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WSB TRANSPARENCY

When I ran for the Windham School Board (WSB), I promised transparency. Sometimes, that puts me in an uncomfortable situation when I disagree with fellow Board Members. Such is the case now, as I provide my insights regarding what I feel was a rushed 3-1-1 decision (Rekart/Joanis/Senibaldi – yes, Eyring – no, Breton – abstain) to sign a no-bid, $577K contract with Cenergistic, a “behavior-based” energy conservation company during the 1/6/15 WSB meeting.

The allure to sign the contract was Cenergistic’s estimate that the Windham School District (WSD) would save $1.8M over 10 years with “no equipment changes required” if the district followed their customized energy conservation program.

I was skeptical. As a School Board Member who has attended many of the Citizen’s Facilities Committee (CFC) meetings over the past 7 months, I knew from speaking with Tom Murray (Windham Contractor), Jerry Rufo (Facilities Manager for IBM), and Rich Amari (Construction Management), that the proposed plans for addressing our space needs incorporate many energy saving measures (for all our schools) that align with PSNH programs.

So prior to the meeting, I reached out to PSNH and spoke directly with

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Top 1%ers if your income is $32,000 or more.  Period.  Yet, the Occupy Wall Street remnants and the Elizabeth Warrens are so blinkered on this, thinking it is only the Haves and Have-Nots battle here in the US that matters.  Out of sight, out of mind is the fact that many of our Poor are often much better off than even Europe’s Middle Class in most economic metrics.

Why is the 1 percent suffering from this peculiar mass delusion? Well, actually, it’s not that hard to understand. Because if you’re reading this article, chances are that you are in the top 1 percent of global income. And chances are also that you really don’t feel like a tycoon.

The cutoff for the global 1 percent starts quite a bit lower than the parochial American version preferred by pundits. I’m on it. So is David Sirota. And if your personal income is higher than $32,500, so are you. The global elite to which you and I belong enjoys fantastic wealth compared to the rest of the world: We have more food, clothes, comfortable housing, electronic gadgets, health care, travel and leisure than almost every other living person, not to mention virtually every human being who has ever lived. We are also mostly privileged to live in societies that offer quite a lot in the way of public amenities, from well-policed streets and clean water, to museums and libraries, to public officials who do their jobs without requiring a hefty bribe. And I haven’t even mentioned the social safety nets our governments provide.

So why don’t we feel like Scrooge McDuck, rolling around in all of our glorious riches? Why do we feel kinda, y’know, middle class?

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First meeting for the newly elected Committee members and they had two jobs to do:

• Elect new NH GOP Officers – Chair, Vice-Chair, Treasurer, Secretary and the 5 Area Vice Chairs
• Vote on the mostly Establishment sponsored Amendments – 6 of them

I posted about Amendment #1 (and left the others alone, below, at the time) and the absolute vagueness of what “good cause” would mean, given that it is open for interpretation, it was open for “political abuse” as well:

County and City Committees may prescribe in their bylaws the conditions under which a member of such committee may be removed for failure to attend meetings or other good cause…

After all, this IS politics we’re talking about there!  But there were five more:

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We don’t fight against “extremists” or “terrorists” – that in itself is an indication of weakness. Terror is a tactic, used by an enemy to change political wills, but not the enemy itself. We do fight against a political ideology as authoritarian that in Shar’ia Law, wishes to control every aspect of your life in the tiniest detail.   From George Packer of the New Yorker (via Betsy’s Page) is this well written snippet describing the enemy of the West – yet most of the Western Leaders, especially Obama (and his minions like AG Eric Holder)  refuse to correctly name that enemy.  And yes, I blame Bush II for calling this war a “War on Terror”.  Emphasis mine:

The murders today in Paris are not a result of France’s failure to assimilate two generations of Muslim immigrants from its former colonies. They’re not about French military action against the Islamic State in the Middle East, or the American invasion of Iraq before that. They’re not part of some general wave of nihilistic violence in the economically depressed, socially atomized, morally hollow West—the Paris version of Newtown or Oslo. Least of all should they be “understood” as reactions to disrespect for religion on the part of irresponsible cartoonists.

They are only the latest blows delivered by an ideology that has sought to achieve power through terror for decades.

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Certainly, the innocent babies have no choice – this is a clear evidence of fact.  Their well being, their life, is in the hands of their mother.  I ran across both of these pretty much at the same time – a juxtaposition of fighting FOR Life and a celebration OF Death.  This amongst an anecdotal study that college students are becoming more open to “post-birth” abortions and Belgium’s willingness to “euthanize” a serial killer (rather than have the courage to say “death penalty”).

A society that embraces Life or is turning to an ethos of Death?  Truth, or hiding behind the manipulation of language?  On the Death side, we see that NARAL, the most pro-baby killer organization outside of Planned Parenthhod, absolutely giddy with celebration of the Supreme Court decision that allowed Gosnell in Philly not only kill the unborn but the partial born and a couple of their mothers:

NARAL Pro-Choice New Hampshire with Colin Van Ostern

The incredible power and influence of the abortion lobby in federal and state politics is nothing short of astounding. Hundreds of millions of dollars flow to support the abortion cause which masquerades as “women’s health care” in our cities and states. New Hampshire is no exception to the rule.

Here is an example for you. Planned Parenthood of New England in 2012 launched a $500,000 “Action Fund” to provide support for Maggie Hassan’s gubernatorial campaign. In 2014, Planned Parenthood supported Hassan to the tune of over $400,000 to ensure her re-election. It is also interesting to note, Gov. Hassan’s 2012 budget TRIPLED the funding for Planned Parenthood in NH. Hmmm…

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Yes, I caught this right at the beginning of the show – you just can’t make this stuff up and just another anecdote that shows we’ve been pulling out too many bricks out of “the Civil Society wall”, leading to its tottering.  What would you expect when the Secularists and the Left had changed the culture from a solid moral absolutist code (er, wrong is WRONG!) to one of moral relativism?

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “As many as 64 Dartmouth College students — including some athletes — could face suspension or other disciplinary measures for cheating in an ethics class this past fall.” I love that it was an ethics class. . . .

Yet, these are the same folks that believe when THEY say “No is NO” it will be obeyed by over-hormone college kids even as they spent the last 50 years redefining sexual conduct from that contained within marriage to the Hookup Generation?  Redefine roles, redefine morals – the outcome is predictable.  The juicy bit of the story:

…Dartmouth officials said students implicated in the cheating scandal misrepresented their attendance and participation in the undergraduate course, “Sports, Ethics & Religion.”

The class used electronic hand-held “clickers,” registered to individual students, to answer in-class questions. Officials at the Hanover, N.H., college said the students charged with cheating either gave their clickers to classmates instead of attending class themselves, or helped others cheat by using the clickers to answer questions on their behalf.

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Heh!  This ought to be fun.  First Jack Flanagan goes after an activist (and ‘Grok friend) by calling him a Democrat Lemming  (wrong thing to do, btw) and then decides to slag us at the same time.  Well, stay tuned as we can play this game all. day. long.  And Jack Flanagan? Is that REALLY how you treat your constituents?  Really?

From an email thread sent to me (mostly anonymized, emphasis mine).  It starts off with an activist telling their House Reps voting the right way by voting NO on the rule change that would have made it much harder to have roll call votes on motions / Amendments / Bills.  First to all

While roll call voting is not necessary for every single item that requires a vote, if someone in the legislature feels it is important or helpful or appropriate to have a roll call vote so WE can know how YOU are voting, it should not be made more difficult than the standard that is currently in place to do so. Voting to make it more difficult by increasing the number of people it takes to second the motion for a roll call  =  voting for secrecy, enabling yourself to “hide” from your constituents, dishonesty, non-transparency, distrust and division. Why would you want to do that unless you have something to hide. We have the absolute right to know what is going on up there and by whom.

VOTE NO ON THE RULES CHANGE. VOTE NO.

I agree whole heartedly – you REPRESENT us and if we can’t verify how you vote, we can’t know how well you are representing us.  If it all.  And then just to their reps:

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Remember, it was the erstwhile NH House “Majority” Leader Jack Flanagan who invited us to this game.   This was just sent in speaking to

I was on a committee where Flanagan was for a while. He is very “moderate,” i.e. squishy. He admits that his district doesn’t like conservative Republicans (I don’t buy it, but he justifies his big-government votes with that). He is no friend of Liberty. His idea of “Republican values” is far from mine, but that is the Big Tent for you.

Squishy.  Translation – will o’the wisp where ever the political winds blow.  Sticking a wet finger up into the political breeze is my visualization – not exactly a winning attribute for a Leader that folks actually look up to the position earned (remember, Jack Flanagan was NOT elected to the position – he had to be appointed by the Democrat appointed Speaker Jasper).

Big-government votes?  I Trust the person that sent this to me and their reputation as a Limited Govt personage is impeccable.  For him to say that has the alarm bells ringing. So gosh, what does the NH GOP Platform say about that?  Let’s see:

We, the people of the New Hampshire Republican Party, do stand united in our dedication to preserving freedom, limited government and unlimited opportunity for all.

We can through this one as well:

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More emailing today than postings, so a chance to combine the two.  And it comes up with a single “what if” supposition.  Again, reference back to my Pat Caddell “ready to quit” and the notices about the “3” and the “4” (slightly edited):

… the NH GOP just doesn’t get how close many of its activists are just ready to quit.  Yet, they just keep doing the same things. I can only surmise that they want a new GOP base – one that doesn’t complain and just votes the way they’re told.  They just don’t seem to want to play chess and look forward a few moves [if they got that base]…

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