Speaker Stegosaurus

Sherman Packard in the Hall of Flags at the NH State House. Photo by Oliver Laughland for The Guardian 

State Rep. Sherman Packard was elected Speaker of the NH House on January 6. The previous speaker was killed by his political party in December, about a week after being sworn in. The Covid denying, freedumb loving, anti-maskers prided themselves on their big, mask free gatherings. Hinch took stupid risks, contracted Covid, and died. 

That meant a new Speaker had to be chosen. Packard was Hinch's second in command, so he served as Acting Speaker after Hinch's death. (A death he initially denied was caused by Covid.) He's been promising to honor Hinch's legacy ever since - and so far he's succeeding. 

Hinch had a long history of coddling and protecting the very worst in his caucus. He tried to protect Robert "Red Pill" Fisher from the consequences of founding an online forum for rape aficionados and other incels. 

Hinch tried to cover for Rep. Robert Forsythe, after he was arrested for assaulting a pregnant woman. 

He covered endlessly for the problem that is known as Rep. James Spillane.

That is the Hinch legacy that Packard is honoring, right out of the starting gate, as we learned in this story by Paula Tracy for InDepthNH.org

This week, Packard stripped Democratic State Rep. Rosemary Rung of her committee assignment, because of a tweet she made about David Ellis, the police chief of Troy, NH who attended the insurrectionist activities in Washington, DC that led to the sacking of the Capitol. He claims he didn't participate in the violence, BUT, he was there, protesting the results of a legitimate election. This would appear to be in violation of his oath to uphold the Constitution. We know that Chief Ellis was in DC, because he did an interview there with a national publication, New York Magazine. Representative Rung's tweet called on NH police to denounce Ellis and call for his resignation. 

Packard is attempting to blame Rep. Rung for the fallout in Troy, where the town hall shut down after threats of violence. Ellis outed himself to a national magazine, but Packard is blaming Rung. From the InDepthNH story:

 "In a letter to House Minority Leader Renny Cushing, D-Hampton, Packard accused Rung of acting “beneath the dignity of the House” and committing a “dangerous violation” of the tenet for how things get done in the House of Representatives..."

The Speaker didn't contact Rep. Rung. He chose to speak with House Minority Leader Renny Cushing. Packard wanted to solve this woman problem by going man to man. 

As for the "dignity of the House" the man who has protected Rep. Dawn Johnson from the consequences of her anti-Semitic and seditious social media posts - and done the same to protect James Spillane from HIS anti-Semitic posts has a lot of nerve talking about dignity. Packard turns himself into a pretzel to defend Spillane, and shows himself to be either a liar or a fool when it comes to Johnson. She posted racist/anti-Semitic memes from the Daily Stormer on social media. She has apologized endlessly for the source of her content. She has NEVER apologized for the content. 

Spillane literally tried to incite violence last fall with a Facebook post:

“Public Service Announcement,” Spillane wrote in the post from earlier this week. “If you see a BLM sign on a lawn, it’s the same as having a porch light on at Halloween. You are free to burn and loot that house.” 

Rep. Rung called for NH police to denounce Chief Ellis for violating his oath of office.  Calling for a resignation is miles away from "you are free to burn and loot." 

But this - this is the real cherry atop the shit sundae served up by Speaker Packard:

Packard has told Rung he would consider her request to resume her committee duties, “If you can demonstrate to me in a sincere manner that you regret the tone and the subject of your social media post, and that you realize how it could have contributed to the very serious situation the town of Troy and its public officials are experiencing…”

If Rep. Rung acknowledges that she's a naughty girl, Big Poppa Patriarch will CONSIDER her request to resume her committee duties. Perhaps he'd like her to write on the blackboard 500 times or give her a spanking, because isn't that what we do with naughty girls?  He's treating her like a wayward child, not an adult human. 

Packard would never, ever, in ten million years say this to a male representative from either party.

This is old-school, deeply ingrained sexism at work. 

It's no wonder he insisted on that ridiculous drive-in House session. We know he's a dinosaur when it comes to technology. Now we know he's a dinosaur when it comes to women, too. 

You'd best be careful, women of the House minority party! Speaker Stegosaurus is ready to apply his misogynistic double standards if you don't behave. 

NH House Republicans: An Endless Conga Line of Bad Behavior

 

         Republican legislators outside Whittemore Hall on Veto Day. Masks are required on campus. 

The Republicans of the NH state legislature have provided us with a lot of embarrassing behavior in recent weeks. 

Late in August, Representative Robert Forsythe of Boscowen was arrested for assaulting a pregnant woman. The first instinct of House leadership? No - it was not to ask him to resign. It was to cover for him and protect him. 

https://susanthebruce.blogspot.com/2020/08/dick-hinch-nh-house-minority-weasel.html

The governor wasn't interested in protecting Forsythe, and called for his resignation. 

https://susanthebruce.blogspot.com/2020/08/forsythe-resigns-hinch-sings-new-tune.html

A week later, another Republican state rep posted on social media that seeing a Black Lives Matter sign on a lawn was permission to burn and loot the house. 

https://susanthebruce.blogspot.com/2020/09/nh-state-rep-advocates-burning-and.html

What happened this time? Nothing. The story was an international embarrassment, but he was not asked to resign. House Minority Leader Dick Hinch protected Spillane. The governor protected Spillane. This man who has a history of offensive and criminal behavior was apparently deemed worthy of the protection of his party. 

This week, the House and Senate were both in session on September 16. Known as Veto Day, it was a chance for both bodies to overturn Governor Sununu's vetoes on 22 bills. Last year he vetoed 57 bills. This isn't governing. This is Sununu attempting to create a partisan wave that he can surf to DC on. 

Veto Day was held at the UNH Whittemore Center's hockey arena, a space sufficiently large enough for the 400 member House to meet while also physically distancing.  As you can see in the photo above, a coterie of Republican legislators stands outside the Whittemore Center, not wearing masks. 

The House Republicans were rambunctious. They had their marching orders - vote to sustain every veto. And if any of them were potentially swayed by the arguments in favor of humane legislation, GOP floor captain Al Baldasaro was madly waving his red hankie. (The House electronic voting system has 2 buttons, green for yea and red for nay.) Elderly frat boy Rep. Chris True dyed his hair red for the occasion.  

I took this screenshot while watching the session online. 

There was cheering, jeering, and booing. The freedumb section, where the Republicans who refuse to wear masks sit was well populated. One media outlet was brave enough to name (though they have no shame) them. The list of all 47 is at InDepthNH

Apparently it was also beer guzzlin' party time for the freedumb lovers. UNH security found a bunch of empties in the trash can near the libertea lads and lasses. Speaker Shurtleff was furious when he announced it near the end of the day. 

Ethan DeWitt of the Concord Monitor has a report on the events of the day, including the big old temper tantrum that Rep. Al Baldasaro had before storming out of the stadium. 

The sad truth? Republicans don't care. They know that they aren't going to be held accountable by anyone. They know the media will gloss over it. They know Hinch will cover for them. They know the state party won't say boo about it. They also know that our Trump loving governor won't do a damn thing - after all, they just voted in lockstep to sustain his vetoes. This kind of behavior doesn't just trickle down from the top (Trump) it's a veritable tsunami of repellent, undignified actions - with no fear of the consequences. 

Regular readers are weary of hearing me say that the default setting for ALL NH media is GOP. 

What does this look like? 

WMUR: 

New Hampshire's House speaker has apologized to University of New Hampshire leadership for the behavior of some legislators after this week's session.

SOME legislators?  We have the list. We know they were REPUBLICAN legislators. WMUR (aka WGOP) would never point that out. 

 NHPR

During Wednesday’s legislative session at the University of New Hampshire's Whittemore Center, a handful of state representatives drank beer and did not wear masks outside of the center, despite the town of Durham’s mask mandate.

Again - we know who they are. But their political affiliation and their names are left out of the story. 

If those had been Democrats, their names and photos would be up on WMUR, who would also have sound trucks parked in front of each of their houses. If those had been Democrats, NHPR would say so. 

And of course the Union Leader - the NH GOP daily broadsheet also avoided naming names or mentioning party affiliation. 

NH Republicans are enabled by the media, by House leadership, by NH GOP leadership, and by Trump lovin' Governor Sununu. Don't expect any fallout from any of this. Expect more of the same, in an endless cycle. 

From the General Court Handbook:

In the absence of ethics rules and enforcement mechanisms, this is meaningless. The honor system has been thoroughly corrupted by the dishonorable. 

If Nothing Is True

Webster’s defines truth as: the property (as of a statement) of being in accord with fact or reality.

In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary chose post-truth as the word of the year. Truth’s been taking a beating for the last few years. No longer are facts accepted, just because they exist. Today we are free to dismiss facts if we don’t like them, or if we find them inconvenient.

Science - the systematic building of organized, tested knowledge is dismissed by ideologues who don’t like the conclusions, or who have religious objections to them. Once ours was a country that enthusiastically taught and venerated science, but somewhere along the way, religious fundamentalists started chipping away at it, because of evolution, and then it became a bone of contention when it came to climate change. The fossil fuel companies didn’t care much for the idea that they might be part of the problem, and so they provided a lot of funding to spread the gospel of ain’t no such thing as climate change. The anti-vaxxer crowd tried to tell us that vaccines caused autism – something many still believe. Now all things scientific are in doubt, because we’ve allowed the lunatic fringe to turn education into something questionable and elitist.

History can either be ignored or rewritten. The legendary civil war battle site, “The River of Blood” is memorialized at a Trump golf Course. Who can forget the Bowling Green Massacre? We’ve also seen plenty of rewriting. The deification of Ronald Reagan was years in the making. It wasn’t successful enough to get him on Mt. Rushmore (or Mount Clay) but it was successful in diverting attention from Reagan’s role in the Iran Contra affair. Reagan planted the seeds of government mistrust that have flourished over the decades, and Republicans smile with pride about that. They should be worrying about what happens in a country where the government can no longer govern, the inequality divide is expanding, and there are nuclear weapons lying about.

News stories we don’t agree with are now handily dismissed as Fake News, thanks to our president. He’s desperate for attention, but unless that attention is fawning and slobbering, it is Fake. When I was a schoolgirl, we were encouraged to read differing points of view, and make up our own minds. What a waste of time that was! Easier to pick out what we like, what we’re comfortable with, or what doesn’t threaten us.

Yes, truth has been taking a beating.

We’ve certainly seen that writ large in New Hampshire. The Republican Party had control of the NH House for 150 years. When they lost that control in 2006, the rumors of “busloads of people from Massachusetts” voting in our elections began. It was a steady drumbeat for a decade. In 2016 those drums became Lambegs when gubernatorial candidate Chris Sununu went on a radio show in Boston to bray about voter fraud. Days later he won his election – in fact the GOP seized control of all branches of the state government, despite all that alleged voter fraud.

Shortly after Trump took office, he started whining about voter fraud in NH, thanks to Trump sycophant Sununu, who paved the way. Donald Trump, the sorest winner in US political history was miffed because even though he won the election, he didn’t win NH, and apparently he was entitled to.

Now we’re dealing with the fallout from that bizarre pageant. Last year our legislature passed a ridiculous voter prevention bill. One of the provisions of that bill created a position for someone to play Nancy Drew and dig into the Mystery of the Unreturned Post Cards.

The person chosen for this new position is Orville “Bud” Fitch, who was an assistant AG, then left to work for Kelly Ayotte. A recent story by the excellent Mark Stern in Slate magazine provided some information about this new state employee. Mr. Fitch was resentful at being questioned, and provided little in the way of answers.  He refused to give Mark his job description, or describe how he’s going about doing it. Meanwhile, we’re paying for this – even though there is no proof of voter fraud.

At the same time, we have the audacity to wonder why there is political apathy among the young. They’ve learned that facts don’t matter. That justice is elusive for the non-wealthy. They can see that we have no interest in protecting the planet or their future. They have no hope of achieving the American Dream. And we have the audacity to wonder why there’s an opioid crisis. If nothing is true, nothing matters.

"Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle." Yale Prof. Tim Snyder

Published as an op-ed in the January 25 edition of the Conway Daily Sun 

Take Off Your NH House Name Badge Before You Go Drinkin'

This is NH State Representative James Spillane. He represents the towns of Deerfield, Candia, and Nottingham. He uses this photo on the NH General Court website. Note the giant badge affixed to his chest - you'll be seeing it again. 

He had a spot of legal trouble in 2010, when he was chair of the Deerfield Town Budget Committee. 

On March 12, 2010, Deerfield police received a call from a resident reporting a driver who drove away after “swerving all over the road” and crashing into his mailbox. As investigators followed tire tracks from the scene of the accident to a house on Swamp Road, a second 911 call came in from a woman at the same address who said her husband had just tried to kill her.

and

Police officers arrested Spillane on the scene and confiscated 20 guns from the house under a provision of state law that authorizes seizure if officers have probable cause to believe an act of domestic violence has occurred. Spillane’s wife declined the officers’ offer to seek a protective order.

 Read the whole story at Miscellany Blue . 

This being NH, and Spillane being a Republican, this did not end his political career. He ran for the NH House in 2014, and is currently serving his third term. 

This is Representative Spillane on May 4, wearing that same giant state rep. badge he's wearing in the photo at the top of the page. This time, though - the photo is a mug shot. 

Spillane was arrested on May 4 for DUI and having an open container. 

NH1 story.
Concord Monitor Story.

A teeensy little no photo story in the NH GOP propaganda arm, known as the Union Leader. It's almost as if they didn't want you to even notice. From the front page of the website:

     

The House was in session on May 4, so obviously Spillane went out drinking at some point during the day, while wearing his giant state rep. badge. (Maybe all that metal pinned on his jacket weighed him down so much he failed the field sobriety test?) 

He posted photos of the after session frivolity on instagram and twitter. Since the story broke, and people started spreading those photos around, he's made his twitter feed private, and made his instagram account inaccessible. Too late. 

Here he is - (before the mugshot)  next to Rape-resentative Robert  Fisher of Red Pill fame. Five Things to Know About GOP Rep. Robert Fisher- Miscellany Blue 

Fisher appears to have been smart enough to remove his House badge. Then again, under the circumstances, he probably didn't want anyone to know who he was, given that he's about as popular as chlamydia right now. 

Pro-tip: Next time, don't go out boozing while wearing your dinner plate sized name tag. 

At least he won't be driving for a while. Oh, and there's this, from the NH Legislative Handbook: 

Magic Bus

Donald Trump won the NH Primary – and he won it bigly. That night he said, “THANK YOU NH! I love you all.” Ah, gratitude…an emotion with a very short half-life.

Fast forward to a year later. Trump did NOT win NH in the general election, and it’s been eating at him ever since. That he sits in the White House is not enough for him. He’s miffed that he didn’t win EVERYTHING. The one thing Donald Trump loves more than anything is being seen as a winner. NH wounded his overweening ego, and like every petulant tyrant, he’s lashing out. If he didn’t win NH, it’s because thousands of illegal voters were bused in from Massachusetts.

The fantasy of busloads of people from Massachusetts voting in NH began sometime in the late 90’s, and was spread by the Republican Party. In a strange coincidence, this rumor began to circulate at the same time Democrats started winning elections. The more Democrats won, the louder the rumbling about buses became.

I sat through a hearing on a photo ID bill at the NH House a few years ago. It was such a big hearing that it was held in Representatives Hall. Dozens of people went to the microphone to testify that they had seen buses full of people from Massachusetts pull up to the polls and all of the passengers went inside to vote. Under questioning by members of the committee, it turned out that not a one of these folks took a photo of the bus, wrote down the license plate number, made a complaint to the moderator, spoke with the police officer on duty, called the Secretary of State or the AG’s office.

The ugly undercutting of our state elections has continued. Every year a handful of bills are presented attempting to cast the runes in some magic combination that will change the definition of the word “domicile” to allow the Republican Party to ensure that college students don’t get to vote any more. This year there are well over a dozen voter suppression bills. One of the concerns endlessly voiced by the voter suppression crowd is that of the same day voter registrations, or those who vote without ID, signing a voter affidavit. They claim there are thousands of them that need to be investigated, even though there is no proof that anyone did anything untoward.  Given the high volume of indignity expressed, one would think they’d be chomping at the bit for those investigations.

One would be wrong. They’re all mad at the AG’s office for not investigating – BUT – they aren’t funding the AG’s office sufficiently to do the investigations. That tells me that all this hype about voter fraud is intended to gin up the base and cast suspicion any time Democrats win. If they were really concerned, they’d pony up for the staffing the AG’s office needs.

This constant drumbeat of fraud serves to create a kind of cynicism intended to discourage voter participation. Republicans may have once had some interest in public service, and the best interests of our state. Now their service is to the shoddy values and dubious actions of their political party.

Now that Trump is in on the act, the stakes have suddenly gotten a lot higher. I’ve always said that when NH loses the first in the nation primary, it will be because of the Republican Party. The end feels increasingly near. The newly minted, unofficial leader of the GOP is nothing if not petty and vindictive.

Over the weekend, professional NH embarrassment, State Rep. Al Baldasaro was on WBZ-TV, showing a reporter some photos of Massachusetts license plates he saw at the polls in Londonderry on Election Day. A license plate isn’t proof of anything – but putting that aside, we also know that Al didn’t take his deep concerns to the moderator, the officer on duty, or call the Sec. of State or the AG’s office. He saved those concerns for three whole months – until he was in front of a TV camera, noble patriot that he is.

In the days before the election, candidate Chris Sununu had plenty to say about voter fraud in NH. Now he’s in the unenviable position of having to flip flop. If Governor Sununu followed his leader, that would mean that the legitimacy of his own election was in question. Can anyone explain to me, why, if busloads of people from Massachusetts came to hijack the election, do the Republicans have control of every branch of the state government?

Given the accusations leveled by Trump and his minions, there’s only one thing NH can do to put this matter to rest. 

We need to do the NH general election over, right away.

Published as an op-ed in the February 17, 2017 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper

Leadership in the New Biennium

The NH legislature begins their new biennium this week. The GOP controls every branch of our state government, so we can be sure that some terrible legislation will be passed and none of it will actually do anything to improve our state’s economy, infrastructure, or do anything to plan for the future.

Now that there are no restraints, House Speaker Jasper has made some peculiar leadership choices. He named Al Baldasaro of Londonderry as Vice Chair of the State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs Committee.  Representative Baldasaro distinguished himself in August 2016 by braying on WRKO radio that Hillary Clinton should be shot for treason. Baldasaro has been saying stupid stuff in public for over a decade now. There was the time he testified at a committee hearing that the state of NH sells babies to gay couples for $10,000, or his nonsense about how a bill to stop the sale of lead fishing tackle  (it kills loons) was part of the UN plan for global domination. Rep. Baldasaro has the same level of impulse control that we see in our Twittertroll-in-Chief. There are many definitions of leader, from “inspires confidence in others” to  “horse placed in advance of the other horses of a team.”

Speaker Jasper named Rep. Yvonne Dean-Bailey of Northwood to be the Vice Chair of the Election Law Committee. Rep. Dean-Bailey is beginning her second term (it will be her first full term) in office. Landing a leadership position in the second term is very unusual, especially for someone who may not be old enough to drink legally. Most leadership positions are given to experienced legislators. Dean-Bailey was touted as a “fresh young voice” when she ran her remarkably well funded (by outside special interests) campaign in a special election in 2015. In this case, “fresh, young voice” means: “same old GOP talking points coming out of a young female mouth.” The NH GOP lost up and coming women Pam Tucker and Marilinda Garcia, and obviously intends to groom Dean-Bailey for bigger things.

Jasper appointed Rep. Donald LeBrun of Nashua to be the Vice Chair of the Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs Committee. Representative LeBrun’s campaign website says nothing about health, human services, or elderly folks. His sole interest is in cutting taxes and spending. LeBrun has chosen interesting ways to attempt it. In 2011 he sponsored a bill that would have made drug testing mandatory for food stamp recipients. It would have cost the state at least $7 million dollars, while saving nothing, given that SNAP is a federal program. There isn’t any way that there could be $7 million in fraud in NH – a state with a population of only 1.3 million. Hardly a fiscally responsible decision, but LeBrun has it in for the poors.

His next foray into cutting spending was a bill to drug test TANF recipients. This time he was smart enough to put a “Pay to Pee” provision in, whereby the individuals would have to pay for their own testing. If they passed, they’d be reimbursed. I attended the hearing for this poorly written bill, and witnessed LeBrun getting a little fed up with being asked questions he couldn’t answer. The bill isn’t perfect, he kept  repeating, petulantly. When people who knew actual facts testified, LeBrun sat there shaking his head no at them.

But that isn’t even the worst. At a hearing in 2013, LeBrun was quoted as saying, “Rather than spending money on people with disabilities, we have another choice, voluntary euthanasia…”
LeBrun was not removed from the committee. He was not ousted from the House. It wasn’t a big story in the NH media, unlike the story of the 90 year old freshman legislator who was ousted a few years ago for telling a constituent that it was too bad we couldn’t send people with disabilities to Siberia to freeze to death. This time, the leadership and the media covered for LeBrun. And now, despite an absence of any visible humanity at all, he’s just been given a leadership position on a committee that deals with important issues relating to humans.

In addition to being a poor excuse for a human being, he’s also a clown. This year he filed a bill to deny public benefits to anyone who desecrates the US or the NH flag. This is his idea of a priority for our state.

This is a man Speaker Jasper considers worthy of a leadership position. It seems that Jasper has abandoned all pretense of rationality and has chosen to let his freak flag fly along with the rest of his party.

Speaking of leadership, Rep. Frank Sapareto of Derry has been made Vice Chair of the House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee. In 2013, Sapareto was convicted of simple assault in a domestic violence case. Gun felon and former State Rep. Max Abramson was not allowed to remain on the committee when his felony came to light. Sapareto challenged Jasper for the Speakership, and Jasper admitted that he promised Sapareto the committee position if he ended his run and backed Jasper. So, not only is a convicted abuser serving as the Vice Chair of the House Criminal Justice Committee – he got the job as quid pro quo.

The House Child and Family Law Committee has been eliminated. Speaker Jasper claimed that the only people who wanted to be on the committee were people who have grievances with the system. At a time when DCYF is under investigation for child deaths, this is a remarkable decision.

The good news is that the work of this committee will be shipped off to the Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee (under the leadership of a convicted domestic abuser) and the Health, Human Services, and Elderly Affairs Committee – under the leadership of a man who thinks euthanizing people with disabilities is a reasonable cost saving plan.

Oh, what a biennium it’s shaping up to be. 

NOTE: The House voted on Wednesday not to eliminate the Child and Family Law Committee 

Published as an op-ed in the January 6 edition of the  Conway Daily Sun newspaper