please vote next november
I don’t typically blog about things connected to my day job (I teach), but this (referenced earlier here by Mike H.) cannot go unnoticed:
To state Rep. Jerry Bergevin, the horrors of the Columbine school shooting and the atrocities of Nazi Germany are linked by the theory of evolution, and that’s all the evidence he needs to see that New Hampshire’s children shouldn’t be taught that it’s correct.…”I want the full portrait of evolution and the people who came up with the ideas to be presented. It’s a worldview and it’s godless. Atheism has been tried in various societies, and they’ve been pretty criminal domestically and internationally. The Soviet Union, Cuba, the Nazis, China today: they don’t respect human rights,” he said.
“As a general court we should be concerned with criminal ideas like this and how we are teaching it… . Columbine, remember that? They were believers in evolution. That’s evidence right there,” he said.
No comment, other than a reminder that next November there’s an election.
#fitn mythbusters
So UNH, paired, as they are on occasion, with the Boston Globe, put out the eleventy hundreth NH-Primary poll of the GOP presidential aspirant circus. Snooze.
Until you dig into it and see that someone made an excellent decision to ask interesting questions of the poll respondents.
Let’s start with the deficit-busting Bush tax cuts:
well, get out then, mr. speaker
As predicted by, um, everyone, New Hampshire’s public colleges are raising their tuition in response to the dramatic budget cuts willfully enacted by the Bill O’Brien led legislature. This is awful news for New Hampshire’s college students, who already have the highest level of student loan debt in the nation:
“Paying for college has always produced anxiety for families and students, but now students are asking, is the degree worth the debt?” said Payne, the foundation’s vice president of college planning. “That’s what they’ve started to have to ask themselves.”
Educational attainment is emphatically the best protection against the current economic crisis. As more students drop out because of money rather than achievement, their employment prospects become dimmer.
House Speaker Bill O’Brien justified the 48% funding cut this way:
“Not only does throwing more and more taxpayer money at funding college education cause more problems than it solves, it inaccurately signals that college attendance is the only route for success in life,”
This foul, repellent statement is not new; but reading it again tonight I am struck by something.
It is the legislature’s job, along with the other two branches of government, to keep the state running. It is the public servant’s express obligation to fund things that require public funding.
If Speaker O’Brien has no interest in funding public college, or public infrastructure, or CHINS, or a host of other things he has indicated he’s sour on, well, then, he should resign.
No surgeon who doesn’t want to operate on patients would last a day; no teacher who hates children.
If you can’t handle the job requirements, Mr. Speaker, get out.
bob garon, #fitn hero
This is such a perfect combination of New Hampshire Primary presidential politics and local issues and stupid stereotypes and phony candidates, I could cry tears of joy. Meet Granite Stater and Vietnam vet Bob Garon:
Romney told Garon, who was chowing down on his everyday staple of scrambled eggs and shaved ham at the restaurant Chez Vachon, that he supports a repeal of the same-sex marriage law, prompting an emotional exchange.…”It’s good to know how you feel, that you do not believe everyone is entitled to their constitutional rights,” the 63-year-old New Hampshire resident responded.
And this is just brilliant:
Afterward, Mr. Garon, who legally married another man in June, said Mr. Romney was not getting his vote.“He told me that I’m not entitled to Constitutional rights,” he said. “I think a man and a woman and a man and a man should be treated equal.”
…”He is not going to make it,” he said. “Because you can’t trust him. I just saw it in his eyes. I judge a man by his eyes.”
So, does he agree with Mr. Romney on any issue?
“I kind of liked his health care plan in Massachusetts,” Mr. Garon said.
Get this man to Concord for the repeal bills!
UPDATE: Just gets better and better:
Reporters asked Garon to explain why he had questioned Romney so intently.“Because I’m gay, all right?” Garon said. “And I happen to love a man just like you probably love your wife. Alright? And I think that he or she or whatever are entitled to the same rights that I have. I fought for my country, I did my thing, and I think that my spouse should be entitled to the same entitlements as if I was married to a woman. What the hell is the difference?”
In one fell swoop Romney committed a huge fail while simultaneously hurting the marriage repeal effort here in NH. The more regular folks in NH who hear about this exchange, the better the chances that patriotic Granite Stater like Garon can keep their rights.
This could be the most remembered moment of the primary.
csp and the 99 percent
One of the reasons those running for the first district Democratic nomination not named Carol Shea-Porter have a tough hill to climb is that Carol Shea-Porter’s supporters are in general an intensely loyal bunch.
You could ascribe this to her grassroots fueled, come-from-behind, unlikely victory in 2006. Or simply from the structural advantages a previous officeholder has.
I think it’s none of these things. But I’ll let Carol herself explain:
When I ran for Congress in 2006, I told people I was running “for the rest of us, the bottom 99 percent.”I said the middle class was stumbling and the poor had fallen, and we needed to address wealth inequality and our unfair tax structure if we were going to have a robust middle class.
This is essentially what’s so appealing about Shea-Porter’s campaign. You get the strong sense that she’s just like any of us. She comes from a middle class world most Americans can understand.
There should be nothing radical about a public servant who resembles the public. But with a Congress that is chock-a-block with millionaires, it is a radical proposition. It also speaks to how the movement that propelled Carol into office in 2006 is a forerunner to the Occupy Wall Street movement today. Former Vermont Governor Madeleine Kunin on how OWS has changed the political landscape:
When we mention the 1 percent and the 99 percent, everybody now knows what we’re talking about. It’s part of our vocabulary. How quickly these numbers jumped from the sidelines to the center. I first heard them from Carol Shea Porter, former Congresswoman from New Hampshire. Fighting for the 99 percent was her campaign theme. I thought she was on to something, but I suspect even she had no idea that fighting for the 99 percent would become the mantra for a new grass roots movement.The wildfire spread of the Occupy movement, both here and abroad, amazed us. It touched a nerve of discontent with the status quo. The huge disparities in income growth between lower, middle and upper income groups offended our sense of fairness.
perry and the indignity of losing
When Texas Governor Rick Perry was the shiny new Non-Romney, and had buckets of donors, hype and momentum, the crowd at a GOP debate booed a gay soldier:
Florida state Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) was among those spinning reporters for Rick Perry after the debate. TPM asked him what he thought of a hometown crowd booing a soldier serving overseas.“That was very unfortunate,” he said. “I wish that one of the candidates, any of them, would have highlighted how disrespectful it was for anyone in the audience to boo someone who who’s risking their life for our country.”
Now that Texas Governor Rick Perry has long since lost his official Non-Romney status, donors, hype and momentum, he’s the one booing our women and men in uniform:
When all else fails, blame the gays.
On the other hand, I bet prominent New Hampshire supporter Rep. Al Baldasaro “thought it was great.” So there’s that.
The 2012 Holiday #FITN Quiz!
THANK YOU
THANK YOU, members of the NH House, who have had to deal with seven months of abusive legislative tricks from your Speaker on his obsession with overriding the veto for Right-to-Work.
You went above and beyond the call of duty in protecting your right of representation in the face of manipulation, lies, and bullying.
As for the Speaker, he will be judged by the people of New Hampshire next November for wasting so much of the People’s time on an issue that was nowhere on the radar screen during the 2010 campaign. He has perpetrated a shocking waste of resources, enlisting congressmen, presidential candidates, and Koch Bros out of state money. Worst of all, he has soured the good will of voters on both sides of the aisle for this narrow, unwinnable goal.
Has any Speaker in the history of this state abused his leadership role thus? Do we now need to move forward past this period in the deliberation of House rules that will prevent the obsessive bringing up of a failed bill? Or can we trust that Mr. Speaker is an aberration, that no decent woman or man would act in such a way again?
children in need of a leader, pt.ii
The Bill O’Brien led NHGOP supermajority decimated CHINS (Children in Need of Services) this year in their budget.
This is what New Hampshire is when CHINS exists:
Kathleen Coakley, of Wilton, said she owes her life to the state’s CHINS (Children in Need of Services) program, which was affected by budget cuts.“New Hampshire invested in me, and I pay it back every day when I go to work,” she said
This is what New Hampshire is when it doesn’t:
My child was receiving CHINS services for excessive truancy. This program was a great help in keeping my daughter out of trouble because there were consequences that she feared, things I could not do on my own.She had a probation officer to check in with, a really great program offered by Becket Family of Services, etc. She was doing well and making good choices.
The day the state changed the CHINS law, they dropped my daughter. She has not been in school since, she has been arrested twice, and now I have not seen or heard from her for a month.
Spread the word. Make them pay dearly for this moral and fiscal failure next November at the ballot box.
"Concord - Thank you all for joining me here today. My name is Terie Norelli. I am the
Democratic leader in the New Hampshire House. Last week, Speaker O’Brien announced two
additional and unprecedented session days this fall, giving us pause for the possibility that
several of the House’s retained bills would come before the full body in the next few weeks.
At end of the legislative session in June, many members thought that we had seen the last of
some terrible bills. Unfortunately that has not been the case. As several news outlets have
reported, many of these initiatives were voted out of committee during the past few weeks. The
bills themselves have been flying under the radar, but they would do significant damage to our
New Hampshire advantage and our quality of life. In short these bills do nothing to improve our
local economy or create jobs.
Instead what we have are bills that cut access to affordable health care for women, weaken
public safety, waste taxpayer time and money, hurt small businesses, and repeal civil rights.
They are a distraction from where the people of New Hampshire expect the legislature to focus
its efforts. Bills like HB309 [repealing certain insurance mandates], HB217 [including “unborn
child” in the definition of “another” for purpose of first and second degree murder], and HB228
[defunding Planned Parenthood] would continue the GOP’s war on women’s health that began
this summer when 3,700 women across New Hampshire lost access to basic preventative health
care. Collectively they would cut access to a variety of health care services for women, and
increase costs for those services that remain.
Also of note is HB309, which would repeal insurance coverage for midwifery. This would
almost certainly force nearly two dozen New Hampshire small businesses to close their doors.
There is no upside to a bill that cuts access to affordable health care for mothers and kills jobs. In
a similar vein, HB446, which would repeal the authority of licensure board for a variety of
professions, has also been vigorously opposed by a number of small business owners across the
state. These entrepreneurs have worked hard to ensure that they offer consumers a quality level
of service. Allowing anyone without a license to operate on similar footing would not only
cheapen their work, it would raise serious public health concerns. This bill is anti-jobs and
threatens public health, and should have been defeated months ago.
There is also a group of bills that would weaken our public safety laws. HB29 [permitting a
person to petition the superior court for any action pertaining to a pistol or revolver license];
HB334 [relative to New Hampshire’s authority to regulate firearms]; HB536 [relative to the
natural right to carry a firearm openly or concealed without a license]; and HB194 [Repealing
the prohibition on having loaded crossbows and rifles in a car] would all weaken our public
safety laws. When it comes to public safety, New Hampshire already has a winning formula.
We have been rated the safest state in the nation several years in a row. But these reckless bills
would jeopardize our first in the nation status. They would allow anyone to carry a weapon
almost anywhere, openly or concealed, without a license.
Even massive public opposition has not stopped this legislature from pushing their agenda. An
example is HB437 which would take away marriage rights from thousands of loving New
Hampshire couples. The most recent UNH poll reported that, by a two-to-one margin, New
Hampshire voters support maintaining equal rights for all Granite Staters. This bill, like so many
others should have been rejected in committee.
Perhaps the worst retained bill this year is HB581. The original bill ensured that people signing
a futures contract for home heating services would be guaranteed to receive the services they
paid for. The bill has been completely rewritten with an amendment. Rather than protecting
New Hampshire consumers, the bill now actually reads that entering into a futures “contract is
not a guarantee that the dealer will use your funds exclusively to lock in your agreed price, and
you are at risk of losing some or all of your payment.”
This will leave responsible New Hampshire home owners out in the cold, not guaranteeing that
the heating oil they purchased with money they worked hard to earn will ever be delivered to
keep their families warm.
Last, but certainly not least, there are multiple bills that appear to be more concerned with
scoring political points than with advancing substantial policy that helps the people of our state.
HB440, which would ignore New Hampshire’s constitutional separation of powers and force the
Attorney General to join a lawsuit, has been opposed by numerous former New Hampshire
Attorneys General and Justices from both sides of the aisle. Even a Supreme Court decision that
the legislature lacks legal authority has not dissuaded them from this attempt to grab power.
They just can’t take “No” for an answer. HB 440 was voted ‘Ought to Pass’ out of committee.
I urge Speaker 0 ‘Brien not to take up any of these bills during either of the sessions he has
called before the end of the calendar year. And I further urge him to support our efforts to reject
these reckless proposals and protect New Hampshire’s jobs, health care, and quality of life."
“all the right things politically”
Frank Guinta earned an up arrow this week:
The first district Congressman continues to do all the right things politically. This week, he was in the paper for visiting a school, and now he is holding job fairs for veterans.
Politically, Frank Guinta is doing all the right things. In terms of actual help for veterans, not so much:
I had the displeasure recently of attending U.S. Rep. Frank Guinta’s job fair at the New Hampshire Community College in Manchester. My son, who is a U.S. Marine, and I traveled from the Monadnock Region to attend this job fair. We arrived just before 10 a.m.Companies with applications were nowhere to be found, not a good thing for veteran job-seekers. They had a table with some snacks on it…
It was a sorry excuse for wasting my gas money. I didn’t see one representative from a company that had job applications.
Politically, this taxpayer funded Google Ad is effective:
Congressman Frank Guinta is fighting to strengthen & preserve Social Security and Medicare
The political gold of that ad, paid for by you and me, is that it omits candidate Guinta’s stated support - on video - for abolishing Social Security. Or Congressman Guinta’s interest in privatizing Medicare, on record even before he voted for the Ryan plan - which ends Medicare.
Politically, Frank Guinta’s photo op in front of a project funded with stimulus money was especially effective. A central pillar of candidate Frank Guinta’s campaign was his opposition to the American Recovery Act. Here’s one of a numerous examples:
“When will Congresswoman Shea-Porter finally agree with the rest of us who believe her failed stimulus was a waste of our money?”
"Americans are actually upset when they find out that troops and vets are not receiving excellent treatment. Remember when they found out that conditions at Walter Reed and other military facilities were bad? I was serving on the House Armed Services Committee, and constituents were outraged and wanted us to fix it fast. When Congress passed the new GI Bill of Rights to help this new generation go to college after serving in a war zone, Americans were very supportive. When we passed the largest increase in funding in history for the Veterans Administration (VA), there was wonderful bipartisan support, as there should be. And now, hopefully, there will be bipartisan resistance to any partisan or bipartisan effort to shrink benefits.
What benefit cuts are being considered? The Veterans of Foreign Wars has a list called the “10 for 10” plan, saying that Congress or the Pentagon wants to cut 10 benefits to pay for 10 years of war. This list includes increasing healthcare premiums for retirees, increasing pharmacy fees for troops, families, and retirees, freezing military pay, and ending government subsidies to military commissaries. The worst idea on this list is to eliminate the 20-year military retirement plan. Those in uniform and their families always look forward, whenever they are at their most challenging points, to “going home” someday, with a secure pension alongside that heartfelt thank you. That pension also happens to be a terrific recruiting and retention incentive for the volunteer military, and it is ridiculous to change that. As American Legion National Commander Fang Wong said, “If our leaders in Washington are intent on making military life like the private sector, then that’s the path our young people will choose—the private sector!” My husband’s November issue of MOAA’s Military Officer states, “This isn’t just about equity. It’s about an attack on the core elements that sustain the quality career force."
"Putting your head in the sand is not the way to lead,” said McLaughlin. “What would be the death knell of the Democratic Party would be not to lead.” Noting that New Hampshire has among the highest incomes and lowest taxes of all states, he said that “the bottom line is that we have a state that needs money” and “it is not enough to just cut government. A lot of people don’t seem to know what century we’re in."
pay up
So this passed the Commerce Committee:
HOUSE BILL 309-FNAN ACT repealing certain insurance mandates.
SPONSORS: Rep. Hunt, Ches 7
COMMITTEE: Commerce and Consumer AffairsANALYSIS
This bill repeals mandatory insurance coverage for:
I. Certified midwives.
II. The cost of testing for bone marrow donation.
III. Continuation of group health insurance in the event of divorce or legal separation.
IV. Children’s early intervention therapy services.
V. Obesity and morbid obesity.
VI. Diagnosis and treatment of pervasive developmental disorder or autism.
VII. Persons having deafness and hearing loss.
Pregnant and need a midwife? Have a child with autism? Going deaf? Trying to save a relative’s life with a bone marrow transplant but can’t afford the test?
Too bad.
The House of O’Brien doesn’t work for you. It works for private health insurance companies’ bottom lines.
It’s your job to keep quiet and pay higher and higher premiums every year.
about
mostly NH, mostly politics
name: dean barker
contact: dean.t.barker AT gmail
twitter: @deanbarker
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