Taxpayer Reunion '06

-- by Ed Naile

Last Saturday was our Coalition of NH Taxpayer's Family Reunion at the Hopkinton State Fairgrounds. This was our eighth such event. We call it a family reunion because that typifies the comments we most often hear from people who attend - so we went with it. We gave up trying to have speeches because people come to talk and meet each other.

Over two hundred of New Hampshire's small government, low tax, freedom loving activists were in attendance. We had a great time networking with people, some of whom we only hear about on the web or read about in the papers.

Dozens of candidates including Republicans, Libertarians, and Democrats signed our "CNHT Taxpayer Protection Pledge." Republican Gubernatorial candidate Jim Coburn waited to sign his Taxpayer Protection Pledge until the cookout. We thank him for that. There are 72 pictures of the event posted on our web site at www.cnht.org so far.

Congressman Charlie Bass attended and spent quite a bit of time walking around eating lunch and talking to our determined band of tax activists. We missed Congressman Jeb Bradley who usually comes due to a tight schedule in-state. His staff waited it out most of the day but it wasn't to be this year.

State Senator Bob Clegg rode his motorcycle this year. State Senator Chuck Morse was there as well. In fact, Sen. Morse and former Sen. Russ Prescott, both candidates for the Executive Council, talked and ate with cookout attendees. Chet Lapointe, Libertarian candidate for Congressional District 2 moved among the guests as well.

Our pal Al Kulas of WKBK 1290, fresh off a win in the NH Broadcaster awards for radio talk show hosts took time to drive out and see us. Al manned the microphone at WKBK for twelve hours straight during the floods this spring giving details of what was going on to police and citizens in the Keene area.

Ron Dupuis with his new Saturday morning show on WLMW 90.7 (also CNHT's Taxpayer Radio station) stopped by as well. Then Gardner Goldsmith of WNTK 99.7 in New London with his new "trimmed" look shook things up late in the day.

Our "Wall of Shame" of captured municipal documents was a big hit again this year with the new two foot by three foot Geoff Wetrosky "Missing" poster. We almost made a giant milk carton to put this little vote thief's face on but the posters are impressive enough.

We also have SCJ David Souter's interesting assessment card and property map, photo evidence of voter fraud from different towns, voter fraud confessions from UNH students, a poster-sized hand written superior court pro se petition, and all kinds of interesting stuff that takes up about fifty feet of wall space. We also like to call the “Wall of Shame” “What the Papers Won't Print.”

The only “speech” of the day which I call a “list” was when I got up on a chair and asked how many people were running for office. About half the hands went up! I predict it will be an interesting legislature next year with this group as part of the debate.

Our next “reunion” will be on July 7, 2007. This will be a Presidential Primary Cookout with a straw poll. The last time we held such an event we sold all 1,500 tickets two weeks in advance. See you there!