The Interviews – Week Ending 3-17-2018

This week our guests include CNHT chairman Ed Naile, Daren Bakst from the Heritage Institute, Pro-Life activist Ellen Kolb, and Kimberly Morin. On topics from the Second Amendment, liberal malfeasance, water rights, free speech, and compelled speech. Visit the original blog post for more ways to listen.  

Pro-SB11 PR Campaign Underway…

Supporters of SB 11, the bill that would allow a new layer of bureaucracy for the purpose of taxing and managing intermunicipal water districts, are waging a public relations campaign on the premise that the opponents of the bill are seeing things that are not there.  Unfortunately for them, the real problem is that there is nothing in the bill to prevent any of the things we see.

Call us cynical but we do not trust rules-makers and bureaucrats to imagine limitations on their authority that are not spelled out clearly.  In fact, as proper cynics, we do not even give them much credit for constraining themselves when the language seems clear.  The language in SB11 fails on all counts.

So I have begun my own counter-campaign on that premise, and emailed the entire New Hampshire House Republican email list with the email below.  Feel free to use this premise or one similar as you reach out to your own representatives.

And a reminder.  Water, water rights, property rights, and fair taxation are not partisan issues.   It is your well, your water, your rain and run-off , and your money that could be taxed; no matter what we’d like the words in SB11 to mean, there is no specific language in it that seeks first and foremost to protect the people of New Hampshire.  Until such language does exist this effort must be opposed.

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EMail Doodlings – SB11 Part 2

by Skip

During an email conversation, I was emailed the NH Association of Regional Planning Commissions broad legislative support document – what the local RPCs want the towns and NH Legislature to do.  Again, I looked at what SB11 was supposed to do, compared that to what SB11 will allow planners to do, and looked at the agenda of how the RPCs with to “Fundamentally Transform” NH’s lifestyle simple because they know a more “efficient” way to “guide us” – as though New Hampshire hasn’t figured out how to do this over the last 400 years by ourselves.

But, we aren’t trained Planners, are we?  When I read over the bill again, I decided to compare what it was put up to be (to make it easier to allow Exeter and Stratham to do a water system together) with how expansive it seemed on the first read through it.  And then I read the NHARPC legislative document. So, I just casually put down every disparate area down.  Once again, I was floored:

On 5/7/2013 9:20 AM, Skip wrote:
Gee:

  • Lakes
  • recycling
  • water
  • energy
  • agriculture

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Guest Post: Ken Eyring – Will Senate Bill 11 Confiscate Control of ALL NH Waters?

On May 22nd, the NH House of Representatives will vote on Senate Bill 11.  It was written to enable Exeter and Stratham to jointly form a water/sewer district — but that capability already exists in State RSA Chapters 53-A, 33-B, 38, and 36.  These RSAs enabled the creation of the Merrimack Valley Regional Water District (7 towns).

The Bill is unnecessary and should be killed.  It contains broad, far reaching language, including this;

“Therefore, the general court declares and determines that the waters of New Hampshire constitute a limited and precious public resource to be protected, conserved, and managed in the interest of present and future generations.”

The “waters of New Hampshire” could be broadly interpreted to mean all water resources are defined as public resources regardless of location (Public or Private Property), and regardless of source (lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, wells…).

This would set a dangerous unconstitutional precedent, severing ownership of water from private property. It could also lead to private wells and septic systems being taxed and “protected, conserved and managed” by newly created, powerful government bodies – whether or not you wish to participate in a water/sewer district.

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Water Sustainability Commission (a subset of the Granite State Future Plan, aka Sustainable Communities Initiative) – their own words. First Rep. Spang in her own words

by Skip

UPDATE before publishing:  Apparently, Judith has responded to Ken and invoking both International Law and the World Court?  That’s only by email, but THIS I have to see!

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Our mission here at the ‘Grok is to promote and to protect Individual Freedom, Liberty, and Rights.  Period.  Sure, we do other things as well, but that is our main focus and raison d’etre.  I’ve been focusing on that my last few posts as the Federal mandate of the Sustainable Communities Initiative by the Federal Government (HUD / EPA / DOT) has, all of a sudden, climbed its way up the ladder from the muck in which it was derived.  And muck it is, and it has spread.

As Ken Eyring has pointed out, the Granite State Future Plan is being spearheaded by the NH Legislature spawned 10 Regional Planning Commissions with the intent, now funded with Obama money, to override local control here in NH by pushing for new zoning laws (back up with threats of lawsuits).  These are a fourth level of Government, creatures totally created by legislative statute that have no connection to the NH Constitution.  It is staffed by locally appointed members (for instance, my DPW department head is my town’s representative on the Lakes Region Planning Commission) with some paid staff.  They get State funding and also go around grubbing for town taxpayer monies by “billing” on population (e.g., “you have X number of people on town; based on $XX.XX / person, you should give us a total of….”).  Starting off as simply a way to “coordinate” transportation usage, they now do all kinds of things (when did road management make them experts in broadband deployment?) that stray far from their original mission (like all good bureaucracies do!).

One of the things the zoning changes are going to do is push for higher density “center of town” living; whether or not it makes sense, these Federal clowns want “livable centers” where you can walk from your home above places of business, walk to work, and walk to work.  Need to go somewhere else?  IF you take the time, you will find out that you will be “nudged” to use public transportation.  Mass transit isn’t even ‘sustainable’ in cities already – how would that work out here in rural NH – Oh yeah, they have a solution for that, too, but that’s for another post.

And it will be done, bit by bit.  In a later post, I go through and use some of what the Water Sustainability Commission and others have said, in their own words, to “shape the battlefield“.  In the mean time, let’s start with what has already been posted.  Even Judith Spang, in her response to Ken, starts with the individual but then immediately goes to the Town level, as if the individual Right never existed:

1. Groundwater Law in NH is based on Common Law, not statutory law. The common law (dating back to English Common Law) says unequivically that a riparian landowner has the right to “reasonable use” of water flowing under or abutting his land.  “Reasonable use” is a limitation: you cannot take so much water that you are depriving someone else who has riparian rights to the same groundwater or surface water.  Neither you nor a foreign water bottling company who may own the land next to you has the right to take so much water out of your (or their) well that it dries up abuttors’ wells.

2. When the Commission talks about the need for a water policy that respects the inter-municipal nature of water supplies, it is based upon the above legal principle.

And then explicitly denies the Individual their property Rights:

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Well, while Judith Spang wants Government to take your water rights right from underneath you (literally), she sold her share to the Govt for $500K

by Skip

Subtitle:      Once again, Progressive hypocrisy…..Do I say and not what I do, and never mind that other hand….

OR:                    Ya gotta love it – siphoning off taxpayer money for private interest groups for their hobby.

OK, just one more (I promise):   FOLLOW THE MONEY!

And in this case, LOTS of money followed Judith Spang, (NH State Representative from Durhan, Democrat). While Ken Eyring of the Southern NH 9-12 group is defending our property rights against Durham Democrat Judith Spang, I got a tip in from a loyal reader concerning NH Rep. Spang:

The US Agriculture office 2 Madbury Road, Durham, NH paid Judith over $500,000 for a wetlands easement on her land in Merrimack County so if we all own some of the water draining from her land do we get paid also?

Really – half a million water-bucks? She gets to “sell” her private property for sake of keeping water clean!  So, I googled her (all emphasis mine) and found a pattern:

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