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New Hampshire

The New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Instutite Doesn’t Like CACR 6 or CACR 13

Why would we give a damn what Jeff McLynch–Executive Director of the New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute–thinks about Republican efforts to push CACR 6 and CACR 13?  It’s a great question.

CACR 6  is a constitutional amendment that would require a 3/5 vote of the legislature to pass any new taxes.  CACR 13 would change the state constitution to prohibit a personal income tax.

Jeff McLynch is “concerned, but Jeff McLynch is a Democrat, the former State Policy Director at the Soros/left wing funded Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)–which pushed for an income tax in the Granite state (see also here), and Jeff is also an avid Obama supporter.

The New Hampshire Fiscal Policy Institute he runs is the New Hampshire chapter of the State Fiscal Analysis Initiative, which is a state by state project of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).  CBPP is a left wing group that promotes the Democrat parties social and economic justice agenda through budget based think tanks and policy organizations with support from the cranky Progressives over at the Bookings Institute and deep pocketed left wing foundations like Ford, Rockefeller and George Soros’ Open Society Institute. So Jeff isn’t working too far out of his known circle of “friends.”

So if you have not yet connected the dots, NHFPI looks all smart and sophisticated but it is really just another socialist/Democrat front group, using the cover of  a welfare-state based (we’re the ones who really care) tax-and-spend-budget policy agenda (Social and Economic Justice) to advocate for the progressive creep of bigger government and the higher and broader revenue streams needed to fund it.

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Remembering Democrat Rule Part 2

If New Hampshire Democrats were ever again allowed to run the State legislature we already know the first thing they would do.  They would overestimate revenue to justify spending for the purpose of driving us into a broad based tax.  They did it during a recession, with unemployment skyrocketing, embarking on one of the most massive modern day expansions of New Hampshire state government.  What’s to stop them doing it again under any other condition?  Republicans.  Barring that, nothing.  It’s who they are.

Spending was and always is the Democrats first priority and Governor Lynch’s most recent budget was just another example.  Even without a Democrat legislature he wanted to spend 4.731 billion on General and Education funds, almost 300 million more than the current Republican Budget; a budget 6% less than that of Governor Lynch; a Republican budget that is almost exactly in line with actual revenue.  (That means it spent what they estimated they would take in.)

But left unchecked by Republicans Democrat Governor Lynch would have got his budget and then some, and added another 300 million dollar hole that the taxpayers of New Hampshire would have had to fill because there wasn’t another $300 million plus to spend without raising some more taxes in this lousy economy.

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New Hampshire vs. European Union: We win.

Damn. I can’t resist sending this article along. Forbes magazine is just too good. The quote that follows is from “”Let’s Face the Facts: Greece is Cooked, Along With Merkel.” Interestingly, it explains why New Hampshire—with the GOP super-majorities under the extraordinary effective leadership of Speaker Bill O’Brien—is going to become “the little state that can…be … Read more

Morse Code – It’s A Double Dip In Oyster River

James Morse - Bnagor Daily News Seth Koenig Photo credit“Sometimes, life throws you some curves.”  That was the response “retiring” Portland Maine School District Superintendent Dr. James Morse gave to the press and the public after announcing that he had taken a job as the Superintendent of the Oyster River Cooperative district in New Hampshire.

“Sometimes, life throws you some curves.”

But we can read the stitches.  One of those stitches indicates that Mr. Morse was one of 15 applicants for the job.  (Applicant: A person who applies, as for a job.) So how much of a curve ball is it when you announce you are “retiring” (after 32 years in the public education industrial complex), and then get a job for which you applied?

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Modern ‘Episcopal’ Family

Shield_of_the_US_Episcopal_Church.svgNew Hampshire Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson is retiring.  His successor was chosen from these three candidates.

William W. Rich, senior associate rector for Christian Formation at Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston; A Homosexual man married to a man.

Penelope Maud Bridges, rector of St. Francis Episcopal Church in Great Falls, Va.:A divorced woman.

Rev. A. Robert Hirschfeld, 50, of Grace Church in Amherst (MA): A Heterosexual man.

Not your Fathers Episcopal Church anymore is it?  Not even when they choose the heterosexual guy.

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Martha Fuller Clark Running for NH Senate District 21

Happy news that Amanda Merrill is not running again for the New Hampshire Senate.  In her stead, former Merrill clone–or perhaps I have that reversed–Martha Fuller “brush” Clark, will run to fill the seat.  Merrill and Clarke are both EMILY’s list support alums.  They are hewed from the same bit of socialist flotsam, with Clark … Read more

‘Properties’ of Marriage

Wedding Rings- does the state have an interest?Marriage is always a great topic to visit in New Hampshire. It irritates so many people on so many sides. But if we ever put it to a vote of citizens, New Hampshire would join the ranks of every other state to define “marriage” as a union between one man and one woman. Which is why the left would never want to allow that. And bigotry or inequality has nothing to do with it. And it certainly has nothing to do with love.

Love, as it turns out, is not a state’s interest. There is no ministry of love. No state department of love. No state director of love. And no one in their right mind would want the State organizing, defining, taxing or regulating it. Love is not a state’s interest.

And the idea that you “can’t help who you fall in love with” is total rubbish. Of course, you can. I haven’t fallen in love with anyone since I got married 18 years ago unless I count falling more in love with my wife. People fall in and out of love all the time.  They can help it. So what the gay marriage lobby means to suggest by this is that sex is love and that you can’t help who whom you want to have sex. But neither of those things is true either.

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Slippery Slope…?

Sylvia Larsen is making a slippery slope argument against the New Hampshire Senate’s passage of a bill that would make causing the death of an unborn child murder. Senate Minority Leader Sen. Sylvia Larsen, D-Concord, joined other Democrats in criticizing Forsythe’s bill. “I think it establishes a bad precedent. It establishes a non-scientific basis for … Read more

99-0

The smartest man in any room can’t seem to put his name on a budget anyone will vote for.  This years nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue is worse than the last–it even has the distinction of being discarded with more no votes than last years budget nighmare.  99-0. The Senate torpedoed his last budget 97-0 in May 2011, … Read more

Do Retired School Superintendents Ever Really Retire?

Starting in July of 2012, Mr. Irwin Sussman will begin his new job as the Superintendent of SAU#43 ( Croydon-Newport), a not so curious turn of events for a man who recently “retired” after 40 years working in public education in New York State.  (Last week, you may recall, we introduced you to Robert Sullivan.  He retired as the Super in Middleboro MA, and is collecting $70-80K from the State of Massachusetts, while currently running SAU#21 in New Hampshire.)

Mr. Sussman was a teacher, school principal, and finally a superintendent, working in Lake Luzerne NY, when he “felt it was time” to retire…

After two decades at the Hadley-Luzerne Central School District, and the last eight years as the superintendent, Irwin Sussman told the board last week he will retire at the end of the school year.

Sussman, who turns 64 next month, will work his last day on June 30. His career in education spans 40 years.
“I feel that it’s that time,” said Sussman, who was the high school principal for about 11 years before he became the superintendent in January 2003.
Wait.  Didn’t I just say he was starting a new job in Croydon-Newport this July?

NH Has a Business Finance Authority

  Bill Walker has a great article over at Bedford Patch on the New Hampshire Business Fiance Authority. According to the first page of the 2011 Annual Report, the BFA has transferred over 1.4 billion dollars from we lazy, undeserving taxpayers (and all holders of dollar balances) to those who truly earned the money (by … Read more

New Hampshire Gets Another “Passing Grade”

Courtesy of The Blaze.com. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting entrepreneurship, and Thumbtack.com have released a study ranking the “least” and “most” business-friendly states in the U.S. Idaho, Texas, Oklahoma, and Utah all got an A +.   New Hampshire got an ‘A.’  The only respectable grade in the Northeast. (Notice … Read more

Please Keep Your Hands Off My Speech

Political speech is a popular subject these past few days, and seeing as that is what we do here, it should be.  Any slight change about what is defined as paid speech could make what we do very difficult to define financially, and more cumbersome to execute.  Take for example the value of web space or the cost of remote equipment used to broadcast “speech.”  If we are not cautious, these and many other things might become “expenses” for “Speech hobbyists,” like those at GraniteGrok, that would require us to register and file with the Secretary of State.  And failing to do so might invite action from the Attorney General.

So while the goal of speech related legislation may be to identify fly-by-night political groups who gang rape your constituents mail-boxes with lies and hate, the potential collateral damage is much too great.  People forget that lies and hate are protected by the first amendment.  We should have other laws for dealing with that (and not the lefts hate speech laws, a topic for a different post).   Any speech related legislation should not define, value, or in any way complicate the act of speech itself; when you meddle with political speech you always risk placing a gag on it and at the very least risk handing someone else the gag to be applied later.

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Smokes and Mirrors – What’s Up With Tobacco Taxes?

smoking - what about the tobacco taxes in New HampshireAll across the the Granite State Democrats have gathered in their secret underground lairs.  The unthinkable has happened.  Tobacco revenues were up last month.   (Audible Gasp!).  That’s right.  Revenues beat estimates.

This is, of course, a double edged sword for the liberal left.   When their grotesque estimates (overall) were forever coming in under target, how many times did they say, “it’s just one month, wait and see.  Give it time, they’ll come around.  We’re not that far off.” No such quarter for Republicans. ( Typical hypocrats.)   At the ugly end of the 2007 to 2010 Democrat “experiment” they were off by about a billion dollars which might suggest they have no clue what they are doing.

But when the Republican’s estimated revenues for their budget the Democrats cried and whined anyway as if they were suddenly experts; the religious left even gathered to pray for more spending.  I’m not kidding.  They prayed for more spending.  The left claimed repeatedly that Republican estimates were purposefully low to punish people.  That is what the left said.

But the overall estimates are close.  Very close.  This means the Democrats were wrong about Republicans underestimating revenue on purpose, which means they were themselves wrong about estimates again (no surprise there).  With revenue nearly in line with spending, bitching about it makes them look petty and just reminds everyone what wretched stewards they were of our tax dollars.

So left hanging without an economic axe to grind they have bet their rhetorical money on the cigarette tax cut.  But they may have lost that bet as well.

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Howard Dilworth – CNHT Vice Chairman

(Picked up and cross posted from CNHT) For those of you who have been asking about our Vice Chair, Howard Dilworth, we have some news… As you may know, our long time Director and friend at CNHT, Howard Dilworth, has recently had some serious medical issues, and was, for a time, in an induced comma … Read more

The Complete Gaia Comment Stream

New Hampshire Public Employee Gaia managed to read, consume, and then comment at the Concord Monitor’s web site some 1200 times in just three years, more often than not during office hours. (Just to clarify this lastpoint, a super majority of time during office hours.) We could guess that they were doing it during one … Read more

New Hampshire Bureaucrats Behaving Badly? Introducing GrokWatch

No one respects found money, and there is nothing more abundantly “found” in its appearance than the millions and billions bilked from taxpayers every year to “run state and local government.”

In the midst of that relationship, between producers and their wallets, are the hordes of bureaucrats, too many of whom are taking advantage of every opportunity to justify their existence while wasting millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.  You know who you are and we know there is at least one other person in New Hampshire who knows as well, and wishes you’d stop it.

So we’re introducing GrokWatch.  Our goal?   To identify and investigate cases of New Hampshire Bureaucrats Behaving Badly and then announce awards of shame for the worst cases…but we need your help.

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Concord Monitor Wont Cover it, But They’ll help Cover It up.

There is Free Press and then there is Free Speech.  And then there is The Concord Monitor.  The Concord Monitor would like you to believe that it is a defender of both Free Press and Free Speech.   But if that were true, they would not be deleting comments that include links to posts at GraniteGrok.  … Read more

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