Nipples and Nonsense

It’s the start of the new year, and that means that the legislature will be back in session! The fun has already begun, with some of our NH Republicans covering our state with glory in the national media.

You may have read that a couple of male legislators made boobs of themselves over the horrifying thought of being subjected to the view of a female nipple. It seems that State Representative Josh Moore was so incensed at the idea, that he told a female state rep that any woman who was putting her nipple on view deserved to have it stared at or grabbed. This is especially fun because Josh is Ted Cruz’s “faith based outreach” director in NH. (Be sure to ask Josh or Ted whose nipple Jesus would grab.) The other offender was Representative Al Baldasaro, who also made crude remarks, but stopped short of justifying assault.

This all came about because last summer some women staged a “free the nipple” topless protest at Hampton Beach. This apparently was too much for the Patriarchal Police, so
a trio of male legislators filed a bill (HB 1525) to define the circumstances that comprise indecent exposure and lewdness.  

NH has some serious problems. We have the 11^th worst infrastructure in the United States. Our roads, bridges, dams, and water systems are in serious need of repair. We need telecommunications infrastructure. Young people are leaving the state in droves, because there are no jobs and no affordable housing. NH invests less than any other state does in higher education, so our college students have a tremendous debt load. We’re unwilling to raise sufficient funds to run the state as if it were a going concern, so all state agencies are insufficiently funded and don’t run properly. Our property taxes are some of the highest in the nation, and prevent young people from buying houses, and force old people to sell theirs.

The response of our legislature to the very serious problems our state faces? Nipples. Nonsense.

There are 8 bills attempting to eliminate abortion. Republican  men may not know diddly about planning future, but one thing they do know is that women can’t be trusted with their own bodies. There are 11 gun bills. There’s a constitutional amendment to try to ensure college students can’t vote here.  There’s a bill to require TANF recipients to be drug tested, another to dictate where SNAP benefits can be spent, and a resolution to encourage the governor and executive council to open their meetings with a prayer. Yeah, that’ll help. The legislature opens every session with a prayer, then they go on to do the best they can to ensure that the state’s poverty rate continues to rise.

Some of the bills are very familiar. Our legislators are not deterred by bills that fail to pass for decades – they just keep filing. There’s the usual attempt at defining “domicile” in ways that are aimed at preventing voting as opposed to encouraging it, this time in the form of a proposed amendment to our state constitution. Another constitutional amendment would require a 3/5 vote in the House to override any veto. We’ve heard these before.

HB 1629 would disqualify members of foreign terrorist groups from receiving public assistance. Is there a box that folks check off (yes or no) to notify the state that they’re members of a terrorist organization? HB 1542 would require drug testing of people receiving TANF benefits. This is one of Representative Don Leeman’s favorite hobbyhorses, brought back again. Kansas spent $40,000 on drug testing TANF recipients and got 11 positive test results. Mississippi spent $5,290 and got 2 positive test results. In a state that can’t afford to fix bridges, this seems like a bizarre use of funds, but hey, those poor folks aren’t going to demonize themselves.

HB 1115 stipulates that NH residents would only be required to obey our own state and federal laws. The laws of other states wouldn’t apply to us. This bill is sponsored by Rep. Frank Edelblut, a Republican who wants to be our governor. HB 1128 would designate the second week of September as Patriot Week. Because legislating patriotism makes it happen!

House Majority Leader Jack Flanagan is the lead sponsor of HB 1668, a bill that would create a registry for people convicted of heroin related offenses, and require the registration of those offenders. NH offers very little in the way of treatment for addicts. The GOP is determined to eliminate the NH Health Protection Program, (aka expanded Medicaid) which enables 40,000 low wage NH workers to access health insurance that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Insurance that covers treatment for addiction. Offering young people a future might be more helpful, (affordable education, good jobs, home ownership) but we’re not about to do that – so the only thing left is trying to prosecute our way out of a heroin epidemic. That it hasn’t worked yet is not a consideration.

Coming to us from the small gummint crowd is HB 1596, a bill aimed at changing the paperwork requirements for marriage. Representatives Itse, Hoell, Hill, and Ingbretson do not believe that the state should license anything, so they want to go forward into the past to the way things used to be, with couples filing a certificate of intent to marry, and then a certificate of marriage, which gives interested parties the opportunity to object to the marriage. I’m not making that up. It’s in the text. The text also only refers to couples that are comprised of a bride and a groom. It’s nice to see the same guys who moan and wail about gummint interference working hard to interfere in the personal lives of NH residents. Bravo, libetea dudes!

You can check out all 812 potential bills filed thus far at www.gencourt.state.nh.us . On the right side of the page, you’ll see the section labeled “State Legislation Dashboard” where you can find all bills – the good, the bad, and the peculiar. Presidential primaries generate a lot of heat and noise, but what happens on the state level has the greatest impact on our lives. Make it your New Year’s resolution to pay more attention.

published as an op-ed in the Conway Daily Sun on January 8, 2012

A Nation of Petty Vigilantes

Those of us who spend time on social media have seen the Facebook memes about rescuing dogs or babies in cars. They’re followed by outraged comments from the huffy judgment posse vowing they’d happily toss a brick through someone’s window to save the day.

We’ve all become very comfortable with minding other people’s business. It’s one thing to save a dog trapped for a long time in a hot car. It’s another to be a jerk to someone who just ran into the store for a few minutes. Then there are those who call the police when they see unsupervised children walking to the park or (as happened to a friend of mine) standing out in front of their house. A practice called “Free Range Parenting” has become a thing, because of the busybodies that call the police about unsupervised children. Free Range parents allow their kids walk to the corner store or the park unaccompanied. The absence of parental hovering is alarming to many people who appear to have little else to do. 

When I was 8 years old, I rode my bike around town, unsupervised. No one called the police. Kids were expected to play outside and entertain themselves. Over the years adults have become conditioned to fear for their children’s lives if they’re outside alone, even though the likelihood of their being kidnapped by a stranger is almost nonexistent.  (At the same time we bemoan the fact that kids sit inside all day.) Actual crime rates are going down, but the perception of crime is going up.

 The US media is better at mongering fear than providing useful information. If you watch morning shows like “Good Morning America” every day there’s almost always some new, dire warning for parents. The average TV newscast involves ginning up at least one kind of fear. That fear endless stream of fear creates a sort of evil combo plate. Combine the ginned up fear with the kind of isolation caused by the constant ginning up of fear, add a side order of overwhelming feelings of powerlessness, another side of anonymous comment sections, and garnish with a constant stream of celebrity gossip masquerading as news and voila - we become a nation of pissy, petty vigilantes.

Homeless children growing up in shelters? Yawn. We save our collective outrage to comment about on a photo of some celebrity dad who puts his kid in a backpack or a car seat the wrong way. Cecil the lion’s death created more outrage than the fact that none of the Wall St. bankers who destroyed the economy went to prison.

WMUR’s website is filled with stories from all over the country that have one specific purpose – feeding the outrage machine. As a result, anonymous commenters leave hundreds of comments about stories they have almost no information on. They all think they’re Sherlock Holmes, but they’re more like Nancy Grace. Those of us who followed the story of a local teen who was missing for a long time read all kinds of terrible comments (before and after she was found) from anonymous comment section vigilantes, eager to pass judgment. It’s awful that she and her family were subjected to that.

At a different place on the outrage spectrum, not everyone who is charged with a crime is prosecuted. The gossipmongers-passing-for-media write huge front-page stories sensationalizing an arrest, and the comment section quarterbacks write hateful comments. They don’t stop there. They harass people on social media, and that harassment can move into the real lives of the falsely accused. Those same media outlets never write big front-page retractions about dropped charges or exonerations. They are unconcerned about being complicit in ruining lives. Sensationalism sells.

This is playing out in our presidential primary. Donald Trump is one of the pissiest, pettiest celebrities on the planet. He believes he’s uniquely qualified to judge women’s looks, and has had plenty to say about them. He churlishly offers up his judgments even though no one has asked for them. In a culture where the most untalented and meaningless of celebrities are lionized by media, he’s the logical end result. He spent years saying that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the US. Is it any surprise that he’s announced that all Mexicans are criminals and rapists? He’s the darling of the GOP base. They love him for “speaking his mind.” (So does drunk Uncle Joe at Christmas, but no one wants him to run for president.) How far do we really think Trumpelistiltskin would have gone in life if he hadn’t been born into a wealthy family?

Bernie Sanders is in trouble for not caving in to the gossip media. He was asked about Hillary’s hair over the weekend, and was a bit curt with the reporter about being asked this inane question. Now some folks are miffed that he didn’t answer this Big Important Feminist Question about Hillary’s hair. He talks a lot about income inequality. As a woman who has been paid less than male counterparts in a few workplaces, that’s more important to me than Hillary’s hair, or what Bernie Sanders thinks about Hillary’s hair. Bernie has a stellar voting record on women’s issues. Instead of being asked about his record, he gets asked about hair. It’s enough to make you weep.

 The thing about answering those kinds of questions is that it only encourages the mainstream media to ask more of them. Where are the questions about the $8.5 trillion the Pentagon can’t account for? The Pentagon has never been audited. It gets a huge chunk of our taxpayer dollars, but we are completely unconcerned by what they’re doing with all that money. We’d rather give some poor single mother the stinkeye for buying her kids some sweets with a SNAP card. After all, she’s a moocher wasting our tax dollars! That the Pentagon is the world’s biggest moocher doesn’t occur to them. They don’t know about it, because it’s never mentioned on the nightly news. Reporters aren’t asking about it, because they have important questions about hair. It pales in comparison to crucial issues like “deflategate.”

We deserve President Trump.

  

published as an op-ed in the August 21, 2015 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

  

Cheese Whiz, Wisconsin

The US economy was destroyed for many of us in 2008. Since then, the jobs being created are low wage service jobs mostly. Poverty is on the rise, as are homelessness, and hunger.

That could only mean one thing to our right wing brethren - it's time to demonize the poor!

All over the country we've seen bills filed in state legislatures, attempting to tell food stamp recipients what they can and cannot eat. (Yeah, I know that SNAP is the supplemental nutrition assistance program, which is the formal name for food stamps. Everyone still calls them food stamps.) This is all based on mythology. Once upon a time some surfer dude in California announced he was buying lobster and steak with food stamps. He singlehandedly turned lobster into the new Welfare Cadillac. Then there are the stories we all hear, from indignant tax payers who have seen "those people" with a shopping cart FULL of soda and chips. Or steaks. Or ____ fill in the blank. EVERYONE has seen "those people." They have brand new iPhones, they have expensive purses, they have ......something other than sackcloth and ashes. 

It's eerily reminiscent of testimony I've heard at the NH House on voter fraud. Dozens of people swear they've seen a busload of "people from Massachusetts" go in to a NH polling place to vote. None of them have a photo or a license plate number for the bus. None of them went inside to speak to the officer on duty or the town moderator. But they saw it! They know! Them liebruls are coming to steal our elections!  I'm not sure how they square that with the outcome of our last election.

The average taxpayer spends about $36 of their federal tax dollars to support the food stamp program for a year.

The average taxpayer contributes $3,174 to military/war spending during that same year. The Pentagon can't pass an audit. The Pentagon can't account for at least $3 trillion. The Dept. of Homeland Security has never been audited either. Waste and fraud is epic.  Fraud in the food stamp program is about 1%.

Anyone who is more pissed off about food stamps than the outrageous defense budget is not paying attention.  Anyone who is more pissed off about food stamps than the defense budget is mad about the wrong things. 

Governor LeRamPage of Maine wants to dictate food choices to Mainers who receive SNAP benefits. He wants to ensure that those moochers can't buy prepared foods. Like pickles. Or spaghetti sauce. Easier than trying to bring jobs to Maine, I guess. 

Then there's Wisconsin, where Republican Rob Brooks wants to make sure the poors aren't eating shellfish. This guy has never seen shrimp on sale, one assumes. In fact, one further assumes he's never done his own shopping. His legislation even dictates cheese consumption. In Wisconsin. From the Chippewa Herald:

Rep. Andy Jorgensen, D-Milton, said the bill holds more questions than answers about rationale and implementation. 
To illustrate Democrats' opposition, Rep. Evan Goyke, D-Milwaukee, held a platter of four Wisconsin cheeses.
All four were cheddar. One was shredded and three were in block form. Three displayed flags that said "GOP Prohibited." One flag said "GOP Approved."
The approved cheese was a block of mild cheddar. Two sharp cheddars — one shredded and one block — were not approved. One mild cheddar was not approved because it was too large, Goyke said.
"The stated goals of this bill are nutrition and fraud," said Rep. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit. "When you look at something like this cheese plate, there's no evidence of sharp cheddar fraud. People are not buying sharp cheddar in order to defraud FoodShare, and there's no nutritional difference. So if those are the stated goals, the bill is not accomplishing either."

As you might expect, there's some pushback:

A coalition of businesses and associations in the food and beverage industry are opposing the bill. A memo to lawmakers from groups including the Wisconsin Cheesemakers Association, Wisconsin Agri-Business Association, Grocery Manufacturers Association, Kwik Trip, Wisconsin Potato and Vegetable Growers and Wisconsin State Cranberry Association says the bill would harm their businesses, "dramatically increase government power" and place checkout clerks in a difficult position.

Cheese whiz, Wisconsin. This idea is no gouda. Only a muenster would pass this kind of legislation.