How fitting, that on this Presidents’ Day, the New Hampshire House is preparing to vote on a resolution George Washington described “as measures systematically and pertinaciously pursued, which must eventually dissolve the union or produce coercion.”
Much of House Resolution 25 is lifted, verbatim, from a series of resolutions secretly written by Thomas Jefferson in 1798 and adopted by Kentucky and Virginia. The language explicitly asserts states have the right to declare federal laws unconstitutional and void.
where powers are assumed which have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy: that every State has a natural right … to nullify of their own authority all assumptions of power by others within their limits: that without this right, they would be under the dominion, absolute and unlimited, of whosoever might exercise this right of judgment for them…
For the record, the courts have repeatedly found that under the Constitution, federal law is superior to state law; the Constitution gives federal courts the power to interpret the Constitution; and states do not have the power to nullify federal law. The Civil War ended most nullification efforts — or so we thought.
HR 25 is sponsored by self-proclaimed Constitutional expert and nullification proponent Rep. Dan Itse. It was approved by the House State-Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs Committee in an 8-2 vote and is on the House calendar for Wednesday’s session.
State House Democratic Leader Terie Norelli points out the obvious. These’s no lack of talk from the GOP House leadership on the topic of jobs — just a lack of action.
For the third time in the last month, House Republicans called a press conference to announce “jobs” as their top priority for the upcoming legislative session. If this prioritization sounds like news to you, it’s because the only time House Republicans actually talk about jobs is at press conferences.
House Republicans have issued 18 press releases promoting specific bills since January, covering such important topics as Transportation Security Administration searches, Arizona’s immigration law, and abortion policy. Jobs have been mentioned only twice: in press releases promoting payday loans and the repeal of insurance mandates.
“House Republicans would be wise to shift their attention away from guns, gay marriage and press conferences,” chides the former House Speaker, “and onto legislation that provides the educated work force that businesses need to create jobs.”
GOP state Rep. Lee Quandt says thousands of New Hampshire Republicans have been driven from the party by the “arrogance and self serving decisions” from Speaker Bill O’Brien and the House leadership team.
There are thousands of union Republicans that have been driven away from the party. The current make up of the Republican Party has no use for senior citizens, veterans, gays, or the working middle class. They have proven this by, not only the right to work issue; but, the myriad of other anti working class bills that they have put in.
The bad House leadership has brought down the Republican Party in NH. The arrogance and self serving decisions that are coming out of our leadership team is being hard to believe according to many active republicans that are watching what is going on. They don’t listen and have put themselves in an un-winnable situation.
While the thousands of public middle class republicans can ask, “why did you stab us in the back, what did we do to deserve this”?
I think they just want us barefoot and pregnant, and I’m disgusted. The atmosphere of the whole Republican Party has been going backwards, and the moderates are lost. The religious argument is bogus, because I think they’re just using that as a political tool.
— GOP state Rep. Priscilla Lockwood, on Republican efforts to allow employers and insurers to place limits on insurance coverage for birth control.
In the past year, support for the New Hampshire GOP legislative agenda has plummeted, House Speaker Bill O’Brien’s favorability rating has declined, and there has been a significant drop in support for the Tea Party.
A new survey from Democratic pollster Benenson Strategy Group found likely voters oppose the agenda of Republicans in the legislature by a 51 percent to 38 percent margin. Last year at this time, voters approved of the agenda by a 49 percent to 38 percent margin. “Notably, nearly one-in-five registered New Hampshire Republicans now opposes the legislative agenda of their own party.”
House Speaker Bill O’Brien, who has championed the agenda, fared no better. As he has become better known by the electorate, O’Brien is less liked. Of the 40 percent of likely voters who could identify O’Brien in May, 2011, six percent had a favorable impression compared to 16 percent with an unfavorable impression. Today, 69 percent of voters can identify him and his net favorability rating has dropped to -14 points (15 percent positive, 29 percent negative).
Support for the Tea Party in New Hampshire continues to drop also. Today, 29 percent say they view the Tea Party favorably, compared to 50 percent who view the Tea Party unfavorably, a net 14 percent drop since the February, 2011 survey. This is consistent with an earlier Suffolk University/7 News tracking poll that also measured a “drastic shift” in Tea Party support among likely GOP primary voters.
Benenson surveyed 600 likely voters in the 2012 general election between January 30 and February 1, 2012. The margin of error is ±4.00%.
House Bill 1402 would eliminate licensing requirements for small-scale food producers that sell food products from homes, roadside stands and farmers’ markets. While licensing would still be required for producers of potentially hazardous foods, producer-distributors of raw milk and raw milk products are specifically excluded from any licensing requirements.
The editors at Food Poison Journal (who knew?) are aghast. This bill will result in more foodborne illness, they write, and should include an “injury fund that will help severely injured people deal with present and future medical costs.”
Amidst its attempts to de-regulate locally produced foods entirely, will New Hampshire legislature consider an insurance requirement? Or is insurance, too, beneath the “live free or die” mantra that is currently being taken to the extreme by a few folks in New Hampshire?
Do not think that this isn’t a problem. … Raw milk producers are the primary offenders — i.e. producing a product with known risks and not doing right by customers by having insurance in place to address medical costs, past and future, for severely injured people—and it is no enticement toward insuring a business to completely de-regulate it.
HB 1402 sailed out of the House Environment and Agriculture Committee with a 13-0 vote. It is on the consent calendar for Wednesday’s House session.
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.
House Bill 1607 and Senate Bill 372 would create a school voucher program granting tax credits to businesses funding scholarships for students to attend private schools, religious schools or home schools.
The Carsey Institute reports that, based on the latest WMUR Granite State Poll, New Hampshire voters are virtually universal in their opposition to this attack on the state’s public schools.
The survey found there was very little support among New Hampshire voters for using state funds to help students attend private school. Public school parents were very satisfied with their local schools and were even more opposed than all voters to using state money to help students attend private schools.
55 percent of all voters oppose using state funds to help students attend private schools compared to only 23 percent who support it. They oppose using tax credits to help students attend private schools by a 41 percent to 27 percent margin. The opposition is bipartisan. Republicans oppose both measures by 43 percent to 36 percent and 36 percent to 30 percent margins respectively.
Supporters assert that New Hampshire public schools are failing and parents are demanding alternatives — but someone apparently forgot to tell parents.
68 percent of public school parents saying that they are extremely satisfied (six percent), very satisfied (31 percent) or somewhat satisfied (31 percent) with the quality of education in their local schools — more than double the 30 percent who express some level of dissatisfaction.
The WMUR Granite State Poll was conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which interviewed 527 New Hampshire adults between January 25 and February 2, 2012. The margin of error is +/- 4.3 percent.
It was just two months ago that House failed to override Gov. Lynch’s veto of right-to-work legislation and the union busting law went down to defeat.
Today, the House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Services Committee meets to hear testimony on House Bill 1677, a similar bill that would prohibit collective bargaining agreements from requiring non-union employees to pay union fees and would eliminate the requirement that public unions represent non-union members.
House Speaker Bill O’Brien continues to pursue his white whale and has, once again, made the anti-union legislation his highest priority. He claims passage would grow our economy and attract manufacturers — despite all evidence to the contrary. New Hampshire AFL-CIO President Mark MacKenzie disagrees.
“We should be talking about the condition of our secondary roads, our crumbling schools and bridges and expanding I-93, to finish that project,” he said. “We should be investing in New Hampshire and its infrastructure so we can be the kind of state we want to be and provide opportunities going forward. That’s what our focus should be.” [Union Leader, February 8, 2012]
Protect New Hampshire Families has organized a Grassroots Lobby Day to push back against this politically-motivated attack on New Hampshire’s middle class. The fun starts with a pre-hearing briefing at noon at America Votes in Room 302 at 4 Park Street in Concord.
The latest WMUR Granite State Poll surveyed Granite State adults on several high profile issues being debated in the legislature. The results show an electorate at odds with two of the key initiatives being promoted by the House Republican leadership.
- Opposition to repeal of same-sex marriage is overwhelming
New Hampshire adults oppose repeal of same-sex marriage by a 59 percent to 32 percent margin. Among those who feel strongly about the issue, opponents of repeal outnumber supporters by a 2-to-1 margin with 48 percent strongly opposing repeal compared to just 23 percent who strongly support it. These figures have remained remarkably constant over the past year in earlier surveys from WMUR and Voter Consumer Research.
- Support for a constitutional amendment to prohibit a state income tax is far short of the required two-thirds majority
New Hampshire voters are evenly divided on a a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit a state tax on income. 39 percent of those surveyed said they would vote for the amendment, 41 percent would oppose it. The House-passed amendment requires Senate approval before being presented to the voters. A two-thirds majority vote would then be required to amend the state constitution.
- Granite Staters support voter photo ID legislation
One Republican issue that does appear to have broad support is requiring voters to present photo identification in order to vote. 68 percent expressed support for a voter ID law compared to 24 percent who oppose it. The support crosses partisan lines with majorities among Republicans (87 to 10 percent), Independents (69 to 22 percent) and Democrats (52 to 37 percent ).
The Granite State Poll is sponsored by WMUR-TV and conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. 527 New Hampshire adults were interviewed between January 25 and February 2, 2012 for the survey, which has a +/- 4.3 percent margin of error.
When asked to name the most important problem facing the state, 39 percent of New Hampshire adults expressed concerns about jobs and the economy. And the second most identified problem? The Republican state legislature!
That’s right, in the latest WMUR Granite State Poll, ten percent of New Hampshire adults identified GOP lawmakers as their biggest concern, more than those who named the state budget, health care, taxes or education quality. And the number is growing. In October, six percent of the respondents identified Republicans in the legislature as the state’s most important problem.
In other news, the survey confirmed that Gov. John Lynch is very popular (with a 68 percent approval rating and a +52 percent net favorability rating) and that most of us don’t know enough about the potential gubernatorial candidates to have an opinion about any of them.
The WMUR Granite State Poll was conducted by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, which interviewed 527 New Hampshire adults between January 25 and February 2, 2012. The margin of error is +/- 4.3 percent.
Foster’s, the state’s most conservative newspaper this side of the Union Leader, predicts House Republicans will pay a price for their “attempt to drive government into the chasm of the absurd.”
Instead of concentrating on the economy as promised time and again, they have shifted their focus to social issues which were barely — if at all — on the radar screen for voters before the 2010 elections.
Sweeping deregulation of guns, the wholesale elimination of professional licensing, gay marriage, abortion, the Magna Carta, forcing youngsters to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance … this list goes on.
What the Republicans in the House don’t seem to understand is they represent a broader electorate than just the right-wing faithful. And come November, it they don’t accept the fact, House Speaker Bill O’Brien, Majority Leader Bettencourt and others will be thrown out on their ears.
