NEW HAMPSHIRE makes Presidents. The way it’s done was in full view last weekend, when 16 Republican hopefuls pressed into the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nashua, for two days of Q&A and coffee huddles with local voters. It was democracy at its best.

Since 1952, winning the presidency almost always starts with a win in the New Hampshire primary, the first in the nation by law. In the months ahead, thousands of New Hampshire voters will flock to bars, diners, neighbors’ homes, and packed gatherings like the Nashua event to size up candidates. They will know more about the candidates than anyone else in America. Last weekend they heard that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker buys his shirts at Kohl’s and former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina started out as an office temp and lost a daughter to addiction.

Here’s what came out of it:

First, there will be no Jeb Bush coronation. Though the former Florida governor (son of one President, brother of another) is leading in the polls, it’s not by much. “No one’s giving it to me,” Bush said. There was less enthusiasm for Bush than his closest rival in the polls, Walker.

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UPDATE:  I knew I forgot something – from the NH Constitution:

[Art.] 10. [Right of Revolution.] Government being instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security, of the whole community, and not for the private interest or emolument of any one man, family, or class of men; …

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Crony Capitalism – the combination of Big Government and Big Business cooperating to use taxpayers as a Piggy Bank.  Both of these gentleman showed us in their Op-Ed in the Union Leader that they possess an entitlement outlook that NH taxpayers should be expected to shoulder their advertising budget for them (entire Op-Ed after the jump) even with their own personal successes:

Rusty McLear is co-owner and president of Mill Falls at the Lake in Meredith. Alex Ray is owner and founder of The Common Man family of restaurants. Together, they are the principals of Granite State Hospitality, the company building the new state welcome centers on I-93 in Hooksett.

These are not small operations by anyone’s view.  So why should we (just as with Les Otten’s attempted claim on $28 Million for his Balsam Boondogle project) taxpayers fund their operations – as rent-seeking (seeking a profit and/or preferred treatment from Government)is ALSO part of the definition of Crony Capitalism?   McLear and Ray actually make the case against doing so in their own words:

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Who owns your kids – you or the Education system?  I’ve blogged about this more and more, it seems, as more stuff keeps popping up.  This latest one surrounds what Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education said upon the news that up to 184,000 kids in New York will not be taking the standardized tests mandated by Government for school kids to take under the No Child Left Behind Act (reformatted, emphasis mine):

Under No Child Left Behind, at least 95 percent of students in a state must take annual standardized tests in reading and math from grades 3-8. Until now, the federal government has never had to contemplate enforcing that regulation, but a growing parent-led boycott effort is changing things. Now, in many states, thousands of parents who oppose new Common Core-aligned tests or simply oppose testing in general are yanking their children out of exams. In New York, activists claim over 175,000 students are refusing to take the state’s new standardized English tests, a figure that would put the state on pace to miss the 95 percent threshold.

Gosh – there seems to be a civil rights movement growing against the Federal Government’s efforts to take over from local education, doesn’t it?  And certainly here in NH, the Department of Education collectivists are showing their bootlicking tendencies in showing that what ever Washington orders, they will comply because MONEY!  And, truth be told, ideology – that Government SHOULD be in control and the Freedom to choose by parents must be verboten.

As for Duncan, what was his threat against this rebel rabble?  Well, government MUST step in against the parents:

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Last year, while everyone was making important and necessary noise about the Veterans Administration Wait-List scandal, a separate Inspector General’s report was not getting any press at all. This separate investigation revealed that the V.A. medical center in Tomah, Wisconsin had been prescribing, in some cases, lethal doses of pain killers

M.D. Kittle at Wisconsin Watchdog has been reporting on this story as well as its relation to the dismissal of Baldwin’s Deputy State Director Marquette Baylor.

Baylor was let go after investigative reports broke in early January about the Tomah V.A. medical center’s pain-killer prescribing practices, now alleged to have led to the deaths of three veterans.

Baldwin’s office, according to reports, did nothing with an inspector general’s report last year detailing the concerns, and refused to act when a whistleblower reportedly begged Baldwin’s office to do something.

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Wisconsin’s Shame: ‘I Thought It Was a Home Invasion’ by David French of National Review,  is the most frightening story I’ve read in a very long time.  I encourage all to read it.  It tells of the true stories, still unfolding, about how laws and the state were/are used to bludgeon citizens, political enemies, destroying their lives and through all of it had to remain silent.  Below are a few excerpts (any and all emphasis mine).

Cindy Archer, one of the lead architects of Wisconsin’s Act 10 … it limited public-employee benefits and altered collective-bargaining rules for public-employee unions — was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking.

She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram.
…
“I told him this was my house and I could do what I wanted.” Wrong thing to say. “This made the agent in charge furious. He towered over me with his finger in my face and yelled like a drill sergeant that I either do it his way or he would handcuff me.”

They wouldn’t let her speak to a lawyer.
…

“It’s a matter of life or death.”
That was the first thought of “Anne” (not her real name). Someone was pounding at her front door.

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