No Pretense of Compassion

Remember the “compassionate conservatives?” Former President George W. Bush would get that earnest, constipated look on his face as he described himself as one. Early in his administration, he used compassionate conservatism as a basis for his faith based initiative program, which was just a way of shoveling tax dollars at right wing Christian groups. Once Bush got his war, we stopped hearing so much about compassion. He did have boundless compassion for the plight of the wealthy, giving them huge tax cuts while putting the cost of his wars on a credit card, and sending off the children of the far less wealthy to fight and die in the war he was so desperate to start.

The compassionate conservative label was a layer of sugar coating intended to distract us from the fact that what these conservatives were espousing was the same old mean-spirited conservative policies they’d always been in favor of.

Then along came the Tea Party, and sugar coating just washed away. There was no pretense of compassion any longer. That lack of pretense has grown louder and nastier over the years.

There was no pretense of compassion in Indiana, when Governor Pence signed the bill legitimizing discrimination by the religious right. There’s no better way for the religious to show their faith than by refusing to serve gays and lesbians. They tell us that if we don’t allow them to discriminate in the name of their religion that we are discriminating against them!  Of course the same section of their Bible that they point to in order to justify their bigotry also calls for stoning adulterers to death, a practice they don’t seem to have the necessary fortitude to engage in.

A reminder: In 2012, the NH legislature attempted to pass a similar bill. Eighty-five legislators voted for it. Thirty-one of them still serve in the legislature, including Conway’s own Frank McCarthy.

There was no pretense of compassion in the legislature this week while the House was in session, passing their bungled budget. Speaker Jasper and former Speaker (and leader of the rump caucus) O’Brien somehow kissed and made up and worked together to pass this thing. Representatives Neal Kurk and Dan McGuire cackled with glee over the many opportunities they took to gut programs for the most vulnerable among us.

Greg Moore of Americans for Prosperity, a Koch funded special interest group, appears to have had a great deal of influence over the budget, despite the fact that none of us voted for him. Moore was brought in to serve as O’Brien’s policy director in 2011, and then became O’Brien’s chief of staff. Moore wasn’t too principled to refuse a taxpayer-funded paycheck. (The guys who hate gummint never are.) At the end of the O’Brien reign, Moore moved on to AFP, where he has served his new masters (the Kochs) well by putting out political ads last year that were outright lies about the Affordable Care Act. He’s a paid shill who is given a disproportionate level of influence over our legislature and given a disproportionate share of attention by the incurious GOP sycophants who make up the mainstream NH media.

New Futures, a group that works to educate and advocate the reducing of drug addiction in NH staged a “die in” in front of the State House on the day the budget was voted on. Some 300 people lay on the ground, representing the 300 people who died of heroin overdoses in the last year. Some of the participants were family members. Greg Moore was overheard mocking them from inside the State House. Later in the day, a reporter from WMUR tweeted out a statement made by Governor Hassan on the budget. Moore’s tweeted response was “You want fries with that?” Because what is more fun than mocking the plight of those less fortunate! Please ask your elected Republicans why this Koch tool has such sway over House Republicans.

That the GOP has whined for years about the raiding of dedicated funds didn’t stop them from emptying the state’s rainy day fund – a move that would lower NH’s bond rating. Please ask your elected Republicans why they would sanction such an action, knowing how it will impact the future of our state. They claim that hacking apart the governor’s budget was necessary, that we must live within our means. These “means” are an artificial construct. NH is the 7^th wealthiest state in the nation. There are plenty of “means” at our disposal, but we refuse to use them. We refuse to raise sufficient revenues to fund our state at a responsible level, so every two years a new budget kicks the can down the road for the next legislature to have to deal with.

The hope now is that the Senate will have a more compassionate take on the budget. Anyone who equates the GOP majority in the NH Senate with compassion hasn’t paid any attention to the legislation they’ve been passing this year. One bill was a direct attack on people receiving benefits via EBT cards. The bill’s sponsor, Jeanne Forrester admitted that the bill’s provisions were impossible to enforce, but it needed to be passed anyway. What could be more important than demonizing the poor? It’s certainly cheaper than bucking up and doing something about the infrastructure. It’s the kind of legislation that appeals to the lowest common denominator of the GOP, something that she can point to with pride when it’s time to pass the hat for campaign contributions.

Today’s GOP no longer requires the veneer of faux compassion. Today’s GOP would mock Jesus for not getting a co-pay from the lepers.

I'm Back

I’m back.

As you know, I was involved in a serious car accident in November. I had a crushed femur, 4 compression fractures in my vertebrae, and a bunch of broken ribs. This resulted in 2 surgeries, a 2-month hospital stay, and in ongoing physical therapy. I’m hoping to be walking again by spring. I’m feeling pretty fortunate – I didn’t die! I was also really lucky to learn that I have the best friends and the best support system anyone could hope for.

Enough about me. On to the legislature!

The big news so far this year was the O’Brien vs. Jasper upset vote for Speaker of the NH House. Former Speaker Bill O’Brien was so sure he was going to be Speaker again that he was boasting about it in the press. His supporters were negotiating deals on committee chair positions.

Then he lost. The libertea crowd lives in a bubble. They only talk to each other. This insularity leads them to believe that their rabid ideology is far more popular than it actually is; that they are far more popular than they really are. O’Brien made a lot of promises to be a different sort of speaker this time – one with an open door policy, and presumably one that wouldn’t close the House gallery to the people, or deny reporters access to his press conferences. Those promises fell on skeptical ears. 

On the day of the election, O’Brien tried to change the rules so that he could be king. Then he failed to get a majority in the first vote. After that, Republican Shawn Jasper entered the contest. Jasper managed to secure bi-partisan support, and finally won the speakership. O’Brien had a Rumpelstiltskin style tantrum, declared himself the real leader, and opened an office across the street from the State House to. …lead, or something. The libertea crowd has been calling conservative Republican Shawn Jasper a RINO and a (gasp!) Democrat ever since. If this sounds childish, that’s because it is.  O’Brien went to the Iowa Freedom Summit last month to mumble into a microphone and announce that he is the current Republican NH House Leader, which probably came as a surprise to Rep. Jack Flanagan who actually holds that position.

The O’Brien cabal is now doing all that it can to subvert the process. Bills that come out of committee with a unanimous or near unanimous recommendation (like a vote of 15-0 that the bill ought to pass) go on the Consent Calendar, which is a section of the House voting session that is usually pretty quickly dispatched by voice votes. Occasionally a representative will pull a bill off Consent, to try to sway his or her fellow legislators that the recommendation is wrong, and this bill deserves greater consideration. The libertea crowd has begun pulling everything off Consent in an effort to slow down the process. They know they aren’t going to change the outcome, but they can obstruct and delay, and that’s the goal.

The Speaker assigns the seating in the House chamber. Jasper sat the most obnoxious members of the libertea crowd  in the middle of what is called “Murderer’s Row” in the middle section of the chamber. Murderer’s Row is a reference to the 1920’s NY Yankees batting line up. In the case of this particular legislature, it’s a lot of angry men wedged in together, forced to climb over one another to get to the podium to speak. They heckle, make sexist remarks about women, and they plot their next moves in the obstruction and delay derby that appears to be their idea of how to best serve their constituents. Lucky for them, their constituents appear to vote solely on the basis of party affiliation, and pay no attention to how effective their state representatives actually are.

This is a budget year in the biennium, so the predictable talk about revenue and budget cuts has already begun. Given how little revenue NH raises to run the state, it’s interesting to watch the GOP try to starve the state even further. The Senate recently passed a bill to eliminate the concealed carry permit. This will create an approximate annual loss of a million dollars to the state, which bill sponsor Senator Jeb Bradley blithely dismissed as unimportant in an interview with NHPR. Given Bradley’s sudden toadying up to the gundamentalists, the lack of concern for revenue, and recent spate of mountain climbing publicity, it’s likely that Bradley has plans to run for higher office in 2016.

The bill to reduce the amount of the business profits tax from 8.5% to 7% would reduce revenue to the state by $60,000,000 in 2016. A bill to exempt businesses doing business as a proprietorship from the business enterprise tax would decrease revenue to the state by $17,100,000 in fiscal year 2016, and unknown amounts in the future, according to the fiscal note attached to the bill. Another bill to exempt proprietorships from taxation under the business profits tax would decrease state revenue by $17,025,000 in fiscal year 2016, and unknown amounts in the future. SB 6, a bill to increase the research and development tax credit against the business profits tax would decrease state general fund and education fund revenues by $500,000,000. Add in the million dollars from Jeb Bradley's gun bill and we're looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000,000. 

This is fiscal irresponsibility of on an epic scale. If all of these bills pass, NH will be in a mess. It will take decades to recover.

The libertea crowd is under the impression that once they eliminate business taxes and unions, then companies will be lined up at the door to relocate to NH. This is further evidence of the bubble. NH property taxes are outrageous. We do not invest in education. Our energy costs are exorbitant, and we have the 11^th worst infrastructure in the nation. It’s clear to any company considering a move that we don’t invest in our state, so why would they?

Will the bubble burst? Stay tuned.  



Edited to fix the numbers - thanks Tony Schinella!

This was published as an op-ed in the February 20, 2015 issue of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.