Articles tagged as

Gangster Gov’t

Sister Mary LaHood – No Talking in Cars

Steve MacDonald

(Originally posted Oct 11th, 2010 – Seem relevant to re-post this given that NH HB 1117 went to executive session yesterday.) Bloomberg reports that Transportation nanny Ray ‘Sister Mary’ LaHood believes that all cell phone use in motor-vehicles, including hands free, are distracting.  Well, no kidding Mr. Einstein.   Prior to the invention of the cell … Read more

Mark Fernald Needs New Material for His Income Tax Arguments

Steve MacDonald

Mark Fernald Wants an Income taxMark Fernald wants New Hampshire to have an income tax before he dies.  It appears to be one of his deepest desires.  So desperate is this need that he is willing to reuse debunked rhetoric to ensure he is not prohibited from having the chance to get one.

Yesterday, over at Windham Patch, Fernald had the income tax equivalent of a recurring rash as “Fair Share class warfare” sores rose up from the page in his opposition to CACR 13.  CACR 13 is a Sttate constitutional amendment that would ban New Hampshire from taxing personal income.  But such a prohibition for Mr. Fernald would be akin to the death of the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia to Dead Heads.  “Well now what do we do with all our free time.”  So Mr. Fernald has gone on the offensive (as in, to offend).

We have a tax system that is made by and for the top 1 percent. The households in New Hampshire with the highest incomes – the 1 percent with incomes $480,000 and up – on average pay just over 2 percent of their incomes in state and local tax. The folks in the middle, on average, pay about 6 percent. The lowest income people have the highest tax burden. They pay, on average, over 8 percent of their income in state and local tax.

I’ve been over this deception more than once, but I am more than happy to revisit it every time Mark wants to bring it up–which will be often between now and Noveber.

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A Question for NH Democrats & Unions…

Steve MacDonald

Is this the NH Democrat parties postion as well, and that of the state union, SEA, SEIU, Teamsters and others who are insisting that New Hampshire workers have no right to opt out of paying union dues just to get a job? Does the Federal government have the right to close a business or a facility in our state, and force those workers out of their employment, simply becasue they are either not unionized or have voted to de-certify the union, as is the case in South Carolina?

Ray Buckley and his faux Mea Culpa

Rick Olson

“Hypocrisy is great fodder for comedy.” ~Mo Rocca  The New Hampshire Democratic Party agreed to pony up  a $5,000 fine upon a finding of the Attorney General that the Democrats violated state law regarding its delivery of pre-recorded political message to 394 homes, presumably Republican, in House Speaker Bill O’Brien’s district on the eve of … Read more

Would You Suck Twice as Hard for Half as Much?

Steve MacDonald

I appreciate it when democrats give you the rope with which to hang their half baked ideas.  Take Mark Fernald for example.  Mr. Fernald is a sometime New Hampshire Democrat candidate for this or that, and prominent member of the left wing Granite State Fair Tax Coalition (GSFTC).  He recently (sorry, frequently) forwards  partisan, left wing economic spin, to justify his pet obsession with rising taxes and class warfare. 

This most recent email to the arm chair central planners in his fan base is just another in a string of left wing editorials that attempts to contrast democrat spending against that of our previous president. It is typical Fernald; an oranges to rotten apples comparison that uses incomplete data, wild assumptions (about Obama’s future affect in every case), misleading graphs, cherry picked data, and resulting percentages that stretch the fabric of reality so thin that you could easily pass into the alternate dimension in which Democrats and faeries dance widderershins around the deficit mound, as money appears out of nowhere to pay for whatever theirr tiny, narrow, Marxist minds can imagine.

donkey with hed up assThis particualr faerie story centers around three graphs from the Government Printing Office (GPO).  Not the fed, the treasury, or even some fruit-loop left wing think tank, but the GPO.  The GPO prints stuff, and answers to the Executive branch.  So right out of the toy-box we have to question these partisan stills, presented as they are in a partisan manner, bearing guestimated facts and assumptions, with no basis in reality any greater than anything that has ever escaped Mr. Obama’s teleprompter; you do recall all the Obama the non-partisan, deficit cutting, cost reducing, globe saving, health care giving, unifying, auto company saving, mortgage rescuing, goodness?  How about the transparent lobbyist-less,  open to ideas, new tone, we need to work together Obama?  No?  You probably remember the we won, closed door, partisan, hate those bankers, Tea Partiers are terrorists,  intimidation tactics, don’t interrupt my vacation, Arrest Ron Paul supporters, dozens of lobbyists, shadow cabinet, Attack Arizona, hunt down my enemies, anti-free speech, black panthers can scare away voters, give guns to Mexican drug lords, nohting is my fault Obama with the double action golf-club grip?  Well his printing office is the source.  Are we surprised it tries to make him look good?

So what can we glean that goes beyond the objective of showing your Republican friends that they are wrong about Obama?  How about using facts to show that those Republicans are actually right?

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How Much Is Enough? (And Other Problems With Left Wing Policy)

Steve MacDonald

How much Is EnoughWhy can’t democrats trust their own constituents to do the right thing?  Their first response to every problem is to institutionalize it with more government, typically as far up the legislative food chain as possible.  That means as far away from you as they can manage, even to the point of giving control to unelected bureaucrats you can’t punish, just to keep you from messing with it.  They entrench it in a bureaucracy, make it impossibly inefficient and expensive and then refuse to let anyone touch it ever again, while charging you more and more to maintain it.

The only reason I can think of for that kind of knee jerk behavior is that Democrats use themselves as the template for the rest of us. The left by their very nature must be selfish, insecure, inconsiderate and un-trusting. Only people so un-giving of themselves or simply incapable of volunteering their time and energy would have to mandate volunteerism and "giving" by legalizing the taking of other peoples time or property through mandates.

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Union Thuggery -Coming Soon To A State House near You.

Steve MacDonald

WI ThugsI was just thinking back to all the loose talk from the left about ending the gun ban in the New Hampshire State House.  How they imagined someone just unloading over testimony supporting same sex marriage–to use one example–kids getting cut down in the cross-fire.  And how they fell over themselves trying to scare parents into keeping their children from ever visiting the place because it was now just too dangerous.

Then I look at the way the union run leftists in Wisconsin are acting.  How they are storming the state house, climbing in through windows, and forcing people to flee for fear of their well being.  These pro-union forces are pushing against state troopers trying to get past them.  Maybe being let in by union cops.  Just because they demand the ability to collectively bargain for benefits (not wages–they still have that privilege as far as I know.)

What is perhaps more instructive is that the left in New Hampshire supports them.  I’d bet money you will not hear a peep in opposition to any of this from the state leadership of the democrat party.  Nothing about State Senators running away like spoiled children.  Nothing about the hate speech, the Hitler signs, the threats or the aggressive mob tactics and intimidation.  They support that–and by their own rules support it through their silence.

So what of it?

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Sullivan’s New Hampshire

Steve MacDonald

Sullivan's NH -Burning down the houseThe ‘Su’ in Suckly, Kathy Lawsuit’ Sullivan, has a regular editorial in the Union Leader.  I have no idea why but after reading it and taking a shower to get the brimstone smell off of me, I have to make an arbitrary decision as to whether I should comment.  Normally I do not.  Her template is the recipe for left wing baby formula and so unoriginal I could probably find it in every other paper in the country with the word New Hampshire replaced with (insert name of your state here.)  But this time she closed her ditty with the words…"They are about to destroy the New Hampshire we love."

This is red meat-bait for right wing carnivores.  It begs the obvious question, ‘"what New Hampshire do they love," they being Sullivan and the far left democrats, and history has been kind enough to provide us with an answer.

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Repeal The “Evergreed” Law

Steve MacDonald

The Evergreed law screws taxpayers. It gives automatic wage and benefit increases based on the last approved contract removing any incentive on the part of the unions to negotiate in good faith with a town or city unless it thinks or knows it can do better than the contract it already has.

This just made my head hurt – Illinois politics

Skip

Illinois – the State where famed Chicagoland politics is a corruption personified.  And not for nothing is a story of "somebody who somebody sent" with three players in playing musical political chair.  Yes, singular – chair: Someone who escaped Someone who slipped the handcuffs by refusing to sit Clueless The sordid tale of how the … Read more

Projection

Steve MacDonald

This can’t be stated often enough, particularly when the dreamers on the left imagine tragedy to excuse their second amendment positions–liberals must be afraid of gun owners because the people who think like liberals are simply too unhinged to be trusted with firearms.

Whose Jounal Is It?

Steve MacDonald

This weeks Merrimack Journal was actually the Bedford Journal. They called it the ‘New Years’ Journal, but with a few minor exceptions, everyting in it was about Bedford. The letters to the editor were from Bedford. The news and sports…Bedford.

Breaking The Addiction To Government

Steve MacDonald

Image: thesassyminx.comThe December New Hampshire labor report, period ending October 2010, is not all that remarkable.  Coos County is still suffering while overall the state is hanging in at 5.4%.  This number is still reflective of issues with the size of the labor force versus mid 2009 numbers.  We have to watch that as we head through the November and December reports into January, where holiday hiring will add to the labor force, and then most likley drop off.

What may have been the most interesting aspect of the new report however, was this paragraph from the first page.

In New Hampshire private industry GDP growth was below that of government. The current dollar change in private industry between 2008 and 2009 was almost non-existent. less than a $1 million dollar difference.  When adjusted for inflation private GDP saw a 1.5% percent decrease.  Government however (this is New Hampshire State Government) saw a 4.6% increase in current dollars.

This is how Democrat-controlled states feign growth. 

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Four Years All For Naught?

Steve MacDonald

I have just three thoughts to share for the moment; Carol had four years in a democrat majority congress–which promised to clean up the swamp, two of them with a democrat president, and I do not see any attempt by her party or by Carol herself (she is defined legislatively as a follower not a leader) to address this or anything else outside the big blue box of liberal progressive agenda items.

Revisiting Censorship In the Wake Of “Nickel And Dimed..”

Steve MacDonald

The dust up in Bedford over the Book ‘Nickel and Dimed’ continues to linger in the local news–which reminded me that back in 2009 we had a similar situation in the sleepy town of Litchfield where  comments by locals and students emerged in defense of the material on the grounds that its exclusion would constitute book banning and or violate protected free speech rights.

This was (and is), of course, total rubbish.

So I wrote at least two articles on the subject back in 2009, this one–from June 20, 2009 on the bankrupt educational-industrial culture that leads to this kind of moronic nonsense, and then a followup on censorship in general after a local ACLU lawyer felt the need to add her two cents.

What follows on the jump is my response, the article from July 5th, 2009–originally posted at NH Insider.  I believe it (and my comments in the previously mentioned post here) are equally relevant to what has transpired in Bedford over the past few weeks, and demonstrates a lack of understanding by the public (and progressives) of the differences between first amendment speech and censorship.  That this keeps coming up in the context of the public school curriculum is nothing short of ironic.

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Fun With Paul And Carol

Steve MacDonald

Anyone know if Paul ‘Sugar Daddy’ Hodes and Carol Seiu-Porter have decided to raise taxes yet?  That’s what that is you know?  If they allow any existing cuts to expire, they are raising taxes. Now I realize our liberal friends don’t see it that way.   They look at it like this.  Since 2003/2005 the … Read more

A Real Separation Of Powers

Steve MacDonald

Separation of powers is something of a throw-away phrase for the Socialist-Democrat-Progressives.  They hand it out like a comfort object to the public, a sort of well-worn teddy bear for the masses.  It is meant to remind you that no matter what they do (or did) that bear will be there to help you feel better.

So what if it is a highly regulated bear, made by dues paying  union workers, stuffed with warning labels, wearing a little red hat with a hammer and sickle on it, and maybe even an Obama T-shirt for good measure.

Separation of powers is also this idea where the three branches are divided to ensure that the tyrannical might of the federal government is divided to protect the rights of the people.  This used to work, right up until someone wrote the seventeenth amendment, and then politicized the national court system.  At that point we no longer had separation of powers just the separation of parties, except where the two parties agree; in which case we are looking at an Oligarchy by direct democracy, which is one of the shortest paths by which little Red Totalitarian-Riding hood arrives at Comrade Grandma’s house.

Why do you think both parties appear to be moving to opposite extreme’s?  Why are states rebelling against the federal government?  Because the system was broken on purpose, by progressives, who need direct democracy so that fear and intimidation can drive the polity to allow top down federal rule as the only viable solution.

So our central planning friends view separation of powers to mean separating you from their power, so they can go about the business of managing your lives, and no one has worked harder or longer to excise the power from the people than democrats, though the ruling class Neo-Cons have done plenty to help fill the picnic basket for grandma.

But there is a solution to this problem, one that can relieve the pressure of special interests, the boys club mentality, and the lack of responsiveness by the federal legislature to the state and the people.

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Some Advice From Across The Pond

Steve MacDonald

Want to better understand the relationship between public and private sector jobs, tax production and consumption, without sitting through a boring three hour lecture?  Here it is an just under six minutes from our friends in England.   Now, go explain it to your progressive friends, the ones who have been supporting all those high-paying … Read more

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