The jon kiper show

What's happening folks? Welcome to the Jon Kiper Show. I'm Jon Kiper. This is my show. it's a pleasure to be with you again, and we are here today to talk about my lawsuit. I recently, a couple weeks ago, I filed a lawsuit against the state of New Hampshire, and this lawsuit was, it's actually, it's called a Petition for Declaratory Judgment.

And I wanna tell you a little bit about my petition for declaratory judgment. So basically in 20, God, when was this? 2023. I had a local guy who was a regular at my restaurant, and he was trying to build some, Housing, some apartment buildings or an apartment building near my restaurant where I live, where we are right now.

And, he said, "Hey, would you mind coming to the ZBA meeting, that Zoning Board of Adjustment, because I have to convince them to let me put, 30 or 40 units on this lot and it's only zoned for a, couple of units. And he's and I want you to talk about why we need affordable housing in New Hampshire and that sort of thing."

I said, "Sure, no problem, buddy." And. So right before I left to go to the meeting, I randomly thought, "Hey, I'm just gonna skim the New Hampshire Constitution," 'cause surely there's gotta be something in there I could just use as, some kind of defense against, or, some kind of legal argument that we need more housing.

And, in that, I, started looking at Article 10 of the New Hampshire Constitution, and Article 10 is, quite interesting because basically. Article 10 says that, and you should look it up for yourself, but it basically says that government being instituted for the common benefit, protection and security of the whole community and not for the private interest, or emolument of anyone, man, family, or class of men.

So it's basically saying the government needs to work for everyone. It needs to work for renters as well as homeowners. As well as homeless folks and et cetera. It has to work for everyone. And I was looking at that, reading that and I thought, it's really weird that a group of generally homeowners who are on a planning board of zoning board, 'cause it's generally people that own homes that are on them.

There are some renters, but the majority are homeowners can block apartments or other housing, which would potentially make their houses worth less money so they can protect their house as a financial asset using the government. And that seems to me to be. Not right. And this was when ChatGPT first had come out and, or at least when I first started using it, and I put Article 10, the New Hampshire Constitution into ChatGPT, and I said, "Hey, can you make a legal argument that, exclusionary zoning, like not letting people build apartments when we need them, is a violation Article 10?"

And ChatGPT was like, "Sure." And it came up with a very basic, but very logical explanation as to why. Not building, apartments and housing that we need. and this being restricted by the government was a violation Article 10. And I thought, huh, that's interesting. And this is one thing that. LM large language models are very good at is interpreting legal text because it's very cut and dry.

it's, very mathematical. It's like x equals y or whatever. and so I, I realized ChatGPT was a really good resource for, deciphering the Constitution. And so I said to ChatGPT, I typed it in. Would you say that not paying the reps or paying them only a hundred dollars is also a violation of Article 10?

And sure enough, ChatGPT said, yeah, I can come up with that argument. And it did. And I try this with a number of different things, and I wanted to see if ChatGPT could come up with an argument that anything. Was a violation of Article 10, if it was just pleasing me. So I said, hey, is inequality itself a violation of Article 10?

The fact that so many people have little, and so other people have more. And ChatGPT's no, this is not a violation of Article 10. So I was like, okay. And I even asked some random things like, is, airlines, having two tiered prices? Is this of, a violation of Article 10? Because I just wanted to see if it would always give me the right answer or always give me the answer I wanted.

And it said, no, that's not a violation of Article 10. So there, there was. Clear evidence that ChatBPT was able to come up with an argument when it applied, but it, wasn't doing it randomly or wasn't doing it every time. It wasn't coming up with an argument to satisfy me every single time.

So I, I thought about this for a while about Article 10 and, the unpaid representatives. And, so just so that in case you did not know, 'cause I talked about this a lot in my last campaign in New Hampshire, our state reps are paid a hundred dollars per year. And because of this, 80% of them are wealthy or retired, and every other state in the country pays its reps.

Now, the way that they pay the reps is always a little bit different. Like in Maine, I think it's $10,000 for one session and maybe $15,000 for the second session for the second year. But then in Maine, they have different amounts of money for every night that you're in the capital. So there's a stipend for food and lodging for every night that you have to be there.

Other states do it a little bit differently. Some of them pay a lot. Massachusetts and New York pay their, their, state reps literally hundreds, a hundred thousand dollars. More, than that. More than a hundred thousand. other states, like Maine and, Vermont pay a lot less.

It's more like 10 or 15,000 with these bonuses based on what days you are actually working in, the capital, what days you're in the capital. And some of 'em do a stipend. There's just a lot of different ways to do it. But understand every other state is paying their state reps at least some nominal fee.

Thousand, New Mexico pays, a fee for I think every day that they're in committee. it's a stipend, but they all pay something and New Hampshire just does not. So as a result, people like me can't run for state rep and I've been thinking about wanting and wanting to run for state rep for literally years because a lot of our reps, even though Democrats are older and therefore more conservative and really don't align with.

With my views. So I felt like I was, frankly, it was taxation without representation, 'cause I am paying a lot of taxes as a business owner in New Hampshire and really. I didn't feel like I could be represented up there. And it's important for people to know that, some municipal elected officials get paid.

So like when I was a state rep, sorry, I wasn't a state rep. When I was on the New, New Market Town Council, I got paid, $1,500 for the year. Now again, this is not a crazy amount of money, but it was enough money to justify my time and it was like 20 to 30 bucks an hour. And it just made the whole thing a little bit easier, Especially, I was on the council during the pandemic, so we're getting screamed at about masks and about, Vaccines and, all that stuff. And so it was just a little bit better that we were getting paid. And literally I would, I bought a guitar for about 400 bucks with one of my checks from the town council.

And I used to just play my guitar whenever I was feeling a little bit, annoyed with being a town counselor and wanting to quit, frankly. And I didn't quit. I saw it through my term, but. So I had been thinking about this idea of running for state rep for forever, for so long. And the reason I even began running for governor, no joke, is that I was looking through the Secretary of State's website because I wasn't sure if the senators get paid.

They don't get paid either. And I was like, man, the executive council gets paid, but it's like $16,000 a year, which. executive council is a lot of work for that small amount of money, and also it's very gerrymandered, so it'd be very hard for me to win a seat, an executive council, the way that they've cut it up.

And I was like, the governor's really the only job that gets a decent paycheck in this state. It's $140,000. I'm like, I might as well run for governor because at a minimum, I, wanted to bring up this idea that the state reps weren't paid and get people to start thinking about the fact that if the reps aren't paid, and therefore they're not reflective of the general population.

Then we, don't really have representative democracy. We have something else, and it's generally what I would call plutocracy, ruled by the rich, or gerontocracy, ruled by the elderly. But what is not, it is not democracy when, certain people, like working class people, young people, cannot serve in Concord.

And I just found this so frustrating when I would tell people about it, especially young people. A little light bulb would go off in their head and they'd go, "Wow, yeah, that makes sense. That's why we don't have affordable housing. This is why we don't have." cannabis legalized in New Hampshire, although it's legalized everyone in New England.

This is why a lot of things, our education system isn't funded. It's because wealthy people and retired people don't have kids in the public school system. Now, not to say that these people don't. Care they do. and a lot of the Democratic reps that are retired, they do care a lot, but it's just a little bit different when the problem is something that you're living versus the problem is something that you're hearing about.

and you should know this, that in the year 2000, so 25 years ago, the Sheraton Hotel, wrote up a report and presented to the legislature and said, "Hey, we don't have enough workforce housing in New Hampshire in the year 2000." And they started the Seacoast, Workforce Coalition to try to advocate for more, housing.

Sorry, the Seacoast Workforce Housing Coalition. I think that's what it's, and so, this idea that we had no have enough housing, it's been around for 25 years and the state reps have made some small changes, but obviously it's not solved the problem. So it's clearly clear in my mind that. The lack of paid representation is, an issue.

And when I brought this up in my last campaign, a lot of young people thought it was a worthwhile, advocacy for me as, governor. And one of the problems I found, I talked to the state reps, I talked to our, minority leader at the time, his name is Matt Willem. And I met with him and he said, thank you for bringing up this idea of paying the reps, because he said, it's very hard for us as state reps to advocate for ourselves to get paid because it looks bad when politicians are demanding money.

And I, totally understood that. So I was like, I will take on this role of advocating for the state reps to get paid, and probably the state reps will not even come out in favor of it because they don't want the Republicans to use that against them. So they don't want the Republicans saying, "Hey, Representative Joe Schmo just wants to get paid.

He's just trying to get money out of the government." And this is really one of the issues is the state reps feel that they can't advocate for themselves, even though some of them have tried to pass bills in the past to get some sort of compensation. it's, never gone anywhere. So this is where we're at with, this is where we were at with this whole issue.

And I thought, I'm just gonna keep advocating for it, keep pushing for it, and just try to get more people to know about this issue and realize and try to connect the lack of paid, state reps with our issues in the state because I think they're directly connected. And, and some of the state reps are, get it.

And they, like I said, and some of them don't. And generally the ones that don't get it are, the ones that have been there for a while and they'll say, oh, we tried paying the reps 20 years ago and it didn't work. But understand what happens is the turnover rate in the house is like 30%. So a lot of people get elected.

They get in there, they find it very frustrating because they can't get a lot done 'cause there's 400 members and they aren't getting paid. So they quit after one or two terms. So there's just this constant turnover of a lot of people with a, small group of other people who are there. For decades.

Literally decades. And you gotta just understand how hard it is for the town and county committees that are trying to recruit people to run for state rep. Because you have to basically say to people, "Hey, do you wanna do this job that pays no money and you gotta drive to Concord?" Two or three times a week, maybe more, and for six months and you don't get paid.

it's impossible. And for me, as someone that's running for governor, I wanna be able to say to people like you listening to this, hey, run for state rep. Let's fight this together. Let's be on the same team and we can champion my economic, ideas of community first economics. And that just, is not viable.

I can't do that. I can't encourage people to run for state rep in any meaningful way because they don't get paid. I have asked a few people I know that are retired or people with flexible schedules to do it, and, everyone has said that they couldn't. So this is where we were at with the paid state reps.

And so this is funny. About six months ago, I, went logged into ChatGPT and I said, "Hey, you remember how we were talking about Article 10?" And the fact that the state reps don't get paid and this being a conflict, I was like, is there some sort of legal avenue through which I can, ask the government to address this or something?

I, was just like, is there anything I can do about this as someone who's not a lawyer and doesn't have a lot of money for a lawyer and as someone who just wants to, have better representation? And it was so funny 'cause I don't know why I never asked this in the first place, but ChatGPT goes, yes.

You can do a petition for declaratory judgment under RSA 491-22. So it was there the whole time. I could have done it at any time. And so I was like, all right, how do I do that? And ChatGPT basically helped me come up with the entire petition, which is right here and. And explain to me how to file it.

So a couple of weeks ago, I took my petition down to, or up to Concord, and I filed my petition with the State. And basically what the petition says is that, The state in, let's see, where is it? In 1889, they set the level of funding at a hundred dollars per year, $200 per session.

And that, this, in my opinion, violates Article 10, which says that, everybody, should be, the government should work for everybody and also violates the equal rights, guarantee of Part One, Article One of the New Hampshire Constitution. and then it adds a number of other arguments, such as the purchasing power of $200 in 1889.

Was equivalent to approximately $6,800 in 2020 dollars, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. So that is a, that the current compensation thus represents a roughly 97% reduction in real value. and, it goes on to say a, legislator in the modern General Court is a demanding commitment.

A 2023 report by the New Hampshire Legislative Ethics Committee notes that the role is considered part to full-time. Commitment during session where many members spend 20 to 40 hours a week on legislative work, including constituent service, committee work, and travel. and when the framers set legislative compensation at.

$100 to $200 in 1889. The general court met only once every two years for a brief session. That's important to know. So when the country, when the state was founded and they wrote the constitution, they only met every other year. The state reps did, and it was very brief. And in 1984, at a constitutional amendment, established an annual session, effectively doubling the time commitment, in responsibilities of legislators without any corresponding adjustment in pay.

and what this does is it basically, like I've said, it keeps working class and, middle class people from, serving. And, I'm not talking about a lot of money. I'm talking about five, $10,000 a year just to make it viable. I was talking to my friend, she just got elected in Somersworth.

She's a state rep, and her name's Billie Butler, and she was just saying it's really hard. she's only just gotten elected, but she's I do gig work and if I get offered a job that pays, yeah, it's gonna pay my bills and it conflicts with my schedule, I'm not sure what I'm gonna do. She was like, but if it paid, like even if paying, if being a state rep paid even $10,000, she was like, that would be great, because then I could probably make 30 or 40,000 the rest of the year and the time in between. With it paying nothing. She was like, I just don't see this being something I can do for more than two or four years.

Like I said, this is how people get burnt out. so I went to, I went to the courthouse to file, and this is the funny thing, is I knew that this, or I had a feeling this might be worthy of the news. So I called or texted my buddy Adam Sexton at WMUR. I said, hey, I'm gonna file this lawsuit. do you want to come down and make it into a story?

And he did. And so it was great 'cause he filmed me going in, I filed the paperwork, they filmed me coming out. The funny part was when I got to the State House or to the courthouse in Merrimack County Courthouse in Concord to file it, I didn't realize that you could only file online. So I thought that you could file online, but you could also file in person.

And obviously filing online wouldn't really look that good for WMUR video. I'd be just sitting at the computer and. So I went in there and they're like, oh, you can only file online, but don't worry, we have computers here and we have wifi. You can just do it here and we'll wait with you in case you have any problems.

And so I, I didn't have a lawyer. I'm representing myself, pro se, basically off of just what ChatGPT told me to do, right? this is crazy. I'm not a lawyer, I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm like, I'm gonna see this through as far as I can because I want to see a judge. Read through this and tell me that it makes any sense.

Tell me that not paying the reps makes any sense and I'm not suing them for money. That's what's important. I'm suing them to say, to make them declare that this constitution is somehow valid, even though it seems to be inconsistent with these two aspects of it. And so I just want my day in court, So I went and I did that. And I also knew that it would probably get me a little publicity and, more than anything, publicize this fact that state reps don't get paid. 'Cause the problem is that, or that they only get paid a hundred dollars a year. 'Cause one of the problems is that even though people hear that state reps get paid a hundred dollars a year, they don't think about the implications and they don't realize that most towns or most states pay their reps.

And once you tell them that and explain to them the difference between New Hampshire and Maine is that Maine pays their reps. They get it, they start to understand. So I wanted to not just bring attention to my campaign for governor, of course, but also to this whole fact that the state reps don't get paid.

So this is what's funny. They put out the article or put out the news, piece. It was great. It was like two minutes long and it was, it aired at least twice plus a little segments in between, which, if I was gonna buy ads time on WMUR, that amount of ad time plus a, product produced video like that. It would've been like, God, thousands of dollars, probably 10,000.

doing a 32nd ad, a political ad, a 32nd ad during prime time is like one to $2,000, literally. So this is we're looking at like $10,000 in, advertising. So right off the gate, I'm like, this is a win. This is a win. It doesn't matter how this works out. I got. What I need, obviously I want this to work out, but let's be honest, there's probably some BS way the judge is gonna go, "Oh, you didn't file it or, it's, not constitutional because blah, blah, blah, blah.

So be it. I, just want my day in court. I want them to look me in the eye and say that this doesn't make sense, that my lawsuit doesn't make sense. But here's the frustrating part, right? And like I said at the beginning, that the state reps cannot be seen to be asking for raises. And I get that.

So what Matt Wilhelm, the former minority leader, had told me was that. They need an outside entity, like maybe the governor, or maybe this lawsuit, to tell the House to form—I think it's a constitutional commission or some kind of commission. And the commission would be made up of, former judges, former state reps, people that weren't elected, currently served, or weren't currently serving elected office.

And they would then. Study this issue and make a recommendation that the House pay itself and how much it pays itself based on what other states do and, that sort of thing. So basically do a big analysis of it and say, hey, how much do we pay? Is it really affecting things? And I think it's, clearly it is.

and so this is what's so funny, right? So I, do that, I, post it immediately. I get a call from one of the reps who, I've been talking to, he hasn't endorsed me yet, hasn't donated any money. So we're not really like. Buddies yet. and he is like, what? What are you doing? And I'm like, what do you mean, what am I doing?

And he is like, why are you doing this? I'm trying to convince people you're a serious candidate, and this is just totally unserious. And I'm like, dude, what are you talking about? And he's we've tried to pay the reps. I've been here for 20 years. I've been in the State House 20 years. We've tried to pay the reps a bunch of times.

It never worked. You're wasting your time. And I was like, has anyone tried 4:91, colon 22? And the answer is no. No one has tried 491 Colin 22, and I know this because I looked it up. No one has tried to use that RSA for de, declaratory judgment about this particular law. And so I said to him, I was like, look, man, you can look at it like I'm wasting my time, but at a minimum, I just got a bunch of free, time on WMUR.

And if there's one thing that we as Democrats need to learn from Donald Trump, it's use the media, get the unpaid media. If by, trying to be, somewhat sensational. that's what Trump does. He says crazy things 'cause he knows the media will cover it. And I was like, I don't wanna say insane things, but frankly paying the reps in New Hampshire is apparently a crazy idea.

So it was, it was funny 'cause he said that, and, he I, I went off on him to be honest with you, and probably shouldn't have, but. I was like, look, man, I don't know what you think, but I can't serve as a state rep because you don't get paid. And this is what's so frustrating for me as, someone running for governor.

The way that a lot of the reps and the senators, especially the older ones, Democrat, Republican, act towards me is that I'm jumping the, queue, the line. They're like, oh, you, shouldn't run for governor. You've never been a state rep, you've never been a senator. You don't even know what we're doing in Concord.

You're not even paying attention. You're not a serious candidate because you, wanna just run for governor, And it's funny because if I was rich, if I was a multi-millionaire, they wouldn't even question my, my ability to run for guard. It wouldn't even be questioned whether or not I was serious candidate because I'd have the money.

And if I'd been a senator for probably, even four years or six years or something, they wouldn't question either. And this is what's so frustrating, 'cause I say to these people, I'm like, look. You think, you say that someone that's running for governor needs to be a state rep or be a senator. And when I say I can't do it 'cause they don't get paid, you say tough luck.

And when I say, hey, I'm fighting to get, people that are state reps paid so I can do that in the future if I don't win governor, they're like, you're not serious. this isn't serious. Why do you think you should get, we should get paid? I. Dude, this is impossible. You guys are impossible. just all logic is just lost on these people.

And this is not all of them. There are, reps that get it, that wanna get paid, and some of them want to do it but don't want to advocate for it 'cause again, they don't want the Republicans using this line of the state rep, the New Hampshire reps just want to make money and blah, blah, blah. And that's, what they, That was the response the Republicans had was like, oh, a typical Democrat wanna tax and spend and, line the pockets of politicians. And this is something to understand. If we paid 'em $10,000, yes, there's 400, that would be $4 million. That would be half a percent of the state budget. and think about this, we spent $50 million on the education freedom vouchers.

But they don't wanna spend 4 million just to make it democratic so that more people can run. Doesn't make sense to me. And then this is what's got me, is there was a letter, an article written up in the CCOs Media group that Portsmouth Herald, Exeter newsletter, I think Fosters Daily. And they got a quote from Justin, Jason Osborne, who's a majority leader of the Republican.

And he said something about, I, I think he said something about just, it was, It. Oh, just dismissive of it, obviously he's gonna be dismissive of it. But the thing was that the, minority leader, Alexis Simpson, also said that she literally said, during this tough time with SNAP benefits, this is a distraction, and we've tried that before.

We tried to fix that, but we couldn't do it. So it's, he's distracting people. And I was like, one, why is the minority leader of the Democratic Party calling me out publicly in, in the media? Why would a Democrat attack another Democrat? Particularly when I'm the only candidate currently running for governor.

there might be another one, not by now, there I'm the only one that's really been out campaigning. Why is she attacking me? This is odd. I thought we were on the same team. Okay. And also, I assumed she would be supportive of this idea because her predecessor, Matt Willem, was also supportive of this idea.

And I'm like, okay, maybe she's saying this for some other reason, but think about this for a second. And just understand this, there are state reps on SNAP benefits there. I've talked to them. They have had to file for SNAP benefits because, one of this one person I talked to lost their job at a nonprofit because of DOGE.

She had to file for SNAP benefits and think about this. The Democrats want you to believe that they're gonna fight for a minimum wage increase or pay increases for people in the, for working class people. But they won't even fight for a minimum wage to be paid to the people of their own elected body.

they don't care enough about the poor people that are serving as state reps or the poor people that wanna serve as state reps to even fight for that fight. And she couldn't even just stay out of it. if it had been me and I was her, and I didn't wanna make a comment for political reasons, I would've said.

Huh? I'm not a lawyer. I haven't read the, lawsuit yet, and I'm, just not gonna comment on that. That's what I would've said. That would've been the diplomatic approach to it. But clearly she's not a diplomat, at least when it comes to me. And I will say, I texted her months ago and I said, "Hey, let's chat," never got back to me.

So if she wanted to have aligned messaging and didn't want this loss to be part of the Democrats' messaging. Would've been helpful if she just answered my text message, and then we could have talked about all of this stuff. But there's just no communication. They don't care about anyone who does not have money to bring to the party, as I've said many times before.

so that's, a story behind my lawsuit. I filed it, was it a couple weeks ago. I finally have gotten the paperwork printed out to, I have to go, I have to go to the sheriff's office. And pay 65 bucks for the sheriff to serve and, bring the paperwork to the, attorney general's office.

And then, we'll be off and, there's gonna be a, there's gonna be a court case, there's gonna be a hearing, and then they're probably gonna find a reason to dismiss it. I'm gonna appeal, and hopefully we'll get to go to the Supreme Court. And this is what's so funny is I, I had wanted to be a lawyer, right?

I did in, a previous life. And then I never went to, I don't have my undergrad. I never went to college. So I couldn't do it. not in New Hampshire anyway. In some states I could, or no, I couldn't. I'd have to, I'd still have to get my undergrad, but I, wouldn't have to go to law school in Vermont.

But it's funny because I never thought like that I'd get a chance to argue a case in front of a court, like in front of a judge, but I'm doing it, man. I'm doing it. So if there's any, takeaway from this, it's don't give up on your dreams, kids. Don't give up on your dreams. Hey, this is a great show.

Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching. and subscribe. Pass, it along.