NHexit.com discussion

[Free libertarian]

My thought is that there were 9 people that weren't doing this before. First step of the thousand mile journey and all that.

  Good point.  Every drop of rain helps to fill the pond or something like that.

If you need to fill the pond quickly, lies make baby Jesus cry.

Dude, he's not a baby, he's like 2,050 years old by now.  Haven't you even seen his beard?

[Jim Johnson]

My thought is that there were 9 people that weren't doing this before. First step of the thousand mile journey and all that.

  Good point.  Every drop of rain helps to fill the pond or something like that.

If you need to fill the pond quickly, lies make baby Jesus cry.

Dude, he's not a baby, he's like 2,050 years old by now.  Haven't you even seen his beard?

....still makes Him cry.

[Dave Ridley]

I make a lot of talk radio calls, some mentioning NHexit if appropriate. This one you'll want to hear about. WCRN in Massachusetts has this thing called "First Amendment Friday" where they supposedly let you phone in about the subject of your choice. But on "terror days" and "dead cop days" recently they've been acting like they only want you to talk about "terror" and "dead cop." So...I called in last Friday about NHexit....but they only wanted to talk about the Dallas cop killing terrorist (even though he was more of a guerrilla fighter than a terrorist). On air they lectured listeners that it might be a problem if they called in about anything other than the Dallas "terrorist." I called in anyway to hold them to their "you get to pick the topic on Fridays" claim. and the call dropped twice...not sure if they were hanging up on me. So I called in again today a week later. I suggested they ask me questions rather than having me spew updates. For some reason that pissed them off, maybe because I wasn't talking about terrorism....and there had been some terrorism in France. This time they at least let me on. Once I got on the host lectured me that...although he had seen NHexit all over the news...we didn't have enough people at our protest...which he read about all over the news. He said I should think twice about calling in and discussing NHexit when obviously I should be talking about terrorists attacking French people.
I was happy with the call. I'll keep on him. I don't dislike the guy but he seemed out of line. With regard to recording and rebroadcasting these calls... maybe I record them, maybe I don't...but there is a chilling effect to both. Does recording run afowl of wiretap laws? Does rebroadcasting run afowl of copyright? Wish it were safer to do both and just upload the audio. For our children in a free country someday, maybe it will be!

[Russell Kanning]

so they invent terrorist attacks to instill fear and hatred ... and if you talk about something else that is unacceptable?

[andy1337]

Can I ask about the "Motivating factors" for NHexit? The one most of you probably care about, and that I care about, is the Libertarian ideal that power should be as close to the individual as possible. Has anyone done any polling on how much that motivates people? The reason I ask is that some of the Brexit motivating factors don't seem to apply to NHexit.
People in Britain mostly see themselves as British, not European, but my guess is that most people in NH see themselves as Americans, and that it'd be difficult to change that
Britain gave far more to the EU than it got back in spending - about 3 to 1. In the case of NH, the ratio of federal taxes to federal spending seems to come out around even (although if enough of the federal spending is itself unpopular, that could still be a factor)
Huge sections of Britain felt they were being swamped with immigrants, and that they didn't like those immigrants very much, either because they were Muslim and therefore presumably hostile to British values, or Eastern European and therefore presumably willing to do unskilled labour more cheaply than unskilled working class Brits. The EU mandated free movement of these people within Europe, so at least 5-8 million of the 17 million brexiteers were against it for that reason alone. It's doesn't seem clear to me that people feel the same thing in NH, or that a post-NHexit state house would want to limit immigration very much in any case.
I'm a long way from the situation in the ground in NH, could someone closer to it explain to me how you intend to motivate people to vote for NHexit as and when a referendum takes place?

[Dave Ridley]

thanks for checking in earlier andy... looking at your last post in a sec. 

Update on the website:  Thanks to a wordpress premium hosting donor now at least it says  http://nhexit.com in the type-here field  instead of blah wordpress yadda yadda.  We'll see how that affects other displays.

[andy1337]

Ok Dave.
The current site isn't great on mobile, there's a lot of scrolling. I'm sure that's fixable.
Also, sorry if I come across as being negative about everything. I think NHexit is possible, but it's more possible if we all recognise just how hard it is. We're not in the place Brexit was in 2015, we're in the place Scot Nats were in 1950. We'll get there, but there's a lot of work ahead of us.

[Dave Ridley]

Andy I can't speak for all the others here let alone all other sympathizers statewide.  My own primary motivation is this: At a stroke, we would be rid of perhaps 90% of the laws and regulations which block our lives/businesses from attaining their potential and endanger us by virtue of the fact that we can't even tell when we're violating them.  Not until Fibbies come knocking.

I'm basing that number on the fact that Fed law/regulation is between 170,000 and 2,000,000 pages long...depending on how you count it.  I think NH law is "only" about 25,000 pages long.

Secondarily, but critically, the means to independence are ends in themselves.   By that I mean, taking partial steps in that direction or even getting a little publicity...benefits us even if we never achieve independence. The publicity almost certainly triggers movers and signers for the Free State Project.  It, and growth of the independence movement, create a motive for the central government to be cautious with New Hampshirites...lest it spark some sort of referendum or embarrassing legislative move.

As for how we would motivate people to vote for independence, I'm counting on Washington to most of that for us.   But there is a need to game out what kinds of shiny toys and businesses might  become immediately lawful in a New Hampshire outside the Union...   Flying cars, for instance?

[andy1337]

Keep working on it. We need a clear "If it wasn't for the Feds, we could..."
And whatever it is, 51% of people need to believe it strongly enough that they stop thinking of themselves as Americans, and start thinking of themselves as people that could do whatever the fantastic thing is, if it wasn't for those damn Americans.

[Free libertarian]

 One of the ironies which might be pointed out is how Maggie Hassan has "lead the fight" to ignore the feds.   She oversees the federally illegal sale of cannabis at the weeds stores NH holds a forcible monopoly on.     So, technically speaking, she's an outlaw.  (smirk).

I like to point out irony, as it can be an effective tool to gain attention. 

[Russell Kanning]

Andy I agree with all of Dave's points above.
The means of non-violently opposing evil are at odds with the US government's means of killing and jailing, so separating me and others from them makes sense.
In regards to balance of payments-bennies NH-Feds ..... sometimes NH heads the lists of "donor" states. All states are net donors to the feds. We have to be .... do you have any idea how many people live off us down in DC alone? Then you add in all the money they "lose".
If you think this is possible .... I am excited.

[Russell Kanning]

interesting

[Russell Kanning]

https://wallethub.com/edu/states-most-least-dependent-on-the-federal-government/2700/

[Russell Kanning]

this one has NH at #3
http://taxfoundation.org/sites/taxfoundation.org/files/docs/sr139.pdf

[Dave Ridley]

in response to andy's suggestion I will probably add some sort of "talking point builder" to the list of roles that need filling.