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

Tarsal Target Practice

New Hampshire is experiencing the worst drought in 35 years. In the southern part of the state some communities instituted a ban on watering lawns. Residents were asked to take shorter showers. A number of NH dairy farms have stopped selling milk. The drought affected haying, so farmers are going into winter with little feed, and the feed growers were also hard hit by the drought.

 I drove to northern Maine over the weekend, and it was disturbing to see how low the water levels are in the top half of our state. The Androscoggin, Lake Umbagog, the Magalloway River, Richardson Lake, Rangeley Lake, Flagstaff Lake – all were low. Some swamps were dry, and ponds have become puddles. Wells are going dry in the Conway area – and still our “good neighbors” over at Poland Spring in Fryeburg are mining about 600,000 gallons a day.

Maine, too, is experiencing serious drought. According to an October 5 story in the Portland Press Herald, Poland Spring/Nestle is withdrawing less from their Hollis and Poland sites, but more from wells in Dallas Plantation and Pierce Pond Township, both near Flagstaff Lake. Flagstaff Lake is very low.

They have not changed their mining practices in Fryeburg. The big straw is still in place, sucking up the water. Does that water understand the state border?

Nestle is an international corporation with a proven record of non-existent ethics. It’s time for Maine (and NH) to stand up and protect their water, before Nestle sucks the state dry -and then sells the water back to residents at a huge profit.

You may have heard that November 8 is Election Day. You’ve already heard too much about the presidential election, plenty about the US Senate race in our state, and not much else. There is still time to research the candidates for Congress, Governor, Executive Council, the NH State House, the NH Senate, for county races, and local races. It’s important to do your homework, since the media has been in thrall to Trump and little else. My advice is this: vote from the bottom up on your ballot. The people you send to Concord and to town hall have a far greater impact on your daily life than whichever unacceptable candidate goes to the White House. 

This newspaper endorsed the so-called independent candidate running for Congress in District One. Shawn O’ Connor has had quite a metamorphosis:  from Republican, to Democrat, to independent. (Libertarian will surely be next.) The millionaire moved to NH a few years ago with the intention of running against Kelly Ayotte. It would require a lot of work from a guy with zero name recognition and there would be accusations of carpetbagging. (This was before Scott Brown) O’Connor backed off. What he didn’t do was get involved with the Democratic Party. He didn’t get to know people. He did spend a bunch of money on high priced consultants, and decided that Congress was the way to go.

Over the summer of 2015, he made a big announcement that he was gay and had been in an abusive relationship. When that didn’t get him the kind of attention he wanted, he accused Carol Shea- Porter’s campaign of waging a whisper campaign behind his back, threatened a lawsuit, threatened to sue the NH Democratic Party, and claimed there were rats in the kitchen at the Puritan Back Room in Manchester. None of the threatened lawsuits have been filed, because he lacks any proof of his preposterous claims. He jumped on the Bernie bandwagon, and became a populist when Bernie’s campaign was on fire in NH.

It’s worth noting that all of the higher ups in Bernie’s NH campaign have endorsed Shea-Porter, including the staffer that O’Connor says solicited his endorsement of Bernie. It’s also worth noting that a vote for O’Connor is a vote for Guinta – and that is exactly what he’s hoping for. He’s a mess. And he will write a letter to the editor calling me a liar.

I was at the gubernatorial debate at New England College that was televised by NECN. At that debate Chris Sununu announced that The Pledge was not enough, that it must be expanded to include all fee increases. The GOP labors under the fiction that the state can run on fumes, while making business tax cuts to ensure no money comes in. This is why you stand in line at the DMV long enough to hit retirement age. If you call in, you’re on hold for hours. I’m not exaggerating; a family member calling from out of state was on hold for 2 hours. We do not raise sufficient revenue to staff and run any of our state agencies properly, and then when complaints arise, it’s dismissed as bad gummint, and blamed on organized labor.  

There was no mention of infrastructure in the debate, though three questions were asked about guns. NH still has the 11^th worst infrastructure in the nation, and some of the least restrictive gun laws. Sununu opposes even having a minimum wage. He’s boasted of creating numerous good paying jobs at Waterville Valley Ski Area. Anyone who has ever worked at a ski area knows better. At the debate Sununu said he’d just bought some workforce housing, which means he isn’t paying workers enough so that they can afford housing.  The fact that NH has both a housing shortage and a serious affordability problem was not addressed at this debate. It was more important to ask 3 questions about guns.

As for the local races – when you send most local Republicans to Concord, you are voting for obstruction and delay. Libertea Republicans get a yellow sheet handed to them every Wednesday on their way in to the House session. The “Gold Standard” is issued by the NH Liberty Alliance, and tells recipients how to vote on so-called “liberty” issues. No need for any work, research, or even any thought. (Kinda like taking The Pledge)  Sending Free Staters and John Birchers to Concord means that what you’ll get are knee jerk reactionaries who want to ensure that nothing gets done, other than MOAR GUNZ! At least 4 gun bills have already been filed for 2017, along with 4 bills intended to restrict voting. These are the GOP priorities for our state. Ponder that, as you drive over East Conway Road.

The NH legislature has been failing to invest in our state for decades. A pity we can’t shoot our way into good roads and bridges. Instead, we seem doomed to continue to shoot ourselves in the foot.

Published as an op-ed in the October 28, 2016 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

What About the Yacht Dwellers?

The New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute (NHFPI) recently released a report called, Taking the Measure of Need in the Granite State. NHPI looks at NH issues, and also examines problems with the federal poverty guidelines.

The poverty rate in NH is the lowest in the nation, at 9.2 percent. The federal poverty threshold was created in the 1960’s. At that time, a research showed that a family of three spent approximately one third of its budget on food.  After that, official poverty thresholds were created by multiplying the cost of a minimum food diet by three. Over time occasional adjustments have been made to account for inflation. In 1995, the Census Bureau created a supplemental poverty measure, which didn’t replace the poverty threshold, but exists to provide alternative information.

No adjustments have been made for the cost of housing. These days, housing costs account for upwards of two thirds of a poverty level budget. That’s another problem, the poverty threshold does not account for geographic differences in housing or other costs. As we all know, NH has some of the highest energy costs in the nation – as well as some of the highest property taxes and housing costs. Rent, day care, and health care costs combined make up at least half of the average working family’s budget.

The report finds that jobs in NH don’t match up with the cost of living. Only 30% of the jobs pay enough for a single parent with one child to have an “adequate” standard of living. The availability of those jobs depends greatly on where one resides in the state. The further north one travels, the more likely it is that the region is dependent on low wage service jobs. The cost of living does not decrease proportionally.

We all know that young people flee our state to avoid crushing student debt. We know they don’t come back because the employment prospects are limited and the exorbitant property taxes limit their ability to buy a house. There’s a shortage of rental property, so the rents are too damn high. We also know that many towns rely on volunteers to serve as firefighters and EMTs. This creates a conundrum in an aging population.

What are we doing about it? Well….nothing. We rely on volunteers to populate our legislature. Many of them are old and retired, and their sole interest is protecting their pensions. Some are businessmen whose sole interest is either passing or preventing legislation that applies to their businesses. Some are younger people who have no visible means of support. They generally do have a lot of expensive video equipment and plenty of weapons.

We are a state that lacks any kind of vision for the future. We live in and are legislated by the past.

Senator Jeb Bradley has been tweeting out lovely photos of his climbs up our 4000 footers in our various state parks. The same state parks we fund with user fees. NH is the only state that does it, because every other state was smart enough to realize that it doesn’t work. We are so miserly that we’ve created a mess. To fix the state parks would require a large infusion of cash. Our visionless legislature has been kicking the infrastructure can down the road for decades. You have only to drive down East Conway Road to see the results of that brilliant strategy. It would have been cheaper and smarter to keep up the maintenance of our roads and bridges all along, but that would have meant spending money, and we don’t do that here. As I’ve said far too many times – we prefer to pay the pound of cure. NH would rather amputate a limb than buy a band-aid.

The NH Senate will be voting on extending the NH Health Protection Plan (NHHPP) this week. Our Republican brethren don’t want to do it, because only people who can afford health insurance deserve it. The 50,000 low-wage workers in our state that are currently covered by the NHHPP apparently aren’t “deserving.” Greg Moore, the head of Americans for Prosperity in NH, was quoted at a hearing on the bill, as saying that “we aren’t getting a return on our investment,” when it comes to the NHHPP. The health of our residents isn’t worth investing in. It’s all about money for the Moores of the world. When everything has a price, nothing has any value.

Moore is a mouthpiece for the Koch Brothers, the funders of Americans for Prosperity. He was included in secret budget meetings last year. The Kochs aren’t creating any jobs here, other than Greg Moore’s. Luckily for the Kochs, we know that money is speech, and they get to speechify aplenty in a state where they have no investments other than AFP and the Free State Project.

The Senate is intent on attaching a work provision to the NHHPP. These are people who have been marinating in Reagan mythology for so long that they’re unable to accept reality. The welfare queen was a myth, and so is trickle down economics. When the NHHPP was first proposed, State Representatives Laurie Sanborn and Neal Kurk penned a letter to the editor that bemoaned the fact that “low income yacht dwellers” would be taking advantage of “free” health care. Has anyone found a low income yacht dweller in NH? The Republicans in our legislature believe that workers will quit their good paying jobs so that they can get “free” health care. Because that “free” health care will pay their rent and buy their groceries? These same legislators conveniently forget the fact that low-wage workers pay taxes. The same taxes that fund the NHHPP. 

The report from NHFPI shows that we use an outmoded tool to assess poverty, in a nation (and our state) where it is increasing. It’s difficult to imagine that this is an accident. The wealthiest country in the world doesn’t want to have accurate information about the poverty of its citizens, because that might require doing something about it. Right now, we’re more than content to blame that poverty on the poor.

published as an op-ed in the April 1 edition of the Conway Daily Sun 

Nipples and Nonsense

It’s the start of the new year, and that means that the legislature will be back in session! The fun has already begun, with some of our NH Republicans covering our state with glory in the national media.

You may have read that a couple of male legislators made boobs of themselves over the horrifying thought of being subjected to the view of a female nipple. It seems that State Representative Josh Moore was so incensed at the idea, that he told a female state rep that any woman who was putting her nipple on view deserved to have it stared at or grabbed. This is especially fun because Josh is Ted Cruz’s “faith based outreach” director in NH. (Be sure to ask Josh or Ted whose nipple Jesus would grab.) The other offender was Representative Al Baldasaro, who also made crude remarks, but stopped short of justifying assault.

This all came about because last summer some women staged a “free the nipple” topless protest at Hampton Beach. This apparently was too much for the Patriarchal Police, so
a trio of male legislators filed a bill (HB 1525) to define the circumstances that comprise indecent exposure and lewdness.  

NH has some serious problems. We have the 11^th worst infrastructure in the United States. Our roads, bridges, dams, and water systems are in serious need of repair. We need telecommunications infrastructure. Young people are leaving the state in droves, because there are no jobs and no affordable housing. NH invests less than any other state does in higher education, so our college students have a tremendous debt load. We’re unwilling to raise sufficient funds to run the state as if it were a going concern, so all state agencies are insufficiently funded and don’t run properly. Our property taxes are some of the highest in the nation, and prevent young people from buying houses, and force old people to sell theirs.

The response of our legislature to the very serious problems our state faces? Nipples. Nonsense.

There are 8 bills attempting to eliminate abortion. Republican  men may not know diddly about planning future, but one thing they do know is that women can’t be trusted with their own bodies. There are 11 gun bills. There’s a constitutional amendment to try to ensure college students can’t vote here.  There’s a bill to require TANF recipients to be drug tested, another to dictate where SNAP benefits can be spent, and a resolution to encourage the governor and executive council to open their meetings with a prayer. Yeah, that’ll help. The legislature opens every session with a prayer, then they go on to do the best they can to ensure that the state’s poverty rate continues to rise.

Some of the bills are very familiar. Our legislators are not deterred by bills that fail to pass for decades – they just keep filing. There’s the usual attempt at defining “domicile” in ways that are aimed at preventing voting as opposed to encouraging it, this time in the form of a proposed amendment to our state constitution. Another constitutional amendment would require a 3/5 vote in the House to override any veto. We’ve heard these before.

HB 1629 would disqualify members of foreign terrorist groups from receiving public assistance. Is there a box that folks check off (yes or no) to notify the state that they’re members of a terrorist organization? HB 1542 would require drug testing of people receiving TANF benefits. This is one of Representative Don Leeman’s favorite hobbyhorses, brought back again. Kansas spent $40,000 on drug testing TANF recipients and got 11 positive test results. Mississippi spent $5,290 and got 2 positive test results. In a state that can’t afford to fix bridges, this seems like a bizarre use of funds, but hey, those poor folks aren’t going to demonize themselves.

HB 1115 stipulates that NH residents would only be required to obey our own state and federal laws. The laws of other states wouldn’t apply to us. This bill is sponsored by Rep. Frank Edelblut, a Republican who wants to be our governor. HB 1128 would designate the second week of September as Patriot Week. Because legislating patriotism makes it happen!

House Majority Leader Jack Flanagan is the lead sponsor of HB 1668, a bill that would create a registry for people convicted of heroin related offenses, and require the registration of those offenders. NH offers very little in the way of treatment for addicts. The GOP is determined to eliminate the NH Health Protection Program, (aka expanded Medicaid) which enables 40,000 low wage NH workers to access health insurance that they wouldn’t have otherwise. Insurance that covers treatment for addiction. Offering young people a future might be more helpful, (affordable education, good jobs, home ownership) but we’re not about to do that – so the only thing left is trying to prosecute our way out of a heroin epidemic. That it hasn’t worked yet is not a consideration.

Coming to us from the small gummint crowd is HB 1596, a bill aimed at changing the paperwork requirements for marriage. Representatives Itse, Hoell, Hill, and Ingbretson do not believe that the state should license anything, so they want to go forward into the past to the way things used to be, with couples filing a certificate of intent to marry, and then a certificate of marriage, which gives interested parties the opportunity to object to the marriage. I’m not making that up. It’s in the text. The text also only refers to couples that are comprised of a bride and a groom. It’s nice to see the same guys who moan and wail about gummint interference working hard to interfere in the personal lives of NH residents. Bravo, libetea dudes!

You can check out all 812 potential bills filed thus far at www.gencourt.state.nh.us . On the right side of the page, you’ll see the section labeled “State Legislation Dashboard” where you can find all bills – the good, the bad, and the peculiar. Presidential primaries generate a lot of heat and noise, but what happens on the state level has the greatest impact on our lives. Make it your New Year’s resolution to pay more attention.

published as an op-ed in the Conway Daily Sun on January 8, 2012

Fauxlifers

Jeb! Bush recently spoke at the Send North America conference, a large evangelical gathering. Jeb! said he wasn’t sure we need half a billion dollars for women’s health issues. His handlers have been getting tons of aerobic exercise trying to backpedal on that statement. It’s not wise to be so honest about the fact that women are regarded as the disposable gender. Jeb! and the rest of the GOP candidates have seized on defunding Planned Parenthood as a way to stand out from the rest of the pack (who all have identical ideology) and ride to the White House on a wave of loathing for women. Oh, wait – those loathers call themselves “pro-life.” The only “life” they care about is that of an imaginary fetus. Once it becomes real, they lose interest in it. They certainly have no interest in making sure it has access to health care, food, housing, or education.

Jeb! distinguished himself when he was Governor of Florida, by defunding Planned Parenthood.  He further burnished his fauxlife cred by getting involved in the end of life decisions of the Schiavo family. The fauxlifers don’t usually bother much with the born, until the end of their lives approaches. They really love a chance to get involved in a big right-to-die situation, and especially if the patient involved is female. Terry Schiavo wasn’t the only one. Remember Karen Ann Quinlan or Nancy Cruzan? More recently the fauxlife crowd scored a twofer, by trying to force the family of Marlise Munoz to keep her on life support. Munoz was ghoulishly kept on life support, against the wishes of her family, for two months because she was pregnant when she died. Fauxlifers are also intent on making sure we all suffer as much as possible rather than choose to end our own lives with medical assistance in the event of a terminal illness.

Some anti-abortion terrorists doctored some videotapes about Planned Parenthood, and now the GOP is using this as another weapon in the ongoing war against women. It’s the equivalent of Jimmy “the pimp” O’Keefe’s highly edited sting against ACORN. You remember ACORN – the community based organization that advocated for health care, housing, and voter registration in low and moderate-income neighborhoods. ACORN was completely destroyed by those fake videos. By the time they were exonerated, the damage had been done. In August of 2013 Congress was gearing up for a 13^th vote to defund ACORN. ACORN had been defunct for 3 years at the time. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn they’re STILL voting on ACORN. They’ve voted 56 times to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, and there’s talk of another vote in the fall.

The Planned Parenthood videos are similar in that respect. Highly edited, for the most emotional possible ginning up of the fauxlifers. Planned Parenthood is selling body parts of the BAYBEEZ!  It’s not true, but truth doesn’t matter to this crowd.  These people don’t care that some BAYBEEZ grow up to be homeless, or hungry, or get lead poisoned as the result of a sleazy slumlord. They’ll vote against any kind of funding to protect children and families. They’ll vote against “inconveniencing” landlords by forcing them to eliminate lead paint from their buildings. After all, landlords are in business! Congressmen and Senators who can’t lift a finger to do anything that needs doing in the US House or Senate have all kinds of energy to spare for interfering in women’s lives. They are desperate to ensure that low and moderate-income women have even fewer health care options.

Imagine how much better things would be going here in the USA if these elected officials were interested in finding a way to repair our failing state and national infrastructures. Roads and bridges aren’t sexy, we are told. (Apparently making women’s reproductive decisions IS sexy.) What if our alleged leaders were all about finding a way to be competitive in telecommunications infrastructure? The US ranks far behind other countries in terms of internet speed, connectivity, and the availability of public wifi. South Korea has the fastest internet speed and the cheapest prices in the world. The best speeds that consumers can buy in major US cities are half as fast, and cost $300 a month. One would think that the boosters of “American exceptionalism” would be interested in ensuring that there is, in fact, such a thing. One would be wrong. As long as we have more guns, sell more weapons, and have the biggest war machine, we are exceptional. The country is falling apart, but hey – we can force women to serve as involuntary incubators! USA! USA!

In Texas, Governor Smart Glasses and the Texas legislature cut the state’s family planning budget by 2/3 as a way of “wiping out the abortion industry.” They succeeded in closing 53 women’s health clinics around the state. Not a one of those clinics that closed performed abortions. All those closings succeed in doing is to make it harder for women to access screenings and health services. The other unspoken goal is to ensure that women don’t have access to contraception, either. After all, he who has control of women’s reproductive decisions has control of women’s lives.

In civilized countries, women’s health and reproductive decisions are their own business. In civilized countries, there is universal health care, family leave, subsidized childcare, and no wage gap for women. In civilized countries children don’t die every day because they found a gun in the bedroom. This is another issue that shows the fauxlifers for what they are. They don’t have any problem accepting the idea that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of infants and children.

Women having bodily autonomy is unacceptable. Guns and moar gunz? Now that’s REAL freedom.

Published as an oped in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper on August 7, 2015