On this episode of the Freecast EZ pass shuts down to amass vast annoyance. And what annoys me is the whole paper or plastic debate keeps popping up as the ignorant harass faster than the practical can produce facts. I know plastic is empirically better by a wide crevasse. We’ve also got the LPNH convention and fighting fraud in the free market next on the Freecast.
News
- EZPass website being taken down for weeks?drivers will incur violations if they run a negative balance during the down time. In what private enterprise world would this be acceptable?
- Paper or Paper?
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- On Monday, March 6th Portsmouth city council unanimously voted to postpone the first hearing for a plastic bag ban vote until March 20th.
- City Councilor Brad Lown brought the issue forward with fellow councilor Josh Denton.
- Reason: 1. It is good for the environment and 2. To change people’s habits
- Luckily, not everyone in Portsmouth at the city hall Monday was inept and Resident Erik Anderson said, there are “more cons to banning these particular certain type of plastic bags then there is benefit.” “In my opinion, this particular issue is a social decision”
- Resident Jim Lee said the proposed ban was, “a solution in search of a problem.” and “I don’t really see a whole lot of plastic bags blowing around”
- Here’s what the proposed ordinance says, “no store, to include a grocery store or a pharmacy, shall provide a single-use carryout plastic bag to a customer” “A customer shall be charged a minimum of ten cents for each recycled paper bag provided by the store (the Paper Bag Cost Pass-Through)”
- 10 cent paper bag charge is to “encourage” people to use reusable bags.
- The unintended consequences of the hands-free law
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- Portsmouth PD has deployed a stealth “low profile” cruiser, that doesn’t look like a police cruiser but is there to enforce…traffic laws.
- What a waste of money!
- Police chief David Mara said that it’s so stealth that he asked it not to be photographed. Well, thanks to people on facebook we’ve been able to find this “stealth cruiser” It is a completely black SUV Ford Explorer with the words “Police” still visible on the side and a bullbar on the front like every police car has.
- Very stealthy, indeed.(sarcasm)
- Unfortunately, 10 people on the March 4th-5th weekend got ticketed by the cruiser for using electronic devices.
- Mara said, “You can get them all day long” “It’s still very prevalent and still very dangerous”
- He added, “People see a black-and-white cruiser and they start to act accordingly. This doesn’t look like a cruiser”
- The police are intentionally trying to deceive people. And they claim the reason they’re doing this is because the most frequent complaint he gets from residents is traffic enforcement.
- LPNH Convention
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- Rodger explains what happened at the LPNH convention.
Local happenings
- Thursday meetups
- 1st Sunday monthly Praxeum Free Market
- Spring potluck April 8th at 4:00 pm
Philosophy of Liberty
- Fighting Fraud on the Free Market
Seacoast History
- Slavery in New Hampshire
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- New Hampshire – awesome, but – NH dark past – like rest of world
- Rarely hear – slavery – north but it did exist, even here!
- Question: When was slavery officially abolished in New Hampshire?
- Briefly mentioned slavery in NH before. Back in episode 22 Outrage Addiction. William Whipple freed slave Prince – fighting for freedom from Britain yet he was a slave.
- The first known black person in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, came from the west coast of Africa in 1645. Captured one Sunday slave merchants attacked his village in Guinea, killing approx. hundred persons and wounding others. When the General Court learned of the raid and kidnapping, ordered the merchants to return the African to his home. Slavery was NOT the issue of concern, as it was legal. The court was “indignant” that raiders had violated the Sabbath and that they had committed “ye haynos and crying sin of man stealing.”(sic)
- New Hampshire – one of few colonies – no tariffs on slave importation.
- Portsmouth – slaves imported- smuggled into other colonies.
- As across the North, wartime attrition destroyed slavery as a viable economic institution. Between 1773 and 1786, the number of New Hampshire slaves fell from 674 to 46. Many obtained freedom by running away to the British in Boston, others by serving in the Continental Army. Desperate to fill its regiments, New Hampshire had offered bounties to slaveholders who manumitted black recruits.
- Slaves were removed from the rolls of taxable property in 1789, but the act appears to have been for taxing purposes only. The 1790 census counted 158 slaves; but in 1800, there were only 8. Portsmouth traders participated legally in the slave trade until 1807. No slaves were counted for the state in 1810 and 1820, but three are listed in 1830 and one in 1840.
- A commonly accepted date for the end of slavery in New Hampshire is 1857, when an act was passed stating that “No person, because of descent, should be disqualified from becoming a citizen of the state.” The act is interpreted as prohibiting slavery. By a strict interpretation, however, slavery was outlawed only on Dec. 6, 1865, when the 13th amendment went into effect. (Ratified by New Hampshire July 1, 1865.)
- New Hampshire was one of the more liberal states of the North in terms of restrictive laws. Except for barring blacks from the militia, it left them to do most other things. For instance, in 1860, New Hampshire was one of only 5 states that allowed blacks to vote.
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- Interesting side story, in Canaan NH in March 1835 at the Newly founded Noyes academy 28 white and 14 black students started classes at this new private school. Basically this was a pet project from abolitionists and they had to ship black kids from New York City. The school’s policy was “to afford colored youth a fair opportunity to show that they are capable, equally with the whites, of improving themselves in every scientific attainment, every social virtue, and every Christian ornament.”
- Abolitionists said it was a success, however, the town had a meeting on July 4th of that year and appointed a committee to get rid of the school for “the interest of the town, the honor of the State, and the good of the whole community (both black and white).”
- On Aug. 10th the townspeople got 100 yoke of oxen and literally pulled the entire school off of its foundation to the town common and moved it next to the baptist church where the front door was inaccessible. 4 years later a fire of unknown origin burned the school down
- In 1789 Governor Langdon signed a bill saying that slaves were no longer taxable property. Even after this, the amount of slaves dwindled, mostly due to how inefficient slavery was.
- Even after slaves were freed they were discriminated against, there was even a negro court in Portsmouth. In churches, they were forced to sit in the back of the congregation usually in the balcony.
- The known leaders of the Negro Court in Portsmouth were among nineteen slaves who submitted a petition to the state legislature in 1779 urging the release of all New Hampshire slaves from bondage and to officially end slavery in the state. They appealed to the lawmakers’ religious, moral and political sense of justice, but no legislative action was taken on the petition. It was tabled, and the entire petition appeared in the newspaper with an editorial disclaimer noting that its publication was “for the amusement” of the newspaper’s readers.
- Currently, there is a Black Heritage Trail in Portsmouth which anyone can follow. Sources for everything mentioned today and more are linked in the show notes.
- http://slavenorth.com/newhampshire.htm
- http://www.seacoastnh.com/blackhistory/slaves.html
- http://www.seacoastnh.com/blackhistory/blacks1.html
- http://www.seacoastnh.com/blackhistory/trail.html
Social media
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Featuring: Matt Carano, Mike Vine, Nicholas Boyle and Rodger Paxton
Producer: Pax Libertas Productions
Editor: Matt Carano
