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

18th Century Outbreak

Last week the NH House had a marathon two-day session wherein hundreds of bills were dealt with, in a variety of ways. It’s hard to know if this was the result of poor planning or if it was deliberately done to create chaos and keep some bills from getting the attention they should. There were some interesting dances done.

On Wednesday, the first day of the 2-day session, legislators were informed they’d be working till 8 pm. One of the bills in the queue was HB 478, the bill to add gender identity to our state’s anti-discrimination laws. A large group of Republican legislators left early. When Speaker Jasper realized that he still had a quorum, but he had a Democratic majority, he shut the session down. He intended to table HB 478, and that wouldn’t have been possible without a GOP majority presence.

The next day, Rep. Packard moved to table, which squeaked through by an 8 vote margin. It seems our brave, gun-totin, GOP majority legislature was too afraid to have a fair hearing and discussion of the bill. This bill came out of committee with a recommendation of ought to pass, by a vote of 15-2. The work of that committee, the calls, letters, and emails from constituents, and the testimony by hundreds of residents were shown absolutely zero respect by the Speaker, most of the Republican majority and some Democrats. In Carroll County the only representatives who voted against the cowardly move to table were Butler, Knirk, and Crawford.  

In other bill news, HB 94 prohibited certain defenses in prostitution and human trafficking cases. The certain defense prohibited in this bill is the “I didn’t know she was underage” excuse given by johns after being arrested for buying sex from a child. The bill passed, but 86 legislators voted against it. Here in Carroll County four legislators voted to continue to allow men to use this excuse when arrested: McCarthy, Knirk, Avellani, and Comeau. Rep. Nelson was excused from voting.

In other repugnant votes, HB 499 would have required individuals to be 18 in order to marry. Current NH statute allows girls of 13 and boys of 14 to marry with the approval of a judge. Also, 13-year-old girls don’t marry 14-year-old boys. Most of those who prey on underage girls are adult men. Like the 40 year old man who married a 17-year-old girl in 2006.

The bill was recommended to pass by a unanimous committee vote, and placed on the consent calendar. Bills on the consent calendar are generally fast-tracked to be approved or killed by a voice vote. Representative David Bates removed the bill from the consent calendar. Rep. Bates (whose last bout of notoriety came from his vociferous opposition to marriage equality and his subsequent attempts to repeal marriage equality) objected to the change in the law, because, he said, “If we pass this, we will ensure forever that every child born to a minor will be born out of wedlock.” Others argued that it would block soldiers from getting married. No word on how many soldiers are enrolled in middle school.  

According to a recent Union Leader story, a judge granted a 17-year-old boy permission to marry his pregnant 13-year-old girlfriend in 2013. They claimed they wanted to get married because of their strong religious beliefs dictated babies be born to married parents. Four months later, at the age of 14, the girl filed for divorce on the grounds of infidelity and domestic abuse. Marriage, contrary to the belief system of Rep. Bates, didn’t do this girl or her baby any favors. When girl children are forced into marriage, they are more likely to drop out of school, and they are at high risk for domestic violence. They’re also on the fast track for a lifetime of poverty.

The House voted 179-168 to indefinitely postpone this bill. That means it can’t come back during the current biennium. In Carroll County, only Representatives Buco, Butler, and Nelson voted against the motion to indefinitely postpone.

To summarize:  Rather than protect a vulnerable population, the men of the GOP clung to a myth to bray about the need to protect girls and women in bathrooms. Other cherished GOP myths include: busloads of voters from Massachusetts, trickle down economics, and the NH advantage. When the majority had a chance to actually vote to protect - they chose to protect the old pervs buying sex from underage girls. When they had a chance to protect girls, they chose to ensure that girls could still be auctioned off, because domestic abuse is more palatable when it comes with the seal of holy matrimony.

When they say, “we want to take our country back,” this is what they mean – back to the 18^th century.
  

        

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

Of course, there are always consequences....