Support for the Keene tank seems to be...tanking. From the UL:
Thanks, but no tanks. That's what some residents are saying in opposition to a city plan to purchase an armored vehicle for emergency response.
An outcry resulted after the City Council accepted a $285,933 Homeland Security grant in December - without a public hearing - to buy a LENCO BearCat Special Missions armored vehicle.
Transportation officials are looking to lawmakers to fill in some gaps, with a 10-year plan an estimated $1.33 billion short on revenue and no funding source identified for a critical Interstate 93 widening project.
Fill in some gaps? Now that's an understatement.
There was talk of bringing back some of the revenue streams eliminated by the current legislature, but:
House Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt says those revenue sources are off the table for his caucus. And before transportation concerns can even be addressed, Bettencourt said fiscal discipline must return to the state's highway fund instead of being "a piggy bank for budget writers."
A RESOLUTION urging the United States Department of Health and Human Services to rescind its rule requiring health plans to provide sterilizations and contraceptives.
SPONSORS: Rep. Bettencourt, Rock 4; Rep. O'Brien, Hills 4; Rep. Baldasaro, Rock 3; Rep. Ulery, Hills 27
Back on February 4, House Majority Leader DJ Bettencourt tweeted
"GOP House Agenda '12: Focuses squarely on getting the 38,000 of our friends and neighbors who remain unemployed back to work."
Town meeting is mere weeks away. Soon we'll be scrutinizing our town reports, getting geared up to discuss the important issues of our towns. Over the last few years, I've fallen in love with town reports. (I can practically hear the eyes rolling)
It's true. The history of how our towns have evolved is in those town reports.
Residents in the town of Mont Vernon will soon vote whether to change the controversial name of a pond.
The small pond in Carleton Park near the middle of town is known as Jew Pond. Town officials said the name dates back to the 1920s, and it was named because of the hotel that once stood adjacent to it.
"The proprietors of the hotel were Jewish," said Jack Esposito, chairman of the board of selectmen.
It's an underappreciated album from 1968. Kooper was in the Blues Project and wanted a horn section - other band members didn't.
The sound only lasted for the one album. The group threw Kooper out and brought in David Clayton Thomas for the next record, and they did much better commercially and (IMO) went flat.
But Child is a wonder. Look at the song writers - Harry Nilsson, Tim Buckley, Randy Newman, Carole King. Nobody knew them then! Except Kooper, I suppose.
(A win next Tuesday would make how many Special Election victories for the Blue Team? How many for those that oppose The O'Brien agenda. - promoted by Mike Hoefer)
There is a special election for NH House next Tuesday, in Manchester's Ward 3. Peter Sullivan is the Democratic candidate, running against a Tea Stater. It is very important that we win this race; this is the seat vacated by Mike Brunelle when he moved to Pennsylvania. So, it has a lot of recent history, as Bill O'Brien and DJ Bettencourt wanted to expel Mike.
Peter has served in the House before; he was an original Obama supporter, is a very hard worker, and will be a great rep. If you live on Ward 3, please vote. If you know anyone in Ward 3, ask them to vote.
(Can't wait to call you Congresswoman Kuster! - promoted by Mike Hoefer)
For the past 25 years as an adoption attorney, I have witnessed the extraordinary courage and compassion of women - from age 14 to 40 - facing unplanned pregnancy. Not once did I believe that the government should interfere with their personal and private decision. In fact, I believe in less government interference in people's personal lives, including whom to marry, when and whether to bear a child and how to raise kind and compassionate children.
But now, Congressman Charlie Bass and N.H. House Speaker Bill O'Brien want to deny access to family planning and impose their own religious beliefs on our most private and personal family decisions. For over a decade, health insurers in New Hampshire have included family planning in our health care coverage, including prescription birth control pills and the accompanying physician visits. For over a decade, no one has raised any objection to this provision.
The truth is that contraception saves lives, prevents unplanned pregnancies, improves outcomes for children and reduces the number of abortions. As an adoption attorney, I know firsthand how difficult and how private these choices are for New Hampshire women. Now, thanks to health care reform, women across the country with private health insurance have access to family planning, including birth control, without additional expense to their family budget. Women will make their own private decisions about when and whether to raise a child and children will be raised in loving, supportive families. Everyone wins.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "99% of all sexually experienced women have used some method of contraception." Congressman Bass and Speaker O'Brien partnering up to repeal the birth control coverage benefit will roll back one of the biggest advancements for women's health under the guise of respecting religious freedom. No one-not Congressman Bass nor Speaker O'Brien-should be able to pick and choose the health care women in New Hampshire can access under their private health insurance coverage.
I stand with the majority of Americans who believe that women will make the right choice for their families and everyone will win.
Click here to join me in standing up for women's access to affordable birth control.
Say someone was thinking about putting together a "Top 10 Crazy things that have happened in NH since 2010" list... What would you nominiate to be on that list?
State Milita? Brunelle Brewhaha? Mass Border Warning Signs?
Use the comments to nominate and up rate the comment you think should make the top 10, you know just in case someone wants to do something with it.
Two hundred years ago next month, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry--signatory to the Declaration of Independence and future Vice President--had an idea. The idea was that, rather than drawing electoral districts to represent communities, districts could be drawn to maximize his party's chances of winning more of them. He did that, and the Boston Gazzette described the phenomenon--Gerrymandering--with a visual aide:
Observations about the proposed new NH Executive Council district map (by Rep. Lucy Weber, I'm told) led to a follow-up by Granite State Progress:
Full size of this image:http://static.ow.ly/photos/ori... (h/t Caitlin Rollo)
... O'Brien declared that gay couples are "seeking to destroy the very society that we have." He said they are seeking "an ever-growing government that has to compensate for the damage that they would do to our families."
He referred to the period since the 2009 legalization of gay marriage in New Hampshire as "the age of loss of values and loss of common sense."
... He talked about gay couples bringing their "private behavior and choices" (read sex) "to the public square."
He referred to gay marriage as among recent "attacks" on New Hampshire families.
When you hear such ugly language from protesters, it's easy to dismiss it as out-of-touch hyperbole. But coming from the powerful leader of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, it is something else entirely.
Read O'Brien's words closely and consider what he's really saying: The couples - nearly 2,000 to date - who have taken advantage of New Hampshire's gay marriage law are out to "destroy" society. Their marriages represent a "lack of values" and "lack of common sense." Their love and commitment are somehow (how?) a danger to their children and the children of straight couples.
And, really, it's not just gay couples and gay parents swept up into O'Brien's apocalyptic rhetoric. Surely it would not be far-fetched for a single parent - an unmarried father or a divorced mother or a single adoptive parent - to feel insulted and worried by a calculus that says only certain types of families are legitimate and worthy of the government's approval.
The people O'Brien is so casually insulting are our friends and neighbors, our sons and daughters - and their sons and daughters. More important, they are O'Brien's constituents.
For a leading state politician to conjure two classes of citizens - those with proper families and those who would "destroy" society not through violence but through a pledge of love and monogamy - is breathtaking.
(Humorous Seinfeld reference in this otherwise humorless effort to kill the lunch break - promoted by Mike Hoefer)
Hello Blue Hampshire community, I'm Joaquin Guerra with Change Nation, a project of the Campaign for Community Change. On Friday, we launched a campaign against Rep. Hoell's bill that would repeal lunch breaks for NH workers. Here's our post on it cross posted at Change Nation:http://bit.ly/xRa6wf
Just when you thought that the attacks on working people couldn't get any worse, another Republican has come along to prove that point wrong. Meet New Hampshire Republican State Representative J.R. Hoell, who has filed a bill to repeal lunch breaks for people in New Hampshire. Seriously? No lunch breaks?
As Pat Garofalo at Think Progress noted:
"The bill's sponsor, state representative J.R. Hoell, argued that companies failing to provide lunch breaks would be shamed over social media, thus rendering the law unnecessary. 'If they are not letting people have lunch, they could put it out though the news media, though social media. I don't think that abusive behavior would continue, the way communications are today,' he said."
We don't know why Rep. Hoell's has a lack of respect for hard-working people, but he is right about the power of social media stopping "abusive" behavior like his bill.
That's why we're asking people to text LUNCH to 69866.
We need to show lawmakers all across the country that there isn't an appetite for laws like this because if this bill passes in NH, it won't be long before other Republicans file the same bill in other states.
Text LUNCH to 69866 and then share it on Facebook and Twitter by clicking on the left.
Last spring, GOP Rep. Susan Emerson accused House Speaker Bill O'Brien of yelling and swearing at her when he objected to her House budget bill amendments.
He was three inches from my face and started screaming at me that he had forbidden a Republican to put any amendments in. ... The Sergeant at Arms from the Senate, who is a retired state trooper, came and stood next to me because he thought O’Brien was going to hit me.
In an interview with Kevin Landrigan last month, O'Brien flatly denied the altercation ever took place and said she made it all up.
“There were no loud voices, no abuse, no bullying. We were having a conversation, and I made clear to her the House was not going to adopt any of her amendments,” O’Brien said.
Writing in the Concord Monitor, Matthew Spolar points out state GOP lawmakers' support for local control by government falls away when they disagree with actions taken by the local governments.
Examples of the proposed dictates and mandates on local governments are varied and far-reaching. They range from prohibiting towns from hiring a lobbyist, to specifying the amount of time students must devote to math and English, to requiring towns to put money raised from land development taxes into their general fund, to requiring towns and cities to adopt specific regulations for hawkers and peddlers.
The rationalizations by Republican lawmakers are almost amusing.
"I don't like telling towns what to do," Sen. Jim Forsythe of Strafford said last week. "But when they're imposing restrictions on the townspeople, I think it's okay for the state to step in in that case."
[Rep. JR Hoell] said he doesn't believe his bills impacting school districts "run against the local control at all."
"If what is being taught in a public education forum is contrary to the beliefs of a group of parents, those parents have the right to raise an objection to that," he said.
Mark Joyce, executive director of the New Hampshire School Administrators Association, states the obvious.
"The legislative majority has always said local control is very important," Joyce said. "If that is of value, then it seems contradictory to impose so many requirements on the communities themselves.
The Washington Press Club Foundation's annual Congressional Dinner has been politely described as "two hours worth of politicians who don't know how to joke trying to make jokes." Sen. Jeanne Shaheen was an exception to that rule when she cracked wise at the event this week.
New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen told the crowd of lawmakers and reporters that the white birch tree was the state tree of New Hampshire. She even offered a PowerPoint slide of said tree.
Then this: "What you didn't know - this tree beat Rick Perry in New Hampshire. It also beat him in a debate."
But Shaheen's best one-liner was at Newt Gingrich's expense. The senator explained that New Hampshire's state amphibian shares a name with the Republican presidential candidate, but - unlike Gingrich - the spotted newt "actually mates for life."
