"Nullification" comes to New Hampshire as the Kochheads' agenda rolls on from state-to-state

[Tesha]

We were out protesting the Koch Brother's willing
fools in New Hampshire yesterday.

AFP (Americans for Prosperity), one of the Koch
Brother's front organizations, was sponsoring a
"nullification conference" yesterday at one of
our local private colleges. Attended by all
sorts of kooks, it was teaching them how the
key to their happiness was the Tenth Amendment
and ignoring the Federal Government on all
sorts of topics.

Of course, aside from "Obamacare" (which all
of them thought was an abomination), each of
them came with their own ideas of which of the
Federal powers should be nullified. For the
mostly-young male crowd (the Free State Project
Libertarians), it was all sorts of personal freedoms
(which, based on the way they constantly got in
my face and shouted at me, seemed to include the
freedom to be a complete asshole with no social
skills whatsoever). For the older folks, it was
whatever Fox has been trumpeting lately including
the budget/deficit and religious/social issues
where they somehow, oddly, seem to think that
the Government should have much *MORE* power,
especially over women and those nasty, nasty
gays.

And guns and cigarettes were a hot button for
all of them, even though New Hampshire is
already quite a paradise for both gun folks
and smokers.

The funny part was that these fools *PAID* to
come here and be indoctrinated in how to help
the billionaire Koch brothers retain even more
of their wealth at the expense of nearly everyone
attending the conference. And most of them, when
they engaged us in conversation, either didn't
know that AFP was sponsoring their conference
(Hell, it was right on the conference's website)
or that the Koch brothers are "the money" behind
the AFP Astroturf.

Willing fools: the Right's bottomless resource.

Tesha

[Tesha]

1. A kick for the evening crowd... (NT)

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[PraetGeiger]

3. Saturday was fun

I attended the conference, so maybe I can share my perspective on the day?

The table headed by the AFP was, honestly, not at all interesting or compelling. The man there said something to me about "outside influences" coming in and wanting to change New Hampshire, and as soon as he said something that gave himself away as being really concerned with "leftists" I tuned out. Something about carbon taxes destroying the state or some boogey-man like that. (to me, as long as corporations are getting favors and tossing kickbacks to and from the government, I can't really "feel sorry" for when leaders in government change and come to bite them in the butt in form of taxes or things like that.)

I wasn't able to tell by the signs that the protesters had, nor by their comments or roles in discussion with my friends, that the Koch brothers were the devil of the details of the conference.

As for which kook I am, I'm a female Freestater who doesn't think nullification ever turned out to be a really clever idea to run with, historically. Which makes it today seem superficial. But it was a fun day listening to people who seemed pretty convinced all on their own.

As for interactions with protesters, I chimed in to agree with one, who was getting nothing but almost-statistics from a couple friends of mine. I think there were 5 protesters there at once (in front of the building, not along the pathway); one yelled several times, and the rest seemed pleasant if understandably sure of themselves. Other attendees: there was dismissive laughter, possibly someone raised their voice here and there to interrupt the other, but I don't recall any actual yelling. Actually I was one of the people who laughed when the one protester was first yelling, because it was surprising and kinda embarrassing to watch.

But it was not constructive discussion from either side for the most part, as it all seemed to be a mix of theory and pointless anecdotes. Other than some signs I didn't get an idea at all that the Koch brothers were snookering me and my friends in to anything, but rather that the Kochs were just simply a boogey-man, like if a right-winger had a sign depicting...idunno, Pelosi, or whoever they're all afraid of right now.

[3lyford]

4. not great

This article seems to be mainly personal attacks. With little info about the actual views of the people involved. Is this really the best we democrats can do? Can't we attack their beliefs rather than making childish jokes about them?

[PraetGeiger]

5. video!

A friend of mine uploaded his video he took of the event and interactions with the protestors outside!

forewarned--obviously it's from his (and my) perspective, but hey, horse's mouth and all that.