While conceding that New Hampshire state Rep. Vaillancourt “deserved to be rebuked” for his “outrageous” Nazi salute in the House this week, a scathing editorial in the Eagle-Tribune concludes that ”the incident says more about the atmosphere — and the character — of the House under [Speaker Bill O’Brien] than it does about Vaillancourt.”
O’Brien was elected as a champion of the Tea Party and has gathered around himself a coterie of like-minded, conservative Republicans.
But as speaker, O’Brien has more in common with some of the martinets who have ruled Massachusetts’ lockstep Democratic Legislature.
In speaking of his leadership style, quotation marks are needed around the word “leadership.”
He brooks no dissent and uses closed-door caucuses to cow the weak. If you disagree with him, he doesn’t want to hear it. Nor does he want anyone else to hear it
Despite his assertion of power, or perhaps because of it, the House remains a dysfunctional and feckless body, constantly chasing rabbits instead of concentrating on what needs to be done for New Hampshire.
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.
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.
After slashing state spending for higher education and cutting services for seniors, the disabled and at-risk children, state House Speaker Bill O’Brien says, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”
O’Brien told Kevin Landrigan he anticipates cutting another $400,000 from the 2014-2015 budget. State Senator Lou D’Allesandro, who serves on the Senate Finance and Ways and Means committees, wants to know where the cuts will be made.
“Will they eliminate all funding for higher education, pushing through another double-digit tuition increase? Will they cut additional aid to cities and towns, raising local property taxes? Will they cut health care for seniors, people with disabilities and children? The people of New Hampshire deserve to know.”
Senate Democratic Leader Sylvia Larsen and Rep. Cindy Rosenwald, a member of the House Finance Committee, called on the GOP gubernatorial candidates to level with New Hampshire voters about their plans for the budget.
“Ovide Lamontagne — and Kevin Smith — should tell us now if they support Bill O’Brien’s radical new plan,” said Larsen, “and if so, they should tell New Hampshire what they would cut.”
“The people of New Hampshire deserve to know what Republican leaders plan to cut in order to pay for their next round of tax giveaways,” echoed Rosenwald.
In an interview with Kevin Landrigan, State House Speaker Bill O’Brien conceded that more than 50 Republican members of the House are “extreme” — even by his standards!
O’Brien said passing an educational funding amendment will require 239 votes from the “moderate middle.” He acknowledged that the 293 House Republicans cannot provide all of those votes.
Getting a 60-percent super majority, or 239 House votes for this amendment, will require the moderate middle of Republicans and Democrats to support it, O’Brien said.
“It has to be that middle 60 percent. We can no longer respond to the extremes of either side,” O’Brien said.
My philosophy on money, material goods and personal responsibility were somewhat like O’Brien’s until my son, while in college, was diagnosed with a mental illness.
It brought me into a whole new world of individuals who espouse personal responsibility but need support and assistance to achieve that status.
Eliminating or reducing the programs that provide this support and assistance, in order to put more money into the pockets of people, is disturbing and simply wrong.
— Ed Kirby, Nashua, responding to the Nashua Telegraph’s four-part series on House Speaker Bill O’Brien.
The New Hampshire Business Review took a look at “Rise to Power,” the Nashua Telegraph’s four-day series on House Speaker Bill O’Brien, and declared it to be “informative, interesting — and at times disturbing.” The interviews with his neighbors in Mont Vernon were particularly enlightening, they wrote.
One anecdote in particular stands out. It involves a neighbor from his days in Amherst who remembers the speaker as “friendly and helpful.”
And what would prompt her to come to this conclusion? Turns out it involves an incident when she locked herself out of her home, and “O’Brien was quick to invite her in and host her until her husband arrived home.” Nice, like she said.
Until you realize the alternative would have been to tell his neighbor “tough luck,” “pound sand” — or whatever — and tell her she was on her own.
Apparently he didn’t get into the habit of doing stuff like that until he found his way to the Legislature.
When GOP state Rep. Anne Cartwright received an email from a constituent urging her to oppose Bill O’Brien’s bid for re-election as Speaker of the House, she responded publicly via the “All Representatives” email list:
I have attended a number of local Tea Party events, have you?
I do not find them divisive.
Are you opposed to stopping wasteful spending such as TARP?
Are you opposed to the US Constitution which limits government to protect your rights?
Do you oppose the NDAA McCain Levin amendment which is already passed into law,
which gives the President the power to arrest and jail any American citizen without due process
if they are considered an enemy belligerent.
Who defines enemy belligerent?
I oppose a Fascist Oligarchy supported by a ceremonial US Congress
and I support your right to free speech and judicial due process
Last week, after the Senate had dismissed numerous House bills seeking to advance its radical social agenda, Speaker Bill O’Brien and his minions retaliated. The response was to table six Senate bills the House had just passed, and to attach the defeated House bills as non-germane amendments to Senate legislation under consideration.
In a letter to the editor, Portsmouth state Rep. Rich DiPentima reviews this obstructionist warfare and declares, “The people of New Hampshire deserve and should demand much better.”
The Senate Republicans understand that the House Republicans are fixated on a radical social and anti-labor agenda that is straight out of the American Legislative Exchange Council playbook. … The Senate Republicans also understand that the public has a very negative opinion of the House, and they are trying to distance themselves from the House Republicans as much as possible to save their political hides come November.
Unfortunately, the big losers in this Republican in-fighting are the people of New Hampshire. Instead of spending the time and energy to create jobs and strengthen education and the economy of our state, they are playing ideological games of chicken. If Republicans cannot even work among themselves, how can we expect them to govern the state? This is government at its worst, and they should be ashamed.
Wednesday, we witnessed an extraordinary House session in which the GOP-dominated House retaliated against the GOP-dominated Senate for defeating many of the more extreme bills sent its way by the House.
The retaliation included tabling six Senate bills it had just passed unanimously and attaching language from the defeated House bills as non-germane amendments to Senate legislation under consideration.
GOP state Rep. Steve Vaillancourt writes that the events of the day prove the super majority GOP can’t govern.
The power play involves sending a message to the Senate—hey you guys kill (either by outright no votes or by interim study) our bills and we’ll kill yours. This “mine is bigger than yours mentality” is fit for a back alley brawl, but it’s hardly the kind of responsible government people have a right to expect from their leaders.
This is a legislature totally out of control, and even level-headed Republicans, who in past years would never have acted so irresponsibly, have now had their senses ground out of them by the bully at the podium….
Vaillancourt wrote that the House strategy of attaching non-germane amendments to Senate bills could backfire and lead to their defeat. “But, he asks, “who cares about that?”
After all, we’ve got a radical right wing social agenda to pre-empt the fiscally prudent agenda we promised to enact!
Patch is running a poll asking, “Does House Speaker William O’Brien deserve another term?” The unscientific poll doesn’t hold much interest for me, but the readers’ comments are quite entertaining.
When the conversation turned to reports of O’Brien bullying lawmakers who disagreed with him, a reader identifying himself as GOP Rep. Will Smith jumped to his defense:
[N]one of the so called “bullying” episodes EVER occurred! Emerson is a liar, the Senate Sargent at Arms is a union hack and was FIRED and he wasn’t even in the room and Tim Copeland is a union hack liar who also wasn’t there and never even had a conversation with the Speaker or majority leader.
That was all too much for Rep. Lee Quandt. “Is Rep. Will Smith unhinged?” asked Quandt.
Calling Emerson and Copeland liars is like calling Mary Poppins a hooker, just doesn’t fit and not credible.
