Poultry in Motion

There were 1101 legislative service requests filed for the 2018 session of the NH House. An LSR is a fledgling bill, one that is written up by a legislator and sent off to be refined and gone over by legislative services, and will then go on to be assigned a number and be sent to a committee. Eighty-three bills were withdrawn before reaching legislative services.

It’s always an adventure. A fair percentage of bills will be retreads that we see over and over, sometimes for decades. There are bill sponsors who pay no attention to the fact that their favorite hobbyhorse doesn’t delight anyone else, or the time for their dream (can anyone say casino?) has passed.

In other legislative updates, last week the legislature had a non-mandatory training for the 425 members of the NH General Court on sexual harassment and discrimination. Of the 425 members, fewer than 10% were in attendance. The rest, no doubt assuming that they were already fully capable of engaging in harassment and needed no further guidance. The presentation is available on the NH General Court website for anyone who is interested.

There are 8 gun related bills this session. There is one bill related to bridge construction. We have hundreds of bridges in dire need of repair, and some of the least restrictive gun laws in the country. There are 20 bills related to “domicile” which is defined in the NH dictionary as “way to prevent voting.” There are 21 bills that are related to “voter,” as in “we don’t want you to vote.” HB 1772 would allow online voter registration, something the Republicans will never allow. After all, a bus can’t park behind a computer.

HB 1474 would make the NH Red the official state poultry. We have pretty much an official state everything else, so why not let the chickens have their day? Indiana is just getting around to passing a bill to make the firefly their state insect. NH has had a state insect since 1977. Take that, Hoosiers.

HB 1242 comes from two young state representatives seeking to create a committee to redesign the state flag. It’s true that the image of a frigate that appears to have run aground may not be the most interesting state flag, but the sponsors of this bill stipulate that the new design will feature the Old Man of the Mountain and the state motto. The Old Man fell off the side of the mountain in 2003. Why do even young New Hampshire guys want to live in the past?  What we need is a new (less destructive) state motto and a new state song. “Old New Hampshire” is a dirge. Lets try for something with a dance beat.

There are 4 abortion bills this year. HB 1707 would create a waiting period. The woman would have to go see a doctor to be handed information, and 24 hours later would be able to go back and access a procedure that she has a legal right to. HB 1721 would force a woman to go through a screening process to determine that she isn’t being coerced, prior to accessing a procedure she has a legal right to obtain. Other medical procedures don’t require this. In HB 1680, the fantasy gyno team will attempt to ban abortion after “viability.” They did include a stingy little line to cover medical emergencies, though in reading the bill you get the feeling they’d just as soon let the woman die.

HB1787 concerns the “right of conscience” for health care providers, including pharmacists. The bill’s concerns are only around abortion, sterilization, or birth control. To give an example of the breadth of concern these folks have for the born, note that every single one of the sponsors of these abortion bills voted against the Family and Medical Leave Insurance bill, except for the two who didn’t bother to vote. As for pharmacists, they aren’t doctors. It’s their job to fill prescriptions. If they can’t manage that, they should find other employment.


SB 465 (the duplicate House Bill is 1762) is a bill that would change child labor laws – especially for kids working in restaurants, allow employers to make tip pooling involuntary, and take rulemaking authority on wages, hours, and child labor from the Dept. of Labor and give it to the legislature. Senator Andy Sanborn, lead sponsor, owns a sports bar and is running for Congress in CD-1. You’ve gotta marvel at him for being so blatantly self-serving while running for higher office.

There are many more, but I’ll end with HB 1289, a bill that makes trespassing fowl a violation, instead of something to work out with a neighbor. Trespassing fowl could also be called poultry in motion. If you have “She Blinded Me With Science” as an earworm now...you’re welcome.

This was published as an op-ed in the February 9, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper

Up to Our Axles in the Past

How do we know it’s spring in NH? The frost heaves are settling and the potholes begin to bloom before we see the crocuses. A recent letter to the editor bemoaned the condition of East Conway Road and excoriated the governor for failing to respond, and repair. Governor Hassan may make a convenient whipping post for the issue, since she is governor (and a Democrat) but the sorry condition of our state’s infrastructure isn’t something we can blame on Maggie Hassan. It took decades of “NH doesn’t have a revenue problem/NH has a spending problem” for us to reach this point. To put it a bit more sharply, the very politicians the letter writer votes for both caused and perpetuate the condition of East Conway Road.

For decades we’ve failed, as a state to invest in both upkeep and new public construction. Our legislators were so intent on not raising any revenue, that there was none to spare. There is currently a bill calling for a study committee to examine the efficiency of the NH DOT. Apparently the fact that they don’t have enough money to work with, or a sufficient number of employees to do the work is their fault. The DOT has seen a steady 22% decrease in employees since 1992.  It’s not the governor’s fault. It’s the fault of our regressive tax system and our regressive legislature.

Since 1990, US military spending has steadily increased. There was a leveling off during the 1990’s but starting in 2000, the increase in military spending has been steep. We spend three times more on offense than we do on public construction. Roads, bridges, airports, electrical grids, schools, drinking water and waste water systems all fall into the category of public construction. Spending on these types of projects is at it’s lowest since 1995. Meanwhile our infrastructure continues to deteriorate.

The states aren’t spending the money, because (in many cases) since 2008, they’re fighting just to balance budgets. Congress isn’t making up the difference; they are intent on making sure anything with the word public attached to it is an anathema – while also making sure that nothing positive is allowed to happen during the tenure of the black guy in the White House. Here in NH, we have 145 state owned bridges on the red list for structural impairment. That’s 7% of the state owned bridges. There are 353 municipal bridges on the red list, or 21% of the municipally owned bridges.

A rural bridge collapsed in Iowa last week. It was built in the 1950’s, and a tractor and 2 ammonia tankers fell into a creek. No one was injured, and fortunately the ammonia didn’t leak. Iowa ranks third in the nation for the most structurally deficient bridges. The ranking of New England states: Rhode Island in fourth place, NH in eighth, Maine in ninth, Vermont in 24^th place, Connecticut in 27^th, and Massachusetts is in 28^th place. Texas is ranked 49^th in the nation for structurally deficient bridges. This is a 19.6% improvement, which is the most significant improvement by any state. Texas has been making big infrastructure investments. It makes sense to do so. That kind of investment creates both short and long term jobs, and makes the state more attractive to potential investors.

In an effort to avoid making those investments here in NH, House Bill 534 calls for a study commission to consider awarding naming rights for highway bridges, overpasses, and exits. There is much to consider. Is this a purely advertising move? Will those companies be responsible for upkeep? Who will own that bridge, overpass, or exit? Bill sponsor, Rep. J. Tracy Emerick was quoted in the Eagle-Tribune as saying, “Private enterprise could take responsibility for a bridge and keep it up to state code.” Does that mean they buy the bridge? What happens if they fail to keep up their end of whatever deal they make? There are those who believe that private enterprise does everything better, and so the push is on to privatize everything from prisons to schools. The phrase “the public good” has disappeared from our vocabularies.

Privatizing the roads hasn’t worked out so well in Chile. Private companies own the highways. This means paying tolls when you get on the highways and when you get off. The toll schedule for Chilean highways warns, “Don’t be caught without cash.” For the 700-mile trip from Santiago to La Serena, the toll charge is $25. From Santiago to the coast, a journey of $186 miles, the toll charges are $20, adding roughly $2.69 per gallon to the cost of gas.

In the beginning, these private investors paid for the building of the Chilean highways. It was supposed to be a loan, and the tolls were supposed to decrease over time to just cover the maintenance. Naturally the tolls never decreased. Instead, they’ve continued to increase over time. Private enterprise doesn’t do anything altruistic – not in Chile, not in NH – not anywhere. It always comes down to profit. A family driving up to the mountains for a ski trip, already a fairly expensive outing, when faced with paying a $5 toll to use the Big Name Corporate Exit Ramp, then another $5 to cross the Big Corporate Bank Bridge may well decide to veer off to friendlier territory in Vermont or Maine.

The idea of privatizing transportation infrastructure has other sinister implications. In the greater Mt. Washington Valley area, rental housing costs are astronomical, while wages have been stagnant for decades. Those people who actually do the low wage work that tourist areas rely on have been priced out of living in the towns they work in, and are forced to commute from ever increasing distances. If bridges and roads become privatized, those people already making substandard wages will have one more hard choice to make. They’re already juggling how to pay rent, put food on the table and keep gas in the car. Adding tolls to that would be unconscionable.

Private isn’t always better – which is how our national public infrastructure came to be built in the first place. The United States has the funds to rebuild our national infrastructure and help all of the states. It’s just that we’d rather spend that money on war. We’ll still be shoveling billions at the F-35 (which still won't be able to fly) when our bridges are collapsing around us.

In NH, we’d rather not spend any money on anything at all. We’d rather continue to pay the pound of cure, and sell our public infrastructure to the lowest bidder.  NH is always desperate for the short-term quick fix, while giving no thought to the consequences or the future.  A legislature comprised overwhelmingly of retirees guarantees that we’ll continue to be mired up to our axles in the past.

© sbruce 2014
From my bi-weekly column in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

Legislators, Guns, and Money

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.

© 2013 sbruce  Published as a biweekly column in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.

The NH Medicaid Expansion Waltz

Today, Beverly Woods and Shana Aisenberg were on hand at the Medicaid expansion rally in front of the LOB, to sing their new, witty and topical song about health care in NH:




There were about 60 people in front of the LOB, ready to welcome legislators heading in to the LOB for the budget committee of conference, where Medicaid expansion will live or die.

Of course, cowardly legislators headed in through other entrances. The group went upstairs, where the hearing room was jammed.

It's the Senate that is all boogered up about expanding Medicaid. This is largely because POLITICS. A number of our state senators are rumored to be thinking about running for higher office. One of them, Chuck Morse, is on the committee. Andy Sanborn is reportedly thinking about a goobernatorial run, and Jeb Bradley is thinking about using his famous charisma in a bid for the US Senate. The NH Senate has done their best to obstruct and undo anything positive the House has done. They may be under the impression this plays well with voters - but that's because they only talk to the Libertea types. 

Chuck Morse announced during this morning's Committee of Conference opening ceremonies that there would be no Medicaid expansion. That's that can-do spirit of bi-partisan cooperation we all know and love. The inmates took over the GOP asylum in 2010. Now everything is a contest, and it's all about winning. The state, and the people who live here aren't even a factor in their calculations. It's just about winning and scoring political points. I've sat behind a bunch of the fratboy libertea brigade during the House sessions this year, and that's what they do. They high five. They giggle, and pass the messages on their phone screens around. They whisper back and forth, and then some will get up and join the mini caucuses going on around the room. It's all about obstruction. It has not a goddam thing to do with what is right for the state. The GOP has a lot to answer for. When they ceded their party to these cretins, they ensured their own doom. 

So, no cigarette tax increase. No gas tax increase. No expanded Medicaid. What's all that mean?

It means hundreds of job losses. The Freedumb crowd wants to liberate hundreds of state employees from their jobs. Why? Because they want the state to run badly. Then they can say: "SEE, GUMMINT BAD." It also means that the 300+ bridges on the state's red list will be joined by more. It means that more people will pretend not to be sick until they have to go to the ER, and the cost of that visit will be more than their poverty can support. It means that NH taxpayers will be subsidizing the expanded Medicaid benefits received by people in states like Arizona. NH gets back $0.67 on each tax dollar we send to Washington. We're a donor state. And rather than get some of it back, our state Senators would just as soon shovel it at the states who want it. 

In the back row, wearing a white shirt is Greg Moore, of Americans for the Prosperous. Sitting next to him is Ashley Pratte, the director of the Cornerstone Policy Institute. Cornerstone claims to be a Judeo-Christian organization that promotes families and family values. That would explain why Ms. Pratte is at this hearing to register her disapproval of expanded Medicaid - her deep concern for families. She's following right along in Jesus' footsteps. 

These people are all loathsome. They're going to do a lot of damage to our state, in the name of scoring political points to appeal to their base. The teabagger, Free State, John Bircher crowd. Ignoranuses. 

Definition of ignoranus :.

(ĭg'nə-rā'nəs)

1. 1. (n.) A person who's both stupid and an asshole.