Mired in red tape, the 4th Annual New Hampshire Live Free or Die Rally will be the testing ground on whether July 4th Tea Parties will be squashed throughout the United States of America.
Suppressing dissent followed hard on the heels of state-wide April 15 Tea Parties when Department of Homeland Security head honcho Janet Napolitano fingered returning war veterans as right-wing “extremists”.
Anti-Obama bumper-stickers brought motorists visits from the FBI.
The mainstream media downplayed the estimated one million main-street Americans who protested high taxes at April 15 Tea Parties.
Even with rock star adulation and his picture on almost every marketable item, President Barack Obama does not feel safe from dissent. At his 100th-day town hall meeting in St. Louis, Obama took direct aim at the anti-tax “tea party” demonstrations, taking a veiled shot at the Fox News Channel, closely associated with the protests.
“Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I’m not very popular, and you see folks waving tea bags around,” Obama said, “let me just remind them that I am happy to have a serious conversation about how we are going to cut our health care costs down over the long term, how we are going to stabilize Social Security.”
Billed as the All Free, Only TRUE First Amendment Rally in the U.S., this year’s Live Free Or Die Rally is slated for August 21, 22 and 23.
A Live Free or Die mentality has been gaining new popularity in an environment where everything America is now under attack and Americans are saddled with a president who is apologizing for America on the World Stage.
“Live Free or Die” is the official motto of the U.S. State of New Hampshire, adopted by the state in long ago 1945.
According to Wikipedia, the motto “is possibly the best-known of all state mottos, partly because it speaks to an assertive independence historically found in American political philosophy and partly because of its contrast to the milder sentiments found in other state mottos.”
“The phrase comes from a toast written by General John Stark on July 31, 1809. Poor health forced Stark, New Hampshire’s most famous soldier of the American Revolutionary War, to decline an invitation to an anniversary reunion of the Battle of Bennington and to send his toast by letter:
“Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.”
The motto was enacted at the same time as the state emblem, on which it appears.
And now the popular Live Free or Die Rally has reached an impasse. On Tuesday, rally organizers were “ordered” to a commercial site-plan review subject to a bevy of board approvals and fees--even though it’s an all-free, NON-commercial, First Amendment assembly demonstration on 300 acres of land donated for the gathering.
As quoted by Priscilla Miller in the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript, the opposing viewpoints of both chief rally organizer and selectman:
“It’s a violation of our rights. What they’re doing is illegal”-Jean “Mike” Coutu, rally organizer.
“I very much want you to have this event, but I want you to have it safely and I want you to have it reasonably.” -Frank Sterling, selectman.
This is Tea Parties Meet Bureaucratic Red Tape 101, offering the Obama administration a way to strangle the Tea Party baby in its cradle.
Civic governments, in politically correct lockstep, and dependent on stimulus money make the most effective blockade for America’s gone-viral Tea Parties.
The age-old adage that “You Can’t Fight City Hall and Win” is as prevalent today as it was in the days of corrupt Tammany Hall politics.
Site-plan reviews masquerading as protection for the local taxpayer are as ridden with crass politics as high-handed members of the Democrat Party.
Victims of business ideas strangled at the local Planning Committee dot the landscape.
Has the Obama administration found a clever fail-proof strategy to stifle America’s Tea Parties?
The answer lies in the fate of the 4th Annual New Hampshire Live Free or Die Rally at the Planning Board’s Site Plan Review.
Meanwhile, patriots are watching for the outcome.
Judi McLeod——
Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
