I'm also a member of the Free State Project and wanted to say how great the community is. It's really like a big family and everyone helps each other out in times of need. Lauren Canario has been imprisoned for 59 days without a trial for sitting on a porch (protesting Connecticut's eminent domain policy) and the members of the FSP community have given her tons of support over the past couple of months.

I've found freedom in an unfree world by becoming a member of the Free State Project and the 1st 1000.

If you want to get to know the community better you should probably check out NH Free as well.

Thanks for bringing this up Zhwazi.

Seems like there are a few 'sunshine' issues other than the weather.

Lawmakers prepare four right-to-know bills

By Chris Dornin Golden Dome News

CONCORD — The legislature has tried for years to pass an updated Right-to-Know Law that better fosters open government without scaring off the public servants who make democracy work. Journalists with tight deadlines have pushed for a statute that has enforcement teeth. The news gets old fast.
Officials agree in concept, but fear getting nailed for innocent violations. They seek something simple, clear and flexible enough to let them do their unpaid jobs.
The main problem is email. More and more selectmen, planners and school board members vet their schemes in electronic mailings to all their colleagues. It’s an easy way to do the public’s business in the age of computers and gifted cell phones. But old-fashioned debates in front of community access TV cameras have gotten shorter and shorter.
A major bill to carry out both competing goals, HB 626, was sponsored last term by Representative John Thomas, R-Belmont. It passed the House 266-41 last February, but died in the senate. This month a study commission he chairs drew up four bills to enact most of that legislation in doable pieces. If one dies, another might become law.
“Last session we thought it would be easier to pass a single bill,” said Thomas, who also serves Gilford, Alton and Barnstead. “In the end, I recommended retaining the bill because of the complexity of the discussions.”
This time his group hopes to guide the House Judiciary Committee through every step.
“Whatever we devise must work equally well for a city like Nashua,” Thomas said, “or a town with a farmer, a store owner and a truck driver for selectmen, and a clerk who does the town’s work at a kitchen table. You don’t want to shut down a community like that. You don’t want the law to be so onerous nobody will serve.”
Senator Joe Kenney, R-Wakefield, was a member of the Senate Public and Municipal Affairs Committee that looked at the Thomas legislation last time. A former selectman, Kenney helped grill him on its intricacies.
“We purposely tried not to meet, particularly in a café, because there’s a perception by the public that you’re conducting public business,” Kenney said of his career in local government. “We avoided meeting at the post office or the town dump too. Perception is nine tenths of the law when it comes to right to know.”
Taxpayer groups often use the law to probe for real or alleged fiscal waste. Ed Naile, a member of the Coalition of NH Taxpayers, has probably filed as many right-to-know suits as anyone in the state. He warned that HB 626 protected towns too much.
“We’re concerned about outside meetings (of officials). This bill allows outside meetings,” he said.
Dean Cascadden, the school superintendent for Whitefield, encourages his board to make policy in public so voters can see their intent, not just their decisions. If he emails members on something important, he adds that message to the record in the next formal meeting.
“We’ve only faced one right to know case,” Cascadden said. “We would have given out the information anyway if they had asked. Whatever law they adopt, I’ll change my behavior to comply. But if all email becomes a public record, board members will stop using it and go back to private conversations. What you don’t want is a quick vote on a controversial topic after no public discussion.”
The ironic demise of HB 626 is maybe a prime example. Senator Sheila Roberge, R-Bedford, rose as if to introduce the bill and explain its 4-2 favorable committee endorsement. That’s the normal procedure.
“I move to table,” she said, and that was all she said. Nobody asked any questions, nobody disagreed. Voice vote yes. The whole thing was over in 15 seconds. It looked like the very secrecy the bill was meant to avoid.
Senate Majority leader Bob Clegg, R-Hudson, recalled the Republican and Democratic caucuses both wanted another year to polish the legislation. Clegg feared it would have stopped any two senators from meeting at lunch.
“It would have worked fine in the House, where they have such large committees,” he said. “But two senators can discuss a bill, and it’s a violation. We allow quorums of two people. You could never meet outside your committee room. The Democrats had the same problem with the bill we did.”
Lawmakers changed the statute several years ago to exempt partisan political caucuses from doing their work in public. The only caucuses like that are in the Statehouse.
The Right to Know Law Oversight Commission has convened a couple of times a month for three years trying to hone a law that works for everyone. One of their proposed bills would hold officials liable for the “reasonable” legal fees of someone seeking public information “provided that the body, agency or person knew or should have known that the conduct was in violation of this chapter.”
If the denial of access to documents or meetings is in “bad faith,” even individual defendants could be liable for those fees.
Another bill would let officials hold an emergency session without full public notice if they disclose what happened at the next formal meeting.
“Communications outside a meeting, including, but not limited to, sequential communications among embers of a public body, shall not be used to circumvent the spirit of this chapter,” this same bill adds.
A clause suggested by Dean Michener of the School Boards Association would let school officials make sensitive decisions about kids in private unless the students or their parents ask for a public deliberation.
The commission spent its first year just brainstorming about a huge topic the courts had asked lawmakers to clarify. Judges often found themselves interpreting an outdated statute.
“They were inundated with cases,” Thomas said in his legislative testimony.

To be skeptical,
it seems like a ploy to get the population up from its dismal 1.7 million. If it really is such a great place then wouldn't it have more people already?
I would think that there would be a mass exodus from Boston to Nashua since it's only a 50 mile drive. Or Windham since it's only 37.5 miles.

I just hope that the 20,000 people aren't the guys in the red shirts on an old episode of Star Trek.

"Captain, over here. I've found something. AAAAGGGGHHHH!"

This strategy has been tried for decades and is a proven failure, hence, the Free State Project. Working for change where you are is going to get harder than ever as the best activists continue to be siphoned off to New Hampshire. I hope you eventually realize the futility of your methods and come home to NH.

As was stated earlier, we're not running from a problem (government), we're regrouping in one place to make a stand for Liberty.

Finally, there is nothing isolationist about Liberty. Liberty advocates want open borders and trade with all who wish to trade.

I invite anyone who is fed up with the consistent lack of progress towards Liberty in their area to look into the Free State Project at http://freestateproject.org . I moved to NH in September and only regret that I didn't come sooner.

I dunno... I mean, what the alternative?
Remaining scatter and effectively unable to change anything anywhere?

If you have one succesful free state, you can benefit from it even if you don't live there.
At the very least you will be able to show it as an example to all the people claiming you need someone from above to guide you through your life by the hand, in order to survive.

I second Zhwazis Hi to Ian, I have listened to FTL a few times and it is cool to see Ian on this board.

It's no more isolationist than the very existence of countries and states is isolationist. Countries and states set the rules for their territory. We want different rules than most people. It's not isolationism, it's just how political division works.

A nice idea, but NH is still under federal law. From what I can see, the feds tend to mess in every state regardless of local laws. For example, I understand California made marijuana practically legal. But people there still go to jail for it because of federal policing.

And the implied future intent is not very realistic(granted I may be off, but I can see no reason to need to have people to commit without intending to gain voting power by doing so, especially after reading the "statement of intent" ). Even if New Hampshire were able to secede(which I see as unlikely at best until the inevitable breakup of the US), it doesn't have the resources to survive as a seperate nation. A look at the NH Department of Resources and Economic Development page says they depend mostly on trees and tourism. As a Canadian, I can tell you the US is downright nasty when it comes to lumber, so the trees wouldn't make the newly founded country nearly as much money as it does now. And tourism would dry up instantly, as Americans were discouraged to travel there for such purposes(much like Cuba) in an attempt to force NH back into the fold economically.  

I've done lots of thinking over the years on the prospect of creating a new nation or having a province or state seperate and become independant of it's parent country, but the process requires more forward thinking than appears to be the case here.

 Well, you'll be getting liberty advocates to run in a setting where they are surrounded by like minded people. Seems pretty moot in that regard. I simply think gradually educating and changing minds is more effective and permanent - it's the same attitude I take regarding religion.

 I'm sure you might say that demonstrating that this sort of liberated society is viable would give it clout, but I'm sure socialistic hippies who form communes think the same thing before they get completely ignored and forgotten.

 Eh, look, I'm not knocking the goals we both share or your optimism, I'm simply saying I don't think it's a way to bring about fundamental change - then again, plenty of atheists say that about the RRS and our methods, so what the fuck do I know?

 Well, I fully understand what I'm talking about does not get rid of the problem, I simply think what I advocate is more conducive to changing the existing reality.

Put it this way though, I'm not opposed to what you are proposing, I just don't find it feasible or think it solves our shared problems. It just seems to me like running from the problem, rather than working to resolve it.

 Uh, no, and how you took that from what I've been saying is pretty confusing.

Meh, well look, at this point we're simply going to have to agree to disagree. When/if you found your state, I may or may not be in line to join it. In either case, rest assured I will happily sell my services to the people who live there .