are carrying firearms, openly or concealed, to leave.

Customers who don’t leave a business when requested can be charged with criminal trespassing."

So call and ask, and decide for yourself whether you want to go there or not. If you see a person with a gun in a business - call the police. There is no way for you to know if he is one of the mythical "good guys with guns" or a domestic terrorist. Complaint to the management. Leave your shopping cart and walk out of the store. 

Enough is enough. And dammit, NH media - do a better job. 

More Guns and Grifters

Photo by Holly Ramer of AP 

As I predicted, the rabid gundamentalists got all worked up about the proposed rule change in the NH House that would prevent them from carrying their concealed firearms on the House floor, in the gallery, the cloakroom, and the anteroom. They would still be able to strap on as many weapons as they needed to feel safe leaving home, driving to Concord, and then walking the mean streets from their parking spot to the State House. They’d just be asked to lock up (in a storage unit provided at the State House) their firearm (s) while on the floor, in the gallery, the anteroom or the cloakroom. The 2-A crowd brought signs into the State House, which is not allowed. They meekly surrendered them, with no mention of first amendment rights. 

There was wailing, moaning, and gnashing of teeth from the gun fetishists. They NEED their weapons on them at all times! They might have to protect the women! The State House isn’t going to be a “soft” target – a gun free zone! Gundamentalist groups, the NRA, and ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council invented the concept of “constitutional carry” around 2012. Nowhere in the constitution does it say that you have the right to bring a concealed firearm into the NH House chamber. It’s also worth noting that Vermont had “constitutional carry” years before everyone else. Guess what you can’t do in Vermont? Bring a weapon in the State House.

Honest, curious people who read more than just propaganda are also aware that mass shooters don’t choose “gun free zones.” School shootings are done by people who had some connection to the school. There’s also the fact that 98% of mass shooters are white men, many of whom have a history of domestic abuse. Most of those shooters were “law abiding gun owners” up until the moment they started shooting their fellow humans.

The floor debate raged. Convicted gun felon, Representative Max Abramson (R. Free State) gave an impassioned speech about gun rights, the kind he doesn’t legally possess any longer. These are the people who want the rest of us to trust them with guns. The vote was 220-163 to ban guns from the House chamber. The response from the cultists was to shriek that they’d carry anyway, because rules don’t apply to them.

After the gun vote was a vote to add mandatory sexual harassment awareness training to the House rules. There have been a number of incidents in the legislature that have come to light in the MeToo era. Some involved payoffs, some involved cover-ups. There are many older men in the legislature who wail that it’s the women who are to blame – they can’t say anything any more without it being taken the wrong way!

Rather than take an opportunity to stop wailing and learn something, members of the libertea crowd became incensed at the thought that they should be expected to attend the kind of training they would be given no choice about attending in any professional workplace. Perhaps they don’t look at themselves as professionals. Perhaps they don’t see themselves as working.

Most amusing was the overlap. Many of the same people who were braying about the need to protect the wimminfolk refused to take the sexual harassment training. That’s right – they need to protect the women with guns – the same women who are lying about sexual harassment! (It would make for an interesting Venn diagram.) The House voted 284 – 92 in favor of the rule change. 

Governor Sununu is back in the news. There’s some very timid reporting going on about the way his first inaugural fund is being dispersed. Large amounts of it seem to have landed in his pockets, and those of a variety of family members and advisors. The Governor has refused to comply with Right to Know requests that those records be produced.  If it all sounds familiar, there’s good reason for that. Sununu was very clear in his first campaign that he is a strong Trump supporter. We know Trump used his inaugural fund as a slush fund to shovel money back into his own businesses, which means into the pockets of his family. Lesson learned. 

Why is this a concern? Where the money comes from and where it goes is always a concern when it comes to politicians. Transparency means accountability, and we should all want our politicians to be accountable. We should know exactly who the donors were, how much they gave, and where that money went, and where the remainder of the fund will go.

The Union Leader has done some surprisingly good reporting on this. Surprising only because of the UL’s history of being the media arm of the NH GOP. This reporting so incensed the governor, that a Union Leader reporter and photographer were denied entry into this year’s inaugural event. It appears our governor has learned another lesson from his mentor, Donald Trump.

“No power without accountability.”  Billy Bragg

Guns and Grifting

The new legislature has been sworn in, and will be back in session on January 2. 

As I write this, there are 894 LSRs. An LSR is a fledgling bill that is written by the sponsor, and then sent to Legislative Services to be fleshed out and checked out. It is assigned a number and published. It will be assigned to a committee, have a hearing, and be voted on. House members have submitted 609 LSRs, and 204 have come from the Senate. Another 71 LSRs were withdrawn before they ever became bills. There are ten proposed amendments to the NH Constitution.

Some are predictable. One wants to change the NH Constitution to stipulate that taxpayer funds can’t be limited to supporting public schools. As we learned last biennium, taking money out of the public schools will mean dramatic increases in property taxes, but our libertea brethren don’t care about that.

There’s a proposed amendment that would stipulate that any broad based tax should be prohibited. Another would alter the state constitution to prohibit a tax on personal income from being enacted. A recent report finds that NH has the third highest property taxes in the US. This kind of GOP policy will help ensure that we reach first place. 

Another amendment would reduce the number of representatives in the House, and another would allow compensation for legislators to be determined by a joint resolution with the approval of the Executive Council. It seems our “live free or die” legislators want a bigger paycheck. Another would enshrine the right to hunt, subject to laws promoting sound wildlife and conservation management.

There is also a proposed amendment that would allow no-excuse absentee voting for NH residents. Perhaps the most important amendment would establish an independent redistricting commission to draw boundaries for state and federal offices. Why does this need to be a constitutional amendment? So that neither party can undo it on a whim. The state senate districts have been ridiculously gerrymandered. NH Republicans have historically opposed the creation of an independent commission, probably because they’ve done most of the gerrymandering. All of the proposed amendments have a long way to go before we ever see them on a ballot.

The first year of the biennium is the year that the next state budget is worked out. The House and Senate have both decided to continue to have Thursday voting sessions, something that began during the last biennium. Former Speaker Terie Norelli introduced mixed party seating during her second term. Her hope was that legislators would get to know one another and form relationships that transcended party affiliation. That’s been the custom since. The Republicans asked Speaker Shurtleff to restore party segregated seating, so that they can sit together, and maintain the kind of discipline needed to meet Minority Leader Dick Hinch’s stated goal of disruption and delay. Shurtleff has agreed to their request.

The GOP gundamentalists are getting all ginned up to fight about a proposed rule change that would forbid concealed carry firearms in the House chamber, anteroom, coatroom, or in the House Gallery. It’s understandable. Republicans who carry have shown an inability to holster their guns properly, as we saw when Kyle Tasker’s gun fell to the floor in a meeting of the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. He’d been playing quick draw out in the hallway, and failed to secure one of his holsters. Tasker carried a gun under each arm, because you can’t be too safe in dangerous NH. The last gun drop was made by Representative Carolyn Halstead whose gun fell out of the back of her pants in a hearing on full day kindergarten that was filled with parents and children. Kyle Tasker is in prison on felony charges and Halstead was not reelected, so there is an opening for a GOP gun dropper. In most public buildings where unstable persons are likely to be present (courthouses, planes, NRA conventions) concealed firearms are not allowed.

As anyone who has ever attended a demonstration at the State House knows, a sign on a stick is not allowed inside the building. That’s right – the State House is a stick free zone, and I’m certain we’re all safer as a result. The last stick massacre was a national tragedy. 

There’s going to be a lot to pay attention to in the coming biennium. Keep an eye on the story of the funds raised for the governor’s inauguration, and how the unspent funds were dispersed to the governor’s family members, advisors, and – of course, to himself. It appears to be near Trumpian level grifting, right here in River City.

It’s a shame we’ve abandoned all interest in expecting our elected officials to avoid the appearance of impropriety. Let’s insist they do better in 2019.

Happy New Year, everyone! 

This was published as an op-ed in the December 28, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

Local Control Under Attack

Our far right legislators love to talk about how much they hate big government. Big government imposes its will on the people, Big Government takes away the voice of towns, cities, and states… yesiree Bob, they hate Big Gummint…until they love it.

By the time you read this, there will have been a hearing on HB 1749, a bill that would remove the right of NH cities or towns to establish their own gun ordinances. Your town doesn’t want target shooting on town land? Your city doesn’t want guns on town property? Tough luck. The libertea gundamentalists are going to eliminate local control, and give that control to the state. That’s right - the same state they complain about all the time.

According to this bill, “the general court will have exclusive authority and jurisdiction by statute over the sale, purchase, ownership, use, possession, transportation, licensing, permitting, taxation, or other matters pertaining to firearms, firearms components, ammunition, firearms supplies, and knives in this state.”

Take that, taxpayers of Anytown, NH. Your town doesn’t get to make decisions about guns, ammo, or knives, because the legislature controls your town’s decisions. You still get to pay taxes, but if you don’t want Bubba and his drunken cousin shooting targets in the park, that’s tough luck.  In fact, they’ll probably be able to shoot at the school playground too, because the bill opposes banning guns at schools, and schools are public property. Nothing goes together like small children and firearms.

It’s a bold power grab. Lead sponsor JR Hoell has never respected local control, and the bill reflects his disdain. Line I makes a point of saying that NH is not a home rule state. That NH has a long-standing (nigh on to sacred) tradition of local control is of no interest to the parade of far right activists that have signed on to this. Free State Project mover Ed Comeau of Brookfield is the only sponsor from the top half of the state, an area where folks are pretty serious about local control. There are no sponsors from Grafton or Coos County. There’s a hearing on Wednesday, and the executive session will follow the hearing. The vote will probably be scheduled for the following week. They don’t want voters to know about this until it’s a fait accompli. 

The other sponsors (from the bottom half of the state) include Representatives Al Baldasaro, John Burt, self-styled Constitutional expert Dan Itse, and James Spillane. Representative Michael Sylvia of Belmont is the other Free Stater sponsoring the bill. The founding document of the Free State Project calls for people to move to NH, take over and dismantle the state government, and then threaten secession. I trust I’m not the only one to see the humor in the would-be dismantlers of the state government, attempting to take local power away from municipalities and hand it to the state government.

They’re counting on the fact that voters aren’t paying attention, and if they hear about it at all, will interpret it as “nobody gonna tell me what I can do with my gun” and leave it at that.

The silence around this bill should concern all of us. There was endless publicity about “Constitutional Carry,” the name the out-of-state special interests came up with for eliminating the permitting process for concealed carry firearms. All the gun groups churned out continuous propaganda emails. The governor made it his very first legislative priority. To get a concealed carry license, a gun owner had to apply to the police chief in his/her town. The “Constitutional Carry” bill eliminated that step. It was the first step in eliminating local control. This latest move to disempower municipalities should come as no surprise.

It should come with rejection. This is the second attack on local control. If these radicals succeed, they’ll be further emboldened. What will be next? What will be the next erosion of local control engineered by the radical ideologues of today’s GOP? What do towns control that these folks hate? Hint: schools. I predict that will be next on their agenda.

There have been amendments proposed to the NH Constitution at different times to make NH a “home rule” state. Every time, the most vehement opposition comes from the liberty crowd. They hate big gummint, until they become the big government - and then they’ll do anything to protect and expand their power.  

For years we’ve heard that it’s the evil liberals who want big government to control every aspect of our lives. It turns out that it’s the NHGOP that wants their idea of big government to run our towns from Concord. It’s a brilliant strategy. The average Republican voter would expect this from liberals, but never from his own party.

Dear Republicans: your demise is being engineered from within. 

This was published as an op-ed in the January 12, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

Working As Planned

Two weeks ago I wrote about the legislature being called back for a special vote on a bill to give law enforcement an extra $1.5 million to deal with the opium crisis. To recap: The original bill, SB 485, failed to pass because a non-germane amendment concerning state employee health care was tacked on, to ensure that it wouldn’t pass. It didn’t. By one vote. The Governor wanted it to pass. House and Senate leadership wanted it to pass. Law enforcement wanted it to pass.

And so, a bipartisan group got together, eliminated the poison pill amendment, and wrote a new bill, HB 1000. The House and Senate were called back in to vote on it. Some representatives were very unhappy at being called back. They were so unhappy that they spent two hours debating whether to suspend the rules in order to vote on the bill. The legislative session began at 10. They didn’t begin discussing the bill till after the lunch break.

The vote was 241-97 to suspend the rules. It’s a small group of GOP miscreants who continually obstruct and delay, but they’re incredibly effective at wasting the time of their colleagues. They made a big point of asking the Speaker if leadership could vote without fear of retribution. It was the last day of this session, what did they think he going to do to them? Change the combo on their locker? Take their lunch money?  Send them to detention?

This voting session came into being because of a non-germane amendment.  To illustrate their displeasure, the libertea faction proceeded to propose 7 non-germane floor amendments to HB 1000. Most were an attempt to add in the language of bills that had already failed or been vetoed. Rep. JR Hoell, for whom guns appear to provide his sole reason for living, put forth a floor amendment to add on a provision that would repeal the requirement for a concealed carry license. Another amendment would have allowed stores to sell syringes without a prescription. Yet another would have allowed towns that have no public schools to use public funds to send children to private religious schools. All seven of the non-germane amendments failed by wide margins, but did succeed in wasting hours of everyone’s time.

Eventually HB 1000 passed by a vote of 235-74. They moved on to attempt to overturn the governor’s veto of six bills. The first prohibited the confiscation of firearms and ammo during a state of emergency. This has never happened in New Hampshire. It was proposed in New Orleans during the aftermath of Katrina, but that story has been twisted by the NRA to get the gundamentalists up in arms, which isn’t exactly a challenge. They’re easily manipulated. (One can only imagine their disappointment in the fact that Obama never even tried to take their guns away, after 8 years of caterwauling about it.)  The veto override failed. So did the attempt to override the veto on the bill repealing the concealed carry license requirement, so that bill failed twice in one day. The override of the bill to use public funds for private religious schools failed. All six override attempts failed.

The last debate concerned an entry in the House journal. Every voting session day begins with an “invocation” which is another way of saying prayer. The prayer was edited in the print version, as many things are. All of the “umms” spoken in a speech are edited out. The minister made reference to “children, born and unborn” in his prayer, and that was truncated to “children.” There’s also a tradition of editing overly sectarian or politically charged language in favor of more neutral language in the permanent record. Fetus fetishist Warren Groen took exception to this editing, and made a fuss. You may remember Warren Groen as the representative who made the fetus speech to fourth graders visiting the legislature who proposed making the red tailed hawk the state bird. The vote to amend the journal passed by a narrow margin, after an hour long debate that began at 4 p.m.

I’m in favor of transparency. If inflammatory, foolish, or reactionary statements are made, they should be included in the permanent record, where the public can see them and hold the makers of the statements accountable for them. Legislative sessions should not be opened with prayers. It is a tradition that should be eliminated. The 400 members of the House do not all share the same religion – and even if they did, their religion should have no sway in the public affairs of our state. No religion should. If there’s a need to fill a hole in the ritual, read a poem. Some Walt Whitman would be nice.

Over in the Senate, the vote to suspend the rules slid right through on a voice vote. No floor amendments. HB 1000 passed unanimously.

HB 1000 passed largely because it’s an election year and most legislators did not want to be seen as voting against law enforcement during an opioid crisis. Whether this is a good use of funds is debatable. In this case, because it’s an election year, perception is everything.

A number of long time representatives are leaving the legislature because of the obstructionist crowd. The endless roll call votes and procedural delays are working exactly as planned.

Published as an op-ed in the June 24 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

Another Shady Group Funding Attacks

This last minute FEAR attack comes from a group called Packing NH, whose mission claims to be support for Second Amendment candidates. This group was formed by JR Hoell, a NH State Rep from Dunbarton, and Susan Olsen, a gundamentalist from Weare. Apparently there is a terrible threat to NH gun ownership - so much so that the gazillion other gun groups in NH weren't sufficient. We needed one more. 

As you can see by the cheesy postcard, the mission seems to have veered from supporting Second Amendment candidates, to attacking legislators they don't like. Packing NH's stance on guns is too radical for most NH residents, so they're attacking from a different angle, to divert attention from themselves. Most people think background checks are a good idea. Not Packing NH. 

These cards were sent out attacking Representatives Robert Cushing, Ed Butler, and Steve Shurtleff. They hate Ed Butler because he  thinks background checks on gun buyers are a good idea. They hate Steve Shurtleff because he's a former US Marshall who apparently doesn't believe every citizen should  have a rocket launcher in their pocket. They hate Renny because he's respected on both sides of the aisle, and impervious to their whimpering about guns. If they can get somewhere with getting these guys voted out, it sends a message to anyone else who might threaten their rights to GUNZ, GUNZ, and MOAR GUNZ! Because clearly, MOAR GUNZ is the solution to all of NH's problems. 


It's almost funny if you think about how scared these people are. They live in one of the safest states in the nation, but they're scared spitless to leave their homes without a personal arsenal. 

 Packing NH is a PAC registered in June with the Secretary of State. It seems they weren't exactly honest in their filing:

As you can see, they claimed on their paperwork that the PAC would not be making independent expenditures. As you can see, there was another box to check. If they had checked the box that reflects what they're actually doing, I couldn't call them sleazy and dishonest. 

To their credit - the PAC has filed subsequent reports noting their donations. They have not filed any reports (including the October 29 filing) that listed expenditures. 

To summarize: Gundamentalists form PAC to support their fellow gun nuts running for office. In their filing, they say they will make no independent expenditures. They report their donations. They report no expenditures. Yet attack postcards go out under the name of this PAC - postcards that don't address the Second Amendment, which is allegedly their reason for being. 

Sleazy and dishonest? You decide. 


UPDATE:
They have filed a report of their expenditures  with the Secretary of State. 


Secretary of State Election Division

It's Almost Over

It’s almost over. A few more political ads ought to help us choose what candidates to vote for. Is there really anyone left who is undecided? Nationwide, over $4 billion is being spent on the midterm elections. Good thing we don’t have anything important we could be spending $4 billion on. The corporate taps are open wide and the dark money is flowing.

Thanks to all that money, we know that Scott Brown knows only one number. 99. We know that he’s attempting to whip white NH into a frenzy about immigration and Ebola. The fear is supposed to divert you from paying attention to why he’s here. He’s here because he lost his Senate seat in Massachusetts, and he’d like to use NH as a springboard to higher office. I’ve been to debates and forums where Brown spoke, and his ground support is thin. What can anyone say about him? He’s never done anything in NH except vacation and run for office. Brown grew up in Massachusetts, went to school there, was married and had a family there, had a career there, got into politics there. If Elizabeth Warren hadn’t beaten him, he’d still be there. The first time Scott Brown casts a vote here it will be for himself.

This is a man who has repeatedly refused to speak with members of the press, going so far as to hide in a bathroom to avoid a reporter. As you ponder his name on your ballot ask yourself this: Should New Hampshire’s US Senate seat be a consolation prize for a guy whose ambition is the only reason he’s here?

Thanks to all the money, we know that Frank Guinta blames Carol Shea-Porter for everything except his toilet training. At the WMUR debate, he was unable to answer even what was presented as a yes or no question without trying to complain about our Congresswoman. He nattered on endlessly about all of the job fairs he had during his single term. I went to 2 of them. The Conway fair was held 2 weeks after a real job fair. The one staged by Guinta was a photo op, and sadly for him, not a single photographer showed up. No one found a job that day, or at any of the other job fairs. If anyone had, they’d be trotted out for display at every opportunity. Frank’s forgotten bank account (the one with the half million he donated to his campaign in 2010) is still being investigated by the FEC. When he ran in 2010, Guinta wailed ceaselessly about CSP’s alleged abuses of the Congressional franking system. He went on to become the number one franking abuser of the 2011-12 Congress.

Guinta learned nothing from being defeated. He still hates gummint, but thinks you should send him back to be part of it. He’s tried to present himself as an independent, bipartisan thinking kind of guy, but that’s not borne out by his voting record, which showed him marching along in party lockstep 96% of the time. Guinta wants to turn the Social Security trust fund over to Wall St. He wants to repeal Obamacare, returning us to those halcyon days of the pre-existing condition, and high cost/high deductable plans that don’t cover much of anything. He is all wound up about Ebola, but doesn’t seem to grasp that public health is a security issue. We should be working to rebuild our once robust public health system.

After listening to a lot of Guinta, it’s clear that he doesn’t have any ideas or plans to move us forward. Frank has only one setting on his gearshift, and that’s reverse.

I was sorry to miss the recent local candidate’s forum, but the write-up in the paper provided such perfect illustration that I could almost hear Frank McCarthy bellowing out his misinformation. Frank is full of “facts,” like the nonsense he spewed about marijuana.  The marijuana law in Colorado does not give free pot to welfare recipients and tens of thousands of potheads are not moving to Colorado. This bellicose purveyor of foolishness should not be given a return ticket to Concord. 

NH is the seventh wealthiest state in the nation, yet we have the 11^th worst infrastructure. Vermont has just about finished wiring their whole state for high-speed internet access. NH has a commission that is still gathering information before acting. Our infrastructure problems, combined with our unwillingness to fund education are the root causes of our economic stagnation. Yet still we hear the same slogans that got us into the mess we’re in taken as some sort of gospel: “NH doesn’t have a revenue problem, NH has a spending problem.” That’s true in the sense that NH is unwilling to raise sufficient revenue to fund our state properly. That’s why we have hundreds of bridges on a red list for structural impairment. Representative Chandler seemed quite comfortable with the fact that we raise insufficient revenue to do the work that desperately needs to be done. Carl Thibodeau is spouting the same old drivel about how to turn the economy around. Union busting won’t magically give NH a 21^st century infrastructure.  Also, guy who dons a Santa suit and stands outside the polls insulting voters might be seen as lacking sufficient gravitas for serving in even our volunteer legislature.

Judging from the reporting on this forum, guns and MOAR GUNZ are the most important issue facing NH. The same people who are desperate to make voting as difficult as possible are living in desperate, scrotum-shriveling fear that gun buyers should have to go through background checks. Mark Hounsell doesn’t seem to think domestic abusers should lose their gun rights. Domestic violence is a leading cause of death in NH. Over 50% of the murders committed in NH between 2001-2010 were related to domestic violence, and over 90 percent of the murder-suicides. Instead of worrying about beheadings in Conway village, Mark would do well to contact Starting Point to learn about domestic violence in NH.

It’s almost over. The calls, the mailers, the surveys will stop for a few months. For now there are still a few days left to research candidates so that we all make informed decisions on Tuesday when we cast our ballots.

In Addition:

This was sent to me by Mark Hounsell:

"If a person is found to be a felon for action as a domestic abuser, based on a conviction in a court of law, that person should loose they right to carry a firearm." - You are free to quote me on this."

This was published as an op-ed in the October 31 issue of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

©sbruce 2014

 

Our Would Be Liberators

Earlier this month, in New Brunswick, a young man named Justin Bourque killed RCMP Constables Fabrice Gevaudan, Dave Ross, and Douglas Larche. He wounded two other Mounties. Justin Bourque was an angry young man, ginned up on conspiracy theories and fears about gun grabbers. (Definition: anyone believing that not every person should have access to firearms is a gun grabber.) One of his Facebook friends is being detained for threatening to kill police.

A few days ago, two police officers having lunch at a pizza place in Las Vegas were gunned down by Jerad and Amanda Miller, who put a swastika and a Gadsden flag on the bodies of the officers, announced the revolution was starting, grabbed their weapons, and went to a nearby Wal-Mart. They killed a man there. Jerad and Amanda were also ginned up on conspiracy theories and gundamentalist fears that the gummint was coming to take their guns away.

These killings happened in two different countries, and the killings were done by people who didn’t know each other. They did, however, have something in common. CopBlock. If you spend any time on social media, you’ve probably seen CopBlock memes; a picture with some message about police violence or authoritarian overreach. CopBlock claims their goal is police accountability. From their website:

We do not “hate cops.” We believe that no one – not even those with badges – has extra rights. The failure to realize and act on that is to our detriment. By focusing the disinfecting light of transparency on public officials we safeguard not just our rights but those of future generations.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? If only we could take these folks at their word.

A regular writer for CopBlock is a guy named Chris Cantwell. Cantwell was kicked out of the Free State Project (in a big public way) for advocating violence, which goes against what the FSP claims to believe. Cantwell, in his capacity as CopBlock administrator had the ability to use the CopBlock twitter account. While Justin Bourque was out killing Mounties, CopBlock sent out a tweet that read, “What the world needs is more people like Justin Bourque not fewer.” The same CopBlock that claims it doesn’t condone violence, the same CopBlock that claims adherence to something called the “Non Aggression Principle.”

Cantwell has lengthy rants on his blog where he waxes on about the reasons to kill cops. It’s not for the faint of heart or stomach. He’s an angry, angry man who doesn’t kill cops because HE doesn’t want to go to jail. He’d like to incite you to do the work for him. He cheered on Justin Bourque. He eulogized the Millers. And when Officer Stephen Arkell was killed in Brentwood, NH last month, Cantwell not only blamed Arkell for getting killed, he celebrated it. 

Justin Bourque had CopBlock memes on his Facebook page. Amanda Miller had a link to a YouTube video from the CopBlock channel that asks, “When is it Okay to Kill a Cop?” with words from an anarchist/Free Stater named Larken Rose. Jason Stam, the friend of Justin Bourque now in custody for threatening cops, posted Chris Cantwell’s CopBlock support for Bourque on his page.

CopBlock was co-founded by Adam Mueller, who calls himself Ademo Freeman and Pete Eyre. Mueller and Eyre are both members of the Free State Project. The Free State Project is the group of libertarians moving to NH with the intent of liberating us by occupying, colonizing, and taking over and dismantling the state government, and threatening secession. They claim to be nonviolent and peaceful. I serve on the board of a peace organization. We don’t have any videos that address when it would be okay to kill cops. That doesn’t fit into the category of peace – at least not as I understand it.

CopBlock has gotten a lot of negative media attention since the recent cop killing incidents took place. On June 11, they posted a notice on the CopBlock site that Cantwell is now a former author, and they pledged their adherence to the non-aggression principle. It was signed by a number of folks affiliated with the site, including co-founder Pete Eyre. It was not signed by Adam Mueller. He sent out a tweet saying that Cantwell “is no longer an admin of the FB page. Gotta be PC, ya know. Otherwise slaves won't like CopBlock.” In other words, they ditched Cantwell so that they can keep on getting well-intended folks to keep posting their memes and sending them money. That’s what they call non-Free Staters, by the way. Slaves.

Many members of the Free State Project will be appearing on ballots around the state this fall. At least one will be on the ballot in Carroll County. Ed Comeau of Brookfield is running for the NH House. Some of you will recognize Ed as the person who tapes a variety of public meetings, including the Carroll County Commissioners. The level of dysfunction we’ve seen in our county government may well have been nurtured by the FSP. Remember, their goal is the destruction of our form of government. What better way to begin than to ensure chaos, obstruction, and gridlock? It’s happening both in Concord and on the county level, engineered by Free Staters and their fellow travelers in the Tea Party and the John Birch Society. Always research your candidates to find out things like: What do they believe in? How do they support themselves financially? What groups are they associated with?

As for CopBlock, don’t be fooled by their attempt at a whitewash. They’ve allowed Cantwell’s rants all this time. The “When is it Okay to Shoot a Cop” video has been up on YouTube for over a year. If no cops had been killed, Cantwell would still be an administrator, and no one would be the wiser. The underbelly of our would-be liberators does not match their public face.

© sbruce 2014  

Published in the June 13 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.