It’s that time of the year, when legislators are scrambling to figure out what bills they should introduce for the coming year.
I’ve got some suggestions. In no particular order:
| Short name | Description |
| Traffic is traffic | Nothing that happens at a traffic stop can be unrelated to the violation that led to the stop. No searches, no use of materials found during searches, etc. https://granitegrok.com/national/2024/07/laws-we-need-increasing-officer-safety |
| No policing for profit | No fines, proceeds from seizures, etc., can go to police departments, or to the state, except to be used as compensation for victims of violence or fraud. |
| Investigative parity | Citizens must be afforded the same due process rights as police officers: https://ian4nhrep.wordpress.com/2016/10/12/the-investigative-parity-act/ |
| Fiduciary policing | The rights of citizens are at least as important as the safety of police officers. Rather than qualified immunity, law enforcement officers have a fiduciary responsibility to members of the public, including alleged criminals. Breach of this responsibility will result in lifetime loss of certification, and revocation of any pension or other benefits. https://granitegrok.com/blog/2019/08/fiduciary-policing https://granitegrok.com/blog/2019/01/crimefighters |
| Only necessary arrests | In NY, when police officers were being ambushed, the police made this policy decision: Absolutely NO enforcement action in the form of arrests and or summonses is to be taken unless absolutely necessary and an individual MUST be placed under arrest. This should be standard operating procedure for all state and local police officers in NH. The alternative, by definition, is to continue to make unnecessary arrests. https://granitegrok.com/blog/2019/01/crimefighters |
| Family corporations | Don’t families deserve to be treated at least as well as corporations? At the very least, we should let families raise kids on before-tax income, rather than on after-tax income: https://granitegrok.com/blog/2019/03/f-corporations |
| Advance Miranda | Every police officer should be required, before talking to anyone, to let that person know that he isn’t required to answer questions or show ID (except when that’s actually a legal requirement, as at a traffic stop) or consent to a search, that anything he chooses to say will be used against him, and that he is free to leave at any time. If it’s critical to have this kind of information after you’ve been arrested, imagine how important it is to have it before you’ve inadvertently provided grounds (however tenuous) for that arrest. |
| Make Parties Private Again | All references to political parties should be removed from RSAs and regulations. Political parties are private organizations, and must be run privately, without aid or interference from government. In particular, political parties must be completely responsible for operating their own primary elections, maintaining lists of their registered members, and so on, rather than relying on the state to do these things for them. |
| Reclaiming Legislative Authority | This was originally introduced by Frank Edelblut when he was a state rep: The citizens of this state shall be bound only by the laws passed by the New Hampshire General Court or the United States Congress. Legislative powers of the New Hampshire General Court and the United States Congress shall not be delegated to unelected officials. https://granitegrok.com/blog/2021/12/constitution-day-talk |
| Tough Shit Act | Recognizing that it is a normal condition of life for people to want things they can’t afford, and that a desire does not constitute a need, no RSA may authorize the use of money raised by taxes to pay for non-essential goods and services, including but not limited to non-academic school programs, post-secondary education, recreational facilities, and elective medical procedures or prescriptions; and any RSA that makes or relies on such authorization is hereby repealed. https://ian4nhrep.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/the-tough-shit-act/ |
| Residential competition | The owner of any property that is on the border between two or more towns may choose to make that property part of whichever of those towns would be more advantageous to his interests. |
| On the job, on the record | The NH constitution says that the magistrates and officers of government are the substitutes and agents of the people. The idea that a substitute or agent may withhold information from his principal is absurd. Therefore, no employee or agent of the state may conduct any kind of business — including contract negotiations — at any time, that is kept secret from the public. An exception might be made for ongoing criminal investigations, so long as all information is released when the investigation is concluded (or after some standard amount of time, whichever comes first — to prevent investigations from remaining ‘open’ indefinitely just to avoid the release of information that the investigators want to keep hidden). |
| Void for vagueness | If the government can’t figure out what a law means, citizens cannot reasonably be expected to know whether they are following it. Therefore, any split decision by a court (or other government panel with multiple members) immediately renders the law or regulation in questionvoid for vagueness, suspending its enforcement until such time as the legislature can clear up the ambiguity that led to the split. |
| No fictional victims | The state, or any subdivision of the state, must be prohibited from appearing as the complainant in a criminal or civil case, in order to ensure that crimes must have actual victims in order to be prosecuted: https://granitegrok.com/blog/2020/06/karen-vs-karen https://granitegrok.com/blog/2020/02/crazy-or-crazier |
| Right to competition | All references to unions should be removed from RSAs and regulations. Article 83 of the state constitution charges the state with the responsibility of protecting the inherent and essential right of the people to free and fair competition in the trades and industries against all monopolies and conspiracies which tend to hinder or destroy it. Therefore, no labor union (whether public or private) may be treated any differently — given any special status or consideration or protection — under the law than any other private organization. |
| Welfare is welfare | Anyone who is eligible for any kind of welfare or tax-subsidized assistance (e.g., Education Freedom Accounts) is automatically eligible for every other kind (e.g., SNAP, LIHEAP, housing subsidies, and so on). In particular, if any kind of welfare is universal, all kinds must be universal. |
| Make Welfare Welfare Again | Implement means testing for EFAs and public schools, in the same way that they are implemented for other forms of welfare: https://granitegrok.com/blog/2024/06/make-welfare-welfare-again |
| Transitioning from schools to education | Treat education as a right, rather than treating schooling as an entitlement: https://granitegrok.com/new-england/nh/2025/02/transitioning-from-schools-to-education |
| 100 percent proficiency act | Every student in a public school shall take a pre-test at the beginning of every year, and be assigned to a grade (e.g., fifth grade) based on the level of proficiency in reading revealed by that test. This means that 100 percent of students will be reading at grade level, which will catapult NH past every other state. |
| Medical prostitution | Put prostitution on the same path to legalization as marijuana use. https://granitegrok.com/blog/2024/05/medical-prostitution |
| Separation of sport and state | Eliminate the use of taxes to pay for sports. https://granitegrok.com/blog/2021/02/separation-of-sport-and-state |
| Pay for results, not intentions | Eliminate pay-and-pray funding for education. https://granitegrok.com/blog/2023/12/pay-and-pray-funding https://www.bareminimumbooks.com/books/rethinking-funding |
| Necessary means mandatory | If some learning or knowledge is necessary to participate in the American social, political, and economic systems of a free society, then teaching it in schools must be mandatory. That is, if something is not important enough to be mandatory for all students in all schools, then its teaching may not be subsidized by taxes for any student in any school. Note that this applies to specific knowledge and skills (e.g., how to calculate a mean or median), and not to nebulously defined ‘subjects’ or ‘credits’, like ‘history’ or ‘physical education’ or ‘technology’. |
| Essentials before incidentals | Any school that doesn’t have 95% of its students reading and doing math at proficiency is prohibited from offering any elective courses (that is, courses that teach anything other than reading and math); or alternatively, any student that is not reading and doing math at proficiency is prohibited from taking courses on any other subjects. |
| Uniform taxes | All taxes must be uniform in amount, rather than rate. The state, or any subdivision of the state, may not charge different people different amounts for the same service. For example, two residents paying for a school district cannot be charged different school taxes based on the values of their properties; two residents who use the same roads cannot be charged different registration taxes based on the values of their vehicles; and so on. Assessing rates rather than absolute amounts to collect government revenues is one-half of the essence of Marxism: From each according to his abilities. It has no place in New Hampshire. https://granitegrok.com/blog/2021/10/the-accidental-marxist |
| Optional occupational licensing | No one should have to beg the state for permission to make a living; nor should the state exercise a power that hinders or destroys the inherent and essential right of the people to free and fair competition in the trades and industries — which, by definition, is what mandatory licensing does. This was already introduced in 2023: https://www.gencourtmobile.com/2023/HB507/Text https://www.bareminimumbooks.com/books/licenses-are-the-new-draft-cards-what-covid-19-taught-us-about-occupational-licensing |
