“Our Public Schools Are Being Privatized”

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.

Quote of the Day: “Disturbing and Simply Wrong”

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.

NHBR on House Speaker O’Brien’s “Rise to Power”

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.

Quote of the Day: A One-Term Speaker

Forget all the other shenanigans, his latest mischief with the redistricting veto override may actually have the last straw with a sizable group of Republican House members. Do we need any more proof that he’s a one-term speaker?

— Jeff Feingold, New Hampshire Business Review editor, on state House Speaker Bill O’Brien thumbing his nose at House protocol — if not the New Hampshire Constitution.

“I Did Not Fight, Nor Did My Gunner Die, For Your Ideology”

In a powerful letter to the editor, veteran Joshua David Denton calls for the New Hampshire GOP to replace chairman Jack Kimball for saying the reelection of President Obama will mean our military deaths have been “completely in vain.”

Mr. Chairman, if you disagree with the president’s decisions as commander in chief, don’t vote for him. If you disagree with the president’s hostilities in Libya or ordering Navy SEALs into Abbottabad, Pakistan, to kill Osama bin Laden, don’t vote for him.

And if you disagree with the president’s decision to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – wars that have cost more than 6,051 American lives and $3.7-$4.4 trillion in borrowed money after factoring in the cost of caring for the injured -– don’t vote for him.

But do not trivialize the deaths of our military killed in action with politics. I did not fight, nor did my gunner die, for your ideology.

Grievances Committee an “Embarrassing Farce”

Last week, I described how the chairman of Speaker O’Brien’s House Redress of Grievances Committee had disclosed a brazen ethics conflict while hearing a child custody case. This week, there was rare agreement from the state’s three most influential newspapers.

Union Leader:

Last week, a blatantly obvious conflict of interest was revealed. It should have resulted in the swift removal of a committee chairman. Instead, it elicited yawns.

As a sponsor earlier this year of a legislative bill of address to impeach a martial master whom Johnson accused of malpractice, Ingbretson was conflicted up to his eyeballs and never should have chaired the hearing.

It should be reheard under a different chairman and with the involvement of the girl’s mother. Otherwise, the Redress of Grievances Committee will have created another grievance to redress.

Nashua Telegraph:

When House Speaker William O’Brien, R-Mont Vernon, established the House Redress of Grievances Committee at the start of legislative session, it marked the first time in roughly 150 years that the redress process spelled out in the state constitution would be put into practice by the state Legislature.

If what happened during a committee hearing last week is any indication of how this process is supposed to work, maybe it should be put back on the shelf for another 150.

Concord Monitor:

Now, out of New Hampshire’s history-making 2011 Legislature comes this riddle for philosophers: Can a violation of ethics occur in a farce, which by definition is a ludicrous, empty show?

The Committee on Petitions for Redress of Grievances is nothing more than a kangaroo court, albeit one whose only power is to make trouble and issue reports. It should be disbanded. If it isn’t, the committee’s four Democratic members should consider whether they really want to remain as players in this embarrassing farce.

Update: The chairman of the House Redress of Grievances Committee agreed to step aside following a request from the general counsel to the judicial branch.

Bonus Quote of the Day: A Blatant Assault

We’re not sure what we find more disturbing: That House Republican leaders want to take a jackhammer to the state’s collective bargaining laws or that they chose to do so through a 70-word amendment in a 146-page budget trailer bill, rather than through separate legislation that would have been subject to its own public hearing and up-or-down vote.

But what House Republican leaders are advocating here — despite their lame protests to the contrary — is far more than a leveling of the playing field. It is a blatant assault on the principles of good-faith bargaining dictated by political ideology under the guise of fiscal responsibility.

— Nashua Telegraph, on the Kurk amendment that effectively ends collective bargaining rights for public workers