Harassment in the House

At the beginning of the legislative session in 2017, legislators were handed a copy of the official State House policy on sexual harassment. They were asked to read the policy, and sign a form saying they’d read it. They weren’t asked to surrender their guns, or burn a US flag. They were just asked to read the policy and sign a form saying they’d read it.

This proved to be a bridge too far for some of our doughty legislators. State Rep. John Burt brayed that it was “political correctness gone wrong.” I’ve had some experience with the kinds of things John Burt says to women. I’m not surprised he’s unwilling to sign. The same people who are refusing to sign a paper saying they’d received and read a policy are the same people who will sign any anti-tax or pro-gun pledge you put in front of them.

It will come as no surprise to learn that most of the refuseniks are men. Most of the Free Staters and Libertea types refused to sign, including the women of the Free State Project, Amanda Bouldin, the Free Stater who runs as a Democrat and votes as a Republican was quoted in an early story as saying she felt she was treated with respect. Apparently the remarks made about her nipples by fellow Representatives Josh Moore and Al Baldasaro in 2015 had slipped her mind. A more recent story reports that Bouldin has signed the form.

Representatives JR Hoell and Frank Sapareto voted against making domestic violence a specific crime in NH, and they both refused to sign the form saying they’d read the policy. There were some surprises in the category of those who signed. Free Stater Michael Sylvia, who voted against the domestic violence bill, did sign the form.  Representative Brian Stone was arrested in 2015 for violating a restraining order. The charge was dismissed. Representative Stone did not sign the form indicating he had received and read the official State House policy on sexual harassment.

The entire Libertarian Caucus of the NH House signed the form: Caleb Dyer, Joseph Stallcop, and Brandon Phinney. With grim amusement I note that Rep. Eric Schleien signed off on the policy, even before he was arrested for sexually assaulting a minor.

In Carroll County, all but one State Rep. signed the form stating they’d read the policy. Surprisingly, Free Stater Ed Comeau did sign the form. Not surprisingly, Lino Avellani did not. He was quoted in a November 17 story at WMUR as saying, “I didn’t sign it. If I’m not going to act appropriately, I shouldn’t be there.” Rep. Avellani, it’s worth noting, has a very poor attendance record.

The policy itself is toothless. All policies relating to ethics in the legislature are toothless. Senators and representatives are asked to sign conflict of interest forms, and then may go on to vote on bills that benefit their businesses or investments. It’s a charade.

There have been 10 cases of harassment reported from 2015 – 2017. One involved a male state representative who touched a woman’s leg and told off color jokes, and invaded personal space. These are toothless policies. “The member may be expelled” is hardly a threat, since no one ever is.

In 2004, a State House secretary, Dorothy Pike, sued a legislator and the House for sexual harassment. She sued the House for not protecting her from the advances of then Representative Ron Giordano. Giordano repeatedly groped her, tried to kiss her, and called her at home to threaten her. When Pike brought the issue to the attention of her boss, the complaint was never investigated. Instead they hired a security guard to follow her around, and told Giordano to stop.

The Speaker of the House at the time was Gene Chandler, who claimed they were powerless to discipline Giordano because he was an elected official, not an employee. The jury awarded Pike $175,000 in damages and $130,000 in back pay. The House was ordered to pay 55% and Giordano the balance. Speaker Chandler said that he was disappointed and would appeal the verdict. Imagine how disappointed Dorothy Pike must have been to learn that the men she worked for had so little respect for her. The House finally settled up with Ms. Pike in 2005. As of that time, Giordano hadn’t paid a dime. After the trial, Chandler filed legislation to create a sexual harassment policy aimed at covering legislators.

It looks as if Chandler will be Speaker again in 2018. The GOP caucus decided against supporting two of the candidates whom, despite multiple terms in office, are unable to correctly frame a parliamentary inquiry. One hopes he keeps his copy of the harassment policy handy. In the era of Trump, it’s likely to get a workout.

This was published as an op-ed in the December 1 edition of the Conway Daily Sun 

We Have A Man Problem

When the story of Harvey Weinstein broke, the floodgates opened. All over social media, women were talking about their experiences with sexual harassment, with the #MeToo hashtag making the rounds. Years (decades) of stories and outrage were expressed. After a few days of that, some men began to be very uncomfortable. They began by getting defensive. Some moved on to make accusations that some of the women were surely lying. This is why women don’t come forward. They aren’t believed. 

Every woman has a story of harassment, often beginning in childhood. A family friend or a relative might have groped her as a child. She might have been a teenager who was groped by the father of the children she was babysitting for. It might be the story of a boss with a hands problem, or a violent story of date rape. It might be an experience she had while working in a restaurant. In a business where customers directly pay a worker’s salary, the worker is forced to put up with a great deal of foolishness in order to get  their pay, also known as the tip.

Hot on the heels of revelation after revelation of bad behavior by wealthy, powerful, men came the shooting in Texas. A man went into a church in a small town in Texas and killed 26 people. Devin Kelley’s past was filled with stories of violence and abusive behavior. If anyone had taken any one of the events seriously, he wouldn’t have been able to legally own a gun. He probably wouldn’t have been able to perpetuate a massacre.

There are a few things that mass shooters have in common. Since 1982, all but three of them have been men. Most of them had a history of domestic violence. It’s one of the best predictors of a potential mass shooter, but we don’t really take domestic violence all that seriously here. After all, it’s only women.

Here in NH, in 2014, three state legislators voted against Joshua’s Law, which made domestic violence a specific crime. JR Hoell was worried about “unintended consequences.” The other two were Frank Sapareto and Michael Sylvia. Rep. Sapareto was charged with assaulting his girlfriend’s two children in 2012. In 2017, he’s the Vice Chair of the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. As for Sylvia, during discussion of a Belknap County deputy who was accused of raping a woman in custody whom he was transporting, Rep. Sylvia commented, “You know what that tells me, that tells me he had time on his hands.” The real worry shared by all three was that domestic abusers would lose their guns. Because, of course, that  “unintended consequence” would be a real tragedy.

By now we all know the tropes: when a man who has skin color of a somewhat duskier hue starts shooting, he’s a terrorist. When it’s a white guy, he’s a lone wolf with mental health problems. We often discover that that the shooter has anger issues, and even more often that he has a history of domestic violence. The Las Vegas shooter was never charged with domestic violence, but he had been heard in shops being cruel and demeaning to his female partner.

One of the great mythologies of our country is the nuclear family, where mom stayed home and baked cookies for the kids while dad went off to work and brought home the paycheck. The single paycheck family went off the rails a long time ago. It takes both partners working at least one job apiece to keep a family financially afloat. That collides with the other mythology: the macho man. The myth of the hyper masculine man has been growing exponentially, and married into the gun culture family. Now the pervasive myth is that of the gun totin’ patriot with a gun who is going to save the nation (by himself, for he is a rugged individualist!) from gubmint tyranny with his gun.

Gun culture is all around us. In NH, our new governor’s very first order of business was a gun bill. In a state with crumbling infrastructure – his biggest concern was passing a law to allow any halfwit with a gun to carry it concealed. There are too many guns, and too many halfwits – and the halfwits are increasingly armed and angry. Too many of them regard women and children as their property. A woman trying to protect herself and her children by removing them from a violent situation is perceived as taking what is theirs.

We need to change our violent, sexist culture. We need to change our societal definition of manhood and masculinity. Given that so many men can’t even handle listening to the stories of women’s lives, I am not hopeful.

Published as an oped in the November 10 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

We Live Here Now

The Oxford Dictionaries recently chose the term “post-truth” as their international word of the year. It’s certainly appropriate, after all of the events of the last 2 years.

Post-truth is where we live now. I was driving north last weekend, and heard a North Carolina voter discussing the election with a person from NPR. She pointed out that President Obama had deported more undocumented immigrants than any other president, and he responded by saying “That may or may not be true.” In post-truth America you can decide what the facts are, based on whether or not you like them.

Given that the NH GOP has control of every branch of the NH government, we will all be dwelling in the land of post-truth for the next two years, and trying to undo the damage they will do for at least the next decade.

In a state where young people don’t stay because they can’t get good jobs or afford housing, where we have the 11^th worst infrastructure, and the highest utility costs in the northeast, you might think that those might be priorities for the new legislature. You would be wrong.

There are 4 gun bills. NH has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the nation – but that is not enough to satisfy the MOAR GUNZ crowd. Perhaps when babies are given guns in the hospital along with a car seat they’ll finally be able to lighten up.

There are bills to limit abortion – something our new governor is in favor of.  (Given the endless parade of Sununus we are subjected to, do we call this one Sununew?) His pretend concern for women is touching. Abortion has been legal for over 40 years. He claims to be worried that abortion clinics must be surgical centers or some such nonsense. Meanwhile, he’s expressed zero concern for the homeless women and children who are about to experience winter. He’s expressed no concern for the increasing rate of child poverty in our state. It’s worth remembering – and I will be here to remind you – that Chris Sununu was a Trump supporter. He supported a man who said vile things about women, and boasted gleefully about sexually assaulting them. His concern for women doesn’t exist.

There are at least 4 bills aimed at making it even harder for people to vote. There were stories all over the news after the election of NH Republicans complaining about voter fraud, including one from the latest Sununu. We’ve been hearing the stories about busloads of people coming from Massachusetts to vote in NH. The Republican Party took the Governor’s office, has control of the NH House, the NH Senate, and the Executive Council. If there’s so much fraud – how did that happen? Worst buses ever!

Sununew wants to put the kibosh on same day voting. One reason we have same day voting is because it exempts us from having to comply with motor voter laws. Someone will explain that to him. Other bills include the usual tortured attempts to redefine words like “domicile” and “residence.” There’s the annual constitutional amendment aimed at making sure only white, male, Republicans can vote.

He’s snagged Charlie Arlinghaus to be his budget advisor. Arlinghaus is the head of the Josiah Bartlett Center, which is allegedly a non-partisan think tank. If perpetuating the same, failed GOP economic policies of the last 30 years is non-partisan, I guess they’re right. The Bartlett Center is funded by the Koch brothers, and is also a member of ALEC, the conservative group of state legislators who are handed model legislation and then bring it home and present it as their idea. Apparently Sununu didn’t dare to ask Greg Moore of Americans for Prosperity. Everyone knows they’re funded by the Kochs. The Bartlett Center also feeds from the Koch trough, but the NH media politely never mentions it. 

State Representative Dick Marple of Hooksett, filed an LSR that calls for the voluntary registration of motor vehicles. Rep. Marple was arrested at the polls on Election Day, on a bench warrant for driving with an expired license. He won re-election anyhow. Perhaps his next bill will call for making driver’s licenses voluntary. And maybe some doughty Republican will file a bill preventing public servants from being arrested while they’re in office. Whatever comes next, you can be certain that it won’t have anything to do with ethics reform.

The new majority will do its damnedest to pass right to work legislation. In NH no bad idea ever dies, they just return every two years, ad infinitum. One wonders, though – suppose they pass free guns for all, voting limited to middle aged white male Republicans, no more abortion, right to work – and big business tax cuts – and nothing changes? Not one of these things will do anything to solve NH’s economic problems.

There’s an ugly race brewing for Speaker of the NH House. The libertea crowd has never forgiven Rep. Shawn Jasper for beating out former Speaker Bill O’Brien with the help of the House Democrats. Somewhere, O’Brien is ensconced in a padded room, kicking and howling because he didn’t run for reelection.)   The other candidates are Rep. Laurie Sanborn of Bedford, Rep. Carol McGuire of Epsom (and the Free State Project), and Rep. Frank Sapareto of Derry.

McGuire and Sanborn are good libertea locksteppers. They both have 100% scores from the Americans for Kochsperity, the House Republican Alliance, and A’s from the NH Liberty Alliance. Sapareto is less of a lockstepper. He only got an 82% from AFP in 2013, and 89% in 2014. He got a 90% from the HRA, and a B from the NHLA. That would seem to indicate that he could think for himself at least part of the time, which means he’ll never be speaker. His conviction for 3 domestic assaults in 2013 won’t be a problem – not in today’s NH GOP.  

This would be a lot more amusing if we weren’t going into the future with leaders who are stuck in the past. Sununu wants to run our state like a business. Remember the last governor who had that dream? He lasted one term. Running a state is not like running a business, no matter how often you invoke kitchen tables. A business owner invests in his business. Republicans do not invest in our state. They’re the reason there are 350 red listed bridges. The bill for decades of neglect is going to be a whopper when it comes due. They will, however, find a way to blame it on the Democrats.

Post-truth. We live here now.

This was published as an op-ed in the November 25 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper  

Joshua's Law

This week the NH House passed SB 318, the bill known as “Joshua’s Law.” The bill establishes the official, stand alone crime of domestic violence. Up till now, abusers were charged with crimes from other statutes, such as simple assault, or criminal threatening. There was no legal distinction made between the beating of a spouse or a bar fight. This made the gathering of domestic violence statistics more difficult, and it also made keeping guns out of the hands of domestic abusers more difficult.

The need for good statistical information about domestic violence in our state is obvious. It’s important for the allocation of resources to both educate communities and law enforcement, as well as combating the crime itself. It’s also important to know if what we’re doing is working. It’s easy to gather statistical information about other crimes. This should be no different.

According to a 2012 Governor’s Commission on Domestic Violence, approximately half of the homicides in NH and 92 percent of murder-suicides are domestic violence related. The was named “Joshua’s Law” in honor of the late Joshua Savyon, a nine year old boy who was killed by his father in 2013. Muni Savyon killed his son and then himself. Savyon was an abuser who was angry with his wife for leaving him. He was also part of the Free State Project, a group of libertarians moving to NH to colonize the state, take over the state government, and then threaten to secede from the union. These are people who hate the government and blame everything on “the state.” Muni Savyon was angry at “the state”, too. In his suicide note he pointed out that his ex “believed in the state so much” but they couldn’t prevent him from killing his son, thereby leaving her alone to suffer the same kind of pain he had been suffering.

The reality is that we don’t care much about domestic violence on any level. Talking about it makes people wince. Law enforcement has a historic aversion to dealing with domestic violence crimes. We’ve certainly come a long way. Back in the 90’s I went to the Conway Police with a complaint about a stalker, and a disinterested officer told me there wasn’t anything they could do, since he hadn’t done anything to hurt me. The fact that this man had been the subject of half a dozen restraining orders taken out by half a dozen women didn’t move him. When I suggested that he seemed to be saying that he wouldn’t develop any concern until the guy killed me, he told me I had a bad attitude. On that much we agreed. I did have a bad attitude about stalkers. I still do. But that was 20 years ago, and I know that the Conway PD has evolved, and that Chief Wagner has worked hard to ensure that evolution.

On the federal level, the crime of domestic violence is what is called a qualifying crime, which means that the abuser’s guns will be taken away, and they will not be allowed to legally purchase guns in the future. When a person legally purchases a weapon, the store calls NICS, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, to determine the eligibility of the person who wants to buy the weapon. The NICS line is intended to keep weapons out of the wrong hands and ensure a timely transfer to a qualified buyer. This process has actually been slowed down in NH, because of the lack of a domestic violence statute.  The new law will streamline the process considerably. Responsible gun owners whose purchases should not be delayed will benefit from the new law.

This was bipartisan legislation. Sponsors included 6 Senators and 5 Representatives from both parties. One of the sponsors was our own Gene Chandler. Everyone could see the value in having a specific statute. In February, the Senate unanimously passed the bill. It passed the House this week on a vote of 325-3.

That’s right. Three representatives voted against this sensible legislation. All were men and all Republicans. They are Rep. Frank Sapareto from Derry, Michael Sylvia from Belmont, and JR Hoell of Dunbarton. I don’t know what Rep. Sapareto’s reasoning was. Michael Sylvia consistently votes against just about everything. (He, too, is a Free Stater.) JR Hoell is affiliated with a fringe gun group, the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition, who proudly refer to themselves as “NH’s Only No-Compromise Gun Rights Organization.” In other words, they oppose any and all gun legislation. This seems to indicate that they are not interested in keeping guns out of the hands of violent abusers, which is truly a radical stance.

As luck would have it, I saw Rep. Hoell at the State House, and asked him why he voted against SB 318. He muttered something about “unintended consequences” and ran away. He was interviewed by WMUR-GOP, and expressed his concern for the term “intimate partner” which, in Hoellville, might be interpreted as having gone out on one date. The issue of violence didn’t appear to trouble him, only the idea that somehow the wording of that statute might prevent gun ownership. That an actual crime would have to be committed for that to occur did not concern him.

It’s unfortunate that we still have to have these discussions in 2014.

In the case of Joshua’s Law, however, the majority of our duly elected officials from both parties came together without rancor, to ensure greater accountability for abusers. This is how our citizen legislature is supposed to work. Be sure to thank and congratulate your state representatives. They’ve done a good thing.

* A letter that Rep. Hoell's fringe gun group sent out about SB 318 is posted below. 

© sbruce 2014  

Published as a bi-weekly column in the May 2, 2014 edition of the Conway Daily Sun