So, WHO called the Delegation meeting yesterday? Was it legally done? Nope. And IMHO, County Attorney Andrew Livernois gave cover in a rambling Letter as so many had contacted him to see if the Delegation was operating legally. I have an email thread with him that I will be posting later. Hint: On quoting RSA 91:A as being permissible, he deliberately left out THE key line
[Art.] 84. [Oath of Civil Officers.] Any person chosen governor, councilor, senator, or representative, military or civil officer, (town officers excepted) accepting the trust, shall, before he proceeds to execute the duties of his office, make and subscribe the following declaration, viz.
I, A.B. do solemnly swear, that I will bear faith and true allegiance to the United States of America and the state of New Hampshire, and will support the constitution thereof. So help me God.
I, A.B. do solemnly and sincerely swear and affirm that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all duties incumbent on me as …………………………………………., according to the best of my abilities, agreeably to the rules and regulations of this constitution and laws of the state of New Hampshire. So help me God.
One would expect that our Lawmakers that we send to Concord to either the NH House of Representatives or the NH State Senate would actually be faithful to that oath. After all, if they expect us to follow the laws that THEY make, shouldn’t we also reciprocate in demanding they follow the laws that regulate the processes they are supposed to follow? Sadly, that doesn’t happen all the time and the activities of the Belknap County Delegation proved that when whipped into a frenzy by others into believing that an “emergency” existed, they acted illegally.
And once again, I am compelled to talk about people that should have known better but the “DO SOMETHING” overrode their common sense.
And broke the Law intentionally IF you look at the plain black and white words of the Law. Either RSA 91:A (which allows for only a 24 hour notice) or RSA 24:9-d (mandates a 7 day notice) could have been used to call the meeting but note the conditions:
91-A:2 II: An emergency shall mean a situation where immediate undelayed action is deemed to be imperative by the chairman or presiding officer of the public body,
RSA 24:9-d: The clerk of the convention, or his or her designee, shall mail to each member of the convention a notice stating the time, place and purpose of further meetings at least 7 days before the day of the meeting and shall cause to be published a like notice at least 7 days before the day of the meeting in a newspaper of general circulation in the county
I hold that the latter, as I said before, is the superior RSA when it comes to Delegation/Convention.
So, Harry Bean, in the case of the former, are you the Chair of the Delegation? No – you violated your oath of office in breaking the RSA 91:A Law. You took it upon yourself for no good legal purpose to trash the Law – I thought you to be far better than that; very disappointed in my State Rep that I have always trusted to Follow The Law.
And, Harry Bean, in the case of the latter, are you the Clerk of the Convention that has the Power to send out that 7 day notice? No you didn’t violated your oath of office in breaking RSA 24:9-d technically – you didn’t use it but you should have.
You talk about “THE MOUNTAIN HAS TO OPEN” wasn’t an emergency – it was a politically charged and mobbed up rush to push political agendas. There was a push, push, push to create an overriding urgency to DO SOMETHING by those that have further political agendas.
And you couldn’t see it. You know, when we met on the Gilford Budget Committee, you kept telling me that you were only a hillbilly. That was always nonsense and I told you that many times. Perhaps this time, I should believe it.
The worst thing, after you had told me on many of occasions, that you valued my opinion as I had never lied to you. You told me that I always did my homework but it wasn’t that you didn’t listen, you didn’t WANT to listen.
So what should be done with a legislator that knew he COULDN’T do something – but did it anyways? What can be done besides the Primary and General Election? What might the legal avenues taken by a constituent when their elected Representative breaks the Law?
And as to the Loyalty bit in the post title. Loyalty, in all its manifest forms, used to be a high virtue within society. We derided former NH GOP Chair Jennifer Horn for never showing any loyalty except to herself (and the guy dragging the dollar bill on a string in front of her. OK, not the guy, just the dollar bill. How else explain her position with the Anti-Republican Lincoln Project (when it got any buzz at all)).
Harry just ensured that Dr. Dave Strang was ejected from the Gunstock Area Commission by calling that meeting – he was neither the Chair nor the Clerk. He did something he shouldn’t have done. Loyalty?
- When Harry came down with COVID, Dr. Strang rendered assistance (multiple times from what I was told) along with his recent cancer scare.
- When GAC Commissioner Jade was enraged that the Gilford School Board wouldn’t let her girls attend school without masks, I’m told, Dr. Strang wrote a medical note support her.
Loyalty? Gratitude? Loyalty is to be earned, to be sure. But it is a Virtue that demands that you don’t just throw someone into the trash for a political agenda. I spent years defending Doug Lambert on calling NH Democrat Party Chair Ray Buckley a really bad word (go ahead, ask him about it and see how quickly he’ll deflect from it). I didn’t just talk about it, I demonstrated Loyalty. What did I get for it?
This:
Certainly, my decade and a half made no difference to him at all. What I was to him in this video was both an irritant for pointing out his character failure and being an impediment to a political goal. I’m used to him using Volume 3-8. But in this meeting, he went to 13. What was most scary to me was the vehemence, the ANGER, and the Evilness that were in his eyes – at that moment, it seemed, that I was worse than either Dave Strang or Peter Ness. The difference is that he was slitting political throats – politically, there is nothing he can do to me and I BET that was, in part, fueling his rage.
And no, the “apology” he offered wasn’t – he only realized how out of control he had become in a split instant. So no, not accepted – and no, I have withdrawn all loyalty I once had. At the height of his rage, I was no longer a person but a THING. In the eyes of this “High Priest of The Mountain”, I had committed heresy by saying I didn’t care if Gunstock opened up or not. I still don’t care but I do care that it was done by Following the Law. In his early days, when he and I used to go after the “good ole’ boys” in Gilford for the dark corners and bring bad things to light, he often mentioned the money they kept spending was akin to “every dollar was sacred”. Now, he’s become just like them except “their dollar” has morphed into his “Sacred Mountain”.
Don’t think I’ll be getting any Christmas cards going forward. C’est La.
Yes, Loyalty is in extremely short supply within politics – even when the human friendship would say otherwise. Gratitude, as well. While Jade has been the most shrill about “picking her target, freezing it, and then personalizing it” (along with Lambert), one would have thought that her position of being an NH GOP Area Vice-Chair would have made her less apt to attack and agitate (like Obama the Alinsky Organizer) against two decent Republicans simply because of political differences of how to handle situations at Gunstock. Nope – they brought the battleship big guns to bear. No, they both used the Left’s tactics of the politics of personal destruction. And if anyone wants to complain that I am, well, as I’ve been saying for a while that if the Left wants to set the New Rules, I’m happy to use their rules.
And they did it with glee (well, Jade seemed to). Just like Doug V1.o used to do, I’m flashing a light.
