New Hampshire: Blue Hampshire

Shhhh.... Can you hear it? If you listen hard enough you can hear the sound of the most open and participatory communication medium yet invented crashing headlong into one of the smallest Legislative bodies in the world.

Yesterday we were live blogging proceedings from the NH Senate. Go back and read that again to let it sink in.

While the topic at hand (HB436) was the "primary" watershed event, I think another tipping point was reached yesterday as well: From this point forward elected officials at the state level will need to be a part of the online conversation if they are to be successful in promoting themselves and their agenda.

Many Liberals are fans of centralized power - at least politicians that I can readily identify as Liberals seem to pontificate that only Government can solve the problem.  Often, that means we, the people, have to give something up of our money, our freedom, our choices.  And when we complain, or a politician stands up against the Libs on a principled stand, let the excoriation begin!

Such is what Dean Barker has done over at Blue Hampshire:

Unconscionable

He's really doing it (h/t TPM):

Gov. Rick Perry will announce today that he is blocking the state from accepting $550 million for expanded unemployment benefits as part of the federal stimulus package

I didn't think it was possible for the other side to act in ways that one could argue are actually worse than George W.

This Administration is using the tax code far beyond any other one that I can remember.  Which brings up one of the biggest questions and differences between Conservatives and Liberals:

As an incidental item, it spotlights just how foolish and unfair social engineering by tax policy always is. For everything somebody judges “good” and encourages with tax code manipulation, there is behavior judged “bad” (success and “too much” wealth) to be punished, and havoc ensues.

What is the purpose of taxation? Is it to finance necessary government services, or to empower certain individuals-on-high to reward or punish us according to their moral and philosophical views? This question should have been asked, publicly debated and settled quite some time ago.

A sad denouement to a site that I once linked to and cheerled at every turn:
to contact@politicker.com
date Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 7:12 PM
subject Blue Hampshire and PolitickerNH
mailed-by gmail.com

Dear Sir or Madam,

I've been receiving a number of complaints from my readers about politickernh.com, which, despite its defunct status, is putting every blog post we have on our front page as its "News Feed".

We are a blog, not a news outlet, and our material is posted on your site in full without any context or additional writing by Politicker's reporters.  Nor were we ever approached about this happening.

I ask that you please not continue to use us as a "news feed" for your site.