Get Your Aristotle On

Ray Burton was our Executive Councilor in District One for 35 years. District One is the largest district, from Claremont to Pittsburg and down to Milton. It’s a big, big area to cover. Ray started covering it in 1977. He had the unique opportunity to grow into the job at the same time as the population of the north country was growing.

Ray was remarkable. He remembered everyone’s name. He was always friendly and charming, and always listened, even if he didn’t agree. Over the years there have been politicians who ducked my calls. Ray never did. He took his job seriously, and that meant listening to everyone.

Ray was never an ideologue. Ray was north country first – and Republican second. He was never a fire breathing conservative intent on pushing a radical right agenda. He believed that his job was to fight for the best interests of the people in his district, and that’s what he did. The Executive Council shouldn’t be a partisan sideshow.

A brief overview of the role of the EC: they approve state contracts for more than $10,000, and approve the receiving and spending of federal funds. They watch the state treasury to make sure that departments don’t spend more than they were allotted. They also approve judges, commissioners, notaries public, justices of the peace, commissioners of deeds, and they hear pardon requests. NH is the only state that has an Executive Council, just as we are the only state that has a 424 member volunteer legislature. The EC does not pass or repeal laws on the state or national level.

The special election to fill Ray’s seat from now till November is coming up on March 11. There are two candidates: Joe Kenney from Wakefield and Mike Cryans from Littleton.

Joe Kenney served 4 terms in the NH House and 3 in the state Senate. He ran for governor in 2008, and garnered approximately 30% of the vote. Mike Cryans has been a Grafton County Commissioner for 17 years – 16 of them working on that commission with Ray Burton.

Mike Cryans has worked in NH as a teacher, a banker, and worked at a transitional facility for substance abusers. Joe Kenney hasn’t had a job in the private sector since he left college.  He spent 30 years in the military. His service is certainly laudable, but it doesn’t make him any more (or less) qualified for the EC. Joe Kenney hasn’t had an actual paying job in NH since he worked for his parents as a teenager. 

Both Kenney and Cryans did interviews with the Concord Monitor. Both men talked about the infrastructure needs of the north country.  Kenney also talked a lot about his political beliefs, and he was honest about his intention to use the EC as an ideological platform.

Legislative experience is a wonderful thing, but it does leave a trail. All of the roll call votes from 1999 on are available on the NH General Court website. Looking back over Kenney’s voting record I was struck by how often he voted on the wrong side of history. He voted against Martin Luther King Day in 1999. He voted for a law so punitive that it not only refused to recognize out of state civil unions, it also refused to recognize gay couples. He also voted for SB 110, the 2003 bill that gave health insurance companies the right to discriminate against customers on the basis of geography – a move that caused health insurance rates in the north country to increase by as much as 500%. 

The month before Ray died, he joined 3 of his colleagues on the EC to support Governor Hassan’s call for a special session on expanded Medicaid. As Ray knew quite well, his district has the largest population of uninsured adults. As Ray also knew, there are plenty of working poor in Carroll, Coos, and Grafton Counties. Service jobs don’t pay enough for most people to live on. Coos County has the highest concentration of families on food stamps. There are no jobs. And there won’t be until something is done about the infrastructure up there.

That takes money. We’ve all seen how loath some of our elected officials are to allow any of our federal tax dollars to return home to us. NH is unwilling to raise sufficient revenue to fund the state properly and rebuild our infrastructure. That infrastructure is costing us on so many levels. Companies won’t locate here because of it, and the longer we put off the work, the more it will cost. NH is the seventh wealthiest state (per capita) yet we have the 11^th worst infrastructure in the nation. We’re not a poor state. We’re a cheap state. The oft-repeated canard that there is all kinds of pork in the NH budget is mendacity that hurts our state. As long as people buy into that lie, we’ll continue to avoid doing the work, which serves to perpetuate the cycle, and further increase the eventual cost.

The future isn’t popular. The radicals of the far right have no vision for the future, only a longing to return to an imaginary past. NH is a state that desperately needs a vision for the future and elected officials who are going to work toward that vision. The north country, more than any other part of the state, needs a fierce advocate, someone who will fight for all of us.

On Tuesday, we’ll all decide who that advocate will be. I urge voters to read up on the candidates, read the Concord Monitor interviews (in the March 5 edition), and take a look at each of their endorsers.

Tuesday is also town meeting day for many of us. It is our chance to participate in the budgeting and decision making in our towns. It’s an opportunity that is envied by people in other parts of the country. Madison Moderator George Epstein once described town meeting to me as “pure Aristotelian democracy.”

Get your Aristotle on, go forth, and participate.

h/t to Kathleen Ronayne at  the Concord Monitor

© sbruce 2014   Published as an op/ed in the March 7, 2014 Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

Today's Steaming Pantload Award

Today's award goes to Grant Bosse for his column in the Concord Monitor about food and hunger. 

Some of the highlights: 

The New Horizons food pantry is limited to low-income Manchester residents, handing out $200 worth of groceries each month to about 900 families. Sherman says that wouldn’t happen without the program’s largest donor, Hannaford Supermarkets.

But - later in the same piece:

Big city unions fight to keep Walmart, now America’s largest grocer, out of town. 

"America's largest grocer" isn't the largest donor to NH food pantries. In fact, once "America's largest grocer" comes to town, they drive out the competition. That's exactly what happened in Gorham, NH - a town that once had several markets to choose from, including an excellent Shaws. Not any more. "America's  largest grocer" is the only choice. It's shabby and dirty, and not  overburdened with healthy choices. 

 If we can get people into the supermarket, food has never been cheaper.

Food has never been cheaper? Has Grant Bosse EVER been inside a supermarket? 

According to the USDA, food prices went up in 2011 anywhere from 2.5 to 9%. Prices were expected to rise again in 2012, just not as much. We who shop for food can testify that prices did go up over the last 2 years. 

Raw ingredients like sugar, flour, rice, potatoes, onions, celery, carrots and bananas are cheap, and the start of a good pantry. Now, it’s too cheap to meter. Eggs, milk, chicken and beef are reasonably priced. Every supermarket offers fresh fruit, greens and seafood all year long. If you were to plot the cost of a calorie over the last hundred years, the line would be approaching zero.

For an overpaid purveyor of agitprop, the price of food may seem "too cheap to meter." For the ordinary underpaid workers, however, this is  hardly the case. Housing costs are outrageous in NH. Low wage workers can spend as much as 50% of their income on housing alone.  Add in utilities, transportation, clothing  - and one can assure Mr. Bosse that the cost of food is very, very visible on the meter. 

Food is cheap. But meals are expensive. Prepared, packaged and preserved foods cost a lot because we’re not paying for the food. We’re buying time. It’s when we stop cooking that food prices soar. Naked DC writer Emily Zanotti took the SNAP Challenge, feeding two people on $63 a week, and managed to eat like a “full-blown foodie hipster.” Her first meal was “Chicken Milanese with frise salad and shredded parm, mushroom and herb risotto.”

Naked DC is a right wing blog. Emily Zanotti is the editor. Emily Zanotti also works for Hynes Communication - the company fronted by NH's very own Pat Hynes. Try as I might, I couldn't find the actual story of Ms. Zanotti's SNAP challenge. She posted a picture of  the "full blown foodie hipster" meal that Mr. Bosse was so impressed with. She didn't post the receipts from the supermarket. Zanotti claimed she fed 2 people on $63 a week - but she provided no proof of her claims. I looked. It seems shills of a feather flock together. 

Bosse works for the far right fringe "think" tank known as the Josiah Bartlett Center. It is his job to churn out craven nonsense like this. That the Concord Monitor would both pay for and publish it is an affront to their readers. 

Propagandist Complains about "Fractured Media Landscape"

When the Democrats took back control of the NH House and the Governor's seat, the Concord Monitor decided to add Grant Bosse to their roster of columnists, with the intent of making the paper more fair and balanced. Or something like that. Given the dearth of right wing voices in NH media, one can certainly understand the Monitor's desire to create such an opportunity. 

Grant Bosse works for the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, a far right wing think tank. (They've stopped calling themselves non-partisan, at least.) He's the editor of their propaganda blog, NH Watchdog. He's also a frequent guest columnist at the Union Leader, the newspaper that serves as the stenographer for the NHGOP. Neither the UL nor the NH Watchdog feel compelled to match the Monitor's desire for fairness and balance. 

This is how we come to see Grant Bosse each week in the Sunday Monitor.  This week's offering was a combination of political predictions and media critique, with a side order of self congratulation. 

Our fractured media landscape makes it very easy for conservatives and liberals alike to seek out news and commentary from sources that share their beliefs. It’s hard to argue that one side has a monopoly on the echo chamber when Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow are both on the air. It’s important for voters to occasionally venture outside the bubble of political conformity, a service which I hope this column performs for Monitor readers.

Our fractured media landscape? This coming from a paid propagandist for the right? He's part of the cabal that broke the media! Then there's the attempt at creating a sort of equivalence between Rachel Maddow and Sean Hannity. 

Sean Hannity barely finished high school and dropped out of college twice. His first weekly radio call in show was cancelled because of anti-gay comments he made. Like the time he told a lesbian caller, "I feel sorry for your child." Amusingly, the ACLU got his job back for him, but he chose not to return. In 2005, Jerry Falwell awarded Hannity an honorary degree from Liberty University. 

Rachel Maddow was a Rhodes Scholar.  She has a PhD from Oxford in politics. In 2010, Dr. Maddow was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Smith College. 

The most striking difference between them? Maddow's consistent use of provable facts. And - unlike Hannity,  Dr. Maddow has never been chased down Elm St. in Manchester by angry Ron Paul supporters. 

Back to Bosse:

Yet those who talk about politics for a living have little incentive to ever change their tune. We’ve seen from the Obamacare debacle how hard it is for elected officials to even acknowledge obvious mistakes, and they have to answer to voters. Why should cable news guests ever admit they were wrong? The good news is that Tuesday’s election results were mixed enough to reinforce almost any narrative.

I guess I missed Bosse taking Bush to task for lying to start a war that has nearly bankrupted the nation. I must have missed Bosse ever changing his own tune or admitting that he was wrong. Finally, I must have missed Bosse taking his own party to task...ever. 

Hubris. 

Why Would They Need a BearCat?

Mike Marland, right on target, in the Concord Monitor.

Front Group for the Free State Project

Since the Concord City Council Meeting on August 13, when the Free Staters gave full voice to their victimhood, they've been mighty quiet. Perhaps even they, as tone deaf as they are, finally understood that all of their thin skinned self pity was beginning to wear.... thin. 

Maybe the fine cartoons done by Mike Marland at the Concord Monitor (August 19, and again on August 21) had something to do with it. I'd link to them, but I can't. I've already gone through my freebies at the Monitor, and I can't afford a subscription. "Live Free and Overreact to Everything" was a thing of beauty. 

But that silence is misleading. The FSP has just created a front group, intended to be untainted by their name. The group that has claimed "we're all Free Staters now" seems to be coming to terms with the fact that they are about as welcome as herpes. 

The front group is called No More Bearcats . There's a petition for Concord residents to sign. Apparently the FSP learned that having a lot of out of towners testify to their victimhood at the Concord hearing wasn't the best strategy. 

The group doesn't identify who they are. An ordinary group of local concerned citizens would make a point of identifying well known opinion leaders in the group as a means of attracting others. This group does not. What it does do is link to 4 videos from the night of the August 13 hearing. All four videos have one very important thing in common. All were produced by a Free Stater named "Biker Bill." 

The site is very carefully designed to avoid any taint of Free Staterdom - but they blew it with the videos. And they blew it by having it be over designed and sanitized. 

The City Council will be voting on Sept. 9. 



For more about the poor victims of the Free State Project and the mean Concord PD:

The cult of perpetual victimhood

The non-aggression principle.

Free Staters and that Pesky First Amendment

WGBH 16th Annual Muzzle Awards

WGBH in Boston announced the winners of their 16th annual "Muzzle" Award. They honor those folks who have done their best to thwart freedom of the press.

This year, northern New England had two winners!

Maine Governor Paul LePage gets his third "Muzzle" since he took office. (This is his third year in office).

Editors at the Bangor Daily News must have known their request for public documents about concealed-gun permits last February would be controversial. After all, The Journal News of White Plains, NY, had already set off a firestorm by publishing an interactive map of gun owners on its website.

But the reaction to the BDN was so intense that it called into question the very nature of “public” records. State legislators, especially Republicans, denounced the newspaper. A “Boycott Bangor Daily News Don’t [sic] Tread on Us” page popped up on Facebook.

The BDN was clear that they had no intention of publishing personal information about gun owners.  

LePage recently secured his 4th Muzzle when he announced he'd no longer speak to 3 of the state's largest newspapers

And speaking of petty tyrants, New Hampshire was also an award winner.  Disgraced Former Speaker of the NH House Bill O'Brien won his "Muzzle" for the day he refused to admit Concord Monitor reporter Annmarie Timmins into a press conference, because he was miffed about a cartoon that had appeared in the paper. Annmarie didn't draw the cartoon - but the petty tyrant took his miffage out on her. 

William O’Brien is not one to brook much in the way of back talk. When a protest broke out in the House gallery during a budget hearing in the spring of 2011, he ordered state police to kick everyone out.

A year later, a fellow Republican legislator became so upset with what he saw as O’Brien’s attempts to silence him that he directed a toxic remark at the Speaker: “Seig Heil.” The legislator was ejected from the chamber and forced to apologize.

The cartoon was the direct result of the "Seig Heil" incident. 

This is one award richly deserved by the former speaker, a little Napoleon who attempted to rule the State House as if it were his own personal fiefdom. 

I sat in the House yesterday in wonder, as O'Brien made a floor speech telling his colleagues that the budget they'd just passed was the result of all of his hard work. Plain old Rep. O'Brien refused a committee assignment this session, because - well - after being royalty, mixing it up with the peasants was too dreadful to even contemplate. O'Brien did no work on the budget - or anything else. He showed up on Wednesdays to vote. The hardest work he did all year was yesterday, when he asked for two roll call votes. Yet, he gave himself a big old pat on the back, and informed his colleagues that this new budget was "his legacy." 

As repellent as I find him, I do marvel at O'Brien's ability to walk through the world unencumbered by facts or logic. 

Our very own NH award winner is running for Congress.  Pass the popcorn!