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NEW HAMPSHIRE makes Presidents. The way it’s done was in full view last weekend, when 16 Republican hopefuls pressed into the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nashua, for two days of Q&A and coffee huddles with local voters. It was democracy at its best.

Since 1952, winning the presidency almost always starts with a win in the New Hampshire primary, the first in the nation by law. In the months ahead, thousands of New Hampshire voters will flock to bars, diners, neighbors’ homes, and packed gatherings like the Nashua event to size up candidates. They will know more about the candidates than anyone else in America. Last weekend they heard that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker buys his shirts at Kohl’s and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina started out as an office temp and lost a daughter to addiction.

Here’s what came out of it:

First, there will be no Jeb Bush coronation. Though the former Florida governor (son of one President, brother of another) is leading in the polls, it’s not by much. “No one’s giving it to me,” Bush said. There was less enthusiasm for Bush than his closest rival in the polls, Walker.

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UPDATE:  I knew I forgot something – from the NH Constitution:

[Art.] 10. [Right of Revolution.] Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; …

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Crony Capitalism – the combination of Big Government and Big Business cooperating to use taxpayers as a Piggy Bank.  Both of these gentleman showed us in their Op-Ed in the Union Leader that they possess an entitlement outlook that NH taxpayers should be expected to shoulder their advertising budget for them (entire Op-Ed after the jump) even with their own personal successes:

Rusty McLear is co-owner and president of Mill Falls at the Lake in Meredith. Alex Ray is owner and founder of The Common Man family of restaurants. Together, they are the principals of Granite State Hospitality, the company building the new state welcome centers on I-93 in Hooksett.

These are not small operations by anyone’s view.  So why should we (just as with Les Otten’s attempted claim on $28 Million for his Balsam Boondogle project) taxpayers fund their operations – as rent-seeking (seeking a profit and/or preferred treatment from Government)is ALSO part of the definition of Crony Capitalism?   McLear and Ray actually make the case against doing so in their own words:

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Who owns your kids – you or the Education system?  I’ve blogged about this more and more, it seems, as more stuff keeps popping up.  This latest one surrounds what Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education said upon the news that up to 184,000 kids in New York will not be taking the standardized tests mandated by Government for school kids to take under the No Child Left Behind Act (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Under No Child Left Behind, at least 95 percent of students in a state must take annual standardized tests in reading and math from grades 3-8. Until now, the federal government has never had to contemplate enforcing that regulation, but a growing parent-led boycott effort is changing things. Now, in many states, thousands of parents who oppose new Common Core-aligned tests or simply oppose testing in general are yanking their children out of exams. In New York, activists claim over 175,000 students are refusing to take the state’s new standardized English tests, a figure that would put the state on pace to miss the 95 percent threshold.

Gosh – there seems to be a civil rights movement growing against the Federal Government’s efforts to take over from local education, doesn’t it?  And certainly here in NH, the Department of Education collectivists are showing their bootlicking tendencies in showing that what ever Washington orders, they will comply because MONEY!  And, truth be told, ideology – that Government SHOULD be in control and the Freedom to choose by parents must be verboten.

As for Duncan, what was his threat against this rebel rabble?  Well, government MUST step in against the parents:

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Smart Car:

AND??

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SB116, the “Constitutional Carry” bill by which any person who is permitted to own a firearm would no longer have to apply for and posses a pistol license to carry it concealed is the current gun bill being decided in the NH House.  Of course, there are all kinds of claims that ne’er-do-wells, criminals, and the mentally insane would now have the freedom to carry without any oversight.  Politicians, Police Chiefs, Progressives (ok, no difference in some cases) all have their panties in a wad.  NH State Rep. Len DiSesa is no different:

Rep. Len DiSesa, D-Dover, a former Portsmouth deputy police chief, said that when people join society, they surrender some of their rights for the greater good, and constitutional gun rights are one of those instances.”Once a round is fired, it cannot be taken back,” DiSesa writes to his fellow House members. “This is not a Second Amendment issue. It is a safety issue, and repealing this law flies in the face of common sense.”

Well, I have emailed the Representative on his words:

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