RIP, NH Primary

It’s been quite a week in New Hampshire. An armed man went into the ICU at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center and shot and killed his mother. There was an attempted armed robbery at a bank in downtown Concord. The investigation into the attempted lynching of an 8-year-old biracial boy in Claremont continues. The Pence Kobach Fraud Commission met in NH to continue in their attempt to legitimize their bogus claims of widespread voter fraud.  

The meeting of the commission was held at St. Anselm’s College, a private, religious school. Former US Senator Judd Gregg helped St. Anselm’s obtain $15 million in federal funding to renovate the building that became the school’s Institute of Politics. The executive director of the Institute of Politics is Neal Levesque, who worked for former Congressman Charles Bass for 12 years. A In other words: a public, allegedly non-partisan commission met at a private, religious, rather partisan school.

Two months ago, I wrote that Kobach was under investigation for violating the Hatch Act, using his role in the commission as part of his 2018 campaign for governor of Kansas. That investigation continues. Since then, we’ve also learned that not only is Kobach the Secretary of State for Kansas, he’s also moonlighting as a paid columnist for Breitbart News. Breitbart being a far right “news” outfit run by Steve Bannon, the recently expelled advisor to President Trump. Breitbart’s ties to white supremacists resulted in them losing 90% of their advertisers between April and June of 2017.

This is the publication that pays Kris Kobach to write a column. A Kobach column in Breitbart was part of the misinformation packet handed out at the meeting of the Fraud Commission. Testifying before the Voter Fraud Commission in NH were 12 white men. There were no women. No people of color. No town clerks or supervisors of the checklist participated in this fact-free extravaganza.

As soon as Donald Trump was elected president, he began to whine about voter fraud. He won the election through the Electoral College. That he failed to win the popular vote has been a terrible blow to his overweening, childlike ego. Trump is the bestest, smartest, most wonderful person ever, and that every person in the United States didn’t vote for him can only mean one thing – fraud.

NH Governor Chris Sununu paved the way for this by bleating about “busloads of voters from Massachusetts” on the Howie Carr radio show, days before the election. Chris Sununu did not attend the fraud side show – how could he? His father, the disgraced philatelist, was ensconced on the dais. No one asked him how all that fraud impacted his son’s election. No one asked him why his family wants to sabotage NH elections.

Sununu-the-younger has had to walk back his claims of voter fraud, given that he was elected. The Republicans would have us believe that the fraud was confined to only two races – the presidential race and the US Senate race. We’re being asked to believe that people came to NH to fraudulently vote for only two candidates. In that same election, Republican Chris Sununu was elected, and the Republican Party now controls the entire state government. We’re also being asked to believe that THOSE votes weren’t fraud.

You can’t have it both ways.

One of the ideas suggested by a witness testifying before the Fraud Commission, was doing background checks on voters. The kind of background checks that are so bitterly opposed by NH gundamentalists. These are the kinds of contortions that the far right will engage in to try to ensure they stay in power. Another suggestion is raising the voting age; to ensure college students don’t vote. It seems the GOP platform has little appeal to young voters, so rather than do the hard work of recruiting, they’d prefer to just eliminate young voters.

NH Secretary of State, Bill Gardner is part of the Sham Commission. In recent years he’s become the tool of those claiming voter fraud, chosen to give them bipartisan credibility. Gardner has been in office since 1976. After a long career in public service, he has besmirched his legacy of defending the first in the nation primary by legitimizing this charade.

What should offend every one of us is the damage being done to our elections by this commission. This craven nonsense is an insult to every town clerk, every moderator, the supervisors of the checklist, the ballot clerks, and every volunteer that is part of our election process – a process that has been working just fine for hundreds of years. That the majority party has chosen to perpetuate this circus tells us that they’ve abandoned any integrity they may have once had.

I’ve long said that when NH loses the first in the nation primary, it will be because of the GOP. Say goodbye, NH. It’s all over now but the shouting.

This was published as an op-ed in the September 15, 2017 edition of the Conway Daily Sun  newspaper

NH Media Silent on GOP Election Fraud

                                    NH State Rep. Don Leeman of Rochester, NH (h/t miscellany blue for photo)

After the NH Primary, there was a small, quiet story in the news. From Fosters:

A local state representative’s voting location has sparked an investigation from the state’s Attorney General.

Deputy Secretary of State Dave Scanlan confirmed on Wednesday that the Attorney General’s office is looking into whether State Rep. Don Leeman, R-Rochester, violated any state laws by voting in the recent N.H. presidential primary election in a district in which he is temporarily no longer living.

Also:

Scanlan said a person intentionally voting in the wrong polling place faces a “range of potential ramifications, anything from civil fine to criminal prosecution.”

This wasn't a big story. You didn't see it splashed across the front page of the UL. You didn't see it covered on WMUR. When a Republican State Representative commits voter fraud, the NH media is silent. 

Some of the bills Don Leeman sponsored this session:

HB 1425  restricting the use of food stamps in convenience stores. He wanted to allow only milk to be purchased in convenience stores with SNAP benefits. He told the committee he thinks people could get more for their money at supermarkets. No word on whether he was planning to give them rides. 

HB 1542  Requiring drug testing of public assistance recipients. Because obviously, anyone receiving public assistance is on drugs. As we all know, this has cost other states a fortune, and saved them nothing. 

HB 1629  Disqualifying members of certain groups from receiving public assistance. This would add a checkbox to forms so that people who are members of foreign terrorist groups could self-sort themselves out of getting any kind of public assistance in the US. It also provided a helpful "fink" provision that would enable residents to turn in anyone they thought was a terrorist, and potentially get a reward. 

It seems Leeman was deeply concerned with uncovering fraud. Except, of course, when he was committing it himself. Then it was justified. Leeman should be charged with election fraud, and voter fraud. 

He is now on the verge of being a former State Representative. The House Legislative Administration Committee has made this determination:

The committee, as part of this report undertook to answer two questions. 1) Is the member an inhabitant of the district to which he was elected? 2) Is the member qualified to continue to represent the district to which he was elected? The committee agreed, unanimously, that the answer to both questions was no. Representative Leeman can no longer serve as a member of the New Hampshire House because he has constitutionally disqualified himself. 

All of this without a whisper from the NH media. 


According to Fosters today:

Should the House vote Leeman is no longer qualified, his seat would be vacated immediately, Rivers said.

Leeman said he had appeared before the committee on Tuesday and was confident he would not be voted out of his seat. He said Tuesday he had spoken to the Speaker of the House, and that "we have a resolution to the whole thing."

A resolution? He moved out of his district, then voted in it anyway in an attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of his constituents, so he could keep his seat. 

If they vote to keep him, the NH GOP should STFU about voter fraud, now and forever.  

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. 

Last Minute Attacks by Shady Non-Profit Affiliated with Americans for Prosperity

This is one of the mailers that has just gone out attacking NH State Representative Robert (Renny) Cushing. Note the stereotyping, the use of FEAR language (WELFARE CARDS!) and of course the incredibly sexist stereotype of a conservative view of what a low income woman looks like. 

There's also something else noteworthy about this mailer. It references HB 1213, a bill that was held over by the legislature for interim study. The House voted in March to send it to interim study. The roll call vote was 175 to 105. (Some fairly reactionary Republicans voted to send it to interim study.)

There have been a number of subcommittee work sessions on the bill, and it's slated to be brought back to the House floor.  This is a craven scare attack on a legislator that is considered a threat. 

That brings us to Part 2. This mailer was paid for by the New Hampshire Advantage Coalition. Who is the NHAC? It is a group originally formed in 1998, aimed at protecting the so-called NH advantage. The founders:

George Lovejoy - Barrington
Roy Stewart - Bedford
Thomas Colburn - Pembroke
Judith Thayer - Manchester
Siobhan Tautkus - Manchester
Bryan Gould - Concord
Diane Gilbert - Epping
Jim Root - Bristol
Ovide Lamontagne - Manchester


They filed only one annual report with the Secretary of State, and that was in 2000. It listed Lovejoy as the president. The non-profit was dissolved/suspended in 2006, and formally dissolved with the IRS in 2011. It was brought back to life later that year by these folks:

Corey Lewandowski - Salem
Ed Sibeleski - Salem
Diane Wolfgang - Windham
Richard Morin - Salem
Matthew Worthen - Hampstead

Corey Lewandowski is employed by Americans for Prosperity - the Koch funded group that is allied with the far right, the John Birch Society, and the Free State Project in NH.

The NH Advantage Coalition has never filed an annual report with the Secretary of State. NH Secretary of State Corporate Search.

In 2012 NHAC received money from AFP.  Americans for Prosperity dutifully reported the $20,000, as you can see by scrolling down to page 24. Note there is no tax ID number  for the NHAC listed on the paperwork.

NHAC also got money from Grover Norquist's group, Americans for Tax Reform in 2012. NHAC was given $15,000 to fight for "right to work" legislation. The group used the tax ID number from the defunct original corporation that was dissolved with the IRS.

It sure does look as if on top of never filing annual reports with the Sec. of State, the New Hampshire Advantage Coalition is accepting money with an invalid tax ID number. 

This group is obviously scared witless by a decent and principled legislator - so much that they'll lie and commit tax fraud to try to take him down.