While I am not an unconditional member of the Massie fan club, I will share something that JR tweeted about him. The meme asks why he votes NO on every bill, and the answer is that he reads them. JR is also a gun club partner of Councilor Wheeler. I observed a conversation between Karen Thoman and Chris Ager last summer at 10 Water Street, and Chris mentioned that Wheeler is the only member of the executive council who actually reads the contracts. And speaking of that body and the 10/13/21 arrests, their 9/29/21 St A’s meeting being cancelled by Wheeler before the dirty money was to be voted on had to do with some protests over the fine print language. You remember, “isolate and quarantine.”
On June 18, Kevin Landrigan tweeted “the ‘public’ negotiations over a compromise in the NH state budget are a complete fiction. All the deals were cut behind closed doors as anyone can tell listening to members repeatedly saying, ‘that was part of the agreement’ aka the private bargain between both branches.” I actually had the livestream running for almost every hour of each day the Committee of Conference was meeting for the budget and can attest to Landrigan’s words. I was on the lookout for what I call “housing crap language.”
When a deal was reached between both bodies that will be on its way to the Corner Office, assuming it passes both chambers on Thursday, my reaction couldn’t have been unique. I was pleased that it excluded a new/bigger cell phone tax, included abolishing the sticker tax, and put that pesky Group 2 noise on ice (for now, at least), assuming it’s a success. It’s part of the human condition to care about what one wants with everything else being a lesser priority, but what happens when the spotlight is pointed at an unpleasant truth? Cognitive dissonance? When Nurse Terese first sounded the “central planning alarm,” I thought there might be a few things that could be fixed with a well-crafted housekeeping bill, or two or more, during LSR time this fall. Then Leah Cushman sounded the alarm. Maybe a fireman in Group 2 can tell us the maximum number of alarms that can be because the number of items Leah unearthed probably exceeds that number.
Everyone ought to look at the tweet she made after meticulously reading the budget. She replied to herself 23 times, making the thread rather long to copy and paste, so please take a look at it. If you don’t want to do that, I’ll give you an index of budget bill sections to look at or call attention to; 31-33, 71, 111, 113, 102, 130, 139, 182, 210-212, 262, 263, 305, 310, 315, 319, 355, 386, 407-409, 420, 427, 431 and 435.
I encourage everyone to carefully consider the concerns Leah has shared and keep in mind that this is also a time-sensitive matter. I expect others with greater numbers of followers and bigger name recognition to weigh in also. Let’s have some polite and productive discourse before Thursday.
