Ruth Larson: Insurrectionists Sylvia and Howard declare war on county

To The Editor;

At the beginning of the Belknap County delegation meeting of Jan. 26, the mostly unmasked members who were present in person stood and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. The same group that pledged its allegiance “to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands” is led by a Chair (Rep. Sylvia) and Vice Chair (Rep. Howard) who have declared in their secessionist “Termination of office” papers that they “are Absolved from all allegiance to the statutory ‘state’ (their quotation marks) of New Hampshire”. They further pledged their lives, their fortunes and their “sacred honor” (my quotation marks). And, by the way, they declared the election of November 3, 2020 “void for fraud and of no effect”. Did they mean to exclude their own election from the claim of invalidity, or are Mr. Sylvia and Mr. Howard stating that when the voters of their districts appeared to choose them, that was fraudulent?

In defense of the rest of the delegation, the group elected its Chair and Vice Chair before Sylvia and Howard went down the insurrectionist path. One may wonder, however, at the wisdom of leaving these two in charge. Since the time they were elected, they have done their best to embarrass the county. Watching the January 26 meeting, with the vast majority of the delegation members sitting close together, unmasked, thanks to Mr. Sylvia’s anti-science leadership, was, to put it mildly, disturbing. This came after the delegation leaders’ refusal to condemn the DC rioters, who killed a police officer as part of their attempt to overturn the vote. Although some claim the vote wasn’t clear and the final vote in favor was “unanimous”, a vast majority (236) of the state representatives, including 8 from Belknap, managed to figure it out and vote in favor without the need to revise history afterwards. It is clear that in Belknap County it was only after the negative publicity that the nay voters scrambled for cover under some arcane parsing of the vote.

Their secession papers clearly include not just the State of NH but also the United States. Although the claimed “fraud” and “nullity” presumably apply mainly to the US election, the incoherent Sylvia-Howard manifesto also seems to apply those terms to the NH elections, even though NH voted mainly Republican. The 2 delegation leaders disavowed the United States, and declared their lack of allegiance to NH. They next turned their nihilistic and destructive ax to the county.

By leading the delegation to arbitrarily slash one significant item after another from the budget, and by ramming through their unwise and cruel cuts, Mr. Sylvia and Mr. Howard have now declared war on Belknap County. They owe allegiance only to their goal of dismantling government and all its services, and are dragging Belknap County down a path of fiscal irresponsibility and failure in the delivery of county services.

Did voters in Belknap County really sign on for this? Time for new leadership?