Posted on 03/15/2005 6:49:33 PM PST by Dada Orwell
Free Staters enable surprise victory over educrats in New Hampshire town
It may not change the world, but a small victory for freedom in New Hampshire may indicate interesting things to come in the Live Free or Die state. March 8 saw local elections across New Hampshire which, as usual went both well and badly for freedom depending on where you live.
A small but ultra-active group of libertarian migrants appears to have made the difference in at least one controversial election, in the southwestern town of Keene (pop 23,000). To the glee of taxpayer groups and the fury of some government workers, the town's tiny group of Free Staters appear to have delivered a swing vote against the local public school lobby - in the state's most liberal town.
Earlier this year members of the school board's conservative minority turned to the five Free Staters who've moved there and asked for help on a seemingly innocuous but politically controversial issue. They simply wanted to sell a moldy, underused administrative building that is wasting nearly a million bucks worth of taxpayer dough annually. But local government schooling advocates saw this as a challenge to their turf spent years sabotaging the sale. This month the issue ended up before the voters.
In response to the board minority's pleas, four of the five Free Stater migrants turned up at the polls during a blizzard, each carrying signs urging voters to approve the building sale. One of them was me (I did six hours at six degrees). Using talk radio, letters to the editor and this surprise appearance at the polls...the tiny group worked to make sure the building got sold. In the event, the victory on this was so overwhelming, it looks like it would have happened even without us. But on a related - equally important issue - voters were essentially asked whether they wanted the money from the sale to go back to taxpayers or be distributed by the board. On this issue victory was achieved by only 9 votes - in other words, without the Free Stater votes and their PR effort this money (estimated in the hundreds of thousands) would probably be going straight back to public schooling instead of taxpayers.
There are now thought to be some evolving schemes for sabotaging the voters' will, and the fight will go on - sometimes to the benefit of educrats. But judging from the rage I saw at the polls, by GovSchool advocates, they feel that something has changed and that their ability to violate the taxpayer wallet is at risk. It's a reminder of what Free Staters call the "filtering effect:" those libertarian types who joined the Free State Project and then moved up here for freedom are proving to be hardcore activists, having an impact out of all proportion to their numbers.
This is what we do with five, in one town.
Wait until we have 5,000 statewide.
I've been watching the free-staters with interest for a while now. I think it's a great idea; possibly the last,best hope of our Republic, and one day I hope to be able to persuade the Mr. that NH wouldn't be THAT cold.
The Free Staters are needed to offset the Massachusetts influx looking to put their stamp on things.
As a former "Masshole," I can attest that we're not all that bad!
Some of us just need to get away, as often as possible. Which means weekends and summers.....
It seems clear that the Republican Party is running out of gas and just becoming democRat-lite, so it's good to see a party supporting true limited government doing something about it.
Congrats! I would join you all, but for the cold.
Who's bright idea was it to pick such a cold place?
Well done FreeStaters...
mark bump
Pardon, but could you post a link to the actual article, instead of just to the propaganda site?
I don't believe the article was pubished anywhere, except some forums. Did you want the forum URL?
Here's a related article:
http://freemarketnews.com/ What's Happening in NH
(I can't get a direct link and not sure how long that will be up there.)
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