Good news. Election Day is fast approaching. No more ads, no
more robocalls or polls, no more emails, and no more debates. The last two
years of national politics have been unbearable for all who aren’t marching in
Tea Party lockstep. The last two years of NH politics have been unbearable for
those who love the state and don’t care to see it continue to be the butt of
jokes made by the rest of the world. The opposite of progressive is regressive,
and the regressives have had too much control for too long.
Ovide Lamontagne is the regressive running for governor of
our state. Ovide is opposed to abortion in cases of rape and incest. He
supports the so-called personhood legislation that would make a clump of cells
the legal equal of an adult woman. He’s also opposed to marriage equality, and
wants to repeal Obama’s health care law. Despite his obvious religious extremism, Ovide manages (with
the help of the complicit media) to be presented as a moderate. All of the
extremist legislation we’ve seen enacted during the last 2 years will be
compounded with Lamontagne in the corner office. He’s no friend to education or
infrastructure, the two biggest needs in our state.
Just this week, a report shows that NH is home to a huge
gender based pay gap. On average, women earn $0.65 for each dollar a man earns
in NH. Ovide said he didn’t think government should micromanage business, by
telling them what to pay people. In other words, Ovide supports the right of employers
to pay women less because of their plumbing. At the same time, Ovide does
support the right of government to micromanage female reproduction. I’ve been
seeing a bumper sticker around that reads, “Got Ovaries? Avoid Ovide.” It’s
good advice for everyone, regardless of their ovarian status.
Frank Guinta is trying for another term in Congress. Frank
ran in 2010, firmly clasped to the bosom of the Tea Party. In 2012, he’s
running away from that bosom as fast as he can, and attempting to reinvent
himself as a moderate. Frank in 2010 campaigned on alleged abuses on the part
of Congresswoman Shea-Porter’s use of the Congressional franking system. In
2012, we learned that Guinta is one of the top franking abusers in Congress. He
opposed Obama’s stimulus spending, but couldn’t wait to get his paws on
stimulus funding as Mayor of Manchester. We’ve all seen the pictures of him at
the infamous ribbon cutting ceremony for the road to the Manchester Airport
that was built with stimulus funds. Above all, we’ve seen no resolution of the
investigation into the “forgotten” bank account used to bankroll his 2010
campaign. No wonder Guinta’s regarded as one of the most corrupt members of
Congress by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Speaking of corrupt - disgraced former Carroll County GOP
Chair Maynard Thomson is running for the NH House. Thomson resigned from his
position as County Chair on the day he received a “cease and desist” letter
from the NH Attorney General’s office. It seems that Thomson (retired attorney turned
romance novelist) was either too inept or too arrogant to properly file the
expenditure forms by the state. Political committees and individual candidates
are required to send in itemized receipt and expenditure forms once they’ve
taken in $500 before an election. I suspect Thomson didn’t want anyone to know
who was bankrolling all those ads that the local GOP ran in the newspaper in
2010. In any case, Thomson was either unwilling or unable to fill out these
forms – and it really doesn’t matter which one it was. Either way, his actions should
disqualify him from holding higher office.
State Senator Jeb Bradley is running radio ads that urge us
to vote for him. In his radio ad, he mentions that he worked to save 5000 jobs
at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard. In the interest of honesty and full
disclosure it’s important to note that he didn’t do that as a state senator.
That was done in 2005, when he was in Congress. In the state senate he’s worked
against the workers at the shipyard, by supporting out of state special
interest groups trying to turn NH into a right to work state. Apparently even
Bradley doesn’t think his record in the NH State Senate is attractive enough to
win voters over, so he’s trying to blur the lines between his former role in
Congress and his current $100 a year position in the NH legislature.
Former Rep. Norm Tregenza is worried about perverts. He’s
been running ads (big expensive ones, who is funding those?) in the Conway
Daily Sun all week, to tell us of his concern about perverts in bathrooms. Why?
It’s all he’s got. He certainly can’t run for reelection on his own record, so
he’s attacking fellow floterial district candidate and former Rep. Ed Butler
for supporting a bill that would have provided some protections for
transgendered persons. One of Tregenza’s ads shows a picture of Norm himself
(looking rather Hitler youth-ish) telling us what an upstanding guy he is for
wanting to keep perverts out of ladies rooms. The ad in Saturday’s paper
suggested that the entire ad (squirrelly photo and all) be taped to the back of
the ladies room door. Norm’s
picture on the bathroom door? Eeeeuuuww! That’s REALLY perverted.
Women know who the real perverts are. I’ve never spoken to a
single woman who is afraid of encountering a transgendered person in a
bathroom. The real perverts are the Republicans running for office trying to
redefine and normalize rape. The
real perverts are the men who want to regulate women’s reproductive organs and
make their most intimate decisions for them. Tregenza is one of those perverts.
He’s voted against a women’s right to bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom
every time he had the opportunity.
Norman comes across as a “nice young man.” As such, people
tend to overlook the fact that he doesn’t appear to have ever had a full time
job, never mind a career. He’s a member of the red baiting, racist,
anti-Semitic John Birch Society, and was a supporter of
racist/homophobe/misogynist candidate Ron Paul. He’s being presented as a
sterling character – so please be sure to ask him exactly when he moved out of
his district, and why it took him so long to resign his seat after moving.
As for the three Constitutional Amendment questions, my rule
of thumb in these matters is simple: always vote no. The first one is a poorly
written mess that will lead to years of expensive court challenges and
adversely affect NH’s bond rating. The second attempts to let the legislature
run our judicial system. It’s an invitation to all manner of legal challenges.
Think about the legislature we’ve had for the last 2 years and vote no. The
last question calls for a convention to amend or revise our state constitution.
This is an unnecessary action that would cost NH taxpayers millions of dollars.
New Hampshire can’t go forward by moving backward.
Voting records for incumbents: http://www.granitestateprogress.org
© 2012 sbruce
Published as an op-ed in the October 26 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.
It's all so bizarre, like a very bad nightmare. At this juncture, I see no reversal to a sudden brain empowered populace since the legislators with the bigggest mouths on the right dominate and raise hysteria in their base the same way the Nazi's did. And of course, they hate an educated populace which is key to denouncing them. I agree about the weird Tregenza ad. In fact, when I saw it the very first time, I commented immediately that he looked like an Aryan and his armband and machine gun were the only things missing from the ad. Strange he is also afraid of bathrooms. I recall an individual called "Craig" who also had an incident in an airport bathroom. As for Guinta I can't think of anyone else more personally disgusting although probably Ovide comes close as does the entire party. Our state will continue to be a national laughing stock. We ought to lose our swing state status particularly if the Teabag Taliban get in.
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