HB 1440 – Making Drivers Ed Affordable Act?

In New Hampshire, Parents are not recognized, by themselves, as adequate driving instructors for children under age 18.  State law requires new instruction through a certified drivers Ed course.  As is the case in any such arrangement, the price for this instruction is not cheap, not even through the public school system.  While I would … Read more

RLCNH Report: Action needed on pension reform

RLCNH Report for the week is available. Lots going on—continuing Obamacare fight, stopping location tracking without consent, requiring police accountability, decriminalization of small amounts of marijuana—but the most important bill this week is pension reform. ACTION ALERT! Fix New Hampshire’s Pension System SB 229 is the pension reform bill that we’ve all been waiting for, because after … Read more

In Grafton County, does Laura Saffo want to be a police-state prosecutor?

Word has come to me that Laura Saffo, the elected Grafton County Attorney—who heads up the office that prosecutes all felonies in the county—has told confidants that she is “keeping an eye on the Freestaters” in Grafton County. Really. In the town of Grafton, where I have my residence, “Freestaters” are members of the volunteer … Read more

Are 3D Movies The Future Of Cinema?

Is 3D worth the extra cost and is it the future of cinema
Is 3D worth the extra cost

I read somewhere that within the movie industry there is a growing consensus that 3D movies are the future of the big screen experience.  My initial reaction was that this is only true the way unemployment is the future of job growth in Obama’s America.  Just because Nancy Pelosi says it is doesn’t make it so. ?

And the problems are related.  Movies in 2D are already too expensive.  3D, which is the Mc Donald’s Drive-Thru cashiers equivalent of adding the apple pie to every order because there is no alternative, puts the big screen experience for the average American family out of reach.  My response to that is to just stay home, and not just because you can’t get a lower ticket price if you bring your own 3D glasses.  I have discovered what I like to call my Red Box mentality.  It goes something like this.

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Data Point: Reagan vs Obama

Over the first 10 quarters of each President’s recovery: Obama Reagan GDP 6% 15% Job creation 790,000 7,500,000 real disposable personal income 0.80% 5.40% No, neither President can actually create jobs or personal wealth; all they can really do is set the stage / create an environment in which they can be created by the … Read more

Notable Quote – Spike Lee

On being called the next Dr. Bill Cosby (noted black entertainer who berates the black community on it culture and on education issues): “I am from the pre-crack generation. When I was growing up, we never, ever, never ridiculed someone because they were a good student,” he said. “Your generation, they now equate intelligence with … Read more

Why should taxpayers be paying for more babies? Who really is the selfish one in all this? Enter stage Right – HB1658

Before getting into the quick discussion of NH HB1658 (“limiting financial assistance for mothers who have additional children while receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).”) that some Conservative has introduced, how ’bout this for a table setting?  This went viral back in December and while it was shocking to see a single women with 15 kids by 3 “baby daddies”, what was worse was the attitude display by her:

“Somebody Needs to Pay For All My Children“

“Somebody needs to be held accountable, and they need to pay.”

(H/T: Weasel Zippers)  The Welfare State gone crazy?  No, it hasn’t.  What is shown here is the actual logical endgame of the Liberal philosophy that allows bad behavior to continue under the guise of “she needs help”. Yes, indeed she does – but not the type I think she requires (think: a humungous dose of traditional morality).  Yes, those children are in a bad situation – no doubt about that.  However in this case,  the Liberal philosophy that places personal sexual / libertine behavior off limits for discussion is shown for the fraud it really is – and the result is now clear that it places lots of children at risk.  Tell me, Libs – how is this result showing “we care more than Conservatives”? There are Progressives that hold the State should not become involved in the intimate life of that woman (except when it is a minor female child – then they have no problem involving Govt in abortions without Parental Notification), but here’s the rub – they have no problem in having the State pay for the consequences of that philosophy.

Except they also expect us all to just pay for the cost of their failed policy. And that is where NH HB1658 comes in.

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The Ascension of Democrat Voters

This started as a comment to Skips remarks on Neal Kurks bill HB 1658: ‘An act limiting Financial Assistance for mothers who have additional children while on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).  As usual, a few off the cuff remark exceeded the medium so I have promoted them here–and then some.

It should be interesting to see if the Democrats try to frame Rep Kurk, the sole sponsor of HB 1658,  as another Republican Extremist.  Ideologically he is a GOP moderate, his NHHRA ratings put him near the RINO category, and if anything he fits the Democrats Free Stater legislative profile (another left wing narrative) more than anything.

But he has gotten a 100% rating from NARAL and as far as I can tell supports wide open access to contraceptives.   So he’s all in on reproductive freedom, and fully embraces the lefts doctrine, right up to the point where it starts to cost taxpayers buckets of money–and then it stops.  With great freedom comes great responsibility.  Rep Kurk  understands that sometimes people need help, but that we are not meant to be slaves to other peoples freedoms, including so called reproductive freedoms, and to that end we have HB 1658.

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Of the things said at Thursday’s Presidential debate, Rick Santorum said the most important:

Thursday night’s GOP Presidential Debate in Florida was, for the most part, a Mitt-Newt mud fight with their hands tied behind them (re: all they could do was just roll in it).  Lots of dirt to spread around.  However, Rick Santorum made the most of it, and I believe finally was able to lay in a few good licks, especially on ObaneyCare.

But as far as I am concerned, he uttered the most important words of the evening:

When an audience member asked the candidates how their religious beliefs would affect their decisions as President, Santorum turned to the nation’s founding documents to reference the relationship between faith and governance:

“The Constitution is there to do one thing, protect God-given rights,” said Santorum. “That’s what makes America different than every other country in the world.”

“When you say ‘faith has nothing to do with it’– faith has everything to do with it,” Santorum went on to say over applause. “If our President believes that rights come to us from the state, everything government gives you, it can take away.

“The role of the government is to protect rights that cannot be taken away.”

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Ron Paul’s Newsletters

In the last election cycle almost everyone on the center right used “voting for bills without reading them” as a campaign cudgel.  So I think it is safe to say that we have some expectation of accountability for what our elected officials put their name to.

When talking about Presidents, we have an equal interest in their having a full understanding of what they are signing into law and every right to hold them to account for everything they put their name to, even though they may not have written a single word of it.

Ron Paul’s name is on the newsletters.  He may or may not have written them.  He may or may not have read them.   His campaign and his supporters do not think he should be held to task for their content.  They have even gone so far as to suggest that their is some massive Republican conspiracy to discredit him.

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HB1279 – “AN ACT relative to voting rights of certain budget committee members”

From the text of the bill (actually, this is pretty much most of it):  1 Budget Committee Membership. Amend RSA 32:15, I(b) to read as follows:

(b) One member of the governing body of the municipality and, if the municipality is a town, one member of the school board of each school district wholly within the town and one [member] commissioner of each village district wholly within the town, all of whom shall be appointed by their respective boards to serve for a term of one year and until their successors are qualified. Each such member shall serve as a non-voting member and may be represented by an alternate member designated by the respective board, who shall, when sitting, have the same authority as the regular member.

While I was in Concord this week, I ran into ‘Grok, friend NH State Rep. Mark Warden, who is one of the sponsors of the bill and asked him “why the changes for SB2 Budget Committee?” since I have been an elected BudComm member in my hamlet for the past 6 years.  Note: never again will I do an interview in a stairwell – apologies for the poor audio – but that was the only place we could find with decent lighting and a lack of foot traffic):

I also had the chance last night to quickly interview fellow BudComm member, Kevin Leandro, as he had given testimony to Mark Warden’s House Committee:

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ID at The Dump

Your Vote Counts...even when someone else steals it
...even when someone else steals it

Not long ago Merrimack went to annual renewal of our dump decal.  You display it on your windshield so they know you are a resident.  It costs nothing to get the decal,   but according to the guy handing them out, the amount of savings more than covers the cost of doing this every year.   Quite a bit more.  He says that asking people to present an ID once a year to get a new sticker, saves the municipality a lot of money.

Not only was there fraud at a place where not too many people were thinking about it (at the town transfer station) but there was enough of it to make annual renewals an important disincentive against it.

Of course the cost of operating the transfer station is just one part of the town budget.

So how much could it cost a town if just anyone can walk into a polling place, get a ballot without any ID at all, and vote for or against issues, Warrants, and candidates that will affect local spending and inevitably the tax burden required to fund that spending?  More?  Millions more?

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US Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) – I keep appreciating how she is actually voting and talking.

As we have said before (and told her personally), Senator Kelly has been a pleasantly surprising voice and vote in the US Senate as she has been voting more conservatively than what we first believed she would.  I think this quick interview she did with Fox News shows how important the debt ceiling, the indebtedness this nation has descended to, is to her:

I don’t think that there is a sane person in NH or the rest of the country that would disagree with her.  Progressives that worship at the feet of Obama and hang on every syllable uttered from TOTUS?  They continue to believe in the magical money tree, financial pixie dust, and Hope (which, as any project manager will tell you, is never a solid plan for success).

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Taxpayers On The ‘Rack’

Elective Surgery on the taxpayer dime? I have a question for progressives.  If a fetus is just a lump of tissue, isn’t abortion just another form of plastic surgery?

You can’t even find a Democrat willing to admit the procedure is not elective.  It’s woman’s choice, yes?

And if you’ve ever gotten an unwanted earful from some feminis, going on  about what pregnancy can do to a woman’s body,  appearance is a consideration.  That makes it cosmetic, yes?

So if  abortion is the elective, cosmetic, removal of unwanted tissue, and not the termination of a human life, why doesn’t the liberal super-state demand the wholesale taxpayer funding of liposuction, nose jobs, and breast implants?

Sorry, trick question.  If you are a public school teacher in Buffalo New York, boob jobs are already covered by taxpayer dollars.

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Sylvia Larsen – Zipper head

Not much left when it comes to tobacco taxes...I suppose you’ll want some context for that headline.  Back in December (12/9/2011) I explained why New Hampshire should continue lowering tobacco taxes.  I suggested we adopt some kind of schedule by which we would sunset tobacco taxes over the next decade based of the long term decline in sales.  Why, after all, would you risk the states ability to invest in anything, including the left’s rhetorical “neediest residents in their most desperate hours (or something),” using an unreliable source of revenue in decline?

OK, what I actually said was

“Only a progressive zipper-head would rely on more revenue from something they want to get rid of.  Increasing the tax on a declining market will only accelerate the unreliability of the revenue stream.  That  creates the opportunity for bigger budget holes that must then be filled on the fly.”

As if by magic, Sylvia Larsen, Democrat super-minoirty leader of the New Hampshire State Senate, in the face of declining unit sales, as fewer people smoke, after a decades long trend indicating that tobacco purchases will likely continue to decrease in the future, thinks we should increase our reliance on cigarette taxes in New Hampshire.

Zipper head. (doofus, goofball, goober, dunderhead, maroon, doh!) see note#2 below

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