I'm interested in the private prison data, and will look into it. As I said, I'm not convinced and perhaps that data will help make up my mind.

ALEC has a lot of 'legislative' code, not all of which I agree with... but some I do. I also don't install every package in Debian, just what I want... different strokes for different folks. ALEC advocates a perspective. Sometimes I agree, sometimes not.

As for minimum wages laws, basic economics shows why minimum wages are broken and wrong. Pick up some Austrian economic books, and prepare to change your worldview.

The value of the dollar is dropping for many reasons, and minimum wage is one of those reasons... You have cause and effect reversed... the elderly having to go out is BECAUSE of the minimum wage, not in spite of it.

And my 'basic assumptions' are that force is wrong, that individuals make better decisions than government agents can make for them, that the right to contract, the right to property, and the right to control your own body are paramount rights...
Libertarians start with principles, and arrive at solutions that follow from principles. Sadly, few other political views do, they get 'ideas' about what is right, and then to try put the square pegs into the round holes...

I am in favor of marijuana legislation, yes, and sponsored a few bills in that vein, and support pretty much all of the 5 or 6 bills this year in NH to do something (medical, decrim, tax/regulate, industrial hemp (prime sponsor on one), and reducing criminal charges (prime on that one)

  I'm also against both war and capital punishment.

As for minimum wage laws, pensions, food stamps, and all of the rest, you are right, you wouldn't want to vote for me, I want to end Social Security, as it's a pyramid scheme, and you want it to continue, because you are about to cash in on it.

There is a fundamental natural right to practice a vocation. But Right to Work laws are even more simple: You do not have the right to force someone else to pay you for the privilege of having his job, and despite that forced unionism is supposed to be over, the 'fair share' dues requires are the same in a different name. Just because 80% or 90% of the workers choose to organize, the remaining folks should be _forced_ to go along.

I don't hate Unions, I think RTW makes unions EARN their place, by making it so the only people who pay for them WANT to pay for them, making them get better and be worthwhile.

And I'm against the PATRIOT Act, etc...

So, despite that you wouldn't vote for me, plenty of others would. I'm a Republican in the vein of Ron Paul... and so far, he's doing quite well. (And while I disagree in minor ways with him, he's the only major politician confronting the problems that _your_ generation has caused, sir.

1) Infrastructure
At my house in rural Hopkinton, NH, I reliably get 8MB down/4MB up. I telecommute to work most days; I live and die by my fast and reliable internet connection. I have had no particular issues. Note that I choose to live in the woods; there are in fact cities (not metropileses, but places with tall buildings and hundreds of thousands of people) in NH: Manchester, Nashua, etc

2) "recording cops"
Yes, FSPers have been pushing legislation to clarify that people have the right to record on-duty civil servants (especially police). Separately, a number of court cases have been won (by FSPer lawyers) that have adjudicated that on-duty police have no reasonable expectation of privacy. So, it's an issue that a number of FSPers are pushing on hard.

3) Downside
Yes, it gets cold in winter. And butt-hot in the summer. And the closest Really Big City is Boston, which is about an hour away from the NH state capitol in Concord. Oh, and there's no income or sales tax, so if you really want to pay those, NH will suck for you.

While true, from a perspective of 20,000 feet, while it's quasi-open, it's still essentially a proprietary solution, in that you can't share it, can't leverage other eyeballs, other states, other voices... it's better than some, worse than others (you broke it, you own both pieces, despite paying for it and thus getting the code)

I don't see a problem with it, but why single it out and perhaps encourage it?

Yes. This is part of the thinking we need people to understand... the long term.

Always glad to answer these sorts of questions:

1) Enforced socialism? Open Source is voluntary. If you agree to the rules by which the code is shared, you play by those rules. It's got no more 'force' than any other aspect of copyright. (And for the record, I'm anti-copyright, which is a state granted monopoly, and in a truly free society, it wouldn't exist)

2) Get out of the current recession? Ron Paul has the answer: it's monetary policy.
2a) Corporatism? Yes, it's a big problem. I think the Occupiers and the Tea Partiers describe the same problem, different facets. Money in politics is the root of all the evil in both.

3) I'm anti-PatriotAct, anti-TSA, anti-war.
3a) Sadly, not much. Folks like Ron Paul are showing that while 10-15% want to fix things, the rest like the illusions.

4) The religious right needs to grow up and get a life. I believe that they have the right to be left alone, and they need to leave others alone too.
I hadn't heard of the wedge strategy, and frankly, it's a mistake... Government needs to get out of people's live, not tell them what to think or not think.

5) As I said, I'm anti-copyright. Mimi and Eunice FTW.

6) I see myself as a typical slashdotter, in the sense of the old school hacker types... I'm a unix geek with a beard. Usenet and the early net in general was heavily libertarian, and I think a major core sector of libertarians are in the geek industries...

7) biggest disagreement with Liberals: Stay out of my wallet - it's mine.
biggest disagreement with (social) Conservatives: stay out of my bedroom - it's not your business.
How to bring the two sides together? I think the new populism will find a libertarian-ish middle ground bringing Tea Party and Occupy together into a new fusion that respects both wallet and bedroom, ideally more voluntaryist. Or else it'll all fall apart, as the collapse hits us hard here in the US, and in Europe too.

8) I'm a Ron Paul endorser, and I was up on the stage when he announced in NH this past spring in the AP video of the event. I'm the furry muppet in the back.
For all the reasons everyone else does: he's right.

Actually, quite a few bullet item... read the bill... The list of principles that RFP need to factor in, for the better use of government money spent on solutions, is not some random list, but based on solid ideas with reasons behind them. See http://www.opengovdata.org/home/8principles

Folks who contributed to that set of ideas:
Carl Malamud (Public.Resource.Org), Tim O'Reilly (O'Reilly Media), Greg Elin (Sunlight Foundation), Micah Sifry (Sunlight Foundation), Adrian Holovaty (EveryBlock), Daniel X. O'Neil (EveryBlock), Michal Migurski (Stamen Design), Shawn Allen (Stamen Design), Josh Tauberer (GovTrack.US), Lawrence Lessig (Stanford), Dan Newman (MapLight.Org), John Geraci (outside.in), Edwin Bender (Inst. for Money), Tom Steinberg (My Society), David Moore (Participatory Politics), Donny Shaw (Participatory Politics), JL Needham (Google), Joel Hardi (Public.Resource.Org), Ethan Zuckerman (Berkman), Greg Palmer (NewCo), Jamie Taylor (MetaWeb), Bradley Horowitz (Yahoo), Zack Exley (New Organizing Institute), Karl Fogel (Question Copyright), Michael Dale (Metavid), Joseph Lorenzo Hall (UC Berkeley), Marcia Hofmann (EFF), David Orban (Metasocial Web), Will Fitzpatrick (Omidyar Network), Aaron Swartz (Open Library)

The problem isn't that there is no method... it's that there is no affordable method (for data they really don't need access to, but are required to keep around by law.) Why spend money and space and so on, on hardware for 'one day, maybe?'

The point of open formats is that worst case, someone has to create a translation into whatever the current format needed is... no hardware or old software dependence....

1) Yes, in fact, I discussed that sort of approach, and it's also been discussed as part of some contentious ongoing battles over power lines...
The 'wiring of NH' is something folks are discussing, and no answers or good plans (IMHO) yet.
The more south you are, and the more urban, of course, the better the situation

2) A recent 2nd Circuit decision and a number of NH decisions have helped a lot. http://www.copblock.org/tag/new-hampshire/
has some news on this. Plus "On the Job, on the Record" bill continues to be worked on in the Legislature.

3) New Hampshire's greatest weakness? Hmm... it's not the "cold" (mild winters and global warming, sweaters and fun stuff to do in winter, all help), and it's not Boston folks (most of the worst voting people live near the educational institutions... not the border of Mass...)
We have low taxes (esp compared to NJ), more relative freedoms (not perfect, but overall best in US already), and lots of tourism...

If I had to name a 'problem', it's that New England tends to be very conservative in taste, meaning that Dunkin Donuts is everywhere, so finding good coffee is hard, Spicy/Ethnic food is findable, but not common place. There is a long tradition, so attempts to restore 'the old NH' can be good (more freedomwise), but things which push against tradition are an uphill battle. While true everywhere, there is a certain reticence in New Hampshire folks (for better or worse). In some ways, this is WHY it's still the best (local politics, town meetings), and in other ways, it's still very hard to make that change happen (local politics, town meetings)

But I wouldn't change it for the world... it's just the other side of the coin...