MOAR GUNZ!

The annual state-by-state health rankings are in from the United Health Foundation. NH is in 5^th place nationally when it comes to the overall health of its residents. This places NH in the middle of the top ten, which is surely nothing to sneer at. That’s the message in every NH mainstream media story about the health rankings thus far. What the NH media isn’t pointing out is that in 2012, NH was in third place. In 2011 we were in second place. Fifth place isn’t terrible, but to get there we had to drop two places, something that one might think is worthy of media mention.

That kind of slippage is the new normal in NH. Our health isn’t as good; our child poverty rate has risen at what should be considered an alarming pace. Our roads and bridges are in terrible condition, our state parks are in increasing disrepair, some of our highway rest stops are still closed, and our telecommunications infrastructure is an embarrassment. Poverty, hunger, and homelessness are on the rise. But hey, NH has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the nation and THAT, my friends, is what is really important. So important that at least a dozen gun bills have been filed for the 2014 legislative session.  Perhaps if we all go out and wave our guns at one of the hundreds of red listed bridges in our state, they will magically repair themselves.

NH has never been a forward thinking state, and now we’re sliding backward. Today’s NH GOP has been taken over by Tea Partiers and libertarians, who think MOAR GUNZ is the answer to everything. They hate planning of any sort, and are actively trying to prevent it on county and regional levels. The libertarians don’t believe in public anything, or that the state should be in charge of roads and bridges. The private sector would do a better job. The Free Staters have yet to volunteer to fix a bridge or repair a highway to show us how well this will work in the future, when they succeed in transforming us into Aynrandshire. Surely a network of differently maintained toll roads will be a real asset when one is attempting to attract business to the state.

Tourism is the #2 business in New Hampshire. Our Fish and Game Dept. is in trouble financially because of our regressive tax structure. Rather than address that, Republican Senator Bob Odell has filed a bill that would require canoe and kayak owners to pay an annual $10 fee for using their non-polluting vessels on our rivers and lakes. The best part of this (from a GOP standpoint) is that the bill (sponsored by a Republican) is being blamed on Democrats. This is right up there with last session’s bill sponsored by GOP Senator Nancy Stiles that would have forced senior citizens to buy a season’s pass each year to use our state parks. Currently, NH residents over the age of 65 are granted free access to state parks. This bill would have initiated a $20 fee for a senior citizen pass. Unfortunately, the NH GOP is far from being ashamed of the lengths that they will go to (gouging old people and canoe owners) to prevent NH’s 27,000 millionaires from paying their fair share of taxes.

NH Republicans made sure that there would be no state exchange system set up to handle the ACA. Now they complain about how things are working (or not working) without state exchanges. The states that created their own exchange networks early on are doing quite well with the ACA. NH Republicans also torpedoed the expansion of Medicaid that would have provided basic insurance coverage to some 50,000 low-wage workers in our state.  This is the kind of thinking that caused NH to drop to 5^th place nationally in terms of overall health. NH’s health ranking has always been a matter of pride for our state, and one that is used as an enticement for companies and families to move here. The Free Staters use it in their advertisements to entice more anarchists to move here to take over the state. Given how many states have embraced expanded Medicaid, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that NH’s numbers will continue to be on a downward spiral while other states will see improved health numbers.

We don’t care about the health of our residents. (Though to be fair, Representatives Neal Kurk and Laurie Sanborn do worry about subsidizing health care for NH’s substantial population of low-income yacht dwellers.) We don’t care about the health of our highways, roads, dams, and bridges. We don’t care about the health of our telecommunications infrastructure. We have a long history of not caring about education. NH ranks a firm 50^th in the nation in state spending on our university system. What do we care about? Spending no money, and MOAR GUNZ!

Recent studies have also shown that NH is not bouncing back from the Great Recession as well or as quickly as our fellow New England states. We have no one but ourselves to blame. NH has failed to invest in the future for decades, and it’s begun to marginalize us and hurt our economy. Nothing short of a disaster is likely to turn that around. If one ever doubts the accuracy of the nickname “granite state” one has only to spend a Wednesday at the NH House of Representatives listening to floor speeches.

© sbruce 2013. Published as a bi-weekly column in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

Strategies for Increasing Poverty

The most recent jobs report got a nice spin from the media, who seemed quite excited that 195,000 jobs were created in June. This was presented as a “solid improvement” in the job market. That this didn’t change the unemployment rate of 7.6% was mentioned as an afterthought. Meanwhile, there are over 11 million Americans still out of work, and 37% of those folks are among the long-term unemployed. If we add the number of folks who are underemployed (working part time because they can’t find full time work) the numbers increase to being 22 million. The folks at Planet Money track what they call the broader unemployment rate, which includes the underemployed. That number is about 14%.

These numbers should be of concern. A consumer-based economy is never going to recover if 14% of the population is unable to spend money. Congress has shown their deep concern for jobs and the economy by recently voting for the 37^th time to repeal the Affordable Care Act. These 37 votes have cost US taxpayers over $53.8 million. The Congressional Budget Office reports that the repeal would add $109 billion to the deficit over the next decade. This is a Congress that is on track to be the most do-nothing Congress in US history, passing fewer bills than any thus far.

What are states across the nation doing in response to the huge numbers of unemployed and underemployed? Well, duh – they’re doing what logic dictates. They’re passing restrictive abortion laws.

Texas just passed a law that dramatically restricts abortions, and outlaws them outright after 20 weeks. The forced birth crowd would have us believe that women get bored with being pregnant, or find it inconvenient, and decide at 5 months pregnant that it’s time to just have an abortion. The reality is that fewer than 2% of abortions occur at this point in a pregnancy. The late term abortion is an agonizing choice, made for health reasons, no matter what the forced gestation crowd tries to tell us. Texas has just sent women a message: “we’d rather let you die.”

                                               

Texas is sending out all kinds of messages. Their unemployment rate is 6.5%. The poverty rate in Texas is 18.5% and the child poverty rate is a whopping 25.7%. Texas has the highest number of uninsured children in the nation. That deep concern for the fetus ends at the moment of birth.  Pew Research finds that only 38% of Texans want to make abortion laws stricter. It’s certainly not the will or the work of the people that’s being done by the Texas legislature. 

Ohio has a 7% unemployment rate. The poverty rate is 16.4%, and the child poverty rate is 24%. Ohio’s response? They’ve just passed an abortion bill that forces women to have ultrasounds, and cuts funding for family planning. Rape crisis centers risk losing public funds if they mention abortion. That kind of flagrant limitation of free speech would never, ever be applied to any other law. Governor Kasich signed it on a Sunday night.

Arkansas passed a law (currently blocked by a judge) in May that prevents abortions after 12 weeks. Arkansas has a 7.3% unemployment rate, a 19.5% poverty rate, and a child poverty rate of 28%. It seems those numbers are such a source of pride for the state that they’re desperate to expand them by forcing women to incubate.

Last week in Wisconsin, Scott Walker secretly signed a bill that makes ultrasounds mandatory for women seeking an abortion. If this is a good, necessary thing, why was it done in secret? Wisconsin, by the way, has a 7% unemployment rate, 13 % poverty rate, and an 18% rate of child poverty. Clearly mandatory ultrasounds are the key to changing all that.

Mississippi, Alabama, and Kansas all have court cases pending on restrictive abortion laws. Alabama has a 9.8% unemployment rate, a 19% poverty rate, and 28% of Alabama’s children live in poverty. Mississippi has a 10.5% unemployment rate, a 22.6% poverty rate, and 32% of the state’s children live in poverty. One can only conclude that those numbers are a source of pride, since they’re working so hard to perpetuate them. As for Kansas, their unemployment rate is 5.7% (it’s on the rise), the poverty rate is 13.8%, and the child poverty rate is 19%.

One wonders why, at a time of economic turmoil, the response is to invalidate women’s rights and create more poverty. There’s no interest on the national or state level in job creation – just uterine regulation. The uterus must be the deadliest weapon on the planet, since the desire to regulate it is unparalleled.

North Carolina has tried to graft restrictive abortion language to other bills in recent weeks. One concerned banning Sharia law (the irony!) and the pending bill concerns motorcycle safety. The language to restrict abortion was added in secret to the bills, by Republicans in the legislature. That they have to resort to secrecy and trickery to attempt to pass these kinds of bills tells us all we need to know. This isn’t the people’s business that’s being conducted – it’s throwing red, divisive meat into the public sphere in an effort to distract voters from the things they really should be mad about. Like the utter failure to do anything that will create jobs – especially jobs that pay a decent wage. Forcing women to serve as involuntary incubators isn’t going to rebuild the nation’s economy.

 © 2013 sbruce

published as a biweekly column in the Conway Daily Sun newspaper