An editorial in the Portsmouth Herald declares, “There seems to be a gap between House Republican leaders’ words and their actions.”
House leaders say their top priorities are jobs and the economy.
But if that’s true, why in the world would they attach an amendment requiring a woman to wait 24 hours for an abortion to a bill approved by the Senate raising the research and development tax credit pool from $1 million to $2 million? …
This is a case of House leaders’ words saying they value jobs and the economy while their actions show that social issues such as abortion are more important.
“This is just one more example,” the Herald concludes, “of why the House needs new leadership.”
At the GOP’s fundraiser in Rye yesterday, most of the attention was focused on right-wing provocateur James O’Keefe, who was a last-minute no-show in order to avoid being served a grand jury subpoena.
But even more offensive than the party elite seeking to hobnob with the convicted filmmaker who is being investigated by the state attorney general’s office, was a speech by one of the candidates in attendance.
New Castle state Rep. Will Smith was quoted by the Portsmouth Herald as claiming his proposed Right to Work legislation is a civil rights bill.
The [Right to Work] bill, which would prevent requiring all employees to pay union fees, is a “civil rights bill and a good jobs bill,” Smith said.
It’s a particularly offensive and inappropriate characterization. Right to Work originated as a response from southern segregationists to fight union efforts to organize workers and end Jim Crow discrimination.
Dr. Martin Luther King’s last march in Memphis was in support of public workers in their fight against segregation and right-to-work laws written to keep them divided and powerless. Dr. King was clear:
In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work.’ It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone.
A Portsmouth Herald editorial applauds the state Senate for defeating legislation approved by the House that would have removed “reasonable restrictions” on firearms.
The New Hampshire House went ballistic with gun legislation this past session. … All the bills are aimed at removing reasonable restrictions on where and when people can own, carry and discharge firearms. We think it’s reasonable:
- To restrict convicted felons from possessing firearms.
- To require a permit including a criminal background check to buy a weapon and carry a concealed weapon. Currently, private dealers can sell you a gun at a gun show without doing a background check.
- To allow public institutions such as colleges and universities to ban weapons from campus.
- To allow officers to stop people from bringing weapons into a courthouse.
- To prohibit carrying a loaded firearm or crossbow in a motor vehicle.
- To prohibit bringing a gun to school or to discharge a firearm near a school.
- To allow cities and towns to enforce no-fire zones in densely populated residential and recreational areas known as compact zones.
- To ban gun possession from someone under an active restraining order.
- To ban guns in the Statehouse visitors gallery.
There were bills on nearly all of these issues this past legislative session and, fortunately, the Senate rejected almost all of them.
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.
The battle for the GOP presidential nomination is all over but the shouting. The Portsmouth Herald, which endorsed Romney earlier this year, reminds us the memories are not good ones.
We’ll remember debate audiences booing a gay Marine just returned from battle and applauding Rick Perry for executing a record 234 Texans during his tenure as governor. We’ll remember Michele Bachmann saying the HPV vaccine causes “retardation,” and Herman Cain’s proposals for foreign policy in “Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan.” We’ll remember Newt Gingrich’s call for a lunar colony by 2020 and Rick Santorum’s saying he “almost threw up” when he heard John F. Kennedy’s famous speech on the separation of church and state.
The red-meat rhetoric fed to Republican primary-goers won’t win over the vast majority of moderate Americans whose votes will determine our next president.
So while most consider the Romney as well-oiled weather vane gibe to be negative, the paper begs to differ. “Frankly, we can’t wait for Romney to start over. … Romney should shake the Etch A Sketch and shake it hard.”
Writing in the Portsmouth Herald, Shir Haberman compares the New Hampshire House with the Senate.
He describes the physical differences between the Senate chamber and Representatives’ Hall. He contrasts the differences in mood between the two chambers. But Haberman notes the recent legislative action in the Senate — where Senators killed a number of House initiatives — and says the most striking difference is “common sense.”
The most striking difference between the two legislative bodies, however, appears to be common sense. While the House is all about making statements about the “over-reaching” of the judiciary, curtailing the role of the federal government in state affairs (read as opposition to Obamacare and environmental controls) and social conservatism, the Senate appears to much more practical in its approach.
The New Hampshire House and Senate have both passed legislation (House Bill 1607 and Senate Bill 372) that would grant businesses tax credits for contributions to a voucher program that would reimburse the educational expenses of students attending private, parochial and home schools.
Proponents of the private school voucher program claim it would improve the quality of education by offering more school choice and increasing competition. An editorial in the Portsmouth Herald dismisses that canard and denounces the legislation as “a vote to damage public schools.”
The vouchers take money from public schools in two ways. First, a tax credit given to a business is a tax not collected by the state. Second, when a student leaves a public school, the state funding that supported that student goes away, but the fixed costs to the schools remain unchanged….
The result would be either higher local property taxes or more cuts to our public schools, lost educational opportunities for our children, and a hollow victory for those who embrace the deluded notion that somehow our country would be better off without public schools.
Even right-wing provocateur Mark Brighton has had enough of House Speaker Bill O’Brien’s threats and intimidation. And he has some advice for the targets of O’Brien’s wrath: Stand up to the bully!
It seems that N.H. Speaker of the House William O’Brien, other than being a Republican, is a nasty piece of work. At first we just assumed that Democrats were being petulant because they had lost big time, but then O’Brien’s fellow Republicans also began squawking.
If the speaker is a loudmouth jerk, then he needs to be bested… You folks need to take your power back. Stand up to the bully!
Romney has distanced himself from his signature achievement, arguing that while near-universal health care was right for Massachusetts, it is not right for the nation and individual states should decide what is best for their citizens. We understand the political need for him to say this, but we don’t buy it. Reducing the number of uninsured in Massachusetts made good economic sense for the Bay State and it makes good sense for the nation.
— Portsmouth Herald editorial endorsing Mitt Romney for GOP presidential nomination.
The Portsmouth Herald calls on House Republicans to repeal the tobacco tax cut. And while you’re at it, they write, get rid of Speaker Bill O’Brien and Majority Leader D.J. Bettencourt.
The tortured logic used to justify New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien’s insistence on cutting the state’s tobacco tax by 10 cents a pack has cost the state $11 million since July, and it will continue to cost the state millions of dollars until common sense prevails and the tax cut is repealed.
On this issue, it seems the House leaders who like to say they are fiscally responsible are either blinded by ideology or so beholden to special interests that the lies just effortlessly flow from their lips.
It’s time to repeal the tobacco tax cut and it’s also past time for House Republicans to find leadership better able to represent the interests of the people of New Hampshire rather than corporately funded ideologues.
Conventional wisdom says we shouldn’t read too much into the results of a low-turnout special election. In many ways, however, today’s Rockingham District 14 race is a microcosm of the ideological battles being waged in the state House. The Portsmouth Herald says the results will have “major implications.”
The question now is whether Republicans will continue to support [Janvrin] or if they will switch allegiances to his Libertarian challenger. The answer has major implications for the direction the state will take over the next couple of years because Republicans will still hold a large majority in the House. Janvrin, however, would appear to be another vote among the Republican bloc who oppose anti-union legislation. Kelly would be another sure vote for House Speaker O’Brien. And if Mahoney wins? Well, that would signal the beginning of the end for the state’s Republican majority.
The Portsmouth Herald puts the latest attacks on New Hampshire workers in historical context and concludes “there is not much to celebrate on Labor Day 2011.”
The rights and life quality of American workers, once the envy of all the world, are under siege in New Hampshire, Maine and across the nation.
The history of labor is written in blood, sweat and sacrifice. Over the past 150 years, thousands of brave souls have given their lives to end the inhumane practices of child labor, 15-hour shifts and deadly working conditions. Living wages were won not through quiet and respectful dialogue, but through hard-fought and often violent strikes.
The labor battles today are just the latest rounds in a fight waged through the decades by young women in Dover and Exeter mills, granite cutters in Concord, street railway workers in Berlin, Amoskeag textile workers in Manchester or, in more recent history, striking teachers in Plaistow’s Timberlane School District.
