THE SHOUT HEARD AROUND THE WORLD!!!

Just when you thought you have heard everything and seen about everything you get surprised. 

This past week in the legislature the speaker out did himself and got into an argument with Rep. Steve Vailancourt from Manchester.  Steve is a very popular Rep. in his area and his well known for his intelligence, flamboyance, and fierce defense of right from wrong and people’s rights.  This past week a democrat got up to speak and was cut short by the speaker.  Then one of the speaker’s friends got up to speak and was allowed.  Then Steve got up to speak and challenged the speaker on what he just did and a shouting match ensued.   You can never win an argument with a bully holding the hammer and Steve was told he was out of order and to sit down.  In a set of circumstances like this, Steve is not inclined to do either and the speaker ordered security to escort him to his seat.  Steve started to walk away and the speaker said something else and Steve walked back to the mike and said, “sieg heil”, and the speaker ordered him removed from the house.

I never took offense of what Steve said, bad choice of words, but no offense.  I knew Steve was paying tribute to someone acting like a German dictator and nothing else.  The speaker’s cult quickly jumped on this and made it sound like Steve was a Nazi sympathizer which is the furthest from the truth.

Steve went back to his seat to sit down when house security and state police arrived to escort him out.  What was interesting was several legislators started yelling at security to leave him alone.  At that point Representative (attorney) Soltani from Epson, who has been thrown off the house floor for arguing with speaker on prior occasions, went and sat down with Steve for a legal chat.

Things quieted down and Steve made his apology and the house started to get back to normal.  An interesting side note is when Tony tried to speak about this incident; the house (cult) started booing him which is a big taboo.  Tony asked the speaker “if you’re going to throw rep. Vailincourt out he needs to throw out all the people booing”.  The speaker couldn’t do that because they were mostly his supporters.

I then find out that this incident went global and was reported in a number of other countries.  This whole incident was avoidable and showed the world what the NH House is like; this wall the house and press talked about for the rest of the week.

HOW DO YOU DEAL WITH LEGISLATIVE LEADERSHIP THAT CAN’T TELL THE TRUTH???

The latest out of the speaker is NH has added 10,000 jobs since the republicans have had control back.  I wish I could believe that; but, there was no caveat as to where this info came from.  The last credible information I have received is that we caused the layoffs of about 4,000 between hospital layoffs and state employees.

Now the speaker is talking about cutting another 400 million dollars out of the budget if he gets re-elected; 

I think the voters will have something to say about that.  Whenever possible I fully support budget cuts; but, they have to be well thought out and prudent.  Slash and burn tactics to grab headlines is not a prudent way to go about cutting the budget.

Everything I’ve been reading and seeing on TV tells us that the NH economy is slowing down even more than it has in the past.  I’m not an economist; but, I think the signs are starting to show.  I think the towns and communities need to make plans for layoffs and budget cuts, the state will need to review what we have done in the last budget and see if there is anymore reductions to be had; but, to say 400 million more in cuts could be a little too optimistic.

New leadership that will work with the senate while working with the department heads will be the right path to travel on this issue.

POLITICS OF ANGER!!!

How many times have we seen or heard people say “I’m mad about this or that”, and then proceed to attack whomever they are addressing; whether it is the Board of Selectmen or a legislative committee hearing, this becoming more and more prevalent. 

There is no easy way to deal with this, sometimes people will listen and other times they start attacking and keep it up never listening to an answer for their issues.

Now we have ultra groups that have funding from sources that they don’t want to make public while the contributors do not want to become known.  This goes against everything most of us stand for and is against the movement for more transparency in government and politics.

What gets formed are hate groups who say and do whatever they want and think they can keep who is behind and pushing them in a closet.  There is a movement underway in Concord to force them to report who is paying them to attack people.  It would be nice to see who paid to have the tobacco tax reduction pushed through a how much they paid.