That was Steve’s post here talking about what NH State Reps Francesca Diggs, Janice Schmidt, Debra Altschiller, Sherry Frost, Nancy Murphy, and Wendy Thomas (the bill sponsors) are pushing on preventing “cyberbullying against public officials.”
They’re peeved that we’ve taken them to task on both what they’ve said and how they’ve voted. Especially Jan Schmidt who lied through her teeth about GraniteGrok being the reason why the Merrimack Police had to provide police protection to four Merrimack Democrat State Rep females. Once confronted, Schmidt’s story about the events kept “evolving”. Yep, and she tried to have our hosting company shut us down, too.
And we’ve got more – she just can’t keep her yap shut. You just keep talking, Jan, and we’ll just keep responding. That’s how it works. You see, if you just ignored us and didn’t write bills that would affect our lives negatively, we’d hardly notice that you even existed. But you can’t, so we will. But I digress.
Our commenters are smart and witty. So one of the commenters, Bryan W, instead of trying to get rid of the bill outright, suggested a few amendments to add to their bill. I smiled a lot as sometimes adding more turns the “danger” around. Sorta like how the #MeToo movement, originally aimed at Trump, took out a whole LOT of Democrats and their donors. So, here they are:
While legislation such as this is extraordinarily dangerous, it might be fun to offer some amendments, and use the votes to prove they are petty tyrants.
“Doxxing” shall not include any publicly available information of a public servant, such as name, address, phone number, public information collected for the purpose of assessing and collecting property taxes, public information collected for the purpose of maintaining a voter checklist, information disclosed in newspapers or online about the servant, or information willingly disclosed by the servant to any business or service, unless protected by a privacy agreement that states that this information will not be shared with any other entity.
“Harassment” in this section shall not include discourse, online postings, letters to the editor, or content in any other electronic or physical social medium deemed to be in the “public square” of content that addresses issues of public interest.
“Cyberstalking” in this section shall not include parody, mocking tones or memes, using the servant’s own words including audio or video of the servant, statements that the person will not vote for the servant in the next election and will tell everyone they know to not vote for the servant — no protected or priviliged speech shall be included in the definition of “cyberstalking.”
New Section “V – Counseling Available”
Any public servant who believes they are being cyberstalked, harassed, or doxxed, yet have not filed a police report, and/or no police agency or prosecutor is willing to take up the issue, shall have access to a special counseling office, established in the state facility at 105 Pleasant St, Concord, NH, which will feature carpeted or foam floors, walls, and ceilings, doors that can only be opened from outside the room, cookies (with and without nuts) and milk (dairy and non-dairy), soft music, and an ample supply of blankies and binkys. Staff from NHH will be available to cry them to sleep.
A little over the top?
No, not at all. You see, more and more, that a number of our “Public Servants” have been morphing into being our “Public Masters” without even a “by your leave” to us. They believe they are above the law and that anything they say or do should not (or in the case of this bill, SHALL not) be beyond reproach. Makes “seeking redress from elected representative” rather difficult. But then again, if a strict interpretation of their oaths of office (strict – er, just READING them once in a while) were taken, they wouldn’t be doing most of the stuff they are.
So anyways, I thought Bryan had a great idea of doing a “boomerang” on their bill. I DO know that a lot more of you out there could contribute to his starting work on this – so what are your contributions in the same vein? Read the bill, figure out “its system”, find the weak points, and create your own points that would “help” it along?
Consider this my challenge to you!
BTW, when we find out when this bill is going to be heard before committee, we’ll be there to give our testimonies. Should be great fun!
