[Note: Here, where we reside, in the commonly-accepted universe as described by the likes of Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking, those wishing to correspond with the editor generally do so by email. It’s simple, it’s convenient, and everyone knows how it works.
Tom Alciere, a candidate in the Republican primary for the 2nd Congressional District, is, however, a capital-L Libertarian. He has therefore disdained the normal means of sending us a letter, and chosen instead to post a comment to an article published four years ago on our website, nhgazette.com. To do full credit to the contents of Alciere’s letter we must briefly describe how we came to publish the article in question.
On August 19, 2020, we posted this on our website, nhgazette.com, in the Piscataqua River Tidal Guide:
“1997—In Colebrook, N.H., anti-regulation fanatic and future hero of the Free State Project Carl Drega murders two cops, a selectman, and a judge.”
The very next day we received a threatening email from Carla Gericke, writing as “President Emeritus of the Free State Project [FSP],” claiming that this item was “inaccurate, spurious, and libelous.” Gericke urged us to remove or retract “any reference in this context to the Free State Project,” lest she be forced to take legal action.
Knowing the late Susan [the] Bruce, of Conway was better informed on the topic than anyone, we asked her about the relationship between the FSP and Carl Drega. She referred us to her 2013 article, “Carl Drega, Folk Hero to Free Staters.”
Having thus armed ourselves with the facts, we revised our Tidal Guide entry to read as follows: “1997—In Colebrook, N.H., anti-regulation fanatic Carl Drega murders two cops, a selectman, and a judge. In response, Vin Suprynowicz, a future Signed Member of the Free State Project, writes an essay and a book sympathizing with the killer.”
We haven’t heard from Gericke since.
Susan kindly granted us permission to post her article, and publish it in our paper of August 28, 2020.
All the above folderol could have been avoided, of course, if Tom here could have just sent an email like a normal person, but nooo… .
Having so laboriously provided what we feel was the necessary context, we present herewith the candidate’s dispatch from the Libertarian Universe. – The Ed.]
[No salutation]
Tax assessments? You fail to mention that increasing a tax assessment increases the resulting property tax, including the school tax to pay for government-run indoctrination centers, and the cost of intimidating children into attending schools where bullies prey on them. It’s not the first time war has broken out in America over taxes.
First, you have all these crazy, deranged, depraved, degenerate, selfish, greedy potholes who support public school because they honestly feel that every child somehow has a right to an education at somebody else’s expense. Then they tell local bureaucrats to impose tougher zoning restrictions to prevent more families from moving into “their” town, and they tell Congress to add more U.S. Border Patrol goons to prevent more families from moving into “their” country. Supposedly, some families cannot afford to educate their children, but the crazies figure those families are supposed to spend a million dollars on a house and yard and mortgage interest, just so the town can tax it.
In a free country, nobody would have to pay school taxes. Legitimate schools would have to compete with each other and if they had a problem with drugs or bullies, they would solve the problem or go out of business. The free market makes gasoline available at all hours of the night and the free market would make school available at all hours of the night, and parents would not have to turn down jobs just to be able to deliver their children to the government.
Tom Alciere
Hudson, N.H.
Tom:
We haven’t heard from you since your memorable press release of September 2, 2010, during the Republican primary for U.S. Senate. Welcome back.
Back then you were asserting that your opponent, Kelly Ayotte, then Attorney General, had put up “campaign posters” in state liquor stores, in which she was “posing with gun-toting goons in bulletproof vests, trying to intimidate Mr. and Mrs. Twenty into living a healthy, alcohol-free lifestyle, into giving up their right to drink; and trying to intimidate the rest of us out of supplying to them the beverage they want.”
Your press release went on to state, referring to yourself in the third person, that “Alciere, campaigning on a platform of liberty and justice for all, opposes underage drinking laws, and says these choices should be left to individuals and their parents ‘just like in a free country.’”
“These posters will appeal to voters who want a police state, as Ayotte is certainly their candidate; and to hypocrites who, for obvious reasons, would rather impose the drinking age on somebody else than impose tough drunk driving laws on themselves. They were printed at state expense and are posted in state liquor stores.”
Somehow your 2010 arguments came up short, and Ayotte went on to the Senate. Or maybe voters had not forgotten your brief term in the State House, nearly ten years earlier.
The New York Times reported on January 14, 2001:
“Mr. Alciere, Republican of Nashua, resigned from the State House of Representatives on Wednesday after intense criticism. He advocated killing police officers in hundreds of Internet postings uncovered weeks after his election in November.
“Mr. Alciere continued to make anti-police remarks as recently as Thursday, when he told WSMN that there were ‘lots of opportunities’ to kill police officers by swerving into construction sites. He said he decided to apologize after listening to stories from the families of murdered police officers.”
Still, considering your current proposals, you should probably keep your day job.
The Editor
–=≈=–
Signs of the Times
Dear Editor:
Driving west on Tilton Road, after the Winnisquam Post Office, I saw a political message. On the left side of the road a house has a small sign reading—“Drive as if your children live here.” Nearly opposite, a house flies a “F____ Biden” flag. Left side / right side. The left side thinks about the preciousness of young life and the investment we must make in caring, being nurturing, working for the good of our mutual young. The right side thumbs-the-nose at what our young read and might pick up for mean / low attitude. What a lesson, there, for the middle-of-the-road people calling themselves neither Democrats or Republicans! (New Hampshire’s majority now are Undeclared, in our voting books.) Participants in voting, the Undeclared study both sides and choose, looking at candidates and party positions.
It’s showdown time, with our New Hampshire primary coming up on September 10th, then November 5th all around the country being voting day. I’m passing on what I saw, heading west, towards the sunset. So glaringly meaningful, this year with deep differences between the two parties.
Lynn Rudmin Chong
Sanbornton, N.H.
Lynn:
You are too demanding of our Republican brethren and sisteren. Isn’t it enough that they want us to be governed by the Bible? To suggest that they ought to live by it, too, seems awfully draconian.
The Editor
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A Particularly Grotesque Lie
Dear Editor:
On July 31st, at the National Association of Black Journalists Conference, Donald Trump repeated his grotesque lie that some Democratic states kill babies after they are born. He stated, “they’re allowing abortion in the ninth month. They’re allowing the death, they’re allowing the death of a baby after the baby is born.” Other than in his own mind, does any state allow the killing of a baby after it is born?
While Trump seems so concerned about the imaginary killing of children after they are born, he totally ignores the real problem that is actually killing thousands of children after they are born in America. In fact, not only does he ignore and dismiss this problem, his policies and agenda actually contribute to more children being killed.
In 2021, the most current available data, 4,752 children were killed by guns. In fact, the leading cause of death for children in the United States is by guns. And it is Republican states that have the highest rate of deaths by guns. Forbes reported in April, 2023, that the 10 states with the highest rates of gun deaths were Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, Alabama, Missouri, Texas and South Carolina. All but one of these states, New Mexico, voted for Trump.
No, Mr. Trump it is not those Democratic states that are killing children after they are born, it is the Republican States with very loose gun laws that are contributing to the deaths of thousands of children and adults every year.
Hon. Rich DiPentima
Portsmouth, N.H.
Rich:
Thank you for plucking this stunning example from the Biblical flood of this fortnight’s lies.
The Editor
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“I’m Not Weird”
To the Editor:
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s VP pick, says I’m weird because I object to:
Putting tampon dispensers in boys bathrooms.
Taking children from parents who don’t provide gender altering drugs and surgeries to young children. If children aren’t mature enough to smoke or buy guns, how can they be mature enough to decide to sterilize or mutilate themselves? Most of Europe outlawed these practices.
Providing sanctuary to illegal aliens. Support for illegal aliens costs taxpayers over $150 billion annually (vs about $3 billion for homeless veterans). More objectionable are the millions of American citizens who are harmed because of illegal immigration and our open border: about 100,000 annual American deaths, millions of victims of rape or other crimes, and millions of mostly poor Americans who suffer because their neighborhoods are flooded with illegal aliens making demands on schools, hospitals, social services, housing, jobs, etc.
Allowing government to censor our free speech. During Covid the government and social media companies censored truth but allowed lies; this censorship prevented access to lifesaving information and treatment for thousands of Americans.
Killing full term, healthy babies. Third trimester abortions of healthy babies and letting babies that survive abortion attempts die are barbaric practices.
Letting rioters rampage through and destroy mostly poor neighborhoods: looting, burning, and assaulting people. Walz refused National Guard support when requested by the Minneapolis Mayor during the 2020 riots.
Lying about one’s military service for political advantage. Walz’s actual service should be respected, but his false claims about his military rank and being in combat, and more importantly, his abandonment of his leadership responsibilities to his soldiers when they were deployed to war is dishonorable.
If you oppose his lying and actions that harm American citizens and our country, Walz thinks you’re weird too.
Don Ewing
Meredith, N.H.
Don:
Regarding tampons and hormonal treatments, perhaps you meant to say, “Tim Walz thinks I’m weird because I think about other peoples’ genitals all the time, and I believe scary lies told by the biggest liar known to man.”
Regarding the cost to taxpayers of migrants fleeing areas of the planet rendered uninhabitable by U.S. imposition of capitalism-and-corruption-friendly governments, even the Heritage Foundation says the correct figure is closer to $50 billion. Your claim of 100,000 American deaths is ludicrous on its face. Provide a credible source—we dare you.
Nothing else in your letter is credible enough to bother with.
The Editor
–=≈=–
Gazans Need Ceasefire, Reconstruction
To the Editor:
As a retired architect with some urban design work experience over 40 years, as well as a Vietnam Veteran who has experienced war first hand, it is appalling to view the devastation that has happened and is continuing in Gaza.
We have read much about the lives lost and seen photos of the devastation along with numbers as high as 60 percent of the country’s structures damaged or destroyed.
The cost of broken structures and infrastructure is extremely significant. It is hard to even imagine the scope of work needed to repair the physical aspects alone. Yet I am not reading much about how that will be done.
One of the few reports was given after four months of the bombing and that estimate had a year just to plan what was needed and 15 years to execute the plan. It also mentioned the very large carbon impact of war and the reconstruction.
It is not reasonable to extrapolate the early numbers and we will only know the total impact when the destruction ends and studies can be made.
Meanwhile, when will it be livable and where will all the displaced people find safety and needed services in the meantime?
Since the United States is a prime supplier of the weapons and a backer of the retaliatory attacks that the Prime Minister has directed under the guise of safety from Hamas, it puts a large amount of blame and responsibility on us as well as him.
Polls show New Hampshire residents do not find the current situation acceptable. I ask that my Representatives, Hassan, Pappas, and Shaheen, demand from the P.M. an immediate ceasefire, and plans for the reconstruction of a safe and habitable Gaza.
Wes Flierl
Rochester, N.H.
Wes:
Having just seen a horrific recent video from Gaza, we concur.
The Editor
–=≈=–
An Oversight of the Founders
Sir or Madam,
How is it that in the corporate world, when a person finds themself at odds with their boss for whatever reason and is fired, said person is told to clean out their desk and be removed from the premises within ten minutes, to be escorted to their vehicle by security post haste.
Yet, in this Republic of ours (if we can keep it), if an incumbent candidate for the highest office loses in November, they are able to maintain all the forces and strength of the most powerful human on the planet for another ten weeks! #45 demonstrated this quite well on January 6th, 2020, displaying a mere fraction of what could possibly happen… someday.
I can only say, despite owning Slaves and engaging in the occasional duel, the Framers and Writers and Founders were Gentlemen and never dreamed a seriously unhinged person such as #45 would ever consider running for president. The Constitutional rules for such a candidate are quite mild, basically being of age and place of birth foremost, which is certainly fair, but there should be some words barring an impeached and convicted felon (not to mention Whoremonger!) from the highest office.
A “husband of one wife” comes to mind as well, but that’s a Biblical qualification for leadership… Born Agains, take note.
Anthony Prizio
Windham, Maine
Anthony:
We don’t know how it’s handled these days, but in our youth, certain limits were placed on new drivers. You couldn’t just hop in the old Tin Lizzie and go gallivanting all over town at will. Perhaps lame duck presidents ought to be similarly hampered, lest they nuke Toronto on a whim.
Oh, wait—the religious fanatics on the Supreme Court have not only precluded such a precaution, they’ve given license to the Commander-in-Chief to send Seal Team Six after anyone who looks at him cross-eyed!
The Editor
–=≈=–
Some Hazards of Democracy
To the Editor,
Shortly after reading “The Undemocratic Reality of Capitalism,” by Professor Richard Wolff, (The New Hampshire Gazette, Friday, August 9, 2024) I chanced upon the Preface to George Bernard Shaw’s “The Apple Cart” (first published 1930). “I am going to ask you,” the playwright asks, “to begin our study of Democracy by considering it first as a big balloon, filled with gas or hot air, and sent up so that you shall be kept looking up at the sky whilst other people are picking your pockets. When the balloon comes down to earth every five years or so you are invited to get into the basket if you can throw out one of the people who are sitting tightly in it, but as you can afford neither the time nor the money, and there are forty millions of you and hardly room for six hundred in the basket, the balloon goes up again with much the same lot in it and leaves you where you were before.”
Of those in the basket, whose governing we accept, the playwright asks: “[W]hat can we do to save ourselves from being at the mercy of those who… govern, and who may quite possibly be thoroughpaced grifters and scoundrels? The primitive answer is that as we are always in a huge majority we can, if rulers oppress us intolerably, burn their houses and tear them to pieces. This is not satisfactory. Decent people never do it until they have quite lost their heads; and when they have lost their heads they are as likely as not to burn the wrong house and tear the wrong man to pieces.”
On the subject of the elections that afford the opportunity to change the composition of the population of the basket, the playwright references a Mr. Dean Inge, who, we are told, observed that “our general elections have become public auctions at which the contending parties bid against one another for our votes by each promising us a larger share than the other of the plunder of the minority.” As to what then can be done, the playwright observes that, “if we entrust the immense powers and revenues which are necessary in an effective modern Government to an absolute monarch or dictator, he goes more or less mad unless he is a quite extraordinary and therefore very seldom obtainable person. Besides, modern government is not a one-man job: it is too big for that. If we resort to a committee or parliament of superior persons, they will set up an oligarchy and abuse their power for their own benefit.”
And as to where all this leaves us, the playwright remarks: “I must conclude by warning you that when everything has been done that can be done, civilization will still be dependent on the consciences of the governors and the governed. Our natural dispositions may be good; but we have been badly brought up, and are full of anti-social personal ambitions and prejudices and snobberies. Had we not better teach our children to be better citizens than ourselves? We are not doing that at present.”
Nearly one hundred years later, an economist, after observing that “the new technologies transforming life will need to bring wider benefits than they have so far. An economy of tech millionaires and billionaires and gig workers with middle-income jobs undercut by automation will not be politically sustainable,” reflects that, “Perhaps the shock induced by Covid19 can ensure that lasting change comes about, or—melodramatic as it feels to write this—we may be in for a revolutionary period.” (Diane Coyle, Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is and What It Should Be).
As we sit spinning our wheels in hybrid and electric cars while gazing blankly into our “smart” phones we might well miss the fact that progress on issues raised by George Bernard Shaw almost a century ago has been essentially nil. And hope from the technocratic quarter seems tepid at best. So the most fitting concluding remark might perhaps be that of University of California at Davis professor of evolution and ecology Art Shapiro, speaking to a tangential but related matter: “It’s sort of depressing but if I thought about it too much I’d commit suicide. Everything is now pretty much in the toilet.” (Oliver Milman, The Insect Crisis). And we’re poised to flush it.
John Simon
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
John:
Naturally we had to take a quick squint at Wikipedia’s entry on “The Apple Cart.” It does indeed seem skeptical of democracy—and not entirely without reason. Alas, what is our alternative? The only one offered by the “thoroughpaced grifters and scoundrels” of our day seems to be a fascist dictatorship.
The Inge to whom Shaw refers appears to have been William Randolph Inge, Dean of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral (1911-1934). Again, from Wikipedia—which defiantly operates without regard to the marketplace, being free to all users—Inge was “nicknamed ‘The Gloomy Dean’ because of his pessimistic views… he said that although mankind’s accumulated experience and wonderful discoveries had great value, they did not constitute real progress in human nature itself,” with which we cannot argue.
On the other hand, he “disapproved of democracy, which he called ‘an absurdity’ and compared it to ‘the famous occasion when the voice of the people cried, Crucify Him!’ He wrote ‘Human beings are born unequal, and the only persons who have a right to govern their neighbours are those who are competent to do so.’ He advanced various arguments why women should have fewer voting rights than men, if any.”
As for self-destruction, at least so long as we are able to continue in our position here, we cannot imagine giving those we routinely excoriate the satisfaction of our demise.
The Editor
–=≈=–
Sayin’ It Don’t Make It So, Joe
Dear Editor,
Joe Biden’s convention speech showed him to be a decent, patriotic family man. It also exposed three incredible blind spots.
Biden once again said America is getting better rather than going downhill. He said, “Our best days are not behind us, they are before us.” This is transparently untrue. This kind of flattery of the electorate shows that Democrats are not above manipulating reality like MAGA Republicans do.
The President also said, “There is only one sacred obligation in America, taking care of veterans.” This betrays an ignorance of other sacred principles of democracy, including educating youth in history, law, and science; prioritizing public health measures to protect and honor the elderly, whose wisdom must be available to rising generations; and upholding our sacred oaths, agreements, vows, and contracts. Never heard of such principles? Better read some history before it is too late.
Finally, there is America’s puppet war against religious freedom in the Middle East, leading to the disproportionate slaughter of Muslims in Gaza. Biden’s decent heart takes a fatal nosedive here.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, Utah
Kimball:
You missed one of President Biden’s most extravagant misstatements, after the near-assassination of his then-rival in Pennsulvania: “This is not who we are.”
Would that it were true, but….
The Editor
–=≈=–
A Suggestion From a Reader
To the Editor:
Sir, I note that on the masthead your organ is costed as Free.
In view of the value it brings every fortnight might I suggest this is changed to Priceless?
David Severn
Portsmouth, N.H.
David:
Thank you, David—your note came like a burst of sunshine on a dank and cloudy day.
The Editor