The Gold Standard

New Hampshire is a state with no income tax and no sales tax. A state where we are constantly warned that we must live within our means. For decades, the Republicans who govern our state have worked overtime to ensure that we have such limited means that we can’t ever fix anything that needs fixing, which is why 12% of our bridges are red listed for “structural impairments.” Our intentionally limited means ensure that our state parks are in desperate need of maintenance and repair. 

One might think that in a state where tourism is our number two business, we’d want to make that investment, but our limited means do not permit. Speaking of number two business, we have closed rest areas in Antrim, Epsom, and Shelburne, in places where tourists would undoubtedly like to stop. They were all closed in order to save money. Perhaps we could reopen them if the tourists signed an affidavit saying that in exchange for using the rest room, they swear they’ll buy a case of Hennessy on the way out of state? (Paying cash, of course.)

Given our constant state of poverty, I was surprised to read what Governor Sununu had to say at the annual spring luncheon for Seacoast Republican Women. From the story in Fosters:  “Despite Democratic criticism of his budget he said, “we have more money than we know what to do with.” 

If that’s the case, it seems our governor lacks imagination. I’ve tweeted suggestions to him about things we might do with all that money. Build a secure psychiatric unit that isn’t part of a prison, for treating our people who have mental illness. Eliminate the shameful wait list for developmental disability services. Fix all the red listed bridges. Open up those closed rest areas, fix the state parks…the list is endless.

He also said, “We slipped for a long time, but we’re back. New Hampshire is the gold standard. A 2017 CNBC report found that NH has the second worst infrastructure in the nation. We don’t seem to be using any of that gold to repair our roads, bridges, dams, water systems, etc. In fact, given those closed rest areas, we don’t even qualify as American Standard.

I’ve said it before (and I’ll say it again!) that NH is the seventh wealthiest state. We are intentionally starving our state, so that we can continue to fail to invest in the present and the future. 

Our politicians are proud to take The Pledge, which refers to the Mel Thomson/William Loeb pledge against the creation of a state income tax or sales tax. The Pledge became popular in the early 70’s and continues to be GOP cult dogma.

New Hampshire’s peculiar system of funding our state government through fees and property taxes results in an underfunded state government. It isn’t the fault of the folks at the DMV that you wait for hours in line or can’t get through on the phone. They are chronically understaffed on purpose. That understaffing makes you the public unhappy, and willing to buy into the first tenet of GOP gospel: government is the problem. It certainly is when they’re running it. 

It’s all a false “economy.” As the 7^thwealthiest state, NH is certainly capable of generating revenue. Our secret is that we don’t want to. One thing the Republican Party fears above all is having enough money to fix the things that were deliberately neglected for decades. The scaremongering around The Pledge is key to their continued dominance in the state. 

A recent twitter exchange was a perfect illustration. Greg Moore is the head of Americans for Prosperity NH. AFP is an arm of the Koch brothers that has managed to achieve a disproportionate amount of influence over our state finances. Greg tweeted out that NH revenues are up in May, and claimed Trump’s tax reform is driving the NH economy forward. A reply to that tweet came from Grant Bosse, who wrote, “Don’t tell them! They’ll come back to spend it!”  (He was referring to the legislature.) Grant Bosse is the editor of the Union Leader’s editorial page. Before that, he worked for the Josiah Bartlett Center, the right wing think tank funded by the Koch brothers. 

That is, of course, easily translated into “spending is bad.” A successful business that invested in itself would be lauded, particularly if that came in the form of higher wages for workers. In NH success is defined as austerity. We don’t invest in education or any real safety net. We don’t even fix what is broken. To say that NH has “more money than we know what to do with,” in the face of our state’s many desperate needs is truly an obscenity.    

Published as an op-ed in the June 8, 2018 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

Failure is the Goal

We’ve all been watching as the various nominees of our new president go through the confirmation process. Most of them are spectacularly unqualified or burdened with serious conflicts of interest, not that that is an impediment in this regime. This week there have been hearings regarding Betsy DeVos whose most important qualification to be Secretary of Education appears to be the hundreds of millions her family has donated to the GOP.

New Hampshire often serves as a mirror, reflecting locally what is going on nationally. That’s never been more apparent than it is right now, with our Trump-supporting new governor, Chris Sununu, sitting in the corner office.  This week the Executive Council had a public hearing on Sununu’s nominee for Commissioner of Education.

Frank Edelblut is a businessman from Wilton. He has a BA in business and a Masters in Theology. His seven children were homeschooled. Frank Edelblut has no background in education, and none of the experience that we would hope a qualified contender for this important position might possess. While serving a single term in the legislature he supported a bill that would have forced all state funded facilities (including hospitals, day care centers, halfway houses) to allow guns on their premises. He’s never been to a school board meeting. He’s never been to a parent teacher conference. He does, however, oppose public education, while supporting taxpayer funded religious education, and charter schools. He’s utterly unqualified for this position. Would you hire your barber to remove your gall bladder?

None of that will matter in either the case of DeVos or Edelblut. These are ideological appointments, and there aren’t any Republicans with principles any more. They have no interest in what’s best for the nation or the state – all they have is obedient cowardice. Doing the right thing isn’t even on the radar screen. Edelblut will be approved because Republicans have a 3-2 majority on the Executive Council.  He’ll be approved, because thanks to gerrymandering, the kind of people who are elected to office in this state hate public education, and refer to them as “gummint schools.” He’ll be approved because the goal here is failure.

There are bills coming up this week in committee hearings in the House and Senate that you won’t hear anything about. One such bill is HB 209. If this were to pass, NH would leave Eastern Standard Time behind, and move into the Atlantic Standard Time Zone. We’d be joining Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and most of Labrador. The Atlantic Time Zone also includes a number of Caribbean islands like Barbados and Martinique. This bill is co-sponsored by Free State Project members Keith Murphy and Carol McGuire, who are concerned that Massachusetts may change to AST, and they want NH to emulate what Republicans and their libertea brethren usually refer to as the socialist republic to the south.

HB 532 would deny state benefits to anyone who desecrates the US or the NH state flag. People who engage in a constitutionally protected act would be punished, by a denial of food stamps or tuition assistance. Lest you think that this bill is in reaction to a sudden outbreak of flag burning, it is not. The last flag burnings I’m aware of were done either by college students or by members of the Free State Project. If it passes, it’s a guaranteed court challenge, which means a lot of money wasted by our allegedly fiscally conservative legislators. Why even write this silliness? To demonize low-income folks, whom the sponsors seem to believe are most likely to burn flags.

SB 154 would allow pharmacists to dispense oral contraceptives without a prescription, after an initial consultation with a health care provider. This sounds like a good thing for women, until one remembers that prescription medications are covered by health insurance. Non-prescription medications are not. And oral contraceptives can be costly.

We are constantly presented with businessmen as candidates, as if that were the best possible qualification. NH has been sold the sob story that we’re a poor state for so long that voters buy into the businessman making tough decisions as the ideal. Not a one of these businessmen would run their businesses the way they approach running the state. Sununu wouldn’t fail to keep the ski lifts in good repair at Waterville Valley, but he’ll make sure NH lacks sufficient revenue to fix our roads and bridges.

If anyone wonders why NH won’t legalize marijuana, and take advantage of all the revenue that would bring in – that’s exactly the reason why. The last thing we want in this state is revenue. 

The last thing we want in this state is success.

published as an op-ed in the February 3 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

Elections Have Consequences

The priorities of the legislature should reflect the priorities of the state. If that’s the case then obviously NH voters are completely unconcerned about our failing infrastructure, and obsessed with guns, MOAR GUNZ, and completely unrestricted, unregulated gun ownership!

On Wednesday the NH House passed SB 116, the so-called “constitutional carry” bill. Constitutional carry is a cutesy name created by the NRA or the American Legislative Exchange Council (aka ALEC) the special interest groups behind the kind of gun legislation that crops up in a number of states simultaneously. It’s nationally coordinated, then fed to state legislators to make it look “local.” SB 116 removes the requirement for a permit to carry a concealed pistol or revolver. If a gun owner wanted to carry concealed, they applied to their local police chief for a permit. Police chiefs seldom refused, by the way. They did, in some instances; attempt to keep concealed guns out of the hands of known drunks and abusers. Quelle horreur.

The NH statute that required the permit has been in place for over a century. Saint Meldrim Thomson was in favor of the permitting process. All was well until the last few years, when suddenly (with the help of the NRA and ALEC) gundamentalists realized their rights were being infringed upon. Our own Senator Jeb Bradley stepped up and filed this bill to protect “law abiding residents who want 2 protect lives, liberty” as he tweeted out on Wednesday. I tweeted back to ask him why he didn’t file this bill in 1990, when he was serving in the NH House. Poor man – simmering with rage for 25 years over this terrible injustice to our noble gun owners! No wonder he failed to answer my tweet. I’m certain it had nothing to do with his attempts to suck up to the libertea crowd to get their support for his upcoming bid for higher office. It’s worth pointing out that polls showed that NH voters opposed the concealed carry statute change 3 to 1.

Imagine if our legislators were as obsessed with our failing infrastructure as they are with guns.

The other interesting vote this week was SB 113, the bill to allow two casinos in the state of NH. This is the most recent casino bill, and we all know the rationale behind the annual parade of gambling legislation. NH has a structural deficit built into our tax system. Rather than solve the problem and tax our 33,000 millionaires appropriately, we look for outside solutions. The time to bring casinos to NH was at least a decade ago, before the economy fell apart, and before the country was saturated with casinos. (Casinos that are now failing in many places.) Each new casino bill leaves NH with less revenue coming in than the previous bill. This one required a modest licensing fee for a 10-year license that a gaming outfit could sell to another gaming corporation. They would make a profit, but NH would get nothing. If the revenue demands from our legislature continue to decline, in another few years, we’ll be begging to pay a casino to come here so we can give them the entirety of the take. The legislature seems incapable of making a good deal for our state.

There was bipartisan support and opposition to the bill. The libertea crowd did some chest beating from the House floor about monopolies and free markets, and gave that as the reason for their opposition. I suspect that since Governor Hassan supports a casino, the GOP opposition had more to do with thwarting the governor than their concern for the free market.

That isn’t the real reason. The real reason is that NH conservatives don’t want the revenue. If the money came in, it could be spent. That would mean NH could spend on higher education, infrastructure, and safety net programs to help those in need. The agitprop slogan of the NH Republicans would be at risk:  “NH doesn’t have a revenue problem, NH has a spending problem!” The goal of NH conservatives is to continue to run the state in a way that maintains that bit of fiction. We have a problem generating sufficient revenue to run the state properly, and our GOP brethren want to make sure we keep it that way.

NH sure is missing out on a huge revenue opportunity by not selling guns at our highway liquor stores.

The voters of Coos County are getting a lesson in why it is that who they send to represent them in Concord matters. The budget passed by the House closes the DMV stations in Colebrook and Gorham. This would leave the Twin Mountain DMV station as the only one in the county. For some residents in the far northern reaches of Coos, this could be a four hour round trip. Ah, what fun that will be during the long winters. State Senator Jeff Woodburn was quoted in the Berlin Sun as saying, “If this budget cut holds, 72 percent of the residents of Coos County will have to drive over 30 miles for basic motor vehicle services.”

The NH legislature abandoned all pretense of concern for the north country long ago. Remember when one-term GOP Governor Craig Benson wanted to close the notches in the winter to save money? The folks of Coos are learning the hard way that sending ideologues to Concord may come back to bite them in the behind. Coos District One covers the northernmost part of the state: the towns of Pittsburg, Colebrook, Clarksville, Errol, Millsfield, Odell, Stratford, Dixville, and Columbia. District 1 is represented by John Fothergill and Lawrence Rappaport. Both voted for the House budget. Leon Rideout of District 7 represents a big chunk of Coos: Dummer, Stark, Northumberland, Milan, Lancaster, Killkenny, Dalton, Whitefield, Jefferson, Randolph, and Carroll. He voted for the House budget, too. I’m sure their constituents will thank them effusively for their good work as they take a day off to drive to Twin Mountain next February.

Elections have consequences. Who we send to Concord matters, especially to the north country.

 This was published as an op-ed in the May 1, 2015 edition of the Conway Daily Sun.  

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.

They Touch Our Food

The end of the legislative session is fast approaching. The new budget for the state is supposed to be in place by July 1. The budget passed by the House was dismantled by the pouty Senate, and now goes to a Committee of Conference, where the two branches must come together and hammer out some sort of compromise.

The Senate is crawling with ambitious folk, using this budget as a springboard to higher office. One of them is former Congressman turned State Senator Jeb Bradley. He is desperate for higher office. Rumors abound that he’s going to run for governor or possibly even the US Senate. Others include Andy Sanborn and Chuck Morse. Their actions and their votes are all about that ambition, and not at all reflecting concern for their constituents or their state. Of course, that’s been the hallmark of this Senate. Obstructionism passing as “work.”

It was illustrated perfectly by Bradley, during a recent debate on a minimum wage bill. The bill didn’t ad a penny to the minimum wage, merely put back into statute the ability for NH to set it’s own min. wage. During the debate, Bradley referred (numerous times) to the sponsors of the bill as “people of good intentions”, even as he argued against a bill that was going to have zero fiscal impact. If their intentions were good, what does that say about Bradley’s?

Fortunately Bradley has not been appointed to the Committee of Conference that will be working out a budget compromise. It seems our NH GOP Senators are so miffed about the fate of their poorly written gambling bill that they’re refusing to raise any revenue.

That’s it in a nutshell. The ideologues of the far right don’t want to raise any revenue. They don’t care if all of our bridges fall down. They don’t care if any NH child gets an education. They don’t care if our state runs smoothly. In fact, that’s the last thing they want. They want to make sure that our state runs poorly, so they can point to it as gummint failure. That they are the architects of that failure is nothing that they ever have to answer for.

Sooner or later the lack of spending on infrastructure and education are going to become a big enough problem that even they can’t ignore it. When businesses refuse to come to NH because of it, the far right anti-government crowd won’t be able to ignore it any longer. NH is already recovering from the economic collapse of 2008 more slowly than any of the states around us. Massachusetts, despite their taxin’ and regulatin’ is doing pretty well. NH is not a poor state. NH is a cheap state.

Speaking of cheap, the NH Senate is opposed to the Medicaid expansion being embraced by most of the other states in the nation. Well known liberal moon-bat Jan Brewer of Arizona decided it would be a good thing for Arizona. Legendary pinko, Rick Scott of Florida has embraced the idea, even if his legislature has not.  Expanded Medicaid would give 58,000 low wage workers in NH some health insurance. The federal government is fully funding the expansion for 3 years. In NH that means $2.5 billion over the next 7 years. It would cost the state $85 million. Obviously the state is making out on the deal.  But let’s be clear, this isn’t “free.” These are our tax dollars, coming home to our state. NH is a donor state. We get back about $0.67 for every tax dollar we send to Washington. That means we’re funding states like New Mexico, where they get back $2.63 on the dollar. Or Alaska, where they get $1.93 for every dollar – and they have oil. Not taking this money isn’t going to save NH a dime. We’ll just continue to be a donor state.

The free marketeers love to tell us that what we need to “fix” health care in NH is “competition.” If only we’d allow it, the free market will just move right into NH and give us all kinds of insurance company options to choose from. Insurance too cheap to meter! Except that it won’t. The top two insurance conglomerates control about 60% of the US market. One of them controls NH – WellPoint/Anthem Blue Cross. The entire population of NH is less than the population of any major metropolitan area in the nation. There is no incentive for any insurance company to come here.

The state can withdraw from the expanded Medicaid program at any time. The state could write a provision spelling that out quite clearly (as the Maine legislature did) so that there’s no doubt. Not taking a big wad of our own cash back is just the kind of thinking we can expect from the folks who pride themselves on their Judeo-Christian family values. They’d rather see that wad o’cash go to Arizona or New Mexico. Or even…Massachusetts.

Low wage workers are the folks who wait on you in coffee shops, restaurants and convenience stores. They touch your food. Low wage workers are also at your mum’s house, wiping her bum and preparing her food. These are not people who have insurance, or paid sick days. All of us should want these people to have access to health insurance. It’s the right thing to do.

“To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.”  Confucius




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