Governor Sununu has been giving weekly press conferences during the pandemic. Not because he's an epidemiologist, a doctor, or a scientist. Not because he's an expert in matters of public health. He's been giving them because he's a politician who seized the moment to advertise himself on the public airwaves (WMUR aka WGOP), for free.
In our neighboring state of Maine, the weekly Covid updates come from Maine CDC Director, Dr. Nirav Shah. Dr. Shah is so popular that he has a Facebook fan page - and a chocolate bar named after him.
The weekly Covid updates are not used as free political advertising for Maine Governor Janet Mills.
Did all this free advertising have an impact on the NH state elections? Absolutely. But don't take my word for it - here's what the (unfortunately) elected Executive Councilor Joe Kenney had to say in the Union Leader:
Kenney said he was one of many who benefitted from Gov. Chris Sununu, who became a TV star by virtue of his weekly briefings on COVID-19.
Even Joe Kenney gets it - and he's no rocket scientist.
Despite lacking any sort of expertise, Sununu got a free platform every week, to stand before fawning journalists who seldom asked any difficult questions, including the most basic one of all, "Isn't this free political advertising, Governor?"
Then Chris Maidment made sure to let us know who is behind all of this:
For anyone who has been wondering about these groups, we see now that they're pretty much one in the same.
Former State Rep. Joe Hoell attempted snark:
That tweet had a pretty short half life in light of today's revelation:
It sure would be sad if some of the infected were at the Covid Policy Summit.
This would all be more amusing if December 2 weren't Organization Day for NH legislators. The NH GOP had no intention of letting the Democrats know anything about this super spreader event. They found out because the story was in the media.
House Minority Leader Hinch is quite pissy about having been caught out. NHPR
"In a statement, House Republican Leader Dick Hinch said he would not share details on the cases, including the number of lawmakers who tested positive, because “we’re dealing with private and personal health information.”
And
"He said Republican House leadership is working with state health officials to notify people who may have been exposed to the virus. As for Wednesday’s scheduled Organization Day, Hinch said, “we have a very small number of people affected and we have no reason to believe that the folks who tested positive will attempt to attend the event.”
Then there was this:
“We are less than 24 hours from Organization Day and the Republican Leadership in the House purposefully neglected to tell the Speaker’s office or their Democratic colleagues of an outbreak within their caucus,” Shurtleff said in a statement. “We were with Republican Leadership just yesterday for Organization Day and the COVID-19 outbreak was not mentioned to anyone.”
That translates as, "NO, we aren't going to tell you how many were infected, or who they are. We don't think they'll show up for Organization Day - but they might. And no, we weren't planning to tell anyone about it."
Shouldn't everyone who was there be self quarantining for 14 days? That would, by the way, include Dick Hinch, who was at the event. An elderly, unmasked man, at a super spreader event. Can I be the one to shove the swab up his nose?
One further note from the anus brigade:
AFP-NH Koch mouthpiece Greg Moore would like to encourage all the sick reps to attend Organization Day.
There are days, and today is definitely one of them, when I ask myself, what the fuck is wrong with these people?
It was a deadly weekend. On Saturday, a gunman in a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, shot and killed 22 people, and wounded 26 more. Early Sunday morning, a gunman killed 9 people in a nightlife district in Dayton, Ohio.
The weekend before, a gunman shot and killed 4 people and wounded 13 others at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, CA.
I thought all these guns were supposed to be making us safer? Meanwhile, here in NH, three gun safety bills languish in limbo, waiting for the attention of our governor. On Monday, August 5, there was a rally at the Legislative Office Building in Concord, where members of gun safety groups and other concerned citizens called upon the governor to sign the bills. The room was packed with people. Not everyone in the room was heartbroken about the slaughter of their fellow humans. Some attendees were so dickhurt by the idea that some people were talking about gun safety, that they showed up with their guns. The guy with the long gun in the photo is Brennan Robinson, a member of the Free State Project, who very obviously came in with the intention of turning the media's attention to him. He succeeded admirably. Both WMUR and NHPR gave him the last word in their stories. This is emblematic of the NH media, which operates with GOP as their default setting. I expect it from WMUR - hell, I've seen it in the past, from the same reporter.
I cannot wrap my head around the shoddiness of this reporting. Not a single reporter who covered this event thought to ask, "Hey, pal - these folks are all here because of gun violence - do you think it's really a good idea to bring GUNS into a room crowded with people - especially since you fit the visual profile of a domestic terrorist?"
These are men who get up in the morning in the safest state in the country, and put on their strapons before they dare leave their houses. And we are all supposed to bow and scrape before their freedumb, because their right to play GI Joe is more important than our right to live.
I don't expect Governor Sununu to sign those gun bills. His first act in office was to sign a bill that repealed the concealed carry license process. Gundamentalists are his base. I don't have any confidence that there will ever be a legislative solution to the wholesale slaughter, either at the state or national level. What I do know is this - people are going to stop going out. They won't go to fairs, festivals, concerts, or movies. They won't go shopping in brick and mortar stores. They won't go to bars and restaurants. And brother, when it starts to hit the bottom lines of business - then we'll see some change. Capitalism may be what changes our gun laws. To help along the process, I suggest that before you go to a store, a venue, a bar or restaurant that you call ahead and ask if they allow guns inside. NH is an open carry state - BUT - there's a provision built into the law:
"Businesses have the to right to ban firearms from their property, Merrigan said, and can ask customers who are carrying firearms, openly or concealed, to leave.
Customers who don’t leave a business when requested can be charged with criminal trespassing."
So call and ask, and decide for yourself whether you want to go there or not. If you see a person with a gun in a business - call the police. There is no way for you to know if he is one of the mythical "good guys with guns" or a domestic terrorist. Complaint to the management. Leave your shopping cart and walk out of the store.
Enough is enough. And dammit, NH media - do a better job.
For the last five years, I’ve
been telling you that Frank Guinta was lying to us about his magic bank
account. After an interminable FEC investigation, we learned this week that
Frank DID break campaign finance laws by using his parent’s money to fund his
campaign in 2010. He has to pay back the $355,000 he claimed he earned himself.
He’s being fined $15,000. The Patriots are paying a million dollar fine for
some deflated balls. Frank Guinta is being fined $15,000 for breaking campaign
finance laws and betraying the public trust.
In 2010, Frank Guinta, former mayor of
Manchester, ran for Congress against incumbent Carol Shea-Porter. Over the
course of the campaign, he loaned himself $355,000. It was done incrementally.
In 2010 after one such incremental “loan”, a Nashua Telegraph reporter wondered,
in print, where he’d gotten all that loan money. Twelve days later, Guinta
filed a revised financial disclosure form that added a new bank account worth
somewhere between $250,000 - $500,000. (The bank account had not appeared on
previous disclosure forms.) He also altered the period of disclosure on the
form, adding an additional 4 months. It seemed obvious that the account had
been opened during that time, given his refusal to provide a bank statement.
When he was asked where the money came from, he said he earned it. He told the
Union Leader that he’d begun putting money away in the mid-1990’s. The only
problem was that his known assets and income – no matter how frugal he was – did
not add up to him being able to save that kind of money.
In 2008, his parents sold a house in New Jersey for $820,000. It seemed obvious
that they were the source of the mystery money, which he denied. For five
years.
In July of 2010, Guinta’s
campaign manger, Mike Biundo, said that Guinta had liquidated some of his stock
market and mutual fund assets. Guinta said that Biundo had made a mistake, and he’d
always had that money in a bank account he’d forgotten about. It’s so easy to
misplace half a million dollars when you’re running for office.
In October, 2010 the Union
Leader reported that Guinta denied accepting money from his parents to finance
his campaign and that Carol Shea-Porter and the Democrats had stooped to a new
low for implying he had.
Former GOP Congressman Jeb
Bradley had been Guinta’s boss when Bradley was in Congress. He did not ever
endorse his former staffer; in fact, he told Politico that if Guinta couldn’t
account for the money he should withdraw from the race.
Fergus Cullen, former NHGOP Chair, wrote a piece for the Union Leader in August
2010, about the mystery money. He asked Guinta how he could have forgotten to
list a bank account worth half a million in his previous disclosure forms.
Guinta called it an “inadvertent oversight.”
He continued to insist that he earned the money, that his parents did not help
him. A GOP activist filed the first complaint and later the NHDP also filed a
complaint with the FEC. That complaint was filed in September 2010.
Guinta won the 2010 election,
despite the questions about his finances. During the campaign he made a lot of
noise about Congresswoman Shea-Porter abusing Congressional franking
privileges. Frank went on to become the #1 abuser of the franking system for
the 2011/2012 Congress, sending out big, shiny, multicolored mailers every
week.The group Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Guinta one of the most corrupt
legislators of the year. He lost the
2012 election.
In 2014 Guinta ran again. He
ran an ad featuring his mother and his wife, who assured voters that Saint
Frank would be there for all of us. He ran an ad featuring “real NH voters.”
The last woman in the ad said, “He’s always been honest.” In October the DCCC
(Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) ran a couple of ads asking where
the mystery money came from.
On October 27, 2014, WMUR televised
a debate between Guinta and Shea-Porter. I was there. When Shea-Porter asked
about the money, Guinta said he’d been cleared by the FEC, in Dec. 2010, before
he was even sworn in, and he had been exonerated. He accused Carol of lying
about his record, and huffily announced, “The people of NH ought to know the
truth.”
Then his campaign ran an ad
called “The Truth.” The ad accuses Carol Shea-Porter of lying about Guinta’s
finances. The ad claims Guinta was cleared 100% by the House Ethics Committee
on 12/14/10. Again, before Guinta was ever even sworn in for his first term. The
thing is, the House Ethics Committee never investigated him. He approved that
ad.
At the debate he said he’d been cleared by the FEC. In the ad he claimed to
have been exonerated by the House Ethics Committee. He knew both of those
things to be untrue, but he didn’t hesitate to trumpet them loudly. The people
of NH certainly deserved the truth, but Guinta was the last person they were ever
going to hear it from.
This week, the FEC finally
found him guilty of violating campaign finance laws. He has to pay the $355,000
back. He has to pay a $15,000 fine. He now claims that he had access to his
parent’s account (which is in their names, not his) and had made deposits into
it that exceeded the amount he “loaned” his campaign. He says he’s come to an
agreement with the FEC so he can “end the distraction.” Those big, bold-faced
lies he told during the WMUR debate? He’s trying to say he “misspoke.”
For 5 long years, Frank Guinta
told us that he earned that campaign money; his parents didn’t give it to him
and he put it in a bank account he forgot about. He accused Carol Shea-Porter
of lying about his finances in a televised debate. He NOW says that he
“inadvertently” made a mistake on his FEC forms. He NOW apparently “misspoke”
when he accused Carol Shea Porter of lying about his finances.
How can he repay the voters
of his district for 5 years of lying? How can he repay the state for stealing
an election? How is it possible that NH Republicans are silent about this? Where
is his apology to Carol Shea-Porter for those ugly, dishonest accusations he
made?
There’s only one way out.
For Frank
Guinta, apology is spelled: R-E-S-I-G-N-A-T-I-O-N.
Frank Guinta "misspeaking" at the WMUR debate:
If you're wondering why the FEC took so long, read this piece from 2013 by Dave Levinthal from the Center for Public Integrity. The FEC has been systematically defunded and cannibalized. When we eliminate the watchdogs we enable the continued demise of our democracy.
This was originally published as an op-ed in the May 15, 2015 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.
During a media shitstorm a few years ago, when Jack Kimball, Kevin Smith, and other Republicans were loudly calling for my head - James Pindell was the only reporter in the state who actually called me to get my comments. Every other reporter just wrote up the wingnut version of the story.
WMUR ranked third in the US for running US Senate related ads this year. Over 10,000 of them. It's no wonder there are marble floors in the WMUR lobby. They have a very lucrative monopoly which serves to benefit 2 entities: WMUR and the GOP. I've spent the last two years at the State House watching Josh McElveen pander shamelessly to the GOP - running straight to JR Hoell of all people, nearly every time he entered the House chamber. He never speaks to a Democrat unless he absolutely has to. He doesn't even bother with a pretense of fairness.
Reporters all over the country are being silenced by Big Money. Dave McKinney recently resigned from the Chicago Sun Times because management caved to the Rauner campaign and made it impossible for McKinney to do his job. Rauner is now mayor of Chicago, and there will be fewer reporters covering him. That's how it's going everywhere. The Telegraph ditched State House Reporter Kevin Landrigan. There are 3 AP stringers in NH - down from 12. This biennium there will be only 2 seasoned reporters at the NH State House - Garry Rayno and Josh Rogers.
I don't think that James should be fired for making Scott Brown uncomfortable. I don't think James should be fired because of the influence of Big Money.
Furthermore, WMUR is broadcasting over our public airwaves. They should be held accountable.
Another deadline has been met and another state budget has
been passed. The final session of the year for the NH House was jam packed with
theater, debate, obstructionism, and oratory that ranged from the sublime to
the ridiculous.
The job of the House was to vote on whether or not to adopt
the reports from the various Committees of Conference (CoC).
All three budgets were passed, HB 1 – the main budget, HB 2
– the budget trailer, and SB 25 – the capital budget. All passed by wide
margins, with a modicum of posturing. The best comic relief of the day came
when former Speaker William O’Brien made a floor speech claiming that the
budget they’d just passed was the result of his hard work – his legacy. It was,
he said, “An O’Brien budget.” The former speaker refused a committee assignment
this year. Apparently after being the king, he was reluctant to mix it up with
the peasants on a committee. That means he did nothing all year but vote on
session days, and hold press conferences. The hardest work he did all year was
during the final session when he asked for 2 roll call votes. After his
delusional speech, someone moved that his remarks be put in the permanent
record. It was roundly voted down. It is fascinating to watch someone walk
through the world unencumbered by fact or logic; yet so egotistical as to think
that running for Congress should be his next move.
HB 242, a bill dealing with child safety restraints was
hotly contested. The Liberty crowd hated this one. How dare anyone tell them
how to take care of their children? Nothing says freedumb like dead kids in a
car accident.
HB 573, the watered down compromise version of the original
therapeutic cannabis bill passed on a division vote of 284-66. The bill is a
disappointment to all advocates for medical marijuana, but the hope is that
this will be a step toward better policy.
HB 595, the voter ID bill compromise also passed, after a
lot of posturing from the Liberty crowd. In the compromise, current NH student
ID is deemed an acceptable form of identification for voting purposes. The
(unfunded) mandate for cameras and scanners is kicked down the road till 2015,
just in time to gum up the first in the nation primary. One legislator told me
all about the need to safeguard our elections, because of all the voter fraud
he’s seen. None of it ever seemed to be caught on camera, video, or reported to
the police. I asked him if he really believed that our elections are highjacked
by busloads of people from Massachusetts, he said yes. I asked how (if that
were the case) he explains the Senate? Or why the Democrats don’t run
everything always, he had no answer.
Everything passed. It was a long, hot day in the House, and
toward the end, tempers were a little frayed over the continual calls for roll
call votes. Many seemed to think that 14 of ‘em were plenty.
We have a budget, but it doesn’t increase revenue. A story
in yesterday’s Concord Monitor warns that the widening of I-93 will run out of
funding by 2015. There’s no money to continue. There’s no money to fix our
roads and bridges. There are still 3 bridges around the state that can’t be
used at all. Some funds have been restored to our university system and our
community colleges, but NH still needs to make the decision to invest in the
future, instead of clinging to the failed policies of the past.
On June 18, the traveling bus tour of Mayors Against Illegal
Guns came to Concord. Local gun safety advocates procured a permit to have a
peaceful memorial vigil on the State House Plaza. The names of the 6000+ who
have been killed by guns since the Sandy Hook school massacre were going to be
read throughout the day. This event horrified the NH NRA group, who sent out
emails to inflame their followers. A Facebook event page was created, and a
number of the Libertea faction of the state legislature signed on as being
quite excited to stage a counter-protest to this peaceful memorial vigil.
Disgraced former NHGOP chair Jack Kimball was hard at work ginning up the
basest of the GOP base. They were successful.
When I arrived at the event at 5 pm, the peaceful, unarmed
citizens who were conducting a solemn memorial were surrounded by about 60
armed thugs who were screaming anti-Semitic slurs, racist slurs, anti-woman
slurs, and bellowing into a bullhorn. They were threatening people. One bellicose
thug threatened me, because I had a camera and I was taking crowd shots. He
later tore a sign out of another woman’s hands and went for her camera. Another
decided that the best way to illustrate responsible gun ownership was to get
right up in the face of John Cantin, as he spoke about his daughter’s murder in
2009. Daniel Musso heckled and harassed John Cantin. He was eventually led off
by the police, fought with them, and was tased.
WMUR presented a very slanted story that night on the news,
a story that has come to be accepted as the truth. I was there at the same time
the WMUR reporter was. He did an interview with Jack Kimball, he spoke to some
of the gun thugs, but he never spoke to anyone outside of the gun nut crowd.
The story was edited into being one lone heckler who was brutalized by the
police. What they don’t tell you is what the police walked into – an armed gang
of bullies spoiling for a fight. It was very nearly a riot. The only NH
traditional media that reported the truth was the Concord Monitor. Everyone
else has worked hard to turn the story into ANYTHING other than a gang of out
of control, armed bullies attacking unarmed NH citizens.
After seeing all this, I can only conclude that these angry
men oppose background checks because they would be unable pass them. Also: this
is why we call them “gun nuts.” The guy who threatened me was furious at the
idea of his picture being taken. I also conclude (as usual) that the default
setting for most NH media is GOP. The slanted WMUR report created a lie that
was then picked up by media all over the world. NH residents deserve to get the
real story, not coverage that’s been sanitized for GOP protection.
“Republicans want to deregulate everything except voting and
vaginas.”susanthe, via Twitter.
Scoop: Controversial State Rep. Stella Tremblay, R-Auburn, has submitted a letter of resignation from the #nhhouse#nhpolitics
— James Pindell (WMUR) (@JamesPindell) June 20, 2013
Stella Tremblay is a NH State Representative, and a member of the NH Republican Party. She's claimed since the bombings of the Boston Marathon that it was a "false flag" operation, engineered by the US government - and that the people who were injured that day were all actors.
NH GOP Chair Jennifer (tax cheat) Horn is supposed to have read Stella the riot act to get her to shut up. She was denounced by her colleagues and the NH House made a very public resolution stating that they didn't believe any such thing. There was some NH media coverage. Mostly though, the NH GOP and their media lapdogs just wanted it to go away.
Stella didn't shut up, which was reported on by NH indy media sources, and by HuffPo. Her latest outburst was covered yesterday, by me, by HuffPo - and ignored by NH tradmed.
Suddenly, today, Stella is resigning. Here's where the irony comes in. At the same time Stella is resigning because of her comments about the bombings in Boston, the NH media is attempting to cover up the violent behavior of gun thugs at an anti-violence rally, by suggesting that they were inflamed by the reading of Tamerlain Tsarnev's name. The Union Leader and WMUR are flogging that story hard.
This was a near-riot incited in part by some New Hampshire legislators. JR Hoell was there - he's the taller man with the blue shirt, keeping his distance from the bully boys.
And after doing his bit to incite the angry mob, he slithered off. Gary Hopper, another inciter, was there briefly, and slunk off.
Rep. John Burt was another of the legislators who helped incite this near riot.
That's Rep. Burt in the red tie. To his credit, he didn't slink off. He stayed for most of it. As the mob shouted at ministers, bellowed anti-Semitic slurs, yelled racist comments, and bellowed about women, Rep. Burt and I discussed what was going on. I told him that it was ugly - that this was the equivalent of the Phelps clan picketing a military funeral, and that this mob was way out of control. He agreed with me.
That this story of this gun thug melee is being reported so dishonestly should enrage every thinking person. And with that in mind, I hope you'll forgive me if I remain unimpressed by the faux outrage emanating from the Party of Stella Tremblay.
This guy was one of the loudest and most persistent hecklers. As the vigil was winding down, he decided that the way to illustrate responsible gun ownership was by getting in the faces of women older than he, and screaming at them. None of his fellow gun nuts attempted to calm him down, far from it. You can hear the guy with the bullhorn egging him on in the background. This kind of behavior is why people call guys like this "gun nuts."
The corporate owned, conservative, GOP bootlicking NH media isn't showing you this side of the story.
As anyone who was at the Gun Nut Melee yesterday is aware, WMUR's coverage was pure, slanted, bunkum. Adam Sexton and I were both there at the same time - so presumably we saw the same things. Yet, for reasons unknown, his report was slanted to sound as if that one guy who was arrested was the only heckler.
He was not.
This is Adam Sexton in the gray suit, showing what I presume are pictures of his adorable baby to a guy in a gray tee shirt and a hat. Gray Tee Shirt was a loud, and persistent heckler, throughout the entire event.
There was no mention in the WMUR story of the anti-Semitic slurs shouted about Mayor Bloomberg. No mention of the crowd yelling Ayotte, Ayotte, Ayotte as an intoxicated gun nut attacked a man whose daughter was murdered as he spoke to the crowd. No mention of the crowd attempting to shout down a minister.
In this picture we also see disgraced former NHGOP Chair Jack Kimball, who Sexton chose to give airtime to, rather than present the reality of the angry mob of gun nuts who were threatening, harassing, and in some cases assaulting the people who were there to participate in a peaceful vigil honoring victims of gun violence. Sexton didn't bother speaking to any of the people there to participate in the vigil. He kept far away from them, choosing only to speak to members of the angry, disruptive, and violent mob.
This report was irresponsible and dishonest. Shame on you, WMUR.
I've long said that WMUR is the TV equivalent of the Union Leader. It's a shame they feel compelled to keep on proving me right.
Contact info for WMUR:
WMUR-TV Broadcast Center 100 South Commercial Street Manchester, NH 03101 (603) 669-9999 FAX: (603) 641-9005
