The Wayback Machine

The social media platform Facebook has a feature called “memories.” Every day it reminds users of posts they made on that same date over their years on Facebook. It’s a daily trip into the Wayback Machine, albeit without Mr. Peabody and Sherman. On April 29 I was reminded that 10 years ago, the NH Senate was scheduled to vote on HB 436, the bill to extend the right to marry to gay couples in our state. 

In 2004 the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that it was unconstitutional to allow only opposite sex couples to marry, making Massachusetts the first state where gay couples were allowed to legally wed. New Hampshire created a commission to study the issue and make recommendations. The commission held public hearings and took hours of testimony, and after all that, in 2005, recommended a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The commission was a sham, created to provide the illusion of listening to residents, even though the outcome had already been decided. 

In 2006, Democrats seized control of the state legislature for the first time in decades. In 2007, the legislature passed a civil unions bill, and Governor Lynch signed it. The law took effect at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and 37 couples were joined in civil unions in a big ceremony on the State House plaza in Concord. I attended a private ceremony that same night at the Notchland Inn. The next day I wrote about the ceremony, and noted that it was like a wedding only more joyful. Gay couples had waited for so long to have any legal recognition or protection that the ceremonies were that much more celebratory. Civil unions did not provide the same legal rights as marriage, but it was a step in the right direction.

Two years later, on March 26, 2009 the NH House passed HB 436, a bill that would allow gay couples to marry, and turn the civil unions into marriages. The vote was long and contentious. A move to table failed. Former State Rep. Gene Chandler’s move to kill the bill failed. The bill finally passed, by a vote of 186-179. Only two of Carroll County’s state reps that voted that day are still in office. Both are Democrats. Bill sponsor Ed Butler voted yea, and Tom Buco voted nay. Former Representatives Robert Bridgham and Susan Wiley also voted yea. Former Representatives Christopher Alghren, Gene Chandler, Joseph Fleck, David Knox, Betsey Patten, John Roberts, Dino Scala, Stanley Stevens, and Karen Umberger joined Rep. Buco on the wrong side of history.

The bill went on to the Senate, where it was amended to ensure that churches and church affiliated groups would not be forced to participate in gay weddings. The amendment also stipulated that only persons over the age of 18 would be allowed to marry. The Senate voted to pass the bill by a vote of 13-11. It should come as no surprise that State Senator Jeb Bradley voted nay. 

When the Senate amends a House bill, the House has to agree with the amendment. The House voted to concur by a vote of 178-167 on May 6. On June 3, 2009, Governor Lynch signed the bill into law.  It went into effect on January 1, 2010.

We know what didn’t happen. There was no rain of toads, no plague of locusts, no flood of lawsuits, and it was not the end of western civilization. What did happen was that new marriages took place, new families were created, and the couples that had entered into civil unions were recognized as legally married.

All this happiness and equality didn’t please everyone. The Republicans won control of the state legislature in 2010, but were not keen to take up a repeal bill. Former Rep. David Bates of Windham launched a move to put a non-binding referendum question as a warrant article at town meetings, to call for a repeal of marriage equality. The move was not a success. Most towns refused to even put the question on their warrant. That did not deter former Rep. Bates. In 2012, he sponsored a repeal bill. Even though polling data showed that NH residents were actually opposed to repeal, Bates was convinced that the polls were wrong, and he knew better. The bill failed in the Republican controlled house, by a vote of 211- 116. Bates was on the wrong side of history, as those who deny rights always are. In 2015, the US Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges made marriage equality the law of the land.

We the People are capable of doing the right thing, something we all need to be reminded of, especially right now.  

“We will never have true civilization until we have learned to recognize the rights of others.” – Will Rogers 

published as an op-ed in the May 3, 2019 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

More Guns and Grifters

Photo by Holly Ramer of AP 

As I predicted, the rabid gundamentalists got all worked up about the proposed rule change in the NH House that would prevent them from carrying their concealed firearms on the House floor, in the gallery, the cloakroom, and the anteroom. They would still be able to strap on as many weapons as they needed to feel safe leaving home, driving to Concord, and then walking the mean streets from their parking spot to the State House. They’d just be asked to lock up (in a storage unit provided at the State House) their firearm (s) while on the floor, in the gallery, the anteroom or the cloakroom. The 2-A crowd brought signs into the State House, which is not allowed. They meekly surrendered them, with no mention of first amendment rights. 

There was wailing, moaning, and gnashing of teeth from the gun fetishists. They NEED their weapons on them at all times! They might have to protect the women! The State House isn’t going to be a “soft” target – a gun free zone! Gundamentalist groups, the NRA, and ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council invented the concept of “constitutional carry” around 2012. Nowhere in the constitution does it say that you have the right to bring a concealed firearm into the NH House chamber. It’s also worth noting that Vermont had “constitutional carry” years before everyone else. Guess what you can’t do in Vermont? Bring a weapon in the State House.

Honest, curious people who read more than just propaganda are also aware that mass shooters don’t choose “gun free zones.” School shootings are done by people who had some connection to the school. There’s also the fact that 98% of mass shooters are white men, many of whom have a history of domestic abuse. Most of those shooters were “law abiding gun owners” up until the moment they started shooting their fellow humans.

The floor debate raged. Convicted gun felon, Representative Max Abramson (R. Free State) gave an impassioned speech about gun rights, the kind he doesn’t legally possess any longer. These are the people who want the rest of us to trust them with guns. The vote was 220-163 to ban guns from the House chamber. The response from the cultists was to shriek that they’d carry anyway, because rules don’t apply to them.

After the gun vote was a vote to add mandatory sexual harassment awareness training to the House rules. There have been a number of incidents in the legislature that have come to light in the MeToo era. Some involved payoffs, some involved cover-ups. There are many older men in the legislature who wail that it’s the women who are to blame – they can’t say anything any more without it being taken the wrong way!

Rather than take an opportunity to stop wailing and learn something, members of the libertea crowd became incensed at the thought that they should be expected to attend the kind of training they would be given no choice about attending in any professional workplace. Perhaps they don’t look at themselves as professionals. Perhaps they don’t see themselves as working.

Most amusing was the overlap. Many of the same people who were braying about the need to protect the wimminfolk refused to take the sexual harassment training. That’s right – they need to protect the women with guns – the same women who are lying about sexual harassment! (It would make for an interesting Venn diagram.) The House voted 284 – 92 in favor of the rule change. 

Governor Sununu is back in the news. There’s some very timid reporting going on about the way his first inaugural fund is being dispersed. Large amounts of it seem to have landed in his pockets, and those of a variety of family members and advisors. The Governor has refused to comply with Right to Know requests that those records be produced.  If it all sounds familiar, there’s good reason for that. Sununu was very clear in his first campaign that he is a strong Trump supporter. We know Trump used his inaugural fund as a slush fund to shovel money back into his own businesses, which means into the pockets of his family. Lesson learned. 

Why is this a concern? Where the money comes from and where it goes is always a concern when it comes to politicians. Transparency means accountability, and we should all want our politicians to be accountable. We should know exactly who the donors were, how much they gave, and where that money went, and where the remainder of the fund will go.

The Union Leader has done some surprisingly good reporting on this. Surprising only because of the UL’s history of being the media arm of the NH GOP. This reporting so incensed the governor, that a Union Leader reporter and photographer were denied entry into this year’s inaugural event. It appears our governor has learned another lesson from his mentor, Donald Trump.

“No power without accountability.”  Billy Bragg

Hankies and Hysteria

Our legislators are a resourceful bunch. Before every voting session, there are caucuses, one for the Republicans and one for the Democrats. Upcoming votes are discussed. Then, as they approach Representatives Hall, lobbyists are standing in the hall, handing out information sheets. The NH Liberty Alliance hands out a mustard yellow sheet called “The Gold Standard” that tells libertea leaning representatives how to vote on key liberty issues. There is an explanation of why a bill is either pro or anti liberty, but for those who don’t want to do that much reading, there is a handy key up in the right (!) hand corner of the page, that lists the bill number and whether to vote yes or no. It’s easier than thinking.

This year the majority party, unsatisfied with every tactic you’ve read so far, has added a new technique for telling their members how to vote.  Republican floor leaders now have red and green hankies. When they want their members to vote yes, they wave the green hankies. They wave red hankies for no. For those who lose their short-term memory in between the caucus and the House floor, this must be an invaluable reminder, and not at all undignified. Oh, wait – I take that back. Representative Al Baldasaro was seen kissing, licking, and fondling his hankie during one vote. At least we taxpayers are only paying them $100 a year for their antics.

*Note: Red and green are the colors of the buttons on each legislator’s voting station.

This is a new development, because prior Speakers wouldn’t have tolerated it. The hankie wavers, however, are part of the majority leadership. There are seven Assistant Majority Leaders: Al Baldasaro, Dave Danielson, Larry Gagne, Michael McCarthy, Laurie Sanborn, Victoria Sullivan, and Michael Vose. There are also eight whips. There’s the Majority Whip, Kathleen Hoelzel, and the Deputy Majority Whip, Bill Ohm. There are six Assistant Majority Whips: David Bates, Gregory Hill, Debra DeSimone, Carolyn Matthews, Claire Rouillard, and Terry Wolf. That’s a possible 15 semaphorists signaling during a vote. Apparently they aren’t worried about distracting their colleagues with all that flapping.

For such a large leadership team, it’s remarkably concentrated. Nine of the members are from Hillsborough County, 7 from Rockingham, and one from Merrimack County. There are 10 counties in the state, yet only three were able to provide representatives who possess the requisite leadership skills? One also wonders precisely what leadership qualities Representative Baldasaro displays, other than a history of obnoxious comments and slobbering on a hankie.

Speaker Chandler seems to be having trouble keeping his House in order. In addition to the hankie waving is the schedule. Weeks go by without a voting session, than at the last minute hundreds of bills are crammed into a two-day marathon. This ensures that the bills won’t get proper attention. It also ensures that representatives with jobs will probably miss one of the marathon days, meaning fewer votes on key issues. Is this intentional, or just poor management?

Meanwhile, the NH GOP has become increasingly shrill, bordering on the hysterical. HB 628, the bill to create a family and medical leave insurance program, something that would benefit every non-wealthy worker, is being billed as a way to create AN INCOME TAX. Bill Gardner, who has been Secretary of State since the Second Punic War is going to be challenged in 2019. This is being touted as: The DEMOCRATS WANT TO TAKE AWAY THE FIRST IN THE NATION PRIMARY. And of course, any discussion about ending the wholesale slaughter of our public school students is A GUN GRAB.

Bill Gardner was a good Secretary of State for a long time. If he’d retired 4 years ago, we’d all be burnishing his halo. Instead, he bought into the nonsense the majority party has been churning about voter fraud since Democrats started winning elections in 2006. He allied himself with the Republicans in their quest to prevent student voting, and he’d recently chosen to prevent seniors from voting, by dictating that towns  have no right to reschedule their town meetings during storms. During the most recent storm, the State House closed early but old people were supposed to leap into their cars to go vote in a blizzard. Then, he allied himself with Kris Kobach, which was a bad move on every level. Kobach’s recent Kansas voter fraud trial revealed how bogus his whole enterprise is. Gardner should have avoided the fraudulent fraud commission, the wet firecracker waste of tax dollars. In 35 states, the Secretary of State is elected by the voters. In NH, the SoS is elected by the legislature. It may be time to reconsider that.

The Trump presidency reveals a moral and ethical vacuum within the Republican Party. No wonder they sound so shrill. They can feel their grip on power and relevance slipping away. Those hankies may be put to good use in November.

This was published as an op-ed in the March 30, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper

Rogue Legislature

        

Last year, NH elected a Republican governor and voted for Republican majorities in all branches of our state government. It’s still something of a puzzle how this came to pass given the rampant voter fraud Donald Trump and his acolytes (including our governor) have brayed about, but the only plausible explanation is that those busloads of people from Massachusetts came to NH to vote for the GOP.

Where a new governor begins sets the tone for his or her administration. Governor Sununu’s first legislative priority was to pass a bill repealing the 100-year-old law requiring a gun owner to have a permit to carry a concealed handgun. NH has the 11^th worst infrastructure in the United States. We ranked 2^nd in the nation for overdose deaths. We have a serious housing problem, and homelessness and poverty are on the rise, yet this gun bill was the most important thing our new governor could think of?

Governor Sununu also took the big raise negotiated for him by the state employee’s union, though he hasn’t yet been willing to sit down and negotiate a contract with them. They’ve been without one for the last 180+ days. One of the sticking points? He doesn’t want to give them a raise, even though he took one, before ever sitting down at his desk in the corner office.

The legislature will be back in session next week. With the likelihood of losing at least some of those majorities (if not all) in the next election, the rabid right majority is going to attempt to pass their entire ideological wish list. There are more voter suppression bills coming up, and more bills to cut business taxes. Bills to maintain fealty to the fossil fuel industries, bills to destroy public education. There are 11 bills dealing with decals on license plates. And because our volunteer legislature full of old people has no interest in a future they won’t be part of, there’s a bill to create a memorial to Meldrim Thomson.

Governor Sununu chose Speaker of the House, Shawn Jasper to be his new Commissioner of Agriculture. One does wonder if that was a deliberate political calculation. The GOP has moved so far to the right that Jasper now appears to be moderate, and removing him from the speakership will very likely allow that rabid agenda to move along more smoothly. When Gene Chandler was elected Speaker last month, there were some sighs of relief. Some real reactionaries ran for Speaker, and Chandler, at least, isn’t one of them. That relief was short-lived.

Chandler has restructured the House leadership. It seems he promised during his campaign for the speakership, to include influential lawmakers in his leadership team. Chandler added six assistant majority leaders, who bring all kinds of “influence” to the table. One of them is State Rep. Al Baldasaro, one of the most nationally famous legislators in the state. Al is famous for a number of reasons (all of them embarrassing) but especially for suggesting that Hillary Clinton should be shot for treason. Another is Victoria Sullivan, who pleased the reactionaries in her party last year, when she launched an attack on the tweets of a female legislator, which appeared to be an attempt to distract attention from former Rep. Robert Fisher, a rape apologist her party was desperate to protect and retain. This is a nice reward for Sullivan, midway through her second term.
 
Speaker Chandler has also appointed a policy advisory committee. This is comprised of “influential” lawmakers who, according to the House website, will review upcoming legislation, hearings, review bills on the calendar, amendments, and give input on various issues. Two of these big thinkers are Frank McCarthy and Lino Avellani. Given that Avellani missed most of the first three months of last year’s session, one wonders how he’ll make it to the weekly meetings, and how, halfway through a second term he became “influential.” Frank McCarthy, after he was ousted in 2012, and before he was reelected, made a career of writing bellicose letters to the editor, where he made frequent bigoted and ugly accusations. In the last year or so, McCarthy has allied himself with the Carroll County contingent of Free Staters and Tea Partiers, groups that promises of inclusion must have been made to by the Speaker candidate, in order to secure their votes.

There are no moderate Republicans any more. The GOP of Trump has no interest in what is right for our state – their interest is in serving party ideology, serving themselves, and their donors/paymasters.

This rogue legislature has the potential to do a great deal of damage. Pay attention – and get involved. State politics may not be sexy, but they affect our lives every day of the week. This is an election year, which gives voters the power to hold their legislators accountable during the session, and again, at the ballot box. 


This was published as an op/ed in the December 29 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper


For those who don't understand the concept of an op-ed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_piece

Grade A Bunkum

By the time you read this, NH may have a budget for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. It’s also possible that we may not.

The budget process begins with the Governor, who presents his budget to the House and Senate. It contains his priorities, the things he would like to see funded in the next biennium. The House Finance Committee then uses the Governor’s budget as a blueprint for the budget they design. There are hearings where every government agency lists their needs, and public hearings where residents can express their budget priorities. Eventually they finish it and it comes out of committee, and goes to the full House for a vote. After passing it goes to the Senate Finance Committee, where they tinker with it. The House flies blindly, without revenue projections, but the projections are in by the time it gets to the Senate. When they finish tinkering, the bill comes out of committee and goes before the full Senate. If it passes, it goes back to the House, where it is sent to a Committee of Conference, where members of the House and Senate work out their differences, agree to concur, the budget is voted on by both bodies, and then prances off to the Governor’s desk.

This year, the budget process has been a disaster from the very beginning. For the first time in recorded history, the House failed to pass a budget. The creation of a budget became the responsibility of the Senate. The Senate Finance Committee had the same hearings with various government agencies, interested parties, and a public hearing for voters. Once they finished, the committee voted it ought to pass, and then it went to the full Senate for a vote. The Republican Party has control of the Senate, so the votes fell along party lines. The budget went back to the House for concurrence but there was no concurrence to be had, so a Committee of Conference was put together so that both bodies could work out an agreement. They have. The only Democrat on the Committee of Conference was removed when she refused to sign off on the CoC report. The House and the Senate will each have voted on this budget by the time you read this column.

Opinion pieces by the majority party are springing up like mushrooms (and you know what mushrooms grow in) in newspapers around the state. There is much chest thumping about “living within our means, “business tax cuts,” and “job creating.” The writers assume you won’t put two and two together. If the last round of business tax cuts were such a tearing success, why are we running the state as if it were impoverished? They claim the tax cuts will allow businesses to hire more and keep young people here. That’s pure grade A bunkum they’re selling.  

The state fails to invest in higher education, infrastructure, and affordable housing. Even if young people wanted to stay in a state so unwilling to invest in itself, there isn’t any place for them to live. This week there are four and a half pages of help wanted ads in the Conway Sun and 6 apartments for rent. It’s the same all over the state. Rather than wake up and smell the future, thanks to The Pledge we continue to elect people who perpetuate the foolishness that it’s still 1975.The business tax cuts just mean that the burden will continue to be shifted to the homeowner in the form of property tax.

Attaching keno to the full day kindergarten funding is being touted as a “compromise” instead of the poison pill that it really is. The education of our children should not be attached to uncertain gambling revenues, and, again, if those business tax cuts are working so well why is this necessary? A cynical person might wonder if this weren’t the plan all along. Our Trump supporting governor made himself sound human on the campaign trail by touting support for full day kindergarten. If the kenogarten bill fails, he can blame Democrats AND not have to cough up state money for education, something Republicans in this state are profoundly opposed to. It’s a win-win for him.

The Republican Party is fighting an internal war, between the regular old right wing and the far extremist right wing of the party.  The self-styled Freedom Caucus thinks the regular right wing is spending too much money, and doesn’t hurt enough people. The Democrats don’t think the budget spent enough money. The regular right wing probably could have negotiated with the Democrats, to pass a budget, but they didn’t want to, because this isn’t about what’s best for the state. This is about ideological purity, and party loyalty. To negotiate with the Democrats would be seen as weak. They’d be called RINOs. They’d be primaried in their next elections for not being hard core enough. The Republican Party has abdicated its responsibility to NH voters, and chosen ideology over New Hampshire.  

Published as an op-ed in the June 23 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

Silber Service, Tarnished

In NH, we have a 400 member volunteer House of Representatives. We have their contact information. We can call them. We can email them. We can email committees. 

They are our representatives. 

They get a lot of email. They hear from constituents. They hear from people all over the state who are concerned about issues. They also hear from lobbyists and special interest groups - from both inside and outside the state. They get paid $100 a year. It's a lot of work. 

They are our representatives.

That's why this exchange is so troubling: 

-----Original Message-----
From: Kimberly Meuse 
Sent: Monday, May 1, 2017 1:51 PM
To: HouseElectionLawCommittee@leg.state.nh.us
Subject: No on SB3

Dear House Election Law Committee,

I’m very troubled by the solution-seeking-a-problem with our state’s SB3 bill. Our own Secretary of State has had to admit that there are no occasions where out-of-staters have come over our border to vote in our elections, and certainly his own claim of “perception” manufactured without evidence by some state reps isn’t enough to put this law into effect. The result would be limiting the ability for legitimate residents to vote based on fear-mongering and partisan gain. Town officials have no clue how to affect the requirements in this bill and pay for the staff to go door to door to fulfill the bill’s draconian measure of proof of domicile. Finally, the bill would require voters to pay a poll tax of $5000 if they don’t have proof of domicile within a small time frame. This isn’t about making our elections “fair”. It’s about recourse for the 1000 voter margin that put a Dem in the Senate.

Enough. 

Best,
Kimberly Meuse

             And the response? 

From: Norman J Silber <njs@silbersnh.com>

Subject: RE: No on SB3

Date: May 1, 2017 at 4:06:48 PM EDT

To: Kimberly Meuse 

Who are you and where do you live? Do you have anything intelligent to add to this debate- your email certainly indicates a lack of a realistic understanding of the issues.

Unhelpful emails such as your just clog my in box and will  be blocked in the future.


Norman Silber
Member of the NH House of Representatives Belknap County District 2- Gilford & Meredith

 Ms. Meuse didn't do anything to deserve this kind of a response. 

The arrogance and rudeness is astounding, coming from a freshman state representative. It seems Rep. Silber counts on that R next to his name to ensure his re-election, and not charming disposition or  his behavior toward voters who have the nerve to question him. 

A reminder from the House General Court Handbook, back in the days when it was still online - before the behavior of the majority party was so embarrassing that they took this down:

Obstruction is Easy

In the process of crafting a budget for our state, first the Governor gives the legislature his or her budget. This year it was written by our new governor and his  budget advisor  Charlie Arlinghaus of the Josiah Bartlett Center, a far right wing think tank. The House Finance Committee then uses the governor’s budget as both a model and a jumping off point for creating their own version. At crossover, the budget goes to the Senate where they tinker with it, and then send it back. The differences are hammered out in a committee of conference where everyone works hard to ensure that there isn’t enough money to run the state as if it mattered, and then it’s done.

Not this year. This year, a cabal of obstructionists calling themselves the Freedom Caucus decided they didn’t like the budget. It spent too much money, they said. This cabal is comprised of legislators who are still angry that their leader, Bill O’Brien was defeated in his second bid to become Speaker, after what was widely acknowledged as a disastrous first term in that position. Even though O’Brien is no longer part of the legislature, he’s driving this bozo bus. This is the same O’Brien who, in 2013, gave a floor speech congratulating the House on the passage of what he called, “An O’Brien budget.” Minutes before, he’d actually voted against it.  

The Freedumb caucus is comprised of the same guys who want to make changes to the SNAP program that will cost the state more to administer, while saving no money, so you know they have the best interests of taxpayers at heart. These are the same guys who have been obstructing and delaying  at every opportunity since 2013.They’re libertarians, Free Staters, and Tea Partiers,  puffed up with manly pride that they’ve made a stand against Big Gummint Spending!

They refused to vote for the budget. The Democrats refused to vote for it, too, but not for the same reasons. The Democrats had some very modest (timid) additions they wanted to see added in. They offered to work out a compromise with Speaker Shawn Jasper, who rebuffed them half a dozen times.  Apparently he was unable to make a deal with the Freedumb caucus, even after he brought the governor in to yell at them, and so, for the first time ever, the House failed to send a budget to the Senate. This means that when the Senate comes up with a budget, the House will have no bargaining chips in the Committee of Conference. The one thing we can be sure of is that there won’t be enough money in this budget to run this state like a business, which is often presented as a goal.  The GOP should be incredibly embarrassed by this failure, yet none are brave enough to speak against the hostage taking actions by the O’Brienistas.

Obstruction is easy. The GOP has been specializing in it since 2009 when Obama took office. On the local level, we’ve had a Democrat in the corner office since one-term Republican Governor Craig Benson. As long as a Democrat held the executive power, the libertea branch of the GOP was free to obstruct anything and everything – and they certainly did, often just for the sake of doing it. With a Republican majority, there’s no one left for them to obstruct except each other.

Obstruction is easy. Governing is hard.

Passing ideological legislation is not governing. It’s easy when you have the majority. What is increasingly beyond the ability of the Republican Party is compromise, as this group illustrates so perfectly. Unless they get their way, they’re going to stomp their big boy feet and no one will get to use the playground swings.

As I’ve said before, this is what you get when you elect people who hate government to be the government.  

I’m often asked, “How do these people keep getting reelected?” Stories about what they do, how they behave, and how they vote are few and far between. This is a group of about 30 and most of them are men. Locally, this group includes Ed Comeau, Lino Avellani, and Glenn Cordelli. Ask yourselves why you keep electing them.

Then ask your other Republican representatives why they are silent. Ask them why you should keep voting for them, when party loyalty means more to them than their role as an elected representative of the people. Finally, ask them if they are a little ashamed that their party has been taken over by tantrum throwing toddlers.

Obstruction is easy. Governing is hard. 


From the NH Legislative Handbook:

 Members should at all times conduct themselves in a way that exhibits the utmost respect for their elected office, their constituents and the people of the State of New Hampshire.


published as an op-ed in the April 14 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper