Outlaw puppeteer

[JosephSHaas]

joe can you send me links to the laws you were prosecuted for allegedly breaking

and summarize in one sentence or less what you did to break them?

David, See: http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/NHTOC/NHTOC-LXII-640.htm for these seven "CORRUPT PRACTICES:" including RSA Ch. 640:3 over at http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/LXII/640/640-3.htm

Notice that it was a House/Senate Bill #____ in 2006 for its effective date of Jan. 1, 2007, so only a year and a quarter on the books with #___ cases unknown with the victims/ assailants being or having been prosecuted under.

A friend of mine: Gus Breton, the carpenter from Manchester (was Bow, Rte. 3A about a divorce case where his neighbor wanted his wife and land as an easier access road to his back lot) who came to me as a co-founder of VOCALS, Inc. [Victims of a Corrupt American Legal System], was later kept in jail beyond the Rule #__ for a "Speedy Trial" of four months, and so I first complained to Jim Duggan, the Judge who came down from the Supremes to Superior Court in Concord to tell him to check his arithmetic as wrong of NOT almost 4 months, but OVER 4 months, but him being a dunce about it, pretending not to hear my verbal complaint in the courtroom, and the Investigator for the A.G. Mike Bahan, saying what an "asshole" I was to even bring this up to the "honorable" judge!

Then when I went to the Attorney General's office and started talking about "Let my People Go" as Moses would have said, she thought that I was going to conjure up some plague cloud to go after her first born infant daughter by midnight so she/ Kelly Ayotte filled out some Affidavit for an Arrest Warrant, and the Concord Police goon-squad did visit me at my office with video tape going to try to get evidence should I had resisted arrest.

I later won the case, after my family having put up $25,000 cash bail, or else I too would have had to sit it out for months in jail in Boscawen before finally being found: NOT GUILTY, thanks to Attorney Ted Barnes of Court Street, Concord , as I've said.

Yours truly, - Joe

P.S. You should have been there in Concord District Court when my attorney asked the COP on the stand for HOW I was supposed to have been some magician to conjure up a plague cloud to attack her daughter! Hilarious, just bizarre! And the COP had never heard of this The Ten Plagues of Egypt story in the Bible. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagues_of_Egypt

note: moral of the story that wishing thinking is not a crime, but then again the George Orwellian "Nineteen Eighty Four" and Double-Speakers will have you run the gauntlet anyway when you're the miner's canary or like a Town Crier saying that the law or statute is broken and you want it fixed, or you MIGHT suffer the same consequences as those from history.

[Dave Ridley]

one thing i still need to know that is important:  can someone name for  me a case where someone was prosecuted for harmlessly violating an obscure or obsolete law in the last ten years?

i'd like to include that in any note i might write as a news release or what not.
if no such thing has ever happened it would make this type of civil dis harder to sell.

[Dave Ridley]

Can someone tell me how many laws NH has?   how many pages of laws?   what time do the legislators usually break for lunch on days where there are a series of house floor votes?  Is there any chance they would be done for the day before 12:30 p.m. on 4/23?

[J’raxis 270145]

Can someone tell me how many laws NH has?   how many pages of laws?   what time do the legislators usually break for lunch on days where there are a series of house floor votes?  Is there any chance they would be done for the day before 12:30 p.m. on 4/23?

Not in conventional terms, but this might be useful:—

The entire RSA site, as of 2008-03-02, is 164,548 KiB. (I downloaded the entire thing locally, for reference.) Since the laws are included on their own section pages, and on a "merged" page containing all the laws under an entire title, that's about twice the actual amount of text contained therein.

[Dave Ridley]

i determine that to mean 820k worth of laws, or roughly 330 pages
what do you think?

using your document could you work up an estimate as to how many laws there are?

[J’raxis 270145]

Move that decimal over a bit. More like 82,274 KiB, give or take—meaning 80.3 MiB of laws.

With what I have, I can strip out the markup, skip over the merged and table-of-contents files, and run a word-count on the text, to get a better number... I'll get back to you on that tomorrow or Monday.

[Luke S]

it is illegal in New Hampshire it exhibit a puppet show for pay without a license (among other things including rope-dancing and card tricks).

One of the most ridiculous laws I've ever heard of.

[J’raxis 270145]

it is illegal in New Hampshire it exhibit a puppet show for pay without a license (among other things including rope-dancing and card tricks).

One of the most ridiculous laws I've ever heard of.

Perhaps it's to prevent puppeteers from living in their own fantasylands, and to prevent broken puppets from being strewn about the streets...

[Luke S]

one thing i still need to know that is important:  can someone name for  me a case where someone was prosecuted for harmlessly violating an obscure or obsolete law in the last ten years?

i'd like to include that in any note i might write as a news release or what not.
if no such thing has ever happened it would make this type of civil dis harder to sell.

Not in New Hampshire, but I do remember one time waking up at 1:00 AM in Petoskey, Michigan to the sound of police sirens on New Year's Eve/Day, and I remember looking out my window, and I saw the police had pulled over this guy, and I forget what they had originally pulled him over for, but they said that they were also going to write him a ticket for having expired tags on his license plate. And then I hear him say "Oh, you've got to be kidding me! They only've been expired for one hour!" And then I hear the cop say back to him "Too bad, you're getting a ticket." I thought it was utterly unreasonable.

[John Edward Mercier]

it is illegal in New Hampshire it exhibit a puppet show for pay without a license (among other things including rope-dancing and card tricks).

One of the most ridiculous laws I've ever heard of.

Perhaps it's to prevent puppeteers from living in their own fantasylands, and to prevent broken puppets from being strewn about the streets...

Is it new, or a hold over now covered by other statutes?

[mackler]

it is illegal in New Hampshire it exhibit a puppet show for pay without a license (among other things including rope-dancing and card tricks).

One of the most ridiculous laws I've ever heard of.

The law is the law, my friend. Apparently you think you know better than the democratically elected representatives who authorizedly enacted that law.  I know your type.

[Dave Ridley]

Ok here is a rough draft of a note i may send to the authorites.
note that i am not yet committing to do this but am moving closer
the objections i've heard so far are not compelling enough to dissuade me, but are appreciated.  and there could still be something we're missing. keep em coming.

anyone see factual errors? what could i do to improve the wording?

What:       Illegal puppet show
When:       (for now I'm thinking Wednesday, April 23, 2008. Starting between 12:00 and 12:30 p.m.  i'd hope you guys would be there earlier). 
Where:      New Hampshire State House, 107 N. Main, Concord, NH.   We'll be outside,
                Near Main but out of pedestrians' way.   
How:         "Outlaw Puppeteer" will perform loose adaptation of "The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail,"
                As an act of civil disobedience against the state's prohibition
                On unlicensed puppeteering.
Who:         Dave Ridley, 41, of NHfree.com.  Ridley is a Manchester videographer. 
                Projected turnout is 20, mostly folks from NHfree.com
Why:         Protest legislature's refusal to repeal unnecessary laws.
Contacts:   Dave Ridley: (number) (email)
                Kelly Halldorson: (number, email)
                Ian Bernard (number)


Dear folks (various politicians and bureaucrats)

Somewhere between ____ and ____ on  _____, I intend to commit an illegal act in Concord.  I will hold a puppett show, for profit, without government permission.  The show will be wholesome and unobtrusive.  But it will violate RSA 286:1.*  Hopefully this will draw some small attention to the neglected importance of repealing unneeded laws. 

Earlier this year, the State House overwhelmingly  voted down HB1347, a bill aimed at removing obsolete statutes.  There were problems with the bill's wording, but the fact remains Concord has declined to eliminate dozens, maybe thousands, of senseless laws which clutter our books at best...and endanger our freedoms at worst.  It's illegal to pick up seaweed off the beach.**  It's illegal to clean litter off the White Mountains without a permit.*** And, of course, it's illegal to grow hemp for even for the most constructive of purposes.

Some of our crazy laws lie dormant and largely unenforced, others crowd our jails with victimless "criminals."   And more appear upon the scene each year to confuse or strangle individuals and businesses.

After 200+ years of adding laws (82 Megabytes worth), it's time to reverse the madness.  It's time for Concord to start eliminating laws instead of imposing them.   A sunset provision on all new laws would be nice.  A robust "repeal committee" might be an option.  Some laws I can't argue with, but others block literally prevent people from living their lives.  So I beg lawmakers:   Stop "protecting" us from commerce you don't approve of.  Stop protecting us from ourselves.

We who cherish our vanishing freedoms are often told we should work within the system, but though the system sometimes works in New Hampshire it has refused to carry out this repair.  Thoreau put it best:   "As for the means the state has provided me for changing it....they take too long, and a man's life will be gone."

So I will do what Thoreau did, and respectfully violate the law rather than wait for a repeal that may never come.  My intent is peaceable and I bear no grudge.  But I will not stop until I am arrested, or have amassed a thousand dollars in illegal puppeteering profits.    I will come back again and again until one of the above occurrs.  And I urge other New Hampshirites to do something similar.  Don't mindlessly obey laws that harm the people, just because they are laws.

Depending on the exact location of boundaries, this event may violate not only RSA 286 but also the prohibition against demonstrating without a permit on state house grounds.  I'm ready to be flexible on this issue so long as we're not forced to request a permit, to leave the area of the state house, or to stand in anyone's way.  But if need be I will face charges of violating the permit-to-demonstrate provision.   In any case, RSA 286 appears to ban many types of unlicensed shows not only on public property but everywhere in the state.  So it apparently would still be illegal to do this, even your own home!

Adding slavery to injury, RSA 286 deputizes the hapless selectmen of every town and makes *them* prosecute.  Hopefully that provision is rarely enforced, but if not enforced why does it need to be on the books?

Again, this is about more than the right to hold public performances without government permission.  It's about the need to reduce the estimated 100,000+ pages worth of often harmful New Hampshire law, something we will never accomplish through conventional means.

* Puppet Law:  RSA 286:1 - http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/xxiv/286/286-mrg.htm
** Seaweed law - http://www.gencourt.state.nh.us/rsa/html/XVIII/207/207-48.htm
*** Litter pickup law - http://www.ahajokes.com/laws029.html

[Dave Ridley]

i've faxed the AGs office as mackler suggested, on apr. 15 requesting clarifications regarding the law.   no response thus far.

[Dave Ridley]

Does anyone have a disposable cell phone i could borrow for this?  i'd want to have a cell to take to jail., but dont want to take my own. 

you probably need a cell when you exit the building, to call for a ride. 

[slim]

Dada I have a few questions.

1. If they do arrest you what will you plead to in court?
2. If you plead not guilty will you get a public trial?
3. If they attempt to arrest you during the show will you comply and stop the show or will you continue the show and force the cops to stop the show?
4. If you are fined will you pay the fine?
5. If you will pay the fine could refreshments (i.e. juice, soda, popcorn, candy) be sold during the show to help you pay the fine?