Tales from the BudComm – a disturbing issue with the Moderator

BudgetUPDATE: The name of the unregistered vote is Jeanin Onos. She is, from what I understand, going to mount a write-in candidacy.  Which, I am pleasantly pleased to say, is that if there is a Conservative in Gilford that wishes to do the same, you now have the same possibility.  We’d be mightly obliged and certainly willing to help out.

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We are now in the tail end of this year’s budget season.  Last items have been buttoned up, budgets have been finalized,  and the General Ledger (“GL”) accounts/line items at the lowest granular level that we’ve slaved over for tons of hours over the last few months have been rolled up into the aggregate NH Department of Revenue (“DRA”) MS forms lines (further reporting on that later on).  The Public Sessions, whereby the Budget Committee presents both the Town and the School District (“SD”) budgets have been presented to the townsfolk, were done middle of last month.

Have I mentioned that we are an SB2 town (of COURSE I have!)? So while we don’t have the traditional Town Meeting where everything is presented and voted on all at the same time with everyone watching everyone else to see how they voted, we do have the Deliberative Sessions for both the Town and SD and both First Sessions were held this past Tuesday (the SD’s) and last night (the Town’s) (the Second Deliberative Session is where the townsfolk vote by secret ballot).

And in listening to the opening remarks by the Moderator, Sandy McGonagle who served as the Moderator for both the School District and Town First Deliberative Sessions there was a very disturbing difference between the two First Deliberative Sessions.

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The Interviews – Week Ending 2-10-2018 [Player Added]

If you missed any of the interviews over the past week, you can get them all in less than an hour with this compilation podcast. Kimberly Morin, Ed Naile, Susan Olsen (with an additional 12 minutes), and Skip Murphy. There’s also a short “heads-up” at the end about why we need to kill HB 628. Added … Read more

Well, NH Rep Sean Morrison (R-Epping) just put himself in line for a RINO of the Week award

21 Most_Wanted NH House RepublicansSteve correctly singled out the 21 RINOs that decided that a paid Family / Medical Leave (via HB628) is a Proper Role of Government.  One of them, Sean Morrison (bottom row, second from the left (heh!  Left – it fits!) decided to visit the ‘Grok and call us out. That would be NH State Rep Sean Morrison, erstwhile “Republican”, from Epping representing Rockingham District 9; you all should be right proud of this boy for basically outing himself.

Bad move in coming to gun fight without a gun, dud.  We LIKE people like you but not for the reasons you might think.

So he left this snarky comment (along with some videos I won’t repost here):

And I thought fake news was only on the left. Hey anyone ever hear of a TAX you can opt out of? Would anyone not put 0.67% of your pay towards insurance that would give you 60% of your pay(taxed) for up to 6 weeks if their husband or wife got cancer, or their kid needed an operation? If any Republicans voted against this bill that Governor Sununu campaigned on, and Trump endorsed LAST WEEK, who’s the real RINO’s? Sincerely, Rep Sean Morrison.

Of COURSE, I decided to have a bit of fun with him:

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Guest Op-Ed taken from the Concord Monitor

NH ConstitutionBy noted attorneys, Gilles Bissonnette (ACLU) and Mark Sisti (defense attorney).  If only our Legislators actually read and adhered to both the Letter and the Spirit of our Constitutions….sigh….this piece of legislation, “Marsey’s Law”, would have been ITL’d (Inexpedient to Legislate) right from the get-go (reformatted, emphasis mine):

On Tuesday, the New Hampshire Senate held a hearing on Marsy’s Law, a proposed amendment that would add certain victims’ rights to the New Hampshire Constitution. Throughout the hearing, proponents of the amendment argued for the need to provide victims “equal rights” to that of the accused in state criminal prosecutions. This notion of “equal rights” is a seductive appeal to one’s sense of fairness. But it is a misnomer that misunderstands how the New Hampshire Constitution works. The state provides constitutional rights to the accused in a criminal proceeding because the state is attempting to deprive the accused – not the victim – of life, liberty and property.

New Hampshire’s founders were aware of the unparalleled power of state government to imprison or even execute its citizens. As a result, in 1784 – five years before the United States Constitution was even established – they provided in the New Hampshire Constitution a Bill of Rights for those accused of crimes as a necessary safeguard against government abuse. This New Hampshire Bill of Rights even, in some areas, provides the accused with greater rights than those provided under the federal Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution.

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Quick Thought – Government generally hates competition

MonopolyManJust like I railed on NH State Rep Sean Morrison here, a quick thought on NH’s bureaucrats disliking competition in the “wine & spirits” marketplace as they seek to stifle any competition to their Power.  A Snippet (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Some wine lovers who look forward to getting new vintages in the mail would be affected if lawmakers approve a bill that would remove “retailers” from the list of those who are allowed to ship wine into the state. Joseph Mollica, chairman of the New Hampshire Liquor Commission, said the change is aimed at “brick-and-mortar” sellers in other states who compete with state liquor stores and other stores selling wine. “A winery that sells wine isn’t a retailer. A wine club that sells wine isn’t a retailer. But a large big-box store is a retailer,” he said Monday.

The bill, Senate Bill 353, would alter the existing law by removing the word “retailer” from the list of out-of-state groups that can get licenses to directly ship wine into New Hampshire, impacting customers who order wine by mail. In testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee last month, Mollica said the bill would affect “about 81” of 1,174 institutions that have the licenses, or about 7 percent of the license holders. But those 7 percent of license holders account for about one-quarter of the annual $11.3 million of “direct ship” sales in the state.

“We are looking to protect our retailers and tax structure,” Mollica told the committee, which is expected to vote on the bill soon.

My Response to this effort to keep a captive marketplace within “their fence”:

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Noteable Quote – Prof. Don Boudreaux

The banner headline in the print edition of today’s Wall Street Journal would have been more revealing and no less accurate had it stopped after the first three words. (H/T: Cafe Hayek)

Reciprocating Disagreement

Licenses and IDsIn New Hampshire, there is a so-called right of a non-resident to vote in our state, while keeping an out-of-state driver’s license. That unconstitutional right, Guare v. NH, has never been established in any law enacted by the NH Legislature, as has been the case with the law regarding reciprocating agreements for driver’s licenses.

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Obama Admin Blocked Efforts to Dismantle Drug Operations Funding Terrorism

Hezbollah (apparently) gets a lot of money from drug running operations run by Lebanese Hezbollah outfits in Latin America. But that’s not the most surprising thing in this report. The latest announcement comes on the heels of President Donald Trump’s decision to pass tough sanctions against Hezbollah. The sanctions are aimed at businesses in Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Liberia, which the … Read more

Donna Green Resigns From Timberlane School Board…

PRESS RELEASE

February 8, 2018, 11 pm  Sandown, NH
GREEN RESIGNS FROM TIMBERLANE BOARD OVER DOBSON NO TRESPASS

For immediate release:

The following is Donna Green’s statement following her resignation from the Timberlane Regional School Board on Thursday night, Feb. 8. after a meeting in which the board failed to rescind the no trespass order against Maxann Dobson, Timberlane school board candidate from Plaistow.

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Climate Change, Climate Change, Climate Change – is there nothing we can’t blame it on?

Cape Town South AfricaThere is a water crisis going on in Cape Town, South Africa right now – they are expecting to run out of potable water in this city of 4 million people rather soon (a few months) and the Concord Monitor is both wringing its hands and bunching up its panties over it.  Given the headline of this post, you can quickly devine what it believes the root cause it. They actually say what they are but then quickly shift to their ideological casting:

…There are many factors that contributed to the crisis in Cape Town beyond the drought, such as outdated water infrastructure, and poor population planning and crisis management. And it’s not like the whole mess came out of nowhere. Baker cited this April 26, 1990, headline in the Cape Times as proof: “City will run out of water ‘in 17 years.’ ” The math may have been off, but the warning was clearly not taken as seriously as it should have been. Now 4 million people find themselves preparing for a worst-case scenario scheduled to arrive on May 11.

Cape Town’s lesson for a world living under the increasing strain of climate change is this: waiting for crises to move from the horizon to the front door before acting is an expensive and potentially catastrophic failure of government.

Sadly, that is too often the way in this short-sighted world, from Concord to Washington, D.C., to Cape Town, South Africa.

And this is TOTAL nonsense, 

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These 21 New Hampshire House Republicans Don’t Just Want an Income Tax, They Saved It.

21 Most_Wanted NH House RepublicansThe Commerce Committee report on HB 628 was inexpedient to Legislate. Kill the bill, they said. We don’t want to add dozens of bureaucrats and a mechanism to tax income in New Hampshire. But the 21 Republicans pictured above voted against the committee report. They saved the Income-tax built into the legislation. Without their “support” this tax is dead.

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The “Uber” pay gap? The feminists aren’t going to like the answer

Uber pay gapFrom a study “The Gender Earnings Gap in the Gig Economy: Evidence From Over a Million Rideshare Drivers.”, the folks at Freakonomics Radio did an interview with the authors (RE: “…The paper was written by five economists — two who are employed by Uber; two Stanford professors; and one researcher who’s been on Freakonomics Radio several times: John List, who’s chairman of the University of Chicago economics department, and he moonlights as head of the ubernomics team at Uber.”)

The Pay Gap has been debunked all kinds of times – that 77% is merely a talking point by lazy Leftists.  In fact, studies show that women now out-income males coming out of college as long as they are in the same industries (and studies show that women often choose lower much lower paying careers than men).  But that’s not the difference here as an Uber driver – I guess that militant Feminists might just chalk it up to another instance of “toxic masculinity” because the male drivers don’t drive like female ones.  From the transcript, a fascinating story why men make about 7% more than women:

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Tales from the BudComm, sorta sideways, – Government Worker Pension plan

pensions

This snippet from the UL caught my eye as we on the BudComm saw (and heard) that retirement costs are skyrocketing from almost every department head lamenting its impact on their budgets, especially as the State broke its “promise” to help local towns and cities pay the costs that go into the State wide pension plan (which is underfunded by $5-6 BILLION dollars) (reformatted, emphasis mine):

The House narrowly defeated a bill sponsored by Rep. Renny Cushing, D-Hampton, to restore a 15 percent state contribution to municipalities for the retirement cost of local police, firefighters and teachers. HB 413 failed in the January session of the House by a vote of 172-166, but was brought up for reconsideration on Thursday, and failed again, 171-170.

“As part of the budgeting process, payment of a percent of retirement payments was discussed and dismissed as an uncontrollable cost to the state,” according to Rep. J. Tracy Emerick, R-Hampton. The state ended its annual contributions to municipal retirement funds 10 years ago, with a contribution of about $50 million to municipalities in the last year of the program.

As I said last night, all of us taxpayers should be downright tired and disgusted with all of the politico talk of up-shifting and down-shifting of costs between the

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Just thought I’d throw this out there: Gay marriage is no longer in Bermuda

The British territory of Bermuda has become the first jurisdiction to roll back same-sex marriage, less than one year after the unions were legalized by the socially conservative island’s supreme court. Governor John Rankin signed the Domestic Partnership Act into law Wednesday reversing the rights of same-sex partners to wed. The legislation allows any couple to enter into … Read more

Steve Negron Has Decisive Victory in Hopkinton GOP Straw Poll

steve-negron-Image Credit - WMUR
Steve Negron-Image Credit – WMUR

The Negron campaign just sent out a press release regarding Republican Congressional Candidate Steve Negron’s Straw poll victory last night in Hopkinton, New Hampshire.

A new or newly reorganized Republican town committee in Hopkinton had “GOP” candidates or their representatives by (for the Republican Primary to challenge Ann Kuster in NH CD-2) to address the attendees who then voted in a Straw Poll.

Steve Negron won, Lynne Blankenbecker came in second, and Stewart Levenson, who is from Hopkinton, came in last.

Here’s the Press Release

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Do Modern Democrats Vote for Anything That Will Make Government Smaller?

governmentDecriminalizing marijuana sounds like is a liberty issue. Not so for Democrats.

Addressing the opioid epidemic is sold as an issue of compassion, but to the professional left, it is an opportunity.

Sex trafficking, repackaged and sold as a matter of freedom under the banner of legalized prostitution is not about freedom at all.

And the Progressive obsession with open borders and illegal immigration has nothing whatsoever to do with compassion, concern, or improving the life and lot of others.

In each and every instance, this is about power and money and growing the size and scope of government.

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