Most of us have at least a rudimentary familiarity with yoga, either as a practitioner or someone who knows one. You can confirm that lots of poses are named after animals. To all Granite State yogis and yoginis, I present the “Hilliard Position.” Stay with me here.
In the recent Ortolano vs. City of Nashua et al. RTK case, Attorney Hilliard was the legal big gun hired by Attorney Bolton at nearly $1/2M to do his own job. Hilliard played “first chair,” and the “Hilliard Position” does indeed involve a chair, but specifically a wooden armchair. It is the posture that I observed him engaging in for cumulatively countless hours and minutes, laying in wait to say “objection” as many times per minute as a football ref blows the whistle. He could now probably benefit from an appointment with Tom Lanzara’s father or one of his siblings in their family of Chiropractors, but just humor me with the picture in your mind. Hilliard has both hands grasping the front ends of the armrests with his elbows pointing at the ceiling and his tush behind a few inches off the seat, and his spine at about a 45-degree angle from the floor.
With that image in mind, I can picture Attorney Lehmann already doing it now because of what I did and the first of two action items I am proposing. Again, stay with me on this. The Senate Judiciary Committee essentially “gave the Live Free or Die state the finger” in giving the RTK tax (HB 1002) their unanimous OTP blessing. Shame on them! My disappointment in Senators Gannon and Abbas and Committee Chair Carson is heartbreaking. Because of what Attorney Lehmann said on 3/13/24, 91A only applies to government bodies and quorums of them, I emailed him with a new RTK request. It’s for emails to the Senate Judiciary (and quorums of it) and the whole Senate (and quorums of it) from the following list of senders:
NH Municipal Association, including anyone doing its bidding
City of Nashua, including all current and former staff*
Lobbyists and lobbying groups working for the City of Nashua
Nashua’s 27 state reps plus Rosenwald
All House Judiciary members
Karen Karwocki and Jennifer Foor, both House Judiciary staffers
All sponsors of HB 1002
Governor Sununu and his staff*
AG Formella and his staff*
*Staff includes all elected, appointed and hired positions.
If you, the reader, live in a community “in RTK distress,” please model your own email to Attorney Lehmann after mine, but customized appropriately. RTK distress would include communities that have reps that voted the wrong way on HB 1002, such as Windham and Rochester. Yeah, Senator Gray and Regina need to hear from YOU!
While Gannon, Abbas, and “Commander Sharon” need to be shamed and primaried, a separate discussion is in order, but let’s move on to the other action item, which is an all-hands-on-deck one.
It’s to email YOUR senator and get people you know outside of the Grok Faithful to email theirs, no matter who it is. If it’s one of the Naughty Three mentioned here or Tim Lang (a supporter of this awful bill), politely ask them to change their minds. If it’s one of the ten members of the enemy camp, remind them that they work for you, especially if it’s Attorney Twitley, who’s now seeking higher office (still wanting to WORK FOR YOU). That leaves ten other Rs out of the 24. Be polite and use one or more of the many talking points on why HB 1002 is a bad bill. Refer to personal experience, if applicable. If you need help with that, it’s available in the form of many resources, including, but not limited to, older articles, testimonies in committee hearings on January 17 (House Judiciary) and April 9 (Senate Judiciary), or RTK guru Laurie Ortolano’s page.
Laurie was a recent guest on Lumberjack Logic and Speaking with the Senator.
And yes, Kevin is one of the ten other Rs that I referenced, and I’m aware that he is listed as a cosponsor, which he addresses in his show with Laurie. While I don’t agree with his philosophy on cosponsorship, it is what it is and I’ll leave it at that.
I will finish by providing some more tools for encouraging people outside the echo chamber to use them. The word “spoonfeeding” has a derogatory sound to it, so let’s call it a “job aid” at NH dot gov. If people in your sphere of influence don’t know who their senator is, they are to go to NH dot gov and hover over the word GOVERNMENT and click on “who is my legislator?” A map of NH will appear, and they can follow the directions. If you know where they live, just bookmark this link from the Senate homepage.
A drop-down menu with every town and city will appear, and you can look it up yourself, tell them who it is, and provide their email addresses. If you’re using a phone, you can figure out how to do it that way. I give your intelligence the benefit of the doubt. You are, after all, still reading this.
