Coming up in 2018

A friend from North Conway suggested I write a column “about some of the good, intelligent legislation proposed for 2018, and some of the decent, intelligent legislators who are striving to promote good and beneficial things for NH.” This sounded as if it would be easy. Not so. There are 1030 LSRs filed so far. An LSR is a legislative service request, which is how bills begin the journey to either becoming law or becoming dead.

We can expect a contentious legislative session. The majority party has seized the opportunity to file their entire wish list, knowing that they may never have control of the entire state government again.

Some of the good bills that are coming back were held over from 2017. SB 247 would prevent childhood lead poisoning from paint and water, and make an appropriation to a special fund for the purpose of remediating lead in rental housing. The bill passed the Senate and was amended by the House, and the Senate refused to concur with the amendments. Lead paint was outlawed 40 years ago. NH is the last state where a child died from lead poisoning. There are a lot of good organizations and some legislators who have been fighting to get the lead out for years.

SB 244 will be back. This bill prohibits licensed counselors from engaging in conversion therapy with persons under the age of 18. Conversion therapy is the discredited and damaging practice of trying to change a person’s sexual or gender orientation. The list of bipartisan sponsors includes Rep. Ed Butler.  

HB 1671 would abolish the death penalty. The fight to abolish the death penalty has been going on for decades. This year, three Democrats and a Libertarian will be the standard bearers.

HB 1213 would remove the exception for married minors from the definition of sexual assault. Last year a bill to stop allowing child marriage failed to pass. This would at least allow married minors to file rape charges against their adult spouses.

HB 1564 concerns the sexual assault of a victim who is incarcerated in a correctional institution by a person with supervisory or disciplinary authority over the victim. Last year the NH Supreme Court overturned a Belknap County deputy sheriff’s rape conviction. The deputy was transporting a prisoner, and had intercourse with her. He claimed it was consensual. The state argued that consent isn’t possible when one party holds authority over the other. There was a lot of jiggery pokery around what agency he was working for, who issued the transport order – and as a result he was freed. This bill is aimed at closing the many loopholes that allowed that to happen. The strong bipartisan sponsorship for this bill is a good sign that it may pass.

HB 1793 would establish a single payer health care system in NH. Given that the entire population of our state is smaller than many suburbs, this would make a lot of sense. I applaud the sponsors (including Rep. Knirk of Tamworth) for trying.

HB 1246 would increase the minimum wage for tipped employees. The minimum wage for tipped employees in NH is $3.26. Rep. Jackie Cilley has been fighting this fight for years. There is also legislation coming up that would allow employers to take tips from servers, but since nothing in that bill qualifies as good, we’ll take that up at another time.  

HB 1772 would allow online voting. Thirty states allow online voting, so it’s not a fad. This would forever put to rest the stories of busloads of people from Massachusetts. They can’t park that bus behind your laptop.

HB 1343 would protect beavers. It provides protection for beaver habitats and requires Fish and Game to include advice on beaver control on their website. We can all agree that protecting the wildlife in our state is a good thing – and in this session, I’m taking good where I find it.

HB 1611 would create a study committee to examine offshore wind energy development. Similar bills have failed in the past. Many of our legislators can’t even face a conversation about the future of energy in our state. State Rep. Renny Cushing perseveres – on this and so many other bills that would move our state forward.

HB 1632 would require bottled water to be tested for certain chemicals and labeled with the results of those tests. In a state where PFOA contamination has been so damaging, this makes sense. Rep. Mindi Messmer has proven to be a strong advocate for protecting water in our state.

Readers can find all of the proposed LSRs at the NH General Court website: gencourt.state.nh.us. The list of LSRs can be accessed on the right side of the page, under the heading “State Legislation Dash Board.”

These are some good bills. Next time we’ll look at the others.

PS: Alice, I tried.

Published as an op-ed  in the December 15 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper 

It Starts Early for Girls

It starts early for girls. Most of us have the experience of being grabbed and manhandled by some adult man before we’re old enough to vote. Possibly before we reach puberty. It might be a stranger, or a family friend. It might be a family member. It might happen on the job, especially if that first job is in food service. Restaurants do not pay waitresses. They subcontract that duty out to customers. Young women learn early that they must be pleasing and flirtatious, and tolerate unacceptable behavior with a smile if they want to be paid. It provides excellent early training for young women in what they can expect for the rest of their lives. That early grooming may be one reason we see some women defending Trump.

By now you’ve heard Donald Trump boasting on tape about how celebrity status means you can kiss and grab women, in the crudest of terms, to his giggling, testosterone fueled fratboy buddy, one of the lesser Bushes. Trump was 60 years old at the time. His wife was pregnant. For me the worst part of the whole tape was the way he referred to the actress that he and Fratboy Bush were about to glom onto as “it” - as in “it looks good.” Women aren’t actually people to Trump, they are objects. If they look good, they are objects that Trump is entitled to. If he doesn’t find them attractive, they are objects for public ridicule.

To dismiss this as “locker room talk” is not only insulting to women, it’s insulting to all of the decent men in the world who would never dream of speaking or acting that way. It’s a way of slapping the old “boys will be boys” label on this mess, as if we should tolerate and expect this behavior from boys, even when the boys in question are nearly old enough to collect Social Security.

This has created a big problem for the GOP, who weren’t all that popular with women to begin with. The recent émigrés to the Trump bandwagon are in a real predicament. In February, John Sununu Pere wrote an editorial piece for the Union Leader and urged people not to drink the “Trump Kool-Aid.” Recently we learned he’d been guzzling that particular beverage, presumably in the hopes that his son would be able to ride Trump’s coattails to the governor’s mansion. Chris Sununu isn’t backing down. He’s blithely giving Trump a pass, something his daughter may have a few things to say about in the future.

Speaking of daughters, imagine being one of Trump’s daughters, hearing that tape of their father discussing how he grabs women by the genitals, and “they let him”. The night of the debate, his younger daughter engaged in what appeared to be a very practiced maneuver to avoid being kissed by her father. One of my friends sent me the clip. He’s disgusted that we live in a world where girls learn how to do this.

Since this big revelation, we’ve seen a lot of reactions. Some Republicans have washed their hands of Trump. Senator Kelly Ayotte was engaging in a curious kind of dance, where she said she was supporting Trump but not endorsing him. She wanted to show her support for the GOP ideology without taking any kind of principled stand against Trump. She’s been freed to ditch him. Serial liar Frank Guinta once hoped to ride the Trumptails back to Congress, and now has to contend with not only the withering contempt of the NH Union Leader (the GOP’s statewide newsletter) but also with the fleas he’s picking up from lying down with that particular dog. Guinta also has a daughter. How proud she must be.

There is a certain irony in the fact that Trump started off by demonizing Mexicans, then moved on to all-purpose xenophobia by demonizing all immigrants, Muslims, and mocked a reporter with a disability. By far and away, though, the majority of his contempt throughout the years has been for women. His bizarre obsession with Rosie O’Donnell comes to mind. Once you have a billion dollars, and build yourself a tacky gilded palace complete with gold plated plumbing fixtures, one appears to have a lot of time on one’s hands for celebrity feuds and beauty pageants. The way he spoke about Miss Universe is certainly a lesson in perceived ownership, racism and contempt.

This is what a big chunk of the electorate wants to elevate to the highest office in our land. A morally bankrupt individual who loudly bellows ignorant proclamations, engages in rambling, sniffly speeches, promises to fix things but has no actual plan for anything, other than yonking down a tic-tac and kissing some women and grabbing them. Our country is sick. Trump isn’t the disease, but he’s the loudest and orangest symptom of it.

The disease is the contempt for government that the Republican Party began to nurture during the Reagan administration. They said gummint was the problem, and went on to elect a host of folks who did their level best to prove it. That was further fed by the Citizens United decision that unleashed unrestricted cash in the service of electing more terrible people. Tea Party ideologues have taken root and worked hard to obstruct in Congress, in the US Senate, and in state legislatures throughout the land, including New Hampshire.

This election cycle has cheapened the process so much that I don’t see how we can ever recover. Whatever happens in the general election – the aftermath is going to be ugly.

Trump has provided us with a barometer. Those who are supporting him despite recent revelations have made an illustrative choice. They may say that Trump’s commentary was offensive, give it the locker-room whitewash, and label it a distraction – but the fact that they’ve chosen to continue to support him means that they have just as much contempt for women and even more contempt for the process than their candidate.   

It starts early for girls. There’s no end in sight.