Bill Duncan, who has been leading the charge to protect New Hampshire’s public schools, explains the true goal of Senate Bill 372. The proposed legislation would create a school voucher program granting tax credits to businesses to fund scholarships for students attending private schools, religious schools or home schools.
Milton Friedman, the godfather of the movement for private school vouchers, said in his famous paper, “Public Schools: Make Them Private”: “Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a free-market system.”
This week, the New Hampshire House of Representatives is expected to vote a plan to do just that.
Our public schools are being privatized, and New Hampshire communities will pay the price.
It took three tries, but Rep. Vaillancourt apologized to the New Hampshire House and the Speaker for his use of “inflammatory” language on the House floor and the regular business of the House resumed.
When the New Hampshire House is in session we’ve come to expect fireworks, but today was one for the record books. We’ll pick it up during the debate on Senate Bill 289, which would require voters to present a photo ID in order to cast a ballot. GOP Rep. Vaillancourt had questioned House Speaker O’Brien over his ruling prohibiting discussion of committee deliberations.
The Legislature is approaching what could be called Hell Week in the House and Senate, where there’s a flurry of action, but not a lot gets done. House and Senate leaders, like two raging bulls, mark their territory in advance of financial negotiations on key bills.
— Kevin Landrigan, Nashua Telegraph
It was an “act of political courage,” writes Robert Gillette, when 17 state Senators killed legislation that would have eliminated funding for Planned Parenthood. It also might have saved a few lives, adds the former science and health reporter for the L.A. Times.
But it will all be for naught, he warns, if New Hampshire voters fail to hold accountable the “militant House majority that has adopted a national conservative political agenda that’s making New Hampshire a laboratory for an imported style of social engineering.”
Last month, in a notable act of political courage, 12 Republicans joined all five Democrats in the New Hampshire Senate to save access to health care for thousands of women and teens. Their action averted financial disaster for the state’s health economy.
They may also have saved a few lives.
Back in 2010, when an angry electoral tide swept dozens of conservative new members into the House on promises of fiscal rectitude, there was not much talk about a social to-do list that now includes a Florida-style “stand your ground” gun law, permitting guns on the House floor, encouraging skepticism of evolution and global warming in schools — along with challenges to women’s health and reproductive rights.
The Senate’s latest common-sense action may not matter much unless more voters take notice of candidates’ positions on vital issues like women’s health.
Cherylyn Harley LeBon — who established her partisan Republican bona fides working for archconservative Sen. Orrin Hatch and serving as deputy press secretary and spokesperson for the Republican National Committee — notes efforts by the New Hampshire GOP to eliminate the International Baccalaureate (IB) program and declares the party has lost its way.
In the State of New Hampshire, however, Democrats have exercised reasonable, sound judgment, while my Republican brethren are being led astray.
Some Republicans in the New Hampshire state legislature believe that the IB program is a pilot program of the United Nations and UNESCO that promotes a socialist agenda. I have my share of criticisms for the UN and UNESCO, but they are a non-issue in this instance and don’t control the IB program.
The IB program prepares our children to function in a global society. The curriculum is challenging and encourages students to hone critical thinking skills, engage in community service, and learn a second language. … We should be proud of and encourage education through programs like the IB program.
If calling for Gov. Lynch to be arrested isn’t enough evidence of the New Hampshire Tea Party’s descent to irrelevancy, how about this message from the NH Tea Party Coalition?
The truth is, Obama is the product of a Bush cousin (his mother), with ties to the Illuminati families, and was picked out by the evil Henry Kissinger as far back as college … and was thus destined to be Kissinger’s Manchurian Candidate.
The reason Obama seems to have “no birth certificate, no college records, no roommates, no student loans, no girlfriends/boyfriends, and no past”, and was able to gain the presidency with virtually no prior major accomplishment or business experience is that he was likely a CIA asset as proven by the 26 or so SS numbers he used over the years.
On the day we honor mothers, it’s worth noting that 71% of women with children under 18 years of age are in the labor force. And as the New Hampshire GOP continues its assault on workers and unions, it’s particularly meaningful to note the advantage these unions provide for working mothers.
A report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) documents the dramatic advantage unions provide women workers in pay and benefits.
The data suggest that even after controlling for systematic differences between union and non-union workers, union representation substantially improves the pay and benefits that women receive. On average, unionization raised women’s wages by 11.2 percent — about $2.00 per hour — compared to non-union women with similar characteristics.
For the average woman, joining a union has a much larger effect on her probability of having health insurance (an 18.8 percentage-point increase) than finishing a four-year college degree would (an 8.4 percentage-point increase, compared to a woman with similar characteristics who has only a high school diploma). Similarly, unionization raises the probability of a woman having a pension by 24.7 percentage points, compared to only a 13.1 percent increase for completing a four-year college degree (relative to a high school degree).
So, by all means, take Mom out for lunch. But to honor working moms all over the state, call your legislators and demand they stop the assault on unions and put an end to the so-called “Right to Work” charade.
This post first appeared on May 8, 2011
Media Matters weighs in on the Union Leader editorial in support of voter photo ID legislation and calls James O’Keefe “a surprising source for a mainstream publication to cite.”
SB 289, the Union Leader editors argued, is necessary to protect the integrity of New Hampshire’s electoral results from the corrupting danger of rampant voter fraud. Their evidence? The work of discredited liar and undercover videographer James O’Keefe, whose attempted investigation of “voter fraud” in New Hampshire last January drew rebukes from election law experts who believed his scheme may have broken the law.
Project Veritas, which is run by O’Keefe, is a surprising source for a mainstream publication to cite, given his history of lies, deception and hyper-partisanship. More importantly, O’Keefe’s “sting” in New Hampshire didn’t come close to establishing that voter fraud has been committed in New Hampshire at all, much less on any scale that would affect the outcome of an election.
“In fact,” the report concludes, “the specter of a voter fraud epidemic is largely a figment of right-wing imagination.”
On his flight to the ALEC Task Force Summit in Charlotte, state Rep. Andrew Manuse chose to opt out of the backscatter scan while passing through security. It was, he claimed, an act of passive resistance against a violation of his “constitutional rights to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures.”
By choosing … to go for an invasive full body pat down when asked to step through a simple backscatter screening machine, we are asserting our own authority and taking control of a lose-lose situation. … I was born free as an American. And I will die free, too, as an individual sovereign man, under the authority of my Almighty God alone.
Manuse believes that his constitutional rights include the right to board a commercial flight without a security check. In fact, Manuse believes the security check is unnecessary because he believes he, and all of his fellow passengers, have a constitutional right to carry a gun on the plane!
Regardless of whether I chose to go through the backscatter machine or opt-out for the pat down, my rights would be violated: My right to travel freely without interference would be violated. My right to bear arms to protect myself from terrorists on the plane or anyone or anything else would be violated. My right to be free from unreasonable searches without probable cause and a warrant indicating the items that were the subject of the search would be violated. My right to be innocent until proven guilty would be violated. [Emphasis added]
Comparing his actions to acts of passive resistance that “brought about the greatest religion in the world, … freed India from the caste system [and] brought light to the plight of former slaves in the Southern United States,” Manuse urges others to follow his lead “if we are ever to restore our liberties.”
Oh, my.
Larry Sabato, director of the UVA Center for Politics, has consistently been one of the nation’s most accurate political prognosticators. He correctly predicted the result of every gubernatorial and U.S. Senate race in 2008 and was one of the first to forecast the 2010 House takeover by Republicans.
In an update to his predictions for the fall’s congressional elections, Sabato has moved New Hampshire’s 1st District race between Frank Guinta and Carol Shea-Porter from “Leans Republican” to “Toss up.” James Pindell has the explanation from Sabato and editor Kyle Kondik.
“[G]iven New Hampshire’s volatile and seemingly always shifting politics, it would not surprise us if an Obama win flipped both seats back to the Democrats in the fall — just like what happened in 2006, when both seats flipped together in a Democratic year. Nor would it surprise us if a Romney win kept both the seats in the GOP column. … New Hampshire looks like a coin-flip state right now at the presidential level — so why shouldn’t its two House seats also be coin flips, at least for now?”
An editorial in today’s Concord Monitor surveys the results of state House Speaker Bill O’Brien’s first term as Speaker and evaluates his proposal to cut another $400 million from the state budget in his second term. He’s done enough damage, they conclude.
O’Brien did damage enough in his first term as speaker. He set a tone that has made the State House atmosphere poisonous. He all but banished Republicans who disagreed with any element of his radical agenda to shrink government or opposed his efforts to concentrate power in the body he leads.
If he gets his way, New Hampshire will do less of what it should do and do what it does do less well. It’s an agenda that voters should reject.