I’m Not The Only One

I’m not a huge sports junkie, but I do enjoy an occasional game once in a while.  However, I prefer watching it online as opposed to attending a live game.  The main reason for this preference comes not just from the price of concessions or tickets, the loud and obnoxious team “supporters, surly asshole ushers who think you’re trying to sneak into the expensive seats when you’re actually just lost, or even leaving my home to go watch the game.

What I really hate about attending live games is what takes place before the game: the demand that everyone there stand during the Pledge of Allegiance and the playing of the national anthem.  Sure, some people will drag out the tired, old argument that soldiers died abroad so that I could have the “honor” of reciting the Pledge. In truth, U.S. troops have mostly died to protect the economic interests of U.S. corporations, overthrow foreign governments, destabilize entire regions, complete Manifest Destiny and punish 11 states for seceding.  Very little of that troop deployment had to do with actually defending Americans from external threats, and indirectly, our “right” to mindlessly recite a pledge and honor America’s theme song when instructed to do so .

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I recently came across this YouTube video which was shared by a friend on Facebook.

The film focuses on Joseph Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which has conducted countless raids on the people of Uganda.  The raids primarily consist of kidnapping boys and forcing them into their army and kidnapping girls to use as sex slaves as well as whatever items of value they find.  The Ugandan military forced the LRA out of Uganda in 2005.  Since then Kony and his army has found refuge in neighboring countries South Sudan, Congo and the Central African Republic, pillaging and engaging in child abduction in Uganda’s border villages. (more…)

Like Occupy Wall Street, many of the participants in the worldwide Occupy protests have been painted as being overwhelmingly leftist with big government advocates demanding the government fix the problems it has created.

The media further solidifies this image of the Occupy demonstrations as being a socialist movement by flooding newspaper, television and Internet with oodles of images of protestors wearing Che Guevara t-shirts, holding up images of Karl Marx and waving the anarcho-socialist flag.  But this isn’t Manhattan; labor unions and other big-government cheerleaders might be less likely to join an Occupy protest in libertarian-leaning New Hampshire.  In fact, the local limited government crowd might produce enough numbers to counter the progressive feel of other Occupy demonstrations elsewhere in the country. (more…)

Anyone who has their finger on the pulse of viral videos has most likely seen by now the YouTube video of a Manchester, New Hampshire high school student being manhandled by a police officer in the school cafeteria.  The video was quickly picked up by Cop Block, an organization dedicated to increasing police accountability and educating people on their civil rights.  Cop Block interviewed Frank Harrington, the 17-year old who was slammed into a cafeteria table by Manchester PD Officer Darren Murphy.  Cop Block also interviewed Harrington’s friend who video recorded the incident and in another video attempted to interview Officer Murphy.

Why was Harrington handled so roughly by this officer assigned to West Manchester High?  This kid isn’t exactly a model student.  At 17, he’s still taking sophomore classes, and doesn’t spend to much time worrying about classwork, or homework for that matter.  He stole his sister’s purse (also a student in the high school) with the intention of returning the purse to her after lunch period. His teachers and principal asked him for the purse, and he refused.  Apparently since the school officials felt they didn’t have the right to use physical force on Harrington to retrieve his sister’s purse without any legal repercussions, they sent in someone who they believed did. (more…)

For those who have been paying attention, many disillusioned people have banded together in a demonstration called Occupy Wall Street.  The goal of this supposedly leaderless organization is to have 20,000 protestors flood the streets of lower Manhattan and occupy it for several months.  The goal is to restore democracy in America by mimicking the successes protestors made in Spain, Egypt, Greece and Iceland which Occupy Wall Street supporter claim was achieved by mass occupation of financial centers of those protestor respective countries.

So far the protest has received some media attention, with the mainstream media initially refusing to cover the protests but eventually have had to as independent media outlets and mountains of video footage of the event emerged on YouTube.  The first MSM outlet I’ve seen cover the OWS (other than a somewhat biased New York Times article) was a surprising editorial by MSNBC.  From the looks of these videos, it appears that almost every participant is equipped with some sort of video recording device.  The paramilitary organization known as the New York City Police Department has reacted to the protest with mass arrests, barricading protestors, assaulting them and dousing their eyes with pepper spray. (more…)

I recently met a New Hampshire native who was fairly familiar with the Free State Project and was also fairly critical of how successful it could be.  He was doubtful that people from other states would be successful in limiting the government in New Hampshire if they weren’t willing to do the same thing in their home states.

On the surface, this question has some merit, but when you dig deeper, the question sounds absolutely ridiculous.   The Free State Project was launched to attract liberty-minded people to come to a state where they had a far better chance of limiting government than wherever they came from.  The majority of people who emigrate to New Hampshire as part of the FSP come from states whose governments were far more intrusive, expansive and expensive than in New Hampshire.

Most NH natives have no real concept of what an extreme oppressive government is like, the phenomenon of being controlled by the state in many ways and paying extra taxes for the assumed privilege of being bullied around by said governments, so I can understand the ignorance from which this question comes.  Not to say that people from New Hampshire are ignorant; they are in fact some of the most fiscally and politically savvy people I’ve ever met. That said, their frame of reference of what role their local government plays in their lives is very, very different than what Americans from say, Los Angeles, New York City, New Jersey, North Carolina, Michigan and other parts of the country know.   (more…)

In the last week I’ve seen many people with the following status on their Facebook page.

 “NYPD FDNY AND EMS OFFICERS WERE NOT INVITED TO THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY CEREMONY OF 9/11… MAYOR BLOOMBERG CLAIMS THERE IS NO ROOM FOR THEM… 10 YEARS AGO, THEY WEREN’T INVITED BUT THEY SHOWED UP!!! REPOST IF YOU AGREE THEY SHOULD BE THERE….”

Technically I am re-posting this, but not on Facebook, which was the intenti0n of this post, so I definitely don’t agree with it.

In fact, I don’t think any employee or representative from any government agency should attend the 9/11 memorial ceremony at Ground Zero.  Those within the e 9/11 Truth Movement suggest that the federal government either knew about the attacks in advance and deliberately did nothing or orchestrated the attacks to trick Americans into supporting the Patriot Act and the invasion and conquest of Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya.

This is not unlike the conspiracy theory in which President Franklin D. Roosevelt allegedly ignored intelligence reports suggesting the Japanese were planning to attack Pearl Harbor, and that the Roosevelt administration deliberately failed to prevent the attack in order to convince Americans to abandon their isolationist sentiments, support the declaration of war on the Axis powers and bring the United States into World War II. (more…)

I’ve had a few people ask me why police oppression/brutality is so high in New Hampshire.  The Free State Project has the goal of getting 20,000 liberty-minded people to move to New Hampshire, but some of the content posted by Free Stater-owned media outlets like the Ridley Report, Free Keene, Talley.TV and Free Talk Live have made some people hesitant about moving to NH.  One click on any of the above websites and it is not hard to find some coverage about NH judges, state and local police abusing their authority.

One such incident occurred in June when some Free Staters decided to hold a protest outside the Manchester PD headquarters.  Some protestors scribbled slogans on the police station with chalk such as “Badges Don’t Grant Extra Rights” and many held video cameras and cameraphones to document how the police would react.  Eight people were arrested and charged with misconduct and criminal mischief for committing such crimes as chalking on the sidewalk and walls of the station, not dispersing when told to do so, refusing to present state ID and “collecting evidence” with their electronic devices.  Some had their devices confiscated (stolen) from police officers and were arrested when they attempted to retrieve their possessions later.

I don’t know about New Hampshire being the freest, but it is freer than a lot of other places in the country. In my hometown of NYC, the protestors would’ve been arrested just for assembling in public without a permit. Forget no ID or chalking.  And in New York, a lot of those protestors would’ve needed medical attention, as the cops there are lot more hostile and brutal than in NH, even to those who don’t resist arrest. (more…)

One thing I kept hearing back when I was working in New York for Democrats on their election campaigns was, “No, no, no.  That’s just a political promise,” followed by a chuckle.  The issue at hand was residential zoning.  Homeowners who had been in the community for three or four decades wanted things just the way it had always been for them, and wanted the New York City Council to reform the zoning codes to restrict the development of multiple-household dwellings to be built in the neighborhood or for large homes to be subdivided into three or four apartments.

Newcomers to the neighborhood, especially recent immigrants wanted the zoning codes to remain as they were, allowing developers and property owners to continue to build multiple dwellings and subdivide existing structures to accommodate the ever-increasing demand for housing in New York City.  Dividing existing structures also made the individual apartments within the structure more affordable for people who otherwise could not have afforded to buy an entire home.  Of course, my candidate, who was the puppet of a very influential and well-connected politician, promised to fight for both affordable housing and neighborhood preservation, while in reality having no intention to assist either side.  Two political promises had been made. (more…)

Michigan set an unsettling precedent in American politics recently when Governor-appointed Emergency Finance Managers were allowed to overreach their powers over certain towns, cities and counties throughout the state. With Michigan running in debt for decades, EFMs were appointed about 20 years ago and only until recently have had a mostly advisory position within the cash-strapped local governments and school districts to which they are assigned.  But now the state government has expanded what the EFM can do, overstepping the powers of locally elected officials, and in some cases, firing them. (more…)

Anthony Weiner, a Congressmember from my old hometown of Queens, is just the latest (and won’t be the last!) of many politicians embroiled in an embarrassing scandal.  At the same time, we recently learned that former Senator and failed Vice Presidential and later Presidential candidate John Edwards has been indicted by a North Carolina grand jury on six felony charges which if convicted he will face 30 years in prison and $1.5 million fine.

I’m not going to rehash the entire story regarding the New York Senator and his fondness for underage and college-age females but in the event you still don’t know about it just Google Anthony Weiner or check out the compressed version here.

While Congress is trying to determine whether Weiner used Congressional resources to send his semi-nude pics to young girls of all ages, the Weinermeister has decided to temporarily abandon his job to seek professional help for his sex addiction.  According to the Daily Mail of the UK, however, Weiner will continue to stay on the Congressional payroll and will still collect (not earn) $476.71 a day (calculated from his annual salary of $174,000).  Thankfully, Weiner got enough bad press and harassment from the public that he finally gave up his Congressional seat. (more…)

Since I moved to New Hampshire last April as part of the Free State Project, I often feel like an immigrant from the Soviet Union or Cuba or some other incredibly repressive place coming to America.  Home to one of the country’s most expensive nanny states, New York City can be very expensive and very restrictive thanks to its high and numerous taxes and scores of regulation.  New Hampshire is the complete opposite, and having been a political activist years ago, to see the inner workings of the NH legislature is amazing when compared to the sluggish, stupified and corrupt governments that run the state of New York and NYC.  Talk about a sharp contrast.

Occasionally, I  come across stories in both New York and New Hampshire worth commenting on, but for some unknown reason, have not.  That’s going to change.  Like any good immigrant, I stay current on what’s happening in my crumbling “homeland” as well as my new home.  And there’s no reason why I shouldn’t add my two cents here.

And that’s what I plan to do from now on.

Although my shoulder is still in some pain, I felt I should do some blogging.

If you’re like me, who believes the private sector serves people better than government, you’ve probably ran into at least one statist sheep who reminds you that we all rely on public roads and highways to get around.  I’ve even heard smarmy remarks like “But you use public roads to get around while you rail against the government, right?”  This of course is a cheap shot and a poor excuse for an argument, since the government enjoys a monopoly on road building, ownership and maintenance. (more…)

The GOP was given a second chance this week as the party regained a majority in the House of Representatives, a significant number of seats in the U.S. Senate and several gubernatorial and statewide races across the country.

Of course, this should not be seen as a license to pull the same nonsense that went on during the Bush Administration.  And since many Americans, including myself, have lost faith in established Congressmembers to make any kind of change for the better, the survival of the Republican Party rests squarely on the actions of the newly elected Tea Party politicians.  Refusing bribes and ignoring threats from special interest groups and resisting the urge to abuse one’s power may not be easy, especially for newly minted Congressmembers.  But if they give in to temptation these Tea Partiers won’t have to worry about abusing their new powers, because they will be promptly voted out of office. (more…)