Tom

To all newly-elected NH State Representatives:

I hope that on Tuesday, Nov 18th, you’ll select Bill O’Brien as Caucus Leader, then House Speaker.

The NHGOP establishment is gunning, again, for someone who votes least with the Republican platform (Gene Chandler).  His HRA scores have been consistently in the low 80% range.  Democrats most definitely want Chandler to be the next Speaker and, in the failed Republican moderate-prototype that was Scott Brown, so do Kelly Ayotte, Jennifer Horn, and John Sununu.

When is this insanity going to end?  We find ourselves with yet another New Hampshire Republican office seeker who has donated sums of money to Democrats, buttering both sides of his bread.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about Gubernatorial candidate Walt Havenstein, donating a ton of money to homesteader-RINOs like Charlie Bass and John McCain, as well as to two Democrats (read here).

Now, we see that Executive Council D-5 candidate (and dear friend of Kelly Ayotte) Steve Hattamer has (and continues) to do the same.

Like Havenstein’s Democrats, these are likely friends or old college buddies of Hattamer.  But friend or not – these Democrats do damage to our Republic and there is NO EXCUSE for this type of behavior.

Let’s look at Hattamer’s Democrat contributions….shall we?

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It goes without saying that you can tell a lot about a person by the political contributions they’ve made.

There are many, many candidates and political organizations (PACs) to choose from, and people obviously tend to favor those that most closely align with their passions and principles. We give our precious time and money to particular candidates and organizations, to help them win elections and further causes that match our personal goals and desires.

So, what sort of political contributions has Walt Havenstein, candidate for New Hampshire Governor, made over the years?

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There’s been a lot of talk about Walt Havenstein lately.  No, not because he’s a candidate for Governor.  Of course, video recently surfaced where he makes an insulting comment about the Tea Party – the very people he purports to respect and hopes (needs) to have vote for him in the coming September primary.

My fellow Groksters, Skip Murphy, Steve McDonald, Rick Olson, Mike Rogers, and Kimberly Morin each wrote about Havenstein’s comments (here, here, here, here, and here).

We bloggers each took a crack at Mr. Havenstein for these arrogant, hurtful, and pandering comments, hopefully illuminating some of his “inner-man” – raw material for voters to use in their critical decision-making process.

This type of “scandal” is not unique.  Many people experience the pain of prior comments coming back to bite them, and many politicians “step in it” along the campaign trail.  What tells you most about the character of a person is how they respond to the situation.  I spoke with a number of Tea-Party-Havenstein supporters this weekend (mostly because they worked for him at BAE) who collectively said that they hoped he would just “come out and own up to the comments”, “offer a public apology” and “get beyond it”.

So, what happens when a non-blogger, concerned, patriotic citizen (who served in the US Navy at about the same time Havenstein served in the US Marines) approaches him face-to-face regarding the gaffe?  How does Havenstein, the man, measure up on the character scale?

Note: I used the photo of Havenstein and McCain for effect.  Not only because there is a slight resemblance but because the body language and, quite frankly, the arrogance seems eerily similar.

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When Liberals attempt to make hay out of today’s Labor Report, you should nudge them to look at all the data, not just the parts that soothe their cognitive dissonance about this economy and the disaster that is the Obama administration’s mishandling of it.

And, after all, data must always be put into context and shown relative to historical trends – it can always be made to look good in isolation.

The first metric in the report shows that the economy added 217,000 jobs in May, a little short of the predicted 218,000.  Not a tragic difference, so they will try to applaud that.  Fine.  I’m glad these people got jobs.

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Game almost over?

Sadly, William Baer was arrested for speaking outside of his “two minute” free-speech allotment at a Gilford, NH school board meeting.  Protesting the use of a scandalous novel (which I will not promote here) in his daughters’ high school, his concerns and complaints got to be too much for the board to hear, so they “asked him to leave”, free handcuffs included.

What really gets me though, is the deer-in-the-headlight look and inaction by the other parents sitting in the gallery.  Either they all disagreed with Baer’s position, or they were all too afraid to speak out against this intolerable act.  Surely, they will be the first to complain about the clampdown – when it’s too late to protest.

Ann Barnhardt, an outspoken activist/commodities broker, who ran Barnhardt Capital Management in Colorado, but shut it down and “went Galt“, has something interesting to say about it too.  A quick, worthy read…

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I’m wondering why some of our veteran Senate Republicans are jumping on the easy track to fixing the so-called Medicaid expansion “problem”.

Republicans are supposed to lean toward market based, economic oriented solutions and away from entitlement-based fixes, which ultimately our grandchildren, not us, nor the aging Republican Senators (who feel the need to “do something“), will pay for.  And it should go without saying that this entitlement solution would come from an already-bloated, debt ridden, ever-encroaching Federal Government that cannot be trusted.

I wonder why they aren’t focusing on improving the New Hampshire jobs climate, helping the very people targeted by this expansion to attain and afford sufficient healthcare on their own, rather than counter-intuitively taking it from a Federal program that requires a built-in “exit strategy”.  After all, Democrats aren’t focusing on the economy, whatsoever, so this would be a chance for Republicans to seriously differentiate themselves.

I then started to look for some low-hanging business and economic fruit to pick.  While doing so, I discovered a few things that really surprised me.

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I know roughly 50% of the people in this photo well – yet I would trust my life with all of them.  To be honest, I would trust the lives of my children with them too.

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