NH Senate's Emergency Power's Reform is "Nothing but Window Dressing with a New Paint Job." - Granite Grok

NH Senate’s Emergency Power’s Reform is “Nothing but Window Dressing with a New Paint Job.”

Sununu Sun King Laughing

The US is moving from being a High Trust Society to one of Low Trust and nowhere is it easy to see than in politics. Both Consistency and Loyalty are hard to come by attributes – almost non-existent.

Thus, over the years, I’ve been burned enough that I almost always verify what I’m told even by those that I normally respect. This is about one of those cases where Reagan’s admonition of “Trust but verify” comes true. Let it be known now that if a politician tells me to go read a bill, I’m gonna read the bill.

Related: The NH State Senate is More Interested in Chris Sununu’s Political Future Than New Hampshire’s

Unfortunately, in this case, I did just that.

So, all kinds of folks and organizations send both me and Steve “stuff.” Trust me (and easy to verify), there is NO WAY that we could even put up a tenth of the stuff onto the ‘Grok and we apologize for that inability (er, TIME!) all the time.

However, we DO read them because it helps us to keep our thumb of what’s going on AND to keep a pulse check on what our readers think is important to them. So from one person, I got a Grok post (Steve’s, to be truthful) returned via his group email:

From: j <others redacted>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2021 8:00 PM
Subject: From today’s GraniteGrok…

I believe I sent a related post earlier today… right. JS??

OK. I’d like an explanation on this. Anyone want to take a shot (https://granitegrok.com/mg_manchester/2021/05/your-state-senate-is-doing-the-governors-bidding)??

Your State Senate is Doing The Governor’s Bidding

Word on the street is that the Senate thinks Gov. Chris Sununu did nothing wrong by acting like a king for the past year, and they aren’t willing to cross him, especially because he’s “in the same party” and “so very popular.” (Insert negative exclamation!)

Here’s the bad news:

  • Sections 76 and 77 of the budget that would have ended the State of Emergency upon passage of the budget in June were removed in the Senate Finance Committee by an amendment proposed by Senate President Chuck Morse. Even worse: RebuildNH endorsed Sen. Bob Giuda seconded the motion and it passed 7-0. Traditionally pro-liberty Sen. Gary Daniels, Sen. Erin Hennessey, and Sen. John Reagan were other disappointing votes on this motion.A Senate committee recommended the Senate retain HB 440, the Civil Liberties Defense Act, effectively killing it in committee. There is no reason to study whether constitutional liberties should be suspended during a State of Emergency. We know the answer is “NO!”
  • A Senate committee passed an amendment, significantly weakening HB 542, the Religious Liberty Act, but at least it moved the bill along to the Senate floor. Perhaps the Senate can be convinced to pass this bill from the floor without the amendment?
  • Rep. John Sytek from Salem walked out of the room for the House Executive Departments and Administration executive session, denying the committee the number of votes needed to pass the amendment to SB 155 that would have prohibited a vaccine passport.

Immediately there was push back from NH State Senator Gary Daniels:

On Friday, May 28, 2021 9:04 AM, Gary Daniels <Gary.Daniels@leg.state.nh.us> wrote:

Look at HB417. The various (policy) bills regarding the Governor’s powers have been assembled in HB417.

Now, to be sure, I defend ALL my writers and I make it clear that I do so. In fact, some who have attacked my writers come begging in asking me to stop (like those two nitwits thinking they were such BMOCs in Windham, they were figuratively crying on the floor before I stopped as they realized I had made GraniteGrok stories about them appear on Google’s front page).

So, having been challenged to “Look at HB417,” I did go fact check his words (and to defend what Steve had written that was being challenged; I’m rather prickly about this kind of challenge):

From: “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
To: j <others redacted>
Cc: Gary
Sent: 5/28/2021 12:19:43 PM
Subject: Re: Fw: Re: From today’s GraniteGrok…

Really Gary?

So how is this any different, results wise, than what we have now? Ad infinitum…

II.(a) A state of emergency shall terminate automatically [21] 30 days after its declaration unless it is renewed under the same procedures set forth in paragraph I of this section.  The governor may, by executive order, renew a declaration of a state of emergency as many times as the governor finds is necessary to protect the safety and welfare of the inhabitants of this state.

So how is this any different than what is going on right now? Especially when neither the Republican held House or Senate, when given the chance to do so, did nothing?

(c) The legislature may terminate a state of emergency or any emergency order issued thereunder by concurrent resolution adopted by a majority vote of each chamber.  The governor’s power to renew a declaration of a state of emergency shall terminate upon the adoption of a concurrent resolution under this subparagraph; provided, however, that such resolution shall not preclude the governor from declaring a new emergency for different circumstances under paragraph I of this section.

There are too many Repubs in thrall to this Socially Leftist and Constitution Ignorer to have the stones to do that – they just want Maggie the Red gone and they’ll shaft the rest of us so as to not spoil His Excellency’s chance at doing so.

And to prove that I’m not just picking on Democrats, GraniteGrok said similar things about Democrats Shurtleff and Soucy when they refused to call the Legislature back into session to terminate the State of Emergency. If they had been that serious about who got to spend the Fed COVID money sent to NH, they should have done that instead of bringing Sununu to Court.

Yeah, this “special carve-out” for “the Elected” was a “stick in my craw” moment – too often we see this favoritism of Elected Officials BY Elected Official buried into legislation:

And this, too – all of us are equal, except as Animal Farm stated, some are more equal than others:

IV.  Members of the legislature shall be exempt from any emergency orders that would infringe on their ability to travel and conduct their business as representatives of the people.

The original intent of the bills preceding this one have been defenestrated by “assembling” them into HB417.

Sorry, spouting all of that verbiage effectively changed NOTHING, Gary, from a practical standpoint that we’ve been living for over the last year.  Nothing but window dressing with a new paint job.

AND WE’RE STILL IN A STATE OF EMERGENCY!!!!!

So, who were the ones that got snookered?

-Skip
Co-Founder, co-owner
GraniteGrok.com

Nine hours later, I had not heard a rebuttal from the Senator – I thought that amount of time might have been sufficient to send one. In fact, if someone DOES want to rebut what I wrote below, be my guest!

From: “Skip” <Skip@granitegrok.com>
To: j
Cc: Gary
Sent: 5/28/2021 8:46:46 PM
Subject: Re[3]: Fw: Re: From today’s GraniteGrok…

Am I to take it, Senator Daniels, that my analysis of HB417 as written and online at 12:20 this afternoon, is correct as you have not corrected me?

Even the Useless Leader agrees (https://www.unionleader.com/news/politics/state/senate-approves-trio-of-bills-in-response-to-covid-19/article_d2aab5e6-dfc7-56af-8960-d0e9d4f36759.html):

The bill would give the governor the power to act on his own without legislative approval if the public health was “at risk.”

“Public Health trumps Everything” – still seems to hold.

EVERYTHING. That’s what he wanted…that’s what he got.

-Skip
Co-Founder, co-owner

I’m still open to someone changing my mind. Unfortunately, having been a software engineer with a bent of writing code ACTIVELY looking to see how both hackers and idiots could cause disastrous results, I view legislative bills the same way – how can someone take those words and twist them all out of shape? How can those words attempt to mollify some but provide a means to a bad ends? Or simply invite the Law of Unintended Consequences run amok?

Decision: Steve is right and the Senator is wrong. The bill just codifies what our Elected King Sununu can continue to do now – the Senate is enabling his behavior.

Now, to be honest, I like Gary Daniels and I think he’s a good guy. He just happened to challenge me and I’m almost always up for such a challenge. The moral here, however, is that:

  • We ALL have a civic duty to keep our Government accountable – everyone. These last couple of years have PROVEN that.
  • We ALL have to keep “eyes on” what is going on in Government – we can no longer allow it to operate on “auto-pilot” and believe that those in Government ONLY have our best interests at heart. Breaking News: they don’t.  Never, EVER assume that they do.
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