The recently sworn in Mr Kenney is off and running as the newest Executive Councillor sitting at the table.
He may be sitting in the late Ray Burton's seat, but that is where the resemblance ends.
Putting politics before his constituents and promptly forgetting the north country, in his first day of having voting privileges he voted against the Medicaid contract that came before the council.
Fortunately there was only one other vote aligned with his (need a hint as to who? Begins with Sun and ends with nu as in nothing new here).
Should be an interesting year.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Scott Brown should take the pledge
From the "Telegraph" with thanks to Jim Tetreault
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Scott Brown should accept Shaheen’s challenge
By DANIEL WEEKS
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Daniel Weeks, the former president of Americans for
Campaign Reform, works on education in low-income communities with City Year
New Hampshire. He walked with the N.H. Rebellion in January.
Welcome to New Hampshire, Sen. Scott Brown.
As you begin your “listening tour” of the Granite State,
you will hear from many of our citizens about jobs, education, health care,
taxes, civil liberties, the environment and more. These issues matter deeply to
our people, and we’ll tell you where we stand.
But we don’t just care about issues in New Hampshire – we
care about process too.
In your travels, you will hear from citizens about
another problem that lies at the root of all our other concerns: The corruption
of American politics by special interest money.
It’s hardly an armchair issue.
This January, inspired by New Hampshire’s own Doris
Haddock, who walked cross country for campaign finance reform at the age of 90,
dozens of citizens of different political persuasions put their bodies on the
line by walking the length of the state through snow and sleet to stop big
money in politics. With more than 6,000 miles collectively under their belt,
and thousands still to come, the New Hampshire Rebellion has officially begun.
Opinion polling confirms what New Hampshire’s walkers
learned along their way: that 96 percent of Americans believe the influence of
money in politics needs to be reduced. Although we have differing opinions on
health care, taxes, and the like, Granite Staters universally agree that
special interest spending in campaigns is an affront to New Hampshire’s
longstanding tradition of representative, accountable government.
If the opinions of ordinary voters aren’t enough,
consider the late Republican senator from New Hampshire, Warren Rudman, who
devoted his latter years to stopping big money as co-chairman of Americans for
Campaign Reform in Concord.
In his final printed piece before his death in 2012, Sen.
Rudman warned that big money was effectively undermining the integrity of
representative government in America. “Members of Congress now report spending
a third of their time or more raising money for their next campaign, most of it
coming from out-of-state interests instead of their own constituents,” Rudman
wrote. “Wealthy contributors, in turn, expect – and too often receive – a
return on their investment in the form of earmarks and legislative favors.”
You have an opportunity to change this status quo, Sen.
Brown. As we were reminded by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen this week, your 2012 campaign
for Senate in Massachusetts featured a “People’s Pledge” between you and
Elizabeth Warren to stem the flood of negative ads by outside Super PACs. By
committing to donate 50 percent of the cost of “independent” ads aired on your
behalf to the charity of your opponent’s choice, you and Warren effectively
ended outside attacks and brought a measure of accountability back into the
campaign.
Of course, a pledge between two candidates will not fix
an entire system of private campaign funding that many New Hampshire voters
agree is rotten at its core. Regardless of the amount of outside spending that
does or does not enter this campaign, candidates on either side are quickly
raising millions of dollars – much of it from out of state – to get their
message out. Too often, as Sen. Rudman observed, the money has strings
attached.
Reducing the influence of special interests once and for
all will require a brand new system of citizen-funded elections based on small
donations from actual constituents capped at $200, and matched with public
funds. To her credit, Sen. Shaheen has long co-sponsored the bipartisan Fair
Elections Now Act in Congress, which would do just that. Former state Sen. Jim
Rubens, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, has also been an avid
supporter of similar reforms in New Hampshire.
Nevertheless, the People’s Pledge is a necessary start.
Close to $2 million in outside attack ads have already been aired in this
campaign, and millions more are sure to follow unless the leading candidates
say no.
As the New Hampshire Rebellion reminds us, big money is
not the New Hampshire way. Out of respect for the citizens of your new home
state, and in the interest of democracy itself, I urge you, Sen. Brown, to sign
the People’s Pledge with Sen. Shaheen today.
Daniel Weeks, the former president of Americans for
Campaign Reform, works on education in low-income communities with City Year
New Hampshire. He walked with the N.H. Rebellion in January.
As typical democrats we are more reactive than proactive when it comes to gathering information on our republican opponents.
Now that Mr Kenney has taken his seat at the Executive Councillor's table we must keep track of his votes as they are made so that when the time comes for the campaign season we will have the facts at hand and not have to scramble for them.
In addition to votes made we also must listen closely to what he says from now to election day.
We do know that he is prone to, uhh, embellishing the truth (he was a great friend of Ray Burton).
The same thoughts also apply to Scott Brown or for that matter any republican, freestater, tea bagger, or libertarian that may be running for office as well.
I will be happy to put any information is this blog concerning the above.
Please send it to me in a file to simplify matters.
Also, please sign up to "follow" this blog. You will automatically be notified when a new post is made.
Thank you.
Now that Mr Kenney has taken his seat at the Executive Councillor's table we must keep track of his votes as they are made so that when the time comes for the campaign season we will have the facts at hand and not have to scramble for them.
In addition to votes made we also must listen closely to what he says from now to election day.
We do know that he is prone to, uhh, embellishing the truth (he was a great friend of Ray Burton).
The same thoughts also apply to Scott Brown or for that matter any republican, freestater, tea bagger, or libertarian that may be running for office as well.
I will be happy to put any information is this blog concerning the above.
Please send it to me in a file to simplify matters.
Also, please sign up to "follow" this blog. You will automatically be notified when a new post is made.
Thank you.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
Grafton County Commissioner Linda Lauer's testimony to the NH Senate committee on HB 569 (Northern Pass) as given today March 19, 2014.
To the Members of the New Hampshire Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee:
I am writing in support of HB569 as amended by the House
(Amendment 2013-2377h). I was recently
appointed to serve out Ray Burton’s remaining term as a Grafton County
Commissioner. Grafton County has an area
of about 1750 square miles and covers almost one-fifth of the state. Over half of the White Mountain National Forest is in
Grafton County, as is Franconia Notch State Park and Cardigan State Park. The Appalachian Trail runs through at least
10 towns in the county. About 90% of
the landscape is timberland. The service
industries, primarily tourism, are the largest employers.
I mention all of these facts because you need to know why
preservation of our state’s natural beauty is so important to me. The beauty of our state provides rest and
relaxation to the tourists from all around the world, but it also provides food
on the table for many of us who live in Grafton County. The majority of my constituents do not want to
see our county become a throughway for tall power lines between Canada and
southern New England. HB569 simply asks the Site Evaluation
Committee to take the importance of our natural resources and tourism-based
economy into account as it evaluates power transmission projects, and give
preference to the burial of elective transmission lines so that our state’s
economy will not be impacted.
HB569 does not ask for a lot. It does not impact projects that are required
for reliability. It does not affect
shorter towers- those less than 50 feet tall- whose height does not exceed that
of the region’s trees. It does not
require burial of elective transmission lines- it allows for the use of higher
transmission lines if the developer can show that burial is not a smart choice
from the perspective of engineering feasibility or substantial cost
differences.
So what does HB569 accomplish? It provides a layer of protection for the
tourism industry and the state by making the burial of lines the preferred
option where it is feasible. It opens up
the possibility of increased state revenue through the lease of state-owned
rights-of-way for elective power lines.
It encourages the use of buried transmission lines so that we don’t have
a repeat of the extended power outages that accompanied the 1998 ice storm in
Montreal, or the December 2008 ice storm in New Hampshire, or the February 2014
ice storm in Georgia, or the storm that cut power to 1.5 million people in
Pennsylvania in February, or…….you get the idea. Ice
storms happen. They happen in New
Hampshire. Why not bury elective
transmission lines where it is feasible?
It’s just common sense.
In summary, HB569 is needed not because it forces the burial
of transmission lines- it doesn’t- but because it will result in line burial
being a preferred option. Burying
elective transmission lines preserves our natural resources, safeguards Grafton
County’s tourism-related economy and jobs, protects the transmission lines from
ice and wind damage, offers the possibility of increased state revenue through
the lease of state-owned rights of way, and gets power to southern New
England. For these reasons, I encourage
you to recommend “Ought to Pass” to the full Senate on HB 569 as amended.
Respectfully,
Linda D. Lauer, Ph.D.
County Commissioner, Grafton District 2
Thanks to Chuck Phillips and author Mr
Ungar…
Tue Mar 18, 2014 at 10:50 AM PDT
So Obamacare is NOT relegating all of us to part-time jobs. Just
the opposite. As noted by Mr. Ungar it turns out that the number one instance
of worker's hours being cut is in the public sector where RW Governor's and
state legislatures have continued to wage a one-sided war on public sector
workers.
And another from Chuck and Mr Ungar...
After years of negative speculation on the
part of the opponents of Obamacare, hard data is finally coming in with respect
to the anticipated negative side-effects of the law.
To find out just how many people have really been put into an insurance fix,
the Urban Institute’s Health Reform Monitoring Survey, in December of 2013,
asked people between the ages of 18 and 64 the following question:
Once again, politics trumps policy and the critical needs of those our elected
officials are sworn to serve.
Facts matter—even when they screw up an
effective disinformation campaign.
So Obamacare is NOT relegating all of us to part-time jobs. Just the opposite. As noted by Mr. Ungar it turns out that the number one instance of worker's hours being cut is in the public sector where RW Governor's and state legislatures have continued to wage a one-sided war on public sector workers.
To find out just how many people have really been put into an insurance fix, the Urban Institute’s Health Reform Monitoring Survey, in December of 2013, asked people between the ages of 18 and 64 the following question:
Once again, politics trumps policy and the critical needs of those our elected officials are sworn to serve.
Monday, March 17, 2014
With thanks to Jim Forrest and the New York Times...
IN advance of St. Patrick’s Day, I went time traveling, back to the 1840s and Ireland’s great famine. On one side of the Irish Sea was Victorian England, flush with the pomp and prosperity of the world’s mightiest empire. On the other side were skeletal people, dying en masse, the hollow-bellied children scrounging for nettles and blackberries.
A great debate raged in London: Would it be wrong to feed the starving Irish with free food, thereby setting up a “culture of dependency”? Certainly England’s man in charge of easing the famine, Sir Charles Trevelyan, thought so. “Dependence on charity,” he declared, “is not to be made an agreeable mode of life.”
And there I ran into Paul Ryan. His great-great-grandfather had fled to America. But the Republican congressman was very much in evidence, wagging his finger at the famished. His oft-stated “culture of dependency” is a safety net that becomes a lazy-day hammock. But it was also England’s excuse for lethal negligence.
There is no comparison, of course, between the de facto genocide that resulted from British policy, and conservative criticism of modern American poverty programs.
But you can’t help noticing the deep historic irony that finds a Tea Party favorite and descendant of famine Irish using the same language that English Tories used to justify indifference to an epic tragedy.
The Irish historian John Kelly, who wrote a book on the great famine, was the first to pick up on these echoes of the past during the 2012 presidential campaign. “Ryan’s high-profile economic philosophy,” he wrote then, “is the very same one that hurt, not helped, his forebears during the famine — and hurt them badly.”
What was a tired and untrue trope back then is a tired and untrue trope now. What was a distortion of human nature back then is a distortion now. And what was a misread of history then is a misread now.
Ryan boasts of the Gaelic half of his ancestry, on his father’s side. “I come from Irish peasants who came over during the potato famine,” he said last year during a forum on immigration.
BUT with a head still stuffed with college-boy mush from Ayn Rand, he apparently never did any reading about the times that prompted his ancestors to sail away from the suffering sod. Centuries of British rule that attempted to strip the Irish of their language, their religion and their land had produced a wretched peasant class, subsisting on potatoes. When blight wiped out the potatoes, at least a million Irish died — one in eight people.
“The Almighty, indeed, sent the potato blight, but the English created the famine,” wrote the fiery essayist John Mitchel, whose words bought him a ticket to the penal colony of Tasmania.
What infuriated Mitchel was that the Irish were starving to death at the very time that rich stores of grain and fat livestock owned by absentee landlords were being shipped out of the country. The food was produced by Irish hands on Irish lands but would not go into Irish mouths, for fear that such “charity” would upset the free market, and make people lazy.
Ryan’s running mate in 2012, Mitt Romney, made the Tory case with his infamous remark that 47 percent of Americans are moochers, “dependent upon government.” Part of that dependence, he said, extended to people “who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.” Food — the gall!
You can’t make these kinds of heartless remarks unless you think the poor deserve their fate — that they have a character flaw, born of public assistance. And there hovers another awful haunt of Irish history. In 2012, Ryan said that the network of programs for the American poor made people not want to work.
On Wednesday, he went further, using the language of racial coding. This, after he told a story of a boy who didn’t want his free school lunch because it left him with “a full stomach and an empty soul.” The story was garbage — almost completely untrue.
“We have this tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” In other words, these people are bred poor and lazy.
Where have I heard that before? Ah, yes — 19th-century England. The Irish national character, Trevelyan confided to a fellow aristocrat, was “defective.” The hungry millions were “a selfish, perverse, and turbulent” people, said the man in charge of relieving their plight.
You never hear Ryan make character judgments about generations of wealthy who live off their inheritance, or farmers who get paid not to grow anything. Nor, for that matter, does he target plutocrats like Romney who might be lulled into not taking risks because they pay an absurdly low tax rate simply by moving money around. Dependency is all one-way.
“The whole British argument in the famine was that the poor are poor because of a character defect,” said Christine Kinealy, a professor of Irish studies and director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University. “It’s a dangerous, meanspirited and tired argument.”
And it wasn’t true. The typical desperation scene of the famine was the furthest thing from a day in the hammock. Here’s what one Quaker relief agent, William Bennett, found in a visit to County Mayo in 1847:
“We entered a cabin. Stretched in one dark corner, scarcely visible from the smoke and rags that covered them, were three children huddled together, lying there because they were too weak to rise, pale and ghastly ... perfectly emaciated, eyes sunk, voice gone, and evidently in the last stage of actual starvation.”
For his role in the famine, Trevelyan was knighted. The Irish remember him differently. At Quinnipiac’s Great Hunger Museum hangs a picture of this English gentleman with a dedication: “For crimes against humanity, never brought to justice.”
Irish Alzheimer’s, goes the joke, is to forget everything but the grudges — in the case of the great famine, for good reason. What Alexis de Tocqueville called “the terrifying exactitude of memory” is burned into Ireland’s soil. But more than forgetting, Paul Ryan never learned.
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