Yet another post that kinda got away from me – I forgot about it (D’oh!) and with everyone writing at full steam, the posts (like emails in my Inbox) keep moving further and further down the list. Face it, if an email goes three or four “page downs”, it pretty much is gone from sight and gone from memory (even as I say “Skip, DON’T forget this one!”). Anyways, these are the notes I took as Maggie Hassan talked with Closeup host, Josh McElven, about a number of topics:
- Voter ID is a very extreme bill and harm the citizens of NH
Extreme? Very Extreme? I keep hearing that from the Democrats and about the only thing I can think of that is “extreme” is that Democrats think it an extreme idea that Republicans don’t like the idea that Democrats keep getting votes that really should never have been cast by people who should not have been voting at that polling place. Perhaps, the real extreme idea is that the Democrats just don’t think enough of Citizenship and don’t think that ensuring that the validity and integrity of a Citizen’s vote is worth protecting. We seem to be in a time when the value of Citizenship is deliberately being diminished (e.g., the mayor that wants to let people votethat should not be in the country). This is not about “discrimination” – this is to hold a fundamental right and responsibility of citizenship high and to maintain its integrity.
- The State Budget that cut the cigarette tax also cut the University and the College budget significantly. That says to the young people in this state, smoke more and go to college less….and to employers, don’t bother to come because we aren’t going to have an educated workforce.
Ah yes, just like Alan Greyson’s “Republicans just want you to die quickly” when it comes to healthcare. Is this the best that a future Governor (Lord, forgive me!) can say about the opposition? This is logic run amok – if the “Adults in the Room” stop subsidizing everything under the Sun (after all, there is a reason why Maggie’s Democrats left a Billion Buck Budget Bust when they got bushwhacked by the voters [I guess not enough of the “No ID voters showed up for Maggie] and everyone needs to just give up, practice more of a bad habit, and you all will be on Welfare forever! Oh Please – will she bring in Attorney General Eric “Never met a gun I didn’t want to send to Mexico” Holder as an election stunt if the bill passes before November?
- The State is really going to go backwards and say to its citizens ‘you are on your own, tough luck, this is the best we can do” And that’s not the NH I raised my family in.
Backwards, yeah right. Backwards if the idea that one of America’s singular traits, rugged individualism, is of no value whatsoever. Backwards if her philosophy is individual Liberty and Freedom must be replaced by the collective fairness. Backwards if she also believes that “Live Free or Die” is also too harsh; like from an old post I wrote:
As always, enter Stage Left, the weenies with their political correctness, pandering, and foolishness. In showing their disdain, they seemingly have ignored the obvious: “And what’s your message?” An utterly condescending one:
YOU cannot succeed on your own – you are NOT good enough!
You will ONLY succeed if others do the work for you.
…Absolute Rubbish! Success comes from hard work and the ability to be left alone to do that work without interference from Government. Tell me, what young person, full of vim and vinegar, is thinking to themselves “yup, I’m helpless and NEED others to make a go of it” – sure, that will attract’em! Most adult-thinking young adults are thinking “I can CHANGE the world – lemme at’em!” and not “quick, I need hand holding at every turn!”.
In my estimation, there is no better summary than “Live Free or Die”. Elegant in its simplicity, it summarizes what General Stark’s thoughts and being: freedom is everything. And not to be bandied about as a “slogan” – replace it when it “wears out”. It stems from a time when we were much less about the glitz and more about the substance of what really matters.
And when pinheads were called exactly that – and worse.
- MaggieCare – any regrets there? Well look, what I was most concerned about is that healthcare costs in this state are really, really high. We’re somewhere around the fifth highest for the medical service that are provided to us. And there is a huge variation across this state, 70% cost variation for the same procedure. I don’t think it’s fair that somebody in one part of the state pays much more for the same procedure that somebody in another part of the state. I particularly don’t think it’s fair that uninsured people were paying more than insurance companies for the same procedure. And so what I tried to do with Senate Bill 505 which ended up passing with a unanamous vote in the State Senate was to really get at transparency in healthcare costs because right now, a person with a high deductible who is putting off high healthcare procedure they may need or the screening they may need is so expensive and keeps skyrocketing, uninsured can’t afford basic medical care and small businesses in particular can’t afford to give benefits to their employees, provide health insurance because of high costs.
And yes, she will revisit this answer over time. However, with this answer, she makes it clear that she hates how the marketplace (where the Govt has already distorted it badly) will participate in Obamacare, will create a state based Exchange, and calls out the current Legislature for not taking the Fed dollars for doing so. She show her absolute faith in Govt to be able to ably control yet another area of the private sector here in NH.
- So I think it is really important for people to step away from the politics of this and in the Washington back and forth of this to really think about what’s best for the State….to make sure that the burdens on the State were lessened or almost non-existent, so much of the expanded coverage would be paid for by the Federal government and not by NH. But the most important thing to do is to recognize that the politics can be really harmful to problem solving. You can’t care more about winning an arguement than you do about solving a problem.
Right! It is absolutely fantastical that Progressives can spout “step away from the politics” when all they have done is to further and further inject politicsinto almost everything in our daily lives. This IS a political issue only in that Progressives demand that it is. In essence, they are trying to say, in other words, “this would not be political IF ONLY YOU WOULD FORGET ABOUT THIS AND LET US HAVE OUR OWN WAYS (you who have no idea how to properly run your own lives on your own without us ). If she didn’t want this to become political, she would not be bringing Govt into it the discussion. After all, once Govt is involved, the special interests become involved, ideologies become involved, and there will be the political fights to divvy up the spoils. No, not true competition a la the open marketplace, but only the infighting of who knows who, who owes who, and what paybacks & grievances will be brought to bear. And just to be clear, there HAS been no open and free marketplace in the healthcare field ever since that Great Progressive, LBJ, rammed Medicare through – and politics have never left that field of play since. This IS a fundamental political question: do we, as individuals, get to decide for ourselves what is best, or is it Govt that has to make the major decisions for us. Sure, Maggie The Red would NEVER couch it in those terms (thus the use of the word “fairness”) – if she did, if Democrat Socialists did, they would lose everytime. They can only win politically, either an argument or an election, when they tread around the issues – like a con man.
- …And right now, what we need to doing in NH is seeing how we can take advantage of what’s there and chart our own course, lower our healthcare costs, get more people covered, and then adjust the program…work if the Federal program law stays in place, work with the Feds to make it better for NH and if it doesn’t, we’ll have to look at what our options are afterwards.
In other words, she wants to play the false game of putting Govt in charge, give out the entitlement gifts, get the entitlement crowd hooked (for Progressives know but rarely admit, that Americans love entitlements using other peoples’ money, and once given, rarely give them up). Hey, we’ll fix it later – not problem! It will only take some “minor tweaks”. Just like we’ve been tweaking Medicare and Medicaid for decades – right up to the financial cliff that is rapidly approaching.
- And she admitted that any revenues would be spent instead of lowering taxes on the normal litany of state level Democrat wish list.
But of course! That goes without saying, for that is the fundamental difference between Progressives on one side and Conservatives / Libertarians the other: who has first dibs on the money that people earn. We think they should keep it – Progressives believe that they have the right to simply say “this is what we allow you to keep – after all, we have better uses for it”.
