The Post-Truth Era

Author and teacher Ralph Keyes published a book in 2004 called, “The Post-Truth Era: Dishonesty and Deception in Contemporary Life.” The “post-truth era” sounds so much better than the liar-liar-pants-on-fire era – but any way you look at it, that’s where we now reside. We don’t expect honesty in any situation anymore, and we’ve cultivated a variety of euphemisms to soften the blow of that reality. We use the term “spin” instead of deceit. We say, “ethically challenged” instead of thief or charlatan. We’ve become so compromised that we can’t even use the word liar.

There is little we can trust in our public lives. In the post truth era, we can pick our own media. We can choose the media sources that give us information that confirm our beliefs or biases. Saint Ronnie told us that gummint is the problem, so we don’t expect anything good or honest to come from our elected officials. We watched as Reagan’s history was rewritten to make him a saint. Everything is fair game these days – even history can be sanitized for our protection. Our presidential primary has become a reality show where big, bold lies are TRUMPeted with no fear of reprisal. The sad truth is this -there are no consequences for lying.

The NH House of Representatives has an internal “all reps” email listserv that is supposed to be used by House members to communicate with one another (and constituents) as they work on The People’s business. Instead, it is frequently used as a means of sending out ideological mendacity. In 2013, State Representative Peter Hansen of Amherst achieved global renown when he sent out an all reps email where he referenced, “children and vagina’s” instead of saying women and children. In 2013 State Rep. Romeo Danais sent out a “joke” over the internal mail system that compared people getting food stamps to wild animals. Danais found it so amusing that he sent it to all of his colleagues twice. In 2013, State Representatives Gary Hopper and Jordan Ulery found it necessary to send out an all reps email with a scantily clad photo of a young woman. The subject matter of the email was the “Democrat’s plan for a 100% gun ban.” In other words, it was fabrication combined with soft-core porn.

 In the weeks since the terrorist attacks in Paris, we’ve seen a near constant barrage of prevarication on just about every level of public discourse. From presidential candidates to NH state legislators, folks are working overtime to spread fables in order to gin up fear.

On November 13, State Representative Dick Marple of Hooksett sent out a real beaut to the all reps listserv:

Coming to a State near you!

“Oh” “Yes” it is coming here too! 1200 to 2,000 a day are coming here. Obama asked for to have 10,000 then it expanded to 100,000 the with in a week it went to 180,000. That is a lot of Diaper heads.

The thing is, these that Obama is bringing in does not have a wife or family with them! This a invasion! Wake up people we are being taken under with out a shot fired! Obama’s pen does the same thing! If this pisses you off! GOOD!

The spelling, sentence structure, and grammar are all Marple’s. The email heading read: “Four wives? Yup n Miochighan.”

Xenophobic? Check. Offensive? Check. Incoherent? Check.
Marple sent this out to all of his colleagues on the official House internal email system. He referred to Syrian refugees – people fleeing for their lives during wartime - as “diaper heads.” These are the words of an adult man, speaking about some of his fellow humans. That’s awful enough, but this is, by the way, a listserv paid for and maintained by our tax dollars. Our tax dollars are subsidizing the spread of lies, fear, and hate. Marple is serving his fourth term, so one assumes that the good people of Hooksett support his incoherence, duplicity, and his xenophobia.

Back in June of 2012, then Speaker Bill O’Brien sent out an email to all reps advising them of a new policy regarding speech on the all reps listserv:

"Electronic media cannot be used for knowingly transmitting, retrieving, or storing any communication that is: 1. Discriminatory or harassing; 2. Derogatory to any individual or group; 3. Obscene, sexually explicit or pornographic; 4. Defamatory or threatening.  In addition, also prohibited are jokes . . . or any other non-legislative work activity that is not allowed on government computers." This new policy was, according to O’Brien, going to be strictly enforced, and violators would lose their email privilege. Clearly it was not strictly enforced, nor has it ever been. Not a single speaker or majority leader (including O’Brien himself) has ever attempted to enforce this rule, no matter how much offensive stuff is sent out on the official House internal email system.

One would think that these guys would be smart enough to send stuff like this out over their own personal email, rather than risk having someone like me make their bigotry, calumny, and bad spelling a matter of public record, but one would be wrong. There are no consequences for lying.

State Representative Max Abramson, Republican, Free Stater and convicted felon, from Seabrook sent out his refugee falsehoods on Twitter. He tweeted, “Shaheen and Obama are still trying to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to New Hampshire to help the Democrats win a close race in 2016.”

This is complete fabrication. The total of all Syrian refugees approved to come to the United States is 10,000. That is for the entire country, not the state of NH. If Representative Abramson had done even a modicum of research, he would have learned that a refugee coming to the US is not eligible to apply for citizenship for five years after they arrive. They have to be citizens to vote. Abramson didn’t bestir himself to find facts. His intent was to gin up fear and xenophobia for his political party, before an election, so he deliberately sent out misinformation. 

No one has paid any attention to his lies, or those of his colleague Dick Marple. We should want better from our elected officials, but this kind of behavior is exactly what we have become conditioned to expect. There are no consequences for liars in the post-truth era.

“Casual duplicity picks at the thread of our social fabric.” Ralph Keyes

published as an oped in the November 27 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper

Pitfalls of a 400 Member Legislature, Part Two

Max Abramson is a member of the Free State Project, the group of armed libertarian miscreants that intend to take over and dismantle the NH state government, then threaten to secede from the US. He's also an elected state representative from the town of Seabrook. This is a screenshot of a comment he left at a story at the Union Leader newspaper. The UL is one of the propaganda arms (along with WMUR) of the NH GOP. 

The 10,000 refugees he mentions are the sum total of ALL Syrian refugees slated to come to the US in the next 12 months. 10,000 for the entire country. Not the state of NH. 

Also, only US citizens can vote in US elections. 

Felonious Max is deliberately spreading dishonesty and deliberately fearmongering, just like his GOP colleague Dick Marple. We should expect better from our elected officials. 


This is another instance of what you get when you have a 400 member volunteer legislature.  

The Pitfalls of a 400 Member Volunteer Legislature

NH State Rep. Glenn Aldrich (R - Free State Project) posted this tasteful profile picture yesterday. He appears to be pushing the Newt Gingrich line of thinking about the recent terrorist attack in France, because for the libertea crowd the answer to everything is always MOAR GUNZ!

Because the 230 million guns in the US in 2001 did so much to prevent the terrorist attacks on September 11. 

He's Lost His Marples

Dick Marple (pictured above) is a NH State Representative from Hooksett. He's well known for taking some peculiar positions on issues - like his 2008 opinion that a woman can't legally be elected president.

The NH legislature has an internal email system that is supposed to be used for doing The People's business - official communications. Far too often, it's used to spread offensive communiques. ( Like this one: Vagina's and Children First) 

Representative Marple was moved by the events in Paris to send this out to all of his fellow representatives:

Incoherent?  ✔

Offensive? ✔ 

Racist? ✔

It's also a lot of bunkum. Marple links to a YouTube video that is supposed to fuel the anger of his fellow white American  incoherents, narrated, curiously by a fellow with a British accent. The video

is available here: https://youtu.be/0R81h6rWgtU

The video is completely debunked by SNOPES here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/immigration/4wives.asp

This man is an elected representative from the state of NH. He's using the NH House internal email system (paid for by NH taxpayers) to spread fear, hate, and xenophobia. 

Diaper heads. That's what an adult man is sending out as a message to his colleagues. 

The NH GOP covers our state with glory once again. 

Tuck over at Miscellany Blue and I attended the same choir practice yesterday. 

Medical Marijuana in Timid New Hampshire

In 2013, the NH House passed HB 573, a bill that was supposed to enable access to medical marijuana. Twenty-eight months later, not a single patient has benefitted from it. One might think that there’s some foot-dragging going on. One would be absolutely correct.

In the interest of full disclosure, this is personal. David Emerson, my husband, died of multiple myeloma. That’s cancer of the bone marrow and blood plasma. The disease weakened his bones so much that he could break a rib just breathing.

In December 2008, David was having serious neck pain, and so we wound up in the ER one night. No one paid us much attention. Christmas vacation in a resort area meant that there were many more interesting things going on – until the X-rays came back and 3 people came screaming down the hall with a backboard. It seemed the bones in his cervical spine had deteriorated to the point where his head was in danger of falling off his neck. He would have been paralyzed. He had neurosurgery at Maine Med, where a titanium infrastructure was fused to the remaining bone. His head was secure - in fact, he’d never be able to move it again. David also had to have a three week course of radiation to protect the remaining bone. It was aimed at his neck. As a result, everything he ate or drank tasted like sheet metal.

He needed to eat and drink in order to recover from the surgery. He couldn’t muster up the will to do it. David was not a complainer, but this was more than even he could bear. One of his friends brought over a joint, which stimulated his appetite enough so that he could eat and drink, despite the taste. It also helped with his anxiety.

David was able to get unlimited prescriptions for opiates. The state he loved so much denied him legal access to medical marijuana. Cancer made him a criminal, and he hated that. He deserved a better death. That’s why this is personal.

The NH legislature passed 3 prior medical marijuana bills. Governor Lynch vetoed them all on the advice of law enforcement and his wife the pediatrician. Law enforcement mostly hates the idea of legal marijuana. The war on drugs guarantees them all kinds of extra money and shiny toys, and they’ve become addicted to those things. The reality that our drug policies are a failure does not matter. They want more money and bigger toys, because somehow more law enforcement will stem the tide. It’s akin to the believers in trickle down economics. Both have been failures for over 30 years now, but the believers in both are determined to keep on trying.

Here’s the thing. No one has died this year from injecting an overdose of marijuana. We aren’t hearing about a marijuana crisis.

Sure, we have a medical marijuana statute in our state, but it’s going nowhere. A byzantine system of approval for marijuana dispensaries was created. Apparently there will be four of them. The locations haven’t been officially decided. There will not be one in Carroll or Coos County. There may be one in Lebanon. A person dying of cancer in Colebrook or Pittsburg can look forward to a 2.5 or 3 hour road trip. It’s clear that this process wasn’t thought out with any kind of empathy or interest in job creation.

Our neighboring state of Maine passed a medical marijuana bill in 1999. In 2009, they added more qualifying conditions and created 8 dispensaries. Maine has a very humane system, one that involves a number of choices. Patients can grow their own, cultivating up to six plants. They may choose to use a registered caregiver, who can supply a small number of patients with marijuana, or they can use a dispensary.

New Hampshire has chosen a far more dictatorial system. A very small list of qualifying conditions. No growing. No registered caregivers. Four dispensaries. If you live out of range or you’re poor – well- tough noogies for you. You can either keep taking opiates or be a criminal. Have a nice death.

Last week, a woman named Linda Horan filed suit against the State of New Hampshire. Linda has stage 4 lung cancer. She is suing the state to get a card that certifies that she is a medical marijuana patient, so that she can go to Maine and access their humane system, given the absence of humanity here in the state where she lives. Linda may not live long enough to be able to access a dispensary in slow moving NH. She would prefer to live the remainder of her life without being stuck in an opiated haze. She would prefer to live out the rest of her life without being a criminal. This should not be too much to expect.

New Hampshire is often touted as a place of independent thinkers and “libertarian” philosophy. What that mostly means is that we get to live free of the kinds of amenities (like infrastructure) that other states provide as a matter of course. We are a state full of timid, wincing conservatives. We’re too afraid to eliminate the death penalty, because it upsets law enforcement. We’re too afraid to have a legislative study committee on end of life issues, because it upsets the governor. We’re too afraid to enact our medical marijuana statute because it upsets law enforcement, our AG and our governor. We are a state ruled by bumper sticker slogans (Ax The Tax!) and that, dear readers, has robbed us of any ability to have adult conversations.

This all says something ugly about what kind of state we are. Guns in the State House – NO PROBLEM! Managing your own illness – BIG PROBLEM!

My husband didn’t get to die the way he wanted to. I hope Linda Horan does. I hope her lawsuit moves the state forward in enacting our medical marijuana law. People with chronic or terminal illnesses should have choices in how they live and die. Opiates are ravaging our state. We have the ability to provide a humane alternative. All we need now is the courage.

This was published as an oped in the November 13, 2015 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper. 

Allergy Warning

Members of the NH House have filed most of the bills for the 2016 session of the legislature. The deadline for filing LSRs was September 18. LSR is the acronym for legislative service requests. Legislative Services helps state representatives and senators with research into these fledgling ideas that may become bills. There have been 639 LSRs filed by House members thus far.

The Senate’s filing deadline is November 3. There are only 32 LSRs filed by senators thus far. It’s a safe bet that a big bunch will be filed at the last minute. Also listed on the NH General Court website are the 56 LSRs that have already been withdrawn. Only the titles of the LSRs and the lead sponsors are available, so it can be difficult, in some cases, to know what the bill is really about. In others, there is little doubt.

We all know that NH has some serious issues that need to be addressed. In looking at the House LSRs, it seems that the most important problems we face in NH appear to be guns and abortion. Get ready for the non-budget session of the biennium, with a side order of special sauce on account of the presidential election. Avoid the sauce if you have allergies, since it was prepared in an area contaminated by nuts.

State Representative Michael Brewster represents Epsom and Pittsfield. He appears to be the winner in this years “most LSRs filed contest,” after filing a whopping 37. It seems that Brewster has some grievances with our judicial system, regarding the custody of his child. Most of the 37 LSRs Brewster has filed involve judges or the judiciary system. Brewster has also filed an LSR calling for the impeachment of Governor Hassan, and another to remove the five executive councilors from office. But, so far, my absolute favorite of Brewster’s LSRs: “prohibiting the general court from filing legislation in the second year of the session.” Well done, sir.

There are several bills calling for a registry of drug dealers to be created. House Majority Leader, Jack Flanagan, has one that would establish a registry for people convicted of heroin related offenses. There isn’t a registry for the bankers who destroyed the US economy, but Flanagan wants to put some poor junkie who gets caught buying a bag on a registry that will forever impede him from turning his life around. (A gun registry would be tyranny!) Jack Flanagan is pondering a run for Congress in the second district.

Rep. Gene Chandler is one of the sponsors of an LSR aimed at amending the NH Constitution on the issue of domicile. The Republican dedication to limiting voting rights continues unabated. Other states are looking at expanding voter rights. New Hampshire is not one of them.  

State Representative Don Leeman would like to require drug testing for public assistance recipients. This has proven to be a big waste of money in other states, where the only winners were the companies who raked in the big bucks for finding a tiny percentage of people who failed the test. One wonders how far this would go. Would the families who receive assistance for their children with disabilities be required to pee into cups? Leeman filed another LSR that would restrict the use of food stamps in convenience stores. Many SNAP recipients live in areas where there are no supermarkets and there is no public transportation. Apparently it was a long, hot summer in Rochester, with nothing to do but think about ways to demonize the poor.

Self-styled Constitutional scholar, Rep. Dan Itse did not disappoint. He may have been overshadowed by Rep. Brewster in the number of LSRs filed, (Itse only filed 28) but he did manage to bring his usual level of peculiarity to the process. Itse has filed an LSR that would change the marriage license requirement to a requirement that couples obtain a certificate of intent to marry. He would also like to proclaim the second week of September as Patriot Week.

An LSR was filed calling on the US House and Senate to consider a constitutional amendment prohibiting campaign contributions, unless the donor is eligible to vote in that election. Free Staters Ed Comeau and Max Abramson didn’t utter a peep when a libertarian millionaire from Texas inserted his “free speech” into the special election in March that gave Yvonne Dean-Bailey a seat in the NH House, but both are sponsors of this LSR.  Continuing on in the tradition of legislating personal grudges, Abramson has also filed an LSR requiring the testing of law enforcement officers for steroid use. Abramson was arrested and charged with felony gun charges for attempting to break up a party at his house (in a residential neighborhood) by firing a gun.

There are at least 8 LSRs regarding firearms, but most of them aren’t coming from the gundamentalists. One would create a criminal penalty for providing a firearm to an individual that is prohibited from having one. Another would require firearm owners to have liability insurance, something that might go a long way to cutting back on stupid. For example, Max Abramson’s party trick would have caused his insurance rates to go up.

There are also 8 bills aimed at either hindering or ending a woman’s right to bodily autonomy. The faked up videos done by an anti-choice group got the GOP all wound up into thinking they can somehow ride to victory in 2016 by forcing women to serve as involuntary incubators. NH has never been a part of Planned Parenthood’s fetal tissue donation program. (Only 2 of 48 states are). Demonizing Planned Parenthood means demonizing the thousands of women who rely on their services. Planned Parenthood saved my daughter’s life. They are often the only health care low income women in rural areas can afford to access.

It’s a wonderful bit of hypocrisy to see how many Free Staters support the various bills. These are people who claim to be all about freedom and libertea, but as always, when the surface is scratched, libertarian freedom applies (and appeals) to white, heterosexual men. And as always, the sponsors of these bills vote against any programs that help women, children, and families.

This is just a small snapshot of what will be coming up in 2016. It’s a mere thumbnail of the bad and the bizarre, but there are a number of LSRs that sound good. Some originate right here in Carroll County. In the coming weeks, I’ll cover those, too. Meanwhile, watch out for the allergens.

Published as an op-ed in the October 30, 2015 edition of the Conway Daily Sun

Pay to Play

By the time you read this, the Democratic candidates for president will have had their first debate of the current electoral season. The Democrats have 3 debates scheduled in 2015. The Republicans have had 2 debates, and have 3 more scheduled for 2015.

This is very different from the debate schedule for the 2007/2008 presidential primary. In 2007 the Republicans had 15 debates, and then 6 more in 2008. In 2007 the Democrats had 17 debates, and 9 more in 2008. Most of us agreed at the time that there were too many debates.

This time the Republicans may have struck a good balance. The Democrats have not.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz (DWS) is the Chair of the Democratic National Committee. She has decreed that there will be only 6 debates sanctioned by the Democratic Party. Any candidates who might want to slither off and do some debating on the side will be cast out from the officially sanctioned debates if they do. Candidate Lawrence Lessig has been polling at sufficient numbers to meet the 1% threshold for appearing on the debate stage, but DWS refused to allow him to participate.

In 2008, DWS was one of Hillary Clinton’s national campaign co-chairs. In 2015, DWS unilaterally made the decision to limit the number of debates to six, and punish any naughty candidates that debated on the side. It’s difficult to imagine that this decision had nothing to do with her long-time support for Clinton. Even more difficult to fathom is that this decision was made by DWS, with no input from the other members of the DNC, or the DNC executive committee. The rest of the DNC meekly followed along, and didn’t challenge the authoritarian decisions made by Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz.

Hillary Clinton has been the anointed candidate of the Democratic Party for a very long time. Clearly DWS expected no viable candidates to rise up and challenge the anointed one, so she saw no need to schedule a lot of debates. When Bernie Sanders came along and began attracting huge crowds and started rising in the polls, DWS refused to add more debates. She appeared (and still appears) desperate to ensure that Clinton would remain the anointed candidate by ensuring that voters wouldn’t hear the voices of her challengers on the national stage until the last possible moment.

This brilliant strategy also ensured that the Republican debates and the Republican candidates have had control of the media and the issues discussed for months, interrupted only by the occasional story about Hillary’s emails. Lucky for DWS, the mainstream corporate media has no interest in covering Sanders. After all, the corporations that own our media don’t want Sanders anywhere near the White House. He’s not for sale.

Sanders may not be for sale, but our democracy is. In Buckley vs. Valeo, and then again in Citizens United, our Supreme Court has affirmed that money is in fact, speech – and that those who which to purchase a lot of speech should not be thwarted from doing so.

Spurred on by ALEC and other conservative special interest groups, many states have succeeded in enacting bills to limit voter participation. Alabama passed a voter ID law that went into effect last year. This year they closed 31 DMV offices. The shuttered offices are in the counties with the largest black populations, including the 5 counties that most significantly supported Obama for president. Quite a coincidence. 

Nowhere is the lack of concern for the democratic process more apparent than the in the debates. Every debate thus far has been on cable television. Cable – which is accessed through paid subscriptions. CNN live streamed the Democrat’s debate so that people who have access to the Internet were able to watch it. Fox did not livestream the GOP debate, so unless one had cable, one was not able to watch the debate.

Voters should not have to PAY to see debates. The debates should be shown on public and network television, and be broadcast over the radio and the Internet. They should be available to every single voter that wishes to see them. No one should have to PAY for the privilege of viewing what is supposed to be our democracy in action.

This week we learned that 158 families (and the companies they own) have provided about half of the money to fund presidential campaigns so far. They are white and they are wealthy. They’ve made vast fortunes in either finance or energy. They have lots and lots of speech at their disposal, and by gum, they’re going to use it to purchase a president. Of those families/companies, 138 are backing Republicans, and 20 are backing Democrats.

How did we get to this place? This isn’t what I learned in Mr. Dakers 8^th grade civics class.

We’re seeing the pernicious influence of big money in all of our elections. In lowly NH state representative races, outside special interests are spending big bucks to ensure that their brand of ideology gets a voice in our legislature. Yvonne Dean-Bailey of Northwood was the recipient of $10,000 in PAC money to win a $100 a year seat in the NH House. Now that buyers know that they can purchase our legislature, the faucet will continue to flow.

It’s called corruption. Whenever special interests purchase a candidate – locally, statewide, or nationally – there is always quid pro quo.

The Roberts court has decreed that the more speech one has in the bank, the louder one’s voice gets to be. You don’t have an account? Sorry – we can’t hear you. What’s in your wallet? Got any speech in there?

Pay to play. What could go wrong?  

This was published as an op-ed in the October 16 edition of the Conway Daily Sun newspaper.